ather in a gentle voice. "You
have been good to my poor brother."

John Storm answered with some commonplace--it had been a pleasure, a
happiness; the brother would soon leave them; they would all miss
him--perhaps himself especially.

The Father resumed his chair and listened with an earnest smile. "I
understand you, dear friend," he said. "It is so much more blessed to
give than to receive! Ah, if the poor blind world only knew! How it
fights for its pleasures that perish, and its pride of life that passes
away! Yet to succour a weaker brother, or protect a fallen woman, or feed
a little child will bring a greater joy than to conquer all the kingdoms
of the earth."

John Storm sat down on the end of the bed. Something had gone out to him
in a moment, and he was held as by a spell. The Father talked of the love
of the world--how strange it was, how difficult to understand, how
tragic, how pitiful! The lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye--how
mean, how delusive, how treacherous! To think of the people of that
mighty city day by day and night by night making themselves miserable in
order that they might make themselves merry; to think of the children of
men scouring the globe for its paltry possessions, that could not add one
inch to the stature of the soul, while all the time the empire of peace
and joy and happiness lay here at hand, here within ourselves, here in
the little narrow compass of the human heart! To give, not to get, that
was the great blessedness, and to give of yourself, of your heart's love,
was the greatest blessedness of all.

John Storm was stirred. "The Church, sir," he said, "the Church itself
has to learn that lesson."

And then he spoke of the hopes with which he had come up to London, and
how they were being broken down and destroyed; of his dreams of the
Church and its mission, and how they were dying or dead already.

"What liars we are, sir! How we colour things to justify ourselves! Look
at our sacraments--are they a lie, or are they a sacrilege? Look at our
charities--are we Pharisees or are we hypocrites? And our clergy,
sir--our fashionable clergy! Surely some tremendous upheaval will shake
to its foundations the Church wherein such things are possible--a Church
that is more worldly than the world! And then the woman-life of the
Church, see how it is thrown away. That sweetest and tenderest and
holiest power, how it goes to waste under the eye and with the sanction
of the Chur