th all those who fail, but assuring her
hearers that when the moment comes for their illumination it will come,
and that it will be a veritable dayspring from on high. Earnestness is
hers of the highest and tenderest order, but also the convincing
authority of one who has found the peace which passes understanding.

She has spoken to me with sympathy of Mr. Studdert-Kennedy, whose
trench-like methods in the pulpit are thoroughly distasteful to a great
number of people. It is characteristic of Miss Royden that she should
fasten on the real cause of this violence. "I don't like jargon," she
said, "particularly the jargon of Christian Science and Theosophy. I
love English literature too much for that; and I don't like slang,
particularly slang of a brutal order; but I feel a deep sympathy with
anybody who is trying, as Mr. Studdert-Kennedy is trying, to put life
and power into institutionalism. It wants it so badly--oh, so very
badly--life, life, life and power."

Of one whose scholarship greatly impresses her, and for whose spiritual
life she has true respect, but whose theology fills her soul with dark
shadows and cold shudders, she exclaimed, as though it were her own
fault for not understanding him, "It is as if God were dead!"

Always she wants Christianity as life and power.

She remains a social reformer, and is disposed to agree with Bishop Gore
that the present system is so iniquitous that it cannot be
Christianised. She thinks it must be destroyed, but admits the peril of
destructive work till a new system is ready to take its place.

Yet I feel fairly certain that she would admit, if pressed with the
question, that the working of any better system can depend for its
success only upon a much better humanity. For she is one of those who is
bewildered by the selfishness of men and women, a brutal, arrogant,
challenging, and wholly unashamed selfishness, which publicly seeks its
own pleasures, publicly displays the offending symbols of its offensive
wealth, publicly indulges itself in most shameful and infuriating
luxuries, even at a time when children are dying like flies of
starvation and pestilence, and while the men of their own household, who
fought to save civilisation from the despotism of the Prussian theory,
tramp the streets, hungry and bitter-hearted, looking for work.

On her mind, moving about England at all times of the year, the reality
of these things is for ever pressing; the unthinkable selfis