spiritual proofs, and there could be none more convincing
than the life of the transformed Saul, who had given to the modern,
western world the message of salvation . . . .

That afternoon, as Alison sat motionless on a distant hillside of the
Park, gazing across the tree-dotted, rolling country to the westward, she
recalled the breathless silence in the church when he had reached this
point and paused, looking down at the congregation. By the subtle
transmission of thought, of feeling which is characteristic at dramatic
moments of bodies of people, she knew that he had already contrived to
stir them to the quick. It was not so much that these opening words
might have been startling to the strictly orthodox, but the added fact
that Hodder had uttered them. The sensation in the pews, as Alison
interpreted it and exulted over it, was one of bewildered amazement that
this was their rector, the same man who had preached to them in June.
Like Paul, of whom he spoke, he too was transformed, had come to his own,
radiating a new power that seemed to shine in his face.

Still agitated, she considered that discourse now in her solitude, what
it meant for him, for her, for the Church and civilization that a
clergyman should have had the courage to preach it. He himself had
seemed unconscious of any courage; had never once--she recalled--been
sensational. He had spoken simply, even in the intensest moments of
denunciation. And she wondered now how he had managed, without stripping
himself, without baring the intimate, sacred experiences of his own soul,
to convey to them, so nobly, the change which had taken place in him....

He began by referring to the hope with which he had come to St. John's,
and the gradual realization that the church was a failure--a dismal
failure when compared to the high ideal of her Master. By her fruits she
should be known and judged. From the first he had contemplated, with a
heavy heart, the sin and misery at their very gates. Not three blocks
distant children were learning vice in the streets, little boys of seven
and eight, underfed and anaemic, were driven out before dawn to sell
newspapers, little girls thrust forth to haunt the saloons and beg, while
their own children were warmed and fed. While their own daughters were
guarded, young women in Dayton Street were forced to sell themselves into
a life which meant slow torture, inevitable early death. Hopeless
husbands and wives were cast up like dr