superiority that it
may seem to require upon the whole must be distasteful to them. For as a
professional apostle of discontent, urging men to cease the worship of
things as they are, I am taking on myself a grave burden--that of
leading those who come with me, into something better. In the end
perhaps, you will not be proud of me. For my vision may be a delusion.
Time may leave me naked to the cold truth of life, and I may awaken from
my dreaming to reality. That is possible. But now I see my course; now I
feel the deep call of a duty I cannot resist." He was speaking softly
and in hardly more than a conversational tone, with his hand at his side
and his gloved claw behind him. He lifted his hand and spoke in a deeper
tone.

"I have come to you--to those of you who lead sheltered lives of
comfort, amid work and scenes you love, to tell you of your neighbors;
to call to you in their name, and in the name of our common God for
help. I have come from the poor--to tell you of their sorrows, to beg of
you to come over into Macedonia and help us; for without you we are
helpless. True--God knows how true--the poor outnumber you by ten to
one. True, they have the power within them to rise, but their strength
is as water in their hands. They need you. They need your neighborly
love."

As he spoke something within him, some power of his voice or of his
presence played across the congregation like a wind. The wind which at
first touched a few who bent forward to hear him, was moving every one.
Faces gradually set in attention. He went on:

"How wonderful is this spirit of life that has come rolling in through
the eons, rolling in from some vast illimitable sea of life that we call
God. For ages and ages on this planet life could only give to new life
the power to feed and propagate, could only pass on to new life the
heritage of instinct; then another impulse of the outer sea washed in
and there came a day when life could imitate, could learn a little,
could pass on to new life some slight power of growth. And then came
welling in from the unknown bourne another wave, and lo! life could
reason, and God heard men whisper, Father, and deep called unto deep.
Since then through the long centuries, through the gray ages, life
slowly has been rising, slowly coming in from the hidden sea that laves
the world. Millions and millions of men are doomed to know nothing of
this life that gives us joy; millions are held bound in a social
i