had some angel whispered to him what devilish utterances were some day to proceed from the lips of the little cherub with shining face and shining robes who acted as the bishop’s attendant in the stately ceremonials of the Church!  Truly, even into the goodly company of the elect, even to the most holy places of the temple, Satan makes his treacherous way!  Even under the consecrated hands of the bishop!  For while the bishop was blessing me and taking me into the company of the sanctified, I was thinking about what the papers had reported, that the bishop’s wife had been robbed of fifty thousand dollars worth of jewels!  It did not seem quite in accordance with the doctrine of Jesus that a bishop’s wife should possess fifty thousand dollars worth of jewels, or that she should be setting the bloodhounds of the police on the train of a human being.  I asked my clergyman friend about it, and remember his patient explanation—­that the bishop had to know all classes and conditions of men:  his wife had to go among the rich as well as the poor, and must be able to dress so that she would not be embarrassed.  The Bishop at this time was making it his life-work to raise a million dollars for the beginning of a great Episcopal cathedral; and this of course compelled him to spend much time among the rich!

The explanation satisfied me; for of course I thought there had to be cathedrals—­despite the fact that both St. Stephen and St. Paul had declared that “the Lord dwelleth not in temples made with hands.”  In the twenty-five years which have passed since that time the good Bishop has passed to his eternal reward, but the mighty structure which is a monument to his visitations among the rich towers over the city from its vantage-point on Morningside Heights.  It is called the Cathedral of St. John the Divine; and knowing what I know about the men who contributed its funds, and about the general functions of the churches of the Metropolis of Mammon, it would not seem to me less holy if it were built, like the monuments of ancient ravagers, out of the skulls of human beings.

#Spiritual Interpretation#

There remains to say a few words as to the intellectual functions of the Fifth Avenue clergy.  Let us realize at the outset that they do their preaching in the name of a proletarian rebel, who was crucified as a common criminal because, as they said, “He stirreth up the people.”  An embarrassing “Savior” for the church of Good Society, you might imagine; but they manage to fix him up and make him respectable.

I remember something analogous in my own boyhood.  All day Saturday I ran about with the little street rowdies, I stole potatoes and roasted them in vacant lots, I threw mud from the roofs of apartment-houses; but on Saturday night I went into a tub and was lathered and scrubbed, and on Sunday I came forth in a newly brushed suit, a clean white collar and a shining tie and a slick derby hat and a pair of tight gloves which