Courtland had been preaching in the Church of the Presence of God for four Sabbaths now, and the congregation had been growing steadily.  There had not been much advertising.  He had told a few friends in the factories near by that there was to be service.  He had put up a notice on the door saying that the church would be open for worship regularly and every one was welcome.  He did not wish to force anything.  He was following the leading of the Spirit.  If God really meant this work for him, He would show him.

Courtland’s preaching was not of the usual cut-and-dried order of the young theologue.  His theology had been studied to help him to understand his God and his Bible, not to give him a set of rules for preaching.  So when he stood up in the pulpit it was not to follow any conventional order of service, or to try to imitate the great preachers he had heard, but to give the people who came something that would help them to live during the week and enable them to realize the Presence of Christ in their daily lives.

The men at the seminary got wind of it somehow, and came down by twos and threes, and finally dozens, as they could get away from their own preaching, to see what the dickens that close-mouthed Courtland was doing, and went away thoughtful.  It was not what they had expected of their brilliant classmate, ministering to these common working-people right in the neighborhood where they lived and worked.

At first they did not understand how he came to be in that church, and asked what denomination it was, anyway.  Courtland said he really didn’t know what it had been, but that he hoped it was the denomination of Jesus Christ now.

“But whose church is it?” they asked.

“Mine,” he said, simply.

Then they turned to Pat for explanation.

“That’s straight,” said Pat.  “He bought it.”

“Bought it!  Oh!” They were silenced.  Not one of them could have bought a church, and wouldn’t have if they could.  They would have bought a good mansion for themselves against their retiring-day.  Few of them understood it.  Only the man who was going to darkest Africa to work in the jungles, and a couple who were bound, one for the leper country, and another for China, had a light of understanding in their eyes, and gripped Courtland’s hand with reverence and ecstatic awe.

“But, man alive!” lingered one, unwilling to leave his brilliant friend in such a hopeless hole.  “Don’t you realize if you don’t hitch on to some denomination, or board of trustees, or something, your work won’t count in the long run?  Who’s to carry on your work and keep up your name and what you have done, after you are gone?  You’re foolish!” He had just received a flattering call to a city church himself, and he knew he was not half so well fitted for it as Courtland.