Power in the case of the former is a rope of sand; in the latter it is law.’  Again on this line, Mr. Irvine said:  ’It was inevitable that these workingmen should be weighed by their contributions.  That is the standard of the Society.’

“How true it is that this standard is applied in more churches than the Pilgrim Church in New Haven those who are in the churches know.  It is not true, of course, universally, but this is not by any means an isolated case.  Possibly the organization of the Congregational churches is faulty in this respect.  There is the church and there is the Society.  The Society’s committee runs the business of the church.  It is apt to be made up of men to whom the dollar is most essential, and often the committee exercises absolute power in most of the affairs of the church.  In this case it froze out a man who wanted to go out and bring in men from the highways and byways, and now he has gone to establish what he calls the church of the democracy.  It is to be a church independent of the rich.  There are such churches—­not many, to be sure—­but they come pretty close to the gospel of the New Testament.

“‘A man here may do one of three things,’ said the democratic clergyman in his good-bye address.  ’He may degenerate and conform to type.  He may stay for three or four years by the aid of diplomacy and much grace.  He may go mad.  Therefore, an essential qualification for this pastorate is a keen sense of humour.  If my successor has this he will enjoy the community ministry for a few years and will do much good among the children—­he will enjoy the view from the parsonage, the bay, the river, the mountains.  He will make friends, too, of some of the most genuinely good people on earth.  He must come, as I came, believing this place to be a suburb of paradise, and blessed will that man be if he departs before he changes his mind.’

“That is satire, and possibly out of place in the pulpit, but it may be that the words could be applied without stretching the truth to other pastorates.  ’The preacher is their “hired man.”  He may be brainy, but not too brainy—­social, but not too social—­religious, but not too religious.  He must trim his sails to suit every breeze of the community; his mental qualities must be acceptable to the contemporary ancestors by whom he is surrounded, or he does not fit.’  The bitterness in those words is evident, but the truths they contain are important.

“It may be that more sermons with equal plain speaking would do good.  It may be that the conservatism, not to say the Phariseeism, of the modern church requires a John the Baptist to pierce it to the core, and expose its inner rottenness.  The church that does not welcome the poor man and his family with just as much heartiness, sincerity and kindly sympathy as it does the rich man and his family is certainly not worthy of the great Teacher who spoke of the great difficulty the rich man has