So they reasoned for themselves, not judging others.  They were simply keeping their own pledge to do as Jesus would do, as they honestly judged He would do.  That was what they had promised.  How could they quarrel with the result if they were irresistibly compelled to do what they were planning to do?

Chapter Twenty-six

Meanwhile, Nazareth Avenue Church was experiencing something never known before in all its history.  The simple appeal on the part of its pastor to his members to do as Jesus would do had created a sensation that still continued.  The result of that appeal was very much the same as in Henry Maxwell’s church in Raymond, only this church was far more aristocratic, wealthy and conventional.  Nevertheless when, one Sunday morning in early summer, Dr. Bruce came into his pulpit and announced his resignation, the sensation deepened all over the city, although he had advised with his board of trustees, and the movement he intended was not a matter of surprise to them.  But when it become publicly known that the Bishop had also announced his resignation and retirement from the position he had held so long, in order to go and live himself in the centre of the worst part of Chicago, the public astonishment reached its height.

“But why?” the Bishop replied to one valued friend who had almost with tears tried to dissuade him from his purpose.  “Why should what Dr. Bruce and I propose to do seem so remarkable a thing, as if it were unheard of that a Doctor of Divinity and a Bishop should want to save lost souls in this particular manner?  If we were to resign our charge for the purpose of going to Bombay or Hong Kong or any place in Africa, the churches and the people would exclaim at the heroism of missions.  Why should it seem so great a thing if we have been led to give our lives to help rescue the heathen and the lost of our own city in the way we are going to try it?  Is it then such a tremendous event that two Christian ministers should be not only willing but eager to live close to the misery of the world in order to know it and realize it?  Is it such a rare thing that love of humanity should find this particular form of expression in the rescue of souls?”

And however the Bishop may have satisfied himself that there ought to be nothing so remarkable about it at all, the public continued to talk and the churches to record their astonishment that two such men, so prominent in the ministry, should leave their comfortable homes, voluntarily resign their pleasant social positions and enter upon a life of hardship, of self-denial and actual suffering.  Christian America!  Is it a reproach on the form of our discipleship that the exhibition of actual suffering for Jesus on the part of those who walk in His steps always provokes astonishment as at the sight of something very unusual?