“The effect on Maxwell is very marked.  I heard him preach in our State Association four years ago.  He impressed me at the time as having considerable power in dramatic delivery, of which he himself was somewhat conscious.  His sermon was well written and abounded in what the Seminary students used to call ‘fine passages.’  The effect of it was what an average congregation would call ‘pleasing.’  This morning I heard Maxwell preach again, for the first time since then.  I shall speak of that farther on.  He is not the same man.  He gives me the impression of one who has passed through a crisis of revolution.  He tells me this revolution is simply a new definition of Christian discipleship.  He certainly has changed many of his old habits and many of his old views.  His attitude on the saloon question is radically opposite to the one he entertained a year ago.  And in his entire thought of the ministry, his pulpit and parish work, I find he has made a complete change.  So far as I can understand, the idea that is moving him on now is the idea that the Christianity of our times must represent a more literal imitation of Jesus, and especially in the element of suffering.  He quoted to me in the course of our conversation several times the verses in Peter:  ’For even hereunto were ye called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye would follow His steps’; and he seems filled with the conviction that what our churches need today more than anything else is this factor of joyful suffering for Jesus in some form.  I do not know as I agree with him, altogether; but, my dear Caxton, it is certainly astonishing to note the results of this idea as they have impressed themselves upon this city and this church.

“You ask how about the results on the individuals who have made this pledge and honestly tried to be true to it.  Those results are, as I have said, a part of individual history and cannot be told in detail.  Some of them I can give you so that you may see that this form of discipleship is not merely sentiment or fine posing for effect.

“For instance, take the case of Mr. Powers, who was superintendent of the machine shops of the L. and T. R. R. here.  When he acted upon the evidence which incriminated the road he lost his position, and more than that, I learn from my friends here, his family and social relations have become so changed that he and his family no longer appear in public.  They have dropped out of the social circle where once they were so prominent.  By the way, Caxton, I understand in this connection that the Commission, for one reason or another, postponed action on this case, and it is now rumored that the L. and T. R. R. will pass into a receiver’s hands very soon.  The president of the road who, according to the evidence submitted by Powers, was the principal offender, has resigned, and complications which have risen since point to the receivership.  Meanwhile, the superintendent has gone back to his old work as a telegraph operator.  I met him at the church yesterday.  He impressed me as a man who had, like Maxwell, gone through a crisis in character.  I could not help thinking of him as being good material for the church of the first century when the disciples had all things in common.