nation.  True Christianity and Democracy were identical, and the congregation of St. John’s, as professed Christians and citizens, were doubly responsible, inasmuch as they not only made no protest or attempt to change a government which permitted the Dalton Streets to exist, but inasmuch also as,—­directly or indirectly,—­they derived a profit from conditions which were an abomination to God.  It would be but an idle mockery for them to go and build a settlement house, if they did not first reform their lives.

Here there had been a decided stir among the pews.  Hodder had not seemed to notice it.

When he, their rector, had gone to Dalton Street to invite the poor and wretched into God’s Church, he was met by the scornful question:  “Are the Christians of the churches any better than we?  Christians own the grim tenements in which we live, the saloons and brothels by which we are surrounded, which devour our children.  Christians own the establishments which pay us starvation wages; profit by politics, and take toll from our very vice; evade the laws and reap millions, while we are sent to jail.  Is their God a God who will lift us out of our misery and distress?  Are their churches for the poor?  Are not the very pews in which they sit as closed to us as their houses?”

“I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot.  I would thou wert cold or hot.”

One inevitable conclusion of such a revelation was that he had not preached to them the vital element of Christianity.  And the very fact that his presentation of religion had left many indifferent or dissatisfied was proof-positive that he had dwelt upon non-essentials, laid emphasis upon the mistaken interpretations of past ages.  There were those within the Church who were content with this, who—­like the Pharisees of old—­welcomed a religion which did not interfere with their complacency, with their pursuit of pleasure and wealth, with their special privileges; welcomed a Church which didn’t raise her voice against the manner of their lives—­against the order, the Golden Calf which they had set up, which did not accuse them of deliberately retarding the coming of the Kingdom of God.

Ah, that religion was not religion, for religion was a spiritual, not a material affair.  In that religion, vainly designed by man as a compromise between God and Mammon, there was none of the divine discontent of the true religion of the Spirit, no need of the rebirth of the soul.  And those who held it might well demand, with Nicodemus and the rulers of the earth, “How can these things be?”