“I am deeply concerned in regard to yourself as to what effect my course may have on you.  And I am not you to listen to me with a view that you should see your way clear to support me McCrae, but rather that you should be fully apprised of my new belief and intentions.  I owe this to you, for your loyal support in the pest.  I shall go over with you, later, if you care to listen, my whole position.  It may be called the extreme Protestant position, and I use protestant, for want of a better word, to express what I believe is Paul’s true as distinguished from the false of his two inconsistent theologies.  It was this doctrine of Paul’s of redemption by faith, of reacting grace by an inevitable spiritual law —­of rebirth, if you will—­that Luther and the Protestant reformers revived and recognized, rightly, as the vital element of Christ’s teachings, although they did not succeed in separating it wholly from the dross which clung to it.  It is the leaven which has changed governments, and which in the end, I am firmly convinced, will make true democracy inevitable.  And those who oppose democracy inherently dread its workings.

“I do not know your views, but it is only fair to add at this time that I no longer believe in the external and imposed authority of the Church in the sense in which I formerly accepted it, nor in the virgin birth, nor in certain other dogmas in which I once acquiesced.  Other clergymen of our communion have proclaimed, in speech and writing, their disbelief in these things.  I have satisfied my conscience as they have, and I mean to make no secret of my change.  I am convinced that not one man or woman in ten thousand to-day who has rejected Christianity ever knew what Christianity is.  The science and archaic philosophy in which Christianity has been swaddled and hampered is discredited, and the conclusion is drawn that Christianity itself must be discredited.”

“Ye’re going to preach all this?” McCrae demanded, almost fiercely.

“Yes,” Hodder replied, still uncertain as to his assistant’s attitude, “and more.  I have fully reflected, and I am willing to accept all the consequences.  I understand perfectly, McCrae, that the promulgation alone of the liberal orthodoxy of which I have spoken will bring me into conflict with the majority of the vestry and the congregation, and that the bishop will be appealed to.  They will say, in effect, that I have cheated them, that they hired one man and that another has turned up, whom they never would have hired.  But that won’t be the whole story.  If it were merely a question of doctrine, I should resign.  It’s deeper than that, more sinister.”  Hodder doubled up his hand, and laid it on the table.  “It’s a matter,” he said, looking into McCrae’s eyes, “of freeing this church from those who now hold it in chains.  And the two questions, I see clearly now, the doctrinal and the economic, are so interwoven as to be inseparable.  My former, ancient presentation of Christianity left men and women cold.  It did not draw them into this church and send them out again fired with the determination to bring religion into everyday life, resolved to do their part in the removal of the injustices and cruelties with which we are surrounded, to bring Christianity into government, where it belongs.  Don’t misunderstand me I’m not going to preach politics, but religion.”