His whole-souled enlistment in the cause of what was regarded as radical religion became, therefore, the subject of amazed comment in the many clubs he now neglected.  The “squabble” in St. John’s, as it was generally referred to, had been aired in the press, but such was the magic in a name made without conscious effort that Phil Goodrich’s participation in the struggle had a palpably disarming effect:  and there were not a few men who commonly spent their Sunday mornings behind plate-glass windows, surrounded by newspapers, as well as some in the athletic club (whose contests Mr. Goodrich sometimes refereed) who went to St. John’s out of curiosity and who waited, afterwards, for an interview with Phil or the rector.  The remark of one of these was typical of others.  He had never taken much stock in religion, but if Goodrich went in for it he thought he’d go and look it over.

Scarcely a day passed that Phil did not drop in at the parish house....  And he set himself, with all the vigour of an unsquandered manhood, to help Hodder to solve the multitude of new problems by which they were beset.

A free church was a magnificent ideal, but how was it to be carried on without an Eldon Parr, a Ferguson, a Constable, a Mrs. Larrabbee, or a Gore who would make up the deficit at the end of the year?  Could weekly contributions, on the envelope system, be relied upon, provided the people continued to come and fill the pews of absent and outraged parishioners?  The music was the most expensive in the city, although Mr. Taylor, the organist, had come to the rector and offered to cut his salary in half, and to leave that in abeyance until the finances could be adjusted.  And his example had been followed by some of the high-paid men in the choir.  Others had offered to sing without pay.  And there were the expenses of the parish house, an alarming sum now Eldon Parr had withdrawn:  the salaries of the assistants.  Hodder, who had saved a certain sum in past years, would take nothing for the present . . . .  Asa Waring and Phil Goodrich borrowed on their own responsibility . . .

II

Something of the overwhelming nature of the forces Hodder had summoned was visibly apparent on that first Sunday after what many had called his apostasy.  Instead of the orderly, sprucely-dressed groups of people which were wont to linger in greetings before the doors of St. John’s, a motley crowd thronged the pavement and streamed into the church, pressing up the aisles and invading the sacred precincts where decorous parishioners had for so many years knelt in comfort and seclusion.  The familiar figure of Gordon Atterbury was nowhere to be seen, and the Atterbury pew was occupied by shop-girls in gaudy hats.  Eldon Parr’s pew was filled, Everett Constable’s, Wallis Plimpton’s; and the ushers who had hastily been mustered were awestricken and powerless.  Such a resistless invasion by the hordes of the unknown might well have struck with terror some of those who hitherto had had the courage to standup loyally in the rector’s support.  It had a distinct flavour of revolution:  contained, for some, a grim suggestion of a time when that vague, irresponsible, and restless monster, the mob, would rise in its might and brutally and inexorably take possession of all property.