McCrae shook his head vigorously, but did not speak.

“I owe it to you to give you some clew to what happened to me,” the rector continued, “although I have an idea that you do not need much enlightenment on this matter.  I have a feeling that you have somehow been aware of my discouragement during the past year or so, and of the causes of it.  You yourself hold ideals concerning the Church which you have not confided to me.  Of this I am sure.  I came here to St. John’s full of hope and confidence, gradually to lose both, gradually to realise that there was something wrong with me, that in spite of all my efforts I was unable to make any headway in the right direction.  I became perplexed, dissatisfied—­the results were so meagre, so out of proportion to the labour.  And the very fact that those who may be called our chief parishioners had no complaint merely added to my uneasiness.  That kind of success didn’t satisfy me, and I venture to assume it didn’t satisfy you.”

Still McCrae made no sign.

“Finally I came to what may be termed a double conclusion.  In the first place, I began to see more and more clearly that our modern civilization is at fault, to perceive how completely it is conducted on the materialistic theory of the survival of the fittest rather than that of the brotherhood of man, and that those who mainly support this church are, consciously or not, using it as a bulwark for the privilege they have gained at the expense of their fellow-citizens.  And my conclusion was that Christianity must contain some vital germ which I had somehow missed, and which I must find if I could, and preach and release it.  That it was the release of this germ these people feared unconsciously.  I say to you, at the risk of the accusation of conceit, that I believed myself to have a power in the pulpit if I could only discover the truth.”

Hodder thought he detected, as he spoke these words, a certain relaxation of the tension.

“For a while, as the result of discouragement, of cowardice, I may say, of the tearing-down process of the theological structure—­built of debris from many ruins on which my conception of Christianity rested, I lost all faith.  For many weeks I did not enter the church, as you yourself must know.  Then, when I had given up all hope, through certain incidents and certain persona, a process of reconstruction began.  In short, through no virtue which I can claim as my own, I believe I have arrived at the threshold of an understanding of Christianity as our Lord taught it and lived it.  And I intend to take the pulpit and begin to preach it.