“Thou shalt deliver me from the strivings of the people:  and thou shalt make me the head of the heathen.”

And the reply: 

“A people whom I have not known shall serve me.”

The working-man next to Alison had no prayer-book.  She thrust her own into his hand, and they read from it together . . . .

When they came to the second hymn the woman in front of her had wonderfully shed her vulgarity.  Her voice—­a really good one—­poured itself out: 

       “See a long race thy spacious courts adorn,
        See future sons, and daughters yet unborn,
        In crowding ranks on every side arise,
        Demanding life, impatient for the skies.”

Once Alison would have been critical of the words She was beyond that, now.  What did it matter, if the essential Thing were present?

The sermon was a surprise.  And those who had come for excitement, for the sensation of hearing a denunciation of a class they envied and therefore hated, and nevertheless strove to imitate, were themselves rebuked.  Were not their standards the same?  And if the standard were false, it followed inevitably that the life was false also.

Hodder fairly startled these out of their preconceived notions of Christianity.  Let them shake out of their minds everything they had thought it to mean, churchgoing, acceptance of creed and dogma, contributive charity, withdrawal from the world, rites and ceremonies:  it was none of these.

The motive in the world to-day was the acquisition of property; the motive of Christianity was absolutely and uncompromisingly opposed to this.  Shock their practical sense as it might, Christianity looked forward with steadfast faith to a time when the incentive to amass property would be done away with, since it was a source of evil and a curse to mankind.  If they would be Christians, let them face that.  Let them enter into life, into the struggles going on around them to-day against greed, corruption, slavery, poverty, vice and crime.  Let them protest, let them fight, even as Jesus Christ had fought and protested.  For as sure as they sat there the day would come when they would be called to account, would be asked the question—­what had they done to make the United States of America a better place to live in?

There were in the Apostolic writings and tradition misinterpretations of life which had done much harm.  Early Christianity had kept its eyes fixed on another world, and had ignored this:  had overlooked the fact that every man and woman was put here to do a particular work.  In the first epistle of Peter the advice was given, “submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake.”  But Christ had preached democracy, responsibility, had foreseen a millennium, the fulfilment of his Kingdom, when all men, inspired by the Spirit, would make and keep in spirit the ordinances of God.

Before they could do God’s work and man’s work they must first be awakened, filled with desire.  Desire was power.  And he prayed that some of them, on this day, would receive that desire, that power which nothing could resist.  The desire which would lead each and every one to the gates of the Inner World which was limitless and eternal, filled with dazzling light . . . .