brary, wasted her energy in deploring the recent volumes on economics,
sociology, philosophy, and religion that were placed on the shelves. If
Bremerton read them--and a portion of Bremerton did--no difference
was apparent in the attendance at Hodder's church. The Woman's Club
discussed them strenuously, but made no attempt to put their doctrines
into practice.

Hodder himself had but glanced at a few of them, and to do him justice
this abstention had not had its root in cowardice. His life was
full--his religion "worked." And the conditions with which these books
dealt simply did not exist for him. The fact that there were other
churches in the town less successful than his own (one or two, indeed,
virtually starving) he had found it simple to account for in that their
denominations had abandoned the true conception of the Church, and were
logically degenerating into atrophy. What better proof of the barrenness
of these modern philosophical and religious books did he need than
the spectacle of other ministers--who tarried awhile on starvation
salaries--reading them and preaching from them?

He, John Hodder, had held fast to the essential efficacy of the word of
God as propounded in past ages by the Fathers. It is only fair to
add that he did so without pride or bigotry, and with a sense of
thankfulness at the simplicity of the solution (ancient, in truth!)
which, apparently by special grace, had been vouchsafed him. And to it
he attributed the flourishing condition in which he had left the Church
of the Ascension at Bremerton.

"We'll never get another rector like you," Alice Whitely had exclaimed,
with tears in her eyes, as she bade him good-by. And he had rebuked her.
Others had spoken in a similar strain, and it is a certain tribute
to his character to record that the underlying hint had been lost on
Hodder. His efficacy, he insisted, lay in the Word.

Hodder looked at his watch, only to be reminded poignantly of the chief
cause of his heaviness of spirit, for it represented concretely the
affections of those whom he had left behind; brought before him vividly
the purple haze of the Bremerton valley, and the garden party, in the
ample Whitely grounds, which was their tribute to him. And he beheld,
moving from the sunlight to shadow, the figure of Rachel Ogden. She
might have been with him now, speeding by his side into the larger life!

In his loneliness, he seemed to be gazing into reproachful eyes. Nothing
ha