ch in the frivolities of fashion--in drawing-rooms, in
gardens, in bazars, in theatres, in balls----"

He stopped. His last word had arrested him. Had he been thinking only of
himself and of Glory? His head fell and he covered his face with his
hand.

"You are right, my son," said the Father quietly, "and yet you are wrong,
too. The Church of God will not be shaken to its foundations because of
the Pharisees who stand in its public places, or because of the publicans
who haunt its purlieus. Though the axe be laid to the rotten tree, yet
the little seed will save its kind alive."

Then with an earnest smile and in a gentle voice he spoke of their little
brotherhood in Bishopsgate Street; how ten years ago they had founded it
for detachment from earthly cares and earthly aims, and for hiddenness
with God; how they had established it in the midst of the world's,
busiest highway, in the heart of the world's greatest market, to show
that they despised gold and silver and all that the blind and cheated
world most prizes, just as St. Philip and St. Ignatius had established
the severest of modern rules in a profane and self-indulgent century, to
show that they could stamp out every suggestion of the flesh as a spark
from the fires of hell.

And then he lifted his cord and pointed to the knots at the end of it,
and told what they were--symbols of the three bonds by which he was
bound--the three vows he had taken: the vow of poverty, because Christ
chose it for himself and his friends; the vow of obedience, because he
had said, "He that heareth you heareth Me"; and the vow of chastity,
because it was our duty to guard the gates of the senses, and to keep our
eyes and ears and tongue from all inordinateness.

"But the lawful love of home and kindred," said John; "what of that?"

"We convert it into what is spiritual," said the Father. "All human love
must be based on the love of God if it is to be firm and true and
enduring, and the reason of so much failure of love in natural friendship
is that the love of the creature is not built upon the love of the
Creator."

"But the love--say of mother and son--of brother and sister?"

"Ah, we have placed ourselves above the ordinary conditions of life that
none may claim our affections in the same way as Christ. Man has to
contend with two sets of enemies--those from within and those from
without; and no temptations are more subtle than those which come in the
name of our holiest