sed to be a sensational
after-meeting. Members of the Athletic Club were scattered through the
room, and the same dogged determination was on their faces as on the
night of the boxing affair.

Mr. McGowan hobbled up the pulpit stair. He announced his text: "Launch
out into the deep and let down your nets." Captain Pott felt Elizabeth,
who was sitting beside him, stiffen. Miss Pipkin leaned forward in her
eagerness to catch every word, and as the minister proceeded her
expression changed from perplexity and doubt to one of deep respect.
There were others who followed the thought of the sermon with keen
interest. Elder Fox was present, for the first time in weeks.
Occasionally, he would write something on a pad, and then lean back to
pull at his silky chops.

Throughout the sermon Mr. McGowan spoke with tense earnestness.

"The time has come when the church must cut the shore lines that have
been binding us to the past. If a man persists in dragging the shore
line he may get a few good fish, but that does not set aside the fact
that he is either a poor fisherman or a coward. He must know the habits
of the fish, and go where they are.... The same thing may be said of the
church. We may produce a few fair Christians by dragging shore lines of
church doctrine, but our success will be due more to luck than to a
knowledge of the working of God's laws.... We have been long-shore
Christians for a good many centuries; the day has come for us to break
away from the surf of man-made ideas, and launch out till we can feel
the swell of a boundless love, a love not confined to the letter of
denominational law or creed. We must get into us the spirit of
Christianity. We must recognize the fact that the spirit is not a thing
that we can confine to sand-lined beaches of narrow conceptions of
faith and salvation that now exist in our churches....

"Here in Little River we have been an excellent example of what I mean.
We have been admiring ourselves,--and not without just cause,--while the
world we ought to be serving is forced to take its stand on the outside,
ofttimes with ideals greater than our own.... We have substituted
doctrine for Christianity, the letter of the law for the spirit of
freedom. We have slavishly worshipped our beliefs about God, instead of
worshipping God.... And what is the result? We have shut our doors to
many who hold a greater faith than our own; or we have forced them out
with no faith because of our own s