tency, frank but not gushing. Out of all
this come two things, the sense of two realisms, the realism of her
political faith, and the realism of her religious faith. You are aware
that she feels the sufferings and the deprivations of the oppressed in
her own blood, and feels the power, the presence, and the divinity of
Christ in her own soul.

It is a grateful experience to sit with this woman, who is so like the
best of men but is so manifestly the staunchest of women. Her face
reveals the force of her emotions, her voice, which is musical and
persuasive, the depth of her compassion. In her sitting-room, which is
almost a study and nearly an office, hangs a portrait of Newman, and a
_prie-Dieu_ stands against one of the walls half-hidden by bookshelves.
She is one of the few very busy people I have known who give one no
feeling of an inward commotion.

Apart from her natural eloquence and her unmistakable sincerity, apart
even from the attractive fullness of her humanity, I think the notable
success of her preaching is to be attributed to a single reason, quite
outside any such considerations. It is a reason of great importance to
the modern student of religious psychology. Miss Royden preaches Christ
as a Power.

To others she leaves the esoteric aspects of religion, and the
ceremonial of worship, and the difficulties of theology, and the
mechanism of parochial organisation. Her mission, as she receives it, is
to preach to people who are unwilling and suffering victims of sin, or
who are tortured by theological indecision, that Christ is a Power, a
Power that works miracles, a Power that can change the habits of a
lifetime, perhaps the very tissues of a poisoned body, and can give both
peace and guidance to the soul that is dragged this way and that.

One may be pardoned for remarking that this is a rather unusual form of
preaching in any of the respectable churches. Christianity as a unique
power in the world, a power which transfigures human life, which tears
habitude up by the roots, and which gives new strength to the will, new
eyes to the soul, and a new reality to the understanding; this, strange
to say, is an unusual, perhaps an unpopular subject of clerical
discourse. It is Miss Royden's insistent contribution to modern
theology.

She tells me that so far as her own experience goes, humanity does not
seem to be troubled by intellectual doubts. She is inclined to think
that it is even sick of such discuss