ve no idea of the manner in which he treats these unhappy people, but
I am perfectly sure that he gives them counsel of a healthy nature.
There is nothing about him which suggests unwholesomeness, and much that
suggests sound strength and clean good sense. Also among his penitents
are numerous shopgirls who have lost in the commercial struggle whatever
piety they possessed in childhood and in their craving for excitement
have gone astray from the path of safe simplicity--gambling on horse
races and often getting into serious trouble by their losses. Dr.
Orchard may be trusted to give these weak, rather than erring daughters
of London, advice which would commend itself to the Free Church Council,
for with all his sacerdotal aberrations the basis of his moral life is
rooted in Puritanism.

It is an entirely good thing that there should be a minister of religion
in London who attracts people of this order, particularly a minister
whose moral notions are so eminently sane and so steadily
uncompromising. London is stronger and less disreputable for Dr.
Orchard's presence in its midst--no doubt a very vulgar, degrading, and
trivial midst, but all the same a great congestion of little people, one
where the solemn note of the old morality sounds all too seldom across
the tinkle of bells in the caps of so many fools.

This moral influence, however, may appear questionable in the eyes of
strong-minded and unsentimental people. Would he exercise such personal
power, it may be asked, if he were not regarded as a "novelty," if the
eccentricity of his position in the nonconformist world had not so
skilfully advertised him to a light and foolish generation ever ready to
run after what is new? Of an Anglican clergyman's popularity I have
heard it said, "Who could not fill a church with the help of the band of
the Grenadier Guards?"

I should not like to answer this question, and yet I do not like to pass
it by. Antipathetic as I find myself to Dr. Orchard, it would not be
just to imply that the power of his personal influence is not a great
one, and one of an entirely wholesome nature. It seems to me, then, that
the nature of that which attracts the unhappy to seek his counsel is of
small moment in comparison with the extent and beneficence of his good
counsel. The fact that he does help people, does save many people from
very unhappy and dangerous situations, is a fact which gives him a title
not only to our respect, but to our grat