was to reach out
here and there, to get hold of this one and that one, and that there its
work terminated. Society was thought of as a heap of sand, and not as an
organism. Man was considered in himself alone, and not in his relations,
and so he was misunderstood, for nothing can be truly and fully known
except in its relations. But it has become plain that this exclusively
individualistic conception was a mistake; that there is such a thing as
community life, the life that all the people have in common; that men are
bound up together by common interests; that they are members one of
another; that "none of us liveth to himself, and none dieth to himself."
The conviction became strong that the church should take account of this
community life of which the individual is a part; that it should concern
itself not only for men, but for _man_; that it should serve the whole
community, and that nothing should be foreign to the church or ignored by
it that in any way concerns the common life of the people.

This conviction did not detract from my estimate of the importance of the
spiritual, or of the individual. I still regarded the spiritual part of a
man as his most essential part. It was still plain that we have to deal
with men as individuals, but I recognized them also in their organic
relation to the whole life of the community. Not only were the men's souls
to be saved, but the _men_ themselves were to be saved. Not only were the
_men_ to be saved and lifted up to a better life, but the _whole
community_ was to be saved, and the community life was to be uplifted and
placed on a higher plane.

Out of these convictions, which grew more and more positive, came the
vision whose fulfilment is the subject of this story.

III

HOW THE VISION CAME

The genesis of a vision is always interesting, though often obscure. On
one day a certain side of life is a blank. There is no outlook, no hint of
the coming brightness. On another day that side of life is made all
radiant and glorious by a vision, clear and definite, that beckons on to
future achievement. Sometimes it comes suddenly, like Peter's vision when
he was upon the housetop in Joppa; and sometimes it dawns gradually, and
little by little paints itself in beautiful colors upon the sky of one's
inner consciousness. As remarked in a previous chapter, a conviction is
the egg from which the vision comes; but the egg is only dead and formless
matter until it is broode