. "The reproach, the responsibility is
largely mine, as the rector, the spiritual, head of the parish. I
believe I am right when I say that the reason for the decision, some
twenty years ago, to leave the church where it is, instead of selling the
property and building in the West End, was that it might minister to the
poor in the neighbourhood, to bring religion and hope into their lives,
and to exert its influence towards eradicating the vice and misery which
surround it."

"But I thought you had agreed," said Mr. Parr, coldly, "that we were to
provide for that in the new chapel and settlement house."

"For reasons which I hope to make plain to you, Mr. Parr," Hodder
replied, "those people can never be reached, as they ought to be reached,
by building that settlement house. The principle is wrong, the day is
past when such things can be done--in that way." He laid an emphasis on
these words. "It is good, I grant you, to care for the babies and
children of the poor, it is good to get young women and men out of the
dance-halls, to provide innocent amusement, distraction, instruction.
But it is not enough. It leaves the great, transforming thing in the
lives of these people untouched, and it will forever remain untouched so
long as a sense of wrong, a continually deepening impression of an
unchristian civilization upheld by the Church herself, exists. Such an
undertaking as that settlement house--I see clearly now--is a palliation,
a poultice applied to one of many sores, a compromise unworthy of the
high mission of the Church. She should go to the root of the disease.
It is her first business to make Christians, who, by amending their own
lives, by going out individually and collectively into the life of the
nation, will gradually remove these conditions."

Mr. Parr sat drumming on the table. Hodder met his look.

"So you, too, have come to it," he said.

"Have come to what?"

"Socialism."

Hodder, in the state of clairvoyance in which he now surprisingly found
himself, accurately summed up the value and meaning of the banker's sigh.

"Say, rather," he replied, "that I have come to Christianity. We shall
never have what is called socialism until there is no longer any
necessity for it, until men, of their owe free will, are ready to
renounce selfish, personal ambition and power and work for humanity,
for the state."

Mr. Parr's gesture implied that he cared not by what name the thing was
called, but he still