at the sight. He found himself asking how much cleansing
could a million dollars poured into this cesspool accomplish? Was
not the living source of nearly all the human misery they sought to
relieve untouched as long as the saloons did their deadly but
legitimate work? What could even such unselfish Christian
discipleship as Virginia's and Rachel's do to lessen the stream of
vice and crime so long as the great spring of vice and crime flowed
as deep and strong as ever? Was it not a practical waste of
beautiful lives for these young women to throw themselves into this
earthly hell, when for every soul rescued by their sacrifice the
saloon made two more that needed rescue?

He could not escape the question. It was the same that Virginia had
put to Rachel in her statement that, in her opinion, nothing really
permanent would ever be done until the saloon was taken out of the
Rectangle. Henry Maxwell went back to his parish work that afternoon
with added convictions on the license business.

But if the saloon was a factor in the problem of the life of
Raymond, no less was the First Church and its little company of
disciples who had pledged to do as Jesus would do. Henry Maxwell,
standing at the very centre of the movement, was not in a position
to judge of its power as some one from the outside might have done.
But Raymond itself felt the touch in very many ways, not knowing all
the reasons for the change.

The winter was gone and the year was ended, the year which Henry
Maxwell had fixed as the time during which the pledge should be kept
to do as Jesus would do. Sunday, the anniversary of that one a year
ago, was in many ways the most remarkable day that the First Church
ever knew. It was more important than the disciples in the First
Church realized. The year had made history so fast and so serious
that the people were not yet able to grasp its significance. And the
day itself which marked the completion of a whole year of such
discipleship was characterized by such revelations and confessions
that the immediate actors in the events themselves could not
understand the value of what had been done, or the relation of their
trial to the rest of the churches and cities of the country.

Chapter Nineteen

[Letter from Rev. Calvin Bruce, D.D., of the Nazareth Avenue Church,
Chicago, to Rev. Philip A. Caxton, D.D., New York City.]

"My Dear Caxton:

"It is late Sunday night, but I am so intensely awake and so