e Bishop was on fire now. His fine face
actually glowed with the enthusiasm of the movement in which he and
his friend were inevitably embarked. He went on and unfolded a plan
of such far-reaching power and possibility that Dr. Bruce, capable
and experienced as he was, felt amazed at the vision of a greater
soul than his own.

They sat up late, and were as eager and even glad as if they were
planning for a trip together to some rare land of unexplored travel.
Indeed, the Bishop said many times afterward that the moment his
decision was reached to live the life of personal sacrifice he had
chosen he suddenly felt an uplifting as if a great burden were taken
from him. He was exultant. So was Dr. Bruce from the same cause.

Their plan as it finally grew into a workable fact was in reality
nothing more than the renting of a large building formerly used as a
warehouse for a brewery, reconstructing it and living in it
themselves in the very heart of a territory where the saloon ruled
with power, where the tenement was its filthiest, where vice and
ignorance and shame and poverty were congested into hideous forms.
It was not a new idea. It was an idea started by Jesus Christ when
He left His Father's House and forsook the riches that were His in
order to get nearer humanity and, by becoming a part of its sin,
helping to draw humanity apart from its sin. The University
Settlement idea is not modern. It is as old as Bethlehem and
Nazareth. And in this particular case it was the nearest approach to
anything that would satisfy the hunger of these two men to suffer
for Christ.

There had sprung up in them at the same time a longing that amounted
to a passion, to get nearer the great physical poverty and spiritual
destitution of the mighty city that throbbed around them. How could
they do this except as they became a part of it as nearly as one man
can become a part of another's misery? Where was the suffering to
come in unless there was an actual self-denial of some sort? And
what was to make that self-denial apparent to themselves or any one
else, unless it took this concrete, actual, personal form of trying
to share the deepest suffering and sin of the city?

So they reasoned for themselves, not judging others. They were
simply keeping their own pledge to do as Jesus would do, as they
honestly judged He would do. That was what they had promised. How
could they quarrel with the result if they were irresistibly
compelled to d