o what they were planning to do?

Chapter Twenty-six

MEANWHILE, Nazareth Avenue Church was experiencing something never
known before in all its history. The simple appeal on the part of
its pastor to his members to do as Jesus would do had created a
sensation that still continued. The result of that appeal was very
much the same as in Henry Maxwell's church in Raymond, only this
church was far more aristocratic, wealthy and conventional.
Nevertheless when, one Sunday morning in early summer, Dr. Bruce
came into his pulpit and announced his resignation, the sensation
deepened all over the city, although he had advised with his board
of trustees, and the movement he intended was not a matter of
surprise to them. But when it become publicly known that the Bishop
had also announced his resignation and retirement from the position
he had held so long, in order to go and live himself in the centre
of the worst part of Chicago, the public astonishment reached its
height.

"But why?" the Bishop replied to one valued friend who had almost
with tears tried to dissuade him from his purpose. "Why should what
Dr. Bruce and I propose to do seem so remarkable a thing, as if it
were unheard of that a Doctor of Divinity and a Bishop should want
to save lost souls in this particular manner? If we were to resign
our charge for the purpose of going to Bombay or Hong Kong or any
place in Africa, the churches and the people would exclaim at the
heroism of missions. Why should it seem so great a thing if we have
been led to give our lives to help rescue the heathen and the lost
of our own city in the way we are going to try it? Is it then such a
tremendous event that two Christian ministers should be not only
willing but eager to live close to the misery of the world in order
to know it and realize it? Is it such a rare thing that love of
humanity should find this particular form of expression in the
rescue of souls?"

And however the Bishop may have satisfied himself that there ought
to be nothing so remarkable about it at all, the public continued to
talk and the churches to record their astonishment that two such
men, so prominent in the ministry, should leave their comfortable
homes, voluntarily resign their pleasant social positions and enter
upon a life of hardship, of self-denial and actual suffering.
Christian America! Is it a reproach on the form of our discipleship
that the exhibition of actual suffering for Jesus on