topics, none of which would have concerned them. Their trouble was
not the forgiveness of sins, the fallacies of Arianism, the
personality of the Holy Ghost, or the doctrine of the Eucharist.
They all WANTED something distinctly. They had great gaping needs
which they longed to satisfy, intensely practical and special. Some
of these necessities no words could in any way meet. It was obvious,
for instance, that Clark must at once be taken away from his gallery
and his copying if he was to live--at least in sanity. He had
fortunately learned shorthand, and M'Kay got him employment on a
newspaper. His knowledge of his art was by no means perfect at
first, but he was sent to attend meetings where verbatim reports were
not necessary, and he quickly advanced. Taylor, too, we tried to
remove, and we succeeded in attaching him to a large club as an out-
of-doors porter. The poor man was now at least in the open air, and
freed from insolent tyranny. This, however, was help such as anybody
might have given. The question of most importance is, What gospel
had we to give? Why, in short, did we meet on the Sunday? What was
our justification? In the first place, there was the simple
quietude. The retreat from the streets and from miserable cares into
a place where there was peace and room for reflection was something.
It is all very well for cultivated persons with libraries to scoff at
religious services. To the poor the cathedral or the church might be
an immense benefit, if only for the reason that they present a
barrier to worldly noise, and are a distinct invitation by
architecture and symbolic decoration to meditation on something
beyond the business which presses on them during the week. Poor
people frequently cannot read for want of a place in which to read.
Moreover, they require to be provoked by a stronger stimulus than
that of a book. They willingly hear a man talk if he has anything to
say, when they would not care to look at what he said if it were