and Mrs. Whitely, who was a trustee of the library, wasted her energy in
deploring the recent volumes on economics, sociology, philosophy, and
religion that were placed on the shelves. If Bremerton read them--and a
portion of Bremerton did--no difference was apparent in the attendance at
Hodder's church. The Woman's Club discussed them strenuously, but made
no attempt to put their doctrines into practice.

Hodder himself had but glanced at a few of them, and to do him justice
this abstention had not had its root in cowardice. His life was full
--his religion "worked." And the conditions with which these books dealt
simply did not exist for him. The fact that there were other churches in
the town less successful than his own (one or two, indeed, virtually
starving) he had found it simple to account for in that their
denominations had abandoned the true conception of the Church, and were
logically degenerating into atrophy. What better proof of the barrenness
of these modern philosophical and religious books did he need than the
spectacle of other ministers--who tarried awhile on starvation salaries
--reading them and preaching from them?

He, John Hodder, had held fast to the essential efficacy of the word of
God as propounded in past ages by the Fathers. It is only fair to add
that he did so without pride or bigotry, and with a sense of thankfulness
at the simplicity of the solution (ancient, in truth!) which, apparently
by special grace, had been vouchsafed him. And to it he attributed the
flourishing condition in which he had left the Church of the Ascension at
Bremerton.

"We'll never get another rector like you," Alice Whitely had exclaimed,
with tears in her eyes, as she bade him good-by. And he had rebuked her.
Others had spoken in a similar strain, and it is a certain tribute to his