He confessed to them that for a long time he had been blind to the truth,
had taken the inherited, unchristian view that the disease which caused
vice and poverty might not be cured, though its ulcers might be
alleviated. He had not, indeed, clearly perceived and recognized the
disease. He had regarded Dalton Street in a very special sense as a
reproach to St. John's, but now he saw that all such neighbourhoods were
in reality a reproach to the city, to the state, to the nation. True
Christianity and Democracy were identical, and the congregation of St.
John's, as professed Christians and citizens, were doubly responsible,
inasmuch as they not only made no protest or attempt to change a
government which permitted the Dalton Streets to exist, but inasmuch also
as,--directly or indirectly,--they derived a profit from conditions which
were an abomination to God. It would be but an idle mockery for them to
go and build a settlement house, if they did not first reform their
lives.

Here there had been a decided stir among the pews. Hodder had not seemed
to notice it.

When he, their rector, had gone to Dalton Street to invite the poor and
wretched into God's Church, he was met by the scornful question: "Are the
Christians of the churches any better than we? Christians own the grim
tenements in which we live, the saloons and brothels by which we are
surrounded, which devour our children. Christians own the establishments
which pay us starvation wages; profit by politics, and take toll from our
very vice; evade the laws and reap millions, while we are sent to jail.
Is their God a God who will lift us out of our misery and distress? Are
their churches for the poor? Are not the very pews in which they sit as
closed to us as their houses?"