you now lack, would overwhelm you."

"You have made me out a rascal and a charlatan," said Eldon Parr, "and I
have listened' patiently in my desire to be fair, to learn from your own
lips whether there were anything in the extraordinary philosophy you have
taken up, and which you are pleased to call Christianity. If you will
permit me to be as frank as you have been, it appears to me as sheer
nonsense and folly, and if it were put into practice the world would be
reduced at once to chaos and anarchy."

"There is no danger, I am sorry to say, of its being put into practice at
once," said Hodder, smiting sadly.

"I hope not," answered the banker, dryly. "Utopia is a dream in which
those who do the rough work of the world cannot afford to indulge. And
there is one more question. You will, no doubt, deride it as practical,
but to my mind it is very much to the point. You condemn the business
practices in which I have engaged all my life as utterly unchristian. If
you are logical, you will admit that no man or woman who owns stock in a
modern corporation is, according to your definition, Christian, and, to
use your own phrase, can enter the Kingdom of God. I can tell you, as
one who knows, that there is no corporation in this country which, in the
struggle to maintain itself, is not forced to adopt the natural law of
the survival of the fittest, which you condemn. Your own salary, while
you had it, came from men who had made the money in corporations.
Business is business, and admits of no sentimental considerations. If
you can get around that fact, I will gladly bow to your genius. Should
you succeed in reestablishing St. John's on what you call a free basis
--and in my opinion you will not--even then the money, you would live on,
and which supported the church, would be directly or indirectly derived