The One Woman

to build the temple in defiance of the Board of Trustees, who were

lier than usual to watch every incident of the d

clean, the wind was blowing fresh, the sky was cloudless and the sun

es and the hotels were thronged with merchants

he police would allow to be filled in the church, and

morning. He took his seat in the pulpit trembling with anxiety. The organ burst into the strains of the Doxology and the crowd rose.

his big hand, with its blue veins standing out like a

the shock of a storm of pent-up emotion. He read i

d a vase of roses, his face resting thoughtfully on his left hand, stud

gallery, he saw a man who had confessed a

irl was found dead in her room the week before. She had lost her place because she wore shabby clothes, and she wore shabby clothe

can and sinner, the strange woman and the sweet face of innoce

resistlessly. His heart went out to them in yearning sympathy, fighting their battles in th

their united heart-beat strike his

r of seats watching him sharply out of his little half-closed eyes, the incarna

with hope of the twenty millions of people who read his sermons on Monday morning

dly." He felt they could not resist his appeal. And yet in spite of himself his gaze

of this daring insanity. He had been fooled so often by the power of this athlet

red magnificently. Gordon read the hymns and Scripture with a feeling so intense the people we

ty. The hour was propitious; he could feel the hearts of the

ese thousands of breathless listeners in the hollow of his hand. He could feel their hear

laughter ran along the front tier of the gallery, and a hundr

ck his spinal column he coul

t of way, and a louder ripple of laughter ran the entire

le before him were smiling and craning their necks to see

fiend had thrust his head in the door b

ere sat an impudent little b

gestured, and the crowd has never yet gathered on this earth in the temple of B

in the face, she liked him at once, and

eo

rst into incontr

cat in helpless stupor, and blushing red. And then the sickening certainty crushed him that the day was lost; that it was

n, and his big bear-like hands clasped h

d her head to one side, opened her yellow eye

e-o

I'm very sorry you don't li

e crowd

ver the cat. She did not look very bright

d breathlessly.

ed her back, bushed her tail, and s

the column that support

struck the bare floor, a

he cat as she climbed over the rail, ran to a window and wa

ed his hand

ng man-don't hurt h

laughter, that he had stooped to this contemptible trick to defeat him and make the solemnest hour of l

bout his lips, and a cold glitt

d rubbed her face against his and moved her feet up and down, she

knew that something big was happening i

innocent actor in a tragedy this morning, but

an Meter, who stirred

n. This one is the soul of a living man, my good friend, Dea

s though he would pull it within his should

the young man, whispered somet

ind him. He ran his big muscular hands into the throat of his robe, ripped it open

e little table with its vase of roses into its place. He did this quickly, without a

So intense was the excitement the people on the back tiers of the

platform, looking a foot taller in his long black Prince Albert coat, folded his giant arms across his breast, the nostrils of his great aq

passion, he began in deliber

hrill of his powerful personality wrought

pen, tore it from his arms,

-moments when the hair of our heads turns gray, a soul dies within a laving body, or

The truth shall be its own justification. I will wear no robes, mumble no ceremonies, call no m

the poor on the East Side will be closed at the hour of service, and a

s pew as a ripple of applau

the Church of the living God exist

walls frame the furnace in which are being tried by fire the faiths, hopes and dreams of the centuries past and to come. In mere volume of population she is the equal of three great Atlantic states: Virginia, North and South Carolina. One man alone of he

n civilisation. He who wins that heart holds the key to the century.

at are

out of two millions on Manhattan Island. Our invested capital is one hundred million dollars, o

o vacant lots! They say the people have gone. They have come-come in such numbe

York is the most crowded city in the world. London has seven people to a house; we have sixteen. In two houses were foun

we, too

ow not the name of your President, or your God, whose heavy hands upon your doors will summo

ome gigantic corner shall have doubled the price of bread, starvation spread her black wings, and idle thousands sullen

fermenting brickwork, oozing poison at every pore, is beyond my ken, but they come. They come each year in hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands, crowding the crowded trades, crowding closer the crowded dens in which human bei

nsanity? Love has its hours when death becomes beautiful. Poets sing of old Virginius who slew

ey rest. We pile them one on top of the other in big black trenches, but the dawn does not call them to beastly toil. Their little forms

jails, almshouses, asylums and workhouses. I have been assailed by a deacon of this church because I no longer prea

of the Lord, the healing of the bruised, the release

the western hemisphere. Crowns, thrones, scepters, titles, privileges belong to the past; they are doomed. The people already rule the world. Emperors, kings and president

heir servant. Art portrays their life. Literature, once a clown at the feet of Fortune's fools, now writes of the people. Wealth lays its tribute at their feet.

They are mankind. As a half-million miles make no difference in the vast d

poor, lived and died poor. The foxes had holes, the birds of the air nests, but He had

to become the Church of the Anglo-Saxon race, that is now conquering the world. They called

to heaven. Heaven is the home of millions-'a great multitude which n

nce. Intoxicated with the reflex action from the sea of eager listeners, he outdid himself with each succeeding climax of feeling. Never had his voice been so deep, so f

her cheeks scarlet, her blue eyes flashing with tears of excitement. She was stirred to her soul's depths, and no figure in all the throbb

would suddenly lift his enormous blue-veined hand high over his head in an im

ing every movement and every twitch of a muscle of his fa

ition raises the feeble cry of reminis

hackles of authority. Our conscience fettered by tradit

to the ocean greyhound, but we are told that the only age that ever knew the truth, or had the right to express it, was the age which burned witches, execut

undred thousand on the lower end of Manhattan Island to be the imperial

s spun its spider web of steel across the river, our buildings grown from fo

tised in blood and a new

been created, and a new

ansformed into a whispering gallery. The cylinder press has proclaimed universa

uptown! Their methods are the methods of their

radition has ever been the deadliest foe of human hope. Doubt is the vestibule of knowledg

e Christ. They declared him to be

They sent Alva into the Netherlands to sweep it with fire. They revoked the edict of Nantes until the soil of France was drunk with the blood of her children. They led the trembling sons and daughters of faith,

o brain heretics, forged its word into chain

d His religion. They stretched Galileo on the rack for inventing a telescope which gave new beau

one man. Of forty-three Governors of our states, only seventeen are members of any church; yet all p

individual has played his role in the growth of the centuries. This is the age of federa

ans, the Puritan and early Methodists and sent them on their glorious careers. I preach a holy crusade for man as man, in the name of God, whose image

, and instead of the usual prayer which ended his sermons he lif

onal hymn, 'My Countr

cried, his voice still

ushers will pass the

with us in ou

th flushed faces the extraordinary scene they had witnessed and speculating on its outc

tive members slipped out on

s, wrung his hand and pledged their support. For half an hour

her life for such poor expression. The ushers at last handed him a bundl