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CHAPTER V

AN UNUSUAL SERMON

When the rector of Christ Church entered the chancel on the Sunday morning following the funeral of John Bradley, and looked out over the well-filled pews, he had no reason to be dissatisfied with the size of his congregation. Yet a full church was no unusual thing. For many Sundays now, people had been coming in ever greater numbers to hear him preach. They were attracted not alone by his ability, his earnestness and his spirituality; but also by the novelty of his message to society concerning the proper relation of the Church to the wage-workers and to the poor. It was by the attendance of the wage-working class that congregations had, for the most part, been swollen. There were few accessions from homes of wealth. To the rich and the exclusive the new interpretation of the Gospel of Christ had not proved to be especially attractive. They had not formally repudiated it. They had not absented themselves from the services in order that they might not hear it. They had not relinquished any proper effort to uphold and maintain the dignity and usefulness of the Church, notwithstanding the divergent views of the rector on certain matters of no little importance. So that, on this particular Sunday morning, there was no evidence of desertion on the part of the rich and the well-to-do. It was noted, however, that the pews in the rear of the church, those renting at low prices and therefore occupied by parishioners in moderate or humble circumstances, were the ones that were filled to overflowing. It was plainly evident that more than one laboring-man and working-