“Begging is an ill trade on a fast day, laddie,” said Mrs. Callender. “Sit you down and tak' some dinner.”
“How dare these people pray, 'Our Father which art in heaven?' It's blasphemy! It's deceit!”
“Aye, and they would deceive God about their dividends if he couldn't see into their safes.”
“Their money is the meanest thing Heaven gives them. If I asked them for their health or their happiness, Lord God, what would they say?”
On the Sunday night following John Storm preached to an overflowing congregation from the text, “This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth and honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.”
But a few weeks afterward his face was bright and his voice was cheery, and he was writing another letter to Glory:
“In full swing at last, Glory. To carry out my new idea I had to get three thousand pounds more of my mother's money from my uncle. He gave it up cheerfully, only saying he was curious to see what approach to the Christian ideal the situation of civilization permitted. But Mrs. Callender is dour, and every time I spend sixpence of my own money on the Church she utters withering sarcasms about being only a 'daft auld woman hersel',' and then I have to caress and coax her.
“The newspapers were facetious about my 'Baby Houses' until they scented the Prime Minister at the back of them, and now they call them the 'Storm Shelters,' and christen my nightly processions 'The White-cross Army.' Even the Archdeacon has begun to tell the world how he 'took an interest' in me from the first and gave me my title. I met him again the other day at a rich woman's house, where we had only one little spar, and yesterday he wrote urging me to 'organize my great effort,' and have a public dinner in honour of its inauguration. I did not think God's work could be well done by people dining in herds and drinking bottles of champagne, but I showed no malice. In fact, I agreed to hold a meeting in the lady's drawing-room, to which clergymen, laymen, and members of all denominations are being invited, for this is a cause that rises above all differences of dogma, and I intend to try what can be done toward a union of Christendom on a social basis. Mrs. Callender is dour on that subject too, reminding me that where the carcass is there will the eagles be gathered together. The Archdeacon thinks we must have the meeting before the twelfth of August, or not until after the middle of September, and Mrs. Callender understands this to mean that 'the Holy Ghost always goes to sleep in the grouse season.'
“Meantime my Girls' Club goes like a forest fire. We are in our renovated clergy-house at last, and have everything comfortable. Two hundred members already, chiefly dressmakers and tailors, and girls out of the jam and match factories. The bright, merry young things, rejoicing in their brief blossoming time between girlhood and womanhood. I love to be among them and to look at their glistening eyes! Mrs. Callender blows withering blasts on this head also, saying it is no place for a 'laddie,' whereupon I lie low and think much but say nothing.
“Our great night is Sunday night after service. Yes, indeed, Sunday! That's just when the devil's houses are all open round about us, and why should God's house be shut up? It is all very well for the people who have only one Sabbath in the week to keep it wholly holy—I have seven, being a follower of Jesus, not of Moses. But the rector of the parish has begun to complain of my 'intrusion,' and to tell the Bishop I ought to be 'mended or ended.' It seems that my 'doings' are 'indecent and unnecessary,' and my sermons are 'a violation of all the sanctities, all the modesties of existence.' Poor dumb dog, teaching the Gospel of Don't! The world has never been reformed by 'resignation' to the evils of life, or converted by 'silence' either.