absolutely and attached themselves to St. Timothy's up-town. Others absented themselves entirely from divine service, or became occasional attendants at other Protestant churches in the city. The prominent and pompous woman who had threatened to go over to the Church of Rome carried out her threat. She felt that now she ran no farther risk of contamination, that she was where socialism is practically, if not officially, anathema.
But there was no diminution in the attendance at the services of Christ Church. As familiar faces disappeared from the pews new ones, stamped with the insignia of toil, took their places. No magnet ever drew to itself the filings of steel with surer power than this magnetic preacher drew to himself the human filings from the social mass.
But the institutional life of the church suffered. As the old workers, displeased or disheartened, or unduly influenced, forsook their tasks, it was with extreme difficulty that others were found with sufficient zeal and adaptability and religious culture to fill their places. Indeed, many places remained wholly unfilled, and the rector and his curate were obliged to do double duty by taking up the neglected work and doing it as best they could. Funds for these church activities were also lacking. Many of the rich and the well-to-do who had contributed liberally in the past were now giving niggardly sums, or were withholding their contributions altogether. And in the absence of both workers and money it was not strange that the work itself should languish.
But the rector was not discouraged. He felt that the tide would eventually turn; that God would not permit the institutions of His Church permanently to suffer, nor His poor always to go uncared for. And who could say that it was not His plan to bring "trouble and distress" upon His people in order to make more emphatic the ushering in of that new social
