"That, in my judgment," replied the rector, "would only be an affront to them. They would not accept discrimination of that kind. It would be equivalent to saying to them that the Church reserves the 'chief seats' for the rich; that the rear pews are good enough for the poor. If we say that to them they will leave us, without doubt. It is because of such an attitude on our part that the poor have been lost to us for so many years."
Then Colonel Boston, president of the S. E. & W. Railroad, his patience nearly exhausted, spoke up:
"Well, I, for one, am willing to lose them. I don't see why we should be called upon to house the rabble from Factory Hill. They have churches nearer their homes, run by their own kind, with preachers of their own sort. Let them go there. I don't propose, when I come to church, to hunt for a vacant seat somewhere, and push myself into it; and I'm utterly opposed to having my wife and daughter crowded and elbowed in their pew by all kinds of people. I simply won't stand for it."
The rector was still calm and deliberate, but tremendously in earnest, as he replied:
"You can close the doors of your church in the faces of God's poor if you wish, gentlemen. They will not come if they find they're not wanted; you can rest assured of that. But the moment you refuse to welcome them, the moment you make it openly manifest that ours is a church exclusively for the rich and the well-to-do, that moment you deprive the Church of its life and soul, you separate it wholly from Jesus Christ, whose message and whose mission was primarily to the humble and the poor."
Judge Bosworth sought to pour oil on the waters which were becoming dangerously troubled.
"Would not the proper solution of this whole question," he asked, "be the founding and support of a mission chapel for these people in their own neighborhood?
