T was somewhat past the middle of the afternoon on the day before Christmas. The resilient spirit of the nation, after the somber seasons of war-time, was giving itself over to an uncalculating holiday generosity. Fifth Avenue, with its alluring windows, its holly-wreathed lamp-posts, and its carnival crowd of late shoppers, might have been a street in Bagdad. All the details for a picture were there: the prodigality of the rich, the enforced carefulness of the less opulent, the tonic gladness of children before the windows of toy-shops, with only here and there the reluctant look of those who bought remembrances from a sense of duty, too drab in soul to catch the sacramental spirit of the day. It was ultra-prosperous and middle-class New York that filled the street. There was just a reminder of New York's "other half" in the blue-cold hand of the red-coated and bewhiskered Santa Claus who rang a bell over a Salvation Army kettle.

This scene had two interested observers. For more than an hour Gordon Mackenzie and Joseph Rawlins had been sitting at their club window watching the crowds swing up and down the avenue. Both were solid men of affairs, with just enough variation in temperaments to make for an interesting congeniality.

Gordon Mackenzie, business man, was a singular blend of pedantry and pracitcality. He was not a man who sensed

the essential poetry and adventure in his own business, but he had an afteroffice-hours self that took keen delight in vagabond ramblings through history, literature, and philosophy. He was not a collector of rare editions, but, what is far more interesting, a reader of rare books. He gave the specialist's allegiance to no particular field. Every subject was grist for his mill. Any incidental topic of conversation was to Mackenzie an always seized excuse for wide excursions into literature and philosophy. He liked the fun of playing off historical parallels one against the other, a habit of which one would never suspect him as he played the rôle of effective, but unimaginative, executive in his William Street offices.

Although Joseph Rawlins was less the littérateur, he fitted into the cultivated life of this fine old club as a hand into a glove. Whatever craving for poetry and adventure Rawlins had, he satisfied inside his business rather than outside it. Industry was for him replete with human as well as financial and administrative interest. He had made his fortune in a business that was in itself a high service to its millions of patrons. He displayed an innate sense of justice and fair play in his relations with workman and consuming public. He had an uncanny sureness of judgment in recognizing reality in men and measures, and a setter's nose for sham. He was a good foil for the half-dilettante, half-practical Mackenzie.

"Isn't it strange, Joe," said Mackenzie, waving his hand toward the crowded street, "that one man could have started all this? To-day this same scene is being acted in many lands and in many languages, and it all started with a self-tutored carpenter."

"I guess we're so used to it," said Rawlins, "that we forget what an amazing accomplishment it really is."

Neither spoke for several minutes. They were interestedly watching the crowds again, both evidently musing on the magnitude and mystery of the miracle of Christmas. As usual, it was Mackenzie who started the play of their minds.

"Joe, do you remember the story of old Thomas Carlyle and the drawingroom group in a discussion of what would happen if this carpenter should appear in London?" asked Mackenzie. "Never heard the story," replied Rawlins.

"It's been a long while since I read it," continued Mackenzie, "but, as I remember, the story ran that Carlyle, arriving late, found the group discussing, with the polite animation of the salon, the sort of reception London society would be likely to accord a fleshand-blood visit of the founder of Christianity. The hostess contended that, after all these centuries of Christian progress, he would be spared the tragic misunderstanding and rejection he met with before. 'We would hasten to do his slightest bidding and even anticipate his wishes. Don't you think so, Mr. Carlyle?' she asked.

"No!' thundered the old Sage of Chelsea. 'If he should appear in London and speak of London life with the same fearless frankness, with the same withering scorn of sham that marked his ministry before, you and your coterie would be among the first to cry: "Away with him! Away with him! Take him to Newgate and hang him."'"

"I wonder," mused Rawlins, half to himself, as he continued gazing into the street.

"That sort of story has always had a peculiar fascination for me," said Mackenzie, "and I think it's because most of us have a lurking suspicion that maybe, after all, the modern world has

missed the real nub of Christianity. The thousand and one theologies and philosophies have n't clarified the matter very much; they 've only confused it. This carpenter has been lost in the house of his friends. So even we old pagans find ourselves interested when we pick up a story that attempts to show his mind playing directly upon the problems of our own time. I certainly do. I remember the keen interest with which I furbished up my neglected French and read Charles Morice's 'Il est ressuscité!' That was a capital story of the fencing of minds between Jesus and Narda, a Parisian journalist, who was the embodiment of the indecisive and cynical intellectualism of modern times. It showed what happened to Paris in eleven days when Jesus appeared in the city, and the contagion of his presence spread through the commerce and culture of that modern Babylon."

Mackenzie paused to light a fresh cigar. Rawlins, knowing that Mackenzie had started on one of his rounds of bookish philosophizing, said nothing. Mackenzie settled more comfortable into his chair and went on:

"Most novels on this theme have been abominably written," he said, "but something about their subject has made them popular. Just think of the vogue of Sheldon's 'In his Steps'! You could hardly call it literature; there was little of fresh insight in the thing; it was rather mawkish moralizing: but it caught on. I remember, back in ninetythree, how the fellows in the club here spent a long evening discussing William T. Stead's little book, 'If Christ Came to Chicago.' It all shows what a grip this carpenter has on the world, after all."

Rawlins was listening to Mackenzie well enough, but his mind was still toying with the Carlyle story.

"I wonder what would happen," queried Rawlins, "if he should appear in New York in the midst of these Christmas festivities. I don't know, but I've always had a suspicion that there's more real Christianity in the world than church statistics indicate. I venture there's a lot of anonymous religion in this city that would come into the

open on a real test. To me Christianity To me Christianity is n't all, or even mainly, the organized movement of churches and missions. It has a good deal of the Gipsy in it, for it is likely to turn up in the most unexpected places. Democracy is a religion to many. The fight for right, for justice, for the square deal to-day, has a lot more real religious passion in it than some of those old Crusades you were telling me about the other evening. The organized church has n't always led this fight, but the fight is Christianity in action just the same. There's a lot of that sort of thing abroad in the world, and the radicals have n't a corner on it, either. So I'm not so sure your Carlyle story would hold good today. I don't know, but I imagine that if this carpenter should strike New York about now-"

"What do you say," interrupted Mackenzie, "to a stroll up the avenue for a bit of air?"

This interruption was not the discourtesy it might seem. Mackenzie and Rawlins indulged in these club-window or club-corner discussions more for the joy of the talking than from any desire to reach conclusions. So, as usual, their afternoon at the club ended on a broken sentence.

II

THEY walked leisurely up the avenue, talking at random of the market, of politics, of a peculiar copper tone that graced the winter sky, when they ran full into an adventure that bore more than a casual relation to what they had been chatting about at the club. A dozen blocks up the avenue they found the street fairly blocked by a crowd of richly attired folk literally fighting their way into a.church. A vacant lot alongside the church was filled with a clamorous throng of unemployed and strikers shouting their approval at the man who was haranguing them from a soap-box. Street-corner meetings of the discontented were not uncommon sights during these winter months, but plainly no ordinary vesper service had drawn this surging crowd of well-to-do New-Yorkers to this church. Mackenzie and Rawlins found their interest

intrigued. They paused for a moment.

"What 's all this about?" asked Rawlins of a man on the outskirts of the crowd about the church-doors.

"John Arewen of the steel-mills is to speak here this afternoon," the man replied.

At the mention of the name, Mackenzie recalled a magazine article he had read a few months before describing the personality and work of this man Arewen. He sketched the story to Rawlins as they stood there on the curbstone. And an interesting story it was, worthy of a more careful telling than the memory of one brief magazine article could give it.

It seems that some years before, a man of strangely compelling powers of leadership had arisen among the workmen in the steel-mills of the Pittsburgh district, a man with the cryptic name of John Arewen. This leader of the steelworkers was one of them. He had entered the mills as a mere slip of a boy. He had submitted himself to the rough tutelage of adversity. He had tasted every experience that was the lot of his fellow-workmen. As he grew to manhood he took part in the labor discussion and action of his fellows. But from the start he displayed unusual qualities. Denied the privileges of formal education, he had made himself, thanks to a free library, a reader of the great books of the race. By the time he reached his majority his mind was refreshingly at home among the great fundamentals. He never lost even for a moment his devotion to good craftsmanship. Neither the injustice of a system nor the perfidy of men could make him give less than his best to a job in hand. No man was ever more sensitive to injustice, but he never saw in sabotage a road to freedom. And in all the bitter labor struggles that took place during his most impressionable years he hever soiled his soul with class hatred. He was of his class, yet beyond his class.

With no authority save the intrinsic authority of his own sincerity and wisdom, the leadership of his fellows gravitated into his hands. When, in a strike situation, the next step was not clear, they turned instinctively toward

John Arewen for counsel. He was a labor leader, but more than a labor leader. By the grace of a rare breadth of knowledge a wisdom beyond the wisdom of the schools, and a sympathy that understood without the need of explanations, he came to be a sort of unordained priest to the needs of his fellow-workmen. His cottage became a secular confessional where the men of the mills poured out their doubts and aspirations about the political, the social, and the industrial issues in which they found themselves involved. And they always left his presence with minds cleared and lifted in spirit, for beyond the sanity of his judgment there was about him a subtle spirituality that breathed refreshment into their sordid lives, as air from the hills. In all the tense hours of strikes and lockouts he was never known to counsel an unethical thing. Now and then some labor leader from the outside charged him with criminal caution and challenged his loyalty to his class, but through years of intimate association with him his comrades had gained a deeper knowledge of their leader, and they trusted him even when he opposed them at times when passions ran hot.

The demands upon his time and strength for counsel to his fellows became so heavy that finally, forgetful of his own future and putting away the hope of family and home, he left his work in the steel-mills and, with only slender savings, began to give all his time to a ministry of singular helpfulness among his comrades On his thirtieth birthday he dedicated himself to his class and flung himself with abandon into its service. On the afternoon of this story he had completed three years of this free-lance service. They had been three crowded and wonderful years. Comrades still came to his cottage one by one for light and leading, but more and more he had become the dominant figure in their union meetings, and necessity had driven him into talking to groups of his fellows in informal public addresses on the problems of their common life. Now he spoke at a luncheon hour in the steel-mills, now in a hall, now from a box on the street corner to the men who came out from

their crowded homes that lined the narrow, sooty streets.

Several churches, haunted by their empty pews, marked his rising influence, noted the ethical passion that swept through all his utterances, and invited him to fill their pulpits. He smiled, and quietly refused all these invitations. One of the liberal denominations that had repeatedly failed in its attempts to carry on religious work in the mills district urged him to organize and lead, under its subsidy, a "Church of the Workman." With courteous firmness he refused to organize and formalize his influence, choosing to remain a free-lance.

These incidents found their way into the newspapers. An Associated Press despatch carried a ten-line story of his refusal to accept the headship of the proposed "Church of the Workman." The alert editor of a New York magazine published an article on "The Rise of John Arewen," interpreting sympathetically the story of this man who had turned a labor leadership into a spiritual ministry of singular power. It was this article that Mackenzie was recounting to Rawlins.

The society of New York, like the society of ancient Athens, always eager "to hear some new thing," was agog with interest in this new personality. A Fifth Avenue church had invited him to deliver a vesper address from its pulpit on the day before Christmas. Hitherto he had refused all such requests, but for some reason he had accepted this. His name had been bandied back and forth across New York dinnertables during the month since it had' become known that he was to appear in the city. Most of the men and women who talked about him at dinner-tables knew little about him. Most of them had not even read the one article that had appeared describing him. They had simply heard of this figure that had arisen in the steel district as a man who had exerted a profound spiritual influence among the workmen of the mills, and knew that he was to speak in a Fifth Avenue church on the day before Christmas. Winged conjecture about his personality and power flew from home to home and from club to club.

If expectation took any definite form, it was of a sort of unlettered Tagore who would bring some new preachment of mystic spirituality. The very indefiniteness of knowledge about John Arewen whetted New York's curiosity. It was this curiosity that had drawn to the church-doors the surging crowd into which Mackenzie and Rawlins had

run.

Rawlins was keenly interested as Mackenzie told him the essential facts of this story about Arewen.

"There may be some real stuff here, Gordon," he said. "What do you say to our going in, if we can get in?"

"All right," agreed Mackenzie. They shoved their way into the church and succeeded in finding standing room on the steps that led to the gallery in the extreme rear. This gave them an unobstructed view of the pulpit.

III

CROWDED in the nave, in the aisles, and in the transepts of the huge building appeared the culture and wealth of the nation's premier city. Men and women who had long carried but lightly the obligations of the church were there. A palpitant expectancy was in the air. The rich tones of the organ rolled among the arches. The audience repeated mechanically the magnificent words of the appeals and prayers of the church. There was a hushed reverence in the dimly lighted building, and yet there was the contradictory atmosphere of a "first night" as the audience waits for the curtain to rise on a new and longheralded star. The longing of New York's jaded palate for a new sensation impudently trailed across its hour of worship.

From the moment the distant chant of the processional began, the eager tensity of the crowd had increased. The church, of a Protestant denomination, indulged in just a touch of ritual. Finally the door to the left of the pulpit opened, and Dr. Ellsworth, the pastor, entered, accompanied by the spare, but dominantly masculine, figure of John Arewen. A flutter ran through the audience. The decorum of the church was forgotten in an eager cranning of

necks to catch full sight of the stranger. Dr. Ellsworth was in his regulation pulpit gown. John Arewen was in simple gray tweeds that had known several seasons' wear. He was a swarthy and slightly bearded figure. There was nothing immediately striking about his appearance; and yet his appearance was of an uncommon commonness. He seemed a perfect type of the average man. A certain wistfulness in his eyes bespoke the dreamer, but his whole bearing was instinct with virility.

He had asked Dr. Ellsworth that he be permitted to speak without the formality of an introduction. As he arose to speak he seemed unaware of the curiosity that his coming had aroused, and was as thoroughly at ease as though speaking to a group of workmen in the steel-mills. Of what new religious light was this man the bearer? Had visions been vouchsafed to him that had been denied the men and women who waited for his first word? In the hush before he spoke the crowd's mere curiosity seemed for the moment to give way to a genuine hunger for a fresh spiritual revelation. He began simply.

"I bring no new doctrine," he said. "I speak of things as old as the traditions of the church; older. I am not concerned with doctrines, but with the life out of which doctrines spring, and without which doctrines are dead things. I have lived a busy life, a burdened life, which has left me little time to worry about the roots of religion, but I have been forced to an interest in its fruits."

There was about these words a fresh directness, but they were hardly the sort of beginning the crowd expected. They might have come from any preacher. As he went on, his speech was not without an easy grace of diction and occasional flashes of imagery; there was now and then a touch of the prophet's passion in his sincerity, but in the main he spoke in athletic sentences stripped of every overweight of embellishment.

"That I should be called a preacher of Christianity has come to me as a surprise," he continued. "I did not intend it. I cannot to this day conceive myself as the salaried servant of an institu