The wealth and fashion of the city sat spell-bound beneath the eloquent tongue of the great divine. The sad face of the Madonna, in the painted window of Geneva, grew sadder still as she looked down upon the favored multitude. There were present there, men who headed every published list of charity, who paid thousands for pew rental, in this great official residence of God, yet who had no compunction about wrecking a railroad and thereby indirectly spreading ruin among hundreds. In the front row sat a bank president, who knew that on the morrow his financial institution would be in irretrievable ruin, yet who for months had been a pillar of the church and had some of the congregational funds in his rapacious clutch. A poor wash woman or window cleaner, probably attracted by the magnetic tones of the stupendous organ, had dared to wander in. In simple ignorance she had probably imagined that Christ’s boasted friendship for the poor meant something to modern dogmatists, and had taken a seat high up among these mighty lordlings of this majestic world. The congregation held its breath in amazement, and could not have been more shocked if the yellow fever in disguise had paid its fatal visit. This magnetic indignation communicated itself to an usher in full dress. He came forward and whispered something to the woman. She slowly rose and went up into the gallery. _God had sold out all the down-stair seats to the rich!_ The Madonna sighed in pity and was angry. The congregation breathed a sigh of relief. The church itself cost half a million. It had no reading room, free bath, employment bureau or lunch counter attached to it. It was open for about nine months each year on Sundays, and when a millionaire wanted to get married, or his heirs wanted to bury him, so they could get up a sensational will contest and make newspapers sell. Not far away from the church was a series of alleys, where poverty held supreme sway, and where the grim specter of want, filth and misery, stalked, dealing death, crime and agony, winning each moment recruits for the devil’s army in hell. I’ll not allow that rich woman over there to plead not guilty, upon the ground of ignorance of these conditions. She knows all about it, and yet to get those latest diamonds that sparkle on her breast, she made her husband sell the farm, whereon his honest old rustic parents were buried. Over there sits a woman, who is unfaithful in heart to her marriage vows, and who yet lacks the courage to follow the bent of her intense longing, for fear of what her small world would say. In all of this artificial brilliance, there are masks and faces as false as many of the hearts which rich attire conceals.