It was pathetic--almost tragic--the inability of this well-meaning priest, of Levitical cast and Roman associations, to escape from under the weight of forty thousand dollars of yearly wealth that God had seen fit to lay upon his shoulders. There was no answer to be made to the practical logic of Mr. Dorman-Webster, and there was nothing to be gained by any sacrifice the rich priest could make. There was the check just donated, and there was the promise of as much more as he should ask for in reason. Dr. Caiaphas might just as well have walked down to the river and have thrown his salary into the water as to refuse to take it now. His poor would gain nothing by the refusal, and he would lose everything--even his influence over the needy of his parish--for poor people, though they resent riches, have no respect for poverty in the upper classes. Such was Dr. Caiaphas. His was a mind of that logical, well-balanced sort to which anything like religious fanaticism or excess is, of all things, most repugnant. There was nothing so displeasing to him as religious hysteria. He was wont to say, "Does any man think that God Almighty is deaf that He needs to have prayers shouted into His ears?" All the religious ferment attending the preaching of John the Baptist was not only distasteful to him--it was positively repulsive. It distressed him beyond measure to think that it was possible for one man like this John to so stir the nether depths of humanity that all the purity and lucidity of true faith should become turbid. It was incredible to the wise and even-minded priest that any man--be he never so poor, or ignorant, or credulous--could, in that age of light, listen to the blasphemous assertions of an insane fanatic, that God was really about to send a Son into the midst of such a turbulent and disorderly tumult. How was it possible for any human creature to conceive that the Messiah would appear in the midst of such a rabble as that gathered in the wilderness to a mad baptism? Of what use were the teachings of his twenty years of rational religion if, in a moment, his poor parishioners could so rush away from him and the pure and lucid truths of faith, trampling those truths beneath their feet like a herd of swine, in their rush to hear something that stirred their emotions and was new and startling? He had thought that the poor people in his parish were fond of him, and loved to listen to the words of wisdom he was commissioned to speak. Now he felt that they cared nothing for him, and that all the words he had spoken to them had fallen upon their minds as water falls upon the sand, leaving it as parched and barren as before. Then one day he sent out addresses to all the prominent clergymen of the different denominations of the city, inviting them to a conference at the rectory of the Church of the Advent to consider what was to be done to counteract the growing disorder.