He was speaking of the needs of men, and through his thoughts there breathed a knowledge of the _Weltschmerz_ of to-day, and deep sympathy with it. There was no weak ignoring of the difficulties of honest doubt, and no false claims for the basis of belief; and, when he spoke of the awful suffering of our time, his words were true to the high dignity of man through the infinite consequences of free choice in his life upon the earth. His appeal was no emotional blending of the false and true, wherewith to blind men’s eyes to the eternal verities, and to cause to rest lightly upon comfortable consciences the sense of personal responsibility for one’s fellows, but rather the sure claim of clear conviction which comes from out the facts of daily life seen in the light of their true meaning. The effect upon his hearers was unmistakable. I was unaware of it for a time, so engrossed was I in the speaker’s words, and in the strongly human personality of the man, but by degrees I awoke to the fact that all about me were listeners as eagerly intent as I. The sense of hardened, pampered, Philistinism gave way before the overwhelming consciousness of a sympathetic unity of thought and feeling. Indifferent to the vital needs of the world and to the pressing problems of its life? No emotion could have been farther from these men and women, the intensity of whose interest could be felt in almost an agony of breathless attention to the sober truthfulness of the minister. The very stillness was charged with mute appeal for guidance from hearts wrung with the hurt of the world and pleading for some useful outlet to the tide of generous feeling. It was as though distress had ceased to be for them the visible sufferings of the poor, and had grown, through the deepening sense of brotherhood, into an anguish of their own, which must find healing in forms of effective helpfulness. Very clearly dawned the conviction that, if one could but point out to the members of this waiting company some “way,” “something to do,” which would square well with their practical business sense of things, instant and unmeasured would be their response for the furthering of an end which would work them such glad relief! From the church my destination was the meeting of the Socialists. But not immediately, for I stopped on the way at the well-known haunt in Madison Street for the usual Sunday dinner.