"I mean just this," answered Dick, rising to his feet and walking
slowly back and forth across the room, "there is plenty of food in
this world to give every man, woman and child enough to eat, and it
is contrary to God's law that the _helpless_ should go hungry. There
is enough material to clothe every man, woman and child, and God never
intended that the needy should go naked. There is enough wealth to
house and warm every creature tonight, for God never meant that men
should freeze in such weather as this; and Christ surely teaches, both
by words and example, that the hungry should be fed, the naked clothed,
and the homeless housed. Is it not the Christian's duty to carry out
Christ's teaching? It is an awful comment on the policy of the church
when a young man, bearing on his person the evidence of his Christianity
and proof that he supported the institution, dies of cold and hunger
at the locked door of the house of God. That, too, in a city where
there are ten or twelve denominations, paying at least as many thousand
dollars for preachers' salaries alone each year."

"But we couldn't do it."

"The lodges do. There is more than enough wealth spent in the churches
in this city, for useless, gaudy display, and in trying to get ahead
of some other denomination, than would be needed to clothe every naked
child in warmth to-night. You claim to be God's stewards, but spend
his goods on yourselves, while Christ, in the person of that boy in
the cemetery, is crying for food and clothing. And then you wonder why
George Udell and myself, who have suffered these things, don't unite
with the church. The wonder to me is that such honest men as you and
Mr. Wicks can remain connected with such an organization."