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378 If the rector heard him he paid no heed to his words. He was there on his own errand, his message was on his lips, and he must deliver it.

"Bishop, I have come to hand back to you the shattered remnant of a sacred trust. I have not been unfaithful to it, but my administration of it has been a tragic failure."

"I know, Farrar. You have been ahead of your generation. You have tried to do things for which the world is not ready. That is the reason you have failed."

"That may be so. But it remains true, nevertheless, that I have wrecked my church, and have brought discredit on the religion of Christ. I am innocent of evil intention, but I am guilty of the actual failure, and I stand ready to suffer the penalty."

"My dear man, do not think too harshly of yourself. You have simply tried to do a beautiful and an impossible thing. Disaster was inevitable. You thought, as did the beloved of Isaiah, that you had planted your vineyard 'with the choicest vine.' And you 'looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.' It could not have done otherwise."

"Pardon me, Bishop, but that is what I do not yet understand. Why should such an unhallowed harvest, unbelief, scandal, riot, murder, suicide, follow on the preaching of the simple gospel of Christ?"

"Ah, but it was not the simple gospel of Christ that you preached. Christ never concerned Himself with economic problems, nor with the reorganization of human society. There are some, I know, who affect to admire and reverence Him, who hold, with great show of learning, that His message was primarily to the Galilean peasants, and so to all whose necks were bowed under the Roman yoke, and so to all the world, that men should rise and scatter their oppressors, and establish an earthly kingdom of justice and righteousness. These do but pervert His teaching, and degrade