Winner Stories

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scene and exercise.
All right, he replied, I'll take you a short cut, if you don't
mind a few back slums to begin with.
Now Erica was familiar enough with the sight of poverty and
squalor; she had not lived at the West End, where you may entirely
forget the existence of the poor. The knowledge of evil had come
to her of necessity much earlier than to most girls, and tonight,
as Tom took her through a succession of narrow streets and dirty
courts, misery, and vice, and hopeless degradation met her on every
side. Swarms of filthy little children wrangled and fought in the
gutters, drunken women shouted foul language at one another
everywhere was wickedness everywhere want. Her heart felt as if it
would break. What was to reach these poor, miserable fellow
creatures of hers? Who was to raise them out of their horrible
plight? The coarse distortion and the narrow contraction of
Christ's teaching which she had just heard, offered no remedy for
this evil. Nor could she think that secularism would reach these.
To understand secularism you meed a fair share of intellect what
intellect would these poor creatures have? Why, you might talk
forever of the good of humanity, and the duty of promoting the
general good, and they would not so much as grasp the idea of what
good was they would sink back to their animallike state.
Instinctively her thoughts turned to the Radical Reformer who,
eighteen hundred years ago, had lived among people just as wicked,
just as wretched. How had He worked? What had He done? All
through His words and actions had sounded the one keynote, Your
Father. Always He had led them to look up to a perfect Being who
loved them, who was present with them.
Was it possible that if Christians had indeed followed their Leader
and not obscured His teaching with hideous secretions of doctrine
which He had assuredly never taught was it possible that the
Christgospel in its original simplicity would indeed be the remedy
for all evil?
They were coming into broader thoroughfares now. A wailing child's
voice fell on her ear. A small crowd of disreputable idlers was
hanging round the closed doors of a publichouse, waiting eagerly
for the opening which would take place at the close of
servicetime. The wailing child's voice grew more and more
piteous. Erica saw that it came from a poor little halfclad
creature of three years old who was clinging to the skirts of a
miserablelooking woman with a shawl thrown over her head. Just as
she drew near, the woman, with a fearful oath, tried to shake
herself free of the child; then, with uplifted arms, was about to
deal it a heavy blow when Erica caught her hand as it descended,

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