OF ELI MOGGRIDGE AND THE NEW SPIRIT New Zion, despite its name, was, as I have hinted, no longer new.

The fiery zeal which had once made it a living schism had long since died out of it.

Carried years before, a little blazing ember of faith, from a flourishing hearth of Nonconformity some streets away, it had puffed and gleamed a little space in the eloquence of the offended zealots who carried it hotfoot that Sunday morning, but its central fire had been poor, and for a long time no evangelistic bellows had awakened in it even a spark.
Its original elders had long since lost heart and passed away.

A dwindling remnant of their children, from old association, just kept its doors from actually closing, and made a mournful interruption in its musty silence on Sundays.

Life was too low to support a Wednesday prayer-meeting, and Sunday by Sunday that life ebbed lower.