Had Mr.Moggridge's interest in New Zion been of a different character, he would inevitably have been as great a hindrance as he was to prove a help.

Fortunately that interest was recreative rather than severely religious.

It was to be for him a sort of Sunday-business to which he was to devote his vast spare energies.

He wanted to see it a "going concern," and, hating stagnation in his neighbourhood, he looked about for a specialist whom he could trust to make it move and hum and whizz.
Luckily, in so far as he was an amateur theologian, he was broad, with further mental allowances for expansion.

What was wanted at New Zion, he explained to the young minister at supper after the close of an evening service which had more than kept the promise of the morning, was not Dogma, but common-sense every-day religion, a religion to help a man in his business, not a Sunday-coat religion, a cheerful human religion; and it happened that something of this very sort was what Theophilus Londonderry was eagerly prepared to supply.
The stipend was small, a poor sixty pounds a year, but Mr.Moggridge guaranteed to swell it to a hundred if necessary from his own resources, and he wanted it clearly understood that, short, of course, of the broad general principles of Christian teaching, no restrictions were to be placed either by him or anyone else on the young man's expression of the faith that was in him.