Dr. Orchard’s manner, which can be extraordinarily nettling in conversation, as I have suggested, is evidently of a very soothing character in the confessional—­if that is the proper term.  He has a remarkable following among women, and it is said that “if he put a brass plate on his door and charged five guineas a time” he might be one of the richest mind-doctors in London.  He himself declares that his real work is almost entirely personal.  I have heard him speak with some contempt of preaching, quoting the witticism of a friend that “Anglican preaching is much worse than it really need be,” or words to that effect.  He likes ceremonial and private confidence.  He has the instincts of a priest.

His patients appear to be the wreckage of psychoanalysis.  It is said that “half the neurotics of London” consult him about their souls.  I have no idea of the manner in which he treats these unhappy people, but I am perfectly sure that he gives them counsel of a healthy nature.  There is nothing about him which suggests unwholesomeness, and much that suggests sound strength and clean good sense.  Also among his penitents are numerous shopgirls who have lost in the commercial struggle whatever piety they possessed in childhood and in their craving for excitement have gone astray from the path of safe simplicity—­gambling on horse races and often getting into serious trouble by their losses.  Dr. Orchard may be trusted to give these weak, rather than erring daughters of London, advice which would commend itself to the Free Church Council, for with all his sacerdotal aberrations the basis of his moral life is rooted in Puritanism.

It is an entirely good thing that there should be a minister of religion in London who attracts people of this order, particularly a minister whose moral notions are so eminently sane and so steadily uncompromising.  London is stronger and less disreputable for Dr. Orchard’s presence in its midst—­no doubt a very vulgar, degrading, and trivial midst, but all the same a great congestion of little people, one where the solemn note of the old morality sounds all too seldom across the tinkle of bells in the caps of so many fools.

This moral influence, however, may appear questionable in the eyes of strong-minded and unsentimental people.  Would he exercise such personal power, it may be asked, if he were not regarded as a “novelty,” if the eccentricity of his position in the nonconformist world had not so skilfully advertised him to a light and foolish generation ever ready to run after what is new?  Of an Anglican clergyman’s popularity I have heard it said, “Who could not fill a church with the help of the band of the Grenadier Guards?”

I should not like to answer this question, and yet I do not like to pass it by.  Antipathetic as I find myself to Dr. Orchard, it would not be just to imply that the power of his personal influence is not a great one, and one of an entirely wholesome nature.  It seems to me, then, that the nature of that which attracts the unhappy to seek his counsel is of small moment in comparison with the extent and beneficence of his good counsel.  The fact that he does help people, does save many people from very unhappy and dangerous situations, is a fact which gives him a title not only to our respect, but to our gratitude.