to have no importance. The
hymns happened on that day to be familiar ones that Maggie had always
known: "As pants the hart for cooling streams," "Just as I am, without
one plea" and "Jerusalem the golden." These were sung, of course,
slowly, badly and sentimentally, the harmonium screaming in amazing
discords, and the deep and untuneful voices of some members of the
congregation drowning the ladies and placing a general discord upon
everything. Especially distressing was Aunt Elizabeth, who evidently
loved to sing hymns but had little idea of melody or rhythm, and was
influenced entirely by a copious sentiment which overflowed into her
eyes and trembled at the tips of her fingers.

All this was as naive and awkward as is always the singing of English
hymns in English churches by English citizens. The chapel, which had
seemed before to be rising to some strange atmosphere of expectation,
slipped back now to its native ugliness and sterility. The personality
was in the man and in the man alone.

Maggie looked about her, at the faces of the women who surrounded her.
They were grey, strained, ugly in the poor light of the building. The
majority of them seemed to be either servant-girls or women who had
passed the adventurous period of life and had passed it without
adventure. When the time for the sermon arrived Mr. Warlock prayed, his
head bowed, during a moment's silence, then leaning forward on his desk
repeated some of the words of his earlier reading:

Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway
for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill
shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the
rough places plain: ... say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!...

What followed was practical, eloquent, the preaching of a man who had
through the course of a long life addressed men of all kinds and in all
places. But behind the facility and easy flow of his words Maggie
fancied that she detected some urgent insistence that came from the
man's very heart. She was moved by that as though he were saying to her
personally, "Don't heed these outward words of mine. But listen to me
myself. There is something I must tell you. There is no time to lose.
You must believe me. I will compel your belief. Follow me and I will
show what will transform your life." He concluded his sermon with these
words:

"And what of our responsibility? We may compare ourselves,