finely shaped head around with something of pride as though he
would say, "Here is my successor, in whom I am well pleased."

It was the revered elder who first engaged the interest of the
congregation, but when Sam Haymond had announced his text: "Let him who
is without sin amongst you cast the first stone," there came a shifting
of attention. Here was a man gifted with that quality of voice without
which there can be no oratory; endowed with that magic of force under
which human emotion is a keyboard responsive to the touch; commanding
that power which can sway its hearers at will between smile and tear.
His reputation was already known to them, but within five minutes after
his voice sounded reputation had become a pallid label for something
flamingly real: something under which their feeling stirred; something
that made their pulses leap like a bugle call; something that soothed
them like sleep after weariness--and above all something so convincing
that questioning was stilled as by the voice of a prophet who comes
direct from the presence of God.

The Reverend William Williams had held their loyalty by virtue of
vehemence and fire, and in that the visitor matched and surpassed him.
The intensity was there, but much besides--and yet in all else this was
a man as opposite to the aged veteran of the pulpit as east is far
across from west. In all the fire of his words was no mention of the
fires of hell. He seemed to know nothing of the avenging God, whose name
had rung terribly from that rostrum for half a century: a God swift of
anger and mighty to punish: an omnipotently jealous God. The Deity he
served was one of infinite charity to whose forgiveness nothing was
unforgivable--except unforgiveness.

He was expounding a doctrine of joy and aspiration: a splendid and
uplifting message from a God of the onward and upward march. No
suspicion came to him that, in effect, he was assailing the life work of
the old man below him, whom he deeply revered, yet he breathed a
conception of religion not only unlike, but contradictory to the set and
riveted dogma of his listening predecessor.

Minds that had unquestioningly accepted the old and hard gospel of
righteousness by duress of brimstone awoke to a new insurgency and eyes
little given to the light of thought kindled to this new postulate of
brotherhood and the service of brotherhood.

Conscience sat with her eyes hypnotically fixed on the face of the
speaker. Yesterd