do we stand
regarding Duty?"

I never heard such questions in my life. He had been speaking smoothly,
evenly, calmly, and without gesticulation. With the questions, his body
was bent as though for a leap; his hands flung forward. These questions
left him like bullets. It was as though that great hall had been in
blackest darkness, and with a sudden movement the speaker had switched
on ten thousand electric lights. I saw men rise to a half-erect
posture. I heard women catch their breath. The air of the place seemed
all aquiver.

"My friends, will you please pray with me?"

He leaned forward, an appeal in every line of his figure, addressed
confidentially to each soul present. Then his right hand rose:

"Please God, help me to give my Message! Please God, open London's heart
to hear my Message! Please God, give me strength to tell it--now! For
Christ's sake. Amen!"

One heard a low, emphatic, and far-carrying "Amen!" from the lips of
London's Bishop; and I think that, too, meant something to the great
congregation of Londoners assembled there.

Immediately then, it was, while the electric thrill of his questions and
the simple prayer still held all his audience at high tension, that
George Stairs plunged into the famous declaration of the new evangel of
Duty and Simplicity. If any man in the world has learned for himself
that prayer is efficacious, that man is the Rev. George Stairs. For it
is now universally admitted that such winged words as those of his first
great exposition of the doctrine of Duty and simple living, the doctrine
which has placed the English-speaking peoples in the forefront of
Christendom, had never before thrilled an English audience.

His own words were a perfect example of the invincible virtue of
simplicity; his presence there was a glowing evidence of the force of
Duty. It is quite certain that the knowledge shown in his flashing
summary of nineteenth-century English history was not knowledge based
upon experience. But neither the poets, nor the most learned
historians, nor the most erudite of naval experts, has ever given a
picture so instantly convincing as the famous passage of his oration
which showed us, first, the British Fleet on the morning of Trafalgar;
then, Nelson going into action; then, the great sailor's dying
apotheosis of Duty; and, finally, England's reception of her dead hero's
body. The delivery of this much-quoted passage was a matter of moments
only, but from where