een sung. "Yes, indeed," he said.
"I can tell heveryone 'ere this night, heveryone, that the Saviour is
mighty to keep. I 'ave got it out of my own personal experience, I 'ave.
Jesus don't only look after you on a Sunday, but six days a week, my
friends, six days a week. Fix your eye on Him and He'll keep His eye on
you--that's all your part of it. I don't mean to say I don't stumble an'
fall into sin. There's times when the Devil will get the upper 'and, but
oh, my friends, I ask you, each an' hevery one of you, is that the fault
of Jesus? No, it is not 'Is fault, it is the fault of the person. The
person 'as been forgetting Jesus, forgetting 'is Bible an' 'is prayers;
what can you expect? And now I ask you, my friends, is Jesus a-keeping
you? And if He is not, oh, my friends, ain't it foolish to put off
any longer? 'Ere we are met together to-night; we may never all meet
together again. You and I may never 'ear each other speaking again or
see each other sitting there. Thank God," the speaker continued, as his
eye rested on Arnold and Lindsay, "the vilest sinner may be saved, the
respectable sinner may be saved. We've got God's word for that. Now just
a little word of prayer from Ensign Sand 'ere--she's got God's ear, the
Ensign 'as, and she'll plead with 'im for all unconverted souls inside
these four walls to-night."
Laura lifted her head at this and dropped with the other exhorters
on her knees on the floor. As she moved she bent upon the audience a
preoccupied gaze, by which she seemed to observe numbers, chances, from
a point remote and emotionally involved. Lindsay's impression was that
she looked at him as from behind a glass door. Then her eyes closed as
the other woman began, and through their lids, as it were, he could see
that she was again caught up, though her body remained abased, her hands
interlocked between her knees, swaying in unison with the petition. The
Ensign was a little meagre freckled woman, whose wisps of colourless
hair and tight drawn-down lips suggested that in the secular world she
would have been bedraggled and a nagger. She gained an elevation, it was
plain, from the Bengali dress; it kept her away from the temptation
of cheap plush and dirty cotton lace; and her business gave her a
complacency which was doubtless accepted as sanctification by her
fellow-officers, especially by her husband, who had announced her
influence with the Divine Being, and who was himself of an inferior
commi
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