Presently the door from the pastor's study opened, and Dr. Bascom came in and took his seat beside the president of the League.
"Look at Dr. Bascom," he heard some one behind him whisper to her escort. "What do you suppose could have happened? His face actually shines."
David had been watching it ever since he took his seat. It was a benign, pleasant face at all times, but just now it seemed to have caught the reflection of a great light. Everybody in the room noticed it. David, quick to make Old Testament comparisons, thought of Moses coming down the mountain from a talk with God. He felt as positively, as if he had seen for himself, that the minister had just risen from his knees, and had come in among them, radiant from the unspeakable joy of that communion. Every one present began to feel its influence.
The prophecy Dr. Bascom had chosen for reading, was one they had heard many times, but it seemed a new proclamation as he delivered it:
"Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given."
Something of the gladness that must have rung through the song of the heralds on that first Christmas night, seemed to thrill the minister's voice as he read.
Then he turned to Luke's account of the shepherds abiding in the fields by night—that beautiful old story, that will always be new until the stars that still shine nightly over Bethlehem shall have ceased to be a wonder.
As the service progressed, David began to feel that he was not in a church, but that he had stumbled by mistake on some family reunion. Everything was so informal. They told the experiences of the past week, the blessings and the trials that had come to them since they had last seen each other.
Sometimes they stood; oftener they spoke from where they sat, just as they would have talked in some home-circle.
And through it all they seemed to recognize a Divine presence in the room, to whom they spoke at intervals with reverence, with humility, but with the deepest love and gratitude.