Dear friend, could I see you receivin' one too!
For you I am prayin'! For you I am prayin'!
For you I am prayin', I'm prayin' for you."
The hymn ceased; all sat down, and the preacher began his discourse: quietly at first, and then, though in a different way, with all the choking fervor of the man who had prayed. For the preacher was fluent as well as zealous, and his words, except when emotion stayed them, poured in a torrent. He preached faith—salvation in faith—declaiming, beseeching, commanding. "Come—come! Now is the appointed time! Only believe—only come! Only—only come!" To impassioned, broken entreaty he added sudden command and the menace of eternity, but broke away pitifully again in urgent pleadings, pantings, gasps; pointing above, spreading his arms abroad, stretching them forth imploringly. Come, only come!
Sobs broke out in more than one place. A woman bowed her head and rocked, while her shoulders shook again. Brother Spyers's face was alight with joy. A tremor, a throe of the senses, ran through the assembly as through a single body.
The preacher, nearing his peroration, rose to a last frenzy of adjuration. Then, ending in a steadier key, he summoned any to stand forth who had found grace that night.
His bright, strenuous eyes were on the sobbers, charging them, drawing them. First rose the woman who had bowed her head. Her face uncovered but distorted and twitching, still weeping but rapt and unashamed, she tottered out between the seats, and sank at last on the vacant form in front. Next a child, a little maid of ten, lank-legged and outgrown of her short skirts, her eyes squeezed down on a tight knot of pocket-handkerchief, crying wildly, broken-heartedly, sobbed and blundered over seat-corners and toes, and sat down, forlorn and solitary, at the other end of the form. And after her came Scuddy Lond.
Why, he knew not—nor cared. In the full enjoyment of a surfeit of indefinite emotion, tearful, rapturous, he had accepted the command put on him by the preacher, and he had come forth, walking on clouds, regenerate, compact of fine feelings. There was a short prayer of thanks, and then a final hymn:—
"Ring the bells of 'eaven, there is joy to-day,