The hymn rose and fell to the end; and then there was a prayer, while his mind did not follow the speaker's words, but went back to that old country Sunday School, in which he had sat week after week, month after month, and even year after year.
"Lose all their guilty stains."
What had the years since then brought him but guilty stains?
He heard not a word of the prayer; but the first sentence that arrested his attention was, "May I not wash in them, and be clean?" and then he listened with an eagerness which surprised himself.
He heard about the proud man turning away in a rage; he heard about his servants trying to persuade him—and mentally said that this was like his own wife; he heard how the man obeyed the prophet's words, and dipped seven times in the stream; he heard how he was cured from his loathsome disease; he heard how he went home rejoicing.
And all through the preacher's words these lines kept running as a strain of sweet music—
"There is a Fountain filled with Blood,
Drawn from Immanuel's veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains."
Slow tears forced themselves from under his eyelids, which he hastily brushed away with his hand.
What passed in the man's mind during that hour was known to none but God; perhaps he was hardly conscious himself at the time what a great transaction had taken place; but from that day forth, first very slowly and fitfully, but afterwards growing stronger and firmer, came the knowledge that he had plunged in that crimson tide, and had been washed and was clean.
As they walked home very little was said; there had been many praying during that little service for the man who had hardly moved a finger, but had sat with bowed head during the whole time, and they believed that their prayers had been heard.