It was the voice of a young enthusiast, with the faith and spiritual uplift of patriarchal years, housed in a frame of youth—the voice of a creature of trance and frenzy, a martyr-elect from birth.
But as he clung to his final syllable in a vibrato of fervor, a second singer, duplicating the note in barytone, took up the second verse, and carried it with the ease and repose of one filled with content, health and the ripeness of years, of one who is the founder of a house, the possessor of goods and a power among his fellow men. And his voice was rich, level as the note of a 'cello, tender because it was strong, persuasive because it was believing:
"For he hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods—"
Wresting the word from him, the tenor again on his altitudes of ecstasy flung out the inquisition:
"Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?—"
He made answer to himself with the barytone, but there was a third now singing, and his voice arose out of their attendance as a great, white, solemn, night-blooming flower might rise out of leafage.
"He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully."
The young fanatic might sing with the fervor of his bigotry, the contented man from the comfort in his heart, but this one, making answer, now, sang as one who was experienced and understood as the others could not. It was deep bass, too deliberate to be flexible, too profound to be hurried, and withal a great bell booming in a dome. And like a bell in travail under each stroke of its hammer, each word, in the full poignancy of its meaning, fell from the lips of him who had been tried by fire.
The voice of the one hundred and fifty on the steps of Nicanor, picked for beauty from a singing nation, burst about the trio, an eruption of great harmony, overwhelming the echoes of the Temple, flooding the purlieus of the Holy Hill, mounting the morning winds to float across the hollow, reverberating ravines, to resound on the bosom of Zion, to penetrate the dark vale of Kedron, and to fail and be one with the reedy rushing of airs through the cedars of Olivet.
"He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity nor sworn deceitfully;