But having said this, one must qualify. Was it nothing out of the common course that the congregation in Saint Agatha's should sit as the people sat that day, bond-slaves before the enunciation of the familiar phrases in the morning's confession?
"What a voice!" whispered the wife of the vestryman. But her husband answered her not a word. Pale, agitated, with strained eyes uplifted, and nervous hands knotted together, he leaned towards the stranger. At the first articulate sentence from the pulpit, he knew that the success of his supply was secured.
What a voice indeed! It melted through the great house like burning gold. The heart ran after it as fire runs through metal. Once or twice in a generation one may hear the liturgy read like that—perhaps. In a lifetime no longer to be counted short, the vestryman had heard nothing that resembled it.
"Thank God!" he murmured. He put his hat before his face. He had not realized before what a strain he had endured. Cold drops stood upon his brow. He shook with relief. From that moment he felt no more concern about the service than if he had engaged one of the sons of God to "supply."
"Are you faint?" asked his wife in a tone of annoyance. She offered him her smelling-salts.
Had there existed stenographic records of that sermon, this narrative, necessarily so defective, would have no occasion for its being. One of the most interesting things about the whole matter is that no such records can to-day be found. Reporters certainly were in the gallery. The journals had sent their picked men as usual, and no more. Where, then, were their columns of verbal record? Why has so important a discourse gone afloat upon vague, conflicting rumor? No person knows; the reporters least of all. One, it is said, lost his position for the default of that report; others received the severest rebukes of their experience from their managing editors for the same cause. None had any satisfactory reason to give for his failure.
"I forgot," said he who lost his position for his boyish excuse. "All I can say, sir, is I forgot. The man swept me away. I forgot that such a paper as 'The Daily Gossip' existed. Other matters," he added with expensive candor, "seemed more important at the time."
*****
"When the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?"
The stranger announced this not unusual text with the simple manner of a man who promised nothing eccentric in the sermon to come. Yet something in the familiar words arrested attention. The phrase, as it was spoken, seemed less a hackneyed biblical quotation than a pointed personal question to which each heart in the audience-room was compelled to respond.