A thousand years the same.
“For a moment,” writes an eye-witness, “there was silence. In another moment the full significance of the reference had flashed on every mind, and the response was instantaneous and universal. Shouts, waving of handkerchiefs, clapping of hands, stamping of feet—I never knew anything like it. Round after round continued, until the storm of applause ended in a burst of grateful tears. No one doubted that the Church still believed in prayer and that the tempest had passed without the loss of a sail.”
In the same volume of “Christian Ballads” there appears another little poem, most appealing in its simplicity:
In the silent midnight-watches,
List—thy bosom door!
How it knocketh, knocketh, knocketh,
Knocketh, evermore!
Say not ’tis thy pulse is beating:
’Tis thy heart of sin;
’Tis thy Saviour knocks, and crieth,