It seemed to him that he was standing in front of a wall, trying to make his words pass through it. This was at first; a moment later he felt that he was speaking to a denser multitude than he had ever addressed before. The mist was before his eyes as a sea of sad grey faces waiting, earnest and anxious for the message of gladness which he was bringing them. His voice rose to heights of impressiveness that it had never reached before. It clove a passage through the mist and fell upon the ears of the multitude whom he could not see, stirring them as they had never been stirred before, while he gave them his message of the Light.
For close upon half an hour he spoke of the Light. He repeated the word—again and again he repeated it, and every time that it came from his lips it had the effect of a lightning flash. This was at first. He spoke in flashes of lightning, uttered from the midst of the cloud of a night of dense blackness; and then he made a change. The storm that made fitful, fiercer illumination passed away, and after an interval the reiteration of the Light appeared again. But now it was the true Light—the light of dawn breaking over a sleeping world. It did not come in a flash to dazzle the eyes and then to make the darkness more dread; it moved gradually upward; there was a flutter as of a dove's wing over the distant hills, the tender feathers of the dawn floated through the air, and fell upon the Eastern Sea, quivering there; and even while one watched them wondering, out of the tremulous spaces of the sky a silver, silken thread was spread where the heaven and the waters met—it broadened and became a cincture of pearls, and then the thread that bound it broke, and the pearls were scattered, flying up to the sky and falling over all the waters in beautiful confusion; and before the world had quite awakened, the Day itself gave signs of hastening to gather up the pearls of Dawn. The Day's gold-sandalled feet were nigh—they were shining on the sea's brim, and lo! the East was bright with gold. Men cried, “Why do those feet tarry?” But even while they spoke, the wonder of the Morn had come upon them. Flinging down his mantle upon the mountains over which he had stepped—a drapery of translucent lawn, the splendour of the new light sprung upward, lifting hands of blessing over the world, and men looked and saw each other's faces, and knew that they were blest.
And the wonder that he spoke of had come to pass. While the preacher had been describing the breaking light, the light had come. All unnoticed, the mist had been dissolving, and when he had spoken his last words the sunlight was bathing the preacher and the multitude who hung upon his words. The wonder that he told them of had taken place, and there did not seem to them anything of wonder about it. Only when he made his pause did they look into each other's faces as men do when they have slept and the day has awakened them. Then with the sunlight about them, for them to drink great draughts that refreshed their souls, he spoke of the Light of the World—of the Dayspring from on High that had visited the world, and their souls were refreshed.
And not one word had he said of all that he had meant to say—not one word of the man whom he had come so far to reprove.
No one was conscious of the omission.
CHAPTER XVII
The day became sultry when the mist had cleared away, and by noon the heat was more oppressive than had been known all the Summer. Wesley was exhausted by the time he set out with Mr. Hartwell to return to the village. They needed no mariner's compass now to tell them the way.
They scarcely exchanged a word. They seemed to have forgotten the conditions under which they had gone forth in the early morning. A new world seemed to have been created since then—a world upon which the shadow of darkness could not fall for evermore.