Wandering princes are we! cried the preacher, with a profound ecstasy and exultation in his tone, while the very light of heaven shone in his aspect—wandering princes are we, sons of the Great King. In foreign lands outcast and forlorn, groveling with the very swine in the mire, and pining for the husks that the swine do eat; envying, defying, hating, forgetting—but never hated nor forgot; in the depths of our rage, and impotence, and sin—in the darkest moment of our moral death, when we would crucify the very image of that Parent who pities us—there is one voice deeper and sweeter than all music, the voice of our elder brother pleading with that common Father—“Forgive them, forgive them, for they know not what they do!”
He sat down, but the congregation did not move. Leaning forward, with upraised eyes glistening with tears and beaming with sympathy, with hope, with quickened affection, they sat motionless, seemingly unwilling to destroy the holy calm in which, with him, they had communed with their Father. There were those in the further part of the church who did not hear; but their mouths were open with earnest attention; their eyes glittered with moisture; for they saw afar off that slight, rapt figure; and so strong was the common sympathy of the audience that they seemed to feel what they could not hear.
Lawrence Newt did not look round for Aunt Martha. But he thought of her listening to the discourse, as one thinks of dry fields in a saturating summer rain. She sat through the whole—black, immovable, silent. The people near her looked at her compassionately. They thought she was an inconsolable widow, or a Rachel refusing comfort. Nor, had they watched her, could they have told if she had heard any thing to comfort or relieve her sorrow. From the first word to the last she gazed fixedly at the speaker. With the rest she rose and went out. But as she passed by the pulpit stairs she looked up for a moment at that pallid face, and a finer eye than any human saw that she longed, like another woman of old looking at another teacher, to kiss the hem of his garment. Oh! not by earthquake nor by lightning, but by the soft touch of angels at midnight, is the stone rolled away from the door of the sepulchre.
CHAPTER XLVI. — IN ANOTHER CHURCH.
While thus one body of Christian believers worshipped, another was assembled in the Methodist chapel in John Street, where Aunt Martha usually went.
A vast congregation crowded every part of the church. They swarmed upon the pulpit stairs, upon the gallery railings, and wherever a foot could press itself to stand, or room be found to sit. As the young preacher, Summerfield, rose in the pulpit, every eye in the throng turned to him and watched his slight, short figure—his sweet blue eye, and his face of earnest expression and a kind of fiery sweetness. He closed his eyes and lifted his hands in prayer; and the great responsibility of speaking to that multitude of human beings of their most momentous interests evidently so filled and possessed him, that in the prayer he seemed to yearn for strength and the gifts of grace so earnestly—he cried, so as if his heart were bursting, “Help, Lord, or I perish!” that the great congregation, murmuring with sobs, with gasps and sighs, echoed solemnly, as if it had but one voice, and it were muffled in tears, “Help, Lord, or I perish!”
When the prayer was ended a hymn was sung by all the people, to a quick, martial melody, and seemed to leave them nervously awake to whatever should be said. The preacher, with the sweet boyish face, began his sermon gently, and in a winning voice. There was a kind of caressing persuasion in his whole manner that magnetized the audience. He grew more and more impassioned as he advanced, while the people sat open-mouthed, and responding at intervals, “Amen!”
“Ah! sinner, sinner, it is he, our God, who shoots us through and through with the sharp sweetness of his power. It is our God who scatters the arrows of his wrath; but they are winged with the plumes of the dove, the feathers of softness, and the Gospel. Oh! the promises! the promises!—Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Yes, patriarch of white hairs, of wasted cheeks, and tottering step! the burden bears you down almost to the ground to-day—into the ground to-morrow. Here stands the Judge to give you rest. Yes, mother of sad eyes and broken spirit! whose long life is a sorrowful vigil, waiting upon the coming of wicked sons, of deceitful daughters—weary, weary, and heavy laden with tribulation, here is the Comforter who shall give you rest. And you, young man, and you, young maiden, sitting here to-day in the plenitude of youth, and hope, and love, Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, for the dark day cometh—yea, it is at hand!”