When the sermon was drawing to a close, Lawyer Ed scribbled something on a scrap of paper and when he rose to take the offering he passed it up to the minister. Lawyer Ed never in his life got through a sermon without writing at least one note. This one was a request for St. George's, Edinburgh, as the closing psalm. He knew it was not the one selected, but something in the stirring words of the sermon, coupled with his joy over his boy's return, had roused him so that nothing but the hallelujahs of that great anthem could express his feelings.
When Dr. Leslie arose at the close and announced, instead of the regular doxology, the 24th psalm, Harry Lauder, the leader of the choir, looked down at Lawyer Ed and smiled, and Lawyer Ed smiled back at him. The young man's name was really Harry Lawson, but as he had a beautiful tenor voice, and could sing a funny Scottish song far better, every one in Algonquin said, than the great Scotch singer himself, he had been honored by the slight but significant change in his name. And when Harry Lauder smiled down at Lawyer Ed at the announcement of St. George's, Edinburgh, every one knew what it meant. When Lawyer Ed had given up the choir, under the pressure of other duties, and put Mr. Lawson in his place, he delivered this ultimatum to his successor: "Now look here, youngster. I am not used to being led by any one, either in singing or in anything else, but I promise that as far as I can, I'll follow you in the church service. But there's one tune in which I'll follow no living man, no, nor congregation of massed bands, and that's St. George's, Edinburgh. I just can't help it, Harry; when the first note of that tune comes rolling out, I am neither to hold nor to bind. Now I don't want to have it spoiled by see-sawing, that would be blasphemous. So you just tell the organist that I have a weakness comes over me when that tune is sung, and tell him to listen, and follow me. And you do the same."
So every one knew that when St. George's, Edinburgh, was sung, Lawyer Ed became the leader of the choir and congregation pro tem. No one needed to be told, however, for none could help following him. And he had never thrown himself into it with more abandon than on this sunny morning with the Eternal Call sounding again in the ears of all who had truly heard the sermon.
"Ye gates lift up your heads on high!"
He was glorious on the first stanza, he was magnificent on the second. He climbed grandly up the heights of its crescendo:—
"Ye doors that last for aye,
Be lifted up that so the King of glory enter may,"
in ever growing power and volume; up to the wonder of the question—
"But who is He that is the King of glory?"
up to the rapture of the response:—
"The Lord of Hosts and none but He
The King of Glory is."