No sickness, no sadness, no dread, and no crying;
Caught up through the clouds with our Lord into glory,
When Jesus receives ‘His own.’”
With the last-sung note the voice of the Major rang out again:
“General Sir R. P.—— will lead us in prayer.”
The hush that followed was of the tensest. It lasted a full half-minute, then the old general’s voice led in a prayer such as Tom Hammond had never even conceived possible to human lips, and such as, certainly, he had never heard before. It awed him, and at the same time revealed to him that real Christianity was something which he, with all his knowledge of men and things, had never before come in contact with.
The prayer concluded, not a moment was wasted. In his clear, ringing tones, the major began:
“Turn with me, if you will, dear friends, to the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, and the eleventh verse.”
Tom Hammond wished that he had a Bible with him. It seemed to him that he was the only person there without one. In an instant every Bible was opened at the passage named. There was no searching, no fumbling. This was another revelation to him.
“They know their Bibles,” he mused, “better than I do my dictionary or encyclopædia.”