A few voices joined in a murmur of assent, but something like a ripple of mocking laughter came from others. And one voice in the gallery laughed outright—it was the man who had cracked the nut.
Momentarily unnerved by that laughter the speaker paused. Then recovering himself he went on:
"Our pastor has gone; the Puritans (as we were wont to call them) are gone; and we know now—now that it is too late for those of us who are 'left'—that they have been 'caught up' into the air, to be with their Lord forever."
He glanced down at the white-draped communion table, as he continued:
"Our church officer has performed his usual monthly office, and has spread the Table for the Lord's Supper, but it dawns upon us, friends, how useless, how empty is the symbol since it was only ordained 'until He should come.' He has come, and we, the unready, have been left behind."
"Tommy Rot!"
The expression came angrily, sneeringly from the man in the gallery, the man who cracked that nut, and who had laughed so boisterously a moment ago.
Many eyes were turned up to the man, but no voice of reprimand came, no cry of "shame!" or of "Turn him out," was raised.
All that had happened during the days of the past week, had served to fill many of the people gathered there that morning, with a curious mingling of doubt, hesitancy, fearsomeness, and uncertainty, as well as an unconscious growth of a new strange skepticism, and a carelessness that almost amounted to recklessness.
"As it is with many more here, this morning," the Secretary went on, "some members of my family have gone, been caught up—"