"Aviated!" laughed a ribald voice, and this time it came from another part of the building.
Disregarding the interruption, the secretary went on:
"My wife has gone—" His voice shook with the deep emotion that stirred him, and for a moment he was too moved to speak. Then recovering himself with an effort he continued:
"My daughter, too, who against my wish had offered herself as a Foreign Missionary, has gone. Both wife and daughter lived in the spirit of expectancy of the Coming of Christ into the air. Now they are with Him, to be with Him for ever."
The ribald voice that had last interrupted, again broke into the Secretary's touching words. This time the interrupter roared out a stanza or two of a wretched song:
"Will no one tell me where they're gone,
My bursting heart with grief is torn,
I wish I never had been born,
I've lost, I've lost my vife."
A hundred or more voices roared with laughter. The devil of blasphemy was growing bolder.
But in the silence that immediately followed the laughter, the Secretary went on again:
"I have been a deeply religious man, even as Nicodemus and Paul were, before their conversion. But now that it is too late to share in the bliss of the glorious Translation, I have discovered that Religion, without Christ, without the Regeneration of the New Birth, is evidently useless, otherwise, I, with scores of others in this church, this morning, who have, for years, listened to a full-orbed gospel from our God-filled translated pastor, would be now with those of our loved ones who have 'ascended up on high.'"
He paused for the briefest fraction of a second, a look of keenest anguish filled his face, his eyes grew moist with unshed tears, and were full of appeal, of enquiry, as he swept the great assembly, crying: