to walls. He was sitting under the chandelier in the choir, the number
of the first hymn had just been whispered along, and he began to sing,
with hundreds of others, the music which then released the pinions of
his love and faith as the air releases the wings of a bird. The hymn
ceased; he could see the pastor rise from behind the pulpit, advance,
and with a gesture gather that sea of heads to prayer. He could follow
the sermon, most of all the exhortation; around him was such stillness
in the church that his own heart-beats were audible. Then the Supper
and then home to the dormitory again--with a pain of happiness filling
him, the rest and the unrest of consecration.

Many other scenes he lived through in memory this morning--once lived
in reality amid that brotherhood of souls. His tenderest thoughts
perhaps dwelt on the young men's prayer-meetings of Sunday afternoons
at the college. There they drew nearest to the Eternal Strength which
was behind their weakness, and closest to each other as student after
student lifted a faltering, stumbling petition for a common blessing on
their work. The Immortal seemed to be in that bare room, filling their
hearts with holy flame, drawing around them the isolation of a devoted
band. They were one in One. Then had followed the change in him which
produced the change in them: no fellowship, no friendship, with an
unbeliever; and he was left without a comrade.

His heart was yearning and sick this day to be reconciled to them all.
How did they think of him, speak of him, now? Who slept in his bed? Who
sat a little while, after the studies of the night were over, talking
to his room-mate? Who knelt down across the room at his prayers when
the lights were put out? And his professors--what bulwarks of knowledge
and rectitude and kindness they were!--all with him at first, all
against him at last, as in duty bound.

To one man alone among those hundreds could David look back as having
begun to take interest in him toward the close of his college days.
During that vacation which he had spent in reading and study, he had
often refreshed himself by taking his book out to the woodland park
near the city, which in those days was the grounds of one of the
colleges of the University. There he found the green wild country
again, a forest like his pioneer ancestor's. Regularly here he observed
at out-of-door work the professor of Physical Science, who also was
pressing his investigations