real difference a word like this must
make in the thoughts and life of those who have been privileged to
listen to it. Never again, surely, can they be as though they had not
heard it." It was a message, so he felt, to shake men, to arouse them,
and make them turn on one another and cry: "Men and brethren, what must
we do?"

Under the impact of his own emotions and sensitive to his surroundings,
he was eager at the close of the service to share with others what he
virtually demanded they should impart to him. But he was grievously
disappointed. Not a word did he hear, not a look did he see on the
face of a departing worshipper which so much as betrayed the transient
emotion stirred by dream or romance. If they had listened to the
discourse, they had evidently forgotten what they had been at no pains
to remember. No new experience befell this man of artistic and
impulsive temperament. I heard a sermon a short time ago preached in a
seaside church, which deeply moved me; a sermon I was thankful to have
heard, and the like of which I would walk a long way to hear again. As
I stood outside the building waiting for a friend, the congregation
came out, and I heard the usual interchange of verbal nothings. The
only reference I did hear to the service was from a well-dressed young
man to a girl by his side, and this is what he said: "A long-winded
fellow, that; let us go on the parade." The remark did not unduly
surprise me. "I wonder," said a man to me lately, "why some people go
to a place of worship at all; they appear to be as indifferent to what
is said, sung, or prayed, as the dog that barks is indifferent about
the dog-star." In every congregation of fair size there is a strange
mixture. But it always includes those whose attention and evident
interest do something to compensate for others who show neither. There
are elect souls who hear the Word and receive it. You may not trace
the fact by what they say, but you know it by the holiness of
helpfulness, which radiates from them like light, and is made by them
as an atmosphere. God has not ordained the foolishness of
preaching--which does not mean foolish preaching--to thin out in the
miserable anti-climax of a remark like that of the young man I have
just quoted. Fortunately, however, our artist had not sufficient
experience of the conventional congregation at a place of worship to
have become philosophic about it--which usually amounts to
indifference.