room when they got in was
already nearly full, all the working fellows of the college were
present, and a body of some thirty men besides, most of them already far
on in their University career. A minute or two afterwards Mr. Grey
entered. The door opening on to the quadrangle, where the trees,
undeterred by east wind, were just bursting into leaf, was shut; and the
little assembly knelt, while Mr. Grey's voice with its broad intonation,
in which a strong native homeliness lingered under the gentleness of
accent, recited the collect 'Lord of all power and might,' a silent
pause following the last words. Then the audience settled itself, and
Mr. Grey, standing by a small deal table with the gaslight behind him,
began his address.

All the main points of the experience which followed stamped themselves
on Robert's mind with extraordinary intensity. Nor did he ever lose the
memory of the outward scene. In after years, memory could always recall
to him at will the face and figure of the speaker, the massive head, the
deep eyes sunk under the brows, the Midland accent, the make of limb and
feature which seemed to have some suggestion in them of the rude
strength and simplicity of a peasant ancestry; and then the nobility,
the fire, the spiritual beauty flashing through it all! Here, indeed,
was a man on whom his fellows might lean, a man in whom the generation
of spiritual force was so strong and continuous that it overflowed of
necessity into the poorer, barrener lives around him, kindling and
enriching. Robert felt himself seized and penetrated, filled with a
fervour and an admiration which he was too young and immature to
analyse, but which was to be none the less potent and lasting.

Much of the sermon itself, indeed, was beyond him. It was on the meaning
of St. Paul's great conception, 'Death unto sin and a new birth unto
righteousness.' What did the Apostle mean by a death to sin and self?
What were the precise ideas attached to the words 'risen with Christ'?
Are this death and this resurrection necessarily dependent upon certain
alleged historical events? Or are they not primarily, and were they not,
even in the mind of St. Paul, two aspects of a spiritual process
perpetually re-enacted in the soul of man, and constituting the
veritable revelation of God? Which is the stable and lasting witness of
the Father: the spiritual history of the individual and the world, or
the envelope of miracle to which hitherto mankind h