ife, and it shall be
Thy joy and crown eternally."

"Lay hold on life!"

The service began,--the well-remembered, beautiful appeal and prayers
which she could still repeat, after a lapse of time, almost by heart;
and their music and rhythm, the simple yet magnificent language in
which they were clothed--her own language--awoke this morning a
racial instinct strong in her,--she had not known how strong. Or was it
something in Hodder's voice that seemed to illumine the ancient words
with a new meaning? Raising her eyes to the chancel she studied his
head, and found in it still another expression of that race, the history
of which had been one of protest, of development of its own character
and personality. Her mind went back to her first talk with him, in the
garden, and she saw how her intuition had recognized in him then the
spirit of a people striving to assert itself.

She stood with tightened lips, during the Apostles' Creed, listening to
his voice as it rose, strong and unfaltering, above the murmur of the
congregation.

At last she saw him swiftly crossing the chancel, mounting the pulpit
steps, and he towered above her, a dominant figure, his white surplice
sharply outlined against the dark stone of the pillar. The hymn died
away, the congregation sat down. There was a sound in the church,
expectant, presaging, like the stirring of leaves at the first breath of
wind, and then all was silent.

II

He had preached for an hour--longer, perhaps. Alison could not have said
how long. She had lost all sense of time.

No sooner had the text been spoken, "Except a man be born again, he
cannot see the Kingdom of God," than she seemed to catch a fleeting
glimpse of an hitherto unimagined Personality. Hundreds of times she
had heard those words, and they had been as meaningless to her as
to Nicodemus. But now--now something was brought home to her of the
magnificent certainty with which they must first have been spoken, of
the tone and bearing and authority of him who had uttered them. Was
Christ like that? And could it be a Truth, after all, a truth only to be
grasped by one who had experienced it?

It was in vain that man had tried to evade this, the supreme revelation
of Jesus Christ, had sought to substitute ceremonies and sacrifices for
spiritual rebirth. It was in vain that the Church herself had, from time
to time, been inclined to compromise. St. Paul, once the strict Pharisee
who had laboured