ovable, silent. The
people near her looked at her compassionately. They thought she was an
inconsolable widow, or a Rachel refusing comfort. Nor, had they watched
her, could they have told if she had heard any thing to comfort or
relieve her sorrow. From the first word to the last she gazed fixedly at
the speaker. With the rest she rose and went out. But as she passed by
the pulpit stairs she looked up for a moment at that pallid face, and a
finer eye than any human saw that she longed, like another woman of old
looking at another teacher, to kiss the hem of his garment. Oh! not by
earthquake nor by lightning, but by the soft touch of angels at midnight,
is the stone rolled away from the door of the sepulchre.

CHAPTER XLVI.

IN ANOTHER CHURCH.

While thus one body of Christian believers worshipped, another was
assembled in the Methodist chapel in John Street, where Aunt Martha
usually went.

A vast congregation crowded every part of the church. They swarmed upon
the pulpit stairs, upon the gallery railings, and wherever a foot could
press itself to stand, or room be found to sit. As the young preacher,
Summerfield, rose in the pulpit, every eye in the throng turned to him
and watched his slight, short figure--his sweet blue eye, and his face of
earnest expression and a kind of fiery sweetness. He closed his eyes and
lifted his hands in prayer; and the great responsibility of speaking to
that multitude of human beings of their most momentous interests
evidently so filled and possessed him, that in the prayer he seemed to
yearn for strength and the gifts of grace so earnestly--he cried, so as
if his heart were bursting, "Help, Lord, or I perish!" that the great
congregation, murmuring with sobs, with gasps and sighs, echoed solemnly,
as if it had but one voice, and it were muffled in tears, "Help, Lord, or
I perish!"

When the prayer was ended a hymn was sung by all the people, to a quick,
martial melody, and seemed to leave them nervously awake to whatever
should be said. The preacher, with the sweet boyish face, began his
sermon gently, and in a winning voice. There was a kind of caressing
persuasion in his whole manner that magnetized the audience. He grew
more and more impassioned as he advanced, while the people sat
open-mouthed, and responding at intervals, "Amen!"

"Ah! sinner, sinner, it is he, our God, who shoots us through and
through with the sharp sweetness of his power. It is our God who
scat