mercy..."

As he continued he did indeed bear the almost breathless urgency of one
who has been sent on in advance to announce the imminence of some awful
peril. No matter what the peril might be; simply through the Chapel
there passed the breath of some coming danger. Impossible to watch him
and not realise that here was a man who had seen something with his own
eyes that had changed in a moment the very fabric of his life. Thurston
might be a charlatan who played with the beliefs of his dupes, Warlock
might be a mystic whose vision was in the future and not in the
past--Crashaw knew.

He painted, quietly, without fine words but with assurance and
conviction, his belief in the punishment of mankind. God was almost now
upon the threshold of their house. He was at the very gates of their
city, and with Him was coming a doom as sure and awful as the sentence
of the earthly judge on his earthly victim.

"Punishment! Punishment! ... We have grown in this careless age to
laugh at punishment. A future life? There is no future life. God? There
is no God! Even were He to come upon us we could escape from Him. We
could make a very good case for ourselves. This world is safe, secure,
founded upon our markets, our treasuries, our laws and commandments,
our conventions of decent behaviour, our police and our ministers. God
cannot touch us. We are secure ... I tell you that at this very moment
this earth in which you trust is trembling under you, at this instant
everything in which you believed is undermined and is betraying you.
You have been given your opportunity--you are refusing it--and God is
upon you."

His voice changed suddenly to tones of a marvellous sweetness. He
appealed, pleaded, implored. The ugliness of his face and body was
forgotten, he was simply a voice issuing from space, sent to save a
world.

"And we here--the few of us out of this huge city gathered together
here--it is not too late for us. Let us surrender ourselves. Let us go
to Him and say that we are His, that we await His coming and obey His
law ... Brothers and sisters, I am as you are, weak and helpless and
full of sin, but come to Him, come to Him, come to Him! ... There is
help for us all, help and pity and love. Love such as none of us have
ever known, love that cannot fail us and will be with us until
eternity!"

He stepped out from behind the desk, stood before them all with his
little stunted, twisted body, his arms held out towards them.