oice that
rang like an alarm-bell pealed in the dead of night. There are voices
and voices, but only now and then one which is pitched in the key of the
spheral harmonies. When the Reverend Silas hurled out the Baptist's
words, _Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!_ the responsive
thrill from the packed benches was like the sympathetic vibration of
harp-strings answering a trumpet blast.

The thin, large-jointed hand went up for silence, as if there could be a
silence more profound than that which already hung on his word. Then he
began slowly, and in phrase so simple that the youngest child could not
fail to follow him, to draw the picture of that Judean morning scene on
the banks of the Jordan, of the wild, unkempt, skin-clad forerunner,
thundering forth his message to a sin--cursed world. On what deaf ears
had it fallen among the multitude gathered on Jordan's bank! On what
deaf ears would it fall in Zoar church this night!

He classed them rapidly, and with a prescient insight into the mazes of
human frailty that made it seem as if the doors of all hearts were open
to him: the Pharisee, who paid tithes--mint, anise and cummin--and
prayed daily on the street corners, and saw no need for repentance; the
youth and the maiden, with their lips to the brimming cup of worldly
pleasures, saying to the faithful monitor, yet a little while longer and
we will hear thee; the man and woman grown, fighting the battle for
bread, living toilfully for time and the things that perish, and hearing
the warning voice faintly and ever more faintly as the years pass; the
aged, steeped and sodden in sin unrepented of, and with the spiritual
senses all dulled and blunted by lifelong rebellion, willing now to hear
and obey, it might be, but calling in vain on the merciful and
long-suffering God they had so long rejected.

Then, suddenly, he passed from pleading to denunciation. The setting of
The Great White Throne and the awful terrors of the Judgment Day were
depicted in words that fell from the thin lips like the sentence of an
inexorable judge.

"'Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the
devil and his angels!'" he thundered, and a shudder ran through the
crowded church as if an earthquake had shaken the valley. "There is your
end, impenitent soul; and, alas! for you, it is only the beginning of a
fearful eternity! Think of it, you who have time to think of everything
but the salvation of your sou