hat vials wud be opened an'
a' wesna wrang, but ma certes"--and that remarkable woman left you to
understand that no words in human speech could even hint at the
contents of the vials.

When the Rabbi gave out his text, "Vessels of wrath," in a low,
awestruck voice, Carmichael began to be afraid, but after a little he
chid himself for foolishness. During half an hour the Rabbi traced the
doctrine of the Divine Sovereignty through Holy Scripture with a
characteristic wealth of allusion to Fathers ancient and reforming, and
once or twice he paused as if he would have taken up certain matters at
greater length, but restrained himself, simply asserting the Pauline
character of St. Augustine's thinking, and exposing the looseness of
Clement of Alexandria with a wave of the hand as one hurrying on to his
destination.

"Dear old Rabbi"--Carmichael congratulated himself in his pew--"what
need he have made so many apologies for his subject? He is going to
enjoy himself, and he is sure to say something beautiful before he is
done." But he was distinctly conscious all the same of a wish that the
Rabbi were done and all . . . well, uncertainty over. For there was a
note of anxiety, almost of horror, in the Rabbi's voice, and he had not
let the Fathers go so lightly unless under severe constraint. What was
it? Surely he would not attack their minister in face of his
people. . . . The Rabbi do that, who was in all his ways a gentleman?
Yet . . . and then the Rabbi abruptly quitted historical exposition and
announced that he would speak on four heads. Carmichael, from his
corner behind the curtains, saw the old man twice open his mouth as if
to speak, and when at last he began he was quivering visibly, and he
had grasped the outer corners of the desk with such intensity that the
tassels which hung therefrom--one of the minor glories of the Free
Kirk--were held in the palm of his hand, the long red tags escaping
from between his white wasted fingers. A pulpit lamp came between
Carmichael and the Rabbi's face, but he could see the straining hand,
which did not relax till it was lifted in the last awful appeal, and
the white and red had a gruesome fascination. It seemed as if one had
clutched a cluster of full, rich, tender grapes and was pressing them
in an agony till their life ran out in streams of blood, and dripped
upon the heads of the choir sitting beneath, in their fresh, hopeful
youth. And it also came to Carmichael