"If it be the will of God that such a man as I should ever stand on the
sea of glass mingled with fire, then this tongue will be lifted with
the best, but so long as my feet are still in the fearful pit it
becometh me to bow my head."

"Then you don't believe in assurance?" but already the evangelist was
quailing before the Rabbi.

"Verily there is no man that hath not heard of that precious gift, and
none who does not covet it greatly, but there be two degrees of
assurance"--here the Rabbi looked sternly at the happy, rotund little
figure--"and it is with the first you must begin, and what you need to
get is assurance of your damnation."

One of the boys read an account of this incident--thinly veiled--in a
reported address of the evangelist, in which the Rabbi--being, as it
was inferred, beaten in scriptural argument--was very penitent and
begged his teacher's pardon with streaming tears. What really happened
was different, and so absolutely conclusive that Doctor Dowbiggin gave
it as his opinion "that a valuable lesson had been read to unauthorised
teachers of religion."

Carmichael recognised the same note in the sermon and saw another man
than he knew, as the Rabbi, in a low voice, without heat or
declamation, with frequent pauses and laboured breathing, as of one
toiling up a hill, argued the absolute supremacy of God and the utter
helplessness of man. One hand ever pressed the grapes, but with the
other the old man wiped the perspiration that rolled in beads down his
face. A painful stillness fell on the people as they felt themselves
caught in the meshes of this inexorable net and dragged ever nearer to
the abyss. Carmichael, who had been leaning forward in his place, tore
himself away from the preacher with an effort, and moved where he could
see the congregation. Campbell was drinking in every word as one for
the first time in his life perfectly satisfied. Menzies was huddled
into a heap in the top of his pew as one justly blasted by the anger of
the Eternal. Men were white beneath the tan, and it was evident that
some of the women would soon fall a-weeping. Children had crept close
to their mothers under a vague sense of danger, and a girl in the choir
watched the preacher with dilated eyeballs, like an animal fascinated
by terror.

"It is as a sword piercing the heart to receive this truth, but it is a
truth and must be believed. There are hundreds of thousands in the
past who were born an