I stood I saw streaming eyes in women's faces, and
that stiff, unwinking stare on men's faces which indicates tense effort
to restrain emotion.

And so, with a fine directness and simplicity of progress, he carried us
down through the century to its stormy close, with vivid words of
tribute for the sturdy pioneers of Victorian reform who fought for and
built the freest democracy in the world, and gave us the triumphant
enlightenment which illumined Victoria's first Jubilee.

"'But isn't Duty a rather early Victorian sort of business, and out of
date, anyhow?' said my young countryman in Calgary. To the first half of
his question there can be no answer but 'Yes.' To deny it were to
slander our fathers most cruelly. But what of the question's second
half? Our fathers have no concern with the answering of that. Is Duty
'out of date,' my friends? If so, let us burn our churches. If so, let
the bishops resign their bishoprics. If so, let us lower for ever the
flag which our fathers made sacred from pole to pole. If so, let Britain
admit--as well first as last--that she has retired for ever from her
proud place among the nations, and is no more to be accounted a Power
in Christendom; for that is no place for a people with whom Duty is out
of date.

"'And did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest,
to offer upon mine altar?... But now the Lord saith, Be it far from me,
for them that honour me I will honour, and them that despise me shall be
lightly esteemed. _Behold the days come that I will cut off thine
arm!_'"

It was almost unbearable. No one had guessed the man had such a voice.
He had recited that passage quietly. Then came the rolling thunder of
the: "Behold the days come that I will cut off thine arm!" A woman in
the centre of the hall cried aloud, upon a high note. The roar of German
artillery in North London never stirred Londoners as this particular
sentence of God's Word stirred them in the Albert Hall.

And then, in a voice keyed down again to calm and tender wisdom, the
words of the Scriptural poet stole out over the heads of the perturbed
people, stilling their minds once more into the right receptive vein:
"'Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His
commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.'"

Like balm, the stately words fell upon the people, as a light to lighten
their darkness, as an end and a solution to a situation found
intolerable. But, thou