An almost imperceptible shiver passed through Esther's figure.

"Wait! he will slip in the humility later," muttered George.

On the contrary, the young preacher seemed bent on letting no trace of
humility slip into his first sermon. Nothing could be simpler than his
manner, which, if it had a fault, sinned rather on the side of plainness
and monotony than of rhetoric, but he spoke with the air of one who had
a message to deliver which he was more anxious to give as he received
than to add any thing of his own; he meant to repeat it all without an
attempt to soften it. He took possession of his flock with a general
advertisement that he owned every sheep in it, white or black, and to
show that there could be no doubt on the matter, he added a general
claim to right of property in all mankind and the universe. He did this
in the name and on behalf of the church universal, but there was
self-assertion in the quiet air with which he pointed out the nature of
his title, and then, after sweeping all human thought and will into his
strong-box, shut down the lid with a sharp click, and bade his audience
kneel.

The sermon dealt with the relations of religion to society. It began by
claiming that all being and all thought rose by slow gradations to
God,--ended in Him, for Him--existed only through Him and because of
being His.

The form of act or thought mattered nothing. The hymns of David, the
plays of Shakespeare, the metaphysics of Descartes, the crimes of
Borgia, the virtues of Antonine, the atheism of yesterday and the
materialism of to-day, were all emanations of divine thought, doing