served for a pulpit.

He was a tall man, thin and erect, with a sallow, beardless face
unrelieved by any line of mobility, but redeemed and almost glorified by
the deep-set, eager, burning eyes. He had a way of bending to his
audience when he spoke, with one long arm crooked behind him and the
other extended to mark the sentences with a pointing finger, as if to
remove the final trace of impersonality; to break down the last of the
barriers of reserve which might be thrown up by the impenitent heart.

The hush remained unbroken till he announced his text in a voice 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