heart. Even his family did not share
his belief. When he married, as he did
when he was nearly fifty, his wife was
impatient with his Faith--indeed, fearful
of it, and with persistent, nagging
reasonableness urged his return to
the respectable paths of Presbyterianism.
To his pain, when his girl, his
Philippa, grew up she shrank from
the emotion of his creed; she and her
mother went to the brick church under
the locust-trees of Lower Ripple; and
when her mother died Philippa went
there alone, for Henry Roberts, not
being permitted to bear witness in the
Church, did so out of it, by sitting at
home on the Sabbath day, in a bare
upper chamber, waiting for the
manifestation of the Holy Spirit. It never
came. The Tongues never spoke. Yet
still, while the years passed, he waited,
listening--listening--listening; a
kindly, simple old man with mystical
brown eyes, believing meekly in his
own unworth to hear again that Sound
from Heaven, as of a rushing, mighty
wind, that had filled the London Chapel,
bowing human souls before it as a great
wind bows the standing corn!