joined the large room on the side. He was himself detained at the
front of the church talking with several persons there, and when he
finally turned around, the church was empty. He walked over to the
lecture-room entrance and went in. He was almost startled to see the
people who were there. He had not made up his mind about any of his
members, but he had hardly expected that so many were ready to enter
into such a literal testing of their Christian discipleship as now
awaited him. There were perhaps fifty present, among them Rachel
Winslow and Virginia Page, Mr. Norman, President Marsh, Alexander
Powers the railroad superintendent, Milton Wright, Dr. West and
Jasper Chase.

He closed the door of the lecture-room and went and stood before the
little group. His face was pale and his lips trembled with genuine
emotion. It was to him a genuine crisis in his own life and that of
his parish. No man can tell until he is moved by the Divine Spirit
what he may do, or how he may change the current of a lifetime of
fixed habits of thought and speech and action. Henry Maxwell did
not, as we have said, yet know himself all that he was passing
through, but he was conscious of a great upheaval in his definition
of Christian discipleship, and he was moved with a depth of feeling
he could not measure as he looked into the faces of those men and
women on this occasion.

It seemed to him that the most fitting word to be spoken first was
that of prayer. He asked them all to pray with him. And almost with
the first syllable he uttered there was a distinct presence of the
Spirit felt by them all. As the prayer went on, this presence grew
in power. They all felt it. The room was filled with it as plainly
as if it had been visible. When the prayer closed there was a