themselves on Robert's mind with extraordinary intensity. Nor did
he ever lose the memory of the outward scene. In after-years,
memory could always recall to him at will the face and figure of
the speaker, the massive head, the deep eyes sunk under the brows,
the Midland accent, the make of limb and feature which seemed to
have some suggestion in them of the rude strength and simplicity
of a peasant ancestry; and then the nobility, the fire, the spiritual
beauty flashing through it all! Here, indeed, was a man on whom
his fellows might lean, a man in whom the generation of spiritual
force was so strong and continuous that it overflowed of necessity
into the poorer, barrener lives around him, kindling and enriching.
Robert felt himself seized and penetrated, filled with a fervor
and an admiration which he was too young and immature to analyze,
but which was to be none the less potent and lasting.

Much of the sermon itself, indeed, was beyond him. It was on the
meaning of St. Paul's great conception, 'Death unto sin and a new
birth unto righteousness.' What did the Apostle mean by a death
to sin and self? What were the precise ideas attached to the words
'risen with Christ?' Are this, death and this resurrection necessarily
dependent upon certain alleged historical events? Or are they not
primarily, and were they not, even in the mind of St. Paul, two
aspects of a spiritual process perpetually re-enacted in the soul
of man, and constituting the veritable revelation of God? Which
is the stable and lasting Witness of the Father: the spiritual
history of the individual and the world, or the envelope of miracle
to which hitherto mankind has attributed so much Importance?

Mr. Grey's treatment of these questions was clothed, throughout a
large portion of the lecture in metaphysical language, which no boy