Facing this crowd that even in the small town of Corinth represented
every class and kind, Dan felt it all; the vulgar curiosity, the craving
for sensation, the admiration, the suspicion, the true welcome, the
antagonism, the spiritual dependence. And the young man from the
mountains and the schools, who had entered the ministry from the truest
motives, with the highest ideals, shrank back and was afraid.

Dan was, literally, to this church and people a messenger from another
world. It was not strange that many of the people thought, "How out of
place this big fellow looks in the pulpit." Many of them felt dimly,
too, that which the Doctor had always felt, that this man was somehow a
revelation of something that might have been, that ought to be. But no
one tried to search out the reason why.

The theme of the new minister's sermon was, "The Faith of the Fathers,"
and it must have been a good one, because Martha said the next day, that
it was the finest thing she had ever heard; and she had it figured out
somehow that the members of neighboring churches, who were there, got
some straight gospel for once in their lives. Elder Jordan assured the
Doctor in a confidential whisper, that it was a splendid effort. The
Doctor knew that Dan was splendid, and he could see that the boy had
fairly hypnotized the crowd, but he could not understand why it should
have been much of an effort. He confided to Martha that "so far as he
could see, the sermon might have been taken from the barrel of any one
of the preachers that had served the Memorial Church since its
establishment." But the sermon was new and fresh to Dan, and so gained
something of interest and strength from the earnestness and personality
of the speaker. "The boy had only to hold that gait," reflected the
Doctor, "and he would, as Nathan had said, land at the very top of his