Paul's cosmical speculations!

And now--from what movements, what obscurities of change within herself,
had come this new sense, half loathing, half attraction, that could not
withdraw itself from the stroke, from the attack of this Christian
poetry--these cries of the soul, now from the Psalms, now from Paul, now
from the unknown voices of the Church?

Was it merely the setting that made the difference--the horror of what
had passed, the infinite relief to eye and heart of this sudden calm that
had fallen on the terror and distraction of the workmen--the strangeness
of this vast shed for church, with its fierce perpetual drama of
assaulting flame and flying shadow, and the gaunt tangled forms of its
machinery--the dull glare of that distant furnace that had made so
little--hardly an added throb, hardly a leaping flame! of the living man
thrown to it half an hour before, and seemed to be still murmuring and
growling there, behind this great act of human pity, in a dying
discontent?

Whence was it--this stilling, pacifying power?

All around her men were sobbing and groaning, but as the wave dies after
the storm. They seemed to feel themselves in some grasp that sustained,
some hold that made life tolerable again. "Amens" came thick and fast.
The convulsion of the faces was abating; a natural human courage was
flowing back into contracted hearts.

"_Blessed are the dead--for they rest from their labours_--" "_as our
hope is this our brother doth._"