It was a crisp November morning. Recent rains had washed the streets
clean, the wind was blowing fresh, the sky was cloudless and the
sun lit in cool gleaming splendour every avenue and park of the
great city.
The people had returned from their country places and the hotels
were thronged with merchants and visitors from the four quarters
of the earth.
An enormous crowd squeezed into every inch of space the police
would allow to be filled in the church, and hundreds were turned
away, unable to gain admission.
Gordon had spent the entire day and night before in an agony of
preparation, and he had not left his study until two o'clock Sunday
morning. He took his seat in the pulpit trembling with anxiety. The
organ burst into the strains of the Doxology and the crowd rose.
He stood with folded hands looking over the sea of faces, and his
heart began to ache with an agony of suspense and fear of failure.
The singing ceased, and every head bent as he lifted his big hand,
with its blue veins standing out like a net of steel wires, and
pronounced a brief invocation.
When he read the hymn, the people felt in his voice the shock of a
storm of pent-up emotion.
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