The organ was playing softly, low, tender music.  She learned afterward that the music was Handel’s “Largo.”  She did not know that the organ was one of the finest in the city, nor that the organist was one of the most skilful to be had; she knew only that the music seemed to take her soul and lift it up above the earth so that heaven was all around her, and the very clouds seemed singing to her.  Then came the processional, with the wonderful voices of the choir-boys sounding far off, and then nearer.  It would be impossible for any one who had been accustomed all his life to these things to know how it affected Elizabeth.

It seemed as though the Lord Himself was leading the girl in a very special way.  At scarcely any other church in a fashionable quarter of the great city would Elizabeth have heard preaching so exactly suited to her needs.  The minister was one of those rare men who lived with God, and talked with Him daily.  He had one peculiarity which marked him from all other preachers, Elizabeth heard afterward.  He would turn and talk with God in a gentle, sweet, conversational tone right in the midst of his sermon.  It made the Lord seem very real and very near.

If he had not been the great and brilliant preacher of an old established church, and revered by all denominations as well as his own, the minister would have been called eccentric and have been asked to resign, because his religion was so very personal that it became embarrassing to some.  However, his rare gifts, and his remarkable consecration and independence in doing what he thought right, had produced a most unusual church for a fashionable neighborhood.

Most of his church-members were in sympathy with him, and a wonderful work was going forward right in the heart of Sodom, unhampered by fashion or form or class distinctions.  It is true there were some who, like Madam Bailey sat calmly in their seats, and let the minister attend to the preaching end of the service without ever bothering their thoughts as to what he was saying.  It was all one to them whether he prayed three times or once, so the service got done at the usual hour.  But the majority were being led to see that there is such a thing as a close and intimate walk with God upon this earth.

Into this church came Elizabeth, the sweet heathen, eager to learn all that could be learned about the things of the soul.  She sat beside her grandmother, and drank in the sermon, and bowed her lovely, reverent head when she became aware that God was in the room and was being spoken to by His servant.  After the last echo of the recessional had died away, and the bowed hush of the congregation had grown into a quiet, well-bred commotion of the putting on of wraps and the low Sabbath greetings, Elizabeth turned to her grandmother.

“Grandmother, may I please go and ask that man some questions?  He said just what I have been longing and longing to know, and I must ask him more.  Nobody else ever told me these things.  Who is he?  How does he know it is all true?”