This incomparable description of the New Jerusalem, read in a finely modulated voice, had a marked effect upon the audience, though the reader was conscious of the presence of but three, Rosa, grandpa, and the Lord Jesus Himself.

Dr. Dale was more disgusted than ever, or at least tried to be.

“What unreasonable fanaticism!” he thought.  “When men leave their homes and business to attend church, they want something practical, something acting as a stimulus in daily life.  Being surrounded as we are on every hand by social evils, strife between capital and labor, and with anarchical tendencies becoming constantly more prevalent, we need something bearing directly upon these problems.  There’ll be time enough for these other things.  Of course I believe in heaven, for Margaret is there, and when I die I want to go to her.

“I wish Dr. Fairfax had left these vagrants where they belong.  The child’s face haunts me.  Her eyes are almost as starry and full of expression as Margaret’s.  That’s the queerest little old man I ever saw.  I can’t see how they happen to be here.”

And so his mind wandered restlessly on during the preliminary services.

“Let all the people,” announced the speaker, “join in singing that old hymn which some of us have not heard in years, ‘The Home of the Soul.’”

The great organ filled the vast auditorium with the strains of the melody, followed by a volume of sweetest song.  Many were carried back to the scenes of their childhood, where, gathered around the family altar, were the dear ones long since singing in paradise.

The strangers across the aisle again attracted Dr. Dale’s attention.  The old man was leaning forward with both hands resting upon his cane, his eyes were closed, and the tears were slowly trickling down the wrinkled face, while with a plaintive, quavery voice he was joining in the singing of his well-beloved song.

At last it was time for the sermon, but the preacher, who by his eloquence and magnetic personality could sway thousands, felt as helpless as a little child to perform the duty before him.

He announced his text:  “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way” (John 14:6).

The audience wondered why at that particular point he stopped apparently to offer a word of silent prayer.  But then they could not see the expression of hope flash across the face of the child, nor the old man lean still a little farther forward that he might catch every word.

“Rosa,” whispered grandpa, “didn’t I tell you if we’d go to a meetin’ house with the steeple a-p’intin’ straight up, we’d find the way?  Yes, yes, that’s it, it surely is, Rosa, and it’s all a-beginnin’ to come back.  Jesus is the way, Jesus is the way!  I wonder I ain’t thought of it before.”

The sermon which followed, simple in every detail, began by calling attention to the marvelously beautiful description of the heavenly land as contained in the Scripture previously read.