How it had been accomplished, the thing she later felt, was beyond the range of intellectual analysis.  Nor could she have told how much later, since the passage of time had gone unnoticed.  Curiosities, doubts, passions, longings, antagonisms—­all these seemed—­as the most natural thing in the world—­to have been fused into one common but ineffable emotion.  Such, at least, was the impression to which Alison startlingly awoke.  All the while she had been conscious of Hodder, from the moment she had heard his voice in the chancel; but somehow this consciousness of him had melted, imperceptibly, into that of the great congregation, once divided against itself, which had now achieved unity of soul.

The mystery as to how this had been effected was the more elusive when she considered the absence of all methods which might have been deemed revivalistic.  Few of those around her evinced a familiarity with the historic service.  And then occurred to her his explanation of personality as the medium by which all truth is revealed, by which the current of religion, the motive power in all history, is transmitted.  Surely this was the explanation, if it might be called one!  That tingling sense of a pervading spirit which was his,—­and yet not his.  He was the incandescent medium, and yet, paradoxically, gained in identity and individuality and was inseparable from the thing itself.

She could not see him.  A pillar hid the chancel from her view.

The service, to which she had objected as archaic, became subordinate, spiritualized, dominated by the personality.  Hodder had departed from the usual custom by giving out the page of the psalter:  and the verses, the throbbing responses which arose from every corner of the church, assumed a new significance, the vision of the ancient seer revived.  One verse he read resounded with prophecy.

“Thou shalt deliver me from the strivings of the people:  and thou shalt make me the head of the heathen.”

And the reply: 

“A people whom I have not known shall serve me.”

The working-man next to Alison had no prayer-book.  She thrust her own into his hand, and they read from it together . . . .

When they came to the second hymn the woman in front of her had wonderfully shed her vulgarity.  Her voice—­a really good one—­poured itself out: 

       “See a long race thy spacious courts adorn,
        See future sons, and daughters yet unborn,
        In crowding ranks on every side arise,
        Demanding life, impatient for the skies.”

Once Alison would have been critical of the words She was beyond that, now.  What did it matter, if the essential Thing were present?

The sermon was a surprise.  And those who had come for excitement, for the sensation of hearing a denunciation of a class they envied and therefore hated, and nevertheless strove to imitate, were themselves rebuked.  Were not their standards the same?  And if the standard were false, it followed inevitably that the life was false also.