I dare say it did most of the people present a little good,
undefinable as the faint influences of starlight, to sit under that
"high embowed roof," within that vast artistic isolation, through
whose mighty limiting the boundless is embodied, and we learn to
feel the awful infinitude of the parent space out of which it is
scooped. I dare also say that the tones of the mellow old organ
spoke to something in many of the listeners that lay deeper far than
the plummet of their self-knowledge had ever sounded. I think also
that the prayers, the reading of which, in respect of intelligence,
was admirable, were not only regarded as sacred utterances, but felt
to be soothing influences by not a few of those who made not the
slightest effort to follow them with their hearts; and I trust that
on the whole their church-going tended rather to make them better
than to harden them. But as to the main point, the stirring up of
the children of the Highest to lay hold of the skirts of their
Father's robe, the waking of the individual conscience to say I WILL
ARISE, and the strengthening of the captive Will to break its bonds
and stand free in the name of the eternal creating Freedom--for
nothing of that was there any special provision.
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