"We're brought up to think so by the novelists, who really have the charge of people's thinking, nowadays.

But I doubt it, especially if the thing outside is some great event, something cataclysmal, like this tremendous sorrow of Dryfoos's." "Then what is it that changes us ?" demanded his wife, almost angry with him for his heresy.
"Well, it won't do to say, the Holy Spirit indwelling.

That would sound like cant at this day.

But the old fellows that used to say that had some glimpses of the truth.

They knew that it is the still, small voice that the soul heeds, not the deafening blasts of doom.