They were all excited over the strange event, the strangest that First Church people could remember.

But the minister insisted on taking charge of the man, and when a carriage came the unconscious but living form was carried to his house; and with the entrance of that humanity into the minister's spare room a new chapter in Henry Maxwell's life began, and yet no one, himself least of all, dreamed of the remarkable change it was destined to make in all his after definition of the Christian discipleship.
The event created a great sensation in the First Church parish.
People talked of nothing else for a week.

It was the general impression that the man had wandered into the church in a condition of mental disturbance caused by his troubles, and that all the time he was talking he was in a strange delirium of fever and really ignorant of his surroundings.

That was the most charitable construction to put upon his action.

It was the general agreement also that there was a singular absence of anything bitter or complaining in what the man had said.