Nor did he ever lose the memory of the outward scene.

In after-years, memory could always recall to him at will the face and figure of the speaker, the massive head, the deep eyes sunk under the brows, the Midland accent, the make of limb and feature which seemed to have some suggestion in them of the rude strength and simplicity of a peasant ancestry; and then the nobility, the fire, the spiritual beauty flashing through it all! Here, indeed, was a man on whom his fellows might lean, a man in whom the generation of spiritual force was so strong and continuous that it overflowed of necessity into the poorer, barrener lives around him, kindling and enriching.

Robert felt himself seized and penetrated, filled with a fervor and an admiration which he was too young and immature to analyze, but which was to be none the less potent and lasting.
Much of the sermon itself, indeed, was beyond him.

It was on the meaning of St.Paul's great conception, 'Death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness.' What did the Apostle mean by a death to sin and self?
What were the precise ideas attached to the words 'risen with Christ ?' Are this, death and this resurrection necessarily dependent upon certain alleged historical events?
Or are they not primarily, and were they not, even in the mind of St.Paul, two aspects of a spiritual process perpetually re-enacted in the soul of man, and constituting the veritable revelation of God?
Which is the stable and lasting Witness of the Father: the spiritual history of the individual and the world, or the envelope of miracle to which hitherto mankind has attributed so much Importance?
Mr.Grey's treatment of these questions was clothed, throughout a large portion of the lecture in metaphysical language, which no boy fresh from school, however intellectually quick, could be expected to follow with any precision.

It was not, therefore, the argument, or the logical structure of the sermon, which so profoundly affected young Elsmere.
It was the speaker himself, and the occasional passages in which, addressing himself to the practical needs of his hearers, he put before them the claims and conditions of the higher life with a pregnant simplicity and rugged beauty of phrase.