It seemed to impart every feeling, every thought, every aspiration of the hymn.
It was full of reverence, gratitude, longing, and resignation: "While Thee I seek, protecting Power, Be my vain wishes stilled; And may this consecrated hour With better hopes be filled." When he had read it and sat down again, Hope Wayne felt as if a religious service had already been performed.
The simplicity, and fervor, and long-drawn melody with which he had read the hymn apparently inspired the choir with sympathy, and after a few notes from the organ they began to sing an old familiar tune.

It was taken up by the congregation until the church trembled with the sound, and the saunterers in the street outside involuntarily ceased laughing and talking, and, touched by some indefinable association, raised their hats and stood bareheaded in the sunlight, while the solemn music filled the air.
The hymn was sung, the prayer was offered, the chapter was read; then, after a little silence, that calm, refined, anxious, pale, yearning face appeared again at the desk.

The preacher balanced himself for a few moments alternately upon each foot--moved his tongue, as if tasting the words he was about to utter--and announced his text: "Peace I leave with you: my peace I give unto you." He began in the same calm, simple way.

A natural, manly candor certified the truth of every word he spoke.

The voice--at first high in tone, and swinging, as it were, in long, wave-like inflections--grew gradually deeper, and more equally sustained.