Now, indeed, as became a smartened village, there was a perfect little Episcopal church of redstone, stained glass and painted shingles, with a macadam driveway leading under its dainty _porte-cochere_, and at the base of whose stern little tower an eager ivy already aspired; a toy-like, yet suggestively imposing edifice, quite in the manner of smart suburban churches--a manner that for want of accurate knowledge one might call confectioner's gothic.
It was here, in his old home, that the Reverend Allan Delcher Linford found his first pastorate.

Here from the very beginning he rendered apparent those gifts that were to make him a power among men.

It was with a lofty but trembling hope that the young novice began his first service that June morning, before a congregation known to be hypercritical, composed as it was of seasoned city communicants, hardened listeners and watchers, who would appraise his vestments, voice, manner, appearance, and sermon, in the light of a ripe experience.
Yet his success was instant.

He knew it long before the service ended--felt it infallibly all at once in the midst of his sermon on Faith.

From the reading of his text, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believed therein might not perish, but have everlasting life," the worldly people before him were held as by invisible wires running from him to each of them.