The hard outline of his creed had grown luminous, fringed with the divine light from beyond, as the bars of prison windows grow dazzling and fade when the prisoner looks at the sun.

All that the preacher said was wise and strong, and the only reason he failed to convince was that Toyner felt that the thought in which his own storm-tossed soul had anchored was a little wiser and stronger--only a little, for there was not a great difference between them, after all.
"I take in all that you say, sir; but you see I can't help feeling sure that it's true that God is living with us as much and as true when we're in the worst sort of sin, and the greater sin that it brings--for the punishment of sin is more and more sin--and being sure, I know that everything else that is true will come to fit in with it, though I may not be able rightly to put it in now, and what won't come to fit in with it can't be true." The preacher perceived that the evil which he had set himself to slay was giantlike in strength.

He chose him smooth stones for his sling.
His heart was growing heavy with fear of failure, his spirit within him still raised its face heavenward in unceasing prayer.

He began to tell the history of God's ways with man from the first.

He spoke of Abraham.
He urged that the great strength had always come to men who had trusted God's word against reason and against sight.