Into the Highways and Hedges
only can comfort. Come—ye who have sinned. He fought wi' that devil, and conquered him. Lord, Thou art standing by my side now, as Thou didst stand on the shores of Galilee; but this people's eyes are holden that they cannot see Thee. Yet let us kneel before Thee, for Thou art here!"

He flung himself on his knees as he spoke, and looked up as if his eyes indeed beheld the "Son of Man" in their midst.

"Kneel! Kneel!" he cried imperatively; and swayed by his intense belief, his strong personal magnetism, his hearers knelt.

In the dead silence that followed, Meg's heart was beating wildly, she alone did not kneel; perhaps her education made any display of religious emotion more repugnant to her than to the rest of his audience; but her knees were shaking under her, and she turned white with the intensity of the awe with which she realised the presence of God.

"Lord, we kneel to Thee. We acknowledge Thee our God. We will follow Thee in all things, counting riches as nought, and throwing aside the pleasures of this world. Thou who wast poor among men, and travel-stained and weary, shall be from henceforth our King and Pattern," he cried, still looking up as if making a vow to One whom his bodily eyes beheld. Then suddenly his glance fell on Meg.

"There is one here who does not kneel to Thee yet," he cried. "Oh, my God, touch her, melt her! The daughters of Jerusalem followed Thee weeping. Mary wept at Thy cross. Wilt Thou not draw her too? this woman, who longs to come to Thee, but fears——" Then, with a ring of triumph in his tone, as if an answer had been vouchsafed to him:—

"He calls you!" he cried. "You have chosen for Him! Kneel!—kneel! Pour out your soul in thanksgiving!" And Meg, sobbing, fell on her knees.

She heard little of the oration which followed; she did not know that a man behind her was groaning over his sins; that two girls had been persuaded to take the pledge; that one tipsy old woman was proclaiming, somewhat pharisaically, that "she'd been converted fourteen years ago, and 'adn't no call to be 'saved' fresh now."

The preacher's voice and the splash of the waves on the shingle sounded far away and indistinct.

Always she had longed for a personal revelation of the Christ; and now it came to her.

As she had never realised before she realised now the 
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