And while the people were still seated, with heads bowed and tears on faces long untouched by feeling, he passed through the aisle to go and take his message to the crowd whose impatient weariness could now be heard by those within. And as he went past him, Stanton was awed and stirred to the deep places of his nature when Jesus turned his look upon him, and then, as he walked slowly through the church, seemed to include in his loving glance every single person there. At that moment Stanton, as he afterward told Virginia, understood how Jesus’s look could change a person’s whole life.

It was impossible for the great congregation to go out by the front doors, owing to the immense crowd outside. The people slowly, and for the most part silently, went out of the side entrances, and even a considerable number through Mr. Maxwell’s study.

Mr. Stanton and Virginia went that way. As they were going out, they heard Mr. Maxwell exclaim as he turned to face a man just leaving through the study—

“Mr. Carter!”

“Yes. No doubt you are surprised to see me among the prophets.” Carter spoke sarcastically. But his face betrayed unusual agitation.

“I didn’t happen to see you,” Maxwell said quietly.

“No? I took the liberty of getting a front seat with the rest of the pastors! That is the reason you overlooked me.”

“Who was that man?” Stanton asked Virginia as they made their way around to the front of the church.

“Mr. Jasper Carter, editor of the Raymond Gazette. I never saw him in church before. That is, not until last Sunday. He was here then.”

“Did you notice his look?”

“Yes. It was the look of a man who is fighting some fear.”

“Exactly.” Stanton gave Virginia a glance of approval. “It was the same look on the face of the Chancellor at the University. It was fear and rage together. And with it all, he looked baffled, as if for the first time in his life he had come face to face with a person who knew him clear to the depth.”

“Yes,” said Virginia. “Have you not felt that true of him in the little while he has been here, as if he had known us all our lives?”

“Yes,” murmured Stanton. “He needs no one’s counsel. He knows what is in man. That, to me, is one of the greatest proofs that he is really Jesus.”

When they had come out into the street, the mass of people was so dense that it was impossible for them to get very near the church. Mr. Maxwell and several of the pastors were near them. Jesus, as he did at the Assembly, had requested that all formalities of introduction be omitted. More people were still coming to swell the crowd, and after Stanton and Virginia had come a little way into the edge of the circle already formed, in a few minutes it seemed to them they were forced farther into the multitude until they could see nothing in every direction but people.