The Chapel was convicted of Sin, and of Sin of no ordinary
measure. The head that rested like a round ball on the surface of
the desk thrust conviction into every heart: "You think that you may
escape, you look at your neighbours, every one of you, and say, 'He
is worse than I. I am safe,' but I tell you that not one man or
woman here shall be secure unless he turn instantly now to God and
beg for mercy . . ."
As he continued he did indeed bear the almost breathless urgency of
one who has been sent on in advance to announce the imminence of
some awful peril. No matter what the peril might be; simply through
the Chapel there passed the breath of some coming danger. Impossible
to watch him and not realise that here was a man who had seen
something with his own eyes that had changed in a moment the very
fabric of his life. Thurston might be a charlatan who played with
the beliefs of his dupes, Warlock might be a mystic whose vision was
in the future and not in the past--Crashaw knew.
He painted, quietly, without fine words but with assurance and
conviction, his belief in the punishment of mankind.
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