The Peril of the Republic of the United States of America - Percy T. Magan

which the preacher might lean his back. The
services commenced with the singing of a psalm by
the whole vast assembly. Clement Marot’s verses,
recently translated by Dathenus, were then new and
popular. The strains of the monarch minstrel,
chanted thus in their homely but nervous mother
tongue by a multitude who had but recently learned
that all the poetry and rapture of devotion were not
irrevocably coffined with a buried language, or
immured in the precincts of a church, had never
produced a more elevating effect. No anthem from
the world renowned organ in that ancient city ever
awakened more lofty emotion than did those ten
thousand human voices, ringing from the grassy
meadows in that fervid midsummer noon. When all
was silent again, the preacher rose,--a little meager
man, who looked as if he might rather melt away
beneath the blazing sunshine of July than hold the
multitude enchained four uninterrupted hours long,
by the magic of his tongue. His text was the eighth,
ninth, and tenth verses of the second chapter of
Ephesians; and as the slender monk spoke to his
simple audience of God’s grace, and of faith in
Jesus, who had descended from above to save the
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