The hymn was ended with a sonorous “Amen,” and only one voice was heard from the church steps--the voice of Father Francis, vibrant and clear. He was not preaching; he was simply speaking to the people. The peculiar timbre and modulation of his voice made him audible to great numbers of the crowd, which now was growing denser and denser over the square and the converging streets. In simple language he carried on the theme of the finished hymn, telling the multitude of the Celestial City, the house not made with hands eternal in the heavens. There, he said, the tired traveller would find a sweet and blessed country, the home of the elect; the pastures of that country lay in glorious sheen, amid still waters and eternal bowers. There men would rest from their labours. Ended would be the dull, deep pain of earthly life and its constant anguish of patience. But the happy people of that land would have high service to perform, tasks suited to an ennobled human nature. The land of the saints had its capital, a great, a glorious city, and the existence of a city implied community of life, activity, achievement. They, if they so willed, might become citizens of that wonderful capital. The gates were open and all might enter in whose names were written in the book of life. The nations of them that were saved would walk in the light of it. On the banks of the crystal river that flowed through the city there was the tree of life, and the leaves of that tree were for the healing of the nations. Healed by the leaves of that most blessed tree, the mortal would have put on immortality, henceforth to be a perfect being with a perfect life triumphant over sin and hell and death. That would be life indeed!--life for evermore; gladness without sorrow, health without a pang, light without darkness. The vigour of age would know no decay; beauty would not wither, nor would love grow cold. Such was the inheritance that humankind might enter into or reject--incorruptible, undefiled, never to fade away. He paused, and with enraptured face gazed into the western sky, where now the sun was sinking amid vast ragged clouds. The towering masses, fringed at first with silver, slowly broke and parted, taking the shapes of ramparts, towers, and pinnacles. A rose-red glow was spreading over all, and shafts of amber light seemed to stretch onward in the infinite, towards heavenly gates of pearl.