When the hymn was over they sat down, and Linus rose to speak to them a few words of exhortation. He reminded them that they had been called from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God. He told them that they had fled to the rock of Christ amid a weltering sea of human wickedness, and though the darkness was around them he bade them to walk in the light, since they were the children of light. Many of them had lived of old in the vices and sins of heathendom, but they were washed, they were justified, they were sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus and in the Spirit of their God. Were not their bodies temples of the Holy Ghost which dwelt in them, except they were reprobates? Since, then, they were in the Spirit, let them bring forth the fruits of the Spirit--love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, goodness, charity-- against which there was no law. The world was passing away and the fashion of it; their own lives were but as the withering grass and the fading flower; and was not the day of the Lord at hand? Would He not speedily return to judge His people? Would not that day come as a thief in the night, and how should they stand its probatory fire unless they were safe in the love of their Redeeming Lord? So far had he proceeded when a mighty answering ‘MARANATHA’ of the deeply-moved assembly smote the air, and immediately afterwards Britannicus stood transfixed and thrilled to the very depths of his whole being. For now a voice such as he had never heard--a sound unearthly and unaccountable--seemed not only to strike his ears but to grasp his very heart. It was awful in its range, its tone, its modulations, its startling, penetrating, appalling power; and although he was unable to understand its utterance, it seemed to convey the loftiest eloquence of religious transport, thrilling with rapture and conviction. And, in a moment or two, other voices joined it. The words they spoke were exalted, intense, impassioned, full of mystic significance. They did not speak in their ordinary familiar tongue, but in what seemed to be as it were the essence and idea of all languages, though none could tell whether it was Hebrew, or Greek, or Latin, or Persian. It resembled now one and now the other, as some overpowering and unconscious impulse of the moment might direct. The burden of the thoughts of the speakers seemed to be the ejaculation of ecstasy, of amazement, of thanksgiving, of supplication, of passionate dithyramb or psalm. They spoke not to each other, or to the congregation, but seemed to be addressing their inspired soliloquy to God. And among these strange sounds of many voices, all raised in sweet accord of entranced devotion, there were some which no one could rightly interpret. The other voices seemed to interpret themselves. They needed no translation into significant language, but spontaneously awoke in the hearts of the hearers the echo of the impulse from which they sprang.