Link by link he lengthened the chain of logic till it reached to the deepest hell. He showed how blasphemous was the cry that men must be saved, if for lack of opportunity they knew not Christ; that God would not damn the soul that had had no chance to accept salvation. It had had the chance of salvation in Adam, and had lost it, and was therefore condemned. To the preacher this punishment of the helpless heathen seemed only just. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" he cried, and he stopped to suppose, for the sake of argument, that Adam had not sinned: surely no one would have disputed the justice of receiving the blessings which his godliness would have entailed. Then he began to prove the right of the potter over the clay. He had forgotten his congregation; the horror of the damnation of the heathen was lost in the fear that one soul should perish. He saw only Helen; she was in danger, she was far from God, but yet the price of admission to heaven could not be altered, though his heart broke for longing that she should be saved; the requirements of the gospel had not softened, the decrees of Omnipotence were as unchangeable as the eternal past. His words, glowing with his love and grief, were only for her. The thunders of God's justice shook his soul, while he offered her the infinite mercy of Christ. But he did not shrink from acknowledging that that mercy was only for those who would accept it, nor presume to dictate to God that all sinners should be saved, forced into salvation, without accepting his conditions. "What right," he said, "have we to expect that mercy should exist at all? What madness, then, to think He will depart from the course He has laid out for himself, and save without condition those who are justly condemned? Yet justice is satisfied, for Christ has died. O Soul, accept that sacrifice!" He had come to the edge of the pulpit, one pale hand clinched upon the heavy cover of the Bible, and the other stretched tremblingly out; his anxious, grieving eyes looked over the solemn, upturned faces of his listeners, and sought Helen, sitting in the dusky shadow by the open window, her face a little averted, and her firm, sweet lips set in a line which was almost stern. Some of the women were crying: an exaltation purely hysterical made them feel themselves lost sinners; they thrilled at John's voice, as though his words touched some strained chord in their placid and virtuous lives.