And the hostile party was infinitely greater than the friendly one. In the first instance, the attitudes of the religious bodies were extremely varied. Mr. Persse himself, whose church had become suddenly emptied of its congregation, and whose personal prestige had suffered an irremediable injury, headed a most virulent and persistent antagonism. But the really fine brains and spiritual natures in the Anglican Church--including those noble men who live the lives of paupers among paupers, and work like galley-slaves--were much more friendly. They noticed that the Teacher made no personal assumptions. He did not say that those whose sins he remitted were cleansed. He baptized none; he called himself an ambassador, but not a priest of God. That, in His inscrutable providence, the Father had richly endowed this man with the Holy Spirit, that he did indeed walk under the direct guidance of God, seemed to these good men impossible to doubt. They were, despite the certain restrictions of thought to which their training and temperament inclined them, ready to believe that because the advent of one directly inspired by the Holy Ghost in the sense with which the Apostle Paul was inspired was outside their personal experience, it was not to be rejected upon that account. As far as in them lay, in the measure of their opportunities and possibilities, they held out the welcoming hand. But, as was inevitable, it was the Free Sects who were in the front of the Teacher's army--as far as definitely Christian people went. During the last few days of the fortnight which had intervened between the present moment and the sermon in St. Elwyn's, Dissent, with the exception of the Unitarians, had spoken in no uncertain way in favor of Joseph's mission. They saw, with a singular unanimity, that here was a deeply spiritual revival of religion upon true evangelical lines. Here was a greater than Wesley even, a force and a personality which could not be explained away by any accusations of charlatanism or self-interest, a man with a personal magnetism, a power over the human soul, a power even over the material things of life which was verily without precedent or likeness since the times of the holy apostles themselves! That much of his teaching was definitely Catholic in tone, that he sent people to the true channels of grace--the Sacraments of the Church--did not alienate them as it might have done in another. It was now known that in his youth Joseph was a baptized and confirmed member of the Church of England, that he in no way repudiated it nor stood outside it, that he constantly received the Blessed Sacrament. But Nonconformity was not hostile. The word "miracle," so long derided and discredited by the materialists and scientists who denied the immanence of God in all things, was now once more in the air.