They had told him it would be all
faith and no sight, but he seemed to find himself absolutely within
that brighter better sphere to which they belonged, to see them
walking in it in their white robes, to hear their songs of praise,
and to know whence came that atmosphere that they carried about with
them, and that he had felt when it was a riddle to him.
And so the early parts of the service passed by him, not so much
attended to or understood as filling him with a kind of dreamy
rapturous trance, as the echoes of the new home, to which he, with
all his heavy sense of past stain and present evil propensity, was
gaining admission and adoption. For the first time he was really
sensible of the _happiness_ of his choice, and felt the compensation
for what he gave up.
When the Second Lesson was ended, and the clergy and the choir, in
their surplices, moved down to encircle the Font, it was as if they
came to gather him in among them. Felix came and helped him up. He
could stand now with one support, and this was his young godfather's
right arm, to which he held tightly, but without any nervous
convulsiveness--he was too happy for that now--during the prayers
that entreated for his being safely gathered into the Ark, and the
Gospel of admission into the Kingdom.
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