The Scarlet Letter

The eloquent voice, on which the souls of the listening audience

had been borne aloft as on the swelling waves of the sea, at

length came to a pause. There was a momentary silence, profound

as what should follow the utterance of oracles. Then ensued a

murmur and half-hushed tumult, as if the auditors, released from

the high spell that had transported them into the region of

another's mind, were returning into themselves, with all their

awe and wonder still heavy on them. In a moment more the crowd

began to gush forth from the doors of the church. Now that there

was an end, they needed more breath, more fit to support the

gross and earthly life into which they relapsed, than that

atmosphere which the preacher had converted into words of flame,

and had burdened with the rich fragrance of his thought.

In the open air their rapture broke into speech. The street and

the market-place absolutely babbled, from side to side, with

applauses of the minister. His hearers could not rest until they

had told one another of what each knew better than he could tell

or hear.

According to their united testimony, never had man spoken in so

wise, so high, and so holy a spirit, as he that spake this day;

nor had inspiration ever breathed through mortal lips more

evidently than it did through his. Its influence could be seen,

as it were, descending upon him, and possessing him, and

continually lifting him out of the written discourse that lay

before him, and filling him with ideas that must have been as

marvellous to himself as to his audience. His subject, it

appeared, had been the relation between the Deity and the

communities of mankind, with a special reference to the New

England which they were here planting in the wilderness. And, as

he drew towards the close, a spirit as of prophecy had come upon

him, constraining him to its purpose as mightily as the old

prophets of Israel were constrained, only with this difference,

that, whereas the Jewish seers had denounced judgments and ruin

on their country, it was his mission to foretell a high and

glorious destiny for the newly gathered people of the Lord. But,

throughout it all, and through the whole discourse, there had

been a certain deep, sad undertone of pathos, which could not be

interpreted otherwise than as the natural regret of one soon to

pass away. Yes; their minister whom they so loved--and who so

loved them all, that he could not depart heavenward without a

sigh--had the foreboding of untimely death upon him, and would

soon leave them in their tears. This idea of his transitory stay

on earth gave the last emphasis to the effect which the preacher

had produced; it was as if an angel, in his passage to the skies,

had shaken his bright wings over the people for an instant--at

once a shadow and a splendour--and had shed down a shower of

golden truths upon them.