When he is at last adjusted like a lay-figure, Mr Chadband, retiring behind the table, holds up his bear’s- paw and says, “My friends!” This is the signal for a general settlement of the audience. The ’prentices giggle internally and nudge each other. Guster falls into a staring and vacant state, compounded of a stunned admiration of Mr Chadband and pity for the friendless outcast whose condition touches her nearly. Mrs Snagsby silently lays trains of gunpowder. Mrs Chadband composes herself grimly by the fire, and warms her knees: finding that sensation favourable to the reception of eloquence.

It happens that Mr Chadband has a pulpit habit of fixing some member of his congregation with his eye, and fatly arguing his points with that particular person; who is understood to be expected to be moved to an occasional grunt, groan, gasp, or other audible expression of inward working; which expression of inward working, being echoed by some elderly lady in the next pew, and so communicated, like a game of forfeits, through a circle of the more fermentable sinners present, serves the purpose of parliamentary cheering, and gets Mr Chadband’s steam up. From mere force of habit, Mr Chadband, in saying “My friends!” has rested his eye on Mr Snagsby; and proceeds to make that ill-starred stationer, already sufficiently confused, the immediate recipient of his discourse.

“We have here among us, my friends,” says Chadband, “a Gentile and a heathen, a dweller in the tents of Tom-all-Alone’s and a mover-on upon the surface of the earth. We have here among us, my friends,” and Mr Chadband, untwisting the point with his dirty thumb-nail, bestows an oily smile on Mr Snagsby, signifying that he will throw him an argumentative back-fall presently if he be not already down, “a brother and a boy. Devoid of parents, devoid of relations, devoid of flocks and herds, devoid of gold, and silver, and of precious stones. Now, my friends, why do I say he is devoid of these possessions? Why? Why is he?” Mr Chadband states the question as if he were propoundlng an entirely new riddle, of much ingenuity and merit, to Mr Snagsby, and entreating him not to give it up.

Mr Snagsby, greatly perplexed by the mysterious look he received just now from his little woman — at about the period when Mr Chadband mentioned the word parents — is tempted into modestly remarking, “I don’t know, I’m sure, sir.” On which interruption, Mrs Chadband glares, and Mrs Snagsby says, “For shame!”

“I hear a voice,” says Chadband; “is it a still small voice, my friends? I fear not, though I fain would hope so—”

(“Ah — h!” from Mrs Snagsby).

“Which says, I don’t know. Then, I will tell you why. I say this brother, present here among us, is devoid of parents, devoid of relations, devoid of flocks and herds, devoid of gold, of silver, and of precious stones, because he is devoid of the light that shines in upon some of us. What is that light? What is it? I ask you what is that light?”

Mr Chadband draws back his head and pauses, but Mr Snagsby is not to be lured on to his destruction again. Mr Chadband, leaning forward over the table, pierces what he has got to follow, directly into Mr Snagsby, with the thumb-nail already mentioned.

“It is,” says Chadband, “the ray of rays, the sun of suns, the moon of moons, the star of stars. It is the light of Terewth.”

Mr Chadband draws himself up again, and looks triumphantly at Mr Snagsby as if he would be glad to know how he feels after that.

“Of Terewth,” says Mr Chadband, hitting him again. “Say not to me that it is not the lamp of lamps. I say to you, it is. I say to you, a million of times over, it is. It is! I say to you that I will proclaim it to you, whether you like it or not; nay, that the less you like it, the more I will proclaim it to you. With a speaking- trumpet! I say to you that if you rear yourself against it, you shall fall, you shall be bruised, you shall be battered, you shall be flawed, you shall be smashed.”