The people were fully prepared for a sermon that would shake them to their souls' depths.

The younger portion shivered and shrank from the ordeal; the older and more experienced shivered and waited with not unpleasing anticipations; it did them good, that remorseless examination of their hearts' secret depravities.

To some it was a kind of satisfaction offered to conscience, after which they could more easily come to peace.

With others it was an honest, heroic effort to know themselves and to right themselves with their God.
The text was disappointing.

"Above all these things, put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness," read the professor from that exquisite and touching passage which begins at the twelfth verse of the fifteenth chapter of Colossians.