midnight
And when he came to the foot of the pulpit , Richie , by the help of another servant that followed with the Book , lifted him up the steps into it , where he was seemingly so exhausted that he was obligated to rest for the space of several minutes . No man who had never seen him before could have thought that one so frail would have had ability to have given out even the psalm ; but when he began the spirit descended upon him , and he was so kindled that at last his voice became as awful as the thunders of wrath , and his arm was strengthened as with the strength of a champion 's . The kirk dirled to the foundations ; the hearts of his hearers shook , till the earth of their sins was shaken clean from them ; and he appeared in the wirlwind of inspiration , as if his spirit was mounting , like the prophet Elijah , in a fiery chariot immediately to the gates of heaven . His discourse was of the children of Bethlehem slain by Herod , and he spoke of the dreadful sound of a bell and a trumpet heard suddenly in the midnight hour , when all were fast bound and lying defenceless in the fetters of sleep . He described the dreadful knocking at the doors -- the bursting in of men with drawn swords -- how babies were harled by the arms from their mothers ' beds and bosoms , and dashed to death upon the marble floors . He told of parents that stood in the porches of their houses and made themselves the doors that the slayers were obliged to hew in pieces before they could enter in . He pictured the women flying along the street , in the nakedness of the bedchamber , with their infants in their arms , and how the ruffians of the accursed king , knowing their prey by their cries , ran after them , caught the mother by the hair and the bairn by the throat , and , in one act , flung the innocent to the stones and trampled out its life .