stianity were so thoroughly discredited by evolution, as Ralph
Hambleton and other agnostics would have one believe, why should this
remarkably sane and able-looking person be standing up for it as though
it were still an established and incontrovertible fact?

He had not, certainly, the air of a dupe or a sentimentalist, but
inspired confidence by his very personality. Youthlike, I watched him
narrowly for flaws, for oratorical tricks, for all kinds of histrionic
symptoms. Again I was near the secret; again it escaped me. The argument
for Christianity lay not in assertions about it, but in being it. This
man was Christianity.... I must have felt something of this, even though
I failed to formulate it. And unconsciously I contrasted his strength,
which reinforced the atmosphere of the room, with that of Ralph
Hambleton, who was, a greater influence over me than I have recorded,
and had come to sway me more and more, as he had swayed others. The
strength of each was impressive, yet this Mr. Brooks seemed to me the
bodily presentment of a set of values which I would have kept constantly
before my eyes.... I felt him drawing me, overcoming my hesitation,
belittling my fear of ridicule. I began gently to open the door--when
something happened,--one of those little things that may change the
course of a life. The door made little noise, yet one of the men sitting
in the back of the room chanced to look around, and I recognized Hermann
Krebs. His face was still sunken from his recent illness. Into his eyes
seemed to leap a sudden appeal, an appeal to which my soul responded yet
I hurried down the stairs and into the street. Instantly I regretted my
retreat, I would have gone back, but lacked the courage; and I strayed
unhappily for hours, now haunted by that look of Krebs, now wondering
what the remarkably sane-looking and informal clergyman whose presence
dominated the little room had been talking about. I never learned, but
I did live to read his biography, to discover what he might have talked
about,--for he if any man believed that life and religion are one, and
preached consecration to life's task.

Of little use to speculate whether the message, had I learned it then,
would have fortified and transformed me!

In spite of the fact that I was unable to relate to a satisfying
conception of religion my new-born determination, I made up my mind, at
least, to renounce my tortuous ways. I had promised my father to be
a lawye