as the Shepherd and the sheep, and the Good Shepherd carrying the sick
lamb upon his shoulder. The voice of singers was heard in the house of
an evening singing the candle hymn, "Hail, Heavenly Light." Altogether
there seemed here to be a combination of exquisite and obvious beauty
with "a transporting discovery of some fact, or series of facts, in
which the old puzzle of life had found its solution."

It was none other than the Church of the early Christian days that
Marius had stumbled on, under the guidance of his new friend; and
already in heart he had actually become a Christian without knowing it,
for these friends of comeliness seemed to him to have discovered the
secret of actualising the ideal as none others had done. At such a
moment in his spiritual career it is not surprising that he should
hesitate to look upon that which would "define the critical
turning-point," yet he looked. He saw the blend of Greek and Christian,
each at its best--the martyrs' hope, the singers' joy and health. In
this "minor peace of the Church," so pure, so delicate, and so vital
that it made the Roman life just then "seem like some stifling forest of
bronze-work, transformed, as if by malign enchantment, out of the
generations of living trees," he seemed to see the possibility of
satisfaction at last. For here there was a perfect love and
self-sacrifice, outwardly expressed with a mystic grace better than the
Greek blitheness, and a new beauty which contrasted brightly with the
Roman insipidity. It was the humanism of Christianity that so satisfied
him, standing as it did for the fullness of life, in spite of all its
readiness for sacrifice. And it was effective too, for it seemed to be
doing rapidly what the best paganism was doing very slowly--attaining,
almost without thinking about it, the realisation of the noblest ideals.

"And so it came to pass that on this morning Marius saw for the first
time the wonderful spectacle--wonderful, especially, in its evidential
power over himself, over his own thoughts--of those who believe. There
were noticeable, among those present, great varieties of rank, of age,
of personal type. The Roman _ingenuus_, with the white toga and gold
ring, stood side by side with his slave; and the air of the whole
company was, above all, a grave one, an air of recollection. Coming thus
unexpectedly upon this large assembly, so entirely united, in a silence
so profound, for purposes unknown to him, Marius f