eceive
the divine grain of compassion.

At birth both her hips were dislocated, and lameness has been her lot
through life. Such was her spirit, however, that this saddening and
serious affliction, dogging her days and nights with pain, seldom
prevented her from joining in the vigorous games and sports of the
Royden family. She was something of a boy even in those days, and pluck
was the very centre of her science of existence.

The religion of her parents suggested to her mind that this suffering
had been sent by God. She accepted the perilous suggestion, but never
confronted it. It neither puffed her up with spiritual pride nor created
in her mind bitter thoughts of a paltry and detestable Deity. A pagan
stoicism helped her to bear her lot quite as much as, if not more than,
the evangelicalism of Sir Thomas and Lady Royden. Moreover, she was too
much in love with life to give her mind very seriously to the
difficulties of theology. Even with a body which had to wrench itself
along, one could swim and row, read and think, observe and worship.

Her eldest brother went to Winchester and Magdalen College at Oxford;
she to Cheltenham College and Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford. Education
was an enthusiasm. Rivalry in scholarship was as greatly a part of that
wholesome family life as rivalry in games. There was always a Socratic
"throwing of the ball" going on, both indoors and out. Miss Royden
distinguished herself in the sphere of learning and in the sphere of
sports.

At Oxford the last vestiges of her religion, or rather her parents'
religion, faded from her mind, without pain of any order, hardly with
any consciousness. She devoted herself wholeheartedly to the schools. No
longer did she imagine that God had sent her lameness. She ceased to
think of Him.

But one day she heard a sermon which made her think of Jesus as a
teacher, just as one thinks of Plato and Aristotle. She reflected that
she really knew more of the teaching of Plato and Aristotle than she
knew of Christ's teaching. This seemed to her an unsatisfactory state of
things, and she set herself, as a student of philosophy, to study the
teaching of Jesus. What had He said? Never mind whether He had founded
this Church or that, what had He said? And what had been His science of
life, His reading of the riddle?

This study, to which she brought a philosophic mind and a candid heart,
convinced her that the teaching should be tried. It was, indeed, a
teachi