child in My name receiveth Me. And who are Christ's?
Every one that loveth is born of God.

WAGNER

I AM A VOICE

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Charles Wagner, French Protestant pastor and moral essayist, was born
in 1851 in Alsace. He is at present rector of the Reformed Church
in Fontenay-Lous-Bois, in the Department of Seine. He received a
comprehensive education at the universities of Paris, Strasburg and
Goettingen, and after undertaking many cures in the provinces he went
to Paris in 1882, where he occupied himself in a crusade against the
degrading tendency of life, art and literature in certain of their
Parisian phases. He has been a founder of several popular universities
under the auspices of the Society for the Promotion of Morality. He
has published many books, and "La Vie Simple" ("The Simple Life")
was crowned by the French Academy and has been translated into many
European languages, as well as into Japanese. Wagner has been styled
the French Tolstoy, but he is less visionary and much more popular and
practical in his views than the Russian mystic. The author of "The
Simple Life" was greeted with many expressions of warm appreciation on
his visit to the United States a few years ago. He was a guest at the
Presidential mansion by invitation of President Roosevelt, who has
highly commended "The Simple Life."

WAGNER

Born in 1851

I AM A VOICE[1]

[Footnote 1: From "The Gospel of Life," by Charles Wagner, by
permission of the McClure Company, publishers. Copyright, 1905, by
McClure, Phillips & Co.]

_I am the voice[2] of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the
way of the Lord_.--John i., 23.

[Footnote 2: In the French version of the Scriptures it is "_a_
voice," and it is necessary to retain this reading in order to render
precisely Pastor Wagner's thought.--_Translator_.]

Nothing is rarer than a personality. So many causes, both interior
and exterior, hinder the normal development of human beings, so many
hostile forces crush them, so many illusions lead them astray, that
there is required a concurrence of extraordinary circumstances to
render possible the existence of an independent character. But
when, God alone knows at the cost of what efforts and of what happy
accidents, a vigorous and original personality has been able to
unfold, nothing is rarer than not to see it degenerate into a mere
personage. History teaches us that men exceptional in will and energy
almost alway