f hearts I knew that I was not sure. But I did not easily
discover the reason of my uncertainty. I supposed the source to be the
destructive criticism of the Gospels which had reduced Jesus Himself to
a probability. In my private thoughts I argued that it was no longer
possible to feel the intense reality of Christ. Francis might feel it,
Catherine might feel it, because they lived in an atmosphere of poetry,
unchilled by criticism. I could never feel as they felt because I
could not transport myself into their atmosphere. Yet as often as I
turned to these great lives, something thrilled within me, some living
responsive fibre, so that I knew that I was not after all quite alien
to them. Could it be that there was that in me that made me, or could
make me, of their company? But how could I attain to their faith?
What could give back to a modern man, tortured by a thousand
perplexities of knowledge of which they never dreamed, the reality of
Christ which they possessed? And then the answer came--not suddenly,
but as a still small voice slowly growing louder, more positive, more
intense--_Live the Life_. Try to do some at least of the things that
Jesus did. Seek through experience what can never come through
ratiocination. _Be_ a Francis; then it may be thou shalt think like
him, and know Jesus as he knew Him. Live the life--there is no other
way.

Simple and far from novel as the answer seems yet it came to me with
the authority of a revelation. It illumined the entire circumference
of life. I could no longer hesitate: Jesus had never spoken from the
Syrian heavens more surely to the heart of Saul of Tarsus than He had
to me. And in the moment that He spoke, I also, like Saul, found all
my feelings altered, altered incredibly, miraculously, so that I
scarcely recognized myself. I no longer stood aloof from men, and
found pleasure in intellectual superiority; I was willing to "become a
fool for Christ's sake" if by any means I might save some. I issued a
card of invitation to the services of my Church with this motto of St.
Paul's upon it, which I now felt was mine. I had had for years
feelings of resentment towards one who I thought had wronged me; those
feelings were now dead. In another case I had been harsh and
unforgiving under great provocation; but when I met after a long
interval of time, the one who had injured me, my heart had only love
and pity for him. I sought out the drunkard and the har