ld 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
lawyer; I would keep my promise, I would give the law a fair trial; later
on, perhaps, I might demonstrate an ability to write. Al