complexities of personality, the
smouldering emotional fires, the other facets of the
character-polyhedron, the resources of the subliminal region. St. Paul
long ago made our ancestors familiar with the idea that every soul is
virtually sacred. Since Christ died for us all without exception, St.
Paul said, we must despair of no one. This belief in the essential
sacredness of every one expresses itself to-day in all sorts of humane
customs and reformatory institutions, and in a growing aversion to the
death penalty and to brutality in punishment. The saints, with their
extravagance of human tenderness, are the great torch-bearers of this
belief, the tip of the wedge, the clearers of the darkness. Like the
single drops which sparkle in the sun as they are flung far ahead of
the advancing edge of a wave-crest or of a flood, they show the way and
are forerunners. The world is not yet with them, so they often seem in
the midst of the world's affairs to be preposterous. Yet they are
impregnators of the world, vivifiers and animaters of potentialities of
goodness which but for them would lie forever dormant. It is not
possible to be quite as mean as we naturally are, when they have passed
before us. One fire kindles another; and without that over-trust in
human worth which they show, the rest of us would lie in spiritual
stagnancy.

Momentarily considered, then, the saint may waste his tenderness and be
the dupe and victim of his charitable fever, but the general function
of his charity in social evolution is vital and essential. If things
are ever to move upward, some one must be ready to take the first step,
and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity,
to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether
these methods will or will not succeed. When they do succeed, they are
far more powerfully successful than force or worldly prudence. Force
destroys enemies; and the best that can be said of prudence is that it
keeps what we already have in safety. But non-resistance, when
successful, turns enemies into friends; and charity regenerates its
objects. These saintly methods are, as I said, creative energies; and
genuine saints find in the elevated excitement with which their faith
endows them an authority and impressiveness which makes them
irresistible in situations where men of shallower nature cannot get on
at all without the use of worldly prudence. This practical pr