with the under-witted saint, is the bully
of the slums, the hooligan or rowdy. Surely on this level also the
saint preserves a certain superiority.

How is success to be absolutely measured when there are so many
environments and so many ways of looking at the adaptation? It cannot
be measured absolutely; the verdict will vary according to the point of
view adopted. From the biological point of view Saint Paul was a
failure, because he was beheaded. Yet he was magnificently adapted to
the larger environment of history; and so far as any saint's example is
a leaven of righteousness in the world, and draws it in the direction
of more prevalent habits of saintliness, he is a success, no matter
what his immediate bad fortune may be. The greatest saints, the
spiritual heroes whom every one acknowledges, the Francises, Bernards,
Luthers, Loyolas, Wesleys, Channings, Moodys, Gratrys, the Phillips
Brookses, the Agnes Joneses, Margaret Hallahans, and Dora Pattisons,
are successes from the outset. They show themselves, and there is no
question; every one perceives their strength and stature. Their sense
of mystery in things, their passion, their goodness, irradiate about
them and enlarge their outlines while they soften them. They are like
pictures with an atmosphere and background; and, placed alongside of
them, the strong men of this world and no other seem as dry as sticks,
as hard and crude as blocks of stone or brick-bats.

In a general way, then, and "on the whole,"[224] our abandonment of
theological criteria, and our testing of religion by practical common
sense and the empirical method, leave it in possession of its towering
place in history. Economically, the saintly group of qualities is
indispensable to the world's welfare. The great saints are immediate
successes; the smaller ones are at least heralds and harbingers, and
they may be leavens also, of a better mundane order. Let us be saints,
then, if we can, whether or not we succeed visibly and temporally. But
in our Father's house are many mansions, and each of us must discover
for himself the kind of religion and the amount of saintship which best
comports with what he believes to be his powers and feels to be his
truest mission and vocation. There are no successes to be guaranteed
and no set orders to be given to individuals, so long as we follow the
methods of empirical philosophy.

[224] See above, p. 321.

This is my conclusion so far.