after the pattern which
it is alleged that his grandfather followed. For, first, there is the
question as to whether his grandfather did conform to this pattern. And
beyond that, it is safer to try to understand the experience of the
grandfather, whom we do not know, by the psychology and experience of
the grandson, whom we do know, with, of course, a judicious admixture of
knowledge of the history of the nineteenth century, which would occasion
characteristic differences. The modern saint is not asked to be a saint
like Francis. In the first place, how do we know what Francis was like?
In the second place, the experience of Francis may be most easily
understood by the aid of modern experience of true revolt from
worldliness and of consecration to self-sacrifice, as these exist among
us, with, of course, the proper background furnished by the history of
the thirteenth century. Souls are one. Our souls may be, at least in
some measure, known to ourselves. Even the souls of some of our fellows
may be measurably known to us. What are the facts of the religious
experience? How do souls react in face of the eternal? The experience of
religion, the experience of the fatherhood of God, of the sonship of
man, of the moving of the spirit, is surely one experience. How did even
Christ's great soul react, experience, work, will, and suffer? By what
possible means can we ever know how he reacted, worked, willed,
suffered? In the literature we learn only how men thought that he
reacted. We must inquire of our own souls. To be sure, Christ belonged
to the first century, and we live in the twentieth. It is possible for
us to learn something of the first century and of the concrete outward
conditions which caused his life to take the shape which it did. We
learn this by strict historical research. Assuredly the supreme measure
in which the spirit of all truth and goodness once took possession of
the Nazarene, remains to us a mystery unfathomed and unfathomable.
Dwelling in Jesus, that spirit made through him a revelation of the
divine such as the world has never seen. Yet that mystery leads forth
along the path of that which is intelligible. And, in another sense,
even such religious experience as we ourselves may have, poor though it
be and sadly limited, leads back into the same mystery.

It was with this contention that religion is a fact of the inner life of
man, that it is to be understood through consciousness, that it is
essent