smiled for He understood,
And Mary watched with eyes grown dim._

_"Since these He doth prefer to gold,"
She sadly said, "Let it be so;
He sees what I cannot behold,
He knows what I can never know."_

_That night the eyes of Mary saw
A Cross of stars set in the sky,
Which after it the heavens did draw,
And this to her was God's reply._

XI

A LOVER OF MEN

When I recollect these experiences, and the almost breathless sense of
joy which accompanied them, I can only marvel that I lived so many
years without discovering the path that led to them. The path was
quite plain, and nothing concealed it from me but my own pride. I
could even see with distinctness those who trod it, not only the saints
of far-off days, but men like Father Dolling, and women whose pale
intense faces met mine from beneath the quaint ugliness of Salvation
Army bonnets. These soldiers of the League of Service moved everywhere
around me in the incessant processions of a tireless love. I knew
their works, and there was no hour when my heart did not go out to them
in sympathy. Why was it that I was only sympathizer and spectator,
never comrade?

Partly through a kind of mischievous humility which was really pride.
They could do these things; I could not, nor were they required of me.
It needed special gifts for such a work, and I had not these gifts.
Besides, had I not my own work? Was it not as important to educate
persons of some culture and social position in a knowledge of Christian
truth as to redeem lost people from the hell of their misdoing?
Certainly it was easier and pleasanter. I found in it that most subtle
of all gratifications, the sense of ability efficiently applied, and
winning praise by its exertion. There was no one who wished me to live
in any other way than that in which I lived. Those to whom I
ministered were satisfied with me, and had I told them that I wished to
do the sort of things that Salvation Army people did among the slums,
they would have been shocked, and would certainly have dissuaded me.
And so to this mischievous humility which assured me that I had no
fitness for the kind of life which I knew was the life of the saints in
every age, there was added the dull pressure of convention. Why should
I do what no one expected me to do? Why could I not be content to
fulfill the common standard approved by the average conception of
Christianity?

I can see now how foolish