and how wrong these thoughts were. I saw it
even then at intervals. Again and again, like a torturing flash of
fire, there ran through me illumining agonized dissatisfactions with
myself, my work, my whole position. And again and again I let the
flame die down, knowing not that the Son of Man had walked amid the
fire. Nay more, I deliberately smothered the holy fire, being in part
fearful of it, and of what its consequence might be, if once it were
allowed to triumph. For I knew that if I followed these strange
impulses my whole life must be changed, and I did not want it changed.
I did not want to give up the ease of an assured position, the calm of
studious hours, the tasks which flattered my ability. I did not want
to face what I knew must happen, the estrangement of old friendships,
the rupture of accustomed forms of life. Besides, I might be wholly
wrong. I might have no real fitness for the tasks I contemplated;
saints, like poets, were born, not made. No one who knew me would have
believed me better fitted for any kind of life than that I lived. I
had no friend who did not think my present life adequate and
satisfactory, and many envied me for the good fortune that had given me
just the kind of sphere which seemed best suited to me.

But now I see, as I look back, that at the root of all my inconsistency
there lay this one thing, I was not a lover of my kind. I did not love
men as men, humanity as humanity, as Jesus did. Of course I loved
individuals, and even groups of men and classes of men, who could
understand my thoughts, recognize my qualities, and repay my affection
with affection. But to feel love for men as men; for those whose
vulgarity distressed me, whose ignorance offended me, whose method of
life repelled me; love for the drudge, the helot, the social pariah;
love for people who had no beauty that men should desire them, nor any
grace of mind or person, nor any quality that kindled interest; love
for the dull average, with their painful limitations of mind and ideal,
the gray armies of featureless grief, whose very sorrows had nothing
picturesque in them and no tragic fascination--no, for these I had no
real love. I had a deep commiseration, but it was that kind of
romantic or aesthetic pity which begins and ends in its own expression.
I did not know them by actual contact; I could not honestly say that I
wished to know them. And then the thought came to me, and grew in me,
that Jesus