Everybody recognises him as a holy man--"a saint." Perhaps, if he had restricted himself to taking only soup or simple medicines to the hungry and sick, he would have been unmolested in his philanthropy; but after his conversion, he had devoured the Scriptures and studied the books of the Fathers, until the spirit of the early, simple, untheological Church had poured into him.

It brought a message the truth of which so stirred him that he could not rest until he imparted it to his fellows.

He preached righteousness,--the supremacy of conduct over ritual,--love as the test and goal of life; but always with full acknowledgment of Mother Church as the way of salvation.

Indeed, he seems neither to doubt the impregnability of the foundations of Christianity, nor the validity of the Petrine corner-stone; taking these for granted he aims to live the Christian life in every act, in every thought.

The superstructure--the practices of the Catholic Church to-day, the failures and sins of clerical society, the rigid ecclesiasticism--these he must in loyalty to fundamental truth, criticise, and if need be, condemn, where they interfere with the exercise of pure religion.