He was self-constituted, or rather called, to be a priest of God.
The great mystery of _effectiveness_ he never solved, I think, quite to his own satisfaction.

His life has solved it for me ever since I was able to regard it _en masse_.

It was a great puzzle to him what to make, for instance, of infants who died at or before birth.

"'Saved from this wicked world' is such a horrible statement in such cases," he used to say.

"If that is the best that can happen to us, what _can_ we make of life ?" And so he was always very urgent about the influence of example opposed to the influence of precept.