He had the faith which removes mountains, and was wholly free from that touch of scepticism, so common in our day, which points out that it is of no more use to move mountains than to change the place of difficulties.
When the people of Assisi learned that his Rule had been approved by the pope there was strong excitement; every one desired to hear him preach.
The clergy were obliged to give way; they offered him the Church of St.
George, but this church was manifestly insufficient for the crowds of hearers; it was necessary to open the cathedral to him.
St.Francis never said anything especially new; to win hearts he had that which is worth more than any arts of oratory--an ardent conviction; he spoke as compelled by the imperious need of kindling others with the flame that burned within himself.

When they heard him recall the horrors of war, the crimes of the populace, the laxity of the great, the rapacity which dishonored the Church, the age-long widowhood of Poverty, each one felt himself taken to task in his own conscience.
An attentive or excited crowd is always very impressionable, but this peculiar sensitiveness was perhaps stronger in the Middle Ages than at any other time.

Nervous disturbances were in the air, and upon men thus prepared the will of the preacher impressed itself in a manner almost magnetic.
To understand what Francis's preaching must have been like we must forget the manners of to-day, and transport ourselves for a moment to the Cathedral of Assisi in the thirteenth century; it is still standing, but the centuries have given to its stones a fine rust of polished bronze, which recalls Venice and Titian's tones of ruddy gold.

It was new then, and all sparkling with whiteness, with the fine rosy tinge of the stones of Mount Subasio.

It had been built by the people of Assisi a few years before in one of those outbursts of faith and union which were almost everywhere the prelude of the communal movement.