ever stood builded so impregnably from earth to stars--a merciless wall
of power. Strength never planted upon the earth so stern a foot. Never
was tyranny so invincibly bastioned to the cowed and conquered eye.

And against all this marble and blood and bronze, what frail fantastic
attack is this? What quaint expedition from fairy-land that comes so
insignificantly against these battlements on which the Roman helmets
catch the setting sun?

A Star in the Sky. Some Shepherds from Judea. Three Wise Men from the
East. Some Frankincense and Myrrh. A Mother and Child.

Yes, a fairy-tale procession--but these are to conquer Rome, and that
child at his mother's breast has but to speak three words, for all that
marble and bronze to melt away: "Love One Another."

It may well have seemed an almost ludicrous weapon--three gentle words.
So one might attack a fortress with a flower. But Rome fell before them,
for all that, and cruel as the world still is, so cruel a world can
never be again. The history of Christianity from Christ to Tolstoi
is the history of a ghost-story; and as Rome fell before the men it
martyred, so Russia has been compelled at last to open its prison doors
by the passive imperative of the three gentle words. Stone and iron are
terribly strong to the eye and even to the arm of man, but they are as
vapour before the breath of the soul. Many enthroned and magisterial
authorities seem so much more important and powerful than the simple
human heart, but let the trial of strength come, and we see the might of
the delicate invisible energy that wells up out of the infinite mystery
to support the dreams of man.