blood of Christ, nor a throb of thought in our brains that is not
thrilling with the impact of this divine life of lives. And so the
true dignity of life is this, that Christ is in all men, faintly
outlined it may be, defaced, half-obliterated, but there, and the
Church that forgets this has neither impulse nor mandate for Christ's
work among men.

2. And then, again, there is a second reason: we have not learned to
look for Christ among the common things of life.

"Let us build three tabernacles," said the wondering disciples on
the Mount of Transfiguration, and the speech betrayed a tendency of
thought which was in time to prove fatal to the Church.

The Christ without a tabernacle, the free, familiar Christ of the lake
or the wayside was everybody's Christ; but the moment Christ is shut
up in a church or a tabernacle He becomes the priest's Christ, the
thinker's Christ, the devotee's Christ, but He ceases to be the
people's Christ.

I remember five years ago standing in the great church of Assisi,
which has been erected over and encloses the little humble chapel
where Francis first received his call. You will scarcely be surprized
if I confess that I turned with a sense of heart-sick indignation
from the pomp of that splendid service in the gorgeous church to
the thought of Francis, in his worn robe, going up and down these
neighboring roads, touching the lepers, calling them "God's patients,"
pouring out his life for the poor; and I knew Christ nearer to me
on the roads that Francis trod than in that church, which is his
mausoleum rather than his monument. And as I felt that day in far-off