disconnected through timidity, and the painful excitement which often
made his pulses gallop and his heart stop beating. Then he cowered in
the corner, and wept and groaned and struggled in vain with the desire
for mortal life. When he succeeded in collecting his thoughts again,
and he took up his pen afresh, he gradually regained calm, and each
time it lasted longer. And it happened that he often wrote for hours
at a stretch, that his cheeks began to glow and his eyes to shine--for
he wandered with Jesus in Galilee. Suddenly he would awake from his
visions and find himself in his prison cell, and sadness overcame him,
but it was no longer a falling into the pit of hell; he was strong
enough to save himself on his island of the blessed. And so he wrote
and wrote. He did not ask if it was the Saviour of the books. It was
his Saviour as he lived in him, the only Saviour who could redeem him.
And so there was accomplished in this poor sinner on a small scale what
was accomplished among the nations on a large scale; if it was not
always the historical Jesus as Saviour, it was the Saviour in whom men
believed become historical, since he affected the world's history
through the hearts of men. He whom the books present may not be for
all men; He who lives in men's hearts is for all. That is the secret
of the Saviour's undying power: He is for each man just what that man
needs. We read in the Gospels that Jesus appeared at different times
and to different men in different forms. That should be a warning to
us to let every man have his own Jesus. As long as it is the Jesus of
love and trust, it is the right Jesus.

It often happened that during the prisoner's composition and writing, a
wider, softer light from the window spread through the cell, flickered
over the wall, the floor, the table, and then rested for a space on the
white paper. And so light even entered the lonely room, but
unspeakably more light entered the writer's heart.