and gained many followers, for there was an extraordinary magnetism
about the man which almost compelled those who were brought into
contact with him to reverence him.

It was a curious history. First there had been that time of
grievous doubt; then he had been thrown upon the world friendless
and penniless, with the beliefs and hopes hitherto most sacred to
him dead, and in their place an aching blank. He had suffered
much. Treated on all sides with harshness and injustice, it was
indeed wonderful that he had not developed into a mere hater, a
passionate down-puller. But there was in his character a nobility
which would not allow him to rest at this low level. The bitter
hostility and injustice which he encountered did indeed warp his
mind, and every year of controversy made it more impossible for him
to take an unprejudiced view of Christ's teaching; but nevertheless
he could not remain a mere destroyer.

In that time of blankness, when he had lost all faith in God, when
he had been robbed of friendship and family love, he had seized
desperately on the one thing left him--the love of humanity. To
him atheism meant not only the assertion--"The word God is a word
without meaning, it conveys nothing to my understanding." He added
to this barren confession of an intellectual state a singularly
high code of duty. Such a code as could only have emanated from
one about whom there lingered what Carlyle has termed a great
after-shine of Christianity. He held that the only happiness worth
having was that which came to a man while engaged in promoting the
general good. That the whole duty of man was to devote himself to
the service of others. And he lived his creed.