While with them we cannot think mean thoughts or speak ungenerous
words. Their mere presence is elevation, purification, sanctity.
All the best stops in our nature are drawn out by their intercourse,
and we find a music in our souls that was never there before.
Suppose even THAT influence prolonged through a month, a year, a
lifetime, and what could not life become? There, even on the common
plane of life, talking our language, walking our streets, working
side by side, are sanctifiers of souls; here, breathing through
common clay, is Heaven; here, energies charged even through a
temporal medium with the virtue of regeneration. If to live with
men, diluted to the millionth degree with the virtue of the Highest,
can exalt and purify the nature, what bounds can be set to the
influence of Christ? To live with Socrates--with unveiled face--must
have made one wise; with Aristides, just. Francis Assisi must
have made one gentle; Savonarola, strong. But to have lived with
Christ must have made one like Christ: that is to say, A CHRISTIAN.

As a matter of fact, to live with Christ did produce this effect.
It produced it in the case of Paul. And during Christ's lifetime
the experiment was tried in an even more startling form. A few
raw, unspiritual, uninspiring men, were admitted to the inner circle
of His friendship. The change began at once. Day by day we can
almost see the first disciple grow. First there steals over them
the faintest possible adumbration of His character, and occasionally,
very occasionally, they do a thing or say a thing that they could
not have done or said had they not been living there. Slowly the
spell of His Life deepens. Reach after reach of their nature is
overtaken, thawed, subjugated, sanctified. Their manner softens,
their words become more gentle, their conduct more unselfish. As