with no response whatever. Occasionally a stranger or two visited the
chapel, and with what eager eyes did I not watch for them on the next
Sunday, but none of them came twice. It was amazing to me that I could
pour out myself as I did--poor although I knew that self to be--and yet
make so little impression. Not one man or woman seemed any different
because of anything I had said or done, and not a soul kindled at any
word of mine, no matter with what earnestness it might be charged. How
I groaned over my incapacity to stir in my people any participation in
my thoughts or care for them!

Looking at the history of those days now from a distance of years,
everything assumes its proper proportion. I was at work, it is true,
amongst those who were exceptionally hard and worldly, but I was
seeking amongst men (to put it in orthodox language) what I ought to
have sought with God alone. In other, and perhaps plainer phrase, I
was expecting from men a sympathy which proceeds from the Invisible
only. Sometimes, indeed, it manifests itself in the long-postponed
justice of time, but more frequently it is nothing more and nothing
less than a consciousness of approval by the Unseen, a peace
unspeakable, which is bestowed on us when self is suppressed.

I did not know then how little one man can change another, and what
immense and persistent efforts are necessary--efforts which seldom
succeed except in childhood--to accomplish anything but the most
superficial alteration of character. Stories are told of sudden
conversions, and of course if a poor simple creature can be brought to
believe that hell-fire awaits him as the certain penalty of his
misdeeds, he will cease to do them; but this is no real conversion, for
essentially he remains pretty much the same kind of being that he was
before.