Giovanni Bernardone passes out of sight, and from the ashes of a dead
past, from the seed which has withered that the new life might
germinate and fructify, Francis--why grudge to call him Saint
Francis?--of Assisi rises.

Very early the young man had shown a taste for Church restoration.
The material fabric of the houses of God in the land could not but
exhibit the decay of living faith; the churches were falling into
ruins. The little chapel of St. Mary and the Angels at Assisi was in
a scandalous condition of decay. It troubled the heart of the young
pietist profoundly to see the Christian church squalid and tottering
to its fall while within sight of it was the Roman temple in which
men had worshipped the idols. There it stood, as it had stood for a
thousand years--as it stands to this day. Oh, shame! that Christian
men should build so slightly while the heathen built so strongly!

To the little squalid ruin St. Francis came time and again, and
poured out his heart, perplexed and sad; and there, we are told, God
met him and a voice said, "Go, and build my church again." It was a
"thought beyond his thought," and with the straightforward simplicity
of his nature he accepted the message in its literal sense and at
once set about obeying it as he understood it.

He began by giving all he could lay his hands on to provide funds for
the work. His own resources exhausted, he applied for contributions
to all who came in his way. His father became alarmed at his son's
excessive liberality and the consequences that might ensue from his
strange recklessness; it is even said that he turned him out of
doors; it seems that the commercial partnership was cancelled: it is
certain that the son was compelled to make some great renunciation of