On the face of it what does the book say? This is what it says: That
Piero Maironi, a man of the world, cultivated far beyond his kind, after
having had a vehement love-affair is stricken with remorse, "experiences
religion," becomes penitent, is filled with a strange zeal--an ineffable
comfort--and devotes himself, body, heart, and soul to the worship of
God and the succour of his fellow-men. As Benedetto, the lay brother, he
serves the peasant populations among the Sabine hills, or moves on his
errands of hope and mercy among the poor of Rome. Everybody recognises
him as a holy man--"a saint." Perhaps, if he had restricted himself to
taking only soup or simple medicines to the hungry and sick, he would
have been unmolested in his philanthropy; but after his conversion, he
had devoured the Scriptures and studied the books of the Fathers, until
the spirit of the early, simple, untheological Church had poured into
him. It brought a message the truth of which so stirred him that
he could not rest until he imparted it to his fellows. He preached
righteousness,--the supremacy of conduct over ritual,--love as the test
and goal of life; but always with full acknowledgment of Mother Church
as the way of salvation. Indeed, he seems neither to doubt the
impregnability of the foundations of Christianity, nor the validity of
the Petrine corner-stone; taking these for granted he aims to live the
Christian life in every act, in every thought. The superstructure--the
practices of the Catholic Church to-day, the failures and sins of
clerical society, the rigid ecclesiasticism--these he must in loyalty
to fundamental truth, criticise, and if need be, condemn, where they
interfere with the exercise of pure religion. But Benedetto engages very
little in controversy; his method is to glorify the good, sure that the
good requires only to be revealed in all its beauty and charm in order
to draw irresistibly to itself souls that, for lack of vision, have been
pursuing the mediocre or the bad.