darkness coming over the face of the earth, and the stone rolled to
the door of the sepulchre. One always thinks of him as a young
bridegroom with his companions, as indeed he somewhere describes
himself; as a shepherd straying through a valley with his sheep in
search of green meadow or cool stream; as a singer trying to build
out of the music the walls of the City of God; or as a lover for
whose love the whole world was too small. His miracles seem to me
to be as exquisite as the coming of spring, and quite as natural.
I see no difficulty at all in believing that such was the charm of
his personality that his mere presence could bring peace to souls
in anguish, and that those who touched his garments or his hands
forgot their pain; or that as he passed by on the highway of life
people who had seen nothing of life's mystery, saw it clearly, and
others who had been deaf to every voice but that of pleasure heard
for the first time the voice of love and found it as 'musical as
Apollo's lute'; or that evil passions fled at his approach, and men
whose dull unimaginative lives had been but a mode of death rose as
it were from the grave when he called them; or that when he taught
on the hillside the multitude forgot their hunger and thirst and
the cares of this world, and that to his friends who listened to
him as he sat at meat the coarse food seemed delicate, and the
water had the taste of good wine, and the whole house became full
of the odour and sweetness of nard.

Renan in his VIE DE JESUS - that gracious fifth gospel, the gospel
according to St. Thomas, one might call it - says somewhere that
Christ's great achievement was that he made himself as much loved
after his death as he had been during his lifetime. And certainly,
if his place is among the poets, he is the leader of all the
lovers. He saw that love was the first secret of the world for