Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Nevertheless, you have been in his company. You forget not the Mediterranean voyage ? By no means. I enjoyed it highly, and recall it ever with delight. soldiers exclaimed, ' Where now are the gods of Rome ?' This is that man, the soldier Macer; then bound with fellow-soldiers to the service in Africa, now a Christian preacher. I see it now. That man impressed me then, with his thin form and all-devouring eyes. But the African climate, and the gash across his left cheek, and which seems to have slightly disturbed the eye upon that side, have made him a different being, and almost a terrific one. Is he sound and sane ? Perfectly so, replied Probus, unless we may say that souls earnestly devoted and zealous are mad. There is not a more righteous soul in Rome. His conscience is bare, and shrinking like a fresh wound. His breast is warm and fond as a woman's. His penitence for the wild errors of his pagan youth, a consuming fire, which, while it redoubles his ardour in doing what he may in the cause of truth, rages in secret, and, if the sword or the cross claim him not, will bring him to the grave. He is utterly incapable of fear. All the racks and the dungeons of Rome, with their tormentors, could not terrify him. You now interest me in him. I must see and know him. It might be of service to him and to all, Probus, methinks, if he could be brought to associate with those whose justor notions might influence his, and modify them to the rule of truth. I fear not. What he sees, he sees clearly and strongly, and by itself. He understands nothing of one truth bearing upon another, and adding to it or taking from it. Truth is truth with him, and as his own mind perceives it, not another's. His conscience will allow him in no accommodations to other men'...