She does not impress one by the force of her intellect, but rather by the force of her humanity.  You take it for granted that she is a scholar; you are aware of her intellectual gifts, I mean, only as you are aware of her breeding.  The main impression she makes is one of full humanity, humanity at its best, humanity that is pure but not self-righteous, charitable but not sentimental, just but not hard, true but not mechanical in consistency, frank but not gushing.  Out of all this come two things, the sense of two realisms, the realism of her political faith, and the realism of her religious faith.  You are aware that she feels the sufferings and the deprivations of the oppressed in her own blood, and feels the power, the presence, and the divinity of Christ in her own soul.

It is a grateful experience to sit with this woman, who is so like the best of men but is so manifestly the staunchest of women.  Her face reveals the force of her emotions, her voice, which is musical and persuasive, the depth of her compassion.  In her sitting-room, which is almost a study and nearly an office, hangs a portrait of Newman, and a prie-Dieu stands against one of the walls half-hidden by bookshelves.  She is one of the few very busy people I have known who give one no feeling of an inward commotion.

Apart from her natural eloquence and her unmistakable sincerity, apart even from the attractive fullness of her humanity, I think the notable success of her preaching is to be attributed to a single reason, quite outside any such considerations.  It is a reason of great importance to the modern student of religious psychology.  Miss Royden preaches Christ as a Power.

To others she leaves the esoteric aspects of religion, and the ceremonial of worship, and the difficulties of theology, and the mechanism of parochial organisation.  Her mission, as she receives it, is to preach to people who are unwilling and suffering victims of sin, or who are tortured by theological indecision, that Christ is a Power, a Power that works miracles, a Power that can change the habits of a lifetime, perhaps the very tissues of a poisoned body, and can give both peace and guidance to the soul that is dragged this way and that.

One may be pardoned for remarking that this is a rather unusual form of preaching in any of the respectable churches.  Christianity as a unique power in the world, a power which transfigures human life, which tears habitude up by the roots, and which gives new strength to the will, new eyes to the soul, and a new reality to the understanding; this, strange to say, is an unusual, perhaps an unpopular subject of clerical discourse.  It is Miss Royden’s insistent contribution to modern theology.

She tells me that so far as her own experience goes, humanity does not seem to be troubled by intellectual doubts.  She is inclined to think that it is even sick of such discussions, and is apt to describe them roughly and impatiently as “mere talk.”  Humanity, as she sees it, is immersed in the incessant struggle of moral evolution.