Michael one night—­it was a Sunday night—­he was always worse on Sundays when he had not been at work—­was unable to sleep, and rose and read the Book.  He turned to the Epistle to the Romans, a favourite epistle with him, and deservedly so, for there we come face to face with the divine apostle, with a reality unobscured by miracle or myth.  And such a reality!  Christianity becomes no longer a marvel, for a man with that force and depth of experience is sufficient to impose a religion on the whole human race, no matter what the form of the creed may be.  Michael read in the ninth chapter, “I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.”  What did Paul mean?  Accursed from Christ!  What could he mean save that he was willing to be damned to save those whom he loved.  Why not?  Why should not a man be willing to be damned for others?  The damnation of a single soul is shut up in itself, and may be the means of saving not only others, but their children and a whole race.  Damnation!  It is awful, horrible; millions of years, with no relief, with no light from the Most High, and in subjection to His Enemy.  “And yet, if it is to save—­if it is to save Robert,” thought Michael, “God give me strength—­I could endure it.  Did not the Son Himself venture to risk the wrath of the Father that He might redeem man?  What am I? what is my poor self?” And Michael determined that night that neither his life in this world nor in the next, if he could rescue his child, should be of any account.

How sublime a thing is this dust or dirt we call man!  We grovel in view of the vast distances of the fixed stars and their magnitudes, but these distances and these dimensions are a delusion.  There is nothing grander in Sirius than in a pebble, nor anything more worthy of admiration and astonishment in his remoteness than in the length of Oxford Street.  The true sublime is in the self-negation of the martyr, and it became doubly magnificent in the case of Michael, who was willing not merely to give up a finite existence for something other than himself—­to be shot and so end, or to be burnt with a hope of following glory—­but to submit for ever to separation and torment, if only he might shield his child from God’s displeasure.  It may be objected that such a resolution is impossible.  Doubtless it is now altogether incredible; but it is so because we no longer know what religion means, or what is the effect produced upon the mind by the constant study of one book and a perfectly unconditional belief in it.  Furthermore, as before said, Michael never corrected himself or preserved his sanity by constant intercourse with his fellows.  He incessantly brooded, and the offspring of a soul like his, begotten on itself, is monstrous and grotesque.  He questioned himself and his oracle further.  What could Paul mean exactly?  God could not curse him if he did no wrong.  He could only mean that he was