Upon these astounding yet perfectly obvious psychological facts, Paul bases his doctrine of sanctification.  He sees that character is a thing built up by slow degrees, that it is hourly changing for better or for worse according to the images which flit across it.  One step further and the whole length and breadth of the application of these ideas to the central problem of religion will stand before us.

II.  THE ALCHEMY OF INFLUENCE.

If events change men, much more persons.  No man can meet another on the street without making some mark upon him.  We say we exchange words when we meet; what we exchange is souls.  And when intercourse is very close and very frequent, so complete is this exchange that recognizable bits of the one soul begin to show in the other’s nature, and the second is conscious of a similar and growing debt to the first.

Now, we become like those whom we habitually reflect.  I could prove from science that applies even to the physical framework of animals—­that they are influenced and organically changed by the environment in which they live.

This mysterious approximating of two souls, who has not witnessed?  Who has not watched some old couple come down life’s pilgrimage hand in hand, with such gentle trust and joy in one another that their very faces wore the self-same look?  These were not two souls; it was a composite soul.  It did not matter to which of the two you spoke, you would have said the same words to either.  It was quite indifferent which replied, each would have said the same.  Half a century’s reflecting had told upon them; they were changed into the same image.  It is the Law of Influence that we become like those whom we habitually reflect:  these had become like because they habitually reflected.  Through all the range of literature, of history, and biography this law presides.  Men are all mosaics of other men.  There was a savor of David about Jonathan, and a savor of Jonathan about David.  Metempsychosis is a fact.  George Eliot’s message to the world was that men and women make men and women.  The Family, the cradle of mankind, has no meaning apart from this.  Society itself is nothing but a rallying point for these omnipotent forces to do their work.  On the doctrine of Influence, in short, the whole vast pyramid of humanity is built.

But it was reserved for Paul to make the supreme application of the Law of Influence.  It was a tremendous inference to make, but he never hesitated.  He himself was a changed man; he knew exactly what had done it;

          IT WAS CHRIST.

On the Damascus road they met, and from that hour his life was absorbed in His.  The effect could not but follow—­on words, on deeds, on career, on creed.  The “impressed forces” did their vital work.  He became like Him Whom he habitually loved.  “So we all,” he writes, “reflecting as a mirror the glory of Christ, are changed into the same image.”