one day in prayer, the rude soldiers of Charles XII. burst into his room. Forthwith the lad began to speak of Christ; and away the soldiers fled in awe and terror. At the age of eight he lay awake at night tormented with atheistic doubts {1708.}. But the doubts did not last long. However much he doubted with the head he never doubted with the heart; and the charm that drove the doubts away was the figure of the living Christ. And here we touch the springs of the boy's religion. It is easy to call all this a hot-house process; it is easy to dub the child a precocious prig. But at bottom his religion was healthy and sound. It was not morbid; it was joyful. It was not based on dreamy imagination; it was based on the historic person of Christ. It was not the result of mystic exaltation; it was the result of a study of the Gospels. It was not, above all, self-centred; it led him to seek for fellowship with others. As the boy devoured the Gospel story, he was impressed first by the drama of the Crucifixion; and often pondered on the words of Gerhardt's hymn:-- O Head so full of bruises, So full of pain and scorn, 'Midst other sore abuses, Mocked with a crown of thorn. For this his tutor, Edeling, was partly responsible. "He spoke to me," says Zinzendorf, "of Jesus and His wounds." But the boy did not linger in Holy Week for ever. He began by laying stress on the suffering Christ; he went on to lay stress on the whole life of Christ; and on that life, from the cradle to the grave, his own strong faith was based. "I was," he said, "as certain that the Son of God was my Lord as of the existence of my five fingers." To him the existence of Jesus was a proof of the existence of God; and he felt all his limbs ablaze, to use his own expression, with the desire to preach the eternal Godhead of Christ. "If it were possible," he said, "that there should be another God than Christ I would rather be damned with Christ than happy with another. I have," he exclaimed, "but one passion--'tis He, 'tis only He."