It is only for convenience that I refer to the Middle Ages in order to explain Dr. Coit. His right to exist as a modern is incontestible: he was as modern as anyone else. He merely belonged to a type which, for the time being, has become rare. To us to-day, the tyrant founder-saint of the Middle Ages appears like a person not wholly a Christian. Judged by the standards of the New Testament, these men seem to be only half converted, or three-quarters converted, to Christianity, the rest of them remaining Tartar. The non-converted fraction of them makes them autocrats who trust no one but themselves, men of unfaith who rely on bolts and bars, on ordinances and arrangements. At the worst, these enthusiasts are schemers, unscrupulous, crafty, and cruel. At the best they are merely opinionated, arbitrary, and lonely men. Their weakness is seen only in the fact that they have a slightly blind side, a side on which walk the favorites and hypocrites who have been formed in the shadow of their tyranny. The same parasites which grow upon autocracy in the great world seem often to appear in the miniature kingdom of a school. That Christianity should have given rise to this peculiar kind of tyrant has often thrown me into wonderment. It seems as if any formulation of spiritual truth, uttered by a higher intelligence, were apt to act as an astringent upon the lower intelligence. The bread of life poisons many men. The formula means more than the neophyte is able to understand; and this overplus of meaning stimulates him to fierceness. The phenomenon may be observed on a small scale by anyone who will contrast the teachings of Froebel with the methods often found in kindergartens. Each mind in the world is capable of a different degree of abstraction; and when a mind is stretched to its widest and you give it still something more, you arouse passion. At any rate, the fact remains that Christ’s gentlest words have, as he predicted, become fire and sword in the world, and that through this fire and sword truth spreads. Men like Dr. Coit, for all their fury and for all their narrowness, leave peace in their wake, and bequeath to their followers not only gentleness, but breadth of view. Their unselfishness--their powerlessness to be other than they are--touches the heart of the world. Christ has been in their dungeons all the while.