Holding the manuscript on my knees, I listened. The passion of the speaker seized and held me; he was like one so full of speech as to be inarticulate, he seemed to falter through many phrases until he found the right one; he would go on blindly, following the mere impulse of his mind, without thought or reason, until at last, as with pain, words came to him that seemed to touch the heart, to illuminate hidden places, and what had gone before was transfused and crystallised by it into a kind of rude and imperfect unity. Sometimes after one of these magnificent utterances, he would give forth phrase after phrase, that glowed with the heat of his own certainty. "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?" He dealt with speech as one dealing with iron in the fire, hammering out the words. "Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord." He was persuaded. Seeing that they had forgotten me, I lifted my eyes and studied him as he spoke. I saw that his health was bad; the carriage of his head seemed epileptic, but bodily health was nothing to him; he seemed worn with travel and hunger, misfortune and persecution, yet the fire of his speech showed the strength of his conviction; even as, in his words, he seemed to thrust the world away from him for the sake of an idea, so, for the sake of an idea he had thrust away his infirmities, and pursued his way heedless of obstacles. "Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it. Why didst thou make me thus? Or, hath not the potter a right over the clay, from the same lump to make one part a vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?" Sometimes Paul moved a little, with nervous half-conscious movements; or while speaking he would stretch his large toil-worn hands over the brazier where the light gleaming through the fingers made them seem more distorted. As a rule he spoke slowly, but when he became dominated by his thought the words hurried, more and more quickly, until the writer paused, perplexed, and, not without a slight gesture of impatience followed by a swifter smile as if of encouragement, Paul would repeat himself; sometimes losing the thread of his discourse. Indeed, from what I learned of his life, it seemed that it was his fate to be thwarted and hindered by material restrictions, of health, of liberty, of speech. No vessel was capable of sustaining the flame that burned in him. I could not understand all that he said, as I knew nothing of what was behind; but here and there his words burnt into my brain.