This seemed, from a Christian point of view, to answer Scaurus’s objection, “‘Start afresh’ is more easily said than done.” The answer was—not my answer, but such an answer as I thought a Christian might make—“Yes, it is much more easily said than done. But the Son of God has authority both to say it and to give power to do it. He says, in effect, ‘_Be thou able to start afresh_,’ and the man _is_ ‘_able to start afresh_’.” Then, if Scaurus replied, “Prove this,” Paul came forward saying, “I at all events have received power to ‘start afresh.’ Even my enemies will attest what I have been, a persecutor of the Christians. Now I have been ‘forgiven’ by Him that has authority to forgive. The old things are passed away. Behold, they are become new.” And if Scaurus had said, “But have others been enabled to ‘start afresh’?” Paul would have answered, “Yes, multitudes, from the Euphrates to the Tiber. Do not trust me. Take a little journey from Tusculum into the poorest alleys of Rome, and judge for yourself.” Here I felt Paul would have been on such strong ground that Scaurus would have given way. “Paul”—he might have said—“is superstitious, and under hallucinations, but I must frankly confess he has the power to help people to ‘start afresh’.” That is just what I, too, felt. It was quite different from the feeling inspired in me by my own Teacher. When Epictetus said “Let bygones be bygones,” “Let us start afresh,” “Only begin and we shall see,” I felt, almost at once, that he was imagining impossibilities. When Paul said “There is a new creation,” I felt that he was describing not only a possibility but also a fact—a fact for himself and for multitudes of others; not indeed a fact for me, but, even for me, a possibility.