But there is no need to settle the question between the two books by authority. Were it necessary to do so, one need but recall the multitudes of all classes and creeds, from St. Francis Xavier and St. Ignatius to Leibnitz and Bossuet and thence to Wesley, George Eliot, Gladstone, and Gordon, for whom the _Imitation_ has been a shining light and a guide upon their path second only to the Sacred Books themselves. To join that number one has but to take and read. The points of similarity between the two books consist in many maxims common to both, such as “that we ought not to regard the opinion of men”; “that we ought to keep the passions in restraint”; “that we ought to despise pleasures and endure hardship with patience”; “that we are not to be too much attached to life and to earthly things”; “that we ought to bear with the faults of others and return good for evil.” This similarity is, however, to a great extent merely verbal. The same words do not express the same spiritual attitude in the two writers. It is merely the resemblance which prevails between all the great ascetical writers, from Seneca and Epictetus to St. Francis, St. Ignatius and Bunyan, and thence to modern writers such as William James. They all study by introspection the same human soul with the same natural faculties and tendencies, strength and weakness, in all its varying moods of joy and sadness, perplexity and peace. Whereas the differences are measured only by the distance between the natural and the supernatural and show themselves in the whole spirit and atmosphere, tone and motive, of the two books. I have already hinted in passing at the sympathy there is between à Kempis and Marcus Aurelius in their contempt of sophistry and vain learning. But this similarity of view does but bring out all the more strikingly the difference in motive and the manifest superiority of the Christian. Aurelius was glad that he had not made more proficiency in the rhetorical and sophistical training of the day; and for the praiseworthy motive that thus he might have more leisure to attend to the main work of life--his own perfection. But how cold is his analysis beside the glowing words of à Kempis. The pagan seeks leisure for an introspection too often morbid; the Christian wishes for silence of the schools that God Himself may speak within him, and in the ecstasy of this holy discipleship cries out:--