No
longer did she imagine that God had sent her lameness. She ceased to
think of Him.
But one day she heard a sermon which made her think of Jesus as a
teacher, just as one thinks of Plato and Aristotle. She reflected that
she really knew more of the teaching of Plato and Aristotle than she
knew of Christ's teaching. This seemed to her an unsatisfactory state of
things, and she set herself, as a student of philosophy, to study the
teaching of Jesus. What had He said? Never mind whether He had founded
this Church or that, what had He said? And what had been His science of
life, His reading of the riddle?
This study, to which she brought a philosophic mind and a candid heart,
convinced her that the teaching should be tried. It was, indeed, a
teaching that asked men to prove it by trial. She decided to try it, and
she tried it by reading, by meditation, and by prayer. The trial was a
failure. But in this failure was a mystery. For the more she failed the
more profoundly conscious she became of Christ as a Power. This feeling
remained with her, and it grew stronger with time. The Christ who would
not help her nevertheless tarried as a shadow haunting the background of
her thoughts.
There was a secret in life which she had missed, a power which she had
never used. Then came the second event to which I have referred. Miss
Royden met a lady who had left the Church of England and joined the
Quakers, seeking by this change to intensify her spiritual experience,
seeking to make faith a deep personal reality in her life.
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