| I | THE POVERTY OF HERMAS |
| II | A CHRISTMAS LOSS |
| III | PARTING, BUT NO FAREWELL |
| IV | LOVE IN SEARCH OF A WORD |
| V | RICHES WITHOUT REST |
| VI | GREAT FEAR AND RECOVERED JOY |
"COME down, Hermas, come down! The night is past. It is time to bestirring. Christ is born to-day. Peace be with you in His name. Makehaste and come down!"
A little group of young men were standing in a street of Antioch, inthe dusk of early morning, fifteen hundred years ago. It was a classof candidates who had nearly finished their two years of trainingfor the Christian church. They had come to call their fellow-studentHermas from his lodging.
Their voices rang out cheerily through the cool air. They were fullof that glad sense of life which the young feel when they awake andcome to rouse one who is still sleeping. There was a note offriendly triumph in their call, as if they were exultingunconsciously in having begun the adventure of the new day beforetheir comrade.
But Hermas was not asleep. He had been waking for hours, and thedark walls of his narrow lodging had been a prison to his restlessheart. A nameless sorrow and discontent had fallen upon him, and hecould find no escape from the heaviness of his own thoughts.
There is a sadness of youth into which the old cannot enter. Itseems to them unreal and causeless. But it is even more bitter andburdensome than the sadness of age. There is a sting of resentmentin it, a fever of angry surprise that the world should so soon be adisappointment, and life so early take on the look of a failure. Ithas little reason in it, perhaps, but it has all the more wearinessand gloom, because the man who is oppressed by it feels dimly thatit is an unnatural and an unreasonable thing, that he should