Echo answered "Where?"—the boys were silent.
The Chaplain saw that in their present mood he could do no good—he turned elsewhere.
Nothing but an intense desire to alleviate suffering had brought him to Byfield lazar-house. The Christianity of that age was sternly practical, if superstitious; and with all its superstition it exercised a far more beneficent influence on society than fifty Salvation Armies could have done; it led men to remember Christ in all forms of loathsome and cruel suffering, and to seek Him in the suffering members of His mystical body; if it led to self-chosen austerities, it also had its heights of heroic self-immolation for the good of others.
Such a self-immolation was certainly our Chaplain's. He walked amongst these unfortunates as a ministering angel; where he could do good he did it, where consolation found acceptance he gave it, and many a despairing spirit he soothed with the hope of the sunny land of Paradise.
And how he preached to them of Him Who sanctified suffering and made it the path to glory; how he told them how He should some day change their vile leprous bodies that He might make them like His own most glorious Body, until the many, abandoning all hope here, looked forward simply for that glorious consummation of body and soul in bliss eternal.
"Oh! how glorious and resplendent
Shall this body some day be;
Full of vigour, full of pleasure,
Full of health, and strong and free:
When renewed in Christ's own image,