reason at the most can set free a force of attraction created by motives
other than reason.

What this attraction is in each case is impossible to specify
accurately--"Ask me and I know not," one might say, "do not ask me and I
know." Each soul is hooked with its own bait, called by its own name,
drawn in its own way; and as the attractiveness of Christ is virtually
infinite in its multiformity, so is that of His Church, nor is there a
more unpardonable narrowness than that of insisting that others shall be
drawn in the same way as we ourselves, or not at all.

Let it also be noticed that a very prolonged and minute intimacy is not
always necessary in order that we should feel the spell of personality.
Much depends on our own gifts of sympathy, insight and apprehension, on
the simplicity and strength of the personality in question, on the
nature of the incidents by which it is disclosed to us. We know one man
in a moment, another only after years of intimacy, while others in
regard to the same individuals might experience the converse. We must
not then suppose that because in one case the impression is the result
of slowly-accumulated observations, and in another the work of an
instant, it is less trustworthy in the latter instance than in the
former. It may be, or it may not be. St. Augustine needed years to feel
the spell that one word, nay, one glance from Christ cast upon St.
Peter. Nor again is it always in some striking and notable crisis that a
character reveals itself abruptly, but often in the merest nuance--a
manner, an intonation, something quite unintentional, unpremeditated. We
know well, if we know ourselves at all, how irresistible is the
impression created on us at times by such trifles, and yet how more than
reasonable it often is.