The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-06-16
Francis Of Assist
By pR. FRANK oRANE

There is no story out of gray, mediaeyal days that so moves me as that of Francis of Assist, .the little poor man."
 We think we are lovers when we love the beautiful, the gifted, and the gentle but we know not the taste of Love Almighty until, like Francis, we love tine ugly. the repulsiye, and the mean. f
 He went to extremes. He had to, in order to shock cruel age to its senses. The cru sades had introduced into Europe that strange plague of the east, leprosy. It was regarded with superstitious horror; those smitten with it were summed by all. To these unfottu- nate beings Francis became a reincarnation of the Master. With a fearlessness greater than any warrior on the shotted field he tend ed them, washed them, kissed them upon the mouth, ate porridge frem the same bowl with them.
 It was foolish, unhygienic wrong-but how splendid!
 St. Francis is dead, but that love of which he was the voice and living person lives on. /
 |, It is not the affected sanctity and ghastly other worldliness we see in mediaeval pie thres. It is the same healthful, life-giving force that fOunds and keeps the family, melts all ancient and new privilege, the eternal enemy of the individual, as the sun melts at last all ieebergs, and unceasingly demands of all power the rights of man.
 It is hard to believe in love, or to under stand how being so gentle it can be so strong
 We doubt love as we doubt God yet God, though we forget Him, sways men and the kingdoms of men to His will, and love, thought it seems so feeble among the cur rents of destiny, in the end has its way with the world
 The supreme wisdomzof Jesus lay in his choice of love as the foundation of his rule. To think of attempting, to become master of men simply by loving them It was like send ing a little child into the arena with glad iatora
 What chance had Love to live, not to mem tion conquering, amongst such virile pas sions as Ambition, Greed, Lust and all the forms of Selfishness? And who could have guessed that Love at last could drive all these iron monsters to his will?
 It took the genius of Jesus to see this. It took the genius of Francis to believe it. Love operating upon the individual was all men could grasp at first, and for over a thousand years the highest strivings were for personal sanctity.
 Now we are learning there is larger eff ciency. Operating upon governments. Love produces democracy.
 The labor movement is to the eye of the seer only an appeal to Love-
 Hospitals and asylums are its modern fruits
 Face to face with the horrors of heathen- ism, it throws out missionaries instead of armies. S-- --
 Appearing fantastieally in chivalry, it be- comes the keynote of all fiction.
 It is Love that has made the ages of great terror the ages of great hope" by rais- ing up a St. Paul in the days of Nero, St. Francis in the times of Simon de Montfort.
 Francis was but voice, the utteranee of that sea of Love which bears humanity with all it's weaknesses upon it's bosom.
 Love is power. All power is mysterious. The inventor draws it from the clouds or discovers it in the steam all the centuries men passed by it's secret.
 The Nazarene saw the power of Love. He came not striving nor crying, neither was his voice heard in the streets
 Francis came a little poor man." whom the bees loved, and the sheep and birds and the wild things in the wood.
 These two never doubted Love. How right they were As right as Edison or Watts. They saw what no man saw, the secret of Power.
 For Power is not in the strong wind nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire; it is in the "still small voice."
 Quenched here, that voice rises wonder. Suppressed in three places 1t breaks forth in hundred, filling the air with its uhcon- querable sweetness, triumphing over it's enc mies-Love, the glory of life love-, the con querer of death, Love- the other name of Cod Love aimighty!