but if sin there was in Stone, as in all that is human, I can truly say that, in our twenty-five years’ intimate friendship, I saw in him no sign of anything approaching sin, other than--if sins they be--a noble anger and a lofty pride. To have loved, and to have been loved and trusted by him, was no less a high privilege than it was a high responsibility, for if any of us, who at some time of our lives, shared Stone’s interests and ideals, and were brought under the compelling power and inspiration of his personality, should hereafter come to forget what manner of man he was--should play false with, or altogether fall away, from those ideals, or be content to strive after any less noble standard of conduct and character than he set and attained--then heavy indeed must be our reckoning, in the day when for these, to whom much has been given, much will be required.
For Stone had something of the talismanic personality of his Master. Just as, without one spoken word--without more than a look--from the Christ the unclean were convicted of sin by the talisman of His purity, so all that was noblest, divinest and knightliest in man, all that was white-souled, selfless, tender, true, lofty, and lovely in womanhood, recognised something of itself in Stone, and in his presence all were at their highest and their best.
Nor was this due merely to what has been called a “magnetic personality.” That there are men and women who for good or for evil (it is just as likely to be for the latter as for the former) possess some magnetic or mesmeric power over others, I am, and from personal knowledge, aware. But Stone’s influence was neither mesmeric nor magnetic. It was by the unconscious spiritual alchemy of a soul so rare (I repeat and purposely near the end of this article what I said in the beginning) as to make possible the courage of a Cœur de Lion, the honour of a King Arthur or Sir Galahad--as to make possible even in a sense the sinlessness of Christ. To have known, if only once in a lifetime--and in spite of bitter disillusionments, of repeated betrayals on the part of some others--such a man as S. J. Stone, is in itself enough to keep sweet one’s faith in humanity, in immortality, and in God.