I was speaking the other day to a lady who had known Signor Alessandro
Gavazzi. 'When he was in England,' she told me, 'he used to come and
stay at my father's home, and, to us girls, he seemed like a visitor
from another world.' The life of Gavazzi is one of the stirring romances
of the nineteenth century. Born at Bologna in 1809, he became, at the
age of fifteen, a Barnabite monk. His eloquence, even in his teens, was
so extraordinary that, at twenty, he was made Professor of Rhetoric in
the College of Naples. Some years afterward Pope Pius the Ninth sent him
on a special mission to Milan as Chaplain-General to the Patriotic
Legion. A little later, however, a new light broke upon him. He left the
church of his fathers and devoted his distinguished gifts to the work of
evangelism. In connection with his conversion, a pathetic incident
occurred. A superstitious Italian mother will sometimes hang a charm
around her boy's neck to drive away malignant powers. When Gavazzi was
but a baby, his mother placed a locket on his breast, and he never moved
without it. But when, in riper years, he found the Saviour, his mother's
gift caused him great perplexity. As a charm he had no faith in it; he
relied entirely on the grace of his Lord to sustain and protect him. And
yet, for his mother's sake, he felt that he should like to wear it. He
solved the problem by placing in the locket the words by which he had
been led to Christ. When he died, an old man of eighty, the locket was
found next his skin. And, when they opened it, they read: '_Who shall
separate us from the love of Christ? I am persuaded that neither death,
nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other
creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in
Christ Jesus our Lord._' Gavazzi's excommunication nearly broke his
heart. He left Rome to wander in strange lands, the most frightful
anathemas and maledictions ringing in his ears. He was an exile and an
outcast, shuddering under the curse of the church that he had served so
devotedly and so long. Yet, after all, what did it matter? He had found
a love--the love of Christ--that he had never known before; and from
that all-compensating love no power in church or state, in heaven or
earth, in time or in eternity, had power to tear him.