Then was I commandedby the Lord to pull off my shoes. I stood still, for it was winter: but the word of the Lord was like afire in me. So I put off my shoes and left them with the shepherds; and the poor shepherdstrembled, and were astonished. Then I walked on about a mile, and as soon as I was got within thecity, the word of the Lord came to me again, saying: Cry, 'Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield!' So Iwent up and down the streets, crying with a loud voice, Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield! It beingmarket day, I went into the market-place, and to and fro in the several parts of it, and made stands,crying as before, Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield! And no one laid hands on me. As I went thuscrying through the streets, there seemed to me to be a channel of blood running down the streets,and the market-place appeared like a pool of blood. When I had declared what was upon me, andfelt myself clear, I went out of the town in peace; and returning to the shepherds gave them somemoney, and took my shoes of them again. But the fire of the Lord was so on my feet, and all overme, that I did not matter to put on my shoes again, and was at a stand whether I should or no, till Ifelt freedom from the Lord so to do: then, after I had washed my feet, I put on my shoes again.

After this a deep consideration came upon me, for what reason I should be sent to cry against thatcity, and call it The bloody city! For though the parliament had the minister one while, and theking another, shed in the town during the wars between them, befallen many other places. But afterwards I came to understand, that in theEmperor Diocletian's time a thousand Christians were martyr'd in Lichfield. So I was to go,without my shoes, through the channel of their blood, and into the pool of their blood in themarket-place, that I might raise up the memorial of the blood of those martyrs, which had beenshed above a thousand years before, and lay cold in their streets. So the sense of this blood wasupon me, and I obeyed the word of the Lord."Bent as we are on studying religion's existential conditions, we cannot possibly ignore thesepathological aspects of the subject.

We must describe and name them just as if they occurred in non-religious men. It is true that weinstinctively recoil from seeing an object to which our emotions and affections are committed handled by the intellect as any other object is handled. The first thing the intellect does with anobject is to class it along with something else. But any object that is infinitely important to us andawakens our devotion feels to us also as if it must be sui generis and unique. Probably a crabwould be filled with a sense of personal outrage if it could hear us class it without ado or apologyas a crustacean, and thus dispose of it. "I am no such thing, it would say; I am MYSELF, MYSELFalone.