'I did not need any other voice than the voice of the Man on the Cross. I thought of the lines, "This hast Thou done for me, What have I done for Thee, Thou Crucified?" I was the centre of my own life. That big "I" had to be crossed out. I saw my resentments against those men standing out like tombstones in my heart. I asked God to change me and He told me to put things right with them.

'It produced in me a vibrant feeling, as though a strong current of life had suddenly been poured into me and afterwards a dazed sense of a great spiritual shaking-up. There was no longer this feeling of a divided will, no sense of calculation and argument, of oppression and helplessness; a wave of strong emotion, following the will to surrender, rose up within me …..and seemed to lift my soul from its anchorage of selfishness, bearing it across that great sundering abyss to the foot of the Cross.'3

The experience was as sudden as that which came to John Wesley in the upper room in Aldersgate, or to Francis at St Damiano when he 'fell before the crucifix and, having been smitten with unwonted visitations, found himself another man than he who had gone in'.

As he left the chapel Buchman's one thought was not so much to forgive those he had hated, but to ask their forgiveness for the way he had behaved. Back at the house where he was staying, he sat down and wrote letters to each member of the Board. One of the letters - the one to Dr Ohl, dated 27 July 1908 - has survived in the archives at Mount Airy.

'Am writing,' declared Buchman, 'to tell you that I have harboured an unkind feeling toward you - at times I conquered it but it always came back. Our views may differ but as brothers we must love. I write to ask your forgiveness and to assure that I love you and trust by God's grace I shall never more speak unkindly or disparagingly of you.

'The lines of that hymn have been ringing in my ears -

When I survey the wondrous Cross

On which the Prince of Glory died,

My richest gain I count but loss

And pour contempt on all my pride.'4

Buchman appended the same lines to each of the letters and, each time, felt the weight of the words in a completely new way. 'It's easy to repeat those lines,' he said later. 'I know because I'd done it over and over again myself. But that day those lines had become great realities. And the last line cost me most of all. I almost wrote it in my own blood.'*

(* Buchman used to say that he had received no replies to these letters. Ohl noted on the back of his letter from Buchman,'... you will notice that he gives no address. Had he done so I surely would have written.' Among Buchman's papers is a brief note from Miss F. G. Crafts, the housekeeper, to whom a letter must also have gone. She wrote, 'I thank you very much for your kindness in forgiving me. For my part I have nothing to forgive. P.S. The dear little children missed you very much at the Settlement House'.)

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