The important feature of the teaching of Francis was that he preached not the doctrine of Christ, but the Person of Christ. He held up before men righteousness, not as the secret of future happiness, but of present happiness, of peace beginning in this world, here and now. He preached not the law of God, but the love of Christ. He opposed nobody, he rebuked nobody, he was in no sense antagonistic to anything. He did not denounce sin, he spoke only of joy and righteousness. The teaching of Francis was in every way absolutely positive, the embodiment in his words and actions of the joy and peace of the believing soul that is at one with God. On that ground only did his appeal come home to the hearts of men. He soon kindled their imaginations. A man of the people, speaking their own tongue by the wayside and wherever he found them, he appealed to the popular fancy as a representation of the life of Christ. That is the secret of the myths and legends that have gathered round Francis.
Francis lived for a short time in a hut outside Assisi, but subsequently he withdrew to a cell which he had made for himself near the Church of the Portiuncula, and this henceforth was his home. Inside the modern church, the cell in which Francis died still remains, beside the little church which his own hands had built. Francis impressed upon the minds of his brethren that, having withdrawn themselves from the world and being poor, their first duty was to work. They were not yet an Order, still less had Francis any idea of founding a mendicant Order. He and his followers might beg sometimes, but it was only for
