He was as if he had been born anew.
The old sense of failure in his work, the feeling of unfitness for it, and the old dread of it, had been lifted out of his soul, and not only was he a new man, but he felt himself to be charged with a new mission, because he had a new message for his men.

No longer did he conceive himself as a moral policeman or religious censor, whose main duty it was to stand in judgment over the faults and sins of the men of his battalion.

No more would the burden of his message be a stern denunciation of these faults and sins.

Standing there to-day, he could only wonder at his former blindness and stupidity and pride.
"Who am I," he said in bitter self-humiliation, "that I should judge my comrades?
How little I knew myself." "A man of God," his superintendent had said in his last letter to him.
Yes, truly a man of God! A MAN not God! A MAN not to sit in God's place in judgment upon his fellow sinners, but to show them God, their Father.
Barry thought of the frequent rebukes he had administered to the officers and men for what he considered to be their sins.

He groaned aloud.
"God will forgive me, I know," he said.