Lew Wallace was a General during the Mexican-American War who became a lawyer and served again as a Union General during the US Civil War. In 1875, he had a conversation with an agnostic while traveling by train. During the conversation Wallace realized he didn't know as much as he should about his faith. He wrote, "I was ashamed of myself, and make haste now to declare that the mortification of pride I then endured ... ended in a resolution to study the whole matter.:
The result of his study was a book titled
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. (This story may be better known for the movie starring Charleston Heston.) Shortly after it came out in 1880, the book quickly became the number one selling book in the United States displacing
Uncle Tom's Cabin. It would remain the top selling book until
Gone With the Wind was published in 1936. It is considered the most influential Christian book written in the 19th century.
Fr Vogel's favorite part of the book is the first five chapters describing the Magi. Since today is the eve of Epiphany, you may enjoy
reading it here,
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