Project Canterbury

The Mind and Work of Bishop King

By B.W. Randolph and J.W. Townroe

With a preface by the Bishop of London.

London: Mowbray, 1918.


Chapter IV. Pastoral Professor at Oxford

THE Chair of Pastoral Theology, carrying with it a Canonry at Christ Church, had been founded in 1842.

The first occupant of this important post was the Rev. C. A. Ogilvie. He died in February, 1873. A few days later Mr. Gladstone, with the sanction of the Queen, wrote to Dr. King, asking him to assume the vacant chair. "Allow me to assure you," he writes, "that in submitting your name to Her Majesty I have been moved by no other consideration than that of what I believe to be your gifts and merits, and the promise they afford of a tranquil but powerful and deep religious influence on young men within the precincts of the university." How abundantly this hope was fulfilled the young men who happened to be at Oxford for the next twelve years could abundantly testify. But for the moment the loss to Cuddesdon was terrible.

King, though installed at Christ Church in April, did not, however, actually vacate the principalship till after the annual festival, which was held, as usual, on the Tuesday after Trinity Sunday, which fell in 1873 on June 10th. It was naturally a great occasion. Liddon was the preacher, and in the sermon he alluded, of course, to what was uppermost in the minds of all. "To-day ... is a day of many congratulations, natural and legitimate. Never before the present year has this college, in the person of any of its working officers, received such emphatic recognition from high quarters of the services which it has been permitted to render to the Church. That recognition many of you will feel, however grateful in itself, is purchased at a very heavy cost." [The sermon is printed in Clerical Life and Work under the title "The Moral Groundwork of Clerical Training."]

King settled in Christ Church with his mother for the October Term. He used laughingly to tell how kind the undergraduates were to him on his beginning his new work. All sorts of rumours about his ritualistic leanings had gained currency in Oxford and not least at Christ Church, but "all the dear things (i.e. the undergraduates) did," he used to say, "was to hang up a surplice on the lamp-post outside my house." It was a not unkindly welcome, as much as to say, "We know what to expect!"

At that time Christ Church was a very strong centre of Church influence. Dr. Pusey was still alive in the well-known corner of Tom Quad; Liddon was close by on the other side of the great gateway. Dr. Bright, as Professor of Ecclesiastical History, was in his house opposite "Kill Canon" archway, a hundred yards from King's "Lodgings"; and among younger men Henry Scott Holland and Francis Paget were soon to come to the front as Senior Students of the House.

This was an atmosphere in which King could breathe freely. He was not naturally "academic" in any way, less still was there ever any trace of "donnishness" in him, so that at first sight his professorship might have seemed a formidable task to take up; but with those who have been named in such close proximity he would not feel stifled or strained; on the contrary, he would be thoroughly at home, in complete sympathy, and in an atmosphere in which he would naturally and inevitably expand.

Not that he in any way neglected the intellectual side of things. Far from it. Many who knew him as only a good and holy man, and who may have somewhat deprecated his coming to Oxford as a professor, soon learnt to realise that they had in King one who was richly endowed with the gift of wisdom, and one whose opinion in intellectual questions was very well worth having. Men soon came to discover his great ability.

He used to lecture each year on Hooker, on the Ordinal, and on Pastoral Theology. His lectures were given in his own house. The men crowded into his study and the dining-room adjoining, and King, wearing his cassock, but no gown, used to stand in the doorway between the two apartments. It was more like talking than lecturing, but none the less--probably the more--appreciated for all that. He was naturally best, because most at home, in his lectures on Pastoral Theology. His experience at Wheatley and Cuddesdon was, of course, invaluable. His lectures on preaching many will remember.

He used to say about the test of a good sermon--"That sermon is a good sermon not when people come out of church saying, 'What a wonderful sermon, what a wonderful preacher,' but when they go quietly away and want to be alone."

"Any manner but no mannerism," was another of his sayings about sermons. You can use any manner, he would say, that is natural to you, but don't copy somebody else's manner. Be natural, be yourself, and any action you may use will then be spontaneous and inevitable. "Truth conveyed through a personality," is one great definition of preaching. [The phrase is Bishop Phillips Brooks'.] He used to dwell also on Bishop Dupanloup's description of preaching. It is speaking to the people (parler à), not merely speaking before them (devant). "You may fire off a great sermon before people," he would say, "but it won't touch them unless you speak to them." He had himself the power of a real orator, but ars est artium celare artem--and his preaching seemed the simplest thing in the world. When he wrote or spoke he talked to the people, using often the simplest words and illustrations. He used to say that it was good to begin with an allusion to something that was in people's minds, and this was his own constant practice. He was never inappropriate; he would warn men against repeating a "Sunday evening gaslight sermon," which had done very well in a big town, to a small country congregation in a village.

Again and again he would insist on St. Augustine's three words as to the purpose of a sermon--'Doceat, delectet, moveat--it must teach, interest, and persuade; it must address the whole man.

A sermon should be like a church. There is the porch or introduction, which should be short; say what you are going to preach about. Then there is the nave, the main theme of the sermon divided into two or three bays. Finally there is the chancel, which represents the conclusion. Get the three main parts into right proportions.

In later life, though his sermons were often written on bits of paper of all sizes and shapes, he would say that an envelope opened out and bent backwards made a very good ground for a sermon. The central part of the envelope was for the main theme, the two sides, when it was split open, served as space for jotting down the illustrations, the top and bottom ends for the beginning and the conclusion respectively.

He preached constantly in Oxford, especially at St. Barnabas and at St. Philip and St. James. But perhaps his greatest work in Oxford--his most far-reaching work--was done in the altogether informal "Friday Addresses," which he gave at nine o'clock every week in an outhouse which was reached by passing through the professor's house and across the lawn. This building was converted by King into an oratory, which was eventually somewhat enlarged, and which must have held about one hundred and fifty men. This was his "Bethel," as he called it, and every Friday in term time it was crowded by young men. No ritual here--all was absolute simplicity. "It was a wash-house," he said, "and we cleaned it out, and put in cocoa-nut matting and chairs and a harmonium--very simple, but very lovely. It is a great pleasure to me." The walls were quite bare, with the exception of Guido Reni's "Head of Christ," which hung above a faldstool at the end of the building.

The place was full before the time to begin, and when "Tom" struck nine--one can feel again, after so many years--the hush of expectation, then the opening of the door, followed by the heavy tread, and, finally, the sight of the well-known figure, as King, robed in a very ample and somewhat crumpled surplice, made his way up the room and knelt down at the faldstool; there was a pause, then a collect, followed by a hymn (sung kneeling), accompanied by a harmonium; then a prayer, after which he would stand up and speak as he alone could speak. It might be on the Lord's Prayer, or on the Ten Commandments, or on the seven capital sins, or on our Lord's life; but, whatever the subject, it was so handled as to seem to go straight to men's hearts. Current events would be alluded to--the beginning of term, the weather, the death of General Gordon, an article in the Times--these and suchlike topics would be touched on; but it seemed to matter little what the subject was. What we all felt was that here was a heart beating in sympathy with my heart; it would help me if I could talk to him; and he wants me to live close to God so that I may bring others to God; for that was always his point of view. He knew that many--probably the majority--of those to whom he spoke would be looking forward to Ordination, and he would often say, "I am speaking, dear friends, to you like this for the sake of the poor people to whom you will, please God, be going."

"Of course," writes Mr. George Russell, "his official duties were primarily concerned with the candidates for Holy Orders; but his influence extended to a much wider circle. Men who, with no thought of seeking the priesthood, were yet in earnest about religion, found themselves drawn by an irresistible attraction to the private lectures which he gave at his house at Christ Church. Those lectures dealt, not with disputed points of doctrine, but with the deepest and often the most secret facts of moral and spiritual experience. His power of sympathy amounted to genius, and gave him an almost supernatural insight into human hearts. He combined the keenest spirituality with a sanctified common sense, which good people sometimes lack. He spoke to us of our past lives, of our future prospects, of our present temptations, of our besetting sins, with an intimate penetration, engendered by long experience in personal contact with souls. He told us truths about ourselves which were part of our consciousness, but which we believed to have been hidden from all except ourselves. It was the same when he preached before the university. There was no rhetoric, no striving after effect, no parade of learning, no attempt to be startling or novel or paradoxical. ... There was the clear statement of theological truth, so gently worded that even the most fiercely controverted questions were touched without offence or jar. There were plain lessons of moral duty, from which one might shrink, but which one could not gainsay. And every now and then there was some keen phrase about our experience, past or present, which once heard was never forgotten: 'Some of us look back to-night to old school friendships when Satan was transformed into an angel of light.' "

No picture of Dr. King at Oxford would be complete without some reference to his mother.

The Bishop of Winchester writes: "The only thing that made the uniqueness of King feel less unique was to know Mrs. King. But to see how the nature had come to him, upon which the special work of grace and discipline had wrought, only made it the more attractive. His ways with her were delightful:--

"'My dear mother, you know, always tells people, with so much content, that she pays her servants just the same wages as many years ago. She does not know how they come into my study from the drawing-room on wages-day and receive a nice little addition.'

"Her death made a great difference in his life. I remember one quaint instance of it. A preacher had preached in the cathedral a sermon which he thoroughly disliked: taste and temper, form and substance. He remarked afterwards, 'Now a sermon like that makes me feel how I miss my dear mother. I should have just gone into her room afterwards and said, "Mother, we've had a beastly sermon!" and then there would have been an end of it, i.e. all the rankle of it would have gone.' His father, when dying, had commended his mother to his special charge; and she was at Cuddesdon and Oxford, till her death, the recipient of all his confidences and the centre of his life."

"So your dear, sweet mother is gone to her rest," wrote Dr. Jones, the Bishop of Capetown, "and to the bosom of Jesus Christ. May the light of God's face shine ever more and more upon her! She was indeed one of this earth's treasures, a jewel of God's storehouse. What a change this will make in your life! ... I had learnt quite to love her, and I had learnt to regard her as my ideal of the Christian lady."

"Through all the Cuddesdon, and most of the Oxford, time, the most delightfully characteristic feature of his home was his mother. She had his gracious, tender ways, and it was an infinite joy to play round her with his fun. One of the prettiest sights in the world was to watch him open the little side-door into their garden out of the cathedral, and pass through with her, after service. We used to wonder how he would ever bear her departure. But when her death came we found that he had been preparing himself for years, and that he could retain all his wonderful serenity and gentleness and confidence and courage.

"'My great satisfaction,' he wrote 'is that the victory was so complete. I did not expect any fear; but there was not one word of anxiety or care about anything--just the same trustful, bright, loving self she has always been. . . . How to get on I do not quite see, but then I need not move just yet; I am sure the light will come. I have had so many kind letters speaking of her brightness, sympathy, wisdom, etc. And, when I remember that she has been enabled to do all this in the days of her widowhood, it is a bright example for me, and gives me hope. Pray for me, dear friend, a little bit that I may be guided. I am tempted to fear the loss of her wisdom almost more than the comfort of her brightness; but I know whence it came, and it can come still.'"

A leading characteristic of Edward King was what one who knew him very intimately calls his "ethical outlook." All his reading was done with this idea in view. His books continually bear witness to it. He marked any passage or phrase which bore on the development or enrichment of character. Thus he developed continually his natural insight into character by what he read.

When he first went back to Oxford he re-read his Aristotle and took the Ethics as a basis; and used them, not indeed as an end, but as a beginning. "To go from the Bible to Aristotle," he says, "is to go back and to go down, and to narrow your hold on, and your sympathy with, men. The old taunt, 'Oh! can't you write a better ethic? Why, as Christians do you keep going back to Aristotle?' is answered--'We do see the deficiencies in Aristotle, we are not satisfied with him. We can and we do supply the deficiencies in revelation."

He longed for some one to bring out a good book on Christian Ethics.

"Political Economy," he writes to Henry Scott Holland, a propos of the labour troubles and strikes which were taking place in the year 1877, "the relation of ethics and politics, is becoming a practical question, and I very much hope some of you good people will bring out an edition of the Republic adapted for a Christian Ploughboy, with notes in his language, and illustrated not by arguments but by stories. We have been worrying these poor boys with the Proverbs, and little narrow bits of personal ethics, and now they are beginning to feel there is a big world round about them, with lots of new powers and hopes, and so they are dashing about. But we must put them upon the real principle, and then, after a bit, they will go on and up, in order, dear things!"

Another letter shows to some extent how he would apply his principles.

"I hope the farmer's lad will do well. The best way is to point out certain plain fundamental things for him to know and do. Get the main outline of his life right, and trust to the Holy Spirit to aid him in all those delicate and divine intricacies of the spiritual life which our clumsy faculties are for the most part too rough to touch without injury. I mean teach him the Ten Commandments, Creed, and Lord's Prayer; to act from a sense of right and wrong, instead of pleasure. Teach him to pray for himself, to keep from persons and places where he would be likely to go wrong; to read the Bible, if he can; and keep Sunday quietly, and go to church. That plain kind of way is best. Your own loving heart will probably be the best power to draw him, but you must take care to draw him by your heart, to God, and not simply to yourself. It is heartbreaking work, but God will help you, if you first give yourself to Him. God bless you and keep you and guide you with His wisdom and holy love." All this keen and intense love for individual souls was never merely emotional or sentimental or weak; it was part and parcel of his intellectual outlook on the world and on human society and human life.

"Intellectually he has sometimes been depreciated, perhaps because he won no academic distinctions. But those who knew him will perhaps think that he was among the most intellectual persons they have ever known; only, as was perhaps the case with St. Anselm, to whom he has been compared, his intelligence was so much a part of his character, so wholly himself, that it might easily escape notice in the simplicity and charm of his personality. He had a singularly alert mind, and was interested in everything; no one ever saw him bored, and he never touched a topic without displaying an original view, and he was really alive to the intellectual difficulties of his day. He knew and could talk French, German, and Italian; and in a mixed company he could talk in at least three languages at once--no small accomplishment; while his English was admirable, and he read widely to the end."'

In 1875 King spent some of the Long Vacation in Dresden. He lived in a German family, and his remarks on German methods illustrate his wisdom and discernment. They are certainly not without special interest at this moment.

"I had," he writes, "a very interesting week at Leipzig, and saw most of the chief theological professors--Delitzsch, Ludthard, and Tholuck--at Halle, about twenty miles off. They are very simple, and work very hard at their books; but not very much more, I think. I think in England we have a wider-reaching and better balanced work than the Germans have; they have confined themselves almost to the cultivation of the intellect, and I don't think it will hold the whole man; he needs cultivation of heart, feelings, affections, etc., as well."

And again, after his return home, he writes: "I have been in Dresden this Long Vacation, working at German. It is very interesting seeing the wonderful upgrowth and power of the German nation; but the unbelief is very sad--only three per cent, they say, go to any sort of church in Berlin, and unbelief is quite open. They seem to have passed through the stages of Rationalism and Pantheism, and now they have almost ceased to care about the metaphysics which we have been following, and worshipping in them, and they are devoting themselves to physics. This means, I fear, for many, materialism. Ludthard says this plainly, meaning by materialism love of money or power or pleasure; this seems to be the leading danger now--that people will try to be respectable, but without God; to separate morality from religion, to devote themselves to civilization and culture, and forget God. The results of physical science are so directly beneficial to society that it pays in the eyes of the world; and yet one ought to know by this time, after the example of Greece and Rome, that culture may exist without morality."

There is something almost prophetic in these words.

In a letter to the present writer the Bishop of Winchester [Dr. Talbot] says: "I owe immensely much to that beloved and holy man." It was a great event to us who already had knowledge of him when the news came that Mr. Gladstone was sending King to us as Professor of Pastoral Theology. We knew that he would do the work in some ways most admirably, for to all Cuddesdon men, and to many others by repute, the Principal's Pastoralia were something by themselves. But we hardly knew how he would fit in to the academical surroundings. He had been so identified with his quiet and beautiful surroundings at Cuddesdon that, joyful as we were to welcome him, we wondered how it would go.

"He himself with his quick, delicate tact and perception, felt acutely how great a change it was; and what a venture of faith for a man without academical distinction and experience; how difficult and even formidable a place a university is to enter in advanced middle life; how he would be in contact with new problems, or old problems in a new atmosphere. I remember his telling me once that when he came to Oxford he took for his special theme of meditation and symbolic remembrance the Crown of Thorns--the Saviour's sufferings of the head--and he intimated that in his inner experience he had found at first the truth of the symbolism. It was very characteristic, solemn, grave, and deep, yet with just that lightest touch of the quaint gracefulness which so often showed itself in lighter ways, and made his conversation and company so delicious. He always keenly felt the difference between himself and academical folk, and the want of familiarity with academical studies and ways of thought. He would express this in his own whimsical way by speaking to us dons as 'You great people'; shall I say that this was three parts modesty and sincerity, and one part irony--so good for us too, and absolutely without sting.

"I never remember, however, any but one time when he seemed a little out of his element; and that was when one could feel that from a sense of duty he had put a strong constraint upon his natural instincts. He was preaching in the university pulpit; there had been some controversy about Confession. It was a subject on which he could have spoken out of a full experience with a characteristic blending of sympathy and firmness; but he evidently thought it his duty to preach a learned sermon; and to his modesty it seemed best to do this by appeal to great names and Fathers of the Church rather than say much of his own, so he gave us quite a chain of patristic and other quotations; and it was 'dull,' not least perhaps to those to whom the word dull was the last epithet which they would ever have thought themselves likely to use of any utterance from that tender, humorous, pungent, winning spirit.

"By way of contrast I always remember a sermon which he preached as Vicar of Cuddesdon to his parish folk. It was autumn after the harvest was over; and he suggested how the darker evenings might be used for more study of the Old Testament, and for preaching about it in course. The parson ought not to be always exhorting his people, but expounding, and guiding their thoughts; only they hindered this by the need of so much stirring and reminding: 'You make us so noisy in our preaching.' But there was so much to explore in the Books of the Old Testament, if we could give time to books mostly so little known--Now Nahum!

"But coming back to his position in the university, it did, I think, prove more intensive than extensive. He did not become a great personality in the university. The dons, on the whole, hardly found out his charm, insight, and cleverness.

"His weapons were not quite academical ones. But the old characteristic influence came out in Oxford, intensive and personal still, but now upon a broader field and with larger reach. It found two special channels.

"There was that of the chair. His professorial lectures (I never heard them)--but perhaps they were not altogether such as the word 'professorial' would naturally suggest. But they were worked for carefully. I remember how he talked of the big work on Pastoral Theology, by Sailer, Bishop of Ratisbon, at which he had worked hard, and his was a pastoral chair; and in that line of teaching he was inimitable, so human, so sagacious, so penetrating, so devout. The spell was felt at once. His class rolled up to unprecedented figures, and hundreds of the young candidates for Holy Orders went out from Oxford carrying with them not only such and such convictions which he had helped to form in his interpretation of Hooker, but even more with thoughts and hints about dealing with their flocks of which they must have felt the touch most in the least controversial and most practical parts of their work. It was the old influence of the Cuddesdon Parochialia deepened and widened.

"The other influence was 'Bethel,' the little outhouse at the end of his garden which he transformed into a little shrine of teaching and devotion. Here on the Friday evenings came numbers of men to join in a simple service and hear him pour out freely the fruits of his sympathy and experience, his insight into divine things and into human life, specially young life.

"But I must not leave the impression that his .influence was limited to undergraduates. It was nowhere stronger than in what it brought to some of us younger dons; of this it is a little difficult to speak. Perhaps I can speak of it best by speaking abstractly of his place in the current of the theological movement. No one indeed was less abstract, or more concrete himself than Dr. King. And the knowledge that he was there among us; the living evidence given by his spirit and example of what goodness could be in one who was within our own immediate ken and touch--this was to myself, and I am sure to others of us, a debt for which to be immeasurably thankful.

"But where did he come into the process of Church life in Oxford? Two things stand out.

"He was an affectionate follower of the Tractarians, a son of the great leaders, the contemporary and close friend of the second generation, such as Dr. Liddon and Dr. Bright, and a profound admirer of Dean Church, with whom I have always felt that he had a certain likeness in temperament on some sides. His theology was their theology. He was si quis alius, a revering disciple. Yet we all felt at once a new quality in his outlook and treatment of this. He was less severe, less didactic and dominating, less preoccupied than they. With a delightful tact he would just let us hear athwart his modesty (he would never have dreamt of being classed in comparison with them) a note of conscious, even deliberate, difference. His temperament radiated sympathy, mental as well as moral and personal. He felt with men, he felt with his time, he was conscious of the movement under his feet. It did not carry him away, but there was appeal in it; he felt the appeal, and responded to it. He wanted to learn as well as to guide; and I feel sure, looking back, that as he got an increasing position he felt drawn to give younger men the sympathy and help which can be given by one who, standing between generations, can feel something of the new as well as the old.

"I think this can be, perhaps, best illustrated by that portrait of his which Richmond painted, and which was reproduced in a well-known engraving. [The original, at first given to Mrs. King, the bishop's mother, is now in the Common Room at Cuddesdon.] At first I think it disappointed people; this wasn't the gracious, winning countenance which they knew; it was more grave, even severe. But closer acquaintance, I think, showed that the painter had rightly caught and interpreted a quality of the face, of the man, and of his inward experiences. His was the freedom which comes through and after discipline, that of a man severe with himself behind his gentleness to others; yes, and with an unflinching sincerity in him which could not help bracing those with whom he had to do. Thus it was that both in his personality and in his teaching there was a blend of the strong austerity of the generation behind, and of the more expansive, lighter-hearted (and in many of us shallower-hearted) tone of the generation into which he lived on. Something of this was in Dr. Bright, his most intimate friend; in a deeper way still it had been anticipated in Dean Church, and was one cause of the extraordinary learning and persistent influence of one so retiring as the Dean. But (as you know, as we all know) in King it was King's. He did not suggest any one. Selfless as he was, there was no character with a more genuine outline and idiosyncrasy.

"What I have tried to say might be illustrated by his relation to Scott Holland, and the intrepid appeal which Holland made (with so much less response than it deserved) to the sons and grandsons of the Oxford Movement to bring its spiritual force to bear upon the problems, both intellectual and social, of a new time, or by his attitude to the question so delicate and complex about criticism and Scripture. But there was one development of Church life which all will unite to remember with gratitude. He felt how the renewed and deepened faith which had given new associations to the name of Oxford must prove itself in the great world, in the life of the nation, in the service of the Gospel; how the cords must be lengthened of a militant and evangelizing Church. He worked and taught steadily about 'Missions.' St. Stephen's House and the Oxford Mission to Calcutta remain as witnesses to the creative touch of his hand when he passed from among us (steering his way through a farewell meeting almost dangerously charged with emotion, by the 'Rub Lightly,' which had caught his eye on the match-box, sole remaining object in his dismantled study). We rejoiced with all our hearts that such a man should receive such an honour and have the great spiritual opportunities of a bishop entrusted to him; but we knew that Oxford would not see his like again, and we should hardly have been wrong if we had questioned whether in any other sphere he would be able to use influence as direct, as lovely, and so entirely timely as that of his Oxford professoriate. . . .

"Often have I inwardly used of him the words--'I had almost said even as they'--as those who doubted or fainted--'but then I should have condemned' what I had seen and known in him.

"Let me add two little instances which live in memory of the way in which he gave personal help. Walking at Cuddesdon, about the time of my ordination, we had spoken of the difficulties which beset faith. 'Well, you see,' he said, 'it's like this--I say to others, "The ice is thin, but I think we can get across. I mean to try myself; won't you come along?"' About the same time, when we were about to open Keble College, speaking of our ideas of the kind of influence which we might use, he gave me the wise counsel, 'Don't try to Talbotize your men!'"

Future generations who have not known him will ask, "What was he like?" Study the portraits reproduced in this volume and then read what Canon Scott Holland has written. They represent the simple truth; there is no exaggeration in what he says. Every one who knew and loved him will endorse every word.

"A light went out of our lives when Edward King passed out of our companionship. It was a light that he carried with him--light that shone through him--light that flowed from him. The room was lit into which he entered. It was as if we had fallen under a streak of sunlight that flickered and danced and laughed and turned all to colour and to gold. Those eyes of his were an illumination. Even to recall him for an instant in the bare memory was enough to set all the day alive and glittering:

'My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.'

So the heart leaped as it caught sight of that dear face that shone and quivered with the radiant hope that had made it its very own. Was there ever such a face? So gracious, so winning, so benignant, so tender? Its beauty was utterly natural and native. It made no effort to be striking, or marked, or peculiar, or special. It possessed just the typical beauty that should of right belong to the human countenance. It seemed to say, 'This is what a face is meant to be--this is the face that a man would have if he were really himself--this is the face that Love would normally wear.'

"We felt as if we had been waiting for such a face to come and meet us--a face that would simply reveal how deep is the goodness of which humanity is capable. . . .

"This gracious beauty of his countenance lasted to the very end. Indeed it had taken on a new charm; for the signals of old age in the wreathed wrinkles only gave an additional emphasis to the delicate rose-pink colouring of a face that was charged with the gaiety of an unconquerable gladness. . . . Those kindly eyes could indeed shine with a glint of steel; and the level brows with their bushy eyebrows could wear a look of sternness; for he was a soldier at heart, and knew the stress of battle, and had a sword that he could wield. This touch of severity was apt to come out in photographs. But he was still an undying optimist. He believed in everything being for the best. He saw goodness and wisdom everywhere manifest. He loved everybody and every thing. He grew happier and happier. His eyes twinkled with dauntless merriment; his presence brimmed over with joy. After all the earth was a good place, and heaven would be better still. God be thanked." [A Bundle of Memories, p. 48.]


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