"I wish friends would not send me papers, &c. I pass them on to ——, who is my waste-paper basket!"

Not only did he combat that part of his nature which loved the praise of men, he also sternly resisted the temptation of ambition. For instance, he writes:—

"I wonder if I look ambitious in your eyes. Do you think I sought this place? You should know better than most people, for you have all my thoughts in my letters. Judging myself, I fear it was so when I took the work in hand; not that I cared for the money or the honours to come from it. I think, however, my main idea was the Quixotic one—to help the Khedive, mixed with the feeling that I could, with God's direction, accomplish this work.

"... There is death in the seeking of high posts on this earth for the purpose of what the world calls doing great things; the mightiest of men are flies on a wheel; a kind word to a crossing-sweeper delights Christ in him, as much as it would delight Christ in a queen."

He was conscious, too, of a natural tendency to judge his neighbours. Like many reformers, he had a critical nature, and often found himself led into temptation through it. He never screened this failing, and did his utmost to fight against it. There are several extracts from his letters on this besetting sin. Witness these two:—

"What troubles me immensely is the way in which circumstances force me into society, for in it is the great evil of judging others, picking them to pieces behind their backs, so entirely mean and contrary to our Lord's will. All this tends to make a cloud between Him and us; and yet I declare I cannot see how I can avoid it."

"This is one great reason why I never desire to enter social life, for there is very great difficulty in knowing people and not discussing others."

Considering how thorough Gordon himself was, and how intensely he hated shams of every kind, it is not surprising to find that, with his naturally critical temperament, he used most relentlessly to expose the unreality of many who, acknowledging the truth of Christianity, practically denied its power.

"As a rule, Christians are really more inconsistent than 'worldlings.' They talk truths, and do not act on them. They allow that 'God is the God of the widows and orphans,' yet they look in trouble to the gods of silver and gold: either He can help altogether, or not at all. He will not be served in conjunction with idols of any sort....

"How unlike in acts are most of so-called Christians to their Founder! You see in them no resemblance to Him. Hard, proud, 'holier than thou,' is their uniform. They have the truth, no one else, it is their monopoly."

But though he avoided Christians of this type, he had a great yearning for the society of those who were real, and had more sympathy with the weaknesses of those who were true, in spite of their failings, than most men. He was fully conscious of the natural depravity of his own heart, and so was ever tender to those who fell. Nobody was more willing than he to act to a fellow Christian on the principle laid down in the lines—

"Help a poor and weary brother Pulling hard against the stream."

He loved Christian society of the right sort, and, under its influence, his whole nature would expand, and he would converse for hours together. Writing from Galatz, where he went after the pleasant time spent at Gravesend, he says, "I feel much also the want of some religious talk," thereby adding another illustration to the truth of that text, "They that love the Lord spake often one to another."

General Gordon's temperament was not that of the monk who shuns his fellow-creatures, and it must therefore have been all the greater trial for him to cut himself off from his friends for so many years at a time as he used to do. Indeed he used to speak of it as "a living death." But the great lesson of his life was that of self-sacrifice for the good of others. Speaking to the editor of a journal, to which reference has already been made, he once said, "When I was in the Soudan, I used to pray every day, 'O Lord, let me be crushed. Lay the punishment of their sins upon me.'" Then, as if he was afraid of being misunderstood, he said, "It was a strange prayer, was it not? As if I had not enough of my own sins to bear!" Few men have learned better than he the great lesson taught from the Cross of Calvary, and few have practised that lesson more completely.

As we so often see greatness associated with success in life, it is well that now and then we witness greatness, which has not been associated with what the world calls success, for the two are far from being inseparably connected. General Gordon frequently emphasised the distinctions between honours and honour. The former he cared very little about, but the latter he ever valued highly, and he used to say that often men attain the former at the expense of the latter. No titles precede his name, nor do any decorations of importance follow it, but his simple and yet heroic self-sacrificing life have fascinated his countrymen, and helped to make the world better by setting before it a higher ideal. On the monument in St. Paul's Cathedral his life is briefly summed up in the few following words: "To Major-General Charles George Gordon, C.B., who at all times and everywhere gave his strength to the weak, his substance to the poor, his sympathy to the suffering, his heart to God. He saved an empire by his warlike genius, he ruled vast provinces with justice, wisdom, and power, and lastly, obedient to his Sovereign's command, he died in the heroic attempt to save men, women, and children, from imminent and deadly peril." The nation felt that their Poet Laureate, Lord Tennyson, did but speak the simple truth when he penned the following lines:—

"Warrior of God, man's friend, not laid below, But somewhere dead far in the waste Soudan, Thou livest in all hearts, for all men know This earth has borne no simpler, nobler man."

THE END

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