a one as
to be countable on the fingers of your hand. What was it that moved
and held us, the rest of the three hundred reckless, childish boys, who
feared the Doctor with all our hearts, and very little besides in heaven
or earth; who thought more of our sets in the School than of the Church
of Christ, and put the traditions of Rugby and the public opinion of
boys in our daily life above the laws of God? We couldn't enter into
half that we heard; we hadn't the knowledge of our own hearts or the
knowledge of one another, and little enough of the faith, hope, and love
needed to that end. But we listened, as all boys in their better moods
will listen (ay, and men too for the matter of that), to a man whom we
felt to be, with all his heart and soul and strength, striving against
whatever was mean and unmanly and unrighteous in our little world. It
was not the cold, clear voice of one giving advice and warning from
serene heights to those who were struggling and sinning below, but the
warm, living voice of one who was fighting for us and by our sides, and
calling on us to help him and ourselves and one another. And so, wearily
and little by little, but surely and steadily on the whole, was brought
home to the young boy, for the first time, the meaning of his life--that
it was no fool's or sluggard's paradise into which he had wandered
by chance, but a battlefield ordained from of old, where there are no
spectators, but the youngest must take his side, and the stakes are life
and death. And he who roused this consciousness in them showed them at
the same time, by every word he spoke in the pulpit, and by his whole
daily life, how that battle was to be fought, and stood there before
them their fellow-soldier and the captain of their band--the true sort
of captain, too, for a boy's army--one who had no misgivings, and gave
no uncertain word of command, and, let who would yield or make truce,
would fight the fight out (so every boy felt) to the last gasp and the
last drop of blood. Other sides of his character might take hold of
and influence boys here and there; but it was this thoroughness and
undaunted courage which, more than anything else, won his way to the
hearts of the great mass of those on whom he left his mark, and made
them believe first in him and then in his Master.

It was this quality above all others which moved such boys as our
hero, who had nothing whatever remarkable about him except excess of
boyishness--by