ed in what was at once its weighty and its winning
dignity. Such was his charm for the elect; but here again comes the
question of temperament. Between Ruskin and Jowett there was a
temperamental antipathy. An antipathy of this kind is a very different
thing from any reasoned dislike, and of this general fact Ruskin and
Jowett were types. I was myself another. Just as Jowett repelled so
Ruskin attracted me. During my later days at Oxford I grew to know
Ruskin intimately, and my sympathy with his genius never lost its
loyalty, though for a long time certain of his ideas--that is to say,
ideas relating to social politics--were to me barely intelligible, and
though, when they became intelligible, I regarded them as perversely
mischievous.

But beneath these social experiences, many of them sufficiently
frivolous, and all of them superficial in so far as their interest
related to individuals, Oxford provided me with others which went to the
very roots of life. Of these deeper experiences the first was due to
Jowett, though its results, so far as I was concerned, were neither
intended, understood, nor even suspected by him.

The most sensational event which occurred during my first term at
Balliol was the suicide of one of the undergraduates. He was a poor
Scotch student of a deeply religious character, who had found, so his
friends reported, that the faith of his childhood had been taken from
him by Jowett's skeptical teachings, and who had ended by cutting his
throat with a razor in Port Meadow. Jowett preached his funeral
sermon--the only sermon which I ever, so far as my recollection serves
me, heard preached in Balliol chapel by himself or by anybody else.
Jowett, who on the occasion was obviously much moved, chose for his text
the story of the woman taken in adultery, and of Christ's challenge to
her judges, "Which of you will dare to assault with the first stone?"
The course of his argument was curious. He began with examining the
passage from the standpoint of verbal scholarship, the gist of his
criticism being that its authenticity was at least doubtful. From this
argument he diverged into one of wider scope, insisting on how much is
doubtful in what the Gospels record as the sayings of our Lord
generally, from which illuminating reflection he advanced to one wider
still. It was as follows: Since we know so little of what Christ really
said about God, how much less can we really know of the nature of God
himself;