suffering, and endowed with an intellectual pride
intolerant of froward ignorance, was, through the chastening power of
that belief, transformed into the cheerful minister and willing slave
of the weaklings whom he gathered into his home, and around whom the
tendrils of his heart had entwined themselves, waxing closer and
stronger in the moisture of his never-failing charity; because Henry
Havelock, a man of the sword, whose duties have never been too
propitious to the cultivation and fostering of the gentler virtues,
lived and died a blameless hero, constrained by that faith to be one of
its most illustrious exemplars; [225] because David Livingstone looms
great and reverend in our mental sight in his devotion to a land and
race embraced in his boundless fellow-feeling, and whose miseries he
has commended to the sympathy of the civilized world in words the
pathos whereof has melted thousands of once obdurate hearts to crave a
share in applying a balm to the "open sore of Africa"--that slave-trade
whose numberless horrors beggar description; and finally--one more
example out of the countless varieties of types that blend into a
unique solidarity in the active manifestation of the Christian life--we
believe because Charles Gordon, the martyr-soldier of Khartoum, in
trusting faith a very child, but in heroism more notable than any mere
man of whom history contains a record, gathered around himself, through
the sublime attractiveness of his faith-directed life, the united
suffrages of all nations, and now enjoys, as the recompense and seal of
his life's labours, an apotheosis in homage to which the heathen of
Africa, the man-hunting Arab, the Egyptian, the Turk, all jostle each
other to blend with the exulting children of Britain who are directly
glorified by his life and history.

[226] Here, then, are speaking evidences of the believers' grounds.
Verily they are of the kind that are to be seen in our midst, touched,
heard, listened to, respected, beloved--nay, honoured, too, with the
glad worship our inward spirit springs forth to render to goodness so
largely plenished from the Source of all Good. Can Modern Science and
Criticism explain them away, or persuade us of their insufficiency as
incentives to the hearty acceptance of the religion that has received
such glorious, yet simply logical, incarnation in the persons of weak,
erring men who welcomed its responsibilities conjointly with its
teachings, and thereby rais