ed in
a profession of Catholic principles which allied him with forces
definitely and sometimes angrily ranged against the Higher Criticism. He
became a Bishop. Almost at once the caressing fingers of the saint
became the heavy hand of the dogmatist. He who had frightened Liddon by
his tremulous adventure towards the mere fringe of modernism became the
declared enemy, the implacable foe, of the least of his clergy who
questioned even the most questionable clauses of the creeds. He demanded
of them all a categorical assent to the literal truth of the miraculous,
in exactly the same sense in which physical facts are true. Every word
of the creeds had to be uttered _ex animo_. "It is very hard to be a
good Christian." Yes; but did Dr. Gore make it harder than it need be?
There was something not very unlike a heresy hunt in the diocese over
which the editor of _Lux Mundi_ ruled with a rod of iron.

I remember once speaking to Dr. Winnington Ingram, Bishop of London,
about the Virgin Birth. He told me that he had consulted Charles Gore on
this matter, and that he agreed with Charles Gore's ruling that if
belief in that miracle were abandoned Christianity would perish. Such is
the fate of those who put their faith in dogmas, and plant their feet on
the sands of tradition.

Dr. Gore's life as a Bishop, first of Worcester, then of Birmingham, and
finally of Oxford, was disappointing to many of his admirers, and
perhaps to himself. He did well to retire. But unfortunately this
retirement was not consecrated to those exercises which made him so
impressive and so powerful an influence in the early years of his
ministry. He set himself to be, not an exponent of the Faith, but the
defender of a particular aspect of that Faith.

Here, I think, is to be found the answer to our question concerning the
loss of Dr. Gore's influence in the national life. From the day of the
great sermons in Westminster Abbey that wonderful influence has
diminished, and he is now in the unhappy position of a party leader
whose followers begin to question his wisdom. Organisation has destroyed
him.

Dr. Gore, in my judgment, has achieved strength at the centre of his
being only at the terrible cost of cutting off, or at any rate of
maiming, his own natural temperament. Marked out by nature for the life
of mysticism, he has entered maimed and halt into the life of the
controversialist. With the richest of spiritual gifts, which demand
quiet and a profou