.

In the summer term some teaching work was offered him at Merton, and
by Mr. Grey's advice he accepted it, thus postponing for a while that
London curacy and that stout grapple with human need at its sorest
for which his soul was pining. 'Stay here a year or two,' Grey said,
bluntly; 'you are at the beginning of your best learning time, and you
are not one of the natures who can do without books. You will be all the
better worth having afterward, and there is no lack of work here for a
man's moral energies.'

Langham took the same line, and Elsmere submitted. Three happy and
fruitful years followed. The young lecturer developed an amazing power
of work. That concentration which he had been unable to achieve for
himself his will was strong enough to maintain when it was a question
of meeting the demands of a college class in which he was deeply
interested. He became a stimulating and successful teacher, and one of
the most popular of men. His passionate sense of responsibility toward
his pupils made him load himself with burdens to which he was constantly
physically unequal, and fill the vacations almost as full as the terms.
And as he was comparatively a man of means, his generous, impetuous
temper was able to gratify itself in ways that would have been
impossible to others. The story of his summer reading parties, for
instances, if one could have unravelled it, would have been found to be
one long string of acts of kindness toward men poorer and duller than
himself.

At the same time he formed close and eager relations with the heads of
the religious party in Oxford. His mother's Evangelical training of
him, and Mr. Grey's influence, together, perhaps, with certain drifts
of temperament, prevented him from becoming a High Churchman. The
sacramental, ceremonial view of the Church never took hold upon him. But
to the English Church as a great national institution for the promotion
of God's work on earth no one could have been more deeply loyal, and
none coming close to him could mistake the fervor and passion of his
Christian feeling. At the same time he did not know what rancor or
bitterness meant, so that men of all shades of Christian belief reckoned
a friend in him, and he went through life surrounded by an unusual,
perhaps a dangerous, amount of liking and affection. He threw himself
ardently into the charitable work of Oxford, now helping a High Church
vicar, and now toiling with Gray and one or two other Libe