don Church, being chosen to read the Gospel at the Ordination;
and he was ordained priest there just two years later. It was during
his diaconate that I, then a freshman, made his acquaintance. We
often came across one another, in friends' rooms and at religious
meetings, and I used to listen with delight to the sermons which
he preached in the parish churches of Oxford. They were absolutely
original; they always exhilarated and uplifted one; and the style
was entirely his own, full of lightness and brightness, movement
and colour. Scattered phrases from a sermon at SS. Philip and James,
on the 3rd of May, 1874, and from another at St. Barnabas, on the
28th of June in the same year, still haunt my memory.[*]

[Footnote *: An Oxford Professor, who had some difficulty with
his aspirates, censured a theological essay as "Too 'ollandy by
'alf."]

Holland lived at this time a wonderfully busy and varied life. He
lectured on Philosophy in Christ Church; he took his full share
in the business of University and College; he worked and pleaded
for all righteous causes both among the undergraduates and among
the citizens. An Oxford tutor said not long ago: "A new and strong
effort for moral purity in Oxford can be dated from Holland's
Proctorship."

This seems to be a suitable moment for mentioning his attitude
towards social and political questions. He was "suckled in a creed
outworn" of Eldonian Toryism, but soon exchanged it for Gladstonian
Liberalism, and this, again, he suffused with an energetic spirit
of State Socialism on which Mr. Gladstone would have poured his
sternest wrath. A friend writes: "I don't remember that H. S. H.,
when he was an undergraduate, took much interest in politics more
than chaffing others for being so Tory." (He never spoke at the
Union, and had probably not realized his powers as a speaker.)
"But when, in 1872, I went to be curate to Oakley (afterwards Dean
of Manchester) at St. Saviour's, Hoxton, Holland used to come and
see me there, and I found him greatly attracted to social life
in the East End of London. In 1875 he came, with Edward Talbot
and Robert Moberly, and lodged in Hoxton, and went about among
the people, and preached in the church. I have sometimes thought
that this may have been the beginning of the Oxford House."

All through these Oxford years Holland's fame as an original and
independent thinker, a fascinating preacher, an enthusiast for
Liberalism as the natural friend an