"I owed nothing to Jowett," he was accustomed
to say; "everything to Green." From that great teacher he caught
his Hegelian habit of thought, his strong sense of ethical and
spiritual values, and that practical habit of mind which seeks
to apply moral principles to the problems of actual life. In 1870
came the great surprise, and Holland, who had no pretensions to
scholarship, and whose mental development had only been noticed
by a few, got a First Class of unusual brilliancy in the searching
school of _Literoe Humaniores_. Green had triumphed; he had made a
philosopher without spoiling a Christian. Christ Church welcomed a
born Platonist, and made him Senior Student, Tutor, and Lecturer.

Holland had what Tertullian calls the _anima naturaliter Christiana_,
and it had been trained on the lines of the Tractarian Movement.
When he went up to Oxford he destined himself for a diplomatic
career, but he now realized his vocation to the priesthood, and was
ordained deacon in 1872 and priest two years later. He instantly
made his mark as a preacher. Some of the sermons preached in the
parish churches of Oxford in the earliest years of his ministry
stand out in my memory among his very best. He had all the preacher's
gifts--a tall, active, and slender frame, graceful in movement,
vigorous in action, abundant in gesture, a strong and melodious
voice, and a breathless fluency of speech. Above all, he spoke
with an energy of passionate conviction which drove every word
straight home. He seemed a young apostle on fire with zeal for
God and humanity. His fame as an exponent of metaphysic attracted
many hearers who did not usually go much to church, and they were
accustomed--then as later--to say that here was a Christian who knew
enough about the problems of thought to make his testimony worth
hearing. Others, who cared not a rap for Personality or Causation,
Realism or Nominalism, were attracted by his grace, his eloquence,
his literary charm. His style was entirely his own. He played strange
tricks with the English language, heaped words upon words, strung
adjective to adjective; mingled passages of Ruskinesque description
with jerky fragments of modern slang. These mannerisms grew with
his growth, but in the seventies they were not sufficiently marked
to detract from the pure pleasure which we enjoyed when we listened
to his preaching as to "a very lovely song."

Judged by the canons of strict art, Holland was perhaps greater