the undergraduate life of Christ's College must,
as a whole, have felt his real influence; nor was his life great simply
because he was a scholar and a thinker. But his life was great, and
will for all time remain great, because it was an inspiration--there is
no other word: it was, and is, a lasting, vivid, real inspiration to a
few. What Bishop Westcott did on a large scale, Forbes Robinson did on
a small. He inspired men--inspired them to search for and hold to the
realities of life.

'To sum up: a man admitted into the inner chamber of his life learnt
there something of these three things: (_a_) The value of his own
personality, (_b_) the meaning of love, (_c_) the power of prayer.

{50}

'_a. The value of his own personality._--A man, as he talked with
Forbes, was taught with increasing clearness the amazing possibilities
of life for any one who has tried to think what it means to say that
"this is I." Many of us, conscious in ourselves only of very ordinary
attainments, of no very high ideals, of weaknesses of character, learnt
from our friend that in spite of all this, our own personality was
God's greatest gift to us. We learnt from him that our own particular
commonplace life was, with all its failures and inconsistencies, a
tremendous enterprise, big with opportunities. He taught us this by
his belief in us. He held (again like Bishop Westcott) through
everything to the faith of "man naturally Christian." By his belief in
a man he forced him at last to believe in himself. For he taught us
that we were, each one, two men--the real "Ego" and the false--and that
the real self must in the end have the mastery over the false, because
that real self was the Christ.

'_b. The meaning of love._--It is impossible for lesser natures to
enter into all that the word "love" meant to Forbes. His love for his
friends was "wonderful, passing the love of women." He loved some men
with an intensity of feeling impossible to describe. It was almost
pain to him. If he loved a man he loved him with a passionate love (no
weaker expression will do). We undergraduates found our natures too
small to understand it. Yet, as we learnt to know him more and more,
we began too to learn a little of what real love is--we began to learn
what can be the meaning and the wonder and the power {51} and the depth
of the love of man for man. And we understood in time that his love
for us and his belief in us sprang from the same hig