s. There have
been Christians as earnest and devout as he; there have been soldiers
as brave and capable; there have been men as kind-hearted; but there
have been few who, while combining all of these good points and many
more, have exhibited so complete an absence of the numerous defects
which blemish the characters of most great men. The late Prebendary
Barnes, who was very intimate with him, remarks that "there are no
popular illusions to be dispelled" as one studies his inner life. Sir
John Lubbock in one of his lectures says of Napoleon, that he was a man
of genius, but not a hero. Now, while Gordon was essentially a genius,
he was even more essentially a hero. True heroism is inseparably
associated with self-sacrifice. A man may be as brave as a bulldog, yet
be entirely wanting in all that goes to make him a hero. The dictionary
definition by no means embraces all that the word implies. Lord
Wolseley in a magazine article remarked that he had met but two heroes
in his eventful life; one of them was that noble Christian officer
General Lee, who commanded the Southerners in the American War, and the
other was Gordon. It was his complete forgetfulness of self, his entire
willingness to sink his own individuality, his own comfort, his own
position, his good name, that made Gordon so Christlike, and lifted him
above the level of his fellows. We are accustomed to read of brave men,
of original thinkers, of great statesmen, of men of genius in different
departments of life, but we seldom read of one who was so entirely free
from what Milton calls the last infirmity of great men--the love of
fame--that he was willing to be nothing that the cause he had espoused
might triumph. When Columbus first saw the River Orinoco, some one
remarked to him that he must have discovered an island. His reply was,
"No such river as that flows from an island; that mighty torrent must
drain the waters of a continent;" and his prediction proved to be
correct. When we see the deep stream of true heroism flowing from the
heart of such a man as Gordon, we instinctively feel that no mere human
heart could produce such a torrent of good works, but that behind the
human being there must be something more. It has been my object in this
memoir to show that the stream that went forth from Gordon's heart to
cheer and bless all with whom he came in contact, sprang from no
isolated fountain, but had its origin in the great ocean of Divine
love, which has