OWN the street I see them pass, DOWN Swings the basket from his arm: Slow, and slower still they go: They will find the wistful lips. "Sweet!" Nay, you are wrong, for this Hers to loose the parcel new, While you dance in glad surprise ; Ah, dear children! Even a rod T is an excellent symptom of the healthy action of the national heart, that the most popular Englishman of the day is the gallant Governor-General of the Soudan. Nor is it merely because he is at once an acknowledged Christian and a successful soldier. We have, fortunately, many other admirable public men, who are followers of the Lamb. In this case, there is something more. And what is more in this case than many others, is a special amount of thorough and downright honesty. There have been many Christians who were notable examples of this or that school of piety; but it is sadly rare and refreshingly welcome to find a genuine disciple-frank and unreserved-of Christ Himself. We have had men of many and of eloquent words; but the people better love a man who talks little about his religion, and who is eloquent by his deeds. And we have had, of course, a hundred brilliant soldiers. Yet not often have we had a better soldier than this-one more strong and prompt, more devoted and brave, more just and fair. After all, there is no country where there is more real Christianity than in England; nowhere is there more generous praise for the true and honest heart. "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honourable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report: if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise," may we not hope, even from her very love of Gordon, that, after all, England "thinks on these things?" It is an advantage which no wise man will despise, 'to have a worthy lineage, and General Gordon was well born. His mother was an Enderby, the latest daughter of a house famous in English commerce; and his father drew his descent from the old Celtic Highlanders. A hundred years ago, before the days of great ocean steamers, the Enderby fleets were an admirable specimen of British commercial supremacy. They penetrated, in their adventurous voyages, the once southern seas, and practically discovered and gave to the nation the vast colonies of Australia and New Zealand. They rounded the dread Cape of Horn, and showed the sea-way, in which the Dutch and Spanish followed them. It was Enderby's vessels that carried to the United States the tea the vigorous New Englanders pitched into the sea, and challenged war; it was the same ships which bore the first convicts to Van Dieman's Land. All this meant energy and enterprise, nobly developed-the enterprise which has founded, which will hold the Island Empire, and which is now reproducing itself in Elizabeth Enderby's son. For a hundred and fifty years his father's people had been soldiers. A David Gordon, of Cope's force at Prestonpans, was his great-grandfather. Since then, the family history was one allied with the army. And when Charles George, born in 1833, went to Woolwich Military Academy, that he, too, might continue the ancestral profession, it seemed his natural place. His career at Woolwich does not seem to have been specially notable; except, perhaps, by a sudden outburst of not inexcusable spirit. When, on one occasion he was reproached with incompetency, he tore his shoulderknots off, and threw them at the officer's feet. The young soldier was just in time for the Crimean war. On New Year's Day, 1855, he reached Balaclava. The new school was harder than the Woolwich Academy. No one who has had experience of that terrible winter before Sebastopol fell, can ever forget it. Gordon shared, with many others, the miseries of the trenches, and the perils of the misty bivouac, alternately with such battle surprises as Inkermann, and the final assaults on the Redan. He left the Crimea with a distinctly high reputation; but he had not yet grown into the mature man. A year or two afterwards, we find him in Bessarabia, engaged on engineering work on the new frontier line between Russia and Turkey. Soon he is back in England; soon he is off again on similar surveying work-this time to Armenia. To him there was special interest in his new tour. He had been sent to the ancient site of world-history-to the cradle of the human race. Somewhere here, surely, if any man could discern it, lay the Garden of Eden. It is characteristic of Gordon that he explored the country with a Biblical scholar's interest; and drew, no doubt, stimulus and inspiration from the solemn and wondrous history, which mysteriously connects itself with the deserted plains across which the English company often urged their way. At In 1865, after a visit to China, he was back in England; and now a simple Engineer at Greenwich, directing the works in connection with the defence of the Thames. Greenwich he was six years. They were six of his bravest and best. No rebel force was there to be met and con quered in the usual military style; but never was Gordon conducting a more real or a more tremendous campaign than when he spent his days in the hospitals and workhouses and slums of south-eastern London. His wrestling was not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the 1 AFTER HIS RETURN FROM CHINA. heavenly places. He took the neglected boys, and taught them that a good boy's life is a battle from end to end. He pitied their sore disadvantages in the fight, and threw himselt beside them. Some of the better lads-who, he hoped, had overcome, he would call kings. Christ, he said, would make all His people both kings and conquerors. 1 Revised version. He gathered them into classes; he did anything for them, and for all the poor and suffering people he could. He hated speech-making, and all vain displays; but he worked and gave away, himself first, and then all he had. "No man," he thought, "had right to be proud of anything; he had no native good in him; he has received it all. There is deep cause for intense humiliation on the part of us all-all wearing of medals, adorning the body, and every form of self-glorification, is out of place. He had no right to keep back anything-once he had given himself to God." Little wonder the people loved and honoured. The boys used to write on the palisades, with a bit of chalk, "God bless the Kernel !" It was the sincerest and the worthiest praise. Since these Greenwich days, two great tasks have taxed Gordon's strength, and, having been worthily and characteristically done, have given him his widest fame. He was the leader, through many a fight, of the "ever victorious army," which saved China from the certain horrors of a most formidable rebellion within her own borders. And he was, in the service of Egypt, the hero of the Soudan. It is impossible to tell the Chinese and the Egyptian stories here. They are told by Dr. Hake, in his affectionate and excellent biography, a book written without Gordon's knowledge, or the consent he never would have given; and in Mr. Forbes' recent volume; as well as in numerous and smaller sketches. It must be enough to say that, when the story of the last quarter of this century is told, they will rank among its most romantic and its noblest narratives. Seldom have so great results been won by means seemingly so inadequate, but so masterfully used. As the tale is read of siege and battle--of the burning desert blaze, and the weary watch; and how, through it all, the simple, muchsuffering Christian soldier, with unsleeping vigilance and almost supernatural indifference to fear, rose victoriously above it all. One thinks of a kindred spirit, that of Henry Havelock. They were gallant Englishmen: they were what is much more, genuine servants of the Lord Jesus. |