I supposed that I should never see the veteran statesman again, but four years afterward, in July, 1889, he kindly invited me to come and see him, and to bring my wife.  It was the week before the celebration of his golden wedding.  He was occupying, temporarily, a house near Buckingham Palace.  Mrs. Gladstone, the good angel of his long life and happy home, received us warmly, and, bringing out a lot of photographs of her children and grandchildren, gave us a family talk.  When her husband came in, I was startled to observe how much thinner he had become and how loosely his clothes hung upon him.  But as soon as he began to talk, the old fire flamed up, and he discoursed eloquently about Irish Home-Rule, the divorce question, (one of his hobbies), and the dangers that threatened America from plutocracy and laxity of wedlock, and the facilities of divorce that sap the sanctities of domestic life.  It was during that conversation that Gladstone tittered the sentence that I have often had occasion to quote.  He said:  “Amid all the pressure of public cares and duties, I thank God for the Sabbath with its rest for the body and the soul.”  One reason for his wonderful longevity was that he had never robbed his brain of the benefits of God’s appointed day of rest.  After our delightful talk was ended, the Grand Old Man went off in pursuit of an imperial photograph, which he kindly signed with his autograph, and gave to my wife, and it now graces the walls of the room in which I am writing.

Many men have been great in some direction:  William Ewart Gladstone was great in nearly all directions.  Born in the same year with our Lincoln, he was a great muscular man and horseman; a great orator, a great political strategist, a great scholar, a great writer, great statesman and a great Christian.  The crowning glory of his character was a stalwart faith in God’s Word, and in the cross of Jesus Christ.  He honored his Lord, and his Lord honored him.  Wordsworth drew a truthful picture of Gladstone when he portrayed

   “The man who lifted high
   Conspicuous object in a nation’s eye,
   Who, with a toward or untoward lot,
   Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not,
   Plays in the many games of life, that one
   Where what he most doth value must be won;
   Whom neither shape of danger can dismay,
   Nor thought of tender happiness betray;
   And while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
   His breath in confidence of Heaven’s applause.”

Who has not wept over the brilliant and beloved Dr. John Brown’s unrivalled story, “Rab and His Friends,” and been charmed with his picture of “Pet Marjorie”?  What student of style will deny that his “Monograph” of his father is the finest specimen of condensed and vivid biography in our language?  When his “Spare Hours” appeared in America I published an article in the “Independent” entitled, “The Last of the John Browns,” several copies of which had been forwarded to him by his friends in