The 19th of May, 1898, was Ascension Day; and, just as the earliest Eucharists were going up to God, William Ewart Gladstone passed out of mortal suffering into the peace which passeth understanding.  For people who, like myself, were reared in the Gladstonian tradition, it is a shock to be told by those who are in immediate contact with young men that for the rising generation he is only, or scarcely, a name.  For my own part, I say advisedly that he was the finest specimen of God’s handiwork that I have ever seen; and by this I mean that he combined strength of body, strength of intellect, and spiritual attainments, in a harmony which I have never known equalled.  To him it was said when he lay dying, “You have so lived and wrought that you have kept the soul alive in England.”  Of him it was said a few weeks later, “On the day that Gladstone died the world lost its greatest citizen.”  Mr. Balfour called him “the greatest member of the greatest deliberative assembly that the world has ever seen”; and Lord Salisbury said, “He will be long remembered as a great example, to which history hardly furnishes a parallel of a great Christian statesman.”

I have written so often and so copiously of Mr. Gladstone, who was both my religious and my political leader, that I might have found it difficult to discover any fresh aspects of his character and work; but the Editor[*] has kindly relieved me of that difficulty.  He has pointed out certain topics which strikingly connect Gladstone’s personality with the events and emotions of the present hour.  I will take them as indicated, point by point.

[Footnote *:  Of the Red Triangle.]

1.  THE LOVE OF LIBERTY.

I have never doubted that the master-passion of Gladstone’s nature was his religiousness—­his intensely-realized relation with God, with the Saviour, and with “the powers of the world to come.”  This was inborn.  His love of liberty was acquired.  There was nothing in his birth or education or early circumstances to incline him in this direction.  He was trained to “regard liberty with jealousy and fear, as something which could not wholly be dispensed with, but which was continually to be watched for fear of excesses.”  Gradually—­very gradually—­he came to regard it as the greatest of temporal blessings, and this new view affected every department of his public life.  In financial matters it led him to adopt the doctrine of Free Exchanges.  In politics, it induced him to extend the suffrage, first to the artisan and then to the labourer.  In foreign affairs, it made him an unrelenting foe of the Turkish tyranny.  In Ireland, it converted him to Home Rule.  In religion, it brought him nearer and nearer to the ideal of the Free Church in the Free State.

2.  BELGIUM AND THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR.

Gladstone hated war.  He held, as most people hold, that there are causes, such as Life and Home and Freedom, for which the gentlest and most humane of men must be prepared to draw the sword.  But he was profoundly anxious that it should never be drawn except under the absolute compulsion of national duty, and during the Crimean War he made this memorable declaration: