Spiritually-minded men do not, as a rule, talk much of their spiritual experiences; but, if one had asked Wilberforce to say what he regarded as the most decisive moment of his religious life, I can well believe that he would have replied, “The moment when ’it pleased God to reveal His Son in me.’”

The subject expands before us, as is always the case when we meditate on the character and spirit of those whom we have lost; and I must hasten to a close.

I have already quoted from a writer with whom I think Wilberforce would have felt a close affinity, though, as a matter of fact, I never heard him mention that writer’s name; I mean J. H. Shorthouse; and I return to the same book—­the stimulating story of John Inglesant—­for my concluding words, which seem to express, with accidental fidelity, the principle of Wilberforce’s spiritual being:  “We are like children, or men in a tennis-court, and before our conquest is half-won, the dim twilight comes and stops the game; nevertheless, let us keep our places, and above all hold fast by the law of life we feel within.  This was the method which Christ followed, and He won the world by placing Himself in harmony with that law of gradual development which the Divine wisdom has planned.  Let us follow in His steps, and we shall attain to the ideal life; and, without waiting for our mortal passage, tread the free and spacious streets of that Jerusalem which is above.”

IX

EDITH SICHEL

This notice is more suitably headed with a name than with a title.  Edith Sichel was greater than anything she wrote, and the main interest of the book before us[*] is the character which it reveals.  Among Miss Sichel’s many activities was that of reviewing, and Mr. Bradley tells that “her first object was to let the reader know what kind of matter he might expect to find in the book, and, if necessary, from what point of view it is treated there.”  Following this excellent example, let us say that in New and Old the reader will find an appreciative but not quite adequate “Introduction”; some extracts from letters; some “thoughts” or aphorisms; some poems; and thirty-two miscellaneous pieces of varying interest-and merit.  This is what we “find in the book,” and the “point of view” is developed as we read.

[Footnote *:  New and Old.  By Edith Sichel.  With an Introduction by A. C. Bradley.  London:  Constable and Co.]

To say that the Introduction is not quite adequate is no aspersion on Mr. Bradley.  He tells us that he only knew Miss Sichel “towards the close of her life” (she was born in 1862 and died in 1914), and in her case pre-eminently the child was mother of the woman.  Her blood was purely Jewish, and the Jewish characteristic of precocity was conspicuous in her from the first.  At ten she had the intellectual alertness of sixteen, and at sixteen she could have held her own with ordinary people of thirty.  To converse with her even casually always reminded me of Matthew Arnold’s exclamation:  “What women these Jewesses are! with a force which seems to triple that of the women of our Western and Northern races.”