His contempt for the idea of the world into which we were born being either a sort of clergyhouse or a market-place, was too complete to be marked by any eagerness.  But in view of the market-place idea he was the less calm.

Like many others who had not yet come to know in what high esteem he held the moral and spiritual nature of children, I had thought he was the advocate of mere secular studies, alike in the nation’s schools, and in its families.  But by contact with him, this soon became an impossible idea.  In very early days on the Board a remark I had made to a mutual friend which implied this unjust idea was repeated to him.] “Tell Waugh that he talks too fast,” [was his message to me.  I was not long in finding out that this was a very just reproof...

The two things in his character of which I became most conscious by contact with him, were his childlikeness and his consideration for intellectual inferiors.  His arguments were as transparently honest as the arguments of a child.  They might or might not seem wrong to others, but they were never untrue to himself.  Whether you agreed with them or not, they always added greatly to the charm of his personality.  Whether his face was lighted by his careless and playful humour or his great brows were shadowed by anger, he was alike expressing himself with the honesty of a child.  What he counted iniquity he hated, and what he counted righteous he loved with the candour of a child...

Of his consideration for intellectual inferiors I, of course, needed a large share, and it was never wanting.  Towering as was his intellectual strength and keenness above me, indeed above the whole of the rest of the members of the Board, he did not condescend to me.  The result was never humiliating.  It had no pain of any sort in it.  He was too spontaneous and liberal with his consideration to seem conscious that he was showing any.  There were many men of religious note upon the Board, of some of whom I could not say the same.

In his most trenchant attacks on what he deemed wrong in principles, he never descended to attack either the sects which held them or the individuals who supported them, even though occasionally much provocation was given him.  He might not care for peace with some of the theories represented on the Board, but he had certainly and at all times great good-will to men.

As a speaker he was delightful.  Few, clear, definite, and calm as stars were the words he spoke.  Nobody talked whilst he was speaking.  There were no tricks in his talk.  He did not seem to be trying to persuade you of something.  What convinced him, that he transferred to others.  He made no attempt to misrepresent those opposed to him.  He sought only to let them know himself...Even the sparkle of his humour, like the sparkle of a diamond, was of the inevitable in him, and was as fair as it was enjoyable.