to belong to a giant and a prodigy,
and I can understand many turning away from the contemplation of such a
character, feeling that it is too far removed from them to interest
them, and that it is too unapproachable to help them--that it is like
reading of Hercules or Hector, mythical heroes whose achievements the
actual living mortal can not hope to rival. Well, that is true enough;
we have not received intellectual faculties equal to Mr. Gladstone's,
and can not hope to vie with him in their exercise. But apart from them,
his great force was character, and amid the vast multitude that I am
addressing, there is none who may not be helped by him.

The three signal qualities which made him what he was, were courage,
industry, and faith; dauntless courage, unflagging industry, a faith
which was part of his fiber; these were the levers with which he moved
the world.

I do not speak of his religious faith, that demands a worthier speaker
and another occasion. But no one who knew Mr. Gladstone could fail to
see that it was the essence, the savor, the motive power of his life.
Strange as it may seem, I can not doubt that while this attracted many
to him, it alienated others, others not themselves irreligious, but who
suspected the sincerity of so manifest a devotion, and who, reared in
the moderate atmosphere of the time, disliked the intrusion of religious
considerations into politics. These, however, though numerous enough,
were the exceptions, and it can not, I think, be questioned that Mr.
Gladstone not merely raised the tone of public discussion, but quickened
and renewed the religious feeling of the society in which he moved.

But this is not the faith of which I am thinking to-day. What is present
to me is the faith with which he espoused and pursued great causes.
There also he had faith sufficient to move mountains, and did sometimes
move mountains. He did not lightly resolve, he came to no hasty
conclusion, but when he had convinced himself that a cause was right,
it engrossed him, it inspired him, with a certainty as deep-seated and
as imperious as ever moved mortal man. To him, then, obstacles,
objections, the counsels of doubters and critics were as nought, he
pressed on with the passion of a whirlwind, but also with the steady
persistence of some puissant machine.

He had, of course, like every statesman, often to traffic with
expediency, he had always, I suppose, to accept something less than his
ideal, but