ising
his voice to shout down a Boanerges than he could dream of lifting an
elbow to push his way through a press of people bound for the limelight.
It is only a deep moral earnestness which brings him into public life at
all, and he endeavours to treat that public life not as it is but as it
ought to be.

In "the calmness and moderation of his sentiments," in his dislike of
everything that is sensational, and of all "undue emphasis," he
resembles Joubert, who wanted "to infuse exquisite sense into common
sense, or to render exquisite sense common."

Modesty might not so hamper the usefulness of Canon Barnes if he knew a
little less than he does know, and was also conveniently blind to the
vastness of scientific territory. But he knows much; much too much for
vociferation; and his eyes are so wide open to the enormous sweep of
scientific inquiry that he can nowhere discern at present the ground for
a single thesis which effectually accounts for everything--a great lack
in a popular preacher.

I am disposed to deplore the degree both of his modesty and his
scholarship, for he possesses one of the rarest and most precious of
gifts in a very learned man, particularly a mathematician and a
theologian, namely, the gift of lucid exposition. Few men of our day, in
my judgment, are better qualified to state the whole case for
Christianity than this distinguished Canon of Westminster Abbey, this
evangelical Fellow of the Royal Society, who is nevertheless prevented
from attracting the attention of the multitude by the gracious humility
of his nature and the intellectual nervousness which is apt to inhibit
his free utterance when he approaches an audience in the region of
science.

What a pity that a clergyman so charming and attractive, and yet so
modern, who understands the relativity of Einstein and who is admirably
grounded in the physical sciences, should lack that fighting instinct,
that "confidence of reason," which in Father Waggett, an equally
charming person, caught the attention of the religious world thirty or
forty years ago.

His mind is not unlike the mind of Lord Robert Cecil, and it is curious
that even physically he should at certain moments resemble Lord Robert,
particularly in his walk and the almost set expression of his eyes. He
is tall and thin, and has the same stoop in the shoulders, moving
forward as if an invisible hand were pressed against the back of his
neck, shoving him forward by a series of