_Him_, I count _him_ well-starr'd.

In teaching the high lesson of Character and Conduct, he dealt sparingly
in words, even words of "studied moderation." He taught principally, he
taught conspicuously, he taught all his life long, by Example. In
regarding that example, as it stands clear across the interspace of
fifteen years, we are reminded of Tertullian's doctrine concerning the
_anima naturaliter Christiana_. A more genuinely amiable man never
lived. His sunny temper, his quick sympathy, his inexhaustible fun,
were natural gifts. But something more than nature must have gone to
make his constant unselfishness, his manly endurance of adverse fate,
his noble cheerfulness under discouraging circumstances, his buoyancy in
breasting difficulties, his unremitting solicitude for the welfare and
enjoyment of those who stood nearest to his heart. The secret of his
life was that he had taken pains with his own character. While he was
still quite young we find him bewailing the "worldly element which
enters so largely into his composition," and which threatens to make a
gulf between him and the strict, almost Puritanical, associations of his
youth. "But," he says in writing to his sister, "as Thomas a Kempis
recommended, _frequentur tibi violentiam fac_ ... so I intend not to
give myself the rein in following my natural tendency, but to make war
against it till it ceases to isolate me from you, and leaves me with the
power to discern and adopt the good which you have and I have not."

The result of this self-discipline and self-culture was to produce in
him all the virtues which are supposed to be specifically and peculiarly
Christian. "Christianity," said Bishop Creighton, "impressed the Roman
world by its power of producing men who were strong in self-control, and
this must always be its contribution to the world." Arnold's
self-control was absolute and unshakable; and to self-control he added
the characteristically Christian virtues of surrender, placability,
readiness to forgive injuries, perfect freedom from envy, hatred, and
malice. He revered the "method and secret of Jesus"; he did all honour
to His "mildness and sweet reasonableness." "Christianity," he said, "is
Hebraism aiming at self-conquest and rescue from the thrall of vile
affections, not by obedience to the letter of a law, but by conformity
to the image of a self-sacrificing example. To a world stricken with
moral enervation Christianity offered its spectacl