pite of their failings, than
most men. He was fully conscious of the natural depravity of his own
heart, and so was ever tender to those who fell. Nobody was more
willing than he to act to a fellow Christian on the principle laid down
in the lines--

"Help a poor and weary brother
Pulling hard against the stream."

He loved Christian society of the right sort, and, under its influence,
his whole nature would expand, and he would converse for hours
together. Writing from Galatz, where he went after the pleasant time
spent at Gravesend, he says, "I feel much also the want of some
religious talk," thereby adding another illustration to the truth of
that text, "They that love the Lord spake often one to another."

General Gordon's temperament was not that of the monk who shuns his
fellow-creatures, and it must therefore have been all the greater trial
for him to cut himself off from his friends for so many years at a time
as he used to do. Indeed he used to speak of it as "a living death."
But the great lesson of his life was that of self-sacrifice for the
good of others. Speaking to the editor of a journal, to which reference
has already been made, he once said, "When I was in the Soudan, I used
to pray every day, 'O Lord, let me be crushed. Lay the punishment of
their sins upon me.'" Then, as if he was afraid of being misunderstood,
he said, "It was a strange prayer, was it not? As if I had not enough
of my own sins to bear!" Few men have learned better than he the great
lesson taught from the Cross of Calvary, and few have practised that
lesson more completely.

As we so often see greatness associated with success in life, it is
well that now and then we witness greatness, which has not been
associated with what the world calls success, for the two are far from
being inseparably connected. General Gordon frequently emphasised the
distinctions between honours and honour. The former he cared very
little about, but the latter he ever valued highly, and he used to say
that often men attain the former at the expense of the latter. No
titles precede his name, nor do any decorations of importance follow
it, but his simple and yet heroic self-sacrificing life have fascinated
his countrymen, and helped to make the world better by setting before
it a higher ideal. On the monument in St. Paul's Cathedral his life is
briefly summed up in the few following words: "To Major-General Charles
George Gordon, C.B., who at all