CHAPTER I

BISHOP GORE


_He is in truth, in the power, in the hands, of another, of another
will . . . attracted, corrected, guided, rewarded, satiated, in a long
discipline, that "ascent of the soul into the intelligible
world."_--WALTER PATER.

No man occupies a more commanding position in the Churches of England
than Dr. Gore. I am assured in more than one quarter that a vote on this
subject would place him head and shoulders above all other religious
teachers of our time. In the region of personal influence he appears to
be without a rival.

Such is the quality of his spirit, that a person so different from him
both in temperament and intellect as the Dean of St. Paul's has
confessed that he is "one of the most powerful spiritual forces in our
generation."

It is, I think, the grave sincerity of his soul which gives him this
pre-eminence. He is not more eloquent than many others, he is not
greatly distinguished by scholarship, he is only one in a numerous
company of high-minded men who live devout and disinterested lives. But
no man conveys, both in his writings and in personal touch, a more
telling sense of ghostly earnestness, a feeling that his whole life is
absorbed into a _Power_ which overshadows his presence and even sounds
in his voice, a conviction that he has in sober truth forsaken
everything for the Kingdom of God.