perhaps to himself. He did well to retire. But unfortunately this
retirement was not consecrated to those exercises which made him so
impressive and so powerful an influence in the early years of his
ministry. He set himself to be, not an exponent of the Faith, but the
defender of a particular aspect of that Faith.

Here, I think, is to be found the answer to our question concerning the
loss of Dr. Gore's influence in the national life. From the day of the
great sermons in Westminster Abbey that wonderful influence has
diminished, and he is now in the unhappy position of a party leader
whose followers begin to question his wisdom. Organisation has destroyed
him.

Dr. Gore, in my judgment, has achieved strength at the centre of his
being only at the terrible cost of cutting off, or at any rate of
maiming, his own natural temperament. Marked out by nature for the life
of mysticism, he has entered maimed and halt into the life of the
controversialist. With the richest of spiritual gifts, which demand
quiet and a profound peace for their development, he has thrown himself
into the arena of theological disputation, where force of intellect
rather than beauty of character is the first requirement of victory.
Instead of drawing all men to the sweet reasonableness of the Christian
life, he has floundered in the obscurities of a sect and hidden his
light under the bushel of a mouldering solecism--"the tradition of
Western Catholicism." It is a tragedy. Posterity I think, will
regretfully number him among bigots, lamenting that one who was so
clearly

. . . born for the universe, narrow'd his mind,
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.