GREAT MEN MAY BE CHRISTIANS.
You may not know why, in the conversation which I had with Mr. Gladstone a few weeks ago, he uttered these memorable words about Christianity, some of which were cabled to America. He was speaking in reply to this remark: I said: “Mr. Gladstone, we are told in America by some people that Christianity does very well for weak-minded men and children in the infant class, but it is not fit for stronger minded men; but when we mention you, of such large intellectuality, as being a pronounced friend of religion, we silence their batteries.” Then Mr. Gladstone stopped on the hillside where we were exercising, and said: “The older I grow, the more confirmed I am in my faith in religion.” “Sir,” said he, with flashing eye and uplifted hand, “talk about the questions of the day, there is but one question, and that is the Gospel. That can and will correct everything. Do you have any of that dreadful agnosticism in America?” Having told him we had, he went on to say: “I am profoundly thankful that none of my children or kindred have been blasted by it. I am glad to say that about all the men at the top in Great Britain are Christians. Why, sir,” he said, “I have been in public position fifty-eight years, and forty-seven years in the cabinet of the British government, and during those forty-seven years I have been associated with sixty of the master minds of the century, and all but five of the sixty were Christians.” He then named the four leading physicians and surgeons of his country, calling them by name and remarking upon the high qualities of each of them and added: “They are all thoroughly Christian.” My friends, I think it will be quite respectable for a little longer to be the friends of religion. William E. Gladstone, a Christian; Henry W. Grady, a Christian. What the greatest of Englishmen said of England is true of America and of all Christendom. The men at the top are the friends of God and believers in the sanctities of religion, the most eminent of the doctors, the most eminent of the lawyers, the most eminent of the merchants, and there are no better men in all our land than some of those who sit in editorial chairs. And if that does not correspond with your acquaintanceship, I am sorry that you have fallen into bad company. In answer to the question put last spring, “Can a secular journalist be a Christian?” I not only answer in the affirmative, but I assert that so great are the responsibilities of that profession, so infinite and eternal the consequences of their obedience or disobedience of the words of my text, “Take thee a great roll and write in it with a man’s pen,” and so many are the surrounding temptations, that the men of no other profession more deeply need the defenses and the reinforcements of the grace of God.