“My dear Mr. Johnson, I have received your letter with many thanks. I am so much obliged for your letting me know of my lads, and have written to them a few lines. I wish sometimes I was with you. I like your quiet earnestness; there is little of that here, and I like the work; I have also said a few words to your son; the Holy Ghost is the teacher for Him, and will not leave His work till he is happy.
I hope Mr. Wardle is improving in health. “And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.” Silver is spoilt if heated too much, therefore the refiner sits watching; until it is purified when the refiner sees his image reflected in its surface; so with us, our Lord will see that we are not too much heated, only just enough to reflect His image. Will you thank Mr. Fielden for his kind letter, I quite feel for his trials in that district, but he has a fellow helper and worker in his kind Lord who feels for him and will support him through all. Give my kind regard to Spence, your wife and son, and to all my friends.
And believe me my dear Mr. Johnson,
Yours sincerely,
C. G. Gordon.”
Mr. Johnson writes:—
“One evening after I had been observing his patient endurance and perseverance with one of the reckless, insolent lads as we left the school, I, in a quiet pleasant way remarked “I fear Colonel, your Christian work in Dark Lane Ragged School will never get the fame and applause from this world that your military achievements in China have lately secured for you.”
“My dear Sir,” he replied “If I can but be the means in the hands of God of leading any of these precious sons to Jesus, I must place that amongst the most glorious trophies of my life, and to hear the Master at last say ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these, ye have done it unto Me,’ will be to me a resplendent undying glory when so many of earth’s fleeting honours have tarnished.”
“It is impossible (says Lord Blatchford about General Gordon) to imagine a man more completely in the presence of God, or more absolutely careless of his own distinction, comfort, wealth or life. A man unreservedly devoted to the cause of the oppressed. One bows before him as before a man of a superior order of things.” Mr. Boulger says, “There will never be another Gordon.” Sir William Butler said of him, “He was unselfish as Sydney; of courage, dauntless as Wolfe; of honour, stainless as Outram; of sympathy, wide-reaching as Drummond; of honesty, straightforward as Napier; of faith, as steadfast as Moore.”
We believe Gordon answered to all these encomiums and well deserved them.
Edgmont Hake, writing of him says:—“He lived wholly for others; his home at Gravesend was school, hospital, church, and almshouse all in one. His work more like that of a Home missionary than of a military officer. The troubles of all interested him alike, but he had a warm corner in his heart for lads.” This will be seen from letters produced. Many of the lads he rescued from the slums and gutters; he cleaned them, clothed them, fed them, and gave them shelter and home, sometimes for weeks and even longer. He taught in the evenings lessons suitable to their conditions; not forgetting the moral and spiritual side of his work. And he did this work without fee or reward, and he did it with all his heart. He was as enthusiastic about this duty as he was about his military duties. He called these lads “His kings.”
Leigh Hunt’s ideal of a king describes very closely Gordon’s ideal:—
“’Tis not the wealth that makes a king
Nor the purple colouring,
Nor a brow that’s bound with gold,
Nor gate on mighty hinges rolled;
That king is he who void of fear,
Can look abroad with bosom clear,
Who can tread ambition down,
Nor be swayed by smile nor frown,
Nor for all the treasure cares,
That mine conceals or harvest wears,
Or that golden sands deliver,
Bosomed on a glassy river,
Safe with wisdom for his crown,
He looks on all things calmly down,
He has no fear of earthly thing,
This is it that makes a king,
And all of us who e’er we be
May carve us out such royalty.”
On one occasion a lad in the employ of a Gravesend tradesman was discovered to have been pilfering on a somewhat serious scale. When the fact was proved beyond question, the master declared he would have the boy punished by imprisonment. The mother of the boy, hearing of this sad affair, was almost broken-hearted, and at her wit’s end. Someone who had heard of Gordon’s love for lads, also his
intense desire to help all in trouble, suggested that she should see him and explain her case. So, with all a mother’s earnestness, she went at once to Gordon and told him the whole story, and begged with tears for his sympathy and help. After hearing the story his heart was touched, he could not refuse a mother’s appeal. When a mother pleads, there is power and pathos difficult for any to withstand, much less Gordon. So he went to the lad’s late employer, and after considerable argument, the master undertook not to prosecute, but only on condition that Gordon would personally undertake to look after the lad himself, for one year at least. This Gordon promised, and he took the boy to his own home, sent him to a good school at his own expense for the year; then he got him a good situation on board one of Her Majesty’s vessels. That lad became a man of honour and respectability, secured good situations, won for himself a good character, and the mother and the sailor boy in their heart often blessed Gordon, who saved the boy from prison, ruin and disgrace, and the mother from a broken heart. His rescue work amongst boys was work he loved
supremely, in it he found his highest joys. His pleasures were not secured where many seek them, viz., at the theatre, at the gambling-house, at the racecourse, at the public-house, or in accumulating wealth, or in winning renown and glory—these were nothing to Gordon. To save a fallen lad, was to him the highest gratification; in this work he was very successful.