"I would that all could look on death as a cheerful friend, who takes us from a world of trial to our true home. All our sorrows come from a forgetfulness of this great truth. I desire to look on the departure of my friends as a promotion to another and a higher sphere, as I do believe that to be the case with all.
"Any one, to whom God gives to be much with Him, cannot even suffer a pang at death. For what is death to a believer? It is a closer approach to Him, whom, even through the veil, he is ever with."
There is one point on which we ought specially to dwell in considering the lessons to be learnt from the life of General Gordon, and that is the moral courage he always exhibited. His physical courage has already been touched on, but great as it was, his moral courage was far greater. There are plenty of men possessing physical courage who fail to exhibit moral courage when put to the test. Man being a gregarious animal, and accustomed to go in flocks, is led by his fellows to evil as well as to good. No man can be a true leader of men who is not prepared to stand alone, if need be, against overwhelming majorities. Gordon had the courage of his convictions, and no amount of pressure, no weight of public opinion, could deter him when once the path of duty was clear. The time-server does not ask, What is right? What is my duty? but, What will pay? What will public opinion think? For such an one Gordon had a supreme contempt. It has been well said by Dr. Ryle, the Bishop of Liverpool, "It is not overwhelming majorities that shake and influence the world. Small minorities have ever had more influence than large majorities. All great men have had their seasons of loneliness. See Napoleon, Mahomet, Luther, John Wesley, and Christ Himself." To this list we may add the name of General Gordon; few men so often found themselves so much in opposition in fashionable circles and in the official world.
Among the false reports that have been circulated about General Gordon is one that he was very unsociable and morose, shunning society in general, and ladies' society in particular. It is true that he shunned a certain class of society; there was also a certain set of women that he fought shy of; but it is quite untrue to say that he was unsociable. He greatly enjoyed the society of ordinary cultivated women, who were in sympathy with his efforts to do good, and with them he was neither shy nor reserved. He could talk pleasantly for hours together, and as his own mind was a very cultivated one, he was a great element of attraction to society of a certain kind. What he did dislike intensely was the society of that class of ladies who think of little beyond the fashions of the day, the latest style of dress, and the newest forms of amusement. Such persons he used to find had no minds to think, and no hearts to feel for suffering humanity. Many of them attempted to lionise him, while others paid him the most fulsome compliments, both being things that he particularly disliked. The ordinary conventional dinner-party, where a man is condemned to take in a lady with whom he has nothing in common, and next to whom he must sit for a couple of hours or so eating and drinking things which do not agree with him, was to Gordon a special object of antipathy. Writing from Cairo on March 15, 1878, he says:—
"I am much bothered, but I get to bed at 8 p.m., which is a comfort, for I do not dine out, and consequently do not drink wine. Every one laughs at me; but I do not care."
Again, when in South Africa, he writes:—
"How I hate society; how society hates me! I never tell you the sort of life I lead, it is not worth it; for it is simply the life I led at home, being asked out, and refusing when it is possible;—when I go, getting humiliated, or being foolish. This latter is better than not being exposed—keeping one's self in cotton wool, for that brings out no knowledge of self, such as is brought out by being with others. At the same time, I think it is not right to be much in society, indeed I fight against it truly, and have only dined out about seven times since I have been here."
On October 24th, 1884, when he had made up his mind not to return to England, even if he should get away from Khartoum, he says:—
"I dwell on the joy of never seeing Great Britain again, with its horrid, wearisome dinner-parties and miseries. How we can put up with those things passes my imagination! It is a perfect bondage. At those dinner-parties we are all in masks, saying what we do not believe, eating and drinking things we do not want, and then abusing one another. I would sooner live like a Dervish with the Mahdi, than go out to dinner every night in London. I hope, if any English general comes to Khartoum, he will not ask me to dinner. Why men cannot be friends without bringing the wretched stomachs in, is astounding."