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.