Ixii CHARLES dARDALE BABINGTON. 



conflict between research and the believer's hope was nowhere to be 

 seen. To him the Bible was the Word of his Lord, reverenced and 

 believed without reserve ; worship was his delight ; and his keen, 

 practical interest in Christian work ran side by side with his 

 enquiries into Nature and History. The calls on this interest were 

 many. Now it was the spread of Scriptural Christianity in Ireland; 

 now it was the admirable work done by Mrs. Babington among the 

 Cambridge postmen and telegraph boys ; now it was Jani Alli's 

 work among the Mohammedans of Calcutta; now it was Henry 

 Parker, another beloved personal friend, going out to live or die in 

 Eastern Africa ; now it was a gathering of undergraduates in his 

 house, invited to meet some well-known Christian visitor ; it might 

 be Sir Arthur Blackwood, who again and again spoke in the 

 drawing-room to hearts which had cause to bless the hour. And 

 behind all these activities the Christian savant was living the 

 personal life of faith and prayer. When after his great illness 

 at Braemar he found himself at Cambridge, debarred from active 

 life, it was the privilege of one friend or another to be asked to 

 help him almost pastorally (not to speak now of the valued 

 ministries of the Vicar of St. Paul's) ; and the helper's own soul 

 was always greatly helped when the very simplest reading and 

 prayer by his side carried evidently his whole heart with it, and 

 was answered by his strong Amen. 



Since his death some cards have been found amongst his papers 

 each containing a motto written in his own hand. One is inscribed 

 with Bishop Hacket's watchword, "Serve God and be cheerful," 

 another with the verse, "Because Thou hast been my help, there- 

 fore in the shadow of Thy wings I will rejoice," a third with the 

 stanza written by Dr. Valpy, of Eeading, in his closing days (see 

 Memmr of the Rev. W. Marsh, D.D., p. 199)— 



In peace let me resign my breath 



And Thy salvation see; 

 My sins deserve eternal death, 



But Jesus died for me. 



This meagre obituary notice is a little better than nothing, but 

 it seems sorrowfully inadequate as I review this noble life, with its 

 great human endowments, its strenuous and elevated work, its pure 

 domestic happiness (the Lord be with her whose devoted companion- 

 ship and perfect care is now succeeded by such a solitude), its firm 

 and living faith, and its blessed end. His saltern accumulem donis et 

 fungar inani munere. But the briefest account of such a man is not 

 quite " empty " if it convey a witness to Christ's truth and glory. 

 For myself, the recollection of Professor Babington is full of that 

 witness. He is present to me as a man who knew much in the 

 human field, and was always learning more, but whose inmost and 

 ruling characteristic was, that he knew Christ and was found in Him. 



H. C. G. M. 



