490 



The Review of Reviews. 



There is no doubt of it, that old Puritan faith in Ciod 

 was the victory that overcame tlie world of convention 

 and tradition, of greed and selfishness, and enabled him 

 to battle, as always, within the Captain's sight and 

 within hearing of His voice. That faith he fed and 

 strengthened day by day. To nourish it he made the 

 Bible his companion, and with its treasures he was as 

 familiar as with the facts of ever\'day life. The quiet 

 week-night prayer-meeting had a perennial charm for 

 him. 'I'wice on Sunday he entered the House of God. 

 \Vhen he started a new crusade it was always bathed 

 i.i the spirit of communion with God. Before address- 

 ing a meeting boiling over with expectation to hear 

 what he had to say, he would rise and say, " Let us 

 pray." and then, often in broken sentences, quivering 

 with emotion, he would pour out his soul in supplica- 

 tion to God. I have seen the same spirit in his home, 

 and felt the same vivid realisation of the presence of 

 God. That faith in God as Leader is the man ; from it 

 he derived his strength ; that gave him his freedom, 

 his captaincy over others, raised his powers to their 

 maximum efficiency, inspired his ceaseless beneficence, 

 and sustained his unconquerable de\otion to the 

 uplifting of the human race. 



Perhaps the last letter written lay him from the 

 Titanic sa}'s : — 



I am going to America to deliver one speech. But I feel 

 as if that was but the asses which Saul went forth to seek when 

 he was crowned King of Israel. What else I am to do I do 

 not know. Something is awaiting me, some important work 

 the nature of which will be disclosed to me in good time. But 

 what it is, whether journalistic, spiritual, social or political, 

 1 know not. I await my marching orders, being assured th.nl 

 lie who has called me will make kno«n His good will and 

 pleasure in due season. 



There is the attitude of the man, 

 waiting with listening ear for his 

 " marching orders," all eager to obey. 

 Many of us, perhaps most of us, 

 think of William T, .Stead as a jour- 

 nalist, brilliant, rapid, unconven- 

 tional, accomplished, his mind a 

 lountain ever fresh and full of opigi- 

 nal ideas, his resources apparently 

 I \haustless, and his energy without 

 liounds. To me he was as a |)rophet 

 who had come straight out of the 

 Old Testament into our modern 

 lorm-swept life. 1 recognise his 

 primacy among the editors of the 

 eighties and nineties of the last ten- 

 tury : but for him tlie Press w.t^ a 

 sword to <ut down the foes of 

 righteousness, a platform from which 

 to hearten and inspire the armies of 

 the Lord, a pulpit from which to 

 preach his crusades, a desk at which 

 he could expound his policy for 

 making a new heaven and a new 

 ' arth. He w.is a man with a mission, 

 and , journalism was the organ 



through which he wrought at it. He wrote to gel 

 things dune — done, and nut merely talked about. 



In 1877 he said, " I see more clearly than ever that 

 the moral sense of the nation is the measure of its 

 power, and all that lowers its morality saps its empire. 

 I must be a preacher of righteousness if I would do m}- 

 country any service." He was a prophet with a 

 prophet's' insight, " With an eye made quiet by the 

 power of harmony and the deep power of jo)' he saw 

 into the life of things." " To be face to face with facts," 

 said he, " that is the real thing — with real, live human 

 facts. He who is face to face with real facts is not far 

 from the secret of God." 



Need I remind you that he had the prophet's fearless- 

 ness .'' " Never strike sail to a fear ! " was one of his 

 mottoes, and he carried it out fully. What startled 

 my timid soul when I first made his acquaintance was 

 the nonchalance and freedom with w hich he approached 

 the great ones of the earth. He could not truckle to 

 men in high places. " Those that wear soft raiment 

 dwell in Kings' Courts." He entered those courts 

 without doffing his ordinary attire, and interviewed 

 princes and millionaires, ambassadors, and Ministers 

 of .State with perfect freedom. To him an emperor was 

 a servant of the State, and a king as one of the members 

 of his staff. He inter\-iewed the Sultan with the same 

 intrepidity as he would a lawyer. He knew his work, 

 and he did it — did it without misgiving or fear or 

 compromise. He was a journalist, but a journalist as 

 Paul was an .Apostle and Knox a Reformer, and woe to 

 him if he did not preach and make potent the good news 

 God gave him. It is characteristic — is it not ? — that 

 he should say that if he had to single out the one chapter 



\. 



Mr. Stead with a Groip of German Editors, 



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