Mr. Gladstone is a practical
statesman, and with some instinct divined the inevitable."
Mr. Gladstone's religious belief, as well as his opinion of the Bible
and the plan of salvation revealed in the Gospel, are manifest as
expressed in the following words from his pen:
"If asked what is the remedy for the deeper sorrows of the human
heart--what a man should chiefly look to in his progress through life as
the power that is to sustain him under trials and enable him manfully to
confront his afflictions--I must point him to something which, in a
well-known hymn is called 'the old, old story,' told of in an old, old
book, and taught with an old, old teaching, which is the greatest and
best gift ever given to mankind."
Another may read the lessons on the Lord's day in Hawarden Church and
write and speak in defense of the Established Church of England, but Mr.
Gladstone did more--he put his trust in his Lord and Saviour, and
believed in his word. Mr. Gladstone was denominationally a member of
the Episcopal Church, but religiously he held to views commonly held by
all Evangelical Christians, from which the temptations of wealth at
home, of college and of politics never turned him.
[Illustration: Kilmainham Jail, where the Irish M.
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