It is more than thirty years since I first met Dr. Barnardo. He was addressing meetings in Inverness, and we were living in the same house. At that time he had begun to be famous, and was in the fullest vigour of his many-sided enthusiasm. We had endless talks at night, and I learned much from him. I conceived a strong belief in the man, and a warm regard for him. This affection and admiration continued to the end. Communication with so busy a man in London is not easy, but we managed to maintain a measure of intercourse, and I was well able to see how his life developed. It was a life of continual growth a life that never flinched, never wavered, a life, which was spent to its last, drop in the labour it loved. When Dr. Barnardo died quite worn out, I was deeply touched to learn that he expressed his I should have something to do with any memorial that might be written of him, and it is in obedience to his desire that these words are set down

The great apparent characteristic of Dr. Barnardo was ardour. He flamed up into vehemence very easily. Love, pity, wrath, scorn manifested them­selves in turn almost volcanically. These bursts soon subsided, but very readily recurred. Dr. Bar­nardo was a man of strong opinions on many points. Latterly he became somewhat deaf, and was wont to carry a fearful and wonderful instrument, which he described as an ear trumpet. I never saw him use it for the purpose of hearing, but he employed it freely in thumping the back of his companion, whether to enforce the point of a joke or of an argument. He would run round the table pouring himself out, and then as his climax approached he seized his ear trumpet firmly. But one soon noticed that this great effervescence was not first or last among his qualities. He had that strange tenacity possessed by a few, to which it seems as if almost everything yields at last. Dr. Barnardo had taken up his work in life, and he clung to it all the time. On general subjects he could talk very brightly. He was emphatically a gentle­man, and there was a measure of justice, courtesy, and toleration in his speech, which were somewhat surprising in a man so firm in his own mind. Matters of home interest to himself and his friends he would dwell upon with a genuine interest and sympathy, but In the end he had only one subject. It was about the homes and the children that he was always thinking, and when conversing on other themes one could some­ times see that his eyes were with his heart, and that ‘his eyes were with his heart, and that was far away.' His shrewdness and humour came out, plainly, but he was a man who had one aim in life. In later years I came to know much of how he was regarded in his own homes by his fellow-workers and the children. It is not too much to describe the feeling as that of affectionate reverence. He was a born leader if ever there was one, and his people followed him gladly. It is of supreme importance that the life of such a man should be written if it be true, as F. W. H. Myers has said, that the record of a great and pure personality is the best bequest of time.

I am anxious to emphasise the fact that Dr. Barnardo was of the old school of philanthropists. Early in his days he was able to conceive the profound influence that may be given to one life. Dr. Barnardo started with hardly any advantages. All around him was difficult and even threatening, but he resolved to see what by God's help one man could do. He did not merely make speeches about the necessity of his work, nor did he show any great interest in Parliamentary reforms. He did the work-that was all. While others were talking and writing, he was pur­suing his task of rescue. No one did more to effect the change that has come over our own nation in its view of the relative importance of political and social questions. No one did more to bring social problems to the front. But he himself was not an active poli­tician. He would not, I am sure, have accepted the dictum that there is no obvious connection between politics and the good of society, but he would have refused to go to the other extreme. In a world of talkers Dr. Barnardo determined to do all he could for the miserable and the weak so long as he could, and that is the story of his life.

It must be noticed that he started and con­tinued as a strongly convinced Evangelical believer. Religion was always uppermost with Dr. Barnardo. He accepted with the most childlike, simple, and absolute faith the gospel of the Cross. Is it not true that so far the greatest social reforms have been effected by men who hold the same views? Dr. Barnardo was much influenced by the great Spurgeon, but it would be utterly misleading to range him in the usual way as a Churchman or a Nonconformist. I fancy he had little or no sympathy with the politi­cal aims of Nonconformity, and certainly he was a strong Protestant. He said 'Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity.' Dr. Barnardo, like others of the old philanthropists, had no faith in utopias. He never ignored the great facts of life-sin and sorrow and death. All of us are under sentence of death, probably death by torture, and all of us have to fight the battle with tempta­tions. Dr. Barnardo thought that when everything was done that could be done, much evil would remain. He did not believe that he had found Excalibur in the magic sword of democracy. He believed, however, with all his heart, that the sum of human misery could be indefinitely lessened, and also that the gospel of the grace of Christ was a sword not wielded in vain. He himself preached continu­ally, and with extraordinary force and fervour. I have before me a sermon on the' Cities of Refuge,' which he preached at the Metropolitan Tabernacle many years ago. It is remarkable for its red-hot earnestness. So far as I have heard Dr. Barnardo was invariably an evangelist. He lived, too, a hidden life of deep, prayerful, constant devotion, and without that he never could have carried his battle through.

Dr. Barnardo gave to this service of the children what he had to give, and it was much. No one who really knew him could doubt that he was a man of Great and commanding powers. If these powers had been in the world of business, or in his own profession, they would certainly have brought him to the front. He had that very rare quality, the genius of organising. Sometimes at his meetings he would suddenly change the programme to the discomfort of his associates, but generally it was found out that he had done the right thing. But what gave him his triumph was his unfeigned and passionate love for poor oppressed, neglected children. This comes back to me as I think of him as by far the most striking feature of his character. It seemed as if he loved the mass and the individuals also, and it seemed as if his love had no limits. The children, from whom others would turn away, went straight into his heart as through an open door. He seemed to know every child of his multitude, or at least to know something of everyone. He loved them and yearned over them as if they had been his own dear children. For nearly all his time I imagine that his working day was six­teen hours, and he seemed to hate the thought of a complete holiday. For his own family his affection was deep and tender, and particularly for his delicate child, whom he loved as John Bunyan loved his, but in the service of the outcast the full enjoyment of home life had to be largely sacrificed. Of course he was not perfect; he would have been the last to claim it. He made mistakes and suffered for them, But he was emphatically one of the few to whom maxim can safely be applied that the man who never makes mistakes never makes anything.

It  would be as far as possible from the truth to say that Dr. Barnardo missed his share of happiness. He had a fulfilment of that word of Christ, 'Whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it.' But measured by ordinary standards his life was a very hard one. This man was perhaps the best servant of the empire, but no recognition, no honours came to him. The small salary he received was hardly enough to supply his necessities. His work was incredibly wearing, and accompanied by infinite worries. He was always in need of money for his ever-extending enterprises, and it had to be raised largely through his effort. Dr. Barnardo was a proud and sensitive man, but for the sake of the children he humbled himself to beg. He had experience of the somewhat bitter saying of Lord Shaftesbury, that the British people have an immense capacity for enthusiasm, and an equal incapacity for giving money. The worries he encountered would have goaded most people to madness, and it is idle to deny that they told upon him and shortened his life. But he never thought of giving up; he held on in the darkest hours to his task.

In addition, Dr. Barnardo had much obloquy to face. I will not say that he met the terrible resistance which the early philanthropists had to face. He did not suffer as the anti-slavery men, as the men who attacked the hanging laws, and as Lord Shaftesbury in his campaign for the factory hands. But there is perhaps no hostility so violent and reckless as that roused by the exposure of brutality, cruelty; and filth by which money is made. So Dr. Barnardo had his full share of violent abuse. But he was of the same breed as the philanthropists who in their struggle faced lives of insult and long-continued poverty and shameful and violent death. Lord Shaftesbury was habitually despondent, but Dr. Barnardo had a high and buoyant courage, and his sufferings seemed to anneal him like fire. The strengthenings he had acquired so painfully helped him when he was down in the thick of the fight, and he did far more to convert public opinion than he himself knew. Then his expectations were measured. He was not of those who believe that nothing but stupidity prevents universal happiness. He was one of those who recognised that when every other obstacle to progress has been removed, human nature will stand right across the road, and that only Christ can deal with it. Never even amidst his gleams of success did Dr. Barnardo expect a world at ease. Each day he rose to face the storm. He had many solaces. He had His home. He drew to him the love and help and confidence of many among the leading men and women of hi time. What he valued still more was the affection of the children, and if the mystical saying is true, that all love is returned, he must have had much of that. Anyhow he never complained and he never boasted. He belonged to the small transfigured band whose reward is with them and their work before them.

Many who loved him were moved to tears at the tributes rendered him after his death. The gracious messages of the King and Queen, the noble leading article in the Times, Mr. Owen Seaman's verses in Punch these and many other things showed that the world had not been so blind to the greatness of his achievement as he himself supposed. It was instinctively felt even among those who had reviled him that a man who had done the work of reclamation on so great a scale was on a different level of nobility, independence, and clear-sightedness from the mass of his generation. Dr. Barnardo had entered into the mind of Christ by his practical service more deeply than almost any other, and men knew it. There must be few indeed who have done the work given them more diligently, more bravely or with a more simple heart.

W. ROBERTSON NICOLL.

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