_From Gravesend._--"The world's preachers and the world's religion of forms and ceremonies are hard and cold, with no life in them, nothing to cheer or comfort the broken-hearted. Explain, O preachers, how it is that we ask and do not get comfort, that your cold services cheer not. Is it not because ye speak to the flesh which is at enmity to all that is spiritual and must die (joy is only from the spirit)?... You preach death as an enemy instead of a friend and liberator. You speak of Heaven, but belie your words by making your home here. Be as uncharitable as you like, but attend my church or chapel regularly.... Does your vast system of ceremonies, meetings, and services tend to lessen sin in the world? It may make men conceal it. Where would you find more hardness to a fallen one than you would in a congregation of worshippers of the Church of this day? Surely this hardness is of the devil, and they who show it know not God." _From the Soudan, April 20, 1876._--"The sacerdotal class have always abounded; they are allied with the temporal civil power, who need their aid to keep the people quiet. 'By whose authority teachest thou these things?' is their cry; from them alone must come the authority." _From Jaffa, July 11, 1883._--"I believe the deadness in some of the clergy is owing, firstly, to not reading the Scriptures; secondly, to not meditating over them; thirdly, to not praying sufficiently; fourthly, to being taken up with religious secular work (Acts vi. 2-4). I wonder how it is that, when a subject of the greatest import is brought up, one sees so very little interest taken in it; and how willingly it is allowed to drop with a sort of 'Oh yes, I know all about that.'" Yet it is quite incorrect to say that Gordon undervalued the work of hard-working clergymen. He was of a critical turn of mind and used to criticise their methods of working, but no one recognised more fully than he did the good that was being done by many devoted workers, and these he would of course exclude when administering blame for the shortcomings of the others. He had a way of speaking and writing in general terms that might be a little misleading to those who do not understand him, but he always took it for granted, in his private letters to his sister, or to his intimate friends, that they would understand to whom he meant his words to apply. There are plenty of his statements which show that he valued highly the ministry of some of the more spiritually minded among the clergy. Those who preached the truth of the indwelling of God had in his opinion a great influence over those to whom they ministered. Writing from South Africa on 5th June 1882, he says:--"Both clergymen here preach the great secret, the indwelling, but not as strongly as I could wish. Their churches are full, while, where it is not preached, they are comparatively empty."