Matthew Arnold proposed my name for election to the Athenæum Club. The usual mode is vote by ballot, which, on account of the number of candidates, occasions delay for many years. But the committee have power to choose annually nine members by special vote. I did not know fully until the secretary wrote to me, that I had been so elected—an honour to which I felt myself by no means entitled. The influence of Dr. Stanley, Mr. Matthew Arnold, and other kind friends, secured for me this great privilege, which has been a source of literary advantage and pleasure to me ever since. And I may here mention, from what occurred in the proceedings of the committee, as I was told, Nonconformity was, in my case, rather a help than hindrance; as the club, in a catholic spirit, desires to have representatives of different classes and opinions included on its rolls. On the same principle not long afterwards Dr. Martineau was introduced to the Athenæum. I was surprised a few weeks after my election to receive an invitation to the Academy dinner, and was pleased to learn from one of the Academicians that this compliment, as well as the preceding, arose from the same spirit of catholic sociality. Nothing but presence at one of these banquets can give an adequate idea of their remarkable magnificence. A sudden burst of light, just before speeches commence, has a magical effect. Mr. Disraeli, then Prime Minister, delivered a highly finished oration, after sitting silent and sphinx-like for an hour before. At an early part of the period to which this chapter belongs, the famous volume entitled “Ecce Homo” was published. It excited much controversy. I read it with interest and attention. It has long been my habit, in perusing works unfavourable to orthodoxy, to search in them for admitted principles which, by a fair application, may be employed in support of truths to which the author is regarded as being opposed. In the work just mentioned there is a chapter on what is called “Christ’s Royalty!” {197} Christ is represented as having established in the world a new theocracy in describing Himself as King of the kingdom of God; in other words, as a King representing the Majesty of the Invisible Ruler of a theocracy. He claimed the character of Founder, of Legislator, and, in a certain high and peculiar sense, “of Judge of a new and Divine society.” Whatever might be the views of the writer with regard to the nature of Jesus Christ, such a position as he reached, seems to me to involve Christ’s true and proper Divinity. In other words, it is tantamount to saying that “Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” I remember that at the time, whatever might be the tendency of the work on the whole, I thought there were in it admissions of such a nature as to afford a basis for convincing arguments in favour of Evangelical Christianity.