unnamed friend took umbrage at him for remaining in the Established Church, and their friendship ceased. It is not easy now to understand the bitterness of feeling that existed at that time between those who took different views on the question of the relation between Church and State; but as regards Mr. Nelson, such was his breadth of mind and catholic spirit, it never made the slightest change on their friendship through all the intervening years, and he spoke of him ‘as the best of all good men he had known.’” But his broad-minded charity was in no degree traceable to latitudinarian indifference. His convictions were strong, and when occasion required it, were maintained with firmness, and defended with incisive keenness of argument. And here it may be well to note a characteristic trait. Few men were ever more notably marked by transparent sincerity and truthfulness. If a truth told against his cause, it never occurred to him to withhold it. There was indeed an amusing simplicity in the manner in which he would disclose a fact seeming to reflect on his own party or on himself; or, when in company with persons disposed to arrogate to themselves rank or social position, he would recall some homely incident or experience of his own early life. But the same instinctive love of truth made him intolerant of cant, or of any evasion in reference to matters of faith. If he were perplexed with doubts, as he often was, in reference to the modern conflict between science and revelation, he would give abrupt utterance to them in the most orthodox circles; and if any attempt were made to evade or gloss over the difficulty, his blunt reassertion of the point at issue, in all its literal nakedness, was at times misunderstood and even bitterly resented. Sanctimonious hypocrisy, or anything savouring of insincerity in religion, was abhorrent to his nature, and provoked his keenest ridicule. For his sense of humour was great, and he would expose pretentious inconsistencies in their most ludicrous aspect, giving no little offence at times to clerical offenders. To this habit of giving expression of his convictions with all unguarded sincerity is, no doubt, to be ascribed the remark in a letter of one of his oldest Christian friends, when bearing testimony to the earnestness with which in his last illness “he gave proof that he had attained by God’s help to true faith in the Son of God, and was conscious of having definitely accepted him as his personal Saviour, and given himself over to him on the warrant of God’s own word of invitation.” The writer, a devoted clergyman of the Free Church, adds: “There was an entire absence of the old levity, which you will remember used sometimes almost to shock and sadden even his best friends.”