The somewhat belated address which the general body of the
Presbyterian, Independent, and Baptist Dissenting minis- ters living in the neighbourhood of London, has just pre- -sented to Mr. Gladstone on his retirement from office, is, we are sure, both perfectly sincere, and as simple an expression of their hearty admiration and affectionate reverence as they 'knew how to write. But it makes the reader very uncomfort- able, one hardly knows why. We do not think that their praise of Mr. Gladstone was intended, as the Pall Mall Gazette seems to think, to advertise the holiness of their own motives, for it is not their motives so much as their aims that they indicate in giving Mr. Gladstone such credit for having pursued righteousness in his political career ; and whatever -their aims may have been, these gentlemen would, we are sure, -eagerly confess that their actual conduct has frequently fallen far short of their aims. What jars upon us is rather -the attempt to express publicly what is much better kept 'unexpressed 'in the heart. It is not well to embody these 'kind of reflections and laudations, however sincere, in words at all. "Prune thou thy words," said the late Cardinal Newman, in one of the pieces he contributed to the Lyra Apostolica ; and these excellent men do not prune their words, but rather lavish them with a sort of lavishness that some- what turns the stomach. We have no doubt at all of the loftiness of Mr. Gladetone's aims, nor of the ardour with -which he pursued them ; but we shrink from premature judgments on the secrets of the heart, even in the case of the great men in whom we believe most earnestly; and this address appears to us to fail in the reticence which is the best token of true reverence.
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