But the time undoubtedly came when, as to this, he modified his
earlier opinions; and the time came too, as I am most glad to think,
when he was led to feel that if he were called to such an office he
might find in it an opportunity for widening his own sympathies and
for estimating more justly those with whom previously he had believed
himself to have little in common.

It was the inevitable condition of his strong and deep convictions
that he should not always or easily understand or make due allowance
for men of different opinions. It was--God and you will bear me
witness that this is true!--one of the noblest characteristics of his
fifteen months' episcopate that, as a bishop, men's rightful liberty
of opinion found in him not only a large and generous tolerance, but
a most beautiful and gracious acceptance. He seized, instantly and
easily, that which will be forever the highest conception of the
episcopate in its relations whether to the clergy or the laity, its
paternal and fraternal character; and his "sweet reasonableness," both
as a father and as a brother, shone through all that he was and did.

For one, I greatly love to remember this,--that when the time came he
himself, with the simple naturalness which marked all that he did,
was brought to reconsider his earlier attitude toward the episcopal
office, and to express with characteristic candor his readiness to
take up its work if he should be chosen to it; he turned to his new,
and to him most strange, task with a supreme desire to do it in a
loving and whole-hearted way, and to make it helpful to every man,
woman, and child with whom he came in contact. What could have been
more like him than that, in that last address which he delivered to
the choir-boys at Newton, he should have said to them, "When you meet
me let me know that you know me." Another might easily have been