THE NEW "MYTHOLOGY.'

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXI, Issue 8783, 10 April 1907, Page 1

THE NEW "MYTHOLOGY.'

The Rev. R. J. Campbell is always saying startling things; they may be old things, or they may be new, but they are colored by the original standpoint from which he sees them. That, of course, is personality. Mr Campbell's personality has troubled the literary analysts through many a column. He has been described best as an example of the victory of spirit over matter, and that is all. One cannot describe the impalpable. Mannerisms;! He lias none. His way of speaking is with a perfect simplicity, and a perfect quietness. Only the face arrests attention, and that because of the mind that lights it.

A description of a sermon in the City Temple by Mr James Douglas, winch appeared in the "World's Work," shows how beautiful this f xpression may bp. "An attendant in a livery like ,that of an hotel-porter places a Bible on the cushion of the pulpit. Then a phantom in a black Geneva gown materialises in the air behind the Bible, a phantom w.ith an aureole of blanched hair and a mysteriously beautiful young face sombred over with strange shadows and illumined by large sunken eyes burning with a mystical light. Ife is nn unearthly face, Eeraphic in its spiritual beauty. It has a romantic glamour that sets one dreaming of Raphael's or Eossetti's angels, or of Tennyson's Galahad. Do not smile at my extravagance. Let me tell you what a shrewd, hard-headed, unsentimental business man said to me about Mr Campbell:— 'He looks more like an angel than any man I ever raw.' Physical beauty in a man is almost a contemptible quality. But this is something far subtler md far rarer than physical beauty ; it is spiritual beauty ; it is not the flesh, it is the eoul shining through the flesh. That, I think, is the secret of this man's magical personality." Another writer descnb3S the youth of his face, despite the strange white hair, the large, dark, inquiring eyes, and gentle mouth. " His voice is ; low, with no sounding force behind ! it, a quiet, soft, persuasive voice. He [ has few gestures. He suggests to I you nothing of the fighter. He would never compel a man to go , with him, and would care for no championship in fa'th that was net born as naturally as the sunrise. He Uands quietly and self-pospessed, the bands resting in front of him, the voice proceeding evenly and without amotion, th 9 eyes never firing, the jrnile never forsakiug his lip?.