John Gordon

“ The chief obstacle to a satisfactory arrangement being [Pg 34] thus removed, General Gordon hastened to have an interview with Ras Alula, and with this intention crossed the Abyssinian frontier, and proceeded to his camp at Gura. After an interview and the presentation of the Khedive's letter and his credentials, Gordon found that he was practically a prisoner, and that nothing could be accomplished save by direct negotiation with King John. He therefore offered to go to his capital at Debra Tabor, near Gondar, if Ras Alula would promise to refrain from attacking Egypt during his absence. ”

“ GORDON, Sir ALEXANDER (1650–1726) , of Earlston, covenanter, eldest son of William Gordon (1614-1679) [q. v.] of Earlston, and Mary, daughter of Sir John Hope of Craighall, Fifeshire, was born in 1650. His grandfather was Alexander Gordon (1587-1654) [q. v.] Like his father he became a zealous presbyterian. He was present at the battle of Bothwell Bridge. One of his tenants saved him during his flight by dressing him in woman's clothes and setting him to rock a cradle. Within a few days he was proclaimed a rebel and cited to appear as such before the justiciary court at Edinburgh on 8 Feb. ”

“ Gordon died in 1654, and a contemporary, John Livingstone, who knew him well, says he was ‘a man of great spirit, but much subdued by inward exercise, and who attained the most rare experiences of downcasting and uplifting’ (‘Memorable Characteristics’ printed in Select Biographies, Wodrow Soc., i. 343) . Of his marriage there was issue three sons and one daughter. The eldest son, John, predeceased him on 29 Oct. 1645, and the second son, William (1614-1679) [q. v.] , whose son Alexander, also a covenanter, is noticed in the next article, succeeded as Laird of Earlston. ”

“ Gordon’s watch was out and he was telling his man on just what car he must leave the apartments for the station. The chief noted it was two cars ahead of what would have been necessary. His gray head gave an almost imperceptible nod of commendation, and his eyes showed that he was content with his selection of a man.
“Now, sir,” said Gordon, as he hung up the receiver, “I’m ready for orders.”
“Well, you are to go to New York, and take a cab for the Cosmopolis Hotel—your room there is already secured by wire. Your name is John Burnham. ”

“ GORDON, JOHN, D.D. (1544–1619) , dean of Salisbury, probably the eldest son of Alexander Gordon [q. v.] , bishop-elect of Galloway, was born on 1 Sept. 1544. He first studied at St. Leonard's College, St. Andrews. In June 1565 he was sent to pursue his education in France, having a yearly pension granted him by Queen Mary, payable out of her French dowry. He spent two years at the universities of Paris and Orleans. On 4 Jan. 1568 he was confirmed by royal charter in the bishopric of Galloway and abbacy of Tongland, vacated in his favour by his father ”

“ It ain't fair." He turned to the young fellow who had taken the pigeons, and who acted as referee.
"See here, John," he said, "you ain't going to see me done this way, be you? You know it ain't a fair deal. Albert Dodd's shot clay pigeons, and I've shot wood. It ain't fair."
"No, it ain't fair," admitted the young fellow reluctantly, with a side glance at Doctor Gordon. Gordon made a movement, but Georgie K. was ahead of him. James saw a roll of bills pass from his hands to Jim Goodman's. ”

“ MAKING THE GLIDER “Now, you see, Harry, if I hadn’t stopped to do that good turn for Miss Leslie, and missed the train, you wouldn’t have had a ride in an aeroplane,” said Gordon, as he hitched up his stocking and settled himself comfortably in the boat for the voyage to camp. “And you fellows would have lost the boat-race, too.”
“We don’t appreciate what a blessing G. Lord really is,” said John Walden, Hawk.
“And he wouldn’t have met Miss Crosby, either,” continued Gordon.
“He ought to be very thankful to you,” said Tom Langford, Beaver. ”

“ The divine fills the human. It is this sense of the glory filling the man that is so overpowering to John.
A glorious presence overshadows the man and shines out of Him, but never obliterates nor makes the man less. That indescribable glory within shining out through the man magnifies every part of His human being. The head and hair are white, not like a pale or painted white, but a transparent whiteness, an intense searching, glowing light shining out from Him through the human head and hair.
The eyes are as a flame of pure fire, the feet like melting metal glowing in fire. ”

“ We find the inspiring, purifying uplift of the flowers, drawing us up the hillside to the top. We find the voice—the Man—gently but with unflinching unbending determination that never yields a hairbreadth, insisting on our coming clear up to the topmost level. That's a wondrous order of words, and coupling of helps, grace and truth.
And this is Jesus. This is John's simple tremendous picture. This Man comes down into our neighbourhood, on our earth. ”

“ You believe: that is you love. The grammar of the word works itself out inside you thus,—believe, trust, love. The truth comes in through eyes and ears and feeling, into brain and will; through emotion clear down into your heart. You love. You cannot help yourself. You love Him, Jesus, the One so lovable.
John says that you may believe. It is possible. It is the reasonable intelligent thing to do after such a presentation. John makes it easy for us to believe. His telling of the story is so strong and convincing, though so simple and short, that believing is the natural thing. ”

“ It becomes the commonplace, the blessed commonplace that can never be common. That's John's underscoring of the word "fullness." May the crowds whose elbows we jostle get this underscored translation, bound in shoe-leather, your shoe-leather.
Then in his eagerness to make us understand the thing really, John makes a contrast. "The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." The law was a thing, given, through a man. Grace and truth was a man coming, the very embodiment in Himself of what the two words stand for. ”

“ He insists on being His own true self in the midst of the unlikeliest surroundings. The glow of His presence shines out over all the neighbourhood of human tents. There's a purity of air that stimulates. Men take deep breaths. There's a fragrance breathing subtly out from His tent that draws and delights. Men come a-running with childlike eagerness.
Grace Flooding.
And now as Jesus comes quietly down the river road where John's crowd is gathered, John the witness points his finger tensely out, and eagerly cries out: There He is! This is the man I've been telling you about! ”

“ It is the same identical light that John is telling us of here that so shines in upon every man, and always has. There is no light but His. His later name is Jesus. From the first, and everywhere still, it is the light that shines from Him that lights men. ”

“ And the most grateful of all is the man. This is the Jesus-plan, John says, "full of grace and truth."
Grace is named first. It comes first. That is a bit of the graciousness of it. That's love's exquisite diplomacy. We feel the grateful warmth of the sun in the winter's air, and are drawn by it. We smell the fragrance of the roses and come eagerly nearer. We hear the winsomeness of a gentle wooing voice a-calling, and instinctively answer to it. And then we find the sun's power to heal and cleanse and its insistence on burning up what can't stand its heat. ”

“ And if a break comes, instantly love in its grief sets itself with warmth and renewed strength to the new harder brooding task. It gives itself out yet more, regardless of cost, until in place of the broken fragments there comes a finer sort of life out of the warm womb of love, brooding, redeeming, bringing-back-again love. This is God. This is Jesus. John shows us Jesus as a picture of the brooding God. ”

“ This is peculiarly and distinctively the picture of John's Gospel. There is a Man walking towards you in these pages. Turn where you will there He is, and always facing you, with a gentle eagerness in His face and in the bend-forward of His body.
There is always a warmth, a gentle radiating comforting drawing warmth in His presence. This is the thing you feel most, the warmth. But it isn't the only thing. There's the purity. There are ideals that seem out of reach in their great height. There's the insistence on these ideals, rigid stern absolutely unbending insistence. ”

“ It is fascinating to find one book in this old Book of God given up wholly to telling of this, John's Gospel. Of course the whole of the Book is really given up to it, when one gets the whole simple view of it at one glance. But so many of us don't get that whole simple glance.
So to make it easier for us simple common folk, and to make sure of our getting it, there is one little book, hardly big enough to call a book, just a few pages devoted wholly to letting us see this one thing. You can see the whole of the sun in a single drop of water. ”

“ Here they come crippled diseased maimed weakened in body, piteously pathetically crutching along, singed and burned with the flames of the same low passion that the onlooking crowds know so well, struggling, limping, crutching along bodily and in every other way. ”

“ It is a Man coming down the road with face looking into yours. He is truly a man, every line of the picture makes that clear to you. But such a man as never was seen before, with the rarest blending of the kingly and the kindly in His bearing. The purest purity, the utmost graciousness, the highest ideals, the gentlest manner, nobility beyond what we have known, and kindliness past describing,—all these blend in the pose of His body and most of all in the look of His face. And He is in motion. He is walking, walking towards us, with hands outstretched.
This is John's picture of Jesus. ”

“ And only the power of the blood of Christ can ever break that bondage.
There was the real thing of light. Here is the real thing of light. There's a distinct tingeing of red in it. It's the only light. It only is the light. Every other is a make-pretend light, however subtle its imitations and reflections: it will lead only into swamp and bog and ditch and worse.
And then John goes on to add a very simple bit that has not always been quite understood in its simplicity. There was the real thing of light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. ”

“ She broods in spirit till her child looks into her eyes, bearing the image, in face and mental impress and spirit, which the brooding months have given. She broods over the inarticulate days when the babe cannot tell the felt needs except to a brooding mother's keen insight. ”

“ The work is interesting, written in a lively style, full of learning and ingenuity, but removing all difficulties with a quaint oracular dogmatism, which entertains rather than convinces. He holds the absolute incorruptness of the text of both testaments, including the Hebrew points. Indeed, he goes so far in a later work as to maintain, respecting the k'thibh and the q'ri, that 'both of them are of God, and of equal authority.' The 'Concent' was attacked in their public prelections by John Rainolds at Oxford, and Edward Lively at Cambridge. ”

“ There only does it reach finest fruitage. Some day we shall recognize the meaning of that modest but tremendous little sentence,—God is love. This warm brooding something that comes, gentle as the dawning light in the grey east, fragrant as the dew of the new morning, irresistible in its pervasive persuasive presence as the rays of the growing sun, giving to us warmth, and life, and drawing out from within us warmth and life and beauty and strength, all in its own image, this is the thing called love. ”

“ Its real heart meaning lies much deeper. Brooding is the mother of all love. It is its warmth that draws out that fine feeling that makes and marks friendship. It is its tender warmth that draws out that finest degree of friendship which knits with unbreakable bonds two lives into one.
It reaches out most subtly to knit up again the ends that have ravelled out under the sore stress of life. It bends compassionately over those hurt in body, and hurt yet more in their spirit by the greedy rivalry of life, and nurses into newness of life the shivering shredded hurt parts. ”

“ The sun gives itself out in life and light and warmth. And out to greet it comes a bit of itself—the fine form and sweet fragrance of the rose, the tender blade of grass, the unfolding green of the leaf, the wealth of the soil, the song of the bird and the grateful answer of all nature.
The hen sits long patient days on her nest. And forth comes cheeping life in her own image, answering the call of her mothering spirit. The mother-bird in the nest in the crotch of the tree gives her life day by day in brooding love. ”

“ Or, that every man is lighted as he comes into the world, the chief thing being told is the same. Every man in the world is lighted by this Light.
Through nature, the nightly twinklers in the wondrous blue overhead, the unfailing freshness of the green out of the brown under foot; through the never-ceasing wonders of these bodies of ours, so awesomely and skilfully made, and kept going; through that clear quiet inner voice that does speak in every human heart amidst all the noises of earth and of passion; through these the light is shining, noiselessly, softly, endlessly, by day and night. ”