CANON ARMOUR
emblazoned as brilliantly by conquests in science in times of peace as by feats of arms in war.
And when war came, this confidence in the manhood of the Empire was gloriously justified; and my aged friend, not to be outdone by younger men, resolved to do his part. In his seventy-sixth year he undertook the duties and burdens of the parish of Berkeley in Gloucestershire, one among the very large parishes of England, of which his son was the Vicar, in order that the son might be free to serve as a Chaplain at the front. Canon Armour continued his ministrations until his son's return at the end of the war, resigning them in the eightieth year of his age.
Among the many men I have known, Canon Armour possesses in a remarkable degree what a writer has attributed to La Fontaine, "that gracious common-sense, founded on a courageous acceptance of the realities of life, and at the same time inspired and lightened by imagination and poesy." The true mystic is often a very efficient and practical man of affairs; and in Canon Armour the spiritual side of life is closely interwoven with the fabric of the material. In homely phrase, "he is a man first, and a parson afterwards." If I were to express truthfully his thought, I am persuaded it would be that true spirituality finds its roots in the necessities of our material nature, and blossoms more gracefully where these necessities are naturally and legitimately gratified.
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