EDWARD CLIFFORD'S life presented one of those human problems for which there seems to be no solution: a paradox which, on analysis, might prove to be no paradox at all. He was born to be an evangelist, but an evangelist of an unusual type, and outside and apart from any Church or sect. Although he worked for years before his death as the secretary of the Church Army, an institution that had modelled itself partially on the pattern of the Salvation Army, he was, I believe, not otherwise allied to the Anglican Church, but esteemed himself as of Christ, and not of Paul, or of Apollos, or of Cephas.
Unlike his Divine Master, who sought His disciples among the lowly and the humble, the missionary efforts of Edward Clifford were directed to the regeneration of the wealthy and the noble. Bearing in mind the saying that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God, he opened his studio—for Clifford was an artist as well as an evangelist—to those members of the aristocracy who had been awakened to an interest in spiritual things by attending the Mildmay Conferences organized by Lord and Lady Mount Temple. Many Americans were attracted to these conferences, among them Mr. and Mrs. Robert Pearsall Smith. Hannah Smith was a "perfectionist" and an able
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