Page:Distinguished Churchmen.djvu/209

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THE REV. WILSON CARLILE 173

the length and breadth of the land as the Founder and Hon. Chief Secretary of the Church Army. Mr Carlile is, above all things, practical so practical, indeed, that, like many of the generals in the army of the State, he needs must bear his scars and bear them with pride, because they are evidence of conflicts encountered and of conflicts overcome in the early struggles to achieve a noble purpose.

" All good things require to be smashed up to make them go ! " is an odd saying of the moving genius of the Church Army. Judged in the light of subsequent events, he certainly seems himself to have gone all the better for the "smashing up," as he terms it, received in Horse Ferry Road. It fired the dominant spirit of the man that spirit which enables men to look an obstacle squarely in the face and elicits without hesitation the resolve, "I will succeed !"

To some lives it is easy enough to find a parallel. The rule meets with the exception in Mr Carlile s case, for his career has been one of marked individuality. By descent our subject is a Scotsman, tracing relationship with some of the Provosts of Paisley. He recounts with some gratification how that, a century ago, his forefathers were establishing a successful whole sale business in the neighbourhood of Cheapside at the same time as the ancestors of another prominent man Mr Joseph Chamberlain, M.P.

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