Now that was the key in which Sanderson dealt with his boys and in which he gave his message to the world. And that is also the key in which they dealt with him. I want to clear out of the reader's mind any idea that this great teacher of men was a solemn and superior person, clear, exact, and exalted¹, and that his boys had any vague sentimental² worship for him. They laughed at him, loved him, understood him, assimilated his ideas, and worked with him. He was much more like a sweating, panting, burly leader pushing a way for himself and others through a thorny³ thicket⁴. And when I sat in his study and read over the notes of his sermons and scripture⁵ lessons I got the same impression of a sturdy fighter thrusting through a tangle⁶.  
[Pg 83]
 
Altogether there were several hundred of these sermon-memoranda. He would take a quire of manuscript paper and write down his notes, not headings merely but sentences, writing very fast, missing out halves of words, leaving phrases incomplete. The result would be a little book with perhaps a title and a date scribbled⁷ on the back page. The dozen specimen⁸ sermons in the official Life were mostly taken from these rough drafts. There was also a quantity of printed sermons dating from his earliest days at Oundle. So that it was possible to trace his development from the days when every heretical utterance⁹ was jealously noted¹⁰, to the days of complete freedom of thought and expression.
 
He came into the interlaced briars and brakes of modern religious thought, a trained theological student, but already a very broad one, far from the trite¹¹ materialistic¹² superstitions¹³ of the narrowly orthodox. 'Of what is termed "definite religious teaching" his boys received little,' says one of his clerical assistants. 'The Head fought shy of anything which he felt might cramp¹⁴ a boy's tendency to think for himself and develop his own views.'
 
[Pg 84]
 
This is far from the old days of salvation¹⁵ by belief.
 
He took Christ as the central figure in hi............