Mahony admired the splendid vitality of the man, as well as the
indestructible optimism that bore him triumphantly through all the
hardships of a colonial ministry. No sick bed was too remote for Long,
no sinner sunk too low to be helped to his feet. The leprous Chinaman
doomed to an unending isolation, the drunken Paddy, the degraded white
woman--each came in for a share of his benevolence. He spent the
greater part of his life visiting the outcasts and outposts, beating up
the unbaptised, the unconfirmed, the unwed. But his church did not
suffer. He had always some fresh scheme for this on hand: either he was
getting up a tea-meeting to raise money for an organ; or a series of
penny-readings towards funds for a chancel; or he was training with his
choir for a sacred concert. There was a boyish streak in him, too. He
would enter into the joys of the annual Sunday-school picnic with a zest
equal to the children's own, leading the way, in shirt-sleeves, at
leap-frog and obstacle-race. In doctrine he struck a happy mean between
low-church practices and ritualism, preaching short, spirited sermons to
which even languid Christians could listen without tedium; and on a
week-day evening he would take a hand at a rubber of whist or
ecarte--and not for love--or play a sound game of chess. A man, too, who,
refusing to be bound by the letter of the Thirty-nine Articles, extended
his charity even to persons of the Popish faith.
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