6 APRIL 1934, Page 6

The comment that Dr. R. F. Horton narrowed his experience

and perhaps to some extent his sympathies by moving from Oxford to Hampstead over fifty years ago and never moving any further is, I think, just. He was a man of one church. He made Lyndhurst Road, became its Minister in 1880 and remained in active charge of it till four years ago. It is a remarkable record. But for some years Horton has been little in the public eye, contrasting therein strikingly with his veteran Free Church colleague, Dr. Scott Lidgett, who in his eightieth year (Horton was a year younger) is abating nothing of his incredible activity. Dr. Horton was one of the best embodiments of scholarship and culture among Free Church leaders and he could, if he had chosen, have had a notable career at Oxford. I have not observed in any of his obituary notices the story of how when, as a young Minister to whom ministerial garb was distasteful, lie announced, " I will wear no clothes to distinguish me from ordinary men," an undergraduate alive to opportuni- ties put a comma after the word " clothes," and flooded Oxford with a drawing illustrating the vow.