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FOREWORD
AN APPRECIATION
How is one to know a friend? Certainly not by the duration of acquaintance.
Neither can friendship be bought or sold by service rendered. Nor can it be
coined into acts of gallantry or phrases of flattery. It has no part in the small
change of courtesy. It is outside all these, containing them all and superior
to them all.
To some is given the great privilege of a day set apart to mark the arrival of
a total stranger panoplied with all the insignia of friendship. He comes
unannounced. He bears no letter of introduction. No mutual friend can vouch
for him. Suddenly and silently he steps unexpectedly out of the shadow of
material concern and spiritual obscurity, into the radiance of intimate
friendship, as a picture is projected upon a lighted screen. But unlike the
phantom picture he is an instant reality that one's whole being immediately
recognizes, and the radiance of fellowship that pervades his word, thought
and action holds all the essence of long companionship.
Unfortunately there are too few of these bright messengers of God to be met
with in life's pilgrimage, but that Judge Troward was one of them will never
be doubted by the thousands who are now mourning his departure from
among us. Those whose closest touch with him has been the reading of his
books will mourn him as a friend only less than those who listened to him on
the platform. For no books ever written more clearly expressed the author.
The same simple lucidity and gentle humanity, the same effort to discard
complicated non-essentials, mark both the man and his books.
Although the spirit of benign friendliness pervades his writings and
illuminated his public life, yet much of his capacity for friendship was denied
those who were not privileged to clasp hands with him and to sit beside him
in familiar confidence. Only in the intimacy of the fireside did he wholly
reveal his innate modesty and simplicity of character. Here alone, glamoured
with his radiating friendship, was shown the wealth of his richly-stored mind
equipped by nature and long training to deal logically with the most
profound and abstruse questions of life. Here indeed was proof of his
greatness, his unassuming superiority, his humanity, his keen sense of
honour, his wit and humour, his generosity and all the characteristics of a
rare gentleman, a kindly philosopher and a true friend.
To Judge Troward was given the logician's power to strip a subject bare of all
superfluous and concealing verbiage, and to exhibit the gleaming jewels of
truth and reality in splendid simplicity. This supreme quality, this ability to
make the complex simple, the power to subordinate the non-essential, gave
to his conversation, to his lectures, to his writings, and in no less degree to
his personality, a direct and charming naïveté that at once challenged
attention and compelled confidence and affection.
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