CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Cornell University Library BX5093 .R72 olin 3 1924 029 448 143 ijll || Cornell University 151 Ij Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029448143 MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN THE ENGLISH CHURCH MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN THE ENGLISH CHURCH BY ARTHUR ROGERS L >VC° NEW YORK LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. LONDON AND BOMBAY 1898 COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY LONGMANS, G R K EX, & /o/o¥?£ MY FATHER WHO FIRST TAUOHT ME TO LOVE BOOKS AND TO SEEK THE GOOD IN MEN PREFACE WHATEVER value this little book may have will not be because so little has been written on the subject with which it deals, but because there has been so much. The men who are here considered wrote many boohs of many kinds. The lives of most of them have been recorded at great length. They took part in stirring movements, they lent themselves to great reforms. Aside from their direct biographies, and the impression which their own works give of them, many side glances are cast upon their lives. It is my purpose in this volume to give some picture of them, and of their influence upon the Church zohich they served in the same office but in such different ways, for those who have not time nor opportunity to make the picture for them- selves; and a list of the larger works to which I am indebted will be found at the end of this volume. viii PREFACE These sketches are not controversial, nor critical. I have tried to take each man at his own terms, and to show how he lived the life which he marked out for himself. So far as possible, I have tried to put myself at each mans point of view, and to see his actions, not as they looked to his opponents, but as they looked to him. I know that there are dangers in such a course, but surely, if we are to learn from the lives cf other men, we must take them at their best. It is safer to make too much of the good that they tried to do, even if it seems to us at times that they did it in mistaken ways, than to make too little of it, and to look at it awry. If there has been any virtue, f there has been any praise, these are the things upon which I have tried to dwell. A. R. St. George's Rectory Central Falls, Rhode Island June SI, 1898, CONTENTS THE NEED OF A REV I V A L II JOHN HENRY NEWMAN -; E N I S O N MAl'RICE 278 XI CHARLES K I N* G S L E Y 3H XII conclusion: light foot and CHURCH 339 LIST OF PORTRAITS I JOHN HENHY NEWMAN From a drawing by George Richmond, R.A., by permission of H. E. Wilberforce, Esq., the owner of the original draw- ing, and of J. McLean, Esq., owner of the copyright of the engraving. Facing page %4 II JOHN KEBLE From a portrait by Oeorge Richmond, R. A., by permission of Ryman Hall, Esq., owner of the copyright of the engraving. Facing page 89 III ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY From a photograph by permission of Sawyer and Lankesler, Regent Street, London. Facing page 21$ IV JOHN FREDERICK DENISON M A U RICE From a painting by Samuel Lawrence in the National Por- trait Gallery, London. Facing page 27S MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN THE ENGLISH CHURCH I Chapter I THE NEED OF A REVIVAL THE eighteenth century was almost everywhere a period of depression. England, it is true, did not fall into the depths of desolation which were reached in France, and elsewhere on the Continent of Europe. But even in England, the general level was distinctly low. There had been a movement back- ward from an earlier time. In literature, Shakspeare and Milton had had their day, and had left no suc- cessors, even to follow afar off. In politics, the advis- ers of the Hanoverian kings were not the equals of those who had gone before them. The old-time pres- tige of the English army and navy was seriously threatened by the reverses which they met with in the Colonies. The very manners of the people lacked the grace and polish of an earlier generation. [1 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN It was impossible that this low level should not affect the Church. The great Cathedrals, which had borne their witness to God for many centuries, re- mained, but their beauty and their significance were alike obscured, or at the best unrecognized. For the Church as an Establishment there existed a profound respect, but the interest felt in it was fairly enough expressed by Walpole's saying that things which were quiet must not be disturbed. It was a respect- able institution which troubled nobody. It had there- fore earned the right, in its turn, to be left alone. Moreover, if the Church had small claim to respect for anything that it did, it insisted so much the more upon its dignity and self-completeness. It seems, for the most part, to have been quite satis- fied with itself. It went on its way unruffled and unmoved. If there had come to the Church of Eng- land at that time any such word as came later to John Henry Newman — Securus judical orbis terrarum — it would have had no effect whatever. Where should it look for securus orbis terrarum beyond its own bord- ers? Church History was neglected, sometimes de- spised. It had no thought of any sister Church. As for the Eastern Church, we are told that it was as unknown as if it had been an insignificant sect in the farthest wilds of Muscovy. The religious move- ments which sprang up within the Church itself not [2 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH only received no encouragement, but when it was possible were dismissed in disgrace. Enthusiasm was disliked and dreaded. A bishop wrote a book to hold it up to scorn. There is no doubt a danger lest we may paint too black a picture. In the eighteenth century, as at other times, there could be found the seven thousand who would not bow the knee to Baal. We must believe that there was many a village in which Goldsmith's description of the country parson, whose very vices leaned to virtue's side, might have been taken from the life. There lingered survivors of a better day in the past, there were foreshadowings of brighter times to come. Thomas Wilson, Bishop of Sodor and Man, lived half-way through the century; and it would be hard to find anywhere a nobler or more holy life. So did William Law, and we cannot say that the spirit of religion was extinct in an age which could pro- duce his Serious Call. So did Joseph Butler, Dean of St. Paul's and Bishop of Durham; and the Analogy is surely one of the world's great books. But it is » witness to the discouragement of those who had eyes to see things as they really were, that when Butler was offered the Archbishopric of Canterbury he de- clined it, saying that it was too late for him to try to support a falling Church. Taken as a whole, this judgment of his must seem [3] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN natural enough. There was much more to censure than there was to praise. There was more to dis- hearten than to inspire. It is this dark side of the picture with which we are most concerned, because it is this which gives its direction to the new life which we are to consider. If it seems as if no good thing could ever come out of all these abuses and this inefficiency, we must remember that the Church did but reflect the conditions of the age. Erastianism reigned almost supreme. The Church was looked upon as the creature of the State. Her spirit- ual functions were subordinated to her social ones. There is no better picture of the life of the last years of the century than that to be found in Jane Austen's novels, and there we see the clergyman at his best an amiable young man, with nothing to dis- tinguish him from his sporting brother except a little better temper and a little gentler language, while at his worst he is an ignorant and pompous fooL If it be urged by any that the type is not yet extinct, it may at least be said that it is no longer taken as a matter of course. The thoughts of the clergy seem to have been directed far more to preferment for themselves than to the service of their people. Whatever would not bring promotion was ignored. Thus we find Dr. John- son saying — "Learning has decreased in England, be- [4] THE ENGLISH CHURCH cause learning will not do so much for a man as for- merly. There are other ways of getting preferment. Few bishops are now made for their learning. To be a bishop, a man must be learned in a learned age, factious in a factious age, but always of eminence." In another place he repeats this, with an added comment which lets us see what he thought of his own age. "No man can now be made a bishop for his learning and piety; his only chance of promotion is his being connected with some one who has Par- liamentary interest." And he points out a pleasant and an unpleasant way in which this interest might be obtained. "The highest offices in Church and State resemble a pyramid, whose top is accessible to only two sorts of animals, eagles and reptiles." We must allow, of course, for some exaggeration. Dr. Johnson had an emphatic way of putting things. There were not many eagles. There were not many who could fitly be described as reptiles. But there can be no doubt that there was very great regard for the emoluments and dignities of office, and very slight regard for its responsibilities. There were always magnificent exceptions. Thus, we are told of Dr. Bathurst, who was Bishop of Norwich during the early part of the present century, that he was for- bidden to advocate in Parliament any concessions to Roman Catholics, under penalty of being left in his [5] ' MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN miserably poor See without hope of translation to a richer Bishopric. The -warning was unobserved. He spoke most energetically in favour of the measure which was proposed. The peer who sat next him said, "I am happy to find the air of Norwich agrees so well with your Lordship; you don't seem inclined to change it." To which the Bishop meekly replied, "My lord, whatever I change, I trust I shall not change my principles." But unhappily, men like this were the exception rather than the rule. It is a dismal enough record that most of the digni- taries of the time have to set before us. There were plenty of lords over God's heritage. There were very few ensamples to the flock. We hear of bishoprics of business and bishoprics of ease. Dr. Hoadly held the See of Bangor for six years, apparently without ever setting foot in his diocese. The career of Dr. Watson, at one time Bishop of LlandafF, gives us a good example — or a bad example — of the way in which promotion was too often bestowed, and of the spirit in which it was not infrequently received. At the age of twenty-seven he was elected to the Professor- ship of Chemistry at Cambridge. He himself tells us the grounds upon which the choice was made. "At the time this honour was conferred upon me," he writes, "I knew nothing at all of chemistry, had never read a syllable on the subject, nor seen a sin- [6] THE ENGLISH CHURCH gle experiment in it; but I was tired with mathe- matics and natural philosophy, and the vehementissima gloricB cupido stimulated me to try my strength in a new pursuit, and the kindness of the University ani- mated me to very extraordinary exertions." After seven years, he was given "the first office for honour in the University, the Regius Professorship of Divin- ity.'' Of this he writes — "On being raised to this distinguished office I immediately applied myself with great eagerness to the study of divinity." He lets us see the qualifications which seemed to him to be needed in one whose special business it was to teach theology. "I determined to study nothing but my Bible, being much unconcerned about the opinions of Councils, Fathers, Churches, Bishops, and other men as little inspired as myself." He describes his method of meeting theological opponents. "I never troubled myself with answering their arguments, but used on such occasions to say to them, holding the New Tes- tament in my hand, En sacrum codicem.'' For a while he attended to the duties of his office himself, after the fashion which has been described; but for many years the performance of them was entrusted to a deputy. In course of time he was made Bishop of LlandafF. With the same frankness with which he depicts his life at Cambridge, with the same entire blindness as to anything in his conduct which could excite unfa- [7 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN vourable remark, he tells of the method which he pursued in the administration of his diocese. He did pay it an occasional visit, it is true, but his chief concern was of a very different sort. " Having no place of residence in my diocese," he remarks, " I turned my attention to the improvement of land." For this purpose he selected "the beautiful district on the banks of Winandermere." He continues — "I thought the improvement of a man's fortune by cul- tivating the earth was the most useful and honourable way of providing for a family. I have now been sev- eral years occupied as an improver of land and a planter of trees." His family was also provided for by an income of £2,000 which he drew from sixteen parishes, as salary for the duties which he neglected. It would seem to most of us that, from his own point of view, he was a very fortunate man. He deserved little, and he obtained much. But this was not at all his way of regarding it. He complains bitterly that he is "abandoned by his friends, and proscribed the emoluments of his profession." He declares that he is " exhibited to the world as a marked man fallen under royal displeasure." He appeals to posterity to rescue him from the neglect into which he is fallen, and not to regard his lack of recognition as a "proof of professional demerit." And the most depressing feature of it all is the absolute innocence, not only [8 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH . of evil, but even of the slightest impropriety, with which he describes his course. There are few Bishops of the time of whom we have such full knowledge as Watson has given of himself. His case, no doubt, is an extreme one in some of its details, but in its general outline we cannot regard it as an isolated one. Where there was such a total lack of oversight, there could be little sympathy between the higher clergy and the lower. Fathers in God, in any real sense, were few and far be- tween. Episcopal duties were not always utterly neg- lected, but the performance of them, at the best, was apt to be of the most perfunctory sort. One Bishop examined his candidates for Ordination in a tent on the cricket-field, while he himself partici- pated in the game. Another sent a message by his butler for the candidate to write an essay. The atti- tude of the Bishop toward his clergy was not often that of a leader in all good works, a friend and counsellor. Rather, it was one of indifference, or per- haps of condescension, which is even worse. Bishop Warburton was to preach a special sermon in a Lon- don church. There was some delay before the service, and several dignitaries who were waiting with the Bishop in an ante-room became ill at ease. We are told of the manner in which the Bishop rose to the occasion. "He did everything in his power to enter- [9 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN tain them and to alleviate their patience. He was beyond measure condescending and courteous, and even graciously handed some biscuits and wine in a salver to the curate who was to read prayers." An- other Bishop was not so condescending. The distance between his house and his chapel was less than a quarter of a mile, but this quarter of a mile he always travelled in his episcopal coach, with his ser- vants in full-dress liveries; and if he ventured abroad on a somewhat longer journey he always carried with him twelve servants at the least. This excess of dig- nity becomes the more oppressive when we discover that he was a farmer's son. With such examples before them, it is not very strange if the parochial clergy were often lazy and avaricious. An excellent clergyman was not ashamed to apply for a country living, in addition to his city parish, for no other reason than that it would serve "as an agree- able retreat within a. convenient distance from town;" and an excellent Bishop was not ashamed to give it to him on those grounds. A rector of Alderley, the parish in Cheshire which Dean Stanley's father served faithfully for many years, used to boast that he had never set foot in a sick person's cottage, though his parish contained thirteen hundred souls. There were some of the clergy to whom fox-hunting was not only a recreation for their leisure hours, but the [10 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH chief business of their lives. Dean Hole remarks of these that it is charitable to suppose that they mis- took the fox for a wolf, and so were anxious to de- stroy him, like good shepherds of the flock. With such low standards, it was inevitable that preaching should suffer. In the early years of this century, there were two chief styles of sermon, cor- responding to the great parties in the Church. The Rev. Thomas Mozley, a brother-in-law of Newman, has left some reminiscences in which he gives a vivid picture of the manners of the two schools. "The High Church clergyman," he tells us, "was seen daily in his parish: he was visiting sick folk, or calling upon the genteeler ones; once in the thoroughfares, he met everybody and exchanged a word with every- body. He might sometimes seem to be at an idle end, and even too accessible. But you saw him. If you wished, you had a talk with him; and if you wished more, a serious talk. When Sunday came, he delivered a cut-and-dried sermon; if he was a big fellow and had a strong voice, ore rotundo; if not, in a monotonous tone, as much as to confess that what he was saying was hardly worth your attention." Yet, as Mozley goes on to show, even in those days there were very good and very energetic High Church preachers to be found, working hard with little ap- preciation and under many discouragements. [ 11 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS I N The other school he treats with little sympathy — perhaps with too little, we are sometimes led to think. "The part of Evangelical preacher," he goes on, "was the very opposite of all this. The great mass of the people committed to his care he assumed to be utterly bad or hopelessly good, that is, hopelessly trusting to good works; or perhaps waiting for the day and hour when the divine call was to reach them. Anyhow, he could discard them altogether from his consideration." The certainty of personal sal- vation is the one burden of his preaching, and if the theme is a high one it lends itself unfortunately to cant and presumption. Mozley remarks of it, that "the impression of the system on my mind, after many years of such sermons, with hardly any relief whatever, was that it put the character of Jesus Christ entirely out of account, and that it reduced the sermon on the mount, all the discourses of our Lord, and all the moral arguments and exhortations of St. Paul and the other apostles, to mere carnalities that no real Christian need have anything to do with." "As to the effect of this preaching,'' he con- tinues, "it was simply none. Hundreds of times have I looked round on a congregation specially moral and respectable to see how they took the final and irre- versible sentence of eternal doom sounded continually in their ears. As often as not everybody was asleep, [12] THE ENGLISH CHURCH except a few too stupid to be ever quite awake or quite asleep. Humanity and common sense revolted against such teaching, and it could really no more reach the understanding than so many letters of the alphabet shaken out of a bag upon a table." Dean Church, in his book on the Oxford Movement, gives us much the same idea of the two schools, though his pictures are less highly coloured, and per- haps more valuable for that very reason. In both parties, he could find much to praise. But he com- plains of the Evangelicals that they never seemed to get beyond the first beginnings of Christian teaching; that they too often found their guarantees for faith- fulness in jealous suspicions and in fierce bigotries; that while they claimed to be exclusively fervent, spiritual, and unworldly, they had come in fact to be on very easy terms with the world. Of the High Church party of the day, he declares that it was looked upon, not only by its rivals, as "dry, unspirit- ual, formal, unevangelical, self-righteous;" its adhe- rents were regarded as "teachers of mere morality at their best, allies and servants of the world at their worst.'' His estimate of the average of the school is not altogether a dark one — "kindly, helpful, respect- able, social persons of good sense and character, workers rather in a fashion of routine which no one thought of breaking, sometimes keeping up their [13 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS I N University learning, and apt to employ it in odd and not very profitable inquiries; apt, too, to value them- selves on their cheerfulness and quick wit; but often dull and dogmatic and quarrelsome, often insufferably pompous." At the time of which Church and Mozley are writ- ing many signs of improvement were already visible. It is of a somewhat earlier period, the period of the Methodist revival, that Sydney Smith is chiefly think- ing when he pours out his wrath against the preach- ing of the orthodox clergy. "Is it wonder," he asks, "that every semi-delirious sectary who pours forth his animated nonsense with the genuine look and voice of passion should gesticulate away the congregation of the most profound and learned divine of the Es- tablished Church, and in two Sundays preach him bare to the very sexton? Why call in the aid of pa- ralysis to piety? Is sin to be taken from men, as Eve was from Adam, by casting them into a deep slum- ber? It is theatrical to use action, and it is Metho- distical to use action. But we have cherished contempt for sectaries, and persevered in dignified tameness for so long, that while we are freezing common sense for large salaries in stately churches, the crowd are feasting on ungrammatical fervour and illiterate anima- tion in the crumbling hovels of Methodists." But the leaders of the Methodists themselves were by no THE ENGLISH CHURCH means satisfied with those very things to which Syd- ney Smith ascribes a large part of their success. We find John Wesley saying to one of his young men — "Scream no more, at the peril of your soul." He protests against "what are vulgarly called Gospel sermons," and declares that the phrase has become a mere cant word. Not Sydney Smith himself could render a more caustic criticism than this of Wesley. "Let but a pert, self-sufficient animal that has neither sense nor grace bawl out something about Christ and His blood, or justification by faith, and his hearers cry out, What a fine Gospel sermon." While the position of the clergy was so very far away from what it should have been, it is no wonder if negligence and irreligion were rife among the laity. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, we read of people standing upon the altar in Canterbury Ca- thedral that they might catch a glimpse of the Queen as she prayed. In other places, it was used for a card-table. There was religious zeal, but it vented itself too often in such ways as by speaking of the surplice, for example, as "a Babylonish garment, a rag of the whore of Babylon, a habit of the priests of Isis." At the beginning of the nineteenth, matters were not so much better. On Easter Day in the year 1800, there were only six communicants at St. Paul's Cathedral. There were churches in London which [15] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN sometimes found themselves on Sunday without a single individual to form a congregation. The pew system had sprung up, with the effect of emphasizing class distinctions, and of curtailing the all too limited space which the churches had at their disposal. Dean Hole, who is still living at a good old age, tells of a state of things which lasted down into his boyhood. "The altar was represented by a small rickety deal table, with a scanty covering of faded and patched green baize, on which were placed the overcoat, hat, and riding whip of the officiating minister, who made a vestry within the sacrarium, and sitting there in a huge surplice, had a conversation with the sexton before the service began, and looked as though he were about to have his hair cut. The font was filled with coffin-ropes, tinder-boxes, brimstone matches, candle-ends, and the like. It was never used for baptism." All this reflects upon the clergyman, of course. But a laity which could tolerate such a state of things was not without blame. In country villages, it was no uncommon thing, be- tween the prayers and the sermon, for a servant to bring sherry and light refreshments to the Squire's pew. Mrs. Barbauld speaks of the mischief wrought by pews in no very gentle way. "I would reprobate those little gloomy solitary cells, planned by the spirit of aristocracy, which deform the building no [ 16] THE ENGLISH CHURCH less to the eye of taste than to the eye of benevo- lence, and insulating each family within its separate enclosure, favour at once the pride of rank and the laziness of indulgence." In other ways, too, churches were made to minister to vanity and to an exclusive spirit. Commemorative sermons were founded in the hope of perpetuating forever names which might very well be left to be forgotten. As one good man expressed it, he was "scandalized with such fulsome panegyrics; it grieved him to the soul to see flattery taken sanctuary in the pulpit." The very fabric of the church was made to minister to an unseemly vainglory. It is put thus in one of the verses of the time — " With pride of heart, the Churchwarden surveys, High o'er the belfry, girt with birds and flowers, His story wrought in capitals; 'twas I That bought the font, and I repaired the perns." The low estate of the Church was faithfully reflected in the Universities, which were regarded, indeed, as a special department of the Church, and were di- rectly under her influence and control. Canon Overton remarks that in the eighteenth century Oxford had reached her nadir, and that professors who never lectured, tutors who never taught, and students who never studied, were the rule rather than the excep- [ 17 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN tion. With the nineteenth century there came some slight improvement, but still there was left very much to be desired. A vast amount of bigotry and obstructiveness lingered within its cloisters. When Copleston was elected Provost of Oriel in 1814, he wrote — "This place is the head-quarters of what is falsely called High Church principle. But the lead- ing partisans appear to me only occupied with the thought of converting the property of the Church to their private advantage, leaving the duties of it to be performed how they can." And Bishop Charles Wordsworth wrote of the Oxford of 1826, that "re- ligious worship and instruction, however it might wear a fair appearance of formal routine, was essen- tially deficient, and in no respect satisfactory.'' At Cambridge, there was a better state of things, and a worse. Cambridge was the seat of the Evan- gelical revival in the Church, and it was impossible that the influence of a man like Charles Simeon should not be deeply felt there. Macaulay declared that his real sway over the Church of England was greater than that of any primate, and there were those who suggested that he might properly enough be called St. Charles of Cambridge. But the influ- ence that Simeon exerted called forth an opposition of corresponding strength. Somewhat severe views were held by his disciples. But there were plenty of THE ENGLISH CHURCH men at Cambridge whose chief endeavour was to make each other drunk. The public schools were at the same low ebb. Rightly or wrongly, they are often represented as having been nurseries of vice, where boys learned a little Latin and Greek, and a great deal of evil. Flogging was the panacea, alike for wickedness and for stupidity. It was with the rod that Samuel Taylor Coleridge's master sought to eradicate his pupil's precocious in- fidelity. Until Arnold's day, the part of education that was least regarded was the teaching of the pupil to use his own powers, and to think. Where there were so many abuses of religion, the re- action from them sometimes showed itself in strange and distorted ways. Among the Evangelicals there was a nervous shrinking from what they called the things of the world. As someone has put it, there were persons who secretly, if not avowedly, associated the ideas of piety and imbecility, and who thought that he who professed to be governed by Christian principles must make himself deficient in natural un- derstanding. A good lady tells with pious satisfaction how her husband, who had been an accomplished musician and an admirer of good pictures, cut his violin-strings and never afterwards replaced them, and gave up visiting the Royal Academy, because such tastes interfered with the one thing needful. [ 19] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN There were many households from which novels and poetry were rigorously excluded. Here is the effect produced upon a young woman of serious mind by her first glimpse into Shakspeare, with the conclusion to which she came concerning him. "I was permit- ted to read The Merchant of Venice. I drank a cup of intoxication under which my brain reeled for many a year. The character of Shylock burst upon me, even as Shakspeare had conceived it. I revelled in the ter- rible excitement that it gave rise to; page after page was stereotyped upon a most retentive memory with- out an effort, and during a sleepless night I feasted on the pernicious sweets thus hoarded in my brain. Oh, how many wasted hours, how much of unprofit- able labour, what wrong to my fellow-creatures, what robbery of God, must I refer to this ensnaring book! But for this I might have early sought the consola- tions of the Gospel. Parents know not what they do when they foster in a young girl what is called a poetical taste. Those things highly esteemed among men, are held in abomination with God; they thrust Him from His creature's thought, and enshrine a host of polluting idols in His place." A judgment such as this was taken as a matter of course. There were many who differed from it. But that it could not have been regarded seriously would have occurred to very few. [20 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH It must be remembered that we have been empha- sizing the Church's weakness, and passing by the Church's strength. Not many Bishops were as unfit for their position as Bishop Watson makes himself to have been, by his own showing. Not many pastors were like the recreant viear of Alderley. But some- thing was lacking where such abuses could be even tolerated. At the close of the last century and the beginning of this one the Church was by no means without noble aims and glorious performance. Howard and Elizabeth Fry had assailed the brutalities that were too commonly associated with prison life. Clark- son and Wilberforce had overthrown the slave trade. There were missionary societies and philanthropic movements. As Dean Church says, among the clergy of those days there were not a few but many in- stances, not only of gentle manners, and warm be- nevolence, and cultivated intelligence, but of simple piety and holy life. But he continues — "The fortunes of the Church are not safe in the hands of a clergy, of which a great part take their obligations easily. It was slumbering and sleeping when the visitation of days of change and trouble came upon it." A Church which had a low idea of its own duties could not expect a high estimate to be held of it by those outside. It was disorganized, satisfied with very little, forgetful alike of its duties and its rights. [21 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN More and more its prerogatives, which itself neg- lected, were usurped and trod upon. Whately wrote of it — "The Church has been for a hundred years without any government, and in such a stormy sea- son it will not go on much longer without a rudder." Lord Grey informed the Bishops that they must set their house in order. A member of Parliament rose in his place, and spoke to this remarkable effect. "I had hoped that these foolish ordinations would ter- minate. But these young gentlemen must bear in mind that, though the nation will feel itself bound to make a provision for such as in past years have entered into orders; though it would doubtless be unjust that a corporation like the Church, n-hich was set up by Parliament nearly three hundred years ago, and is older, therefore, than either the East or West India Company, should be abolished without ade- quate compensation to those who have wasted their youth in its service; yet by those who enter this body now that it is condemned by the country, when its charter is on the eve of being cancelled by the authority which gave it, when it is admitted on all hands to be not useless only, but absolutely detrimental, neither indulgence nor compensation can fairly be expected. They choose to invest their time and property in a condemned building, and can ex- pect no pity." Nor was this extraordinary reading of [22 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH Church history confined to words. The Church's best members were becoming more and more dissatisfied with her carelessness and lack of responsibility. To this there was now added the pressure of bitter op- position from without. In February, 1833, ten Irish bishoprics, which had existed for ten centuries, were swept out of existence at one blow. At this rate, an indifferent Church would soon become no Church at all. Her friends and foes combined to wake her from her sleep. Her lukewarmness was to be fanned into enthusiasm. The spark had fallen. There was abun- dant material for it to ignite. Lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way, but let it rather be healed. [ 23 ] Chapter ii. JOHN HENRY N E W M A N A DISTINGUISHED outsider, Principal Shairp of St. Andrew's, calls John Henry Newman "a man in many ways the most remarkable that England has seen during this century, perhaps the most re- markable whom the English Church has produced in any century." We cannot think his estimate exagger- ated. It is half-a-eentury since Newman left the Eng- lish Church, but it would be hard to find a man who still exercises a greater influence within it. He took himself to Rome, and at the time there were many who went with him. But he helped to bring in to the Church of England a great deal that he could not take away, even if he had wished to do so. And the man was cast in such a colossal mould, that, even when every condition of his life was changed, his old companions could not say — "He went out from us, but he was not of us; for if he had been of us, he would no doubt have continued with us." We may account for his conversion as we like. We mav call him by whatever harsh names we choose. He de- spaired of the English Church, and so he left her. Doubtless it is hard to understand how he could have [24 ] John Ilennj Newman THE ENGLISH CHURCH acted as he did. But while he yet remained, he achieved what has been called a "glorious failure;'' and though he departed, he could not make submission to Rome of his past work. Dean Church speaks of him thus — "Even Liberalism owes to the movement of which he was the soul much of what makes it now such a contrast, in largeness of mind and warmth, to the dry, repulsive, narrow, material Liberalism of the Reform era. He, and he mainly, has been the source, often unrecognized and unsuspected, of depth and richness and beauty, and the strong passion for what is genuine and real, in our re- ligious teaching." Not only was Newman's career in itself a most extraordi- nary one; our knowledge of it is more extraordinary still. For the story of his life, we are not dependent upon some biographer who has given us a little of New- man and a good deal of himself. It is often the case, es- pecially when some critical period is under discussion, which may be looked at from opposite points of view, that history depends quite as much upon the historian as upon the events that are to be described. With New- man there need be no such risk. He kept his letters, and they are before the world. In his old age, he pre- pared a short autobiography of his early years. But more than this, in the Apologia he has given us an ac- count, not only of events, but of his own thoughts and feelings. Surely, it is the most remarkable book of its [25] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN kind in the language. For twenty years Newman had lived in obscurity, doing the work which his new eccle- siastical relations brought with them. Men spoke of him, they asked about him, there were many who re- membered him; but so far as his old associates were concerned, he had disappeared from sight. In an evil hour for himself — but was it not a fortunate hour for Newman and for the world? — Charles Kingsley attacked the intellectual honesty of the Roman priesthood, and quoted Newman to support his charge. Newman's com- ments upon the correspondence which ensued be- tween them show the force of that weapon of withering sarcasm which he might have wielded oftener, had he so chosen. The thunder crashes and the lightning plays about poor Kingsley. As Newman gives his own interpretation of Kingsley's attack, he makes us feel that it is Kingsley, and not Newman, to whom it all applies. "If I demonstrate that I am not a knave, he may exclaim — Oh, but you are a fool! and when I demonstrate that I am not a fool, he may turn round and retort, Well then, you are a knave!" Somehow, in this connection, it is with Kingsley rather than with Newman that we are led to associate such words, though in every other con- nection we know well enough that he was very far from being either. But it is not the controversy from which the Apologia derives its interest and value. The [26] THE ENGLISH CHURCH controversy is remembered only because of that to which it led. Newman considered how he might de- fend himself against the charges which were brought against him. This is the conclusion to which he came. "I recognized what I had to do, though I shrank from both the task and the exposure which it would entail. I must, I said, give the true key to my whole life; I must show what I am that it may be seen what I am not, and that the phantom may be extinguished which gibbers instead of me. I wish to be known as a living man, and not as a scarecrow which is dressed up in my clothes." And so it comes to pass that we have the inner history of a great move- ment, that we are admitted to the inner life of a great man. John Henry Newman was born in London, while the nineteenth century was yet less than two months old. The household was a religious one. His mother was a godly woman, trained in the Evangelical school. He was no common boy. He himself tells us that the powerful imagination which played so promi- nent a part in all his life was early developed. "I used to wish the Arabian tales were true; my imag- ination ran on unknown influences, or magical powers, and talismans. I thought life might be a dream, or I an angel, and all this world a deception, my fellow- angels by a playful device concealing themselves from [27 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN me, and deceiving me with the semblance of a ma- terial world." Like so many men who have afterwards attained dis- tinction in the Church, he was at one time destined for the bar, but this was abandoned, and as a young man he went up to Oxford, with whose history for so many years he was so closely identified. It was impossible that he should not have given some prom- ise of his future power, but for all that he failed in a critical examination at Trinity College, with which he was first connected; a failure which he retrieved by winning the next year a Fellowship at Oriel. In Loss and Gain, a story published after he had left the English Church, there is a passage in which he seems to be speaking of himself. "He recollected with what awe and transport he had at first come to the Uni- versity as to some sacred shrine, and how from time to time hopes had come over him that some day or other he should have gained a title to residence on one of its old foundations. One night in particular came across his memory; how a friend and he had ascended to the top of one of its many towers with the purpose of making observations on the stars; and how, while his friend was busily engaged with the pointers, he, earthly-minded youth, had been looking down into the deep, gas-lit, dark-shadowed quad- rangles, and wondering if he should ever be Fellow [28 J THE ENGLISH CHURCH of this or that college, which he singled out from the mass of academical buildings." He tells us that after he had taken his degree he had thought of various occupations for himself. He would compose a piece of music for instruments, he would experimentalize in chemistry, he would get up the Persian language. At one time he had had serious thoughts of going as a missionary to some foreign land. But his elec- tion to Oriel seemed to determine his career. He was ordained in 1824, and for a couple of years was in charge of St. Clement's, Oxford, where he had much drudgery to do in connection with the building of a church. He was successful in his work, and beloved by his people; but it is interesting to observe that he did not escape the difficulties which have come to many lesser men. In one of his letters he speaks of having had a dispute with his singers, which ended in their leaving the church. He gave up his work at St. Clement's on being appointed Tutor at Oriel in 1826. During those early years at Oxford, Newman came under the influence of Dr. Whately, afterwards Arch- bishop of Dublin, the leader of the Liberal party of his day. He writes to Whately — "Much as I owe to Oriel in the way of mental improvement, to none, as I think, do I owe so much as to you. I know who it was that first gave me heart to look about me after [29 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN my election, and taught me to think correctly, and — strange office for an instructor — to rely upon myself." But it was inspiration rather than permanent direc- tion that Whately gave to Newman's thought, and his direct influence lasted but a short time. Newman began to read the Fathers in connection with his first book, a History of the Arians, and the first centuries became his beau-ideal of Christianity. In 1828, on the election of Dr. Hawkins as Provost of Oriel, Newman was appointed Vicar of St. Mary's. It was at St. Mary's that he preached those sermons which are a lasting contribution, not only to morals, but to literature. It is as Vicar of St. Mary's that he plays his part in the stirring movements of his time. It is as Vicar of St. Mary's that he first rises into fame. It is from St. Mary's that he retires into lay-com- munion before his entrance into the Church of Rome. St. Mary's is a noble church in the High Street of Oxford. At the time of Newman's first connection with it, it is spoken of as having a small congregation of respectable people of the middle class, but upon the great body of students it made little or no im- pression. Newman himself, in spite of Whately's in- fluence and his growing interest in the Fathers, still retained the Evangelical training which he had brought with him from his home. There was little critical knowledge of the Bible in those days, and [30 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH many strange interpretations were seriously enter- tained, even by educated men. Newman tells us that as a boy he became imbued with the idea, then common, that the Pope was the Antichrist pre- dicted by Daniel, St. Paul, and St. John; and though his reason and judgment soon rejected this, it re- mained as a sort of false conscience to his imagina- tion till 1843. The atmosphere of his early home was brought, to some extent, to Oxford. His father had died, and his mother and two sisters came to live at Littlemore, a village close by which was included in his parish, and which became later the cynosure of all the eyes in the Church of England. The influence of Newman's preaching was profound. From the very first, the students flocked to hear him. Hutton remarks truly that the very first character- istic of these sermons is that they are so clear and so emphatic in their recognition of the actual facts of life. They were never sensational, never gaudy. It seems almost an insult even to mention such words in connection with them, even though it is only to deny their presence. Mr. Gladstone has given a de- scription of Newman's manner in the pulpit at the beginning of his career. "When I was an under- graduate of Oxford," he says, "Dr. Newman was looked upon rather with prejudice as what is termed a Low Churchman, but was very much respected for [ 31 ] ' MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN his character and his known ability. Without ostenta- tion or effort, but by simple excellence, he was con- stantly drawing undergraduates more and more around him. Now Dr. Newman's manner in the pulpit was one about which, if you considered it in its separate parts, you would arrive at very unsatisfactory conclu- sions. There was not very much change in the in- flexion of the voice; action there was none. His sermons were read, and his eyes were always bent on his book; and all that, you will say, is against efficiency in preaching. Yes, but you must take the man as a whole, and there was a stamp and a seal upon him, there was a solemn sweetness and music in the tone, there was a completeness in the figure, taken together with the tone and with the manner, which made even his delivery, such as I have de- scribed it, and though exclusively from written ser- mons, singularly attractive." Of the sermons themselves, it is hard to speak with justice in a few words. In their simplicity, they are models of literary style — and I fancy that it may be said of the great majority of sermons, even of good sermons and of useful ones, that whatever else they may be they are not literature. Newman's acquaint- ance with the Bible was thorough. Mozley remarks that it would hardly be too much to say that he knew the Bible by heart, and this knowledge he [ 32 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH used with a master's hand. It is the temptation of a clumsy preacher, or a lazy one, to use texts for pad- ding. A sermon can have no higher praise than that, in its language and its spirit, it reflects the Bible. In our modern desire to be what is called up-to-date, we often forget this, greatly to the disadvantage of ser- mon and of congregation. But, of course, to string a collection of texts together, without relevance and without judgment, is not to preach. We are often reminded of Elspeth Macfadyen's scornful criticism of that which weak good-nature declared to be Bible preaching, if nothing else could be said for it. "It's ae thing to feed a calf wi' milk, and anither to gie it the empty cogie to lick." In Newman's sermons there was no such pious makeshift. If he made abun- dant use of the Bible, it was because the Bible was the best expression of his own ideas. Nor did he rely upon the shibboleths of his party, though, as the years went on, he was getting more and more to be a party-man. I have quoted the effect of his preach- ing upon Mr. Gladstone. It may be worth while to let a very different man add his testimony. Principal Shairp of St. Andrew's, himself a Presbyterian, and at the farthest theological remove from Newman, speaks thus — "The centre from which his power went forth was the pulpit of St. Mary's, with those won- derful afternoon sermons. Sunday after Sunday, year [33 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN by year, they went on, each continuing and deepen- ing the impression produced by the last. The service was very simple, no pomp, no ritualism; for it was characteristic of the leading men of the Movement that they left these things to the weaker brethren. When he began to preach, a stranger was not likely to be much struck. Here was no vehemence, no dec- lamation, - no show of elaborated argument, so that one who came to hear a great intellectual effort was almost sure to go away disappointed. Indeed, we be- lieve that if he had preached one of his St. Mary's sermons before a Scotch town congregation, they would have thought the preacher 'a silly body."' As we shall soon see, the Low Church principles which had been an accident of Newman's childhood had by this time disappeared, and he was in the forefront of a very different movement. It would be too much to say that his sermons do not show this. Doubtless, he meant them to show it, some of the later ones in a very marked degree. But controversial sermons they could not possibly be called. Principal Shairp continues concerning him — "Those who never heard him might fancy that his sermons would gen- erally be about Apostolical Succession, or rights of the Church, or against dissenters. Nothing of the kind. You might hear him preach for weeks without an allusion to these things. What there was of [ 34 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH High Church teaching was implied rather than en- forced. The local, the temporary, and the modern were ennobled by the presence of the Catholic truth belonging to all ages that pervaded the whole. His power showed itself chiefly in the new and unlooked- for way in which he touched into life old truths, moral or spiritual, which all Christians acknowledge, but most have ceased to feel. After hearing these sermons you might come away still not believing the tenets peculiar to the High Church system; but you would be harder than most men if you did not feel more than ever ashamed of coarseness, selfishness, worldliness, if you did not feel the things of faith brought closer to the soul." I have let other men speak for me in these estimates of Newman's preaching, men who themselves heard many of the sermons, and knew the man. In the eight volumes of Parochial and Plain Sermons, preached in St. Mary's from 1828 to 1843, there is to be found of course a great variety of subject and of aim. But it may be said of every one of them — and un- fortunately there are some who preach with whose sermons this is the exception rather than the rule — that they are in the highest and best sense religious. It speaks well for the spirit of the time that on their publication they were eagerly read. Indeed, one says of them that they drove all other sermons from the [35 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN market, just as Waverley and Guy Mannering drove all other novels. I have dwelt so long upon Newman's preaching be- cause it was such an important part of his work, though as the years went by he became more conspic- uous in other ways. Before we leave this subject, and follow very rapidly the onward current of his life un- til the great change came, it may be well to quote a few sentences to show the wonderful clearness of his style; the accuracy with which he enters into men's feelings, though they are quite unlike his own. He is speaking to worldly-minded men — and if there are any such who read his words they will recognize the picture as a true one. "The very terms religion, devotion, piety, conscientiousness, mortification, and the like, you find to be inexpressibly dull and cheer- less; you cannot find fault with them, indeed you would if you could; and whenever the words are ex- plained in particulars and realized, then you do find occasion for exception and objection. But though you cannot deny the claims of religion used as a vague and general term, yet how irksome, cold, uninterest- ing, uninviting does it at best appear to you! How severe its voice! How forbidding its aspect! With what animation, on the contrary, do you enter into the mere pursuits of time and the world! What bright anticipations of joy and happiness flit before [36] THE ENGLISH CHURCH your eyes! How you are struck and dazzled at the view of the prizes of this life, as they are called! How you admire the elegancies of art, the brilliance of wealth, or the force of intellect! According to your opportunities you mix in the world, you meet and converse with persons of various conditions and pursuits, and are engaged in the numberless occur- rences of daily life. You are full of news; you know what this or that person is doing, and what has be- fallen him; what has not happened which was near happening, what may happen. You are full of ideas and feelings upon all that goes on around you. But from some cause or other religion has no part, no sensible influence, in your judgment of men and things. It is not of your way. Perhaps you have your pleasure-parties; you readily take your share in them time after time; you pass continuous hours in society where you know that it is quite impossible even to mention the name of religion. Your heart is in scenes and places where conversation on serious sub- jects is strictly forbidden by the rules of the world's ' propriety." These words are seventy years old. But their eye is not dim, nor their natural force abated. While these sermons were being delivered at Oxford, much was going on in the world outside. It seemed as if Newman were to be specially prepared for the part which he had to play. The first part of 1833 he [37 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN spent in the Mediterranean with his friend Hurrell Froude, a man of great brilliancy and also of great unconventionality, one of the foremost leaders of the Oxford Movement, but who died almost before the Movement had begun. In Sicily Newman fell ill, and for a while he lay at the point of death. He tells us in the Apologia — "My servant thought that I should die, and begged for my last directions. I gave them as he wished, but I said — 'I shall not die.' I re- peated — 'I shall "not die, for I have not sinned against light, I have not sinned against light.' I have never been able," he goes on, "to make out at all what I meant." It was impressed upon him that he had a work to do in England. He proposed to Froude to take as a motto for the verses that he had written during their journey the line from Homer — "They shall know the difference now that I am back again." One incident of this voyage we must on no account pass by, for it has helped and inspired many who have never so much as heard of Newman's name. Recovering from his illness, he travelled from Sicily to Marseilles in an orange-boat, and while they lay becalmed in the Straits of Bonifacio, between Corsica and Sardinia, he wrote the hymn, Lead, kindly Light, which is known wherever men call upon God. [ 38 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH Returning to England in the summer of 1833, he found matters relating to the Church in great con- fusion. The State laid its hand upon the Establish- ment with ever-increasing force. The ten Irish bishoprics had just been suppressed, and there were threats of worse to come. Lord Grey had advised the English bishops to set their house in order. The very existence of the Church seemed to be made to depend upon the will of Parliament. Keble remarked — "Things go on at such a rate that one is quite dizzy. Anything, humanly speaking, will be better than for the Church to go on in union with such a State; and I think, as far as I can judge, that this is becoming, every day, a more general feeling among Churchmen." We have now arrived at the historical beginning of what came later to be called the Oxford Movement. We know already something of the condition of af- fairs. Because in England Church and State are so closely intertwined, the movement was in a sense political. It was intended to resist the encroachments of Parliament upon the Church's rights, of which the suppression of the Irish bishoprics was the last straw. But if it was political, it was so only because of the accidents of the time. There was already a High Church party, insisting upon the dignity and catho- licity of the Church. The movement could hardly [39] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN be called a movement upward. In the persons of its leaders, at any rate, it was first of all a movement inward — a real revival of religion. Shairp says of it "that it extended its influence far beyond the circle of those who directly adopted its views. There was not, in Oxford at least, a reading man who was not more or less indirectly influenced by it. Only the very idle or the very frivolous were wholly proof against it. On all others it impressed a sobriety of conduct and a seriousness not usually found among large bodies of young men. It raised the tone of average morality in Oxford to a level which perhaps it had never before reached. You may call it over- wrought and too highly strung. Perhaps it was. It was better, however, for young men to be so, than to be doubters or cynics." A heathen obduracy, and a cold, self-sufficient, self-wise tranquillity; the privilege of judging for one's self on subjects on which one has no means of judging wisely — these are the things that Newman attacks with all the fierceness that he has at his command. The devotional tone of his ser- mons is the best commentary upon the Movement, though the Movement itself sometimes takes other aspects. In its beginnings, it is a movement backward; not Eomeward, but homeward. Walter Scott's novels had stimulated interest in the past. The Oxford Move- ment did the same. It bade men look for the authority [ 40 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH of the Church, not to the houses of Parliament or the claims of individuals, but to the Fathers of the first centuries, to the Apostles, to Christ Himself. In no sense was it subservient to the State, or the State's creature. Moreover, the moral aspect of the Movement cannot be insisted upon too strongly. Seriousness, rev- erence, the fear of insincere words and unsound pro- fessions, these were indispensable in all who made common cause with it. There is a fine scorn in one of Newman's poems which seems to mark out those who have a right to strong feelings, and those who have no such right. "Thou to wax fierce In the cause of the Lord! Anger and zeal, And the joy of the brave, Who bade thee to feel, Sin's slave?" There was talk of organizations and societies. A couple of petitions were presented to the Archbishop of Can- terbury, protesting against the interference of the State in Church affairs. But these methods seemed to Newman too cumbersome and formal. Dean Church tells us that tracts, "from the fashion of using them, had become united in the minds of many with rather disparaging associations. The pertinacity of good ladies [ « ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN who pressed them on chance strangers, and who ex- tolled their efficacy as if it was that of a quack medi- cine, had lowered the general respect for them. The last thing that could have been thought of was a great religious revolution set in motion by tracts and leaflets, and taking its character and name from them." Yet that was just what happened. Newman's plan was "to arouse by tracts, short, full of nerve, intentionally alarming in tone, as a man might give notice of a fire or inundation, transparently clean in statement, and setting forth the truths on which the Church rested with uncompromising simplicity." The first tract ap peared Sept. 9, 1833, and others followed in quick succession. Most of the earlier tracts were written by Newman, though Pusey, Keble, and others were occasional contributors; and the tracts varied in char- acter and bulk according to the purpose and the in- dividuality of their authors. Before long the name Tractarian was applied to the movement. Newman tells us that he felt the firmest confidence in his position, which he defines under three propo- sitions. He insisted upon the principle of dogma, and waged the fiercest battle against those who seemed to minimize its importance in any way. He was con- fident in the truth of a certain definite reliffious o teaching, based upon this foundation of dogma; viz., that there was a visible Church with sacraments and [42 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH rites which are the channels of invisible grace. And he was outspoken in his opposition to the Church of Rome. In this, indeed, he felt that there lay no small part of the strength of his position. "I felt such confidence," he remarks, "in the substantial justice of the charges which I advanced against her, that I considered them to be a safeguard and an as- surance that no harm could ever arise from the freest- exposition of what I used to call Anglican princi- ples.'' The Movement grew and prospered. In the opposi- tion to Dr. Hampden, the consideration of which we may more appropriately reserve for the next chapter, it found itself for a time in alliance with the Evan- gelical school. There were extravagances, of course, but they were generally recognized as such, and it was some little time before they attracted much at- tention in any quarter. Newman says of them — "There will ever be a number of persons professing the opinions of a movement party, who talk loudly and strangely, do odd or fierce things, display them- selves unnecessarily, and disgust other people; per- sons too young to be wise, too generous to be cau- tious, too warm to be sober, or too intellectual to be humble. Such persons will be very apt to attach themselves to particular persons, to use particular names, to say things merely because others do, and [ 4 3 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN to act in a party-spirited way." In later years, such persons have often been very much in evidence, un- der many names. But at the beginning of the Oxford Movement they were hardly of sufficient importance to be taken into serious account. We need not linger over the details that lead up to the catastrophe. In the summer of 1839 there came to Newman's mind the first doubt of the position of the English Church. As he expresses it, he had seen the shadow of a hand upon the wall. The doubt passed away, but there were many things in the course of events that tended to invite its return. Moreover, it becomes increasingly evident that New- man's conception of the Church is getting to be more and more external. So far as what he calls the note of catholicity is concerned, he has lost his faith; he is plainly seeking for a sign. In February, 1841, Tract Number 90 appeared. Its special subject is the way in which the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion are to be interpreted. Drawn up as these were at the time of the Reformation, several of them are ex- plicitly directed against Rome. Newman asks in his Tract, What then is meant by Rome? and contends that the Articles do not oppose Catholic teaching; that they are only partially opposed to Roman dogma; but that they are specifically directed only against the dominant errors of Rome. [ 44 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH Greatly to Newman's surprise, though not to the surprise of some to whom he had shown it, the Tract aroused a storm of indignation and dismay. The Bishop of Oxford, Dr. Bagot, condemned it as "objectionable, and tending to disturb the peace and tranquillity of the Church." He requested that the Tracts should be discontinued. Four Tutors of Ox- ford, one of whom was Archibald Tait, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, made a public protest, and demanded the name of the author; for though there was no special secret about the Tracts, they were published anonymously. It was interpreted as an at- tack upon the Church, and the cries of Romanizing, which had increased of late, were redoubled. In a letter to Dr. Jelf, Canon of Christ Church, Newman explains the purpose with which he wrote the Tract. "There is at this moment a great progress of the religious mind of our Church to something deeper and truer than satisfied the last century." He shows how this is true with poets and philosophers, and with religionists outside the Established Church. Then he goes on. "The age is moving towards something, and most unhappily the one religious communion among us which is in possession of that something is the Church of Rome. She alone, amid all the errors and evils of her practical system, has given free scope to the feelings of awe, mystery, [45 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN tenderness, reverence, devotedness, and other feelings which may especially be called Catholic. The ques- tion then is, whether we shall give them up to the Roman Church, or claim them for ourselves, as we well may, by reverting to that older system which has of late years indeed been superseded, but which has been and is quite congenial (to say the least), I should rather say proper and natural, or even neces- sary, to our Church. But if we do give them up, then we must give up the men who cherish them; we must consent either to give up the men or to admit their principles.'' He continues — "The Tract is grounded on the belief that the Articles need not be so closed as the received method of teaching closes them, and ought not to be for the sake of many persons. If we will close them, we run the risk of subjecting persons whom we should least like to lose to the temptation of joining the Church of Rome." That Newman himself was dangerously near to this temptation was believed by many. His enemies in- sisted that Rome was his only destination, some of his friends gave colour to their insistence by forsaking the Church of England. The alliance of that Church with the Protestant State Church of Prussia in the maintenance of a bishop at Jerusalem went far towards loosening his hold upon her. But his mind moved slowly. There were Roman abuses which he [46] THE ENGLISH CHURCH could not then countenance, the Church which clam- oured against him was the Church of his hope and love. He preached pathetic sermons on the duty of remaining Anglicans under great discouragement. At last, in the fall of 1843, a young man under his care suddenly joined the Church of Rome. He felt it im- possible to remain any longer in the service of the Church of England when such a breach of trust, however little he might have had to do with it, would be laid at his door. In a recent sermon on the Apostolical Christian, he had commended a type of piety which at that time could not be found out- side the Roman Church. And soon after, he wrote to J. B. Mozley — "The truth is, I am not a good enough son of the Church of England to feel that I can in conscience hold preferment under her. I love the Church of Rome too well." His last sermon as a priest of the Church of Eng- land was preached in the little chapel at Littlemore which he had himself erected. It was the seventh anniversary of its consecration, Sept. 25, 1843. A week before, Newman had resigned St. Mary's. At the Holy Communion, Pusey was the celebrant, and in his Life there is a description of the scene. The chapel was full of friends who had come from Ox- ford. The service was, as always, simple. "When Newman mounted the pulpit, there was a kind of [47 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN awe-struck silence; everybody knew that something would be said which nobody would ever forget. And The Parting of Friends is perhaps the most pathetic of all the sermons of this greatest master of reli- gious pathos; it is the last and most heart-broken expression of the intense distress which could not but be felt by a man of extraordinary sensitiveness when placed between what he believed to be a new call of duty on one side, and the affection of high- minded and devoted friends on the other; it is the cry which tells the world that a work of spiritual and religious restoration, to which no parallel had been witnessed in Europe for at least three centuries, was, at least to the mind of one who had hitherto had the chief hand in promoting it, a failure." Contemporary record is always interesting. On the evening of this same day Pusey wrote thus to his brother. "I am just returned, half broken-hearted, from the commemoration at Littlemore. The sermon was like one of Newman's, in which self was alto- gether repressed, yet it showed the more how deeply he felt all the misconception of himself. It implied, rather than said, Farewell. If our bishops did but know what faithful hearts, devoted to the service of our Lord in this His Church, they are breaking! Yet, at eventide there will be light." It is likely enough that Newman was often misun- [48] THE ENGLISH CHURCH derstood. But we have seen already that if the Church had doubts of him it was not altogether without reason; for he, too, had his doubts about the Church. Newman's life at this time was not yet half done. He was then forty-two years old, and he lived forty-seven years longer, dying in 1890. But so far as the Church of England is concerned, there is little more to tell. He retired into lay-communion at Littlemore, praying, studying, and writing, and on the 9th of October, 1845, a day of wild wind and drenching rain, he was received into the Roman Church. A few weeks later he left Oxford for good. "I have never seen it since," he writes, "ex- cepting its spires, as they are seen from the rail- way." We may not follow him in his new work. His ene- mies had declared that the principles for which he stood were hostile to the spirit of the Church of England; and now, by his departure, he seemed to have proved their words. But those were still left who, w r hile protesting against the errors of Rome, declared that the Catholic inheritance belonged to the English Church. The bitterness of enemies, the loss of friends, might dismay, but it could not over- come them. As we study the history of the time, we shall see how Pusey and Keble bore their heavy burden, and gained for the principles of the Oxford [ W ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS I N Movement the right to live and bear fruit in the English Church. The climax of Newman's life comes in the words in which he said farewell. It is a wonderful sermon. None but a beautiful and tender soul conld have written as he wrote. The text of his last sermon and of his first was the same — "Man goeth forth to his work and to his labour until the evening.'' And now the evening had closed in. He speaks of the friends of whom the Scripture tells us, and how, when they parted, many a time it was at a feast. Was it strange that those should weep who were his friends? If they were old time names that he used, the experience was with them at that moment. "So was it with Jacob, when he passed with his staff over that Jor- dan. He too kept feast before he set out upon his dreary way. He received a father's blessing, and then was sent afar; he left his mother, never to see her face or hear her voice again. He parted with all that his heart loved, and turned his face towards a strange land. He went with the doubt, whether he should have bread to eat, or raiment to put on. He came to the people of the East, and served a hard master twenty years. In the day the drought consumed him, and the frost by night; and his sleep departed from his eyes." So he goes on, dwelling upon one parting after another, and then he comes to the end. "O my [50] THE ENGLISH CHURCH mother, whence is this unto thee, that thou hast good things poured upon thee and canst not keep them, and bearest children, yet darest not own them? Why hast thou not the skill to use their services, nor the heart to rejoice in their love? How is it that what- ever is generous in purpose, and tender and deep in devotion, thy flower and thy promise, falls from thy bosom, and finds no home within thine arms? Who hath put this note upon thee, to have a miscarrying womb, and dry breasts, to be strange to thine own flesh, and thine eye cruel towards thy little ones? Thine own offspring, the fruit of thy womb, who love thee and would toil for thee, thou dost gaze upon with fear, as though a portent, or thou dost loathe as an offence — at best thou dost but endure, as if they had no claim but on thy patience, self-pos- session, and vigilance, to be rid of them as easily as thou mayest. Thou makest them stand all the day idle, as the very condition of thy bearing them; or thou biddest them be gone where they will be more welcome; or thou sellest them for naught to the stranger that passes by. And what wilt thou do in the end thereof?" But the last word of all is not to the Church which he feels has driven him forth, but to the friends whose hearts are breaking at the fear that he may go. It is not given to many men to have such a capacity for [ 51 J MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN winning affection as Newman possessed. The leaders in any great movement are often admired, often re- spected, often feared, often imitated, often envied, often hated. It is not very often that they are loved. But Newman must have known, as he looked around that little chapel for the last time, that there were not a few there of whom it might be said, in Scripture phrase, that their love to him was wonderful, passing the love of women. And it is to these that the final word is spoken. "And now, my brethren, bless God, praise Him and magnify Him, and praise Him for the things which He hath done unto you in the sight of all that live . Leave off from wrath, and let go displeasure; flee from evil, and do the thing that is good. "And O my brethren, O kind and affectionate hearts, O loving friends, should you know any one whose lot it has been, by writing or by word of mouth, in some degree to help you thus to act; if he has ever told you what you knew about yourselves, or what you did not know; has read to you your wants and feelings, and comforted you by the very reading; has made you feel that there was a higher life than this daily one, and a brighter world than that you see; or encouraged you, or sobered you, or opened a way to the inquiring, or soothed the perplexed; if what he has ever said or done has ever made you take interest in him, and feel [52] THE ENGLISH CHURCH well inclined towards him; remember such a one in time to come, though you hear him not, and pray for him, that in all things he may know God's will, and at all times he may be ready to fulfil it." f It is not an open enemy that hath done me this dishonour, for then I could have borne it; neither was it mine adversary that did magnify himself against me, for then peradventure I would have hid myself from him; but it was even thou, my companion, my guide, and mine own familiar friend. We took sweet counsel together, and walked in the house of God as friends. [53 ] Chapter fit DR. PUSEY IF we were to try to describe the character of Dr. Pusey in a single sentence, we could do no better than to borrow St. Paul's expression — "Wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil." His life was a long one, and in a certain sense, in spite of all the controversies in which he was en- gaged, a quiet one. We look in vain for any such dramatic climax as came to Newman. There was storm and stress, indeed; furious fighting with foes who were without; the wind and the waves roaring, men's hearts failing them for very fear; there was loneliness, and misunderstanding, and reproach; there was in him a sense of sin and unworthiness that to less holy men must seem exaggerated. But there was never, as in Newman's case, a conscience bat- tling against itself; and as he had lived, so he died. He was wise — not with the wisdom of the world nor of the serpent — not with the wisdom which has to do with passing things — but unto that which is good; and it may be added, unto that alone. For he was simple as a child concerning evil. He could help good men, but he could never discover bad ones. [54] THE ENGLISH CHURCH Again and again he was deceived. Again and again, in dealing with what seemed evil to himself, though it did not seem so to others, he signally failed in putting himself at his opponent's point of view. His greatness was the greatness of the kingdom of heaven, in patterning his life by the life of Christ. As we follow his career, we shall see him in many different lights. He was a profound scholar in more than one department. He was the leader of a great party in the Church — though the spirit of mere par- tisanship he hated and despised. He was involved in many and protracted controversies. He quotes of himself Jeremiah's sad lament — "Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth." For all the demands that his learning and his leadership made upon him, he was devoted to Christ's poor. He was such a man as the apostle speaks of — "Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; con- tinuing instant in prayer; distributing to the neces- sity of saints; given to hospitality.'' There are many men whose gifts or whose adventures make them famous. There are very few who add to prominent place and high gifts a goodness before which all else sinks into the background. Whether one agrees with Dr. Pusey in his positions, or whether one disagrees [55 ] MEN* AND MOVEMENTS IX with him — and in this generation most men would do something of both — to be blind to the loftiness of his character is to be blind indeed. When all has been said of praise or blame that can be said, this remains, giving permanent value to the one, and serving in large degree as explanation for the other. He was wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil. To most good men there comes a measure of obscu- rity. The very spirit of self-sacrifice which animates them keeps them in the shadow. Emerson tells us that each of us may set his own rate at which he shall be appraised, and they have not time to insist on their own importance with loud swelling words. The greatness of the kingdom of heaven is found in humble hearts, and often in humble places. It is never on dress parade. It does not necessitate a bi- ography, or even a memorial sermon, after death. And while the high plane on which Pusey lived his life, and the saintliness of his character, is that which we may not for a moment forget if we would understand the man, it is not that which has kept his name alive on earth. It is as a leader of the Oxford Movement, and then for many years as its chief, that his name is known by many who are ignorant of all else about him. We have seen something of what the Oxford Move- [56] THE ENGLISH CHURCH ment was in its beginnings, in connection with the life of Newman. In its immediate occasion, it was to a large degree political. The Church was threatened by the State. Ten bishoprics had been suppressed in Ireland, and their revenues diverted to State uses, and there were rumours of more to come. The Church was regarded as the creature of the State, to do its bidding. It was felt that something must be done, and Newman suggested the issuing of Tracts, short, sharp, alarming, calling attention to the danger by which the Church was threatened, and urging men to rally to her support. What was the Church, that she should be thus assailed and thus defended? Not an irresponsible body of more or less pious persons, each doing what was right in his own eyes, though those eyes were often blind; not a field in which the Prime Minister might show his favours, nor the tool of Parliament; but the Body of Christ, a Kingdom divinely appointed to do Christ's work on earth. This was the rallying-cry of the Movement — the divine nature of the Church, and its unbroken suc- cession from the apostles, as against those who made it a mere thing of expediency, to be set up and put down at will. But there was a deep under-current which flowed along with this, just as the river bears on its bosom a little boat, and floats it down to the sea. The accident of the times had largely deter- [57 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN mined the precise form which the revival took. But before all else, and above all else, we must think of it as a revival of true religion. In Newman's sermons at St. Mary's, he was insisting, almost entirely to the exclusion of controversy, that holiness was necessary for future blessedness — and this was the insistence of his friends as well. The doctrine of a divine Church laid weighty responsibilities upon the Church's mem- bers. There was much for them to do, much for them to learn, much that had been lost sight of for them to restore. We have seen how the claim of the Church of Eng- land to a share in the Catholic heritage of ancient times, and the way in which that claim was treated, led Newman at last to join the Church of Rome. After long hesitation, and deep searchings of heart, he came at length to speak of it as "the one true fold of Christ"; he sought admission for himself, and prayed that his friends might follow. Many of them did follow, clerical and lay. It was a time of profound upheaval in the religious world. There was distrust, suspicion, misrepresentation. But of Pusey and his position Newman could write thus, after he had been in the Roman Church for twenty years. "People are apt to say that he was once nearer to the Catholic Church than he is now; I pray God that he may be one day far nearer to the Catholic Church than he [58 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH was then; for I believe that, in his reason and judg- ment, all the time that I knew him he never was near to it at all. When I became a Catholic, I was often asked — What of Dr. Pusey? When I said that I did not see symptoms of his doing as I had done, I was often thought uncharitable. If confidence in his position is, as it is, a first essential in the leader of a party, Dr. Pusey had it. The most remarkable instance of this was his statement, in one of his sub- sequent defences of the Movement, when too it had advanced a considerable way in the direction of Rome, that among its hopeful peculiarities was its stationari- ness. He made it in good faith; it was his subjective view of it." It is Pusey the man whom we are chiefly to con- sider, rather than Pusey the party-leader. The latter, except in barest outline, would demand a good-sized volume. But to this testimony of Newman's as to Pusey's distance from the Roman Church, we may add another word. For some time before Newman's withdrawal the Oxford leaders had been looked on with suspicion as Romanizers. With an obvious wit- ticism, their doctrine was spoken of by Whately and others as New-mania. From the tracts which they sent out, they were often called Tractarians. But upon Newman's retirement, Pusey at once became the chief man among them, and his name was associated [ 59 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN with the Movement more and more. Puseyism and Puseyite became common words, and in various forms made their way into the languages of continental Europe. A Greek newspaper, even, spoke of 5rou^eio-/ids. What did it mean? Often, no doubt, it was used as a term of reproach, and nothing more — a convenient epithet; just as Unitarian is sometimes applied in our time to clergymen who repeat at every public service of the Church that they believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ, His Only Son, our Lord. But it meant something, for all that; and Pusey himself has left a record of what he under- stood by it, in response to a letter asking him the question. With reference to his theological opponents, he remarks — "I am more and more convinced that there is less difference between right-minded persons on both sides than these often suppose; that differ- ences which seemed considerable are really so only in the way of stating them; that people who would express themselves very differently, and think each other's mode of expressing themselves very faulty, mean the same truths under different modes of ex- pression." His own position he defines under six heads, thus: 1. High thoughts of the two Sacraments. 2. High estimate of Episcopacy, as God's ordinance. 3. High estimate of the visible Church as the body [60] T H J'. ENGLISH CHURCH wherein we are made and continue to he members of Christ. 4. Regard for ordinances, as directing our devotions and disciplining us, such as daily public prayers, fasts, and feasts. ."). Regard for the visible part of devotion, such as the decoration of the house of God, which acts insensibly on the mind. 6. Reverence for and deference to the Ancient Church, of which our own Church is looked upon as represen- tative to us, and by whose views and doctrines we interpret our own Church when her meaning is ques- tioned or doubtful; in a word, reference to the Ancient Church, instead of the Reformers, as the ultimate ex- pounder of the meaning of our Church." Such is Puseyism, at least as Dr. Pusey understood it. It has had its grotesque and uncanny exaggerations. It has not always been free from the bitterness of party-strife. But, both within and without the Church, its influence has been felt increasingly in the growth of reverence, the desire for decency and order, and respect for the traditions of the past. We may now turn from the party to the man, and, as we follow the course of Dr. Pusey's life, we shall follow at the same time the fortunes of the Oxford Move- ment. Edward Bouverie Pusey was born at Pusey House, in [61 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN Berkshire, August 22nd, ] 800, being thus just six months Newman's senior. His father was a man of wealth and consequence, and it might be said of Pusey, as Archbishop Tait said once of himself, that he was "always in the enjoyment of ample means." He had this advantage — that he was free to follow his own bent, for stern necessity did not hold him back. He was sent to Eton, and then to Oxford, where he was a student of Christ Church, and later Fellow of Oriel. At eighteen years of age he formed an attachment for a young lady whom he afterwards married, but for ten years it seemed impossible that this should ever be, because of family objections on both sides. He fell for a time into a state of profound despair. "Never," he writes, "did I feel any disposi- tion, or make any effort, to be gay. It seemed to me unnatural. I loved my grief better than any hollow joy, and if my mother in society, when I occasionally forgot myself, expressed to me her pleasure at seeing me smile, it invariably brought a gloom again over my countenance." His religious sense came to the rescue, and he threw off this melancholy even before there seemed any hope of the attainment of his object. His marriage finally took place in the summer of 1828, and for eleven years, till Mrs. Pusey's early death, she was the companion, not only of his daily life, but of all his thoughts, and hopes, and aspirations. [62] THE ENGLISH CHURCH In the light of his future close relationship with Newman, it is interesting to know how they first came together. We are told in Newman's Letters that " Newman first saw him on his dining, as a stranger, at Oriel high table, when a guest of his Eton friend Jelf, and as a future candidate, it was reported, for a Fellowship. Newman used to speak in after life of this first introduction to one with whom eventually he was so closely united, and to the blessing of whose long friendship and example, as he said in the dedi- cation to him of his first volume of sermons, he had owed so much. His light curly head of hair was damp with the cold water which his headaches made neces- sary for his comfort; he walked fast with a young manner of carrying himself, and stood rather bowed, looking up from under his eyebrows, his shoulders rounded, and his bachelor's gown not buttoned at the elbow, but hanging loose over his wrists. His countenance was very sweet, and he spoke little.'' From time to time, in Newman's correspondence during 1823 and 1824, he speaks of Pusey, at first in a slightly patronizing manner, which soon gives way to genuine affection and regard. "Two men have succeeded this morning, who I trust are favour- ably disposed to religion, or at least moral and think- ing, not worldly and careless men." In a month this hope has become a certainty. "I have taken a short [63 ] MEN' AND MOVE M ENTS I X walk with Pusey, and we have had some very pleas- ing conversation. He is a searching man, and seems to delight in talking on religious subjects." And in a year Pusey is grappled to his soul with hooks of steel. "Took a walk with Pusey; discoursed on mis- sionary subjects. I must bear everv circumstance in continual remembrance. What words shall I use? Mv heart is full. How should I be humbled to the dust! What importance I think myself of ! My deeds, my abilities, my writings! Whereas he is humility itself, and gentleness, and love, and zeal, and self-devotion. Bless him with Thy fullest gifts, and grant me to imitate him." In those Oxford days Pusey was laying the foundations of that solid scholarship which was afterwards to be of so much service to his cause. He sometimes spent six- teen or seventeen hours a da} r over his books, which is described, properly enough, as a suicidal practice. He speaks of himself as "a reading automaton who might by patience be made a human being." From Oxford he went to Germany, where, in two visits, he studied Oriental languages, and gained a familiarity with Ger- man modes of thought which was very rare in those days. As Newman began life as an Evangelical, so Pusey was regarded in those early years as a Liberal, and was even viewed with alarm as one who might easily become a Latitudinarian. His first book, on the r 64 1 THE ENGLISH CHURCH Theology of Germany, in its subject-matter if not in its contents, gave colour to this suspicion. Pusey was ordained deacon at Christ Church, Oxford, on Trinity Sunday, 1828, and priest at Cuddesdon in the following November. On the day of his Ordina- tion, he said the evening service at St. Mary's, where Newman's ministry was just beginning. His first ser- mon was preached some weeks later at a country church in Shropshire, from the text — "Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord." The first of Newman's published sermons is on the same text. The coincidence sug- gests that the Movement into which they flung them- selves with so much energy was before all things a call to holiness. In the fall of 1828, just after his marriage and his Ordination, lie was appointed Regius Professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford — the position in which he spent his life. The appointment was made at the recommendation, and largely through the influence, of the then Bishop of Oxford, Dr. Lloyd. "What will Pusey do?" asked a clergyman who was staying with the Bishop, when he learned that his efforts on Pusey's behalf had been successful. "If," replied the Bishop, "he belongs to the old school, he will come over and see me; if to the new, he will write me a letter," Pusey at once drove over to Cud- [65 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN desdon to thank the Bishop for his good offices. If he had belonged to a modern school which is far too com- mon among us, he would have taken the Bishop's inter- est as a matter of course, and made no sign at all. Newman's publication of the Tracts for the Times was begun in 1833. Pusey was in full sympathy with their general drift, but at first he did not himself contribute. Indeed, his style was too elaborate and scholarly to lend itself readily to such a purpose. As we read of sermons an hour and a half in length, and unrelieved by any lighter touches, we realize that his gifts were not of a popular sort. He contributed an early Tract on Fasting, but it was not till 1835, and the appear- ance of his Tract on Baptism, which was a volume in itself, that he became definitely associated with the Movement. Newman remarks of this — "He at once gave us a position and a name. Without him we should have had no chance of making any serious resistance to the Liberal aggression. But Dr. Pusey was a Pro- fessor and Canon of Christ Church; he had a vast influence in consequence of his deep religious seri- ousness, the munificence of his charities, his Profes- sorship, his family connexions, and his easy relations with University authorities. He was a host in himself; he was able to give a name, a form, and a personality to what was without him a sort of mob; and when various parties had to meet together in order to resist [66] THE ENGLISH CHURCH the liberal acts of the Government, we of the Move- ment took our place by right among them." We cannot pass by altogether the Hampden contro- versy, or rather controversies, for there were several of them, with perpetual irritation all along the line, but we must dismiss them with a word. In 1832 Dr. Hampden had preached the Bampton Lectures at Oxford, on The Scholastic Philosophy considered in its Relation to Christian Theology. He was a man of much information on a subject where most of his hearers and readers were profoundly ignorant. He seems to have had a blundering way of seeming to say what he did not really mean. But few read the lectures, and fewer understood them. They bade fair to sink into quick oblivion. But in 1836 he was appointed Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, and in a moment the dogs of war were loose. Hampden in- dignantly asserted his orthodoxy, but it was ques- tioned in many quarters. It is dangerous to write what no one can understand, especially to write it in an obscure and careless way. It will probably be forgotten, but if it is not forgotten each man will interpret it to suit himself, or, as in this case, to dis- please himself. It seemed to Pusey and his friends, and to many others in no way connected with the Oxford Movement, that Hampden's lectures under- mined the Christian Faith, though this seems to have [67]' MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN been as far as possible from the intention of the author. Hampden's friends saw in Pusey only a man who had attacked a friend who was his successful rival in the path of fame. Dr. Arnold sent to the Edinburgh Re- view the famous and unfortunate article on the "Ox- ford Malignants," in which he remarked that "the attack upon Dr. Hampden bears upon it the charac- ter, not of error but of moral wickedness/' and went on to make use of language which the lofti- ness of his character makes it all the more difficult to excuse. An unsuccessful attempt was made to keep Hampden from assuming his position, but the authori- ties at Oxford set a ban by depriving him of certain of the rights which hitherto his Professorship had always carried with it. Later, an effort was made to remove these disabilities, but it failed. Later still, he was appointed Bishop of Hereford, and there was another protest. It was unavailing, and with his pro- motion he seems to have disappeared from the public eye. The first Hampden controversy caused Dr. Pusey to put in immediate execution a project which he had long had in mind. It will be remembered that in his own definition of Puseyism he had included a respect for and deference to the Fathers of the Ancient Church. He was of all things a student of antiquity. He tells us that for years he "lived in St. Augus- [68] THE ENGLISH CHURCH tine." His reverence for long ago, if it was only long enough ago, would seem to most men to be extreme. And Dr. Hampden outraged this sense of his. "I cannot refrain," he writes, "from protesting earnestly against the harsh and often bitter and sarcastic lan- guage employed by Dr. Hampden towards the Fa- thers of the Christian Church, and whole classes of God's departed servants." But the Fathers were un- known, and inaccessible to all but a few scholars. If they were thought of at all, it was as belonging to the Church of Rome, and that Church was not slow in claiming them for its possession. It had seemed to Pusey as if, for many reasons, the Fathers should be put within the reach of English Churchmen. The stigma cast upon them by Dr. Hampden made him hasten his purpose. He projected a Library of the Fathers, which grew to forty-eight volumes, appear- ing from time to time in the years from 1838 to 1885. Pusey's work was that of editor. He did little of the actual translation, but wrote notes and pref- aces, and supervised the whole. Of the great value of this work there can be no doubt, and where Pusey led the way others have followed. It is true, it was doubted at the time. No less a person than the Dean of Christ Church is said to have waved his hand towards the volumes of the Fathers contained in the Christ Church Library, and to have remarked [69] M EX AND MOVEMENTS IN of them that they were sad rubbish. One clergyman spoke of the "stinking puddles of tradition" which they contained. But in this respect the world has progressed since then. There are many who would not accept Dr. Pusey's estimate of their authority, but it is only a rude iconoclast here and there who would not value their work. As early as 1836, charges of Romanizing had begun to be made against the leaders of the Movement. In a way, and in the state of general ignorance that then prevailed, they were not altogether without foundation. The Tractarians claimed for the Church of England certain things which had previously been regarded as the exclusive property of Rome — and in this recovery lay one of their greatest services to the Church. But at the first it exposed them to suspi- cion, and later the secession of Newman and his friends showed that it was not without its dangers. While they were contending against Hampden and the Latitudinarianism which he was supposed to rep- resent, others were contending against them. Here and there their doctrines were denounced as hereti- cal — chiefly, it must be said, by those who did not understand them. An excitable official sent forth a pamphlet, and followed it up with placards, denoun- cing "the Popery of Oxford." Ridiculous charges were made concerning the innovations which they [70 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH were said to be introducing. We shall have occasion later to consider Pusey's attitude towards Ritualism. Now he remarked — "We have too much to do to keep sound doctrine and the privileges of the Church to be able to afford to go into the question about dresses." In the spring of 1837 the first official ex- pression of disapproval appeared in a. Charge of the Archdeacon of Coventry to his clergy. It was said that "the respectable and learned authors of those Tracts were, unawares to themselves, injuring the pure and Scriptural doctrines of the Protestant Faith." To this Pusey replied — "We are conscious of no in- tention but that of recalling to the minds of such of our brethren as we may forgotten truths ; we wish to in- troduce no new doctrines; we do not wish to supersede, but to uphold the authority of our Church, by pointing out its agreement with the primitive Catholic Church. We teach nothing but what has been taught before us. Neither do we wish to give to anything an undue, and so injurious prominence. If indeed we think any part neglected, and so that it is useful to the Church to write on it, we must write on that subject mainly, for one cannot bring the whole fulness of theology into each Tract. But it is not part of our system; and I might refer you to Mr. Newman's three volumes of sermons to show that we do not attach ourselves ex- clusively to a portion of Christian truth." [71 ] MEN AND M OVE M EXTS IN While the Oxford Movement, by attack and defence, was thus developing, Pusey lived at Christ Church, attending to the duties of his Professorship. He Mas by accident, and through force of circumstance, a public man; but by preference he was reserved and shrinking, and as time went on he withdrew more and more, not into himself, but from the world. In the spring of 1839 his wife died, after years of ill- ness. This sorrow left a mark upon him which was never effaced. It seemed to him a call for his retire- ment from society and its life. The crape which he wore on his hat to the end of his life, and the crape scarf which he always used when attending the Cathe- dral service, were symbols of the new mode of life which befitted a sorrow that could only end with death. As an old man, he wrote to one similarly be- reaved, out of his own experience, still fresh in his heart. "I have kept silence, because such grief as yours is beyond words; and yet, though human sym- pathy is vain, I have longed to say how I grieved for you and with you. It is indeed, as I felt those thirty- seven years ago, that the sun is gone down at mid-day. I could but go blindly on, not daring to look back- wards or forwards, but binding myself to the duties of the day, looking to Him Who had brought me to the morning to bring me to the evening. For you, it must be still harder; for the more one has around [72] THE ENGLISH CHURCH one, the more sad is the absence of that sun which gilded them all. Then, however, I learned the bless- edness of our Lord's rule — as all His commandments are blessings — to take no thought for the morrow, and so one got on day by day. At first time seemed so slow, but after a while it began to whirl as be- fore." Before the death of his wife, he had begun to feel the claims of the poor and of the Church upon his purse. He did not give grudgingly nor of necessity; but where his heart was, he could not withhold his treasure. They sold their horses, that they might have more to give away, and Mrs. Pusey parted with her jewels, and gave the money to the London churches. The sin of luxury, which carries in its train so many other sins, and which — however it may be defined — has made such strides since then, he had to denounce. "I am much perplexed by my own sermon," he writes after one of these denunciations. Truly, in some of its details, it is one of the hardest questions with which men have to deal; though, for a general principle, we have Christ's saying — "Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?" It is not a question of cost, but of proportion. When good things take the place that should be held by better things, they be- come, in so far, evil. But Pusey does not shrink from asking searching questions — "Is there no blessing," he [ ™ ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN asks, "on luxuries abandoned, establishments dimin- ished, show of plate laid aside, equipages dropped, superfluous plate cast into the treasury of God, the rich (where it may be) walking on foot here, that they may walk in glory in the streets of the City which are of pure gold?" At another time, he sug- gests that the example of those in station at Oxford is in large measure responsible for the increase of reckless extravagance amongst the undergraduates. "Can we expect the luxuries which are enervating and injuring our youth to be abandoned until our own habits are simpler?" It is doubtless true that what seems carelessness or hardness of heart is often due to ignorance. Men do not realize the power of example; and then, as the phrase is, half the world does not know how the other half lives. But it ought to know. It was Christ's work to bring men together — "He hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us" — and it is the Church's work to-dav. On the occasion of the Irish famine in 1847 Pusey describes the horrors of the time. "They who witness it say it exceeds all, save the siege of Jerusalem. Horrors there are, which one could scarce name except in the solemnity of Scripture language. The curse on the house of Ahab is fulfilled on members of Christ. Him that dieth of Ahab in the city shall the dogs eat. More horrible yet is the temptation to [ 74 '] THE ENGLISH CHURCH sin ; for what must be the misery, where, for a morsel of food, a man could be found to murder two children! Well nigh all the sorrows of the Lamentations over the city, once full of people, that sitteth solitary, are there; the tongue of the suckling child cleaveth to the roof of his mouth for thirst; the young children, hundreds upon hundreds in one city, ask for bread, and no man breaketh it unto them." And whatever might be done in the way of immediate relief, he goes on to the root of the evil which, even then, was arraying class against class. "Whatever amend- ments there may have been among us, luxury and self-indulgence have been increasing among us; no class has been contented with the expenditure of their forefathers; new luxuries have invaded us; lux- uries have become comforts, and comforts have be- come necessaries and our idols. In its turn, luxury is the parent of covetousness, and covetousness of un- just gain, and of the grinding of the poor. We mill not limit our self-indulgence; and so, in order to ob- tain it cheaply, we pare down the wages of our arti- sans. They who have seen it, know that full often the very clothes we wear are, while they are made, moistened by the tears of the poor. How has the same desire of cheapness, to vie with others, impaired the character of our trade, and made practices com- mon which our forefathers would have counted, what [ 75 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN they are, dishonesty." It will be seen from this that, scholar as he was, Pusey's interests were not con- fined to the doctrine and practice of the Church, but that they included as well the great principles of daily life. As we have seen, whatever Dr. Pusey said of this sort he had the right to say. With him, there was none of that rhetorical display which sometimes de- grades the pulpit, and disgraces those who seem to speak for God. His words to others meant deeds per- formed himself. His love of the Church and of the poor, while it showed itself in many ways, took one chief practical direction. The problem of the religious care of the masses of population in large towns had long pressed upon him. It was this practical neces- sity which was largely responsible for his efforts to revive monastic life in the Church of England. So now he wrote to his friend Hook at Leeds, where there was much spiritual destitution, and, concealing that he was himself the giver, offered to provide means for building a church in the most needy part of the town. The offer was gratefully accepted, and the church, St. Saviour's, was built and consecrated. We are told of the district in which it lay, that it con- sisted of "narrow streets, with low houses; and among or around these ran a branch of the river Aire, whose waters were brown and thick with mud, and dye- [-6] THE ENGLISH CHURCH grease, and drains. The physical discomfort was out- done by the moral degradation; every form of the foulest vice nourished, as was natural, in rank luxuri- ance. The moral, as well as the mental atmosphere, was heathen, without the restraining forces which occasionally make heathenism respectable." The church, so piously projected, doubtless did much of the good which was hoped for from it, but to Pusey it brought trouble and distress. At the very time of its consecration Newman had been received into the Roman Church, and Pusey, by friends who had seceded and by foes who remained, was being urged to follow. Ecclesiastical censure had been pro- nounced upon him, and censure is censure, even though it be unjust. St. Saviour's, from the first, was looked upon with suspicion, and the suspicion was too well justified by the event. The clergy who were placed in charge were often indiscreet, and sometimes more than indiscreet. They openly antagonized Hook, and caused a breach between him and Pusey which was not healed for years. Pusey was blind to what was going on, then as ever "simple concerning evil." He refused to believe that there was room for sus- picion, until two sets of clergy from St. Saviour's had joined the Church of Rome. Before this time, a direct attack, and in some ways a successful one, had been made upon Pusey himself. [77 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN He had preached before the University a sermon on "Sin after Baptism," in which he dwelt upon such sin as irreparable, as indeed all sin must be. It was a solemn sermon, and a grim one. It frightened peo- ple, and rightly or wrongly made them feel as if Christ had not died for sinners, after all. To counter- act this, as he himself tells us, he was led to write a course of sermons on "Comforts to the Penitent." One of these comforts, and the chief one, was the Holy Eucharist. Of the sermon itself, Dean Church remarks — "He spoke of the Eucharist as a disciple of Andrewes and Bramhall would speak of it; it was a high Anglican sermon, full, after the example of the Homilies, Jeremy Taylor, and devotional writers like George Herbert and Bishop Ken, of the fervid language of the Fathers; and that was all. Beyond this it did not go; its phraseology was strictly within Anglican limits." And J. B. Mozley describes the scene — "The audience listened with the attention it always does to Dr. Pusey, and then the audience went away. The remarks upon it were pretty much the same as usual; it was pronounced a useful sermon, an eloquent sermon, a striking sermon, a beautiful sermon. Some said that it was a long sermon, others that it was not longer than usual. It was, of course, said to contain high doctrinal views on the subject treated of; but as all Dr. Pusey's sermons contain [78] THE ENGLISH CHURCH high views, there was nothing to draw attention in this remark. In short, it was one of Dr. Pusey's ser- mons; the audience recognized that fact, went home, were perfectly at their ease, thought nothing more about it — the reverential impression excepted, of course, which that preacher's discourses always leave on the mind — when all on a sudden comes, like a clap of thunder on the ear, the news that the Board of Heresy is summoned to sit on Dr. Pusey." The astonishment which the congregation felt we must feel too, at this distance of time. Indeed, the charges against him were never known, and it is not really known what was condemned. But Dr. Pusey was pronounced guilty of preaching what was con- trary to the doctrine of the Church of England, by a tribunal in which his accuser sat as one of the judges, and was sentenced to be suspended from preaching at the University for two years. He was given no op- portunity for defence. The plea was actually put forth that this would have led to the "inconvenience" of an interminable debate, and confronting of texts and authorities. It was a time of suspicion, almost of panic. Misunderstanding and distrust were everywhere. A remonstrance, sent to the Resident Governor of the University by eminent statesmen and lawyers, was re- turned with an intimation that they were meddling in a matter in which they need have no concern. [79] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN Dean Church says of the judgment that it was a great injustice and a great blunder. As year after year passed by, following Newman's secession, and the converts to Rome steadily de- creased, while Pusey remained firm, it became in- creasingly plain that the principles which the Oxford leaders represented, whatever might be thought of them, and in spite of the dangers to which they un- deniably might lead, had nevertheless a legitimate place in the Church of England, and had returned to stay. From time to time, Rome loomed up as a place of refuge, where Protestantism must have served be- fore. It was inevitable that things which had long been considered Rome's monopoly should not be thought so still. Bishop Wilberforce condemned Pusey's adaptation of Roman devotional books, and at one time privately inhibited him from preaching in the diocese of Oxford. As was not unnatural, he was held responsible for the excesses and indiscretions of his followers. Throughout his life perplexing questions about sisterhoods, or confession, or ritualism, were constantly coming up. He was frequently misunder- stood, frequently misjudged. Among ignorant people, and among those who should have known better, his name was associated with strange and shapeless ex- travagances. It was reported that the Pope compared him to a church bell, alwavs calling people into the [80] THE ENGLISH CHURCH church — and of course he meant the Church of Rome — though he stayed outside himself. It is re- lated that after he had preached in a country church, one rustic maiden said to another — "Who be that that preached? A monstrous nice man, but dreadful long." "Don't you know?" was the reply. "It be that Mr. Pewdsey, who is such a friend to the Pope." But those who knew him best knew what his service to the Church had been. In 1850 England was consti- tuted an ecclesiastical province of the Roman Church, and Pusey's refusal to join in some distinctly anti- Roman resolution provoked fresh distrust. He was then, as ever, perfectly willing to join in a declara- tion of loyalty to the Church of England, but he added — "If the labours of seventeen or twenty-seven years will not persuade men that we are faithful to that Church, words will not. We must await God's time until this fever of fear subside; or if nothing will convince them, death in the bosom of the Church of England will." Keble said of him — "Of one thing I am quite confident, that if more have passed from his teaching to Rome than from the teaching of any other, more also, by very many, have been positively withheld from Rome by his teaching than have been kept back by any other." And when Pusey lay under the suspicion of Bishop Wilberforce for Romish teach- ing, Keble wrote again — "My own conviction is that [81 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN he has been the greatest drag upon those who were rushing towards Rome, by showing them that all their reasonable yearnings were provided for in the English system, rightly understood." Such, then, was the Oxford Movement — Catholic, not Roman Catholic; leading to antiquity, but not to Rome; claiming for the Church of England much that she need never have given up. In its spirit, it was inclusive rather than exclusive. It is true, it hated the principles of Liberalism, which it did not altogether understand. It had to fight for recognition, and as time wore on that which had been oppressed took its turn as the oppressor. We may not enter in any detail into the controversies of Pusey's later years. It will be enough merely to mention two or three of the chief. In 1850 the famous Gorham Judg- ment was pronounced. The Bishop of Exeter refused to induct Mr. Gorham into a living to which he had been presented, because of defective views which he was said to hold on the question of baptismal regen- eration. The case was tried in a civil court, and judg- ment given in Mr. Gorham's favour. If the verdict distressed Pusey and his party, the principle that the trial seemed to sanction, that ecclesiastical questions could be decided in lay courts, distressed them even more. In 186l Essays and Reviews appeared. In these days it would not be likely to excite much comment. [ M ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH But when it first appeared, as we shall have occasion to see more fully in later chapters, it came as a bomb- shell into the ecclesiastical world. The present Arch- bishop of Canterbury, Dr. Temple, was one of the original contributors, though he afterwards withdrew his essay. But when, later, he was appointed Bishop of Exeter, Pusey declared that he had participated in the ruin of countless souls. In the discussion regarding the Athanasian Creed, Pusey, and others with him, de- clared that they must resign from the ministry of the Church if that hymn were altered or disturbed. But these are matters which, in their fulness, belong rather to the history of the Church of England than to the life of any of her members. To the end of life, and in spite of the controversies with which his name is most often associated, Dr. Pusey was preeminently a scholar, and a comforter of souls. For forty-eight years he was engaged in constant production, and at the age of sixty he made himself master of Ethiopic, for the better prosecution of his Biblical studies. Commentaries, notes on the Fathers, expositions of the doctrines, some of which, in a sense, he had re- discovered, and for which he stood, flowed from his pen. And what time was left was given to such practical work as seemed to come his way. The revival of sisterhoods in the Church of England was largely due to Dr. Pusey's influence, and to his [ 83 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN direct help. Even before Newman's departure the subject had been discussed, and from its first begin- nings in 1844 to the end of his life it was a matter very close to Dr. Pusey's heart. The needs of large cities, his appreciation of which had led him to build St. Saviour's at Leeds, seemed to him to demand some such system — and moreover it seemed also to give some outlet to the desire for a purely religious life, as it is called. His daughter Lucy, who died when little more than a child, had looked forward to such a life, and he ever associated it with her. Another matter to which Pusey seems to have at- tached weightier importance with increasing years, was the practice of confession. As to the value of this practice, apart from any theories concerning it, there is room for, and there prevails, a very great difference of opinion. That it is permitted by the Prayer-Book of the Church of England, no one. can deny. That it is commanded, or even advised, except under very special circumstances, no one can affirm. It is certain that there are times and temperaments in which it may be productive of great help and comfort. It is also certain that it may be wofully abused, that it may lead to morbid and unhealthy states of mind, and may come at last to blunt the sense of right and wrong, and to obscure that feel- ing of personal responsibility which is the last thing [84] THE ENGLISH CHURCH we can afford to lose. It did all these things on its appearance in the Church of England, and Pusey was held largely responsible, alike for good and bad. He himself seems to have heard confessions in large num- bers, and to have helped many who were in need of counsel and advice. He made his own confessions to John Keble for many years. But in the excess of his penitence, his craving after spiritual direction, his long- ing to be bidden to do things which were wholly unnecessary and uncalled-for, we find it difficult to distinguish between the humility of a genuinely holy man, and the morbid self-depreciation of an ascetic. One is tempted to wonder if there may not be excess of spiritual fervour, as of other things. His rules for himself suggest another man, of widely different the- ology, but of similar spirit. Adoniram Judson, the great Baptist missionary to Burmah, had a grave dug in his garden, that he might go out among the luxuriance of tropical life, and looking into it imagine how he should appear when he had been for some days dead. Pusey exercised somewhat similar imaginings, when he re- solved to make the fire from time to time the type of hell, and always to confess, when he lay down, that he was unworthy to awake except in hell. We need to remember that, the better the man, the stronger the sense of sin. But if it is no longer I that live, but Christ who lives in me, hell becomes impossible. [85 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN The growth of ritual, of late years, has been very marked, and has spread, in greater or less degree, to all religious bodies. There are good reasons for this, and bad ones. It owes its beginning, though not its excess, to the spirit of the Oxford Movement. Be- ing on the surface, it has come, more than anything else, to be a party-badge. Tempests in teapots have raged over practices and vestments in which neither party to the combat could have defended their posi- tion or explained their zeal. Hearts have been broken over stoles and surplices. There have been fierce dem- onstrations against ritualism — mostly by ungodly men. A generation ago, it led to mobs and riots in many places. Under the name of reverence, there has been ridiculous display, which, if childish at its best, be- came criminal under certain circumstances. We read of a man who mould break the Church's law that he might be sent to prison for it, while Archbishop Tait pleaded with him in vain not to be a fool. Dean Hole speaks of the combination of bad taste and bragga- docio which led a ritualistic clergyman, being asked if it was Sacrament Sunday, to make answer — "Five masses have been already said." In such extrava- gances, Pusey had no part. He loved the Church, he loved the House of God, he wished to make it beau- tiful and its service seemly. But none realized better than he that the first requisite to such a result was [86] THE ENGLISH CHURCH what men carried in their hearts, rather than what they wore on their backs, or the position in which they held their hands. In I860, he wrote thus to Dr. Tait, then Bishop of London, with regard to the prac- tices which had led to the riots at St. George's in the East, in London. "In regard to my friends, per- haps I regret the acts to which your Lordship al- ludes as deeply as you do. I am in this strange posi- tion, that my name is made a byword for that with which I never had any sympathy, that which the writers of the Tracts, with whom in early days I was associated, always deprecated, any innovations in the way of conducting the service, anything of ritualism, or especially any revival of disused vestments. Of late years, when ritualism has become more prominent, I have looked out for a natural opportunity of dissoci- ating myself from it, but have not found it. I have been obliged, therefore, to confine myself to private protests which have been unlistened to, or to a warn- ing to the young clergy from the University pulpit against self-willed changes in ritual. Altogether I have looked with sorrow at the crude way in which some doctrines have been put forward, without due pains to prevent misunderstanding, and ritual has been forced upon the people, unexplained and with- out their consent." And in 1877 he writes again to Tait, now Archbishop, speaking for the Ritualists, [87 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN though not identifying himself with them. "With the concession of the Eastward position and the vest- ments, I believe that the main body of the Ritualists would be satisfied. Then there would be an end of all these unseemly bickerings. How can we hope that God will hear our prayers for the Church or for souls amid all this discord?" Dr. Pusey died at Oxford in a ripe old age Sept. 16, 1882, and was buried in the nave of Christ Church Cathedral beside his wife. When he had served his generation in many ways, he fell asleep. If sometimes he made mistakes, if sometimes he could not appre- ciate the sincerity of those who were opposed to him in important matters, he was simple concerning evil, and all that seemed like evil to him. And he was ever wise unto that which is good, a holy and hum- ble man of heart. We think of him as a controversial- ist, the leader of a party; but it was in the name of Penitent that the first stone of his church at Leeds was laid. And this text was on it. "God for- bid that I should glory, save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, whereby the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." Wise unto that which is good, and simple rmirerniiHi evil. [ ««] Chapter fK JOHN KEBLE THE keynote of the Oxford Movement was that article of the Creed — "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church." Before the Movement, the vague- ness of all teaching on this point had not been un- noticed, and the unsatisfactory nature of the relation between Church and State was realized in many quar- ters. A High Church leader had written of this doc- trine — "When it is brought forward, it will swallow up the rest. Our present confusion is chiefly owing to the want of it, and there will be yet more confusion attending its revival. The effects of it I even dread to contemplate, especially if it comes suddenly, and woe betide those, whoever they are, who shall in the course of Providence have to bring it forward. They will be endlessly misunderstood and misinterpreted. There will be one great outcry of Popery from one end of the country to the other." We have seen already how well his words were real- ized, and how soon. In the case of Newman, to whom the publication of the Tracts for the Times was chiefly due, his thought upon the nature and constitution of the Church led not only to the suspicion of Popery [ 89 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN on the part of his opponents, but to his own submis- sion to Rome. There were deep searchings of heart, there was a manful struggle against what, somehow or other, seemed to be forced upon him, there was patient waiting for the kindly light that did not come. Then, "he was sent afar; he left his mother, never to see her face or hear her voice again. He came to the people of the East, and served a hard master twenty years" — but the twenty years of Jacob be- came to Newman the half of a long lifetime. "In the day the drought consumed him, and the frost by night; and the sleep departed from his eyes." The little group who had been so much to each other for so many years, who had had the same high hopes and lofty purposes, who had fought shoulder to shoul- der in the same battles, was broken — for one had gone. To those who remained there was not left even the comfort of thinking what he might have been, as when Hurrell Froude, "the bright and beautiful Froude," was taken; for now his cause was theirs no longer. It must have been with him who went and with those who stayed as Newman puts it in those simple words of Scripture which he makes alive with tenderest meaning. "What woe was upon that young man, of a beautiful countenance and goodly to look to, and cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent [90] THE ENGLISH CHURCH in matters, when his devoted affectionate loyal friend, whom these good gifts have gained, looked upon him for the last time. O hard destiny, except that the All-merciful so willed it, that such companions might not walk in the house of God as friends!" There were other secessions, a few before Newman's, some in consequence of his, some afterwards, at vari- ous times, and for various reasons. For a while, the Oxford Movement was discredited, even with those who had been disposed to be its friends. But New- man was the only one of the writers of the Tracts to leave the Church of England. Pusey and Keble and the rest remained, to live down the reproach that had come to them without their bringing it, to sup- port a tarnished cause, to vindicate for the principles of the Movement the right to live and grow within their mother Church. With them was "the place where the priests' feet stood firm." They had to show that the appeal to antiquity need not carry with it the acceptance of mediaeval errors and cor- ruptions; that there was a Catholicity which was not Romanism, and a Protestantism which was neither lawless nor time-serving, neither antinomian nor Eras- tian. With the retirement of Newman from St. Mary's, Pusey became the party-leader. Partly because of his Professorship at Oxford, partly because of the con- [91 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN denination of his sermon on the Eucharist, partly be- cause of the accidental use of the word Puseyite, the spirit of the Movement seemed somehow to be per- sonified in him. But side by side with him stood Keble. When a great man sought to make compari-, sons between the opinions of the two, to Pusey's dis- advantage, Keble resented it with indignation. In a manner, it was his lot to prepare the way for what was to follow. The Christian Year was published in ] 8i7, six years before the beginning of the Tracts. Some time later, when the Movement was in full swing, some Evangelicals who little realized their thorough-going mediaevalism burned a certain book, which they pronounced to be fors et origo mali. When Newman heard of it, he declared at once that it could be no other than the Christian Year. And his testimony in the Apologia is even more emphatic. '"The true and primary author of the Movement, as is usual with great motive powers, was out of sight. Need I say that I am speaking of John Keble?" The story of Keble's life is quickly told. So far as external happenings are concerned, it was a life of the utmost quiet. Though he was in the forefront of a great struggle, and though he never shirked giving his testimony, and giving it boldly, it is impossible to think of him as one who was much engaged in con- troversy. His other qualities, the associations that are [92] THE ENGLISH CHURCH connected with his name, push this into the back- ground. He lived and worked "far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife." When he deliberately set aside ambition — he, who might have aspired to so much — he rose above the turmoil and tumult that ambition always carries in its train. John Keble was born at Fairford, in Gloucestershire, in 1792, being thus the senior of Newman and Pusey by eight years. His father was Rector of the parish — an old-fashioned High Churchman, who himself di- rected the education of his sons until they went to Oxford. Keble was a student at Corpus Christi Col- lege, and later was elected Fellow of Oriel. His aca- demic career was one of the utmost brilliancy. But he longed for pastoral work, and for a couple of years he served as his father's curate. It seemed to him that "the salvation of one soul was worth more than the framing of the Magna Charta of a thousand worlds." His pastoral life was interrupted for a time. In 1818 he was appointed Tutor at Oriel. "I am go- ing back," he writes, "to lay down the laws of ye. and S rj to a set of wriggling watch-consulting undergradu- ates." His word carried great weight, he exercised a powerful influence over all his pupils. "He is the first man in Oxford," Newman wrote. Isaac Williams tells us that a short walk with Keble and a few words spoken were the turning-point of his life. Hurrell [93 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN Froude declared — "Where Keble was, donnishness and humbug would be no more in college, nor the pride of talent nor ignoble secular ambition." But the life at Oxford did not give him all that he wanted. In 1823 he retired to a curacy at Southrop, then he removed to Fairford to help his father in his declining years, and in 1 P35, after his father's death, he became Vicar of Hursley, near Winchester, where he remained for thirty years, until his death in 1866. When the office of Provost of Oriel was vacant, in 1828, Keble was mentioned for the place; but Pusey and Newman supported a rival candidate, and Keble withdrew his name. Newman said that if an angel's place was vacant he should look toward Keble, but they were only electing a Provost. Pusey's idea was similar. "We thought Hawkins the more practical man," he wrote. But many years later he declared of this decision — "To us it became the sorrow of our lives.'' For ten years Keble was connected with the University as Professor of Poetry, and the duties of this office brought him frequently to Oxford. But his life was the life of an obscure country minister, from whose quiet vicarage, nevertheless, there proceeded a deeper influence, a more far-reaching example, than from any of the episcopal palaces of the time. In a sermon preached at the opening of Keble Col- lege, Oxford, Canon Liddon spoke of Keble as a man [94 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH distinguished in three several ways. He was a theo- logian, a man of preeminent goodness, and a poet. We may take this division as the text of our consid- eration of him. I. Under the first head will fall some slight account of his connection with the Oxford Movement, and of his participation in the controversies of the period. The suppression of the Irish Bishoprics was the spark that aroused a fire which had long been smouldering. The divine descent of the Church, as opposed to the popular Parliamentary theory which made it merely a pious ward of the State, Keble had learned as » boy to believe in with all his heart — and he was in all things a most pronounced Conservative. "It seems to me just what my father taught me," was the highest praise that he could give; and his pseudonym in the British Magazine was /wo-oj/coAoyos, one who hates new things. Such a new thing as the spoliation of the Church aroused his sternest indignation. He declared that the time was come when "scoundrels must be called scoundrels." In the Lyra Apostolica he breathes defiance against "the ruffian band, Come to reform where ne'er they came to pray." While the matter was still under discussion, he was [95] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN nominated to preach the Assize Sermon before the University, July 14, 1833. The subject of the sermon was "National Apostasy." It dwelt upon the dangers of the time, the restlessness under all restraint, the shallow indifferentism, the decay of faith. In dealing with such dangers, it held up the example of Samuel, "whose combination of sweetness with firmness, of consideration with energy, constituted the temper of a perfect public man." It counseled each Churchman to be careful of his own spiritual life, lest his example should bring reproach upon the Church, and not to let interest in public questions obscure the devotional and practical aspects of religion. But with such pre- cautions, the cause of the Apostolical Church could not be too vehemently defended, too eagerly maintained. Newman says of the sermon in the Apologia — "I have ever considered and kept this day as the start of the religious movement of 1833." Close upon the sermon followed the Tracts. Newman, of course, was the most prolific writer. Of the ninety Tracts, Keble contributed but eight. But they show us the man, with all his respect for the past, his love for institutions, his delicate poetic mind. Ad- herence to the Apostolical Succession is the safest course. It insures the reality of the Sacraments. It is the guarantee of apostolic doctrine. He urges that it is the duty of Churchmen to avoid marriage with 196 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH Dissenters. To an American, the attitude of the Ox- ford leaders towards Dissent seems strange and inade- quate enough. Here, when that which would be Dissent in England is ignored, the only effect is to make the Church ridiculous. Whatever one may think of its shortcomings, it must at least be recognized. If it is to be judged by its fruits, it may be held responsible for many evils, but it must be given credit for very much of good. But to the Oxford men of that earlier generation, it seems almost as if it were non-existent. An unbaptized woman came to Newman to be married, and he refused to perform the ceremony. To him, as a priest of the Church of England, it was as if she was not. We are told that Pusey rarely came into close contact with any of the forms of Dissent, though he gladly recognized the amount of revealed truth to which many of the sepa- rated bodies give their witness, and was painfully aware that their Dissent is largely due to the short- comings of the Church in past generations. And while there can be no doubt that Keble's was a gentle and a loving nature, and that he longed to serve all men in the best way he could, his very slight experience with Dissenters seems to have led him to think of them — officially — as unpleasant persons, of whom the less said the better. It was not narrowness. Least of all was it an arrogant superiority. It was enthusiasm for [97] MEN' AND MOVEMENTS IN what he held most sacred; and that lack of knowl- edge which lack of experience must always carry with it. His last Tract, upon the patristic method of the mystical interpretation of Scripture, was his longest, and in a way most characteristic of the man. It shows his intense Conservatism, his thorough-going acceptance of his models, whithersoever they lead him, his poetic and imaginative spirit. He prefers ancient methods to modern ones, simply because of their antiquity. That is reason enough for him. His biographer calls it "a. poet's protest against a prosaic age," but something more than poetry is needed for a sober and intelligent understanding of the Bible. To Keble, as to all the Tractarians, what they called Germanism was something utterly mischievous and abhorrent. The modern study of the Bible, in its most innocent form, would doubtless have met with then- severest disapprobation. Keble selects those very in- stances of fanciful interpretation which would be most likely to startle and scandalize. He shocks the moral sense by his unwillingness to condemn immoral ac- tions in the Bible. The beauties of the Tract were obscured by its manifest deficiencies. And the time of its appearance was inopportune. In this same year, 1841, the Bishop of Winchester refused Priest's Orders to Keble's Curate, the Rev. [y»] THE ENGLISH CHURCH Peter Young, because of his views on the doctrine of the Eucharist. Keble's own views were similar, and he thought for a time of resigning his charge, but was dissuaded. During these years he was engaged with Newman in the publication of Hurrell Froude's Remains, and in the editing of the works of Richard Hooker. His Life of Bishop Wilson belongs to a later period. It is unnecessary to dwell upon the approach of the catastrophe. Pusey's sermon was condemned, Tract 90 raised a storm of censure, Newman retired into lay- communion, Ward's bold and outspoken book on The Ideal of a Christian Church resulted in the degrada- tion of its author. One hesitates a little whether im- pudent or imprudent would be the better word to use in the description of its contents. Then, in the fall of 1845, came the news from Littlemore, so long expected but none the -less dreaded, that Newman had been received into the Church of Rome. Keble thus concludes a letter that he had begun before the news arrived. "My dearest Newman, you have been a kind and helpful friend to me in a way in which scarce any one else could have been, and you are so mixed up in my mind with old and dear and sacred thoughts that I cannot well bear to part with you, most unworthy as I know myself to be; and yet I cannot go along with you. I must cling to the belief [ 99 } MEN AXD MOVEMENTS IN that we are not really parted — you have taught me so, and I scarce think you can unteach me — and hav- ing relieved my mind with this little word, I will only say God bless you and reward you a thousand fold for all your help in every way to me unworthy, and to so many others. May you have peace where you are gone, and help us in some way to get peace; but somehow I scarce think it will be in the way of controversy. And so, with somewhat of a feeling as if the spring had been taken out of my year, I am al- ways Your affectionate and grateful John Keble." To Pusey and Keble the years that followed must have been hard indeed. It is not strange that they should have been suspected. It was only time that could prove their loyalty to the Church, and mean- while there was very much that was discouraging and disheartening. Dr. Hampden's elevation to the epis- copate was a grievous blow. It seemed like an intima- tion from the powers that be that the Oxford leaders were not only not to be recognized as having any in- terest in the welfare of the Church, but that their opposition was to suggest men for promotion. Then followed the Gorham Judgment, in itself displeasing, but intolerable in the fact that it left ecclesiastical questions to the discretion, or the indiscretion, of sec- [ 100 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH ular courts. Then in a few years came the trials of Archdeacon Denison and of Bishop Forbes of Brechin for their views on the Eucharist. And in 186l the publication of Essays and Reviews shook the Church of England to its very centre. In the controversies over all these matters Keble took a foremost part. The bitterness of theological controversy has often been deplored. Many and many a time it has given occasion to the enemy to blaspheme, and will do so, doubtless, many a time again. We have it on St. Paul's authority that now we know in part, and different parts seem to have been assigned to different men. One sees clearly a truth of which another is in almost entire ignorance, and often one doctrine seems to overlay another, and make it of no effect. Then there must be controversy; and men who would sell honesty at a price, and who would stick at nothing which would bring them reputation, not to speak of men who are better than these, but whose interest is still given wholly to concrete things, look on amazed and shocked. With little relevancy, they strike attitudes of horror, and give God thanks that the Church is not for them. "See how these Christians love one another" — they repeat derisively, as pamphlet fol- lows pamphlet, or religious paper attacks religious paper. I hold no brief for the odium theologicmn. It is often petty, and mean, and unimaginably small. It [ 101 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN is employed sometimes to give a false dignity to spite and malice, it appears occasionally as a miser- able substitute for Christian zeal. To a small mind abuse of an adversary is the easiest form of activity, and to our fallen nature it seems as if it were often the most congenial. Personal bickering over religious matters is no better — perhaps no worse — than per- sonal bickering over anything else. But we must re- member that when the State punishes a thief or a murderer for his misdeeds, we do not call it persecu- tion; and when some good man, standing for the Church of which he is a part, or the truth that has been committed to his trust, protests against the mu- tilation or the slaughter of that truth, his hatred is directed, not against his adversary, but against the injury which that adversary would inflict upon the Church. It is painfully true that much discussion, even of sacred matters, comes from bad temper. But it is also true that devotion to principle is a far more powerful factor in good men's lives than men who are less good could possibly believe. The opposition to the Oxford Movement was of both these kinds, and so was the attitude of the men of the Movement toward the questions of the day which they in turn opposed. But from Keble, as from Pusey, personal motives, improper motives, were always far away. What these men did, whether it was to defend their [ 102 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH own doctrines or to attack their adversaries', they did from the love of Christ. We see this plainly enough as we turn from Keble the party-leader to Keble the "man to all the country dear." II. It is a man's home life that must always be the best index of the man. His writings tell of his ability and education, but they can do little more. The position which he holds is largely the result of accident. The smallest men sometimes strut about carrying the lar- gest titles. But what the man is at home displays his character. If that is known, one can judge of him without mistake. Adjectives have a hard fate. They are abused, pro- faned, and made ridiculous without mercy. They have no privacy, they meet with no consideration. They are sent on the strangest errands, and they have to go. Many of the best of them, through no fault of their own, have lost their character. One would not dare to say of Keble that he was a sweet man. The idea suggested might be quite diiferent from the idea desired to convey. But if the life in his earlier par- ishes and at Hursley were to be expressed in one word, we might venture to let that word be beautiful. Here is a description of Keble at twenty-seven, taken from an old letter written by a lady in whose house [ ">S ] M E X A X D MOVEMENTS I X he had been visiting. "Keble went away early. We were all very sorry to lose him, as he is a person that is not to be met with every day. His manners are singularly simple, shy, and unpolished, though with- out the least rudeness or roughness, as he is the mild- est and quietest person I almost ever saw. He speaks very little, but always seems interested in what is going on, and often says the cleverest and most witty things as if he was not the least aw T are of it. In his own family I should think he must be more missed when absent than any one else could possibly be; he seems formed for a domestic circle and all the feelings attendant on home. Without making any fuss about it, he seems so interested in every one, and has such a continual quiet cheerfulness about him, that I cannot imagine how his father and mother, brother and sisters can do without him. But it is his religious character that has struck me more than anything else, as it is indeed that from which everything else proceeds. I never saw any one who came up so completely to my ideas of a religious man as Keble, and yet I never saw any one who made so little display of it. He seems to me a union of Hooker and George Herbert — the humility of the one with the feeling and love of the other. In short, altogether he is a man whom the more you see of and know, the less you must think of yourself." [ 104 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH There was a sense in which Keble was a man of the utmost seriousness. It is related that he remonstrated once with Froude, who had said that Law's Serious Call was a clever book. "It seemed to me," he added, "as if you had said the Day of Judgment will be a pretty sight." One cannot read his life, or study his poetry, without being impressed by that in him for which there is no better name than otherworldliness. He was as one who would be always on the watch for his Lord. His theology was of a kind that must have been particularly distasteful to Baptists, but we are told of a sturdy Baptist who used regularly to at- tend his church, because there, as he said, he "heard the Gospel." In the care of his parish he was inde- fatigable; and so unobtrusive and self-forgetful in all that he did that his humbler parishioners had no con- ception that their rector was one of the leaders of the Church of England. A new schoolmistress coming to the village found it hard to convince her pupils that Mr. Keble was as clever as herself. His favourite text was — "Ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake." He spoke of "waiting on" the sick. If they desired him, all else must yield. He was instant in prayer. Over all with which he had to deal he cast "the cooling shadow of his lowliness." The greatness of his influence it is hardly possible to exaggerate. "O that Keble were here!" said one who [ 105 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN had known him, when he was at the point to die. "I wish I knew how Keble meant to vote," said an- other, when Oxford was agitated by some vexed ques- tion. Liddon calls him the wisest man he ever knew. Thomas Mozley remarks — "The slightest word he dropped was all the more remembered from there be- ing so little of it, and from its seeming to come from a different and holier sphere. His manner of talking favoured this, for there was not much continuity in it, only every word was a brilliant or a pearl." Most of his preaching was to humble people. Soon after his death the landlord of the village inn at Hursley was asked whether Mr. Keble was a great preacher. "I don't know what a great preacher is," was the reply; "but he always made us understand him." His thought was never of himself. The sermons are what his favourite Bishop Wilson said sermons should be, "pious instructions to lead men to heaven and save them from hell." Dr. Pusey has said that their chief characteristics were affectionate simplicity and intense reality. Keble' s description of the Bap- tismal Service seems to express his theory of life. "It is as if a father sending his child on a journey should first give him instructions what to do, then make him solemnly promise to do it, and lastly cause him to kneel down and bless him very religiously before he set out.'' [ 106] THE ENGLISH CHURCH His help was often sought by friends and by strangers who needed counsel in spiritual matters. He speaks of the danger lest the clergy should forget the un- speakable awfulness of their trust, and so be too soon satisfied with themselves; and of the other danger, lest they may not rate what God requires of Christian people high enough, and so be too soon satisfied with their flocks. But if he was stern with himself, he was never harsh with others. Concerning the value of con- fession as a practice, there must always be the great- est difference of opinion, at least until that time when all men shall be made alike. Keble counseled it. "Whoever can discreetly and effectually bring in con- fession will do, I should think, one of the best things for this poor Church, as she is at present." So he writes, not longing for spiritual power, but oppressed by the sense of sin. Professional priestcraft was always far from Keble. He will not assume "direction," as it is called. "The wish for an infallible guide to relieve one of responsibility is plainly very natural," he writes, "but as plainly not intended to be granted in this world." To an undergraduate who had asked his ad- vice about confession, he replied — "Whatever people do or decline to do as to confession should not go upon feeling one way or the other, but upon calm consideration with prayer; and should not be allowed to lessen their own sense of responsibility. To whom- [ 107 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN soever the confession is to be made outwardly, it should be made distinctly to our Lord beforehand, in the conviction that He knows it all beforehand, and has declared His will that it should somehow be made known." And to show that confession by itself is not enough, he quotes the words of Bishop Bull — ''Hav- ing laid ourselves at God's feet, let us not lie idly there, but arise and for the future do the work of God with all faithfulness and industry." Because the clergy are dealing continually with seri- ous things, they sometimes get little credit among those who do not know them except in the parish routine for their keen interest in the lighter sides of life. A worldly clergyman can never be other than an abomination; but an abomination just as great is the theory that it is worldly to enjoy God's blessings. To live as with a higher life in view does not mean that this life must be despised. And Hursley Vicarage must have been a charming place. It was hospitable, of course. "Given to hospitality," is an apostolic in- junction not often neglected by the clergy. J. B. Moz- lev, visiting there, writes that "Keble is great fun." There were no children, and Keble and his wife, with for much of the time his invalid sister also, consti- tuted the entire family. We are told also of a horse, Strawberry, in colour ''flea-bitten gray." Keble loved flowers — what good man does not? and when he went [ 108 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH into the garden with the young men of his parish, or with his guests, the gardener remarked — "Master's the greatest boy of them all." But with it all, he never forgot that he must one day give account. He loved the Church, he loved his work, he loved his fellow creatures. One who knew him well has said — " What I think remarkable was not how many people loved him, or how much they loved him, but that everybody seemed to love him with the very best kind of love of which they were capable. It was like loving goodness itself; you felt that what was good in him was applying itself directly and bringing into life all that was best in you. His ready, lively, trans- parent affection seemed as if it was the very spirit of love opening out upon you and calling for a return such as you could give." III. But after all, there were other leaders of the Oxford Movement. There has been many and many a faithful parish priest. But there has been but one Christian Year. It is through this book that Keble has wielded his mightiest influence. There is a reason for this. Other men's works repre- sent the author's opinions, or his fancies, or the results of his researches. But the Christian Year was Keble himself in print. [ W ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS I N "I love thy book because thyself art there," wrote Isaac Williams. "It taught," said Dr. Pusey in a ser- mon at the opening of Keble College, "because his own soul was moved so deeply; the stream burst forth, because the heart which poured it out was full; it was fresh, deep, tender, loving, because himself was such; it disclosed to souls secrets which they knew not, but could not fail to own when known, because he was so true and thought aloud; and conscience everywhere responded to the voice of conscience." And the same testimony is borne even more stronglv by an old parishioner whose husband had been in Keble's service, and who said twenty-four years after his death — "Father and I do read the Christian Year every Sunday, and it do bring him out to us more than we knew even when he was alive." The Christian Year was first published in 1827, but the poems of which it is composed were written at intervals during the eight years before that time. It was written by a man to whom the Church was a very real and sacred thing, and so it was natural enough that it should point in the direction in which the Oxford Movement afterwards proceeded. But any- thing like religious controversy is absolutely foreign to its spirit. How remote it is from partisanship may be seen from the fact that Hurrell Froude was afraid that people would take its author for a Methodist. [ no ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH And Thomas Arnold, whose theology was at the farthest extreme from Keble's, wrote of some of the earlier poems — "It is my firm opinion that nothing equal to them exists in our language; the wonderful knowledge of Scripture, the purity of heart, and the richness of poetry which they exhibit I never saw paralleled. So Newman wrote in one of his letters — "Keble's hymns are just out. They seem quite exquisite." But there was adverse criticism too, mostly, we must fancy, from dull and commonplace souls. We can see some- thing of the reception which the book met with on its first appearance, from a letter of Thomas Mozley to his sister, sent with a copy. "I should wish much that you would give a little study to the book I enclose in the parcel. Study, perhaps, is too harsh a word, and savours too much of the dry critic. But pray do something or other with the book, and then tell me what you think of it. You may, with safety, declare any judgment you like, for I do not know poetry on which there are such various opinions. Some think it will outlive all other human poetry whatever, others that it will be unheard of fifty years hence; some think it simple, others far-fetched; some think it only requires a little pure feeling for the most unlearned to enter into it, others that it is ut- terly unconstruable to every one, and probably to the [111 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IX author himself; some think that it breathes the 'pure spirit of our dear Mother Church,' others that it bears the mark of the Beast. But if I would attempt to tell you all that has been or can be said concern- ing it, I must take up Johnson's Dictionary and go right through it, taking every epithet and coupling it with its opposite." Certainly, the Christian Year has stood the test of time, for Christian congregations, worshipping in many ways, are indebted to it more doubtless than many of them know. There is not a village in any English- speaking land where its hymns are not sung. It begins the day — " Xew even/ morning is the love Our wakening and uprising prove; Through sleep and darkness safely brought, Restored to life, and power, and thought." And it ends it. "Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear, It is not night if Thou be near; Oh may no eaiih-born cloud arise To hide Thee from Thy servant's eyes.'" And it sets forth a rule of life for rich and poor, for [ "9 ] young and old. THE ENGLISH CHURCH " We need not bid, for cloistered cell, Our neighbour and our friend farewell, Nor strive to mind ourselves too high For sinful man beneath the sky : The trivial round, the common task, Will furnish all we ought to ask; Boom to deny ourselves; a road To bring us daily nearer God." It has been said of Keble that one of his character- istics is the close personal love which he seems to bear to Christ as to a living Friend. Again and again we meet this in his poetry. "My Saviour, can it ever be That I should gain by losing Thee ? The watchful mother tarries nigh Though sleep have closed her infant's eye, For should he make and find her gone, She knows she could not bear his moan. But I am meaker than a child, And Thou art more than mother dear, Without Thee heaven mere but a mild, Horn can I live without Thee here?" And so it goes. Newman describes it in a sentence. "It was the most soothing, tranquillizing, subduing [ us ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN work of the day; if poems can be found to enliven in dejection, and to comfort in anxiety; to cool the over-sanguine, to refresh the weary, and to awe the worldly; to instil resignation into the impatient and calmness into the fearful and agitated — they are these." There can be no more fitting conclusion to a sketch of Keble than a verse or two from his poem for Palm Sunday. He has been speaking of poetry and its mission, of the use of God's gifts, of the dignity and the responsibility that they carry with them. He dwells upon the praise that even stars, and flowers, and stones must yield to Him. Then he goes on — "Lord, by every minstrel tongue Be Thy praise so duly sung, That Thine angels' harps may ne'er Fail to find Jit echoing here; We the while, of meaner birth, Who in that divinest spell Dare not hope to join on earth, Give us grace to listen well. But, should thankless silence seal Lips that might half Heaven reveal, Should bards in idol-hymns profane The sacred soul-enthralling strain — [ "* ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH As, in this bad world below Noblest things find vilest using — Then, Thy power and mercy show, In vile things noble breath infusing. Then waken into sound divine The very pavement of Thy shrine, Till we, like Heaven s star-sprinkled floor, Faintly give back what we adore. Childlike though the voices be, And untunable the parts, Thou wilt own the minstrelsy, If it flow from childlike hearts." I In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength. [ H5] Chapter *>♦ ARNOLD OF RUGBY IN passing from the leaders of the Oxford Move- ment to Thomas Arnold, we shall find ourselves in another mental hemisphere. When it is day in England it is night in China, though to each there comes day and night in turn. The northern winter is the southern summer, if only one goes far enough; and the roses bloom, though at Christmas-time in England, or in the Australian June, we might look for them in vain. We say to one another sometimes that the world is small, and in one sense so it is. But it is large enough to admit of very great diversity in different parts, though it is the same world still. And what is true of geography is true of morals and of mind. To look in Australia for the order of the Eng- lish seasons, or the constellations of the English hea- vens, would play havoc with all one's fixed ideas. There would be nothing as it should be — and the attempt to discover what was not there at all could only lead to confusion and distress. And yet, in the midst of things new and strange, the emigrant would soon find that there was much that was familiar and like what he had left at home. It would take an ef- [ US ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH fort, no doubt, to call winter summer, and summer winter; to look to the North Star for guidance, and to find it missing. But when the new conditions of life were fully realized, it would be seen that the life itself, under whatever heavens, or in whatever climate, was very much the same. Suiting this figure to our purpose, we leave Oxford for Rugby. We have followed the Oxford Movement to the parting of the ways. One stream, after many turnings and twistings, joined itself to the Tiber, and was borne on to Rome. The secession of Newman, and of many more, proved that the suspicion of the enemies of the Movement as to its natural destination was not wholly groundless. Another stream flowed straight through England. Amid abuse, misunder- standing, and discouragement, Pusey and Keble stood firm, and vindicated not only the good faith of the Movement, but the historical right of its principles to a place in the English Church. But if, now, we were to judge of Arnold from the point of view of Keble, or of Pusey and his friends from the point of view of Arnold, and to let it go at that, we should find our- selves involved in endless contradiction. As we shall see, between the theology of Arnold and that of the Oxford leaders there was a great gulf fixed. The question between those who went to Rome and the Tractarians who remained was a question as to the [117] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN identity, or rather perhaps as to the limits of the Church. It was to be determined by history rather than by any general principle of thought; and so it was determined, in opposite ways. But the question between Arnold and the Oxford men had to do with the Church's very nature. They approached the mat- ter in wholly different ways. In various details they were in substantial agreement, but to each the prin- ciples of the other seemed false and odious. There is no more mischievous heresy — and none more popular, perhaps — than the statement that it does not matter what one thinks, or what one believes. It is to ship one's rudder, and cast it adrift, saying that it does not matter where one goes. And yet, there seems to be in it this much of truth. Given a firm and living faith in Jesus Christ, as Redeemer, Master, Guide, and Friend, the manner in which this faith is nur- tured and developed becomes a wholly secondary matter. This is not to say that it is unimportant or indifferent, absolutely — but it is so relatively, com- pared to the fact of faith, which carries with it a constraining and impelling love. To say that it does not matter what one believes is to say, virtually, that one destination is as good as another; and this is true of no grade higher than the tramp. But the student of history, who must judge of principles by the men who hold them, at least to some extent, finds himself [ US ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH compelled to believe that however important the matter of the principles may be, the manner of holding them is more important still. After all, it is our Lord's question — "Is not the life more than meat?" The best principles may be degraded and caricatured. The worst ones may be glorified, if they are brought to Christ. There seemed need that something of this sort should be said, because, in passing from Pusey and Keble to Arnold, the contrast of ideas — leading to vigorous and determined opposition — is so very strik- ing, and the contrast of character is so veiy slight. It is a different type of excellence, but in degree it falls no whit behind the high standard to which we are become accustomed. There is the same deep personal religion; the same humility, albeit in somewhat dif- ferent form; the same hatred of what seems evil. There are faults, of course; where are there not? But we shall see that Arnold's dislike of the Oxford men did not spring from a spirit of ignorant and bitter persecution. We shall see something of that Move- ment as it appeared to its opponents. While the violence of Arnold's opposition cannot always be jus- tified, when the smoke of battle has cleared away we shall find an agreement that might not have been suspected. And if at times his suggestions should seem chimerical and strange, it is with him as [ 119 ] MEX AND MOVEMENTS IX it was with Joseph, when a certain man found him wandering in the field. If he had lost his way, it was because he was seeking for his brethren. We may give a rapid outline of his life, and then fill in the picture by thinking of him in turn as a theo- logian, a schoolmaster, and a man at home. Thomas Arnold was born at Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, in 1795. He was three years younger than Keble, and five years older than Pusey and Newman. His earliest education was directed by bis aunt at home, and at the age of twelve he was sent to school at Winchester. We are told that throughout his boy- hood and youth he had such a dislike of early rising that it almost amounted to a constitutional infirmity. He overcame it — he had far too much to do to be a sluggard — but it cost him a daily effort. He showed an early fondness for history and geography — a fond- ness which lasted all his life, and which determined the direction of much of his work. In 1811 he went up to Oxford as a scholar of Corpus Christi College, and four years later was elected Fellow of Oriel. In those first years at Oxford he was a mere boy in appearance as well as in age. He is described by one who was there with him as fond of conversation on serious matters, and vehement in argument; positive in the assertion of his own opinions, which were sometimes startling; but open to conviction, and [ 120 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH without a grain of vanity or conceit. "The more we saw of him, and the more we battled with him, the more manifestly did we respect and love him." Among his companions, both at Corpus and at Oriel, was John Keble. In later years these two were ranged on opposite sides in many a bitter conflict. We may quote a sentence or two, then, from a letter of Mr. Justice Coleridge, who throughout his life continued the friend and intimate correspondent of them both, as to the relation between them. "Arnold clung to all his friends with equal fidelity. His love for all of them continued to his life's end. In the case of Keble, it survived separation, suspension of intercourse, and entire disagreement of opinion on points believed by them both to be of essential importance. These two held their opinions with a tenacity and zeal propor- tionate to their importance; each believed the other in error pernicious to the faith and dangerous to him- self; and what they believed sincerely, each thought himself bound to state, and stated it openly, it may be with too much of warmth; and unguarded expres- sions were unnecessarily, I think inaccurately, re- ported. But Keble ever spoke and wrote of Arnold as an elder brother might of a younger whom he tenderly loved, though he disapproved of his course; while it was not in Arnold's nature to forget how much he owed to Keble. He bitterly lamented what [121 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN he laboured to avert, the suspension of their intimate intercourse; he was at all times anxious to renew it; and though this may have been too much to expect where the difference between them turned on points so vital, they would probably have met at Arnold's home if he had lived a few weeks longer." At Oxford he is spoken of as having "an anxiously inquisitive mind, and a scrupulously conscientious heart." For a short period he seems to have been troubled with intellectual doubts as to the verities of the Christian faith, but the spectre was soon laid, never to rise again. As Tennyson wrote of Hallam — " He fought his doubts, and gathered strength." Or as one of his own companions put it — "One had better have Arnold's doubts than most men's certain- ties." In December, 1818, he was ordained deacon at Ox- ford, and in the following year he settled at Laleham, a little village on the Thames, and devoted himself to taking private pupils, and fitting them for the Universities. Time works strange changes. Into the fellowship at Oriel made vacant by the retirement of Thomas Arnold, John Henry Newman was elected. In 1820 Arnold married. We may catch a glimpse hereafter of the beauty of his life at home. He re- mained at Laleham for nine years, until in 1828 he [ 1*3 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH was elected Headmaster of the School at Rugby, where he remained fourteen years more, until his death in 1842. But the nine years at Laleham must not be passed over in a single sentence. This was the time when he was laying the foundation for the years of greater power and influence that were to come. Not that he was ambitious for himself. He looked forward to no other work in life. But the years, as they passed quietly enough, broadened his interests, and deepened his spiritual nature, so that when five talents were given him instead of two he knew how to use them. A letter to the father of one of his pupils shows us the high standard that he set for them. Indeed, the extraordinary objection was made to some of his pub- lished sermons that their standard of Christian living was too high. "I regret in your son," he says, "a carelessness which does not allow him to think seri- ously of what he is living for, and to do what is right not merely as a matter of regularity, but because it is a duty. I trust you will not think that I am mean- ing anything more than my words convey, or that what I am regretting in your son is not to be found in nineteen out of twenty young men of his age; but I conceive that you would wish me to form my de- sire of what your son should be, not according to the common standard, but according to the highest; to [ 123 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN be satisfied with no less in him than I should be anxious to find in a son of my own." And one of his masters, who was with him both at Laleham and at Rugby, writes — "The wonderful power of making all his pupils respect themselves, and of awakening in them a consciousness of the duties that God assigned to them personally, was one of Arnold's most charac- teristic features as a trainer of youth. His hold over all his pupils perfectly astonished me. It was not so much an enthusiastic admiration for his genius, or learning, or eloquence which stirred within them; it was a sympathetic thrill, caught from a spirit that was earnestly at work in the world — a work that was founded on a deep sense of its duty and its value; and was coupled wilh such a true humility, such an unaffected simplicity, that others could not help be- ing invigorated by the same feeling, and with the belief that they top in their measure could go and do likewise." But in the life at Laleham there was more than mere tuition. At first, there is many a homesick look toward Oxford. He writes to a friend — "Poor dear old Ox- ford! If I live till I am eighty, and were to enjoy all the happiness that the warmest wish could desire, I should never forget the years that we were together, nor all the delights that we have lost. I must en- deavour to get some such associations to combine [ 124 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH with Laleham and its neighbourhood, but at present all is harsh and ruffled, like woods in a high wind; only I am beginning to love my own little study, where I have a sofa full of books, as of old, and the two verse books lying about on it, and a volume of Herodotus; and where I sit up and read till twelve or one o'clock." But with his marriage this restless- ness disappears. He takes a constant delight in his children and in his garden. He preached often in the parish church at Laleham, and the first volume of his sermons, published in 1828, the year that Newman began his sermons at St. Mary's, marks nearly the first attempt at breaking through the conventional phraseology with which English preach- ing had been long encumbered, and urging to every- day duties in the language of every-day life. He read Niebuhr's History of Rome, and a new intellect- ual world dawned upon him. He mastered German, at that time a rare accomplishment, and one that was regarded with grave suspicion. He visited Rome, where he met the Chevalier Bunsen, with whom he was in frequent correspondence till his death. And when the call to Rugby came, unsought and unexpected, though it seemed his duty and was his pleasure to accept it, he turned his back on Laleham with regret. Before we follow him to Rugby, and see the work upon which his great fame rests, it will be well to [ 125 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN dwell for a little upon the theological controversies in which he was engaged. We have seen already that the Oxford Movement was, to a great extent, a re- vival of religion. In so far, Dr. Arnold was its friend. But with some of its principles he was at deadly war. I. It was in 1833 that the Oxford Movement had its birth, and so far as it had to do with doctrine rather than with life it placed its main emphasis upon the nature of the Church, and the fact of an apostolical succession by which the continuity of the Church was secured and maintained. Arnold went with them in looking upon the Church as a Divine institution, the very Body of Christ; but beyond that, he makes Cole- ridge!s words his own, and sets them as a motto to one of his volumes of sermons. "I soon discover that by the Church they mean the clergy, the hierarchy exclusively, and there I fly off from them at a tan- gent. For it is this very interpretation of the Church that, according to my conviction, constituted the first and fundamental apostasy." This is the main thesis of his opposition to the Ox- ford School. They did not, of course, exclude the laity from the Church, nor did their doctrine, with the men whose lives we have already studied, lead to arrogance and spiritual pride. That it may do so, that [ 126 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH persons who deserve contempt as men should claim respect as priests, is not so much a reflection upon the doctrine, as a sign of the corruption of the human heart. Nor did Arnold claim for the clergy and laity an equality of office, but only an equality of rank, through the mediation of the One Priest, Jesus Christ. But the apostolical succession, which meant so much to Newman and his friends, meant absolutely nothing to Arnold. He did not deny it. He only de- nied its significance. As it appeared in the Oxford system, it seemed to him to be morally powerless and intellectually indefensible, and as tending to sub- stitute a ceremonial for a spiritual Christianity. To him, the Church, from its very nature, was in no sense an institution of the clergy, nor dependent upon them, essentially, in any way, but a living soci- ety of all Christians. His idea was of the absolute identity of Church and State, the end of both being the putting down of moral evil. It was not a new idea. It had been sanctioned already by Hooker, Burke, and in part by Coleridge. But it had never before been so completely the expression of a man's whole mind. Arnold knew well that his views could not be applied directly to existing circumstances. "So deeply," he wrote in the preface to his History of Rome; "so deeply is the distinction between the Church and the [ 127 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN State seated in our laws, our language, and our very notions, that nothing less than a miraculous interposi- tion of God's Providence seems capable within any definite time of eradicating it." But for all that, it was the ideal to which he looked, and for which he worked. It was said of him — "He wakes every morn- ing with the impression that everything is an open question." In a sense, it gives an absolutely false idea of his character. He reminds us of John Keble in his intense personal devotion to Jesus Christ. He was often accused of latitudinarianism, but a low estimate of the necessity of bishops can hardly be called by such a name. But on the other hand, he was at the farthest remove from Keble in his feeling for anti- quity, as antiquity, and with reference to what seemed to him indifferent things. Keble, it will be remem- bered, signed himself /n.io-oi'eoA.oyos, hater of new things. But Arnold wrote to his friend Coleridge — "There is nothing so revolutionary, because there is nothing so unnatural and so convulsive to society as the strain to keep things fixed, when all the world is by the very law of its creation in eternal progress; and the cause of all the evils of the world may be traced to that natural but most deadly error of hu- man indolence and corruption, that our business is to preserve and not to improve. It is the ruin of us all alike, individuals, schools, and nations." [ 128 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH In a pamphlet upon the claims of the Roman Catho- lic- Church in Ireland, he protested at the divorce between politics and religion which was almost every- where assumed, and expressed doubts as to the com- petence of the clergy as a class to judge of historical questions. To his second volume of sermons, he added an essay on the right interpretation of the Scriptures. The subject rightly seemed to him a most important one. "I should be sorry to die," he wrote, "without having circulated what I believe will be to many most useful and most satisfactory." It was unavoidable that such an essay, at such a time, should expose him to misunderstanding. His views are very different from those of Keble, and very much more in accord with those held by members of all schools at the present day. He separates between the accidental and the permanent in Scripture, and protests against that spirit which would take the Bible as one whole, and judge of every part of it by the same laws and in the same way. "My object," he writes, "has been to distinguish carefully between that Christian faith which is the guide and comfort of our lives, and a variety of questions, historical, critical, scientific, and the like, connected with parts of that Volume from which the grounds of our faith are derived. With Christian faith there must be no tampering; we can- not afford to propitiate an adversary by sacrificing [ 129 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN the points which he objects to; we dare not describe the method of salvation as different from what God has appointed; we dare not content ourselves with any lower standard of holiness than God's perfect law. We must indeed render unto God the things that are God's; but we must also render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. That intellectual wisdom, which exercises over this world more than imperial dominion, may not be denied her lawful tribute. It is within her province to judge of all questions of history, of science, and of criticism, according to her own general laws; nor may her decisions on these matters be disputed by an appeal to the higher power of spiritual wisdom, who leaves such points wholly to her lower jurisdiction." There were those who were shocked and startled by Arnold's language and opinions. As he himself put it, there were some who must be startled if he was to do any good. And as he had begun, he went on. In those years before 1833, the question of Church Reform was everywhere in the air. When Arnold could refrain no longer, he published his pamphlet on the subject. A desperate case seemed to him to call for a desperate remedy. How desperate he thought the case may be seen from his closing sentence. "Most earnestly do I wish to see the Establishment reformed, for the sake of its greater security, and its greater [ ISO ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH perfection; but whether reformed or not, may God in His mercy save us from the calamity of seeing it destroyed." The pamphlet falls into three parts. He defends the Establishment, he states the dangers by which it is threatened, and he dwells upon means by which they may be averted. At that time, dissent was ranged upon the side of infidelity, by which it was used as a sort of cat's-paw. It seemed to Arnold as if, in order to save the Church, dissent must be brought into some sort of union with it. He advocated the com- prehension of dissenters, without compromise of prin- ciple on either side. Christianity without sectarianism was his favourite watchword. It was not to be expected that the pamphlet should not create » sensation, and that it should not expose him to suspicion and attack. Newman at this time was on his Mediterranean tour with Hurrell Froude. In one of his letters, he makes very merry over Arnold's plan. "Froude heard from Keble the day before yesterday, and so received news of Arnold's plan of Church Reform, which seems very comprehen- sive. If I understand it right, all sects — the Church inclusive — are to hold their meetings in the parish churches, though not at the same hour, of course. He excludes Quakers and Roman Catholics, yet even with this exclusion surely there will be too many [ 131 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN sects in some places for one day. This strikes me as a radical defect in his plan. If I might propose an amendment, I should pass an act to oblige some persuasions to change the Sunday. If you have two Sundays in the week, you could accommodate any probable number of sects, and in this way you would get over Whately's objection against the Evangelical party and others. Make them keep Sunday on Satur- day. This would not interfere with the Jews, who would of course worship in the parish church, for they are too few to take up a whole day. Luckily, the Mohammedan holiday is already on a Friday, so there will be no difficulty in that quarter." Of course, this is not criticism, but caricature. The comprehension of dissenters was but an incident in Arnold's plan, and whatever might be thought of it it was at least deserving of serious treatment. There is something pathetic in Arnold's protest against the spirit in which in mam' quarters his suggestions were received. "It grieves me more than I can say to find so much intolerance; by which I mean over-estimating our points of difference, and under-estimating our points of agreement. I am by no means indifferent to truth and error. But when opposite opinions, though I may think them not only erroneous but mischievous, exist in men whom I know to be thoroughly in earn- est, fearing God and loving Christ, it seems to me to [132 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH be a waste of time which we can ill afford, and a sort of quarrel by the way which our Christian vow of enmity against moral evil makes utterly unseasonable, when Christians suspend their great business and loosen the bond of their union with each other by venting fruitless regrets and complaints against one another's errors, instead of labouring to lessen one another's sins. For coldness of spirit, and negligence of our duty, and growing worldliness, are things which we should thank our friends for warning us against; but when they quarrel with our opinions, which we conscientiously hold, it merely provokes us to justify ourselves, and to insist that we are right and they wrong." And in a letter to Augustus Hare, he speaks of St. Paul's favourite definition of heresy as "a doting about strifes of words." We can but glance in the most rapid way at Arnold's direct relation to the Oxford Movement. His gener- al attitude is sufficiently expressed in a few sen- tences written to the Provost of Oriel, Dr. Hawkins. "I never accused Keble or Newman of saying that to belong to a true Church would save a bad man; but of what is equally un-Christian, that a good man was not safe unless he belonged to an Episcopal Church; which is exactly not allowing God's seal unless it be countersigned by one of their own forging. Nor did I say they were bad men, but much the contrary; [ 133 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN though I think that their doctrine, which they be- lieve, I doubt not, to be true, is in itself schismati- cal, profane, and un-Christian." And in the preface to the fourth volume of his sermons, written in 1841, he expresses himself in similar style. Against the doctrine of the divine necessity of an episcopate, and the doctrine of a human priesthood as distinguished from an official order of ministers in Christ's Church, he protests in the strongest terms. But he concludes, speaking of Newman — '•! believe him to be in most serious error; I believe his system to be so destruc- tive of Christ's Church, that I earnestly pray, and would labour to the utmost of my endeavours for its utter overthrow; but on the other hand I will not be tempted to confound the authors of the svstem with the svstem itself, for I know that the most mischiev- ous errors have been promulgated by men who yet have been neither foolish nor wicked; and I nothing doubt that there are many points in Mr. Newman in which I might learn truth from his teaching, and should be glad if I could come near him in his prac- tice." At this period of the English Church, all roads lead to Dr. Hampden, his Bampton lectures, his Profes- sorship at Oxford, and by-and-bye his elevation to the episcopate. In the outcry raised against him Ar- nold came to his defence. He believed Hampden to [ 134 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH be persecuted and misjudged, and his sense of justice would not allow him to be still. He sent to the Ed- inburgh Review an article to which the editor gave the title — "Dr. Hampden and the Oxford Malig- nants." It gave great offence, justly, no doubt. It was written in the heat of indignation, and, while we cannot defend it, it is impossible not to respect that chivalrous feeling which does not stop to count the cost when injustice is being done. He protested against Newman's interpretation of Hampden's book. "He has in several places omitted sentences in his quotations which give exactly the soft and Christian effect to what, without them, sounds hard and cold." And I suppose to this day it is not altogether certain what Dr. Hampden meant. But, so far as Dr. Arnold's theology is concerned, we need go no farther. His great contention was that between clergy and laity there is no difference in kind whatever, though of course there is a difference in office. He insisted on the real distinction between Christ's religion and Christ's Church. He expostulates with Mr. Justice Coleridge, who speaks of "descend- ing all the way to his level" in religious opinions, and declares that his view of the Church is a high one, though he does away with the human priesthood, which seems to him a species of idolatry. Of course the Oxford leaders must combat views like [ 135 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN these. In many pulpits Arnold was denounced as a special agent of the devil. Latitudinarian and heretic were mild epithets to apply to him. But he was far more than a mere maintainer of negatives; and con- troversy, for its own sake, he shrank from and de- spised. He writes of Keble, who had broken off inter- course with him — "Keble, I am sure, has ascribed to me opinions which I never held, not of course wil- fully, but because his sensitiveness on some points is so morbid that his power of judgment is pro tanto ut- terly obscured. The first shock of perceiving some- thing that he does not like makes him incapable of examining steadily how great or how little that some- thing is." And he goes on — "One or two men have behaved towards me in the course of my life just as they might have done, being kind-hearted and affec- tionate men, if I had committed some great crime, which rendered respect or friendship impossible, though old kindness might still survive it." He dep- recates the treating of intellectual error as if it were a moral fault. As Arnold and Keble drew apart on the question of the Church, so with others there was separation of a different kind. There is a little poem by Arthur Hugh Clough, who was a boy at Rugby, which is said to have reference to Arnold, when Clough found himself drifting away from Arnold's teaching and becoming [136] THE ENGLISH CHURCH more and more involved in uncertainty and unbelief. To separation like that between Arnold and Keble it applies most certainly. "As ships, becalmed at eve, that lay With canvas drooping, side by side, Two towers of sail at dawn of day Are scarce, long leagues apart, descried; When fell the night, upsprung the breeze, And all the darkling hours they plied, Nor dreamed that each the self-same seas By each was cleaving, side by side; E'en so — but why the tale reveal Of those whom, year by year unchanged, Brief absence joined anew to feel, Astounded, soul from soul estranged? At dead of night their sails were filled, And onward each rejoicing steered; Ah! neither blame ; for neither willed, Or wist, what first with dawn appeared. To veer, how vain ! On, onward strain, Brave barks! In light, in darkness too, Through winds and tides one compass guides — To that, and your own selves, be true. [ 137 ] M E X A X D MOVEMENTS I N But blithe breeze, and great seas, Though ne'er, that earliest parting pant, On yon wide plain they join again, TogetJier lead them home at last! One port, methought, alike they sought, One purpose hold where'er they fare — bounding breeze, rushing seas, At last, at last, unite them there!" II. But it is not Arnold the controversialist who must occupy so prominent a place in the history of the English Church. It is as Arnold of Rugbv that he is best remembered and best known. It is hardly too much to say that he revolutionized the methods of English public-school education. Before his time there was a certain stiffness and formality that was rarely broken through. Education was a process of pouring in rather than of bringing out, and comparatively lit- tle attention was given to the vessels which were to hold the stores of learning thus imparted. But during Arnold's fourteen years at Rugby, it was his avowed purpose to make of his boys, first, Christians; second, gentlemen; and only third, scholars. With the older pupils, his relation was that of an older brother rather than a schoolmaster. And the enthusiasm that he in- [ 138 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH spired among them is a lasting witness to his person- ality and power. As one of them remarks, his educa- tion was not based upon religion, but was itself re- ligious. In the Life of Stanley, who later became Arnold's biographer, we have a boyish letter to his sister, giv- ing his first impressions of Rugby. He says that he certainly should not have taken Arnold for a Doctor. "He was very pleasant, and did not look old." As he was barely thirty-four at the time, perhaps this is not surprising. To Arnold himself, the entrance of a new boy was always a solemn moment. "It is a most touching thing for me to receive a new fellow from his father. When I think what an influence there is in this place for evil as well as for good, I do not know anything that affects me more." And again — "If ever I could receive a new boy from his father without emotion, I should think it was high time to be off." In Tom Brotvn at Rugby, we have a popular picture of the school life. In his preface, the author speaks of the "moral thoughtfulness" which it was Arnold's earnest effort to create in every boy with whom he came in contact. And he goes on — "He certainly did teach us — thank God for it — that we could not cut our life into slices and say — In this slice your actions are indifferent, and you needn't trouble your heads [ 139 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN about them one way or another; but in this slice mind what you are about, for they are important. A pretty muddle we should have been in had he done so." Arnold rarely alluded at school to his particular po- litical or theological opinions. "It would be a great mistake," he wrote, "if I were to try to make myself here into a Pope." But through his sermons in the Chapel, and his close personal intercourse with the older boys, he exercised a commanding influence. We are told of Stanley that a growing affection for Ar- nold became the strongest influence of his Rugby career, and rose from a schoolboy's awe to the height, as he himself notices not without a touch of momen- tary misgiving, of almost idolatrous veneration. In spite of Arnold's public occupations, his boys made up his world. When he thought of the social evils of the country, it made him want to check the selfish waste and thoughtlessness of schoolboys; to overcome the insolence and want of sympathy sometimes shown by rich to poor. When he thought of the evils of the Church, it made him, "within the walls of their own little particular congregation," endeavour to realize what he believed to be its true idea. "Whatever new and important things took place in the world of thought," he said, "suggested the hope that they, when they went forth amidst the strife of tongues [ 140 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH and of minds, might be endowed with the spirit of wisdom and power." He governed the school on the same principles as he would have governed a great empire. He called it "our great self." "What- ever defects it had/' says Stanley, "were his de- fects; whatever excellences, his excellences. The pupils were marked, not by the genius of the place, but by the genius of the man. Throughout, whether in the school itself, or in its after effects, the one image that we have before us is not Rugby, but Ar- nold." But with all this, he was absolutely free from petty jealousy, or from arbitrary use of power. His influence over the masters was scarcely less than his influence over the boys, and he ever rejoiced in their successes. "Nothing delights me more," he wrote of one of them, "than to think that boys are sent here for his sake rather than for mine." He wished that as much as possible should be done by the boys, and nothing for them. He never doubted their word, so that it came to be a saying among them — "It's a shame to tell Arnold a lie; he always believes one." Once there was an extensive display of bad feeling among the boys. He called them together, and said — "Is this a Christian school? I cannot remain here if all is to be carried on by constraint and force; if I am to be here as a gaoler, I will resign my office at [ 141 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN once." And on another occasion, when he had to send several boys away, he remarked — "It is not necessary that this should be a school of three hun- dred, or one hundred, or fifty boys; but it is necessary that it should be a school of Christian gentlemen." He took especial pleasure in that definition of man which calls him "a being of large discourse, looking before and after," and it was this that he tried to make his boys. He had a strong belief in the union of moral and intellectual excellence, but for mere cleverness he had no regard. We ' are told that he lost his temper once at what seemed like stupidity. The boy inquired — "Why do you speak angrily, sir? Indeed, I am doing the best I can." And Arnold's mortification was as excessive as his sense of justice was strong and deep. "If there is one thing on earth," he said, "which is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers, where they have been honestly, truly, and zealously cultivated" Speaking of such an one, he added — "I would stand to that man hat in hand." The liveliness and simplicity of his whole behaviour must always have divested his earnestness of any ap- pearance of moroseness or affectation. He exercised the minds of his pupils vigorously and well. He dealt a death-blow to themes on Virtus est bona res, and similar commonplaces. The boys regarded him as a [ 142 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH human being, not as a mere schoolmaster. The reali- ty of the relation between them is brought out by a saying that was common in the school. "He calls us fellows," they would say. In 1841 Arnold was appointed Regius Professor of Modem History at Oxford. He was beginning to look forward to the time when he should retire from Rugby, although this time was still indefinitely in the future. The duties at Oxford need not necessarily interfere with the duties at the school, and the con- nection with Oxford, which he had always loved, gave him great pleasure. He accepted gladly, and on the second of December of that year he delivered his Inaugural Lecture to an immense gathering. In it he took occasion to declare "how deeply he valued the privilege of addressing his audience as one of the Professors of Oxford;" how "there was no privilege which he more valued, no public reward or honour which could be to him so welcome." On one of these visits to Oxford, Arnold met New- man, for the first time in many years, and for the second time in his whole life. They sat side by side at a public dinner in the Hall. The controversy be- tween them had been so bitter that the occasion could not but be an interesting one, and for the principals an embarrassing one as well. In a letter to his sister, Newman gives a most characteristic descrip- [ 1« ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN tion of the scene. "The Provost came up in a brisk, smart way, as if to cut through an awkward begin- ning, and said quickly — 'Arnold, I don't think you know Newman;' on which Arnold and I bowed, and I spoke. I was most absolutely cool, or rather calm and unconcerned, from beginning to end. In such sit- uations, I seem, if you will let me say it, to put on a very simple, innocent, and modest manner. I some- time laugh at myself, and at the absurdities which result from it; but really I cannot help it, and I really believe it to be genuine. . . . We then sat down to table, and I thought of all the matters possible which it was safe to talk on. I recollected he had travelled with William Churton, and that made one topic. Others equally felicitous I forget. But I recollect the productions of North Africa was a fruitful subject; and I have some dream of having talked of a great tree, the name of which I now forget, as big as a hill, and which they bring as an argument for the indefi- nite duration of the present earth. ... I never saw him again; he died the June after. He is a man whom I have always separated from the people he was with, always respected, often defended, though from an ac- cident he got a notion, I believe, that I was a fire- brand, and particularly hostile to him. For myself, I don't think I was desirous of pleasing or not; but was secretly amused from the idea that he certainlv [ 144 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH would be taken aback by coming across me in propria persona; at least so I think.'' III. There is another side of Arnold's life which demands a brief closing word — I mean his life at home. Of his nine children, six were born at Laleham, and three at Rugby. His love for his family was very great. "I do not wonder/' he wrote, "that it was thought a great misfortune to die childless in old times, when they had not fuller light; it seems so completely wiping a man out of existence." And at the approach of middle age, to take a sentence from one of his sermons, "the interest of life which had begun to fade for himself revived with vigour in be- half of his children." Archbishop Whately said of him — "He was attached to his family, as if he had no friends; to his friends, as if he had no family; and to his country, as if he had no friends or relations." His letters to his friends are a fruitful storehouse containing the story of his life. He was most careful about his correspondence, a point where many men who are much less busy are most lax. He wrote — "I never do, and I trust I never shall, excuse myself for not writing to old and dear friends, for it is really a duty which it is mere indo- lence and thoughtlessness to neglect.'' [ 145 J MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN It is unfortunately the case, that among the clergy may sometimes be found the most narrow-minded and ignorant of men. Beyond their own soul and their own parish they have no thought nor care. They are set to teach, and yet they have no outlook beyond the city or the village where their lot is cast. Whether it is due to indolence, to smallness of mind, or to the pressure of real cares, it is equally mischievous, though not of course equally reprehensible. But though Ar- nold was one of the busiest of men, he had his spe- cial work apart from school and Church. He had a. faculty of picking up spare fragments of time which most men lose. Speaking of his work, he used to say — "I always think of that magnificent sentence of Bacon: In this world God only and the angels may be spectators." Certainly, the impression that his life produced was one of unhasting, but unresting dili- gence. He had had an early fondness for history and geography. At Laleham, he prepared an edition of Thucydides. In his busy life at Rugby, he found time to write a History of Rome which bears upon it the marks of careful, painstaking scholarship. Beginning with the very dawn of history, he had brought it down to the close of the Second Punic War when his sudden death brought it to an abrupt end. He says of it — "My highest ambition, and what I hope to do as far as I can, is to make my History the very [ 146 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH reverse of Gibbon in this respect; that whereas the whole spirit of his work, from its low morality, is hostile to religion, without speaking directly against it; so my greatest desire would be, in my History, by its high morals and its general tone, to be of use to the cause, without actually bringing it forward." In 1 832 Arnold purchased Fox How, a place in West- moreland, in the very heart of the Lake Country, where the poet Wordsworth was among his nearest neighbours. Rugby is the scene of his labours for four- teen years, but of his affection only because his work was there. Of Laleham and Oxford he often spoke with tender love. But it is Fox How that is the ob- ject of his warmest affection. There he was not an official whose term of office might end at any time, but the proprietor. With each particular shrub and tree which he had planted he had some tender feel- ing. His letters are full of his delight in the beauty that lay all about him. The very peacefulness of it all brought him refreshment after the rough world in the school, and the weary conflicts in Church and state. There he hoped to spend his declining years, when his active work was done, and to carry on the His- tory which at Rugby could never be finished. And from there he hoped that "his bones should go to Grasmere Churchyard, to lie under the yews which [ 147 ] M EX AND MOV E MENTS I X Wordsworth planted, and to have the Rotha with its deep and silent pools passing by." It was not to be. He describes himself as skating with his children on Rydal Lake. He speaks of tlu- "delicious calm of this place, where the mountains raise their snowy tops into the clear sky by this dim twilight with a most ghost-like solemnity; and noth- ing is heard, far or near, except the sound of the stream through the valley." There is something both inspiring and pathetic in his keen enjoyment of his home. The summer term of 1842 came to a close, and the younger children were already settled at Fox How, awaiting the coming of the rest. Most of the boys had already left for home. In Arnold's diary for the eleventh of June is this entry — "The day after to- morrow is my birthday, if I am permitted to live to see it — my forty-seventh birthday. How large a por- tion of my life on earth is already passed! And then — what is to follow this life? How visibly my out- ward work seems contracting and softening away into the gentler employments of old age! In one sense, how nearly can I now say, J'ixi! And I thank God that, as far as ambition is concerned, it is I trust fully mortified. I have no desire other than to step back from my present place in the world, and not to rise to a higher. There are works which, with God's per- mission, I would do before the night cometh. But [ 148 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH above all, let me mind my own personal work, to keep myself pure, and zealous, and believing; labouring to do God's will, yet not anxious that it should be done by me rather than by others, if God disapproves of my doing it." He was to all appearance in perfect health. But the next morning he was dead. Death is far too solemn a thing to be lightly spoken of. Milton could weep for Lycidas, and Shelley for Adonais, each in his way. Tennyson could sing the praises of his friend Hallam, and mourn his loss, so that in neither the one nor the other should there seem to be excess. And Matthew Arnold's word of his father, written in the cold November evening at Rugby Chapel after fifteen years, is worthy to be ranked with these. "But thou mould'st not alone Be saved, my father! alone Conquer and come to thy goal, Leaving the rest in the mild. We were weary, and we Fearful, and we in our march Fain to drop down and to die. Still thou turnedst, and still Beckonedst the trembler, and still Gavest the weary thy hand. If, in the paths of the world, Stones might have wounded thy feet, [ 149 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN Toil or dejection have tried Thy spirit, of that we saw Nothing — to us thou wast still Cheerful, and helpful, and firm! Therefore to thee it was given Many to save with thyself; And, at the end of thy day, O faithful shepherd! to come, Bringing thy sheep in thy hand." ? And u certain man found him, and behold, was wandering in the field; and the man asked him, saying, What seek- est thou? And he said, I seek my brethren. [ 150 ] Chapter tou ROBERTSON OF BRIGHTON SAMSON'S strange life was closed by a yet stranger death. What he could not do by living he did by dying. The effect is written in a single sentence. "So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life." And what is true of Samson, as he dealt out destruction, is true of Rob- ertson, in his influence upon people for their good. He lived, almost unknown beyond the city of his labours, without conspicuous position, without fame. He died, and after more than forty years his sermons are as fresh and vigorous as on the day when they were first delivered, while the very names of most of the dignitaries of that time have been forgotten. It may be that other sermons have been more widely read, but none have entered more deeply into men's minds and hearts, nor have left a stronger impress upon thought and life. It does not matter much whether one agrees with Robertson, or whether one disagrees with him, as to details. He had no party war-cry. He dealt with principles rather than with those minor matters of celestial etiquette which attract the petty partisans of every school. But his preaching was of [ 151 ] M EX AND MOVE M E X T S I X such a sort that those to whom it comes are com- pelled to think. It opens up new regions to the mind, while it speaks with the sympathy of fullest experi- ence to the soul's needs. Of Robertson's external life, there is not much to tell. Partly from circumstances, partly from the nature of the man, there is none of that quiet peace which lends such a charm to Keble's country vicarage, or to Arnold's home at Fox How. Those few years of heavy toil were years of storm and stress. In spite of all the fruit that it has borne, while it was being lived it was a life of weariness, and discouragement, and sadness. It shows at once the tremendous power which he who preaches the Gospel may wield, if he compre- hends in any degree the fulness and the significance of his message; and at the same time it points out plainly enough the difficulties which are likely to be- set him, the hindrances which will annoy him, the temptations which may assail him, the misunderstand- ing and distortion to which his simplest word is liable, the almost inconceivable pettiness to which at times he will be exposed. Robertson must take his place among the greatest preachers of the century — but it is a place that was not discovered until his death. And as we study the story of his life, the picture that we have before us is not the picture of a prom- inent dignitary, nor of a public man. It is that of a [ 152 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH faithful, hard-working minister of Christ, doing his duty in the face of fearful odds, enduring hardness as a brave soldier of his Master. Frederick William Robertson was born in London in 1816. The associations of the family were with the army, his father, his grandfather, and his two brothers all being employed in their country's service. The first five years of his life were passed at Leith Fort, and the impressions of that early period never wore away. "I was rocked and cradled," he writes, "to the roar of artillery, and the very name of such things sounds to me like home. A review, suggesting the concep- tion of a real battle, impresses me to tears. I cannot see a regiment manoeuvre, nor artillery in motion, without a choking sensation." Naturally enough, a life which appealed to him so strongly he desired for himself. His father had other views for him, and suggested the ministry, and when he turned away from that, the law. He passed a year in a solicitor's office, but the work disgusted him, and his health broke down under the strain of an employ- ment that was at once exacting and absolutely uncon- genial. It was then determined that he should have his way, and his name was placed upon the list for a cavalry regiment serving in India. The commission which he expected was long delayed, and at last he gave up hope. It arrived, but five days before it came [ 153 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN he had matriculated at Brazenose College, Oxford, having decided to enter the ministry; and, the step once taken, he did not turn back. When Robertson went up to Oxford, in the fall of 1837, the influence of Newman's sermons at St. Mary's was at its height. Newman attracted him in many ways. The deep sincerity, the quick religious sense of the Oxford leaders, he could not fail to see. They appealed to his instinct for self-sacrifice, and there was a vigorous reality about them which contrasted most favourably with the trim donnishness of which he often complains as characteristic of the place. He gave himself for a while to the serious study of their doc- trines, and then he turned away. Many years later, when his work was almost done, he could write like this — "It is my belief that in all the tenets and practices of the High Church body there is an under- lying truth, but then I confess that I should find as much difficulty in using their forms of statement in many points, as I should in using those of the Evan- gelicals on all points. With a thoughtful and large- minded High Churchman I believe I should sympathize more than with one of any section of the Church ; but my recoil from the bare formalism of the half-edu- cated and half-spiritualized of that school would, I fear, be stronger than from the extremes of any other party." And the purely external character of this cari- [ 154 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH cature of Tractarianism seems to him to be the cause of its success among those who cling to the semblance of religion while they are immersed in frivolities of every sort, and who insist upon serving God and mam- mon at the same time with equal fervour. "Chanted services and innocent gentlemen with lilies of the valley in their dresses must afford something of the same cooling and sedative effect which I have felt in the burning South of France, in going from a garden on the walls of which innumerable lizards basked, and the sun's rays beat down intolerably, at once into the coolness of an artificial cave." Robertson was ordained in 1840, and served for a year as Curate of a church at Winchester. A man's first sermon must always mark a crisis in his life, and though it may give no indication of future excel- lence or future folly, it is likely to show the spirit in which he comes to his new work. Robertson's Evan- gelical fervour at that time is seen in his first text — "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." And it may be added that though he was afterward widely separated from the Evangelical party in the Church, their fervour was a thing which he never lost. On his return from a journey to the Continent, he be- [ 155 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN came Curate at Christ Churchy Cheltenham, where he remained five years. They seem to have been years of restlessness and discouragement. The character of the place was ill-suited to a man of his intense enthusi- asm and vigorous, active mind. There were too many of that class whose life consists in drifting from "a youth of frolics'' into "an old age of cards." Every- thing was on the surface, and respectability was given a much higher place in the scale of virtues than it properly deserves. Not only was the life there super- ficial. There was much in it that was small and mean; and it was Robertson's way to blame himself for the stupidity or the malignity of others. He fancied his sermons unintelligible, because they were sometimes misunderstood. On one occasion he had used all his eloquence to prove that this world without religion is a riddle, and that Christianity is the only key. The next day he received an anonymous letter, telling him that Christianity made all the difficulties he spoke of plain! There was slight cause for annoyance. The most faithful preacher cannot furnish brains to his congre- gation, if they are lacking. But Robertson took such things to heart. To suffer fools gladly was an accom- plishment which he could not acquire. He looked upon his ministry at Cheltenham as a fail- ure. His ability was not unrecognized, but during those years he was coming to know the world and his [156 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH own mind, and the knowledge brought with it a cer- tain shock. He saw his friends through the atmo- sphere of his own love and truthfulness, and when, as happened once or twice in his life, he was deceived where he had given the fullest confidence and trust, it almost broke his heart. He was surrounded by re- ligious controversy, which at that time raged every- where. Those were the days of Newman's retirement to Littlemore, of his long hesitation, and final submis- sion to Rome; of Pusey's suspension from the Univer- sity pulpit, and the troubles over St. Saviour's, Leeds; of Ward's trial and degradation; of Hampden's eleva- tion to the episcopate, in the face of vigorous and determined opposition. In many places, there was a strong tendency to hysterics. There was need of a prophet to re-echo Micah's stirring words. "He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" There was little leisure for such things as these. In times of excitement, they are not popular as religious tests. To hold certain doctrines, and to speak certain phrases, and to feel certain feelings, had come to be looked upon as the sum of the Christian life. The most igno- rant and careless were most violent in their demands for guarantees of orthodoxy; and surely, if orthodoxy could be discredited, it would long ago have hap- [ 157 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN pened, for time and again it has been in very doubt- ful company. We are told that Robertson, coming froni work among the poor, was shocked at the spec- tacle of religion which prevailed in fashionable life. It was not that he loved asceticism, but that he hated sham; and extreme religious emotion on the part of those whose god is their belly, and nothing more nor less, can never be an edifying sight. To the impression produced by the worldliness of the place, there was added disgust at the weakness of many of the clergy, and horror at the blindness and bigotry of what, strangely enough, was called the "religious" press. He writes during these years — "As to the state of the Evangelical clergy, I think it lamentable. I see senti- ment instead of principle, and a miserable, mawkish religion superseding a state which was once healthy.'' And of some of the Church papers — "They tell lies in the name of God; others tell them in the name of the devil; that is the only difFerence." And of himself — "T stand nearly alone, a theological IshmaeL. The Tractarians despise me, and the Evangelicals somewhat loudly express their doubts of me." The life at Cheltenham came to an end It was a time during which Robertson's views on many sub- jects underwent great change. Like all transition pe- riods, it must have been a time of deep distress. He himself writes — "It is an awful moment when the [ 158 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH soul begins to find that the props on which it has blindly rested so long are, many of them, rotten, and begins to suspect them all; when it begins to feel the nothingness of many of the traditionary opinions which have been received with implicit confidence, and in that horrible insecurity begins also to doubt whether there be anything to believe at all." But the shadow passed. A friend was with him at the English Lakes, and said to him one day, pointing to the summit of Skiddaw, which was unseen for mist — "I would not have my head, like the peak of that mountain, in- volved, as we see it now, in cloud, for all that you could offer me." "I would," rejoined Robertson, quickly, "for by-and-by the cloud and mist will roll away, and the sun will come down upon it in all his glory." And so it was. He left home, and wandered alone among the glories of the Tyrol. New hope came to him, and new cour- age. At one time he had despaired of his ministry. But now he seeks fresh work. He will not return to Cheltenham. He asks that his stay there may be as brief as possible. He wants to try the experiment of a country parish, where there are none but poor. He is not confident of success, but he is not certain that he should fail in such a work. The country parish did not come. He was offered St. Ebbe's, Oxford, and felt it his duty to accept it. It [ 159] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN was a forlorn hope, and the man who in a dozen years was to be recognized as one of the greatest preachers of his time received as stipend £\ 15 a year! He writes to a friend — "I have lately given up Christ Church, at Cheltenham, with feelings of inexpressible pain. A ministry of twilight, at the best, and difficulty, has closed. Every effort has been crowned with the most signal failure, and I shrink sometimes almost in tor- ture from the idea of beginning work again, with the possibility of five such years once more before me. This is not an encouraging tone of mind to begin a ministry with, so beset with difficulties as St. Ebbe's. However, as I certainly have no earthly inducement to take it, perhaps the work may be blessed, even though mine." But the work was abandoned almost before it was begun. After two months at Oxford he was offered Trinity Chapel, Brighton, which he at once declined. It seemed to him dishonourable to take charge of a parish, and then to leave it without trial, for no better reason than a larger salary and a wider field. But the offer was renewed, and the Bishop of Oxford counseled him to accept it. And so, in the summer of 1847, began that brief ministry of six years which was to mean so much, not only to Brighton, but to the whole English-speaking world. It was during these years that he preached those sermons by which he is chiefly known. In the light [ 160 ]' THE ENGLISH CHURCH of what he became, it is interesting to read in a let- ter to his mother while he was a student at Braze- nose College words like these — "I do believe the station of a popular preacher is one of the greatest trials on earth; a man in that position does not stop to soberly calculate how much, or rather how little, is done when there appears a great effect, nor to con- sider how immense is the difference between deeply affecting the feelings, and permanently changing the heart." And in the midst of his greatest success, he seems to have regarded his work as of the very least account. "I wish I did not hate preaching so much, but the degradation of being a Brighton preacher is almost intolerable. I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed; but I think there is not a hard-working artisan whose work does not seem to me to make him a worthier and higher being than myself. I do not depreciate spiritual work — I hold it higher than secular. All I say and feel is, that by the change of times the pul- pit has lost its place." Again, he compares sermons to crutches, sometimes, indeed, an assistance, but for all that required only because of weakness or disease. And he gives a sorry picture of one who has been preaching for years. "He has degenerated into verbi- age; and in the last sermon I heard, he took ten minutes to say what three sentences might have set- tled. He has lost his power, which was once the [161 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN greatest I ever knew. The sentimental people of his congregation attribute it to increase in spirituality; but it is in truth a falling off of energy of grasp. I heard four sermons from him with scarcely four thoughts, and much absolutely false logic. But how can a man preach for ten years without exhausting himself, or else pandering to popularity? Talk, talk, talk, for ever, and no retreat to fructifying silence." And yet in his own case it was not so. He preached much, and though he wore out his body the fountain of his thought flowed freshly to the end. It was partly due to the intense mental vigour and spiritual earnest- ness of the man. But it was due also to the method in which he did his work. In one of Anthony Trol- lope's ecclesiastical novels, we are told of a curate who had written nine sermons from Sunday to Sun- day, and who sought sympathy because of the great- ness of his labours. But the sympathy which he de- sired for himself was given, properly enough, to the unfortunate people who had to listen to stuff that was thus prepared. There can be no preaching unless the preacher himself enters into every sentence — but even this is not sufficient unless he has something to express. One seeks to arouse other feelings in the congregation besides pity for one's own starved mind. And Robertson, while he complains at the excessive demands upon him, was not content to be always [ 162] THE ENGLISH CHURCH giving out. He is ever taking in, as well. His early sermons at Winchester were written in a single morn- ing. It is possible that they served their immediate purpose, but they have perished, of course. In later years he carefully prepared his sermons, though commonly they were not written out in full till after they had been preached. As with all great preachers, his close familiarity with the Bible is evident at once. And he read much, and mastered what he read. As we follow his life, we see that there were always books at hand, to be used directly or indirectly. He was not like a less distinguished man who once wrote that he did not permit himself to read, lest it should interfere with the originality of his thought and style! He speaks often of the value of devotional reading, though by this he does not mean the mere pious ejaculations to which we sometimes give that name. He read the Imitation of Christ — as who does not? with greatest benefit. But he chose by prefer- ence "the lives of eminently holy persons, whose tone was not merely uprightness of character and high- mindedness, but communion with God besides." It is much to have the companionship of such men, amid the distractions of one's daily life. He read Carlyle and Niebuhr and Guizot, and Dante and Tennyson and Wordsworth. If to love poetry is to be half a poet, then Robertson was that. On the appearance of [163] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN In Memoriam, it was given a critique in the Times which for vulgar Philistinism and commonplace stu- pidity deserves to rank among the classics of its kind. In a lecture on The Influence of Poetry on the Working Classes, Robertson gives this critique the treatment which it deserves; and at the same time shows the power of satire which he could have wielded, had he so chosen. It was objected that In Memoriam, though treating of religious subjects, was not a religious poem. To this he replies — "It certainly is saturated neither with Evangelicalism nor Tractarianism ; nor does it abound in the routine phrases which, when missed, raise a suspicion of heterodoxy; nor does it seize the happy opportunity afforded for a pious de- nunciation of Purgatory and Mariolatry." He suggests that there may still be religion, though these things are lacking. And after exposing some of the unutter- able follies of the reviewer, he sums up thus — "So much for this critic; wrong when he praises, and wrong when he blames; who finds Shakspeare false to the facts of human nature, and quotes Dr. Johnson as a model poet; who cannot believe in the Poetry of any expression unless it bears the mint stamp of a prece- dent, and cannot understand either the exaggerations or the infinitude of genuine grief." Of Robertson's theological position, it is hard to speak. We have seen already that after his revulsion [ 164 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH from his early Evangelicalism, he could not be classed with any party in the Church. He approved things that are excellent — and these things, fortunately, are not the monopoly of any party — and with lesser mat- ters he had not much concern. Not that his attitude toward men or toward opinions was a supercilious one. He did not "sit as God, holding no form of creed, But contemplating all." He could hate, when there seemed need of hatred. He writes — "If working men are to gain their no- tions of Christianity from the sneering, snarling gossip of the religious newspapers, I for one do not marvel that indignant infidelity is so common amongst them." He could admire, where he did not follow. His biog- rapher tells us that "he had no sympathy with the views of the High Church party; but he had a great deal of sympathy with the men who held them, with their self-devotion, and with their writings. He rever- enced the self-sacrificing work which they were per- forming among poor and neglected parishes. He said that, as a body, they had re-asserted the doctrine of a spiritual resurrection, which had been almost put out of sight by the Evangelical party. He read New- man's sermons with profit and delight till the day of his death. There was no book which he studied more carefully or held in higher honour than the Christian [165 ] M E X AND MOVEMENTS IX Year. It seemed to him that some of its poems were little short of inspiration. He saw in the importance which the Tractarians gave to forms a valuable ele- ment which he never lost sight of in his teaching. Only, while they seemed to say that forms could pro- duce life, he said that forms were necessary only to support life ; but for that they were necessary. To use his own illustration; bread will not create life, but life cannot be kept up without bread." His was a singularly sensitive and a singularly receptive mind. He writes of himself — "My misfortune or happiness is power of sympathy. I can feel with the Brahmin, the Pantheist, the Stoic, the Platonist, the Transcen- dentalist, perhaps the Epicurean. I can suffer with the Tractarian, tenderly shrinking from the gulf blacken- ing before him, as a frightened child runs back to its mother from the dark, afraid to be alone in the fear- ful loneliness; and I can also agonize with the inn- dels, recoiling from the cowardice and false rest of superstition. Many men can feel each of these sepa- rately, and they are happy. They go on straight for- ward, like a one-eyed horse, seeing all clear on one side. But I feel them all at once, and so far I am all§eitig, ein ganjer SJlann. But I am not such in this sense, that I can harmonize them all; I can only feel them." I have purposely abstained from speaking of his ser- [ 166 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH mons, except in the most general way. If they are to be known, they must be read. One cannot master their spirit at second-hand. They are to Robertson what the Christian Year was to Keble — the expression of his very soul; and therein lies the value of them both. And yet, one cannot write of Robertson, and pass by without a word the very thing which has kept his name alive on earth. He did not avoid the vexed questions of the day. At the time of the Gorham Judgment, he preached on Baptism. When there was a violent discussion as to the propriety of opening the Crystal Palace on Sunday, he preached on the "Shadow and Substance of the Sabbath." When the higher criticism was hated and distrusted, and looked upon with less intelligence and greater prejudice than now, he preached on the Inspiration of the Bible. When to say a good word of anything that had to do with Rome was to be suspected and abused, he pointed to the Glory of the Virgin-Mother. He was fearless, but never blatant — as fearlessness inevi- tably becomes unless it is held in check by sense and piety. If, from time to time, he was compelled to combat error, it was never for the sake of mere de- struction, but that he might establish the positive truth which had been distorted or corrupted. His ser- mon on the Virgin Mary is a case in point. In the Church of Rome we find the woman reverenced above [167] MEN" AXD MOVEMENTS IX the Son, and then adored. It is easy to condemn this as idolatry, but Robertson declares that there is that behind it which no mere cutting and uprooting can destroy; no thunders of Protestant oratory, nor plat- form expositions, nor Reformation Societies. For it marks this truth — albeit imperfectly and in corrupted form — that all that is most manly and all that is most womanly are met in Christ. One half of our na- ture, the sterner portion of it, only, was felt to be of God and in God. And when the divinity of the other half was asserted, that was given to Mary which belonged to Christ. Robertson goes on — "There is a spirit abroad which is leading men to Rome. Do not call that the spirit of the devil. It is the desire and hope to find there, in its tenderness, and its beauty, and its devotion, a home for those feelings of awe, and contemplation, and love, for which our stern Pro- testantism finds no shelter. Let us acknowledge that what they worship is indeed deserving of all adora- tion, only let us say that what they worship igno- rantly is Christ. Whom they ignorantly worship let us declare unto them — Christ, their unknown God, wor- shipped at an idol-altar. Do not let us satisfy our- selves by saying as a watch-word — Christ, not Mary: say rather — In Christ all that they find in Mary." A man who preached like this, and much of his preaching was of just this sort, was bound to be dis- [ 168 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH liked. He held with St. Paul that spiritual things are spiritually discerned, and so he avoided dogmatic statements and the promulgation of infallible authori- ties of any sort. With him, Christianity was a principle working from within outward, and any attempt to im- part it otherwise must end in failure. There were things about it which could be reduced to an orderly system, but in its essence it could not be limited nor confined. He writes to a friend — "God's truth must be boundless. Tractarians and Evangelicals suppose that it is a pond which you can walk around and say — I hold the truth. What, all? Yes, all; there it is, circumscribed, defined, proved, and you are an infidel if you do not think that this pond of mine, that the great Mr. Newton, and Mr. Scott, and Mr. Cecil dug, quite large enough to be the immeasurable Gospel of the Lord of the universe." With the proper sub- stitutions, this is the language of offensive partisans of every school. But Robertson was not a party-man. He was misunderstood, and slandered, and opposed. His good was evil spoken of in many places. The stoning of the prophets was not confined to Bible times. What St. Paul wrote to the Galatians of a period many centuries before then- day, is just as true now, many centuries after it. "As then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now." Pusey and Rob- [ I'*) ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN ertson could hardly have differed more widely in the opinions which they held, but they were alike in this — they were spiritual men, and those were not lack- ing who hated them for that very reason. I do not mean that to each there was not much conscientious opposition. There was. But there are some to whom holiness and humility are a sort of Nazareth from which no good thing can come — a forsaking of the old paths with which they are themselves familiar. He was accused of a craving for originality at the ex- pense of truth. Among the many charges that were brought against him, he was said to have apologized for Judas. To this he replies — "My apology for Judas consisted in saying that his sin was not murder, but unbelief, and that he was sincere in what he did; also that his temptation was Satanic, and that he is in hell. I do not fancy that Judas would thank me much for my apology." He goes on to explain the sense in which he used the word sincerity, viz., not of Judas' character, but of his remorse. He continues — "If I say Judas' guilt was not murder, but final and fatal despair, and call it, as I remember well I did, the sin of sins, it is somewhat difficult to make me out as an apologist for suicide." And he concludes — "Further, I said that Judas went to his own place. I said the soul gravitated downwards. The sin which led to suicide led to hell; but it was his own place, [ 170 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH in the way of natural retribution, not of arbitrary re- probation. This was another feature in the apology for Judas. I left him in hell. What more would they have? Only an unbeliever! Only in hell!" Again, there was the charge of German neology, now antiquated, and left for the most part to the invinci- bly ignorant, but then comparatively new. Unfortu- nately, it is a great deal easier to abuse what is called the higher criticism, than it is to master it. It would seem to most sober-minded persons that to neglect the Bible, or to read it in some arbitrary sense, is to show it greater irreverence than to study it with all diligence, and so to try to find out what it really means. And if here and there men lacking the spirit- ual sense have shown irreverence in the spirit of their work, it may still be that they have discovered prin- ciples which may be reverently used. It is easy to hide one's head in the sand, like the ostrich, and to kick out against whatever happens to come within our reach. It was so at the time of the Reformation. "Greek," said a Roman Catholic priest, "is a new language, just discovered, and full of heresies. As for the Hebrew language, all who study that become Jews immediately." There has been the same outcry against German scholarship, as such, though now it has waxed faint, and is hardly found except as an eccen- tricity of uninformed religionism. But in Robertson's [ 171 ] M EN AND MOVE M E N T S IN time, the ignorance with which the charge was made was so sublime, that, as he says, "they who make it are not even aware that the present heterodoxy of Germany is not neologian, and that neology is ex- ploded even there. To them neology, rationalism, mysticism, mythicism, pantheism, all mean pretty much the same thing; and one charge is nearly as good as another, because all are vague and mysterious, like the venerable fee-fi-fo-fum of our childhood." History repeats itself, and mysterious denunciation is still heard. Even yet, there may be found those who would deny to some of their brethren the very name of Christian, not for their worldliness or their materi- alism, not for their lack of love for Christ nor of faith in the historic Creeds, but because they are not suf- ficiently zealous in their recognition of the importance of questions that have to do with what may be called the Quadrilateral of Biblical ultra-orthodoxy — the fish, the ass, the den of lions, and the devil. It is interesting to see Robertson's treatment of im- pertinence, for fuss and feathers are not confined to Brighton. We are told in his biography that "one Monday morning an elderly gentleman introduced himself as having been of great service to young clergymen. He arraigned the sermon he had heard in Trinity Chapel the day before; spoke of dangerous views and the impetuosity of young men ; offered him- ( 172 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH self as a weekly monitor; and enumerated in conclu- sion the perils and inconveniences to which popular preachers were subject. Robertson, who had remained silent, at last rose. 'Really, sir,' he said, sternly, 'the only inconvenience I have experienced in being what you are pleased to call me, a popular preacher, is in- trusion like the present;' and he bowed his censor out of the room." On another occasion, a lady with whom he had some slight acquaintance assailed him for his "heterodox opinions," and threatened him with the consequences to which they must lead, both in this world and the next. His only answer was, "I don't care." "Do you know what don't care came to, sir?" "Yes, madam," was the grave reply. "He was cruci- fied on Calvary." We have seen already something of his broad sym- pathy. He writes — "Alas! alas! when I see Roman- ists cursing the Church of England, Evangelicals shaking their heads about the Christianity of Trac- tarians, Tractarians banning Dissenters, Dissenters anathematizing Unitarians, and Unitarians of the old school condemning the more spiritual ones of the new, I am forced to hope that there is more inclu- siveness in the Love of God than in the bitter ortho- doxy of sects and churches. I find only two classes who roused His Divine indignation when on earth; those who excluded bitterly, the Scribes; and those [ 173 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN of a religious name, the popular religious party of the day, who judged frailty and error bitterly, the Phari- sees. I am certain that I do not dilute truth, at least what I count truth, nor hold lax views about opinions; but I am certain that men are often better than their creed, and that our Lord's mode of judging of the tree by its fruits is the only true one." And so his sympathy leads us on to what we may call the other great characteristic of the man — his intense reality. There are a few lines by Arthur Hugh Clough, called "The Latest Decalogue." They are bitter, but not too bitter for those to whom they apply. They are these — " Thou shalt have one God only; mho Would be at the expense of two? No graven images may be Worshipped, save in the currency; Swear not at all; since for thy curse Thine enemy is none the worse; At church on Sunday to attend Will serve to keep the world thy friend ; Honour thy parents; that is, all From whom advancement may befall ; Thou shalt not kill; but need's! not strive Officiously to keep alive; Adultery it is not Jit Or safe — for woman — to commit; [ 174 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat, When 'tis as lucrative to cheat; Bear not false witness; let the lie Have time on its own wings to fly ; Thou shalt not covet; but tradition Approves all forms of competition." This was the form of religion which Robertson fought with all his might. He was no Socialist nor Revolu- tionist, but he did not shut his eyes to the sins of the strong against the weak. He abhorred that conscience which is wounded if haply shibboleth be called sib- boleth, but which does not hold back its possessor from falsehood, hypocrisy, and fraud. "I have seen him," writes one of his friends, "grind his teeth and clench his fist when passing a man who, he knew, was bent on destroying an innocent girl." And he himself writes, when he was accidentally reminded of an ex- perience of his own — "My blood was at the moment running fire; and I remembered that I had once in my life stood before my fellow-creature with words that scathed and blasted ; once in my life I felt a ter- rible might; I knew, and rejoiced to know, that I was inflicting the sentence ■ of a coward's and a liar's hell." This is the man who preached at Brighton during those six years. As we read his sermons, we get a brighter picture. We see that if he was often lonely, [ 175 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN he did not fear to be alone with Christ; and if he craved that sympathy which he was so ready to give, but which was so often withheld, he put truth higher vet. And there were many who loved him, and who could receive his message. To the workingmen of Brighton he was a tried and valued friend. He had no word for the self-righteous and the self-satisfied. But the perplexed, the discouraged, those who were hungering and thirsting after righteousness, never looked to him in vain. Thirty-seven has been a fatal age to several extraor- dinary men. Burns died at thirty-seven, and Byron, and Raphael. In his own way, Robertson ranks with these, and he died, like them, almost at the outset of his career. For months he was in failing health, often in agonizing pain. But his undaunted spirit kept him at his work till a few weeks before the end. We cannot tell what he might have been, if he could have lived. So far as worldly honours go, he had none of them. He was poor, holding an inconspicuous posi- tion, subject to the petty power of small and narrow- minded men. But when he died, in the summer of 1853, those who had known him knew what they had lost. And to each new generation, he speaks with ever-living words. There are many, and increasingly many, who cannot commit themselves unreservedly to any party watchwords. They feel with Solomon — [ 176'] THE ENGLISH CHURCH "Surely, the heaven and the heaven of heavens can- not contain Thee; how much less this house that I have builded!" These are the men to whom Robert- son's message comes with greatest force. He points them away from that which lies upon the surface, on and up to God. And to those who, with fear and trembling, are working out their own salvation, each as best he may, he reiterates the prophet's word. "Doubtless Thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not." Then I said, I will not make mention of Him, nor speak any more in His name. But His word was in my lieart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not [ 177 J Chapter to it ARCHBISHOP TAIT THERE would be many surprises if, from their present standing-ground, men could look for- ward for a few years, and see what would come to pass. Of course, great changes must be expected, al- ways. That is involved in life. But, many and many a time, the character of the change is of the most amazing kind. To say nothing of those whose great promise yields no performance, we meet constantly with those whose lives have developed in the most unexpected direction, and in the most unlikely way. Certainly, when a little club-footed boy was born into a Scottish family in Edinburgh, and was baptized in the drawing-room by the Presbyterian minister of the parish, no one would have imagined that he would one day hold the highest office in the English Church, and that he would come to be one of the greatest states- men whom that Church had ever known. He was of unmixed Scotch descent, and no Scotsman had ever filled the see of Canterbury. He was weak and sickly, and it was feared that he must be hopelessly de- formed. The family traditions would not lead him to the ministry, even if he should grow up strong and [ 178 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH well; and if, by chance, that should have been his destination, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland was his natural field for work. But it was the improbable that happened, as it so often does; and the Scotch infant whose mother's tears flowed freely for him in 1811 because he had entered into life handicapped and misshapen, passed from one office of responsibility into another until he became in 1868 the Primate of the English Church. And she has had no Primate who was called upon to steer her through more troubled waters, who was compelled to meet and settle so many vexed and vexing questions, and who did his work with greater faithfulness and conscientiousness, than Archibald Campbell Tait. The life of a clergyman has to be described with a certain measure of superlatives. His profession gives him a significance which he might not otherwise pos- sess. He is very much in the public eye, even in the eye of that public who care very little about his min- istrations. His failures and successes are not personal, nor parochial, but to a greater or less degree they af- fect the whole Church of which he is a part. As a rule, he is very much beloved by those who love him, and very much disliked by those who dislike him at all. His office gives him peculiar opportunities for the winning of affection from those whom in some way or other he has been able to help, and also for bringing [ 179] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN upon himself the virulence of bitter opposition from those whom, wisely or unwisely, he has rebuked. His opportunities are so many, and so varied, that he can- not be estimated quite as other men. For praise or blame, there must be now and again the superlative degree. His standard is so high a one that, when he is not very good, there is some show of reason for de- claring that he is very bad. He is very patient, often, with stupidity, and ignorance, and utter lack of any appreciation; but sometimes he is very impatient, too. There are no men who work harder than the clergy, though here and there, to judge from a single in- stance, we might be tempted to imagine that none have less to do. And because they speak as ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God, their words have an importance — or ought to have it — that words on lesser subjects cannot have. What is true of the class, is especially true of those who have risen to distinction in their class. The priest's words may be weightier than the bishop's, but there are many with whom the bishop's words will carry greater weight. And it is true that he speaks with a certain representative authority that the other lacks. Men listened to Newman at St. Mary's, or to Robertson at Brighton, because of the worth of what they had to say. But they listen to the Archbishop of Canterbury, whoever he may be, because [ 180 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH he holds the office that he does. He is certain of a hearing, upon any subject, and at any time. Of all the leaders of the English Church whom we have considered, Tait is the first to add high official dignity to other gifts. His position brought him into contact with many movements and with many men. For some years his life, if told in full, would mean the history of the Church of England during that time. But it is not because of the accidental fact that he was Archbishop that he deserves his fame. Many a small man has held high place, and has been for- gotten. But Tait was called to high place, and proved not unequal to a colossal task. Wherever he might have been placed, he had the elements of greatness in him, and in the Providence of God he was placed in just that position where they could best be used. He had his limitations, as all men have. He was not such a preacher as Robertson or Newman. Indeed, one of his friends warns him that his sermons are often dull. He was not a profound scholar, like Pusey, nor a Christian poet, like Keble. He succeeded Arnold at Rugby, and he was not a failure there; but he left no such influence behind him as his predecessor. But he was a Christian statesman; and with the gifts of nature and opportunity that God had given him he served his generation as best he could. He was much blessed and much tried, much honoured and much [ 1«1 ] M E X A X D MOVEMENTS I X burdened, much helped and much hindered in his work. As we have seen, he was born at Edinburgh in 1811, and when he was two years old his mother died. The trials, which of themselves would make his life a marked one, began at an early age. But the little motherless boy was not left quite without a mother's care. There was an old nurse in the family, Betty Morton by name, who watched over him with ten- derest solicitude. The inseparable companion of his boyhood was his brother Campbell, who was also lame, and the very fact that the boys were debarred from so many childish sports made them more to each other. Their religious training was after the fashion of the time, rigorous, but thorough. On Sun- days they amused themselves by looking at the pic- tures in an old Family Bible, "dedicated to Catherine Parr, and full of such illustrations as that of a man with a beam as large as a rafter sticking straight out of his eye." In course of time the lameness of both the brothers was removed, but while he was still a boy the little Campbell died, and Archie, deprived of his companion, was thrown in upon himself and his books. At sixteen Tait matriculated as a student at the Uni- versity of Glasgow. We shall be astonished by-and- bye at the extent and variety of his reading, even at [ 182 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH times when the pressure of official business seemed to leave him not a moment to himself. Perhaps this advice of his father may be some explanation. "In little excursions which you happen to make, as well as longer journeys, always take with you some well- written, agreeable author, that you may fill up pleas- antly the broken hours which occur on such occa- sions. By going on regularly, in taking one book after another in such a list, it is wonderful what you may accomplish without diminishing, but rather increas- ing, the pleasure of your journeys." And the diary of those years at Glasgow shows that he meant to be well-prepared for whatever work might be before him. Half-past four seems to have been no uncommon hour for rising, and the day's work was planned and carried out with faithful care. He won a scholarship which provided for his further education at Balliol College, Oxford, and at nineteen he went to England, which was henceforth to be his home. Though belonging to a Presbyterian family, even in Edinburgh he had attended the Scottish Episcopal Church to some extent, and shortly after taking up his residence in Oxford he was confirmed, and determined to apply for Orders in the English Church. Young men are always full of pleasant ban- ter, but it is curious that a friend should recollect such an incident as this of his very first visit to Lon- [ 183 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS I X don. The Archbishop of Canterbury has Lambeth Palace for his official residence. When Tait came in one evening from a walk, they asked where he had been. "Walking through Lambeth;" was the reply. It is not an attractive district. "Through Lambeth" — was the astonished answer; "why, whatever pos- sessed you to walk in Lambeth?" It was mere chaff, of course, but it proved prophetic, for Tait replied — "I wanted to see how I shall like the place when I get there." There is testimony, too, that there were those who looked forward to no such career for him In the debates of his student days at the Oxford Union, he appears as a zealous advocate for Church Reform. A note-book has been preserved, containing the statement by a youth who became a holy and distinguished man, that that side was "without aris- tocracy either of rank or talent." and enumerating a few of its supporters. Among them is this scornful entry. "Tait, nobody." As student, Fellow, and Tutor, Tait was at Oxford for twelve years; and during this time the Oxford Movement was begun and continued, and, in one as- pect of it, almost ended. John Henry Newman was the presiding genius of the place. Tait read his sermons, and doubtless often heard him preach. But Newman himself seems to have had no attraction for him. He was on intimate terms with Oakeley and Ward, one [ 18* ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH of whom preceded Newman, while the other followed him, to Rome. But neither Newman nor Pusey seem to have influenced his Oxford life. Principal Shairp remarks — "His Scotch nature and education, his Whig principles, and the Evangelical views which he had imbibed, were wholly antipathetic to this Move- ment; so entirely antipathetic that I do not think he ever, from first to last, caught a glimpse of the irre- sistible attraction which it had for younger and more ardent natures, or of the charm which encircled the leaders of it, more especially the character of John Henry Newman." And Dean Lake of Durham, who was his contemporary at Oxford, witnesses to the same thing. "The one great power which then ruled and inspired Oxford was John Henry Newman, the influence of whose singular combination of genius and devotion has had no parallel there, either before or since; the only persons who were left outside the charmed circle being « somewhat apathetic race, the twenty or twenty-two Heads of Houses, and a few Tutors, of whom Tait was the only one of real power." And there is an allusion to "a certain want of poetry in his character," as accounting for this lack. If he failed to appreciate Newman, he did recognize a genius of a very different sort. Principal Shairp thinks that he was the first man in Oxford to esti- [ "5 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN mate Arthur Hugh Clough at his proper value. He goes on — "I remember his excitement when, in the summer of 1841, Clough, to the dismay of Balliol, got only a second class in the Final Schools. Tait was furious, and went about the University loudly denoun- cing the incapacity of the Examiners. 'They had not only a first-rate scholar, but a man of original genius before them, and were too stupid to discover it.'" And during those years at Oxford, Tait was called upon to instruct many men who must have demanded in their teachers the possession of no ordinary powers. At different times Stanley, Dean of Westminster, Goulburn, Dean of Norwich, Jowett, Master of Bal- liol, Clough, Chief Justice Coleridge, Matthew Arnold, and Frederick Temple, Tait's successor at Rugby, London, and Canterbury, were all his pupils. On the appearance of Tract No. 90, a storm of op- position was aroused. One of the first remonstrances was the Protest of the Four Tutors, of whom Tait was one. The Tract itself, it will be remembered, had to do with the interpretation to be put upon the Thirty- Nine Articles, and declared that "they need not be so closed as the received method of teaching closes them, and ought not to be, for the sake of many persons." It was urged against the Tract that it deprived words of their plain meaning. The gist of the Four Tutors' Protest can best be given in a couple [ 186 j THE ENGLISH CHURCH of their own sentences. "We readily admit the neces- sity of allowing that liberty in interpreting the formu- laries of our Church which has been advocated by many of its most learned bishops and other eminent divines; but this Tract puts forward new and startling views as to the extent to which that liberty may be carried. For if we are right in our apprehension of the author's meaning we are at a loss to see what security would remain, were his principles generally recognized, that the most plainly erroneous doctrines and practices of the Church of Rome might not be inculcated in the lecture-rooms of the University, and from the pulpits of our churches." This was Tait's first public appearance as a controversialist, and it was marked by the same spirit which characterized the controversies in which he was called upon to engage in later years. William George Ward speaks of the remarkably temperate and Christian tone of the paper which began the contest; and Tait himself, in a letter to the redoubtable Golightly, points out at once the wickedness and the folly of abuse and recrimination. "Pray remember that any appearance of bitterness or a persecuting spirit is not only wrong in itself, but, if shown on the right side, will be sure, in the present ticklish state of opinion in Oxford, to drive many who are now doubtful into the wrong." The years at Oxford, though they were years of [ 187] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN study and of teaching, were more than that. On Trin- ity Sunday, 1836, Tait was ordained, and shortly after he undertook the care of a country parish at Baldon, five miles from Oxford, which had been much neg- lected. On Saturday nights he slept at Baldon, that he might be there for the Sunday service, and though his days were filled to the full there were few weeks when he did not get to his parish once or twice. For five years he carried on this work, and to the end of his life he looked back upon its difficulties and dis- couragements as the best preparation for the greater work which was before him. A country village can furnish many types of character, and lack of charac- ter, and surely there was no type with which he did not come in contact some time or other in his later life. In the summer of 1842 Thomas Arnold died, with scarcely a moment's warning, in his very prime. He was the greatest schoolmaster of his day. He had given a new impulse to Christian education. Who could take his place — or, if no one could do that, who was there to succeed him? Tait was led to offer himself as a candidate for the position, and was elected. His diary has this entry. "O Lord, I have this day taken a step which may lead to much good or much evil. Do Thou suffer me to succeed only if it be to the good of my own soul, and to Thy glory." [ 188 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH And upon his inauguration, he was deeply moved by the opening words of the Epistle for the day — "Such trust have we through Christ to God-ward; not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God." He was Headmaster of Rugby for eight years. In his own life there were two events to disturb the mo- notony of the routine-work which belongs to every school. The first was his happy marriage to Catherine Spooner, the daughter of a country clergyman of some prominence. Her training had been in the Evangelical School, but the Oxford Movement had influenced her greatly, and she was nearly related to Bishop Wilber- force and other High Church leaders. She brought to Tait a sympathy for those from whom he differed which, without her, he might not have had. In later years their son Craufurd was wont to say that the Church of the future would be "more High Church than my father, but more Low Church than my mother." For thirty-five years she was her husband's constant companion in the performance of duties of every kind. His biographer, Bishop Davidson, who is also his son-in-law, says of her — "No picture of his life during any one of those eventful years would be a true one which failed to show her working in bright activity by his side, sharing and lightening every la- bour and every sorrow." [ 189 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN The second great event of the life at Rugby was a serious illness which brought him to the very thresh- old of the grave. His death was hourly expected, and when he arose it was as a shattered man. Very slowly his strength came back to him, and throughout his life he had frequent warnings that there were limits to his powers, while several times he was laid aside for months by tedious illness. It became evident that he would be no longer equal to the strain of the work at Rugby, and in 1850 he was appointed Dean of Carlisle. One wonders a little what he himself thought about his Rugby life. It was a peculiarly hard position that he was called upon to fill, for Arnold had cast a glamour over Rugby, and had died at the very summit of his fame. He was a born schoolmaster, and Tait was not. His friends seem to have recognized this, and a man of his shrewdness and keen perception must have recognized it too. Dean Bradley, Stanley's suc- cessor at Westminster, who was an under-master dur- ing his administration, says of him — "His tenure of the Headmastership was a very remarkable instance of goodness and good sense, and I need hardly add very good abilities, enabling a man to fill a post for which he was not specially designed." And Dean Lake's testimony points in the same direction. "Per- haps his life at Rugby was the least marked period [ 190 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH of Tait's career, though I think it greatly developed some of his best qualities. But as the Headmaster of a public school he was hardly a success. He succeeded a man of real genius and extraordinary force of charac- ter, by far the greatest teacher of his day. Tait was anything but a finished scholar himself, and he had to run the gauntlet of a good deal of severe criticism. At the same time, Rugby offered him a more conge- nial and more independent sphere than Oxford, and gave a great scope to his tact, and his natural power of dealing with men." The change from Rugby to Carlisle was very great. Indeed, there could hardly have been a stronger con- trast. The place, the duties, the opportunities, all were quite different. One friend wanted him to write a book. Another, Samuel Waldegrave, who later was himself to be the Bishop of that very diocese, had other views for him. Many of the Cathedrals at that time seem to have been maintained as luxuries of elegant leisure. Waldegrave points out two great op- portunities. "I do hope that in your hands the post of Dean will prove not to be a completely useless office. If a man has judgment and courage, a Dean might prove an invaluable person in a Cathedral town. Not only might he perform the other duties of his office, but he might be the foremost man in preaching the Gospel to the people. But this will re- [ 191 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN quire that he should step out of the beaten path by instituting some such thing as an evening service, or a service at some suitable hour for the poor.'' Both in Carlisle -and London Tait followed this advice. Again, his friend urges upon him the need of hospitality. "May I ask you to forgive me if I suggest another subject for serious thought? Cannot you as Dean be kind to some of the poorer clergy? It is quite painful to see how great people forget our Lord's command to invite those who cannot repay them. Great luncheons are provided when the rich come in to infirmary sermons, to which they and their wives and their daughters go, while the utmost a poor clergyman can expect is a dinner for himself occasionally, while his wife and children may go anywhere. Do, my dear Tait, be kind to the poor clergy." Excellent as was the advice, if he had known Mrs. Tait he might have known that it would be superfluous. As the Bishop of London's wife, she tried to know personally every one of the thousand clergymen of the diocese, and neither she nor her husband willingly let an opportunity of doing kindness pass them by. The work at Carlisle was not Tait's only responsibil- ity at this time. He was appointed on a Commission for inquiring into the condition of the University of Oxford, and suggesting various modifications and re- forms. The work of the Commission was bitterly [ 192 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH opposed in many quarters. So far as Oxford was concerned, there seem to have been many who held the doctrine that whatever is, is right; and who looked upon any investigation as little short of sacri- lege. And yet, there were many things where change was greatly to be desired. The aim of the Commis- sion was, so far as might be, to broaden the influence and work of the University, by giving to its govern- ing Board a more representative character, and by opening its doors more widely to students of every class. The much-vexed question of subscription to religious tests they could but touch upon, as "habit- uating the mind to give a careless assent to truths which it has never considered, and naturally leading to sophistry in the interpretation of solemn obliga- tions." Tait points out the mingled absurdity and irreverence of some of the oaths which were still preserved in certain Colleges. "Why," he asks, "should a man be forced solemnly to call the Holy Trinity to witness that he will obey statutes which he knows to be almost entirely abrogated?" And he calls attention to the ancient obligation upon a newly- elected Fellow to swear, "under the pain of anathema and the wrath of Almighty God, that he will always wear a lilliput" — whatever that may be — "and that he will never walk abroad in the fields without hav- ing another Fellow as his companion." For the final [ 193 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN Report of the Commission Tait was largely responsi- ble. It was described by the Edinburgh Review as "a truly remarkable document, and one which is destined, we are persuaded, to form an era in the constitutional history of this country." Meanwhile, at Carlisle he was not idle. The fabric of the Cathedral, its revenues, its practical work, all de- manded his attention. The views of his fellow-labourers often differed from his own. "At times,'' he writes, "I feel greatly depressed here by the uncongenial spirits amongst whom I am thrown. But, O Lord, give me to understand that nothing great was ever done without effort, and amidst much opposition." It was a place where he was brought daily face to face with the grim realities of life. "I am visiting what seem to be three death-beds. What a difference between the three ! O God, save me from the danger of being made callous by the sight of so much misery as is brought before me in this town." And we find the same strain recurring in his diary again and again. In the wretchedness that is all around him he perceives a constant temptation to melancholy or to hardness. But in his closeness to the naked deformity of pov- erty and vice he knows that there may be something good, and both he and his wife did all in their power to bring brightness and comfort into the lives of those who sorely needed both. Notwithstanding the dislike [ 194 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH of some of the Cathedral dignitaries, both Cathedral and Deanery were always open to the poor. The domestic life of public men is apt to be left in the background. In many cases, perhaps in most cases, it is the fountain from which they draw their power. But the birth and education of children, the lighter hours, the happy days at home — all these are over- shadowed, when the story of the life comes to be told, by the public events in which the public man took part, and which give to his life an interest which is not so much personal as official. The very things that mark a man in his home and with his neighbours are the things that find the smallest place in his biogra- phy. But with Tait it could not have been altogether so in any case, and the appalling tragedy which swept down upon his home at Carlisle brings his family life into very special prominence. Mrs. Tait has left a record of that spring of 1856 which would bring tears from the heart of a stone. Scarlet fever was raging in Carlisle, and it appeared at the Deanery in its most malignant form. One after another, five little daughters fell ill, and died. Each time that the stricken father returned from the grave, it was to find that the plague had claimed another victim. In his private diary there is this record — "I have not had the heart to make any entry in my journal now for above nine weeks. When last I wrote I had six [ 195 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN daughters on earth ; now I have one, an infant. O God, Thou hast dealt very mysteriously with us. We have been passing through deep waters; our feet were well-nigh gone. But though Thou slay us, yet will we trust in Thee. They are gone from us, all but my beloved Craufurd and the babe. Thou hast reclaimed the lent jewels. Yet, O Lord, shall I not thank Thee now? I will thank Thee not only for the children Thou hast left to us, but for those Thou hast re- claimed. I thank Thee for the blessing of the last ten years, and for all the sweet memories of their little lives — memories how fragrant with every bliss- ful, happy thought. I thank Thee for the full assur- ance that each has gone to the arms of the Good Shepherd, whom each loved according to the capacity of her years. I thank Thee for the bright hopes of a happy reunion, when we shall meet to part no more. O Lord, for Jesus Christ's sake, comfort* our desolate hearts. May we be a united family still in heart through the communion of saints — through Jesus Christ our Lord." An experience like this must leave its mark through life — and it came at what may be called the turning- point of Tait's career. The desolate family fled from the Deanery with the two remaining children, and took refuge in a country-house near by, from which the Dean went daily to Carlisle. But a new work was al- [196] THE ENGLISH CHURCH most ready for him. As Headmaster of Rugby and as Dean of Carlisle he had been a public man, but in each case his public was local and provincial. His abilities and his affliction combined to bring him into prominence, and in the fall of 1856 he was appointed by Lord Palmerston to the vacant see of London. There is a well-known story of two labourers, who were discussing together, while they broke stone upon the road, what was the easiest life a man could live. The one declared that, for absolute rest and idleness, he should prefer to be a judge. The other disagreed. "For a good, soft, aisy job, give me a bishop." But whoever is of this opinion only needs to read a life like Tait's to be thoroughly disabused. It is the custom in the Church of England for the bishops to drop their surnames, and to sign them- selves by the names of their dioceses. And it is no mere form, for a bishop's life must be merged to great extent in the life of the diocese of which he is head. A. C. Tait now becomes, for twelve years, A. C. London; and then A. C. Cantuar., as Arch- bishop of Canterbury, for fourteen years more. And the change in signature serves as a perpetual re- minder of the great change in his life. From this time on there was no question of prominence in the English Church with which Tait did not come into some direct relation, and some idea may be formed [ 197 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN of the magnitude of his work from the fact that at his death over sixty thousand letters were found on file. Not only was there much work. There was much responsibility as well. There were difficult questions to be handled, calling in many voices for diligence and tact. Dr. Hook wrote from Leeds — "I believe the thankfulness at your appointment to arise from the conviction that you are a just man. The virtue which we require in a Bishop, in these days of party- violence, is justice. We require a just and impartial ruler, and as you have never been a partisan, and are known to possess all the other qualifications of a good Bishop, such we expect you to be." Both in its public and private relations, the office of Bishop is peculiarly well-fitted to draw down upon its holder abuse and misrepresentation of many sorts. The clergy have been called by one of their own number a most unruly set of men; and when the relation between pastor and people is not a pleasant one, it is difficult to imagine how anything could be more unpleasant. The Bishop has to make these rough places smooth. The ease with which theological feel- ings may be wounded is well-known. The Bishop has to arbitrate between conflicting opinions, which are sometimes really irreconcilable, and which are almost always, by the violence of party spirit, made to seem [ 198 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH so, as best he may. And then again, there is a sense in which conscience must be recognized as a court of last resort, and yet it is the Bishop's duty to inter- pret and maintain the Church's law. The church at Hursley, of which John Keble was vicar for so many years, was surrounded by noble trees; and there was an old woman in the parish whose conscience would not permit her to worship there, because the Scrip- ture forbade the children of Israel to worship in groves! Such consciences are not uncommon, and with some of them Tait was brought in contact. There can be no harder work than to reason with those who do not seem to know what reason is, and to apply the law to those who are determined that they will be persecuted. There are such men to cari- cature every party in the Church. And it is the Bishop's unhappy duty to have to try to deal with them as if they were men of sense. It is of course impossible even to mention the public questions with which Tait was called upon to deal while Bishop of London. Like any man in his posi- tion, he could do nothing without abuse from some quarter. The publication of Essays and Reviews, in I860, marked, in a sense, a crisis in the Church. It consisted of seven essays, in varying style, by seven men, of varying attainments. Their subjects, now-a- days, are familiar and commonplace enough, but [ 199 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IX there were one or two which at that time called forth special condemnation. Popular theology is always very jealous of the Bible, and it goes without saying that it should always be approached and studied with the utmost reverence. But one of the essayists seemed to speak of its inspiration in a flippant, not to say a contemptuous tone. While the book was being eagerly discussed, two of the authors were brought to trial, and Tait, as Bishop of London, was a member of the Court. He disliked the book, and did not hesitate to say so. But it seemed to him that the particular charges which were brought against it were not proven, and he so decided. In his first Charge, he had spoken of the dangers of the time. "It is not to be denied that there is, in this age, a great dan- ger of what we may call intellectualism, as contra- distinguished from a sound and vigorous exercise of the intellect. If a young clergyman is a man of prayer, if, having a reverential sense of God's presence, he seeks to be taught of God, I cannot myself fear that he will be beguiled by the dangerous temptations of a sceptical and would-be intellectual age. But let him beware in his early days how he trifles with in- tellectualism, lest his whole nature be corrupted, and a shallow half-belief come to be all that he has to offer, either to his people or his own soul, instead of deep-rooted love and faith." But utterances like these [ 200 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH were quite lost sight of, and the decision was taken in many quarters as expressing entire approbation and approval. Dr. Pusey, with his usual pious vigour, called it "a soul-destroying judgment." And the "religious" papers were quite as explicit. "The course taken by the Bishop of London is disastrous to his own reputation. It has awakened mingled shame and indignation, not only among the digni- taries and clergy of the Church, but, we may add, the laity, always excepting the minority of the clergy who may be called latitudinarians, and that section of the laity who may be called freethinkers." There was a practical repetition of all this in the Colenso case. Tait disliked Colenso's views, but he was unfortunate enough to see that the case involved considerations of order and of jurisdiction, as well as of heresy. And the vials of wrath were poured out upon his head. In all such cases, as he himself said, "the great evil is that the liberals are deficient in religion, and the religious are deficient in liberality." But these were questions that did not directly con- cern the diocese of London. The troubles there had to do, for the most part, with the advance of ritual- ism. Among the adherents of this movement, then as now, were some very devoted, and some veiy foolish men. There were times when it seemed as if with some of them the care of their vestments and their [ 201 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN postures was of more importance than the care of souls, and that their own eccentricities represented the law and the prophets to their eyes. While the disgraceful rioting which occurred at several ritualis- tic churches must be condemned in the very strongest terms, it is a question if those who brought it on were wholly free from blame. Tait did his best to bring order out of what, in some parishes, was literal chaos, and to induce the combatants not to make of religious questions a mere matter of legal right. We have seen already that religious papers are apt to become maudlin when they speak of those whose views they do not approve. Thus, Tait is called "that ecclesiastical bully, the Presbyterian-minded Bishop of London, who with all his professions of large-heartedness and toleration, has shown himself to be as narrow-minded a bigot and as un-Christian a gentleman as ever disgraced a bishopric." But the charge is as false in fact as it is contemptible in spirit. But controversies, after all, are like the froth that rises to the surface. A man's real strength must never be looked for there. One of the notes of Tait's London episcopate was his eager desire to bring home the Gospel to the poor. He raised large sums of money for work in neglected districts. He made himself familiar with every parish in his [ 202 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH charge, and sought to make his influence reach out over those who would not go to church. He did not rest, in spite of many difficulties in the way, until he had opened St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey for evening services. At his wife's suggestion, he or- ganized women's work. He sought to have churches kept open habitually, for private prayer. At the be- ginning of his episcopate he won for himself the reproach of "undignified and almost Methodist" pro- ceedings, by open-air preaching in the streets. There were confirmations and sermons and committees, be- sides a business correspondence which sometimes amounted to a hundred letters in a day — and all this for a man not in robust health. But he found time to speak to emigrants at London Docks, to costermongers at Covent Garden Market, to railway- porters from the platform of a locomotive, to omni- bus-drivers in their great yard at Islington. He held special services at Bethnal Green, for those people whom we have come to know as the "submerged tenth." The Times describes one of the services thus. "Long before eight o'clock, the time appointed for the commencement of the service, the spacious church was densely crowded by such an auditory as it is quite safe to say was never before seen in any church in England. The people who assembled were of the poorest possible classes — men with fustian jackets [ 203 ] M EN AND MOVE M E N T S I N and unshaven faces; women whose faces betokened the sad privations they were called upon to endure; and many in absolute rags." Another newspaper said of the sermon — "It was entirely extemporaneous, and the striking earnestness and sincerity which characterized his affectionate and eloquent discourse appeared to sustain throughout the attention of every member of the congregation." In the summer of 1866 the cholera appeared in London, and in a few days there were many hun- dred cases. It was mostly confined to the poorer dis- tricts of the East End. Tait was recovering from a severe illness, but he and Mrs. Tait remained in London, and were incessant in their care upon the sick. When the epidemic had abated, Mrs. Tait established a Home for girls whom it had made orphans, in which she took the closest interest throughout her life. Her own girls whom she had lost made it a sacred task. In 1862, Tait had been offered the Archbishopric of York, which he declined. The vast work in London seemed to have the strongest claim. But in 1868 Archbishop Longley died, and Disraeli offered Tait the see of Canterbury, which he was to hold for fourteen years. It was recognized beforehand that they would be anxious times. There were those, of course, who were displeased with the appointment. [ 204 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH But a man like Lightfoot could write of it — "Look- ing to the future of the English Church at a great crisis in her history, I can but feel most deeply thank- ful for it." Thirl wall, Stanley, Maurice, all wrote, not only in congratulation, but in hope. And a High Churchman like Hook, who by this time had become Dean of Chichester, sent a characteristic letter, in which jest and earnest closely touch each other. He had predicted Tait's success at London. Now he predicts yet farther, that he will be among the greatest of many eminent Archbishops. And he speaks of the troubled times that are like to come. "I think in the predicted falling away there will be a persecution of the clergy of all denominations. I am so near the end that I hope it will not come in my time, for I am terribly sensitive, and should not like to burn. The burning of a fat man would be awful!" As Archbishop, it was Tait's province to exercise a moderating influence upon public affairs. Extreme men of every sort were clamouring for extreme measures, and Tait's sound sense and strong love of justice did much towards keeping the balance. There was never a time, of course, when there were not those who were in violent opposition to him. But that must always be the perquisite of any man who holds con- spicuous position. [ 205 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN To follow the life at Lambeth in any detail would involve nothing less than a history of the English Church during those fourteen years. They began with a bitter controversy over the status of the Epis- copal Church in Ireland. It seemed to Tait as if it might be reformed without being disestablished, but eventually disestablishment carried the day. Tait's action is characteristic of the man. There were many who threw up their hands in holy horror, and aban- doned themselves to pious sulkiness. But Tait, though beaten, made the best terms he could. And Arch- bishop Trench of Dublin wrote to him thus — "All Irish Churchmen, if they are not vulgarly thankless, will keep a most grateful memory of all that you did, and sought to do, in aid of our Establishment, while it was passing through the crisis of its fate; and I, with those others who were the immediate witnesses of your efforts, will keep the most grateful record of them all." A controversy of another kind was that which raged over the Athanasian Creed. It is omitted in the American Prayer Book, but is retained in England, and must be said on certain days. It has many claims to respect, no doubt, but it is hardly suitable for public worship. It had fallen into much disuse, and various suggestions were made concerning it. It is exceedingly difficult to be understood, and exceed- [ 206 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH ingly easy to be misunderstood. The experience with it of Bishop Fraser of Manchester was doubtless a common one. "For thirteen years of my ministerial life," he says, "I had charge of a rural parish of two hundred souls. The one intelligent man in my con- gregation was the Squire. Whenever I stood up to recite the Athanasian Creed in his presence he sat down at once, closing his Prayer Book with an angry slam. And the pain this used to give me was poorly compensated by hearing the clerk and some fifty or sixty agricultural labourers reciting their alternate verses, from which I doubt if they received as much edification as they would have done from the more familiar language of the Apostles' Creed." The proposal was made that it be swept away, " bag and baggage, as the barbarous production of a bar- barous age, and a form of words conveying no idea whatever to the mind." To this Pusey and Liddon rejoined that if it should be "degraded" or "muti- lated" in any way, they must retire from the min- istry. To each extreme the notion of compromise was equally odious. An explanatory rubric was suggested. But this Dean Stanley, on the one side, scorned as "a miserable attempt to explain away simple and emphatic words"; and the other side were equally vigorous in their denunciation of change or explana- tion of any kind. Said Archdeacon Denison — "I [ 207 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN often wonder, as I walk about London, what will be found when the bodies of this generation come to be exhumed. There will be a wonderful amount of car- tilage, but very little backbone." The final settlement of the question seems to have pleased nobody — it certainly did not please Tait. But where party-spirit ran so high, it was something that the Church was guided safely through the storm. During those years, as in the years at London, ques- tions concerning ritualism were always coming up. Certainly, comparatively speaking, it can hardly be regarded as a matter of very grave importance. We know that Pusey and Keble did not so regard it. But more than any other subject it has called out, and sometimes still calls out, bitter and indecent controversy. Perhaps it is because it is so much easier to appeal to prejudice than to deeper feel- ings. At any rate, now and again there were dis- putes to be settled whose seriousness was out of all proportion to their cause. Tait introduced an act for the regulation of public worship, which was spoken of as an attempt to put down ritualism. He was no ritualist himself. Some of their doctrines, as that of habitual confession, he regarded with extreme dis- like, as utterly foreign to the spirit of the Church, and liable to many and grave dangers. But it is hard to see how the most violent partisan can represent [ 208 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH him as a persecutor. His desire was, as he himself put it, "to get these disputes quickly and quietly settled on one side or the other, so as to set men free for the greater conflicts and duties which pas- toral work involves." Where law was openly flaunted, his office would not permit him to acquiesce. But he was ready to allow the largest liberty. An American bishop once asked him why he permitted the ritual- ism of the extremest type that was in use in certain parishes in East London. With tears in his eyes, Tait gave this answer. "Bishop, these men realize that those poor lost souls can be saved, and that our blessed Lord is their Saviour as He is ours. Who am I, to meddle with such work as they are doing, in the way they think best, for those who are going down to death?" But when such questions came to him for legal adjudication, he could not help but act. He writes of one such case — "It is heart-break- ing to find how one's hopes are thwarted by these good and earnest men. What they have come to un- derstand by the 'law of the Church' I cannot even conjecture. I have done my best. May God direct all." These are but examples of the many matters that came before him. Twice he was brought to the very threshold of the grave by illness. In 1878 he lost his only son, who was just entering on the work of the [ 209 ] MEN AXD MOVEMENTS TN ministry ; and then in a few months he lost his wife. It became evident that he had not long to live. It is inevitable that a public man should be thought of, sometimes, as a mere machine. But this will not do for Tait. He had enormous capacitv for work, but he objected seriously to what he called the modern ideal of a bishop, as "a man in a chronic state of per- spiration." Amid the constant pressure of public duty, he had two rules of life. The first, to keep the spirit fresh by constant prayer. The second, to quicken and enlarge the intelligence by the constant reading, un- der whatever drawbacks, of books upon other subjects than those belonging to his working hours. Of course, in his correspondence, there were many letters from eccentrics and visionaries of various kinds, there were petty quarrels to be smoothed over, and wounded feel- ings to be bound up. But even when it was neces- sary for him to send a severe or stern reply, he was determined that it should be a kind one. He used to say to his secretary in such cases — "Tell him he's a consummate ass, but do it verv kindlv." He never would shut his ears to any call of need. If difficulties were suggested, he would turn to the question in the office for the Consecration of a Bishop — "Will you show yourself gentle, and be merciful for Christ's sake to poor and needy people, and to all strangers des- titute of help?" And the answer — "I will so show [ 210 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH myself, by God's help." We have frequent evidence that he possessed an abundant fund of dry Scotch humour. There is no better example than this. "A worthy man wrote to him at some length, asking him to consider the question whether, 'since the Ascen- sion of our blessed Lord into heaven,' it was not right that the Lord's Prayer should be used with a clause as to His mediatorial work appended, 'as is the case in other Christian prayers.' The reply, by the hand of his chaplain, was — 'In answer to your letter I am directed by the Archbishop to say that it does not appear to him to be necessary that you should under- take to make any additions to the Lord's Prayer.' " He died at his home in Addington on the Advent Sunday of 1882, and was buried in the village church- yard beside his wife and son. Bishop Davidson writes — "None who were present will easily forget that scene; the white mantle of snow that covered the countryside, the utter stillness of the winter air, the trees of the long elm-avenue wreathed with white hoar-frost, the slow voices of the bells from one church and another across the snow-bound fields, while the long procession wound slowly through the Park, fol- lowing the plain hand-bier which had carried so many Addington villagers to their last rest, now borne by the loving hands of men who were every one of them his friends; and then the bright triumphant service [211 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN led by the village choir, and the great gathering of some of England's foremost men, with the Queen's two sons at their head, beside the open grave. All was solemn to the last degree in the very strength of its simplicity, and in its quiet appropriateness to the lessons of his life." There is a monument in Can- terbury Cathedral with this inscription from the pen of Dr. Vaughan. A GREAT ARCHBISHOP, JUST, DISCERNING, DIGNIFIED, STATESMANLIKE, WISE TO KNOW THE TIME AND RESOLUTE TO REDEEM IT. HE HAD ONE AIM: TO MAKE THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND MORE AND MORE THE CHURCH OF THE PEOPLE: DRAWING TOWARDS IT BOTH BY WORD AND GOOD EXAMPLE ALL WHO LOVE THINGS TRUE AND PURE, BEAUTIFUL AND OF GOOD REPORT. ■r ? Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches. [ 212 ] Chapter tnit. DEAN STANLEY IT was a matter of congratulation to many of Stan- ley's theological opponents that he was never made a bishop. When Tait was transferred from Lon- don to Canterbury, Dean Hook wrote to congratulate him on his new honours, and added — "If our friend Stanley is appointed to London, I shall turn Red Re- publican, and go in for Disestablishment." And there were many more who regarded him with the same distrust. Much of it, no doubt, was due to prejudice; much to sheer ignorance, which would not take the trouble to inform itself. But there were good reasons which made Stanley unsuited for a bishopric, entirely apart from odium, theologicum of any sort. His gifts were distinctly literary, and not in the least executive. His sympathies were more strongly developed than his judgment; and although this is a failing that leans to virtue's side, and that is far more amiable than many more correct qualities, it would have un- fitted him for a position which has to deal with tan- gled and complicated cases of many kinds. He hated the details of business and of administration. "There are two things," he used to say, "that I can never [ 213 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN learn ; one is to understand arithmetic, and the other is to take care of myself." A man who was so help- less in his own affairs would have been hopelessly burdened with the conduct of a diocese. And, still apart from any question of theology, there are other reasons which made it far better that Stanley should not have been called to the highest office in the Church. We have seen in the case of Tait that a man who becomes a bishop does not cease to be a man. His dignity does not innate him; or if, in any case, it does, it is the surest sign that the honour has been unworthily bestowed. Like his Master, he is among us as one that serveth. His cares, though they are various and many, do not break his spirit, for Christ is with him to help him in his work. But for all that, the faithful bishop has time for little else. Somehow or other, the office overlays the man. It calls for the very best qualities of heart and mind, and then it demands them for its own uses. The Eng- lish custom, by which the bishop drops his surname, and is known after his consecration by the name of his see, is only a sign of that which comes to pass. If there was much leisure in the old life, there can be but little in the new. If there was time to spend in libraries, with manuscripts, it will be heavily curtailed; for there will be many men coming on many errands. If delightful letters to friends were often written, they [214 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH will be fewer if the end of life shows sixty thousand official letters on file, as it did with Tait. It is an honourable office, if one may venture to say so with- out seeming to patronize. We know that he who de- sires it desireth a good work. But he must pay the price. To a greater or less degree — and so, indeed, it is true of all of us — he must merge his individu- ality in his work. But it is to a greater degree with him. He is no longer Jones, or Smith, or Brown. He is the Bishop of London, or of Waiapu. It is an office that calls for the best and strongest men, and that often gets them. Butler was a bishop, and Ken, and Andrewes, and Wilson, and in our own day Lightfoot. In this country it is enough to men- tion Phillips Brooks. But for a few who are remem- bered, many are forgotten — many who were hard- working, faithful men. And if Stanley had qualities which would have made him out of place as a bishop, he had other qualities which are not so common that they could have been devoted to any exclusive office, however honourable, without loss. We must be glad that throughout his life his own personality ever re- tains the foremost place. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley was born at Alderley, in Cheshire, at the end of 1815. He was what would be called in Scotland a "son of the manse," for his fa- ther was rector of Alderley for more than thirty years, [ 215 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN until he was appointed Bishop of Norwich in 1837. At fourteen Stanley was sent to Rugby, an event which left its impress on his whole life. Whatever he did, he did intensely, and his delight at Rugby knew no bounds. He gains a prize, the first of many, and he writes home — "There is a German sentence which we had in our lesson the other day, which is f My heart laughs to me in my body;' that is just my feeling.'' His love of school-life does not come from a mere overflow of animal spirits. He was entirely lacking in that adoration of sport which boys — and men — so often cany to excess. He hopes to improve in foot-ball. "I think," he writes, "I kick the ball, whereas before they used to tell me I only pushed it with my foot." But his chief interest lay in quite an- other direction. Already he has become a hero-wor- shipper, although his worship is half-concealed as yet. Arnold had just come to Rugby, and the school was beginning to feel the touch of the master-hand that was to effect so much. Stanley's parents asked Dr. and Mrs. Arnold to visit them at Alderley, but Stan- ley hopes that they will decline, or will go when he is not at home, because "I stand in such exceeding awe of him that I don't think I could ever have a perfectly comfortable talk with him till our relations as schoolmaster and schoolboy are snapped asunder." He goes on — "I can hardly help laughing every time [216] THE ENGLISH CHURCH I open Boswell's Johnson, to see how very like my feeling towards him is to Boswell's towards Johnson." Throughout his school-life, this is constantly repeated. He dreads lest Arnold may be made a bishop, and so removed from Rugby. He dwells on the power of his sermons. He writes at leaving — "Six Sundays more, and only six. Alas! Alas! I never in the days of my first coming wished so earnestly for the arrival of the holidays as I now dread it. Most sincerely must I thank God for His goodness in placing me here to live with Arnold. But it is fortunate, perhaps, that I can stay here no longer, for the feeling of admiration must grow as long as I have him before me. What I shall do without him I know not. It may be fool- ish, and it may wear away — though God grant that it is not the one, and that it may not do the other — but I can hardly tell you the relief I felt last Sun- day night, when he was hearing the children their lesson, that from all the abounding wickedness in the school and in the world one might always turn to the image of that pure Christian family. As I feel it now it is wound up with my very life." We know that it did not wear away. Long afterwards, when Stanley's life was almost done, he said at Baltimore — "The lapse of years has only served to deepen in me the conviction that no gift can be more valuable than the recollection and the inspiration of a great character [217 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN working on our own. I hope that you may all experi- ence this at some time of your life, as I have done." From Rugby Stanley went to Oxford, where he was scholar at Balliol, and later Fellow and Tutor of Uni- versity College. He was ordained by the Bishop of Oxford in 1839, and for seventeen years before and after his ordination Oxford was his home, though there were frequent visits to Norwich and to London, and breaks for foreign travel. As we have seen al- ready more than once, Oxford in the thirties meant John Henry Newman. There were few who, like Tait, were not affected by him, and over Stanley's romantic mind he exercised a powerful but peculiar influence. There is something very characteristic of Stanley's habit of searching for resemblances rather than for differences in what he has to say of Newman. "The point that most occupies my mind just now is New- man. I heard him preach in the parish church on Sunday. There were things that reminded me that he was the High Churchman. But the general tone, the manner, the simple language, reminded me of no other than Arnold. There was the same overpowering conviction conveyed that he was a thorough Christian — I had almost said, a man of the purest charity. I have had a long talk about him with Faber, who with Marriott worships him as we do Arnold, and from what he says of him, I think rightly. He does appear [218 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH to be a man of the most self-denying goodness that can well be conceived, and to do good to a very great extent. I dread more and more a collision be- tween Arnold and the High Church. At present New- man and Arnold seem to be almost antagonist powers, whereas really they are of the very same essence, so to speak." Under other circumstances, one wonders if a man of Stanley's temperament would not have fal- len under the spell of Newman's power. But Arnold had already been set upon the pinnacle, and there was not room for both. Moreover, it was Newman the preacher, not Newman the Tractarian leader, who ex- cited Stanley's admiration. His feeling for Pusey was quite different. He describes one of Pusey's sermons on the Song of Solomon as "very long and dispropor- tioned, most of it learned and clever. The general argument, which I thought veiy weak, was singularly anti-rationalistic; while the digressions, which were very long, were rationalistic, and against the spirit of the rest. There were slight attacks on the spirit of the age, and on the German neology, which rather amused me as coming from him." Stanley preached his first sermon at Bergh Apton, a village near Norwich, while on a visit to his father. It was on the text — "He loveth our nation, and hath built us a synagogue." In later years he rarely failed to interest, and his power over all kinds of [ 219 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN people was very great. This sermon has perished, but a curious reminiscence of it has been preserved. After the service, two old women of the parish were over- heard discussing the sermon and the preacher. The first old woman observed to her friend — "Well, I do feel empty-like." "And so do I!" returned the other; "that young man didn't give us much to feed on." Taken as a judgment upon sermons for which the only preparation has been derived from books, per- haps it was not too severe. The years at Oxford were comparatively uneventful. They helped to make the man, but they were marked by no great crisis in his life. They saw the beginnings of his literary work. They gave abundant opportunity for those foreign journeys in which he always took such keen delight. In the exciting events of those years Stanley of course bore his part, as we shall see, but they had no direct effect upon his life. As tutor, he is distressed at the apparent apathy of his audience. "The only unpleasant part I find in my lectures is the total absence of any expression of feeling in the faces of my twelve auditors. Not a shadow of joy or sorrow ever passes over their immovable features." But a little later, he succeeds in making an impres- sion. "You will be glad to hear that my audience has at last given signs of human feeling by a burst of laughter at a ludicrous story. I was quite ashamed [ 220 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH at the effect of my own wit. I have also succeeded in discovering all their names at length." We see that his boyish admiration for Arnold still continues, and is only deepened with advancing years. When Arnold delivered his Inaugural Lecture as Professor of Modern History at Oxford, Stanley calls it "one of the most glorious days I ever enjoyed here;" and he goes on in the same strain as the lectures pro- ceed. "His lectures have undoubtedly produced a deep, and I believe a lasting impression in his favour, and dispelled for ever misunderstandings which noth- ing else but his own personal presence could have dispelled. No other professor has produced such an effect, I should think, for centuries.'' The Oxford life came to an end at last, or rather was interrupted, for the time came when it was resumed. In 1849 the Bishop of Norwich died, and shortly after Stanley was offered the Deanery of Carlisle, partly, no doubt, because of his own merits, and partly as a mark of respect to his father's memory. He declined, and his friend Tait was appointed in his stead. But when, two years later, he was appointed Canon of Canterbury, he accepted, and a new period began. At Canterbury, for the first time, he had a home of his own. His mother and sister lived with him, and he delighted then, as always, in gathering about him [ 221 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN men of all professions, and of every variety of opinion. The great Cathedral, with its wealth of associations, was a constant joy. The abundant leisure he em- ployed with abundant work. But when he was re- called to Oxford as Professor of Ecclesiastical History, his duty seemed clear. His departure was regarded as a public calamity. "What an end of life," he writes, "these partings make! I should be torn to shreds if they were to come more than once in seven years." Years after, when he was leaving Oxford for Westminster, he looked back to Canterbury. "I never cease to be grateful for the seven years in that green island; but I feel that it was good to take to sea again, and on that sea I suppose that it will now be my fate to be tossed about as long as I live." And the new life at Oxford was in many respects emi- nently suited to his tastes and powers. He writes to Principal Shairp concerning it — "You rightly argue that I have at last found my footing here. My lec- tures appear to be better understood, and I find that I can say what I wish without being either attacked or suspected. The evil, no doubt, still is the dearth of able, serious students." But Stanley's eager enthu- siasm and ready sympathy went far towards supplying even this defect. "My heart leaps up when I behold an undergraduate," he would say. And while there is a stupidity of indifference which is impervious alike [ 222 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH to eloquence and to reproof, which knows neither shame nor aspiration, the shyness and uncertainty of one's own powers which sometimes takes the appear- ance of stupidity was never proof against him. While at Canterbury, he had served as Secretary of the unpopular University Commission, of which Tait was also an influential member. As Canon of Christ Church, Stanley found himself one of a body of men whose relations to one another were peculiar. What must have been awkward then seems only amusing now. "This morning at Chapter," he tells his mother, "a discussion arose about the former mode of ser- vices in Christ Church Cathedral. 'I stated the fact to be so,' said Pusey, who was sitting by Ogilvie, 'in preaching before the University.' 'Can you refer to it?' asked Jacobson. 'It was in my condemned ser- mon,' replied Pusey. I could not help stealing a glance at Ogilvie, who was one of the judges that condemned the sermon. You can imagine the black thundercloud. It burst afterwards in another direction. Another discussion arose about the income of the College property. 'We shall only be laying up stores for the rapaciousness of future Commissioners.' Cer- tainly the Chapter here contains very explosive ele- ments." There was to be one more change. At the end of 1863 Dean Trench of Westminster was appointed Arch- [ 223 ] MEN" AND MOVEMENTS I X bishop of Dublin, and Stanley was offered the vacant place. "It seems made for you/' wrote Dean Church of St. Paul's. "You could not go on lecturing for ever," wrote Bishop Tait, "and the calmness of the Deanery, with its great position, will be a blessing." Other friends wrote in the same strain. At Oxford the feel- ing was one of dismay that they were to lose him, and Stanley's resolution was shaken more than once. "Would that I had declined this wretched Deanery, or prevented the offer of it;" he exclaimed. And again — "To leave this dear house will be a Paradise Lost." But the change came at the very time that a new and great happiness was coming into his life, and the sorrow of loss could not persist before the joy of gain. In the last month of 1863 he was mar- ried in Westminster Abbey to Lady Augusta Bruce, and a fortnight later he was installed as Dean, a posi- tion which he held for eighteen years, until his death in 1881. This is the chronology of Stanley's life — a life marked by much accomplishment, rather than by great events. He bore his part in the stirring controversies of the time, but because it was an unofficial part he also did much else. He was in touch with all sorts and condi- tions of men. He had many interests, and many tasks. He was the friend of the Queen, and of the humblest labourer in Westminster. His was a life crammed full, [ 224 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH and if we are to penetrate at all below the surface we must plan our way. Without entering into the details of theological controversy, we may first glance at his opinions. A brief notice of his many travels will bring us to his writings, many of which were quick- ened and illuminated by his journeys. And we may close with some consideration of his life with his friends and in his home. I. When Stanley died, he directed that this verse should be placed upon his tomb. "I know that all things come to an end; but Thy commandment is exceeding broad." Party names are often misapplied. They must always be so unless they are used as words of convenience, rather than as accurate — and exclusive — definitions of principle. They are bound to mean very different things with different men. Newman's High Church- manship was not like that which led to ritual riots. The snarling, spiteful spirit of the Record for many stormy years could not be taken as rightly represent- ing the Evangelical party in the Church. And the term "Broad Churchman" can be applied to almost any extreme of good and bad, and can carry with it almost any amount of admiration or of reproach. It may mean that a man is the slave of Christ, as St. Paul was, and does not stop to inquire too closely [ 225 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN into the rights and privileges which attend his ser- vice. It may mean, in common with other party- words, that there is one particular direction in which the offending of weak brethren is not to be regarded. Or it may mean such an indifference to historical and external religion, as almost to justify the frantic hor- ror of a Virginia clergyman, who repelled the charge of Broad Churchmanship as "a stigma against a man's character that can never be recalled; a charge at a man's character that can never be erased in the eyes of the world." Assuredly, with Stanley it did not mean this last; but a Broad Churchman we need not hesitate to call him. It is the fashion in some quarters to accuse him of being indefinite and vague in his religious views. It is true, there were some things that he did not know. He did not imagine that he, or any party with which he was connected, was excluded from that saying of St. Paul's — "Now we know in part." And his broad sympathy may have sometimes given him the appear- ance of being indifferent to erroneous opinions in his longing to be of help to erring men. But there was nothing indefinite about the fundamentals of his faith. "I believe that Jesus Christ is both God and man." This stands behind all else. Beyond this he advocates always and everywhere the largest liberty, and we trace the influence of Arnold in the distinction [ 226 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH which he seems to draw between Christ's religion and Christ's Church. Perhaps his zeal for the one leads him at times to minimize the importance of the other. He was not a profound theologian, and in some things he may have been too lax. At any rate, he did not, like the ancient Pharisees and their spiritual — or their unspiritual — descendants, build up a fence about the law. He advocates the widest com- prehension. He denies that unity of doctrine is essen- tial to the idea of a Christian Church, and declares that absolute unity of religious opinion on all sub- jects involves the idea of absolute intellectual per- fection, and is neither to be looked for nor desired. "For myself," he writes, "I should not ask more to make up the unity of the Church even in heaven, than that they all loved one another as Christ's redeemed servants, and all loved God in Christ." It is easy, of course, to point out omissions in such a view as this. The question is, whether they are really omitted, or whether the greater implies and includes the less. We are not unfamiliar with a somewhat similar saying which is made to carry with it a great deal that is not directly expressed. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On [ 227 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IX these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." To be a Broad Churchman ought to imply a lack of partv bitterness. Alas! that it does not always do mi. The true Broad Churchman is not a party-man at all. except in self-defence. There may be a danger lest his indifference to small questions may extend to great ones. It sometimes happens. I do not say that it neyer happened in Stanley's case. But it cannot be said of Stanley's toleration that it was confined to any one direction. He was hated alike by each of the two opposing parties in the Church. When he enlisted sympathy on the one side, he repelled it on the other, and those to whom religion was a thing of High or Low could not account for his position. There were many to whom to admire Newman meant to condemn Hampden, and to uphold Hampden meant to condemn Ward. But with Stanley it was not so at all. His loye for Arnold did not make him underyalue Newman's power. He defends Hampden and Ward alike — not that he agrees with either, but because each seems condemned by a hasty and inconclusive judgment. He writes of Newman — "I have read Tract 90, and almost all its consequences. The result clearly is, that Roman Catholics may become mem- bers of the Church and universities of England, which I for one cannot deplore." He describes Pusey's first [ 22S ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH sermon after his condemnation — "To me, I confess, the mere sight of a vast crowd hanging on the lips of a good man is so pathetic that I would go a good way to see it. It was like most of his sermons, a divine soul clothed in a very earthly body. The beginning very pathetic and dignified — 'It will be in the mem- ory of some that three years since, etc' — and the end, on the needs of the manufacturing towns, very earnest and solemn. I do sincerely say, God bless him, and keep him amongst us." But again and again he finds Pusey in violent opposition to him. At the time of the agitation over the Gorham Judg- ment concerning baptismal regeneration, he insists that the real issue was not whether the view put for- ward by Mr. Gorham was true or false, but whether a bishop has a right to impose upon his clergy a new test, which is sanctioned neither by Scripture, nor Creeds, nor Councils, nor Articles, nor the Liturgy. "What right," he asks, "have the anti-Gorhamites to assume it to be essential to a true Church to define accurately even important points, when the Apostoli- cal Church system was a mass of open questions?" When Maurice was dismissed from his position at King's College because of his writings on the subject of eternal punishment, Stanley maintained the same position. Who were the Council of King's College that they should force upon their most distinguished [ 229 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN Professor a rigid definition of the word "eternal," and of the theory of punishment? On the publica- tion of Essays and Reviews, he felt that the authors had made a grave mistake. He recognized the mis- understandings and perversions to which the joint authorship would lead, and of the work itself he wrote — "No book which treats of religious questions can hope to make its way to the heart of the Eng- lish nation unless it gives at the same time that it takes away." But the outcry against it was so clam- orous, and so foolishly undiscrhninating, that he did not hesitate to come to its defence. He invited Bishop Colenso to preach in Westminster Abbey, not because he sympathized with his opinions, but because he sympathized with his character and his distress. His idea of breadth was, not that it does not matter what a man thinks, or says, or does; but rather, that Christ's religion was designed to meet the infinitely varying needs of men, to embrace the East and the West, to afford a full scope for the play of human faculties. He insists on the real difference between unity and uniformity. So, for himself, he could wear no party badge. He writes — "I cannot go out to battle in Saul's armour. I must fight with my own sling and stone, or not at all I have never been able to reconcile myself to those unreasoning, undiscrimi- nating war-cries. Whatever power I have been able [ 230 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH to exert has been mainly derived from this absti- nence." It is impossible not to be struck with the perfect fairness of the man, and with his contempt for shams of every sort. Thus, he describes with the utmost in- dignation the method of Ward's condemnation and degradation at Oxford in 1845. "The more I reflect upon it, the more simply shocking is the impression left. A mob of twelve hundred persons assuming judi- cial functions, after the most solemn warnings of their incompetency, on a question which it is quite impos- sible they can have studied, and then proceeding to inflict a sentence such as, in its present form, has never been inflicted on any one in the whole history of the University. The great mass, I suppose, voted on both sides with their party, the Puseyite side vot- ing for Ward, as they would vote against Whately, or had voted against Hampden; the others, as they had voted, and will vote, against any one who breaks in on the established usage. 'What are you going to do?' one old clergyman was heard to say to another. c Oh, I don't know; vote for the old Church, I sup- pose; come and have a rubber afterwards.' The Doc- tors gave their votes as they sat aloft in the semi- circle. The others filed out at the two doors, by each of which stood one of the two Proctors. It must have been a trying thing for Church, the Junior Proctor, [ 231 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN friend of Newman and Ward, to see the tide rolling by, his blood boiling, as he said, from time to time, as, one after the other, men notorious for utter world- liness gave their placets for the degradation. What impressed me so deeply in the whole scene was the feeling that, had it been in the sixteenth, instead of in the nineteenth century, just the same men, with just the same arguments, would have been voting, not for degradation, but for burning.'' Many years afterwards, Stanley laid down these rules for abating the evils of controversy. "Never condemn a book unless we have read it. Never to condemn in one man the same sentiment which in another we forgive or applaud. Never judge of one side of the question without healing or reading the other side. Never impute to our opponents, whether Churches, sects, or individuals, intentions which they them- selves disclaim, nor fasten upon them opprobrious names which they themselves repudiate. Never attack any one without first making out delib- erately, carefully, seriously, all the points wherein we agree; and then, and not till then, stating the points wherein we disagree; and stating these also to our- selves no less deliberately, carefully, and seriously, lest, after all, there be perchance no disagreement at all, or not that which we thought there was." [ 232 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH To Stanley's love of fairness there must be added another word as to his great — there are some who would say his too great — breadth of sympathy. He laments the curse of every man, that he cannot be liberal on one point without being illiberal on an- other. He protests against the narrowing process that is applied to theological terms, till a noble word like ecclesiastical comes to suggest nothing more than a contest for the abolition or the retention of vest- ments, or the outward machinery of a Christian soci- ety. He defines heresy as "the spirit of combination for party purposes." In an address at Rugby, he re- minds the boys of Arnold's teaching, with which, on this point, we know that Stanley's own views were in complete accord. "Religion, the true religion of Jesus Christ, consists in that which makes us wiser and better, more truthful, more loving, more tender, more considerate, more pure. Therefore, in his view, there was no place or time from which religion is shut out; there is no place or time where we cannot be serving God, by serving our fellow-creatures.'' The evil of sectarianism seems to him the party spirit and uncharitableness, the sin of violent newspapers, and fierce controversialists, and haughty aristocratic scorn — and not the sin of Baxter and of Wesley, of Milton and of Luther. Laying the utmost stress upon points of agreement, and minimizing points of difference, he [ 233 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN had a weakness for heretics, which, if blame-worthy, is amply atoned for by the severity with which they are regarded by some other sections of the Church. One of his pupils relates a characteristic anecdote of his Oxford class-room. "When preparing a lecture upon early Church history, Stanley wished for a large chart giving a list, in order, of the early Fa- thers and the principal heretics. This he entrusted me to draw up on a large sheet from a paper which he furnished; and in giving me his directions he begged that, with a view to distinctness, the heretics might be underlined with red ink. But here arose the difficulty. Who was a heretic? Some one or two great offenders were promptly disposed of; some others were condemned, with a sigh, in deference to general opinion. But it was amusing to see his tenderness for Origen, his unwillingness to brand him even with the faintest mark of disapprobation; and it was only after a struggle that he bid me put c a very small line of red' under his name. 'Perhaps,' he added, with his playful smile, 'they won't see it.'" He was determined to get at the good rather than the bad in every one. The controversies in which he was engaged were almost without exception brought upon him by his defence of some one who seemed to him to be attacked unjustly. He took no pleasure in definition and in limitation. It was sometimes said [ 234 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH of him by his opponents that he was not a Church- man. In one sense, it is a remark that shows the pro- foundest ignorance. But if it means only that he was not an ecclesiastic, it is true. His religious temper is summed up in Charles Wesley's lines — " Weary of all this wordy strife, These motions, forms, and modes, and names, To Thee, the Way, the Truth, the Life, Whose love my simple heart inflames — Divinely taught, at last I fly, With Thee and Thine to live and die." II. The breadth of Stanley's theological horizon was sup- plemented by an enthusiasm for foreign travel. There is a curious parallel between the two regions of his mind. Just as he took no special interest in doc- trines merely as doctrines, but cared rather for their significance and their application; so places as places did not appeal to him, but his interest lay in the associations connected with them. There is a lack in any man who can speak of the Alps as "huge, un- meaning masses,'' and there was this lack in him. But in his pursuit of the historical events belonging to any place, he was indefatigable. The circumstances of his life gave him abundant op- [ 235 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN portunity to gratify his taste for travel. He had the leisure and the means, and from boyhood to old age he was constantly on the wing. His first long trip was to the Pyrenees, when he was twelve years old. The novelty and strangeness of it all gave him in- tense delight. He writes that he and his sister "sat upon the deck screaming with rapture at the swell- ing and rolling and foaming waves." He lost his love for travel simply as travel, and he did not care to visit a place a second time, but no effort was too severe that enabled him to see the scene of a great event, or of something that had impressed him in poetry or fiction. He made many journeys to the continent, with various friends, with his mother and sister, and, after his marriage, with his wife. He was at Bonn with Tait, and at Berlin and Wittenberg with Jowett. He was in Italy with his friend Hugh Pear- son. With Goulburn, afterwards Dean of Norwich, he visited Greece. His description of Venice is a good example of the effect produced upon his mind by travel, and shows just what he lacked and what he appreciated to the full. "The town is striking from its palaces coming down to the water's edge, from the black gondolas, and from any place where you meet with a confluence of canals, and from the islands. But still, I think the general strangeness and beauty have been exaggerated. A city on the [ 236 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH sea, or on a river, may always, more or less, be like it." Thus far he seems singularly impervious to the peculiar charm of Venice. It seems almost stupid to think of it for a moment as possible of comparison with any other place. But in the next sentence he finds what he has missed. "But the Piazza is quite unrivalled. I shall never forget the first view, when we issued into it from a dark lane on a glorious day of Italian sunshine. It seemed as if, at one glance, the whole of Venetian history was unrolled before us." For Stanley, that was the great attraction. "It was not beauty, nor magnificence alone, nor gro- tesqueness. We have been vainly searching after words to describe the peculiar effect. It is a sort of sublime quaintness — the work of a mighty child, with all the strange and lively fancies, and yet with none of the weakness or innocence of a child." He dwells lovingly upon each object in that wonderful Square, even to the pigeons feeding by hundreds on the chequered pavement. "One feels that every one of them would be missed. Every one of them has a story of its own, and tells of the strange, great, fan- tastic fortunes of the proud young state." This is Stanley the traveller. Increasingly blind to the beauties of nature, on the lake of Lucerne he cares only for those spots identified with the story of Wil- liam Tell; he drives through the Alps or the Carpa- [ 237 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN thians with his eyes glued upon his book; he is unmoved by the splendour of a Northern sunset on the Baltic Sea. But wherever man has set his mark, his interest is at once awakened. In 1853, with three companions, he visited Egypt and the Holy Land. On the Fourth Sunday in Lent, he held a service on Mount Sinai. He writes — "I confess that it was with difficulty that, in that place, I could read through the Ten Commandments. And it was hardly less thrilling to read from the Epistle for the day — 'This Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia.'" On his return to England he sums up the journey thus — "It is not one of the least remarkable points of that tour that its parts are so dramatically arranged. From Egypt, through the Exodus to Sinai, and from the Law on Sinai to the Gospel at Jerusalem, and from the Gospel in Pales- tine to the Acts and Epistles at Damascus, at Patmos, and at Ephesus; and from the Acts and Epistles to the first Fathers and Councils at Smyrna, at Nicaea, and at Constantinople. Add to this the burst of knowl- edge through the acquaintance with the Oriental at- mosphere of thought and custom — to see the Bedouin chiefs still representing Ishmael and Esau and Jethro; to see the God of Abraham still worshipped by his Arabian descendants; to see the illustration of psalms and parables in house and field; to see last, I can hardly say least, the successor of the Caesars and [ 238 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH Caliphs on the tottering throne of Constantinople; these things have so settled my thoughts that I have almost lost the wish to travel again." Nine years later, at the Queen's request, he took very much the same journey with the Prince of Wales. Meanwhile, he had been to Spain, and Sweden, and Denmark, and Russia. The Greek Church interested him greatly, and at the marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh to the daughter of the Czar of Russia he officiated at the English service. His last long jour- ney, taken only three years before his death, was to America. Despite the absence of antiquities, his his- torical imagination did not lack food. He was fired with a vision of the vast and mysterious destiny which lay before the American people; and even in three centuries very much may happen. At Provi- dence he was reminded of Roger Williams, and traced his progress over hill and valley till he crossed the river from Massachusetts, and unfurled in a new com- monwealth the banner of religious liberty. Newport spoke to him of Berkeley and of Channing. "No spot on earth," Channing was wont to say, "helped to form me like that beach." And to Stanley, who had many a time stood on Berkeley's grave in the Cathe- dral at Oxford, Newport gained an added interest because Berkeley had lived there. Of the relation between England and America he spoke thus — "Of [ 239 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN that unbroken union there seemed to me a likeness when, on the beautiful shores of Lake George, the Loch Katrine of America, I saw a maple and an oak growing together from the same stem — the brilliant, fiery maple, the emblem of America; the gnarled and twisted oak, the emblem of England. So may the two nations always rise together, so different each from each, and representing so distinct a future, yet each springing from the same ancestral root, each bound together by the same healthful sap and the same vigorous growth." III. It is not possible to do much more than mention some of Stanley's chief writings. The most useful of them, and the most widely known, were prepared, not in his study, but through the experience of his own life. At the numberless sermons and addresses which, in one shape or another, found their way into print, we cannot even glance. His other works fall into three main divisions. The first in order of time, and perhaps in other things, is his Life of Thomas Arnold. We have already seen how great was Arnold's influence upon him. As a boy, he compares himself to Boswell, and as a man he is to do Boswell's work. On Arnold's death, he hastened to Rugby. At Mrs. Arnold's request, he [ 240 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH took charge of the letters and journals that were left, to draw up from them a memoir. The work grew under his hand. He writes of the materials that are at his disposal — "If I am not able to make out of them one of the most remarkable biographies that has appeared for a long time, it will be my fault, not theirs." For two years he gave himself up almost completely to his task. He used to say that the labour was the hardest he ever went through in his life. He tried to sink himself altogether out of sight, and to paint a faithful portrait of his hero, which should re- veal him to the world as he really was, and displace the distorted image that many had formed of his character. He was successful beyond his hopes. The work marks an era in biographies. The picture was so good that no one thought of the artist. And the fact that Arnold has been remembered for so long, and with such veneration, even by those who would be strongly opposed to him on many points, is largely due to Stanley's faithful work. The second class of writings comprises those which were directly inspired by the positions which he held. A man like Stanley could not live for seven years in Canterbury without being inspired by the constant presence of that great Cathedral. He could not be Dean of Westminster for eighteen years, and not master the countless historical associations of the [ 2 « ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN ancient Abbey. In his Memorials of Canterbury, he writes of Augustine, who built there the first church on British soil; of Becket, who was foully murdered in the Cathedral in the winter twilight; of the Black Prince, who is buried there in the spot which he chose himself. He makes the stone and mortar live, and the ancient streets once more seem thronged with companies of pilgrims, while the narrow lane of the Merceries, which leads to the Cathedral, is filled with eager sellers of objects of devotion. In the Me- morials of Westminster, he does the same thing there. The volume is a storehouse of information of every sort concerning the Abbey, from the earliest times down to the present day. In the third class of Stanley's literary work may be included several volumes differing in many points, but agreeing in this — that they were suggested or completed by his travels. Sinai and Palestine is a description of the Holy Land, much of which was written on the spot. History may gain much from a thorough knowledge of the scenes with which it is connected. "To delineate the outward events of the Old and New Testament, so that they should come home with a new power" — this is Stanley's object in this book. The Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church have the same purpose. They give to the Bible a life and reality which is often lacking [ 242 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH as many persons read it. He wrote also of the Eastern Church, and of the Church in Scotland. He had the power — not too common — of making inter- esting whatever he might write. As he described a scene, he seemed to be himself present, and bearing a living part in what was going on. We are told that as a child of ten, he was found marching down the passage at Alderley in a coat that trailed behind him, holding a blotting-pad in front of him, and say- ing — "I am Mahomet reading the Koran." When he came to write, this same vivid imagination, tempered by the knowledge that he had gained from books and from the world, stood him in good stead. Said Archbishop Tait — "No clergyman, perhaps, who ever lived, exercised over the public at large, and espe- cially over the literary and thoughtful portion of it, so fascinating an influence." IV. The last word may be given to Stanley's life at home. In every relation of life — as son, as brother, as hus- band, as friend — he was a model. With affectionate care he watched over his mother's declining years, he waited by his wife's sick bed for the parting which was to take the joy out of his life. In the dedication to the volumes on the Jewish Church, he shows what he was, and what they were. "To the dear memory of [ 243 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN her by whose firm faith, calm wisdom, and tender sym- pathy these and all other labours have for years been sustained and cheered — to my Mother; this work, which shared her latest care, is now dedicated in sacred and everlasting remembrance." And to the last volume, which was completed while his wife lay at the point of death, there is this. "To the beloved memory of the inseparable partner in every joy and every struggle of twelve eventful years, this Volume, the solicitude and solace of her latest days, is dedi- cated; with the humble prayer that its aim may not be altogether unworthy of her sustaining love, her inspir- ing courage, and her never-failing faith in the enlarge- ment of the Church, and the triumph of all truth." But there are lighter associations, too. As a boy, he visits the Zoological Gardens in London with his brother Charles. "You may imagine us walking about," he writes; "I felt how dull it would have been without him; as it was, he knew just where to take me, and so to economize time, and we could observe who the monkeys were like, etc. There were some crested peacocks, that hopped so exactly like exceedingly silly people. The monkeys were rather quiet, but the way in which they picked the fleas off each other was capital, one so very earnest and the other so very submissive. The vultures are certainly the very perfection of loathsomeness." Stanley's love [ 244 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH for children was always so great that he never really ceased to be a boy. He records with particular delight a saying of the Princess Beatrice concerning him, when she was six years old. She offered some cakes of her own making to a lady who declined them. "Very well, then," said the little Princess, "as Dr. Stanley is not here, I shall give them to the donkey.'' He had a genius for friendship. He delighted in bringing together at his table men of the most diverse interests and tastes, and then in finding for them some common ground. He was never so happy as when he succeeded in clearing up some misunder- standing, and so made men "to be of one mind in an house." He was not overcome of evil. Rather, he strove to overcome evil with good. When he was appointed Dean of Westminster, Dr. Wordsworth, then one of the Canons, afterwards Bishop of Lin- coln, protested against his appointment, and preached against it in the Abbey. Stanley writes — "Dr. Words- worth published a protest against my appointment filled with the most reckless misrepresentations. I thought that the only notice which it was fitting for me to take of this attack was to pronounce an eulogy upon that part of his conduct which really deserved it." Thus met, Dr. Wordsworth's protest became the first step in a cordial and friendly intercourse. Stanley was the friend of the Queen. He was a wel- [ 245 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN come guest in every household. His love of history enabled him to realize to the full the significance of high station. But some of his dearest friends were in the humblest walks of life. Such an one was his old nurse, Sarah Burgess, who died at Canterbury after thirty-eight years of service in the Stanley family. He speaks of her thus, in a funeral sermon at Al- derley, where she was born and bred. "All that she was in that family it is not possible, it is not neces- sary, for me fully to speak. How she was one with them in their joys and their sorrows, how every change of place and station was shared by her with them, you know as well as I do. But you can hardly tell how great is the blessing which such a union between master and servant sheds around on all who come within its influence. To know that in the midst of that household sat one who, through all the changes and chances of life, thought far more of the interests and comfort and welfare of those whom she served than of her own; who never thought of what she wished or liked, but only of what they wished or liked; who in all sickness and distress, in all difficulty and prosperity, in all time of our tribu- lation and in all time of our wealth, was ever ready with a bright smile, with a kind look, with a wise word, with a gentle touch, with a quick eye, to calm, to cheer, to assuage, to counsel; this was indeed a [ 246 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH light shining in the darkness of this evil world." And when his servant Waters, with two of his chil- dren, fell victims to scarlet fever while Stanley was absent on a visit in France, he hastened home at once. He could not stay away. He writes — "It is the shattering asunder of a whole cluster of living recollections, and associations, and graces, such as I can never replace. I laid my dear Waters in his grave yesterday in the Holywell Cemetery at Oxford, with his beloved children. Vale, dulcissime! I may in- deed say — Vivat, vivant in Deo. Stanley died at his home in Westminster in the sum- mer of 1881. He preached his last sermon in the Abbey nine days before his death. In its occasion and its subject it was characteristic of the man. It was preached on a Saturday afternoon, for those who were unable to be present at other times. And this was the text of it. "Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God." / labour for peace; but when I speak unto them thereof, they make them ready to battle. [ 247 ] Chapter tr, SAMUEL WILBERFORCE WHEN Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Winches- ter, lay dead in his house at Lavington, so just a judge of influence as Dean Church could say of him that he had been the greatest Bishop that the Church of England had seen in a hundred and fifty years. There are men who hold high office who are known for that, and for no other reason; who would be nothing if they were separated from the dignity which they have gained as it were by acci- dent; who go through life clumsily and heavily, weighed down by honours that are too great for them. But Wilberforce, though he held high place, made it seem higher yet because it was he who held it. He did not merely maintain the traditions of his office. He made new traditions, so that his friend Dean Burgon could write of him as the "Remodeller of the Episcopate"; so that Dean Church could say that he had a new idea of the functions of a Bishop, and of what a Bishop might do, and ought to do; so that a brother Bishop could write to him — "You have introduced such a system into the Episcopate that one has time for nothing." And to all this there were [ 248 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH added gifts of intellect and soul and character and temper by which, as one puts it who knew whereof he spoke, he was able at once to charm without tir- ing the most refined and fastidious society, to draw to him the hearts of hard-working and anxious cler- gymen, and to enchain the attention of the dullest and most ignorant of rustic congregations. We find him spoken of as a public man who, by the general suffrage of English society, was without a peer. Even Jowett, who did not see below the surface of Wilber- force's character, and who was inclined to put the worst interpretation on his acts, is constrained to de- scribe him as "a man who always looks good, out of whose mouth Christian charity flows like rivers of oil, equally respected by old women and Prime Minis- ters." As a rule, men are remembered for what they do, rather than for what they are. But though Wil- berforce did much, his acts sink into the background before the charm of his personality, so that we can- not understand what he did unless we know some- thing first of what he was. But it is just here that words have least power. He can fill no such place in history as he filled in the eyes of his own genera- tion. We may think of him as a good man, and an able man, and a man of extraordinary gifts, but doubtless Dean Burgon is right when he closes a sketch of his friend with the remark that "none but [ 249 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN those who knew him will have the faintest concep- tion what an exquisite orator, what a persuasive preacher, what a faithful Bishop — in every private relation of life what a truly delightful person — is commemorated by the stone which marks his grave." Samuel Wilberforce was born at Clapbam Common, near London, in 1805. His father, William Wilber- force, was a man of more than national reputation, to whose untiring efforts the abolition of slavery in the British colonies was largely due. But his public affairs were never permitted to interfere with the claims of private life. He was no stranger to his children, and their interests were his interests to an extent which is, unfortunately, too seldom found, even with parents whose time is much less fully occupied. Over six hundred letters of his to his son Samuel re- main, checking nascent faults, pointing out the path of upright and manly conduct, urging to prayer and personal love to Christ, or setting forth practical counsels which were to bear abundant fruit in later years. Thus he writes of the importance of bringing men together, and getting them to know one an- other; and dwells upon the importance of cultivating what some one has called a talent for friendship. He insists upon constant practice in the art of saving plainly and lucidly what one has to say. In these re- [ 250 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH spects Samuel Wilberforce showed himself to be truly his father's son. In 1823 he went to Oxford, where he became a stu- dent at Oriel, of which Newman, Pusey, and Keble at the time were Fellows. In 1828 he was ordained, and in the same year he married Miss Emily Sargent of Lavington, in Sussex, one of whose sisters married his brother Henry Wilberforce, while another sister married Henry Edward Manning, known in the English Church as Archdeacon of Sussex, and who became later, in the Roman communion, Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. After a few months as curate in sole charge of Check endon, a little village on the Thames, Wilberforce was appointed rector of Brighstone, in the Isle of Wight, a position which he held for ten years. They were years of happiness, and activity, and con- stant growth. His house was a centre both of work and of hospitality. His influence in the neighbour- hood was already great. Thus, Hurrell Froude writes to him — "I hear that you are the /xeya.'s SiaAXaKTTjs of the Island, and that if it were not for you all the parsons would be by the ears." Through his father's prominence and his own good work he was offered various preferments, among them the Vicarage of Leeds, which Hook was later to make famous, but for one reason and another he declined them all. [ 251 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN After a few years he was appointed Rural Dean, and in 1840 he became Archdeacon of Surrey, and Canon of Winchester Cathedral. The next year he became Rector of Alverstoke, near Portsmouth, a post which called for zeal, and energy, and large ability. The years of Wilberforce's life at Brighstone had been years of much disturbance in the Church. The Oxford Movement was begun in ] 833, and was now in full progress. It was exciting not only attention but suspicion. It was winning friends, and it was making enemies. It was making itself felt, not only in Oxford and in London, but in the remotest dis- tricts. Though the traditions of Samuel Wilberforce's youth were all of a distinctly Evangelical kind, he speaks of himself as "a High Churchman from the first." But he was never in full sympathy with the Oxford School, and there were times when this lack of sympathy developed into active opposition. Almost at the beginning of the Movement, he writes to his friend Hook at Leeds — "I admire most highly the talents of some of those men; I revere far more their high and self-denying holiness and singleness of pur- pose; but I cannot agree with them in all their lead- ing views of doctrine — e.g., Pusey's view of Sin after Baptism, as far as I understand it — and I often find in practical matters that I differ from them, on points, and in ways, in which men commonly charge those [ 252 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH who differ from themselves with wrong-headedness, but in which, as it seems to me, they are for en- forcing an ancient practice at the expense of a still more ancient principle." This lack of sympathy was quickly perceived by Newman, who declined further contributions from Wilberforce to the British Critic, because he was not confident enough of his general approval of the body of opinions for which the paper chiefly stood. At the same time we catch a glimpse of Wilberforce's dislike of another school of thought. He writes to his brother Robert — "How disgusting is Hampden's appointment" to the chair of Divinity at Oxford. And again — "Could we not pass a vote that Hampden should always preach in Hebrew?" But while the Church at large was full of ferment, and while Wilberforce entered fully into its life and thought, there was much to keep him occupied at home. Together with his brother Robert, he edited an exhaustive Life of his father, William Wilberforce; and from time to time he engaged in other literary work. He was busy in his parish, and out of it. For months together the course of preparation of each sermon is specified in his journals, with memoranda as to its efficiency when delivered. We are told that he was never a great reader simply for reading's sake, but he took an interest in everything, so that he fastened with keen eagerness, and great acute- [ 253 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN ness of perception, upon every means of information which either books or men supplied. His mind was not directed exclusively in any one direction. Thus, his diaries speak of "a. noble article of Newman's/' and "a beautiful sermon from Maurice." His interest in missions was very great throughout his life. In the autumn of 1839, he took a long tour in the counties of Devon and Cornwall on behalf of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. From every point of view it was a great success. In the light of future years, one incident of it, unnoticed at the time, has a very special interest. In 1853 J. W. Colenso was consecrated Missionary Bishop of Natal, and the consecration sermon was preached by Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. A week later Bishop Colenso visited Wilberforce at Cuddesdon, and there in the Visitors' Book he wrote these words. "In memory of words spoken in Cornwall, fourteen years ago, which first awakened in the writer's soul a lively concern for the spiritual distresses of our col- onies; and of the solemn charge delivered by the same lips, in the name of Christ and His Church, at Lambeth, on Nov. 30, 1853. The raw recruit of 1839 must now go forth into the field of battle, which he does with a deep sense of his own weakness, and knowing 'that he who is but girding on his armour may not boast as he who putteth it off.' But the [ 254 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH voice which first called still cheers him on to the work; and in a far-off land the words of St. An- drew's Day will still be ringing in his ears — rather, will be treasured in his heart — for strength and com- fort in the midst of the conflict.'' In 1840, Wilberforce made his first appearance in London as a public speaker, first at a great mission- ary meeting, and a few weeks later at an anti-slavery meeting in Exeter Hall, when Prince Albert made his first public speech in England. One who was present writes — "The Prince Consort agreed to pre- side, and some of the chief men of the country were present. It turned out, however, a slow affair, the speeches dull and wearisome, when on a sudden a young man got up to move a resolution, and he spoke so much to the purpose and with so much fire in manner and originality of matter that the eyes of all were turned upon him, and thunders of ap- plause arose when he sat down. The Prince inquired his name. It was Samuel Wilberforce. Sir Robert Peel, in a following speech, complimented him as his father's worthy son; and he was altogether the hero of the day." Shortly afterwards, he was ap- pointed one of Prince Albert's Chaplains, in a letter in which occurred this sentence. "The Prince has additional pleasure in making this proposition to you, in looking back to the great meeting at which [ 255 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN he presided, and at which your talents so ably advo- cated the cause of humanity and religion." In the spring of 1841 fell the first of those heavy blows of which he was called upon to bear so many, and by which, to use his own expression, his spirit was scourged into devotedness. At the veiy moment when life was opening out before him with fresh op- portunities of influence and of happiness, his wife died, leaving him with five little children. It was « stroke from which he never recovered. It did not turn him into a. recluse, as the like affliction did with Dr. Pusey. But the memory of it was never far away. Her birthday, their wedding-day, the day of her departure, are always noted, amid the press of business, and after many years. It made him ten- der, and pitiful. In a speech after his death, Mr. Gladstone referred to his prowess in debate, and to the brilliancy of his social qualities. Then he con- tinued — '"But if I wished to know the true charac- ter of Bishop Wilberforce, I would not ask it from those who have admired his powers as displayed in Parliament, or who felt his charm in society. I would appeal to those who, from time to time, have been called upon to suffer under the calamities of life; and I affirm, from a wide personal knowledge, that which others too, I have no doubt, can affirm — that wherever there was affliction in the world, thither [256] THE ENGLISH CHURCH the heart of Bishop Wilberforce was drawn with resistless power; there, if he had a friendship, he repaired for its exercise; there, if he had no friend- ship already existing, he endeavoured to found one." Time softened, but it could not heal his wound. "I quite know all those spring feelings" — he wrote. "It is the hardest time of all the year. She loved it so! She opened in it like some sweet flower. Always was I looking forward to it. Now, I never look on to it. It seems so indifferent what it is; all the short halting-places in life are swept away. It is most sad going home. If I went home to her, it was beyond all words. If I went home with her, I got apart to see her meet her children. And now — but I ought not to sadden you." After thirty-two years, and only six weeks before his own death, he wrote to his daughter-in-law of a visit to the church-yard at Lav- ington. "God's world in its beauty animate and in- animate around me; the nightingales singing His praises; and all seeming to rejoice before Him. My dead seemed so near to me in my solitude, each one following another and speaking calm and hope to me, and reunion when He will." But while his affliction entered so deeply into his life, it was to make it fuller, rather than to strip it bare. He must mourn, but he could not be idle. It was with Wilberforce as with Ezekiel of old. "At even [257 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN my wife died; and I did in the morning as I was commanded." He had no time for the indulgence of selfish grief. When he lost his eldest son on the very threshold of young manhood, he went directly from the funeral to his work. "There was scarcely a mo- ment," he writes to one who loved him, "when, if I had given way, I should not have burst into tears." But then, he did not give way. The loss of his wife he speaks of, after many years, as "the great sorrow which has overshadowed my life." It came at the beginning of his work at Alver- stoke, and in the desolation which it brought upon him it contributed, no doubt, to the depth and power of the sermons preached at that time. Moreover, at Alverstoke he found a congregation which called forth his energies as the little flock at Brighstone could not have done. A sermon differs from other forms of composition in many ways. But nowhere is this dif- ference more plain than in its dependence, not merely upon the preacher, but upon those to whom he is to preach. At Alverstoke Wilberforce found that stimulus which was needed to develop his power to the full. And he impressed himself upon the parish and the community in many ways. Already he had held many positions in the Church. He had been Curate, Rector, Rural Dean, Canon of Winchester Cathedral, Archdeacon of Surrey, and [ 258 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH Court Chaplain. In the spring of 1845 he was ap- pointed Dean of Westminster, and in the autumn of the same year he was called by Sir Robert Peel to the Bishopric of Oxford, left vacant by the trans- lation of Bishop Bagot to Bath and Wells. He was consecrated at Lambeth. The sermon was by his brother Robert. He writes in his diary of the day — "The service very overwhelming; sometimes almost above my endurance. I trust that I did in very truth betroth myself for ever unto my God, and that He mercifully deigned to accept of me, even of me. Came home, and at night much prayer. Many friends round me, and full of sympathy and love." When Wilberforce entered upon the See of Oxford, he was just forty years of age, and the work before him might well have dismayed the stoutest soul. He found himself in the very storm-centre of a most stormy time. It was not six weeks since John Henry Newman had been received into the Church of Rome. The memory of Pusey's condemned sermon was still fresh in Oxford, both with friends and foes. The epidemic of conversions to Rome was well un- der way, and in many places the very suggestion of Tractarianism bred a panic. A letter from Dr. Pusey to Wilberforce on his appointment, shows that he fully realized the difficulties of the time. "It does seem strange, and is I trust a token of God's [ 259 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN mercy, that whereas some of the offices of a Bishop would seem fitted to your natural gifts, you should, by God's appointment, have been called to a See which most of all requires supernatural. It is indeed a time of intense anxiety; we have scarcely seen the beginning of the troubles with which we are threat- ened. I fear that the unsettlement is exceeding great, and that there are lurking seeds of doubt very often where nothing comes to the surface. A little while ago people seemed inclined to give up everything out of mere dejectedness. Of course such a loss as we have just had must be intensely painful and per- plexing to thousands who owe all their religious being to his preaching, or published sermons. Then each unhinges another, and so it spreads until one sees not where it is to end. As far as I can see, what is chiefly at work is, not attraction towards Rome, but despondency about ourselves." And in Wilberforce's first address to his candidates for Or- dination he touches upon the same unsettlement. "Self-confidence, fondness for speculation, love of singularity, separation from the brethren, and then the misty visions of the darkening eye, the eager throbbings of the narrowing heart, heresy, schism, unbelief, and apostasy — these are the special dan- gers of the unwatchful Christian student. How deeply, but as yesterday, some have thus fallen [ 260 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH by our side, is known to all of us. They are set as beacons to us, if such is our path, that we 'be not high-minded, but fear'; lest like them we too be led hereafter deliberately to adopt errors which we have been permitted erewhile to expose with a clearness withheld from others; and, at last, to fly on the wing's of an unbounded skepticism into the bosom of an unfathomed superstition." To dwell in any detail upon the twenty-four years during which Samuel Wilberforce was Bishop of Ox- ford, would be, as with Tait's episcopate at Fulham and Lambeth, to give the history of the Church of England during that time. There was no important movement in which he did not play a leading part. He was foremost in the revival of Convocation, by which a certain measure of self-government was se- cured to the Church. In the House of Lords he spoke with weight and brilliancy upon the ques- tions of the day. In the conduct of missions he was a mighty force, and in the difficulties and contro- versies which troubled the colonial Church his ad- vice was often sought and freely given. To him, as to most of the Bishops of that day, Liberalism in any form was the "theological villain," and nothing more. His condemnation of Essays and Reviews, and of Bishop Colenso's works, was complete and un- qualified. But Bunsen, Maurice, Carlyle, were his [ 261 j MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN friends. "I am for the party of the Church of Eng- land, and nothing narrower," he writes. And when he was accused of leanings toward Tractarianism, he replied — "I have never ceased to protest against it, but because I have had dear friends who were Trac- tarians, because between angry parties I, God help- ing me, have held and will hold what I esteem the truth of both and the party violence of neither, I am reviled as uncertain. It is hard to bear, and as my heart craves after sympathy and trust above all other gifts, the temptation has often beset me to cast off the burden by the easy course of adopting party-cries, but I dare not do it." It is idle to revive forgotten controversies. Wilber- force's administration of his own diocese is his chief claim to remembrance, and is the point with which we may be most concerned. But there is need of a word as to his relation with two men who occupied a prominent position in the public eye at various times during his episcopate — Dr. Hampden and Dr. Pusey. We have seen already that Dr. Hampden is the Maelstrom toward which every Churchman who lived during the second quarter of this century must in- evitablv be drawn. We have seen, too, that Wilber- force had protested against his first appointment to the Chair of Divinity at Oxford. Whatever may be [ 262 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH thought of the justice of the accusations against his orthodoxy, at this distance of time there can be lit- tle difference of opinion that his appointment to the Bishopric of Hereford by Lord John Russell was most unfortunate and most improper. He was not a man of commanding ability in any one direction, like Arnold, nor of consummate tact, like Tait. Ex- perience had shown that he had a faculty for seem- ing to say what he did not really mean to say at all. He lay under the censure of the University. Under the circumstances, his selection for a Bishop- ric was plainly an insult, not only to the Tractarians, but to a large and devoted section of the Church. The Times, although a steady supporter of the Gov- ernment, declared — "We cannot imagine on what principle or motive this appointment has been ad- ventured." Since Dr. Hampden held a charge in the diocese of Oxford, it fell to Wilberforce to play a leading part in the opposition to his consecration. Of his conduct in the case his friend Dean Burgon says — "His tem- perament made him a peculiarly unfit person to stand in the breach at such a time. Truly, it was as if di' abolical ingenuity had contrived the snare into which the versatility of his nature, not to say his veiy tal- ents and virtues, were pretty sure to draw him head- long." The details of the proceedings belong to ancient [ 263 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN history. More than a generation has passed away since Hampden's death, and other controversies have long since taken the place of those which raged about him so fiercely. It is enough to say that Wilberforce satisfied nobody, probably least of all himself. He was accused on all sides of double-dealing and in- sincerity. As we look at his life as it stretches out before us as a whole, such charges seem absurd. If his object had been to gain favour for himself, he was far too bright a man to seek it in any such way. He began proceedings against Hampden, there- by bringing upon himself the wrath of the Govern- ment and of Hampden's friends. But when, upon fuller investigation of the case, he was persuaded that there was no ground for such proceedings, he stopped them, and so brought down upon his head the wrath of orthodox and ignorant alike. Some- where, he must have acted hastily and without dis- cretion. But as the story is set before us at great length by his biographer, his motives at least must seem above all censure. If he was led into a false position, it was through the desire for peace, and the wish to bring the contending parties to an un- derstanding of each other's point of view. To see that a question has two sides is always dangerous. To Wilberforce, it was a sharp introduction to the cares and responsibilities of the episcopate. He [ 264 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH writes to his brother — "I suppose that to men of my mental constitution, abuse, and especially insinu- ations of dishonesty, are more exquisitely painful than almost any other trial, and therefore also more necessary. Only may God give me the blessing of this and every other chastisement. I believe myself to have given up all that men call worldly promo- tion when I signed the Remonstrance against Hamp- den ; and now I fear many suppose me, when I was afraid of acting unjustly, to have acted from low cunning or cowardice. Write to me soon and tell me I am not a rascal." In his relations to Pusey and his party, Wilberforce also found himself in opposition. A High Church- man, and so far sympathizing with the spirit of the Oxford School, he was bitterly hostile to what seemed to him its development along lines which were foreign and un-Anglican. He lent himself to the establishment of Sisterhoods, but he would give no countenance to irrevocable vows, or to the false elevation upon which such a life is sometimes placed. He did much towards rescuing the Holy Communion from the neglect into which it had fallen, but in his opposition to what he called the new doctrines of fasting Communion and non-communicating attend- ance no one could be more vigorous. Against Con- fession as a system, still more as a requirement, he [ 265 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN was outspoken. He had an honest dread of the Church of Rome, a dread that was fostered and increased by his peculiar family history, in that his three brothers, his two brothers-in-law, his only daughter and her husband, one after another joined themselves to that communion. At the same time he was in fullest sympathy with that seeking after the old paths to which the Oxford Movement had first awakened men's minds. In an address delivered only four days before his death, he said — "I am attacked on all sides. On the one side I am called a false friend, accused of betraying a cause which I once upheld; on the other, I am said to be unfaithful to my own Church, and a concealed Papist. I cannot say that I do not feel such attacks. It is impossible not to be pained by them. It is hard to bear. But after all, it is nothing when weighed against the tes- timony of one's own conscience; it is nothing to make one recede from the course which one be- lieves to be right, or to shake one's resolution by God's help to maintain it." At the same time he spoke his mind with reference to some of the later developments of ritualism. "There is a growing de- sire to introduce novelties, such as incense, a multi- tude of lights in the chancel, and so on. Now these and such things are honestly and truly alien to the Church of England. All this appears to me to indi- [ 266 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH cate a fidgety anxiety to make everything in our churches assimilate to a foreign usage. There is a growing feeling, which I can only describe as an ' ashamedness ' of the Anglican Church, as if our grand old Anglican communion contrasted unfavour- ably with the Church of Rome. The habitual lan- guage held by many men sounds as if they were ashamed of our Church and its position; it is a sort of apology for the Church of England as compared with the Church of Rome. I have no sympathy in the world with such a feeling. I abhor this fidgety desire to make everything un-Anglican. This is not a grand development, as some seem to think. It is a decrepitude. It is not something very sublime and impressive, but something very feeble and con- temptible." In language like the last, Dr. Pusey himself would probably have joined. In his estimate of Pusey, Wil- berforce seems to have been led astray by his hearty dislike of those who were little more than carica- turists of Pusey's views. Not that there were not great differences of opinion between the two. But they were hardly so great as a mere statement of facts might seem to indicate. Thus, for two years Pusey was virtually suspended from preaching in the diocese of Oxford, because of the Bishop's dislike of the tone of his adaptations of Roman books. It [267] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN seemed as if Wilberforce held him responsible for those who left their mother Church for Rome, and failed to give him credit for those whom he held back. As Keble put it, Pusey "was like a hen with a brood of ducklings; no fault of his if they took to the water at last." But Wilberforce, while convinced of Pusey's holiness and of his personal loyalty to the Church of England, was convinced too of the evil tendency of much that he taught. He wrote concerning him — "He has given the impetus to these people, and he cannot stop them. He has no deep horror of the Popish system; none has been infused into the early beginnings of their awak- ened spiritual consciousness; they have practically been set by him on a Romish course; he was all to them so long as he seemed part of that ensnaring system into which he has brought them; but so soon as he begins to thwart them, his influence is gone; they begin to pity him — they have said to me, 'Poor, good Dr. Pusey,' and the like; they pass into strange hands, and then to the Romish priest." It is the description of a type with which we are not altogether unfamiliar, but so far as it applies to Pusey himself after all these years it does not need one of his disciples to say that it is hardly just. Post hoc may be a very different thing from propter lioc. But Wilberforce had seen the leaven working in his [ 268 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH own family. He had been deeply wounded time and time again, and he could not jest at the scars with which his heart was marked. If he was unduly sus- picious, and unjustly so, we can hardly think it strange. But we may turn from controversy, which seems un- happily to be the common lot of theologians of every school of thought, to that in which Bishop Wilberforce stands by himself, in a position peculiar and unique. That there were excellent Bishops be- fore his day, hardly needs to be said. And yet Dean Burgon does not seem to exaggerate when he de- clares that Wilberforce inaugurated a new era in the history of the English episcopate. It had been a dignified office, and an honourable one. In many cases it had not been a very active one. "I recol- lect," said one whose memory could go back many years, "I recollect when a Bishop of Oxford never drove into Oxford without four horses and two pow- dered footmen; and what does Sam do? He gets upon a horse, and rides in by himself, without so much as a groom behind him. I met him myself to- day." The act was typical of his whole episcopate. He was busy himself, and he expected others to be busy. If any disliked him, it was the lazy, the secu- lar, the obstructive. In a sermon preached at the consecration of Cuddesdon Chapel, he gives his own [ 269 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN ideas of the responsibilities of a Bishop's office. "How great a burden to bear honestly, lawfully, is that care of all the churches! How fearful the con- demnation if it be not borne! If indolence, or self- pleasing, or covetousness, or ambition, or worldliness, or sloth, be found in the seat where the Apostles sat, how great must be the Church's loss, how hor- rible the faithless pastor's condemnation! And yet, to bear it all how much is needed — what tenderness of spirit, what unwearied patience, what open-eyed vigi- lance, what resolute fortitude, what unflinching cour- age, what unfaltering sympathy, what an absence of selfishness, what a love of truth, what jealous hatred of error, what love of him who errs!" If the ideal was a lofty one, he strove the more earnestly to have it realized. He made himself felt in every village in the diocese. From time to time he held missions in the chief towns, when he en- deavoured to break the crust of formalism, and to compel men and women to think of spiritual things. He revolutionized the manner of administering the rite of Confirmation. We are told that an innkeeper came to him for compensation, because the candi- dates for Confirmation, gathered from all the country round, no longer came to him after the service for a grand ball! But now the Bishop went into parish after parish, and made the service no mere formal [ 270 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH rite, but an opportunity of making a dint in charac- ter that must be used to the uttermost. What he was to the clergy of his diocese, it is hard to say. In the Life of Christopher Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln, occurs this passage, which no doubt ex- presses the view held of Bishop Wilberforce in many a country rectory. "And here we must take occasion to note the very deep debt of gratitude which Dr. Wordsworth, in common with many others, owed to the influence and example of the Bishop of Oxford at that time. No one who recalls those days will ever forget the magical effect of his presence — like the coming of spring to a winter landscape — in the little nooks and corners of that agricultural county; his thrilling Confirmation addresses; his cordial ap- preciation of what was done by others; the brilliant wit of his conversation; the inimitable tones of his wonderfully modulated voice; and the fascination of his look and manner. How much of the poetry, life, and enthusiasm of Church work is due to Bishop Wilberforce, how much also of its organization and practical development!" We have had abundant proof that Wilberforce was a man of intense activity. Not sparing himself, he valued accordingly energy and zeal wherever he per- ceived it. We are told that as he was travelling one day, the train stopped for a moment at a station, [271 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN and he saw on the platform one of his Rural Deans. The Bishop called to him in loud tones — "I am very glad to have an opportunity of speaking to you. I hear great things of your zeal and success as Rural Dean." "Well, my Lord," was the reply, '• I believe some people are under the impression that I am somewhat mad." "All I can say then is," replied the Bishop, "I wish you would bite all my Rural Deans!" Not only did Bishop Wilberforce set himself to make the most of the clergy who were in the diocese be- fore his coming. In his treatment of candidates for Ordination he instituted a new departure from the methods of that day. It had often happened that the examinations were left entirely to subordinates, and that the Bishop had scarcely more than a per- functory acquaintance with those whom he ordained. Wilberforce changed all that, and eventually estab- lished a Theological College at Cuddesdon where men, under his own eye, might make some special preparation for their work. In his addresses at the Ordination times, he went to the very root of things. The words on preaching of one who was among the foremost preachers of his generation have a special value. "When you preach," he says, "be real. And to make your sermons such as this, spare no pains or trouble. Beware of giving to God and souls the [ 272 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH parings of your time, and the ends of other employ- ment. Beware of a pernicious facility. However poor or ignorant your people are, you may be assured that they will feel the difference between sermons which have been well digested and well arranged, and those which are put carelessly and ill together." In another place, he dwells upon the temptation to seek the praise of men more than the praise of God; he traces the subtle process by which the soul deceives itself, until "he who pledged himself to seek God's glory and the salvation of souls becomes a mere empty unmeaning hunter after a wretched earthly popularity;" until "he who of old thirsted for the favour of his Lord is now contented to re- ceive his pay in the base earthly coin of gain, and wealth, and station." He insists upon the one thing without which all else is vain. "No one can listen carefully to the majority of sermons in our churches, few, alas, can closely scrutinize their own, without deep sorrow, shame, and dejection of heart. It is not oratory that we want. But there is a tenderness in love which makes its touch so light that even the most deeply wounded will bear its handling; there is a reality about it which makes it go straight to the true point. And this will make all our ministry, and especially our sermons, effective. Instead of the dry, wandering, unreal generalities, the fine writing, [ 273 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN or the unmeaning repetition of phrases which make so many sermons so absolutely intolerable, they will be felt by those who hear them to be indeed living voices, voices about God, voices about themselves; as good news from the far land; as the message the weary soul wants." He points out that it is in the same way that error must be resisted. "Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Well was it answered by one holy man to whom it was remarked, 'I cannot think why your people bear such plain speaking' — 'It is because they know I love them.'" Of Wilberforce's own great power as a preacher there can be no doubt. There have been many men who have had as much to say. There have been very few men who knew so well how to say it. This is the testimony of all who knew him. He had in an emi- nent degree the faculty of bringing home what he had to say to those to whom he spoke, whoever they might be. At the re-opening of a restored church, the Bishop was thanking the Churchwarden, an old farmer, for his share in the good work. "And I must thank your Lordship for your sermon," was the reply. "But I could not help thinking, as you talked about sin, that your Lordship must have been a little wildish yourself when you were a young man." The same thing happened at the Oxford Workhouse. The Bishop was speaking of the low [274 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH temptations to which such a life might lead. "I say," one of the party was heard to exclaim to his comrade, "I'll tell you what; that man knows a little too much about it!" It would be idle to say that he was eagerly sought as a guest at every country-house, that he could attract and fascinate men of many kinds. There were those who called him the "Bishop of Society." Truly, there was no society in which he could not make himself at home. But this seems to have been scarcely more than an accident of his character. He was many- sided, and on most sides he excelled. In an address at Cuddesdon College, the Archbishop of York drew a picture of him that admirably represents the man. "See him now, and you would say he shone most as a genial and ready host; but follow him to his work to-morrow — that is, if you will take the chance of having to get up at half-past five and to travel a hun- dred miles by rail — and you would say that he had given his whole attention to pulpit eloquence. Ask some friend to write you word of his afternoon's occu- pations, for you will despair of being able to follow him fast enough yourself, and you will hear that he is presiding with the utmost tact and success over some difficult meeting or troublesome committee. No wonder the newspapers tell us every now and then that his health is failing, and that he is ordered off [275 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN to the South of France. But we may comfort our- selves with the thought that there is an easier rem- edy. He is now doing the work of six men. He has but to sink down awhile to the work of two, and that will be as good as rest to him." He had the defects of his qualities, no doubt. Arch- bishop Tait said after one of his speeches in the House of Lords that "he was as eloquent and indis- creet as usual." Dean Burgon remarks — "His very excellences were a snare to him. He was too clever, too self-reliant, whereby he often put himself in a false position, and exposed himself to unfriendly criti- cism. Again, he was too persuasive, too fascinating in his manner, too fertile in expedients, and thus he furnished not a few with pleas for suspecting him of insincerity. Sure of himself, and unsuspicious of others, he was habitually too confiding, too unguarded in his utterances. Above all, his besetting fault was that he was a vast deal too facile." Had it not been for these real weaknesses, he who was in many ways the foremost prelate of his time would doubtless have been called to the See of Canterbury. If Tait was less brilliant, he was a safer man. In 1869 Wilberforce was appointed by Mr. Gladstone to the Bishopric of Winchester. But it is with Oxford that his name must be chiefly associated. He carried into his new diocese the methods by which he had [ *™ ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH done so much for the old one. He was still foremost in every public question of the day. But his work was almost done. One summer's day in 1873, as he was riding with a friend, his horse stumbled for a moment on the smooth turf, and the Bishop was thrown to the ground. When his friend reached him, he was dead. He had had more of success and more of sorrow than falls to the lot of most men. With the five talents that were given him, he had made five talents more. There were no failing powers, no weak- ening of those keen faculties. All in a moment, he rested from his labours. There was no time for any parting word. But Thomas Carlyle expressed what it must have been to Wilberforce himself. On hearing of his death, he only said — "What a glad surprise!" Unto one he gave five talents. [ 277 ] Chapter r. FREDERICK DENISOX MAURICE IT is a penalty that the world exacts from those who think high thoughts, that they must often be misinterpreted, misrepresented, misunderstood. There are certain persons to whom nothing is satisfactory that they might not have done themselves. What- soever is more than this seems lacking in the re- spect that is due to them; and therefore comes of evil. They could not have done it. Therefore they are at a loss to know why it should be worth doing. They cannot understand its significance or beauty. There- fore they conclude that it has no significance or beauty at all. We are told that Abelard built an altar in the wilderness, and dedicated it to the Paraclete, because there he had found comfort in the midst of his distresses. But such a dedication was unusual, and so there were some who could see in it only the sign of some new heresy. In literary criticism, the same stupid subserviency to some dull tradition has become a by-word. Keats and Words- worth did not model their poetry after the pattern which mediocrity had approved, and so they were greeted with cheap sneers and vulgar ribaldry. Be- [ 2 78 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH cause some matter-of-fact soul found himself in mo- mentary power, and wrote very foolishly about what he did not in the least understand, the general re- cognition of Browning's genius was delayed for a dozen years. We have seen in an earlier chapter that there was one man at least — the world could hardly have produced another — who condemned In Memoriam because it lacked the ponderous qualities of Dr. Johnson's verse! Of course it does not follow from these extreme cases that blame and ridicule are not often bestowed most justly. A silly criticism cannot do away with the necessity and the value of a criticism that is sober, and intelligent, and fair. It would be a dan- gerous principle to set forth that whatever is harshly censured must be good, and whatever is widely praised must therefore be bad. In the long run, the world's judgments on such matters are likely to be sane. But we see, from such examples, how easy it is to impute strange and unthought of motives; how constantly grotesque and uncanny criticisms may be applied. Nowhere is this more true than in whatever pertains to theological discussion. It is a field in which we look for the loftiest character, and find it. The ques- tions at issue are not matters of taste, or prejudice, or education. They have to do with man's eternal welfare and with the deep things which God has [ 279 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN revealed to us of Himself. And yet, the odium theo- logicmn is a phrase of whose meaning no one can be in doubt. We have seen it exercised against Tracta- rian and Liberal, Archbishop and obscure parish priest. We shall come across it in its bitterest and most malignant form as it was directed against the very man whom we are now to consider. Sometimes it admits of no excuse. So far as we can see, it seems as if it could be nothing but the expression of a proud and -cruel soul, which, with horrible blasphemy, has set itself in place of God. But often, very often, we know that it cannot be this. When Dr. Pusey said that he and Maurice worshipped different Gods, he said, and meant to say, a grievous thing; but we know that Pusey was a gentle and a godly man. It was simply that he did not put himself — perhaps he could not — at the other's point of view; and so it was no strange thing if he put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter. The harshness of his judgment was due, not to his own hardness of heart, but to the in- tensity of his love for holy things which seemed to him profaned. It had no value, not because he did not love justice and seek to render it, but because he could not understand the testimony. Unless we bear in mind these limitations, which hedge men in in every direction, and never more than when they have to do with spiritual things, we must [ 280 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH come from the study of a man like Maurice with gloomy and distracted thoughts. Now, as of old, there are diversities of gifts, and differences of administra- tions, and diversities of operations. Now, as of old, the kingdom of heaven may be likened to many things, and comes to men in many different ways. To measure God's truth by our own ability to appre- hend it is but a subtle form of selfishness, the mother-sin. But to know that it is the same God which worketh all in all; that the selfsame Spirit divides to every man severally as He will; that apos- tles, prophets, teachers, workers of miracles have each their appointed work — this is to recognize the impossibility of uniformity, to leave the "hill retired," which Milton describes as the abode of evil spirits, who "reasoned high'' of what they could not hope to understand, and "found no end, in wandering mazes lost." In coming to Maurice, we have to do with a man whose work lay, not in the market-place, but in the study. More than any man whom we have yet con- sidered, he may be called a theologian. To make men act is hard enough, but to make them think is harder yet. This Maurice essayed to do. At the age of twenty-three he wrote of Bishop Berkeley in a way that seems prophetic of his own career. "Would to God there were a few such men in the [ 281 1 MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN English Church to-day ! We should not then have flimsy books written to persuade men to the vice which they are most prone to commit — the vice of limiting their imagination, their intellect, and their affections. We should not have people warned against feeling too strongly, thinking too deeply, lest they should find out too much of the Almighty Wisdom, lest they be too conscious of the Almighty Goodness. But we should be exhorted to cultivate to the utmost every power of the mind, every faculty of the soul; we should be taught that religion does not consist in words, but in a deep inward power; that know- ledge — the knowledge of truth — is power, is virtue; and above all we should be stirred up to that study — the least pursued, and the most valuable — the study of our own natures." We shall see how, in Maurice's own life, these sentences were developed and given shape. A man with such an object is certain to be deeply loved, and deeply hated. There are some who will take him for their leader; who will set out, under his guidance, upon voyages of discovery, and will learn things about God and about themselves which else had been for ever hidden from their eyes. But there will be some, too, who will honestly mistrust him; and others who will oppose him with savage fierceness and for a savage reason — simply because [ 282 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH he is different from themselves. In a review of Hare's Guesses at Truth, Maurice points out that he is not ignorant of the dangers of such a course as he after- wards adopted for his own. "Those who make it their great object to set free their own minds and those of their fellow-men to feel as deeply and think as earnestly as they can, and teach others to do so; who would bring us to truth, not by tumbling us into a stage-coach, none of which travel that road, and which would certainly take us wrong, but by lending us a staff and a lantern, and setting us for- ward on our way for ourselves; such persons as these, whether in Rome, London, or Cambridge, are very certain to meet at first with but scanty audiences, jealous reception, and niggard entertainment." The time came when what Maurice thus spoke of Hare was even truer of himself. Dean Burgon called him a "confused and cloudy Christian," and doubtless found him so. J. B. Mozley wrote of him that "he has not a clear idea in his head It is a reputation that, the instant it is touched, must go like a card- house." And yet, on many subjects, Mozley's opinion was of value. But there were other estimates, of quite a different kind. There were some who spoke of him as having the greatest mind since Plato. Sterling writes of himself as picking up pebbles be- side the ocean of Maurice's genius. Those who were [ 283 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN closely associated with him in practical -work speak of him not only with sincere admiration, but with genuine affection. He is said to unite severe earnest- ness of purpose with irresistible kindliness. His whole being is completely drenched in Christianity. He is marked out by his whole nature to exercise the in- fluence of an apostle. And Charles Kingsley, who for years shared many of his most cherished plans, speaks of him thus. "The most beautiful human soul whom God has ever, in His great mercy, allowed me, most unworthy, to meet with upon this earth; the man who, of all men whom I have seen, approached near- est to my conception of St. John, the Apostle of love. Well do I remember, when we were looking together at Leonardo da Vinci's fresco of the Last Supper, his complaining, almost with indignation, of the girlish and sentimental face which the painter, like too many Italians, had given to St. John. I asked why. And he answered — 'Why: Was not St. John the Apostle of love: Then in such a world of hate and misery as this, do you not think he had more fur- rows in his cheeks than all the other apostles?' And I looked upon the furrows in that most delicate and yet most noble face, and knew that he spoke truth, of St. John and of himself likewise; and understood better from that moment what was meant by bearing the sorrows and carrying the infirmities of men." [ 284 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH Enough has been said to show that Maurice was one of the great men of his time, though at one time or other he was bitterly opposed by the great majority of his contemporaries, though he had no popular gifts of any sort, though he filled no high position in the Church. The story of his life is little more than the story of the workings of his mind. It is not a story of accomplishments, nor of successes. The low man, with a little thing to do, sees it and does it. To Maurice's work there could be no such speedy end. Hutton remarks of him — "His confessions must be taken as the outpourings of the conscience of a race rather than as the outpourings of the conscience of an individual, or they will seem artificial and un- real." And so they are still at work, and no man can mark their end. We cannot separate the outward events of his life from his mental activity, for the two are inseparably connected. But it may help us to a clearer understanding of what he was, and what he tried to do, if we think of him first from the point of view of what befell him, and then from the point of view of what he thought. I. Frederick Denison Maurice was born near Lowestoft in the summer of 1805. He was just a week older than Samuel Wilberforce, with whom in later years [ 285 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN he was more than once to find himself in opposition. When, in recognition of his great ability and faithful service, some of his friends sought to obtain prefer- ment for him in the Church, he would not allow them to do what they desired. "My early training," he writes, "and the line of thinking into which I have been led since I took orders alike seem to tell me that my business is very much more with the outlying sheep than with those in the fold. It is very true that I have been brought little into con- tact with dissenters for many years, that my books have produced exceedingly little eifect upon them, and that I have not gone out of my way to find them, far less to conciliate them. Nevertheless, I think that some time or other my vocation will be among them, and generally among all that are in dis- tress and are in debt and are discontented — Quakers, Unitarians, Rationalists, Socialists, and whatever else a Churchman repudiates, and whatever repudiates him. This dream would seem to most a very wild one. Nevertheless, it is a. dream which is worth something to me, and out of which, at any rate, I cannot wake myself." Certainly, the training of which he speaks was of a very varied and uncommon kind, and had brought home to him very plainly the evils of religious sepa- ration. His father was a Unitarian minister, and con- [286] THE ENGLISH CHURCH tinued to be such through a life that was prolonged to extreme old age. But one by one his family for- sook his teaching. The day came when Mrs. Maurice declared to her astonished husband that Calvinism was true; but her faith brought her little comfort, for she was tortured with the fear that she could not be one of God's elect. There were six sisters, three older than Frederick, and three younger. One after another, they abandoned the opinions which their father held. One became a Baptist; the others, through various channels, drifted into the Established Church. The atmosphere of the household was one of argument and discussion. The thought of God did not make men to be of one mind in an house. Rather, its effect was exactly the reverse. Such a home influence could not fail to leave its impress upon a studious and thoughtful boy. At the age of fifteen Maurice and his cousin formed a youth- ful compact. "We pledge each other to endeavour to distinguish ourselves in after life, and to promote as far as lies in our power the good of mankind." We cannot wonder that to Maurice whatever led men to turn from their differences and seek for points of union should seem to accomplish this result. In the fall of 1823 he entered Trinity College, Cam- bridge. From his letters, even at that early age, it is hard to conceive how he could have been other than a [ 287 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN clergyman. But he was not a member of the Church of England. The dissenting ministry, whether Unita- rian or Orthodox, became more and more impossible for him. He determined to seek admission to the bar. His intellectual power was quickly recognized at Cambridge. But his life there, and during the few years that followed, was marked by uncertainty and restlessness. He engaged in literary work, but it could not satisfy him. From time to time he took pupils, but this he could regard as nothing but a temporary expedient. He could delay the inevitable, but he could not escape it. Necessity was laid upon him, as upon St. Paul. He must preach; and the con- ditions of that preaching many things conspired to determine. He went up to Exeter College, Oxford, and in January, 1834, was ordained in the Church of England. But he found teachers elsewhere, too. He speaks of Erskine's book, The Brazen Serpent, as having been unspeakably comfortable to him. "The peculiarities of his system may be true or not, but I am certain a light has fallen through him on the Scriptures, which I hope I shall never lose, and the chief tendency I feel he has awakened in my mind is to search them more and more." It is a book which still retains its usefulness and vigour. As one has said of it, "its exegesis is antediluvian, but its spirit is the spirit of the everlasting Gospel." [ 288 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH For a couple of years he was curate in sole charge of Bubbenhall, a little hamlet not far from Leaming- ton. Here he wrote a pamphlet called Subscription no Bondage, which caused the leaders of the Oxford Movement to look to him for a moment as a possi- ble member of their school. Here too he began that study of moral and metaphysical philosophy which has given its title to his most learned work, and which he continued to the very end of his life. In the winter of 1836 he was appointed Chaplain of Guy's Hospital in London, a position which he held for ten years, though during the latter part of the time he was Professor of English Literature and Modern History at King's College as well. To Maurice they were years of quiet, but effective, work. To the Church at large they were years of confusion and deep searching of heart. They wit- nessed the rise of the Oxford Movement, and its decline; the first controversy over Dr. Hampden; the publication of Tract 90, with its long train of conse- quences; the departure of Newman from the Church of England, though he went heavily, as one that mourns for his mother, to his new home; the con- demnation of Dr. Pusey's sermon, and his banish- ment from the University pulpit. A man like Maurice could not but feel the keenest interest in the move- ments of the time, but the part that he took in [ 289 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN them was too deep to be conspicuous. The hope of his assistance which the Oxford leaders had cher- ished at the first was quickly shattered. Pusey's tract on Baptism marked for him the parting of the ways. He writes that he read it with the greatest pain, and came to the conclusion that if it were true he might as well leave off preaching, for he could have no message to declare to men from God. He published an answer to the tract, which convinced the Tracta- rians that they had been wofully mistaken in their first estimate of him, and that he was "self-deceived." While he thus incurred the wrath of the one side, he made himself exceedingly obnoxious to their oppo- nents by defending Dr. Pusey in the matter of the condemned sermon. They were able to account for it in no other way than by declaring that he was a Tractarian at heart. But his action in this case was only characteristic of the man. Again and again we shall find him contending for the rights of minori- ties, and pleading unpopular causes. As he wrote some years later than this — "I feel that I am to be a man of war against all parties, that I may be a peacemaker between all men." Party-spirit as such he hated with all the strength and vigour of his na- ture. When it was proposed to him that he should take part in some tracts which were designed to op- pose the errors of the day, and set forth a more [ 290 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH correct system, he replied — "The one thought which possesses me most at this time, and I may say has always possessed me, is that we have been dosing our people with religion when what they want is not this but the Living God; and that we are threatened now, not with the loss of religious feel- ing, so-called, or of religious notions, or of religious observances, but with atheism. Everywhere I seem to perceive this peril. The heart and the flesh of our countrymen is crying out for God. We give them a stone for bread, systems for realities; they despair of ever attaining what they need. The specific for all this evil is some Evangelical discourse about the Bible being the rule of faith, some High Church cry for tradition, some Liberal theory of education. Surely we want to preach it in the ears of all men — It is not any of these things or all these things together that you want, or that those want who speak of them. All are pointing towards a Living Being, to know Whom is life; and all, so far as they are set up for any purpose but leading us into that know- ledge, and so to fellowship with each other, are dead things which cannot profit." Maurice's first impor- tant book, the Kingdom of Christ, points in the same direction. In it he sets forth that the Church is in- clusive, not exclusive; that its great privilege is, not that it confers certain selfish advantages upon its [291 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN members, but that it is the representative of what is true for all mankind. In 1846 he resigned his chaplaincy at Guy's, and was appointed Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn, where he preached each Sunday afternoon to a congregation largely made up of lawyers. In. the same year he was relieved of his literary and historical work at King's College, and made Professor of Theology. It must be that the duties of the two positions sup- plemented each other to some extent. Certainly, Maurice's preaching was distinctly theological and systematic, and might well have taken its shape from the lectures which he delivered at the College. Most of his books are in the form of lectures or of sermons, which were given to definite congregations before they were put in print. Not a few of these are the result of his work at Lincoln's Inn. We think of Maurice chiefly as a writer of books, and as a student. To the title of popular preacher, as we commonly understand the term, he can have had no claim. But there must have been a power in those services at Lincoln's Inn which popular preach- ing does not often give. Hutton tells us of his first visit to the Chapel there. "I went, and it is hardly too much to say that the voice and manner of the preacher — his voice and manner in the reading-desk at least as much as in the pulpit — have lived in my [ 292 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH memory ever since, as no other voice and manner have ever lived in it. There was intensity, almost too thrilling, and something, too, of sad exultation in every tone, as if the reader were rehearsing a story in which he had no part except his personal cer- tainty of its truth, his gratitude that it should be true, and his humiliation that it had fallen to such lips as his to declare it. But though his voice seemed to be the essential part of him as a religious teacher, his face, if you ever looked at it, was quite in keep- ing with his voice." Thomas Hughes, the author of Tom Brown at Rugby, and Maurice's associate in much of his philanthropic work, speaks in the same way of the manner of his preaching, and adds a word as to its matter, and the reason of its influence. "When he preaches, the chapel is crammed with young men of all shades of belief, many of them, to my know- ledge, not members of the Church of England, and most of the rest differing from him widely on many points. And come they will by hundreds whenever he preaches, because they feel that he has got some- thing to tell them which they want to know, and about which they must be satisfied. Whatever turn his sermon takes, they are quite sure that it will bring them back somewhere to this year of grace, and to the needs and struggles of their own inner life, and will cast light on those struggles and that [ 293 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN life. Moreover, they will hear a man speaking to them as men, sympathizing with and not silencing them; a far wiser and stronger man than themselves, no doubt, but one who is above all things at their side, and fighting his own life-battle as one of them, which is what they want, and not a saint or a doc- tor ever so much above them, with his cut-and-dried methods and paths for them to war and walk in, which is just what they don't want and won't have." Not only did Maurice preach and lecture. He speaks of the Church as "the hallower of all professions and occupations, the bond of all classes, the instrument of reforming abuses, the admonisher of the rich, the friend of the poor, the asserter of the glory of that humanity which Christ bears.'' The comprehensive- ness of this definition he proved in his own person. He took a prominent part in the establishment of Queen's College for women, at a time when the higher education of women was regarded with sus- picion and dislike. Of his labours in this direction, Archbishop Trench remarks — "Though many have watered and tended the plant, the vital seed in which it was all wrapped up, and out of which every part was unfolded, was sown onlv bv him." In spite of the many demands upon him, he found time for neighbourhood work among the poor. In the sum- mer of 1849, he took a company of ragged boys into [ 294 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH the country for a picnic — an event which now-a-days seems natural enough, but which was almost un- heard of then. Throughout his life, he was always holding Bible classes for those who cared to attend them — for barristers, for workingmen, for ladies, for London tradesmen. With his friend Charles Kingsley, he was a leading spirit in the movement known as Christian Socialism, which had for its object the recognition of men as men, and not as mere mem- bers of a class. The word, and the thing too, were bitterly opposed in many quarters. But the rich were often cruel and unfeeling, the poor brutal and passionate. It was the aim of Maurice and his friends to mitigate the evils of the time, so far as they could, by Christianizing Socialism. It was not a party which they tried to found. They had no wish to Christian-Socialize the world. In 1853 he published a volume called Theological Essays, most of which he had already delivered as sermons at Lincoln's Inn. In their final form, they were designed to meet the difficulties of Unitarians concerning the fundamentals of religious thought. The concluding essay was entitled "Eternal Life and Eternal Death." In it Maurice taught nothing that he had not often taught before. He declared that the word "eternal" was a word not of time, but of condition; that time and eternity could not [ 295 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN be used in contrast, for that they co-existed on the earth. The belief that the revelation of God, and not the notion of rewards and punishments, must be the end of the Divine dispensation, lay at the root of all his thought. So in this essay he points out that it is not punishment that men must dread, but sin. He declares that the real, the unutterable hor- ror, is the thought of God's ceasing to punish so long as there is any sin, of His letting men alone, of His leaving them to themselves. He protests against dogmatic statements which in effect hold that a man is as much bound to say — "I believe in the endless punishment of the greater portion of mankind," as "I believe in God the Father, in God the Son, and in God the Holy Ghost." There were lady-novelists who spoke smartly of "Mr. Maurice's easy-going belief." The religious papers of the day added to the hyena-like reputation which some of them enjoyed. But to say that Maurice took away ever so little from the awfulness of sin is to show blank ignorance or to utter libel. Not Pusey himself regarded it with greater horror. But it is not sin with which Maurice starts, but God. In one of his letters, he tells of a Baptist preacher, who was asked — "Sir, do you believe in the devil?" "No, sir," he answered; "I believe in God; do not you?" Maurice adds — "Now he had an intense feeling of the devil as his [ 296 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH personal and constant enemy; but he kept his belief for his Everlasting Friend." There could hardly be a better commentary upon Maurice's own position. Wherever there is sin, there there must be death — death present, and not only future. But God is al- ways righteous, always maintaining a fight with evil, always seeking to bring His creatures out of it. So he concludes — "I ask no one to pronounce, for I dare not pronounce myself, what are the possibilities of resistance in a human will to the loving will of God. There are times when they seem to me — thinking of myself more than of others — almost in- finite. But I know that there is something which must be infinite. I am obliged to believe in an abyss of love which is deeper than the abyss of death. I dare not lose faith in that love. I sink into death, eternal death, if I do. I must feel that this love is compassing the universe. More about it I cannot know. But God knows. I leave myself and all to Him." Maurice had long been a marked man in the theo- logical world. By partisans of every sort he was feared and hated. His opinions were ruthlessly mis- represented and distorted by a large portion of the religious press, so that the complaint was wrung from him — "Love and Truth seem to lose all con- nection with the name of religion, and God to be [ 297 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN utterly forgotten by those who use His name every moment." Because of his interest in working-men, he was charged with holding seditious and revolu- tionary views; so that Dr. Jelf, the Principal of King's College, had already expostulated with him on the disastrous results to the College which threatened to follow from his connection with it. The matter had blown over at the time. It was not difficult for Maurice to maintain his position, and at the same time to allay what Dr. Jelf called "the just apprehensions of the Council," by showing that he had been grossly misrepresented. The Council passed a vote of confidence in his teaching, and ex- pressed the hope that by his increased caution in the future any further measures on their part would be rendered unnecessary. But upon the publication of Theological Essays, the old clamour broke out anew. There was a certain grim fitness that such bitter denunciation should come from those who called upon the world to fraternize in the belief of everlasting punishment, rather than in the belief of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The Council of King's College were much alarmed lest their institu- tion should be compromised or injured, and hastened to throw the offender overboard. Maurice refused to resign while a charge was brought against him by the Principal of the College amounting to a declara- [ 298 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH tion that he had departed from the orthodox faith. In a letter to the Council, he remarks — "I cannot, my Lords and gentlemen, believe that, great as are the privileges which the Right Reverend Bench has conceded to the Principal of King's College, their Lordships the Bishops ever intended to give him an authority superior to their own, superior to that of the Articles by which they are bound; I cannot think that they wished to constitute him and the Council arbiters of the theology of the English Church. Such a claim would be as alarming, I ap- prehend, to the public as to our ecclesiastical rulers." But alas! how often such a claim is made the world over, and to this day, by lay-popes, by ecclesiastics who lord it over God's heritage, by decadent party- journals which seem to feed on envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness. Maurice goes on to ask that they will declare what Article of the faith condemns his teaching, or what law of the Church he may have violated. After reading his let- ter the Council decided that they need not enter further into the subject, and declared the two chairs held by Mr. Maurice in the College to be vacant! Maurice at once offered to resign his positions at Queen's College and at Lincoln's Inn. To Queen's College he was soon recalled, unanimously. His pa- rishioners at Lincoln's Inn would not hear of his [ 299 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN departure, and addressed to him a letter of sym- pathy and affection. Alfred Tennyson, to one of whose children he was godfather, wrote to him those cordial lines which have been read and admired by many who knew nothing of the occasion of their composition. " Come, when no graver cares employ, Godfather, come and see your boy; Your presence mill be sun in winter, Making the little one leap for joy. For, being of that honest few, Who give the Fiend himself his due, Should eighty thousand College-Councils Thunder ' anathema,' friend, at you; Should all our Churchmen foam in spite At you, so careful of the right, Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome, (Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight." He dwells on the peace and quiet of the country-side. He speaks of the many subjects upon which they will talk together — " Till you should turn to dearer matters, Dear to the man that is dear to God; [ 300 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH How best to help Hie slender store, How mend the dwellings, of the poor; How gam in life, as life advances, Valour and charity more and more." Truly, all these were subjects in which Maurice was at home. His departure from King's College did not interrupt his work as a teacher. He connected himself with the Workingmen's College which was established in the autumn of 1854; and there was no long period in his life when he was not conducting classes at his own house, generally in the study of the Bible. In I860 Maurice was appointed to St. Peter's, Vere St., a London Chapel with a considerable congrega- tion. He had many enemies. He had been engaged in several controversies. Dr. Candlish, an eminent minister of the Scotch Free Church, had attacked the Theological Essays with the uttermost bitterness; and Maurice had defended himself in the dedication to his volume on The Doctrine of Sacrifice. His con- troversy with Dr. Mansel, over the latter' s Bampton Lectures on The Limits of Religious Thought, ex- tended over a period of three years. He spoke of it as "my difference with those who think that revela- tion does not reveal." Maurice's book called What is Revelation ? was a direct answer to the Bampton Lee- [ 301 ] MEN AXD MOVEMENTS IN tures; and this was followed by what Dean Burgon calls "severe chastisement regretfully administered" on Mansel's part, and a dignified reply by Maurice. When, now, Maurice was appointed to St. Peter's, the opposition which he had experienced for years came to a head. But he had won the respect of fair-minded people, even of those who differed from him most. A protest against his appointment was drawn up by the Record newspaper of unsavory memory, and signed by about a score of London clergymen. A counter-ad- dress prepared by some of Maurice's friends received no less than 332 clerical and 487 lay-signatures, among them those of bishops, deans, and head-mas- ters; that of Tennyson, and that of Gladstone. It seemed as if the tide of unpopularity and misunder- standing had turned at last. In a letter thanking bis Mends for their efforts in his behalf, Maurice speaks thus of parties in the Church. ''You know, from the records of history, when any sect or school has be- come dominant, what has then happened; that it has been changed from a witness for Christ into a witness for itself; that the vital convictions which were dear to its founders pass into dead notions and an un- meaning phraseology; that opposition to other schools becomes the chief token that it retains any energy of its own. Therefore you are proving your reverence for the memories of pious ancestors, your gratitude [ 302 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH for the lessons which they have bequeathed to you, your determination that their legacies shall not be perishing heirlooms, but trusts for the generations to come, when you do what in you lies that the school, whatever it be, to which they were attached, may not lose all its power as an instrument of blessing to the Church through a suicidal ambition to absorb the Church into itself." Shortly after the beginning of Maurice's ministry at St. Peter's, the agitation over Bishop Colenso began. Maurice wrote of Co- lenso's book on the Pentateuch — "The pain which it has caused me is more than I can tell you. It is the most purely negative criticism I ever read. His idea of history is that it is a branch of arithmetic." With what must be regarded as an excess of deli- cacy, he thought of resigning his living that all the world might see that his opposition to Colenso was of the most purely disinterested kind. But largely through the tact of Bishop Tait he was brought to think better of it. He continued his work at St. Peter's for nine years, though during the last three years he was also Professor of Theology and Moral Philosophy at Cambridge. One incident of his later life ought not to be omitted. From time to time a little company of clergymen and laymen of all schools of thought met at St. James' Rectory in London^, and discussed questions of com- [ 303 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IX mon interest. On one such occasion, the question under discussion was the subscription of the clergy. Colonel Maurice, describing the scene in his father's Life, goes on — "A Member of Parliament, a strict adherent of the religion of the hour, had been em- phatically insisting upon the necessity of tightly tying down the clergy to their belief in the current dog- mas of the day, and of his particular school, assum- ing throughout that just the creed of him and his friends was that which had always everywhere been held by all. Pointing out the shocks which this form of faith had been of late receiving from many quar- ters, and suggesting a doubt whether the clergy were really giving their money's worth of subserviency for the money paid to them, he had said — 'Sometimes one would like to know what the clergy do believe now-a-days.'" There is no insolence like that of the pompous ignoramus, whether he be clerical or lay, who has dabbled on the surface of theological mat- ters, and who is his own St. Vincent of Lerins. The narrative continues — "Even' sentence had added fuel to the passionate indignation with which my father listened. It seemed to him just that claim to bind the clergy in the chains of Mammon at the chariot- wheels of public opinion, against which he believed that the Creeds, the Articles, the fixed stipends of the clergy, the order of Bishops as fathers-in-God, [ 304 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH were so many protests. It seemed just that convenient getting rid of all belief in a living God, and safely disposing of Him under a series of propositions to be repeated at so much an hour, which he looked upon as the denial of the day. He rose, as all those who saw him say, 'on fire.' c Mr. asks what the clergy believe in now-a-days. I believe in God the Father Almighty,' continuing the Apostles' Creed. Then he went on passionately to declare that be- cause he so believed he was bound by his Orders to protest against all appeals to money, to the praise of men, to the bargaining of the market, to the current run of popular feeling, as so many direct denials of truth, so many attempts to set up idols in place of the teaching of the living God. From all sides I have heard men say that it was one of the most striking things they had ever witnessed. Every one felt as if the place was in a blaze. No one else felt in any condition to speak, and the discussion abruptly ended.'' I have not spoken of Maurice's home life. His biog- rapher gives us but brief glimpses of it, though from those glimpses we might well wish for more. He was twice married. His first wife was the sister of the wife of John Sterling, whose strange, sad life has been written from opposite points of view by Julius Hare and by Thomas Carlyle. His second wife, who [ 305 ] MEN AXD MOVEMENTS IN survived him, was the sister of Julius Hare. He was a man of constant prayer. We are told that he never began any work or any book without preparing for it in this wav. His habit of mind is indicated by a re- mark in a letter to his son. "Do you remember what Charles Lamb says about his wanting a grace before Shakespeare and Milton, as well as a grace before meat? I am sure this is true, if our books are not to choke us." He was the most hospitable of men, and yet his son tells us that he doubts if he ever gave an invitation without a certain shyness and hesitation, as though it was something of a liberty for him to take to ask any human being to come to his house. This shyness it was almost impossible for him to set aside. He had none of those qualities which make the bustling clergyman successful in his work. He lacked assurance. He lacked self-esteem. Though it is a peculiarity of his books that they are almost always autobiographical, that he speaks in the first person, and has much to say about himself, it is be- cause he will not presume to speak for other people. He is never a critic unless he is forced to be so. It is his own duty with which he is most concerned. His books were composed in a hurry, and he did not regard them as likely to be of permanent repu- tation. He says of them — "Still I do not doubt that they are to do something. If, for example, I have [ 306 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH helped any one to feel that there is an eternal con- nection between history and mystery; that the per- sons who seek to separate them are seeking to destroy both — the mere historian turning history into an old almanac, the mere mystics and mythics turning the invisible things, which are of all the most substantial, into an empty, gilded vapour; or if I have succeeded in fixing this thought in any one's heart, that Christian- ity as expressed in the sacraments, the written word, and an apostolic ministry, is not a costume belonging to one age or country, but is just that which enables men to feel and know that there is anything which is not costume, anything which is eternal and un- changeable, and that with the loss of this that faith will perish altogether; if I have done this for any one, it signifies not to me the least how soon all the words which conveyed this impression are forgotten; how soon they are regarded as poor and idle words." For the last six years of his life Maurice lived at Cam- bridge, performing the duties of his professorship, and, for a part of the time, ministering to a little congre- gation. He died at London in the Easter week of 1872. Of the many warm tributes to his character and work, his son selects this sentence as that which would have pleased him most. "Wherever rich and poor are brought closer together, wherever men learn to think more worthily of God in Christ, the great [ 307 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN work that he has laboured at for more than fifty years shall be spoken of as a memorial of him." II. It has been impossible to glance ever so hastily at Maurice's life, without learning something of his thought. More than with any man whom we have yet considered, it is the record, not so much of events, as of mental processes. To enter into his the- ology would cany us far beyond the scope of our present plan. But in a few sentences we may point out something of the method of his thought, and its direction. I think we strike at the root of his theology by say- ing that it begins and ends with God. Perhaps this ought to be a commonplace, but in fact it is very far from being such. It was for just this lack that Mau- rice criticized the Evangelical preaching of his day; as deficient in reverence because it was deficient in depth; as so much about us, so little about God. For the opinions of men he cared but little, though per- haps such a statement needs to be supplemented by saying further that he cared for them a great deal. What I mean is this. He declares of Dr. Candlish, for example, that he regards the Christian faith as made up of a certain set of opinions — an opinion about the resurrection, an opinion about the judg- [ 308 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH ment, an opinion about sacrifice, an opinion about the Trinity. It is because he found Maurice wanting in the proper opinions on some of these subjects that he made his attack upon him. But for Maurice, his effort is to escape from opinions. He writes — "My de- sire is to ground all theology upon the Name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; not to begin from ourselves and our sins" — and he might easily have added, our opinions; "not to measure the straight line by the crooked one." At the same time, it is never what we commonly understand by compro- mise for which he pleads. "Compromise," he writes, "must always tend to the impairing of moral vigour, and to the perplexing of the conscience, if it is any- thing else than a confession of the completeness of Truth, and the incompleteness of our apprehension of it. I accept the Articles as a witness of truths which I cannot comprehend in my little system, and which my neighbour cannot comprehend in his little system. But God forbid that I should accept them if they compel me to give up any portion of that which I believe to him, or him to give up any portion of that which he believes to me. These are the compromises of politicians, which have no place in the Kingdom of God, seeing that they are based on calculations of self-interest and fear, not on mutual sacrifice." The mention of sacrifice suggests another of Mau- r 309 l MEN AND M OVEMEN'IS IN rice's root thoughts. He speaks of it as the doctrine of the Bible. He remarks of Abraham, that "he had found sacrifice to be no one solitary act, no sudden expression of joy, no violent effort to make a return for blessings which we can only return by accepting; but that it lies at the very root of our being; that our lives stand upon it; that society is held together bv it; that all power to be right, and to do right, begins with the offering up of ourselves, because it is thus that the righteous Lord makes us like Himself." He goes on — "The discovery that he had nothing to present, that he was poor and worthless, was the dis- covery that he belonged wholly to God, that he was His, and that his sin had consisted in withdrawing from his allegiance, in choosing another condition than his true and actual one." He dwells upon sacri- fice as brought out in its fullest and most radical sense when it becomes the giving up, not of some- thing belonging to the man, but of the man himself. But when he comes to the sacrifice of Christ, he adds a note of warning. "It is possible for men to speak much of justification, and to suppose that it is some act of theirs which justifies, not God Himself; it is possible for them to speak of Christ's redemption, and to suppose that He redeems them out of the hands of God, not brings them to Him; it is possible for them to speak of the Spirit bearing witness that they [ 310 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH are the sons of God, and to suppose that its witness depends upon some feelings or tempers or experiences which separate them from their fellow-creatures." To Maurice this seemed the mother-heresy. Must it not seem so to us all? Christ is our Peace, and all the promises of God in Him are yea. If we must fight, we have a better cause than our own notions. Maurice speaks of the difference between godliness and sentimental religion, which consists in feelings about God; and between godliness and systematic religion, which consists of notions about Him. He can have little sympathy with those who give only the husks of truths in systems, or those who give only the juice of truths in feelings. "To know that God does not depend upon our feelings, but our feelings upon God; to know that we must claim a certain spiritual position as our right before we can realize it in our apprehensions; to be assured that we have the Spirit of God within us, and that He is distinct from all the emotions, energies, affections, sympathies, in our minds, the only Source and Inspirer of them all; this is most necessary for us, the peculiar neces- sity, if I am not mistaken, of this age. To learn that what they could grasp by faith was theirs, was the task of our forefathers; it is a precious truth which they have left to us, and we must not let it go. To learn that there is a substance for faith to lay hold [311 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN of, and that faith does not create this substance; that there is a deep ground and source of faith, deeper of course than all the acts which proceed from it — this is our task." These were the principles with which Maurice ad- dressed himself to his work. Whatever the subject might be which was immediately before him, this was the sort of background against which it took its shape. He was a prolific writer, but his message was always much the same, that theology must be the knowledge of God, and not the teaching of a religion. In his Life of St. Francis of Asxixi, Sabatier remarks that theology had killed religion. The saying may express a truth, no doubt, a truth which Maurice himself would have been the first to admit. There may be a pseudo-theology which does not get beyond the mind, and leaves the heart and will untouched. But Mau- rice would have said rather, that many and many a time religion kills theology. He complains that it was wont to define the notes of sincerity and fellowship so carefully as to produce insincerity and separation. It is not God Who exists for man. It is man who must live for God. That Maurice was often misunderstood, there can be no doubt. There was a certain obscurity about his style which made misrepresentation easy, and it is not strange if those who did not know him often mistook [ 812 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH his meaning. There were some who thought that he introduced difficulties in order to make much of them, whereas his real purpose was to discover the truth in them, and confirm the faith of those who felt them. He does not attack a doubter, but endeavours to help him overcome his doubts. We may take Dean Church's summing up of his character as the estimate of a man who differed from him in many points. "It is nothing but the plainest justice to say that he was a philoso- pher, a theologian, and, we may add, a prophet, of whom, for his great gifts, and still more for his noble and pure use of them, the modern English Church may well be proud." All the promises of God in Him are yea. [313 ] Chapter xt CHARLES KINGSLEY THE influence of Frederick Denison Maurice could not be adequately described nor under- stood unless something were to be said of Charles Kingsley, who loved to call Maurice his "master." Never were two men more different. Maurice was essentially a theologian, Kingsley was a poet. Maurice was a student, the subtlety of whose thought some- times made it of no avail to those whom he sought to reach; while Kingsley was nothing if not plain. Maurice was gentle, shy, retiring; while Kingsley's name has come to be associated with what is called "muscular Christianity" — properly enough, if only it is remembered that it must also be associated with many things besides. But for all the contrast that there is between them, and it could hardly be put too strongly, in the inmost depths of being the two men are alike. Again and again, and in the most un- expected ways and places, we find Kingsley thinking Maurice's thoughts after him, and translating them from the language of the class-room into the lan- guage of daily life. In their common interest in Chris- tian Socialism, perhaps it is Kingsley who takes the [314 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH lead. In practical matters, the fourteen years between them counted for little. But in the region of the- ology, Kingsley is always the disciple. In the first letter that he ever wrote to Maurice, he remarks — "To your works I am indebted for the foundation of any coherent view of the Word of God, the meaning of the Church of England, and the spiritual phenom- ena of the present and past ages." Apologizing for his intrusion upon a stranger, he asks — "But where shall the young priest go for advice, but to the elder prophet?" And if Maurice did much for Kingsley by scattering his doubts and removing his difficulties, Kingsley has also done much for Maurice by making his thoughts known to many who would never have learned them at first hand. Like Keble and Stanley, Charles Kingsley was a son of the manse. He was born at Holne Vicarage, in Devonshire, on the 12th of June, 1819. His child- hood was spent at Barnack, in the Fen country, and at Clovelly, in North Devon. In these places the scenes that he was afterwards to describe in Here- ward the Wake, and Westward Ho, impressed them- selves on his mind. He was exquisitely sensitive to his surroundings, and keenly observant of whatever came his way. He speaks of Clovelly, with its quaint streets and old traditions, its wealth of op- portunity for botanical and geological studies, and [ 315 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN its wide stretch of sea, as the inspiration of his early life. When Kingsley was seventeen, his father removed to London, and for the next two years Charles was a pupil at King's College. Then he was at Magdalen College, Cambridge, for three years — years of popu- larity, uncertainty, and comparative idleness. He had determined to seek admission to the bar, and his name was already down at Lincoln's Inn. But to Kingsley, as to Robertson and to Maurice, there came the call to leave the work that he had chosen for himself, and to give himself to another that was chosen for him. The old life was left behind; the old energy, which had been without direction, was de- voted to God's service; and in the summer of 1842 Kingsley was ordained deacon by Bishop Sumner of Winchester. He writes to his future wife — "Night and morning, for months, my prayer has been: O God, if I am not worthy ; if my sin in leading souls from Thee is still unpardoned; if I am desiring to be a deacon not wholly for the sake of serving Thee; if it be necessary to show me my weakness and the holiness of Thy office still more strongly; O God, re- ject me. And while I shuddered for your sake at the idea of a repulse, I prayed to be repulsed if it were necessary, and included that in the meaning of my petition, 'Thy will be done.' After this what can I [316] THE ENGLISH CHURCH consider my acceptance but as a proof that I have not sinned too deeply for escape; as an earnest that God has heard my prayer and will bless my ministry, and enable me not only to raise myself, but to lift others with me. Oh! my soul, my body, my intellect, my very love, I dedicate you all to God." He be- came at once Curate of Eversley, in Hampshire. In two years he was appointed Rector; and Eversley was his home for thirty-three years, until his death in 1875. While Kingsley thus remained throughout his life a country parson, his influence upon the Church and upon the nation was far greater than that of most of his ecclesiastical superiors. And while he retained his charge at Eversley, he was called upon for other work as well. In 1859 he was appointed one of the Chap- lains to the Queen. For nine years from I860 he was Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. From 1870 to 1873 he was Canon of Chester, and then Canon of Westminster until his death. His scien- tific knowledge was recognized by his election as Fel- low of the Geological Society. And all this time, by a constant succession of books, he was speaking to many people in many ways. It will be convenient to think of him as the centre of three diminishing cir- cles. We may consider first those general principles of thought and action which made him what he was; [317 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN and then look for a little at the application of those principles in his books, and in his life at home and in his parish. I. It was said of Kingsley that the two most distinctive features of his religious teaching were that the world is God's world and not the devil's, and that manli- ness is entirely compatible with godliness. In sermons, in lectures, in tracts, in novels, we meet these con- stantly, and they supply the background of Kingsley's life. They explain the controversies in which he was engaged. They account for the special direction of the work which he tried to do for God. The first of these principles was the starting-point of all Maurice's teach- ing, as we have already seen. The second was the nat- ural outcome of Kingsley's temperament and training. Throughout his life, we see these principles in action. It is God's world. However great, then, the evil that lifts its head, and seems to have no remedy, still he cannot despair. His earliest novels, Yeast and Alton Locke, are concerned largely with those questions of Christian Socialism that became so prominent about 1848, and that must always excite the profoundest in- terest among those who believe that God has made of one blood all the nations of the earth. At the time of the Chartist uprising, Kingsley ranged himself with [ 318 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH the workmen, not through a fanatical disregard for the rights of property, but to keep the workmen from exaggerating and confounding their own wrongs. Wrongs enough they had, God knows. Dark and squalid houses, neglect, oppression, chilling penury, with all the ills that follow in their train — we cannot think that the pictures in Yeast are overdrawn. If Kingsley recognized all this, and the pity of it, and the wicked- ness of it, it was not as a popular demagogue, as there were some who tried to make him out. He was not blind to the shortcomings of those whom he be- friended. He pointed out to them, plainly enough, that they needed something more than a Charter to make them free. "Will it free you from slavery to bribes? Slavery to beer and gin? Slavery to every spouter who natters your self-conceit, and stirs up bitterness and headlong rage in you? That, I guess, is real slavery; to be a slave to one's own stomach, one's own pocket, one's own temper. There will be no tree freedom without virtue, no true science with- out religion, no true industry without the fear of God, and love to your fellow-citizens." Kingsley wrote thus for a placard which was to be posted up in the streets of London during the riots of April, 1848. He concludes — "Workers of England, be wise, and then you must be free, for you will be Jit to be free." The address was signed, "A Working Parson." [319 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN Under the name of "Parson Lot," he wrote much with the aim of improving social conditions, and of bringing about a better understanding between class and class. He was often misunderstood. He was bit- terly attacked by those who perverted and distorted his teaching so that he would never have recognized it as his own. After he had preached in a London church, by invitation of its Rector, the Rector de- nounced his sermon to his face, in the presence of the amazed congregation. Many of his own friends magnified the dangers that must always come from the abuse of any teaching, and closed their eyes to the evils that he sought to heal. He felt their aliena- tion, but it could not move him from his purpose. He writes to his wife — "I will not be a liar. I will speak in season and out of season. I will not shun to declare the whole counsel of God. I will not take counsel with flesh and blood, and flatter myself into the dream that while even- man on earth, from Mau- rice back to Abel, who ever tried to testify against the world, has been laughed at, misunderstood, slan- dered, and that, bitterest of all, by the very people he loved best, and understood best, I alone am to escape. My path is clear, and I will follow in it. He Who died for me, and Who gave me you, shall I not trust Him through whatsoever new and strange paths He may lead me?" [ 320 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH That Kingsley was no mere theorist upon such sub- jects, his own life proves abundantly. In a lecture to ladies interested in the cause of the labouring classes, he strikes the keynote of his own success. "Visit whom, when, and where you will; but let your visits be those of women to women. Consider to whom you go — to poor souls whose life, compared with yours, is one long malaise of body, soul, and spirit — and do as you would be done by ; instead of reproving and fault- finding, encourage. In God's name, encourage. They scramble through life's rocks, bogs, and thorn-brakes, clumsily enough, and have many a fall, poor things! But why, in the name of a God of love and justice, is the lady, rolling along the smooth turnpike road . in her comfortable carriage, to be calling out all day long to the poor soul who drags on beside her, over hedge and ditch, moss and moor, barefooted and weary-hearted, with half-a-dozen children on her back — c You ought not to have fallen here; and it was very cowardly to lie down there; and it was your duty as a mother to have helped that child through the puddle; while as for sleeping under that bush, it is most imprudent and inadmissible.' Why not encourage her, praise her, cheer her on her weary way by loving words, and keep your reproofs for yourself — even your advice; for she does get on her way, after all, where you could not travel a step [ 321 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN forward; and she knows what she is about better perhaps than you do, and what she has to endure, and what God thinks of her life-journey." 'Be a sister to her,' is the substance of what he has to say; 'for if you cannot be that, what is it but im- pertinence to interfere in her affairs at all?' But the portent of an exclusive individual, or an exclusive society, or, worse than all, an exclusive Church, was to Kingsley only another name for the selfishness of hell. Because he looked upon the world as God's world, he longed to set it right where it had gone astray, and so we find him foremost in the reforming move- ments of his time. The other principle of his teach- ing, that there could be no real godliness for men without manliness, gave him a wide-spread and far- reaching influence; but at the same time, because he confined it within undue limits, it sometimes led him to hasty conclusions which were half true, and were therefore all the more dangerous and mislead- ing on that account. He was the most charitable of men. "Life is too hard work in itself," he writes, "to let one stop to hate and suspect people." He sees plainly enough that absence of tenderness for men, and want of sympathy with men, are connected by a hundred roads. But, as Pusey was blind to the good that Maurice taught; as it could be said of Keble by [ 322 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH one of his own friends that, saintly as he was, he yet belonged to his day and generation, and hated evil more than he perceived various and mingled good; so was it with Kingsley. To a man of his disposition, the Oxford Movement, in its original form at least, had no message. To the Church of England he was devotedly attached. But it was just because the Ox- ford Movement seemed to him to advance principles which were foreign to that Church that he disliked and distrusted it. Events have proved that he was not altogether wrong; but they have also proved that he was not altogether right. And so in his letters, and still more in his books, we find a char- acterization of the Tractarians that is hardly just. Asceticism he regarded almost as a denial of God's goodness. With Maurice, looking upon the family as the unit, he considered celibacy an artificial state which approached much less nearly to virtue than to vice. Readers of Hypatia will not need to be told that his reverence for antiquity, simply as antiquity, was by no means great. Though it is an expression that may easily enough be misunderstood, we may venture to say that his reverence for manhood was greater than his reverence for sainthood. Lancelot, in Yeast, is a hero much more to his mind than Cyril of Alexandria. This distrust of the Tractarians was of course inten- [ 323 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN sified by the stream of secessions to Rome which followed the departure of Dr. Newman. Veiled allu- sions to Newman are by no means rare in Kingsley's writings, and in 1864 he remarked, in the course of a review of Froude's History of England — "Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be." It was a rash statement, and a hasty one. Kingsley and Newman were cast in radically different moulds, and I suppose that neither was capable of thoroughly understanding the other. When in his Anglican days Newman was the idol of a considerable part of the religious world, Kingsley had yielded scant admira- tion. We can hardly suppose that Newman would have had much interest in most of Kingsley's work. It is true that Kingsley speaks of the strong influence which some of Newman's writings had at one time exerted upon him; and that Newman declared himself amazed on learning that it was Kingsley who had penned the offensive sentence. But of real sympathy there was little on either side. It is impossible to enter into the controversy between the two. Newman was the greatest master of dialectic of his time, and had the advantage of being the of- fended party. Kingsley did what he could to make amends, but without avail. We have already seen [ 324 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH Newman's method of meeting his opponent. And we can hardly be sorry for an indiscretion, or even for an "enormity," to call it by Newman's name, which resulted in the writing of the Apologia. In a way, the episode is characteristic of each of the two men. If Kingsley was defeated, we must remember that he was defeated by a giant whom he had roused. If he was rash, we must remember that rashness is the ex- aggeration of boldness, and Kingsley was always bold in a good cause. If now and then he was rash in a bad one, shall we be too hard upon him for possess- ing the defects of his qualities? II. It is time to cast a hasty glance at Kingsley's books. Writing, of course, formed no small part of the work of each of the men whom we have considered. The sermons of Newman and Robertson belong to the classics of the English language. Though Keble found himself in the position of a party-leader, his religious poetry belongs to devout men of every party and every name. Tait and Wilberforce found the cares of the episcopate too weighty to have much leisure for literary work, but they wrote multitudinous letters, if they had little time for writing books. Stanley must rank among the literary chiefs. Arnold was a historian of no mean power. The labours of Pusey and Maurice [ 325 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN were prodigious, though each of them confined his work for the most part to subjects of an ecclesiastical or theological nature. In some point or other, doubt- less, Kingsley was surpassed by all these men, but it may at least be said that in versatility he surpassed them all. He died when he was only fifty-five, while still in the vigour of his prime, but he had already published thirty-five volumes, and volumes of the most diverse kinds. There were plays and poems. There were ser- mons preached in the village and in the Cathedral. There were lectures of one sort and another, literary, historical, scientific. There were stories for children, such as few men have ever written. And there were novels of the fifth century, the sixteenth, and the nineteenth; of Europe, Africa, and America; with a purpose and without one. From a mass of material so great and so diversified, it is a difficult matter to pick out a distinctive mark of Kingsley's style. But in his Inaugural Lecture at Cambridge he lays down a principle which, in some shape or other, we find at the root of all his work. He is speaking of the limits of exact science as ap- plied to History. "If you wish to understand His- tory," he says, "you must first try to understand men and women. For History is the history of men and women, and of nothing else; and he who knows men [ 326 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH and women thoroughly will best understand the past work of the world, and be best able to carry on its work now. The men who, in the long run, have gov- erned the world, have been those who understood the human heart." And so, after a little, he goes on — "If, therefore, any of you should ask me how to study History, I should answer — Take by all means biographies; wheresoever possible, autobiographies; and study them. Fill your minds with live human figures; men of like passions with yourselves; see how each lived and worked in the time and place in which God put him. Believe me, that when you have thus made a friend of the dead, and brought him to life again, and let him teach you to see with his eyes, and feel with his heart, you will begin to understand more of his generation and his circumstances than all the mere history-books of the period would teach you. In proportion as you understand the man, and only so, will you begin to understand the elements in which he worked." This human element we find in all of Kingsley's writ- ing. It is the great point of difference between him and his master, Maurice. Maurice was concerned with principles. He sets forth again and again that what is needed is not so much that the believer should possess his faith, as that the faith should possess the believer. But Kingsley is concerned with men; and [ 327 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN when he would state the same truth he puts it in the mouth of Raphael Aben Ezra, and gives it a local habitation and a name. The Bishop complained of the sermons that Kingsley presented to him be- fore his Ordination, that they were too colloquial. Considering the habits of the English episcopate in 1842, it is probable that they regarded ponderousness with too lenient eyes. But whether the criticism was just or not, it shows that Kingsley did not forget that while he spoke for God, he also spoke to men. From this keen human sympathy there came a vein of genial playfulness that is one of Kingsley's greatest charms. We find it oftentimes in his novels, where it takes the sting from some harsh saying. It made him a delightful companion, whether in print or in his proper person. He is free — there were those who said that he was too free — from fussy formalities. Though none ever played a man's part better than he, he loved from time to time to be a boy again. He writes to his friend, Thomas Hughes, asking him to join him in a holiday in North Wales. " Though we earn our bread, Tom, By the dirty pen, What we can we will be, Honest Englishmen. Do the work that's nearest, [ 328 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH Though it's dull at whiles, Helping, when we meet them, Lame dogs over stiles j See in every hedge-row Marks of angels' feet, Epics in each pebble Underneath our feet ; Once a year, like schoolboys, Robin Hood-ing go, Leaving fops and fogies A thousand feet below." Perhaps there is no one book in which so many of the distinctive features of Charles Kingsley are com- bined as in the delightful Water Babies, dedicated to his youngest son, Grenville Arthur, and to all other good little boys. In it we have his eager sympathy with suffering; his love for little children; his hatred of cruelty and injustice; his intolerance of ignorance which masquerades as knowledge; his delight in the wonderful things of Nature, which are the works of God. It is a dull soul who does not feel for poor little Tom, who spent his time between laughing and cry- ing, and who thought it must be a very dirty lady who could need a bath-tub! Cousin Cramchild and Aunt Agitate seem, alas! like familiar friends. There is something as deep as there is delicious in the [ 329 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN argument concerning the existence of water-babies. "You never heard of a water-baby? But there are a great many things in the world which you never heard of. There are no such things as water-babies? How do you know that? Have you been there to see? And no one has a right to say that no water- babies exist, till they have seen no water-babies ex- isting; which is quite a different thing, mind, from not seeing water-babies; and a thing which nobody ever did, or perhaps ever will do." Again, the otter who spoke with Tom after he had become a water-baby added human qualities to human speech. "Come out," said the wicked old otter, "or it will be worse for you." But Tom would not come out. "Come away, children," said the otter in disgust, "it is not worth eating, after all. It is only a nasty eft, which nothing eats, not even those vulgar pike in the pond." "I am not an eft," said Tom. "Efts have tails." "You are an eft," said the otter, very positively. "I see your two hands quite plain, and I know you have a tail." And she ends the discussion in the water as many discussions are ended on the land. "I say you are an eft, and there- fore you are." There must be just a word about Mrs. Bedonebv- asyoudid. It is an innocent realism that she repre- sents, and a pleasanter and more intelligent than [ 330 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH that which is now in vogue. Her dealings with the doctors who give little children so much physic, and the foolish ladies who pinch up their children's waists and toes, and the schoolmasters who beat and bully, are fittingly described. "Then she called up all the careless nursery-maids, and stuck pins into them all over, and wheeled them about in perambulators with tight straps across their stomachs, and their heads and arms hanging over the side, till they were quite sick and stupid, and would have had sunstrokes; but being under the water, they could only have water- strokes. And mind, when you hear a rumbling at the bottom of the sea, sailors will tell you that it is a ground-swell; but now you know better. It is the old lady wheeling the maids about in perambu- lators." I have dwelt on Kingsley's lighter side, perhaps be- cause such a side is less often looked for in a man of his profession. Most persons are familiar with his novels, and know their interest and power. As for his sermons, there is little that need be said. They are plain and to the point. In their day, there is every reason to believe that they were profoundly useful. But it is not by his sermons that he will be remem- bered. It is hard to judge a sermon as literature, be- cause it ought to be so much more than literature, and because, alas ! it is often so much less. Many men [ 331 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN have preached as well as Kingsley. Not a few have preached better. But veiy few indeed have understood better than he the mind and heart of little children; and if Aunt Agitate thinks his lyrics silly, so much the worse for her. "/ once had a sweet little doll, dears, The prettiest doll in the world; Her cheeks were so red and so white, dears, And her hair was so charmingly curled. But I lost my poor little doll, dears, As I played in the heath one day; And I cried for her more than a week, dears, But I never could Jind where she lay. "I found my poor little doll, dears, As I played in the heath one day; Folks say she is terribly changed, dears, For her paint is all washed away; And her arm trodden off by the cows, dears, And her hair not the least bit curled; Yet for old soke's sake she is still, dears, The prettiest doll in the world." III. We may turn from Kingsley' s more public work to the quiet life at Eversley, in his parish and in his [ 332 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH home. It would be hard to find more perfect pictures of domestic happiness than those which we have seen in the lives of most of the men whom we have been considering. Kingsley was no exception to the rule. From his marriage in 1844 until his death, his wife shared all his thoughts, his hopes, his work. One writes who knew him well, and who lived for some months as a pupil in his house — "To his wife — so he never shrank from affirming in deep and humble thankfulness — he owed the whole tenor of his life; all that he had worth living for. It was true. And his every word and look, and gesture of chivalrous devotion for more than thirty years, seemed to show that the sense of boundless gratitude had become part of his nature, and was never out of the under- current of his thoughts.' - Between Kingsley and Keble there were many points of opposition. But in their peaceful country life they were alike. And this is a side of them on which one loves to dwell. In the world of letters and of thought each had his special place. They were not as other men. They had powers, and they used them, such as are given to but few. But in their parishes, they serve as types of many faithful men who are quite unknown to fame. They show us how strong a hold the Church of England has upon her people, and how justly it is so. At Eversley, Kingsley was the good angel of the [ 333 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN place. He found many lacks. There had been neglect, for which criminal is hardly too harsh a word. The property was falling to decay. The people were scat- tered abroad, like sheep having no shepherd. The alms were collected in an old wooden saucer. A cracked kitchen basin inside the font held the water for Holy Baptism. A moth-eaten cloth served as cov- ering for the altar. And these external things were only signs of the demoralization of the parish. It was not long before all this was changed. St. Paul writes to Timothy that a Bishop must be one that ruleth well his own house, for if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the Church of God? Kingsley's government of his house shows the method of his administration of his parish. Just before his marriage, he writes to his future wife — "We will hunt out all the texts in the Bible about masters and servants, to form rules upon them; and our rules we will alter and improve upon in time, as we find out more and more of the true relation in which we ought to stand to those whom God has placed under us. I feel more and more that the new principle of considering a servant as a trader, who sells you a certain amount of work for a certain sum of money, is a devil's principle, and that we must have none of it, but return as far as we can to the patriarchal and feudal spirit towards them." These [ 334, ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH principles he carried into practice, and at his death all the servants in the house had lived with him from seventeen to twenty-six years. In all his relationships he was emphatically a man of God. The routine of a country parish is monotonous enough. There must have been much that was very commonplace. A description of the penny readings, for example, that meant so much to Eversley, could not but sound tame. It was Kingsley's delight to bring some brightness into cramped and narrow lives. "With every person he met," we are told, "he instinctively struck some point of contact, found something to appreciate — often, it might be, some information to ask for — which left the other cheered, self-respecting, raised for the moment above himself; and whatever the passing word might be, it was given to high and low, gentle or simple, with an ap- propriateness, a force, and a genial courtesy, in the case of all women a deferential courtesy, which threw its spell over all alike, a spell which few could re- sist.'' It is not every man who can live in the country, and yet keep his mind as vigorous and alert as if it were exposed to the constant stimulus of other minds, act- ing and reacting upon itself. But to Kingsley his books were very real companions. We are told that every book on the many crowded shelves looked at [ 335 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN him with almost human friendly eyes. Never was a man whose high transparent life made the glare and gaslight seem such a wretched sham. He knew where each book "lived," to use his own expression; for to him, as to every man who has truly learned how to read, his books were living souls. And he used them, not to confound his enemies, but to help and strengthen those who needed help. There was earn- est as well as jest in his suggestion for a tax on long words, such as heterodoxy. His love of nature shows in all his writings, and must have played no small part in making him a good and happy man. One who is blind to God's works cannot find it very easy to love God. One writes of him — "Earth, air, and water, as well as farmhouse and cot- tage, seemed full of his familiar friends. By day and by night, in fair weather and in storm, grateful for heat and cold, rain and sunshine, light and soothing darkness, he drank in nature. It seemed as if no bird, or beast, or insect, scarcely a drifting cloud in the sky, passed by him unnoticed, unwelcomed." When the evening's work was done, he would open the door that led on to the lawn, and make a rush out into the darkness. "It is very pleasant," he would say, "to see what is going on out here." As his fame increased, the little church was filled with strangers — officers from Sandhurst and Alder- [ 336 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH shot, families from the surrounding country, and strangers who had come from afar to see for the first time a man who had been long their friend. But the interest which the great world outside took in him was never allowed to relax the interest which he himself took in the little world in which his lot was cast. The humblest duties which his parish laid upon him never seemed to lose their importance in his eyes. As with Keble, his own people did not recognize his greatness. They had known him for so long that they imagined all country parsons were like him. One day when the yard was filled with carriages, the sexton was heard to say that he could not think why there was "such flitting to and fro to our church on Sundays." As it is art to conceal art, perhaps it is the truest greatness which is unsuspected. During the later years of Kingsley's life, there were many absences from Eversley. There were lectures to be delivered at Cambridge, and terms of resi- dence to be kept at Chester and at Westminster, and twice there were long journeys to the West Indies and the United States. But throughout his ministry it was Eversley that was his home, and it was to Eversley that he returned to die. He had lived much. Long life was not for him. On the Ad- vent Sunday of 1874, he preached his last sermon in Westminster Abbey, and then hastened home. Be- [337 ] M E X AND MOVEMENTS IN fore the first month of the new year had passed away, he was dead. He lies buried in Eversley Churchyard, and on the stone which marks his grave are three words which tell the story of his life— AMAVIMUS, AMAMUS, AMABIMUS. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this command- ment have we from Him, That he who loveth God love his brother also. [ 338 ] Chapter vtt. CONCLUSION LIGHTFOOT AND CHURCH WE have traced the course of some of the great changes that have come to the Church of England during the present century, in the per- sons of those who played a leading part in bringing them about. There are many others whose claim to remembrance is scarcely less great than that of the men whom we have considered. In some cases, and in some directions, it may well be questioned if it is not even greater. The number is not few of those who served their generation faithfully and well, not merely in the "obscure felicity" of country parishes scattered all over the land, and in the ceaseless ac- tivity which work in great cities is demanding more and more, but in high station which they filled with conspicuous merit, or commanding abilities and solid scholarship which they consecrated to the Church's work. In the earlier part of the period which has been before us, there were men like Whately, who gave its tone to Oriel for years before the beginning of the Oxford Movement, and who taught Newman [ 339 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN to think, as Newman himself tells us, though the thoughts of the pupil soon became widely different from those of the master; and Hawkins, who was elected Provost of Oriel over Keble; and Christopher Wordsworth, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. In the development of the Oxford Movement, men like Rose and Marriott, and Hurrell Froude and Isaac Wilhams played no small part. A historian of at least equal weight with Stanley, and somewhat along Stan- ley's lines, was Henry Hart Milman, Dean of St. Paul's, whose works, especially his History of Latin Christianity, are of permanent value. By their Com- mentaries, Wordsworth and Alford and Ellicott, though each had his limitations, did much for the furtherance of Bible study. Alford's magnificent hymn, "Ten thousand times ten thousand," which was sung at his funeral in Canterbury Cathedral, must take its place among the world's greatest hymns. Nor were preachers lacking who were worthy suc- cessors to Newman and to Robertson in their grasp of spiritual truth, and their power of bringing home to their hearers what they had to say. One name in particular will at once suggest itself. When Dr. Light- foot had completed his great work on Ignatius, he gave it this Dedication. "To Henry Parry Liddon, to whom God has given special gifts as a Christian Preacher and matched the gifts with opportunities [ 340 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH assigning to him his place beneath the great dome of St. Paul's, the centre of the world's concourse." No higher praise can be given than this, that the man was equal to his great position. It seems sometimes as if one of the chief dangers of modern ritualism lay in the thinly-veiled contempt for preaching which is expressed by some of its adherents, sometimes in words, sometimes even more strongly by their own use of the pulpit. Liddon's example proves conclu- sively that any such divorce is at once unnecessary and indefensible. In the mere external use of the word, perhaps he could hardly be called a ritualist. Certainly, we should search in vain through all his writings for any of those instructions as to dress and postures which form the literary output of some of the members of that school, and the service at St. Paul's did not readily lend itself to extremes, even had their introduction been desired. But Liddon was in fullest sympathy with Dr. Pusey. It was to him that the task of writing Pusey's life was committed, a task unhappily interrupted by his too early death. And he did not shrink back from those later develop- ments growing out of the Oxford Movement, in which Pusey himself took little interest. For all this — and if there are some who would say, in spite of this, it is to a caricature that they must look for their justification — he was the foremost [341 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN preacher of his time. Whatever else he was, and he was uncompromising in controversy, while his Bamp- ton Lectures on the Divinity of Christ show the range and depth of his scholarship, it is his preach- ing that must claim the foremost place. At one time he was associated with Samuel Wilberforce in his theological school at Cuddesdon. Then he was at Oxford for a time; and then, for the last twenty years of his life, he was Canon of St. Paul's Cathe- dral until his death in 1890. There he wielded an influence which could hardly be exaggerated. As one put it on the day of his funeral — "Men, women, and children, as he met them, as he spoke to them, through all external difference, had this one supreme and common interest for him, that he might perhaps make it easier for them to know and do God's will, that he might somehow help forward in their lives the victory of God's love. In all alike he saw the same great drama moving to its vast issue ; of all alike in simplest sincerity he held himself the slave for Christ's sake." This was the purpose of his preaching, and in part at least the secret of his suc- cess. He had the profoundest respect, not only for the message which he had to deliver, but for those to whom he had to speak. And so his sermons are always direct, but always dignified. He deals with the life that is going on around him. He has sorae- [ 342 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH thing to say upon the event that has been in men's minds during the week. But it is to bring it into its relation to the Eternal. No man was ever less tempted to turn the pulpit into a place for the discussion of current gossip. Whatever the subject with which he has to deal, neither preacher nor congregation are permitted to forget for a moment that it is Jesus Christ whose they are and whom they serve. His months of residence at St. Paul's were April, August, and December. It therefore fell to him to preach in Advent and Holy Week, at Christmas and at Easter. Year after year, he dwelt upon the same great subjects with force and freshness. One feels that here there is the richest and most varied learn- ing, which is never suffered to intrude itself; the fullest experience, from which the faintest suspicion of egotism is very far removed. Some one has said that he was not only a great preacher, but that he was emphatically a preacher of great sermons. It is true. They are always deeply religious. They are al- ways solemn. There is nothing of the essay in them. But they are never dull, they are never beyond the comprehension of any one who will take the pains to listen. They are for all sorts and conditions of men. They are positive and unflinching in their teaching, but so entirely are they concerned with the essentials of Christianity that we should search in vain for any- [ 343 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN thing of the appearance of party-spirit in them. Christ's Cross and Passion, His glorious Resurrection, His two comings to this earth of ours, these are his constant themes. In Liddon's sermons,, as in Keble's poems, we are made to feel the very spirit of the Christian Year. There are two men who were associated with Liddon at St. Paul's, to whom we must give a somewhat fuller consideration. They were alike in this, that each com- bined ripe scholarship with high administrative posi- tion, admirably filled. One, Bishop Lightfoot, was the profoundest scholar whom the Church of England has produced for many a day. The other, Dean Church, besides his great work at St. Paul's, and a mastery of English style in which he has had few equals, is noteworthy as an example of the uses to which ob- scurity may be put. About the year 1845 Dr. Prince Lee, afterwards first Bishop of the new See of Manchester, was Master of the Grammar School at Birmingham. He used to say to his pupils — "You must not only listen, but read. You must not only read, but think. Knowledge with- out common sense is folly; without method it is waste; without charity it is fanaticism; without religion it is death." Many of these pupils attained distinction at [ 344 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH the Universities. Three of them rose to positions of commanding eminence. One, Edward White Benson, became Bishop of Truro, and then, at Tait's death, Archbishop of Canterbury. Of his Judgment in the trial of the Bishop of Lincoln Dean Church could write — "It is the most courageous thing that has come from Lambeth for the last two hundred years." His book on Cyprian, published since his death, proves that in spite of the many cares of the Primacy he yet found time to be a scholar of the first rank. An- other, Brooke Foss Westcott, was for many years Re- gius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and is still living as Bishop of Durham. We are not concerned with those who still survive. In most cases, a man's work cannot fairly be estimated until his death. We must hope that nothing need be said of Dr. Westcott's administration of his diocese for many years. But his services to every student of the Bible have been so great, especially in what he has written on the Epistle to the Hebrews and concerning the Resurrection of our Lord, that it would be idle hesi- tation to pass them by. The third was Joseph Barber Lightfoot, whose career we may now consider briefly. He was born at Liverpool in 1828. From Birmingham he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he be- came a Tutor after his ordination by his old Master, now Bishop of Manchester. As Tutor, it was said of [ 345 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN him that he never made any one ashamed of asking questions; and again, that he had a singular power of inspiring his pupils with a belief in the duty and the pleasure of hard work, letting them know that his own great attainments had been won by sheer diligence. At the same time, he never allowed his studious habits to close for him the avenues of hu- man interest. One of his pupils remarks that to have known him in his lighter moods was a possession for a lifetime. In 1861 he was made Hulsean Professor of Divinity. It has been said of this choice that "it may be re- garded as one of the turning-points not only in the history of the University of Cambridge, but also in the wider history of Christianity in England, and from England throughout the world." Surely, the matter is not over-stated. During those years, he produced his Commentaries on Galatians, Philippians, and Co- lossians, which are likely to remain the standard works on those Epistles for many years to come. He had intended to include all of St. Paul's Epistles in his plan, and a volume of fragmentary notes which he had made upon them has been published since his death, but the pressure of other work prevented the complete execution of his design. But as Bishop West- cott said of him, if he has not done all that he in- tended, he has at least shown how it should be done. [ 346 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH He was one of the Committee on the Revision of the New Testament. By his refutation of the work en- titled Supernatural Religion he made a valuable con- tribution to apologetic literature. Nor was Cambridge the sole sphere of his labours. At various times he served as Select Preacher, not only at his own Uni- versity, but at Oxford and at Whitehall. He was Chaplain to the Prince Consort, and Honorary Chap- lain to the Queen. For seventeen years he was Ex- amining Chaplain to Dr. Tait, both at London and at Canterbury. In 1870 he was appointed Canon of St. Paul's, but his terms of residence were such that they did not interfere with the continuance of his work at Cambridge. There are many men who are weighed down by responsibilities that are too heavy for them, who cannot rise to the positions which they are called upon to fill. But we cannot doubt that there are others who possess latent powers which are never known, through lack of opportunity for their development. In preaching, especially, almost as much depends upon the congregation as upon the preacher. Tait recognized this. It was as a scholar, of course, that Lightfoot had made his reputation. But on his appointment to St. Paul's the Archbishop remarked — "We have made Lightfoot a preacher;" and explained his meaning by adding — "We have given the finest pulpit in the world to a man to whom God has given [ 347 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS I X the power to use it." Certainly, Lightfoot's sermons, even as they are read in the printed page, abun- dantly justified the wisdom of the choice. In 1879 he was offered the Bishopric of Durham. It was the first direct nomination to that See in more than two hundred years. His first words to his diocese were these. Thev show the spirit in which he under- took his work, and the purpose which lay behind it all. '"'And what more seasonable prayer can you offer for him who addresses you now, at this the most momentous crisis of his life, than that he — the latest successor of Butler — may enter upon the duties of his high and responsible office in the same spirit; that glimpses of the invisible Righteousness, of the invisi- ble Grace, of the invisible Glory, may be vouchsafed to him; and that the Eternal Presence, thus haunting him night and day, may rebuke, may deter, may guide, may strengthen, may comfort, may illumine, may consecrate and subdue the feeble and wayward impulses of his own heart to God's holy will and purpose!" From Cambridge and St. Paul's to Durham was a tremendous change. The old work was never quite given up. The scholar's mind, the scholar's con- science, could not suffer that. But the needs of a diocese like Durham were not to be met with in the study, and it was to his diocese that he always [ 348 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH gave his first allegiance. For many years he had been engaged upon an edition of Ignatius, which lie regarded as the great critical work of his life. Be- side his new duties, it had to take the second place. "For weeks, and sometimes for months together," he tells us, "I have not found time to write a single line." But from rest and sleep he snatched the hours to bring it to completion. We are accustomed to look to Germany for painstaking erudition and minute anti- quarian research. It is interesting, then, to see what Professor Harnack of Berlin has to say of Lightfoot's work. "We may say, without exaggeration, that this edition of. the Epistles of Ignatius and Polycarp is the most learned and careful Patristic monograph which has appeared in the nineteenth century; that it has been elaborated with a diligence and know- ledge of the subject which show that Lightfoot has made himself master of this department, and placed himself beyond the reach of any rival." After the offer of the Bishopric, but while it was yet uncertain whether the old claim might not prove stronger than the new, Dean Church wrote of him to Dr. Benson — "He is not only full of knowledge, he is able to make knowledge live. He is able to animate it with the sense of its connection with the needs and hopes of present modern life." This power of his he continued to exercise, though in new places [ 349 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN and with new ends. He gathered around him at Auckland Castle a band of young men, and himself trained them for their future work in the diocese. As the number grew, and year after year they went out to their new posts, he called them back on each St. Peter's Day for a reunion. His addresses on these occasions show how deeply he entered into the feel- ings of his clergy, how truly he deserved the title Father in God. In work like theirs there must have been many discouragements, many temptations to shallowness or even to despair. So he reminds them that spiritual greatness is the ability and the readi- ness to learn from failure what is the secret of suc- cess. He warns them not to mistake what failure really is. It is not mere external inefficiency, nor want of ministerial success in any given place. That may mean much, and it may mean very little. Out- ward success is a poor criterion of worth. But real failure lies in spiritual sluggishness, the sense that they have been wanting in themselves. He points out to them some of the dangers to which they are exposed. "If vice is the death of the irreligious many, formalism is the death of the religious few." He urges the duty of self-communication. This man, whose own stores of knowledge were so vast, and who made such noble use of them, bids them remember that the selfish accumulation of knowledge is not one [ 350 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH whit more honourable than the selfish accumulation of raonej'. The elegant scholar, who has no care for "the riddle of the painful earth," and whose only interest is in his own accomplishments, stands on the same moral plane with the miser. He tells them that while we must bear one another's burdens, every man must bear his own burden, too. "It is a burden indeed, a pack, such as soldiers carry; it adds much to the fatigue and toil of the march; but it is absolutely necessary, not only for the man's efficiency, but even for his sustenance. It comprises not only his accoutrements, but it includes also provision for the journey. We cannot shake it off. We cannot devolve it upon others. It was laid upon our shoulders by our commanding officer. If it is burdensome, it is necessary. To sink under it is pusillanimous. To throw it off is rebellious, and will lead to certain destruction." In what he desires for the young men who had lived in his house and been as sons to him, we may see what he chiefly desired for himself. "I am ambitious for you all. But my ambition does not take the form of wishing to see you in places of emolument or ease or comfort or popularity. I desire before all things that you should be fit to do Christ's work, that you should be ready to do it, and that you should have the scope and opportunity for doing it. I should feel — you would feel, would you not? — that [ 351 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN only too much honour was done to you when you were called to bear the brunt of the fight in the van of God's army, even though your shoulders might wear no epaulettes, and you yourselves receive less than a subaltern's pay." If Lightfoot won more than this, it was not of his own seeking; and if he attained high honour, it was an honour that carried with it weighty cares. At Durham he found himself face-to-face with the most perplexing problems of the modern world. Great masses of industrial populations were rushing in, drawn thither by the coal-fields, the iron-works, the ship-building. We are told that a country road, such as that along which the Bishops of Durham had driven from their castle at Auckland to the Cathe- dral Church, and by the side of which one house stood some fifty years ago, had become for a considerable part of its course a street, with a network of houses on either side. A seaside village had become a great port. The church accommodation was wretchedly insufficient for this rapid influx of people. One of the first accomplishments of Lightfoot's episcopate was the setting apart of the diocese of Newcastle, dividing the work, and so not lightening his labour, but adding to his power of concentration. He de- voted himself heart and soul to meeting the needs which were but too evident. If he asked others to [ 352 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH help him, it was not until he had given generously himself. At the end of five years, no less than forty- five churches and mission chapels had been com- pleted. Unlike most of the great men whom we have con- sidered, it was Lightfoot's happy lot to escape the violence of partisan opposition. Something, perhaps, we may put down to the kindlier spirit of more re- cent times, something to the very magnitude of his tasks, which silenced cavil. Certainly, when he spoke, he spoke plainly. He was not afraid to meet the questions of the day. So, he remarks of the increas- ing interest in Biology — "Will not history repeat it- self? If the time should come when evolution is translated from the region of suggestive theory to the region of acknowledged fact, what then? Will it not carry still further the idea of providential design and order? Will it not reinforce with new and splendid il- lustrations the magnificent lesson of modern science — complexity of results traced back to simplicity of principles — variety of phenomena issuing from unity of order — the gathering up, as it were, of the threads which connect the universe, in the right hand of the One Eternal Word?" He did not insist upon shutting up his theology within narrow limits — and sometimes the narrowest limits are those for which the greatest breadth is claimed — and defending stoutly but un- [ 353 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN availingly battlements which are not the Lord's. He spoke thus of the work of the Lambeth Conference — "It may be said, this was a very important and very suggestive gathering, but what was the outcome? Did it leave behind any result at all proportionate to the imposing spectacle? What questions did it settle, disposing for ever of the relations between Christianity and science, or between religion and politics or social life — questions of infinite perplexity, which are trou- bling the minds of men in our own generation? Heaven be thanked, it did not lay down any formal dogma or infallible decree on any of these points. There is such a thing as hastening to be wise, even in Church Councils and Conferences. Of all the mani- fold blessings which God has showered on our Eng- lish Church, none surely is greater than the providence which has shielded her from premature and authorita- tive statements, which soon or late must be repudi- ated or explained away, however great may have been the temptation from time to time. The Church of England is nowhere directly or indirectly committed to the position that the sun goes round the earth; or that this world has only existed for six or seven thou- sand years; or that the days of creation are days of twenty-four hours each ; or that the scriptural genealo- gies must always be accepted as strict and continu- ous records of the descent from father to son; or that [ 354 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH the sacred books were written in every case by those whose names they bear; or that there is nowhere al- legory, which men have commonly mistaken for his- tory. On these and similar points, our Church has been silent; though individuals, even men of high authority, have written hastily and incautiously." It was a life that could ill be spared, but Lightfoot died in 1889j at the comparatively early age of sixty- one. As his monument in Durham Cathedral bears record, his works show what he was — a careful stu- dent of the past, an interpreter of the Gospel, a ruler of the Church. We may apply to him his own words of one of his predecessors — "Vast and varied mental powers, untiring energy and extensive knowledge, in- tegrity of character and strictness of example, » wide and generous munificence, a keen interest in the pro- gress of the Church and the University, an intense devotion to his own diocese, a strong sense of duty, a true largeness of heart, a simple Christian faith; the union of these qualities fairly entitles him to the fore- most place among the Bishops of Durham." II. Shortly after Liddon and Lightfoot were appointed Canons of St. Paul's, Mr. Gladstone called Richard William Church from his retirement at Whatley to be its Dean. In glancing at Church's life, we shall [ 355 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN find ourselves carried back once more to the tumul- tuous days that came at what seemed to be the break-up of the Oxford Movement. We shall find him in contact with one and another of those whom we have considered. We shall have an illustrious ex- ample of three distinct kinds of life which the Church of England affords. Although a thorough Englishman, Church was born at Lisbon in 1815, and passed his boyhood days in Italy. In 1833, the year of Keble's Assize Sermon and Newman's return from his Mediterranean voy- age, he entered Wadham College, Oxford, distin- guished for its Evangelical prepossessions. He was duly warned of the dangers which lay in wait for the unwary. An Evangelical clergyman assured him that the Christian Year was not quite sound about vital religion — one of those books, I suppose, to be read "with caution," to use the expression of those orthodox almanacs which are now in vogue. The warning was unheeded, the caution was not observed. He came more and more under the influence of Newman, whose sermon on the "Ventures of Faith" seemed to him to have been in some sort the turn- ing-point of his life. At Newman's request, he made some translations from the Fathers. But his disciple- ship did not prevent him from having other inter- ests. "It is a great wish of mine," he writes in a [ 356 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH note -book, "to be properly acquainted with Butler, to lay the foundations of my own mind amid his works, to have him ever facing me and imbuing me with his spirit." And again — "There is something in Maurice, and. his master Coleridge, which wakens thought in me more than any other writings almost; with all their imputed mysticism they seem to me to say plain things as often as most people." In 1838 he was elected Fellow of Oriel. One said at the time — "There is such a moral beauty about Church that they could not help taking him." He was ordained in St. Mary's, Stanley being among the number of those ordained at the same time. He remained at Oxford till 1852, part of his work con- sisting in regular contributions to the Guardian and the Christian Remembrancer. Whatever monotony there may have been in such a life was broken by a year of foreign travel. But those were trying times for the friends of the Oxford Movement, and if there was quiet at home it was fully made up for by the public turmoil. Many years after Newman had joined the Roman communion, he dedicated to Church a new edition of his University Sermons, and spoke thus of the relation between them at this time. "For you were one of those dear friends resident in Ox- ford, who in those trying five years from 1841 to 1845, in the course of which this volume was given [ 357 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN to the world, did so much to comfort and uphold me by their patient, tender kindness, and their zealous services in my behalf. I cannot forget how, in the February of 1841" — the date of the appearance of Tract 90 — "you suffered me day after day to open to you my anxieties and plans, as events successively elicited them; and much less can I lose the memory of your great act of friendship, as well as of justice and courage, in the Februaiy of 1845, your Proctor's year, when you, with another now departed, shielded me from the civium ardor prava jubentium by the inter- position of a prerogative belonging to your academi- cal position." The allusion is to the veto pronounced in Convocation by the Proctors, Church and Guille- mard, upon the proposal to censure Tract 90 in con- nection with the condemnation of Ward. After nineteen years at Oxford as undergraduate, Tutor, and Fellow, Church exchanged his academic pursuits for the life of a country parson. We have seen already, in the case of Keble and of Kingsley, how full of beauty such a life may be. If it has its limitations and its dangers, it has its compensations too. It is something to see one's work plainly mapped out, and to be able to escape the feeling that after all the greater part of it must be left undone. In the familiarity of village life, it is possible to come into closer contact with those with whom one has to [ 358 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH deal. And there are many men for whom the repose and quiet of the country has a constant charm. Church's home now for another nineteen years was at Whatley, in Somersetshire, a little hamlet of scarcely two hundred people, whose interests were wholly agricultural. To the finished scholar, there must have been much in the work, at least at first, which was irksome and unfamiliar. But he wrote to James Mozley — "There are only two things which I regret in the life I lead here; one is that I never have the chance of good music, such as one gets in London; the other that it is so difficult to see the world, and I am getting older and older, and such a number of things not seen that I should like to see." It goes without saying that his care for his people was tender and loving. His daughter writes — "They turned to him unquestioningly as their friend, as one on whose counsel they could rely, who could under- stand their perplexities, and who could be trusted to keep their secrets. They could not mistake the pres- ence of a sympathy which honestly and naturally en- tered into the familiar and homely details of their everyday life, and into all that concerned them — their work, their children, their gardens — and which could be interested, as they said themselves, even in their pigs." "He were such a gentleman, and he cared for us so," said one old woman. A similar compliment is [ 359 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN recorded of one of the English bishops, but expressed in a somewhat different way. A mechanic declared that what he liked about the Bishop was, that he was not a gentleman! Never did a much-abused word receive a more caustic commentary. In such a life as Church led at Whatley, it must have been that there was the temptation to be satis- fied too soon. After the faithful performance of his duties, there was still much time that he could call his own. Intellectual stimulus there was none what- ever. Scholarly sermons would have been wholly out of place. Many a man would have been content to settle down as a quiet country gentleman, doing his duty in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call him, and thinking that duty done when his parish was served and his own soul nourished. One can often do his duty to his parish, and still not have a very well furnished mind. But Church never allowed his interests to be bounded by paro- chial limitations. In his deep retirement, he yet kept his finger on the pulse of the great world. On the Sundays, he preached to a few score farm-labourers at Whatley. But on the week-days, in one review and another, his judgments were eagerly looked for by educated men in every part of England. There was scarcely a question of first-rate importance, scarcelv a book, whether in French or English, with any real [ 360 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH claim to attention, upon which he had not some word to say. His estimates of his contemporaries are char- acterized by a broadness of vision which can see many sides, and by a depth of charity which is not easily provoked. One may differ from him in the conclusion which he reaches, but there must always be respect for his opinion. It would be hard to find two men whose way of looking at things was more diverse than Church and Robertson. But even here, Church was not blind to the excellences of a character which he could not altogether understand. There were things, such as Robertson's lack of the historic sense, which he disliked extremely. But he could admire, even where he could not sympathize. In the same way, he did not shut his eyes to the weaknesses of his best friends. That was not permitted to one for whom he had the most profound respect which would not have been permitted to a stranger. We have seen some- thing of his allegiance to the principles of the Oxford Movement. But when the outcry arose against the appointment of Dr. Temple, now Archbishop of Can- terbury, to the See of Exeter, because of his associa- tion with Essays and Reviews, Church expressed himself with the utmost plainness. "The outcry against Tem- ple is, I think, most unjust, and in its violence very discreditable. I believe he will make one of our best bishops. But the agitation, I think, threatens to be [ 361 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN very mischievous. We have not so many great names on the religious side, that we can afford to see a man like Pusey, who is a man after all to rank with reli- gious leaders of a high mark in all ages, casting away all the lessons of a lifetime, and countenancing the worst violence of zealots. We shall smart for all this. Seeing a man learned and religious as Pusey is, so blindly unjust and intemperate, is a heavy blow against that which is more dear to Pusey than life." At last the time came when Church was needed in high place. On the death of Dr. Mansel, in the sum- mer of 1871, he was appointed to the vacant Dean- ery of St. Paul's. In the case of most men, we should think of it as a tardy recognition of genius too long neglected. But Church's power was of such a sort that such an acknowledgment could not make it greater. The man conferred an honour upon the position which the position could not confer upon the man. He writes to his friend Dr. Asa Gray at Harvard of his feeling at leaving the old work and taking up the new. "You will not mind my telling you, once for all, before this treadmill work begins, how happy my life has been these nineteen years, what blessings I have enjoyed in the sense of lib- erty, in being able to worship and serve away from the strife of tongues, in the perpetual delight of the beauty of nature all round, of sun, and air, and green [ 362 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH fields and flowers, in the kindness of friends in high estate and still more in low, in the deep and grow- ing affection at home, every year becoming richer and more charming." He looks forward to the new life with many misgivings. "What I could do, I shall have neither time nor strength for longer; what I shall have to do, I have neither aptitude nor experi- ence for. It used to be a place of literary leisure; and so it was under Milman. But times are changed. What is required now is that St. Paul's should waken up from its long slumber, and show what use it is of, and how it can justify its existence as the great central church of London. The end and purpose is a great and right one; but the detail of weary official work which such a reform involves few can guess." As Church had been in the cloisters of Oxford and in the fields at Whatley, so he was still amidst the din and roar of London. But now, the time of the first ripe fruits had come. Hitherto, he had pub- lished little in permanent form. Now, the result of those quiet years out of men's sight was given to the world. He had written much at Whatley, but even more than that he had learned how to write. Like his first master, Newman, he had the English language under complete control. He writes of An- selm and Dante, of Spenser and Bacon. In his ser- [ 363 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN mons, he makes the Scripture live. His book on the Oxford Movement is the testimony of an eye-wit- ness, after many years. He answers an inquirer to this effect — "The great thing in writing is to know what you want and mean to say, and to say it in words that come as near to your meaning as you can get them to come. That is the old and true rule of writing, because it is based on the effort after reality, and is the counter-charm to laziness and negligence, and to show and make-believe. After all, self-restraint and jealousy of what one's self- indulgence or vanity tempts us to is the best rule in writing as in eating." Upon his administration of St. Paul's Cathedral there is no need to dwell. It was what it must have been with such a man. He never thrust himself upon the public notice, as sometimes is the way with lesser men. With all his mastery of language, his gifts were not the gifts of a popular preacher. It was Liddon who made the pulpit of St. Paul's one of the strong- est forces in London, and so in England, and in the English-speaking world. But the work that he had to do was a hard work, and he did it. One of his colleagues speaks of him as having stood as a sort of judicial conscience to the Cathedral, up to the stand- ard of which all things must be brought. When the highest office in the Church of England was left va- [ 364 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH cant by the death of Archbishop Tait, it was reported that Church might have had it if he would but have said the word. But he shrank from prominence as some men seek it. He died in 1890, within a few months of Lightfoot, and Liddon, and Newman. Indeed, it is of Newman that almost his last words were written. He lies buried at Whatley, where he served so long, and which he loved so well. By his death almost the last link was broken which connected our day with the stirring times of 1833. III. These are some of the men who have brought new life to the Church of England during the century which is drawing to its close. They have differed very widely from each other. They have represented many types of mind. They have looked at things from very different points of view. Sometimes they have been in personal contact with each other. As we have seen, between Newman and Kingsley there raged fierce controversy. Pusey and Liddon would not preach in Westminster Abbey because Maurice was suffered to preach there too, and Liddon de- clared that he could not think of Tait as a clergy- man at all, but only as a shrewd Scotch lawyer. Arnold and Keble, once friends, were estranged for [ 365 ] MEN AND MOVEMENTS IN years. Newman parted with all that his heart loved, and went out, not'knowing whither he went. There will be many estimates of these men, of course. No one could find himself in complete theological sym- pathy with them all, though points of agreement are likely to be overlooked, and points of difference em- phasized. There may be some, like Jowett, to whom the principles of the Oxford Movement will seem re- actionary, unphilosophical, superstitious, and petty. There may be others who will wish to imitate the example of some of the members of one of the early Sisterhoods, who shut their ears against distasteful preaching, and who will look askance at Robertson and Stanley as destroyers of the faith. Between these two extremes there will be all grades of opinion. Em- phasis will be laid, now here, now there. Exaggerations of all sorts will be taken for standards, and con- demned. But surely, in many ways and in divers manners, the spirit of the Church has been revived and quickened. There are diversities of gifts, and diversities of ministrations, and diversities of work- ings, but there is the same God. Ritualist and "ration- alist" work side by side among the poor, and if they still quarrel when they have time to quarrel, we may hope and believe that their strife is less bitter than of old. Details in the conduct of public worship, or critical questions, which once called forth rancorous [ 366 ] THE ENGLISH CHURCH abuse, have become a matter of course to every one. More than all, if there is yet self-seeking it must at least be disguised. For more and more we are coming to ask the question, not — How shall these things be? but — Who is sufficient for these things? And from men of every school of thought and every method of working there comes the answer which Lightfoot gave at Benson's consecration — "He who lays down at the footstool of God his successes and his failures, his hopes and his fears, his knowledge and his ignorance, his weakness and his strength, his misgivings and his confidences — all that he is and all that he might be — content to take up thence just that which God shall give him." I What shall I more say ? For the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the pro- [367 } LIST OF VOLUMES QUOTED LIST OF BOOKS QUOTED General. The English Church in the Eighteenth Century. By Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1887. The English Church in the Nineteenth Century. By John H. Overton. London and New York : Longmans, Green <£ Co. 1804. Reminiscences, chiefly of Oriel College and the Oxford Movement. By Thomas Mozley. London : Longmans, Green & Co. 1882. Letters of the Rev. J. B. Mozley. London : Rivingtons. 188-1. William George Ward and the Oxford Movement. By Wil- frid Ward. London: Macmillan & Co. 1889. The Oxford Movement. By Richard W. Church. London : Macmillan & Co. 1892. Life and Letters of Dean Church. London : Macmillan & Co. 1894. Movements op Religious Thought in Britain during the Nineteenth Century. By John Tulloch. London : Longmans, Green & Co. 1885. Letters of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen. Edinburgh : Da- vid Douglas. 1884. The Life and Letters of Dean Hook. By W. R. W. Ste- phens. London : Richard Bentley & Son. 1880. [ 371 ] LIST OF BOOKS QUOTED Memorials of Bishop Hampden. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1871. Memories of Dean Hole. London : Macmillan & Co. 1892. Occasional Papers. By Richard William Church. London : Macmillan & Co. 1897. Tracts for the Times. New York : Charles Henry. 180-t. Newjiax. Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman dur- ing his Life in the English Church. Edited by Anne Mozley. London and New York : Longmans, Green & Co. 1890. Apologia pro Vita Sua. By J. H. Newman. London: Long- mans, Green & Co. 1865. Sermons on Subjects of the Day. By J. H. Newman. Lon- don : Rivingtons. 1885. Parochial and Plain Sermons. By J. H. Newman. London : Rivingtons. 1887. Hymns by J. H. Newman. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. 188o. Cardinal Newman. By R. H. Hutton. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1890. Modern Guides of English Thought in Matters of Faith. By R. H. Hutton. London : Macmillan & Co. 1888. Aspects of Poetry. By John Campbell Shairp. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin Jt Co. 1894. PrSEY. Life of E. B. Pusey, D. D. By H. P. Liddon. London and New York: Longmans. Green it Co. 1893-1897. Keble. John Kebi.f.. Bv Walter Lock. London : Methuen cc Co. 1893. [ z<* ] LIST OF BOOKS QUOTED The Christian Year. By John Keble. Musings over the Christian Year. By Charlotte M. Yonge. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1871. Essay on Keble. By John Campbell Shairp. Clerical Life and Work. By Henry Parry Liddon. London and New York : Longmans, Green & Co. 1894. AltNOLD. Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold. By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley. London : T. Fellowes. 1858. Christian Life at School. By Thomas Arnold. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1878. History of Rome. By Thomas Arnold. Robertson. Life and Letters of F. W. Robertson. By Stopford A. Brooke. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 1887. Sermons by F. W. Robertson. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 1886. Lectures, Addresses, and Literary Remains. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 1886. Tait. Life of Archibald Campbell Tait. By Randall Thomas Davidson and William Benham. London : Macmillan & Co. 1891. Catherine and Craufurd Tait. By William Benham. Lon- don : Macmillan & Co. 1879. Stanley. The Life and Correspondence of Arthur Penrhyn Stan- ley. By Rowland E. Prothero. London : John Murray. 1893. History of the Jewish Church. By A. P. Stanley. Lon- don : John Murray. 1884. [ 373 ] LIST OF BOOKS QUOTED Sermons on Special Occasions. By A. P. Stanley. London : John Murray. 1882. Sermons in the East. By A. P. Stanley. London. 1863. Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey. By A. P. Stanley. London : John Murray. 1890. Sinai and Palestine. By A. P. Stanley. London : John Mur- ray. 1865. WlLBERFORCE. Life of Samuel Wilberforce. By Canon Ashwell and Regi- nald Wilberforce. London : John Murray. 1881-83. Lives of Twelve Good Men. By J. H. Burgon. London : John Murray. 1888. Lectures to Candidates for Ordination. By Samuel Wilber- force. Maurice. Life of Frederick Denison Maurice. By Frederick Mau- rice. London: Macmillan & Co. 1884. Modern Guides of English Thought in matters of Faith. By R. H. Hutton. London : Macmillan & Co. 1888. Theological Essays. By F. D. Maurice. London : Macmillan & Co. 1881. What is Revelation? By F. D. Maurice. London: Macmil- lan & Co. 1859. The Doctrine of Sacrifice. By F. D. Maurice. London : Macmillan & Co. 1879. The Kingdom of Christ. By F. D. Maurice. London : Mac- millan & Co. 1883. Social Morality. By F. D. Maurice. London : Macmillan & Co. 1872. [ 374 ] LIST OF BOOKS QUOTED Religions of the World. By F. D. Maurice. London : Mac- millan & Co. 1886. KlNGSLEY. Charles Kingsley. His Letters and Memories of his Life. Edited by his Wife. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 1877. The Roman and the Teuton. By C. Kingsley. London : Macmillan & Co. 1864. Yeast. By C. Kingsley. Alton Locke. By C. Kingsley. Hypatia. By C. Kingsley. The Water Babies. By C. Kingsley. THE END D. B. Updike The Merrymount Press 104 Chestnut St. Boston