LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 PH.sENT.oBv mr. c)A^^hT?.monro 
 
 BR 1700 .W629 1913 
 
 Whyte, Alexander, 1836-1921 
 
 Thirteen appreciations 
 
THIRTEEN 
 APPRECIATIONS 
 
THIRTEEN 
 APPRECIATIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 PRINCIPAL ALEXANDER WHYTE 
 
 D.D., LL.D. 
 
 \ 
 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO 
 
TO THE STUDENTS OF DIVINITY 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 SANTA TERESA 
 
 PA»E 
 1 
 
 JACOB BEHMEN 
 
 35 
 
 BISHOP ANDREWES . 
 
 73 
 
 SAMUEL ' RUTHERFORD 
 
 . 113 
 
 THOINIAS '^SHEPARD . . . 
 
 . 129 
 
 WILLIAM ""gUTHRIE . 
 
 . 137 
 
 JAMES ERASER 
 
 . 147 
 
 THOMAS GOODWIN . 
 
 . 157 
 
 SIR THOMAS BROWNE 
 
 . 177 
 
 WILLIAM "^LAW .... 
 
 . 199 
 
 BISHOP BUTLER . . . . 
 
 . 239 
 
 CARDINAL "nEWMAN . . . . 
 
 . 283 
 
 JOHN WESLEY 
 
 . 361 
 
SANTA TERESA 
 
 Luther was born in 1483, and he nailed his ninety-five 
 theses to the door of the University Church of Wittenberg 
 on the 31st October 1517. Lo^^ola was born in 1491, 
 and Xavier in 1506, and the Society of Jesus was estab- 
 hshed in 1534. Isabella the Catholic was born in 1451, 
 and our own Protestant Elizabeth in 1533. The Spanish 
 Inquisition began to sit in 1483, the Breviary was finally 
 settled in 1568, and the Armada was destroyed in 1588. 
 Columbus was born in 1446, and he set out on his great 
 enterprise in 1492. Cervantes was born in 1547, and the 
 First Part of his immortal work was published in 1605. 
 And it is to be read in Santa Teresa's Breviary to this 
 day that ' Teresa the Sinner ' was born on the 29th day 
 of March 1515, at five o'clock in the morning. She died 
 in 1582, and in 1622 she was publicly canonised at Rome 
 along with Loyola and Xavier and two other Spanish 
 saints. 
 
 Teresa was greatly blessed in both her parents. ' It 
 helped me much that I never saw my father or my mother 
 respect anything in any one but goodness.' Her father 
 was a great reader of the best books, and he took great 
 pains that his children should form the same happy habit 
 and should carefully cultivate the same excellent taste. 
 Her mother, while a Christian gentlewoman of the first 
 social standing, did not share her husband's love of 
 serious literature. She passed far too much of her short 
 
12 SANTA TERESA 
 
 lifetime among the romances of the day, till her daughter 
 has to confess that she took no little harm from the books 
 that did her mother no harm but pastime to read. As 
 for other things, her father's house was a perfect model 
 of the very best morals and the very best manners. 
 Alonso de Cepeda was a well-born and a well-bred Spanish 
 gentleman. He came of an ancient and an illustrious 
 Castilian stock ; and, though not a rich man, his house- 
 hold enjoyed all the nobility of breeding and all the 
 culture of mind and all the refinement of taste for which 
 Spain was so famous in that great age. All her days, 
 and in all her ups and downs in life, we continually trace 
 back to Teresa's noble birth and noble uiDbringing no 
 little of her supreme stateliness of deportment and 
 serenity of manner and chivalry of character. Teresa 
 was a perfect Spanish lady, as well as a mother in Israel, 
 and no one who ever conversed with her could for a 
 moment fail to observe that the oldest and best blood 
 of Spain mantled in her cheek and shone in her eye. A 
 lion encompassed by crosses was one of the quarters of 
 her father's coat of arms. And Teresa took that up and 
 added out of it a new glory to all her father's hereditary 
 honours. For his daughter was all her days a lioness 
 palisaded round with crosses, till by means of them she 
 was transformed into a lamb. But, all the time, the 
 lioness was still lurking there. Teresa's was one of those 
 sovereign souls that are born from time to time as if to 
 show us what our race was created for at first, and for 
 what it is still destined. She was a queen among women. 
 She was in intellect the complete equal, and in still better 
 things than intellect far the superior, of Isabella and 
 Elizabeth themselves. As she says in an outspoken 
 autobiographic passage, hers was one of those outstand- 
 ing and towering souls on which a thousand eyes and 
 
SANTA TERESA 13 
 
 tongues are continually set without any one understand- 
 ing them or comprehending them. Her coming greatness 
 of soul is foreseen by some of her biographers in the 
 attempt that she made while yet a child to escape away 
 into the country of the Moors in search of an early martyr- 
 dom, so that she might see her Saviour all the sooner, 
 and stand in His presence all the purer. ' A woman,' 
 says Crashaw, ' for angelical height of speculation ; for 
 masculine courage of performance, more than a woman ; 
 who, while yet a child, outran maturity, and durst plot 
 a martyrdom.' 
 
 Teresa's mother died just when her daughter was at 
 that dangerous age in which a young girl needs a wise 
 mother most ; ' the age when virtue should begin to 
 grow,' as she says herself. Teresa was an extraordinarily 
 handsome and attractive young lady, and the knowledge 
 of that, as she tells us, made her very vain, and puffed 
 up her heart with foolish imaginations. She has a power- 
 ful chapter in the opening of her Autobiography on 
 dangerous companionships in the days of youth. ' Oh 
 that all parents would take warning by me, and would 
 look carefully into their children's early friendships ! ' 
 She suffered terribly from bad health all her days, and 
 that severe chastisement began to fall on her while she 
 was yet a beautiful girl. It was a succession of serious 
 illnesses, taken along v.ith her father's scrupulous care 
 over her, that brought Teresa back to the simple piety 
 of her early childhood, and fixed her for life in an extra- 
 ordinary devotion to God and to all the things of God. 
 When such a change of heart and character comes to a 
 young woman among ourselves she usually seeks out 
 some career of religion and charity to which she can 
 devote her life. She is found labouring among the poor 
 and the sick and the children of the poor, or she goes 
 
14 SANTA TERESA 
 
 abroad to foreign mission work. In Teresa's land and 
 day a Religious House was the understood and universal 
 refuge for any young woman who was in earnest about 
 her duty to God and to her own soul. In those Houses 
 such young women secluded themselves from all society 
 and gave themselves up to the care of the poor and the 
 young. In the more strict and enclosed of those retreats 
 the inmates never came out of doors at all, but wholly 
 sequestered themselves up to a secret life of austerity 
 and prayer. This was the ideal life led in those Houses 
 for religious women. But Teresa soon found out the 
 tremendous mistake she had made in leaving her father's 
 family - fireside for a so-called Religious House. No 
 sooner had she entered it than she was plunged headlong 
 into those very same ' pestilent amusements,' the mere 
 approach of which had made her flee to this supposed 
 asylum. Though she is composing her Autobiography 
 under the sharp eyes of her confessors, and while she is 
 writing with a submissiveness, and indeed a servility 
 that is her only weakness, Teresa at the same time is 
 bold enough and honest enough to tell us her own experi- 
 ences of monastic life in language of startling strength 
 and outspokenness. ' A short-cut to hell. If parents 
 would take my advice, they would rather marry their 
 daughters to the very poorest of men, or else keep them 
 at home under their own eye. If young women will be 
 wicked at home, their wickedness will not long be hidden, 
 but in monasteries, such as I speak of, their worst wicked- 
 ness can be completely covered up from every human 
 eye. And all the time the poor things are not to blame. 
 They only walk in the way that is shown them. Many 
 of them are to be much pitied, for they honestly wish to 
 withdraw from the world, only to find themselves in ten 
 times worse worlds of sensuality and all other devilry. 
 
SANTA TERESA 15 
 
 my God ! if I might I would fain speak of some of the 
 occasions of sin from wliich Thou didst dehver me, and 
 how I threw myself into them again. And of the risks 
 
 1 ran of utterly shipwrecking my character and good 
 name and from wliich Thou didst rescue me. O Lord 
 of my soul ! how shall I be able to magnify Thy grace in 
 those perilous years ! At the very time that I was 
 offending Thee most, Thou didst prepare me by a most 
 profound compunction to taste of the sweetness of Thy 
 recoveries and consolations. In truth, O my King, Thou 
 didst administer to me the most spiritual and painful 
 of chastisements : for Thou didst chastise my sins with 
 great assurances of Thy love and of Thy great mercy. It 
 makes me feel beside myself when I call to mind Thy 
 great grace and my great ingratitude.' 
 
 This leads us up to the conception and the commence- 
 ment of that great work to which Teresa dedicated the 
 whole of her after life, — the reformation and extension 
 of the Religious Houses of Spain. The root-and-branch 
 reformation of Luther and his German and Swiss col- 
 leagues had not laid much hold on Spain ; and the little 
 hold it had laid on her native land had never reached 
 to Teresa. Teresa performed a splendid service inside 
 the Church to which she belonged ; but that service was 
 wholly confined to the Religious Houses that she founded 
 and reformed. Teresa's was intended to be a kind of 
 counter-reformation to the reformation of Luther and 
 Melanchthon and Valdes and Valera. And such was the 
 talent and the faith and the energy she brought to bear 
 on the work she undertook, that, had it been better 
 directed, it might have been blessed to preserve her 
 beloved native land at the head of modern Christendom. 
 But, while that was not to be, it is the immense talent, 
 and the unceasing toil, and the sj^lendid faith and self- 
 
16 SANTA TERESA 
 
 surrender that Teresa brought to bear on her intramural 
 reformation — and, all through that, on the working out 
 of her own salvation, — it is all these things that go to 
 make Teresa's long life so memorable and so impressive, 
 not only in her own age and land and church, but where- 
 ever greatness of mind, and nobleness of heart, and 
 sanctity of life, and stateliness of character are heard of 
 and are esteemed. 
 
 Teresa's intellect, her sheer power of mind, is enough 
 of itself to make her an intensely interesting study to all 
 thinking men. No one can open her books without con- 
 fessing the spell of her powerful understanding. Her 
 books, before they were books, absolutely captivated 
 and completely converted to her unpopular cause many 
 of her most determined enemies. Again and again and 
 again we find her confessors and her censors admitting 
 that both her spiritual experiences and her reformation 
 work were utterly distasteful and very stumbling to them 
 till they had read her own written account, first of 
 her life of prayer and then of her reformation work. 
 One after another of such men, and some of them the 
 highest in learning and rank and godliness, on reading 
 her autobiographic papers, came over to be her fear- 
 less defenders and fast friends. There is nothing more 
 delightful in all her delightful Autobiography, and in the 
 fine ' censures ' that have been preserved concerning it, 
 than to read of the great and learned theologians, the 
 responsible church leaders, and even the secret inquisitors 
 who came under the charm of her character and the spell 
 of her pen. ' She electrifies the will,' confessed one of 
 the best judges of good writing in her day. And old 
 Bishop Palafox's tribute to Teresa is far too beautiful to 
 be withheld. ' What I admire in her is the peace, the 
 sweetness, and the consolation with which in her writings 
 
SANTA TERESA 17 
 
 she draws us towards the best, so that we find ourselves 
 captured rather than conquered, imprisoned rather than 
 prisoners. No one reads the saint's writings who does 
 not presently seek God, and no one through her writings 
 seeks God who does not remain in love with the saint. 
 I have not met with a single spiritual man who does not 
 become a passionate admirer of Santa Teresa. But her 
 writings do not alone impart a rational, interior, and 
 superior love, but a love at the same time practical, 
 natural, and sensitive ; and my own experience proves 
 it to me that there exists no one who loves her but would, 
 if the saint were still in this world, travel far to see and 
 speak with her.' I wish much I could add to that Peter 
 of Alcantara's marvellous analysis of Teresa's experi- 
 ences and character. Under thirty-three heads that 
 great saint sums up Teresa's character, and gives us a 
 noble, because all unconscious, revelation of his own. 
 And though Teresa has been dead for three hundred 
 years, she speaks to this day in that same way : and that 
 too in quarters in which we would little expect to hear 
 her voice. In that intensely interesting novel of modern 
 Parisian life. En Route, Teresa takes a chief part in the 
 conversion and sanctification of the prodigal son whose 
 return to his father's house is so powerfully depicted 
 in that story. The deeply read and eloquent author of 
 that remarkable book gives us some of the best estimates 
 and descriptions of Santa Teresa that I have anywhere 
 met with. ' That cool-headed business woman , . . 
 that admirable psychologist and of superhuman lucidity 
 . . . that magnificent and over-awing saint . . . she 
 has verified in her own case the supernatural experiences 
 of the greatest mystics, — such are her unparalleled experi- 
 ences in the supernatural domain. . . . Teresa goes 
 deeper than any like writer into the unexplored regions 
 
 B 
 
18 SANTA TERESA 
 
 of the soul. She is the geographer and hydrographer 
 of the sinful soul. She has drawn the map of its poles, 
 marked its latitudes of contemplation and prayer, and 
 laid out all the interior seas and lands of the human 
 heart. Other saints have been among those heights and 
 depths and deserts before her, but no one has left us so 
 methodical and so scientific a survey.' Were it for 
 nothing else, the chapters on mystical literature in M. 
 Huysmans's trilogy would make it a valued possession 
 to every student of the soul of man under sin and under 
 salvation. 
 
 And then, absolutely possessed as Teresa always is by 
 the most solemn subjects, — herself, her sin, her Saviour, 
 her original method of prayer and her unshared ex- 
 periences in prayer, — she showers upon us continually 
 gleams and glances of the sunniest merriment amid all 
 her sighs and tears. She roasts in caustic the gross- 
 minded, and the self-satisfied, and the self-righteous, as 
 Socrates himself never roasted them better. Again, like 
 his, her irony and her raillery and her satire are some- 
 times so delicate that it quite eludes you for the first two 
 or three readings of the exquisite page. And then, when 
 you turn the leaf, she is as ostentatiously stupid and 
 ignorant and dependent on your superior mind as ever 
 Socrates was himself. Till I shrewdly suspect that no 
 little of that ' obedience ' which so intoxicated and fasci- 
 nated her inquisitors, and which to this day so exasperates 
 some of her biographers, was largely economical and 
 ironical. Her narrow cell is reported to have often re- 
 sounded with peals of laughter to the scandal of some of 
 her sisters. In support of all that I have marked a score 
 of Socratic passages in Woodhead, and Dalton, and 
 Lewis, and Father Coleridge, and Mrs. Cunninghame 
 Graham. They are very delicious passages and very 
 
SANTA TERESA 19 
 
 tempting. But were they once begun there would be 
 no end to them. You will believe Froude, for he is an 
 admitted judge in all matters connected with the best 
 literature, and he says in his Quarterly article on Teresa's 
 writings, ' The best satire of Cervantes is not more 
 dainty.' 
 
 The great work to which Teresa gave up her whole life, 
 after her full conversion, was the purification of the 
 existing monastic system, and the multiplication and 
 extension of Religious Houses of the strictest, severest, 
 most secluded, most prayerful, and most saintly life. 
 She had been told by those she too much tiiisted, that 
 the Church of Christ was being torn in pieces in Germany, 
 and in Switzerland, and in France, and in England by a 
 great outbreak of heretical error ; and, while the Society 
 of Jesus and the Secret Inquisition were established to 
 cope with all such heresy, Teresa set herself to counter- 
 act it by a widespread combination of unceasing penance 
 and intercessory prayer. It was a zeal without know- 
 ledge ; but there can be no doubt about the sincerity, 
 the single-mindedncss, and the strength of the zeal. For 
 forty as hard-working j^ears as ever any woman spent 
 in this world, Teresa laboured according to her best light 
 to preserve the purity and the unity of the Church of 
 Christ. And the strength and the sagacity of mind, 
 the tact, the business talents, the tenacity of will, the 
 patience, the endurance, the perseverance, the sleepless 
 watchfulness, and the abounding prayerfulness that she 
 brought to bear on the reformation and multiplication 
 of her fortresses of defence and attack in that holy war, 
 all taken together, make up one of the most remarkable 
 pages in the whole history of the Church of Christ. Her 
 difficulties with Rome, with the Inquisition, with her 
 more immediate superiors, confessors, and censors : and, 
 
20 SANTA TERESA 
 
 most of all, with the ignorance, the stupidity, the laziness, 
 the malice, and the lies of those monks and nuns whose 
 reformation she was determined on : her endless journeys : 
 her negotiations with church-leaders, land-owners, and 
 tradesmen in selecting and securing sites, and in erect- 
 ing new Religious Houses : the adventures, the accidents, 
 the entertainments she met with : and the fine temper, 
 the good humour, the fascinating character, the winning 
 manners she everywhere exhibited ; and, withal, her in- 
 comparable faith in the Living God, and the exquisite 
 inwardness, unconquerable assurance, and abounding 
 fruitfulness of her own and unshared method and secret 
 of prayer, — had Teresa not lived and died in Spain, and 
 had she not spent her life and done her work under the 
 Roman obedience, her name would have been a house- 
 hold word in Scotland. As it is, she is not wholly un- 
 known or unloved. And as knowledge extends, and love, 
 and good-will ; and as suspicion, and fear, and retaliation, 
 and partjT'-spirit die out among us, the truth about Teresa 
 and multitudes more will become established on clearer 
 and deeper and broader foundations ; and we shall be 
 able to hail both her and multitudes more like her as our 
 brothers and sisters in Christ, whom hitherto we have 
 hated and despised because we did not knoAV them, and 
 had been poisoned against them. I am a conspicuous 
 case in point mj^sclf. And when I have been conquered 
 by a little desultory reading and by a little effort after 
 love no man need despair. And if you will listen to this 
 discourse with a good and honest heart : Mdth a heart 
 that delights to hear all this good report about a fellow- 
 believer : then He who has begun that good work in you 
 will perfect it by books and by discourses like this, and 
 far better than this, till you are taken absolutely captive 
 to that charity which rejoiceth not in iniquity, but re- 
 
SANTA TERESA 21 
 
 joiceth in the truth : and which beareth all things, 
 believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all 
 things. Follow after charity, and begin with Santa 
 Teresa. 
 
 Forbid it, mighty Love, let no fond hate 
 
 Of names or words so far prejudicate ; 
 
 Souls are not Spaniards too ; one friendly flood 
 
 Of baptism blends them all into one blood. 
 
 What soul soe'er in any language can 
 
 Speak heaven like hers, is my soul's countryman. 
 
 But the greatest and the best talent that God gives 
 to any man or woman in this world is the talent of prayer. 
 And the best usury that any man or woman brings back 
 to God when He comes to reckon with them at the end 
 of this world is a life of prayer. And those servants best 
 put their Lord's money to the exchangers who rise early 
 and sit late, as long as they are in this world, ever finding 
 out and ever following after better and better methods 
 of prayer, and ever forming more secret, more steadfast, 
 and more spiritually fruitful habits of prayer : till they 
 literally pray without ceasing, and till they continually 
 strike out into new enterprises in prayer, and new achieve- 
 ments, and new enrichments. It was this that first drew 
 me to Teresa. It was her singular originality in prayer 
 and her complete captivity to prayer. It was the time 
 she spent in prayer, and the refuge, and the peace, and 
 the sanctification, and the power for carrying on hard 
 and unrequited work that she all her life found in prayer. 
 It was her fidelity and her utter surrender of herself to 
 this first and last of all her religious duties, till it became 
 more a delight, and, indeed, more an indulgence, than 
 a duty. With Teresa it was prayer first, and prayer 
 last, and prayer always. With Teresa literally all things 
 were sanctified, and sweetened, and made fruitful by 
 
22 SANTA TERESA 
 
 prayer. In Teresa's writings prayer holds much the 
 same place that it holds in the best men and women of 
 Holy Scripture. If I were to say that about some of the 
 ladies of the Scottish Covenant, you would easily beheve 
 me. But you must believe me when I tell you that about 
 a Spanish lady, second to none of them in holiness of life, 
 even if her holy life is not all cast in our mould. All who 
 have read the autobiographic Apologia will remember 
 the fine passage in which its author tells us that ever 
 since his conversion there have been two, and only two, 
 absolutely self-luminous beings in the whole universe of 
 being to him, — God and his own soul. Now, I do not 
 remember that Newman even once speaks about Teresa 
 in any of his books, but I always think of him and her 
 together in this great respect. GOD IS to them both, 
 and to them both He is a rewarder of them that diligently 
 seek Him. And it is just here, at the very commence- 
 ment and centre of divine things, that we all make such 
 shipwreck and come so short. The sense of the reality 
 of divine and unseen things in Teresa's life of prayer is 
 simply miraculous in a woman still living among things 
 seen and temporal. Her faith is truly the substance of 
 things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. 
 Our Lord was as real, as present, as near, as visible, and 
 as affable to this extraordinary saint as ever He was to 
 Martha, or Mary, or Mary Magdalene, or the woman of 
 Samaria, or the mother of Zebedee's children. She pre- 
 pared Him where to laj^ His head ; she sat at His feet 
 and heard His word. She chose the better part, and He 
 acknowledged to herself and to others that she had done 
 so. She washed His feet with her tears, and wiped them 
 with the hair of her head. She had been forgiven much, 
 and she loved much. He said to her, Mary, and she 
 answered Him, Rabboni. And He gave her messages 
 
SANTA TERESA 23 
 
 to deliver to His disciples, who had not waited for Him 
 as she had waited. Till she was able to say to them all 
 that she had seen the Lord, and that He had spoken such 
 and such things within her. And hence arises what I 
 may call the quite extraordinary purity and spirituality 
 of her hfe of prayer. ' Defecate ' is Goodwin's favourite 
 and constant word for the purest, the most rapt, the 
 most adoring, and the most spiritual prayer. ' 1 have 
 known men ' — it must have been himself — ' who came 
 to God for nothing else but just to come to Him, they so 
 loved Him. They scorned to soil Him and themselves 
 with any other errand than just purely to be alone with 
 Him in His presence. Friendship is best kept up, even 
 among men, by frequent visits ; and the more free and 
 defecate those frequent visits are, and the less occasioned 
 by business, or necessity, or custom they are, the more 
 friendly and welcome they are.' Now, I had sometimes 
 wondered what took Teresa so often, and kept her so 
 long, alone with God. Till I remembered Goodwin's 
 classical jDassages about defecate prayer, and under- 
 stood something of what is involved and what is to be 
 experienced in pure and immediate communion with 
 God. And, then, from all that it surely follows, that no 
 one is fit for one moment to have an adverse or a hostile 
 mind, or to pass an adverse or a hostile judgment, on 
 the divine manifestations that came to Teresa in her 
 unparalleled life of prayer ; no one who is not a man of 
 like prayer himself ; no, nor even then. I know all the 
 explanations that have been put forward for Teresa's 
 ' locutions ' and revelations ; but after anxiously weigh- 
 ing them all, the simplest explanation is also the most 
 scientific, as it is the most scriptural. If our ascending 
 Lord actually said what He is reported to have said 
 about the way that He and His Father will always 
 
24 SANTA TERESA 
 
 reward all love to Him, and the keeping of all His com- 
 mandments ; then, if there is anything true about 
 Teresa at all, it is this, that from the day of her full con- 
 version she lived with all her might that very life which 
 has all these transcendent promises spoken and sealed 
 to it. By her life of faith and prayer and personal holi- 
 ness, Teresa made herself ' capable of God,' as one 
 describes it, and God came to her and filled her with 
 Himself to her utmost capacity, as He said He would. 
 At the same time, much as I trust and honour and love 
 Teresa, and much good as she has been made of God to 
 me, she was still, at her best, but an imperfectly sanctified 
 woman, and her rewards and experiences were corre- 
 spondingly imperfect. But if a holy life before such 
 manifestations were made to her, and a still holier life 
 after them — if that is any test of the truth and reality 
 of such transcendent and supernatural matters, — on her 
 own humble and adoring testimony, and on the now 
 extorted and now spontaneous testimony of absolutely 
 all who lived near her, still more humility, meekness, 
 lowly-mindedness, heavenly-mindedness and prayerful- 
 ness demonstrably followed those inward and spiritual 
 revelations to her of her Lord. In short and in sure ye 
 shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes 
 of thorns, or figs of thistles ? On the whole, then, I 
 for one am strongly disposed towards Teresa, even in 
 the much-inculpated matter of her inward voices and 
 visions. The wish may very possibly be father to the 
 thought : but my thought leans to Teresa, even in her 
 most astounding locutions and revelations ; they answer 
 so entirely to my reading of our Lord and of His words. 
 I take sides, on the whole, with those theologians of her 
 day, who began by doubting, but ended by believing in 
 Teresa and by imitating her. They were led to rejoice 
 
SANTA TERESA 25 
 
 that any contemporary and fellow-sinner had attained 
 to such fellowship with God : and I am constrained to 
 take sides with them. ' One day, in prayer, the sweet- 
 ness was so great that I could not but contrast it with 
 the place I deserved in hell. The sweetness and the 
 light and the peace were so great that, compared with 
 it, everything in this world is vanity and lies. I was 
 filled with a new reverence for God. I saw His majesty 
 and His power in a way I cannot describe, and the vision 
 kept me in great tenderness and joy and humility. I 
 cannot help making much of that which led me so near 
 to God. I knew at that great moment what it is for a 
 soul to be in the very presence of God Himself. What 
 must be the condescension of His Majesty seeing that 
 in so short a time He left so great an impression and so 
 great a blessing on my soul ! O my Lord, consider who 
 she is upon whom Thou art bestowing such unheard-of 
 blessings ! Dost Thou forget that my soul has been an 
 abyss of sin ? How is this, O Lord, how can it be that 
 such great grace has come to the lot of one who has so 
 ill deserved such things at Thy hands ! ' He who can 
 read that, and a hundred passages as good as that, and 
 who shall straightway set himself to sneer and scoff and 
 disparage and find fault, he is well on the way to the sin 
 against the Holy Ghost. At any rate, I would be if I 
 did not revere and love and imitate such a saint of God. 
 Given God and His Son and His Holy Spirit : given sin 
 and salvation and prayer and a holy life ; and, with 
 many drawbacks, Teresa's was just the life of self-denial 
 and repentance and prayer and communion with God 
 that we should all live. It is not Teresa who is to be 
 bemoaned and blamed and called bad names. It is we 
 who do all that to her who are beside ourselves. It is wc 
 who need the beam to be taken out of our own eye. 
 
26 SANTA TERESA 
 
 Teresa was a mystery and an offence ; and, again, an 
 encouragement and an example to the theologians and 
 the inquisitors of her day just as she still is in our day. 
 She Avas a stumbling-stone, or an ensample, according 
 to the temper and disposition and character of her con- 
 temporaries, and she is the same to-day. 
 
 Teresa's Autobiography, properly speaking, is not an 
 autobiography at all, though it ranks with The Confes- 
 sions, and The Commedia, and The Grace Abounding, and 
 The Religuice, as one of the very best of that great kind 
 of book. It is not really Teresa's Life Written by Herself, 
 though all that stands on its title-page. It is only one 
 part of her life : it is only her life of prayer. The title 
 of the book, she says in one place, is not her life at all, 
 but The Mercies of God. Many other matters come up 
 incidentally in this delightful book, but the whole drift 
 and the real burden of the book is its author's life of 
 prayer. Her attainments and her experiences in prayer 
 so baffled and so put out all her confessors that, at their 
 wits' end, they enjoined her to draw out in writing a 
 complete account of a secret life, the occasional and 
 partial discovery of which so amazed, and perplexed, 
 and condemned them. And thus it is that we come 
 to possess this unique and incomparable autobiography : 
 this wonderful revelation of Teresa's soul in prayer. It 
 is a book in which we see a woman of sovereign intel- 
 lectual ability working out her own salvation in circum- 
 stances so different from our own that we have the 
 greatest difficulty in believing that it was really salvation 
 at all she was so working out. Till, as we read on in 
 humility and in love, we learn to separate-off all that is 
 local, and secular, and ecclesiastical, and circumstantial, 
 and then we immensely enjoy and take lasting profit 
 
SANTA TERESA 27 
 
 out of all that which is so truly Catholic and so truly 
 spiritual. Teresa was an extraordinary woman in every 
 way : and that comes out on every page of her Auto- 
 biography. So extraordinary that I confess there is a 
 great deal that she tells us about herself that I do not 
 at all understand. She was Spanish, and we are Scottish. 
 She and we are wide as the poles asunder. Her lot was 
 cast of God in the sixteenth century, whereas our lot is 
 cast in the twentieth. She was a Roman Catholic mystic, 
 and we are Evangelical Protestants. But it is one of 
 the great rewards of studying such a life as Teresa's to 
 be able to change places with her so as to understand 
 her and love her. She was, without any doubt or con- 
 tradiction, a great saint of God. And a great saint of 
 God is more worthy of our study and admiration and 
 imitation and love than any other study or admiration 
 or imitation or love on the face of the earth. And the 
 further away such a saint is from ourselves the better 
 she is fitted for our study and admiration and imitation 
 and love, if we only have the sense and the grace to see it. 
 Cervantes himself might have written Teresa's Book 
 of the Foundations. Certainly he never wTote a better 
 book. For myself I have read Teresa's Foundations 
 twice at any rate for every once I have read Cervantes' 
 masterpiece. For literature, for humour, for wit, for 
 nature, for photographic pictures of the time and the 
 people, her Foundations is a masterpiece also : and then, 
 Teresa's pictures are pictures of the best people in Spain. 
 And there was no finer people in the whole of Christendom 
 in that day than the best of the Spanish people. God 
 had much people in the Spain of that day, and he who 
 is not glad to hear that will never have a place among 
 them. The Spain of that century was full of family Hfe 
 of the most polished and refined kind. And, with all 
 
28 SANTA TERESA 
 
 their declensions and corruptions, the Rehgious Houses 
 of Spain enclosed multitudes of the most saintly men 
 and women. ' I never read of a hermit,' said Dr. John- 
 son to Boswell in St. Andrews, ' but in imagination I 
 kiss his feet : I never read of a monastery, but I could 
 fall on my knees and kiss the pavement. I have thought 
 of retiring myself, and have talked of it to a friend, but 
 I find my vocation is rather in active life.' It was such 
 monasteries as Teresa founded and ruled, and of which 
 she wrote the history that made such a sturdy Protestant 
 as Dr. Johnson say such a thing as that. The Book 
 of the Foundations is Teresa's own account, written also 
 under superior orders, of that great group of Religious 
 Houses which she founded and administered for so many 
 years. And the literature into which she puts all those 
 years is literature of the first water. A thousand times 
 I have been reminded of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza 
 as I read Teresa's account of her journeys, and of the 
 people, and of the escapades, and of the entertainments 
 she met with. Yes, quite as good as Cervantes ! yes, 
 quite as good as Goldsmith ! — I have caught myself 
 exclaiming as I read and laughed till the tears ran down 
 my cheeks. This is literature, this is art without the 
 art, this is literary finish without the labour : and all 
 laid out to the finest of all uses, to tell of the work of God, 
 and of all the enterprises, providences, defeats, successes, 
 recompenses, connected with it. The Foundations is a 
 Christian classic even in Woodhead's and Dalton's and 
 David Lewis's English ; what must it be then to those 
 to whom Teresa's exquisite Spanish is their mother- 
 tongue ! 
 
 Teresa's Way of Perfection is a truly fine book : full 
 of freshness, suggestiveness, and power. So much so, 
 that I question if William Law's Christian Perfection 
 
SANTA TERESA 29 
 
 would have ever been written but that Teresa had written 
 on that same subject before him. I do not mean to say- 
 that Law plagiarised from Teresa, but some of his very 
 best passages are plainly inspired by his great prede- 
 cessor. You will thank me for the following eloquent 
 passage from Mrs. Cunninghame Graham, which so 
 felicitously characterises this great book, and that in 
 language such as I could not command. ' To my think- 
 ing Teresa is at her best in her Way of Perfection with 
 its bursts of impassioned eloquence ; its shrewd and 
 caustic irony ; its acute and penetrating knowledge of 
 human character, the same in the convent as in the 
 world ; above all in its sympathetic and tender instinct 
 for the needs and difficulties of her daughters. The 
 Perfection represents the finished and magnificent fabric 
 of the spiritual life. Her words ring with a strange terse- 
 ness and earnestness as she here pens her spiritual testa- 
 ment. She points out the mischievous foibles, the little 
 meannesses, the spirit of cantankerousness and strife, 
 which long experience of the cloister had shown her were 
 the besetting sins of the conventual life. She places 
 before them the loftier standard of the Cross. Her words, 
 direct and simple, ring out true and clear, producing 
 somewhat the solemn effect of a Commination Service.' 
 Strong as that estimate is, The Perfection deserves every 
 word of it and more. 
 
 Teresa thought that her Mansions was one of her best 
 books, but she was surely far wrong in that. The 
 Mansions, sometimes called The Interior Castle, to me at 
 any rate, is a most shapeless, monotonous, and weari- 
 some book. Teresa had a splendid imagination, but her 
 imagination had not the architectonic and dramatic 
 quality that is necessary for carrying out such a concep- 
 tion as that is which she has laid in the ground-plan of 
 
30 SANTA TERESA 
 
 this book. No one who has ever read The Purgaiorio, or 
 The Pilgrim's Progress, or The Holy War could have 
 patience with the shapeless and inconsequent Mansions. 
 There is nothing that is new in the matter of the Mansions ; 
 there is nothing that is not found in a far better shape in 
 some of her other books ; and one is continually wearied 
 out by her utter inability to handle the metaphoric 
 imagery that she will not let alone. At the same time, 
 the persevering reader will come continually on charac- 
 teristic things that are never to be forgotten as he climbs 
 with Teresa from strength to strength on her way to her 
 Father's House. 
 
 To my mind Teresa is at her very best, not in her 
 Mansions of which she made so much, but in her Letters 
 of which she made nothing. I think I prefer her Letters 
 to all her other books. A great service was done to this 
 fine field of literature when Teresa's letters were collected 
 and published. What Dr. Dods, Augustine's editor, has so 
 well said about Augustine's letters I would borrow and 
 would apply to Teresa's letters. All her other works re- 
 ceive fresh light from her letters. The subjects of her 
 more elaborate writings are all handled in her letters in a 
 far easier, a far more natural, and a far more attractive 
 manner. It is in her letters that we first see the size and 
 the strength and the sweep of her mind, and discover 
 the deserved deference that is paid to her on all hands. 
 Burdened churchmen, inquiring students in the spiritual 
 life, perplexed confessors, angry and remonstrating monks, 
 husbands and wives, matrons and maidens, all find their 
 way to Mother Teresa. Great bundles of letters are 
 delivered at the door of her cell every day, and she works 
 at her answers to those letters till a bird begins to flutter 
 in the top of her head, after which her physician will not 
 suffer her to write more than twelve letters at a down- 
 
SANTA TERESA 31 
 
 sitting. And what letters they are, all sealed with the 
 name of Jesus — she will seal now with no other seal. 
 What letters of a strong and sound mind go out under 
 that seal ! What a business head ! What shrewdness, 
 sagacity, insight, frankness, boldness, archness, raillery, 
 downright fun ! And all as full of splendid sense as an 
 egg is full of meat. If Andrew Bonar had only read 
 Spanish, and had edited Teresa's Letters as he has edited 
 Rutherford's, we would have had that great treasure 
 in all our houses. As it is, Father Coleridge long ago fell 
 on the happy idea of compiling a Life of Teresa out of her 
 extant letters, and he has at last carried out his idea, if 
 not in all its original fulness, yet in a very admirable and 
 praiseworthy way. Of Teresa's Letters, Mrs. Cunning- 
 hame Graham, that greatest modern authority on Teresa, 
 says — ' That long series of epistolary correspondence, so 
 enchanting in the original. It is in her letters that 
 Teresa is at her best. They reveal all her shrewdness 
 about business and money matters ; her talent for 
 administration ; her intense interest in life, and in all 
 that is passing around her. Her letters show Teresa as 
 the Castilian gentlewoman who not only treats on terms 
 of perfect equality with people of the highest rank in the 
 kingdom, but is in the greatest request by them. Her 
 letters, of which probably only a tithe remains, show us 
 how marvellously the horizon of her life had expanded, 
 and how rapidly her fame had grown. Perhaps no more 
 finished specimen of epistolary correspondence has ever 
 been penned than those letters, written in the press of 
 multifarious occupations, and often late at night when 
 the rest of the convent was sleeping.' 
 
 Her confessor, we are told, commanded Teresa to 
 throw her Commentary on the Song of Solomon into the 
 fire. From this we shall perhaps be justified in inferring 
 
32 SANTA TERESA 
 
 that in his opinion she had somewhat exceeded the 
 limits which even the most allegorising and mystical of 
 interpreters of that time had allowed themselves. 
 And when we remember that the text she commented 
 on — with a confessedly imperfect understanding, too — 
 was that of the Vulgate and not any modern version, 
 it is quite likely that, had we possessed the book in its 
 completeness, we too should have found it sometimes 
 tedious, not seldom grotesque, and often neither very 
 wise nor very profitable. Yet, judging of the whole by 
 the part preserved for us by the nun who burnt her 
 fingers by snatching a few leaves from the fire, there 
 must have been many things scattered up and down the 
 destroyed book well worthy of her best pen. The 
 ' instance of self-esteem ' which Teresa so delightfully 
 narrates is well worth all the burnt fingers its preserva- 
 tion had cost the devoted sister ; and up and down the 
 charred leaves there are passages on conduct and char- 
 acter, on obedience and humility and prayer, that 
 Teresa alone could have written. 
 
 Her Seven Meditations on the Lord's Prayer ran no 
 danger of the censor's fire. I have had occasion to read 
 all the best expositions of the Lord's Prayer in our lan- 
 guage, and I am bound to say that for originality and strik- 
 ing suggestiveness Teresa's Seven Meditations stands alone. 
 After I had written that extravagant-sounding sentence 
 I went back and read her little book over again, so sure 
 was I that I must have overpraised it, and that I would 
 not be believed in what I have said concerning it. But 
 after another reading of the Meditations I am emboldened 
 to let the strong praise stand in all its original strength. 
 I have passages marked in abundance to prove to demon- 
 stration the estimate I have formed of this beautiful 
 book, but I must forgo myself the pleasure and the pride 
 of quoting them. 
 
- SANTA TERESA 33 
 
 Sixteen Augustinian Exclamations after having Com- 
 municated : sixty-nine Advices to Her Daughters, and a 
 small collection of love-enflamed Hymns, complete what 
 remains to us of Teresa's writings. 
 
 Teresa died of hard work and worry and shameful 
 neglect, almost to sheer starvation. But she had meat 
 to eat that all Anne Bartholomew's remaining mites 
 could not buy for her dying mother. And, strong in the 
 strength of that spiritual meat, Teresa rose off her death- 
 bed to finish her work. She inspected with all her wonted 
 quickness of eye and love of order the whole of the House 
 into which she had been carried to die. She saw every- 
 thing put into its proper place, and every one answering 
 to their proper order, after which she attended the divine 
 offices for the day, and then went back to her bed and 
 summoned her daughters around her. ' My children,' 
 she said, ' you must pardon me much ; you must pardon 
 me most of all the bad example I have given j^ou. Do 
 not imitate me. Do not live as I have lived. I have 
 been the greatest sinner in all the world. I have not 
 kept the laws I made for others. I beseech you, my 
 daughters, for the love of God, to keep the rules of your 
 Holy Houses as I have never kept them. O my Lord,' 
 she then turned to Him and said, ' the hour I have so 
 much longed for has surely come at last. The time has 
 surely come that we shall see one another. My Lord 
 and Saviour, it is surely time for me to be taken out of 
 this banishment and be for ever with Thee. The sacri; 
 fices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite 
 heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise. Cast me not away 
 from Thy presence, and take not Thy Holy Spirit away 
 from me. Create in me a clean heart, O God. A broken 
 and a contrite heart ; a broken and a contrite heart,' 
 was her continual cry till she died with these words on 
 
34 SANTA TERESA 
 
 her lips, ' A broken and a contrite heart Thou wilt not 
 despise.' And, thus, with the most penitential of David's 
 penitential Psalms in her mouth, and with the holy 
 candle of her Church in her hand, Teresa of Jesus went 
 forth from her banishment to meet her Bridegroom. 
 
 ' O sweet incendiary ! shew liere thy art 
 Upon this carcass of a cold hard heart ; 
 Let all thy scatter'd shafts of light that play 
 Among the leaves of thy large hooks of day. 
 Combined against this breast at once break in 
 And take away from me myself and sin ; 
 This gracious robbery shall thy bounty be, 
 And thy best fortune such fair spoils of me. 
 O thou undaunted daughter of desires ! 
 By all thy dower of lights and fires ; 
 By all the eagle in thee, all the dove ; 
 By all thy lives and deaths of love ; 
 By thy large draughts of intellectual day ; 
 And all thy thirsts of love more large than they ; 
 By all thy brim-filled bowls of fierce desire ; 
 By thy last morning's draught of liquid fire ; 
 By the full kingdom of that final kiss 
 That seized thy parting soul, and sealed thee His ; 
 By all the Heavens thou hast in Him, 
 (Fair sister of the Seraphim !) ; 
 By all of Him we have in thee ; — 
 Leave nothing of myself in me. 
 Let me so read thy life, that I 
 Unto all life of mine may die.' 
 
 THEODIDACTA 
 
 AFFICIENS 
 
 INFLAMMANS. 
 
JACOB BEHMEN 
 
 Jacob Behmen, the greatest of the mystics, and the 
 father of German philosophy, was all his life nothing 
 better than a working shoemaker. He was born at Old 
 Seidenberg, a village near Goerlitz in Silesia, in the year 
 1575, and he died at Goerlitz in the year 1624. Jacob 
 Behmen has no biography. Jacob Behmen's books are 
 his best biography. While working with his hands, 
 Jacob Behmen's whole life was spent in the deepest and 
 the most original thought ; in joiercing visions of God 
 and of nature ; in prayer, in praise, and in love to God 
 and man. Of Jacob Behmen it may be said with the 
 utmost truth and soberness that he lived and moved and 
 had his being in God. Jacob Behmen has no biography 
 because his whole life was hid with Christ in God. 
 
 While we have nothing that can properly be called a 
 biography of Jacob Behmen, we have ample amends 
 made to us in those priceless morsels of autobiography 
 that lie scattered so plentifully up and down all his books. 
 And nothing could be more charming than just those 
 incidental and unstudied utterances of Behmen about 
 himself. Into the very depths of a passage of the pro- 
 foundest speculation Behmen will all of a sudden throw 
 a few verses of the most childlike and heart-winning con- 
 fidences about his own mental history and his own 
 spiritual experience. And thus it is that, without at all 
 
 35 
 
86 JACOB BEHMEN 
 
 intending it, Behmen has left behind him a complete 
 history of his great mind and his holy heart in those 
 outbursts of diffidence, deprecation, explanation, and 
 self-defence, of which his philosophical and theological, 
 as well as his apologetic and experimental, books are all 
 so full. It were an immense service done to our best 
 literature if some of Behmen's students would go through 
 all Behmen's books, so as to make a complete collection 
 and composition of the best of those autobiographic 
 passages. Such a book, if it were well done, would at 
 once take rank with Tlie Confessions of St. Augustine, 
 The Divine Comedy of Dante, and the Grace Abounding 
 of John Bunyan. It would then be seen by all, what 
 few, till then, will believe, that Jacob Behmen's mind and 
 heart and spiritual experience all combine to give him a 
 foremost place among the most classical masters in 
 that great field of religion and literature. 
 
 In the nineteenth chapter of the Aurora there occurs a 
 very important passage of this autobiographic nature. 
 In that famous passage Behmen tells his readers that 
 when his eyes first began to be opened, the sight of this 
 world completely overwhelmed him. Asaph's experi- 
 ences, so powerfully set before us in the seventy-third 
 Psalm, will best convey, to those who do not know Beh- 
 men, what Behmen also passed through before he drew 
 near to God. Like that so thoughtful Psalmist, Behmen's 
 steps had wellnigh slipped when he saw the prosperitj'' 
 of the wicked, and when he saw how waters of a full 
 cup were so often wrung out to the people of God. The 
 mystery of human life, the sin and misery of human life, 
 cast Behmen into a deep and inconsolable melancholy. 
 No Scripture could comfort him. His thoughts of God 
 were such that he vnW not allow himself, even after they 
 are long past, to put them down on paper. In this terrible 
 
JACOB BEHMEN 37 
 
 trouble he lifted up his heart to God, little knowing, as 
 yet, what God was, or what his own heart was. Only, 
 he wrapped up his whole heart, and mind, and will, and 
 desire in the love and the mercy of God : determined 
 not to give over till God had heard him and had helped 
 him. ' And then, when I had wholly hazarded my life 
 upon what I was doing, my whole sj)irit seemed to me 
 suddenly to break out through the gates of hell, and to 
 be taken up into the arms and the heart of God. I can 
 compare it to nothing else but the resurrection at the last 
 day. For then, with all reverence I say it, with the eyes 
 of my spirit I saw God. I saw both what God is, and I 
 saw how God is what He is. And with that there came a 
 mighty and an incontrollable imj^ulse to set it down, so 
 as to preserve what I had seen. Some men will mock me, 
 and will tell me to stick to my proper trade, and not 
 trouble my mind with philosophy and theology. Let 
 these high matters alone. Leave them to those who have 
 both the time and the talent for them, they will say. 
 So I have often said to myself, but the truth of God did 
 burn in my bones till I took pen and ink and began to set 
 down what I had seen. All this time do not mistake me 
 for a saint or an angel. My heart, as well as yours, is 
 full of all evil. In malice, and in hatred, and in lack of 
 brotherly love, after all I have seen and experienced, 
 I am like all other men. I am surely the fullest of all 
 men of all manner of infirmity and malignity.' Behmen 
 protests in every book of his that what he has written 
 he has received immediately from God. ' Let it never be 
 imagined that I am any greater or any better than other 
 men. When the S^Dirit of God is taken away from me 
 I cannot even read so as to understand what I have 
 myself written. I have every day to wrestle with the 
 devil and Avith my own heart, no man in all the world 
 
38 JACOB BEHMEN 
 
 more. Oh no ! thou must not for one moment think of 
 me as if I had by my own power or hohness cHmbed up 
 into heaven or descended into the abyss. Oh no ! hear 
 me. I am as thou art. I have no more hght than thou 
 hast. Let no man think of me what I am not. But 
 what I am all men may be who will truly believe, and 
 will truly wrestle for truth and goodness under Jesus 
 Christ. I marvel every day that God should reveal 
 both the Divine Nature and Temporal and Eternal 
 Nature for the first time to such a simple and unlearned 
 man as I am. But what am I to resist what God will 
 do ? What am I to say but, Behold the son of thine 
 handmaiden ! I have often besought Him to take these 
 too high and too deep matters away from off me, and to 
 commit them to men of more learning and of a better 
 style of speech. But He always put my prayer away 
 from Him and continued to kindle His fire in my bones. 
 And with all my striving to quench God's spirit of revela- 
 tion, I found that I had only by that gathered the more 
 stones for the house that He had ordained me to build 
 for Him and for His children in this world.' 
 
 Jacob Behmen's first book, his Aurora, was not a book 
 at all but a bundle of loose leaves. Nothing was further 
 from Behmen's mind, when he took up his pen of an 
 evening, than to make a book. He took up his pen after 
 his day's work was over in order to preserve for his own 
 memory and use m after days the revelations that had 
 been made to him, and the experiences and exercises 
 through which God had passed him. And, besides, 
 Jacob Behmen could not have written a book even if 
 he had tried it. He was a total stranger to the world of 
 books ; and then, over and above that, he had been 
 taken up into a world of things into which no book ever 
 written as yet had dared to enter. Again, and again, 
 
JACOB BEHMEN 39 
 
 and again, till it came to fill his whole life, Behmen -would 
 be sitting over his work, or walking abroad under the 
 stars, or worshipping in his pew in the parish church, 
 when, like the captive prophet by the river of Chebar, 
 he would be caught in rapturous ecstasy and carried 
 away into the visions of God to behold the glory of 
 God. And then, when he came to himself, there would 
 arise within him a ' fiery instigation ' to set down for a 
 ' memorial ' what he had again seen and heard. ' The 
 gate of the Divine Mystery was sometimes so opened to 
 me that in one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more 
 than if I had been many years together at a university. 
 At which I did exceedingly admire, and, though it passed 
 my understanding how it happened, I thereupon turned 
 my heart to God to praise Him for it. For I saw and 
 knew the Being of all Beings ; the Byss and the Abyss ; 
 as, also, the Generation of the Son and the Procession of 
 the Spirit. I saw the descent and original of this world 
 also, and of all its creatures. I saw in their order and 
 outcome the Divine world, the angelical world, paradise, 
 and then this fallen and dark world of our own. I saw 
 the beginning of the good and the evil, and the true 
 origin and existence of each of them. All of which did 
 not only cause me great wonder but also a great joy and 
 a great fear. And then it came with commanding power 
 into my mind that I must set down the same in pen and 
 ink for a memorial to myself ; albeit, I could hardly 
 contain or express what I had seen. For twelve years 
 this went on in me. Sometimes the truth would hit 
 me like a sudden smiting storm of rain ; and then there 
 would be the clear sunshine after the rain. All which 
 was to teach me that God will manifest Himself in the 
 soul of man after what manner and what measure it 
 pleases Him and as it seems good in His sight.' 
 
40 JACOB BEHMEN 
 
 No human being knew all this time what Jacob Behmen 
 was passing through, and he never intended that any- 
 human being should know. But, with all his humility, 
 and all his love of obscurity, he could not remain hidden. 
 Just how it came about we are not fully told ; but long 
 before his book was finished, a nobleman in the neigh- 
 bourhood, who was deeply interested in the philosophy 
 and the theology of that day, somehow got hold of Beh- 
 men's papers and had them copied out and spread abroad, 
 to Behmen's great surprise and great distress. Copy 
 after copy was stealthily made of Behmen's manuscript, 
 till, most unfortunately for both of them, a copy came 
 into the hands of Behmen's parish minister. But for 
 that accident, so to call it, we would never have heard 
 the name of Gregory Richter, First Minister of Goerlitz, 
 nor could we have believed that any minister of Jesus 
 Christ could have gone so absolutely insane with ignor- 
 ance and envy and anger and ill-will. The libel is still 
 preserved that Behmen's minister drew out against the 
 author of Aurora, and the only thing it proves to us is 
 this, that its author must have been a dull-headed, coarse- 
 hearted, foul-mouthed man. Richter's persecution of 
 poor Behmen caused Behmen lifelong trouble ; but, at 
 the same time, it served to advertise his genius to his 
 generation, and to manifest to all men the meekness, the 
 humility, the docility, and the love of peace of the perse- 
 cuted man. ' Pastor-Primarius Richter,' says a bishop 
 of his own communion, ' was a man full of hierarchical 
 arrogance and pride. He had only the most outward 
 apprehension of the dogmatics of his day, and he was 
 totally incapable of understanding Jacob Behmen.' But 
 it is not for the limitations of his understanding that 
 Pastor Richter stands before us so laden with blame. 
 The school is still a small one that, after two centuries of 
 
JACOB BEHMEN 41 
 
 study and prayer and a holy life, can pretend to under- 
 stand the whole of the Aurora. William Law, a man of 
 the best vmderstanding and of the humblest heart tells 
 us that his first reading of Behmen put him into a ' perfect 
 sweat ' of astonishment and awe. No wonder, then, that 
 a man of Gregory Richter's narrow mind and hard heart 
 was thrown into such a fiendish sweat of prejudice and 
 anger and ill-will. 
 
 I do not propose to take you down into the deep places 
 where Jacob Behmen dwells and works. And that for 
 a very good reason. For I have found no firm footing 
 in those deep places for my own feet. I wade in and in 
 to the utmost of my ability, and still there rise up above 
 me, and stretch out around me, and sink down beneath 
 me, vast reaches of revelation and speculation, attain- 
 ment and experience, before which I can only wonder 
 and worship. See Jacob Behmen working with his hands 
 in his solitary stall, when he is suddenly caught up into 
 heaven till he beholds in enraptured vision The IMost 
 High Himself. And then, after that, see him swept 
 down to hell, down to sin, and down into the bottomless 
 pit of the human heart. Jacob Behmen, almost more 
 than any other man whatsoever, is carried uj) till he moves 
 like a holy angel or a glorified saint among things unseen 
 and eternal. Jacob Behmen is of the race of the seers, 
 and he stands out a very prince among them. He is 
 full of eyes, and all his eyes are full of light. It does not 
 stagger me to hear his disciples calling him, as Hegel 
 does, ' a man of a mighty mind,' or, as Law does, * the 
 illuminated Behmen,' and ' the blessed Behmen.' ' In 
 speculative power,' says dry Dr. Kurtz, ' and in poetic 
 wealth, exhibited with epic and dramatic effect, Behmen's 
 system surpasses everything of the kind ever written.' 
 Some of his disciples have the hardihood to affirm indeed 
 
42 JACOB BEHMEN 
 
 that even Isaac Newton ploughed with Behmen's heifer, 
 but had not the boldness to acknowledge the debt. I 
 entirely accept it when his disciples assert it of their 
 master that he had a privilege and a passport permitted 
 him such as no mortal man has had the like since John's 
 eyes closed upon his completed Apocalypse. After re- 
 peated and prolonged reading of Behmen's amazing 
 books, nothing has been said by his most ecstatic dis- 
 ciples about their adored master that either astonishes or 
 offends me. Dante himself does not beat such a soaring 
 wing as Behmen's ; and all the trumpets that sound in 
 Paradise Lost do not swell my heart and chase its blood 
 like Jacob's Behmen broken syllables about the Fall. I 
 would not wonder to have it pointed out to me in the 
 world to come that all that Gichtel, and St. Martin, and 
 Hegel, and Law, and Walton, and Martensen, and Hart- 
 mann have said about Jacob Behmen and his visions of 
 God and Nature and Man were all but literally true. 
 No doubt, — nay, the thing is certain, — that if you open 
 Jacob Behmen anywhere as Gregory Richter opened the 
 Aurora ; if a new idea is a pain and a provocation to you ; 
 if you have any prejudice in your heart for any reason 
 against Behmen ; if you dislike the sound of his name 
 because some one you dislike has discovered him and 
 praised him, or because you do not yourself already 
 know him and love him, then, no doubt, you will find 
 plenty in Behmen at which to stumble, and which will 
 amply justify you in anything you wish to say against 
 him. But if you are a true student and a good man ; if 
 you are an open-minded and a humble-minded man ; if 
 you are prepared to sit at any man's feet who will engage 
 to lead you a single step out of your ignorance and your 
 evil ; if you open Behmen with a predisposition to be- 
 lieve in him, and with the expectation and the determina- 
 
JACOB BEHMEN 43 
 
 tion to get good out of him, — then, in the measure of all 
 that ; in the measure of your capacity of mind and your 
 hospitality of heart ; in the measure of your humility, 
 seriousness, patience, teachableness, hunger for truth, 
 hunger for righteousness, — in that measure you will 
 find Jacob Behmen to be what Frederick Maurice tells 
 us he found him to be, ' a generative thinker.' Out of 
 much you cannot understand, — wherever the blame for 
 that may lie, — out of much slag and much dross, I am 
 mistaken if you will not lay up some of your finest ^t' 
 gold ; and out of much straw and chaff some of the 
 finest of the wheat. The Divine Nature, human nature, 
 time, space, matter, life, love, sin, death, holiness, heaven, 
 hell, — Behmen's reader must have lived and moved all 
 his days among such things as these : he must be at 
 home, as far as the mind of man can be at home, among 
 such things as these, and then he will begin to understand 
 Behmen, and will still strive better and better to under- 
 stand him ; and, where he does not as yet understand him, 
 he will set that down to his own inattention, incapacity, 
 want of due preparation, and want of the proper ripeness 
 for such a study. 
 
 At the same time, let all intending students of Jacob 
 Behmen take warning that they will have to learn an 
 absolutely new and an unheard-of language if they would 
 speak with Behmen and have Behmen speak with them. 
 For Behmen's books are written neither in German nor 
 in English of any age or idiom, but in the most original 
 and uncouth Behmenese. Like John Bunyan, but never 
 with John Bunyan's literary grace, Behmen will borrow, 
 now a Latin word or phrase from his reading of learned 
 authors, or, more often, from the conversations of his 
 learned friends ; and then he will take some astrological 
 or alchemical expression of Agripjja or Paracelsus or 
 
44 JACOB BEHMEN 
 
 some such outlaw, and will, as with his awl and rosin- 
 end, sew together a sentence, and hammer together a page 
 of the most incongruous and unheard-of phraseology, till, 
 as we read Behmen's earlier work especially, we continu- 
 ally exclaim, O for a chapter of John Bunyan's clear, 
 and sweet, and classical English ! The Aurora was 
 written in a language, if writing and a language it can be 
 called, that had never been seen written or heard spoken 
 before, or has since, on the face of the earth. And as 
 our students learn Greek in order to read Homer and 
 Plato and Paul and John, and Latin in order to read 
 Virgil and Tacitus, and Italian to read Dante, and German 
 to read Goethe, so William Law tells us that he learned 
 Behmen's Behmenite High Dutch, and that too after he 
 was an old man, in order that he might completely 
 master the Aurora and its kindred books. And as our 
 schoolboys laugh and jeer at the outlandish sounds of 
 Greek and Latin and German, till they have learned to 
 read and love the great authors who have written in those 
 languages, so Rutherford, and Wesley, and Southey, and 
 even Hallam himself, jest and flout and call names at 
 Jacob Behmen, because they have not taken the trouble 
 to learn his language, to master his mind, and to drink 
 in his spirit. 
 
 At the same time, and after all that had been said about 
 Behmen's barbarous style, Bishop Martensen tells us how 
 the readers of Schelling were surprised and enraptured by 
 a wealth of new expressions and new turns of speech in 
 their mother tongue. But all these belonged to Behmen, 
 or were fashioned on the model of his symbolical language. 
 As it is, with all his astrology, and all his alchemy, and 
 all his barbarities of form and expression, I for one will 
 always take sides with the author of The Serious Call, and 
 The Spirit of Prayer, and The Spirit of Love, and The Way 
 
JACOB BEHMEN 45 
 
 to Divine Knowledge, in the disputed matter of Jacob 
 Behmen's sanity and sanctity ; and I will continue to 
 believe that if I had only had the scholarship, and the 
 intellect, and the patience, and the enterprise, to have 
 mastered, through all their intricacies, the Behmenite 
 grammar and the Behmenite vocabulary, I also would 
 have found in Behmen all that Freher and Pordage and 
 Law and Walton found. Even in the short way into this 
 great man that I have gone, I have come ui^on such rare 
 and rich mines of divine and eternal truth that I can 
 easily believe that they who have dug deeper have come 
 upon uncounted riches. ' Next to the Scriptures,' writes 
 William Law, ' my only book is the illuminated Behmen. 
 For the whole kingdom of grace and nature was opened 
 in him. In reading Behmen I am always at home, and 
 kept close to the kingdom of God that is within me.' 
 ' I am not young,' said Louis Claude de St. Martin, ' being 
 now near my fiftieth year, nevertheless I have begun to 
 learn German, in order that I may read this incomparable 
 author in his own tongue. I have written some not 
 unacceptable books myself, but I am not worthy to 
 unloose the shoestrings of this wonderful man. I advise 
 you to throw yourself into the depths of Jacob Behmen. 
 There is such a profundity and exaltation of truth in them, 
 and such a simple and delicious nutriment.' 
 
 The Town Council of Goerlitz, hounded on by their 
 minister, sentenced Behmen to be banished and inter- 
 dicted him from ever writing any more. But in sheer 
 shame at what they had done they immediately recalled 
 Behmen from banishment ; only, they insisted that he 
 should confine himself to his shop, and leave all writing 
 of books alone. Behmen had no ambition to write any 
 more, and, as a matter of fact, he kept silence even to 
 himself for seven Avhole years. But as those years went 
 
46 JACOB BEHMEN 
 
 on it came to be with him, to use his own words, as with 
 so much grain that has been buried in the earth, and 
 which, in spite of storms and tempests, will, out of its 
 own hfe, spring up, and that even when reason says it 
 is now winter, and that all hope and all power is gone. 
 And thus it was that, under the same instigation wliich 
 had produced the Aurora, Behmen at a rush wrote his 
 very fine if very difficult book. The Three Principles of 
 the Divine Essence. He calls The Three Principles his 
 ABC, and the easiest of all his books. And William 
 Law recommends all beginners in Behmen to read alone 
 for some sufficient time the tenth and twelfth chapters 
 of The Three Principles, I shall let Behmen describe 
 the contents of his easiest book in his own words. ' In 
 this second book,' he says, ' there is declared Avhat God 
 is, what Nature is, what the creatures are, what the love 
 and meekness of God are, what God's will is, what the 
 wrath of God is, and what joy and sorrow are. As also, 
 how all things took their beginning : with the true 
 difference between eternal and transitory creatures. 
 Specially of man and his soul, what the soul is, and how 
 it is an eternal creature. Also what heaven is, wherein 
 God and the holy angels and holy men dwell, and hell 
 wherein the devils dwell : and how all things were origin- 
 ally created and had their being. In sum, what the 
 Essence of all Essences is. And thus I commit my 
 reader to the sweet love of God.' The Three Principles, 
 according to Christopher Walton, was the first book of 
 Behmen's that William Law ever held in his hand. That, 
 then, was the title-page, and those were the contents, 
 that threw that princely and saintly mind into such a 
 sweat. It was a great day for William Law, and through 
 him it was, and will yet be acknowledged to have been, a 
 great day for English theology when he chanced, at an 
 
JACOB BEHMEN 47 
 
 old bookstall, upon The Three Principles, Englished by 
 a Barrister of the Inner Temple. The picture of that 
 bookstall that day is engraven in lines of light and love 
 on the heart of every grateful reader of Jacob Behmen 
 and of William Law's later and richer and riper writings. 
 
 In three months after he had finished The Three 
 Principles, Behmen had composed a companion treatise, 
 entitled The Threefold Life of Man. Modest about him- 
 self as Behmen always was, he could not be wholly blind 
 about his own incomparable books. And he but spoke the 
 simple truth about his third book when he said of it — 
 as, indeed, he was constantly saying about all his books 
 — that it will serve every reader just according to his 
 constellation, his inclination, his disposition, his com- 
 plexion, his profession, and his whole condition. ' You 
 will be soon weary of all contentious books,' he wrote to 
 Casper Lindern, ' if you entertain and get The Threefold 
 Life of Man into your mind and heart.' ' The subject 
 of regeneration,' says Christopher Walton, * is the pith 
 and drift of all Behmen's writings, and the student may 
 here be directed to begin his course of study by master- 
 ing the first eight chapters of The Threefold Life, which 
 appear to have been in great favour with Mr. Law.' 
 
 Behmen's next book was a very extraordinary piece 
 of work, and it had a very extraordinary origin. A 
 certain Balthazar Walter, who seems to have been 
 a second Paracelsus in his love of knowledge and in 
 his lifelong pursuit of knowledge, had, Hke Paracelsus, 
 travelled east, and west, and north, and south in search 
 of that ancient and occult wisdom of which so many men 
 in that day dreamed. But Walter, like his predecessor 
 Paracelsus, had come home from his travels a humbler 
 man, a wiser man, and a man more ready to learn and 
 lay to heart the truth that one of his own countrymen 
 
48 JACOB BEHMEN 
 
 could all the time have taught him. On his return from 
 the east, Walter found the name of Jacob Behmen in 
 everybody's mouth ; and, on introducing himself to that 
 little shop in Goerlitz out of which the Aurora and The 
 Threefold Life had come, Walter was wise enough to see 
 and bold enough to confess that he had found a teacher 
 and a friend there such as neither Egypt nor India had 
 provided him with. After many immensely interested 
 visits to Jacob Behmen's workshop, Walter was more 
 than satisfied that Behmen was all, and more than all, 
 that his most devoted admirers had said he was. And, 
 accordingly, Walter laid a plan so as to draw upon 
 Behmen's profound and original mind for a solution of 
 some of the philosophical and theological problems that 
 were agitating and dividing the learned men of that day. 
 With that view Walter made a round of the leading 
 universities of Germany, conversed with the professors 
 and students, collected a long list of the questions that 
 were being debated in that day in those seats of learning, 
 and sent the list to Behmen, asking him to give his mind 
 to them and tiy to answer them. ' Beloved sir,' ^vrote 
 Behmen, after three months' meditation and prayer, 
 ' and my good friend : it is impossible for the mind and 
 reason of man to answer all the questions you have put 
 to me. All those things are known to God alone. But, 
 that no man may boast, He sometimes makes use of very 
 mean men to make known His truth, that it may be seen 
 and acknowledged to come from His own hand alone.' 
 It is told that when Charles the First read the English 
 translation of Behmen's answers to the Forty Questions, 
 he wrote to the publisher that if Jacob Behmen was no 
 scholar, then the Holy Ghost was still with men ; and, 
 if he was a learned man, then his book was one of the 
 best inventions that had ever been written. The Forty 
 
JxVCOB BEHMEN 49 
 
 Questions ran through many editions both on the Con- 
 tinent and in England, and it was this book that gained 
 for Jacob Bchmen the denomination of the Teutonic 
 Philosopher, a name by which he is distinguished among 
 authors to this day. ' He is known,' says Hegel, ' as the 
 Philosophus Teutonicus, and, in reality, through him for 
 the first time did philosophy in Germany come forward 
 with a characteristic stamp. The kernel of his philo- 
 sophising is purely German.' The following arc some 
 of the university questions that Balthazar Walter took 
 down and sent to Jacob Bchmen for his answer : ' What 
 is the soul of the man in its innermost essence, and how 
 is it created, soul by soul, in the image of God ? Is the 
 soul propagated from father to son like the body ? or is 
 it every time new created and breathed in from God ? 
 How comes original sin into each several soul ? How 
 does the soul of the saint feed and grow upon the word of 
 God ? Whence comes the deadly contrariety between 
 the flesh and the spirit ? Whither goes the soul when it 
 at death departs from the body ? In what does its rest, 
 its awakening, and its glorification consist ? Wliat kind 
 of body shall the glorified body be ? The soul and 
 spirit of Christ, what are they ? and are they the same 
 as ours ? What and where is Paradise ? ' Through a 
 hundred and fourteen large quarto pages Behmen's 
 astonishing answers to the forty questions run ; after 
 which he adds this : ' Thus, my beloved friend, we have 
 set down, according to our gifts, a round answer to your 
 questions, and wc exhort you as a brother not to despise 
 us. For we are not born of art, but of simplicity. We 
 acknowledge all who love such knowledge as our brethren 
 in Christ, with whom we hope to rejoice eternally in 
 the heavenly school. For our best knowledge here 
 is but in part, but when we shall attain to perfection, 
 
 D 
 
50 JACOB BEHMEN 
 
 then we shall see what God is, and what He can do. 
 Amen.' 
 
 A Treatise of the Incarnation of the Son of God comes 
 next, and then we have three smaller works written to 
 clear up and to establish several difficult and disputed 
 matters in it and in some of his former works. To write 
 on the Incarnation of the Son of God would need, says 
 Behmen, an angel's pen ; but his defence is that his is 
 better than any angel's pen, because it is the pen of 
 a sinner's love. The year 1621 saw one of Behmen's 
 most original and most powerful books finished, — the 
 Signatura Rerum. In this so illuminating book Behmen 
 teaches us that all things have two worlds in which they 
 live, — an inward world and an outward. All created 
 things have an inner and an invisible essence, and an 
 outer and a visible form. And the outward form is 
 always more or less the key to the inward character. 
 This whole world that we see around us, and of which 
 we ourselves are the soul, — it is all a symbol, a ' signature,' 
 of an invisible world. This deep principle runs through 
 the whole of creation. The Creator went upon this 
 principle in all His work ; and the thoughtful mind can 
 see that principle coming out in all His work, — in plants, 
 and trees, and beasts. 
 
 As German Boehme never cared for plants 
 Until it happed, a-walking in the fields, 
 He noticed all at once tliat plants could speak, 
 Nay, turned with loosened tongue to talk with him. 
 That day the daisy had an eye indeed— 
 Colloquized with the cowslips on such themes ! 
 We find them extant yet in Jacob's prose. 
 
 But, best of all, this principle comes out clearest in 
 the speech, behaviour, features, and face of a man. 
 Every day men are signing themselves from within. 
 
JACOB BEHMEN 51 
 
 Every act they perform, every word they speak, every 
 wish they entertain, — it all comes out and is fixed for 
 ever in their character, and even in their appearance. 
 ' Therefore,' says Behmen in the beginning of his book, 
 ' the greatest understanding lies in the signature. For 
 by the external form of all creatures, by their voice 
 and action, as well as by their instigation, inclination, 
 and desire, their hidden spirit is made known. For 
 Nature has given to everything its own language accord- 
 ing to its innermost essence. And this is the language 
 of Nature, in which everything continually speaks, 
 manifests, and declares itself for what it is, — so much so, 
 that all that is spoken or written even about God, how- 
 ever true, if the writer or speaker has not the Divine 
 Nature within himself, then all he says is dumb to me ; 
 he has not got the hammer in his hand that can strike 
 my bell.' 
 
 The Way to Christ ^ was Behmen's next book, and in 
 the four precious treatises that compose that book our 
 author takes an altogether new departure. In the Aurora, 
 in The Three Principles, in the Forty Questions, and in 
 the Signatura Bcrum, Jacob Behmen has been writing 
 for philosophers and theologians. Or, if in all these 
 works he has been writing for a memorial to himself in 
 the first place, — even then, it has been for himself on the 
 philosophical and theological side of his own mind. 
 But in The Way to Christ he writes for himself under 
 that character which, once taken up by Jacob Behmen, 
 is never for one day laid down. Behmen's favourite 
 
 ^ The IVay to Christ has been published recently by J. M. Watkins. 
 The Signature of All Things is included in Everyman's Library (Dent), 
 and Mr. George Allen has undertaken a complete edition of Behmen's 
 works, of which The Threefold Life, TIic Three Principles and The Forty 
 Questions have already appeared. 
 
52 JACOB BEHMEN 
 
 Scripture, after our Lord's promise of the Holy Spirit 
 to them that ask for Him, was the parable of the Prodigal 
 Son. In all his books Behmen is that son, covered with 
 wounds and bruises and putrifying sores, but at last 
 beginning to come to himself and to return to his Father. 
 The Way to Christ is a production of the very greatest 
 depth and strength, but it is the depth and the strength 
 of the heart and the conscience rather than the depth 
 and the strength of the understanding and the imagina- 
 tion. This nobly evangelical book is made up of four 
 tracts, entitled respectively. Of True Repentance, Of 
 True Resignation, Of Regeneration, and Of the Super- 
 sensual Life. And a deep vein of autobiographic life 
 and interest runs through the four tracts and binds 
 them into a quick unity. ' A soldier,' says Behmen, 
 ' who has been in the wars can best tell another soldier 
 how to fight.' And neither Augustine nor Luther nor 
 Bunyan carries deeper wounds, or broader scars, nor 
 tells a nobler story in any of their autobiographic and 
 soldierly books than Behmen does in his Way to Christ. 
 At the commencement of The True Repentance he pro- 
 mises us that he will write of a process or way on which 
 he himself has gone. ' The author herewith giveth thee 
 the best Jewel that he hath.' And a true jewel it is, 
 as the present speaker will testify. If The True Repent- 
 ance has a fault at all it is the fault of Samuel Rutherford's 
 Letters. For the taste of some of his readers Behmen, 
 like Rutherford, draws rather too much on the language 
 and the figures of the married life in setting forth the 
 love of Christ to the espoused soul, and the love of the 
 espoused soul to Christ. But with that, and with all 
 its other drawbacks, The True Repentance is such a 
 treatise that, once discovered by the projDcr reader, it 
 will be the happy discoverer's constant companion all 
 
JACOB BEHMEN 53 
 
 his earthly and penitential days. As the English reader 
 is carried on through the fourth tract, The Suyersensual 
 Life, he experiences a new and an increasing sense of 
 case and pleasure, combined Avith a mj^stic height and 
 depth and inwardness all but new to him even in Bchmen's 
 books. The new height and depth and inwardness are 
 all Jacob Behmen's own ; but the freedom and the 
 ease and the movement and the melody are all William 
 Law's. In his j)reparations for a new edition of 
 Behmen in English, William Law had re-translated and 
 paraphrased The Supersensuol Life, and the editor of 
 the 1781 edition of Behmen's works has incorporated 
 Law's beautiful rendering of that tract in room of John 
 Sparrow's excellent but rather too antique rendering. 
 We are in John SparroAv's everlasting debt for the 
 immense labour he laid out on Behmen, as well as for 
 his own deep piety and personal worth. But it was 
 service enough and honour enough for Sparrow to have 
 Englished Jacob Behmen at all for his fellow-countr}^- 
 men, even if he was not able to English him as William 
 Law would have done. But take Behmen and Law 
 together, as they meet together in The Supersensual 
 Life, and not A Kcmpis himself comes near them even 
 in his own proper field, or in his immense service in that 
 field. There is all the reality, inwardness, and spirituality 
 of The Imitation in TJie Supersensual Life, together with 
 a sweep of imagination, and a grasp of understanding, 
 as well as with both a sweetness and a bitterness of 
 heart that even A Kempis never comes near. The 
 Supersensual Life of Jacob Behmen, in the English of 
 William Law, is a superb piece of spiritual work, and a 
 treasure-house of masculine English. 
 
 A Treatise of the Four Complexions, or A Consolatory 
 Lnstrucfion for a Sad and Assaulted Heart, was Behmen's 
 
54 JACOB BEHMEN 
 
 next book. The four complexions are the four tempera- 
 ments — the choleric, the sanguine, the phlegmatic, and 
 the melancholy. Behmen's treatise has been well de- 
 scribed by Walton as containing the philosophy of 
 temptation ; and by Martensen as displaying a most 
 profound knowledge of the human heart. Behmen sets 
 about his task as a cluctor dubitantium in a masterly 
 manner. He takes in hand the comfort and direction 
 of sin-distressed souls in a characteristically deep, inward, 
 and thoroughgoing way. The book is full of Behmen's 
 observation of men. It is the outcome of a close and 
 long-continued study of character and conduct. Every 
 page of The Four Complexions gleams with a keen but 
 tender and wistful insight into our poor human nature. 
 As his customers came and gave their orders in his shop ; 
 as his neighbours collected, and gossiped, and debated, 
 and quarrelled around his shop window ; as his minister 
 fumed and raged against him in the puljoit ; as the 
 Council of Goerlitz sat and swayed ; jjassed sentence 
 upon him, retracted their sentence, and again gave way 
 under the pressure of their minister, and pronounced 
 another sentence, — all this time Behmen was having 
 poor human nature, to all its joints and marrow, and 
 to all the thoughts and instincts of its heart, laid naked 
 and open before him, both in other men and in himself. 
 And then, as always with Behmen, all this observation of 
 men, all this discovery and self-discovery, ran up into 
 philosophy, into theology, into personal and evangelical 
 religion. In all that Behmen better and better saw the 
 original plan, constitution, and operation of human 
 nature ; its aboriginal catastrophe ; its weakness and 
 openness to all evil ; and its need of constant care, 
 protection, instruction, watchfulness, and Divine help. 
 Behmen writes on all the four temperaments with the 
 
JACOB BEHMEN 55 
 
 proloiindcst insight, and with the fullest sj^mpathy ; 
 but over the last of the four he exclaims : ' O hear mc ! 
 for I know well myself what melancholy is ! I also have 
 lodged all my days in the melancholy inn ! ' As I read 
 that light and elastic book published some years ago, 
 The Life and Letters of Erasmus, I came on this sentence, 
 ' Erasmus, like all men of real genius, had a light and 
 elastic nature.' When I read that, I could not believe 
 my eyes. I had been used to think of light and elastic 
 natures as being the antipodes of natures of real genius. 
 And as I stopped my reading for a little, a procession of 
 men of real and indisputable genius passed before me, 
 who had all lodged with Behmen in the melancholy inn. 
 Till I remembered that far deeper and far truer saying, 
 that ' simply to say man at all is to say melancholy.' 
 No : with all respect, the real fact is surely as near as 
 possible the exact opposite. A light, elastic. Erasmus- 
 like nature, is the exception among men of real genius. 
 At any rate, Jacob Behmen was the exact opjjosite of 
 Erasmus, and of all such light and elastic men. Melan- 
 choly was Jacob Behmen's special temperament and 
 peculiar comj^lexion. He had long studied, and 
 watched, and wrestled with, and prayed over that 
 complexion at home. And thus it is, no doubt, that he 
 is so full, and so clear, and so sure-footed, and so im- 
 pressive, and so full of fellow-feeling in his treatment of 
 this special complexion. Behmen's greatest disciple has 
 assimilated his master's teaching in this matter of 
 complexion also, and has given it out again in his own 
 clear, plain, powerful, classical manner, especially in 
 his treatise on Christian Regeneration. Let all preachers 
 and pastors who would master the rationale of tempta- 
 tion, and who would ground their directions and their 
 comforts to their people in the nature of things, as well 
 
56 JACOB BEHMEN 
 
 as in the word of God, make Jacob Behmen and Wi]]iam 
 Law and Prebendary Clark their constant study. ' I 
 write for no other purpose,' says Behmen, ' than that 
 men may learn how to know themselves. Seek the noble 
 knowledge of thyself. Seek it and you will find a 
 heavenly treasure which will not be eaten by moths, 
 and which no thief shall ever take away.' 
 
 I shall not attempt to enter on the thorny thicket 
 of Jacob Behmen's polemical and apologetical works. 
 I shall not even load your mind with their unhappy 
 titles. His five apologies occupy in bulk somewhere 
 about a tenth part of his five quarto volumes. And full 
 as his apologies and defences are of autobiographic 
 material, as well as of valuable expansions and explana- 
 tions of his other books, yet at their best they are all 
 controversial and combative in their cast and com- 
 plexion ; and, nobly as Behmen has written on the 
 subject of controversy, it was not given even to him, 
 amid all the misunderstandings, misrepresentations, 
 injuries, and insults he suffered from, always to write 
 what we are glad and proud and the better to read. 
 
 About his next book Behmen thus writes : ' Upon the 
 desire of some high persons with whom I did converse in 
 the Christmas holidays, I have written a pretty large 
 treatise upon Election, in which I have done my best 
 to determine that subject upon the deepest grounds. 
 And I hope that the same may put an end to many con- 
 tentions and controversies, especially of some points 
 betwixt the Lutherans and Calvinists, for I have taken 
 the texts of Holy Scripture which speak of God's will 
 to harden sinners, and then, again, of His unwillingness 
 to harden, and have so tuned and harmonised them 
 that the right understanding and meaning of the same 
 may be seen.' ' This author,' says John Sparrow, 
 
JACOB BEHMEN 57 
 
 ' disputes not at all. He desires only to confer and 
 offer his understanding of the Scriptures on both sides, 
 answering reason's objections, and manifesting the 
 truth for conjoining, uniting, and reconciling of all parties 
 in love.' And that he has not been wholly unsuccessful 
 we may believe when we hear one of Behmen's ablest 
 commentators writing of his Election as ' a superlatively 
 helpful book,' and again, as a ' profoundly instructive 
 treatise.' The workmanlike way in which Behmen sets 
 about his treatment of the Election of Grace, commonly 
 called Predestination, will be seen from the titles of some 
 of his chapters. Chap. i. What the One Only God is. 
 Chap. ii. Concerning God's Eternal Speaking Word. 
 Chap. V. Of the Origin of Man. Chap. vi. Of the Fall of 
 Man. Chap. viii. Of the sayings of Scripture, and how 
 they oppose one another. Chap. ix. Clearing the Right 
 Understanding of such Scriptures. Chap. xiii. A Con- 
 clusion upon all those Questions. And then, true to his 
 constant manner, as if wholly dissatisfied with the 
 result of all his labour in things and in places too deep 
 both for writer and reader, he gave all the next day 
 after he had finished his Election to an A^ppendix on 
 Repentance, in order to making his own and his reader's 
 calling and election sure. And it may safely be said 
 that, than that day's work, than those four quarto 
 pages, not Augustine, not Luther, not Bunyan, not 
 Baxter, not Shepard has ever written anything of more 
 evangelical depth, and strength, and passion, and 
 pathos. It is truly a splendid day's work ! But it 
 might not have been jDOSsible even for Behmen to perform 
 that day's work had he not for months beforehand been 
 dealing day and night with the deepest and the most 
 heart-searching things both of God and man. What 
 a man was Jacob Behmen, and chosen to what a service ! 
 
58 JACOB BEHMEN 
 
 At work all that day in his solitary stall, and then all the 
 night after over his rush-light writing for a memorial 
 to himself and to us his incomparable Compendium of 
 Repetita?ice. 
 
 In a letter addressed to one of the nobility in Silesia, 
 and dated February 19, 1623, Behmen says : ' When 
 you have leisure to study I shall send you something 
 still more deep, for I have written this whole autumn 
 and winter without ceasing.' And if he had written 
 nothing else but his great book entitled Mysterium 
 Magnum that autumn and winter, he must have written 
 night and day and done nothing else. Even in size the 
 Mysterium is an immense piece of work. In the English 
 edition it occupies the whole of the third quarto volume 
 of 507 pages ; and then for its matter it is a still more 
 amazing production. To say that the Mysterium 
 Magnum is a mystical and allegorical commentary upon 
 the Book of Genesis is to say nothing. Philo himself is 
 a tyro and a timid interpreter beside Jacob Behmen. 
 ' Which things are an allegory,' says the Apostle, after 
 a passing reference to Sarah and Hagar and Isaac and 
 Ishmael ; but if you would see actually every syllable of 
 Genesis allegorised, spiritualised, interpreted of Christ, 
 and of the New Testament, from the first verse of its 
 first chapter to the last verse of its last chapter, like 
 the nobleman of Silesia, when you have leisure, read 
 Behmen's deep Mysterium Magnum. I would recommend 
 the enterprising and unconquerable student to make 
 leisure so as to master Behmen's Preface to the Mysterium 
 Magnum at the very least. And if he does that, and is 
 not drawn on from that to be a student of Behmen for 
 the rest of his days, then, whatever else his proper field 
 in life may be, it is not mystical or philosophical theology. 
 It is a long step both in time and in thought from Behmen 
 
JACOB BEHMEN 59 
 
 to Schopenhauer ; but, speaking of one of Schclhng's 
 books, Schopenhauer saj^s that it is all taken from 
 Jacob Behmen's Mysterium Magnum ; every thought 
 and almost every word of Schelling's work leads 
 Schopenhauer to think of Behmen. ' When I read 
 Behmen's book,' says Schopenhauer, ' I cannot withhold 
 either admiration or emotion.' 
 
 At his far too early death Behmen left four treatises 
 behind him in an unfinished condition. The Theoscopia, 
 or Divine Vision, is but a fragment ; but, even so, the 
 study of that fragment leads us to believe that had 
 Behmen lived to the ordinary limit of human life, and 
 had his mind continued to grow as it was now fast grow- 
 ing in clearness, in concentration, and in simplicity, 
 Behmen would have left to us not a few books as classical 
 in their form as all his books are classical in their sub- 
 stance ; in their originalitj'-, in their truth, in their 
 depth, and in their strength. As it is, the unfinished, 
 tlie scarcely-begun, Theoscopia only serves to show the 
 student of what a treasure he has been bereft by Behmen's 
 too early death. As I read and re-read the Theoscopia 
 I felt the full truth and force of Hegel's generous words, 
 that German philosophy began with Behmen. This is 
 both German and Christian philosophy, I said to myself 
 as I revelled in the Theoscopia. Let the serious student 
 listen to the titles of some of the chapters of the Theoscopia, 
 and then let him say what he would not have given to 
 have got such a book from such a pen in its completed 
 shape : ' What God is, and how we men shall know the 
 Divine Substance by the Divine Revelation. Why it 
 sometimes seems as if there were no God, and as if all 
 things went in the world by chance. Why God, who is 
 Love itself, permits an e^il Avill contrary to His own. 
 The reason and the profit, why evil should be found 
 
60 JACOB BEHMEN 
 
 along with good. Of the mind of man, and how it is the 
 image of God, and how it can still be filled with God. 
 Why this Temporal Universe is created ; to what it is 
 profitable ; and how God is so near unto all things ' : 
 and so on. ' But no amount of quotation,' says Mrs. 
 Penney, that very able student of Behmen, lately 
 deceased, ' can give an adequate glimpse of the light 
 which streams from the Theoscopia when long and 
 patiently studied.' 
 
 Another unfinished fragment that Behmen's readers 
 seek for and treasure up like very sand of gold is his Holy 
 Week. This little work, its author tells us, was under- 
 taken ujDon the entreaty and desire of some loving and 
 good friends of his for the daily exercise of true religion 
 in their hearts and in the little church of their families. 
 The following is Behmen's method of prayer for Monday, 
 which is the only day's prayer he got finished before his 
 death : ' A short prayer when we awake early and before 
 we rise. A prayer and thanksgiving after we are risen. 
 A praj'^er while we wash and dress. A prayer when we 
 begin to work at our calling. A f)rayer at noon. A 
 prayer toward evening. A prayer when we undress. 
 A prayer of thanks for the bitter passion and dying of 
 Jesus Christ.' What does the man mean ? many of 
 his contemporaries who came upon his Holy Week would 
 say. What does the madman mean ? Would he have 
 us pray all day ? Would he have us pray and do nothing 
 else ? Yes ; it would almost seem so. For in his 
 Supersensual Life the Master says to the discijDle who 
 has asked, ' How shall I be able to live aright amid all 
 the anxiety and tribulation of this world ? ' : 'If thou 
 dost once every hour throw thyself by faith bej^ond all 
 creatures into the abysmal mercy of God, into the 
 sufferings of Christ, and into the fellowship of His 
 
JACOB BEHMEN 61 
 
 intercession, then thou shalt receive power from above 
 to rule over the world, and death, and the devil, and 
 hell itself.' And again, ' O thou of little courage, if 
 thy will could but break itself off every half-hour from 
 all creatures, and plunge itself into that where no 
 creature is or can be, presently it would be penetrated 
 with the sjDlendour of the Divine glory, and would taste 
 a SAveetness no tongue can express. Then thou wouldst 
 love thy cross more than all the glory and all the goods 
 of this world.' The author had begun a scries of reflec- 
 tions and meditations on the Ten Commandments for 
 devotional use on Tuesday, but got no further than the 
 Fifth. Behmen is so deep and so original in his purely 
 philosophical, theological, and speculative books, that 
 in many places we can only stand back and wonder at 
 the man. But in his Holy Week Behmen kneels down 
 beside us. Not but that his characteristic depth is 
 present in his prayers also ; but we all know something 
 of the nature, the manner, and the blessedness of 
 prayer, and thus it is that we are so much more at home 
 with Behmen, the prodigal son, than we are with Behmen, 
 the theosophical theologian. When Behmen begins to 
 teach us to pray, and when the lesson comes to us out 
 of his own closet, then we are able to sec in a nearer 
 light something of the originality, the greatness, the 
 strength, and the true and genuine piety of the philo- 
 sopher and the theologian. When Behmen's philosophy 
 and theology become penitence, prayer, and praise, then 
 by their fruits we know how good his philosophy and his 
 theology must be, away down in their deepest and most 
 hidden nature. I agree with Christopher Walton that 
 those prayers are full of unction and instruction, and 
 that some of them are of the ' highest magnetical power ' ; 
 and that, as rendered into modern phraseology, they 
 
62 JACOB BEHMEN 
 
 are most beautiful devotional compositions, and very 
 models of all that a divinely illuminated mind would 
 address to God and Christ. For myself, immediately 
 after the Psalms of David I put Jacob Behmen's Holy 
 Week and the prayers scattered up and down through his 
 True Repentance, and beside Behmen I put Bishop 
 Andrewes' Private Devotions. I have discovered no 
 helps to my own devotional life for a moment to set 
 beside Behmen and Andrewes. 
 
 A Treatise on Baptism and the Lord's Supper ; A Key 
 to the Principal Points and Expressions in the Author^ s 
 Writings ; and then a most valuable volume of letters — 
 Epistolae Theosophicae — complete the extraordinarily 
 rich bibliography of the illuminated and blessed Jacob 
 Behmen. 
 
 Though there is a great deal of needless and wearisome 
 repetition in Jacob Behmen's writings, at the same 
 time there is scarcely a single subject in the whole range 
 of theology on which he does not throw a new, an intense, 
 and a brilliant light. ' It is only natural,' says M. Bou- 
 troux in his Studies in Philosophy, ' that Behmen's 
 disciples should mainly be found among theologians.' 
 In his absolutely original and magnificent doctrine of 
 God, while all the time loyally true to it, Behmen has 
 confessedly transcended the theology of both the Latin 
 and the Reformed Churches ; and, absolutely unlettered 
 man though he is, has taken his stand at the very head 
 of the great Greek theologians. The Reformers concen- 
 trated their criticism upon the anthropology and soteri- 
 ology of the Church of Rome, and especially upon the 
 discipline and worship connected therewith. They saw 
 no need for recasting any of the more fundamental 
 positions of pure theology. And while Jacob Behmen, 
 broadly speaking, accepts as his own confession of faith 
 
JACOB BEHMEN 63 
 
 all that Luther and Calvin and their colleagues taught 
 on sin and salvation, on the corruption and guilt of 
 sinners, and on the redeeming work of our Lord, he rises 
 far above the greatest and best of his teachers in his 
 doctrine of the Godhead. Not only does he rise far 
 higher in that doctrine than either Rome or Geneva, he 
 rises far higher and sounds far deeper than either Antioeh, 
 or Alexandria, or Nicomedia, or Nice. On this profound 
 point Bishop Martensen has an excellent appreciation 
 of Behmen. After what I have taken upon me to say- 
 about Behmen, the learned Bishop's authoritative passage 
 must be quoted : — ' If we compare Behmen's doctrine of 
 the Trinity,' says the learned and evangelical Bishop, 
 ' with that which is contained in the otherwise so admir- 
 able Athanasian Creed, the latter but displays to us a 
 most abstruse metaphysic ; a God for mere thought, and 
 in whom there is nothing sympathetic for the heart of 
 man. Behmen, on the contrary, reveals to us the Living 
 God, the God of Goodness, the Eternal Love, of which 
 there is absolutely no hint whatever in the hard Athan- 
 asian symbol. By this attitude of his to the affections 
 of the human heart, Behmen's doctrine of the Trinity 
 is in close coherence with the Reformation, and Avith its 
 evangelical churches. . . . Behmen is anxious to state a 
 conception of God that will fill the hiatus between the 
 theological and anthropological sides of the dogmatical 
 development which was bequeathed by the Reformation ; 
 he seeks to unite the theological and the anthropological. 
 . . . From careful study of Behmen's theology,' continues 
 Bishop Martensen, ' one gains a jDrevailing impression 
 that Behmen's God is, in His inmost Being, most kindred 
 to man, even as man in his inmost being is still kindred to 
 God. And, besides, we recognise in Behmen throughout 
 the pulse-beat of a believing man, who is in all his books 
 
6i JACOB BEHMEN 
 
 supremely anxious about his own salvation and that of 
 his fellow-men.' Now, it is just this super-confessional 
 element in Behmcn, both on his speculative and on his 
 practical side, taken along with the immediate and 
 intensely practical bearing of all his speculations, it is 
 just this that is Behmen's true and genuine distinction, 
 his shining and unshared glory. And it is out of that 
 supreme, solitary, and wholly untrodden field of Behmen's 
 super-confessional theology that all that is essential, 
 characteristic, distinctive, and fruitful in Behmen really 
 and originally springs. The distinctions he takes within, 
 and around, and immediately beneath the Godhead, are 
 of themselves full of the noblest light. The Divine 
 Nature, Eternal Nature, Temporal Nature, Human 
 Nature, when evolved out of one another, and when 
 related to one another, as Behmen sees them evolved and 
 related, are categories of the clearest, surest, most neces- 
 sary, and most intensely instructive kind. And if the 
 height and the depth, the massiveness, the stupendousness, 
 and the grandeur, as well as the sweetness and the beauty 
 and the warmth and the fruitfulness of a doctrine of God 
 is any argument or evidence of its truth, then Behmen's 
 magnificent doctrine of the Godhead is surely proved to 
 demonstration and delight. God is the Essence of all 
 Essences to Behmen. God is the deepest Ground, the 
 living and the life-giving Root of all existence. At the 
 same time, the Divine Nature is so Divine ; It is so high 
 and so deep ; It is so unlike all that is not Itself ; It is so 
 beyond and above all language, and all thought, and all 
 imagination of man or angel, that universe after universe 
 have had to come into existence, and have had to be 
 filled, each successive universe after its own Idnd, with 
 all the fulness of God, before that universe of which we 
 form a part, and to which our utmost imagination is 
 
JACOB BEHMEN 65 
 
 confined, could have come into existence, and into recog- 
 nition of itself. Behmen's Eternal Nature must never 
 be taken for the Eternal God. The Divine Nature, the 
 Eternal Godhead, exists in the Father, in the Son, and in 
 the Holy Ghost ; and then, after the Eternal Generation 
 of the Sow, and the Eternal Procession of the Holy Ghost, 
 there comes up in order of existence Eternal Nature. 
 Eternal Nature is not the Divine Nature, but it is as near 
 to the Divine Nature in its qualities and in its powers as 
 any created thing can ever by any possibility be. Now, 
 if we are still to follow Behmen, we must not let ourselves 
 indolently think of the production of Eternal Nature as 
 a divine act done and completed in any past either of 
 time or of eternity. There is neither past nor future 
 where we are now walking with Behmen. There is only 
 an everlasting present where he is now leading us. For, 
 as God the Father generates the Son eternally and con- 
 tinually ; and as the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father 
 and the Son eternally and continually, so God the Word 
 eternally and continually says, ' Let this Beginning of all 
 things be, and let it continue to be.' And, as He speaks, 
 His Word awakens the ever-dawning morning of the ever 
 new-created day. And He beholds Eternal Nature con- 
 tinually rising up before Him, and He pronounces it very 
 good. The Creator so transcends the creation, and, 
 especially, that late and remote creation of which we are 
 a part, that as the Creator's first step out of Himself, 
 and as a step towards our creation, is His creation, genera- 
 tion, or other production of a nature or universe that 
 shall be capable of receiving immediately into itself all 
 that of the Creator that He has purposed to reveal and to 
 communicate to creatures, — a nature or universe which 
 shall at the same time be itself the beginning of creation, 
 and the source, spring, and quarry out of which all that 
 
 E 
 
66 JACOB BEHMEN 
 
 shall afterwards come can be constructed. Eternal 
 Nature is thus the great storehouse and workshop in 
 which all the created essences, elements, principles, and 
 potentialities of all possible worlds are laid up. Here 
 is the great treasury and laboratory into which the Filial 
 Word enters, when by Him God creates, sustains, and 
 perfects the worlds, universe after universe. Here, says 
 Behmen, is the great and universal treasury of that 
 heavenly clay of which all things, even to angels and men, 
 are made ; and here is the eternal turning- wheel with 
 which they are all framed and fashioned. Eternal 
 Nature is an invisible essence, and it is the essential 
 ground out of which all the visible and invisible worlds 
 are made. For the things which are seen were not made 
 of things which do appear. In that radiant original 
 universe also all the thoughts of God which were to 
 usward from everlasting, all the Divine ideas, patterns, 
 and plans of things, are laid open, displayed, copied out 
 and sealed up for future worlds to see carried out. 
 ' Through this Kingdom of Heaven, or Eternal Nature,' 
 says William Law, in his Appeal to all that Doubt, ' is the 
 invisible God eternally breaking forth and manifesting 
 Himself in a boundless height and depth of blissful 
 wonders, opening and displaying Himself to all His 
 heavenly creatures in an infinite variety and an endless 
 multiplicity of His powers, beauties, joys, and glories. 
 So that all the inhabitants of heaven are for ever knowing, 
 seeing, hearing, feeling, and variously enjoying all that is 
 great, amiable, infinite, and gracious in the Divine Nature.' 
 And again, in his Way to Divine Knowledge : ' Out of 
 this transcendent Eternal Nature, which is as universal 
 and immense as the Godhead itself, do all the highest 
 beings, cherubims and seraphims, all the hosts of angels, 
 and all intelligent spirits, receive their birth, existence, 
 
JACOB BEHMEN 67 
 
 substance, and form. And they arc one and united in 
 one, God in them, and they in God, according to the 
 prayer of Christ for His disciples, that they, and He, 
 and His Holy Father might be united in one.' A little 
 philosophy, especially when the philosopher does not 
 yet know the plague of his own heart, tends, indeed, to 
 doubt and unbelief in the word of God and in the work of 
 Christ. But the philosophy of Behmen and Law will 
 deepen the mind and subdue the heart of the student till 
 he is made a prodigal son, a humble believer, and a pro- 
 found philosopher, both in nature and in grace, like his 
 profound masters, 
 
 Behmen's teaching on human nature, his doctrine of 
 the heart of man, and of the image of God in the heart of 
 man, has a greatness about it that marks it off as being 
 peculiarly Behmen's own doctrine. He agrees with 
 the catechisms and the creeds in their teaching that the 
 heart of man was at first like the heart of God in know- 
 ledge, righteousness, and true holiness. But Behmen is 
 above and beyond the catechisms in this also, in the way 
 that he sees the heart of man still opening in upon the 
 Divine Nature, as also upon Eternal and Temporal 
 Nature, somewhat as the heart of God opens out on all 
 that He has made. On every page of his, wherever j^ou 
 happen to open him, Behmen is found teaching that 
 God and Christ, heaven and hell, hfe and death, are in 
 every several human heart. Heaven and all that it 
 contains is every day either being quenched and killed 
 in every human heart, or it is being anew generated, re- 
 kindled, and accepted there ; and in like manner hell. 
 ' Yea,' he is bold to exclaim, ' God Himself is so near thee 
 that the geniture of the Holy Trinity is continually being 
 wrought in thy heart. Yea, all the Three Persons are 
 generated for thee in thy heart.' And, again : ' God is 
 
68 JACOB BEHMEN 
 
 in thy dark heart. Knock, and He shall come out within 
 thee into the light. The Holy Ghost holds the key of 
 thy dark heart. Ask, and He shall be given to thee with- 
 in thee. Do not let any sophister teach thee that thy 
 God is far aloft from thee as the stars are. Only offer at 
 this moment to God thine heart, and Christ, the Son of 
 God, will be born and formed within thee. And then 
 thou art His brother. His flesh, and His spirit. Thou 
 also art a child of His Father. God is in thee. Power, 
 might, majesty, heaven, paradise, elements, stars, the 
 whole earth — all is thine. Thou art in Christ over 
 hell, and all that it contains.' ' Behmen's speculation,' 
 Martensen is always reminding us, ' streams forth from 
 the deepest practical inspiration. His speculations are 
 all saturated with a constant reference to salvation. 
 His whole metaphysic is pervaded by practical applica- 
 tions.' And conspicuously, so we may here point out, 
 is his metaphysic of God and of the heart of man. The 
 immanence of God, as theologians and philosophers call 
 it ; the indwelling of God, as the jDsalmists and the 
 apostles and the saints call it ; the Divine Word lighten- 
 ing every man that comes into the world, as John has it, — 
 of the practical and personal bearings of all that Beh- 
 men's every book is full. Dost thou not see it and feel 
 it? he continually calls to his readers. Heaven, be sure, 
 is in every holy man, and hell in every bad man. When 
 thou dost work together with God, then thou art in 
 heaven, and thy soul dwells in God. In like manner, 
 also, thou art in hell and among the devils when thou 
 art in any envy, malice, anger, or ill-will. Thou needest 
 not to ask where is heaven or where is hell. Both are 
 within thee, even in thy heart. Now, then, when thou 
 prayest, pray in that heaven that is within thee, and there 
 the Holy Ghost shall meet with thee and will help thee, 
 
JACOB BEHMEN 69 
 
 and thy soul shall be the whole of heaven within thee. 
 It is a fundamental doctrine of Behmen's that the fall 
 would have been immediate and eternal death to Adam 
 and Eve had not the Divine Word, the Seed of the woman, 
 entered their hearts, and kept a footing in their hearts, 
 and in the hearts of all their children, against the ful- 
 ness of time when He would take our flesh and work out 
 our redemption. And thus it is that Behmen appeals to 
 all his readers, that if they will only go down deep enough 
 into their own hearts — then, there, down there, deeper 
 than indwelling sin, deeper than original sin, deep down 
 and seated in the very substance and centre of their 
 souls — they will come upon secret and unexpected seeds 
 of the Divine Life. Seeds, blades, buddings, and new 
 beginnings of the very life of God the Son, in their deepest 
 souls. Secret and small, Behmen exclaims, as those seeds 
 of Eden are, despise them not ; destroy them not, for a 
 blessing for thee is in them. Water those secret seeds, 
 sun them, dig about them, and they will grow up in you 
 also. The Divine Life is in you, quench it not, for it is 
 of God. Nay, it is God Himself in you. It depends 
 upon yourself whether or no that which is at this moment 
 the smallest of all seeds is yet to become in you the 
 greatest and the most fruitful of all trees. 
 
 ' Man never knows how anthropomorphic he is,' is a 
 characteristic saying of a fellow-countryman of Beh- 
 men's. And Behmen's super-confessional and almost 
 super-scriptural treatment of that frequent scriptural 
 anthropomorphism, — ' unavoidable and yet intolerable,' 
 — the wrath of God, must be left by me in Behmen's 
 own bold pages. Strong meat belongeth to them that 
 are of full age, even those who by reason of use have 
 their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. 
 Behmen's philosophical, theological, and experimental 
 
70 JACOB BEHMEN 
 
 doctrine of sin also, with one example, must be wholly 
 passed by. ' If all trees were clerks,' he exclaims in 
 one place, ' and all their branches pens, and all the hills 
 books, and all the waters ink, yet all Avould not sufficiently 
 declare the evil that sin hath done. For sin has made 
 this house of heavenly light to be a den of darkness ; this 
 house of joy to be a house of mourning, lamentation, and 
 woe ; this house of all refreshment to be full of hunger 
 and thirst ; this abode of love to be a prison of enmity 
 and ill-will ; this seat of meekness to be the haunt of 
 pride and rage and malice. For laughter sin has brought 
 horror ; for munificence, beggary ; and for heaven, 
 hell. Oh, thou miserable man, turn convert. For the 
 Father stretches out both His hands to thee. Do but 
 turn to Him and He will receive and embrace thee in 
 His love.' It was the sin and misery of this world that 
 first made Jacob Bchmen a philosopher, and it was the 
 sinfulness of his own heart that at last made him a saint. 
 Of Behmcn's full doctrine and practice of prayer also ; his 
 fine and fruitful treatment of what he always calls ' the 
 process of Christ ' ; and, intimately connected with 
 that, his still super-confessional treatment of imputa- 
 tion, — of all that, and much more like that, I cannot 
 now attempt to speak. Nor yet of his superb teaching 
 on love. ' Throw out thy heart upon all men,' he now 
 commands and now beseeches us. ' Throw open and 
 throw out thy heart. For unless thou dost exercise thy 
 heart, and the love of thy heart, upon every man in the 
 world, thy self-love, thy pride, thy contempt, thy envy, 
 thy distaste, thy dislike will still have dominion over thee. 
 The Divine Nature will be quenched and extinguished 
 in thee, till nothing but self and hell is left to thee. In 
 the name and in the strength of God, love all men. Love 
 thy neighbour as thyself, and do to thy neighbour as thou 
 
JACOB BEHMEN 71 
 
 doest to thyself. And do it now. For now is the accepted 
 time ; and now is the day of salvation ! ' 
 
 Jacob Behmen died in his fiftieth year. He was libelled 
 and maligned, harassed and hunted to death by a world 
 that was not worthy of such a gift of God. A sudden and 
 severe sickness came upon Behmen till he sank in death 
 with his Aurora and his Holy Week and his Divine Vision 
 all lying still unfinished at his bedside. ' Open the door 
 and let in more of that music,' the dying man said to his 
 weeping son. Behmen was already hearing the harpers 
 harping with their harps. He was already taking his 
 part in the song they sing in heaven to Him who loved 
 them, and washed them from their sins in His own blood. 
 ' And now,' said the prodigal son, the blessed Behmen, ' I 
 go to-day to be with my Redeemer and my King in 
 Paradise,' and so died. 
 
BISHOP ANDREWES 
 
 Lancelot Andrewes was born the son of a seafaring 
 man at Allhallows, Barking, London, in 1555, and he died 
 Bishop of Winchester at Southwark in 1626. Andrewes 
 was born one year after Hooker, four years before Isaac 
 Casaubon and Robert Bruce, six years before Bacon, 
 nine years before Shakespeare, eleven years before 
 James the First, and eighteen years before Laud and 
 Donne. Lancelot Andrewes hves to us and shines to us 
 to this day in his Private Devotions. All our interest in 
 Andrewes is centred in his Private Devotions. Andrewes 
 was a great scholar and a great patron of poor scholars, 
 he was the most popular preacher of his day, in his 
 hospitality he was the pattern of an apostolic bishop, 
 and he was a great favourite with his king ; but all that 
 would have been forgotten long ago had it not been 
 for his one incomparable and priceless book, the Private 
 Devotions. We carry Andrewes's Private Devotions in our 
 mind as we read of his birth, of his education, of his 
 talents, of his industry, of his rise in life, and of all his 
 after-career. Our interest in Andrewes's scholarship and 
 wide reading, in his churchmanship and in his statesman- 
 ship, in his single life, in his friends and in his opponents, 
 in his great opportunities and in his great temptations 
 both as a minister of Jesus Christ and as a privy 
 councillor of King James, — our interest in all that is 
 awakened and is intensely quickened as we study, and 
 
74 BISHOP ANDREWES 
 
 much more as we ourselves emjjloy, his Private Devotions. 
 With that ilhiminating book open before us we search 
 the histories and the biographies of his time ; the home 
 and the foreign pohtics of his time ; the State papers, 
 the Church controversies, and not least the Court 
 scandals and the criminal reports of his time, with the 
 keenest interest and the most solicitous anxiety. ' I 
 am wonderful curious,' says Montaigne, ' to discover and 
 know the mind, the soul, the genuine disposition, and the 
 natural judgment of my authors ; but much more what 
 they do in their chambers and in their closets than 
 what they are in the senate and in the market-place.' 
 And that is just what we discover and know of our 
 author in his Private Devotions. We have preserved to 
 us in that all-revealing book what Andrewes was in his 
 chamber and in his closet as we have no other author 
 preserved to us in any other book that I know. To 
 Andrewes more than to any other man that I know has 
 this assurance of our Saviour been to the letter fulfilled, — 
 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and 
 when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which 
 is in secret ; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall 
 reward thee openly. For, what Andrewes prayed for 
 in his closet, and how he prayed for it, of that all the 
 world now openly knows and openly has the reward. 
 
 As soon as young Andrewes had a book put into his 
 hands he began to show a quite extraordinary aptitude 
 for the acquisition of languages. From his tender years, 
 Isaacson, his secretary and biographer, tells us, Andrewes 
 was totally addicted to the study of languages ; and in 
 his youth there appeared in him such aptness to learn, 
 answerable to his endeavours, that his first two school- 
 masters contended who should have the honour of his 
 breeding. By his extraordinary industry and admirable 
 
BISHOP ANDREWES 75 
 
 capacity he soon outstripped all his school-fellows, 
 having become an excellent Grecian and Hebrician. 
 When he came home to London from Cambridge for his 
 Easter holiday, he was wont to bespeak a tutor for those 
 vacant weeks, till he went back to his college after a 
 month's absence a much better scholar than he had 
 been when he left it. Isaacson had often heard the 
 reverend and Avorthy prelate say that when he was a 
 young scholar at the University, and so all his time 
 onwards, he never loved or used any games or ordinary 
 recreation, either within doors, as cards, dice, tables, 
 chess, or the like ; or abroad, as butts, quoits, bowls, or 
 any such ; but his ordinary exercise and recreation was 
 walking either alone by himself, or with some selected 
 companion, with whom he might confer, argue, and 
 recount their studies. He would often profess that to 
 observe the grass, herbs, corn, trees, cattle, earth, waters, 
 heavens, any of the creatures, and to contemplate their 
 natures, orders, qualities, virtues, uses, and such like, 
 was ever to him the greatest mirth, content, and recreation 
 that could be : and this he held to his dying day. ' He 
 accounted all that time lost that he spent not in his 
 studie,' says Bishop Buckeridge, ' wherein in learning he 
 outstript all his equals, and his indefatigable industry 
 had almost outstript himself : he studied so hard when 
 others played, that if his parents and masters had not 
 forced him to play with them also, all the play had been 
 marred.' And then Fuller follows Isaacson and Bucke- 
 ridge with this, — that ' the world wanted learning to 
 know how learned this man was ; so skilled in all 
 (especially Oriental) languages, that some conceive he 
 might, if then living, almost have served as an inter- 
 preter - general at the confusion of tongues.' ' His 
 admirable knowledge in the learned tongues,' adds 
 
76 BISHOP ANDREWES 
 
 Buckeridge, ' Latine, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriack, 
 Arabick, besides other modern tongues to the number 
 of fifteen, as I am informed, was such, and so rare, that 
 he may well be ranked to be in the first place, to be one 
 of the rarest linguists in Christendom.' 
 
 This is to be an appreciation of Andrewes at his true 
 price, and our true picture must show the shadows as 
 well as the sunlights ; Cromwell's warts as well as his 
 high forehead and his shining eyes. 
 
 With his elevation to the bench of bishops that sad 
 drop and deterioration of Andrewes's character began 
 which cannot be kept hid from any unprejudiced reader 
 of his life, and which stands written out in a sea of tears 
 the bitterness of which every reader of sensibility must 
 surely taste on every page of his penitential Devotions. 
 A more servile and short-sighted body of men than the 
 bench of bishops under James the First never set a royal 
 house on the road to ruin ; and with all his saintliness, and 
 with all his unworldliness, Lancelot Andrewes at last 
 consented to sit down among them. George Herbert 
 writes of the same Court : ' I now look back upon my 
 aspiring thoughts, and think myself more happy than if 
 I had attained what then I so ambitiously thirsted for. 
 And I now can behold the court with an impartial eye, and 
 see plainly that it is made up of fraud, and titles, and 
 flattery, and many other such empty, imaginary, painted 
 pleasures.' ' A main cause of all the misery and mischief 
 in our land is the fearf ullest of flattery of our prelates and 
 clergy,' says one of the Rev. Joseph Mead's correspond- 
 ents in 1623. It is only those who truly love Andrewes, — 
 and as Buckeridge who had known him for thirty years 
 says, ' I loved him, but yet my love doth not blind or 
 outsway my judgment,' — it is only those, I say, who 
 have long known and who truly love Andrewes, and 
 
BISHOP ANDREWES 77 
 
 who have his Devotions day and night in their hands 
 till they come to owe him their own souls, it is only 
 they who will feel the full pain and shame of Lancelot 
 Andrewes's position as a minister of Jesus Christ, and at 
 the same time a privy councillor and a Court favourite 
 of James the First. The truth is, no man could remain 
 a man at all, and much less a man of Christian honour 
 and uncompromised integrity, at the Court and in the 
 favour of James. What a system of things that was 
 which placed the Church of Christ and her chief ministers, 
 as well as the whole people of a great and growing nation, 
 under the heel of a man like James Stuart ! The strongest 
 men bent and broke under the dreadful incubus of that 
 abominable system. It was only one outstanding man 
 here and another outstanding man there who could 
 remain true and upright and honourable men under that 
 abominable system. It was only a statesman like Bristol, 
 and a judge like Coke, and a bishop like Abbot, and a 
 minister like Robert Bruce who could live through such 
 an atmosphere. The best and the most blameless men 
 became compromised, corrupted, and demoralised. And 
 that a man of Andrewes's goodness and beauty of char- 
 acter was so compromised, corrupted, and demoralised is 
 surely of itself sufficient condemnation of James and of 
 the life of his Court, and of that whole abominable system 
 of things that had grafted the sword and the sceptre of 
 England ujDon the crook of Jesus Christ, and then had put 
 all three into the hand of James the First. The time had 
 been when you would have seen Lancelot Andrewes 
 rather have his right hand cut off than that it should 
 countersign any king's command in such an infamous 
 affair as the divorce case of the Earl and Countess of 
 Essex. But ten years at a Stuart Court had brought 
 even Lancelot Andrewes down to that. If you cannot 
 
78 BISHOP ANDREWES 
 
 so much as touch pitch without being defiled, how could 
 you expect to wade about in a pit of pitch for half a life- 
 time and come out clean ? The Essex case is much too 
 loathsome to be more than merely mentioned here, and 
 I do not wonder that Mr. Gardmer protests that nothing 
 short of direct evidence will suffice to convince him that 
 Lancelot Andrewes kncAv what he was doing Avhen he 
 took the side he did take in the Essex case. Mr. Gardiner 
 has had all the evidence before him, and he is both an 
 able and a just judge ; but, much as I would like to see 
 Andrewes cleared, or even given the benefit of a doubt 
 in the Essex case, I despair of ever having the relief of 
 mind of seeing that done. I have read far too much 
 direct evidence against Andrewes for m}^ own full faith 
 and perfect pride in Andrewes. The successive state 
 trials connected with that long-lasting, wide-spreading, 
 and utterly loathsome case, suioplementcd and aggravated 
 as they are by the powerful Memorial and outspoken 
 Speech of Archbishop Abbot, to all of which I shall always 
 be compelled to add some of the most agonising pages 
 of the Private Devotions — all that is nothing short of over- 
 whelming evidence to me. Had Bishop Andrewes kept 
 a private diary, and had he kept his diary as his disciple 
 and friend Archbishop Laud kept his ; that is to say, had 
 Andrewes entered his ' unfortunatenesses ' and his ' ill- 
 haps ' under fast days and in cyphers and in initials as 
 the Archbishop did, I cannot doubt what some of those 
 cyphers and initials would have been, nor how ' slubbered ' 
 they would have been ' with his pious hands, watered 
 with his penitential tears.' ' Some great calamity hap- 
 pens to you, you do very well to make it an occasion of 
 exercising a great devotion,' says William Law. 
 
 Much as I should like to agree with Mr. Gardiner in 
 the hesitation and judicial doubt of which he gives 
 
BISHOP ANDREWES 79 
 
 Andrewes's memory the benefit, I am compelled in this 
 matter to side rather M'ith Mark Pattison and with many 
 other students of that time as to the depth of the infamy 
 into which Bishop Andrewes slipped and fell when James 
 summoned him to vote, and pursued after him and com- 
 pelled him to vote on the king's side, which was also the 
 wanton's side, of the Essex case. I would not have 
 come near that noisome ditch unless I had seen Bishoji 
 Andrewes's footsteps being dragged up toward it in a 
 leash of servility till he all but sank out of sight under it. 
 Shall I, to please King James and to shelter and satisfy 
 his vile favourites, — shall I send my soul to hell ! shouted 
 Archbishop Abbot to one of the king's emissaries. No ! 
 I will not do it. But Bishop Andrewes did it. And 
 Bishop Andrewes's soul is still in hell to the end of his life, 
 and a hundred times in his remorseful Devotions, because 
 he did it. There is no other word for it. For a man 
 like Lancelot Andrewes to have to look back all his days, 
 and that too from an episcopal throne, to that scandalous 
 Essex case, and to see himself in the society, if not in the 
 secrets, of James, and Rochester, and the Countess of 
 Essex, and Mrs. Turner, and Bishop Neill, — out of the 
 belly of hell cried I ! As whoredom and wine take away 
 the heart, so do servility and party spirit, the fear of 
 kings and the respect of great men. But as David's 
 heart came back to him from adultery and murder in the 
 Fifty-first Psalm, so did Bishop Andrewes's heart come 
 back to him from servility and sycophancy and the sale 
 of justice in many a confession and in manj^ a commenda- 
 tion of his Private Devotions. If I did not believe abso- 
 lutely in the sincerity and the truthfulness of Andrewes's 
 repentance in every literal sjdlable and down to the 
 blackest bottom of that sea of tears, his Private Devotions, 
 I would not have opened my mouth or taken up mj^ pen 
 
80 BISHOP ANDREWES 
 
 about him. But, absolutely and utterly believing that 
 Andrewes means all that he says when he is on his knees 
 clothed in sackcloth and with dust on his head and a rope 
 round his neck, I am not afraid at the worst thing that I 
 meet with in his previous life. ' Come,' says Andrewes, 
 ' and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what 
 He hath done for my soul. Blessed be God, which hath 
 not turned away my prayer, nor His mercy from me.' 
 
 Andrewes preached one of his least pedantic sermons, 
 and one with less than usual of his ' ingenious idleness ' 
 in it, before James in Holyrood Chapel during that 
 royal visit to our city. The Edinburgh people even in 
 that day were severe judges of sermons, and the king's 
 favourite preacher did not escape the searching climate 
 into which he had come. ' How did you like the sermon 
 this morning ? ' James was still Scotsman enough to 
 ask of a Presbyterian lord who had been present at the 
 service. ' No doubt your Majesty's bishop is a learned 
 man, but he cannot preach. He rather plays with his 
 text than preaches on it.' And I must say that I 
 entirely agree with my outspoken fellow-countryman 
 against all the adulation that has been lavished on 
 Andrewes's preaching from that day to this. Canon 
 Mozley, who came to be one of the clearest-headed and 
 profoundest writers of our generation, has a prepos- 
 terously extravagant paper on Andrewes's Sermons, in 
 the British Critic for January 1842. The whole paper 
 is a set and a highly elaborated eulogy in which such 
 overworked words are applied to Andrewes's sermons 
 as these : — force, animation, depth, fertility, felicity, 
 admirable decision and completeness, quickness, variety, 
 dexterity, richness, rapidity, ubiquity, clear-headedness, 
 manifoldness, what he is going to say occupies him, 
 what he is saying he only says and no more, — language 
 
BISHOP ANDREWES 81 
 
 which, were it distributed upon Hooker's sermons and 
 Taylor's and Newman's and Robertson's, would yield 
 a sufficiency of epithet for all the four. After Mozley 
 has Avritten himself out of breath, he settles down to say 
 that ' these characteristics of Bishop Andrewes are not 
 plainly discernible, we allow, at first sight.' No, they 
 are not. Nor, I am sincerely sorry to say, have they 
 been discerned at all by one who has looked for them 
 longer and oftener than he would like to confess. My 
 sight and experience of Andrewes's sermons was at 
 first and still is rather that of one who is said to have 
 set a high value upon some others of Andrewes's writings, 
 but who, at the same time, had the detachment from 
 party spirit and the intellectual integrity to say, — ' I 
 own that however clear-headed I might be when I sat 
 down to read one of his sermons, I invariably rose at the 
 conclusion of it with my brain bewildered and confused.' 
 But the British Critic and its young Anglo-Catholics were 
 all engaged in that day in writing up, without rhyme or 
 reason, the churchmen of James's and Charles's day ; 
 and with much of a high, a fine, and a quite singular 
 distinction, at the same time less theological openness, 
 less true catholicity, and less fair and just judgment you 
 will scarcely meet with anywhere than just in their 
 sectarian and reactionary writings. Archdeacon Hare 
 is the only writer of any authority and eminence I know 
 on whom the good sense and sound judgment of that 
 ancient Scottish lord has descended. I have read a 
 good many sermons in my time, and there are some 
 sufficiently High Church sermons that I have continually 
 in my hands. It cannot then be their Church doctrine, 
 or their Church tone, or their exclusive temper that 
 has turned me so often away from Andrewes's sermons. 
 And still as I read again about Andrewes, and as his 
 
82 BISHOP ANDREWES 
 
 editors and biographers and fellow-churchmen praise 
 his sermons, I go back to his five volumes, accusing 
 myself that I cannot have done them and myself proper 
 justice, — but always with the same result. I tried to 
 read the Gowrie series again one Sabbath morning above 
 the fiord of Mandal in Norway during my late holiday 
 time till I could read no longer, I so felt as I read that I 
 was wasting and desecrating the Lord's Day. I threw 
 down the eight maledictory sermons preached before 
 James on the long dead and buried Gowrie brothers, 
 and took up the much praised sermon on Justification 
 to give it another trial. But with the old result. The 
 doctrine was all right, when I got at it. The doctrine 
 was the Pauline, Lutheran, Puritan, Presbyterian, only 
 possible doctrine on that text and on that topic, but the 
 magnificent doctrine never kindled the preacher, never 
 gave him wings, never carried him away, never fused 
 nor took the slag out of his style, never made him once 
 eloquent, never to the end of his sermon made him a 
 great preacher of a great gospel. I felt sorry I had not 
 brought with me the third volume of Keble's Hooker, 
 such was my hunger for Hooker's greatest sermon after 
 those twenty tantalising pages of his unimproved con- 
 temporary. But, happily, I had brought Mr. Henry 
 Craik's English Prose Selections with me, the first volume 
 of which contains ten pieces out of Hooker with Mr. 
 Vernon Blackburn's perfect little paper prefixed. Ay, 
 that is preaching, I exclaimed to myself as I read and 
 read again the four golden pages taken out of Hooker's 
 golden sermon. That is Avriting. That is English. 
 That is the best of gospels in the best of English. Yes, 
 when I go back to Edinburgh, and have my classes again 
 before me, I shall command them to master Hooker, at 
 any rate on Justification, such is his stj^le in that 
 
BISHOP ANDREWES 83 
 
 immortal sermon, his dei)th, his strength, and his siib- 
 hmity. I shall also set Andrewes's Devotions day and 
 night before them, — but not his sermons. Bruce's and 
 Hooker's and Donne's and Taylor's and Leighton's, and 
 many other sermons since their day, but not Andrewes's. 
 Whoever says otherwise, the blunt, uncourtly Scottish 
 lord was right. We are assured on all hands that the 
 bishop's delivery was ' inimitable.' But substance and 
 unction have always come before delivery in Scotland. 
 Andrewes is a learned man, and, better than that, he 
 can pray as no other man can pray, but he cannot preach, 
 to be called preaching. That dissatisfied Edinburgh 
 lord most likely was one of Robert Bruce's elders, and 
 he must have heard that ' stately Presbyterian divine ' 
 preach his famous Five Sermons on the Lord's Supper, 
 and his Six Sermons on King Hezekiah's Sickness, and 
 his taste for a sermon must have been formed on the 
 model of that preacher of such distinction. And if I 
 had the ear of one of Bishop Andrewes's descendants in 
 Church doctrine and in English preaching I should 
 earnestly advise him to send to Edinburgh for Robert 
 Bruce's Sermons. He would find in that noble volume 
 what we in Scotland believe to be the true New Testa- 
 ment teaching on the Lord's Supper, and he would see 
 that doctrine put forward in an ancient Scottish style 
 not wholly unworthy of the great subject. Kcble gives 
 us at the end of his Hooker a sermon of Hooker's which 
 was found among Bishop Andrewes's papers. Found in 
 such company, it was as if a sermon of Newman's had 
 got in among Simeon's skeletons. It is enough for one 
 man that he can pray as Andrewes alone can pray, but 
 let no beginner in the pulpit go to Andrewes to learn 
 how to preach. 
 
 It is no blame to Andrewes that he cannot preach 
 
84 BISHOP ANDREWES 
 
 like Bruce or Hooker or Donne or Taylor ; great preachers 
 like them are born and not made. But no man has 
 any business to tune and tamper with his pulpit to please 
 either his king or his congregation, and a true preacher 
 will never do it. I do not complain of Andrewes because 
 I find his sermons unreadable and unprofitable, but I 
 cannot excuse him for his Gowrie and Gunpowder Plot 
 series, and too many other sermons like them. Could 
 James not have got some other of his Court Chaplains to 
 curse the hanged and dismembered Gowries every fifth 
 of August, and leave Andrewes to his proper work and 
 to his private prayers ? But no. James, born fool as 
 he was in some things, was a shrewd enough sovereign 
 in some other things, and he knew quite well what he 
 was doing when he commanded Lancelot Andrewes in 
 England, while never all he could do could command 
 Robert Bruce in Scotland, to preach or to pray to 
 his policy and to his passions. What a pity it is, I 
 have sometimes exclaimed to myself, that anything of 
 Andrewes's has been preserved besides his Devotions ! 
 And yet, may it not have been so ordained in order to 
 comfort and assure us every night when we have to go 
 with a continual confession that is such a continual 
 condemnation and such a continual contrast to our 
 everyday life. ' O God,' prayed Andrewes in secret 
 every night, ' save me from making a god of the king.' 
 On this whole matter the sim^ole truth is that the plainest 
 facts of history and of biography in Andrewes's case 
 have been so twisted about and so covered up by party 
 spirit and ecclesiastical pride that it is impossible to 
 draw them out into any light of day without great pain 
 and great regret. But what has here been said has this 
 for it at any rate, that it was a very unwelcome and a 
 very distressing discovery to the present speaker when he 
 
BISHOP ANDREWES 85 
 
 made it. It seemed to him like laying hands on one's 
 own father, as some one has said it somewhere in Plato. 
 
 Lancelot Andrew^es was a fast-rising scholar of Pem- 
 broke when Francis Bacon went up to Trinity in the 
 ' pregnancy and towardness of his wit,' a boy between 
 twelve and thirteen years of age. And Lord Bacon's 
 name comes afterwards to be the symbol of so much, 
 that we like to think of two such men as Andrewes and 
 Bacon being early and lifelong friends. And, though 
 I do not know that we have documents for it, I like to 
 think of the elder scholar selecting the younger and taking 
 him out to those country walks and talks that Isaacson 
 has told us about so delightfully. That the rising divine 
 and the pushing young lawyer were intimate friends early 
 in life we have abundant evidence. Mr. SjDcdding, who 
 has unearthed everj^thing that exists about Bacon, has 
 produced an invitation that Bacon sent to Andrewes 
 when he was preacher in St. Giles', Cripplegate, ask- 
 ing him to come out to Twickenham to share a holiday 
 with a party of young lawyers and other scholars. 
 But Andrewes's pulpit duties detained him at home. 
 Andrewes all his days loved good society and a hospit- 
 able table, but not till his day's work w'as done. Through- 
 out life, Bacon's biographer assures us, the Lord Chan- 
 cellor held the bishop in special reverence. Indeed, 
 there is nothing either in Andrewes's best life or in his 
 best work that gives us such a high idea of his intellect 
 as the fact that Bacon submitted The Advancement of 
 Learning and some others of his magnificent books to 
 Andrewes, calling him his inquisitor, and asking him for 
 his criticisms and corrections. ' You were wont to make 
 me believe that you took a liking to my writings ; will 
 you therefore mark what you think not current in my 
 style, or harsh to credit and opinion, or inconvenient 
 
86 BISHOP ANDREWES 
 
 to the position of the writer. For to write at one's ease,' 
 as Bacon said to Casaubon about another book of his, 
 ' that which others are to read at their ease is of httle 
 consequence. The contemplations I have in view are 
 those which may bring about the better ordering of man's 
 hfe and business with all its turmoil. How great an 
 enterprise is this, and with Avhat small help I have 
 attempted it.' This of Bacon leads us into his Private 
 Memoranda, where we see him laying his lines to ' fish 
 for testaments,' for loans, for gifts, for bribes, and indeed 
 for anything and everything that would bring in money 
 to a poor man who had taken all knowledge for his pro- 
 vince, a province, as he often sadly said, that would take 
 a king or a pope to occupy and hold it. Bacon sets it 
 down among other like secret plots against his best 
 friends, — ' not desisting to draw in Bishop Andrewes, 
 he being single, rych, and sickly.' ' Bacon's was a 
 mind,' says Dr. Abbott, ' unique and extraordinary'' ; 
 worldly, it is true, but not after the common fashion of 
 worldliness ; say rather an unworldly mind of super- 
 human magnanimity, gradually becoming enslaved by 
 the world while professing to use the world as a mere 
 tool. Bacon will place all the arts of worldliness at the 
 feet of Truth, and will master them by first obeying 
 them.' ' A man whose fall,' as the same writer so truly 
 and so finely says, ' shook men's confidence in humanity.' 
 Broken in health and broken in heart as Bacon might 
 well be by a fall that shook the world, and the terrible 
 shock of which we still feel to this day. Bacon died at his 
 desk. And, though Andrewes had sat on his trial and had 
 acquiesced in his sentence. Bacon continues to acquaint 
 Andrewes with all his intended work, and consults him 
 about it to the end. Bacon's Holy War is not Bunyan's 
 book of the same name. ' There cannot but ensue a 
 
BISHOP ANDREWES 87 
 
 dissolution of the state of the Turk, whereof the time 
 seemeth to approach. The events of time do seem to 
 invite Christian kings to a war in respect of the great 
 corruption and relaxation of discipline in that empire.' 
 It would have been very interesting to us in our day to 
 have been able to read the mature mind of Bacon on the 
 rights and wrongs of a war to be carried on by England 
 and the united West against ' the enemy of Christendom.' 
 But Bacon only lived to overtake a few pages of his Holy 
 War, Most happily, however, he had written the pre- 
 face before he began the body of the book, and he had 
 given to the preface the form of a Dedicatory Letter to 
 Andrewes (now Bishop of Winchester), and a most 
 important piece of Bacon's mental autobiography it is. 
 Dante and Bacon and Milton were three gigantic brothers 
 in intellect, they were each sent into a world wholly out 
 of joint, and they all three write about themselves in 
 their disjointed worlds as only giants are enabled and 
 permitted to write. Bacon's Dedication and Advertise- 
 ment to his Holy War stands beside Dante's classification 
 and comparison of himself with Homer and Virgil, and 
 beside Milton's magnificent proposals and preparations 
 for the work of his life. After comparing his case with 
 the cases of Demosthenes and Cicero and Seneca, Bacon 
 goes on to say this to Andrewes : ' These examples con- 
 firmed me in a resolution to spend my time wholly in 
 writing, and to put out that poor talent or half talent, 
 or what it is, that God hath given me, not as heretofore 
 to particular exchanges, but to banks and mounts of 
 perpetuity which will not break. And therefore this 
 work, not for the City, but for the Temple, I have dedi- 
 cated to your lordship, in respect of ancient and private 
 acquaintance, and because I hold you in special reverence.' 
 Great Bacon, and noble in all his ignobility ! ' In his 
 
88 BISHOP ANDREWES 
 
 great adversity I prayed,' says Ben Jonson, ' that God 
 would give him strength, for greatness he could not want.' 
 ' The most exquisitely constructed intellect,' says Macau- 
 lay, ' that has ever been bestowed on the children of 
 men.' It is the fashion to-day to run down Macaulay, 
 but let all gifted and ambitious young men read that 
 great writer's Essay on Bacon and lay it to heart once 
 every year. As for Spedding and Ellis, they should lie 
 beside every young lawyer's Bible and Private Devotions. 
 There is no finer picture of Andrewes to be seen any- 
 where than that which is painted in Mark Pattison's 
 classical, if somewhat cold and supercilious, Life of Isaac 
 Casauhon. Though the Rector of Lincoln says some very 
 severe things of Bishop Andrewes, at the same time, 
 in no other book that I know is there such an altogether 
 delightful ghmpse given us of the beauty and attractive- 
 ness of Andrewes's private character. The truly episco- 
 pal hospitality, — his lordship, it was said, kept Christ- 
 mas all the year, — the noble courtesy, the exquisite 
 geniality and tenderness, and the whole graciousness and 
 affectionateness of the bishop's nature never came out 
 better than all that did in his whole connection with 
 Casaubon. It is true there were more things than one 
 that went to attract and to attach those two men to one 
 another. ' Profound piety,' says Pattison, ' and great 
 reading, common to both, placed them at once in sym- 
 pathy.' But, besides that, their ecclesiastical views also, 
 their attitude toward those questions of Church order 
 and public worship which were agitating and rending all 
 the Churches in Christendom at that day, drew the 
 scholar and the bishop continually closer and closer to 
 one another. ' The Anglican ritual,' says his able bio- 
 grapher, ' exactly met Casaubon's aspirations after the 
 decent simplicity of primitive worship, though his Presby- 
 
BISHOP ANDREWES 89 
 
 terian sentiment was at first inclined to find a little too 
 much pomp and pride mingling with some parts of the 
 episcopal services. But, on the whole, he preferred the 
 Anghcan ceremonies to the bare and naked usages of his 
 own communion. At the same time, he never forsook 
 the French congregation of which he continued to be a 
 member. He attended the preaching from time to time, 
 though not seldom hearing doctrine from which he 
 differed, and philology which he knew to be rotten.' 
 But, besides all that, the two scholars were continually 
 thrown together at Court in carrying on those loyal 
 labours to which the king had for so long yoked the bishop, 
 and to assist the bishop in which with his omnipotent pen 
 the greatest classical scholar in Europe had been brought 
 over from France. Chained to his task, the best ecclesi- 
 astical scholar in England had been toiling for years past 
 at those controversies in which the Crown and the Church 
 of England had become involved with the great Catholic 
 theologians and casuists of that day ; and Casaubon's 
 arrival in London was hailed as the advent of a heaven- 
 sent assistant to Andrewes and liis cause. Long before 
 they had seen each other's face Andrewes and Casaubon 
 were already at one in their intense hatred of Bellarmine 
 and Baronius, and no sooner had they shaken hands 
 than they sat down to work to each other's hands at a 
 task which was to them at once the service of the Truth, 
 of the Church, and of the State ; the service of God, and 
 of their king and patron James the First. Casaubon's 
 diary of those delightful days is full of Andrewes, and 
 the admiration and the esteem are quite as much, to his 
 honour be it said, on the great bishop's side as on the 
 poor scholar's. ' Come and shoot a buck with me. 
 Throw aside your books this hot weather. Shut up your 
 Drury Lane lodgings, and let me see your dear face. I 
 
90 BISHOP ANDREWES 
 
 am not well in my solitude, but a visit from you will set 
 me on my feet. Come down at once if you would be in 
 time for Stourbridge Fair, the finest thing of its kind in 
 all England. But, if you have no taste for an English 
 fair, then I have beside me at this moment a Matthew 
 in Hebrew that will make your mouth water. Do be 
 persuaded to come. Be so good as to remember that 
 the hand which writes these lines is ill with the ague. 
 Coming or going, God keep you long to be an ornament 
 to letters.' And then when Casaubon did find his way to 
 the palace at Downham, — to see the two solitary scholars 
 together is delightful. It is a rebuke and an inspiration 
 to open Casaubon's diary for those holiday weeks. The 
 two book-lovers read more in the mornings of their holi- 
 daj^s than other men read all the year round. Thej?^ 
 breakfasted alone to gain time and to keep the freshness 
 of the day for their private devotions and their peculiar 
 studies. And then they met, the best of company, at 
 their early mid-day dinner. Andre wes ' doubted,' so 
 Isaacson reports his master, ' they were no true scholars 
 who came to speak to a man before noon.' Casaubon 
 was happy in everything at Ely, the bishop's present 
 diocese, but in the distance of his books. The bishop 
 had a fine library, as the catalogue of it still proves ; but, 
 unhappily, it was nearly all in London, where Andrewes 
 spent the most part of every yeav in attendance at Court 
 and in writing controversies for the king. Both Casaubon 
 and Andrewes were of Pericles' mind, and held that not 
 a Greek's best holiday only, but an Englishman's and a 
 Frenchman's best holiday also, was that day on which 
 he did most of his duty. And accordingly the Master of 
 Peterhouse was largely requisitioned for the loan of his 
 most learned books when Andrewes and Casaubon were 
 at Ely. Books and manuscripts were the tools of Casau- 
 
BISHOP ANDREWES 91 
 
 bon's life, and even if he was not working at his full 
 strength while he was at Ely, at the same time he loved 
 to be feeling the edge of his tools, and to have them and 
 his whetstone always near him. When Casaubon was 
 not composing he was always collecting materials for his 
 next composition. His advice to all true students is 
 this : ' Remember that it is of no use to have read a thing, 
 unless you retain it in your memory. Make notes there- 
 fore of everything you read, as aids to your memory.' 
 The books that Casaubon read at Downham and made 
 copious notes of would stagger an ordinary student so 
 much as even to hear their bare names, and he always 
 put at the head of his sheet of notes this motto in Greek, 
 ' Alone and at work with God.' After their mid-day 
 dinner the two friends spent the afternoon walking, 
 riding, visiting the parishes of the diocese, inspecting 
 the church fabrics, entertaining friends, transfixing a 
 buck, but always their best recreation and entertain- 
 ment was to be talking together of books. Still, with 
 all that, there was nothing that went so deep both into 
 the hearts and into the characters of those two good men 
 as their life of faith, of prayer, and of personal holiness. 
 If there were two saints of God in England that summer, 
 they were surely to be found under the roof of the episco- 
 pal palace of Ely. Writing of thirty years before, Patti- 
 son's somewhat grudging words are these : ' The religious 
 sentiment was ever suggesting to young Casaubon the 
 futility of worldly knowledge, and the superior value of 
 religious studies. This impression may be traced to the 
 early years of the son of the Huguenot pastor who had 
 to fly to the hills. From the first there were two men in 
 Casaubon, the theologian and the scholar.' And sum- 
 ming uj) his life his somewhat too aloof biographer says : 
 ' The habitual attitude of Casaubon's soul was abandon- 
 
92 BISHOP ANDREWES 
 
 ment ; not merely resignation, but prostration before the 
 Unseen. He moved, thought, and felt, as in the presence 
 of God. His family and friends lay near to his heart, 
 but nearer than all is God. In all his thoughts the 
 thought of God is subsumed.' And again, ' his diary is 
 one prolonged litany.' Yes : so it is. David's Psalms 
 were never out of Casaubon's hands, and the best day he 
 spent at Downham was not the day when he transfixed 
 three bucks, but the day when all alone in the bishop's 
 copse he read the Hundred-and-nineteenth Psalm over 
 again with a rapturous heart. Pleasantly as his holiday 
 passed, and in spite of the bishop's ' golden chains of 
 courtesy,' Casaubon began to be feverish for London 
 and for his own books. But the great scholar's life of 
 books in this world soon after that came to an end. ' In 
 answer to your questions,' writes Andre wes to Heinsius 
 in 1614, ' regarding the departure of that illustrious man. 
 In the morning of the day on which he died he received 
 the Holy Sacrament from my hand ; and that because 
 three days before he had begged it of me. After the 
 sacrament he expressed a wish that Simeon's Canticle 
 should be chanted. There was nothing in the whole 
 world of the slightest interest to that Christian man Casau- 
 bon, unless what related to piety and holiness, and that 
 was most evident amid his last tortures. His remains 
 were buried in Westminster Abbey in front of the doors 
 of that chapel in which the monuments of our kings are 
 seen.' 
 
 Lancelot Andrewes was born of honest and godly 
 parents in 1555. We find him a scholar of Pembroke in 
 1571, and Dean of Westminster in 1601. Hooker died 
 in 1600 at the age of forty-six, and on hearing of his death 
 Andrewes wrote of him, ' He hath not that I know left 
 any near him.' Queen Elizabeth died in March 1603 
 
BISHOP ANDREWES 93 
 
 and four months later Andrewcs assisted at the corona- 
 tion of James. In 1605 he was raised to be Bishop of 
 Chichester, he was one of the translators of the Bible in 
 1607, and in 1609 he published his very learned Tortura 
 Torti against Cardinal Bellarmine, an uncongenial task, 
 imposed upon him by the king. In the end of the same 
 year he was translated to Ely, where Casaubon spent 
 part of the summer of 1611 with the bishop. In 1613 he 
 sat as one of the judges on the Essex case. In 1617 he 
 attended the king on his visit to Scotland, and in 1618 
 he was translated from Ely to Winchester. In 1621 
 Bacon fell, and Andrewcs was one of the deputation of 
 peers who attended on Bacon to receive his confession 
 and submission. In 1621 he sat on Archbishop Abbot's 
 case also, and ' the party,' says Thomas Fuller, ' whom 
 the archbishop suspected his greatest foe, proved his 
 most firm and effectual friend, even Lancelot Andrewcs, 
 Bishop of Winchester.' In 1623 James died. On his 
 deathbed the king sent for Andrewcs, but the favourite 
 bishop was so ill himself at the time that it was not 
 possible for him to come to bid his royal master farewell. 
 On the 2nd of February 1626 Andrewcs w^as able to be 
 present at the coronation of Charles the First, in which 
 ceremony, both on account of his high office and his 
 personal acceptability, he took a foremost place. This 
 was one of the last public acts that AndrcAves ever per- 
 formed. ' His gratitude to men,' says his secretary, 
 ' was now changed into thankfulness to God. His 
 affability to incessant and devout prayers and speeches 
 with his Creator and Redeemer and Sanctifier. His 
 laborious studies to restless groans, sighs, cries, and tears. 
 His hands laboiu-ing, his eyes lifted up, and his heart 
 beating and panting to see the living God, even to the last 
 of his breath.' Under Monday the 25th of September 
 
94 BISHOP ANDREWES 
 
 1626 we read in Archbishop Laud's diary this entry : 
 ' About four o'clock in the morning died Lancelot 
 Andrewes, the most worthy Bishop of Winchester, the 
 great light of the Christian world.' 
 
 Andrewes has left behind him five volumes of sermons, 
 preached for the most part at Court, and on special occa- 
 sions ; two or three columns of controversial matter, a 
 volume of catechetical matter, and the Private Devotions, 
 The Private Devotions, as the name indicates, was never 
 intended for publication. Andrewes wrote the little book 
 for his own use, and then, when he was done with it, he 
 gave it to his great friend Archbishop Laud. 
 
 The Eastern Churches have a very noble devotional 
 literature, which has been made accessible to the English 
 student in the works of Maskell, Palmer, Neale, Little- 
 dale, Hammond, Bright, and Robertson, as well as in the 
 Prayer-Books of Edward and Elizabeth. And such heirs 
 of such riches are we, and such joint-heirs with all the 
 Churches, that we possess yet another great treasure in 
 the more private and more personal devotional books of 
 all ages and all nations. We have the Confessions of 
 Augustine, the Prayers and Soliloquies of Anselm, the 
 unfinished Holy Week and other great prayers and 
 praises of Jacob Behmcn, the Golden Grove of Jeremy 
 Taylor, the Private Devotions of Lancelot Andrewes, 
 and William Laud, and Thomas Wilson, and many other 
 suchlike precious possessions. But, for its peculiar pur- 
 pose and for its special use, Andre wes's Private Devo- 
 tions stands out at the head of them all. There is nothing 
 in the whole range of devotional literature to be set beside 
 Andrewes's incomparable Devotions. Its author's jDublic 
 and private life ; his intense conscience of his past sins 
 and of his abiding sinfulness ; his keen, all-realising 
 
BISHOP ANDREWES 95 
 
 faith in God and in the grace of God ; his soaring and 
 adoring love ; his universal scholarship, especially in 
 the sacred schools ; his so original method and so peculiar 
 plan in the conception and in the composition of his book ; 
 and the long lifetime of profoundest penitential and 
 importunate prayer that he has put into his book, — all 
 these and many other things combine to make Bishop 
 Andrewcs's Private Devotions to stand alone and mi- 
 approached in the literature of the closet and the mercy- 
 seat. To myself one of the chiefest compensations and 
 offsets for the reign of James the First is this, that the 
 Private Devotions of Lancelot Andrewes were being con- 
 tinually composed and Avere being continually employed, 
 — were being continually wrung out of him, — during the 
 whole course of that so mischievous and insufferable 
 reign. As the chief interest of the reign of this and that 
 king of Judah and Israel lies in such and such prophets 
 and psalmists and righteous men who lived and wrote 
 in the reigns of those kings, so is it with us in our own 
 national history. Kings and queens, protectors and 
 presidents, and the times of their rule, are ultimately 
 memorable and honourable still by notliing so much as 
 by the good and the great men they had among their 
 subjects, the progress that the Kingdom of Heaven made 
 in their day, and not least by the number and the quality 
 of the books belonging to the Kingdom of Heaven that 
 were written in their day. And that the English Bible, 
 the Five Sermons on the Sacraments, Donne's Sermons, 
 and the Private Devotions — not to speak in this place of 
 Macljeth, and Hamlet, and Lear, and the Essays, and the 
 Advancement — have all come down to us out of James's 
 day, that covers a multitude of the sins of his day, and 
 that will make his day to remain rich and illustrious 
 to all time in the estimation of the Church of Christ in 
 
96 BISHOP ANDREWES 
 
 our land, and in all other English-reading lands. It is to 
 James's insight that we owe it that John Donne ever was 
 a minister, — of whom Professor Saintsbury says that in 
 the strength and savour of his quality he has no rival in 
 English, no rival indeed anywhere but in the author of 
 the Confessions. 
 
 In the composition of his Devotions, Lancelot 
 Andrewes had anticipated and had already fulfilled all 
 William Law's best counsels. ' When at any time,' 
 Law advises us, ' either in reading the Scriptures or any 
 book of piety, you meet with a passage that more than 
 ordinarily affects your mind, and seems as it were to give 
 your heart a new motion toward God, you should try to 
 turn it into the form of a petition, and then give it a 
 place in your prayers. By this means you would be 
 often improving your prayers, and storing yourself with 
 proper forms of making the desires of your heart known 
 unto God.' And, again, returning in another place to 
 the same subject : ' If they were to collect the best forms 
 of devotion, and to use themselves to transcribe the 
 finest passages of Scripture-prayers ; if they were to 
 collect the devotions, confessions, petitions, praises, 
 resignation, and thanksgivings, which are scattered up 
 and down the Psalms, and range them under proper 
 heads, as so much proper fuel for the flame of their own 
 devotions ; if their minds were often thus employed, 
 sometimes meditating upon them, sometimes getting 
 them by heart, and making them habitual as their own 
 thoughts, how fervently would they pra)'', who came thus 
 prepared to pray ! ' Now, this was exactly and to the 
 letter what Andrewes had already done a hundred years 
 to a day before Law so pleaded with his readers. When 
 Andrewes met with a verse or a clause or so much as a 
 word in any scripture that specially suited into his own 
 
BISHOP ANDREWES 97 
 
 case ; when David, or Asaph, or Job, or Paul said any- 
 thing, or hinted at anything, that went to Andrewes's 
 heart, on the spot he took that word down, and that too 
 in its own native Hebrew or Greek, as the case might be. 
 And he did the same thing when he would be reading 
 any of the ancients of the Latin or Orient Kirks, as 
 Robert Bruce called them. Such is the care and the 
 labour of those who write the masterpieces in any branch 
 of letters. Andrewes made such a constant practice of 
 this, and had formed such a settled habit of it, that as 
 his life went on his book of secret prayer came to be 
 filled with all the best passages in the Psalms, in the 
 Prophets, in the Gospels, and in the Epistles, as also in 
 the sermons and litanies and liturgies of the Fathers 
 and the Saints, till we have a perfect portrait before us 
 of Andrewes's inmost soul, and that too in lines and in 
 colours borrowed from those hands that could best 
 draw such deep lines and best mix such strong and 
 lasting colours. Every verse, every clause of a verse, 
 every single word and syllable, indeed, that Andrewes 
 quotes has some special and inspired reference to him- 
 self alone. It is not quotation with him, it is assimila- 
 tion ; it is appropriation ; and it is the recovery and the 
 reappropriation of that which is indisputably his own 
 wherever he comes across it. He passes over whole 
 chapters and whole books in silence and with a dry pen. 
 Only this one word in this whole Psalm is his, and he 
 straightway takes this one word out of the whole Psalm 
 and leaves to its author and to its other readers all the 
 rest of the Psalm. He takes but what is demonstrably 
 his own, and what has no such interest and no such value 
 to any one else, and he hides it ever afterwards in his 
 heart. He steals it down from all eyes into the book 
 which he never opens till after his door is shut. And 
 
 G 
 
98 BISHOP ANDREWES 
 
 thus it is that all formality, all insincerity, all mere lip- 
 service, and all multiplying of sacred words for the 
 sake of their sound is excluded from this severe, sincere, 
 and serious little book. The author's method with 
 himself and with his Bible excludes all that, and protects 
 him and his readers from their constant temptation to 
 all that. 
 
 Andrewes always carried out the same method of 
 selection and assimilation as he read the devotional 
 books of the Greek and the Latin Fathers. Only, I 
 feel sure that a great deal too much has been made of 
 what Andrewes owes to the Greek and the Latin litanists 
 and liturgists. Now and then you will come on a passage 
 that is plainly borrowed from Chrysostom, or Basil, 
 or the ' Liturgy of St. James,' but for one word that 
 Andrewes owes to Chrysostom he owes a hundred to 
 David. The truth is, the Devotions are far more original, 
 so to call it, than has ever been allowed even by those 
 who are tempted to sacrifice the plain truth to their 
 partiality and their praise of Andrewes. All that 
 Mozley says so uncritically and so extravagantly about 
 Andrewes's sermons, with some chastening and some 
 selecting, could then be very well and very truly said 
 about his Devotions. And I venture to prophesy that 
 when the genuine and original Laudian text has been 
 translated, and when all the scriptural and liturgical 
 and other quotations, references, and allusions have 
 been traced up to their sources, the bishop's book will 
 nevertheless be seen to be absolutely his own. The 
 main sources from which he drew were the Holy Scrip- 
 tures and his own life. The Jnsiitutiones Pice is a little 
 volume of clear, simple, svyeet English writing, not at 
 all equal in depth or in strength to the Devotions, but a 
 great improvement on the style of the sermons. This 
 
BISHOP ANDREWES 99 
 
 and the Manual for the Sick are excellent little books, 
 and were the product of Andrewes's personal religion and 
 of his pastoral work when he was as yet an obscure 
 and a single-hearted young minister with his whole time 
 and his whole strength given up to his pulpit and to 
 his pastorate. 
 
 To the question why the best part of the Devotions 
 was written in Greek, I have no better answer to offer 
 than that which honest Stationer Moseley offered to 
 the Christian reader from his shop in St. Paul's Church- 
 yard in 1647. ' He penned them in Greek, and in that 
 language presented them to his God ; the reason is not 
 for me to determine ; whether it were for that the 
 evidences of our salvation are delivered to us in that 
 tongue, or whether amongst those fifteen he was master 
 of, he chose this language as the most copious to express 
 the fulness of his soul.' To which let me add this out 
 of the Preface to Dean Stanhope's translation : ' Such 
 of his prayers as were brought nearest to perfection he 
 wrote in Greek, either because the New Testament, the 
 Septuagint, and most of the ancient Fathers and Liturgies, 
 whence he extracted a good deal, were in that language, 
 or because that language had some advantage for 
 devotion, as the many compound words it contains 
 strengthen the ideas they convey to us, and make a more 
 lively impression on the mind.' The fulness of the 
 Greek spirit also, in its form, order, elevation, taste, 
 beauty, music, falls on Andrewes, and for the first time 
 takes full possession of Andrewes, when he enters his 
 closet. And thus it is that, when we take Andrewes's 
 method and manner of composition along with his 
 sources and with the language he wrote in, we have 
 before us in his Private Devotions a perfect portrait of 
 that man of prayer. We have Andrewes, in his 
 
100 BISHOP ANDREWES 
 
 Devotions, if not altogether as God saw him, at any 
 rate as he saw himself when he felt himself to be more 
 immediately under the eye of God. And thus it is that 
 it is not David we see even in the most Davidie of 
 Andrewes's prayers, nor Asaph in the most Asaphic of 
 them, nor Paul nor James nor Chrysostom : but what 
 we see there is what was true of Andrewes in them all, 
 with something added that was in none of them all, and is 
 in no one else but in Lancelot Andrewes in all the world. 
 There is a very remarkable argument carried on in 
 the early part of the Eighty-sixth Tract for the Times. 
 And the argument is to the effect that the Reformation 
 was the outcome of a universal call to repentance on the 
 part of God, and that on the part of the Church of 
 England it was a response to that call in a gTeat act of 
 national humiliation and sorrow for sin. And the 
 subtle and skilful writer of the Tract, having taken that 
 thesis in hand, goes on to trace the proof of that and the 
 effect of that in the changes made in the Collects of 
 the English Prayer-Book at the time of the Reformation. 
 And he points out what he calls a lowering of the voice, 
 a descent of the mind, and a humbling of the heart of 
 the Church from the high choral tone of the missals and 
 the breviaries and the early liturgies, till the Book of 
 Common Prayer has become the cry of a returning 
 prodigal rather than an expression of the liberty and the 
 joy of obedient children. And it cannot be denied that 
 Bishop Andrewes is a true son of the English Church in 
 this respect. He is at his best in repentance and con- 
 fession. He prays and praises in many places like a 
 son also. But like volcanic rock thrusting itself up 
 through a harvest field, so does Andrewes's acute and 
 abiding remorse for sin pierce up through his finest and 
 fullest psalms of thanksgiving. Andrewes comes again 
 
BISHOP ANDREWES 101 
 
 with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him, but all 
 his harvest field has been sown in tears, and so reaped, 
 and so gathered in, and so garnered, till it is the bread 
 of tears. ' His piety has not softened his heart,' says 
 Mark Pattison in a cruel and revengeful passage. But 
 Andrewes would have said with John Foxe that what 
 his piety had not done his impiety had completely 
 accomplished. I owe far more to my sins, says the 
 old martyrologist, than I owe to my good works. 
 Andrewes has three Acts of Confession in his Latin 
 Devotions, and all three are out of the same still broken 
 heart. But the second of the three, beginning with — 
 ' O God, Thou knowcst my foolishness,' — it exceeds. 
 I shall not touch it. I shall not attempt to give examples 
 out of it. The page would run blood if I broke off a 
 single sentence of it. Only, if ever God got at the hands 
 of a sinful man a sacrifice that satisfied Him and made 
 Him say on the spot, Bring forth the best robe, it was 
 surely in Lancelot Andrcwcs's closet, and after that 
 great Act of Confession. 
 
 One of the acknowledged masters of the spiritual 
 life warns us against ' an unthcological devotion. True 
 spirituality,' he insists, ' has always been orthodox.' 
 And the readers of the Grammar of Assent will remember 
 with what masterly power and with what equal 
 eloquence it is there set forth that the theology of the 
 Creeds and of the Catechisms, when it is rightly under- 
 stood and properly employed, appeals to the heart 
 quite as much as to the head, to the imagination quite as 
 much as to the understanding. And we cannot study 
 Andrewes's book, his closet confession of his faith 
 especially, without discovering what a majesty, what a 
 massiveness, what a depth, and what a strength, as 
 well as what an evangelical fervour and heartsomeness 
 
102 BISHOP ANDREWES 
 
 his theology has given to his devotional life. Take in 
 illustration this profound apostrophe — the sum of so 
 much that is contained in the Devotions : ' Essence 
 beyond essence : Essence everywhere, and wholly 
 everywhere ! ' Let the intellect and the imagination 
 take that of God truly, fully, and long enough up, and 
 forthwith Andrewes's words will take rank not un- 
 worthily with John's words, ' No man hath seen God at 
 any time,' and with Paul's words, ' Dwelling in the light 
 which no man can approach unto.' To some minds 
 those three words in which Andrewes describes the 
 Divine Nature will recall Jacob Behmen and will flash 
 a new light on many an old expression of the Scriptures 
 and the Catechisms and the Creeds. Let any devout 
 and thoughtful man take up Andrewes's confession of 
 faith for the Fourth Day imaginatively and affection- 
 ately, and let each strong heaven-laden word be meditated 
 and prayed over, and he will experience in himself what 
 is meant by the power and the profitableness of a theo- 
 logical devotion. ' I believe in the Father's loving- 
 kindness ; in the Almighty's saving power ; in the 
 Creator's providence for guarding, ruling, perfecting the 
 universe ; in Jesus, for salvation ; in Christ, for the 
 anointing of his Holy Sj^irit ; in the only begotten Son, 
 for adoption ; in the Lord, for His care as our Master ; 
 in His conception and birth, for the cleansing of our 
 unclean conception and birth ; in His sufferings, en- 
 dured that we, whose due they were, might not suffer ; 
 in His cross, for the curse of the law removed ; in His 
 death, for the sting of death taken away ; in His descent 
 whither we ought, that we might not go ; in His 
 resurrection, as the first fruits of them that sleep ; in 
 His ascension, to prepare a place for us ; in His sitting, 
 to appear and to intercede for us ; in His return, to 
 
BISHOP ANDREWES 103 
 
 take unto Him His own ; in His judgment, to render to 
 every man according to his deeds ; in the Holy Ghost, 
 for power from on high, transforming unto sanctity from 
 without and invisibly, yet effectually and evidently ; 
 in the Church, a body mystical of those called out of the 
 whole world into a commonwealth of faith and holiness ; 
 in the communion of saints, members of this body, a 
 partaking with one another of holy things, for assurance 
 of the remission of sins, for hope of resurrection and 
 translation to life everlasting.' In the Grammar of 
 Assent its author says that for himself he has ever felt 
 the Athanasian Creed to be the most devotional formulary 
 to which Christianity has given birth. We certainly feel 
 something not unlike that when Andrewes takes up the 
 Apostles' Creed, or the Nicene Creed, or the Life of our 
 Lord, or His Names, or His Titles, or His Attributes, or 
 His Offices. When Andrewes takes up any of these 
 things into his intellect, imagination, and heart, he has 
 already provided himself and his readers with another 
 great prayer and another great psalm. So true is it 
 that all true theology is directly and richly and 
 evangelically devotional. 
 
 No one can have any idea of the power and the beauty, 
 the breadth and at the same time the particularity of 
 Andrewes's intercessions, who has not for long made 
 use of them as the coal of this so much neglected altar 
 in his own devotional life. William Law is always 
 insisting on particulars, and instances, and specifications ; 
 on names of people, names of places, and names of 
 things in all prayer, and especially in intercessory prayer. 
 And, even with Law himself open before me, I know 
 no master of instances and particulars in intercessory 
 prayer like Andrewes. Those who have not discovered 
 the Devotions have a great start forward still before 
 
104 BISHOP ANDREWES 
 
 them when they begin to make constant use of that 
 great book. I shall rejoice if these weak words of mine 
 shall succeed in persuading even one man to take 
 Andrewes for his teacher and his pattern in his life of 
 intercessory prayer. 
 
 And then his thanksgivings. Read them, sing them, 
 carry them about with you, drink in their spirit, and 
 offer your own thanksgivings on their noble plan. The 
 Thanksgiving for the Fifth Day is an absolutely imique 
 piece of sacred song. It is an all-embracing, absolutely 
 exhaustive, autobiographic psalm. It is written by a 
 man of God for God alone to read and to hear. And 
 as we are chosen and privileged to read it and to hear it 
 we come to understand something of the secret life of a 
 man who was said to spend five hours of the day sometimes 
 over a prayer and a psalm. We ourselves will spend as 
 many hours, and we will not be done with our praise, 
 when we have learned Andrewes's divine art of writing 
 and reading our own autobiography to God. ' O God, 
 for my existence, my life, my reason ; for nurture, pro- 
 tection, guidance, education, civil rights, religion ; for 
 thy gifts to me of grace, nature, worldly good ; for 
 redemption, regeneration, instruction in the truth ; for 
 my call, recall, yea, many calls all through life ; for Thy 
 forbearance, longsuffering, long longsuffering toward me, 
 even until now ; for all good things received, for all 
 successes granted to me, for all good deeds I have been 
 enabled to do ; for my parents honest and good, for 
 teachers kind, for benefactors never to be forgotten, 
 for religious intimates so congenial and so helpful, for 
 hearers thoughtful, friends true and sincere, servants 
 faithful ; for all who have helped me by their writings, 
 sermons, conversations, prayers, examples, rebukes, and 
 even injuries ; for all these, and for all others which I 
 
BISHOP ANDREWES 105 
 
 know, and which I know not, open, hidden, remembered, 
 forgotten ; — what shall I render unto the Lord for all 
 His benefits ? ' And, then, on an altogether other key, 
 An Act of Thanksgiving in the Latin Part. ' If I were 
 compelled to make a choice,' says Dr. Cazenove, ' I 
 should select the Act of Thanksgiving.' Before I knew 
 Dr. Cazenove's choice, I find I had already spoken of 
 it as ' that magnificent Act of Thanksgiving. Surely 
 the noblest service of that kind that ever rose from 
 earth to heaven. Yes, it is wholly worthy to be taken 
 up word for word by the great multitude that no man 
 can number. They cannot sing a better song. It is in 
 every word of it worthy of them and of the place where 
 they stand.' And if any man think that too much to 
 say about a book whose very title he has never heard 
 till now, let him begin from now to learn to thank God 
 with Lancelot Andrewes. Those who are staggered and 
 offended to be told that any man should spend hours 
 upon hours alone with himself and with his Maker should 
 study such prayers and psalms as those of Andrewes ; 
 and if they once enter into their genius, and come under 
 their spell, they will have discovered a new way of 
 redeeming and laying out the dregs of their days. 
 
 In trying to account for Andrewes having composed 
 the most finished parts of his Devotions in Greek, Mr. 
 Hutton, Dean Stanhope's editor, says that the compound 
 and emphatic words of that language greatly strengthen 
 the ideas they convey to us, and thus make a deeper 
 impression on our minds. Now no adequate justice can 
 at all be done to Andrewcs's Devotions till attention has 
 been called to the power and the impressiveness of some 
 of his single words and short sentences. The weight, the 
 concentration, the solidity, and the impact of the style 
 is one of the foremost features of Andrewes's Devotions. 
 
106 BISHOP ANDREWES 
 
 I have never forgotten the impression that one word of 
 his in one of his confessions of sin made on my own 
 imagination and heart the first time it leaped out upon 
 me. ' I have neglected thee, O God ! ' Andrewes cried, 
 and I trembled as I heard him cry it. And I have 
 never come upon that awful word from that day to this 
 without a shudder. It is this neglect of God that makes 
 so many men infidels and atheists and outcasts. You 
 neglect God till you come to say, and that not without 
 some reason, that there simply cannot be such and such 
 a God else it would be a sheer impossibility that you 
 could have neglected Him as you have done. You look 
 within, and you look around, and you see yourself and 
 all men absolutely pushing God aside till it is as good 
 as demonstrated to you that there can be no God. 
 ' God,' said John Donne in a sermon that Andrewes may 
 very well have heard, ' God is like us in this also, that 
 He takes it worse to be slighted, to be neglected, to be 
 left out, than to be actually injured. Our inconsideration, 
 our not thinking of God in our actions, offends Him 
 more than our sins.' ' Pardon,' cries Bishop Wilson 
 in his Sacra Privata, ' that I have passed so many days 
 without admiring, without acknowledging and confessing 
 Thy wonderful goodness to the most unworthy of Thy 
 servants. Preserve in my soul, O God, such a constant 
 and clear sense of my obligations to Thee, that upon 
 every new receipt of Thy favour, I may immediately 
 turn my eyes to Him from Whom cometh my salvation.' 
 And in an evening prayer that Andrewes draws out for a 
 family in the Instituiiones Pice, he makes them all say, 
 * We have fled from Thee seeking us : neglected Thee 
 loving us : stopped our ears to Thee speaking to us : 
 turned our backs to Thee reaching Thy hand to us : 
 forgotten Thee doing good to us : and despised Thee 
 
BISHOP ANDREWES 107 
 
 correcting us.' And then in the Manual for the Sick 
 he makes the dying man say : ' I have not studied to 
 seek and know Thee as I ought to do. Knowing Thee, 
 I have not glorified Thee, nor given thanks to Thee 
 accordingly.' And again when Andrewes cries in 
 another confession, — ' I have withstood Thee, O God,' 
 that makes almost as terrible an impression on my 
 mind, as well it may. ' I will confess my iniquity, for 
 I have transgressed, and neglected Thee, O Lord. Set 
 not my misdeeds before Thee, nor my life in the light 
 of Thy countenance. I have withstood Thee, Lord, 
 but I return unto Thee. I take with me words, and I 
 return unto Thee and say. Take away all iniquity, and 
 receive me graciously.' And still, after all that, we see 
 Andrewes still struggling with some ' relics of reluctancy,' 
 to the end of his seraphic old age. 
 
 ' I am made of sin,' Andrewes cries out in one of his 
 great acts of confession. ' I have sinned, and of a truth 
 I am made of sin, and my whole life maketh it manifest.' 
 Only those out of whose broken heart the echo comes. 
 And so am I ! — only they will believe that Bishop Andrewes 
 can be in honest earnest and in his sound senses when he 
 says that. But they who feel that to be true of them- 
 selves, — literally and absolutely true and far short of 
 the truth, — they will be drawn irresistibly to the man 
 who first made such a discovery as that in himself, and 
 who had the truth and the talent to put the discovery 
 into such answering words. Andrewes belongs to the 
 family of Abraham, and Isaiah, and Paul, and Neri, and 
 Pascal, and Bunyan, and Law, and all the devotional 
 succession. ' I am made of dust and ashes,' Abraham 
 said. ' From the head to the foot I am made up of putri- 
 fying sores,' said Isaiah. ' In me there dwelleth no good 
 thing,' said Paul. ' Begone, I am a devil, and not a man,' 
 
108 BISHOP ANDREWES 
 
 said Philip. ' I defy the devil himself to equal me,' 
 said the author of Grace Abounding. ' We are made up 
 of falsehood, duplicity, and insincerity,' said Pascal, 
 ' and we cloak up these things in ourselves from our- 
 selves.' ' Man is only a compound of corrujot and dis- 
 orderly tempers,' says William Law. ' I am made of 
 sin,' groans Andrewes, and with that one awful word he 
 lets us down into the whole bottomless pit of sin and shame 
 and pain and misery that is in his own evil heart. ' I 
 am a burden to myself,' he continues, still on his face 
 before God, ' I am a ruined, wretched, excessive sinner.' 
 Nor are these the mere ink-horn terms of which our 
 prayer-books are full, or the usual insincere devotions of 
 which our public worship is full. It is the truth, it is the 
 sincerity, it is the intensity, it is the absolute agony of 
 Andrewes's supremely sinful and supremely miserable 
 heart that so fascinates us, and holds us, and makes us 
 like clay in his hands. 
 
 Small is the blind man's grief to theirs who see 
 Nothing at all but their own misery. 
 
 ' But I have an Advocate with Thee to Thee, and may He 
 be the propitiation for my sins Who is also the propiti- 
 ation for the whole world.' As much as to say that the 
 whole world and Lancelot Andrewes together will com- 
 plete the propitiation. As much as to say that Lancelot 
 Andrewes is a whole guilty world in himself, and that to 
 be the propitiation for Lancelot Andrewes is more than 
 to redeem and restore the whole world apart from him. 
 Whom God hath set forth to be the propitiation for the 
 whole world and Lancelot Andrewes. 
 
 You Avill sometimes see in the wall of a church or in 
 the wall of a house or in the wall of a garden a stone with 
 the smooth mark of the boring-iron still upon it — the 
 
BISHOP ANDREWES 109 
 
 boring-iron by means of which the blast was let in which 
 shattered the hard rock into a thousand pieces. And 
 many such significant marks occur all up and down the 
 Private Devotions. ' I have perverted that which was 
 right, and yet Thou hast not overwhelmed me with 
 infamy.' Now, ' infamy,' remarkably enough, is the 
 very word that an able historical writer of our day of 
 himself has applied to Andrewes's share in the Essex 
 case. Sometimes one single sin will blast and ruin a 
 man's whole after-life to himself. Sometimes one single 
 sin will still leave its mark on a man long long after it 
 has been forsaken, repented of, atoned for, and forgiven. 
 One single sin will so explode and shatter his conscience, 
 it will so bruise and break his heart into a thousand 
 pieces, that like one of the Children of Israel a true peni- 
 tent will feel the taste of the dust of the golden calf in 
 every cup he ever after drinks — in his sweetest as well 
 as in his bitterest cup. The Essex case followed Andrewes 
 about all his days, as his drunkenness followed Noah, and 
 his adultery David, and the sins of his blasphemy and 
 injuriousness Paul, and our sins us. ' God often permits 
 sin, even in the elect,' says Bishop Wilson, ' that He may 
 make their fall instrumental to their conversion and sal- 
 vation. We have reason to bless God for those sins that 
 awaken us, lead us to repentance, and make us to love 
 much because so much has been forgiven us.' ' Where- 
 withal a man sinneth,' says the Son of Sirach, ' by the same 
 also shall he be punished. Thou, O God, tormentest men 
 with their own abominations.' Or as Andrewes has it, 
 ' Let not my ungodliness be for my punishment. De- 
 stroy me not in mine iniquities, nor reserve evil for me, 
 nor make me a public shame.' We stumble at the length 
 and at the number of the hours that Andrewes spent every 
 day with sweating hands, but when God begins to torment 
 
110 BISHOP ANDREWES 
 
 us with our own abominations, and to make our ungodli- 
 ness our punishment, all Andrewes's hours will have flown 
 past, and we shall neither have numbered them nor 
 grudged them. 
 
 ' I return to my own heart, and with all my heart I 
 return to Thee, O God of j^enitents, O Saviour of sinners. 
 Evening by evening will I return in the innermost marrow 
 of my soul. I turn baek from my evil ways, I return 
 unto mine own heart, and with my whole heart I return 
 unto Thee, saying, I know, O Lord, the plague of my 
 heart. Since the days of my youth have I been in a great 
 trespass unto this day, and I cannot stand before Thee, 
 by reason of this. I bear the brands of sin. I conceal 
 nothing. I make no excuses. I have destroyed myself. 
 I am without plea. Thou art just in all that has come 
 upon me. Thou hast done right, but I have done wickedly. 
 I remember my sins in the bitterness of my soul. I have 
 no rest because of them. I turn away from them and 
 groan. I despise and hate myself. Forgive me, for I 
 knew not, truly I knew not what I did when I sinned 
 against Thee. I can sin much, but I cannot return from 
 my sins. Only, I will always remember my latter end. 
 I will give myself up to prayer. I will give up the rest 
 of my life to repentance, because Thou art waiting for 
 my full conversion.' How his words transfix us ! How 
 our past comes baek upon us at his words ! How our 
 hearts melt in us as Andrewes takes us by the hand, and 
 as we kneel beside him ! The secret of the Lord and His 
 best power are with this penitent in a most singular way, 
 till that wonderful book of his in every page of it pierces 
 us, solemnises us, and subdues us to tears and to prayer 
 and to obedience as no other book of its kind has ever 
 done. Every page, almost every line, of the Private 
 Devotions has some strong word in it, some startling 
 
BISHOP ANDRE WES 111 
 
 word, some selected, compounded, and compacted word, 
 some heart-laden clause, some scriptural or liturgical 
 expression set iu a blaze of new light and life, and ever 
 after to be filled with new power as we employ it in our 
 own prayers and praises. It is true genius ; it is a 
 special gift of God and a special grace of His Spirit to be 
 able in this way to make the old and familiar language 
 of devotion so new, so quick, so powerful, and so prevail- 
 ing, as Andrewes makes it in tliis fine book of his which 
 is now open before us. 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 Samuel Rutherford, the author of the seraphic Letters, 
 was born in the south of Scotland in the year of our 
 Lord 1600. Thomas Goodwin was born in England in 
 the same year, Robert Leighton in 1611, Richard Baxter 
 in 1615, John Owen in 1616, John Bunyan in 1628, and 
 John Howe in 1630. A little vellum-covered volume 
 now lies open before me, the title-page of which runs 
 thus : ' Joshua Redivivus, or Mr. Rutherford's Letters, 
 now published for the use of the people of God : but more 
 particularly for those who now are, or may afterwards 
 be, put to suffering for Christ and His cause. By a well- 
 wisher to the work and to the people of God. Printed in 
 the year 1664.' That is all. It would not have been 
 safe in 1664 to say more. There is no editor's name on 
 the title-page, no publisher's name, and no place of 
 printing or of publication. Only two texts of forewarning 
 and reassuring Scripture, and then the year of grace 1664. 
 Joshua Redivivus : That is to say, Moses' spy and 
 pioneer, Moses' successor and the captain of the Lord's 
 covenanted host come back again. A second Joshua sent 
 to Scotland to go before God's people in that land and 
 in that day ; a spy who would both by his experience and 
 by his testimony cheer and encourage the suffering people 
 of God. For all this Samuel Rutherford truly was. 
 As he said of himself in one of his letters to Hugh Mackail, 
 he was indeed a spy sent out to make experiment upon 
 
114 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 the life of silence and separation, banishment and 
 martyrdom, and to bring back a report of that life for 
 the vindication of Christ and for the support and encour- 
 agement of His people. It was a happy thought of 
 Rutherford's first editor, Robert M'Ward, his old West- 
 minster Assembly secretary, to put at the top of his 
 title-page, Joshua risen again from the dead, or, Mr. 
 Rutherford's Letters written from his place of banish- 
 ment in Aberdeen. 
 
 In selecting his twelve spies Moses went on the principle 
 of choosing the best and the ablest men he could lay hold 
 of in all Israel. And in selecting Samuel Rutherford 
 to be the first sufferer for His covenanted people in Scot- 
 land, our Lord took a man who was already famous for 
 his character and his services. For no man of his age 
 in broad Scotland stood higher as a scholar, a theologian, 
 a controversialist, a preacher and a very saint than 
 Samuel Rutherford. He had been settled at Anwoth on 
 the Sol way in 1627, and for the next nine years he had 
 lived such a noble life among his people as to make 
 Anwoth famous as long as Jesus Christ has a Church 
 in Scotland. As we say Bunyan and Bedford, Baxter 
 and Kidderminster, Newton and Olney, Edwards and 
 Northampton, Boston and Ettrick, M'Cheyne and 
 Dundee, so we say Rutherford and Anwoth. 
 
 His talents, his industry, his scholarship, his preaching 
 power, his pastoral solicitude and his saintly character 
 all combined to make Rutherford a marked man both 
 to the friends and to the enemies of the truth. His 
 talents and his industry while he was yet a student 
 in Edinburgh had carried him to the top of his classes, 
 and all his da3^s he could write in Latin better than 
 either in Scotch or English. His habits of work at 
 Anwoth soon became a very proverb. His people 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 115 
 
 boasted that their minister was always at his books, 
 always among his parishioners, always at their sick- 
 beds and their death-beds, always catechising their 
 children, and always alone with his God. And then the 
 matchless preaching of the parish church of Anwoth. 
 We can gather what made the Sabbaths of Anwoth so 
 memorable both to Rutherford and to his people from 
 the books we still have from those great Sabbaths : 
 The Trial and the Triumph of Faith ; Christ Dying and 
 Drawing Sinners to Himself; and suchlike masterly 
 discourses. Rutherford was the ' most moving and the 
 most affectionate of preachers,' a preacher determined 
 to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, 
 but not so much crucified, as crucified and risen again — 
 crucified indeed, but now glorified. Rutherford's life 
 for his people at Anwoth had something altogether 
 superhuman and unearthly about it. His correspondents 
 in his own day and his critics in our day stumble at his 
 too intense devotion to his charge ; he lived for his con- 
 gregation, they tell us, almost to the neglect of his wife 
 and children. But by the time of his banishment his 
 home was desolate, his wife and children were in the 
 grave. And all the time and thought and love they had 
 got from him while they were alive had, now that they 
 were dead, returned with new and intensified devotion 
 to his people and his parish. 
 
 Pair Anwoth by the Solway, 
 
 To me thou still art dear^ 
 E'en from the verge of heaven 
 
 I drop for thee a tear. 
 
 O ! if one soul from Anwoth 
 
 Meet me at God's right hand. 
 My heaven will be two heavens 
 
 In Immanuel's Land. 
 
116 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 This, then, was the spy chosen by Jesus Christ to go 
 out first of all the ministers of Scotland into the life 
 of banishment in that day, so as to try its fords and 
 taste its vineyards, and to report to God's straitened 
 and persecuted jaeople at home. 
 
 To begin with, it must always be remembered that 
 Rutherford was not laid in irons in Aberdeen, or cast 
 into a dungeon. He was simply deprived of his pulpit 
 and of his liberty to preach, and was sentenced to live 
 in silence in the town of Aberdeen. Like Dante, another 
 great spy of God's providence and grace, Rutherford was 
 less a prisoner than an exile. But if any man thinks 
 that simply to be an exile is a small punishment, or a 
 light cross, let him read the psalms and prophecies of 
 Babylon, the Divine Comedy, and Rutherford's Letters. 
 Yes, banishment was banishment ; exile was exile ; 
 silent Sabbaths were silent Sabbaths ; and a borrowed 
 fireside with all its willing heat was still a borrowed fire- 
 side ; and, spite of all that the best people of Aberdeen 
 could do for Samuel Rutherford, he felt the friendliest 
 stairs of that city to be very steep to his feet, and its 
 best bread to be very salt in his mouth. 
 
 But, with all that, Samuel Rutherford would have 
 been but a blind and unprofitable spy for the best people 
 of God in Scotland, for Marion M'Naught, and Lady 
 Kenmure, and Lady Culross, for the Cardonesses, father, 
 and mother, and son, and for Hugh Mackail, and such 
 like, if he had tasted nothing more bitter than borrowed 
 bread in Aberdeen, and climbed nothing steeper than a 
 granite stair. ' Paul had need,' Rutherford writes to 
 Lady Kenmure, ' of the devil's service to buffet him, and 
 far more, you and I.' I am downright afraid to go on 
 to tell you how Satan was sent to buffet Samuel Ruther- 
 ford in his banishment, and how he was sifted as wheat 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 117 
 
 is sifted in his exile. I would not expose such a saint 
 of God to every eye, but I look for readers who know 
 something of the plague of their own hearts, and who 
 are comforted in their banishment and battle by nothing 
 more than when they are assured that they are not alone 
 in the deep darkness. ' When Christian had travelled 
 in .this disconsolate condition for some time he thought 
 he heard the voice of a man as going before him and 
 saying, " Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow 
 of Death I zvillfear no ill, for Thou art tvith me." Then he 
 was glad, and that for these reasons : — Firstly, because he 
 gathered from thence that some one who feared God was 
 in this valley as well as himself. Secondly, for that he 
 perceived that God was with them though in that dark 
 and dismal state ; and why not, thought he, with me ? 
 Thirdly, for that he hoped, could he overtake them, to 
 have company by and by.' And, in like manner, I am 
 certain that it will encourage and save from despair 
 some who now read this if I just report to them some 
 of the discoveries and experiences of himself that Samuel 
 Rutherford made among the siftings and buffetings of 
 his Aberdeen exile. Writing to Lady Culross, he says : 
 ' O my guiltiness, the follies of my youth and the neglects 
 of my calling, they all do stare me in the face here ; . . . 
 the world hath sadly mistaken me : no man knoweth 
 what guiltiness is in me.' And to Lady Boyd, speaking 
 of some great lessons he had learnt in the school of 
 adversity, he says : ' In the third place, I have seen here 
 my abominable vileness, and it is such that if I were 
 well known no one in all the kingdom would ask me how 
 I do. ... I am a deeper hypocrite and a shallower 
 professor than any one could believe. Madam, pity me, 
 the chief of sinners.' And, again, to the Laird of 
 Carlton : ' Woe, woe is me, that men should think there 
 
118 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 is anything in me. The house-devils that keep me 
 company and this sink of corruption make me to carry 
 low sails. . . . But, howbeit I am a wretched captive 
 of sin, yet my Lord can hew heaven out of worse timber 
 than I am, if worse there be.' And to Lady Kenmure : 
 ' I am somebody in the books of my friends, . . . but 
 there are armies of thoughts within me, saying the 
 contrary, and laughing at the mistakes of my many 
 friends. Oh ! if my inner side were only seen ! ' Ah, 
 no ! my brethren, no land is so fearful to them that 
 are sent to search it out as their own heart. ' The land,' 
 said the ten spies, ' is a land that eateth up the in- 
 habitants thereof ; the cities are walled up to heaven, 
 and very great, and the children of Anak dwell in them. 
 We were in their sight as grasshoppers, and so we were 
 in our own sight.' Ah, no ! no stair is so steep as the 
 stair of sanctification, no bread is so salt as that which 
 is baked for a man of God out of the wild oats of his past 
 sin and his present sinfulness. Even Joshua and Caleb, 
 who brought back a good report of the land, did not 
 deny that the children of Anak were there, or that their 
 walls went up to heaven, or that they, the spies, were as 
 grasshoppers before their foes : Caleb and Joshua only 
 said that, in spite of all that, if the Lord delighted in His 
 people, He both could and would give them a land 
 flowing with milk and honey. And be it recorded and 
 remembered to his credit and his praise that, with all 
 his self-discoveries and self-accusings, Rutherford did 
 not utter one single word of doubt or despair ; so far from 
 that was he, that in one of his letters to Hugh Mackail 
 he tells us that some of his correspondents have written 
 to him that he is possibly too joyful under the cross. 
 Blunt old Knockbrex, for one, wrote to his old minister 
 to restrain somewhat his ecstasy. So true was it, what 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 119 
 
 Rutheriord said of himself to David Dickson, that he 
 was ' made up of extremes.' So he was, for I know no 
 man among all my masters in personal religion who 
 unites greater extremes in himself than Samuel Ruther- 
 ford. Who weeps like Rutherford over his banishment 
 from Anwoth, while all the time who is so feasted in 
 Christ's palaee in Aberdeen ? Who loathes himself like 
 Rutherford ? Not Bunyan, not Brodie, not Brea, not 
 Boston ; and, at the same time, who is so transported 
 and lost to himself in the beauty and sweetness of Christ ? 
 As we read his raptures we almost say with cautious 
 old Knockbrex, that possibly Rutherford is somewhat 
 too full of ecstasy for this fallen, still unsanctified, and 
 still so slippery world. 
 
 It took two men to carry back the cluster of grapes 
 the spies cut down at Eshcol, and there is sweetness and 
 strength and ecstasy enough for ten men in any one of 
 Rutherford's heaven-inebriated Letters. ' See what the 
 land is, and whether it be fat or lean, and bring back of 
 the fruits of the land.' This was the order given by 
 Moses to the twelve spies. And, whether the land was 
 fat or lean, Moses and all Israel could judge for them- 
 selves when the spies laid down their load of grapes at 
 Moses' feet. ' I can report nothing but good of the 
 land,' said Joshua Redivivus, as he sent back such 
 clusters of its vineyards and such pots of its honey to 
 Hugh Mackail, to Marion M'Naught, and to Lady 
 Kenmui'c. And then, when all his letters were collected 
 and published, never surely, since the Epistles of Paul 
 and the Gospel and Revelation of John, had such 
 clusters of encouragement and such exhilarating cordials 
 been laid to the lips of the Church of Christ. 
 
 Our old authors tell us that after the northern tribes 
 had tasted the warmth and the sweetness of the 
 
120 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 wines of Italy they could take no rest tiJl they 
 had conquered and taken possession of that land of 
 sunshine where such grapes so plentifully grew. And 
 how many hearts have been carried captive with the 
 beauty and the grace of Christ, and with the land of 
 Immanuel, where He drinks wine with the saints in His 
 Father's house, by the reading of Samuel Rutherford's 
 Letters, the day of the Lord will alone declare. 
 
 O Christ ! He is the Fountain, 
 
 The deep sweet VV^ell of love ! 
 The streams on earth I 've tasted. 
 
 More deep I '11 drink above. 
 There to an ocean fulness 
 
 His mercy doth expand, 
 And glory^ glory dwelleth 
 
 In Immanuel's Land. 
 
 A story is told in Wodrow of an English merchant who 
 had occasion to visit Scotland on business about the year 
 1650. On his return home his friends asked him what 
 news he had brought with him from the north. ' Good 
 news,' he said ; ' for when I went to St. Andrews I heard 
 a sweet, majestic-looking man, and he showed me the 
 majesty of God. After him I heard a little fair man, and 
 he showed me the loveliness of Christ. I then went to 
 Irvine, where I heard a well-favoured, proper old man 
 with a long beard, and that man showed me all my own 
 heart.' The little fair man who showed this English 
 merchant the loveliness of Christ was Samuel Rutherford, 
 and the proper old man who showed him all his own 
 heart was David Dickson. Dr. M'Crie says of David 
 Dickson that he was singularly successful in dissecting 
 the human heart and in winning souls to the Redeemer, 
 and all that we know of Dickson bears out that high 
 estimate. When he was presiding on one occasion at 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 121 
 
 the ordination of a young minister, whom he had had 
 some hand in bringing up, among the advices the old 
 minister gave the new beginner were these : — That he 
 should remain unmarried for four years, in order to give 
 himself up wholly to his great work ; and that both in 
 preaching and in prayer he should be as succinct as 
 possible so as not to weary his hearers ; and, lastly, 
 ' Oh, study God well and your own heart.' We have 
 five letters of Rutherford's to this master of the human 
 heart, and it is in the third of these that Rutherford 
 opens his heart to his father in the Gospel, and tells him 
 that he is made up of extremes. 
 
 In every way that was so. It is a common remark 
 with all Rutherford's biographers and editors and com- 
 mentators what extremes met in that little fair man. 
 The finest thing that has ever been written on Rutherford 
 is Dr. Taylor Innes's lecture in the Evangelical Succession 
 series. And the intellectual extremes that met in 
 Rutherford are there set forth by Rutherford's acute and 
 sympathetic critic at some length. For one thing, the 
 greatest speculative freedom and theological breadth 
 met in Rutherford with the greatest ecclesiastical hard- 
 ness and narrowness. I do not know any author of 
 that day, either in England or in Scotland, either Prelatist 
 or Puritan, who shows more imaginative freedom and 
 speculative power than Rutherford does in his Christ 
 Dying, unless it is his still greater contemporary, Thomas 
 Goodwin. And it is with corresponding distress that we 
 read some of Rutherford's polemical works, and even 
 the polemical parts of his heavenly Letters. There is 
 a remarkable passage in one of his controversial books 
 that reminds us of some of ShakesjDeare's own tributes 
 to England : ' I judge that in England the Lord hath 
 many names and a fair company that shall stand at the 
 
122 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 side of Christ when He shall render up the kingdom to 
 the Father ; and that in that renowned land there be 
 men of all ranks, wise, valorous, generous, noble, heroic, 
 faithful, religious, gracious, learned.' Rutherford's whole 
 passage is worthy to stand beside Shakespeare's great 
 passage on ' this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this 
 England.' But persecution from England and con- 
 troversy at home so embittered Rutherford's sweet and 
 gracious spirit that passages like that are but few and 
 far between. Only, let him away out into pure theology, 
 and, especially, let him get his wings on the person, and 
 the work, and the glory of Christ, and few theologians 
 of any age or any school rise to a larger air, or command 
 a wider scope, or discover a clearer eye of speculation 
 than Rutherford, till we feel exactly like the laird of 
 Glanderston who, when Rutherford left a controversial 
 passage in a sermon and went on to speak of Christ, 
 cried out in the church : ' Ay, hold you there, minister ; 
 you are all right there ! ' A domestic controversy that 
 arose in the Church of Scotland towards the end of 
 Rutherford's life so separated Rutherford from Dickson 
 and Blair that Rutherford would not take part with 
 Blair, the ' sweet, majestic-looking man,' in the Lord's 
 Supper. ' Oh, to be above,' Blair exclaimed, ' where 
 there are no misunderstandings ! ' It was this same 
 controversy that made John Livingstone say in a letter 
 to Blair that his wife and he had had more bitterness 
 over that dispute than ever they had tasted since they 
 knew what bitterness meant. Well might Rutherford 
 say, on another such occasion : ' It is hard when saints 
 rejoice in the sufferings of saints, and when the redeemed 
 hurt, and go nigh to hate the redeemed.' Watch and 
 pray, my brethren, lest in controversy — ephemeral and 
 immaterial controversy — you also go near to hate and 
 hurt one another, as Rutherford did. 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 123 
 
 And then, what strength, combined with what tender- 
 ness, there is in Rutherford ! In all my acquaintance 
 with literature I do not know any author who has two 
 books under his name so unlike one another, two books 
 that are such a contrast to one another, as Lex Rex and 
 the Letters. A more firmly built argument than Lex 
 Rex, an argument so clamped together with the iron 
 bands of scholastic and legal lore, is not to be met with 
 in any English book ; a more lawyer-looking production 
 is not in all the Advocates' Library than just Lex Rex. 
 There is as much emotion in the multiplication table 
 as there is in Lex Rex ; and then, on the other hand, the 
 Letters have no other fault but this, that they are over- 
 charged with emotion. The Letters would be absolutely 
 perfect if they were only a little more restrained and 
 chastened in this one respect. The pundit and the 
 poet are the opposites and the extremes of one another ; 
 and the pundit and the poet meet, as nowhere else that 
 I know of, in the author of Lex Rex and the Letters. 
 
 Then, again, what extremes of beauty and sweetness 
 there are in Rutherford's style, too often intermingled 
 with what carelessness and disorder. What flashes of 
 noblest thought, clothed in the most apt and well-fitting 
 words, on the same page with the most slatternly and 
 down-at-the-heel English. Both Dr. Andrew Bonar 
 and Dr. Andrew Thomson have given us selections from 
 Rutherford's Letters that would quite justify us in claim- 
 ing Rutherford as one of the best writers of English 
 in his day ; but then we know out of what thickets of 
 careless composition these flowers have been collected. 
 Both Gillespie and Rutherford ran a tilt at Hooker ; 
 but alas for the equipment and the manners of our 
 champions when compared with the shining panoply and 
 the knightly grace of the author of the incomparable 
 Polity. 
 
124 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 And then, morally, as great extremes met in Ruther- 
 ford as intellectually. Newman has a fine sermon 
 under a fine title, ' Saintliness not forfeited by the 
 Penitent.' ' No degree of sin,' he says, ' precludes the 
 acquisition of any degree of holiness, however high. 
 No sinner so great, but he may, through God's grace, 
 become a saint ever so great.' And then he goes on to 
 illustrate that, and to balance that, and almost to retract 
 and to deny all that, in a way that all his admirers only 
 too well know. But still it stands true. A friend of 
 mine once told me that it was to him often the most 
 delightful and profitable of Sabbath evening exercises 
 just to take down Newman's sermons and read their 
 titles over again. And this mere title, I feel sure, has 
 encouraged and comforted many : ' Saintliness not 
 forfeited by the Penitent.' And Samuel Rutherford's 
 is just another great name to be added to the noble 
 roll of saintly penitents which we all have in our minds 
 taken out of Scripture and Church History. Neither 
 great saintliness nor great service was forfeited by 
 this penitent ; and he is constantly telling us how the 
 extreme of demerit and the extreme of gracious treatment 
 met in him ; how he had at one time destroyed him- 
 self, and how God had helped him ; how, where sin had 
 abounded, grace had abounded much more. In one of 
 the very last letters he ever wrote — his letter to James 
 Guthrie in 1G61 — he is still amazed that God has not 
 brought his sin to the Market Cross, to use his own 
 word. But all through his letters this same note of 
 admiration and wonder runs — that he has been taken 
 from among the pots and his wings covered with silver 
 and gold. Truly, in his case the most seraphic saintli- 
 ness was not forfeited, and we who read his books may 
 well bless God it was so. 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 125 
 
 And then, experimentally also, what extremes met 
 in our author ! Pascal in Paris and Rutherford in 
 Anwoth and Aberdeen and St. Andrews were at the 
 very opposite poles ecclesiastically from one another. 
 I do not like to think what Rutherford would have said 
 of Pascal, but I cannot embody what I have to say of 
 Rutherford's experimental extremes better than just 
 by this passage taken from the Thoughts : ' The Christian 
 religion teaches the righteous man that it lifts him even 
 to a participation in the divine nature ; but that, in 
 this exalted state, he still bears within him the fountain 
 of all corruption, which renders him during his whole 
 life subject to error and misery, to sin and death, while 
 at the same time it proclaims to the most wicked that 
 they can still receive the grace of their Redeemer.' 
 And again : ' Did we not know ourselves full of pride, 
 ambition, lust, weakness, misery and injustice, we were 
 indeed blind. . . . What then can we feel but a great 
 esteem for a religion that is so well acquainted with the 
 defects of man, and a great desire for the truth of a 
 religion that promises remedies so precious.' 
 
 And yet again, what others thought of him, and how 
 they treated him, compared with what he knew himself 
 to be, caused Rutherford many a bitter reflection. Every 
 letter he got consulting him and appealing to him as if 
 he had been God's living oracle made him lie down in 
 the very dust with shame and self-abhorrence. Writing 
 on one occasion to Robert Blair he told him that his 
 letter consulting him about some matter of Christian 
 experience had been like a blow in the face to him ; it 
 affects me much, said Rutherford, that a man like you 
 should have any such opinion of me. And, apologising 
 for his delay in replying to a letter of Lady Boyd's, he 
 says that he is put out of all love of writing letters because 
 
126 SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 
 
 his correspondents think things about him that he him- 
 self knows are not true. ' My white side comes out on 
 paper — but at home there is much black work. All the 
 challenges that come to me are true.' There was no 
 man then alive on the earth so much looked up to and 
 consulted in the deepest matters of the soul, in the 
 secrets of the Lord with the soul, as Rutherford was, 
 and his letters bear evidence on every page that there 
 was no man who had a more loathsome and a more 
 hateful experience of his own heart, not even Brodie, 
 not even Owen, not even Bunyan, not even Baxter. 
 What a day of extremest men that was, and what an 
 inheritance we extreme men have had left us, in their 
 inward, extreme, and heavenly books ! 
 
 Once more, hear him on the tides of feeling that 
 continually rose and fell within his heart. Writing from 
 Aberdeen to Lady Boyd, he says : ' I have not now, of 
 a long time, found such high springtides as formerly. 
 The sea is out, and I cannot buy a wind and cause it to 
 flow again ; only I wait on the shore till the Lord sends 
 a full sea. . . . But even to dream of Him is sweet.' 
 And then, just over the leaf, to Marion M'Naught : 
 ' I am well : honour to God. . . . He hath broken in 
 upon a poor prisoner's goul like the swelling of Jordan. 
 I am bank and brim full : a great high springtide of 
 the consolations of Christ hath overwhelmed me.' But 
 sweet as it is to read his rapturous expressions when the 
 tide is full, I feel it far more helpful to hear how he still 
 looks and Avaits for the return of the tide when the tide 
 is low, and when the shore is full, as all left shores are 
 apt to be, of weeds and mire, and all corrupt and unclean 
 things. Rutherford is never more helpful to his corre- 
 spondents than when they consult him about their ebb 
 tides, and find that he himself either has been, or still 
 is, in the same experience. 
 
SAMUEL RUTHERFORD 127 
 
 But why do we disinter such things as these out of 
 such an author as Samuel Rutherford ? Why do we 
 tell to all the world that such an eminent saint was 
 full of such sad extremes ? Well, we surely do so out 
 of obedience to the divine command to comfort God's 
 people ; for, next to their having no such extremes in 
 themselves, their next best comfort is to be told that 
 great and eminent saints of God have had the very same 
 besetting sins and staggering extremes as they still have. 
 If the like of Samuel Rutherford was vexed and weak- 
 ened with such intellectual contradictions and spiritual 
 extremes in his mind, in his heart and in his history, 
 then may we not hope that some such saintliness, if not 
 some such service as his, may be permitted to us also ? 
 
THOMAS SHEPARD 
 
 Jonathan Edwards, ' one of the greatest of the sons 
 of men,' has given us his Appreciation of Thomas 
 Shepard in a most eloquent and impressive way. I know 
 no such complete and conclusive appreciation in all litera- 
 ture as when Jonathan Edwards on every page under- 
 builds and establishes and illustrates his spiritual master- 
 piece, the Religious Affections, with constant references to 
 the Ten Virgins, the Sound Convert and the Spiritual 
 Experiences, and with no less than innumerable quota- 
 tions from those so experimental Puritan books. I 
 know no instance of the laudaiur a laudato principle at 
 all to compare with that of Thomas Shepard and Jonathan 
 Edwards. Now, though I cannot speak mth an atom 
 of the authority of Edwards, at the same time I am not 
 on that account wholly shut out from making my own 
 humble acknowledgment of what I also owe to this 
 great Pilgrim Father. I am not debarred from laying 
 my own loyal tribute at the feet of the man on whose 
 head Jonathan Edwards has set such a crown. 
 
 Thomas Shepard has been one of my favourite authors 
 ever since the year 1861 when my honoured friend 
 Dr. Williamson of Huntly wrote my name on his own 
 copy of the Parable of the Ten Virgins. I think I must 
 have read Shepard quite as often as Spurgeon had read 
 Bunyan ; quite as often at any rate as Jowett had 
 read Boswell. And I am still reading Shepard as if I 
 
 I 
 
130 THOMAS SHEPARD 
 
 had never read him before. As a proof of that take 
 this httle confidence of mine. The week before one of 
 my hohdays I had read Professor Churton Colhns's 
 dehghtful paper on The Tempest that had appeared 
 some time previously in the Contejnporary Review. 
 And so impressed was I with the learned Professor's 
 paper that I took to the country with me Dr. Furness's • 
 variorum and monumental edition of that exquisite 
 work, promising myself a great revel over the great 
 text and over the extraordinary rich mass of explanatory 
 and illustrative notes. But would you believe it ? 
 with such a temptation lying on my table all the time 
 I never once opened the seductive volume. For, as 
 God would have it, as John Bunyan was wont to say, 
 I had taken Thomas Shepard also with me, and I read 
 the Ten Virgins, and the Sound Behever, and the Sincere 
 Convert, and the Saint's Jewel, and the Select Cases, 
 and the Spiritual Experiences over and over again ; 
 execrable EngUsh and all. And instead of repenting 
 myself for my neglect of Shakespeare and his monu- 
 mental editor, I came home thanking God again for His 
 so notable and so exceptional servant Shepard. And 
 more than that, I came home more settled and resolved 
 than ever to do all I can to make you know something 
 of Shepard's matchlessly pungent lessons in spiritual and 
 experimental religion. And to reassure me I took out 
 of my desk and read again a postcard bearing the 
 Aberdeen postmark, which I received some years ago 
 and which runs thus : ' A thousand thanks for pressing 
 Thomas Shepard on our attention. After long looking 
 for it, I have at last got a copy of the Parable, and I can 
 scarcely lay it down. It is proving itself a very book of 
 life to me. This is the preaching that our day needs. — 
 A Feee Chuech Minister.' 
 
THOMAS SIIEPARD 131 
 
 I dare say you will remember that I we.s always besieg- 
 ing you to buy and to read and to read all your days, 
 as also to distribute, the Pilgrini's Progress and the 
 Grace Abounding. But you will have perfeet peace of 
 mind concerning Thomas Shepard and his works. For 
 I shall never ask any of you to spend one penny on 
 Shepard, such is his atrocious English. Bunyan and 
 Shepard are at one in the deepest things, but they stand 
 at opposite poles in the matter of their English style. 
 Shepard at his very best wrote an all but unrecognisable 
 English. But after the New England printers and then 
 the Aberdeen printers had put Shepard's best book 
 through their hands, if hands they could be called, 
 Shepard came forth absolutely unreadable, unless to a 
 few resolved and relentless and irresistible readers, 
 such as Mrs. Black of Dunnikier Manse, and Dr. Foote 
 of Brechin, and Dr. Williamson, and myself. Much as 
 I respect William Grecnhill's judgment, I cannot follow 
 him when he says of Shepard that ' here is a cornfield 
 without cockle or thorns or thistles.' I know quite 
 well what Greenhill means when he says all that, and I 
 wholly subscribe to his deep meaning. But if I were 
 to repeat his words without some warning, you might 
 be led into advertising for the old book, which you would 
 no sooner open than you would throw it down in disgust 
 and in indignation both at Shepard and at Greenhill 
 and at me. ' Polybius,' says Dr. Butcher, ' pays the 
 penalty attaching to neglect of form ; he is read by 
 few.' At the same time I will say this. As we find 
 Principal Kendall quite frankly acknowledging the 
 heavy cramped vocabulary, and the deadness of expres- 
 sion, and the formless monotony of clause that all com- 
 bine to weigh down the First Book of Marcus Aurelius : 
 while at the same time he stands up against Matthew 
 
132 THOMAS SHEPARD 
 
 Arnold when that critic says that the Emperor's style 
 lacks distinction and physiognomy, so will I stand up 
 for Shepard's distinction and for his physiognomy. The 
 truth is, while repeating and exaggerating all the stoic 
 Emperor's faults of style, Shepard's mental countenance 
 is even more unmistakable to me than is that of the 
 royal author of the immortal Thoughts. There is no 
 possibility of our ever mistaking a page or a paragraph 
 or even a sentence of Thomas Shepard's. Not only 
 because of its unparalleled shapelessness, but much 
 more because of its Paul-like hands and feet. For 
 Shepard, once he has got on your track, will follow hard 
 after you all your days. And once he gets a real hold 
 of you, as Luther said of Paul, you will never be able to 
 shake him off again. But when all is said that can be 
 said about Shepard's sluggard's-garden of a style, if 
 you will go with me into the resolved study of this great 
 Puritan I will promise you many a sweet and fragrant 
 flower out of his crannied and crumbling walls, and many 
 a medicinal herb out of his stoniest places, and many a 
 cup of wine well refined out of his most gnarled or crabbed 
 vinestocks. Just gird up your loins and come with me 
 and see if it will not be so. And as the saintly David 
 Brainerd says, ' We shall see what passed for soul-saving 
 religion with that so excellent and so venerable Pilgrim 
 Father Thomas Shepard, the author of the Sound 
 Convert, the Spiritual Experiences, and the Parable 
 Unfolded: 
 
 Take these, then, as some specimen and characteristic 
 headings, sometimes of short entries, and sometimes of 
 whole chapters, in Shepard's Spiritual Experiences : 
 ' No one who ever came under my shadow prospered.' 
 ' The more I do the worse I am.' ' My idle words in 
 my preaching, in my praise, and in my prayer.' ' The 
 
THOMAS SHEPARD 133 
 
 sins of one day I forget the next day.' ' I come to see 
 that God is having His whole Name in Exodus xxxiv. 
 fulfilled and adorned in me.' ' For His sake I am killed 
 all the day long.' ' I keep a private fast for the con- 
 quest of my pride.' ' My sins are sometimes crucified, 
 but they are never mortified.' ' I am salted with 
 suffering.' ' Fiat experimentum in corpore vili.' ' I 
 abhor myself.' ' You ask me what cured me of being 
 an infidel.' ' Some remorses of an old ministry.' 
 ' Surely I have always laid my pipe far short of the 
 Fountain,' and so on, through the whole unique book. 
 Now, I will appeal to all readers of the best literature 
 to say if they ever came upon more penetrating and 
 more pungent titles and topics than these. At any rate, 
 the immortal author of the Freedom of the Will, and the 
 True Virtue, and the Religious Affections never did ; 
 and his splendid appreciation of Thomas Shepard runs 
 accordingly. 
 
 When matters were not going well with Shepard 
 himself in his family life, in his pain and remorse he 
 would sometimes say that he thought the Pope had the 
 right way of it with his preachers and pastors. At any 
 rate, he would sometimes say, I wish I had remained a 
 celibate along with my own soul all my days. Other 
 men, he was wont to say, might not always manage 
 their family life with the most perfect success ; but a 
 minister's breakdown at home was to Shepard the 
 greatest of all domestic tragedies. He had known 
 many ministers, both in Old England and in New 
 England, whose family life was a great success in every 
 way. But not his own. As for himself, neither wife, 
 nor child, nor servant, nor visitor prospered spiritually 
 under his baleful shadow. So he enters it, again and 
 again, on occasions, in his secret journal which he kept 
 
134 THOMAS SHEPARD 
 
 alone with God. Nobody but himself thought such 
 things about Thomas Shepard. All the same, never 
 was there more sincerity or more poignancy in any 
 private journal than there was in his. Thales was so 
 fond of children that nothing would persuade him to 
 become a father. And though Thomas Shepard became 
 the father of more children than one, he both loved and 
 pitied his children so much that he would sometimes 
 wish they had never been born, at any rate to him. 
 
 Altogether, substitute Thomas Shepard, the New 
 England Puritan, for Santa Teresa, the Spanish Superior, 
 and you will have his exact case in his home life, as he 
 so often saw and felt it to be. Thomas Shepard could 
 not express himself nearly so well as Santa Teresa could ; 
 but in substance and in essence they both said exactly 
 the same thing. ' My children,' said the saint on her 
 death-bed, ' you must pardon me much. You must 
 pardon me most of all the bad example I have given 
 you. Do not imitate me. Do not live as I have lived. 
 I have been the greatest sinner in all Spain. I have not 
 kept the laws that I laid down for other people. But, 
 then, is not this written in David expressly for me, 
 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit ; a broken and 
 contrite heart God will not despise ? ' Thomas Shepard 
 and Teresa of Jesus would not have spoken to one 
 another on earth. But they are now praising God 
 together in glory ; and for their family shame they are 
 now having the double, as they sing together before 
 the throne, and say : By Thy great grace to us, O God, 
 here are we ourselves, and all the children that Thou 
 didst give us. 
 
 When Dr. Chalmers was out at Skirling on one occa- 
 sion he went to the village school and gave the children 
 an elementary lesson in optical science. Taking the 
 
THOMAS SHEPARD 185 
 
 blackboard and a piece of chalk he drew a long diameter 
 on the board, and then he ran a large circumference 
 around the diameter. And then turning to the wonder- 
 ing children he said to them in his own imaginative and 
 eloquent way, ' You must all see that the longer the 
 diameter of light the larger is the surrounding circum- 
 ference of darkness. And in like manner the shorter 
 the diameter of light the smaller is the circumference 
 of the surrounding darkness.' Now, all we have to do 
 in order to explain and illustrate one of Thomas 
 Shepard's most startling self-accusations is to carry 
 over Dr. Chalmers's mathematical and optical black- 
 board into the region of moral and spiritual things. 
 ' The more I do,' says Shepard oftener than once, ' the 
 worse I am.' That is to say, the longer the diameter 
 of Shepard's duty done the larger is the circumference of 
 duty he has still to do. And the holier and holier his 
 heart and life become the more sinful the remaining 
 corruption of his heart and life becomes to him, till he 
 is constrained to cry out with the holiest of men, O 
 wretched man that I am ! 
 
 And then, carrying up all his own experience of the 
 spiritual life therewith to deepen and strengthen and 
 enrich his pulpit work, the great preacher would say : 
 ' There is no difference. I am as you are, and you are 
 as I am. Just try the thing yourselves. Just begin to 
 love God mth all your heart, and you will soon see that 
 the more you try to do that the less will you feel satisfied 
 that you succeed. And, in like manner, when you 
 begin to love your neighbour as yourself you will begin 
 to get a lesson with a vengeance in the spiritual life. 
 Just try to rejoice in all your neighbour's well-being as 
 much as you rejoice in your own. Just try to relish and 
 enjoy all other men's praises of your neighbour as you 
 
136 THOMAS SHEPARD 
 
 relish and enjoy all other men's praises of yourself. 
 Just try to take delight in all your neighbour's rewards, 
 promotions, prosperities as you take delight in your 
 own. And go on trying to do that toward all men 
 around you, friend and foe, and you will get a lesson in 
 the infinite and exquisite holiness and spirituality of 
 God's law of love, and at the same time a lesson in the 
 abominable and unspeakable corruptions of your own 
 heart that will make you wiser in all these matters than 
 all your teachers.' In such homecoming homiletic as 
 that Shepard made pulpit and pastoral application of 
 his own experiences in the spiritual life. Till he became 
 a foremost master in all these holy matters, and till men 
 like Edwards and Brainerd sat as his scholars at his 
 feet in New England, and till his name became a tower 
 of truth and power in the old England from which he 
 had been exiled. 
 
WILLIAM GUTHRIE 
 
 William Guthrie was a great humourist, a great sports- 
 man, a great preacher, and a great writer. The true 
 Guthrie blood has always had a drop of humour in it, and 
 the first minister of Fen wick was a genuine Guthrie in this 
 respect. The finest humour springs up out of a wide and 
 a deep heart, and it always has its roots watered at a 
 well-head of tears. ' William Guthrie was a great melan- 
 cholian,' says Wodrow, and as we read that we are re- 
 minded of some other great melancholians, such as Jacob 
 Behmen and Blaise Pascal and Joseph Butler and John 
 Foster and William Cowper and Samuel Johnson. William 
 Guthrie knew, by his temperament, and by his knowledge 
 of himself and of other men, that he was a great melan- 
 cholian, and he studied how to divert himself sometimes 
 in order that he might not be altogether drowned with 
 his melancholy. And thus, maugre his melancholy, and 
 indeed by reason of it, William Guthrie was a great 
 humourist. He was the fife of the party on the moors, 
 in the manse, and in the General Assembly. But the 
 life of the party when he was present was always pure 
 and noble and pious, even if it was sometimes some- 
 what hilarious and boisterous. ' If a man's melancholy 
 temperament is sanctified,' says Rutherford in his Coven- 
 ant of Grace, ' it becomes to him a seat of sound mortifi- 
 cation and of humble walking.' And that was the happy 
 result of all William Guthrie's melancholy ; it was 
 
 1S7 
 
138 WILLIAM GUTHRIE 
 
 always alleviated and relieved by great outbursts of good 
 humour ; but both his melancholy and his hilarity always 
 ended in a humbler walk. Samuel Rutherford confides 
 in a letter to his old friend, Alexander Gordon, that he 
 knows a man who sometimes wonders to see any one laugh 
 or sport in this so sinful and sad life. But that was 
 because he had embittered the springs of laughter in him- 
 self by the wormwood sins of his youth. William Guthrie 
 had no such remorseful memories continually taking him 
 by the throat as his divinity professor had, and thus 
 it was that with all his melancholy he was known as the 
 greatest humourist and the greatest sportsman in the 
 Scottish Kirk of his day. No doubt he sometimes felt 
 and confessed that his love of fun and frolic was a temp- 
 tation that he had to watch well against. In his Saving 
 Interest he speaks of some sins that are wrought up into 
 a man's natural humour and constitution, and are thus 
 as a right hand and a right eye to him. ' My merriment ! ' 
 he confessed to one who had rebuked him for it, ' I know 
 all you would say, and my merriment costs me many a 
 salt tear in secret.' At the same time this was often 
 remarked with wonder in Guthrie, that however boister- 
 ous his fun was, in one moment he could turn from it 
 to the most serious things. ' It was often observed,' says 
 Wodrow, ' that, let Mr. Guthrie be never so merry, he 
 was presently in a frame for the most spiritual duty, and 
 the only account I can give of it,' says wise Wodrow, ' is, 
 that he acted from sj)iritual principles in all he did, and 
 even in his relaxations.' Poor Guthrie had a terrible 
 malady that preyed on his most vital part continually — 
 a malady that at last carried him off in the mid-time of 
 his days, and, like Solomon in the proverb, he took to a 
 merry heart as an alleviating medicine. 
 
 Like our own Thomas Guthrie, William Guthrie was a 
 
WILLIAM GUTHRIE 139 
 
 great angler. He could gaff out a salmon in as few 
 minutes as the deftest-handed gamekeeper in all the 
 country, and he could stalk down a deer in as few hours 
 as my lord himself who did nothing else. When he was 
 composing his Saving Interest, he heard somehow of a 
 poor countryman near Haddington who had come through 
 some extraordinaiy experiences in his spiritual life, and 
 he set out from Fenwick all the way to Haddington to 
 see and converse with the much-experienced man. All 
 that night and all the next day Guthrie could not tear 
 himself away from the conversation of the man and his 
 wife. But at last, looking up and down the country, his 
 angling eye caught sight of a trout-stream, and, as if he 
 had in a moment forgotten all about his book at home 
 and all that this saintly man had contributed to it, 
 Guthrie asked him if he had a fishing-rod, and if he would 
 give him a loan of it. The old man felt that his poor 
 rough tackle was to be absolutely glorified by such a 
 minister as Guthrie condescending to touch it, but his 
 good wife did not like this come-down at the end of such 
 a visit as his had been, and she said so. She was a clever 
 old woman, and I am not sure but she had the best of 
 it in the debate that followed about ministers fishing, 
 and about their facetious conversations. The Hadding- 
 ton stream, and the dispute that rose out of it, recall to 
 my mind a not unlike incident that took place on the 
 street of Ephcsus, in the far East, just about 1800 years 
 ago. John, the venerable Apostle, had just finished the 
 fourteenth chapter of his great Gospel, and felt himself 
 unable to recollect and write out any more that night. 
 And coming out into the setting sun he began to amuse 
 himself with a tame partridge that the Bactrian convert 
 had caught and made a present of to his old master. The 
 partridge had been waiting till the pen and the parch- 
 
140 WILLIAM GUTHRIE 
 
 merit were put by, and now it was on John's hand, and 
 now on his shoulder, and now circHng round his sportful 
 head, till you would have thought that its owner was the 
 idlest and foolishest old man in all Ephesus. A hunts- 
 man, who greatly respected his old pastor, was passing 
 home from the hills and was sore distressed to see such a 
 saint as John was trifling away his short time with a 
 stupid bird. And he could not keep from stopping his 
 horse and saying so to the old Evangelist. ' What is 
 that you carry in your hand ? ' asked John at the hunts- 
 man with great meekness. ' It is my bow with which 
 I shoot wild game up in the mountains,' replied the hunts- 
 man. ' And why do you let it hang so loose ? You 
 cannot surely shoot anything with your bow in that 
 condition ! ' ' No,' answered the amused huntsman, 
 ' but if I always kept my bow strung it would not rebound 
 and send home my arrow when I needed it. I unstring 
 my bow on the street that I may the better shoot with it 
 when I am up among my quarry.' ' Good,' said the 
 Evangelist, ' and I have learned a lesson from you hunts- 
 men. For I am playing with my partridge to-night 
 that I may the better finish my Gospel to-morrow. I am 
 putting everything out of my mind to-night that I may 
 to-morrow the better recollect and set dovm a prayer I 
 heard offered up by my Master, now more than fifty 
 years ago.' We readers of the Fourth Gospel do not 
 know how much we owe to the Bactrian boy's tame 
 partridge, and neither did John Owen nor Thomas 
 Chalmers know how much they owed to the fishing-rods 
 and the curling-stones, the fowling-pieces and the violins 
 that crowded the corners of the manse of Fenwick. I 
 do not know that William Guthrie made a clean breast 
 to the Presbytery of all the reasons that moved him to 
 refuse so many calls to a city charge, though I think I 
 
WILLIAM GUTHRIE 141 
 
 see that David Dickson, the Moderator, divined some of 
 them by the joke he made about the moors and streams 
 of Fenwick to one of the defeated and departing depu- 
 tations. 
 
 Wilham Guthrie, the eldest son and sole heir of the laird 
 of Pitforthy, might have had fishing and shooting to his 
 heart's content on his own lands of Pitforthy and Easter 
 Ogle had he not determined, when under Rutherford at 
 St. Andrews, to give himself up wholly to his preaching. 
 But, to put himself out of the temptation that hills and 
 streams and lochs and houses and lands would have 
 been to a man of his tastes and temperament, soon after 
 his conversion William made over to a younger brother 
 all his possessions and all his responsibilities connected 
 therewith, in order that he might give himself up wholly 
 to his preaching. And his reward was that he soon 
 became, by universal consent, the greatest practical 
 preacher in broad Scotland. He could not touch Ruther- 
 ford, his old professor, at pure theology ; he had neither 
 Rutherford's learning, nor his ecstatic eloquence, nor 
 his surpassing love of Jesus Christ, but for handling broken 
 bones and guiding an anxious inquirer no one could hold 
 the candle to William Guthrie. As Goodwin says, 
 Guthrie had ' a lady's hand.' Descriptions of his preach- 
 ing abound in the old books : A Glasgow merchant was 
 compelled to spend a Sabbath in Arran, and though he 
 did not understand Gaelic, he felt he must go to the place 
 of public worship. Great was his delight when he saw 
 William Guthrie come into the pulpit. And he tells us 
 that though he had heard in his day many famous 
 preachers, he had never seen under any preacher so much 
 concern of soul as he saw that day in Arran, under the 
 minister of Fenwick. There was scarcely a diy eye in 
 the whole church. A gentleman who was well known as 
 
1-12 WILLIAM GUTHRIE 
 
 a most dissolute liver was in the church that day, and 
 could not command himself, so deeply was he moved 
 under Guthrie's sermon. That day was remembered 
 long afterwards when that prodigal son had become an 
 eminent Christian man. We see at one time a servant 
 girl coming home from Guthrie's church saying that she 
 cannot contain all that she has heard to-day, and that she 
 feels as if she would need to hear no more on this side 
 heaven. Another day Wodrow's old mother has been at 
 Fenwick, and comes home saying that the first prayer 
 was more than enough for all her trouble without any 
 sermon at all. ' He had a taking and a soaring gift of 
 preaching,' but it was its intensely practical character 
 that made Guthrie's pulpit so powerful and so popular. 
 The very fact that he could go all the way in those days 
 from Fenwick to Haddington, just to have a case of real 
 soul-exercise described to him by the exercised man him- 
 self, speaks volumes as to the secret of Guthrie's power in 
 the pulpit. His people felt that their minister knew them ; 
 he knew himself, and therefore he knew them. He did 
 not pronounce windy orations about tilings that did not 
 concern or edify them. He was not learned in the pulpit, 
 nor eloquent, or, if he was — and he was both — all his 
 talents, and all his scholarship, and all his eloquence were 
 forgotten in the intensely practical turn that his preaching 
 immediately took. All the broken hearts in the west 
 country, all those whose sins had found them out, all 
 those who had learned to know the plague of their own 
 heart, and who were passing under a searching sanctifi- 
 cation — all such found their way from time to time from 
 great distances to the Kirk of Fenwick. From Glasgow 
 they came, and from Paisley, and from Hamilton, and 
 from Lanark, and from Kilbride, and from many other 
 still more distant places. The lobbies of Fenwick Kirk 
 
WILLIAM GUTHRIE 143 
 
 were like the porches of Bethesda with all the bhnd, halt, 
 and withered from the whole country round about. After 
 Hutcheson of the Minor Prophets had assisted at the com- 
 munion of Fenwick on one occasion, he said that if there 
 was a church full of God's saints on the face of the earth, 
 it was at Fenwick communion-table. Pitforthy and Glen 
 Ogle, and all the estates in Angus, were but dust in the 
 balance compared with one Sabbath-day's exercise of 
 such a preaching gift as that of William Guthrie. ' There 
 is no man that hath forsaken houses and lands for My 
 sake and the Gospel's, but shall receive an hundredfold 
 now in this life, and in the world to come life everlasting.' 
 But further, besides being a great humourist and a 
 great sportsman and a great preacher, William Guthrie 
 was a great writer. Our greatest writers have all written 
 little books. Job is a small book, so is the Psalms, so is 
 Isaiah, so is the Gospel of John, so is the Epistle to the 
 Romans, so is the Confessions, so is the Comedy, so is the 
 Imitation, so are the Pilgrim and the Ch'ace Abounding ; 
 and, though William Guthrie's small book is not for a 
 moment to be ranked with such masterpieces as these, 
 yet it is a small book on a great subject, and a book to 
 which I cannot find a second among the big religious books 
 of our day. You will all find out your own favourite 
 books according to your own talents and tastes. My 
 calling a book great is nothing to you. But it may at 
 least interest you for the passing moment to be told what 
 two men like John Owen in the seventeenth century, and 
 Thomas Chalmers in the nineteenth, said about William 
 Guthrie's one little book. Said John Owen, drawing a 
 little gilt copy of The Great Interest out of his pocket : 
 ' That author I take to be one of the greatest divines that 
 ever wrote. His book is my vade mecum. I carry it 
 always with me, I have written several folios, but there 
 
144 WILLIAM GUTHRIE 
 
 is more divinity in this little book than in them all.' 
 Believe John Owen. Bcheve all that he says about 
 Guthrie's Saving Interest ; but do not believe what he 
 says about his own mahgned foMos till you have read 
 twenty times over his Person and Glory of Christ, his 
 Holy Spirit, his Spiritual-mindedness, and his Mortifica- 
 tion, Dominion, and Indwelling of Sin. Then hear Dr. 
 Chalmers : ' I am on the eve of finishing Guthrie, which 
 I tliink is the best book I ever read.' After you have 
 read it, if you ever do, the likelihood is that you will feel 
 as if somehow you had not read the right book when you 
 remember what Owen and Chalmers have said about it. 
 Yes, you have read the right enough book ; but the right 
 book has not yet got in you the right reader. There are 
 not many readers abroad like Dr. John Owen and Dr. 
 Thomas Chalmers. 
 
 In its style William Guthrie's one little book is clear, 
 spare, crisp, and curt. Indeed, in some places it is almost 
 too spare and too curt in its bald simplicity. True 
 students will not be deterred from it when I say that it 
 is scientifically and experimentally exact in its treatment 
 of the things of the soul. They will best understand and 
 appreciate this statement of Guthrie's biographer that 
 ' when he was working at his Saving Interest he en- 
 deavoured to inform himself of all the Christians in the 
 country who had been under great depths of exercise, or 
 were still under such depths, and endeavoured to con- 
 verse with them.' Guthrie is almost as dry as Euclid 
 himself, and almost as severe ; but, then, he demon- 
 strates almost with geometrical demonstration the all- 
 important things he sets out to prove. There is no room 
 for rhetoric on a finger-post ; in a word, and, sometimes 
 without a word, a finger-post tells you the right way to 
 take to get to your journey's end. And many who have 
 
WILLIAM GUTHRIE 145 
 
 wandered into a far country have found their way home 
 again under William Guthrie's exact marks and curt 
 directions. You open the Httle book, and there is a 
 sentence of the plainest, directest, and least entertaining 
 or attractive prose, followed up with a text of Scripture 
 to prove the plain and indisputable prose. Then there 
 is another sentence of the same prose, supported by two 
 texts, and thus the little treatise goes on till, if you are 
 happy enough to be interested in the author's subject- 
 matter, the eternal interests of your own soul, a strong, 
 strange fascination begins to come off the little book and 
 into your understanding, imagination, and heart, till 
 you look up again what Dr. Owen and Dr. Chalmers said 
 about your favourite author, and feel fortified in your 
 valuation of, and in your affection for, William Guthrie 
 and his golden little book. 
 
JAMES FRASER 
 
 The religious literature of Scotland is remarkably rich 
 in books of religious autobiography. Telling us each one 
 his own spiritual story we have James Melville, and 
 Robert Blair, and John Livingstone, and Alexander 
 Brodie, and James Fraser, and Thomas Halyburton, 
 and Thomas Boston, and Hugh Miller, and John Duncan, 
 and William Taylor, and Andrew Bonar. And there 
 are not a few fragments of the same kind quite worthy 
 to stand beside those full and finished works ; such as 
 the autobiographical remains of the Lady Coltness, the 
 Lady Anne Elcho, and Marion Veitch. Every one of 
 those famous autobiographies has its own individuality, 
 idiosyncrasy, and physiognomy ; and each several one 
 of them makes its own special contribution to the noblest 
 catalogue of the books of our native land. I know 
 something of all those great books ; but there is none of 
 them that draws me and holds me and keeps possession 
 of me like the Meinoirs of Sir James Fraser of Brea, 
 written by Himself. Dr. Jowett, writing to Lady Airhe, 
 said that he had just finished Bos well for the fiftieth 
 time, and Mr. Spurgeon was wont to say that he had 
 read Bunyan a hundred times. I shall not attempt to 
 count up the times I have read James Fraser of Brea, 
 but if I did I feel sure that I would run both Jowett and 
 Spurgeon hard. 
 
 Dr. Aird of Creich has collected the chief facts of 
 
 w 
 
148 JAMES FRASER 
 
 Fraser's life into a short biographical sketch which will 
 be found prefixed to the Inverness edition of Fraser's 
 autobiography. And Dr. Elder Gumming of Glasgow 
 has an admirable appreciation of Eraser in his Holy 
 Men of God. The following arc the main outlines of 
 Fraser's much-tried life. He was born at Brea, his 
 father's estate in Ross-shire, on the 29th of July 1639. 
 His father died while his son James was still a child, and 
 some of his greatest troubles in life came to him out of his 
 ownership of that estate. Although he began to study 
 for the legal profession, young Eraser eventually gave 
 himself up to the study of divinity, to which study he 
 brought a mind of the first intellectual order. From 
 his earliest days the Laird of Brea identified himself 
 with the outed evangelical ministers of the north, and all 
 along he was a most pronounced Presbyterian and 
 Covenanter, and both by his tongue and by his pen he 
 fought unflinchingly for the freedom of his Church and 
 his country. Both in the Bass and in Blackness and in 
 Newgate he suffered the most unjust imprisonment, 
 and the wickedest and the most malicious ill-usage. 
 After the Revolution we find Eraser settled as parish 
 minister of Culross, where he closed his troubled career 
 about the year 1698. Dr. Aird adds this note to his 
 short sketch of Fraser's life : ' He was assisted at a 
 communion at Culross, very shortly before his death, 
 by the celebrated Boston of Ettrick, then a j^oung man.' 
 But with all that it is in his Memoirs of Himself that 
 James Eraser of Brea will live, and he will live in that 
 remarkable book as long as a scholarly religion, and an 
 evangelical religion, and a spiritual religion, and a pro- 
 foundly experimental religion lives in his native land. 
 In saying that I do not forget the warning that Dr. 
 Elder Gumming gives mc to the effect that Fraser's will 
 
JAMES FRASER 149 
 
 be a Scottish reputation only, and even that will be 
 limited to readers of a special cast of religious experience 
 and spiritual sympathy. At the same time, Dr. Elder 
 Gumming adds that Eraser's autobiography is a book that 
 for depth and for grip has few, if any, equals among the 
 foremost books of its kind in the whole world. 
 
 Now you will naturally ask me at this point just what 
 it is that gives James Eraser such a high rank as a 
 spiritual writer, and just what it is that so signalises his 
 Memoirs of Himself. Well, in his own characteristic 
 words his Memoirs is ' the book of the intricacies of his 
 own heart and life,' and that on their purely spiritual 
 side. Now, Eraser's mind was by nature of the most 
 intricate kind — that is to say, his mind was naturally 
 of the most acute and subtle and penetrating and 
 searching-out kind. Had he gone into law, as at one 
 time he intended to do, he would infallibly have taken 
 rank as one of the acutest of our Scottish lawyers. And 
 with his immense industry he would to a certainty have 
 left writings behind him that would have been of classical 
 authority in that great profession. But to the lasting 
 enrichment of his own soul, and to the lasting enrichment 
 of all his kindred-minded readers' souls. Eraser was led 
 of God into divinity, and into divinity of the deepest, 
 acutest, most evangelical, and most experimental kind. 
 ' I chose divinity,' says Butler, ' it being of all studies 
 the most suitable to a reasonable nature.' 
 
 Unhappily for us, many of Eraser's private journals, 
 family papers, and estate documents are hopelessly lost. 
 But if ever they are recovered I feel sure it will be 
 found that he had made out more than once a most 
 exact map and inventory of his inherited estate with his 
 own exact and intricate hands. I can see the delinea- 
 ments and the depictments of the whole estate of Brea 
 
150 JAMES FRASER 
 
 as they were laid down by the honestest, and the exactest, 
 and the intricatest of pens. I can see its hills and its 
 glens, its farms and its crofts, its streams and its 
 lochs, its cattle and its game and its fish, and all laid 
 down with a mathematical exactness and a geometrical 
 completeness as if he were preparing his estate for the 
 Inverness or Edinburgh market ; and as if he were deter- 
 mined to do so with the most absolute justice both to 
 the seller and the buyer. Now whether those maps and 
 plans and accompanying documents are ever recovered 
 or no, most happily we have some still more important 
 documents preserved to us from Eraser's faithful and 
 careful hands. I refer to the delineations he made 
 of the inward estate of his own soul : a delineation and 
 an inventory that has been preserved to us to this day, 
 I will say, under the special and adorable providence of 
 Eraser's God and our God. And it is an analysis and a 
 delineation and a depictment of such a kind that I know 
 nothing to approach it in any language that I read. 
 And I thank God every day that so intricate and so 
 spiritual a book is not in Hebrew or Greek or Latin, but 
 is in my own Scottish tongue wherein I was born. Eraser 
 describes his spiritual autobiography as ' The Book of the 
 Intricacies of his own Heart and Life.' And so it is. 
 It is a book of such intricacy and sinuosity and com- 
 plication and reticulation and involution, that in all my 
 experience of such books it stands simply unparalleled 
 and unapproached. No labyrinth ever constructed by 
 the brain of man comes near the heart of Brea. Not 
 even that wonder of the world the labyrinth of Egypt 
 with its three thousand secret chambers. Not even the 
 Cretan labyrinth of Daedalus with its blood-thirsty 
 monster at its centre, and with only a thin linen thread 
 to lead you out through its endless tortuosities to the 
 
JAMES FRASER 151 
 
 open air. AH that is but a faint and feeble description 
 of the always spiritually intricate book that Eraser of 
 Brea has bequeathed to his fellow-countrymen and his 
 fellow-churchmen. To as many of them, that is, as have 
 an intricate life of their own, and a labyrinthine heart 
 of their own. And among the thousands of his Christian 
 fellow-countrymen in our day, there must surely be 
 some men still left with something of the intellectual 
 strength, and the spiritual inwardness, and the experi- 
 mental concentration, and the holy fear and the close 
 walk with God, of the Laird of Brea. Some men who 
 will feel that they are not such absolute monsters among 
 men, and so much alone in Scotland, as they always 
 thought they were till they were told about James 
 Eraser, the Laird of Brea. Well may Dr. Elder Gumming 
 say that Brea's is a book to be read by all men with 
 wonder and with awe ; and, I will add, to be read by 
 some men with an ever-increasing thankfulness and an 
 ever-increasing hopefulness. Yes, well might liis old 
 publisher in first venturing Brea's autobiography out 
 on the market go on to say : ' There is perhaps no other 
 Performance giving a more distinct Account of a super- 
 natural Work of Grace. And it is thought not to be 
 unseasonable at this juncture for reviving Piety and the 
 Exercise of Grace, and convicting those who make a jest 
 of these serious Matters.' 
 
 Now in summing up all I have already said about 
 Eraser and his autobiography, I will say a single word 
 here about the immense importance of intellect in our 
 evangelical preachers and experimental writers. And 
 instead of any weak words of my own on that matter, 
 take these so fresh and so pointed words of Santa Teresa : 
 ' I always had a great respect and affection for intellectual 
 and learned men,' she says. ' It is my experience that 
 
152 JAMES FRASER 
 
 all who intend to be true Christians will do well to treat 
 with men of mind when they are being deeply exercised 
 about their souls. The more intellect and the more 
 learning our preachers and pastors have, the better. 
 The devil is exceedingly afraid of learning, especially 
 when it is accompanied with great humility and great 
 virtue. Let no one be taken into this religious house 
 of ours unless she is a w^oman of a sound understanding. 
 For if she is without mind, she will neither know herself 
 nor will she understand her best teachers. And ignor- 
 ance and self-conceit is a disease that is simply incurable. 
 And, besides, it usually carries great malice and great 
 malignity along with it. Commend me to people with 
 good heads. From all silly devotees may God deliver 
 me ! ' Had Santa Teresa lived in Scotland in the seven- 
 teenth century she would to a certainty have taken a 
 house at Culross in order to sit under Fraser's ministry. 
 Nay, she would to a certainty have taken service as a 
 scullery-maid on the Bass Rock just to be under the same 
 roof with a man of such learning and such intellect in his 
 religion ; and a man, at the same time, of such a broken 
 heart in his daily devotions. 
 
 And, then, one of the best of intellects of that intel- 
 lectual day is here to be seen employed, exclusively and 
 unceasingly, upon what its owner conceived to be the 
 best, the noblest, and the most commanding of all 
 occupations — the salvation of Ms own soul ; and in and 
 after that the same salvation of other men's souls. Let 
 a man constantly examine himself on that supreme 
 matter, says the Apostle. Well, James Eraser has only 
 one fault in that respect : he takes the Apostle much 
 too seriously and much too literally, for he is always and 
 in everything examining himself. Whether Paul would 
 have praised Eraser or blamed him for that incessant 
 
JAMES FRASER 153 
 
 introspection of his, you have your opinion, and I have 
 mine. Watch and pray, says our Lord also. Well, 
 did any of the twelve do that like the Laird of Brea ? 
 No, I am quite sure that none of them did — not, at 
 any rate, to begin with. ' My people do not consider,' 
 complained the God of covenanted Israel. Now, our 
 complaint here again with Eraser is this, that he con- 
 sidered too much, and that he would do nothing else all 
 his days but consider inwardly and then act outwardly. 
 Eraser believed with all his deep mind and with all his 
 renewed heart that there was but one thing absolutely 
 and supremely necessary as between him and his God ; 
 and he wrote his book and lived his life accordingly. 
 In season and out of season Eraser of Brea pursued that 
 one thing with an intricacy, and with a tenacity, and 
 with a perspicuity unparalleled in all my reading or 
 hearing of such men and such matters. 
 
 And then I have this also for my defence and apology 
 in taking up such an out-of-date man — Eraser of Brea 
 is one of ourselves. He is one of our own covenanted 
 household of faith. He is one of our own cloud of 
 witnesses. ' PeoiDle are variously constituted,' says Dr. 
 Newman in an exquisite essay. ' What influences one 
 man does not in the same way or to the same extent 
 influence another man. What I delight to trace,' he 
 says, ' and to study, is the interior life of God's great 
 saints. And when a great saint himself speaks to me 
 about himself, that is what I Hke best, and that is what 
 is done by those early luminaries of the Christian Church, 
 Athanasius, and Hilary, and Ambrose, and Theodoret. 
 This is why I exult in the folios of the Eathers. I am 
 not obliged to read the whole of them. I read what I 
 can, and am content.' And if I may be bold enough to 
 borrow that from Newman, I shall be loyal enough to 
 
154 JAMES FllASER 
 
 apply that to myself and to say that that is the very 
 same reason why I so exult in Bunyan, and in Baxter, 
 and in Goodwin, and in Brea, and in Halyburton, and 
 in Boston, and in Chalmers : a body of men who, as 
 Coleridge has it, are, for the matter in hand, worth a 
 whole brigade of the Fathers. At the same time, I do 
 not forget that people are very variously constituted. 
 What influences one does not in the same way influence 
 another. Nor am I obliged to read the whole of our 
 evangelical and experimental and Puritan Fathers. I 
 read what I can, and am content ; or rather, I for one 
 exult — and then, as a wise old writer has it, ' the judicious 
 are fond of originals.' And then, as to the reward that 
 we may confidently look for from our study of Eraser's 
 autobiography. In his dedication to Thomas Ross of 
 Tain, our author says : ' I have in nothing been more 
 refreshed, quickened, and edified than by hearing and 
 reading of the experiences of others of God's people, and 
 in nothing more comforted and sanctified than by a 
 serious recalling to mind of the Lord's intricate dealings 
 with myself.' And far on in the body of the book he 
 returns to that subject, and says : ' The calling to mind 
 and seriously meditating on the Lord's secret dealings with 
 myself as to soul and body ; my recalling of His manifold 
 and intimate mercies to me has done me very much good ; 
 has cleared my case ; has confirmed my soul concerning 
 God's love to me, and of my interest in Him ; and has 
 made me love Him more and more. O what good hath 
 the writing of this book of my Memoirs done me ! What 
 wells of water have mine eyes been opened to see that 
 before were hid from me ! Scarce anything hath done 
 me more good than the writing of this book ! ' And I 
 will say that scarce anything hath done the writer of 
 this Appreciation more good than the reading of such 
 
JAMES FRASER 155 
 
 chapters in this book as these : i., iv., vi., xiii., xvi., 
 xviii., XX., xxiv., and three times as many and all as 
 good. Till this line about a great man in a very- 
 different dispensation comes to my mind — ' Probed many 
 hearts, beginning with his own.' 
 
THOMAS GOODWINi 
 
 Gentlemen, I have long looked for a suitable oi^portunity 
 of acknowledging an old debt of mine to a favourite 
 author of mine. But when I proceed to pay a little of 
 that old debt to-day I am not to be supposed to put any 
 of you into that same author's debt. All I wish to do 
 to-day is for once to make full and heartfelt acknow- 
 ledgment of my own deep debt to that author, and then 
 to urge you all to get into some such relation of indebted- 
 ness to some great authors of past days or of the present 
 day. 
 
 It was in my third year at the University that I first 
 became acquainted with Thomas Goodwin. On opening 
 the Witness newspaper one propitious morning my eye 
 fell on the announcement of a new edition of Thomas 
 Goodwin's works. I entered my name at once as a 
 subscriber to the series, and not long after the first 
 volume of Goodwin's Works came into my hands. And I 
 will here say with simple truth that his Works have 
 never been out of my hands down to this day. In those 
 far-off years I read my Goodwin every Sabbath morning 
 and every Sabbath night. Goodwin was my every 
 Sabbath day meat and my every Sabbath day drink. 
 And during my succeeding years as a student, and as a 
 young minister, I carried about a volume of Goodwin 
 with me wherever I went. I read him in railway carriages 
 1 Originally an Adilro.^s lo New College Students. 
 
158 THOMAS GOODWIN 
 
 and on steamboats. I read him at home and abroad. 
 I read him on my hoHdays among tlie Scottish Grampians 
 and among the Swiss Alps. I carried his volumes about 
 with me till they fell out of their original cloth binding, 
 and till I got my bookbinder to put them into his best 
 morocco. I have read no other author so much and so 
 often. And I continue to read him to this day, as if I 
 had never read him before. Now, if I were to say such 
 things as these about some of the Greek or Latin or 
 Enghsh classics, you would receive it as a matter of 
 course. But why should I not say the simple truth 
 about the greatest pulpit master of Pauline exegesis and 
 homiletic that has ever lived, and who has been far more 
 to me than all those recognised classics taken together ? 
 
 It was a great time, gentlemen, when I was attending 
 the University and New College. The works of Dickens 
 and Thackeray were then appearing in monthly parts. 
 The Bronte family were at their best. George Eliot 
 was writing in Blackwood. Carlyle was at the height 
 of his influence and renown. Ruskin, Macaulay, Tenny- 
 son, and Browning were in everybody's hands. And I 
 read them all as I had time and opportunity. But I 
 read none of them all as I read Goodwn. He is not to 
 be named beside them as literature. No. But then 
 they are not to be named beside him as religion. Masters 
 in their own departments as they all are, yet none of 
 them laid out their genius upon Paul, nor upon Paul's 
 supreme subject — Jesus Christ and His salvation. And, 
 therefore, though I read them all and enjoyed them all 
 in their measure, yet, as Augustine says about some of 
 the best classics of Greece and Rome, since the Name 
 of Jesus Christ was not to be found in them, none of 
 them all took such complete possession of me as did 
 Thomas Goodwin, the great Pauline exegete. 
 
THOMAS GOODWIN 159 
 
 I frankly confess to you that I sometimes say to 
 myself that I must surely be all wrong in my estimate 
 of Goodwin's worth, else some one besides myself would 
 sometimes be found to mention his name with some 
 honour. But when I am led to open Goodwin again 
 all my old love for him returns to me, and all my old 
 indebtedness and devotion to him, till I give myself up 
 again to his incomparable power and incomparable 
 sweetness as an expounder of Paul and as a preacher of 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 Thomas Goodwin was born October the 5th, 1600, 
 at Rollesby, a Httle village in Norfolk. He was brought 
 up with great care by his Puritan parents, who had from 
 his birth devoted him to the Christian ministry. He 
 was educated at Cambridge, where he attained to great 
 proficiency in Hebrew and Greek and Latin, and he 
 kept up his reading in those three languages to the 
 end of his life, and to the lasting enriching and adorning 
 of his pulpit work. ' By an unwearied industry in his 
 studies,' says one of his biographers, ' Goodwin so much 
 improved those natural abilities that God had given 
 him, that, though so very young, he gained for himself 
 a great esteem at the University. But all the time,' 
 adds his biographer, ' he walked in the vanity of his 
 mind, and ambitious hopes and selfish designs entirely 
 possessing him, all his aim was to get applause, and to 
 raise his reputation, and in any manner to advance 
 himself by preferment. But,' adds his biographer, 
 ' God, who had designed Goodwin to higher ends than 
 those he projected in his own thoughts, was graciously 
 pleased to change his heart and to turn the course of 
 his life to the divine service and to the divine glory.' 
 
 After his conversion, Goodwin attached himself openly 
 and boldly to the Puritan party in the University, and 
 
160 THOMAS GOODWIN 
 
 he remained one of the great pillars of that party as long 
 as he lived. He was wont to say that it was his deep 
 reading of his own heart, taken along with his deep 
 reading of his New Testament, that made him and kept 
 him an evangelical Puritan through all the intellectual 
 and ecclesiastical vicissitudes of liis after life. Owing 
 to Archbishop Laud's persecution of the evangelical 
 party in the English Church, Goodwin was compelled 
 to resign all his ecclesiastical appointments, and to take 
 refuge in Holland. By this time his scriptural and 
 historical studies had made him a convinced Independent, 
 both in politics and in Church government. And he 
 was looked on and spoken of as the ' Atlas of Independ- 
 ency ' all through the coming years of such debate and 
 controversy in connection with Church constitution and 
 Church government. After Laud fell Goodwin was able 
 to return to England. He settled in London, where his 
 unparalleled power in the pulpit soon gathered a large 
 and influential congregation around him. His epitaph 
 in Bunhill Fields excellently sums up his services and 
 his character : ' Here lies the Body of Thomas 
 Goodwin, D.D. He had a large acquaintance with 
 ancient, and, above all, with Ecclesiastical Histor3^ 
 He was exceeded by no one in the knowledge of the 
 Holy Scriptures. He was at once blessed with a rich 
 invention and a solid and exact judgment. He care- 
 fully compared together the different parts of Holy Writ, 
 and with a marvellous felicity discovered the latent 
 sense of the divine Spirit who indited them. None 
 ever entered deeper into the mysteries of the Gospel, 
 or more clearly unfolded them for the benefit of others. 
 ... In knowledge, wisdom, and eloquence he was a 
 truly Christian pastor. . . . Till having finished his 
 appointed course, both of services and of sufferings, 
 
THOMAS GOODWIN 161 
 
 in the cause of his divine Master, he gently fell asleep in 
 Jesus. His writings that he has left behind him will 
 diffuse his name in a more fragrant odour than that of 
 the richest perfume. His name will flourish in far 
 distant ages, when this marble, inscribed with his just 
 honour, shall have dropt into dust. He died February 
 23rd, 1679, in the eightieth year of his age.' 
 
 Goodwin's works in their original editions occupied 
 five massive folio volumes. ' And,' says Andrew Bonar, 
 in one of his learned notes to Rutherford's Letters, 
 ' they are five invaluable volumes.' In the Edinburgh 
 edition the whole works fill twelve closely printed 
 octavo volumes. The first volume of the Edinburgh 
 reprint is wholly occupied with thirty-six sermons on 
 the first chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians. 
 The Ephesians was the Apostle's favourite Epistle, and 
 it was also Goodwin's favourite Epistle. I know 
 nothing anywhere at all to compare with this splendid 
 exposition, unless it is Bishop Davenant on the Epistle to 
 the Colossians or Archbishop Leighton on First Peter. 
 Goodwin cannot be said to have the classical compression, 
 nor has he the classical finish that so delight us in all 
 Leighton's literature. But there is a grappling power ; 
 there is ' a studying down ' of the passage in hand and, 
 withal, there is a height, and a dejjth, and a fertilising 
 suggestiveness in Goodwin that neither Davenant nor 
 Leighton possesses. For a specimen of this golden volume 
 take the expository sermon on the words : ' Blessed be 
 the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath 
 blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places 
 in Christ ' ; or the sermon on the words : ' Holy and 
 without blame before Him in love ' ; or the sermon on 
 ' Sealed with the Holy Spirit ' ; and in those great 
 sermons you have noble examples of the height to which 
 
 L 
 
162 THOMAS GOODWIN 
 
 the Puritan pulpit could rise. Than Thomas Goodwin's 
 twenty-six pages on ' the sealing of believers,' I know 
 nothing deeper, nothing sweeter, nothing more capti- 
 vating and enthralhng in the whole range of our 
 exegetical and homiletical literature. I would almost 
 venture to set those divine pages as the test of a divinity 
 student's spiritual experience, spiritual insight, and 
 spiritual capacity for opening up to a congregation the 
 deep things of God. To the wonderful sermon on 
 ' Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith ' you must bring 
 your most disciplined theological mind, and your most 
 deeply exercised Christian heart. For myself, when I 
 am again reading that superb sermon I always set it 
 down in my mind beside Hooker's immortal sermon, 
 ' Of Justification,' as two of the greatest, if not the two 
 very greatest sermons in the English language. But 
 how Hooker's people or how Goodwin's people could 
 have followed such powerful and such soaring sermons, 
 I cannot imagine. It is hard enough work to follow 
 them and to master them even when they are read and 
 re-read in the leisure of the study. I will leave what 
 I have said about the specimen sermons I have selected 
 out of Goodwin's Ephesians with this fine saying of 
 Hazlitt about Burke : ' The only adequate specimen of 
 Burke,' said Hazlitt, ' is all that the greatest of English 
 statesmen has ever written.' And with this out of 
 Coleridge : ' How Luther loved Paul ! And how Paul 
 would have loved Luther ! ' So will I say : How he 
 would have loved Goodwin ! And that not without 
 good reason. For not even Luther on the Galatians is 
 such an expositor of Paul's mind and heart as is Goodwin 
 on the Ephesians. 
 
 Goodwin's second volume contains his famous sermon 
 on what he calls ' the strangest paradox ever uttered.' 
 
THOMAS GOODWIN 168 
 
 That strangest of paradoxes is the passage in which the 
 Apostle James tells the twelve tribes to count it all joy 
 when they fall into divers trials or temptations. Good- 
 win's loss of his valuable library in the great fire of 
 London was the occasion of his remarkable discourse 
 entitled Patience and her Perfect Work. In that great 
 calamity our author lost £500 worth of selected and 
 cherished books ; a greater loss to such a student than any 
 number of pounds could calculate. ' I have heard my 
 father say that God had struck him in a very sensible 
 place. But that since he loved his books much too 
 well, so God had sharply chastised him by this sore 
 affliction.' This recalls to my mind what Dr. Duncan 
 of this college was wont to say : ' My Semitic books,' 
 he said, ' are my besetting sin.' But, as God would 
 have it, out of the redhot ashes of Goodwin's burncd-up 
 books there sprang up a sermon that has been the 
 calming and the consolation of multitudes amid crosses 
 and losses such that, but for Goodwin's teaching and 
 example, would have comiDletely crushed and over- 
 whelmed them. 
 
 The third volume contains ' An Exposition of the 
 Book of Revelation,' which is followed by ' Three Select 
 Cases Resolved.' And Goodwin's Three Cases are as 
 lastingly valuable to me as his Revelation is worthless. 
 Goodwin warns his readers that some of them may find 
 his Revelation somewhat ' craggy and tiresome.' And 
 I am fain to confess that I am one of those readers. The 
 true key to the Book of Revelation had not been dis- 
 covered in Goodwin's day. And, therefore, I thankfully 
 accept his offered permission to leave his Revelation 
 alone. But if his Revelation is ' craggy and tiresome ' 
 to me, his ' Select Cases ' are everything but that. The 
 truth is, there is no part of Goodwin's twelve volumes 
 
164 THOMAS GOODWIN 
 
 that has been more thumbed by me from my youth up 
 than just his ' Three Select Cases.' The ablest, the most 
 scholarly, the most elaborate, and, I need not say, the 
 most eloquent book of case-divinity in the English 
 language, is Jeremy Taylor's Ductor Dubitantium. The 
 Dudor is a book that every divinity student ought to 
 read once at any rate in his lifetime, even if he finds 
 it also to be somewhat craggy and tiresome in some 
 parts. But if he reads Goodwin's ' Select Cases ' once, 
 and if he needs them as much as I do, they will never 
 be long out of his hands. ' Likewise, at the same time,' 
 says James Fraser of Brea, ' I received much knowledge 
 and much comfort from Mr. Goodwin's works, especially 
 from his Growth in Grace. For that book of his answered 
 to the frame of my heart as face answers to face.' ' The 
 Three Select Cases ' are : ' A Child of Light Walking in 
 Darkness,' ' The Return of Prayers,' and ' The Trial of a 
 Christian's Growth.' 
 
 ' The Heart of Christ in Heaven towards Sinners on 
 Earth ' is the gem of the fourth volume. And it is a 
 gem of the purest water, if I am any judge. If any 
 enterprising student who now hears me is interested, or 
 ever becomes interested, in the philosophical and theo- 
 logical controversy that raged round Mansel's famous 
 Bampton Lectures in my New College days, he will 
 find the roots of that whole debate dealt with, again 
 and again, in a most masterly way in this profound 
 volume. It is such pages as occur, again and again, in 
 this volume, that have won for Goodwin the fame of 
 being the most philosophical theologian of all the 
 Puritans. And every one who knows the works of the 
 great Puritans will recognise how high that praise of 
 Goodwin is. Hooker, in some important respects, 
 comes up closer to the full truth about the Heart of 
 
THOMAS GOODWIN 163 
 
 Christ in Heaven than even Goodwin does. And it 
 does not need to be said that the greatest theologian of 
 the Enghsh Church clothes his great teaching here, as 
 everywhere, in the noblest English ever written. At 
 the same time, Goodwin is unapproached here, as so 
 often elsewhere, in his combination of intellectual and 
 theological power with evangelical and homiletical 
 comfort. Take them together on this supremest of 
 subjects, and Hooker and Goodwin will form an inex- 
 haustible equipment for any man whose ofRce and 
 calling it is to preach Jesus Christ in His life on earth, 
 and in His eternal priesthood in heaven. 
 
 Speaking about Hooker, the Fifth Book of the 
 Ecclesiastical Polity contains some of the very noblest 
 things that have ever been written on that great mystery 
 of godliness, ' God manifest in the flesh ' ; and that in 
 language not wholly unworthy of that noblest of subjects. 
 Unhappily for English Church doctrine and discipline, 
 Hooker's incomparable Christology always ends in pure 
 sacramentalism. But, on the other hand, happily for 
 the evangelical faith, Goodwin's fifth volume is full of 
 the purest and strongest and sweetest New Testament 
 truth. Christ the Mediator is the all-comprehending 
 title of this massive and most scriptural book. And 
 throughout, this grand subject is grappled with, and 
 is handled, as only Goodwin can grapple with and handle 
 Paul. And then every chapter is carried down into the 
 hearts of his hearers and readers with that powerful, 
 and at the same time tender, homiletic of which Goodwin 
 is such a master. 
 
 The chapters in the sixth volume to which I oftcnest 
 turn are those on True Spirituality ; on true and pure 
 scriptural and evangelical spirituality ; what it is ; 
 and why and how it is what it is ; on spiritual persons 
 
166 THOMAS GOODWIN 
 
 and spiritual things ; and on the supreme blessedness of 
 the truly spiritual mind. The chapters on conscience 
 in the sixth volume are simply masterly, even to this 
 day. Neither Sanderson, nor Taylor, nor Butler, nor 
 Chalmers, nor Maurice, nor all of them taken together, 
 have superseded Goodwin. I speak only of the authors 
 I know somewhat well when I say that none of them 
 comes near Goodwin for powerfulness, for subtlety, for 
 finality, and best of all, for evangelical impressiveness and 
 for pulpit fruitfulness. I know what I say, and you may 
 believe me — Butler on conscience, and Chalmers on 
 Butler, and then Goodwin after them, these three 
 masters will furnish out a young preacher with a doctrine 
 and a homiletic of conscience that will be like iron in his 
 own blood and in the blood of all who sit under him. 
 
 By men who know what they say on such matters, 
 Goodwin has been appreciated and eulogised as by far 
 the most philosophically minded of all the Puritans. 
 Let the great treatise in his seventh volume, ' Of the 
 Creatures, and the condition of their state by Nature,' 
 be read in proof of tliis eulogium. Even in these 
 Darwinian days, when ' Adam ' has been dissolved and 
 distributed into so many protoplasms, and potencies, 
 and preludes of the human being who was to come in 
 the far future, I am bold to recommend Goodwin's 
 seventh volume to all serious-minded students of Moses, 
 and of Paul, and of themselves. 
 
 Editing the eighth volume, Goodwdn's dutiful son 
 says of it : ' In this book of my father's you have the 
 infinite mercy of the divine nature displayed as far as 
 human thought and human language can reach. And 
 what you here possess in my poor English does not at 
 all reach the rich eloquence of his Latin.' So far Good- 
 win's grateful son. But take the eighth volume from 
 
THOMAS GOODWIN 167 
 
 mc, and in this way. We sometimes entertain one 
 another by disclosing what author and what book of 
 his we Avould select to take away with us if we were 
 banished to a desert island, and were only allowed one 
 author. One says that he would take Homer, another 
 says Dante, and another Milton. Almost every one 
 says Shakespeare. Now to emjiloy one of Goodwin's 
 own expressions — would you count me utterly ' uncouth 
 and extravagant ' if I said that I would take Goodwin's 
 eighth volume with me to my island ? Whatever you 
 count me, it is true, and I have done it, and that more 
 than once. ' I write this book,' says its author, ' for 
 the use of thoroughly humbled and thoroughly broken 
 hearts.' And you will all admit that till a man's heart 
 is thoroughly humbled and thoroughly broken he is not 
 a fit judge of the books that contrite men should select 
 to take with them to read, whether on an island or on a 
 continent. The great acknowledgment I have to make 
 concerning Goodwin's eighth volume is this. I had 
 often read the thirty-fourth of Exodus before ever I 
 came upon Goodwin's exposition of that great fountain- 
 head of Old Testament grace and truth. But from the 
 day when I first read Goodwin's epoch-making discourses 
 on that wonderful chapter, it has been a source of daily 
 salvation and of daily song to me. Yes, I am quite safe 
 to say that for fifty years I have never seen the day that 
 ' the Name of the Lord ' has not been a strong tower 
 to me, and all owing to Thomas Goodwin's exposition of 
 that great Name. ' Thank you, sir,' writes one of our 
 ministers to me ; ' thank you for urging us to study 
 Goodwin. Nowadays he is never out of my hands.' 
 
 After you have read his ninth volume, ' On Election,' 
 you will confess that amid much that is somewhat 
 ' craggy and tiresome ' to you, at the same time you 
 
168 THOMAS GOODWIN 
 
 have come upon chapters that only Goodwin could have 
 written, notably those chapters on the election of Christ 
 Himself, and on your election in Him. As also the 
 specially Goodwinian Book iv. on 1 Peter v. 10. Indeed, 
 I will stake all I have ever said about Goodwin on this 
 book : that is to say, when the book comes into the 
 hands of the prepared and proper reader. 
 
 His tenth volume is a comprehensive treatise on the 
 Prophetic, Apostolic, and Puritan anthropology. It 
 cannot be denied that this treatise is somewhat sombre 
 and even solemnising and overawing reading. But it 
 would not be true to mankind if it were not both sombre 
 and solemnising and overawing. The whole volume is 
 an exhaustive and a conclusive answer to the Catechism 
 question : ' Wherein consists the sinfulness of that 
 estate whereinto man fell ? ' And once mastered by the 
 true student this massive treatise will remain a quarry 
 of scriptural and experimental material both for his 
 personal religion and for his pulpit work. 
 
 The eleventh volume contains an elaborate treatise 
 on ' The Constitution, Right Order, and Government of 
 the Churches of Christ.' As to the manner in which 
 Goodwin's defence of Independency, and his assault on 
 Presbytery and Episcopacy is conducted, I will let the 
 author's son speak : ' Here,' says young Goodwin, ' is 
 no pride nor arrogance. Here are no reproaches, no 
 base and sly insinuations, none of those invidious reflec- 
 tions with which controversies are usually managed. 
 But here are sober thoughts, calm reasonings, and the 
 truth showing itself in such a mild and lovely aspect as 
 may create inclinations to it in the souls of all persons 
 whom passion or interest have not too much prejudiced.' 
 So speaks an able and a loyal son about the only polemical 
 work of his father. There is no doubt that this elaborate 
 
THOMAS GOODWIN 169 
 
 volume will greatly fortify the Independent who reads 
 it, and there is as little doubt that it will both open the 
 mind and reward the heart of the Presbyterian and the 
 Prelatist who has the patience and the sympathy to 
 master it. ' A truly great and noble spirit,' is the verdict 
 of a Presbyterian of that day, who felt bound to attempt 
 a reply to Goodwin's eleventh volume. For myself, I 
 do not think that any one but Goodwin would have 
 induced me to read a volume on Church government of 
 five hundred pages again, and again, and again. To 
 me that endless debate has little or no real and immediate 
 interest, though I still believe in the apostolicity of 
 Presbytery, even after reading both Hooker and Goodwin 
 again and again. But what takes me back to both these 
 authors is the nobleness of the thought and the style of 
 the one, and the extraordinary freshness and modcrn- 
 ness of mind of the other. But take this on this subject 
 from Goodwin's own pen : ' As for my part, this I say, 
 and I say it with much integrity, I never yet took up 
 party religion in the lump. For I have found by a long 
 trial of such matters that there is some truth on all 
 sides. I have found Gospel holiness where you w^ould 
 little tliink it to be, and so likewise truth. And I have 
 learned this principle, which I hope I shall never lay 
 down till I am swallowed up of immortality, and that 
 is, to acknowledge every truth and every goodness 
 wherever I find it.' 
 
 As I have all along laboured to show, Goodwin is always 
 an interpreter, and one of a thousand. So much is this 
 the case that he is still an interpreter even when he lays 
 out and executes his most elaborate, most confessional 
 and most dogmatical works. I refer to such confessional 
 and dogmatical works of his as The Mediatorship of Christ, 
 in his fifth volume ; The Holy Spirit, in his sixth volume ; 
 
170 THOMAS GOODWIN 
 
 The Object and the Acts of Faith, in his eighth volume ; 
 and Election, in his ninth volume. Even when he plans 
 out a great scheme of a book on the elaborate, construc- 
 tive, and dogmatic method of his day, Goodwin no sooner 
 commences the execution of his plan than he falls back 
 immediately on his own favourite method of exegesis 
 and exposition and homiletic. As a matter of fact, he 
 heads every successive chapter, even of his most formal 
 and logical works, with some great Scripture that he 
 forthwith sets himself to expound and to apply. And 
 thus it comes about that book after book, and chapter 
 after chapter, is but another example and illustration of 
 that endlessly interesting method of his. It cannot be 
 too much signalised, for it is his outstanding and honour- 
 able distinction over all the great divines of his own and 
 every other day, that every head of doctrine, every pro- 
 position of divinity, every chapter and every sentence 
 and every clause of creed or catechism is taken up and is 
 discussed down to the bottom by Goodwin, not as so 
 many abstract, dogmatical propositions, but as so many 
 fountain - head passages of Holy Scripture. All his 
 work, throughout all his twelve volumes, is just so much 
 pulpit exposition and pulpit application of the Word of 
 God. And hence one great secret of the incomparable 
 vitality, freshness, succulence, richness, great home- 
 comingness, great personal directness, and great evan- 
 gelical fruitfulness of all his work in all its parts. Like 
 Paul, his master in mental constitution, in literary 
 method, and in homiletic urgency, Goodwin will often 
 ' go off upon a word,' as Paley says somewhat too famili- 
 arly about the Apostle. And sometimes, like his master 
 in method, Goodwin does not soon return. But, like his 
 master in this also, when he does return he returns laden 
 Avith such fresh intellectual and spiritual spoils as make 
 the digression almost richer than the proper text. 
 
THOMAS GOODWIN 171 
 
 Long and elaborate as Goodwin's sermons undeniably 
 were, had they been measured by the scrimp and starved 
 standards of our modern day, even so I feel quite sure 
 that his sermons were not felt to be too long by those 
 hearers of his who had mind enough, and imagination 
 enough, and experience enough to enable them to appreci- 
 ate such a preacher. Indeed, his pulpit manner must 
 have made his sermons singularly and endlessly interesting 
 to those who Hstened to him. He is so natural in the 
 pulpit ; so homely, while so dignified ; so unconventional, 
 while so classical ; so affable, so confidential, and always 
 on such intimate terms with his hearers. He so takes 
 his hearers into his confidence about his studies and about 
 his sermons. He so shows them all the processes and 
 operations of his mind in the conception and the composi- 
 tion of his sermons ; he so leans over the pulpit and takes 
 his hearers by the hand ; he so speaks to them as if they 
 were less his hearers than his felloAV-students ; he so 
 introduces them to his favourite authors ; he so assumes 
 that they are all as much interested in his favourite 
 authors as he is himself ; he so tells them why he agrees 
 so wholly with this great commentator and so wholly 
 disagrees with that other ; he so confesses to his hearers 
 all the difficulties and all the perplexities he has had with 
 his text ; and how, at last, he thinks he has overcome 
 those difficulties ; and then he so puts it to them if they 
 do not all agree with him in the interpretation that he is 
 now putting upon the text. Full as Goodwin always is 
 of the ripest scriptural and Reformation scholarship ; 
 full as he always is of the best theological and philosophical 
 learning of his own day and of all foregoing days ; full, 
 also, as he always is of the deepest spiritual experience — 
 all the same, he is always so simple, so clear, so direct, so 
 untechnical, so personal, and so pastoral, in all his pulpit 
 work, that what Thomas Fuller says about Perkins in his 
 
172 THOMAS GOODWIN 
 
 pulpit may be borrowed and applied to Goodwin. ' In 
 a word,' says Fuller, ' Perkins' church consisting of town 
 and gown, the scholar could hear no learneder, the 
 townsman no simpler or plainer sermons. He did distil 
 and soak so much deep scholarship into his sermons, yet 
 so insensibly, that nothing but the most familiar expres- 
 sions did ever appear.' 
 
 And then as to his favourite authors, things like these 
 continually occur. ' So Socrates was the highest instance 
 how far the light of nature could go.' ' Plato thanked 
 God that he was a man, an Athenian, and a philosopher. 
 I, that I am a Christian.' ' Aristotle, that great dictator 
 of nature, hath a touch of this notion in his Ethics.^ ' See 
 Athanasius on this text contra Arianos.' ' Omnipotente 
 suavitate is Augustine's word for this text on the drawing 
 of the soul by Christ.' ' Suarez says this, and he is one 
 of the acutest of our new schoolmen.' ' Scotus, the 
 wisest of the schoolmen, and Bonaventure, the holiest 
 of them, are of another mind.' ' Luther radically altered 
 all his former principles and practices, such was the view 
 he got of the sinfulness of sin.' ' Calvin, that great and 
 holy light of the Reformed Church.' ' Pollock, Principal 
 of Edinburgh University, in his Latin comments, and 
 in his English sermons.' ' Worthy Mr. Dickson, also 
 of Scotland.' ' Gerard, that most judicious divine.' 
 ' Arminius also speaks true.' ' Zanchius, that best of 
 our Protestant writers, and a truly great divine.' And 
 so on ; I have a thousand such references. Parenthetic- 
 ally, and as he passes on, he characterises and appreci- 
 ates them all, as if, instead of having an everyday 
 congregation sitting before him, he had an exegetical class 
 hanging on his learned and eloquent lips. The Fathers, 
 Greek and Latin ; the Schoolmen ; the Reformers, the 
 Remonstrants, the Anglicans, the Arminians, the Anti- 
 
THOMAS GOODWIN 173 
 
 nomians, the Socinians, the Quakers, the EngUsh and 
 American Puritans, the Scottish Presbyterians, they are 
 all laid under pulpit contribution, and they all get their 
 generous meed of praise, or their regretful word of passing 
 blame. Till it must have been a Biblical and a theo- 
 logical education to sit under Goodwin, not only to his 
 Bible students, but to all his hearers. And till I can see 
 the Bible-loving Protector and all his preaching officers 
 rubbing their hands with holy glee as they crowded round 
 Goodwin's pulpit, now in the House of Commons, and 
 now in the camp, and congratulated evangelical England 
 and themselves that they had such a ' trier ' as Goodwin 
 was, by whom to waken up the sleeping incumbents of 
 the parish pulpits all over the land. 
 
 But, after all I have said, I would not feel that I had 
 come within sight of doing justice to the whole wealth, 
 originality, and suggestiveness of Thomas Goodwin's 
 mind unless I went on to give a specimen list of the topics 
 and the themes he starts and treats himself, and of the 
 topics and the themes he leaves his ministerial readers 
 to take up and treat for themselves. I have, therefore, 
 selected a short list of those topics and themes, some of 
 which I have already treated in the pulpit myself. And 
 if I have not sufficient time and strength left me to over- 
 take them all, I shall leave them to such of you as shall 
 succeed me in the study and exposition of Goodwin's 
 works. Take, then, the following texts and topics and 
 themes as so many illustrations of Goodwin's wealthy and 
 suggestive mind. 
 
 ' God is glorified only by being made known.' 
 
 ' The Son of God might have assumed any nature, 
 yours or mine.' 
 
 ' Jesus Christ was the greatest and the best believer 
 that ever lived.' 
 
174 THOMAS GOODWIN 
 
 ' The one great end of Christ's preaching was to reveal 
 the Father.' 
 
 ' AHquid in Christo formosius Salvatore.' 
 
 ' Faith answers to the whole of Christ, and Christ 
 answers to the whole of faith.' 
 
 ' Eye not the promises, bnt the Promiser.' 
 
 ' Holy Scripture is not abhorrent of the metaphor of 
 purchase in the work of Christ.' 
 
 ' Man never knows how anthropomorphic he is.' 
 
 ' Some men have given over all other lives but the life 
 of faith.' 
 
 ' Regeneration is but partial in the very best saints.' 
 
 ' Motus primi non cadunt sub libertatem.' 
 
 ' Our greatest sins are those of the mind.' 
 
 ' Their indwelling sin is by far the greatest misery of 
 the regenerate.' 
 
 ' Self is the most abominable principle that ever was.' 
 
 ' Generalia non pungunt.' 
 
 ' We are to seek to have affections suitable to our 
 knowledge.' 
 
 ' Aqua fortis is laid on letters of ink to eat them out, 
 and so is the blood of Christ laid on the handwriting that 
 is against us,' 
 
 ' Verba in res, as the philosopher said when he was 
 converted.' 
 
 ' Divinity hath a definition of man, of which definition 
 the deepest philosophy falls short.' 
 
 ' The circumstances lie heavier on the conscience than 
 the act itself.' 
 
 ' Hell fire is not culinary fire.' 
 
 ' Good swimmers seek out deep waters.' 
 
 ' A thief that deserves hanging must not complain 
 of being burned in the hand.' 
 
 ' Judas heard all Christ's sermons.' 
 
THOMAS GOODWIN 175 
 
 ' Demas left his preaching, and turned to merchandis- 
 ing.' 
 
 ' God had only one Son, and He made Him a Minister.' 
 
 And a thousand more of the same suggestive kind. 
 
 Now, I do not think that any born preacher can listen 
 to a catalogue of texts and topics and themes like that 
 without his heart taking fire for the pulpit. What 
 think you ? But with all that I have said, do not go away 
 supposing or saying that I am demanding that any of 
 you shall feed your mind and feast your heart on Thomas 
 Goodwin as I have done. All I have said to-day but 
 leads me up to say this with some experience and with 
 some authority, I hope. Find out the food and the 
 relish convenient for your own mind and heart, and 
 then feed continually upon it. Amid the immense intel- 
 lectual and spiritual riches of our Biblical and theological 
 and experimental and autobiographical literature, find out 
 some first-class authors who shall be to you something of 
 what Paul was to Luther, and Luther to Bunyan, and 
 Calvin to Cunningham, and Athanasius to Newman, and 
 William Guthrie to John Owen, and Augustine to Dean 
 Trench, and Thomas Shepard to Jonathan Edwards, and 
 Butler and Edwards to Chalmers, and Foster and Faber 
 to Dods. And then study with all your might to put 
 the theology of Paul and Luther and the Puritans into the 
 written English of Hooker and Newman, or into the 
 spoken English of Robertson and Spurgeon. And thus 
 studying, and thus preaching, and thus living, you will 
 both save yourselves and them that hear you. 
 
SIR THOMAS BROWNEi 
 
 The Religio Medici is a universally recognised English 
 classic. And the Urn-Burial, the Christian Morals, and 
 the Letter to a Friend are all quite worthy to take their 
 stand beside the Religio Medici. Sir Thomas Browne 
 made several other contributions to English literature 
 besides these masterpieces ; but it is on the Religio Medici, 
 and on what Sir Thomas himself calls ' other pieces of 
 affinity thereto,' that his sure fame as a writer of noble 
 truth and stately English most securely rests. Sir 
 Thomas Browne was a physician of high standing and 
 large practice all his days ; and he was an antiquarian 
 and scientific writer of the foremost information and 
 authority : but it is the extraordinary depth and riches 
 and imaginative sweep of his mind, and his rare wisdom 
 and wealth of heart, and his quite wonderful English 
 style, that have all combined together to seal Sir Thomas 
 Browne with his well-earned immortality. 
 
 Sir Thomas Browne's outward life can be told in a 
 very few words. He was born at London in 1605. He 
 lost his father very early, and it must have been a very 
 great loss. For the old mercer was wont to creep up to 
 his little son's cradle when he was asleep, and uncover 
 and kiss the child's breast, and pray, ' as 'tis said of 
 Origen's father, that the Holy Ghost would at once take 
 
 ' The Inaugural Discourse delivered at the Meeting of the British 
 Medical Association in St. Giles' Cathedral on the 26th of July 1898. 
 
 M 
 
178 SIR THOMAS BROWNE 
 
 possession there.' The old merchant was able to leave 
 money enough to take his gifted son first to Winchester 
 School, and then to Oxford, where he graduated in New 
 Pembroke in 1626. On young Browne's graduation, old 
 Anthony a Wood has this remark, that those who love 
 Pembroke best can wish it nothing better than that it 
 may long proceed as it has thus begun. As soon as he 
 had taken his university degree young Browne entered 
 on the study of medicine : and in pursuit of that fast- 
 rising science he visited and studied in the most famous 
 schools of France and Italy and Holland. After various 
 changes of residence, through all of which it is somewhat 
 difficult to trace the young physician's movements, we 
 find him at last fairly settled in the city of Norwich, 
 where he spent the remainder of his long, and busy, and 
 prosperous, and honourable life. 
 
 Dr. Johnson laments that Sir Thomas Browne has 
 left us no record of his travels and studies abroad, and 
 all Sir Thomas's readers will join with his great biographer 
 in that regret. At the same time, as we turn over the 
 pile of letters that Sir Thomas sent to his student son 
 Edward, and to his sailor son Thomas, when they were 
 abroad at school and on ship, we can easily collect and 
 picture to ourselves the life that the writer of those so 
 wise and so beautiful letters led when he himself was 
 still a student at Montpellier and Padua and Ley den. 
 ' Honest Tom, — God bless thee, and protect thee, and 
 mercifully lead thee through the ways of His providence. 
 Be diligent in going to church. Be constant, and not 
 negligent in your daily private prayers. Be a good 
 husband. Cast up your accounts with all care. Be 
 temperate in diet, and be wary not to overheat yourself. 
 Be courteous and civil to all. Live with an apothecary, 
 and observe his drugs and practice. Frequent civil 
 
SIR THOMAS BROWNE 179 
 
 company. Point your letters, and put periods at the 
 ends of your sentences. Have the love and the fear 
 of God ever before your eyes. And may God confirm 
 your faith in Christ. Observe the manner of trade : 
 how they make wine and vinegar, and keep a note of 
 all that for me. Be courteous and humble in all your 
 conversation, and of good manners : which he that 
 learneth not in France travaileth in vain. When at sea 
 read good books. Without good books time cannot be 
 well spent in those great ships. Learn the stars also : 
 the particular coasts : the depth of the road-steads : 
 and the risings and fallings of the land. Enquire further 
 about the mineral water : and take notice of such plants 
 as you meet with. I am told that you are looked on 
 in the Service as exceeding faithful, valiant, diligent, 
 generous, vigilant, observing, very knowing, and a 
 scholar. When you first took to this manner of life, 
 you cannot but remember that I caused you to read all 
 the sea-fights of note in Plutarch ; and, withal, gave 
 you the description of fortitude left by Aristotle. In 
 places take notice of the government of them, and the 
 eminent persons. The merciful providence of God ever 
 go with you, and direct and bless you, and give you ever 
 a grateful heart toward Him. I send you Lucretius : 
 and with it Tully's Offices : 'tis as remarkable for its 
 little size as for the good matter contained in it, and the 
 authentic and classical Latin. I hoj^e you do not forget 
 to carry a Greek Testament always to church : a man 
 learns two things together, and profiteth doubly, in the 
 language and the subject. God send us to number our 
 days, and to fit ourselves for a better world. Times 
 look troublesome : but you have an honest and peace- 
 able profession like myself, which may well employ you, 
 and you have discretion to guide your words and actions. 
 
180 SIR THOMAS BROWNE 
 
 May God be reconciled to us, and give us grace to for- 
 sake our sins which set fire to all things. You shall 
 never want my daily prayers, and also frequent letters.' 
 And so on, through a delightful sheaf of letters to his 
 two sons : and out of which a fine picture rises before 
 us, both of Sir Thomas's own student hfe abroad, as well 
 as of the footing on which the now famous physician 
 and English author stood with his student and sailor 
 sons. 
 
 You might read every word of Sir Thomas Browne's 
 writings and never discover that a sword had been un- 
 sheathed or a shot fired in England all the time he was 
 living and writing there. It was the half-century of the 
 terrible civil war for political and religious liberty : 
 but Sir Thomas Browne would seem to have possessed 
 all the political and religious liberty he needed. At any 
 rate, he never took open part on either side in the great 
 contest. Sir Thomas Browne was not made of the hot 
 metal and the stern stuff of John Milton. All through 
 those terrible years Browne lived securely in his labora- 
 tory, and in his library, and in his closet. Richard 
 Baxter's Autobiography is as full of gunpowder as if it 
 had been written in an army-chaplain's tent, as indeed 
 it was. But both Bunyan's Grace Abounding and 
 BroAvne's Religio Medici might have been written in the 
 Bedford or Norwich of our own peaceful day. All men 
 are not made to be soldiers and statesmen : and it is 
 no man's duty to attempt to be what he was not made 
 to be. Every man has his own talent, and his corre- 
 sponding and consequent duty and obligation. And 
 both Bunyan and Browne had their own talent, and 
 their own consequent duty and obligation, just as 
 Cromwell and Milton and Baxter had theirs. Enough, 
 
SIR THOMAS BROWNE 181 
 
 and more than enough, if it shall be said to them all on 
 that day, Well done. 
 
 ' My life,' says Sir Thomas, in opening one of the 
 noblest chapters of his noblest book, ' is a miracle of 
 thirty years, which to relate were not a history, but a 
 piece of poetry ; and it would sound to common ears like 
 a fable.' Now, as all Sir Thomas's readers must know, the 
 most extraordinary criticisms and comments have been 
 made on those devout and thankful words of his con- 
 cerning himself. Dr. Samuel Johnson's were not common 
 ears, but even he comments on these beautiful words with 
 a momentary wooden-headedness almost past belief. 
 For, surely the thirty years of schoolboy, and student, 
 and opening professional life that resulted in the pro- 
 duction of such a masterpiece as the Religio Medici was 
 a miracle both of God's providence and God's grace, 
 enough to justify him who had experienced all that in 
 aeknoAvledging it to God's glory and to the unburdening 
 of his own heart, so richly loaded with God's benefits. 
 And, how a man of Samuel Johnson's insight, good sense, 
 and pious feeling could have so missed the mark in this 
 case, I cannot understand. All the more that both the 
 chapter so complained about, and the whole book to 
 which that chapter belongs, are full of the same thankful, 
 devout, and adoring sentiment. But even Homer 
 sometimes nods. ' The world that I regard,' Sir Thomas 
 proceeds, ' is mj^self. Men that look upon my outside, 
 and who peruse only my conditions and my fortunes, 
 do err in my altitude. There is surely a piece of divinity 
 in us all ; something that was before the elements, and 
 which owes no homage unto the sun.' And again : ' We 
 carry with us the wonders we seek without us. There 
 is all Africa and all its prodigies in us all. We are that 
 bold and adventurous piece of nature, which he that 
 
182 SIR THOMAS BROWNE 
 
 studies wisely learns, in a compendium, what others 
 
 labour at in a divided piece and endless volume.' And 
 
 again : ' There is another way of God's providence full 
 
 W^ of meanders and labyrinths and obscure methods : that 
 
 "' serpentine and crooked line : that cryptic and involved 
 
 method of His providence which I have ever admired. 
 Surely there are in every man's life certain rubs, and 
 doublings, and wrenches, which, well examined, do 
 prove the pure hand of God. And to be true, and to 
 speak out my soul, when I survey the occurrences of my 
 own life, and call into account the finger of God, I can 
 perceive nothing but an abyss and a mass of mercies. 
 And those which others term crosses, and afflictions, and 
 judgments, and misfortunes, to me they both appear, 
 and in event have ever proved, the secret and dissembled 
 favours of His affection.' And in the Christian Morals : 
 » ' Annihilate not the mercies of God by the oblivion of 
 
 \r ingratitude. Make not thy head a grave, but a repository 
 
 of God's mercies. Register not only strange, but all 
 merciful occurrences. Let thy diaries stand thick with 
 dutiful mementoes and asterisks of acknowledgment. 
 And to be complete and to forget nothing, date not His 
 mercy from thy nativity : look beyond this world, and 
 before the era of Adam. And mark well the winding 
 ways of providence. For that hand writes often by 
 abbreviations, hieroglyphics, and short characters, which, 
 like the laconism on Belshazzar's wall, are not to be 
 made out but by a key from that Spirit that indited 
 them.' And yet again : ' To thoughtful observ^ers the 
 whole world is one phylactery, and everything we see 
 an item of the wisdom, and power, and goodness of God.' 
 How any man, not to speak of one of the wisest and 
 best of men, such as Samuel Johnson was, could read all 
 that, and still stagger at Sir Thomas Browne holding 
 
SIR THOMAS BROWNE 183 
 
 himself to be a living miracle of the power, and the 
 love, and the grace of God, passes my understanding. 
 
 We have seen in his own noble words how Sir Thomas 
 Browne's life appeared to himself. Let us now look 
 at how he appeared to other observing men. The Rev. 
 John Whitefoot, the close and lifelong friend of Sir 
 Thomas, has left us this lifelike protrait of the author of 
 Religio Medici : ' For a character of his person, his 
 complexion and his hair were answerable to his name, 
 his stature was moderate, and his habit of body neither 
 fat nor lean, but evaapKO'i. In his habit of clothing 
 he had an aversion to all finery, and affected plainness. 
 He ever wore a cloke, or boots, when few others did. He 
 kept himself always very warm, and thought it most 
 safe so to do. The horizon of his understanding was 
 much larger than the hemisphere of the world : all 
 that was visible in the heavens he comprehended so well, 
 that few that are under them knew so much. And of the 
 earth he had such a minute and exact geographical 
 knowledge as if he had been by divine providence ordained 
 surveyor-general of the whole terrestrial orb and its 
 products, minerals, plants, and animals. His memory, 
 though not so eminent as that of Seneca or Scaliger, was 
 capacious and tenacious, insomuch that he remem- 
 bered all that was remarkable in any book he ever read. 
 He had no despotical power over his affections and 
 passions, that was a privilege of original perfection, but 
 as large a political power over them as any stoic or man 
 of his time, whereof he gave so great experiment that he 
 hath very rarely been known to have been overpowered 
 with any of them. His aspect and conversation were 
 grave and sober ; there was never to be seen in him 
 anything trite or vulgar. Parsimonious in nothing but 
 his time, whereof he made as much improvement, with 
 
184 SIR THOMAS BROWNE 
 
 as little loss of any man in it, when he had any to spare 
 from his drudging practice, he was scarce patient of any 
 diversion from his study : so impatient of sloth and 
 idleness, that he would say, he could not do nothing. 
 He attended the public service very constantly, when 
 he was not withheld by his practice. Never missed the 
 sacrament in his parish, if he were in town. Read the 
 best English sermons he could hear of with liberal 
 applause : and delighted not in controversies. His 
 patience was founded upon the Christian philosophy, and 
 sound faith of God's providence, and a meek and humble 
 submission thereto. I visited him near his end, when he 
 had not strength to hear or speak much : and the last 
 words I heard from him were, besides some expressions 
 of dearness, that he did freely submit to the will of God : 
 being without fear. He had oft triumphed over the 
 king of terrors in others, and given him many repulses 
 in the defence of patients ; but when his own time came, 
 he submitted Avith a meek, rational, religious courage.' 
 
 Taking Sir Thomas Browne all in all, TertulUan, 
 Sir Thomas's favourite Father, has supplied us, as it seems 
 to me, with his whole life and character in these so 
 expressive and so comprehensive words of his, Anima 
 naturaliter Christiana. In these three words, when well 
 weighed and fully opened up, we have the whole author 
 of the Religio Medici, the Christian Morals, and the 
 Letter to a Friend. Anima naturaliter Christiana. 
 
 The Religio Medici was Sir Thomas Browne's first book, 
 and it remains by far his best book. His other books 
 acquire their value and take their rank just according to 
 the degree of their ' affinity ' to the Religio Medici. Sir 
 Thomas Browne is at his best when he is most alone with 
 himself. There is no subject that interests him so much 
 
SIR THOMAS BROWNE 185 
 
 as Sir Thomas Browne. And if you will forget yourself 
 in Sir Thomas Browne, and in his conversations which he 
 holds with himself, you will find a rare and an ever fresh 
 delight in the Ileligio Medici. Sir Thomas is one of the 
 greatest egotists of literature — to use a necessary but 
 an unpopular and a misleading epithet. Hazlitt has 
 it that there have only been but three perfect, absolute, 
 and unapproached egotists in all literature — Cellini, 
 Montaigne, and Wordsworth. But why that fine critic 
 leaves out Sir Thomas Browne, I cannot understand or 
 accept. I always turn to Sir Thomas Browne, far more 
 than to either of Hazlitt's canonised three, when I want 
 to read what a great man has to tell me about himself : 
 and in this case both a great and a good and a Christian 
 man. And thus, whatever modification and adaptation 
 may have been made in this masterpiece of his, in view 
 of its publication, and after it was first published, the 
 original essence, most genuine substance, and unique 
 style of the book were all intended for its author's peculiar 
 heart and private eye alone. And thus it is that we have 
 a work of a simplicity and a sincerity that would have 
 been impossible had its author in any part of his book 
 sat down to compose for the public. Sir Thomas Browne 
 lived so much within himself, that he was both secret 
 writer and sole reader to himself. His great book is 
 ' a private exercise directed solely,' as he himself says, 
 ' to himself : it is a memorial addressed to himself rather 
 than an example or a rule directed to any other man.' 
 And it is only he Avho opens the Religio Medici honestly 
 and easily believing that, and glad to have such a secret 
 and sincere and devout book in his hand, — it is only he 
 who will truly enjoy the book, and who will gather the 
 same gain out of it that its author enjoyed and gained 
 out of it himself. In short, the properly prepared and 
 
186 SIR THOMAS BROWNE 
 
 absolutely ingenuous reader of the Religio Medici must 
 be a second Thomas Browne himself. 
 
 ' I am a medical man,' says Sir Thomas, in intro- 
 ducing himself to us, ' and this is my religion. I am 
 a physician, and this is my faith, and my morals, and my 
 whole true and proper life. The scandal of my profession, 
 the natural course of my studies, and the indifference of 
 my behaviour and discourse in matters of religion, might 
 persuade the world that I had no religion at all. And 
 yet, in despite of all that, I dare, without usurpation, 
 assume the honourable style of a Christian.' And if 
 ever any man was a truly catholic Christian, it was surely 
 Sir Thomas Browne. He does not unchurch or ostracise 
 any other man. He does not stand at diameter and 
 sword's point with any other man ; no, not even with 
 his enemy. He has never been able to alienate or 
 exasperate himself from any man whatsoever because of 
 a difference of an opinion. He has never been angry 
 with any man because his judgment in matters of religion 
 did not agree with his. In short, he has no genius for 
 disputes about religion ; and he has often felt it to be 
 his best wisdom to decline all such disputes. When his 
 head was greener than it now is, he had a tendency to 
 two or three errors in religion, of which he proceeds to 
 set down the spiritual history. But at no time did he 
 ever maintain his own opinions with pertinacity : far 
 less to inveigle or entangle any other man's faith ; and 
 thus they soon died out, since they were only bare errors 
 and single lajDses of his understanding, without a joint 
 depravity of his will. The truth to Sir Thomas Browne 
 about all revealed religion is this, which he sets forth in 
 a deservedly famous passage : ' Methinks there be not 
 impossibilities enough in revealed religion for an active 
 faith. I love to lose myself in a mystery, and to pursue 
 
SIR THOMAS BROWNE 187 
 
 my reason to an altitudo ! 'Tis my solitary recreation 
 to pose my appreliension with those involved enigmas 
 and riddles of the Trinity, with incarnation and resur- 
 rection. I can answer all the objections of Satan and my 
 rebellious reason with that odd resolution I learned of 
 Tertulhan, Cerium est quia imyossibile est. I desire to ^ 
 
 exercise my faith in the difficultcst point ; for anything -x^" '^ 
 else is not faith but persuasion. I bless myself, and am ti^''' 
 thankful that I never saw Christ nor His disciples. For 
 then had my faith been thrust upon me ; nor should I 
 have enjoyed that greater blessing pronounced to all 
 that believe and saw not. They only had the advantage 
 of a noble and a bold faith who lived before the coming 
 of Christ ; and who, upon obscure prophecies and mystical 
 types, could raise a belief and expect apparent im- 
 possibilities. And since I was of understanding enough 
 to know that we know nothing, my reason hath been 
 more pliable to the will of faith. I am now content to 
 understand a mystery in an easy and Platonic way, and 
 without a demonstration and a rigid definition ; and thus 
 I teach my haggard and unreclaimed reason to stoop 
 unto the lure of faith.' The unreclaimed reader who is 
 not already allured by these specimens need go no further 
 in Sir Thomas Browne's autobiographic book. But he 
 who feels the grace and the truth, the power and the 
 sweetness and the beauty of such writing, will be glad to 
 know that the whole Religio is full of such things, and 
 that all this author's religious and moral writings partake 
 of the same truly Apostolic and truly Platonic character. 
 In this noble temper, with the richest mind, and clothed 
 in a style that entrances and captivates us. Sir Thomas 
 proceeds to set forth his doctrine and experience of God ; 
 of God's providence ; of Holy Scripture ; of nature and 
 man ; of miracles and oracles ; of the Holy Ghost and 
 
188 SIR THOMAS BROWNE 
 
 holy angels ; of death ; and of heaven and hell. And, 
 especially, and with great fulness, and victoriousness, and 
 conclusiveness, he deals with death. We sometimes 
 amuse ourselves by making a selection of the two or three 
 books that we would take with us to prison or to a desert 
 island. And one dying man here and another there has 
 already selected and set aside the proper and most suit- 
 able books for his oAvn special deathbed. ' Read where I 
 first cast my anchor,' said John Knox to his wife, sitting 
 weeping at his bedside. At which she opened and read 
 in the Gospel of John. Sir Thomas Browne is neither 
 more nor less than the very prose-laureate of death. He 
 writes as no other man has ever written about death. 
 Death is everywhere in all Sir Thomas Browne's books. 
 And yet it may be said of them all, that, like heaven itself, 
 there is no death there. Death is swallowed up in Sir 
 Thomas Browne's defiant faith that cannot, even in death, 
 get difficulties and impossibilities enough to exercise 
 itself upon. O death, where is thy sting to Rutherford, 
 and Bunyan, and Baxter, and Browne ; and to those 
 who diet their imaginations and their hearts day and 
 night at such heavenly tables ! But, if only to see how 
 great and good men differ, Spinoza has this proposition 
 and demonstration that a ' free man thinks of nothing 
 less than of death.' Browne was a free man, but he 
 thought of nothing more than of death. He was of 
 Dante's mind — 
 
 The arrow seen beforehand slacks its flight. 
 
 The Religio Medici was Sir Thomas Browne's first 
 book, and the Christian Morals was his last ; but the two 
 books are of such affinity to one another that they will 
 always be thought of together. Only, the style that was 
 already almost too rich for our modern taste in the Religio 
 
SIR THOMAS BROWNE 189 
 
 absolutely cloys and clogs us in the Morals. The opening 
 and the closing sentences of this posthumous treatise 
 will better convey a taste of its strength and sweetness 
 than any estimate or eulogium of mine. ' Tread softly 
 and circumspectly in this funambulatory track, and 
 narrow path of goodness ; pursue virtue virtuously : 
 leaven not good actions, nor render virtue disputable. 
 Stain not fair acts with foul intentions ; maim not up- 
 rightness by halting concomitances, nor circumstantially 
 deprave substantial goodness. Consider whereabout thou 
 art in Cebes' table, or that old philosophical pinax of 
 the life of man : whether thou art yet in the road of 
 uncertainties ; whether thou hast yet entered the narrow 
 gate, got up the hill and asperous way which leadeth 
 unto the house of sanity ; or taken that purifying potion 
 from the hand of sincere erudition, which may send 
 thee clear and pure away unto a virtuous and happy 
 life.' And having taken his reader up through a virtuous 
 life, Sir Thomas thus parts with him at its close : ' Lastly, 
 if length of days be thy portion, make it not thy expecta- 
 tion. Reckon not upon long life ; think every day thy 
 last. And since there is something in us that will still 
 live on, join both lives together, and live in one but for 
 the other. And if any hath been so happy as personally 
 to understand Christian annihilation, ecstasy, exaltation, 
 transformation, the kiss of the spouse, and ingrcssion 
 into the divine shadow, according to mystical theology, 
 they have already had an handsome anticipation of 
 heaven : the world is in a manner over, and the earth in 
 ashes unto them.' ' Prose,' says Friswell, ' that with 
 very little transposition, might make verse quite worthy 
 of Shakespeare himself.' 
 
 The Letter to a Friend is an account of the swift and 
 
190 SIR THOMAS BROWNE 
 
 inevitable deathbed of one of Sir Thomas's patients : 
 a young man who died of a deceitful but a galloping 
 consumption. There is enough of old medical observa- 
 tion and opening science in the Letter, as well as of sweet 
 old literature, and still sweeter old religion, to make it a 
 classic to every well-read doctor in the language. ' To 
 be dissolved and to be with Christ was his dying ditty. 
 He esteemed it enough to approach the years of his 
 Saviour, who so ordered His own human state, as not to 
 be old upon earth. He that early arriveth into the 
 parts and prudence of age is happily old without the 
 uncomfortable attendants of it. And 'tis superfluous 
 to live unto grey hairs, when in a precocious temper we 
 anticipate the virtues of them. In brief, he cannot be 
 accounted young who outliveth the old man.' Let all 
 young medical students have by heart Sir Thomas 
 Browne's incomparable English, and wisdom, and piety 
 in his Letter to a Friend upon the occasion of the death of 
 his intimate Friend. ' This unique morsel of literature,' 
 as Walter Pater calls it. 
 
 The Vulgar Errors, it must be confessed, is neither 
 very inviting, nor very rewarding to ordinary readers 
 nowadays. And that big book will only be persevered 
 in to the end by those readers to whom everything that 
 Sir Thomas Browne has written is of a rare interest and 
 profit. The full title of this now completely antiquated 
 and wholly forgotten treatise is this, ' Pseudodoxia 
 Epidemica, or Enquiries into very many received Tenets 
 and commonly presumed Truths, which examined prove 
 but Vulgar and Common Errors.' The First Book of 
 the Pseudodoxia is general and philosophical ; the 
 Second Book treats of popular and received tenets con- 
 cerning mineral and vegetable bodies ; the Third, of 
 popular and received tenets concerning animals ; the 
 
SIR THOMAS BROWNE 191 
 
 Fourth, of man ; the Fifth, of many things questionable 
 as they are commonly described in pictures, etc. ; and 
 the Sixth, of popular and received tenets, cosmographical, 
 geographical, and historical ; and the Seventh, of popular 
 and received truths, some historical, and some deduced 
 from Holy Scripture. The Introductory Book contains 
 the best analysis and exposition of the famous Baconian 
 Idols that has ever been written. That Book of the 
 Pseudodoxia is full of the profoundest philosophical 
 principles set forth in the stateliest English. The 
 students of Whately and Mill, as well as of Bacon, will 
 greatly enjoy this part of the Pseudodoxia. The 
 Grammar of Assent, also, would seem to have had some 
 of its deepest roots in the same powerful, original, and 
 suggestive Book. For its day the Pseudodoxia is a 
 perfect encyclopaedia of scientific, and historical, and 
 literary, and even Biblical criticism : the Pseudodoxia 
 and the Miscellany Tracts taken together. Some of the 
 most powerful passages that ever fell from Sir Thomas 
 Browne's pen are to be come upon in the Introduction to 
 the Pseudodoxia. And, with all our immense advances 
 in method and in discipline, in observation and in 
 discovery, no true student of nature and of man can 
 afford to neglect the extraordinary catalogue of things 
 which are so characteristically treated of in Sir Thomas 
 Browne's great, if, nowadays, out-grown book. For one 
 thing, and that surely not a small thing, we see on every 
 page of the Pseudodoxia the labour, as Dr. Johnson so 
 truly says, that its author was always willing to pay for 
 the truth. And, as Sir Thomas says himself, a work of 
 this nature is not to be performed upon one leg, or with- 
 out the smell of oil, if it is to be duly and deservedly 
 handled. It must be left to men of learning and of 
 science to say how far Sir Thomas has duly and deservedly 
 
192 SIR THOMAS BROWNE 
 
 handled the immense task he undertook in this book. 
 But I, for one, have read this great treatise with a true 
 pride, in seeing so much hard work so hberally laid out 
 according to the best light allowed its author in that day. 
 As Dr. Johnson has said of it, ' The mistakes that the 
 author committed in the Pseudodoxia were not com- 
 mitted by idleness or negligence, but only for want of 
 the philosophy of Boyle and Newton.' Who, then, will 
 gird up his loins in our enlightened day to give us a new 
 Pseudodoxia after the philosophy of Bacon and Boyle 
 and Newton and Ewald and Darwin ? And after Sir 
 Thomas's own philosophy, which he thus sets forth before 
 himself in this and in all his other studies : ' We are 
 not magisterial in opinions, nor have we dictator-like 
 obtruded our conceptions : but, in the humility of 
 inquiries or disquisitions, have only proposed them to 
 more ocular discerners. And we shall so far encourage 
 contradiction as to promise no disturbance, or re-oppose 
 any pen, that shall fallaciously or captiously refute us. 
 And shall only take notice of such whose experimental 
 and judicious knowledge shall be employed, not to tra- 
 duce or extenuate, but to explain and dilucidate, to add 
 and ampliate, according to the laudable custom of the 
 ancients in their sober promotions of learning. Unto 
 whom, notwithstanding, we shall not contentiously 
 rejoin, or only to justify our own, but to applaud or 
 confirm his maturer assertions ; and shall confer what 
 is in us unto his name and honour ; ready, for our part, 
 to be swallowed up in any worthy enlarger : as having 
 our aid, if any way, or under any name, we may obtain 
 a work, so much desired, and yet desiderated, of truth.' 
 Shall this Association, I wonder, raise up from among 
 its members, such a worthy successor and enlarger of 
 Sir Thomas Browne ? 
 
SIR THOMAS BROWNE 193 
 
 The title, at least, of the Urn-Burial is more famihar 
 to the most of us than that of the Pseudodoxia. It was 
 the chance discovery of some ancient urns in Norfolk 
 that furnished Sir Thomas with the occasion to write 
 his Hydriotaphia. And that classical book is only 
 another illustration of his enormous reading, ready 
 memory, and intense interest in everything that touches 
 on the nature of man, and on his beliefs, habits, and 
 hopes in all ages of his existence on tliis earth. And the 
 eloquence and splendour of this wonderful piece is as 
 arresting to the student of style as its immense information 
 is to the scholar and the antiquarian. ' The conclusion 
 of the essay on Urn-Burial,' says Carlyle, ' is absolutely 
 beautiful : a still elegiac mood, so soft, so deep, so 
 solemn and tender, like the song of some departed saint 
 — an echo of deepest meaning from the great and mighty 
 Nations of the Dead. Sir Thomas Browne must have 
 been a good man.' 
 
 The Garden of Cyrus is past all description of mine. 
 The Garden of Cyrus must be read. It is an extravagant 
 sport of a scholar of the first rank and a genius of the 
 first water. ' We write no herbal,' he begins, and neither 
 he does. And after the most fantastical prose-poem 
 surely that ever was written, he as fantastically winds 
 up at midnight with this : ' To keep our eyes longer 
 open were but to act our antipodes. The huntsmen are 
 up in America, and they are already past their first 
 sleep in Persia.' At which Coleridge must incontinently 
 whip out his pencil till we have this note of his on the 
 margin : ' What life ! what fancy ! what whimsicality ! 
 Was ever such a reason given for leaving one's book 
 and going to bed as this, that they are already past 
 their first sleep in Persia, and that the huntsmen are up 
 in America ? ' 
 
194 SIR THOMAS BROWNE 
 
 Sir Thomas Browne has had many admirers, and his 
 greatest admirers are to be found among our foremost 
 men. He has had Samuel Johnson among his greatest 
 admirers, and Coleridge, and Carlyle, and Hazlitt, and 
 Lytton, and Walter Pater, and Leslie Stephen, and 
 Professor Saintsbury ; than whom no one of them all 
 has written better on Browne. And he has had princely 
 editors and annotators in Simon Wilkin, and Dr. Green- 
 hill, and Dr. Lloyd Roberts. I must leave it to those 
 eminent men to speak to you with all their authority 
 about Sir Thomas Browne's ten talents : his unique 
 natural endowments, his universal scholarship, his 
 philosophical depth, ' his melancholy yet affable irony,' 
 his professional and scientific attainments, and his 
 absolutely classical Enghsh style. And I shall give 
 myself up, in ending this discourse, to what is of much 
 more importance to him and to us all than all these 
 things taken together, — for Sir Thomas Browne was a 
 believing man, and a man of unfainting and unrelaxing 
 prayer. 
 
 ' I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and 
 the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal 
 frame is without a mind : and therefore, God never 
 wrought miracles to convince atheism, because His 
 ordinary works convince it. It is true, that a little 
 philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth 
 in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.' 
 The old proverb, Ubi ires medici, duo ailiei, cast an 
 opprobrium on the medical profession that can never 
 have been just. At the same time, that proverb may be 
 taken as proving how little true philosophy there must 
 have been at one time among the medical men of Europe. 
 Whereas, in Sir Thomas Browne at any rate, his philo- 
 sophy was of such a depth that to him, as he repeatedly 
 
SIR THOMAS BROWNE 195 
 
 tells us, atheism, or anything like atheism, had always 
 been absolutely impossible. ' Mine is that mystical philo- 
 sophy, from whenee no true scholar becomes an atheist, 
 but from the visible effects of nature, grows up a real 
 divine, and beholds, not in a dream, as Ezekiel, but in 
 an ocular and visible object, the types of his resurrection.' 
 Nor can he dedicate his Urn-Burial to his worthy and 
 honoured friend without counselling him to ' run up his 
 thoughts upon the Ancient of Days, the antiquary's 
 truest object ' ; so continually does Browne's imagina- 
 tion in all his books pierce into and terminate upon 
 Divine Persons and upon unseen and eternal things. 
 In his rare imagination. Sir Thomas Browne had the 
 original root of a truly refining, ennobling, and sanctifying 
 faith planted in his heart by the hand of Nature herself. 
 Up through all ' the weeds and tares of his brain,' as Sir 
 Thomas himself calls them, his imagination and his 
 faith shot, and sprang, and spread, till they covered 
 with their finest fruits his whole mind, and heart, and life. 
 Sir Thomas Browne was a noble illustration of Bacon's 
 noble law. For Sir Thomas carried all his studies, experi- 
 ments, and operations to such a depth in his own mind, 
 and heart, and imagination, that he was able to testify to 
 all his fellow-physicians that he who studies man and 
 medicine deeply enough will meet with as many intel- 
 lectual, and scientific, and religious adventures every 
 day as any traveller will meet with in Africa itself. As 
 a living man of genius in the medical profession. Dr. 
 George Gould, has it in that wonderful Behmenite and 
 Darwinian book of his. The Cleaning and the Method of 
 Life, ' A healing and a knitting wound,' he argues, ' is 
 quite as good a proof of God as a sensible mind would 
 desire.' This was Sir Thomas Browne's wise, and deep, 
 and devout mind in all parts of his professional and 
 
196 SIR THOMAS BROWNE 
 
 personal life. And he was man enough, and a man of 
 true science and of true religion enough, to warn his 
 brethren against those ' academical reservations ' to 
 which their strong intellectual and professional pride, 
 and their too weak faith and courage, continually tempted 
 them. Nor has he, for his part, any clinical reservations 
 in religion either, as so many of his brethren have. ' I 
 cannot go to cure the body of my patient,' he protests, 
 ' but I forget my profession and call unto God for his 
 soul.' To call Sir Thomas Browne sceptical, as has been 
 a caprice and a fashion among his merely literary 
 admirers : and to say it, till it is taken for granted, 
 that he is an English Montaigne : all that is an abuse of 
 language. It is, to all but a small and select circle of 
 writers and readers, utterly misleading and essentially 
 untrue. And, besides, it is right in the teeth of Sir 
 Thomas's own emphatic, and repeated, and indignant 
 denial and repudiation of Montaigiie. Montaigne, with 
 all liis fascinations for literary men, and they are great ; 
 and with all his services to them, and they are not small ; 
 is both an immoral and an unbelieving writer. Whereas, 
 Sir Thomas Browne never wrote a single line, even in 
 his greenest studies, that on his deathbed he desired to 
 blot out. A purer, a humbler, a more devout and 
 detached hand never put English pen to paper than was 
 the hand of Sir Thomas Browne. And, if ever in his 
 salad days he had a doubt about any truth of natural 
 or of revealed religion, he tells us that he had fought 
 down every such doubt in his closet and on his knees. 
 
 I will not profanely paraphrase, or in any way water 
 down the strong words in which Sir Thomas Browne 
 writes to himself in his secret papers about prayer. All 
 that has been said about this very remarkable man only 
 makes what we are now to read all the more remarkable 
 
SIR THOMAS BROWNE 197 
 
 and memorable. All Sir Thomas Browne's readers owe 
 an immense debt to Simon Wilkin ; and for nothing 
 more than for rescuing for us these golden words of this 
 man of God. ' They were not,' says Wilkin, ' intended 
 by Browne for the perusal of his son, as so many of his 
 private papers were, or of any one else.' And hence 
 their priceless value. 
 
 ' To be sure that no day pass without calling upon 
 God in a solemn, fervent prayer, seven times within the 
 compass thereof. That is, in the morning, and at night, 
 and five times between. Taken up long ago from the 
 example of David and Daniel, and a compunction and 
 shame that I had omitted it so long, when I heedfully 
 read of the custom of the Mahometans to pray five times 
 in the day. 
 
 ' To pray and magnify God in the night, and in my 
 dark bed, when I cannot sleep ; to have short ejaculations 
 whenever I awake, and when the four o'clock bell 
 awakens me ; or on my first discovery of the light, to say 
 this collect of our liturgy, Eternal God, who hast safely 
 brought me to the beginning of this day. . . . 
 
 ' To pray in all places where privacy inviteth : in any 
 house, highway, or street : and to know no street or 
 passage in this city which may not witness that I have 
 not forgot God and my Saviour in it ; and that no parish 
 or town where I have been may not say the like. 
 
 ' To take occasion of praying upon the sight of any 
 church which I see or pass by as I ride about. 
 
 ' Since the necessities of the sick, and unavoidable 
 diversions of my profession, keep me often from church ; 
 yet to take all possible care that I might never miss 
 sacraments upon their accustomed days. 
 
 ' To pray daily and particularly for sick patients, 
 and in general for others, wheresoever, howsoever, under 
 
198 SIR THOMAS BROWNE 
 
 whose care soever ; and at the entrance into the house 
 of the sick, to say, The peace and mercy of God be in 
 this place. 
 
 ' After a sermon, to make a thanksgiving, and desire 
 a blessing, and to pray for the minister. 
 
 ' In tempestuous weather, Hghtning, and thunder, 
 either night or day, to pray for God's merciful protection 
 upon all men, and His mercy upon their souls, bodies, 
 and goods. 
 
 ' Upon sight of beautiful persons, to bless God for His 
 creatures : to pray for the beauty of their souls, and that 
 He would enrich them with inward grace to be answer- 
 able to the outward. Upon sight of deformed persons, 
 to pray Him to send them inward graces, and to enrich 
 their souls, and give them the beauty of the resurrection.' 
 
WILLIAM LAW 
 
 William Law was born at King's Cliffe, Northampton 
 shire, in 1686, and he died at the same place in 1761. 
 Daniel Defoe was born in 1661, Jonathan Swift in 1667, 
 Joseph Addison in 1672, Alexander Pope in 1688, Joseph 
 Butler in 1692, John Wesley in 1703, Samuel Johnson 
 in 1709, and Oliver Goldsmith in 1728. The best books 
 of Law's famous contemporaries are all more or less 
 known to every one who loves books, — Crusoe and Gulliver, 
 Homer and the Essay on Man, the Spectator, the Tatler, 
 the Vicar of Wakefield, the Analogy and the Sermons, as 
 well as Southey and Boswell, — but many not ill-read men 
 have never read a single line of William Law. And yet 
 it may with perfect safety be said that there are very few 
 authors in English literature, if there is one, whose works 
 will better delight and reward readers of an original and 
 serious cast of mind than just the wholly forgotten works 
 of William Law. In sheer intellectual strength Law is 
 fully abreast of the very foremost of his illustrious con- 
 temporaries, while in that fertilising touch which is the 
 true test of genius. Law simply stands alone. And then 
 his truly great and sanctified intellect worked exclusively, 
 intensely, and with unparalleled originality on the most 
 interesting, the most important, and the most productive 
 of all subjects, the Divine Nature and human nature, sin, 
 prayer, love, and eternal life. Certainly fame is like a 
 
 199 
 
200 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 river that beareth up things hght and swollen, and drowns 
 things weighty and solid. 
 
 William Law was the fourth of a large family of eight 
 sons and three daughters. His father was a shopkeeper 
 in King's Cliffe, and the shop had prospered in his honest 
 and attentive hands. The old shopkeeper's impressive 
 portrait has been preserved to us in the delightful gallery 
 of his son's Serious Call. He was surely a happy son 
 who could draw such a portrait of his father as we have 
 in the Paternus of that noble book, and could also place 
 beside it such a companion picture as that of Eusebia in 
 her widowhood. Young Law was intended for the min- 
 istry of the Church of England, and with that view he 
 entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1705. He was 
 elected to a Fellowship and entered Holy Orders in 1711. 
 He held his Fellowship) till 1716, when by his refusal to 
 take the oath of allegiance to King George i., Law for- 
 feited his Fellowship and with it all hope of preferment 
 in the Established Church. I suppose every student 
 lays down rules for his life when he first leaves his father's 
 house and enters the university, and much more when he 
 enters the divinity hall ; and the only thing remarkable 
 about the rules that Law laid down for his conduct as a 
 student is the light they cast on the early life of the 
 future author of the Christian Perfection and the Serious 
 Call. Out of Law's eighteen rules I select the following 
 as specimens, ' That the greatness of human nature con- 
 sists in nothing else but in imitating the Divine Nature. 
 To avoid all idleness. To avoid all excess in eating and 
 drinking. To call to mind the presence of God whenever 
 I find myself under any temptation to sin, and to have 
 immediate recourse to prayer. To think humbly of 
 myself and to think with great charity of all others. 
 To forbear all evil-sj)eaking. To pray privately three 
 
WILLIAM LAW 201 
 
 times a day besides my morning and evening devotions. 
 To spend some time in giving an account of the day, 
 previous to evening prayer.' To the students of Wilham 
 Law's works all these rules and resolutions read like so 
 many headings of well-known chapters and recall many 
 never-to-be-forgotten passages. The letter which the 
 young nonjuror wrote to his eldest brother when he lost 
 his Fellowship, and Avith it all the high hopes his family 
 had hitherto held of his advancement in the Church, lets 
 us see what kind of man the observance of his rules of 
 conduct had produced in William Law. ' Dear Brother,' 
 he wrote, ' I have sent my mother such news as I am 
 afraid she will be too much concerned at, which is the 
 only trouble I have for what I have done. My prospect 
 is melancholy enough, but had I done what was required 
 of me to avoid it, I should have thought my condition 
 much worse. The benefits of my education seem partly 
 at an end, but that education had been miserably lost 
 if I had not learned to fear something more than mis- 
 fortune. ... I expected to have had a greater share of 
 worldly advantages than I am now likely to enjoy, but 
 I am fully persuaded that if I am not happier for this trial 
 it will be my own fault. ... I am heartily glad that 
 your education does not expose you to the same hard- 
 ships that mine does me, so that you may provide for 
 your family without the expense of conscience. ... I 
 shall conclude as I began with desiring you to say as many 
 comfortable things as you can to my mother, which will 
 much oblige your affectionate brother.' 
 
 While yet a young man, Law sprang to the front rank 
 of the polemical writers of his day. The Bangorian 
 controversy created a tremendous agitation in the Church 
 of England in Law's early days. We have ourselves 
 
202 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 passed through enough theological panics to have some 
 idea of the Bangorian controversy. Dr. Hoadly, Bishop 
 of Bangor, occupied, roughly speaking, some such position 
 theologically and ecclesiastically in his day as that 
 which Bishop Hampden, Archbishop Whately, Dean 
 Stanley, and Dr. Hatch occupied in the Church of England 
 in their day. The memorable sermon that Bishop 
 Hoadly preached before George i. in 1717, and which 
 caused such a scandal, was just such a sermon as Dean 
 Stanley, say, might have preached in his day, and, 
 indeed, did often preach. And it will give modern 
 students not a bad idea of Law's reply to Hoadly if they 
 will imagine Canon Mozley replying in a joamphlet to 
 Dean Stanley's Church Institutions. Mozley at his best 
 is not unlike Law if only he had a dash of Newman to 
 give lucidity, keenness, flexibility, and here and there a 
 subtle touch of wit and satire to his style. The High 
 Church party of that day were soon in ecstasies over 
 the advent of such a powerful writer on their side. And 
 I do not wonder at their exhilaration. For, little sym- 
 pathy as I have with many of Law's early ecclesiastical 
 contentions, — as little as he latterly had himself, — ^yet 
 I cannot but confess to the strength of understanding, 
 the ripeness of learning, the clearness of eye, and, withal, 
 the noble seriousness of mind that Law discovers to his 
 readers on his first appearance in the arena of theological 
 controversy. Throughout his three letters to Hoadly 
 Law is almost wholly taken up with the divine right of 
 kings and priests, the apostolical succession of English 
 bishops, baptismal regeneration, confirmation, absolu- 
 tion, and suchlike questions. There are not lacking, 
 indeed, many promises and foretastes of that truly 
 catholic breadth and depth of mind, and that truly 
 apostolic power of handling divine things, which after- 
 
WILLIAM LAW 203 
 
 wards made William Law so deservedly famous. But 
 had he not in after days far outgrown the Bangorian 
 stage of his mental and spiritual development Law 
 would have been hailed as the ablest and freshest pol- 
 emical writer of his own day, but would never have been 
 opened after his own day had passed away. No one can 
 read Law's Three Letters to the Bishop of Bangor without 
 admiring and enjoying the young nonjuror's ecclesiastical 
 gladiatorship, but it is when he rises into such passages 
 as those on prayer, on the use of the passions in religion, 
 and suchhke, that we hail the approach of the coming 
 author of the Christian Perfection, the Serious Call, and 
 The Spirit of Love. In their purely theological passages 
 Law's Three Letters continually remind me of Hooker at 
 his best. It is the fashion to laugh at Christopher Walton 
 as a perfect madcap on the subject of Wilham Law and 
 all that he ever said and did, but I have found nothing 
 that to my mind better sums up the true merit of Law 
 in the part he took in the Bangorian controversy than 
 just what W^alton says on this subject in his mammoth 
 footnote. ' If the reader,' says Walton, ' be a person of 
 experience, strict impartiality, and solid judgment in 
 religious things, he will easily arrive at a clear perception 
 of the true and the false of all the questions discussed 
 in this most important controversy. For our author, 
 despite his captivating logic, rhetoric, and erudition, 
 and notwithstanding the praise bestowed upon those 
 letters by the High Church party and their reviewers, 
 must not be sanctioned beyond the bounds of justice 
 and experience.' With that wise caution taken along 
 with a sentence out of Bishop Ewing's well-written 
 eulogy I shall take leave of Law's first publication. ' The 
 Letters to Hoadly,' says the Bishop of Argyll and the 
 Isles, ' may fairly be put on a level with the Lettres 
 
204 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 Provinciales of Blaise Pascal, both displaying equal 
 power, wit, and learning.' 
 
 We do not even know where Law was living during 
 the years that immediately followed his exclusion from 
 college life, but that he was not idle we soon have abun- 
 dant proof. In the year 1705 Dr. Bernard Mandcville 
 published a short political squib of some two hundred 
 doggerel lines entitled The Grumbling Hive, which he 
 followed up with a succession of defences and expan- 
 sions of his doctrines, publishing the whole under the 
 general title of The Fable of the Bees in 1723. Under the 
 figure of a bee-hive, in which ' These insects lived like men 
 and all Our actions they performed in small,' Mandcville 
 took up the cynical position that our most brutish and most 
 diabolical vices are not only natural to us but are actually 
 necessary to fit us for our life in this world ; and, indeed, 
 that the most prosperous communities of men owe all 
 their prosperity at bottom to the vicious dispositions of 
 their individual members. In Mandeville's own words, 
 his book was written to show that it is the very vileness 
 of the ingredients that secures the wholesomeness of 
 every well-ordered society, and to extol the wisdom of 
 statesmen and philosophers who have raised such a 
 beautiful machine as a great nation is out of such con- 
 temptible and abominable materials. Nor is Mandcville, 
 in all this, setting forth a violent paradox wherewith to 
 bait the moralists and divines of his day, as you would 
 naturally think. Not at all. With all his ability and 
 learning and argumentative powers, and they are not 
 small, and with something that looks sometimes like real 
 conviction, the author of The Fable of the Bees defends 
 and extends his scornful position through two large 
 volumes. Mandeville's contemptuous and insulting 
 book called forth many able and indignant replies, but 
 
WILLIAM LAW 205 
 
 William Law's reply is on all hands admitted to be by 
 far the best. In a letter to his brother-in-law, Frederick 
 Denison Mauriee, we find John Sterling expressing him- 
 self about Law's answer to Mandeville in this manner : 
 ' I cannot refrain from sending you a few words to 
 announce a discovery which I made yesterday after- 
 noon. Looking by accident into William Law's works 
 I found at the beginning of the second volume an answer 
 to Mandeville's Fable of the Bees. The first section is 
 one of the most remarkable philosophical essays I have 
 ever seen in English. This section has all the highest 
 beauty of Law's polemical compositions with a weight 
 of pithy, right reason, such as fills one's heart with joy.' 
 So highly did Maurice also think of Law's Remarks on 
 the Fable of the Bees that he published a special edition 
 of the neglected book in 1844 with a characteristic and 
 valuable introduction from his own pen. Even Gibbon 
 says that morality as well as religion must join in Law's 
 applause for the manner in which he drew his pen against 
 Mandeville's licentious doctrines. The Remarks is, 
 indeed, a fine piece of philosophical polemic, red-hot 
 throughout with a passionate indignation. How human 
 virtue has its origin and seat and sanction in the Divine 
 virtue ; how obligation arises in the reason and con- 
 science of man ; how our human idea of God is formed ; 
 how and what happiness is the perfection of human 
 nature ; and how our liberty and our conduct act upon 
 the formation of character, and on our ultimate desert 
 and destiny : — the whole treatise is, indeed, all that it 
 has been called, an essay in moral philosophy, and a gem 
 in literature such that to read it fills one's heart with joy. 
 Mandeville is a powerful and attractive writer. He sees 
 the seamy side of life ; he sees seams and creases and 
 stains and scars, indeed, when they exist only in his own 
 
206 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 polluted imagination and corrupt heart. I can quite 
 well understand why Mandeville had so many readers 
 in the eighteenth century in England, and why so few 
 of those who tried it were able to answer him. 
 
 Law's next publication was a sixpenny pamphlet 
 entitled The Absolute Unlawfulness of the Stage Enter- 
 tainment fully Demonstrated. ' I am sensible,' says Law, 
 in the opening sentence of his tract, ' that the title of 
 this little book will, to the generality of people, seem 
 too high a flight ; that it will be looked upon as the 
 effect of a fanatical spirit carrying matters higher than 
 the sobriety of religion requires.' And the anticipation 
 of its author has turned out to be quite true concerning 
 his tremendous attack upon the theatre. ' Law's 
 admirers,' says Canon Overton, one of his greatest 
 admirers, ' will regret that he ever published this tract.' 
 Well, no. I, too, am one of Law's admirers, and after 
 reading the universally disowned tract over and over 
 again, and reading it in the light of all that has been 
 said against it, I cannot honestly say that I regret its 
 publication. I know something of what has been said 
 as to the ideal stage with all its educating, refining, 
 and diverting possibilities. But, all the more, do I not 
 regret Law's onslaught on the actual stage of his day. 
 No doubt Colo was put on the stage of Law's day, but 
 one swallow maketh not summer. And, if for nothing 
 else, I read and re-read the tract which contains 
 Trebonia, who goes ' but seldom to the playhouse, and 
 then either with her mother or her aunt. And, besides, 
 she always knows the play beforehand, and she never 
 goes on the sacrament week.' And Levis, who has 
 this to set against all Law's arguments, that ' the diversion 
 of the theatre never did him any hurt.' And Jucunda, 
 who, with great cheerfulness, says that ' after all is said, 
 
WILLIAM LAW 207 
 
 the stage is but a small sin, and, considering the wicked- 
 ness of the age, she thinks that the person who is only- 
 guilty of going to the play is in a very good state indeed. 
 God send I may have no greater sin to answer for than 
 seeing a play ! ' Law is undoubtedly strong even to 
 extremity in his polemic against the stage of the 
 eighteenth century ; but after the true mean has been 
 found, and duty and safety and liberty have had their 
 boundaries fixed as regards this diversion, there will 
 remain many passages in this tract that for a noble 
 solemnity, as well as for a moral severity, William Law 
 alone in his loose generation could have ventured to 
 write. 
 
 In his thirty-eighth year Law published a volume of 
 considerable size, entitled, A Practical Treatise upon 
 Christiayi Perfection. This was Law's first treatise on 
 personal religion, and its appearance placed him at 
 once in the very first rank of our practical and homiletical 
 authors also. I do not wonder at the immense impression 
 that great book made on the generation to which it was 
 immediately addressed ; for, to this day, it is impossible 
 to read it seriously without our hearts being taken by 
 storm, and without our whole after-life being powerfully 
 affected by it. As his method always is, Law begins in 
 the Christian Perfection at the beginning. He bottoms 
 his book deep in the nature of fallen man, in the nature 
 of sin, and in the nature and design of true religion ; 
 and he works up from all that to the very highest attain- 
 ments of Christian experience and out from all that to 
 the finest fulfilments of Christian obedience. In his 
 Christian Perfection, Law takes us into a strait gate 
 indeed, and leads us along a narrow way ; but what of 
 that when every step of the way rewards us with new 
 liberty and with a nobler prospect, till he lands us at 
 
208 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 last without spot or blemish before the throne of God. 
 In this, as in all his practical books, Law cuts to the 
 bone. He seizes and holds all the defiles and dark 
 passes of the heart. When John Wesley on one occasion 
 complained to Law that his doctrine of Christian per- 
 fection was too high to be attainable, Law replied, ' We 
 shall do well to aim at the liighest degree of perfection 
 if we may thereby at least attain to mediocrity.' The 
 literature of the Christian Perfection also, though it has 
 not yet attained to the balance and ease and finish of 
 the Serious Call, is delightful. The characters who cross 
 the stage from time to time as the argument goes on are 
 drawn with aU Law's insight, sagacity, humane satire, 
 and sparkling wit, till those who sit beside us as we read 
 Law to ourselves wonder what we get to laugh at in such 
 a forbidding book. 
 
 Law is in his thirty-ninth year when we find him 
 living in comfort and honour and happiness in Mr. 
 Edward Gibbon's house at Putney as the tutor of his 
 son who was afterwards the father of the famous historian. 
 Gibbon, the old merchant, was a man of uncommon 
 ability. His grandson tells us with pride that Lord 
 Bolingbroke had been heard to declare that he had 
 never conversed with a man who more clearly under- 
 stood the commerce and finance of England than Edward 
 Gibbon did. And the old merchant showed that he 
 understood more and better things than commerce and 
 finance when he took William Law into his household. 
 Macaulay has three or four very characteristic pages 
 on the life of dependence and even degradation that so 
 many of the nonjuring and unbeneficed clergy of the 
 Church of England lived in the houses of rich city 
 merchants and country gentlemen in that day. But the 
 
WILLIAM LAW 209 
 
 brilliant and epigrammatic historian would have had to 
 tone down his highly coloured picture of the trencher- 
 chaplains of that day if there had been more poor scholars 
 of the habits and character and temper of Mr. Gibbon's 
 chaplain-tutor. We are deeply indebted to John Byrom's 
 Journal for the impressive picture we possess of Law's 
 life at Putney. Byrom is a kind of Pepys in the way 
 he keeps his journal, and a kind of Bos well in the way 
 he hangs upon and worships his master. And, alto- 
 gether, vain and lazy and garrulous and good-liver as 
 Byrom is, yet he compels from us a certain respect if 
 only for his love of good men and good books. With 
 all Byrom's provoking ways Law had a great liking 
 for the restless irrepressible stenographer. Byrom had 
 some not despicable literary gifts of his own. Three or 
 four of his papers were admitted into the Spectator, and 
 there is a volume of poems of his still extant ; but it is 
 by his journal that Byrom will be best remembered, and 
 it, again, by those passages in it in which William Law 
 appears. Byrom was so struck and so influenced for good 
 by Law's Serious Call and Christian Perfection that he 
 took boldness to go out to Putney and introduce himself 
 to the great author, and many were the visits he after- 
 wards made, and many were the conversations about 
 men and books they held together as they walked to 
 and fro in Mr. Gibbon's garden. All up and down 
 Byrom's queer conglomerate of a journal Law's name 
 and the names of his famous books continually appear. 
 We talked about Mr. Law : we fell out about Mr. Law : 
 So-and-so has just bought and begun to read Mr. Law's 
 books : So-and-so's life has been totally changed by 
 reading Mr. Law's Call : I supped too late and ate too 
 much last night and lay too long to-day for an admirer 
 of Mr. Law : in a multitude of such coffee-house entries in 
 
210 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 his journal and letters to his wife, Byrom in these ways 
 returns to Law till we have such a portrait of Law as 
 only a thousand such touches can produce. But all 
 that Byrom writes only goes to establish and illustrate 
 the noble praise that Gibbon pronounces on Law in 
 his Memoirs of My Life and Writings. ' In our family 
 William Law left the reputation of a worthy and pious 
 man who believed all that he professed, and practised 
 all that he enjoined.' That from Edward Gibbon's 
 mature pen is a monument more lasting than brass. 
 
 Among the many visitors to Putney was a student 
 from Oxford who was destined to make a deeper and a 
 more lasting mark on the world than any other man of 
 his day. Law's books had made a very deep impression 
 on John Wesley, till, as Law said after they had fallen 
 out : ' I was at that time a sort of oracle to John Wesley.' 
 The bitter quarrel that broke out between Wesley and 
 Law is a perplexing and a painful subject, and I shall 
 not attempt to discuss it here. The ins and outs of the 
 dispute are set forth with admirable impartiality both 
 by Mr. Tyerman in his excellent Life of Wesley and by 
 Canon Overton in his equally excellent Life of Law. 
 It is most refreshing and reassuring, and it reads us an 
 excellent lesson, to see how Tyerman puts Wesley in the 
 wrong, and Overton Law. Both biographers bring out 
 that Wesley's attack on his old master was inevitable, 
 given the man and given the great change he passed 
 through after he had taken Peter Bohler to be his new 
 master. But it is not the less to be deplored that the 
 two most influential and two of the best men of that 
 whole century should have made themselves such a 
 spectacle of acrimony and recrimination. A large part 
 if not the whole of the truth in that most unhappy 
 controversy lay in this : that Law and Wesley in their 
 
WILLIAM LAW 211 
 
 intellectual life and in their religious experience, as well 
 as in the work to which their Master had called them, 
 were perhaps as different as two able and good men 
 could well be. Wesley was fitted to be a popular and 
 most impressive preacher, while Law was never allowed 
 to preach, but was early set apart by Divine Providence 
 to think and read and write. The work of Wesley's life 
 was to preach aAvakening sermons ; whereas, to take 
 up already awakened and converted men, and especially 
 converted men of the educated and intellectual class, 
 and compel them to a more consecrated life, was the 
 equally divine commission of William Law. And, 
 surely, if they could only both have seen it, there was 
 scope enough and call enough within the lines of 
 Evangelical Christianity for two such signally gifted 
 if signally individual men. We see now that William 
 Law without John Wesley, as well as John Wesley 
 without William Law, would have left the religious life 
 and literature of the eighteenth century both weak, 
 one-sided, and unsafe. Could they both but have seen 
 it, both were indispensable : John Wesley to complete 
 William Law, and William Law to complete John Wesley. 
 It was during his quiet residence at Putney that Law 
 wrote his famous masterpiece, the Serious Call. 1 shall 
 not enter here on any description or discussion of that 
 matchless book. It is still the only one of all Law's 
 books that is easily accessible ; but, happily, it is 
 easily accessible to everybody. I shall not begin, great 
 as the temptation is, to praise the Serious Call, or even to 
 attempt to say what I myself owe to it and through it 
 to its author. Let those praise the book who can do so 
 with authority, and whose voices will be listened to. 
 Take, first, what John Wesley says about this book, 
 after his lifelong quarrel with its author. ' The Serious 
 
212 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 Call,^ says Wesley in his old age, ' is a treatise which 
 will hardly be excelled, if it be equalled, in the English 
 tongue, either for beauty of expression, or for justness 
 and depth of thought. It is a treatise which must 
 remain, as long as England endures, an almost unequalled 
 standard of the strength and purity of our language as 
 well as of sound practical divinity.' ' Soon after I went 
 to the university,' says George Whitefield, ' I met with 
 Mr. Law's Serious Call, but had not money to purchase 
 it. Afterwards I purchased a small edition of the book, 
 and by means of it God worked powerfully upon my 
 soul as He has since upon many others by that and by 
 Law's other excellent treatise, the Christian Perfection.^ 
 ' When I was at Oxford,' said Dr. Johnson, ' I took up 
 Law's Serious Call to a Holy Life, expecting to find it a 
 dull book (as such books generally are), and perhaps to 
 laugh at it. But I found Law quite an overmatch for 
 me, and this was the first occasion of my thinking in 
 earnest of religion.' And again : ' Law's Serious Call 
 is the finest piece of hortatory theology in any language.' 
 ' Mr. Law's masterpiece,' says Gibbon, ' is a powerful 
 book. His precepts are rigid, but they are founded on 
 the gospel ; his satire is sharp, but it is drawn from his 
 knowledge of human life, and many of his portraits are 
 not unworthy the pen of La Bruyere.' ' Though I live,' 
 writes a minister, ' in a small country village, I have 
 had sufficient work on my hands to bring my parishioners 
 to any tolerable degree of piety and goodness. I preached 
 and laboured among them incessantly ; and yet, after 
 all, was convinced that my work had been as fruitless as 
 casting pearls before swine. I purchased many religious 
 works and distributed them among my people ; but, 
 alas ! I could perceive no visible effects. About this 
 time I happened to peruse Mr. Law's Serious Call, with 
 
WILLIAM LAW 213 
 
 which I was so much charmed and greatly edified that I 
 resolved my flock should partake of the same spiritual 
 food. I therefore gave to each person in my parish one 
 of those useful books, and charged them upon my blessing 
 to carefully peruse the same. My perseverance was now 
 crowned with success, and I had the satisfaction of 
 beholding my people reclaimed from a life of folly and 
 impiety to a life of holiness and devotion.' And the 
 Rev. David Young of Perth, who prepared an edition of 
 the Serious Call for publication by William Collins of 
 Glasgow in 1827, says of it, ' The Serious Call will never 
 fall into oblivion. It is sustained by a brilliancy of 
 genius, and has risen to a rank of favour with the intel- 
 lectual and the tasteful which no neglect and no vitu- 
 peration of its enemies can overcome.' And Mr. Birrell, 
 in his Ues Judicatce, describes William Law to his readers 
 as ' the inimitable author of the Serious Call ' ; and 
 speaking of Gibbon, goes on to say that ' splendid achieve- 
 ment of learning and industry though the Decline and 
 Fall may be, glorious monument though it is, more 
 lasting than marble, yet in sundry moods it seems but a 
 poor and barren thing by the side of a book, which, 
 like the Serious Call, has proved its power " to pierce 
 the heart and tame the will." ' 
 
 Matthew Tindal was the Voltaire of England with- 
 out Voltaire's genius. As it was, Tindal was by far 
 the ablest enemy of revealed religion. Law was at his 
 best when Tindal's attack on Christianity appeared, 
 and he lost no time in putting on his armour. Mr. 
 Leslie Stephen has very little sympathy with William 
 Law's religious principles, but Mr. Stephen is historian 
 enough and critic enough to hold the scales even when 
 he is weighing the merits of the deistical debate. ' The 
 question raised,' says Stephen, ' by Law's answer to 
 
214 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 Tindal is how such a master of English and of reasoning 
 should have sunk into such obhvion.' Dr. Arnold has 
 described the eighteenth century as the great misused 
 seed-time of modern Europe. William Law's works 
 were among the richest seed-baskets of that century, and 
 its seed stands still unused down at the end of the nine- 
 teenth century. Those who love practical religion best 
 give the palm to the Serious Call ; but there have been 
 able theologians who have held that The Case of Reason is 
 Law's masterpiece. Speaking for myself, I prefer several 
 of LaAv's books to his reply to Tindal ; but that does not 
 prevent me from feeling and acknowledging the massive- 
 ness of mind and the nobleness of spirit with which the 
 argument against Deism is carried on. ' Here at last,* 
 Leslie Stephen sums up, ' we are face to face with a man 
 who believes what he says, who is fighting for what he 
 loves, and is striking at the heart. This man despises 
 your vamped-up and second-hand eloquence, he writes 
 with the freedom of a man who is thoroughly at home 
 in his own doctrines, and with the force, brilliance, and 
 terseness of a clear-headed reasoner. Law simply tears 
 Tindal's flimsy fallacy to rags.' 
 
 For ten years the poor nonjuring scholar had found a 
 happy home in Mr. Gibbon's house at Putney. So much 
 esteemed was the tutor by the head of the house and by 
 the whole family, and so famous as the years went on 
 had his name become, that Law was looked on less as a 
 dependent than a beloved and honoured member of the 
 household. Mr. Gibbon's hospitable table was always 
 open to his tutor's visitors, Byrom, the Wesleys, and 
 suchlike ; his purse was always open when his tutor wished 
 to buy books ; and, altogether. Law had ten years of 
 great intellectual activity and great happiness in the old 
 
WILLIAM LAW 215 
 
 merchant's house at Putney. But Mr. Gibbon's death 
 in 1736 suddenly put an end to all that, and soon after 
 we find Law back again at King's Cliffe and settled as a 
 bachelor householder in an old edifice that had been left 
 to him by his deceased father. In the year 1744 we 
 find the old palace, as it was called, peopled by a most 
 remarkable household. A widow lady, named Mrs. 
 Hutcheson, along with Miss Hester Gibbon, one of his 
 old pupils and an aunt of the future historian, had 
 entered into a domestic arrangement with Law, and had 
 taken up their quarters in King John's palace, as the old 
 house was by tradition called. By Christopher Walton's 
 passionate devotion to all that belongs to the name of 
 WiUiam Law, we have collected for us a mass of bio- 
 graphical material belonging to this period of Law's life 
 which only waits for the fit biographer, for whom Walton 
 so long advertised in vain, to digest that indefatigable 
 collector's stores into one of the most interesting, im- 
 pressive, and instructive chapters of Christian biography 
 in the language. I question if there is a more arresting, 
 impressive, and instructive picture in the whole range of 
 Christian biography than we have in the daily round of 
 study and devotion and charity that William Law punc- 
 tiliously fulfilled for the next twenty years in the old 
 mansion-house at King's Chffe. 
 
 Law by this time was well turned fifty, but he rises as 
 early and is as soon at his desk as when he was still a new, 
 enthusiastic, and scrupulously methodical student at 
 Cambridge. Summer and winter Law rose to his devo- 
 tions and his studies at five o'clock, not because he had 
 imperative sermons to prepare, but because, in his own 
 words, it is more reasonable to suppose a person up early 
 because he is a Christian than because he is a labourer 
 or a tradesman or a servant. I have a great deal of 
 
216 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 business to do, he would say. I have a hardened heart 
 to change ; I have still the whole spirit of religion to get. 
 When Law at any time felt a temptation to relax his rule 
 of early devotion he again reminded himself how fast he 
 was becoming an old man, and how far back his sancti- 
 fication still was, till he flung himself out of bed and began 
 again to make himself a new heart before the servants 
 had lighted their fires or the farmers had yoked their 
 horses. Shame on you, he said to himself, to lie folded 
 up in a bed when you might be pouring out your heart 
 in prayer and praise, and thus be preparing yourself for 
 a place among those blessed beings who rest not day and 
 night, saying, Holy, Holy, Holy ! All the time he was 
 dressing, and till he sat down to his desk, Law occupied 
 his thoughts with thanksgiving. He had laid himself 
 down last night saying to himself. What, O my soul, if 
 we should waken in eternity ! And that he wakened 
 once more in a place of repentance and had another 
 day of salvation and service before him was every new 
 morning a fresh cause of warm thanksgiving. As a rule, 
 he began his devotions with a thanksgiving psalm or 
 chapter or collect, but he did not confine himself to any 
 one form of prayer or praise. As soon as he felt his heart 
 ready to break forth into strains of devotion on its own 
 account and in its own language, he immediately gave 
 himself up to those inward fervours. Not seldom he 
 needed no book at all. Not seldom, both in the early 
 morning and all the day, Law was so filled with an 
 overpowering compunction that no language could 
 relieve his heart but that of silent tears. Then, again, 
 he religiously reserved a certain spot, first of his bed- 
 room and then of his little study, for secret prayer. 
 He never allowed himself to do anything common on 
 that spot, till he came to find that just to kneel in that 
 
WILLIAM LAW 217 
 
 spot was a real and sure assistance toward a spirit of 
 prayer. 
 
 He collected also into a manuscript book, and that not 
 for pulpit use, but for his OAvn secret assistance, all the 
 best forms of devotion he ever lighted on. As he read 
 the Psalms, he collected all the confessions, petitions, 
 praises, resignations, and thanksgivings scattered up and 
 down the Psalter, and ranged them under their proper 
 heads as so much sacred fuel for his own fire. And from 
 all this he discovered that though the spirit of devotion 
 is the gift of God, and not attainable by any mere power 
 of our own, yet it is mostly given to, and never withheld 
 from, those who by a wise and diligent use of the proper 
 means, prepare themselves for the reception of it. Many 
 a morning Law never got to his studies at all, and nine 
 o'clock, the third hour of his day of study and prayer, 
 had often come before he had got himself torn away from 
 the devotions and meditations of the early morning. A 
 deeper humility was always the burden of Law's prayers 
 for himself at the third hour of the day. Law's work 
 lay largely, as we have seen, in philosophical and theo- 
 logical controversy, and he felt a mighty want of humility 
 in his intercourse with men and papers and books. And, 
 full of pride and scorn and contempt and ill-will as he 
 knew liimself by nature to be, he felt a wonderful change 
 gradually coming over his spirit as he prayed year after 
 year, and every day of the year, expressly and particu- 
 larly, and pleading instances for the divine nature of 
 humility. After an hour spent at the appointed place 
 where he met every forenoon the poor of the village and 
 even the mendicants of the whole country, he had two 
 or three hours of hard study before dinner-time. But 
 before he appeared at early dinner he had a fixed appoint- 
 ment to pray in secret every day for the divine grace of 
 
218 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 universal love. See what he says in the Serious Call 
 about universal love. It would open your eyes, it would 
 alter your whole life, both of prayer and of practice. 
 
 One thing he keeps saying continually, and that is the 
 sure sanctification that comes to that man's own sinful 
 heart who is importunate and particular in intercessory 
 prayer. You cannot, he argues, continue to hate or envy, 
 or feel spite or ill-will at a man if you persist in praying 
 for him and seeking his good. It is an axiom of Law's 
 that intercessory prayer is an infallible means of renew- 
 ing and cleansing and sweetening the heart. Try it, he 
 says, and see. Sir James Mackintosh has claimed the 
 striking title of a discoverer in morals for Bishop Butler 
 on the ground of his doctrine of conscience in his Three 
 Sermons on Human Nature ; and no lower designation 
 than that of a discoverer in experimental religion will 
 adequately describe William Law in what he has written 
 on the reflex effects of intercessory prayer. ' What 
 remains,' says Butler, in his profound sermon on The 
 Ignorance of Man, ' is that we learn to keep our heart, 
 to govern and regulate our passions and our affections, 
 that we may be free from the impotencies of fear, envy, 
 malice, covetousness, ambition, considered as vices seated 
 in the heart. He who should find out one rule to assist 
 us in this work would deserve infinitely better of man- 
 kind than all the improvers of all other knowledge put 
 together.' Now, what is claimed for Wilham Law is 
 just this, that he has found out such a rule. Let any 
 man who is keeping his heart with all diligence just try 
 Law's rule upon his own heart and see the result. Every 
 day the London post brought letters to King's Cliffe from 
 people who were reading the recluse's books and were 
 getting untold good out of them. But the postman's 
 bag brought other things also. A great controversy — 
 
WILLIAM LAW 219 
 
 many great controversies — had sprung up out of Law's 
 writings. We have already seen what a many-sided and 
 powerful controversialist Law was. He had been a man 
 of war for the truth from his youth up. His hand had 
 been against every enemy of the truth. And he had all 
 a controversialist's temptations to overcome. And how 
 was a constant controversialist like Law to keep himself 
 humble and full of universal love ? How, but just by 
 the way Law spent the ninth hour of every day ? When 
 things seemed to go ill with the cause of truth and right- 
 eousness in controversy or in actual life, Law at once fell 
 back on the assurance that God's ways must of necessity 
 be a great deep to the mind of man. And when hurts 
 and wrongs, crosses and vexations came to himself, Law 
 knew himself well enough to see why God sent them or 
 permitted them to come. It was often remarked that 
 Law struck only for the truth. There was never perhaps 
 a lifelong controversialist whose hands were so clean 
 of his enemy's blood. You are here, he said to himself, 
 to have no tempers, and no self-designs, and no self-ends, 
 but to fill some place, and act some part, in strict com- 
 formity and thankful resignation to the Divine good 
 pleasure. Begin, therefore, in the smallest matters and 
 most ordinary occasions, and accustom yourself to the 
 daily exercise of this pious temper in the lowest occur- 
 rences of life. And when a contempt, an affront, a little 
 injury, a loss, or a disappointment, or the smallest events 
 of every day come to try you, continually raise your 
 mind to God in proper acts of resignation, and then you 
 may justly hope that you shall be numbered among 
 those who are resigned and thankful to God in the greatest 
 trials and afflictions. ' Perform,' says a writer in morals, 
 ' a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is to say, 
 be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary 
 
220 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 points ; do every day or two something for no other 
 reason than that you would rather not do it ; so that, 
 when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you 
 nerved and trained to stand the test. Then you will 
 stand like a tower when everything rocks around you 
 and when your softer fellow-mortals are scattered like 
 chaff.' I leave you to picture Law at bedtime to your- 
 selves after telling you what he says about self-examina- 
 tion. An evening repentance, he says, which brings all 
 the actions of the day to account is not only necessary 
 to wipe off the guilt of sin, but is also the most certain 
 way to amend and perfect our lives. For it is only such 
 a repentance as this is that touches the heart, awakens 
 the conscience, and leaves a horror and detestation of 
 sin upon the mind. An examination thus managed will 
 in a little time make you as different from yourself as a 
 wise man is different from an idiot. It will give you such 
 a newness of mind, such a spirit of wisdom, and such a 
 desire after perfection as you were an utter stranger to 
 before. Represent to your imagination that your bed 
 is your grave, and that you have no more to do with this 
 world, and then commit yourself to sleep, as into the hands 
 of God, as one that is to have no more opportunities of 
 doing good, but is to awake among spirits that are separate 
 from the body and are waiting for the judgment of the 
 last great day. This, if you pursue it, is a practice that 
 will soon have an excellent effect upon your spirit and 
 your life. ' How,' asks the disciple of the Master in 
 Behmen's Supersensual Life, ' how shall I be able to 
 subsist in all this anxiety and tribulation so as not to 
 lose the eternal peace ? ' And the Master answers : 
 ' If thou dost once every hour throw thyself by faith 
 beyond all creatures into the abysmal mercy of God, 
 into the sufferings of our Lord, and into the fellowship of 
 
WILLIAM LAW 221 
 
 His intercession, and yieldest thyself fully and absolutely 
 thereinto, then thou shalt receive power from above to 
 rule over death and the devil, and to subdue hell and the 
 world under thee. And then thou mayest not only 
 endure in all manner of temptation, but be actually the 
 better and the brighter because of them.' By a life of 
 study of the best authors, by a life of good works and 
 devotional tempers and practices such as these, William 
 Law kept his mind open to all truth, and his heart open to 
 all love, and his life open to all opportunities of doing 
 good, till he made himself, till God made him, the ablest 
 defender of the truth, the most powerful and impressive 
 writer on practical religion of his day, and one of the most 
 saintly men that ever lived on the earth. 
 
 During the Putney period of his life, when Law was 
 standing one day in the door of his publisher's shop in 
 Paternoster Row looking at the passing crowd, a young 
 man in the dress and with the manners of a gentleman's 
 servant stepped out of the crowd and asked him if he 
 was Mr. Law, and put a letter with that address into his 
 hand. When Law opened the letter he found inside of 
 it a bank-note for a thousand pounds. No name accom- 
 panied the note and by the time that Law had looked up 
 from his letter the messenger had gone. But there could 
 be no doubt about it. There was the correct address, 
 The Reverend William Law, M.A., and inside the thou- 
 sand pounds. Some well-wisher, some one who had 
 read the Three Letters and the Christian Perfection, had 
 taken this anonymous way of conveying his gratitude 
 to the unbeneficed author. Before Law had left the 
 doorstep he had taken his resolution ; for, has not 
 Gibbon told us that his father's old tutor believed all that 
 he professed and practised all that he enjoined ? For 
 years Law had had the poor widows and orphans of 
 
222 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 King's Cliffe on his heart, and he had often said to him- 
 self that if he were only a rich man they should not need 
 to beg their bread. And now, behold, in a moment, 
 and without any effort or desert of his, he was a rich 
 man. And, accordingly, next morning Law took the 
 first coach to King's Chffe and before he returned to 
 Putney he had made arrangements for the building and 
 endowment of a residential school for fourteen poor 
 girls. And then in after-years when he had retired to the 
 Manor House of his native town, and when his books 
 had begim to bring him in some royalty, and when old 
 Mrs. Hutcheson, the rich merchant's widow, and Miss 
 Gibbon, his old pupil, had come to live with him, the 
 three charitable souls all threw their incomes into a 
 common purse, lived with all the frugality and modesty 
 set forth in Law's practical books, the Christian Perfection 
 and the Serious Call, and gave all to the poor. Schools 
 were built for orphan boys and girls. Viduarum Hospitia 
 were endowed. Schoolmasters' houses and a library 
 were fitted up which last as ' The Law and Hutcheson 
 Charities ' to this day. Rule 5 for the King's Cliffe 
 hospital runs thus : ' Only such old and poor women, 
 widows or ancient maidens, as are of good report for their 
 sobriety, industry, and Christian character in their 
 several stations are qualified. No ancient women of 
 ill manners, or of unchristian behaviour, no idle, gossip- 
 ing, or slothful persons shall be nominated.' At the 
 same time, while all this tender and scrupulous care was 
 taken of the Christian poor, the window of Law's study 
 was open for an hour every forenoon at which his charity 
 ran so free that he got into difficulties with the rector 
 for demoralising the parish with his too open window. 
 The rules and regulations of the Law and Hutcheson 
 schools are extant to this day in the handwriting of Mr. 
 
WILLIAM LAW 223 
 
 Law and Miss Gibbon. They run on such hues as 
 these : ' Rule 18. The master at his first entrance into 
 the school in the morning is to pray with the children, 
 and again at twelve o'clock, and again at their breaking 
 up in the evening.' And Rule 4 for the girls' school, 
 ' Every girl at her entrance in the morning shall kneel 
 down by her mistress and with her hands held up together 
 shall say the prayer appointed for the morning, and 
 before they go away shall say the prayers for the evening, 
 and at their rising up shall make a curtsey. . . . No girl 
 shall talk, or laugh, or make any noise in the room 
 where her mistress is. Every girl that gives the lie to 
 any other girl, or calls another a fool, or uses any rude 
 or unmannerly word, shall kneel down and in the presence 
 of them all shall say, I am heartily sorry for the wicked 
 words that I have spoken. I humbly beg pardon of 
 God and of all you that are here present, hoping and 
 promising by the help of God never to offend again in 
 like manner. Then shall the girl that she has abused 
 come and take her up from her knees and kiss her, and 
 both turning to their mistress, they shall make a curtsey 
 and return to their seats. . . . Every girl when she 
 walks in the streets shall make curtseys to all masters 
 and mistresses of families, and to all ancient people 
 whether rich or poor. They shall also make a curtsey 
 when they enter into any house and at their coming 
 out of it.' And so on for seventeen such happy rules 
 which were read over and explained to the children every 
 Monday morning when the children all knelt down and 
 said after the mistress the following prayer : ' Almighty 
 and Most Merciful Father, we give Thee humble thanks 
 for all Thy mercies to us and to all mankind. We bless 
 Thy Holy Name for that Thou hast called us to this 
 place to be brought up in Thy faith and fear, to learn 
 
224 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 Thy holy word, and to turn our hearts to Thee in the 
 days of our youth. We here offer ourselves, our souls, 
 and our bodies, to Thee. Grant us. Holy Father, that 
 we, thus beginning our lives in humility and labour, 
 in praying and reading, may, as we grow in age, grow 
 in good works, and at last attain the salvation of our 
 souls, through the merits and mediation of our Blessed 
 Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Our Father, Which art in 
 heaven. . . .' Such, adds the indefatigable Walton, are the 
 particulars of the charities established at King's Cliffe by 
 Mr. Law and under his direction, which, in common with 
 all the other public acts and monuments of his life, are 
 calculated to endear his name and character for wisdom, 
 piety, and benevolence to the latest generations. 
 
 Nonjuror and mystic is the description that William 
 Law usually goes by on the title-pages of his biographers 
 and in the references made to him in church histories 
 and in religious literature. We have seen something of 
 the life that the nonjuror led and the work that he did ; 
 and it now remains for us to look for a little at Law as 
 the chief of the English mystics. Most interesting as 
 the subject is, and helpful as a short estimate of mysticism 
 would be to enable us fully to understand Law, that 
 cannot be attempted here. I must content myself with 
 the bare mention of the names of a few mystical writers — 
 ' spiritual writers ' Law always called them ; but the 
 mere mention of their names will perhaps leave some 
 idea in our minds of what a mystic is. Plato was the 
 prince of mystics among the Greek philosophers. And 
 the Apostle John may, with all due reverence, be said to 
 be a kind of mystic among the writers of the New Testa- 
 ment. Passing by fathers and mediaeval philosophers 
 and theologians who partake more or less of the mystic 
 
WILLIAM LAW 225 
 
 spirit, we come to such men as Tauler, a Kempis, the 
 author of the Theologia Germanica, Jacob Behmen, 
 Samuel Rutherford with all his logic, Peter Sterry 
 Cromwell's chaplain, the Cambridge Platonists, Fenelon, 
 Leighton, Jonathan Edwards in his earlier and later 
 writings, William Blake, Coleridge in some moods of his 
 mind, Carlyle in some moods of his mind, Newman in 
 some moods of his mind, Wordsworth, Maurice, Keble, 
 Tennyson in his In Memoriam especially, Stewart and 
 Tait in their Unseen Universe, Martensen, George 
 MacDonald, and suchlike. The mere mention of these 
 names, far apart as their owners are in time as well as 
 in many other things, will yet leave with us a picture of 
 a certain type of mind and heart that we may not in- 
 correctly call the mystic type. The true mystic begins 
 with and never loses sight of this foundation truth, that 
 man is made in the image of God. All Christian men 
 admit that ; but it is the distinguishing mark of the true 
 mystic that he never forgets his high original, it is ever 
 with him penetrating, illuminating, and inspiring all 
 his reflections and all his devotions. Our Lord's words 
 also, ' The kingdom of heaven is within you,' are deep 
 down in the mystic's heart. As are also John's words 
 concerning ' the true light which lighteth every man that 
 Cometh into the world,' and, indeed, all that John has 
 written both in his Gospel and in his Epistles. And Paul, 
 who has everything, has mysticism too, and that even 
 in the Epistle to the Romans. ' The invisible things of 
 God are clearly seen from the creation of the world, 
 being understood by the things that are made.' Not to 
 speak of the whole of the Epistle to the Ephesians, and 
 much more. ' I thank God,' wrote Law in one of his 
 last books, ' that I have been a diligent reader of the 
 mystical divines, through all ages of the church, from 
 
 p 
 
226 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 the apostolical Dionysius the Areopagite down to the 
 great Fenelon and the illuminated Guion.' But of all 
 these mystical writers it was the poor unlettered German 
 shoemaker, Jacob Behmen, that made William Law a 
 mystic. I can well believe that there are some of my 
 readers who never heard so much as the name of Jacob 
 Behmen, and there cannot be many who have ever read 
 a line of his marvellous books. ' In an intimate inter- 
 view I had with Mr. Law a few months before his decease,' 
 says one of Law's early biographers, ' I inquired of him 
 when and how he first met with Jacob Behmen's works. 
 He replied that he had often reflected upon it with 
 surprise that although when a tutor in London he had 
 rummaged every bookseller's shop and book-stall in the 
 metropolis, yet he had never met with a single book of 
 Jacob Behmen's or even so much as knew the title of 
 any one of them. The first notice he had of Behmen 
 was from a treatise called Fides et Ratio, published at 
 Amsterdam (1707), and soon after he accidentally 
 obtained one of the best of Behmen's books. " When 
 I first began to read Behmen's book," he says, " it put 
 me into a perfect sweat. But as I discerned sound truths 
 and the glimmerings of a deep ground and sense even in 
 the passages not then clearly intelligible to me, I followed 
 the impulse to dig in Behmen with continual prayer to 
 God for His help to understand His servant, till at 
 length I discovered the wonderful treasure there was 
 hid in this field." ' Know thyself, said Jacob Behmen 
 in every page of his heart-searching books to Wilham 
 Law. Seek above every other search the one noble 
 knowledge of thyself. For, only in the ever-deepening 
 knowledge of thyself shalt thou come to know sin, and 
 only in the knowledge of thyself and thy sinfulness shalt 
 thou ever know aught aright of God. Self is sin and 
 
WILLIAM LAW 227 
 
 God is love. Seek all thy knowledge, therefore, in the 
 still deeper knowledge of thyself. Count all other 
 knowledge but ignorance till thou knowest thyself. The 
 knowledge of thyself is the pearl of great price ; it is the 
 treasure that no thief can steal, and that no rust can 
 corrupt. The kingdom of heaven, the throne of grace, 
 the Son of God, the Holy Ghost, are all within thee. 
 So Behmen preaches in season and out of season. But, 
 you will say, surely William Law knew all that long 
 before he met with Jacob Behmen. He surely knew 
 that the kingdom of heaven is not set ujd among the 
 stars, nor the throne of God established and prepared 
 in the sun or the moon. Yes, in a way he might be 
 said to know all that before he met with Behmen. But 
 we have his own solemn word for it that it was the poor 
 unlettered German artisan who first made him see and 
 feel all that with anything like its true reality and power. 
 To borrow Law's own words about the daily and life- 
 long reading of the Bible, Behmen gave him not so much 
 any new information, but he took all Law's old informa- 
 tion and drew out of it a new, a deep, a lasting, an ever- 
 lasting impression. This, then, was the man, I can 
 scarcely call him the author, who took up the greatest 
 English theologian and the best practical writer of the 
 eighteenth century and made him the greatest of our 
 English mystics. 
 
 It only remains to say something about the increasingly 
 deep and noble books that William Law wrote after he 
 had been taken possession of by Jacob Behmen. In the 
 year 1737 Law published a book on the Lord's Supper. 
 This treatise took the form of a reply to his old opponent. 
 Bishop Hoadly, who had set forth a doctrine of the Supper 
 in which he had taught the lowest and most rational- 
 istic views as to the nature and grounds of that ordinance. 
 
228 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 Law's doctrine of the Supper is a high doctrine in the best 
 sense of that word. ' Everything that is great,' he sets 
 out with saying, ' everything that is adorable in the 
 redemption of mankind, everything that can dehght, 
 comfort, and support the heart of a Christian is found in 
 this holy sacrament.' That the Supper is not merely 
 a positive ordinance, as Hoadly held, but that it has its 
 ground and its roots deep down in the very nature of 
 things. Law argues out in a profound, most convincing, 
 and most satisfying way. He then passes on to show his 
 readers that there are two essential parts in this sacra- 
 ment, which relate respectively to the twofold character 
 and office of our Redeemer, first, as He is the atonement 
 and satisfaction for our sins, and, second, as He is a prin- 
 ciple of life to us. All the merit, all the dignity, all the 
 virtue of the Supper, with all the blessings and advan- 
 tages derived to us from it, and all the pious dispositions 
 with which we are to approach it, — all this will come to 
 him who aright understands and receives this twofold 
 nature of the Supper. And starting from these deep 
 principles Law passes on to expatiate on the blessings of 
 redemption and on our need of it in all his own powerful 
 and affecting way. The Demonstration is a book for 
 trained theologians rather than for the body of com- 
 municants, and, indeed, there arc not a few passages in 
 it that will not be very intelligible even to trained theo- 
 logians unless they have first read something of Behmen 
 and have some sympathy with him. At the same time. 
 Canon Overton, Law's Anglican biographer, is quite 
 entitled to say that Law's churchmanship was only 
 modified, not lost, when he became a mystic ; and that 
 on the Supper he holds as distinctly High Church views 
 as he did when he measured swords with the same anta- 
 gonist twenty years before. For myself I may say that 
 
WILLIAM LAW 229 
 
 the two best books by far I have ever read on the Lord's 
 Supper are that of our own Calvinistic and Presbyterian 
 Robert Bruee and that of the Anghcan and Behmenite 
 Wilham Law, 
 
 Our industrious author's next piece was a shilling 
 tract entitled The Ground and Reason of Christian Regeyier- 
 ation. This fine treatise is steeped throughout in Law's 
 new mysticism, and if he does not transgress the Church 
 Catechism and the Baptismal Service in his exposition 
 and argument, it is because he rises far above both and 
 expatiates in a region clear of every ecclesiastical creed 
 that has ever been laid down. The super-confessional 
 clement, as Martenscn calls it, that was so conspicuous 
 in Bchmen the orthodox Lutheran, comes out in this and 
 in all the subsequent works of Law the equally orthodox 
 Anglican. The Christian Regeneration is a delightful 
 piece, and I do not wonder that my copy of this tract 
 belongs to the seventh edition. 
 
 We owe Law's next work to the publication of Dr. 
 Trai^p's Four Sermons on the Sin, Folly, and Danger of 
 being Righteous Overmuch. I have ill succeeded in 
 setting William Law before you if you cannot imagine 
 for yourselves something of the power, solemnity, and 
 pathos of his Serious Ansiver to such a publication as 
 that of Dr. Trapp. I must leave you to imagine what 
 that book is of which Mr. Tyerman, the biographer of 
 Wesley, says that it is ' as grand a piece of writing as can 
 be found in the English language.' Only, to assist your 
 imagination I shall let you hear in one or two sentences 
 how Law begins his answer to Trapp and how he ends it. 
 ' Might I follow the bent of my own mind,' he begins, 
 ' rny pen, such as it is, should be wholly employed in 
 setting forth the infinite love of God to mankind in Christ 
 Jesus, and in endeavouring to draw all men to the belief 
 
230 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 and acknowledgment of it. The one great mercy of God, 
 which makes the one, only happiness of all mankind, so 
 justly deserves all our thoughts and meditations, so 
 highly enlightens and improves every mind that is atten- 
 tive to it, so removes all the evils of this present world, 
 so sweetens every state of life, and so inflames the heart 
 with the love of every divine and human virtue, that he 
 is no small loser whose mind is either by writing or reading 
 detained from the view and contemplation of it.' And 
 then, after ninety pages of such serious matter as you can 
 imagine, he closes thus : ' I desire no authority for what 
 I have written but the gospel, else I could soon show that 
 everything in my books that offends the doctor is again 
 and again to be found not only in Thomas k Kempis and 
 Jeremy Taylor, but in the writings of the most eminent 
 saints through all ages of the church.' 
 
 I must also leave untouched his next book, which has 
 this bold and elaborate title-page, An Appeal to all that 
 doubt or disbelieve the Truths of the Gospel, whether they be 
 Deists, Arians, Socinians, or Nominal Christians, in which 
 the true Grounds and Reasons of tlie whole Christian Faith 
 are plainly and fully Demonstrated. The Appeal is the 
 most original and the most complete of all Law's later 
 works. You may think that Law is very bold on his 
 title-page. And so he is. But by universal consent he 
 fully performs all that he promises. All through the 
 Appeal its author continually acknowledges that he is 
 ploughing with Jacob Behmen's heifer ; but, all the 
 more, because of that, it must be proclaimed that the 
 field that Law so ploughs is all his own, and that the 
 furrows he draws in it have a depth, an order, and a beauty 
 all his own also. I have no means of knowing what 
 effect the Appeal had on the Deists, Arians, Socinians, 
 and Nominal Christians of Law's day, but speaking for 
 
WILLIAM LAW 231 
 
 myself I can answer for the effect for good it has had on 
 one nominal Christian at least in our day. It was about 
 the Appeal that Samuel Johnson, impransus, wrote to 
 Miss Boothby, ' I return you Law, which, however, I 
 entreat you to give me.' 
 
 We come now to two truly golden books, The Spirit of 
 Prayer and its companion volume, The Spirit of Love. 
 Christopher Walton does not exaggerate one iota when he 
 says that Law's readers will rise up from those books 
 saying, These are the two best books in the world ! 
 The intellectual and experimental range of The Spirit of 
 Prayer and The Spirit of Love is much more extended and 
 profound than is the range of what is popularly known as 
 orthodox and evangelical doctrine. Law does not write 
 here — indeed, he never writes, though he always says he 
 does — for the unlettered believer. The abler and the 
 better informed the mind, and the more exercised in the 
 divine life the heart that any reader brings to those two 
 treatises, the more good will he get from them, and the 
 more all his after-life will he value them. The dialogues 
 which constitute so much of both those books are to my 
 taste productions of a nothing less than a Platonic depth 
 and beauty. I have laid down those books again and 
 again saying with Walton : In their way, and on their 
 subjects, show me another two books like those in all the 
 world ! And, if only to show you that Walton and I are 
 not alone in our exquisite estimate of lite Spirit of Prayer, 
 just listen to what the editor of the Glasgow edition says 
 about it. ' For myself,' he says, ' I cannot extol this 
 book too highly. I think it ought to be printed in 
 diamonds. Nor am I a wild enthusiast in saying this. 
 I have had forty years' intimate acquaintance with this 
 book. I have also read all known spiritual writers in 
 the world with much general satisfaction. But after all 
 
232 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 that I turn to William Law's Spirit of Prayer, and con- 
 clude that it stands far above them all.' Sir James 
 Mackintosh has adduced the memorable instances of 
 Cicero and Milton and Dryden and Burke in support of 
 his idea that there is some natural tendency in the fire of 
 genius to burn more brightly in the evening than in the 
 morning of human life. And this was signally the case 
 with William Law. His seraphic genius literally blazed 
 up to heaven in the evening of his holy life till w^e cannot 
 take up The Spirit of Prayer or The Spirit of Love into our 
 hands without feeling that we are in the presence of a 
 man whose heart was an absolute altar-fire. ' The first 
 part of The Spirit of Prayer you read to me,' says Rusticus 
 in the dialogue, ' more than three or four times, and that 
 is the reason why I am in no state of eagerness after a 
 second part. I have found in the first part all that I 
 need to know of God, of Christ, of myself, of heaven, of 
 hell, of sin, of grace, of death, and of salvation. I have 
 found that all these things have their being, their life, 
 and their working in my own heart. That God is always 
 in me : that Christ is always in me : that He is the 
 inward light and life of my soul, a bread from heaven 
 which I may always eat, a water of eternal life springing 
 up in my soul of which I may always drink. O my 
 friend, these truths have opened up a new life in my 
 soul. I am brought home to myself : the veil is taken 
 off my heart. I have found my God. I know now that 
 His dwelling-place. His kingdom, is within me. My 
 eyes, my ears, my thoughts are all now turned inwards 
 because all that God and Christ and grace are doing for 
 me, and all that the devil, the world, and the flesh are 
 working against me, are only to be known and found 
 there. What need, then, of so much news from abroad 
 since all that concerns either life or death are all transact- 
 
WILLIAM LAW 233 
 
 ing and are all at work within me ? I now know to what 
 it is that I am daily to die, and to what it is that I am 
 daily to live, and, therefore, I look upon every day as 
 lost that does not help forward both this death and this 
 life in me. I have not yet half done what the first part 
 of Tlie Spirit of Prayer directs me to do, and therefore 
 have but little occasion to call out for a second.' 
 
 The third part of The Spirit of Prayer was intended by 
 Law to be an introduction to a new edition of Behmen's 
 works, for which Law had now for a long time been 
 preparing himself. ' I tavight myself the High Dutch 
 language on purpose that I might know the original 
 words of the blessed Jacob, and if it please God that 
 I undertake this work, I shall only attempt to make 
 J. B. speak as he would have spoken had he written in 
 English. Also, by prefaces and introductions and notes 
 to prepare and direct the reader to the true use of these 
 writings.' But Law did not live to carry out this 
 cherished design. And thus it is that the four-volume 
 quarto edition of Behmen which we possess, and which is 
 often advertised and referred to as Law's translation, 
 is not Law's at all. It is only a reprint of an old edition 
 which was first published during the time of the Common- 
 wealth, with some allegorical plates added which Law's 
 executors found among his papers, and which were 
 originally from the pencil of Freher, Behmen's German 
 editor. What a treasure we have thus lost by the death 
 of Law we only too well see as we are carried through 
 The Way to Divine Knowledge. The four friends are met 
 again, and Humanus, the Deist, who has been silent till 
 now, opens the conversation. He is frank to confess that 
 the conversation to which he has been privileged to listen 
 has completely overcome him. ' I must yield,' he says ; 
 ' you have taken from me all power of cavilling and 
 
234 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 disputing. What I have read and heard glows in my 
 soul like a fire, like a hunger which nothing can satisfy 
 but a further view of those great truths which I this 
 day expect from your opening to us the mysteries of 
 heaven revealed to that wonderful man, Jacob Behmen.' 
 And then Theophilus, who is just Law himself, takes the 
 lead in the dialogue, and the result is, as I have said, 
 such an exposition of Behmen's doctrines and services 
 as would have proved a worthy introduction to an 
 adequate edition of the Teutonic philosopher. As it is, 
 the English reader must content himself with such 
 expositions of Behmen as are scattered up and down 
 Law's later works ; and, in spite of Mr. Leslie Stephen's 
 flout at Christopher Walton, let no student of Behmen 
 and Law neglect that indefatigable and able, if some- 
 what erratic and unconventional author, or, rather, 
 author's collector and referee. One reader at any rate 
 has neither been bewildered nor even wearied, as Mr. 
 Stephen said he would be, among the theosophical 
 quagmires and gigantic footnotes of Walton. I have 
 read Walton's enormous book over and over again with 
 delight, with benefit, and with gratitude. 
 
 Law's truly heavenly treatise The Spirit of Love is, 
 itself, besides all else, a perfect triumph of that same 
 divine spirit. For that fine work was called forth by 
 the persistent objections that both his friends and his 
 enemies had made to many things in his later writings. 
 And while gathering up into an ordered and systematic 
 whole all the best and most characteristic things in his 
 later books, Law gives them over again here with a 
 fulness and a finish that make The Spirit of Love the 
 copestone and crown of all his compositions. And, 
 better than all that, he illustrates and adorns that 
 most delightful book with a wisdom and a meekness, 
 
WILLIAM LAW 235 
 
 and Avith a display of that all-embracing love of which 
 William Law was, of all our modern men, surely the 
 chosen apostle. While the most humble and simply 
 believing and the least rationalistic of theologians, at 
 the same time, Law sets out in The Spirit of Love to give 
 a profound and complete rationale of the origin and the 
 nature of sin, the origin and the nature of the love and the 
 wrath of God, the origin and the nature of the atoning 
 death of our Lord, and so on. Like his master Jacob 
 Behmen, Law moves deep down among the primitive 
 and unfrequented roots of things. He sees the unseen 
 roots of things with his own eyes, and he tells what he 
 sees in his own words, till it may safely be said that no 
 man of a sufficiently open and sufficiently serious mind 
 can read Law on these awful and unfathomable subjects 
 without having his seriousness immensely deepened and 
 his love to God and man for all his days fed to a seraphic 
 flame. The second dialogue of The Sjnrit of Love has 
 been reprinted by the late Bishop Ewing in his Present- 
 Day Prayers on Theology ; but, even with the Bishop's 
 excellent preface, the reader is plunged into the very 
 depths of Law's doctrines without the needful discipline 
 of mind and heart that the consecutive and cumula- 
 tive reading of his peculiarly germinant and organic 
 books can alone give to the student. ' Before you 
 leave me,' says Thcophilus, ' I beg one more conversation 
 to be on the practical part of the spirit of love ; that so 
 doctrine and practice, hearing and doing, may go hand in 
 hand.' I wish Bishop Ewing, or some such student of 
 Law, had reprinted for the Christian public the third 
 and practical part of Law's great work. 
 
 Law's last book, which he did not live to correct for 
 the press, is entitled. An Humble, Earnest and Affectionate 
 Address to the Clergy. Law had never been in active 
 
236 WILLIAM LAW 
 
 pulpit and parish work himself ; he held by his nonjuring 
 principles to the end ; but his whole heart was in the 
 ministry, as a thousand passages scattered up and down 
 his writings sufRciently show us. And, accordingly, 
 in the Humble Address Law sums up all the authorship 
 of his long and fruitful life, and brings it all to bear with 
 an overpowering impressiveness on the younger clergy 
 of the Church of England. He had often had the 
 younger clergy in his eye as he composed his former 
 books, but this now is his dying charge to them. And 
 it is very characteristic of Law that he does not set out 
 to address his younger brethren on any of their properly 
 professional duties. There is not one word about books, 
 though he had been a lifelong student himself. There 
 is not a single word about how to compose or deliver a 
 sermon. Law leaves all that to his readers to find out for 
 themselves. And he keeps himself and them to the end 
 of his overpowering address to the purest substance and 
 the innermost essence of a minister's work. In a letter, 
 dated Philadelphia, 1767, I find the following passage : 
 ' Mr. Law's Address to the Clergy was the first of his books 
 that fell into my hands. I took it up with much prejudice 
 in my mind against its author, whom I had always heard 
 spoken of as an enthusiast. But I had not read half the 
 pamphlet before my heart was visited with such sensa- 
 tions as I had never felt before. My mind, which had 
 hitherto been unsettled, dark, doubting, and yet anxious 
 to find the truth, became calm, serene, and sweetly 
 composed. I had found my God. I had found my 
 Redeemer. I had found the origin and source of my 
 disorder, and with that the only means of consolation 
 and of a perfect cure.' But by the time that American 
 letter arrived in England, William Law had been taken 
 to that world of light and love where neither the praise 
 nor the blame of this world could follow him. 
 
WILLIAM LAW 237 
 
 It was when Law was engaged on some out-of-doors 
 business connected with the King's Chffe charity schools 
 that he took the severe cold that ended in his death. 
 Till well beyond his threescore years and ten Law had 
 enjoyed splendid health. He started on life with a 
 sound constitution, and all his days he took good care of 
 it. We shall not forget his early hours, his temperate 
 and almost ascetical habits, his regularity in study and 
 devotion and exercise, and the serenity of his noble mind 
 continually occupied even to ecstasy with the most 
 sublime objects of human contemplation. Law's death- 
 bed was one long rapture. He fell asleep at that morning 
 hour at which for a lifetime he had been wont to make 
 his study vocal with his songs of thanksgiving for an- 
 other new day. And his ruling passion was strong enough 
 even in death to raise him up in his bed while he sang 
 with his last breath the angels' song of peace and good- 
 will on the plains of Bethlehem. The last words that 
 were heard from his lips were something like these : 
 ' Take away the filthy garments from him, and clothe 
 him with a change of raiment.' And these : ' I feel 
 within me a consuming fire of heavenly love which has 
 burned up in my soul everything that was contrary to 
 itself and transformed me inwardly into its own nature.' 
 And thus, like a saint already satisfied with the Divine 
 likeness, William Law breathed his last on the morning 
 of the 9th of April 1761. 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 Joseph Butler had for his contemporaries John Locke, 
 Isaac Newton, George Berkeley, WiUiam Law, Alexander 
 Pope, John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, Samuel Johnson, 
 and many other well-known men. The Principia was 
 published in 1687, the Essay Concerning Human Under- 
 standing in 1690, the Rolls Sermons in 1726, the Serious 
 Call in 1729, the Essay on Man in 1733, the Alciphron 
 in 1733, the Analogy in 1736, the Religious Affections 
 in 1746, the Freedom of the Will in 1754, the Dictionary 
 in 1755, and the Lives of the Poets in 1781. If Butler's 
 lifetime was not the very greatest age of English literature 
 and philosophy and religion, it was still a great age, 
 when these were the men whose names were in every 
 mouth, and when these were the books that were in 
 every reader's hand. 
 
 Butler quite excelled himself the very first time he put 
 pen to paper. He never wrote anything again so astonish- 
 ingly acute as was the short series of anonymous letters 
 he addressed to Dr. Samuel Clarke on certain philo- 
 sophical and theological positions of that eminent author. 
 Butler tells us that the Being and the Nature of God 
 had been his incessant study ever since he began to think 
 at all. And that he had thought to some purpose on 
 that supreme subject of thought, those able letters of 
 his are the sufficient evidence. ' A correspondence,' 
 says Professor Eraser in his Life of Berkeley, ' unmatched 
 
 239 
 
240 BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 in its kind in English philosophical literature.' But it 
 is not the acuteness of their dialectic, nor even the 
 depth of their thought, that gives those early letters of 
 Butler their lasting interest to us. It is much more the 
 rare qualities of heart and character that shine out of 
 every page of those modest letters that make Butler's 
 admirers so to cherish his early correspondence with 
 Clarke. 
 
 Butler has no biography. Butler's books are his 
 whole biography. What Jowett so well saj^s of Plato's 
 writings may also be said of Butler's : ' The progress 
 of his writings is the history of his life. We have no other 
 authentic life of him. His writings are the true self of 
 the philosopher, stripped of the accidents of time and 
 place.' Butler's schoolboy letters to Clarke are the best 
 biography of his boyhood and youth, and his Rolls 
 Sermons and his Analogy are the sum and substance of 
 all his after days. The Preface to the second edition of 
 his Rolls Sermons is, perhaps, on the whole, the most 
 self-revealing and most characteristic piece of writing 
 that ever proceeded from Butler's pen. ' The Preface 
 to the Sermons,'' says Maurice, ' is the most important 
 of all the documents we possess for the understanding of 
 Butler's character.' The famous Preface is full, I will 
 not say of contempt, but of a certain saddened scorn at 
 the generality of the readers of his day. Those are 
 classical passages in which he takes up the defence of his 
 much-assailed manner of writing in his Rolls Sermons. 
 Butler's really noble style is never seen to greater advan- 
 tage than just in those two or three pages in which he 
 defends his Rolls Sermons. All those men among our- 
 selves who w^ould write seriously, as well as all those 
 who would read seriously, should lay to heart those 
 weighty and solemnising pages of this great writer. 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 241 
 
 And then, after his severe chastisement of the indolent 
 and incapable readers of his day, Butler passes on to 
 assist his really serious-minded readers by preparing 
 for them a most masterly introduction to the fifteen 
 sermons. Then the famous Preface comes to a close 
 with this valuable autobiographic paragraph : ' It may 
 be proper to advertise the reader that he is not to look 
 for any particular reason for the choice of the greatest 
 part of these discourses ; their being taken from 
 amongst many others preached in the same place, 
 through a course of eight years, being in a great measure 
 accidental. Neither is he to expect any other connection 
 between them than that uniformity of thought and 
 design which will always be found in the writings of the 
 same person when he writes with simplicity and in earnest.' 
 With these simjile and earnest words Butler winds up 
 a piece of composition so characteristic of him, that we 
 would not have wanted it for anything. Butler writes 
 by far his best, so far as style is concerned, when he is 
 smarting under a sense of injury. His resentment makes 
 him strike with his pen in this Preface of his as with a 
 sword. In these powerful pages Butler turns and 
 charges home on his idle-minded and fault-finding 
 readers in a way that still reaches to many readers among 
 ourselves. We all reel under Butler's blows as we read 
 his retaliatory Preface to his Rolls Sermons. 
 
 The three epoch-making sermons on Human Nature 
 commence with a characteristically conducted examina- 
 tion as to what human nature really is ; of what several 
 parts it is composed, and how those several parts are all 
 constituted and constructed into human nature as we 
 possess it and know it. And then from that, Butler 
 proceeds to ask what it is for a man to ' live according to 
 
 Q. 
 
242 BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 his nature,' as the Stoics always insisted that every man 
 ought to hve. Christian bishop as Butler was, it was 
 true of him what Maurice says about Jonathan Edwards : 
 ' He was not afraid to agree with the Stoics when they 
 were right.' Appropriating, therefore, the very words 
 of those ' ancient moralists,' as he always calls them, 
 Butler proceeds to explain and to enforce their teaching 
 by showing that human nature is made up of its several 
 appetites, passions, affections and emotions, and that 
 conscience sits as a sovereign and a judge over all these 
 her subjects. And it is just in his discovery and exposi- 
 tion of this complex constitution of human nature ; and 
 especially it is in his discovery and vindication of the 
 supremacy of conscience, that Butler's services to philo- 
 sophy, and to morals, and to religion, are so original and 
 so immense. ' In his three sermons on Human Nature,' 
 says Dr. Eagar, ' Butler dropped a plummet into depths 
 before unsounded.' ' It may be stated, once for all,' 
 says Carmichael in his admirably annotated edition of 
 the Rolls Sermons, ' that to Butler belongs the merit of 
 having first, as a scientific moralist, made the supremacy 
 of conscience the subject of distinct and reflex cogni- 
 tion.' And then, after characterising the ethical stand- 
 ards of Plato and Aristotle and Bentham and Hobbes, 
 Carmichael goes on to say, ' Butler would simply direct 
 the enquirer to reverence his conscience, to respect its 
 dictates, and to bring all his conduct before it as before 
 a faculty from which there can be no appeal but to 
 itself : that is to say, from its unillumined to its en- 
 lightened decision, to seek for that enlightenment, to 
 wish for it, and in the consciousness of his countless 
 secret faults and his unnumbered shortcomings, to pray 
 for it, and to bow down, an humble, contrite penitent, 
 before that God in whose sight even the heavens are not 
 clean.' 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 243 
 
 The law of conscience in the moral world is like nothing 
 so much as the law of gravitation in the material world. 
 And both those foundation laws of Almighty God were 
 for the first time brought to light in the same generation : 
 the one by Newton and the other by Butler. Newton 
 made the most magnificent and the most fruitful of all 
 physical discoveries, that every atom of matter in the 
 material universe exercises a measurable influence on 
 every other atom ; and that this law, which he named 
 the law of gravitation, is absolutely universal and 
 invariable in its operation. The smallest atom of red- 
 hot lava at the heart of our own earth throws out an 
 influence of attraction that measurably affects the 
 remotest speck of star-dust on the outermost border of 
 the unfathomable universe. And it was while the 
 minds of men were so overawed and exalted with 
 Newton's astounding discovery and with all that 
 followed upon it, that Butler made his parallel discovery 
 and demonstration of the law of conscience in the moral 
 world. This law, namely, that there is not an act that 
 any man performs, nor a word that any man speaks, 
 nor a thought in any man's mind, nor an affection in 
 any man's heart, that is not all placed under the sceptre 
 of his conscience. It is true, the nature of man in the 
 present life is such, that the law of conscience suffers 
 endless perturbations and suspensions, and sometimes 
 what would seem to be reversals ; but so does the law 
 of gravitation. And just as our ever- widening know- 
 ledge has proved the absolute universality and in- 
 violability of NcAvton's law, so will it be with Butler's 
 law. Wait, says Butler, till you enter on the completing 
 dispensation of things, and you will find that conscience 
 has only handed over all her seeming defeats and reversals 
 to the judgment and to the power of One who will sooner 
 
244 BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 see heaven and earth perish than that one jot or title 
 of His moral law shall be left unvindicated and un- 
 executed. Both the law of gravitation and the law of 
 conscience had been laid by Almighty God on nature 
 and on man from the beginning. But those two univer- 
 sally binding laws of God were never fully discovered 
 nor finally demonstrated to the children of men till 
 Newton and Butler were raised up to discover them and 
 to demonstrate them. And that immense service, so 
 far as the law of conscience is concerned, is performed by 
 Butler in his three epoch-making sermons on Human 
 Nature. The noble teaching of those three sermons 
 has been so absorbed and assimilated into our best 
 literature that it is not very easy for us to go back to 
 that age when Butler's doctrine of conscience could be 
 called a new discovery, as Sir James Mackintosh so 
 emphatically calls it. Dr. Newman, especially, has 
 made Butler's teaching on the subject of conscience 
 such a theme of his in a multitude of magnificent passages, 
 that the supremacy, and the authority, and the anticipa- 
 tions, and the presages, of conscience are all familiar 
 ideas to us, as well as daily experiences. Newman took 
 up his great master's teaching on conscience, and brought 
 to that teaching all his own so captivating English style, 
 and all his own so unequalled homiletical genius, in both 
 of which gifts Butler was, comparatively speaking, so 
 deficient. It is true that all the best literature, both 
 ancient and modern, has always been full of the omni- 
 presence, and the authority, and the presages, of con- 
 science. But it was Butler who first established all that 
 on a scientific and an unassailable basis ; till it almost 
 seems as if very conscience herself holds the pen and 
 mounts the pulpit in these three immortal sermons upon 
 herself. 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 245 
 
 Robert Hall on one occasion gave a young preacher 
 a most impressive advice as to his frequently taking up 
 particular parts of conduct and character in his sermons. 
 John Foster also, both by precept and example, often 
 sets this duty before his ministerial readers. Butler 
 was still but a young preacher when he delivered his 
 extraordinarily original and pungent sermon on this 
 particular part of conduct and character — the govern- 
 ment of the tongue. Butler was still a young man, but 
 there is a whole lifetime of observation and insight, I 
 might almost say of suffering and exasperation, in that 
 single sermon. No one ever reads that sermon, and of 
 those who do read it, not one in ten pays any attention 
 to it so as to apply it to himself. And thus the wide- 
 spread mischief and misery go on, just as if that sermon 
 had never been written. ' The fault referred to, and the 
 disposition supposed,' says the preacher, ' is not evil- 
 speaking from malice, nor lying, nor bearing false witness 
 for selfish ends. The thing here supposed is talkative- 
 ness.' Nothing seems to have worn out Butler like the 
 incessant talking of the people round about him. After 
 his death his enemies said that he had died a Papist. 
 But that was only another instance of their irrepressible 
 talkativeness. Butler did not die a Papist, but he 
 would be tempted sometimes to think of entering the 
 Carthusian Order so as to escape for ever from the 
 tongues of continually talking men. Butler rode a little 
 black pony, and he always rode it as fast as it could 
 carry him — so his old parishioners used to tell. He 
 rode fast, sometimes, to escape the crowds of beggars 
 who continually infested him, and sometimes, as we are 
 led to think, to escape the tongues of men who so con- 
 tinually tormented him. It has been said that there is 
 a certain tinge of remorse in the style of Tacitus. And 
 
246 BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 I never read Butler's sermon on the misgovernment of 
 the tongue without detecting in that sermon Butler's 
 own bitter remorse for his misgovernment of his own 
 tongue. No man ever speaks with such an intense 
 bitterness as I taste in that sermon except when he 
 speaks in remorse, and in self-resentment, and, as Butler 
 says, with real self-dislike toward himself. And then, 
 lest some of his superficial readers should think that he 
 is making far too much of a small matter, he has this 
 observation, that ' the greatest evils in life have had 
 their rise from somewhat which was thought of too little 
 importance to be attended to.' ' There is, nor can be,' 
 says Mr. Gladstone, ' no superannuation in this sermon.' 
 No : not so long as men and women are ruining them- 
 selves every day by talking continually, and by straining 
 continually, as Butler has it, ' to engage your attention : 
 to take you up wholly for the present time : what reflec- 
 tions will be made afterwards is in truth the least of their 
 thoughts,' The son of Sirach is a classical author with 
 Butler : ' Honour and shame is in talk. A wise man 
 will hold his tongue till he sees opportunity ; but a 
 babbler and a fool will regard no time. He that useth 
 many words will be abhorred ; and he that taketh to 
 himself authority therein shall be hated. The tongue 
 of a man is his fall.' Let every man who has a tongue 
 to govern read regularly, once every year, Butler's bitter 
 sermon on that subject, and lay it to heart. 
 
 ' Balaam ' and ' David ' are two tremendous sermons. 
 ' Good God, what inconsistency is here ! What fatality 
 is here ! ' Butler bursts out in a way most unusual with 
 him. And then he goes down to the darkest bottom of 
 Balaam's heart, and of his hearer's heart, with the two- 
 edged sword of the Spirit in his hand, till Butler's 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 247 
 
 Balaam is one of the most terrible pieces of conscience- 
 searching invective in the English language. And then, 
 David's self-partiality and self-deceit make the tenth 
 sermon a companion sermon, quite worthy of the seventh 
 sermon. Both those sermons must be read many times 
 over before their tremendous power will be believed. 
 ' I am persuaded,' says the preacher, ' that a very great 
 part of the wickedness of the world is, one way or other, 
 owing to the self-partiality, self-flattery, and self-deceit, 
 endeavoured here to be laid open and explained. Those 
 who have taken notice that there is really such a thing, 
 namely, plain falseness and insincerity in men with 
 regard to themselves, will readily see the drift and 
 design of these discourses. And nothing that I can 
 add will explain the design of them to him who has not 
 beforehand remarked at least somewhat of the character.' 
 At the same time, ' Viewed in the light of the Gospel,' 
 says Carmichael, ' this sermon is incomplete.' 
 
 ' On Resentment ' is a most enlightening and memor- 
 able sermon. ' One point in Butler's account of resent- 
 ment,' says Dr. Whewell, ' has been admired as happy 
 and novel. I mean the distinction he draws between 
 anger and settled resentment.' And Whewell sums up 
 Butler's doctrines on these subjects in these words : 
 ' The distinction that Butler takes between sudden 
 anger and settled resentment is of this kind. Sudden 
 anger does not imply that we have wrong inflicted on 
 us, resentment does. Sudden anger flashes up before 
 we have time to reflect, and resists all violence and 
 harm : resentment glows with a permanent heat against 
 injury and injustice. Sudden anger is an instinct 
 implanted for the preservation of the individual : re- 
 sentment is a moral sentiment given for the repression 
 
 ^ 
 
248 BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 ol injustice, and the preservation of society. The 
 former, we may add, belongs to animals as well as to 
 men, the latter is peculiar to mankind.' Let every 
 hot-hearted, and every sullen-hearted, and every spiteful- 
 hearted man lay this sermon of Butler's to heart, and it 
 will be a great assistance to him in his deliverance from 
 his besetting sin. 
 
 The sermon on the Forgiveness of Injuries is full of 
 that moral and intellectual seed-sowing which is so 
 characteristic of all Butler's best work, and which has 
 made his writings so singularly fruitful to all his readers. 
 And the same thing may be said about his two beautiful 
 sermons on the Love of our Neighbour. It is in the 
 second of those two sermons that this single seed is 
 dropped which has raised such a harvest of thoughtful- 
 ness, and fellow-feeling, and brotherly love, in so many 
 of Butler's readers. This single seed, that ' we ourselves 
 differ from other men just as much as they differ from us.' 
 The two sermons are summed up into this closing 
 prayer : ' O Almighty God, inspire us with this divine 
 principle of brotherly love. Kill in us all the seeds of 
 envy and ill-will. And help us, by cultivating within 
 ourselves the love of our neighbour, to improve in the 
 love of Thee. Thou hast placed us in various kindreds, 
 friendships, and relations, as the school of discipline for 
 our affections. Help us, by the due exercise of all these, 
 to improve to perfection, till all partial affection be lost 
 in that entire universal one, and Thou, O God, shalt 
 be all in all.' 
 
 In his two sermons on the Love of God, Butler touches 
 by far his highest chord. There is the very thrill of 
 David and Isaiah in those two sermons, if not of Paul and 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 249 
 
 John. In the fourteenth Essay of his Horce Sabbaticce, 
 Sir James Stephen says that the famous sermons on the 
 Love of God are in his judgment not only the greatest 
 of Butler's writings, but they are also the first to which 
 a person who wishes to understand those writings as a 
 whole should attend. I have preferred to take Butler's 
 own arrangement of his sermons, and to study them in 
 the order in which he has placed them himself. I agree 
 with Sir James Stephen that those two sermons are the 
 greatest of Butler's writings, and I return to them 
 oftener than to any other of his writings, and always 
 with the same result. So far as they go they are to me 
 among the most conclusive and satisfying pieces of 
 religious writing in the English language, and every 
 serious student ought to return to those sermons till he 
 has them, as we say, by heart. This is the character- 
 istically quiet way in which Butler introduces us to 
 those enthralling sermons : ' There must be some move- 
 ments of mind and heart which correspond to the divine 
 perfection.' It is from these few words that those 
 truly magnificent sermons are developed and elaborated 
 and reasoned out, and that with such depth and strength 
 and opulence of thought, and with such masculine 
 eloquence of style. In his admirably annotated edition 
 of the Rolls Sermons, Carmiehael has this introductory 
 footnote to guide the student through those deep 
 sermons : ' Although the thirteenth and fourteenth 
 sermons are included under the same head, the points of 
 view are widely different. In the thirteenth sermon 
 Butler treats of the love of God as an affection in the 
 highest degree reasonable, alike from the constitution 
 of man and the character of God. In the fourteenth 
 sermon he considers the love of God as a principle which 
 is influenced in its exercise by man's present condition, 
 
250 BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 and is to be perfected in heaven.' Butler is the least 
 scriptural of all our great preachers, but for once he 
 closes and crowns those two magnificent sermons with a 
 long chain of scripture passages which gleam on Butler's 
 somewhat sombre pages like a cluster of pearls. Such 
 masterly sermons as these are, and coming to such a 
 close, and approaching, as they sometimes do approach, 
 to the very borders of becoming evangelical — all this 
 makes us wish that Butler had gone on to give himself 
 up wholly to apostolical and evangelical theology, 
 instead of spending his great gifts on philosoj^hical 
 apologetics, however successfully and however fruitfully 
 executed. As it is, those two truly superb sermons will 
 always go with the reader of Butler to lighten up his 
 path and to warm his heart as he toils on through the 
 somewhat unsunned and severe spaces of the Analogy. 
 
 Now, after saying all that, it is a strong thing to go 
 on to say that as far as Butler's sermons on our love to 
 God are concerned, the Son of God need never have 
 come with His Father's message of love to us, nor need 
 the New Testament Epistles ever have been written. 
 The truth is, the very name of Him in whom God's love 
 to us has been most fully manifested, and in whom our 
 love to God is first kindled, is never mentioned by Butler 
 in these two sermons. Literally, the name of our Lord 
 occurs only once, and that once is in a quite incidental 
 way, in the whole of these sermons. Now, very far be 
 it from me to point that out in order to raise a prejudice 
 against Butler. My sole object in pointing out this 
 distressing limitation and impoverishment of Butler's 
 high argument is in order to forewarn the student not 
 to expect what Butler's chosen and deliberate plan does 
 not promise, or indeed permit. Butler has determined 
 to rest his whole argument with us on those deep and 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 251 
 
 primaeval foundations which are laid in the nature of 
 God, and in the corresponding constitution of the mind 
 and heart of man. ' It cannot be denied ' — they are 
 Butler's own words in his first sermon — ' that our being 
 God's creatures, and virtue being the natural law we 
 arc born under, and the whole constitution of man being 
 plainly adapted to it, are prior obligations to piety and 
 virtue than the consideration that God sent His Son 
 into the world to save it.' Now, it is among those 
 ' prior obligations ' that Butler's mind is most at home, 
 and moves most easily. And it is on those ' prior 
 obligations ' that he preaches with such incomparable 
 power. Whereas the New Testament, while taking its 
 first stand on those same ' prior obligations,' goes on to 
 bring forward still stronger obligations to piety and 
 virtue. The God of redemption claims our love and 
 our obedience on this supreme obligation, that He has 
 purchased us to Himself at a great price, till we are no 
 longer our own. Butler himself has taught us that new 
 relations both demand and produce new affections and 
 new duties. But in his present sermons he has left out 
 the most heart-melting relations and affections of all ; 
 that is to say, God's relations and affections to us in 
 Jesus Christ, and our relations and affections back again 
 in Jesus Christ to God. Had Butler but followed out 
 his own teaching on relations and their resulting duties 
 in these two sermons, what a magnificent service he 
 would thereby have rendered to New Testament theology 
 and morals, and to his New Testament readers. 
 Carmichael, while warmly defending Butler from some 
 philosophical censures of Mackintosh, and Wardlaw, 
 and Maurice, is himself compelled to append this note of 
 censure to these two sermons : ' It will be a matter of 
 surprise and regret to the Christian reader that, in the 
 
252 BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 two sermons on the Love of God, the New Testament 
 should have been almost completely ignored. It may 
 indeed be urged that Butler was mainly concerned in 
 establishing upon natural and metaphysical grounds, the 
 reasonableness of our love of God. But this will scarcely 
 justify the omission of all reference to truths, such, for 
 example, as are contained in the words. Come unto Me, 
 all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give 
 you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me ; for 
 I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto 
 your souls.' But the best explanation of this constant 
 and distressing defect in Butler is supplied in this true 
 distinction of Maurice : ' Butler was a preacher pro- 
 fessionally ; whereas he was by instinct and by character 
 a philosopher.' 
 
 Hazlitt has finely said about Burke that the only speci- 
 men of the great orator is all that he ever wrote. And 
 the same thing may be said about Butler with even more 
 truth and point. At the same time, if I were asked 
 what, to my mind, is the best specimen of the real Butler, 
 I would without hesitation say that it is his great sermon 
 On The Ignorance of Man. Nowhere else, in such short 
 space, do Butler's immense depth of mind ; his con- 
 stitutional seriousness of mind, even to melancholy ; 
 his humility and his wisdom, all come out, and all at 
 their best, as in his great sermon On The Ignorance of 
 Man. Socrates himself might have written the sermon 
 On The Ignorance of Man. Only, by Butler's day the 
 diameter of knowledge had been so extended that the 
 corresponding circumference of ignorance was immensely 
 enlarged beyond the realised ignorance of Socrates's 
 day. ' Creation is absolutely and entirely out of our 
 depth and beyond the extent of our utmost reach. And 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 253 
 
 yet it is as certain that God made the world, as it is 
 certain that effects must have a cause. It is indeed, in 
 general, no more than effects that the most knowing are 
 acquainted with ; for as for causes, the most knowing 
 are as entirely in the dark as the most ignorant.' And so 
 of the government of the world. ' Since the Divine 
 Monarchy is a dominion unlimited in extent and ever- 
 lasting in duration, it cannot but be absolutely beyond 
 our comprehension.' And Butler's deep heart reflects 
 on all these things till he can only find adequate utter- 
 ance for his heart in such prostrate and adoring passages 
 as these : ' Thy faithfulness, O Lord, reacheth unto the 
 clouds : Thy righteousness standeth like the strong 
 mountains : Thy judgments are like the great deep. 
 O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the 
 knowledge of God ! How unsearchable are His judg- 
 ments, and His ways past finding out ! ' And, then, he 
 would not be Butler if he did not read all that home to 
 himself and to his hearers in some of the weightiest words 
 that ever were written by the pen of man. Dr. Angus 
 says well that this sermon is one of the most impressive 
 examples of Butler's wisdom. Altogether, the fifteen 
 Rolls Sermons, if sometimes very ' abstruse and difficult, 
 or, if you please, obscure,' as their author admits they 
 are, will always be an epoch in the intellectual and 
 moral life of the student who takes the trouble to master 
 them. 
 
 With that studied caprice which becomes so belittling 
 to himself, and so wearisome to his most admiring 
 readers, Matthew Arnold tells us that the most entirely 
 satisfactory to him of all Butler's productions are the 
 Six Sermons on Public Occasions. Arnold is alone in 
 that satisfaction, as he so ostentatiously advertises him- 
 self to be. The Six Sermons are very able sermons. 
 
254 BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 and they are all sermons that Butler alone in that day 
 could have written. But there is one sermon among 
 them that I could wish for the honour of his good name 
 that Butler had never written : his sermon preached 
 before the House of Lords on ' The martyrdom of King 
 Charles the First.' This sermon is as unworthy of 
 Butler as the Gowrie series are unworthy of Andrewes. 
 Both those great and good men still remained men 
 enough to suffer both their pulpits to be tuned, on occasion, 
 and by the same finger. 
 
 The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to 
 the Constitution and Course of Nature, is the full 
 title of Butler's second great work. ' Others,' says 
 Southey in his famous epitaph on Butler, ' had estab- 
 lished the historical and prophetical grounds of the 
 Christian religion, as also that sure testimony to its truth 
 ^^ which is found in its perfect adaptation to the heart of 
 man. But it was reserved for Butler to develop its 
 analogy to the constitution and the course of nature. 
 And, laying its strong foundations in the depth of that 
 i^ argument, there to construct another and an irrefragable 
 
 proof. Thus rendering philosophy subservient to faith ; 
 and finding in outward and visible things the type and 
 the evidence of things within the veil.' The angel's 
 yg words to Adam in Paradise Lost will supply another 
 remarkable illustration and enforcement of Butler's 
 title-page — 
 
 ' What surmounts the reach 
 Of humau seuse I will delineate so 
 By likening spiritual to corporal forms 
 As may express them best, tho' what if Earth 
 Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein 
 Each to other like, more than on earth is thought ? ' 
 
 
 „A J 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 255 
 
 The Apostle's words also in his Epistle to the Romans 
 might very well have been taken for a motto to the 
 Analogy : ' For the invisible things of Him from the 
 creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood 
 by the things that are made, even His eternal power and 
 Godhead, so that they are without excuse.' ' All things 
 are double, one against another,' says one of Butler's 
 favourite authors. And, then, the real design of the 
 Analogy, as Butler himself explains to us, is not, as so 
 many have assumed, to vindicate the character of God, 
 but to show the obligations of men : it is not to justify 
 God's providences toward us, but to show us what belongs 
 to us to do under His providences. 
 
 When the studious reader of the Rolls Sermons opens 
 the Analogy, he has not gone far into that deep book 
 till he begins to discover the presence of the Rolls preacher 
 in the person of the philosopher. The same qualities of 
 mind, and heart, and character that so signalised the 
 preacher come out conspicuously in the ajDologist also. 
 The same profound thoughtfulness at once comes out, 
 the same deep seriousness, the same sober-mindedness, 
 the same intellectual and moral humility, the same 
 scrupulous truthfulness, the same fairness to opponents, 
 the same immediate and unquestioning submission to 
 the will of God, and the same subordination of everything 
 to the sovereignty of conscience : all these characteristic 
 qualities so come out both in the Sermons and in the 
 Analogy, that if both these books had been anonymous, 
 every capable reader would have set them down with 
 absolute certainty to the same author. And this is 
 just what Butler starts his great work by saying about 
 Nature and Revelation ; and he repeats it and proves 
 it till he claims at the end of his high argument to have as 
 
256 BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 good as demonstrated to every willing and receptive 
 reader that the Author of Nature is also the Author of 
 Revelation. Butler is the most modest of controver- 
 sialists ; but as he closes his Analogy he is bold to claim 
 that he has shut all serious-minded men up to the beliefs, 
 and to the comforts, and to the duties, and to the hopes, 
 that all arise out of Revelation. The amazingly close 
 analogy that subsists between natural and revealed 
 religion and the constitution and course of nature is 
 Butler's great argument, but no mere description of his 
 argument, however true and however exact, and no 
 epitome of it, not even his own masterly epitome of it, 
 can convey any conception of the wealth of thought that 
 goes to establish his argument, or of the enlarging and 
 enriching of mind that comes to the reader as he accom- 
 panies Butler through his magnificent apology. Till the 
 reader ceases to wonder at the extraordinary acknowledg- 
 ments of indebtedness that he finds paid to Butler on all 
 hands. ' Bishop Butler,' wrote Mr. Gladstone in 1873, 
 ' taught me forty-five years ago to suspend my judgment 
 on things I knew I did not understand. Even with his aid 
 I may often have been wrong ; without him I think I 
 should never have been right. And oh ! that this age 
 knew the treasure it possesses in him, and neglects.' 
 * I have derived greater aid from the views and reason- 
 ings of Bishop Butler,' says Dr. Chalmers, ' than I have 
 been able to find besides in the whole range of our extant 
 authorship. It was Butler who made me a Christian,' 
 says that great man and true Christian. True as I believe 
 all that to be, at the same time I entirely agree with 
 what Maurice says in his admirable remarks on the 
 Analogy. ' Butler,' says Maurice, ' is such a great and 
 generative thinker, that his hints are often far more 
 to us than even his conclusions.' Now, that has been 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 257 
 
 the case most emphatically with myself. I have almost 
 lost myself sometimes in travelling on to Butler's con- 
 clusions. But it has been the hints of things, and the 
 seeds of thought, that Butler has dropped into my mind 
 as I walked with him — it is this that makes me to con- 
 tinue to walk with him and to keep so close beside him. 
 Dean Church also has given eloquent expression to my 
 own feelings as a student of Butler. ' Even if a person 
 cannot thoroughly master the argument, yet the tone 
 and the spirit of the book, and its whole manner of look- 
 ing at things, is so remarkable, is so high, so original, 
 so pure and so calmly earnest, that great interest may 
 be taken in Butler's book, and an infinite amount of 
 good may be got out of it even by those who are baffled 
 by its difficult argument.' And again, ' there is as much 
 to be learned from Butler's tone and manner as there is 
 from the substance of his reasonings.' 
 
 ' Probability is the very guide of life.' This 
 famous proposition of Butler's contains the essence of 
 his extraordinarily able Introduction to the Analogy. 
 And to master Butler's great doctrine of probability is 
 the student's first palscstra-like encounter with Butler, 
 of which encounter Mr. Gladstone writes so impressively 
 and so eloquently. Multitudes of new beginners have 
 been turned away from Butler by the difficulty they 
 experienced in mastering his opening pages. But had 
 they persevered ; had they tried the Introduction again 
 and again, and had they been encouraged to go on into 
 the body of the book even though they had not yet taken 
 full possession of its opening pages, they would have got 
 such pleasure and such profit in the body of the book 
 that they would have returned to the Introduction 
 somewhat accustomed to Butler's difficult style, and 
 would thus have more easily mastered his fundamental 
 
258 BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 principles. What both Maurice and Church say so well 
 about the difficulty of Butler's writings, and at the 
 same time about his many ways of rewarding his per- 
 severing readers, should be kept continually before all 
 new beginners in this great intellectual arena. As also 
 this that Dr. Bernard says on this subject : ' It is con- 
 duct, not conviction, that Butler has in his mind through- 
 out.' And so true is it that probability is the guide of 
 life and conduct, that there will be seasons with the 
 most experienced and the most assured of Christian men 
 when difficulties, both speculative and experimental, 
 will so beset them that they will be fain to fall back 
 upon Butler's great law of probability. And if they 
 are happy enough to be students of Butler and followers 
 of his, they will often be inexpressibly thankful to him 
 for what he has said Avith such power and such per- 
 suasiveness as to the wisdom and the duty of our acting 
 oftentimes on a bare probability in the absence of 
 demonstrative proof and full assurance. A proof and 
 an assurance that we cannot possibly have concerning 
 the most important matters both of this life and the 
 next. Do what your conscience tells you to be your 
 duty, even if it is only on probable evidence, and in doing 
 so you Avill act according to the true nature of your 
 own mind and heart, and according to the true nature of 
 this whole economy in which God has placed you here, 
 says Butler to his readers. And this is just his philo- 
 sophical and apologetical way of adapting to us our 
 Lord's own authoritative and assuring words : ' If any 
 man will do the will of God, he shall know the doctrine.' 
 And again, ' If ye continue in My word, then are ye 
 My disciples indeed. And ye shall know the truth, and 
 the truth shall make you free.' 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 259 
 
 ' Death, that unknown event,' never dies out of 
 Butler's thoughts, and he never lets it die out of his 
 reader's thoughts. Butler's whole life was, in Plato's 
 words, one long meditation on death ; on our due pre- 
 paration for death, on our due anticipation of death, on 
 the real nature and exact experience of death when it 
 comes to us, and on the nature of that life which follows 
 death. If I am to imagine other readers of Butler to be 
 exercised under his arguments and conclusions as I am, 
 the first chapter of the Analogy will give them not a few 
 thoughts and feelings in connection with the great 
 shock and alteration which they will undergo by death, 
 thoughts and feelings whicli will never leave them. 
 While it will lead them to dwell far more than they have 
 hitherto dwelt on ' that something in themselves which 
 is quite out of the reach of the king of terrors.' The 
 whole argument of Butler's chapter on a future state 
 may best be summed up in these words of the Apostle : 
 ' For which cause we faint not ; but though our outward 
 man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.' 
 And in these words of one of Butler's latest and best 
 commentators : ' The senses may grow weak ; but the 
 man himself does not weaken in truth, in honesty, in 
 uprightness, in love.' 
 
 In no part of his solemnising and overawing book 
 docs Butler more solemnise and overawe his readers than 
 in his chapter on probation. ' The conception,' says 
 Canon Spooner, ' which in these chapters Butler has 
 elaborated, of our present life being a period of probation 
 for a future state of existence, has probably affected 
 English thought more than any other part of the 
 Analogy.^ This life is not an end in itself and to itself ; 
 this life is meaningless and purposeless, it is a maze and 
 a mystery, it is absolutely without explanation or 
 
260 BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 justification to Butler unless it is the ordained entrance 
 to another life which is to be the completion and the 
 compensation of this life. But, then, grant that this 
 present life is but the schoolroom and the practising- 
 ground to another life, and what a grandeur straightway 
 invests this life ! What a holy fear, and what a holy 
 hope, thenceforward take possession of the heart of the 
 probationer of immortality ! And then it is in working 
 out his great argument of probation that Butler discovers 
 to his readers the momentous part that the law of habit 
 performs in the formation of character, and in the 
 successful or unsuccessful probation of every man who 
 has another life before him. Next to his having made 
 his great discovery concerning conscience, Butler has 
 done nothing more important and more fruitful than his 
 enunciation and illustration of the doctrine of habit. 
 ' This part of the chapter,' says Canon Collins, ' is mainly 
 founded on Aristotle's ethical theory, and Butler's 
 exposition of the growth and power of habit has been 
 considered by many to be the most valuable part of the 
 whole treatise.' But Mr. Gladstone, always scrupulously 
 jealous for Butler's honour, says, ' Seminally, the 
 declarations in the Ethics of Aristotle are of great weight. 
 But the Greek writer does not enter on the field of self- 
 education at all. The idea of mental habits is radically 
 distinct in the two writers ; and the full development of 
 the subject, with the great lessons it conveys, seems 
 to be due to the thought of Butler.' Some of Butler's 
 most thought-laden passages are on this subject, and 
 they are passages never to be forgotten by him who has 
 once read them and laid them to heart. 
 
 In the Second Part of the Analogy, as in the First 
 Part, it is the originality, and the depth, and the serious- 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 261 
 
 ness, and the suggestiveness, of Butler's incidental 
 thoughts, occasional aphorisms, and solemnising reflec- 
 tions, that chiefly instruct and impress the reader. The 
 great argument in itself does not in every part find and 
 command the modern reader. But no reader with 
 sufficient mind and heart, and, as Butler is always 
 saying, with sufficient seriousness, can accompany 
 Butler through his discussion of Revealed Religion 
 without carrying away both enlightening and enriching 
 for all his after days. Butler opens his Second Part 
 with some great thoughts strikingly expressed on this 
 thesis of his, that Revealed Religion is an authoritative 
 republication of Natural Religion ; that the divine 
 truths which had become dimmed and distorted in the 
 blinded minds and the corrupted hearts of fallen men, 
 were kindled afresh, and were set forth in more than all 
 their pristine authority and power, in Revelation. 
 ' Christianity especially ' — they are Butler's own words 
 — ' is a republication of Natural Religion. Christianity 
 instructs mankind in the moral system of the world ; 
 that it is the work of an infinitely perfect Being, and is 
 under His government ; that virtue is His law ; and 
 that He will finally judge mankind in righteousness, 
 and render to all according to their works, in a future 
 state. And, which is very material, Christianity teaches 
 Natural Religion in its genuine simplicity ; free from 
 those superstitions with which it was totally corrupted, 
 and under which it was in a manner lost.' But the 
 religion of Jesus Christ, blessed be God, is a vast deal 
 more, and a vast deal better, than a mere republication 
 of Natural Religion. Holy Scripture sets forth an 
 absolutely new departure that Almighty God has taken 
 toward the children of men. In Natural Religion, God 
 is revealed as the Maker, and the Law-giver, and the 
 
262 BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 Judge of men ; as our Father also, and our Friend. 
 But how glorious His fatherhood is, and how blessed His 
 friendship, the Gospel alone has revealed. Natural 
 Religion in its highest and best dispensation might 
 attain to tell us that God had sent forth His Logos-Son 
 to create, and to enlighten, and to govern, and to judge 
 the world. But no man ever read in the very best book 
 of Natural Religion that God so loved the world as to 
 make His Son to be sin for us, that we might be made 
 the righteousness of God in Him. But instead of taking 
 up and pursuing this line of thought, Butler turns im- 
 mediately to quite another field of things in which he is 
 much more at home. And he proceeds to draw out 
 and to illustrate the striking contrast between what he 
 calls moral and positive duties. No doubt the oppor- 
 tunities, if not the necessities, of his argument offered 
 this field of reflection to Butler. But it is painfully 
 characteristic of our author that he can always find 
 plenty of room for purely ethical and logical discussions, 
 but keeps scrupulously close to his philosophical and 
 analogical argument as often as he comes into the 
 neighbourhood of apostolical and evangelical truth. 
 ' In reviewing this chapter,' says Dr. Angus, ' too much 
 stress cannot be laid on the principle laid down by Dr. 
 Chalmers. Christianity is not only a republication of 
 natural religion, with added truth, but the added truth 
 is adapted to the condition in which natural religion 
 leaves us. The first without the second, the republication 
 without the remedial addition, would have been a 
 message of terror and denunciation. It is the Gospel 
 which reconciles all difficulties ; and which, besides adding 
 the light of its own manifestation, resolves all the doubts 
 and hushes all the fears which natural religion had 
 awakened.' At the same time, let us not be tempted 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 263 
 
 to make little of the immense service Butler has done 
 for us, because he has not performed for us the highest 
 service of all. Let us not cast Butler to the moles and 
 the bats because he is not able to give us all that we 
 demand of him. All the more since we have the full 
 truth on this subject, and at this stage, in Chalmers and 
 Angus and many others, in correction and in completion 
 of Butler. Let us go on to study, with all due attention 
 and profit, those remarkably suggestive chapters on 
 moral and positive institutions and duties, thankful for 
 the great services Butler here performs to us, instead 
 of uselessly complaining because of the absence of 
 services that, to his own impoverishment, he was not 
 able to perform. 
 
 In these days, when so much attention is being given 
 to the history of revelation — that is to say to the sundry 
 times and divers manners in which God spake unto the 
 fathers by the prophets — Butler's two chapters on those 
 sundry times and divers manners are intensely interest- 
 ing and highly instructive. Butler alone could have 
 written the chapter on our unfitness to sit in judgment as 
 to when and how God would speak to the children of 
 men. The whole argument at this point is most en- 
 lightening and most enlarging to the mind of the reader. 
 And then, we come again and again on passages that 
 would almost seem to have been written in anticipation 
 of our own perplexed and anxious day. Such passages 
 as this : ' Neither this obscurity, nor seeming inaccuracy 
 of style, nor various readings, nor early disputes about 
 the authors of particular parts, nor any other thing of 
 the like kind, though they had been much more con- 
 siderable than they are, could overthrow the authority 
 of Scripture, unless the prophets, the apostles, or our 
 Lord Himself had promised that the book containing 
 
264 BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 the Divine revelation should be secure from those things.' 
 Butler's whole discussion on Scripture is full of that 
 sanity and sobriety of mind, and that deep and reverent 
 wisdom, with which he has made us so familiar in all 
 his previous writings. At the same time, it must be 
 admitted that when Butler passes on from the defence 
 of revelation to the exposition of the contents and 
 substance of revelation, he by no means shows the same 
 qualities of mind as heretofore, nor commands the same 
 assent and admiration from all his readers as heretofore. 
 All the remaining chapters of the Analogy are full of the 
 finest thoughts, and the most fruitful suggestions ; but, 
 as a whole, the remainder of the work falls very much 
 below the high and adequate level of the First Part. 
 Butler has no equal in his defence of the outworks of 
 the Christian faith. But when he passes into the inner 
 sanctuary itself, he no longer commands the same assent 
 and admiration as he does among the defences. ' Butler,' 
 says Chalmers, ' is like one who, with admirable skill, 
 lays down the distances and the directions of a land 
 into which he has not travelled very far himself.' ' But,' 
 adds Chalmers, ' without sitting in judgment on the 
 personal religion of Butler, it is the part of the Christian 
 world to own their deepest obligations to the man who 
 has so nobly asserted the authority of the Word of God 
 over all the darkling speculations of human fancy, and 
 who has evinced to us, by the truest of all philosophy, 
 that we should cast down every lofty imagination and 
 bring all our thoughts into the captivity of its obedience.' 
 Dr. John Cairns — who, his biographer tells us, read the 
 Analogy regularly once a year — writing to his sister from 
 Stanhope in the year 1873, says : ' Here, doubtless, the 
 Analogy was finally thought out and adjusted to its 
 present state. I had a specimen of the local humour 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 265 
 
 when asking a young farmer what I should see from 
 a distant point. His reply was, ' a sight of fell, and the 
 road.' It was only too true. For I had to labour on 
 through the fell till at last the ocean rose upon the view. 
 A sight of fell, but a road through it, and a grand out- 
 look beyond, is not a bad image of Butler's work. 
 
 The very title-page of Butler's great book shows the 
 immense capaciousness of Butler's mind. The Constitu- 
 tion of Nature — how vast a subjeet is that for a human 
 mind to attempt to grasp ! And then, the Course of 
 Nature — how vast a subject is that also for a human 
 mind to attempt to trace and follow out ! And then to 
 take up both Natural and Revealed Religion, and to lay 
 both those great fields of Divine truth alongside of 
 Nature, both in her constitution and her course — all 
 that was surely far too much for any created mind to 
 undertake. And yet Butler was not only led to under- 
 take all that, but was enabled to carry all that out 
 in a way that has been the wonder and the praise of 
 all his readers ever since. Never had a book, after the 
 Bible itself, a more capacious title-page than the Analogy, 
 and never had an uninspired book a more complete 
 success in what it undertook. Butler has never had 
 sitting at his feet a more capacious-minded scholar than 
 Mr. Gladstone. And this is how that generous-hearted 
 and grateful-hearted man speaks about the capacious 
 mind of his master : ' The argument of the Analogy 
 is an argument perhaps even greater than Butler him- 
 self was aware. In opening up his argument, which in 
 my judgment stands among the masterpieces of the 
 human mind, Butler has unfolded to us the entire method 
 of God's dealings with His creatures ; and in this way 
 the argument which he offers us is as wide as those 
 
266 BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 dealings themselves.' And again : ' It is Butler who, 
 more than any other writer, opens to us the one all- 
 pervading scheme upon which Almighty God deals with 
 His creatures.' And again : ' Butler's method is so 
 comprehensive as to embrace every question belonging 
 to the relations between the Deity and man.' The truth 
 is, very much what his great contemporary Newton is 
 in the material world that Butler is in the moral world. 
 And more than once Butler as good as acknowledges the 
 debt he owed to the discoveries of his great contemporary. 
 Dr. AVace carries out the parallel between Newton and 
 Butler in a very interesting and suggestive way in his 
 lecture on Butler in Typical English Churchmen. 
 
 In the matter of Butler's imagination I am not only 
 alone against almost all the world, but also at first sight 
 against Butler himself. For he never once mentions the 
 imagination without belittling it, and he more than 
 once actually vilifies it, to use one of his own strong 
 words about another great faculty of the human mind. 
 And Bagehot's passages on this subject may be taken as 
 only too good specimens of the way that Butler has been 
 taken at his own unfortunate valuation in the matter of 
 the imagination. For that able essayist actually says, 
 and says it with a great and a repeated emphasis, that 
 Butler is wholly wanting in imagination, that he is 
 wholly deficient in the visual faculty, that he is not able 
 to picture particulars, and that no instances or illus- 
 trations occur in his writings. Able and authoritative 
 as Bagehot is, I must be permitted to say that I cannot 
 agree with him in all that. I cannot agree with him 
 that Butler does not see what he is writing about, and 
 does not let his reader see what he is reading about. 
 Butler docs not indeed delay in his great task to expatiate 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 267 
 
 pictorially on what he sees. He docs not take time 
 in his high argument to describe dramatically and dilate 
 eloquently on the vast visions that pass before his 
 heaven-soaring mind. His imagination does not come 
 out in purple patches on his pages. But if Butler had 
 not himself seen the great things of nature, and of natural 
 and revealed religion, with his own inward, and imagina- 
 tive, and realising eye, he could never have made me see 
 and realise them as I, for one, must always acknowledge 
 and rejoice that he has done. ' Of some assistance to 
 apprehension,' is one of Butler's far too grudging, and 
 far too ungrateful, references to a faculty of his own 
 mind, which he employs continually to assist his own 
 apprehension and that of his readers. Butler ought to 
 have been as scrupulous not to vilify or undervalue 
 imagination, as he is not to vilify or undervalue reason, 
 since imagination is the only faculty we possess in this 
 life that can be to us the substance of things hoped for, 
 and the evidence of things not seen. A service that 
 both Butler and all his readers are continually receiving 
 at the realising and illuminating hands of the imagination. 
 To me, at any rate, let Butler himself, and Bagehot, 
 and all Butler's other critics, say what they will, Butler 
 will always rank, if not with the great masters of the 
 dramatic and pictorial imagination, such as Dante and 
 Bunyan and Milton, yet with those other masterly minds, 
 who by means of that same noble faculty, exercised in 
 another way, have made me vividly realise what I had 
 hitherto but vaguely heard of, and who have also made 
 things to be present and impressive to me which had 
 hitherto been so remote as to be all but unreal. ' See ! ' 
 exclaims Maurice, ' how he throws in the length of the 
 ages and the immensity of the universe.' As often as 
 Butler is brought to a standstill in his high argument till he 
 
268 BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 again says to his reader suppose, suppose, suppose — and 
 he says that in some of his chapters in every second 
 sentence— Butler by saying that, and by the way he goes 
 on to make his suppositions, summons all my imagination 
 into his service, till his whole high argument is lighted up 
 to me from the one end of heaven to the other. And till 
 ever after, the dry light of Butler's own reason is suffused 
 and softened, and shed far and wide, as only the imagina- 
 tion could suffuse it, and soften it, and shed it abroad. 
 The simple truth is, as Mr. Gladstone so regretfully 
 points out, there is a serious confusion of language on 
 Butler's part in all those passages in which he seems to 
 us to vilify the imagination. For it is not against the 
 imagination proper that Butler is writing at all in those 
 unfortunate and misleading passages, says Mr. Gladstone, 
 but it is against ' an unbridled fancy, an intellectual 
 caprice, and an ill-regulated judgment.' All which 
 things are as far as the poles asunder from the proper 
 use of the imagination, that so superb faculty of the 
 human mind. ' The term imagination in Butler's 
 pages,' so Mr. Gladstone sums up, ' would seem to be 
 a misnomer.' I will be bold to add, it not only 
 seems to be a misnomer but actually is such a fatal 
 misnomer as to have misled many of Butler's readers, 
 and drawn them wholly away from the due recognition 
 and the due appreciation of a divinely given faculty that 
 as little deserves to be vilified as either the reason or the 
 conscience themselves. Dean Church alone has done 
 something like justice to this noble endowment of Butler's 
 own mind. ' That was the feature of Butler's mind,' 
 says the Dean in his brilliant lecture, ' that he never 
 lost hold on his high thoughts, and never let custom or 
 any other thing close his eyes or raise a mist between 
 him and them. It was his power, the greatest perhaps 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 269 
 
 that he had, that what his reason told him was certain 
 and true, he was able continually to see, and feel, and 
 imagine to be true and real. He had the power of 
 faith.' And again : ' These touches of imagination and 
 feeling come in the midst of austere argument or state- 
 ment ; they come in naturally and unforced ; and they 
 give us a momentary glimpse, the more interesting 
 because rare, into the depths of a great mind.' And 
 again in what Mr. Gladstone calls ' that masterly sermon 
 of Dean Church,' ' there are passages in Butler, when we 
 read between the lines of his words, that at first sight 
 look so dry and commonplace, which seem to open a 
 glimpse of the very foundations of the world and nature.' 
 And Professor Alexander Bain, in a striking passage in 
 his Study of Character, says on this same subject : ' The 
 many observations scattered over Butler's writings that 
 have been esteemed for their profundity, owe their force 
 to the flash of some hidden identity that gives a new 
 aspect to an old problem. Remove from Butler's mind 
 his foremost end, which is to obtain truth ; give him 
 the local susceptibilities to colour and form, to words, 
 cadence, and metre ; and the same reach of the identify- 
 ing faculty would have emerged in a poet.' 
 
 It is a great lesson in English composition to read 
 what has been written first and last about Butler's style. 
 And the best thing that has ever been said on that 
 subject was what Butler said himself. In the Preface 
 to the second edition of his Rolls Sermons he replied in 
 these words to the fault that had been found with his 
 style of writing, — ' It must be acknowledged that some 
 of the following discourses are very abstruse and difficult ; 
 or, if you please, obscure. But I must take leave to add 
 that those alone are judges whether or no this is a fault 
 
270 BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 who are judges whether or no and how far it might have 
 been avoided. Those only who will be at the trouble to 
 understand what is here said, and to see how far the 
 things here insisted upon and not other things, might 
 have been put in a plainer manner : which I am very far 
 from asserting they could not. Confusion and perplexity 
 in writing is indeed without excuse, because any one 
 may, if he pleases, know whether he understands and 
 sees through what he is about. And it is unpardonable 
 for a man to lay his thoughts before others when he is 
 conscious that he himself does not know whereabouts he 
 is, or how the matter before him stands. It is coming 
 abroad in disorder, which he ought to be dissatisfied [to 
 find himself in at home.' And then at the end of his 
 extraordinarily ably written preface he puts in this 
 claim for himself, that at any rate he has written his 
 sermons ' with simplicity and earnestness of purpose.' 
 Take the following as so many most interesting speci- 
 mens of the debate that has been held over Butler's style. 
 John Byrom, stenographer and poet, and William Law's 
 Boswell, has this in his Journal. ' Some,' says Byrom, 
 ' thought Butler a little too little vigorous, and wished 
 he would have spoken more earnestly.' Sir James 
 Mackintosh, who averred that he owed all his philosophy 
 to Butler, at the same time allows himself to call the 
 Rolls Sermons ' those deep and dark dissertations.' 
 And he goes on to say that ' no thinker so great was ever 
 so bad a writer.' On the other hand, Bartlett, Butler's 
 best biographer, has this on the matter in hand : ' We 
 have heard persons talk of the obscurity of Bishop 
 Butler's style, and lament that his book was not rewritten 
 by some more luminous master of language. We have 
 always suspected that such critics know very little about 
 the Analogy. We would have no sacrilegious hand 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 271 
 
 touch it. To touch it would be hke officious meddHng 
 with a well-considered move at chess. The Analogy is 
 a work carefully and closely packed up out of twenty 
 years' hard thinking. It must have filled folios had its 
 illustrious author taken less time to concoct it ; for 
 never was there a stronger instance of the truth of the 
 observation, that it requires far more time to make a 
 small book than a large one.' And further on he adds : 
 ' The style of Butler has, we think, been condemned un- 
 deservedly. It certainly is not formed to anything like 
 Ciceronian harmony and elegance ; but it seldom offends 
 the ear, or violates the purity of the English idiom.' 
 ' After all,' says Fitzgerald, one of Butler's best editors, 
 ' the faults of his style are greatly overstated by many of 
 his critics. It may not be polished ; but it is good, 
 plain, downright English, the words are proper for his 
 purpose, and they are generally put in their proper 
 places. Nay, though it would be absurd to claim for 
 Butler's general style the artful simplicity of Addison's 
 elegance, the brilliant perspicuity of Berkeley, or even 
 the plain compactness of Swift, it is not too much to 
 say that there occur, here and there, passages of pure, 
 musical, Saxon-English that will not suffer from a com- 
 parison with any of those great models.' ' Butler's style,' 
 admits Dean Goulburn, ' though it has a massive grandeur 
 and solidity in it, is yet anything but attractive to the 
 general reader.' ' Butler's words,' says Maurice, ' often 
 become feeble and contradictory, because he cannot 
 write what is struggling within him.' ' A great thinker, 
 but a poor writer,' says Bagehot. ' It is probable, 
 that if Butler hated anything, he hated his pen. Com- 
 position is pleasant work for men of ready words, fine 
 ears, and thick-coming illustrations. But Butler, so 
 far from having the pleasures of eloquence, had not 
 
272 BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 even the comfort of perspicuity. In some places the 
 mode of statement is even stupid : it seems selected to 
 occasion a difficulty.' And then Bagehot sums up 
 against Butler in these words : ' No writer of equal 
 eminence is so defective as Butler. His thoughts, if you 
 take each one singly, seem to lose a good deal from the 
 feeble and hesitating manner in which they are stated. 
 And yet, if you read any considerable portion of his 
 writings, you become sensible of a strong disinclination 
 to disagree with him.' And again, and much more 
 generously in another book : ' There was not a spark of 
 the littleness of literary ambition about Butler. There 
 is nothing light in Butler ; he leaves to others all amusing 
 skirmishing and superficial writing. In Butler all is 
 grave, serious, and essential. Nothing else would be 
 characteristic of Butler.' ' The admirable arrangement 
 of the Analogy,' says Mark Pattison, ' is all its own. Its 
 closely packed and carefully fitted order speaks of many 
 years' contrivance. Its substance is the thought of a 
 whole age, not barely compiled, but each separate 
 thought reconsidered and digested. Every brick in the 
 building has been rung before it was relaid, and replaced 
 in its true relation to the complex and various whole.' 
 ' The style of Butler,' says Mr. Gladstone, ' has been 
 made largely responsible for the difficulties of his subject, 
 but those who might rewrite one of his pages would find 
 it more difficult than they suppose to improve the style 
 without impairing the substance.' And in direct con- 
 tradiction of one of Bagehot's charges against Butler's 
 style, Mr. Gladstone proceeds : ' In his illustrations 
 Butler is particularly happy ; and upon the whole, in 
 his case, and also in that of Aristotle, it may be said that 
 the style and the substance cannot be parted.' And 
 then, if ' a consciousness of what has preceded and what 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 273 
 
 is to follow makes a perfect style,' as Jowett in his 
 introduction to the Laws says it does, then Butler's 
 rank as a writer is secure. For never was there a more 
 regular plan laid down for any book, and never had any 
 book more consciousness of what had preceded and what 
 was to follow. Canon Spooner also, Butler's latest 
 biographer, has this in his excellent little book : ' Is the 
 charge of obscurity that is brought against Butler well 
 deserved ? On such a matter the reading public is the 
 only judge. A writer whom most, even intelligent, 
 readers find obscure, is obscure. Tried by this test, 
 Butler will almost certainly stand convicted. But the 
 obscurity that exists is not the obscurity of a loose and 
 confused thinker. There was nothing loose or confused 
 in Butler's mind : quite the reverse. The difficulty 
 of the style arises from the extreme closeness and con- 
 tinuity of the thoughts. Still more from the caution, 
 many-sidedness, and conscientiousness of the writer 
 which would leave no aspect of the question unprovided 
 for, no possible objection which might be taken unmet, 
 no necessary limitation unexpressed, no possible mis- 
 understanding of his meaning unguarded against. A 
 man writing in such a spirit, particularly a man of 
 Butler's anxious and even morbidly conscientious 
 temperament, could scarcely attain to a facile and un- 
 laboured style. Certainly Butler would have been less 
 himself had his style been less laboured : with him even 
 more than with most men, the style is the man.' 
 
 It is a study in literary criticism, as well as in style, to 
 ponder these various opinions, and to consider them in 
 relation to their respective authors, as well as in relation 
 to Butler's style. It is an excellent exercise in criticism 
 and in composition to watch in what, and how far, his 
 critics coincide with one another, and to discover how 
 
 s 
 
274 BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 they less, any single one of them, say the whole truth 
 about Butler, than make each his own contribution to 
 the whole truth. For myself, I will say in one word 
 that the more I read Butler, and the better I understand 
 him, the more I enjoy his peculiar style. His style is 
 what it is, to employ one of his own repeated expressions, 
 and I would not have it other than it is. And I most 
 heartily subscribe to what Bishop Steere says so well 
 on this same subject : ' In truth the greatest beauty in 
 any author's style consists in its appropriateness to 
 express his meaning. And thus it is that careful students 
 of Butler's works generally come, in the end, to have a 
 sort of relish for his peculiar style.' I think that is a 
 very happy expression of Steere's. ' A sort of relish ' 
 exactly describes my own enjoyment of Butler's peculiar 
 style. For there is a certain dry, nutty, oaten aroma 
 that comes off Butler's page as I read it ; not only not 
 disagreeable, but positively healing, and restoring, and 
 strengthening. Till, what with his style and what with 
 his substance, with all his limitations — and they are 
 neither few nor small — Butler will always remain one 
 of the few first-class authors in the whole world to me. 
 
 Butler is universally acknowledged to be the most 
 thoughtful of all our English theologians and moralists. 
 Many English theologians, and moralists, and preachers, 
 could be named who far excelled Butler in other things. 
 Many were more learned, many were more eloquent, many 
 were far more scriptural, and consequently far more 
 evangelical. But Butler stands alone in his own sheer 
 power of thought, and in his amazing power of awakening 
 thought in his readers. Hooker was far more learned 
 and far more evangelical. Taylor was far more oceani- 
 cally read, and his eloquence was without parallel. 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 275 
 
 Edwards's mind was far more powerful than Butler's 
 mind was naturally, and it was simply seraphically 
 sanctified. While the great English Puritans far eclipsed 
 Butler in the apostolicity and spirituality of their ministry. 
 But for plunging his readers into the greatest depths of 
 thought, Butler excels them all. Butler was like Pascal 
 in this, that he was not at all a wide reader, but was one 
 of the princeliest of thinkers. It was simply Butler's 
 own thoughtfulncss, and his power of producing thought- 
 fulness, that has called forth such extraordinary appre- 
 ciations and acknowledgments as these : ' The most 
 original and profound work extant in any language on 
 the philosophy of religion,' says Sir James Mackintosh. 
 ' I could not write on this or on any other kindred sub- 
 ject,' says Bishop O'Brien, ' without a consciousness 
 that I was either directly or indirectly borrowing from 
 Butler.' ' I have derived greater aid from the views 
 and reasonings of Butler,' says Dr. Chalmers, ' than I 
 have been able to find besides in the whole range of our 
 extant authorship.' ' I am more indebted to Butler's 
 writings than I am to any other uninspired author,' 
 says Bishop Kaye. ' That great and generative thinker,' 
 says Maurice. ' The greatest name,' says Newman, 
 ' in the Anglican Church.' And writing about books 
 to a lady, Newman says : ' I think you will gain great 
 benefit on the whole subject of ethics and religion from 
 Butler's Analogy. It is a very deep work, and while it 
 requires, it will repay your attention.' It is no detraction 
 from Newman's own great fertility of mind to say that 
 the reader of Butler and of Newman continually comes 
 on sentences, and clauses of sentences, in Butler that 
 have been the seed of some of Newman's most famous 
 sermons. And the same thing may be said of not a few 
 of the sermons of Butler's philosophic and eloquent 
 
276 BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 Irish namesake, as also of some of the best of Mozley's 
 sermons, who has been called the Butler of the nineteenth 
 century. Plato's discourses were so overladen with 
 thought, that when he looked up after finishing one of 
 the longest and deepest of them, all his audience had 
 escaped : only Aristotle was left in the lecture-room. 
 So Plutarch tells us. And I would not have wondered 
 to have been told by Byrom that when Butler had 
 finished some of his Rolls Sermons, there was no one left 
 in the chapel but the Master of the Rolls and William 
 Law, in for the forenoon from Putney. ' The pain of 
 attending ' is one of Butler's own admissions about his 
 sermons. But then, all the pain is well repaid. 
 
 ' A more than ordinary depth of thought produces the 
 melancholy temperament,' says Jacob Behmen. And 
 Butler's deep melancholy is one of his outstanding 
 characteristics, both as a preacher and a philosopher. 
 Passages like these occur continually in his writings. 
 ' The infinite disorders of this world.' ' This world is 
 a mere scene of distraction.' ' Instead of this world 
 being what it was intended to be, a discipline of virtue, 
 the generality of men make it a discipline of vice. It 
 is a state of apostasy, wickedness, and ruin. Men are 
 depraved creatures, who want to be renewed.' ' If the 
 discoveries of men of research tend in any way to render 
 life less unhappy than it is, then they are most usefully 
 employed.' Lamentations like these come out of the 
 Sermons and out of the Analogy continually, till to say 
 Butler is to say melancholy. At the same time, Butler's 
 melancholy is more a philosophical and a speculative 
 melancholy than a religious and an experimental melan- 
 choly. There is a far deeper, a far more bitter, and a 
 far more inconsolable melancholy than is that melancholy 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 277 
 
 to which Butler, with all his depth of thought, has ever 
 given voice. There is a cup, ' bitterer to drink than 
 blood,' that Butler would seem scarcely ever to have 
 tasted. So far as his Analogy, or his sermons, or even 
 his prayers go, he would seem to have had little or no 
 experimental acquaintance with the unspeakable melan- 
 choly of such spiritual men as Behmen, and Pascal, and 
 Foster — to keep to some of the men of deepest thought 
 that have ever lived. It is always this fallen, and 
 corrupt, and depraved world that is the source of Butler's 
 melancholy. It is their own corrupt and depraved and 
 hopeless hearts that is the source of the far deeper melan- 
 choly of such men as have been named above. Butler 
 is a great ' melancholian,' but, all the same, his great 
 melancholy is but philosophical, and speculative, and 
 economical : whereas the melancholy of Behmen, and 
 Pascal, and Foster is spiritual, and personal, and experi- 
 mental, and inconsolable. 
 
 Under the head of his mental qualities Mr. Gladstone 
 discusses Butler's measure, his strength of tissue, his 
 courage, his questionable theses, his imagination, and 
 his originality. All students of Butler should be sure 
 not to miss what that great statesman has to say about 
 the mental qualities of his revered master. Contenting 
 myself with recommending Gladstone's third volume 
 to all students of Butler — and I may add to all students 
 of Gladstone himself — I pass on to take some notice of 
 what is b}'^ far the most serious complaint that has ever 
 been made against Butler. That is to say, his extra- 
 ordinary deficiency m apostolical and evangelical truth. 
 Now, that complaint is so serious, and is so fundamental, 
 that it must be made by me in the words of one who 
 had both the ability, and the courage, and the loyalty 
 
278 BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 to truth, to make it. Dr. Chalmers shall speak for all 
 those who agree with him in his immense regret con- 
 cerning Butler's religion. Whether in praise or in 
 blame of Butler, as I have already said, I like to read 
 Dr. Chalmers above all Butler's other editors and com- 
 mentators. There is nothing to my mind to compare 
 with Chalmers's lectures on the Analogy. That great 
 man is so reverential to Butler ; he is so full of noble 
 acknowledgment of indebtedness to his great master ; 
 and he is so eloquent and impressive in expounding him. 
 Let Dr. Chalmers therefore speak on this distressing sub- 
 ject. ' We fear,' says Chalmers in his fourth chapter, 
 ' that Butler here makes the first, though not the only, 
 exhibition that occurs in his work, of his meagre and 
 moderate theology. Sound as his general views were on 
 what might be termed the philosophy of religion, this 
 formed no security against the errors of a lax and super- 
 ficial creed on certain of its specific doctrines.' And 
 again : ' It were great and unwarrantable presumption to 
 decide on the personal Christianity of Butler, but I think 
 it but fair to warn you that up and down throughout the 
 volume there do occur the symptoms of a heart not 
 thoroughly evangelised.' ' I have already,' says Chalmers 
 in another place, ' given repeated intimation that, viewed 
 as a Christian composition, I do not regard Butler's 
 book as being sufficiently impregnated with the sal 
 evangelicum, and that even his own principles are not 
 fully and practically carried out. Butler is like one who, 
 with admirable skill, lays down the distances and the 
 directions of a land into which he has not travelled very 
 far himself.' Let any careful student read Butler's 
 Dissertation on the Nature of Virtue, and then let him 
 read Jonathan Edwards's treatise on the same subject, 
 and he will see for himself what it is that Dr. Chalmers 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 279 
 
 complains of when he says that Butler is so afraid or so 
 incapable of becoming evangelical that he will not even 
 follow his own principles fully and practically out. 
 Butler continually confines himself to the barely ethical, 
 even when his subject claims to become spiritual. He 
 will abide rigidly and severely philosophical even when, 
 on every ground, he should rise to be apostolical and 
 evangelical. But he never does so rise : never so much 
 as once. And thus it is that there is a height and a 
 depth, a fragrance, a sweetness, and a beauty about all 
 Edwards's ethical work, of which Butler's very best work 
 is wholly and blamefully devoid. He defends himself, 
 and his out-and-out eulogists defend him, on the plea 
 that he is always arguing, not on his own principles, but 
 on the principles of the deists, who were his opponents. 
 But Edwards argues not less effectually because he lets 
 his great subject carry both him and his readers away 
 up to its native heavens. Edwards is only the more 
 genuinely and profoundly philosophical that he is so 
 seraphically spiritual ; and only the more truly and 
 convincingly ethical that he is so Pauline in the grace 
 and truth of his philosophy as well as his theology. 
 Wesley's report of his interview with Butler is humiliating 
 reading. And when it is read alongside of Chalmers's 
 lectures on Butler, it is absolutely conclusive as to 
 Butler's utter lack of sympathy with apostolic and 
 evangelic preaching, even when he could not but see the 
 miracles that such preaching was working in his own 
 diocese. Mr. Gladstone is driven to think that the 
 interview between the Bishop and the great Gospel 
 preacher cannot be correctly reported in Wesley's 
 Journal. I wish I could believe that. For, with all his 
 shortcomings on the most important of all matters, I 
 love and honour Butler more than I can tell. The truth 
 
280 BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 is, with all his greatness, Butler falls far short of the 
 greatest. Many an author, many a preacher, many an 
 unlettered believer, who was not talented enough to read 
 what Butler had written, could have taken him and 
 taught him the way of God more perfectly, as Aquila 
 and Priscilla taught Apollos. It is a mystery to me how 
 such a deep-seeing man, and such a fearless and honest 
 man, and such a serious-minded man as Butler was 
 could have lived and died contented with such an 
 emasculated and meagre gospel as that of the Sermons 
 and the Analogy. It would be a mystery did we not 
 see the same mystery every day. But we have only 
 too good evidence that Butler did not either live or die 
 contented. As to his death, a delightful narrative is 
 given of the Bishop's last moments, a narrative that 
 carries its truth on the face of it, and a narrative we 
 would not have wanted for anything. When Butler 
 lay on his deathbed he called for his chaplain and said to 
 him : ' Though I have endeavoured to avoid sin, and to 
 please God to the utmost of my power, yet, from the 
 consciousness of perpetual infirmities, I am still afraid 
 to die.' ' My lord,' said the chaplain, ' you have forgotten 
 that Jesus Christ is a Saviour.' ' True,' said Butler, 
 ' but how shall I know He is a Saviour for me ? ' ' My 
 lord, it is written, " Him that cometh unto Me, I will in 
 nowise cast out." ' ' True,' said Butler, ' and I am 
 surprised that though I have read that Scripture a 
 thousand times over, I never felt its virtue till this 
 inoment. And now I die happy.' 
 
 'A mighty prelate on his deathbed lay, 
 
 Revolving the dread themes of life and death 
 And their stupendous issues, with dismay, 
 
 His marvellous powers nigh quenched. " My lord," one 
 saithj 
 
BISHOP BUTLER 281 
 
 " Hast thou forgotten how Christ came to be 
 
 A Saviour?" "Nay/' the bishop made reply, 
 " How know I He's a Saviour unto me}" 
 
 The chaplain paused, then answered thoughtfully : 
 " ' Lo, him that cometh unto Me,' Christ said, 
 
 ' I will in nowise cast out,' need we more?" 
 The bishop slowly raised his dying head : 
 
 "I've read a thousand times that Scripture o'er 
 Nor felt its truth till now I near the tomb ; 
 
 It is enough, O mighty Christ, I come." ' 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 Writing about himself in the third person, Cardinal 
 Newman says in the beginning of his Autobiographical 
 Memoirs : ' John Henry Newman was born in Old 
 Broad Street, in the city of London, on February 21, 
 1801, and was baptized in the Church of St. Benet Fink 
 on April 9 of the same year. His father was a London 
 banker, whose family came from Cambridgeshire. His 
 mother was of a French Protestant family, who left 
 France for this country on the revocation of the Edict 
 of Nantes. He was the eldest of six children — three 
 boys and three girls. On May 1, 1808, when he was 
 seven years old, he was sent to a school of two hundred 
 boys, at Ealing, near London, under the care of the Rev. 
 George Nicholas, D.C.L., of Wadham College, Oxford. 
 As a child Newman was of a studious turn and of a quick 
 apprehension ; and Dr. Nicholas, to whom he became 
 greatly attached, was accustomed to say that no boy 
 had run through the school, from the bottom to the 
 top, as rapidly as John Newman. Though in no respect 
 a precocious boy, he attempted original compositions 
 in prose and verse from the age of eleven, and in prose 
 showed a great sensibility, and took much pains in 
 matter of style. He devoted to such literary exercises, 
 and to such books as came in his way, a good portion of 
 his playtime ; and his schoolfellows have left on record 
 that they never, or scarcely ever, saw him taking part 
 
 283 
 
284 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 in any game. In the last half-year of his school life he 
 fell under the influence of an excellent man, the Rev. 
 Walter Mayer, of Pembroke College, Oxford, one of the 
 classical masters, from whom he received deep religious 
 impressions, at the time Calvinistic in character, which 
 were to him the beginning of a new life.' 
 
 Turning now to the Apologia we read as follows, this 
 time in the first person : ' I was brought up from a 
 child to take gTcat delight in reading the Bible ; but I 
 had no formed religious convictions till I was fifteen. 
 Of course, I had perfect knowledge of my Catechism. 
 . . . When I was fifteen a great change of thought took 
 place in me. I fell under the influences of a definite 
 Creed, and received into my intellect impressions of 
 dogma, which, through God's mercy, have never been 
 effaced or obscured. Above and beyond the conversations 
 and sermons of the excellent man, long dead, who was 
 the human means of this beginning of divine faith in 
 me, was the effect of the books which he put into my 
 hands, all of the school of Calvin. ... I was then, and 
 I still am, more certain of my inward conversion than 
 that I have hands and feet. My conversion was such 
 that it made me rest in the thought of two and two 
 only supreme and luminously self-evident beings, myself 
 and my Creator. ... I am obliged to mention, though 
 I do it with great reluctance, a deep imagination which, 
 in the autumn of 1816, took possession of me, — there 
 can be no mistake about the fact ; — viz. that it was the 
 will of God that I should lead a single life. This antici- 
 pation, which has held its ground almost continuously 
 ever since, — with the break of a month now and then, 
 up to 1829, and, after that date, without any break at 
 all, — was more or less connected, in my mind, with the 
 notion that my calling in life would require such a 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 285 
 
 sacrifice as celibacy involved : as, for instance, missionary 
 work among the heathen, to which I had a great drawing 
 for some years.' And so on, in that so fascinating book. 
 
 Newman has a very characteristic sermon in his 
 series of University Sermons, entitled ' Personal In- 
 fluence ' ; and all his days he was his own best example 
 of that kind of influence, both as experiencing it and as 
 exercising it. So much so, that from the day he entered 
 Oxford his biography is really the history of the personal 
 influences that were poured in continually, and some- 
 times unaccountably, upon his susceptible mind and 
 heart. Richard Whately was, at that time, one of the 
 ruling influences of Oxford, and his moulding hand was 
 at once laid on the impressible freshman, John Henry 
 Newman, ' If there was a man,' says Newman, ' easy 
 for a raw youth to get on with, it was Whately — a great 
 talker, who endured very readily the silence of his 
 company ; original in his views, lively, forcible, witty 
 in expressing them ; brimful of information on a variety 
 of subjects. The worst that could be said of Whately 
 was that, in his intercourse with his friends, he was a 
 bright June sun tempered by a March north-easter.' 
 
 Whately was not long in discovering that Newman 
 was a youth full of all kinds of ability, and for a time 
 Whately and Newman were on the very best of terms. 
 Whatcly's powerful mind, great learning, commanding 
 manner, and high position, all combined to make him 
 a tower of strength around his sensitive, shy, and self- 
 conscious young friend. As time went on, Whately 
 began to share some of his literary work with Newman, 
 and in that, and in not a few other things, Whately 
 treated Newman as if he were already a colleague and an 
 equal, rather than a junior and a subordinate. And, 
 altogether, Newman had good reason to reckon Whately, 
 
286 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 as he always did, as one of the best influences of his 
 early Oxford life. At the same time, it was impossible 
 that Whatcly and Newman could for very long continue 
 to act together, more esjDecially in their religious and 
 ecclesiastical relations. And the more that Whately 
 helped forward the development and the independence 
 of Newman's mind and character, the more the inevitable 
 breach between the two so different men was hastened, 
 not to say, precipitated. But let Newman sum up this 
 early Oxford relationship in his own inimitable way : 
 ' In 1822 I came under very different influences from 
 those to which I had been hitherto subjected. At that 
 time Mr. Whately, as he was then, afterwards Archbishop 
 of Dublin, showed great kindness to me. ... I owe Dr. 
 Whately a great deal. He was a man of generous and 
 warm heart. He was particularly loyal to his friends, 
 and to use the common phrase, all his geese Avere swans. 
 While I was still awkward and timid in 1822, he took me 
 by the hand, and acted the part to me of a gentle and 
 encouraging instructor. He, emphatically, opened my 
 mind, and taught me to think and to use my reason. 
 After being first noticed by him in 1822, I became very 
 intimate with him in 1825, when I was his Vice-Principal 
 in Alban Hall. I gave up that office in 1826, when I 
 became Tutor of my College, and his hold upon mc 
 gradually relaxed. He had done his whole work toward 
 me or nearly so, when he had taught me to see with my 
 own eyes and to walk with my own feet, . . . Dr. 
 Whately's mind was too different from mine for us to 
 remain long on one line. ... I believe that he has 
 inserted sharp things in his later works about me. They 
 have never come in my way, and I have not thought it 
 necessary to seek out what would pain me so much in 
 the reading.' That passage on Whately's influence on 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 287 
 
 Newman will be best wound up with this characteristic 
 postscript to a very painful correspondence that took 
 place long afterwards between Newman and his old 
 Oriel friend : ' May I be suffered to add, that your name 
 is ever mentioned in my prayers, and to subscribe myself 
 your Grace's very sincere friend and servant, John 
 Henry Newman.' 
 
 But by far the most powerful personal influence that 
 laid hold of Newman in those impressible days of his was 
 that of Hurrell Froude. Froude's personal friends are 
 all at one in their love for him and in their admiration 
 of his talents and his character. At the same time, as 
 to the true value of Froude's influence on Newman, 
 men's judgments will vary according to their ecclesiastical 
 and religious principles. Those who lean to Rome, 
 and who look with approval on the introduction of 
 Romish doctrines and practices into the Church of 
 England, will see nothing but good in Froude's immense 
 influence over Newman. Whereas, those who stand 
 fast in the Apostolical and Reformed and Evangelical faith 
 will bitterly lament that Froude and Newman ever met. 
 Newman's portrait of his friend is one of the shining char- 
 acterisations in a book full of such : — 
 
 ' I knew Froude first in 1826, and was in the closest 
 and most affectionate friendship with him from about 
 1829 till his death in 1836. He was a man of the highest 
 gifts, — so truly many-sided, that it would be presumptu- 
 ous in me to attempt to describe him, except under those 
 aspects in which he came before me. Nor have I here 
 to speak of the gentleness and tenderness of nature, the 
 playfulness, the free elastic force and graceful versatility 
 of mind, and the patient winning considerateness in 
 discussion, which endeared him to those to whom he 
 opened his heart ; for I am all along engaged upon 
 
288 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 matters of belief and opinion, and am introducing others 
 into my narrative, not for their own sake, or because I 
 love and have loved them, so much as because, and so 
 far as, they have influenced my theological views. . . . 
 Dying prematurely, as he did, and in the conflict and 
 transition-state of opinion, his religious views never 
 reached their ultimate conclusion, by the very reason of 
 their multitude and their depth. ... It is difficult to 
 enumerate the precise additions to my theological creed 
 which I derived from a friend to whom I owe so much. 
 He taught me to look with admiration towards the 
 Church of Rome, and in the same degree to dislike the 
 Reformation. He fixed deep in me the idea of devotion 
 to the Blessed Virgin, and he led me gradually to believe 
 in the Real Presence.' And on Froude's death in 1836 
 Newman wrote : ' I can never have a greater loss, 
 looking on for the whole of my life. I never, on the 
 whole, fell in with so gifted a person. In variety and 
 perfection of gifts I think he far exceeded even Keble. 
 For myself, I cannot describe what I owe to him — as 
 regards the intellectual principles, the philosophy of 
 religion and morals.' 
 
 As to Froude having taught Newman to dislike the 
 Reformation, Mr. Gladstone, while in many things 
 admiring Froude and sympathising with him, says that 
 he is compelled to admit and lament Froude's ' glaring, 
 if not almost scandalous disparagement of the Reformers.' 
 And on Froude's whole character, as seen in his History 
 and as studied in his writings, Isaac Taylor, one of the 
 most moderately spoken of all the critics of the Tractarian 
 Movement, calls Froude's Remains a most offensive 
 book, and describes Froude himself as the unhappy 
 victim of a singularly malign temperament, and of a 
 pernicious training. He denounces also the sombre and 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 289 
 
 venomous flippancies of Froude's published Journal, 
 As to what Newman suggests to his readers in saying that 
 Froude died before his reUgious views had reached their 
 ultimate conclusion, Isaac Williams has this in his 
 clear-headed and honest-spoken Autobiography : ' Many 
 have imagined, and Newman endeavoured to persuade 
 himself, that if Froude had lived he would have joined 
 the Church of Rome as well as himself. But this I do 
 not at all think. And I find that John Keble and others 
 quite agree with me that there was that in Hurrell Froude 
 that he could not have joined the Church of Rome. I 
 had always full confidence in Froude,' adds Isaac Williams. 
 A far more sweet and genial influence than that of 
 Froude, though an influence that did almost more than 
 that of Froude to smooth Newman's way to Rome, was 
 that of John Keble. ' Do you know the story of the 
 murderer,' Froude asks, ' who had done one good deed 
 in his life ? Well, if I were asked what good deed I had 
 ever done, I would say that I had brought Keble and 
 Newman to understand each other.' John Keble had 
 won an immense reputation at Oxford, but great honours 
 were never worn with a more lowly mind than were 
 Keble's college honours. He left the University with 
 the greatest prospects just opening before him, and 
 went to assist his father in his parish work as a pastor. 
 As to Keble's devoted and all-absorbing churchmanship, 
 it was as indisputable as was his scholarship. In his 
 brilliant sketch of Keble, Dean Church tells us that 
 Keble ' looked with great and intelligent dislike at the 
 teaching and the practical working of the Evangelical 
 Christianity ' around him, and that ' his loyalty to the 
 Church of England was profound and intense. He was 
 a strong Tory, and by conviction and religious temper 
 a thorough High Churchman.' Froude had been Keble's 
 
290 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 pupil at Oriel, and when Keble left Oriel for his curacy, 
 he took Froude with him to read for his degree. And 
 not only did Froude read under Keble, but from that 
 time Keble gained in Froude a disciple who was to be 
 the mouthpiece and the champion of his High Church 
 ideas. Froude took in from Keble all he had to com- 
 municate, Dean Church tells us — ' principles, convictions, 
 moral rules and standards of life, hopes, fears, anti- 
 pathies.' A story is told to the effect that Keble before 
 parting with Froude one day, seemed to have something 
 on his mind ; and as Froude stepped into the coach, 
 Keble said to him, ' Froude, you said to-day that you 
 thought Law's Serious Call a very clever book ; it 
 seemed to me almost as if you had said that the Day 
 of Judgment would be a very pretty sight.' Froude all 
 his days acknowledged the deep impression that these 
 words of Keble made upon him. As a matter of fact, 
 William Law was one of Froude's favourite authors 
 all his days, and the same masterly writer was one of 
 Keble's favourite authors also. 
 
 Keble's immense influence on Newman is traced both 
 by Newman himself, and by all the writers of authority 
 on that time, to two things — to the influence of Keble 
 upon Froude, and to Tlie Christian Year. Hursley has 
 produced two very influential books in its time, which 
 are as diametrically removed from one another, not to 
 say as diametrically opposed to one another, as could 
 possibly be found in the whole spacious circle of Christian 
 literature. The one book is a Puritan classic, and the 
 other is an Anglican classic. The one is a treatise in 
 strong old Enghsh prose, and the other is a volume of 
 sweet, somewhat sentimental, somewhat ecclesiastical, 
 but always devout and always beautiful, poetry. The 
 one is a very masterpiece of the soul under the deepest 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 291 
 
 spiritual sanctification, and the other is an acknow- 
 ledged masterpiece of an Englishman's religion under 
 the English obedience and discipline. ' Keble,' wrote 
 Newman satirically in his Church of Rome days, ' did 
 that for the Church of England which none but a poet 
 could do : he made it poetical.' Keble's own con- 
 demnation of The Christian Year in after days may well 
 bewilder his biographer. Dr. Abbott traces this state 
 of mind in Keble to the malign influence of Newman 
 upon him. Be that as it may, few, I fear, have the 
 catholicity of training, and the taste and the temper, 
 to make to themselves classics of both those Hursley 
 books, though both books are real classics, each in its 
 own kind. The Christian Year is in a multitude of 
 scholarly and beautifully got-up editions, and The 
 Gospel Mystery is in not a few somewhat poor and mean- 
 looking editions. My favourite copy of The Gospel 
 Mystery, which I have read as often as Jowett had read 
 Boswell, if not as often as President Roosevelt has read 
 Plutarch, is of the fourteenth edition, and bears the date 
 of 1819. Dr. Andrew Murray of South Africa has lately 
 published with Messrs. Nisbet an admirably introduced 
 edition of Marshall at a shilling. And the purchaser who 
 answers to the advertisement for him on the title-page, 
 and who once reads Marshall, will never cease reading 
 him till, as Keble says, ' time and sin together cease.' 
 But after this parenthesis, which, at the same time, is 
 of more importance than the proper text, let me supply 
 you with one more passage out of the Apologia about 
 the author of The Christian Year, and his immense 
 influence on Newman : ' The true and primary author 
 of the Tractarian Movement, as is usual with great 
 motive-powers, was out of sight. Having carried off 
 as a mere boy the highest honours of the University, he 
 
292 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 had turned from the admiration which haunted his 
 steps, and had sought for a better and hoHer satisfaction 
 in pastoral work in the country. Need I say that I 
 am speaking of John Keble ? . . . The Christian Year 
 made its appearance in 1827. It is not necessary, and 
 scarcely becoming, to praise a book which has already 
 become one of the classics of the language. . . . Nor 
 can I pretend to analyse, in my own instance, the effect 
 of religious teaching so deep, so pure, so beautiful. The 
 two main intellectual truths which it brought home to 
 me I had already learned from Butler : the first of these 
 may be called, in a large sense, the Sacramental system, 
 and the other that probability is the guide of life.' 
 Every one who is acquainted with Newman's works 
 will remember how those two principles, first implanted 
 by Butler, and then watered by Keble, grew till they 
 cover with their branches and with their leaves and 
 with their fruits the whole broad expanse of Newman's 
 philosophical, ecclesiastical, and religious writings. 
 
 The Tractarian Movement was well advanced before 
 Dr. Pusey joined it. But his accession to the movement 
 immediately gave it an immense impulse. ' Towards 
 the end of 1834,' says Dean Church, ' and in the course 
 of 1835, an event happened which had a great and 
 decisive influence on the character and fortunes of the 
 movement. This was the accession to it of Dr. Pusey. 
 He had looked favourably on it from the first, partly 
 from his friendship with Mr. Newman, partly from the 
 workings of his own mind.' But I am always glad when 
 I can set aside every other authority, even Church and 
 Mozley, and open the Apologia. And on opening that 
 peerless book at this point, I read : ' It was under these 
 circumstances that Dr. Pusey joined us. I had known 
 him well since 1827-8, and had felt for him an enthusiastic 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 293 
 
 admiration, I used to call him 6 fieya'i. His great 
 learning, his immense diligence, his scholarlike mind, 
 his simple devotion to the cause of religion, overcame 
 me ; and great of course was my joy when, in the last 
 days of 1833, he showed a disposition to make common 
 cause with us. . . . He at once gave us a position and 
 a name. Dr. Pusey was a Professor and Canon of Christ 
 Church ; he had a vast influence in consequence of his 
 deep religious seriousness, the munificence of his charities, 
 his Professorship, his family connections, and his easy 
 relations with University authorities. . . . Dr. Pusey 
 was, to use the common expression, 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. . . . People are 
 apt to say that he was once nearer the Catholic Church 
 than he is now. I pray God that he may be one day far 
 nearer that Church than he was then ; for I believe that, 
 in his reason and judgment, all the time that I knew 
 him, he never was near to it at all.' 
 
 Pusey, as well as Newman, had already passed through 
 some very remarkable changes in his theological views. 
 He had spent some time in Germany, and on his return 
 to England he had published a treatise full of promise in 
 defence of the liberal theologians and liberal theology of 
 Germany. He afterwards withdrew that book, and it 
 is now very little known. But as I read that long- 
 denied and forgotten Essay, I see nothing in it, at any 
 rate in its demand for freedom in Biblical studies, of 
 which any High Churchman, or any one else, need be 
 ashamed. Indeed, I am not sure but that it will yet be 
 pronounced to be the best book that its learned author 
 ever wrote. At any rate, there is a strength in it, and a 
 sanity, and a true catholicity, that are not always 
 exhibited in Pusey's later writings. I could quote page 
 
294 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 after page out of this repudiated book of the profoundest 
 insight into many still-pressing problems of Biblical 
 criticism ; pages that, had their author stood true to 
 them, and had he gone on to unite to them all his piety, 
 and all his learning, and all his well-earned influence in 
 the Church of England, would have done much to pre- 
 pare the way for that combination of orthodox doctrine 
 with the foremost scholarship, which our own Church in 
 Scotland, as well as Pusey's Church in England, are still 
 painfully seeking to attain. But instead of becoming 
 what at one time Pusey gave promise to become, he fell 
 back into Tractarianism, and became another instance 
 of a great and good man making the grand refusal. 
 
 Such, then, were the three remarkable men to whom 
 Newman, in his humility, makes such handsome and 
 honest acknowledgment. But the real truth in that 
 whole matter is told about all those four men, and their 
 relations to one another, in this final and unchallenge- 
 able judgment of James Anthony Froude : ' Far different 
 from Keble, from my brother, from Dr. Pusey, from all 
 the rest, was the true chief of the Cathohc revival — 
 John Henry Newman. Compared with him, they all 
 were but ciphers, and he the indicating number.' At 
 the same time, we find the historian writing about his 
 brother in the Nineteenth Century for 1879 in these 
 strong terms : ' I look back upon my brother as on the 
 whole the most remarkable man I have ever met with 
 in my life. I have never seen any person — not one, in 
 whom, as I now think of him, the excellences of intellect 
 and character were combined in fuller measure.' Some 
 forty years after their first meeting, in a letter to Newman 
 now in the Oratory at Birmingham, and written in refer- 
 ence to a chance meeting of Newman and Pusey and 
 Kcble at Hursley, Keble sent these lines : — 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 295 
 
 ' When shall we three meet again ? 
 When the hurley-burley 's done. 
 When the battle's lost and won.' 
 
 And may I not add from Keble himself : — 
 
 ' And sometimes even beneath the moon 
 The Saviour gives a gracious boon. 
 
 When reconciled Christians meet, 
 And face to face, and heart to heart. 
 High thoughts of holy love impart 
 
 In silence meek or converse sweet.' 
 
 In the month of December 1832 Archdeacon Froude, 
 taking his son Hurrell and Newman with him, set out to 
 the south of Europe in search of health for the two young 
 divines. Hurrell Froude was far gone in a consumption, 
 and Newman's health had suffered severely from the 
 labour involved in the composition of his book on the 
 Arians. Condensed as is Newman's account of their tour 
 in the Apologia, I must condense it still more. The full 
 narrative is given, as only he could give it, in his corre- 
 spondence published by his sister, Mrs. Mozley. But 
 I quote and condense from the Apologia : ' We set out 
 in December 1832. It was during this expedition that 
 my verses which are in the Lyra Aposiolica were written. 
 Exchanging as I was definite tutorial work, and the 
 literary quiet and pleasant friendships of the last six 
 years, for foreign countries and an unknown future, I 
 naturally was led to think that some inward changes, 
 as well as some larger course of action, were coming upon 
 me. The strangeness of foreign life threw me back 
 upon myself : I found pleasure in historical sights and 
 scenes, not in men and manners. We kept clear of 
 Catholics throughout our tour. My general feeling was 
 — " All, save the spirit of man, is divine." I saw nothing 
 but what was external ; of the hidden life of Catholics 
 
296 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 I knew nothing. I was still more driven back upon 
 myself, and felt my isolation. England was in my 
 thoughts solely, and the news from England came rarely 
 and imperfectly. The Bill for the Suppression of Irish 
 Sees was in progress, and filled my mind. I had fierce 
 thoughts against the Liberals. It was at Rome that we 
 began the Lyra Apostolica. The motto shows the feeling 
 of both Froude and myself at the time. We borrowed 
 from Bunsen a Homer, and Froude chose the words in 
 which Achilles, on returning to the battle, says, " You 
 shall know the difference, now that I am back again." 
 I was aching to get home. At last I got off in an orange 
 boat, bound for Marseilles. Then it was that I wrote 
 the lines " Lead, kindly Light," which have since become 
 well known. When I reached my mother's house, my 
 brother Frank had arrived from Persia only a few hours 
 before. This was the Tuesday. The following Sunday, 
 July 14th, Mr. Keble preached the Assize Sermon in the 
 University pulpit. It was published under the title of 
 " National Apostasy." I have ever considered and 
 kept the day as the start of the religious movement of 
 1833.' With all that, thirty years after, Keble whispered 
 to Newman of that very National Apostasy, " But was 
 it not just and right ? " ' 
 
 As we have seen, Newman has said that John Keble 
 was the true and primary author of the Tractarian 
 Movement. Be that as it may, there can be no doubt 
 that the idea of the Tracts originated with Keble. In a 
 private letter of Keble's we find the first intimation of 
 what Thomas Mozley has called ' that portentous birth 
 of time, the Tracts for the Times.' ' To give you a notion 
 of the kind of thing,' writes Keble, ' the first tract we 
 propose to print will be a penny account of the martyr- 
 dom of St. Ignatius, with extracts from his Epistles. 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 297 
 
 Pray do not blow on it as being all ultra.' As a matter of 
 fact, when the first tract actuaUy came out, it showed 
 to all who had eyes to read it that a very different hand 
 from that of Keble was to be on the helm of the new 
 enterprise. Newman wrote the first tract with his own 
 pen under the name of ' A Presbyter,' and the full title 
 of the tract was this, ' Thoughts on the Ministerial 
 Commission, respectfully addressed to the Clergy.' The 
 famous series thus begun ran on from the 9th September 
 1833 till the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, 1841, 
 during which years ninety tracts were published, varying 
 in size from four pages to an octavo volume. Newman 
 wrote twenty-seven numbers out of the ninety, Keble 
 twelve, and Pusey eight, but Pusey's characteristic con- 
 tributions were large treatises rather than handy tracts. 
 The rest of the ninety tracts were either written by men 
 whose names you would not recognise, or they were 
 compilations and extracts out of such writers as Bull, 
 and Beveridge, and Wilson. The substance of the 
 tracts was wholly limited to what is known as High 
 Church doctrine. The tracts are full of the privileges 
 of the Catholic Church, her ministry, her sacraments, 
 and the discipline to which her priesthood and her people 
 ought to submit themselves. ' Their distinctive speech,' 
 says Mr. Gladstone, ' was of Church and Priesthood, of 
 Sacraments and Services.' And, as was to be expected, 
 there runs through the whole series a great scorn of 
 evangelical preaching, and a great contempt toward 
 every minister of the Church of Christ who is not a priest, 
 either of the Greek, or the Roman, or the Anglican, 
 obedience. But, whatever the subject, and whatsoever 
 the treatment, it is Newman who draws on the reader 
 through all the tracts. At the same time, with all his 
 extraordinary power of writing, the tracts are little 
 
298 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 read either in England or in Rome ; and were it not for 
 Newman, nobody nowadays would ever open them. 
 At least so I learn from all Anglican authorities. But 
 if you have a sufficient wish to study the development, 
 or, as some readers will be sure to call it, the degeneration, 
 of the finest mind in the Church of England in this 
 century, you must not grudge to go diligently through 
 every successive number of the Tracts for the Times. Not 
 that Newman writes them all, but there is not one of 
 them without his consent and approval and personal 
 stamp. At the same time, I warn you before you begin 
 that you will need to have all your patience in its fullest 
 exercise, and all your forbearance, and all your admira- 
 tion of Newman, in order to carry you on from the 
 beginning of Tract I. to the end of Tract XC. Dreary 
 and saddening as much of the tract-writing is, I do not 
 need to say that, since so much of Newman is in it, you 
 will come on passages not a few that do not require his 
 signature set to them — passages of such truth and 
 beauty that they will dwell with you all your days. 
 Having read all the ninety tracts, and some of them 
 many times over, I can, concerning not a few of them, 
 subscribe to what Dean Church says about the series : 
 ' They were clear, sharp, stern appeals to conscience 
 and reason, sparing of words, utterly without rhetoric, 
 intense in purpose. They were like the short, sharp, 
 rapid utterances of men in pain, and danger, and pressing 
 emergency.' That eulogium is only true of the selectest 
 and the best of the tracts, that is to say, of Newman's 
 contributions to the series. As regards the first tract, 
 which gave the keynote to the series, I can entirely 
 subscribe to what Dr. Abbott, Newman's severest critic, 
 says about it : ' Regarded as a specimen of Newman's 
 sympathetic rhetoric, the tract is most admirable. It 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 299 
 
 is indeed a splendid piece. All the more effective, 
 because so restrained.' And what that sternest of 
 Newman's censors says about the first tract is entirely 
 true of many more of Newman's contributions. ' Topics,' 
 says Mr. Jacobs in a fine piece of criticism reprinted from 
 the Athenceum, ' that seemed forbidding, both for their 
 theological technicalities, and their repulse of reason, 
 were presented by Newman with such skill that they 
 appeared as inevitable as Euclid, and as attractive as 
 Plato.' 
 
 But it was the pulpit of St. Mary's that was Newman's 
 true and proper throne. It was from the pulpit of St. 
 Mary's that he began to conquer and to rule the world. 
 I never saw Newman in his pulpit myself, but I have 
 read so much about his appearance in the pulpit that I 
 feel as if I could undertake to let you see and hear him 
 in it. I have open before me, as I compose these lines, 
 what Shairp, and Church, and Mozley, and Froude, and 
 Lockhart, and Oakeley, and the Bishop of Carlisle, and 
 many more have told us about Newman's preaching. 
 Principal Shairp, for one, has a most admirable picture 
 of Newman in the pulpit. He begins by telling us how 
 simple and unostentatious the service in St. Mary's was 
 when Newman was the preacher. ' No pomp, no ritual- 
 ism,' are Shairp's words, ' nothing but the silver intona- 
 tion of Newman's magic voice. Newman's delivery 
 had this peculiarity. Each sentence was spoken rapidly, 
 but with great clearness of intonation, and then, at the 
 close of every sentence, there was a pause that lasted for 
 several seconds. Then another rapidly but clearly 
 spoken sentence, followed by another pause, till a wonder- 
 ful spell took hold of the hearer. The look and bearing 
 of the preacher were as of one who dwelt apart, and who, 
 though he knew his age well, did not live in his age. 
 
300 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 From his seclusion of study, and abstinence, and prayer ; 
 from habitual dwelling in the unseen, he seemed to come 
 forth that one day of the week to speak to others of the 
 things he had seen and known in secret. As he spoke, 
 how the old truths became new ! how they came home 
 with a meaning never felt before ! The subtlest of 
 truths were dropped out as by the way in a sentence or 
 two of the most transparent Saxon. What delicacy of 
 style, yet what calm power ! how gentle yet how strong ! 
 how simple yet how suggestive ! how homely yet how 
 refined ! how penetrating yet how tender-hearted ! 
 And the tone of voice in which all this was spoken 
 sounded to you like a fine strain of unearthly music' 
 I remember vividly the delight I took in an article on 
 Newman's sermons that appeared more than thirty years 
 ago in the Saturday Review. That article gave a voice 
 to what I had long felt about Newman's sermons, but 
 had not the ability myself to utter. And I remember 
 how I bought up not a few numbers of that issue of the 
 Saturday Review, and sent them to friends up and down 
 the country in order that they might share the fine tribute 
 with me. I did not know at the time that Dean Church 
 was the writer of that remarkable appreciation. I used 
 to have the following passage by heart : ' Dr. Newman's 
 sermons stand by themselves in modem English litera- 
 ture : it might even be said, in English literature gener- 
 alty. There have been equally great masterpieces of 
 English w^riting in this form of composition, and there 
 have been preachers whose theological depth, acquaint- 
 ance with the heart, earnestness, tenderness, and power 
 have not been inferior to his. But the great writers 
 do not touch, pierce, and get hold of minds as Newman 
 does, and those who are famous for the power and the 
 results of their preaching do not write as he does. We 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 301 
 
 have learned to look upon Dr. Newman as one of those 
 who have left their mark very deep on the English 
 language. Little, assuredly, as their writer originally 
 thought of such a result, the sermons have proved a 
 permanent gift to our literature, of the purest English, 
 full of sirring, clearness, and force. Such English, 
 graceful with the grace of nerve, flexibility, and power, 
 must always have attracted attention ; but his English 
 had also an ethical element which was almost inseparable 
 from its literary characteristics.' And so on, to the 
 end of an article very remarkable for its insight and its 
 eloquence. 
 
 Before leaving St. Mary's, I must give you this very 
 remarkable portrait of Newman, lest you may never 
 have seen it. James Anthony Froude, in an article in 
 Good Words for 1881, says : ' My present letter will be 
 given to a single figure. When I entered Oxford John 
 Henry Newman was beginning to be famous. His appear- 
 ance was striking. He was above the middle height, 
 slight, and spare. His head was large, his face remark- 
 ably like that of Julius Cassar. The forehead, the shape 
 of the ears and nose, were almost the same. I have 
 often thought of the resemblance, and believed that it 
 extended to the temperament. In both there was an 
 original force of character which refused to be moulded 
 by circumstances, which was to make its own way, and 
 become a power in the world ; a clearness of intellectual 
 perception, a disdain for conventionalities, a temper 
 imperious and wilful, but always with it a most attaching 
 gentleness, sweetness, singleness of heart and purpose. 
 Newman's mind was world-wide. He was interested 
 in everything which was going on in science, in politics, 
 in literature. Nothing was too large for him, nothing too 
 trivial. He was careless about his personal prospects. 
 
302 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 He had no ambition to make a career, or to rise to rank 
 and power. Still less had pleasure any seductions for 
 him. His natural temperament was bright and light ; 
 his senses, even the commonest, were exceptionally 
 delicate. I am told that, though he rarely drank wine, 
 he was trusted to choose the vintages of the college 
 cellar. He could admire enthusiastically any greatness 
 of action and character, however remote the sphere of 
 it from his own. Gurwood's Despatches of the Duke of 
 Wellington came out just then. Newman had been 
 reading the book, and a friend asked him what he thought 
 of it. " Think ! " he said ; "it makes one burn to have 
 been a soldier ! " ' I could not deny you that remark- 
 able characterisation, though it is Froude's description 
 of Newman in the pulpit I am specially in quest of : 
 ' No one who heard his sermons in those days can ever 
 forget them. Taking some Scripture character for a 
 text, Newman spoke to us about ourselves, our tempta- 
 tions, our experiences. His illustrations were inex- 
 haustible. He seemed to be addressing the most secret 
 consciousness of each of us — as the eyes of a portrait 
 appear to look at every person in a room. He never 
 exaggerated ; he was never unreal. A sermon from 
 Newman was a poem, formed on a distinct idea, fascinat- 
 ing by its subtlety, welcome — how welcome ! — from its 
 sincerity, interesting from its originality ; even to those 
 who were careless of religion, and to those who wished to 
 be religious, it was like the springing of a fountain out of 
 a rock.' And take this also from an anonymous pen : 
 ' Action in the common sense there was none. His 
 hands were literally not seen from the beginning to the 
 end. The sermon began in a calm, musical voice, the 
 key slightly rising as it went on ; by and by the preacher 
 warmed with his subject, till it seemed as if his very 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 803 
 
 soul and body glowed with suppressed emotion. The 
 very tones of his voice seemed as if they were something 
 more than his own. There are those who to this day, 
 in reading many of his sermons, have the whole scene 
 brought back before them. The great church, the 
 congregation all breathless with expectant attention, 
 the gaslight just at the left hand of the pulpit, lowered 
 that the preacher might not be dazzled : themselves, 
 perhaps, standing in the half-darkness under the gallery, 
 and then the pause before those words in The Ventures of 
 Faith thrilled through them, " They say unto Him, 
 ' We are able,' " or those in the seventh sermon in the 
 sixth volume, " The Cross of Christ." ' 
 
 But hear William Lockhart also, one of Newman's 
 oldest disciples : ' To see Newman come into St. 
 Mary's, in his long white surplice, was like nothing one 
 had seen before. He glided in swiftly like a spirit 
 incarnate. When he reached the lectern, he would drop 
 down on his knees and remain fixed in mental prayer 
 for a few moments, then he rose in the same unearthly 
 way and began the service. His reading of the lessons 
 from the Old and New Testaments was a most marvellous 
 expression of soul. Many men are expressive readers, 
 only we can see that they intend to be expressive. But 
 they do not reach the soul ; they are good actors, cer- 
 tainly, but they do not forget themselves, and you do 
 not forget them. The effect of Newman's preaching on 
 us young men was to turn our souls inside out. It was 
 like what he says in the Dream of Gerontius of the soul 
 after death, and presented before God — 
 
 " Who draws the soul from out its case 
 And burns away its stains," 
 
 ' We never could be again the same men we were 
 before.' 
 
304 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 That is surely enough. Nothing surely could add to 
 that. Such testimonies, from such men, are almost more 
 to us than if we had been hearers of Newman for our- 
 selves. Next to having been his hearers, and far better 
 than that, we have his incomparable sermons in our 
 hands, so that we can enter St. Mary's whenever we 
 choose. 
 
 We would willingly remain with Newman in St. Mary's 
 pulpit to the end, if he would only remain there with us. 
 But we are following out his onward career, and all this 
 time he has been making steady and straight for Rome ; 
 so much so, that his Romeward progress can be watched, 
 and measured, and recorded — Dr. Abbott has done it — 
 in almost every one of his St. Mary's sermons. No 
 reader of those sermons who has his eyes open can fail 
 to see Newman's Romeward footprints on every page. 
 He denies that he ever took his Tractarian doctrines 
 into the pulpit ; but, then, he tells us that it was almost 
 a rule of his not to open his own books after they came 
 out ; and he cannot have opened many of his St. Mary's 
 sermons, if he is entirely candid in what he says about 
 them in the matter of their Tractarianism. At any 
 rate, I cannot open them without being continually 
 vexed and thrown out by his constant asides at 
 evangelical truth, not to say by his constantly insinuated 
 praises of Tractarian positions, and sacerdotal and 
 ascetic practices, with their both justifying and sanctify- 
 ing influences. From the first of his published sermons 
 to the last, sermon succeeding sermon, there are to be 
 seen Newman's onward footprints, soft as the falling 
 snow ; his swift, noiseless, delicate, and refined foot- 
 prints. Sometimes for a moment seeming to turn 
 aside ; sometimes for a moment, as one would think, 
 looking not unwistfully back ; but only to turn all the 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 305 
 
 more resolutely, and sometimes, to use his own word, 
 ' fiercely,' on his Romeward way. In all his tracts also 
 you can trace the same progress as plainly as in his 
 sermons ; as also in all his historical, doctrinal, and 
 polemical writings, from the Arians to the Development ; 
 and the same progress is still more dramatically to be 
 studied in all his letters. ' It has ever been a hobby of 
 mine, though perhaps it is a truism, not a hobby, that 
 the true hfe of a man is in his letters. Not only for the 
 interest of a biography, but for arriving at the true inside 
 of things, the publication of letters is the true method. 
 Biographers varnish, they assign motives, they con- 
 jecture feelings, they interpret Lord Burleigh's nods ; 
 but contemporary letters are facts.' On these four 
 parallel and converging lines then, — his sermons, his 
 tracts, his historical, doctrinal, and controversial publica- 
 tions, and his letters, and, I may add, his poems — the 
 attentive student can trace every step of Newman's 
 secession from the Church of England, and every step 
 in his progress toward the Church of Rome. And a 
 right repaying study it is to the proper student, — the rare 
 student, that is, of sufficient enterprise and endurance. 
 
 ' From the end of 1841 I was on my deathbed as 
 regards my membership with the Anghcan Church. 
 Now a deathbed has scarcely a history ; it is a tedious 
 decline, with seasons of rallying and seasons of falling 
 back ; and since the end is foreseen, or what is called a 
 matter of time, it has little interest for the reader, 
 especially if he has a kind heart. Moreover, it is a 
 season when doors are closed and curtains drawn, and 
 when the sick man neither cares nor is able to record 
 the stages of his malady.' Littlemore was the scene of 
 Newman's deathbed. Littlemore was a sort of midway 
 house between Oxford and Rome. Or, rather, it was 
 
306 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 the last hostel on the Roman road. ' Father Dalgairns 
 and myself,' says Lockhart, ' were the first inmates of 
 Littlemore. It was a kind of monastic life of retirement, 
 prayer, and study. We had a sincere desire to remain 
 in the Church of England, if we could be satisfied that 
 in so doing we were members of the world-wide visible 
 communion of Christianity which was of apostolic origin. 
 We spent our time at Littlemore in study, prayer, and 
 fasting. We rose at midnight to recite the Breviary 
 Office, consoling ourselves with the thought that we 
 were united in prayer with united Christendom, and 
 were using the very words used by the saints of all ages. 
 We regularly practised confession, and went to Com- 
 munion, I think, daily, at the village church. At dinner 
 we met together, and after some spiritual reading at 
 table we enjoyed conversation with Newman. He 
 spoke freely on all subjects that came up, but I think 
 controversial topics were tacitly avoided. He was most 
 scrupulous not to suggest doubts as to the position of 
 the Church of England to those who had them not. 
 Newman would never let us treat him as a superior, 
 but placed himself on a level with the youngest of us. 
 It was his wish to give us some direct object of study in 
 his splendid library, in which were all the finest editions 
 of the Greek and Latin fathers and schoolmen, all the 
 best works on Scripture and theology, general literature, 
 prose and verse, and a complete set of the Bollandist 
 Acta Sanctorum, so far as they had been printed. New- 
 man was an excellent violin player, and he would some- 
 times bring his instrument into the library after dinner, 
 and entertain us with the exquisite sonatas of Beethoven.' 
 But by this time the end was not far off. And this 
 letter to his sister will best describe the end : — 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 307 
 
 'LiTTLEMOHE, Ocioher dth, 1845. 
 
 ' My dear Jemima, — I must tell you what will pain 
 you greatly, but I will make it as short as you would 
 wish me to do. 
 
 ' This night Father Dominic, the Passionist, sleeps 
 here. He does not know of my intention ; but I shall 
 ask him to receive me into what I believe to be the One 
 Fold of the Redeemer. 
 
 ' This will not go till all is over. — Ever yours 
 affectionately, John H. Newman.' 
 
 ' I left Oxford for good on Monday, February 23, 1846. 
 On the Saturday and Sunday before, I was in my house 
 at Littlemore simply by myself, as I had been for the 
 first day or two when I had originally taken possession 
 of it. I slept on Sunday night at my dear friend's, 
 Mr. Johnson, at the Observatory. Various friends 
 came to see the last of me : Mr. Copeland, Mr. Church, 
 Mr. Buckle, Mr. Pattison, and Mr. Lewis. Dr. Pusey, 
 too, came up to take leave of me ; and I called on Dr. 
 Ogle, one of my very oldest friends, for he was my 
 private tutor when I was an undergraduate. In him 
 I took leave of my first college, Trinity, which was so 
 dear to me, and which held on its foundation so many 
 who have been kind to me, both when I was a boy, and 
 all through my Oxford life. Trinity had never been 
 unkind to me. There used to be much snap-dragon 
 growing on the walls opposite my freshman's rooms 
 there, and I had for years taken it as the emblem of 
 my own perpetual residence, even unto death, in my 
 university. 
 
 ' On the morning of the 23rd I left the Observatory. 
 I have never seen Oxford since, excepting its spires, as 
 they are seen from the railway.' 
 
308 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 ' Father Dominic does not know of my intention ; 
 but I mean to ask of him admission into the One Fold 
 of Christ.' Now, I have studied every syllable that 
 Newman ever wrote about ' the One Fold of Christ,' 
 both before he had asked to be admitted into it, and 
 after his admittance. But he has failed to convince 
 his most admiring and most open-minded reader. Not 
 only has he not convinced that reader, but he has con- 
 firmed him more than ever the other way. No ; Newman 
 and all his entrancing Tractarian and Catholic writings 
 notwithstanding. Neither Moscow, nor Rome, nor 
 Geneva, nor Canterbury, is the One Fold of Christ to 
 me. To me, I thank God, none of all those assuming 
 and contending churches, nor all of them taken together, 
 is the One Fold of Christ. The Good Shepherd, who 
 gave His life for the sheep, has much sheep of His in all 
 these partial folds, and much sheep of His outside them 
 all, neither shall any man pluck them out of His hand. 
 To me, Protestant though I am, the true pathos of 
 Newman's history does not lie in his leaving the Church 
 of England for the Church of Rome, but it lies in his 
 for ever forsaking the Evangelical faith, than which, 
 properly speaking, there is no other faith, and in declining 
 upon a system of religion in which that faith, as I suppose, 
 is at its very lowest point. Paul's indignant language 
 to the Galatian Church alone expresses my sad thoughts 
 over Newman's declension. I will not repeat that 
 language, but all who know Newman's history will 
 recall and will apply that language for themselves. 
 ' But,' as Newman says of himself in the Introduction 
 to his Chrysostom, ' I am getting far more argumentative 
 than I thought to be when I began ; so I will soon lay 
 down my pen and retire into myself.' 
 
 The last forty years of Newman's earthly life were 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 809 
 
 spent within the walls of the Oratory at Birmingham. 
 And, monastery as it was, it was in many respects a 
 charming retreat for a community of scholars and 
 Christian gentlemen. You must not think of Newman 
 and his confraternity as cooped up in narrow cells, 
 never seeing the sun, and never allowed to speak or to 
 look up from the ground. You must not think of them 
 as fasting every day, and only breaking their fast with 
 a crumb of bread and a cup of cold water. Far from 
 that ; for Philip Neri was their patron saint, and not 
 Father Mathew. And under Philip's genial rule they 
 had great times of it at Edgbaston. The students had 
 stage-plays and all kinds of out-of-doors sports and 
 games to their hearts' content, Father Newman the 
 greatest boy of them all. He employed his fine and 
 familiar scholarship to adapt old Latin comedies to the 
 Oratory stage, he presided in person over the rehearsals, 
 saw to the proper dresses with his own eyes, and that at 
 no end of expense. ' He coached nearly every one of 
 the players privately, and astonished them not a little 
 by the extraordinary versatility and dramatic power 
 with which he would himself personate for their imitation 
 a love-sick Roman exquisite or a drunken slave.' And 
 not for the entertainment of the young men only, were 
 these relaxations indulged in. The head of the holy 
 house himself had been all his days passionately fond of 
 music, and at eighty few could handle the fiddle-bow 
 like him. And then, the six days of the secular week 
 were not sufficient for the flow of spirits that welled up 
 in the old Cardinal's heart. Dr. Allen tells us that long 
 after Phillips Brooks was the most famous preacher in 
 America, on one occasion when he and his brother were 
 back in the old home on a holiday, so obstreperous were 
 the noises that were coming out of the smoking-room, 
 
310 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 that their mother knocked at the door and exclaimed, 
 ' My boys, remember that it is the Sabbath-day ! ' And 
 had the Cardinal's Huguenot mother been allowed inside 
 the Oratory on any Sabbath-day whatever, most 
 certainly she would have boldly reproved the cricket 
 and the concerts that went on all the afternoon, to the 
 scandal of the Puritan neighbourhood. As a matter of 
 fact, Newman's near neighbours did remonstrate with 
 him against his continental Sunday, but Hippocleides 
 didn't care. And the thing went on. But you must not 
 suppose that all the Cardinal's forty years in the Oratory 
 were spent in sport like that. One who must have known 
 the Oratory from the inside once wrote about it thus : 
 ' As Dr. Newman's days grow fewer, they grow longer. 
 He has ever been an early riser, and now from five in 
 the morning to an unknown hour at night he is busily 
 engaged in redeeming the time. His first two hours are 
 given to devotion. About eight o'clock he appears in 
 the refectory, where he breakfasts in silence, attacking 
 meanwhile the pile of correspondence which awaits him 
 on the table. Then his own room receives him, and until 
 half-past two or three in the afternoon correspondence, 
 study, and the duties of the house and the school, engross 
 him. An hour or two in the afternoon is given to exer- 
 cise, for he is still a great pedestrian ; the community 
 dinner is at six o'clock ; and on days when his turn 
 comes round " the Father " girds on the apron of service, 
 and waits upon his brethren, not sitting down till they are 
 all served. All eat in silence, only broken by the voice 
 of the lector. Perhaps the two things which most 
 strike the visitor among these ecclesiastics is their 
 thoroughly English tone, and the liberality, in the 
 highest sense, of their views. So passes Dr. Newman's 
 life in the Birmingham Oratory.' 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 311 
 
 The Cardinal did not need to assure us that his mind 
 was not idle during his Catholic days. He did not need 
 to certify us that he had not given over thinking on 
 theological subjects. The Sermons addressed to Mixed 
 Congregations, the Sermons preached on Various Occa- 
 sions, The Idea of a University, the Grammar of Assent, 
 the Apologia pro vitd sua. Loss and Gain, Callista, The 
 Dream of Gerontius, his brilliant controversial volumes, 
 and his ceaseless re-writing and re-arranging of his 
 Anglican works, such as his Arians, his Athanasius, his 
 Theological Tracts, and his fine volumes of Critical and 
 Historical Essays ; all that is proof enough of the con- 
 tinued activity of his magnificent mind. His Oratory 
 writings alone would make up a noble life's work in 
 themselves, even for a man of the greatest genius, and 
 the greatest industry, which Newman was to the end 
 of his days. 
 
 ' I cannot see, I cannot speak, I cannot hear, God bless 
 you,' was Newman's message to his old friend Mr. 
 Gladstone in November 1888. Newman's delight in 
 men, in books, and in affairs had all his life been intense, 
 and he had a strong desire that his life might be pro- 
 longed to its utmost possible span, if it was the will of 
 God. ' For myself, now, at the end of a long life, I say 
 from a full heart that God has never failed me, has never 
 disappointed me, has ever turned evil into good for me. 
 When I was young I used to say (and I trust it was not 
 presumptuous to say it) that our Lord ever answered 
 my prayers.' And his prayer for a long life was answered 
 like all the rest of his prayers. Cardinal Newman died 
 at the Edgbaston Oratory on Monday, 11th August 1890, 
 and was buried at his own little estate of Rednal, under 
 this epitaph written by himself : — 
 
312 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 JOANNES HENRICUS NEWMAN 
 
 EX UMBRIS ET IMAGINIBUS 
 IN VERITATEM 
 
 REQUIESCAT IN PACE 
 
 The Church of Rome may well be proud of her conquest 
 of Newman, for she never made spoil of a nobler foe. 
 But what Rome gains and holds, she gains and holds 
 not for herself alone. Men like Newman are not to be 
 separated up to any one sect of the Church of Christ. 
 They belong to no one denomination even when they 
 surrender themselves to it. In the adorable providence 
 of God, it may have been permitted and appointed that 
 Newman should pass over into the Roman communion 
 to do a service for God in that communion that no other 
 living man could do. We are not able to follow out such 
 pennissions and appointments of God's providence to 
 their ultimate end. It is enough to know that men like 
 Newman are not their own, and that their very errors 
 and mistakes are made to work together for good to 
 themselves, and to many besides themselves. Rome 
 belongs to the Risen Christ, as well as Moscow, and 
 Geneva, and Canterbury, and Edinburgh. And He to 
 whom we all belong will dispose of His servants, and will 
 distribute their services, according to their talents and 
 according to our necessities. And that, not according 
 to our approval, but according to His own. And now, 
 for one thing, who can tell but some open mind among 
 ourselves may, as he hears all this, be led to say — Surely 
 the Church of Rome must be other and better than I 
 have been brought up to think she was, since she drew 
 over to herself such a saint, and such a scholar, and such 
 a man of genius, as Newman was. Well, whatever the 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 313 
 
 Church of Rome is or is not, for you to say that about 
 her is a good sign in you. I want you to be more hospit- 
 able in your heart to Rome than she is to you ; more 
 cathohc than she is, more humble, more tender, more 
 hopeful, and altogether more charitable. I do not 
 want any of you to be like the man in William Law who 
 died devoid of all religion because he had spent all his 
 life on earth in nothing else but in constant terror of 
 Popery. And I will hope and will be sure that one result 
 of our present appreciation of Newman together will be 
 to help to lead you to something of my own mind in these 
 matters, which I would not now lose or exchange for all 
 the world. For, as I see and believe, our brethren in the 
 Church of Rome have some things to teach us ; but, 
 again, we have far more important things to call to their 
 remembrance. Newman sang : 
 
 ' O that thy creed were sound 1 
 For thou dost sootlie the heart, thou Church of Rome, 
 By thy unwearied watch and varied round 
 Of service, in thy Saviour's holy home.' 
 
 Wlien her creed is again sound, and when we have 
 humbled ourselves to learn from her some of the not un- 
 needed lessons that she has to teach us, then Ephraim 
 shall not any more envy Judah, and Judah shall not 
 any more vex Ephraim. Then He shall set up an 
 ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts 
 of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah 
 from the four corners of the earth. Who is she that 
 looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as 
 the sun, and terrible as an army Avith banners ? Enlarge 
 the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the 
 curtains of thine habitations ; spare not, lengthen thy 
 cords, and strengthen thy stakes ; for thou shalt break 
 forth on the right hand and on the left ; and thy seed 
 
S14 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities 
 to be inhabited. 
 
 The true Catholic, as his name implies, is the well- 
 read, the open-minded, the hospitable-hearted, the 
 spiritually-exercised Evangelical, as he is called. He 
 is of no sect. He is of no school. He is of no occasion. 
 He comes of no movement. He belongs to all sects, 
 and all sects belong to him. So far as they have any 
 portion of Divine truth in their keeping, or any evidence 
 of Divine grace in their walk and conversation, they all 
 are his fellow-communicants and his brethren. How 
 rich such men are in truth and love and hope ! for all 
 things are theirs. All men, and all books, and all 
 churches. Whether Paul, or John, or Augustine, or 
 Athanasius, or Dante, or Luther, or Behmen, or Calvin, 
 or Hooker, or Taylor, or Knox, or Rutherford, or Bunyan, 
 or Butler, or Edwards, or Chalmers, or Newman, or 
 Spurgeon. And we have not a few of such Catholic 
 Evangelicals in our pulpits, and among our people, in 
 Scotland, and they are multiplying among us every 
 day. And nowhere in broad Christendom does the 
 foremost scholarship, wedded to the oldest and deepest 
 doctrines of grace, produce such good preaching, and such 
 receptive and believing hearing, as just in that land where 
 Laud found no religion, and where Newman, when in his 
 Laud-like mind, saw only Samaritan schism, somewhat 
 alleviated by God's uncovenanted mercies. 
 
 To return once more to the Apologia : ' In 1843 I 
 took a very significant step. I made a formal Retracta- 
 tion of all the hard things which I had said against the 
 Church of Rome.' Now there was a far more significant 
 step than that which Newman ought to have taken in 
 1890. But it was a step which, alas, he died without 
 having taken. He ousrht to have laid his honoured 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 815 
 
 head in the dust for all the slings and scoffs he had ever 
 uttered in the pride of his heart at men whose shoe- 
 latchet, he should have said, he was not worthy to un- 
 loose. The shoe-latchet of such men of God as Luther, 
 and Calvin, and the Anglican Reformers, as well as 
 Bunyan, and Newton, and Wesley, and many more 
 men of God, whose only offence against Newman and 
 his sectarian and intolerant school had been that they 
 were determined to preach no other gospel than the 
 gospel of a sinner's free justification before God by faith 
 on the Son of God, and on Him and on His work alone. 
 Men to whom their Master will yet say, Well done, good 
 and faithful servant ! and that, too, in Newman's 
 hearing. Those who are best able to speak about such 
 matters assure us that Newman largely returned to his 
 mother's Huguenot and Puritan faith in his last days. 
 And I believe it. But, then, he should have said so him- 
 self, and he should have openly apologised for and 
 repudiated all he had ever written, and had instigated 
 others to write, to the detriment of apostolical and 
 evangelical religion. Had he done that he would have 
 died in the Catholic faith indeed. And then he would 
 have had all his great gifts, \vith all their sjjlendid usury, 
 accepted when he came to offer them at the altar. As 
 it is, ' He that despiseth you, despiseth Me ; and he that 
 despiseth Me, despiseth Him that sent Me.' I am not 
 Newman's judge ; but if I were, I would say of him, in 
 the language of his own Church, that he died unrepentant 
 and unabsolved of the sin of having despised and trampled 
 on, and of having taught many others to despise and 
 trample on, some of the best ministers of Christ this 
 world has ever seen. 
 
 When, then, if such thy lot, thou seest thy Judge, 
 The sight of Him will kindle in thy heart 
 
316 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 All tender, gracious^ reverential thoughts, 
 
 And thou wilt hate and loathe thyself; for, though 
 
 Now sinless, thou wilt feel that thou hast sinned, 
 
 As never thou didst feel ; and wilt desire 
 
 To slink away, and hide thee from His sight, 
 
 And yet wilt have a longing aye to dwell 
 
 ^V'^ithiu the beauty of His countenance. 
 
 And those two pains, so counter and so keen, — 
 
 The longing for Him, when thou seest Him not ; 
 
 The shame of self at thought of seeing Him, — 
 
 Will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory. 
 
 Newman's works extend altogether to some thirty- 
 seven or thirty-eight volumes, not counting his Tracts 
 for the Times. Newman's works may be described and 
 classified as containing sermons, pure theology, pure 
 literature, history, treatises, essays, polemics, fiction, 
 poetry, devotions, autobiography, — and all first-rate of 
 their kind. And, all taken together, constituting a 
 body of intellectual workmanship that stands absolutely 
 by itself in English literature. 
 
 The Lyra Apostolica was the first publication with 
 which Newman's name was associated. ' It was at 
 Rome that we began the Lyra Apostolica, which appeared 
 monthly in the British Magazine. The motto shows the 
 feeling of both Froude and myself at the time ; we 
 borrowed from Bunsen a Homer ; and Froude chose the 
 words in which Achilles on returning to the battle says, 
 " You shall know the difference, now that I am back 
 again." ' Exactly so. It is the motto, not the title- 
 page, that truly describes the character of this bellicose 
 little book. The motto is out of the Iliad, and, most 
 certainly, the fierce little volume is written much more 
 in the spirit of the Iliad than in the spirit of the New 
 Testament. If you had never heard of the Lyra Apostolica, 
 but had come upon it by chance, had read its title-page, 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 317 
 
 and had then dipped into its contents, you would certainly 
 have laid it down, saying, Surely never was written 
 book worse named than this proud, scornful, ill-natured, 
 and most anti-apostolic ebullition ! And the more you 
 had been indoctrinated with apostolic truth, and imbued 
 with the apostolic spirit, the more would you resent the 
 utterly misleading title-page, however happy to the 
 book you might think the motto and the heathen source 
 of it. The motto is most excellent for the purpose of the 
 Lyra, but the title-page is a very triumph of misnomer. 
 Froude supplied the motto, and no little of the pugnacious 
 and egotistical spirit of the Lyra ; but Newman, as 
 usual, did the most of the work, as he certainly did all 
 the best of it. There are 179 pieces in the Lyra alto- 
 gether ; of which Newman contributed 109, Keble 46, 
 Isaac Williams 9, Froude 8, Bowden 6, and Wilberforce 1. 
 Bowden writes above the signature a, Froude above /3, 
 Keble above 7, Newman above h, Wilberforce above e, 
 and Williams above f. The most valuable of the pieces 
 are those that are autobiographical of Newman, but 
 there are other contributions of his besides the auto- 
 biographical that we would not willingly let die. They 
 are such as Moses, The Call of David, Judaism, The 
 Elements, Deeds not Words, and some more. But, on 
 the other hand, there are far more, both of his and of 
 his colleagues' contributions, that, both for their writers' 
 sake, as well as for the sake of truth and love, had better 
 have been buried out of sight. Newman's more personal 
 pieces are full of religious fear, and religious doubt, and 
 sometimes of downright religious despair ; at their best 
 they are everything but apostolical. From first to last 
 the Lyra is political, ecclesiastical, clerical, sacramental, 
 ascetic ; but it is impossible to let it be called apostolical 
 without a loud protest. You may hesitate to believe 
 
318 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 that the work of such men can, with any fairness, be 
 called political ; but that description of the book is not 
 mine. ' Do not mention it,' writes Newman, ' but we 
 have hopes of making the Lyra an effective, quasi- 
 political engine, without any contribution being of that 
 character.' And Mr. Holt Hutton, who loved Newman 
 like a father, has insight and honesty enough to admit 
 that several of Ne^vman's own pieces are nothing other 
 than ' theologico-political anathemas.' And Mr. Jacobs 
 in an admirable Athencemn article says that ' throughout 
 Newman's Anglican period the ecclesiastical things that 
 touched him most nearly were not things of dogma, but 
 lay in the sphere of practical politics. At every point 
 of his career it was some problem in the relations of 
 Church and State that affected him most strongly. The 
 abolition of the Irish bishoprics, the alliance of O'Connell 
 and the Whigs, — these things, and things hke these, 
 are the turning-points of his career. Even the diplomatic 
 reserve and economy of truth with which the world 
 credited him for so many years were marks of the 
 ecclesiastical statesman, not of the religious thinker.' 
 There is plenty of intellect in the Lijra — with such 
 authors it could not be otherwise ; plenty of scholarship 
 of a kind ; plenty of Old Testament, classical, and 
 ecclesiastical illustration and allusion, but you will 
 search in vain for the apostolical element in it. The 
 Lyra is too much like what Augustine found the father 
 of Newman's style to be. The author of the Confessions 
 discovered everything in Cicero that was delightful, 
 except the name of Jesus Christ. And that name of all 
 names is far too little to be found in the Lyra to let us 
 call it, of all epithets, apostolical. The Church of 
 England and the Church of Rome are quite sufficiently 
 in it to admit of its being truly described as ecclesiastical, 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 319 
 
 and we have the best of authority for calhng it qiiasi- 
 poHtical ; but, again, I will protest, not apostolical. 
 Isaac WilUams wrote a famous tract on ' Reserve in 
 communicating Religious Knowledge,' and the Lyra 
 authors are all so many illustrations and examples of 
 that anti-apostolical tract. For they reserve and exclude 
 altogether the things that the Apostle always puts in the 
 very forefront of every Epistle of his. Newman says 
 that the movement needed boldness. So it did. And 
 it needed some boldness in him to call the Lyra by the 
 name of apostolical, unless it was so called in an economy, 
 and is another case of the editor's irony. 
 
 Yes ; call the Lyra Judaica, or Patristica, or Ecclesi- 
 astica, or Anglicana, but Apostolica it never is in so 
 much as a single page. I have sought for it, but I have 
 not found one single piece among all the 179, that I 
 could imagine the Apostle receiving into the number of 
 the psalms and hymns and spiritual songs that he taught 
 his young churches to sing. Not one. I never find 
 myself chanting a Lyra to myself when I again come to 
 mj^self in the early morning. An Olney hymn or a 
 Wesley hymn often — ' Rock of Ages,' ' There is a 
 fountain filled with blood,' ' Just as I am,' ' Jesus, Lover 
 of my soul,' ' Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness,' 
 * How sweet the name of Jesus sounds,' ' Come, my soul, 
 thy suit prepare ' — but never once a Lijra Apostolica, 
 nor any of its school, unless it is ' New every morning is 
 the love,' or 'Help us this and every day. to live more 
 nearly as we pray.' The Lyra will no doubt continue 
 for a time to be studied and annotated by experts in 
 English ecclesiastical history, but by very few besides. 
 Whereas, the hymns I have named, and which are so 
 despised by the Tractarian school, will last as long as 
 the Church of Christ lasts. Both the Lyra, and the 
 
320 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 Christian Year, and the Cathedral, are the poetry of a 
 school. A great school in its day. A scholarly school. 
 An aristocratic school. A stately, refined, fastidious 
 school ; but still a school. A caste, as those it despises 
 and tramples upon might well turn upon it and call it. 
 Yes ; the Lyra is the production of a school, of a caste, 
 and of an occasion. Neither the Lyra, nor anything of 
 its kind, is truly Christian and Catholic. You could not 
 translate the Lyra into another language than the English. 
 It will not be intelligible to another age than that which 
 produced it, nor to another civilisation. Whereas, 
 wherever Paul's Epistles are preached, if they are preached 
 with the understanding and the spirit, there the great 
 hymns I have named will come to the mind like the 
 mother-tongue of the Evangelical worshipper. This is 
 not said in any depreciation of Newman, or Keble, or 
 Williams, or any of their school. I only say this to lead 
 you to give to the Wesleys, and Newton, and Cowper, 
 and Toplady, and Zinzendorf, and Doddridge, and 
 Watts, and Hart, and Bonar, their unchallengeably 
 apostolic places in your worship and in your love. 
 
 Under the title of ' Schism ' there are three very 
 characteristic verses in the Lyra that bear on ourselves. 
 Scotland is ' Samaria,' and our Presbyterian reformers 
 and theologians are a ' self -formed priesthood.' Our 
 fathers sinned in carrying out the Reformation, and we, 
 their children, have thus lost the grace that seals ' the 
 holy apostolic line.' That is to say, Knox, and Melville, 
 and Bruce, and Rutherford, and Halyburton, and the 
 Erskines, and Boston, and Chalmers, and M'Cheyne, 
 were a grace-forsaken priesthood. And we, their spiritual 
 children, can only look for the crumbs that fall from the 
 Catholic table. That is a specimen of the religion and 
 the morals and the manners of the Tractarian lyre. But, 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 321 
 
 then, two can play at that unchurching and excom- 
 municating game. As thus, ' We know you only as 
 heretics,' said M. Mourouvieff of the Holy Synod to 
 William Palmer, the Tractarian deputy. ' You separated 
 from the Latin Church three hundred years ago, as the 
 Latins had before that separated from the Greeks. We 
 think even the Latin Church heretical, but you are an 
 apostasy from an apostasy. You are a descent from bad 
 to worse.' And, as if taught a lesson by the Greek 
 reception of their Tractarian envoy, or else as visited 
 surely by the spirit of Christian wisdom and Christian 
 love, Newman afterwards modified somewhat his 
 ' Samaria ' effusion. ' I still must hold that we have 
 no right to judge of others at this day, as we would have 
 judged of them had all of us lived a thousand years 
 earlier. I do really think, for instance, that in the 
 Presbyterianism of Scotland we see a providential 
 phenomenon, the growth of a secondary system unknown 
 to St. Austin ; begun, indeed, not without sin, but con- 
 tinued, as regards the many, ignorantly, and compatibly 
 with some portion of the true faith.' Pitiful enough, 
 and reprehensible enough, you will say, in such a man, . 
 though not quite so insolent as the original ' Samaria. 
 But Newman sometimes came to himself. And when in 
 his old age he was revising some of the Tractarian out- 
 bursts of his arrogant and hot-headed youth, he is com- 
 pelled to admit again and again that he had no justifica- 
 tion for a great deal of the language that he employed 
 about other men and other churches in the Lyra. ' Their 
 common bond is lack of truth,' said Manning, to Glad- 
 stone's horror. And, really, as we read the Lyra, even 
 in the cooled-down air of our remote day, we are some- 
 times tempted to add to our own horror, ' both lack of 
 
 X 
 
322 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 truth and lack of love.' But a truce to this. For, as 
 ^neas replied to Achilles — 
 
 Long in the field of words we may contend. 
 
 Reproach is infinite, and knows no end, 
 
 Arm'd or with truth or falsehood, right or wrong : 
 
 So voluble a weapon is the tongue ; 
 
 Wounded we wound, and neither side can fail. 
 
 For every man has equal strength to rail. 
 
 I can honestly assure you I have no pleasure in repeat- 
 ing to you these railings of Newman and his Tractarian 
 allies. I have not told you nearly all, nor by any means 
 the worst, of that kind. I could not help telling you 
 somewhat, if I was to tell you the truth. But you should 
 judge of that time, and of the spirit of that time, for 
 yourselves. And you have an admirable opportunity 
 for studying the intellectual and moral and religious 
 qualities of the Lyra at least, in a cheap, scholarly, 
 beautiful, edition of that book just published by Messrs. 
 Methuen, and admirably edited by Canon Scott Holland. 
 The little volume contains, besides the editor's very able 
 preface, an invaluable Critical Note by Professor Beeching. 
 Critical, but on much safer and much pleasanter lines of 
 criticism than those I have been compelled to go out 
 upon in passing. 
 
 Very much what the Lyra Apostolica is in poetry, that 
 the Tracts for the Times are in prose. Like the Lyra, the 
 Tracts are the productions of several authors ; like the 
 Lyra, the Tracts are contingent and occasional ; and, 
 like the Lyra, they sway backwards and forwards from 
 the very best tempers of mind and styles of writing to 
 the very worst. The motto of the Tracts is not taken 
 out of the Iliad indeed, but they have the same battle- 
 note and boast of coming war in them. And, following 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 323 
 
 up their warlike motto, very much the same good qualities 
 are found in the Tracts as in the poems, and very much 
 the same bad qualities. Newman's own remarkable 
 character ; his aristocratic, refined, fastidious, severe, 
 sometimes scornful, and sometimes fierce and reckless, 
 temper, finds its full scope in the Tracts, just as it does 
 in the whole of the Tractarian movement, and in the 
 whole of its literature. 
 
 To begin with, we all see now that Newman, in his 
 passionate impetuosity, — ' vehement feelings ' is his 
 own expression, — rushed into the battle before he had 
 proved his armour. He launched out into the great 
 Tractarian enterprise very ill prepared for its difficulties 
 and its dangers. In a very able paper printed in the 
 North British Review for October 1864, Dr. Rainy has 
 pointed out how scandalously ill-furnished Newman was 
 for what he set out on with such confidence. Dr. Rainy 
 shows how little ballast Newman had on board, either 
 of theological learning, or of a disciplined judgment, 
 in such difficult matters. And he out on such a wide 
 sea, swept with such storms, and liable to be suddenly 
 struck with such unforeseen currents. 'It is a fact,' 
 writes Dr. Rainy, ' and not a creditable one, that, owing 
 largely to the want of regular theological training in the 
 English Church, there is very little tuition, and very 
 little literature, fitted to suggest to the minds of her young 
 divines the range of theological responsibilities that 
 may attach to the positions they take up, and the alter- 
 natives they embrace. And a certain allowance may 
 be reasonable on that score.' Newman himself, indeed, 
 in his own candid and confidential way, admits as much 
 in his Apologia. He confesses to us that he was ' taken 
 in ' by those who should have known better, and that 
 he, in his turn, took in others. He sometimes uses 
 
324 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 strong language about himself in this matter when in 
 after days he is in a confidential and rhetorical mood ; 
 but Dr. Rainy's powerful paper only proves the simple 
 and severe truth of what Newman, sometimes somewhat 
 too jauntily, and in a literary way, admits about himself. 
 The first Tract has this for its title-page and headline, 
 ' Thoughts on the Ministerial Commission, respectfully 
 addressed to the Clergy.' And its author, — and there 
 is no mistaking his pen, — commences thus : ' I am but 
 one of yourselves — a Presbyter ; and therefore I con- 
 ceal my name, lest I should take too much on myself 
 by speaking in my own person. Yet speak I must ; for 
 the times are very evil, yet no one speaks against them.' 
 Now, when a man born and brought up as Newman 
 had been born and brought up ; born and brought up 
 in an Evangelical household, and educated for the 
 Christian ministry, and by this time by far the foremost 
 preacher in the English Church ; and with England and 
 Oxford in the state they were still in, notwithstanding 
 all that Whitefield, and the Wesleys, and Newton, and 
 Scott, had done ; — when such a man begins a series of 
 tracts addressed to his fellow-ministers in the way we 
 have seen, I would have looked for a succession of writings 
 that would have been meat and drink to every true 
 minister of Jesus Christ in England. I see now that it 
 would have been preposterous and impossible to expect 
 such a service from a man in the fanatical and anti- 
 evangelical spirit that Newman was in at that time. 
 Yet it would have been but an instance of believing all 
 things, and hoping all things, to have looked for such 
 a result as I have described from such a commencement. 
 With that charity in my heart, I would have looked for 
 a nineteenth-century Reformed Pastor from Newman's 
 pen ; or a series of letters worthy to stand beside William 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 325 
 
 Law's Letter to a Young Minister, or a succession of 
 utterances like Jeremy Taylor's noble Addresses to his 
 clergy. I would have encouraged myself to hope that 
 an early Tract would have been given to Bedford ; and, 
 considering the state of the rural parishes of England 
 at that time, another to Kidderminster ; and, still con- 
 sidering the state of the mining villages of the north, 
 another to Wesley and his truly apostolic work. But 
 how bitterly would my hopes have been disappointed ! 
 For, not only did the successors of those apostolic men 
 get no help from the Tracts, but their New Testament 
 preaching and pastorate were in every possible way be- 
 littled and sneered at ; their defects and failures were 
 dwelt upon, exaggerated, and held up to scorn and 
 contempt, in a way you would not credit. Even Hooker 
 himself, truly Evangelical as he was at heart, was so 
 carried away with the controversy to which he had 
 committed himself, that even he spake almost as un- 
 becomingly of the Puritan pulpit as Newman and Froude 
 spake. Both the high Anglican of Hooker's day, and 
 the Tractarian of Newman's day, fell before the 
 temptation to exalt some of the other functions of the 
 ministerial commission above its always first, and always 
 fundamental, function, even the immediate and urgent 
 preaching of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. All students 
 for the Christian pulpit, and all occupants of the Christian 
 pulpit, and all intelligent Christian men, should have by 
 heart Coleridge's noble rebuke of Hooker himself in this 
 matter. Coleridge's splendid services to Reformation 
 and Evangelical religion have never to this day been 
 adequately acknowledged in England. Coleridge's in- 
 comparable services as a critic and an annotator were not 
 confined to Shakespeare and Milton. I like him best 
 when he is writing notes on Luther, and Hooker, and 
 
326 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 Taylor, and Baxter, and Bunyan, and ' A Barrister ' ; 
 but that prince of critics is nowhere better than just on 
 Hooker in the matter in hand. Born preachers, Uke 
 Hooker and Newman, will prove themselves to be born 
 preachers, all pernicious influences notwithstanding. 
 But the ordinary occupant of the Christian pulpit has 
 small need to have his divine work made little of by men 
 to whom he looks up as his masters in Israel. And when 
 Newman escapes out of the Tractarian paddock, and 
 gives full expression to all that is in his heart about the 
 greatness of preaching, how nobly, how inspiringly, how 
 memorably to all times, he speaks ! How like himself ! 
 But, from some of the Tracts, you would actually think 
 that the Evangelical pulpit had been an evil invention 
 of the Puritans, and that the doctrines of grace were a 
 device, if not actually of the great enemy himself, then of 
 some of those middle and half-fallen spirits of his who 
 sometimes take possession of nations and churches, and 
 of whom Newman has written such characteristic chapters 
 of national and ecclesiastical demonology. At the same 
 time, and with all that, let this be said here, and said with 
 all possible emphasis, and with the most profound thank- 
 fulness, that the Tractarian pulpit and press are at one 
 with the Apostolical and Reformed and Evangehcal pulpit 
 and press on the great foundation-stones and corner-stones 
 of the Christian faith. On God ; on the Son of God ; 
 on the sin-atoning death of the Son of God ; and on the 
 Person, if not always on the work, of the Holy Ghost. 
 It is at this crucial question in the Westminster Shorter 
 Catechism that the Evangelical and the Tractarian 
 pulpits part company. This question — ' How doth the 
 Spirit apply to us the redemption purchased by Christ ? ' 
 The Evangelical, and I feel sure, the Scriptural, if not 
 the patristic and traditionary and ecclesiastical answer 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 327 
 
 is : 'By our effectual calling ; that is to say, by enlighten- 
 ing our minds in the knowledge of Christ, by renewing 
 our wills, and by persuading and enabling us to embrace 
 Jesus Christ as He is offered to us in the Gospel.' And, 
 then, baptism comes in, as in Scripture it comes in, as 
 a sign and a seal of what has already been wrought by 
 the hand of the Holy Ghost in the renewed soul. And, 
 then, the Lord's Supper comes in from time to time to 
 strengthen and to build up the renewed and believing 
 soul. Whereas, the Tractarian teaching is — leaning too 
 much, as it does, on the least Evangelical of the fathers, 
 on the least Evangelical line of tradition — that the soul 
 is united to Christ in baptism, when that ordinance is 
 administered by the hand of a true priest, through 
 whose hand alone the Holy Ghost may be expected to 
 operate. And so begun, so on. Newman tells one of his 
 correspondents in 1833, that he has started the Tracts 
 with what he calls ' an indirect inculcation of apostolical 
 principles.' But if he was quite sure that they were 
 ' apostolical principles,' why did he feel any need to 
 inculcate them indirectly ? The Lyra also, he tells us 
 in confidence, was undertaken ' with a view of catching 
 people when unguarded.' Now, after all allowance is 
 made for his paradoxicalness, and playfulness, and 
 banter, in his private letters to his intimate friends, these 
 somewhat remarkable terms of expression, in the cir- 
 cumstances, have their own significance. Mr. Holt 
 Hutton, no Puritan certainly, either in the doctrine or 
 the discipline he preached in the Spectator for so long 
 and with such attractiveness and power, while he almost 
 worships Newman, honestly admits that the Tractarian 
 was essentially a clerical movement — clerical to the core, 
 is his very word about it. And he goes on to make, for 
 him, this very remarkable admission that ' the Tractarian 
 
328 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 was a much more pronounced and self-conscious, not to 
 say almost aggressive and over-pretentious, type of 
 sacerdotalism, than that of a Church wherein direct 
 Apostolical Succession had been the plainly and univer- 
 sally avowed basis of the priesthood for nearly two 
 thousand years.' In short, that Tractarianism was more 
 Popish than Popery itself. There is a large literature 
 on the Notes of the True and Only Apostolic Church, 
 and the Tracts for the Times belong to that literature, 
 and are almost wholly taken up with those Notes. But, 
 then, over against that large literature there is a not 
 small and a not unmasterly literature on the Notes of 
 the truly Regenerate and Gracious Soul. In Baxter's 
 SainVs Rest, an English classic, there is a characteristically 
 acute chapter on those notes and marks and tokens 
 of such a soul. The thoroughgoing student of these 
 subjects — and they will repay such a student — will do well 
 to master Baxter alongside of the Tracts ; and he should 
 add to Baxter an old Scottish classic republished the other 
 day in Inverness, which once read, will be often returned 
 to — The Memoirs of James Fraser of Brea. And I will 
 not prejudge this matter to such a student, but will 
 leave him to say whether or no the Tractarians are as 
 Scriptural, and as able, and as scholarly, and as sancti- 
 fying, in their identification of the Church, as the Puritans 
 are in their identification of the soul. Let the Anglican 
 student master Baxter and Brea, and let the Evangelical 
 student master the Tracts for the Times, and then they 
 will judge for themselves between the Church and the 
 soul. 
 
 Newman's sermons, of which all the world has heard 
 the fame, are contained in twelve volumes. There are 
 eight volumes of Parochial and Plain Sermons, one 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 329 
 
 volume of Sermons on Subjects of the Day, one volume 
 of University Sermons, and two volumes of Roman 
 Catholic Sermons — the one volume entitled Sermons to 
 Mixed Congregations, and the other Sermons 'preached on 
 Various Occasions. The very titles of Newman's sermons 
 are a study in homiletics. To read and ponder his simple 
 titles is a stimulus to the mind of the ministerial reader. 
 A carpenter friend of mine once told me that sometimes on 
 a Sabbath night he took down the selected volume of New- 
 man's sermons just for the benefit and the delight of reading 
 over their titles. To read Longmans' detailed catalogue 
 of Newman's Parochial, and University, and Catholic 
 Sermons is in itself a great lesson in pulpit literature. 
 Looked at as pure literature, Newman's St. Mary's 
 sermons are not far from absolute perfection ; but looked 
 at as pulpit work, as preaching the Gospel, they are full 
 of the most serious, and even fatal, defects. With all 
 their genius, with all their truly noble and enthralling 
 characteristics, they are not, properly speaking, New 
 Testament preaching at all. Even as pure literature 
 their most serious fault steals in and infects and stains 
 them. The very best of the sermons are continually 
 tainted with some impertinent aside at some Evangelical 
 truth, or at some real, or imagined, or greatly exag- 
 gerated, defects in the doctrine or in the life of the 
 Evangelical preachers of his day. All the world knows 
 how poor Kingsley was annihilated. But though I 
 cannot forget his terrible punishment, neither can I 
 forget his extraordinarily apt description of this most 
 unpleasant feature in Newman's controversial manner, 
 especially in his sermons. Newman is too skilful a con- 
 troversialist to discharge his assault from a catapult, 
 as he accused Dr. Pusey of discharging his olive branch. 
 Newman's style sings round you, musical and delicate as 
 
330 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 a mosquito's wing, and alights on you with feet as fine. 
 In Kingsley's very words, which so detected and angered 
 Newman, a phrase, an epithet, a Uttle barbed arrow, 
 will be delivered on you in passing as with his finger-tip. 
 Nothing could be better said of Newman's treatment of 
 Evangelical doctrines and Evangelical preachers in many 
 of his sermons. How often his most admiring and 
 revering reader is made to feel both pain and shame as 
 he comes across such stains as these, and that on pages 
 otherwise of the most perfect truth and beauty. New- 
 man's sermons, in some respects, are simply incom- 
 parable in the literature of preaching. As an analysis 
 of the heart of man, and as a penetrating criticism of 
 human life, their equal is nowhere to be found. But, 
 with all that, they lack the one all-essential element of 
 all true preaching — the message to sinful man concern- 
 ing the free grace of God. That message was the one 
 thing that differentiated the Apostle's preaching from 
 all the other so-called preaching of his day. And that 
 one thing which has been the touchstone of all true 
 preaching ever since the Apostle's day, and will be to the 
 end of the world, — that is all but totally lacking in New- 
 man's sermons. It is a bold thing to say, but let it be 
 said since it is true, that the St. Mary's sermons are like 
 the Lyra and the Tracts in this, that they are the out- 
 come of a movement and of an occasion ; and so far as 
 they are that, they are neither truly Catholic as sermons, 
 nor truly classical as literature. At their best they carry 
 with them the limitations and the restrictions of a school. 
 They are the manifestoes and the proclamations of a 
 party, and they too often exhibit the spirit and the temper 
 of a party. So much so, that with all their royal right 
 and power of giving the law to English homiletical 
 and rhetorical literature ; with all their, not seldom, 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 331 
 
 sovereign splendour of thought and style ; and though, 
 in all these fine qualities, they may last as long as the 
 language lasts ; at the same time, they will not be fully 
 understood where the Tractarian movement is not under- 
 stood. They will be read for their literature, as the 
 Lyra and as some of the Tracts are read ; but thousands 
 of hints, and touches, and turns in them, directed by the 
 preacher against the religion of the England and Scotland 
 of his day, will only be fully apprehended and appreciated 
 by theologians and ecclesiastical students. When we 
 do come on a truly Pauline and Evangelical sermon, 
 or such a part of a sermon, what a treat it is ! what a 
 pure intellectual and spiritual joy ! But how seldom 
 that unmixed joy comes to the reader of Newman's 
 sermons, only they know who yearn above all things to 
 see the greatest of gifts engaged in the greatest of services. 
 The finer and the more fastidious your mind is, the 
 more you will enjoy Newman's sermons. But the more 
 burdened and broken your heart is, and especially with 
 your secret sinfulness, the less will you find in them that 
 which, above all things in heaven or earth, your heart 
 needs. Had the substance and the spirit of Newman's 
 sermons been but half as good as their style, what a 
 treasure the St. Mary's sermons would have been to all 
 time ! As it is, they are a splendid literature in many 
 respects ; but one thing they are not, they are not what 
 God intends the Gospel of His Son to be to all sinful 
 and miserable men. After all is said in praise of these 
 extraordinary sermons, this remains, that Newman's 
 constant doctrine is that doctrine which the Apostle 
 discarded with anathemas, — salvation by works, whether 
 legal or evangelical works. And almost more did he 
 discard and denounce salvation by austerities, by 
 gratuitous self-severities, and by fear rather than by 
 
332 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 faith, and that faith working by love, and peace, and joy. 
 When I am again overtaken of one of my besetting sins ; 
 when the sorrows of death again compass me, and the 
 pains of hell take hold of me, I never take down New- 
 man's sermons for my recovery and my comfort. For 
 Newman's preaching — and I say it M'ith more pain 
 than I can express — never once touches the true core, 
 and real and innermost essence, of the Gospel. The 
 Epistle to the Romans, the ' Acropolis,' as Olshausen 
 calls it, of the Gospel, need never have been written as 
 far as Newman's exposition of it is concerned. The 
 Righteousness of Christ, of which that glorious Epistle 
 is full, need never have been worked out by Him for all 
 that those enthralled audiences in St. Mary's ever heard 
 of it. There is a whole shining chain of Gospel texts that 
 Newman never touches on, or only touches on them — I 
 shrink from saying it — to misread them and misapply 
 them. Moses was never dressed up in such ornaments 
 before ; never even in his own day and dispensation. 
 The old lawgiver would not know himself, he is so 
 beautified and bedecked by Newman's style. But, all the 
 time, he is Moses. All the time, with all his ornaments, 
 he still carries his whip of scorpions hidden away among 
 his beautiful garments. Do and live ! Disobey and 
 die ! and he draws his sword on me as he says it. Mount 
 of Transfiguration and all, Moses has not changed his 
 nature one iota, nor his voice one accent, at least not as 
 far as Newman's Oxford pulpit is concerned. ' The soul 
 that sinneth it shall die ' is, somewhere or other, and in 
 some more or less musical note or other, in every sermon 
 of Newman's. The sinner-condemning law is his mark 
 in every sermon, and tract, and Lyra verse, of his. So 
 much is this the case, that when any of my class or 
 congregation come to tell me that, at last, their sin has 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 333 
 
 found them out, and ask me what book they will hence- 
 forth keep beside them for their direction and comfort, — 
 do you think I ever give them Newman's Lectures on 
 Justification, or even a volume of his Parochial and Plain 
 Sermons ? I wish I could. I have given not a few of 
 Newman's books to young men in other circumstances, 
 and at other stages, — The Idea of a University, the 
 Historical Sketches, the Athanasius, the Universiiij 
 Sermons, the Gerontius, and so on ; but never one of his 
 beautiful books to a broken-hearted and inconsolable 
 sinner. I have often given to men in dead earnest, books 
 of the heart and soul that Newman and his Tractarian 
 school would scorn to name : The Pilgrim's Progress, 
 Grace Abounding, The Ten Virgins, Christ Dying, The 
 Trial and Triumph of Faith, The Gospel Mystery, the 
 Cardiphonia, The Force of Truth, the Marroiv, Chalmers's 
 Life, IIalyburton''s Life, Boston's Life, M'CJieyne's Life, 
 the Olney Hymns, Hart's Hymns, a sermon of Spurgeon's, 
 a tract of Ryle's ; but a volume of Newman's never ; 
 no nor the Lyra Apostolica, nor c^'en the Christian Year, 
 
 Newman's Tractarian and unevangelical preaching 
 always sends me back to his conversion. You know 
 what he says about his conversion himself, and in what 
 memorable English. I will not venture to tell you all 
 that I sometimes think and feel about that conversion. 
 I will not take it upon me to say that Newman never 
 was, root and branch, mind and conscience, imagination 
 and heart, completely converted and completely sur- 
 rendered up to Jesus Christ, the alone Redeemer and 
 Righteousness of sinful men. Only, I have sometimes 
 pictured to myself what an eloquent, impressive, and 
 unanswerable case the author of the Apologia could have 
 made out against himself ever having been apostolically 
 and evangelically converted at all, — had he set himself 
 
334 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 to make out such a case. And if, in his restless versa- 
 tihty of mind, Newman had ever turned to be an Agnostic, 
 say, and had he then gone back, and reviewed, and 
 examined, and repudiated, his position and his experi- 
 ence as a convert to Christ, as he has reviewed, and 
 examined, and repudiated, his position and his experience 
 as an Anghcan ; had he added another chapter of 
 retractation and explanation to his Autobiography, he 
 could easily have made out an unanswerable case against 
 the reality and the validity of what he had at one time 
 rejoiced in as his complete and abiding conversion. He 
 would have admitted that he became a genuine Theist, 
 even in his boyhood, if ever there was a Theist. He 
 would have copied into his second Apologia that classical 
 page in his first Apologia, in which he tells us with what 
 intensity of faith and feeling he came to realise to him- 
 self the existence and the omnipresence of God. And 
 how, from that profound and overpowering conviction 
 and impression of the presence of God, his heart never 
 swerved for one hour. And not only was he a great 
 believer in the existence and the nearness of Almighty 
 God ; but, as time went on, and as his patristic studies 
 began to bear their proper fruit, he came to believe also, 
 and to preach, those two foundation doctrines of the 
 Christian faith — our Lord's Divine Sonship and His 
 substitutionary and sin-atoning death — as they have 
 seldom, if ever, been preached. But Newman would 
 have claimed for his honesty, and it would have given 
 him a fine scope for his subtlety of mind and for his 
 delight in distinctions, to have made it out to demon- 
 stration that, at his best, he never went further than the 
 strictly limited doctrine of the Fathers on the Person 
 and the Work of Christ. And the real distinction, and 
 characteristic difference, of a Pauline convert, he would 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 335 
 
 have pressed upon us, is not that he luminously believes 
 in the existence and the nearness of his Creator, and his 
 Lawgiver, and his Judge : or even in the Incarnation and 
 Atonement of the Son of God, and then submits himself 
 to a life of self-chosen austerities and self-denials ; but 
 he is the true Pauline believer who submits himself, 
 as Paul could not get his converts to do, and to continue 
 to do, to be justified before God, first and last, by the 
 imputed righteousness of the Son of God, and by that 
 alone. Newman could easily have filled an unanswerable 
 chapter of his new Apologia with a long catena of passages 
 out of his St. Mary's sermons, in which, with all his 
 winning eloquence, and with all his silencing argumenta- 
 tions, he persistently put forward works where Paul 
 puts faith ; and merit where Paul puts grace ; and doubt 
 and fear where Paul puts love and hope and full assur- 
 ance. Passage after passage in which he employed all 
 his incomparable powers of sarcasm against the Reforma- 
 tion preaching of Paul's palmary doctrine of justification 
 by faith alone ; a doctrine that the chief of the Apostles 
 protested continually was his special and peculiar Gospel ; 
 and, indeed, that there is no other Gospel to be called 
 a Gospel. Newman could have boldly and successfully 
 defied any Lutheran or Calvinist of us all, to point out 
 one single sermon of his on the Righteousness of Christ, 
 or on faith, or on love, that we could suppose Paul 
 preaching, or sitting still to hear preached. How could 
 a man be truly converted, Newman would have triumph- 
 antly demanded, at any rate, as you Lutherans and 
 Calvinists call conversion, who wrote a whole eloquent 
 volume utterly to discredit Luther, and Calvin, and the 
 other Reformers, and never retracted it ? 'If Luther is 
 right,' Newman would have said in his own dialectic 
 and dilemma way, ' then I never stood within a standing 
 
336 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 Church at all. For Luther will have nothing to do, as 
 he continually exclaims, with a God who is not, first 
 and last, to be found in Christ, and to be treated with 
 only in Christ. And so much as the name of Christ, as 
 all my readers must have seen, is not once to be found 
 in all the impressive record of my supposed conversion ; 
 much less His imjsuted and sinner- justifying righteous- 
 ness.' If Newman aad changed again, and had lived 
 to write a chapter like that, he would have written it 
 ten times stronger than that, and in a hundred times 
 more unanswerable English. No ; Newman never was 
 converted as John Wesley, say, was converted. And as a 
 consequence, among all Newman's St. Mary's sermons, 
 he never preached a single sermon like John Wesley's 
 famous St. Mary's sermon on the text, ' By grace ye are 
 saved through faith.' A sermon preached in all the 
 fulness and freshness of Wesley's at last full, and still 
 fresh, conversion. All men, says Coleridge, are born 
 either Platonists or Aristotelians, and what they are 
 once born, with all their changes, they remain and die. 
 And Newman, in the matter of Pauline truth, was born 
 what he died. Evangelical birth and upbringing, so- 
 called Calvinistic conversion, and all, Newman's very 
 heart of hearts never, to the day of his death, got her 
 complete divorce, to use Paul's great word, from the 
 dominion of the law. Newman's Maker, and Lawgiver, 
 and Judge was, all his days, far more self-luminous to 
 Newman than his only Redeemer with His sin-cleansing 
 blood, and with His sinner- justifying righteousness. He 
 tells us himself that He who is our only peace was always 
 severe to him, even on his crucifix. Newman never, to 
 the day of his death, was dead to the law by the body 
 of Christ, as Paul was, and as Luther was, that man after 
 Paul's own heart. But, then, Luther was not a ' Father,' 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 337 
 
 he was only ' the founder of a school.' And how could 
 Newman, a born Romanist, surrender himself to the 
 teaching of the deadliest enemy that ever rose up against 
 Rome since Paul rose up and wrote his Epistles to the 
 Romans and to the Galatians ? 
 
 Every intelligent Evangelical will be forward to admit 
 how much the Evangelical pulpit needed in Newman's 
 day, and still needs, all Newman's genius, all his scholar- 
 ship, all the winningness of his character, and all his rare 
 and splendid talents, in order to commend the Gospel 
 message to men of taste, as John Foster has said. And 
 had Newman but run as well as he began, what a rank 
 he would have attained to in the Church of Christ ! Had 
 he kept true to his first faith, and had he devoted his 
 superb abilities to the enriching and the ennobling of 
 the Evangelical faith and life and literature of England, 
 what a long-shining name he would have left behind 
 him ; and that not only in the world of letters, but 
 above all, in the true Church of Christ — the Church of 
 Christ Reformed and Evangelical ! At this point take 
 these two letters written in 1826, while as yet he was 
 preaching Evangelical sermons and sending them now 
 and then to his Huguenot mother to read. ' I assure 
 you,' his happy mother writes, ' your sermons are a real 
 comfort and delight to me. They are what I think 
 sermons ought to be— to enlighten, to comfort, to correct, 
 to support, to strengthen. It is, my dear, a great gift 
 to see so clearly the truths of religion ; still more, to be 
 able to impart the knowledge to others.' ' These tender 
 and happy mother's letters,' says his sister in editing 
 his Correspondence, ' are given for a purpose which the 
 reader will understand as time advances. Even now 
 their tone is too confiding to be allowed to pass without 
 some touch of warning.' And his sister introduces the 
 
 Y 
 
338 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 following passage from one of Newman's letters to his 
 mother as a touch of warning : ' I am pleased you like 
 my sermons. I am sure I need not caution you against 
 taking anything I say on trust. Do not be run away 
 with by any opinion of mine. I have seen cause to 
 change my mind in some respects, and I may change 
 again.' Not a very happy letter for a mother to read 
 from the hand of a minister-son. But, as his sister says, 
 it was intended as a touch of warning of what might 
 come to his mother hereafter. And which came, only 
 too soon, to her great sorrow. 
 
 ' In my University Sermons there is a series of dis- 
 cussions upon the subject of Faith and Reason ; these, 
 again, were the tentative commencement of a great and 
 necessary work, viz. an inquiry into the ultimate basis 
 of religious faith, prior to the distinction into creeds.' 
 Now, it is not the ultimate basis of faith, but the proxi- 
 mate outcome and finishing work of faith, that I specially 
 take to do with ; and neither in his University Sermons, 
 nor in his Parochial and Plain Sermons, does Newman 
 give me any help at all in that. I cannot follow him 
 into his philosophical discussions as to all the relations 
 of faith and reason. Dr. Martineau, Dr. Fairbairn, 
 Dr. Abbott, and others, have descended into that deep 
 arena, and, to my mind, they have won the battle. Let 
 the debate be read by all who arc interested in it, and are 
 able to read it. The subject of the ultimate basis of 
 faith is beyond my powers. That is not my region at 
 all. I lose myself down there. I cannot keep my feet 
 down there. It is altogether out of my depth. But 
 as much as these champions complain to have found 
 Newman at fault in those deep places, as much do I 
 complain against him up in my own field. Newman is 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 339 
 
 always assailing and blaming reason. Now, my reason 
 is all right. My reason partakes indeed in the universal 
 debility of my whole inner man ; but the seat of my 
 evil is not in my reason, but in my heart. If my heart 
 were as sound in its offices and operations as my reason, 
 I would be nothing short of a saint. But I have an 
 evil heart of unbelief, that even my reason continually 
 condemns and abhors. And it is in helping me with the 
 unbelief of my heart that Newman so fails me. With 
 the unbelief of my heart, that is, as regards its highest 
 and best Object, Jesus Christ, as my righteousness and 
 my strength. ' The relation of faith to reason,' says 
 Dr. Martineau, ' is traced by Newman with a fineness 
 and general truth of discrimination that remind us of 
 Butler. Newman does not narrow faith to the Lutheran 
 dimensions, that is to say, to denote a reliant affection 
 toward a person ; to imply a grace peculiar to the 
 Christian and Jewish dispensations.' And I find Baur 
 in his great book on Paul employing the very same word, 
 though with another motive. ' Thus,' he says, ' the 
 object of faith is narrowed in Paul stage by stage ; and 
 in proportion as this is done, the faith becomes more 
 intense and inward. From mere theoretical assent it 
 becomes a practical trust in which the man's deepest 
 needs find expression till it has for its object the Blood 
 of Christ.' Now, in these passages Dr. Martineau and 
 Dr. Baur have supplied me with the very expression that 
 will best bring to a point the great fault I find with 
 Newman ; and that not in his University and Philosophical 
 Sermons only, but quite as much in his Parochial and 
 Plain Sermons. No ; Newman does not narrow the 
 faith he preaches to the Pauline and Lutheran dimensions. 
 Would God he did ! Would God he did narrow ; or, 
 rather, did exalt, and did perfect, and did finish, faith. 
 
340 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 and make it to find its everlasting rest and its reliant and 
 affiant operation and affection in Jesus Christ ! In that 
 Person for whom, from its ultimate basis, on to its most 
 exquisite finish and most perfect fulness, faith is created 
 in the mind and in the heart of every true believer. 
 The true and perfect faith of the Pauline theology and 
 anthropology, embraces, to begin with, both Butler's 
 and Newman's and Martineau's philosophical faith. 
 But true saving faith still ascends in Baur and in Luther, 
 with adoring eyes and uplifted hands, to embrace Jesus 
 Christ as He is offered to such faith in the Gospel. And 
 this faith, or rather the heart in which such faith is seated, 
 casts itself upon Jesus Christ with a love, and an assur- 
 ance, and a peace that passes all understanding ; of 
 which love and assurance and peace Newman has next 
 to nothing to say to me in all his sermons. Saving faith 
 is such, and is so divine, both in its origin, in its opera- 
 tions, and in its results, that nothing, not the best thing 
 in heaven or in earth, will ever be permitted to take its 
 place. All the works, both legal and evangelical, that 
 Jew, or Greek, or Papist, or Tractarian, or Puritan, ever 
 performed, will not be permitted to take the place of 
 faith alone, and will not be allowed to invade its great 
 province, no, not by a hair's-breadth. Because that 
 would be invading Christ alone. Work, fast, pray, 
 afflict body and mind and heart, and all else that terror 
 and love ever led you to do, all is but loss compared with 
 faith ; in other words, compared with Christ. Faith 
 first, faith last, faith always, faith only ; in other words, 
 Christ. Luther and the great Puritans have taught a 
 far away more Scriptural and a far away more Evangelical 
 doctrine of faith and of Christ than is to be found in the 
 very best of Newman's sermons. And it is a faith, as I 
 have said, whose enemy and opposite is not reason at 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 841 
 
 all ; but is an evil heart, full of doubt and fear of God, 
 and of unbelief against God's Son. A faith, indeed, 
 that works by love ; but, better than that, it works and 
 has its greatest triumphs when love is dead ; for it 
 restores our dead love to newness of life. A faith that 
 performs feats in the soul, and for the salvation of the 
 soul, that love, at its best, could not attempt. No ; 
 true faith is never the enemy of anything that is worthy 
 to be called reason. True faith is the enemy of a corrupt, 
 a proud, an ungodly, and an unchristian heart, and the 
 enemy of that heart alone. 
 
 Newman's two volumes of Roman Catholic sermons 
 are in many ways very unlike his Anglican sermons. 
 Over and above the new note of certitude and finality 
 that was to be expected in them ; over and above the 
 complete disapjjearance of that provisional, precaution- 
 ary, pioneering, attitude that Newman so much took 
 up in his St. Mary's sermons ; there are some other new 
 features in his Catholic sermons that both surprise the 
 student of Newman's mind, and demand his explana- 
 tion of these remarkable alterations in Newman's mind 
 and work. For one thing, there is far less bitterness and 
 unfairness to his opponents when he becomes con- 
 troversial. His temper has improved. He is more 
 genial, if not more generous. The too frequent tone of 
 irritation and impatience, the far too frequent slings of 
 scorn and contempt, have all but vanished. Also, his 
 pulpit wings now spread out and bear the preacher aloft, 
 as never before. He has a far larger horizon before the 
 eye of his imagination, and he surveys a far larger scope 
 behind and before and all around. At his best he was 
 a tethered eagle in St. Mary's pulpit ; he is now the 
 untrammelled sovereign of the whole spiritual sky. 
 
342 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 To use his own words about himself — formerly he was 
 like a traveller by night, calculating and guessing his 
 way over a morass, losing all his confidence, if not all 
 his hope. But the Kindly Light that he so pathetically 
 invoked when he was still in the midst of the morass, 
 has now risen upon the wayfarer and has led him to his 
 rest, and his Catholic sermons are the product and the 
 evidence of that rest. If there was a restraint of thought 
 and of style in Newman's Oxford sermons, there was in 
 them a refinement and a delicacy also that has all but 
 wholly disappeared from the Birmingham and Dublin 
 sermons. And in the removal of both the restraint and 
 the refinement and the delicacy, there has entered in the 
 room of these qualities a new freedom of treatment, a 
 new movement as of a great drama, a new breadth and 
 depth of colour ; an abandonment, so to speak, to the 
 truth in hand ; a surrender up of himself to the full 
 possession of the passion that the sight of ' the last 
 things ' should produce, as he holds, in every preacher. 
 The terrific sermon on the ' Neglect of Divine Warnings,' 
 for instance, has a sweep of imagination and a licence 
 of utterance in it that makes the reader shudder to hold 
 it before his eyes. Jonathan Edwards's tremendous 
 sermon on ' Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God ' is 
 the only sermon at all like Newman's awful sermon in 
 the English language, or, I should think, in any other 
 language spoken among living men. ' The Mental 
 Sufferings of our Lord in His Passion,' is another ever- 
 memorable sermon of Newman's Catholic pulpit, that 
 has nothing at all like it among his English Church sermons, 
 or only a sentence or two at most. ' The Motive of the 
 Preacher,' also ' Paul's Gift of Sympathy,' and ' The 
 Religion of the Pharisee,' may all be mentioned as 
 sermons full of Newman's later and more magnificent 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 343 
 
 manner ; full of his completely emancipated, if somewhat 
 overworked, power. And there is sometimes, with all 
 this, a certain momentary return to something like the 
 kind of sermon that so satisfied his mother in her 
 son's pre-Tractarian days. But that return does not 
 long remain. 
 
 Newman's volume on Justification is to me the most 
 Newman-like of all his written work. It gathers up 
 into itself all his power, all his beauty, all his virtues, 
 and all his vices. What English ! — I exclaim continu- 
 ally as I read it. What iridescent, dazzling, elusive, 
 charming writing ! And, at the same time, how pro- 
 voking, and how intended to provoke ! Full of that 
 irony which he admits he was accustomed to use to dull 
 men, but always beautiful ; always very beauty itself. 
 And absolutely invaluable to the thoroughgoing divinity 
 student ; for he will find the greatest and best of all his 
 pulpit subjects here set before him in every possible 
 light. And he will find this also, that if there are any 
 loose links in his Evangelical doctrine of justification by 
 faith alone, he will find those loose links detected and 
 exposed in this book with the most merciless satire, and 
 with the most matchless literary skill. So much so, 
 that he who holds to this supreme apostolic doctrine 
 after reading Newman, will hold it as he never held it 
 before. He will both understand, and hold, and love, 
 and preach, that doctrine of doctrines as never before. 
 And what more can be said in favour of any book, true, 
 half-true, or wholly false ? From one point of view 
 Newman's Justification is an entirely dialectical book ; 
 again, it is an entirely mystical book ; again, a most 
 spiritual book ; and yet again, a most sophistical and 
 mischievous book. A perfect mirror of the nature and 
 
344 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 the working of its author's many-sided, arbitrary, and 
 anomalous mind, especially when he is engaged in con- 
 troversy with Evangelical truth. How any man of 
 Newman's spirituality of mind, knowledge of his own 
 heart, and exquisiteness of insight into the infinite holi- 
 ness of God's law, could, in any way, or at any time, 
 or in any degree, stake his standing before the judgment- 
 seat of God, on anything he could suffer, or perform, or 
 attain to, in this world, is a mystery and an amazement 
 to me, beyond what I can express. Indeed, this is the 
 supreme mystery of Newman's mysterious mind to me. 
 Had it been almost any one else, I would have said 
 that, simply, the holy law of God had never really 
 entered that man's heart who could write of sin and the 
 pardon of sin as Newman sometimes writes. Again and 
 again, he says things about sin, at the reading of which 
 I stand absolutely astounded, — that Newman, of all 
 men, should say such things. Till I fall back on his 
 self-confessed way of speaking ironically, and in raillery, 
 even on the most solemn subjects ; especially when he 
 has Evangelical preaching in his scornful eye. Also, the 
 doctrinal system to which he had surrendered himself 
 has no little to account for in its twist and perversion of 
 such a splendidly spiritual mind. ' Know ye not, that 
 to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants 
 ye are to whom ye obey.' 
 
 Hooker is the greatest name in the English Church. 
 If the English Church has a master in theology. Hooker 
 is that universally acknowledged master of the best 
 English theology in the best English prose. And this is 
 his masterpiece passage on Justification. And a passage 
 in which he is absolutely at one with Paul and Luther, 
 even as all truly Evangelical preachers are at one with 
 him :— 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 345 
 
 ' Christ hath merited righteousness for as many 
 
 AS ARE FOUND IN HiM. AnD IN HiM GoD FINDETH US, 
 IF WE BE FAITHFUL ; FOR BY FAITH WE ARE INCORPORATED 
 
 INTO Him. Then, although we be in ourselves alto- 
 gether SINFUL AND UNRIGHTEOUS, YET EVEN THE MAN 
 WHO IS IN HIMSELF IMPIOUS, FULL OF INIQUITY, FULL OF 
 SIN ; HIM BEING FOUND IN ChRIST THROUGH FAITH, AND 
 
 having his sin in hatred through repentance, him 
 God beholdeth with a gracious eye ; putteth away 
 
 HIS SIN by NOT IMPUTING IT ; TAKETH QUITE AWAY THE 
 PUNISHMENT DUE THEREUNTO, BY PARDONING IT ; AND 
 ACCEPTETH HIM IN ChRIST JeSUS, AS PERFECTLY RIGHTEOUS 
 AS IF HE HAD FULFILLED ALL THAT IS COMMANDED HIM 
 IN THE LAW ; SHALL I SAY MORE PERFECTLY RIGHTEOUS 
 THAN IF HIMSELF HAD FULFILLED THE WHOLE LAW ? I 
 MUST TAKE HEED WHAT I SAY, BUT THE APOSTLE SAITH, 
 
 " God MADE Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, 
 
 THAT we might BE MADE THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD 
 
 in Him." Such we are in the sight of God the 
 Father, as is the very Son of God Himself. Let it 
 
 BE counted folly, OR PHRENSY, OR FURY, OR WHATSO- 
 EVER. It is OUR wisdom, and our comfort : we care 
 
 FOR NO knowledge IN THE WORLD BUT THIS, THAT MAN 
 HATH SINNED, AND GoD HATH SUFFERED : THAT GoD 
 HATH MADE HiMSELF THE SIN OF MEN, AND THAT MEN 
 ARE MADE THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GoD.' 
 
 Would that Newman had subscribed and stood to 
 that, and had always preached that in his own best 
 English ! 
 
 Newman's ostensibly controversial works are a very 
 treasure-house of good things to the student who knows 
 how to search for them. The intricate man will never 
 be fully understood till his controversial works have been 
 
346 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 consecutively and sympathetically explored. There is 
 no other writer whose controversial works will prove so 
 repaying to the student, unless it is the still more repay- 
 ing controversial works of William Law. And Law and 
 Newman are alike in this, and are alone in this, that 
 whatever be the immediate matter in dispute, both these 
 great writers give their readers such rifts, and glimpses, 
 and flashes, into the highest truths, and bring those 
 truths to bear with such impressiveness on the matter in 
 hand. And they both display such a trained and 
 polished mind in their polemics, that their controversial 
 writings will remain English literature of a very high 
 and a very rare order. One great interest to us of 
 Newman's polemical writings lies in the continually 
 fluid and mobile state of his own mind ; while, all the 
 time, he is taking up the most fixed and the most final 
 attitude of mind toward the men and the matters in 
 debate. This also makes his controversial works a 
 study of himself to us ; how his passions largely decide 
 and fix his standing-ground for the time ; and, then, 
 how his imagination — and such an imagination ; and, 
 then, his argumentative talents — and such argumentative 
 talents — all come in to fortify, and to defend, and to 
 make warlike and aggressive, every present position of 
 his. Dante boasts somewhere that language has never 
 led him to say what he had not beforehand determined 
 to say. Now I question if Newman would have been 
 bold enough, at his boldest, to say that. For, first his 
 likes and dislikes, and then his imagination, and then his 
 self-seductive style — we cannot shut our eyes as we see 
 all these things completely sweeping Newman himself 
 away into utterances and attitudes he did not intend, and 
 almost sweeping us away with him. With all that, if 
 the student of Newman has sufficient patience, and 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 347 
 
 temper, and taste for letters, and a sufficient appreciation 
 of the gleams and glimpses of the loftiest truths that are 
 never long absent from anything that Newman writes, 
 he will find his master's most sectarian, and, at first 
 sight, most unattractive-looking, treatises full of illus- 
 trations of their author's character ; full of the over- 
 flowing resources of his mind ; and full of things the 
 enriched student will never forget ; however occasional, 
 and perhaps ephemeral, and even worse, the character 
 of the original controversy in hand may be in itself. 
 
 It would be well worth while for any student of natural 
 science to compare Newman and Darwin in their Develop- 
 ment books. Newman's categories are, to my mind, even 
 more suggestive and philosophical than Darwin's are, or 
 those of any of his successors. Newman's extraordinary 
 intellectual strength, originality, amazing versatility, 
 and inexhaustible resource of mind, all come out in an 
 entrancing way in this wonderful, even if almost entirely 
 baseless, book. Reading the Develoyment always makes 
 me wish that Newman had given his great gifts to show- 
 ing us how the doctrines of grace, as we find them in 
 Paul's Epistles, were elaborated in the Apostle's mind. 
 Under what impulses, inspirations, sanctions, assist- 
 ances, assurances, the Apostle's mind worked, till the 
 outcome of it all is what it is, and will be to the end of 
 Evangelical time. What a contribution, what a Tract 
 for all time, that would have been ! Dr. Sanday has 
 said that only Newman could have written a Life of Jesus 
 Christ to satisfy us in our day. And I will add, only 
 Newman could have treated Paul, and his development 
 of doctrine, as Paul is still waiting to be treated. Instead 
 of that, — what a waste of labour ! What a lost oppor- 
 tunity ! 
 
348 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 Everybody has read Macaulay's Essays, and Carlyle's 
 Essays, but not one in a thousand knows so much as 
 the very existence of Newman's Essays, his Historical 
 Sketches, and his Discussions and Arguments. Even to 
 advertise some of the contents of Newman's six splendid 
 volumes, and to call attention to some of the rare intel- 
 lectual workmanship contained in those six volumes, 
 is a service which any man like myself may well be 
 proud to perform. His essay on ' Aristotle's Poetics,' 
 his essay on ' John Davison,' his essay on ' John Keble,' 
 his Times articles on ' The Tamworth Reading-Room,' 
 his ' Who 's to blame ? ' (for the disasters of the Crimean 
 War), his criticism of Ecce Homo, his succession of 
 papers on The Church of the Fathers, and his twenty 
 chapters on Universities, besides his many ecclesiastical 
 articles, — all make up a body of literature of the very 
 finest quality. The very dedications, advertisements, 
 and prefaces, are well worth our study for their charming 
 courtesy and for their beauty of style. The advertise- 
 ment to The Church of the Fathers has been well described 
 as ' a very gem, both of thought and expression.' The 
 paragraphs on translation in that advertisement are 
 simply canonical to the classical scholar. The whole 
 piece is always to be read alongside of Matthew Arnold's 
 exquisite little book on translating Homer. Were New- 
 man's Essay on Poetry, or his Milman, or his Davison, 
 or his criticism of Ecce Homo, or his Lamennais, or his 
 Tamworth Letters, to appear in any periodical of our day, 
 every one would hail the entrance of a new writer in the 
 intellectual arena, soon to prove himself to be the 
 possessor of the clearest of eyes, the supplest of arms, 
 and the noblest of minds. So much so, that a young 
 political or literary aspirant could have no better advice 
 given to him than to study Newman's Essays and Dis- 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 349 
 
 cussions night and day. For, let any young man of real 
 capacity once master Newman's methods of exposition, 
 discussion, and argumentation ; his way of addressing 
 himself to the treatment of a subject ; his way of enter- 
 ing upon a subject, worming his way to the very heart 
 of it, working it out, and winding it up ; his exuberance 
 of allusion, and yet every word of it for illustration, and 
 never one word of it for mere embellishment ; and, 
 withal, the nobleness of his heart in all that he writes : 
 any new writer studying Newman's intellectual work- 
 manship would soon make his presence and his power 
 felt in any of our newspapers or magazines. And let 
 any theological student read Davison's Remains, and his 
 beautiful book on Prophecy, and then go into Newman's 
 review of Davison, and a lifelong impression of the best 
 kind cannot fail to be made on that student's mind. 
 And then the splendid sketch of University life in ancient 
 Athens, — there is nothing so brilliant anywhere else to 
 be read ; and that, again, will lead the reader up to the 
 universally-accepted masterpiece on that whole subject, 
 The Idea of a University ; the first reading of which is 
 always an epoch in every university man's life. And 
 that student of letters who has not yet read the lecture 
 on ' Literature,' and that student of theology who has 
 not yet read the lecture on ' Preaching,' have both a 
 treat before them that I would envy them for, were it not 
 that the oftener I read those two lectures I always enjoy 
 them the more. For, how enlightening, how captivating, 
 are those two or three pages in which Newman takes 
 Sterne's eulogium on the style of Holy Scripture for a 
 text, and then proceeds to the vindication of the style of 
 the classical writers. Read attentively the lecture on 
 ' Literature,' and if you are not simply captivated, you 
 need read no more in Newman. Read his ' University 
 
350 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 Preaching ' ; and unless your heart burns within you, 
 you may depend upon it you have mistaken your call to 
 the Christian pulpit. Those University papers, especi- 
 ally, are yet another illustration of that liberating, 
 broadening out, and exuberating, of Newman's mind 
 which reveals itself in so many of his Catholic com- 
 positions. If the Catholic University movement had 
 left no other result than those two brilliant volumes, 
 not Ireland and Rome only, but all the other Churches, 
 and English literature itself, would be the great and 
 lasting gainers. 
 
 As Coleridge would say. Let every theological student 
 sell his bed and buy Newman's Aihanasius. The great 
 antagonist of the Arians was Newman's favourite Father, 
 even more than Augustine himself. Mr. Arthur Hutton 
 tells us that when Leo xiii. made sundry pronouncements 
 in favour of an almost exclusive use of the writings of 
 St. Thomas, and the Cardinal was in duty bound to 
 write to His Holiness approving and praising his action, 
 he slipped in a saving clause, claiming that St. Athanasius 
 was doubtless included in the Papal recommendation. 
 Athanasius is always ' the great Athanasius ' to Newman, 
 and a page could easily be filled with this and many other 
 epithets and titles of honour and admiration that his 
 translator and annotator has bestowed upon his patristic 
 master. But it is not so much Athanasius, with all his 
 services, that I wish all students to possess, as Newman's 
 volume of Notes on the Select Treatises. The way that 
 Newman introduces his little articles — little in bulk, but 
 bullion itself in value — will make every true student 
 hunger to have them : ' I had hoped that this would be 
 my least imperfect work, but I have done my best, bear- 
 ing in mind that I have no right to reckon on the future.' 
 And this also : ' These annotations are written, pro re 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 351 
 
 nata, capriciously, or, at least, arbitrarily, with matter 
 which the writer happens to have at hand, or knows 
 where to find, and are composed in what may be called 
 an undress, conversational style ; and the excuse for 
 these defects is that they are mere appendages to the 
 text, and ancillary to it.' Do not believe him. Athan- 
 asius wrote in order to give occasion to Newman to 
 translate, and edit, and annotate, his writings. Buy or 
 beg Newman's Annotations to the Select Treatises of 
 Aihanasius. 
 
 No one can feel the full force of Newman's great 
 sermons on ' The Incarnation,' and on ' The Atoning 
 Death of God the Son,' who has not gone with Newman 
 behind the sermons and up to the sources of the sermons 
 in Athanasius, and in Basil, and in Cyril. The greatest 
 and the most sure to be lasting of Newman's sermons are 
 just his rich Athanasian Christology poured into the 
 mould of his incomparable homiletic, and delivered with 
 all that overpowering solemnity to which all who ever 
 heard those sermons have testified. Such sermons 
 would not have been possible, even in Newman's pulpit, 
 had it not been that he was absolutely taken possession 
 of by the Apostolic and Athanasian Christology. And 
 this leads me to make an acknowledgment to you that 
 I have often made to myself in reading Newman's more 
 theological and Christological sermons. Newman deserves 
 this acknowledgment and praise above all other expositors 
 of the Fathers and the great Creeds that have ever spoken 
 or written on those high subjects. This acknowledg- 
 ment and praise, that what he so truly says of Hooker 
 is in every syllable of it still more true of himself : ' About 
 Hooker there is the charm of nature and reality. He 
 discourses not as a theologian, but as a man ; and we 
 see in him what otherwise might have been hidden — 
 
352 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 poetry and philosophy informing his ecclesiastical matter.' 
 Now, read Pearson, say, a master as he is, on any article 
 of the Apostles' Creed, especially any article of his on the 
 Divine Persons, and then read a sermon of Newman's 
 on the same subject, and you will get a lesson in think- 
 ing and in writing and in preaching in English that you 
 will never forget. Newman delivers all his readers ever 
 after from a cold, dry, notional, technical, catechetical 
 mind, he so makes every article of the Creed a very 
 fountain of life and power and beauty. He so lifts up 
 his own superb imagination to its noblest use, that he 
 makes, first himself, and then makes us to see, the Divine 
 Persons, and their Divine relations and operations, as 
 never before. Till all our Creeds and Confessions and 
 Catechisms become clothed with a majesty, and instinct 
 with a beauty, and welling over with personal applica- 
 tions and comforts, new, and unexpected, and ever- 
 abiding. His two grand sermons in his sixth volume — 
 ' Christ the Son of God made Man ' and ' The Incarnate 
 Son a Sufferer and a Sacrifice,' may be pointed out as 
 two splendid illustrations of Newman's incomparable 
 power of making the highest doctrines imaginatively to 
 abide Avith us, and to abide full of the most homileti- 
 cal and most home-coming expositions and ai^plications. 
 
 As to Newman's two novels, — it goes without saying 
 that both Loss and Gain and Callista contain brilliant 
 and memorable passages. Callista, especially, contains 
 not a few pages that are entirely classical. The descrip- 
 tion of the scene where the work is laid ; the oft-quoted 
 locust-passages ; and the conversation on Tartarus held 
 between Caecilius and Callista, — a passage that William 
 Law himself might have written ; and, I am not sure that 
 even Ne^vman would ever have written those masterly 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 853 
 
 pages, unless William Law had written on the same 
 subject before him. As to the trustworthiness of Callista, 
 — when the critics charge its author with violating 
 historical truth, and with the importation of Popish 
 developments of doctrine and life into a thu'd century 
 sketch, Newman frankly admits the charge. Indeed, 
 he cannot deny it. This is how he defends himself from 
 a similar charge in his advertisement to The Church of 
 the Fathers : ' It is plain that as to the matter of these 
 Sketches, though mainly historical, they are in their 
 form and character polemical, as being directed against 
 certain Protestant ideas and opinions. This considera- 
 tion must plead for certain peculiarities which it exhibits, 
 such as its freedom in dealing with saintly persons, the 
 gratuitous character of some of its assertions, and the 
 liberality of many of its concessions. It must be recol- 
 lected that, in controversy, a writer grants all that he 
 can afford to grant, and avails himself of all that he can 
 get granted ; in other words, if he seems to admit, it is 
 mainly for argument's sake ; and if he seems to assert, 
 it is mainly as an argumentum ad hominem. As to positive 
 statements of his own, he commits himself to as few as he 
 can ; just as a soldier on campaign takes no more baggage 
 than is enough, and considers the conveniences of home 
 life as only impediments in his march.' As long as 
 Hippocleides can write in that way, what chance has 
 Charles Kingsley, or even the truth itself, with Hippo- 
 cleides ! Altogether, Loss and Gain and Callista are not 
 at all worthy of their author's genius and character. He 
 should have been advised against reprinting them. 
 They might pass at the time of their composition for 
 veiled polemical pamphlets, but they can do no real and 
 abiding good. They certainly do not add to Newman's 
 reputation, either for literary ability, or for historical 
 
354 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 integrity, or for controversial fairness. I never took to 
 his two novels, and I do not recommend you to read 
 them, unless for the light they throw on their author. 
 But, then, that hght is not httle. For, as Dr. Abbott 
 says, Loss and Gain and Callista are ' the most subjective 
 of novels.' 
 
 What Coleridge has said about Jeremy Taylor's com- 
 position of his Apology is exactly, and exquisitely, and 
 prophetically, true of Newman in the composition of his 
 book of the same name. ' Taylor so again and again 
 forgets that he is reasoning against an antagonist, that 
 he falls into conversation with him as a friend — I might 
 almost say into the literary chitchat and unwithholding 
 frankness of a rich genius whose sands are seed-pearl.' 
 The Apologia pro vita sua could not possibly be better 
 described. It is just a literary chitchat whose sands are 
 seed-pearl. For it is a chitchat rather than a studied 
 composition. That is, it has been studied and studied, 
 and written and re-written, to such a finish that it reads 
 to us like chitchat, so perfect, so exquisite, is its art. 
 And, like Taylor's very richest writing, Newman's 
 Apologia has all the charm of a rich genius conversing 
 confidingly Avith his most intimate friends. I am not to 
 attempt the praise of the Apologia as English hterature. 
 I could fill a volume as large as itself with its praises by 
 the acknowledged judges of good books. They are all 
 agreed as to the Apologia being the brilliant crown of a 
 brilliant series of literary masterpieces. And, besides 
 all that, as a piece of polemic ; as the apology it was 
 intended to be ; it is as conclusive and unanswerable 
 as it is incomparable as a piece of English literature. 
 The Apologia carried the whole world captive in a day. 
 Never was there such a sudden and such a complete 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 355 
 
 reversal of men's judgments. It may well stand on the 
 title-page of the Apologia : ' Commit thy way to the 
 Lord, and trust in Him, and He will do it. And He will 
 bring forth thy justice as the light, and thy judgment 
 as the noonday.' At the same time, like so much of its 
 author's work, it bears the stamp of an occasion on its 
 face, and no work of that kind will ever become immortal. 
 The immortal Ecclesiastical Polity itself is preserved to 
 all time, in virtue of those books which are imbedded in 
 it, and which do not properly belong to it. Those books, 
 and chapters of books, which rise above time, and all its 
 polemic, and belong to eternity. Even as an auto- 
 biography the Apologia does not stand in the first rank. 
 The Confessions does, the Grace Abounding does, the 
 Reliquice even, in many of its chapters, does. Ay, even 
 such homely books as Halyburton, and Brea, and Boston, 
 stand in the first rank to us, because, even where their 
 style may not be the most classical, and even when those 
 writers are the most homely, their subject-matter is of 
 such transcendent and everlasting importance. New- 
 man's splendid vindication of his ecclesiastical honesty 
 is of a high importance and a rare relish to all his readers ; 
 but there is a region far higher than even that, and a 
 region into which his Apologia never once enters. It 
 glances, in passing, into that region of regions, but only 
 in passing. And, never really entering into that inner 
 and upper region, it has none of the interest, and none 
 of the perennial imjjortance and power, that many 
 autobiographies have which cannot for a moment com- 
 pete with the Apologia in hterary charm. He would 
 be a bold man who would venture to correct Newman's 
 English, even in a jot or a tittle, else I would propose to 
 read ' ecclesiastical ' where he has written ' religious ' on 
 his title-page. For the Apologia is really a history of 
 
856 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 his ecclesiastical opinions, and not at all of his religious 
 opinions ; or it is a history of his religious opinions only 
 so far as they bear upon his ecclesiastical opinions, and 
 upon his ever-shifting ecclesiastical positions. There are, 
 to be sure, single entrancing sentences of experimental 
 religion in the Apologia, but the bulk of the book is in 
 the region of ecclesiastical opinion, and not always the 
 highest region of that. ' The Apologia,' says Froude, 
 ' is the most beautiful of autobiographies, but it tells us 
 only how its writer appeared to himself.' And, I will 
 add, only how its writer appeared to himself from time 
 to time as a Churchman, which is a very different thing 
 from a man, a sinful man, and a Christian man. I read, 
 and read, and read again, the Apologia, but it always 
 leaves me where first it found me so many years ago. 
 Nobody enjoys the Apologia more than I enjoy it, but 
 I get nothing beyond intellectual, and artistic, and 
 emotional, enjoyment out of it. I am not a stronger or 
 a better man after again reading the Apologia. It never 
 sends me back to the stern battle of my life with my 
 harness better fastened on, or to my pulpit with any new 
 sense of spiritual power. It affords me amusement of 
 the rarest and finest kind ; it gives me a high intellectual 
 and artistic treat ; but it does not dwell and work 
 within my heart as some other autobiographical books 
 dwell and work, that I am ashamed to name in such 
 classical company. But I must always remember what, 
 exactly, the Apologia is, and what it is not. It is not a 
 religious book at all, but an ecclesiastical. It is not a 
 spiritual book at all, but a dialectical. It is not a book 
 of the very soul, but of what is to be said as between this 
 Church and that. Its author does not say, like John 
 Bunyan, ' Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I 
 will declare what He hath done for my soul ' ; and, 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 357 
 
 therefore, I must not expect what he does not promise. 
 And thus it is that I never lay down the Apologia without 
 finding myself exclaiming, — Oh, that all that so captivating 
 talent had been laid out on telling us how Newman, like 
 Paul, won Christ so as to be found in Him, instead of how 
 he won his way to Rome so as to be found in her. For, 
 then, he would have produced a book that would have 
 stood beside the two or three best books of that kind in 
 all the world. Then Newman's Apologia would have 
 stood beside Bunyan's Grace Abounding. And, then, I 
 would have sung ' Lead, Kindly Light,' with a liberty, 
 and with a sense of communion with its author, that, 
 by his Apologia, he has completely taken away from me. 
 
 In the Grammar of Assent, as Mr. Birrell says, New- 
 man strikes the shield of John Locke, and it is not for me 
 to venture in between such combatants. But I may be 
 permitted to say this, that the Grammar of Assent has 
 been a prime favourite of mine ever since the year 1870, 
 when it was first published. There is more of the jargon 
 of the schools in the Grammar than in all Newman's 
 other books taken together. But, then, to make up for 
 that, there are many passages of a high and noble 
 eloquence that he has never surpassed. This very able 
 book, when stripped of its technicalities, is simply an 
 amplification, in Newman's perfect English, of the truth 
 that it is with the heart, and not with the head, that a 
 man believes unto salvation. And an amplification of 
 this kindred truth also, that if any man will do the will 
 of God, he shall know the ^octrine. And that in these 
 ways his peace shall be as a river. Only, to have made 
 this fine book fine to the end, it should have ended, not 
 with an assent to Rome, but to this rather, that neither 
 in this mountain, nor yet at Jesusalem, shall we worship 
 
358 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 the Father ; but they that worship Him must worship 
 Him in spirit and in truth. With all its defects, the 
 Grammar is a great possession to the proper possessor. 
 
 The Dream of Geroniius was the true copestone for 
 Newman to cut and to lay on the literary and rehgious 
 work of his whole life. Had Dante himself composed 
 The Dream of Geroniius as his elegy on the death of some 
 beloved friend, it would have been universally received 
 as altogether worthy of his superb genius, and it would 
 have been a jewel altogether worthy of his peerless crown. 
 There is nothing of its kind outside of the Purgatorio 
 and the Paradise at all equal to the Geroniius for 
 solemnising, ennobling, and sanctifying power. It is 
 a poem that every man should have by heart who has 
 it before him to die. 
 
 All students of the English language give their days and 
 nights to the Authorised Version of the Bible, to Shake- 
 speare, to Hooker, to Tajior, to Milton, to Bunyan, to 
 Johnson, to Swift, to Ruskin. But if they overlook 
 Newman, they will make a great mistake, and will miss 
 both thinking and writing of the very first order. The 
 strength, the richness, the pliability, the acuteness, the 
 subtlety, the spiritualness, the beauty, the manifold 
 resources of the English language, are all brought out 
 under Newman's hand, as under the hand of no other 
 English author. ' Athanasius is a great writer,' says 
 Newman, ' simple in his diction, clear, unstudied, direct, 
 vigorous, elastic, and, above all, characteristic' All 
 of which I will repeat of Newman himself, and especially 
 this — he is, above all, characteristic. If the English 
 language has an angel residing in it and presiding over 
 it, surely Newman is that angel. Or, at the least, the 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 359 
 
 angel who has the guardianship of the Enghsh language 
 committed to him, must surely have handed his own pen 
 to Newman as often as that master has sat down to write 
 English. No other writer in the English language has 
 ever written it quite like Newman. Every preface of 
 his, every title-page of his, every dedication and adver- 
 tisement of his, every footnote, every parenthesis of his, 
 has a stamp upon it that at once makes you say — that is 
 Newman ! He is simply inimitable. He is simply alone 
 as a writer, and has no fellow. No wonder he says that 
 the only master of style he ever had was Cicero. And 
 Cicero had a good scholar in Newman, if the scholar is 
 correct in his description of his master. ' This is the 
 great art of Cicero himself, who, whether he is engaged in 
 statement, argument, or raillery, never ceases till he has 
 exhausted the subject ; going round about it and placing 
 it in every different light, yet without repetition to 
 offend or weary the reader.' Altogether, Newman's is a 
 shelf of some thirty-eight volumes, all opulent with ideas, 
 all instinct with spirituality, all resplendent with beauty, 
 and all enriching and fertilising to the mind of their 
 proper reader ; with all their drawbacks, a noble inheri- 
 tance to their true heir. And now, in bringing this very 
 imperfect appreciation of Newman to a close, I think I 
 can say with a good conscience, that I have done my 
 best to speak to you about this great man and rich 
 writer on Paul's great principle of 
 hoping all things, enduring all things 
 in the truth. And on Shakespeare's great principle ; 
 for I have not knowingly extenuated anything, and it 
 was simply impossible for me to set down aught in 
 malice. And on Bengel's great principle, not to judge 
 without knowledge, nor without necessity, nor without 
 love : Sine scieniia, sine necessitate, sine amore. 
 
 )f believing all things, 1-^cl 
 ^s, and always rejoicing // /Cr^' 
 
JOHN WESLEYi 
 
 ' It was in pursuance of an advice given me by Bishop 
 Jeremy Taylor in his Holy Living and Dying, that I 
 began to take a more exact account than I had ever 
 done before of the manner wherein I had spent my 
 time, writing down how I had employed every hour.' 
 With characteristic promptitude Wesley at once took 
 that great casuist's counsel to heart, and the result, 
 after many years, was John Wesley's Journal. Pliny 
 tells us that Apelles never let a day pass without his 
 drawing something, great or small, with his pencil : 
 nulla dies sine linea. And, after the most dialectical and 
 the most eloquent of Enghsh theologians gave that 
 advice to John Wesley, he never let a day pass away 
 till he had penned a longer or shorter account of the day 
 in his so faithful journal. 
 
 ' Mind is from the mother,' says Isaac Taylor. ' Such 
 we conclude to be a law of nature, on the evidence of 
 many bright instances. Now, the Wesley s had the 
 advantage of this law ; and their mother, a woman of 
 quite extraordinary intelligence, force of mind, correct 
 judgment, and vivid apprehension of truth, conferred 
 also upon her sons whatever advantage they might 
 derive from her composite excellence as a zealous church- 
 woman ; yet rich in a dowry of nonconforming virtues.' 
 Thus far the best writer we have on Wesley. At the 
 
 ^ New College Closing Address, Session 1912-13. 
 
362 JOHN WESLEY 
 
 same time, with all that about his mother, John Wesley's 
 father was not a man to be despised or forgotten, though 
 he never attained to the intellectual and spiritual dis- 
 tinction of his wife. Susannah Wesley's management 
 of her household, her nurture and admonition of her 
 large family, and her whole behaviour and deportment 
 both as a wife and a mother : all taken together, exalt her 
 to the very highest rank of great and good women in all 
 religious biography. I always think of Susannah Wesley 
 as standing beside Jonathan Edwards's New England 
 wife, and Thomas Boston's Ettrick wife. And Thomas 
 Boston's truly classical eulogy of his noble wife does not, 
 in anything, surpass what we read of the mother of 
 John Wesley. Take a few lines from one of her letters 
 to her son John, when he was still somewhat undecided 
 about the ministry. ' And now,' she wrote, ' in good 
 earnest, resolve to make religion the business of your 
 life. For, after all, that is the one thing which, strictly 
 speaking, is necessary. All things else are, compara- 
 tively speaking, little to the purpose of life. I heartily 
 wish that you would now enter upon a strict examination 
 of yourself, in order that you may know whether you 
 have a reasonable hope of your salvation by Jesus 
 Christ. If you have, the satisfaction of knowing it 
 will abundantly reward your pains ; and, if you have 
 not, you will find a more reasonable occasion for tears 
 than can be met with in a tragedy.' A passage, gentle- 
 men, worthy of a writer one of whose favourite authors 
 was Pascal. And, afterwards, when she was asked if 
 she would give her consent to her son John going out as 
 a missionary to the American Indians, her reply was : 
 ' Had I twenty sons, I should rejoice that they were all 
 so employed, though I should never see them more.' 
 Well, it was from Susannah Wesley's manse-home that 
 
JOHN WESLEY 363 
 
 John and Charles Wesley went up to the University of 
 Oxford. And she soon had the happiness to hear that 
 her two sons were members, and indeed leaders, in 
 the ' Holy Club ' of that University. ' The Holy Club ' 
 was one of the many nicknames that Whitefield and the 
 Wesleys and others likeminded had earned for them- 
 selves from their irreligious and ribald-tongued fellow- 
 students. The offensive holiness of the Club consisted 
 in its members meeting from time to time in one another's 
 room for the devotional reading of the Greek Testament, 
 and for suchlike fellowship. And the duties to which 
 they devoted their spare time were very much like the 
 duties to which so many of yourselves devote your 
 spare time in the Settlement. They went out to the 
 streets on the Lord's Day and collected into classes the 
 neglected children of the city ; they visited the prisons 
 and the poorhouses of the city. And one thing to which 
 they specially attended was, to watch for the arrival of 
 young students, so as to get them introduced at once 
 into good company. But the Holy Club was as con- 
 spicuous for its scholarship as it was for its works of 
 religion and charity. John Wesley especially was one 
 of the best, if not the very best, scholars of his day. 
 He stood at the top of the Hebrew and Greek and Latin 
 classes ; he held a lectureship in Greek and another in 
 Logic. He had a quite extraordinary talent for learning 
 languages. ' In his knowledge of German,' says an 
 eminent Methodist writer, ' Wesley was a pioneer. It 
 was not until the end of the eighteenth century, at the 
 time when the fame of Goethe and Schiller was filtering 
 into England, that Englishmen began to regard German 
 as a language worth learning. It would be possible to 
 count on the fingers of one hand all the distinguished 
 Englishmen who knew German in John Wesley's day.' 
 
364 JOHN WESLEY 
 
 And that same writer gives us a list of some thirty-two 
 German hymns that Wesley translated, ' which became 
 famihar to the Methodists in after days.' How Wesley 
 anticipated the Revised Version also, in his Notes on the 
 New Testament, will be read with something like amaze- 
 ment in Mr. Bett's scholarly book. 
 
 After his Greek Testament, three great books took 
 complete possession of John Wesley's mind and heart 
 during his Oxford days. Our own Dr. Hood Wilson has 
 an excellent passage on this subject. He says : ' It was 
 about this time that Wesley began the earnest study of 
 the Imitation of Christ, the Holy Living and Dying, and 
 the Serious Call. These three books became very much 
 his spiritual guides. They wakened up his conscience, 
 and he sought to deal with his heart, and to frame his 
 life, according to their teaching. Doubtless, there must 
 have been a divine purpose in his being guided to these 
 authors at such a time, and they may have done their 
 part, in that transition period of his life, in preparing 
 him for the great work that lay before him. And yet, 
 one cannot but regret that he did not, at this critical 
 time, meet with some more simple and more direct 
 evangelical teaching, in book or Uving friend, which 
 might have guided him to the sinner's one resting-place, 
 saved him long years of painful soul-struggle, and given 
 to the world, much sooner, the benefit of those labours 
 which it so urgently needed. Not now, nor till long 
 after, was the great discovery made to Wesley of a full, 
 free, and immediate salvation through faith in Jesus 
 Christ. Amid all his Oxford earnestness, his views were 
 entirely legal. His one aim was to attain salvation by 
 devoutness and self-denial, by holy living and by deeds 
 of charity, to all of which he gave himself up with all 
 the ardour of his devoted nature. And, while these 
 
JOHN WESLEY 865 
 
 books might have helped him at a later stage, they but 
 served, in the state of mind in which he then was, to 
 furnish rules for a life which had not yet begun. He 
 himself comes back upon this bitterly in after years, and 
 speaks of it as laying a foundation beneath the Founda- 
 tion.' So far Dr. Hood Wilson. And this is an example 
 of how Wesley himself often speaks about his Oxford 
 days, as he looked back to them after his full conversion : 
 ' I did go thus for many years : using diligence to eschew 
 all evil and to have a conscience void of offence, redeem- 
 ing the time, laying up every opportunity of doing 
 good to all men, constantly and carefully using all the 
 public, and all the private means of grace, endeavouring 
 after a steady seriousness of behaviour at all times 
 and in all places ; and God is my record, before whom 
 I stand, that I did all this in sincerity, having a real 
 design to serve God ; a hearty desire to do His will in 
 all things, to please Him who had called me to fight 
 the good fight, and to lay hold of eternal life. Yet, my 
 own conscience beareth me witness in the Holy Ghost, 
 that all this time I was but almost a Christian.' You 
 might very well think that John Wesley, coming from 
 such a home, and leading such a life at the University, 
 must have been, from the beginning, a truly converted 
 man. But he did not think so himself. Whatever he 
 may have thought about that all-important matter 
 during his Oxford days he looked back on those days 
 as being his pharisaical, unregenerated and unconverted 
 days, as we have seen, and will still more see immediately. 
 
 After Wesley left Oxford he went out as a missionary 
 to Georgia. I shall not enter on his Georgian life. It 
 is a painful story in many ways, and what lesson it has 
 to teach us, I will take from Wesley's latest biographer. 
 
366 JOHN WESLEY 
 
 ' John Wesley had gone to Georgia to save his own soul, 
 and to convert the Indians. He found no opportunity 
 of attempting the latter, but his Georgian experiences 
 exercised an important influence upon the life of his 
 own soul. His ministry to the colonists met with com- 
 paratively little success, and was attended by a good 
 deal of bitterness and strife. It is impossible to acquit 
 Wesley of some blame in the matter. He was at that 
 time a narrow, and an autocratic, High Churchman.' 
 And this writer gives instance after instance to illustrate 
 that ; and then he adds that ' other forces, besides his 
 unhappy life in Georgia, were at work, which were 
 destined to submerge the formalist within him.' 
 
 Some of the other forces here referred to were his 
 experiences on shipboard in his Georgian voyages, the 
 results of his painful mismanagement of his personal 
 life in the midst of his missionary labours, his inter- 
 course with some Moravian missionaries in Georgia, 
 and his further intercourse with some of the same 
 evangelical and fervent-souled men, after his return to 
 England — all of which is to be read at length in his 
 Journal, and all ending with his full conversion at the 
 time and in the way he describes so graphically ^vith 
 his own pen. As thus : ' I continued in this way to 
 seek my salvation (though with strange indifference, 
 dullness, and coldness, and with frequent relapses into 
 sin), till Wednesday, May 24. I think it was about 
 five this morning that I opened my Testament at these 
 words : " There are given unto us exceeding great and 
 precious promises, even that ye should be partakers of 
 the divine nature." Just as I went out, I opened it again 
 on these words : " Thou art not far from the Kingdom 
 of God." In the afternoon I was asked to go to St. 
 
JOHN WESLEY 367 
 
 Paul's. The anthem was, " Out of the deep have I 
 called unto Thee, O Lord ; Lord, hear my voice." In 
 the evening I went, very unwillingly, to a society in 
 Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's 
 Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter 
 before nine, while Luther was describing the change 
 which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, 
 I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did, at that 
 moment, trust in Christ, and in Christ alone, for my 
 salvation. And an assurance was given me on the spot 
 that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and had 
 thus saved me from the law of sin and death.' 
 
 Adds his latest biographer : ' The scene in Aldersgate 
 Street marks one of the turning-points of human history ; 
 for the mightiest and most far-reaching issues are 
 determined, not on stricken fields, but in the solitary 
 places of the spirit. The experience at Aldersgate 
 Street changed the centre of John Wesley's life from 
 himself to Christ, opened his heart to the redeeming 
 and sanctifying influences of Divine grace, and kindled 
 within him an invincible assurance of the mighty 
 working of the forgiving love of God in his heart. . . . 
 Sacerdotalism, asceticism, and externalism have loosed 
 their bonds ; he has entered into the glorious liberty of 
 the children of God, and is a freeman in Christ Jesus. 
 And, standing in the noble succession of Paul, Augustine, 
 and Luther, he henceforth preached salvation by faith 
 with a passion that no opposition could quench, and 
 with a divine power that godlessness and unbelief could 
 not withstand.' ' From this time,' says Dr. Rigg, 
 ' Wesley was no longer a priest ; henceforth his vocation 
 was, pre-eminently, that of a j^reacher. Though, for 
 some time yet, he retained some of his rubrical scruples 
 and punctilios, yet, henceforth, the sacraments, accord- 
 
368 JOHN WESLEY 
 
 ing to his teaching, were to be regarded only as means 
 and seals of grace, and not at all as fountains of super- 
 natural power, ministered by the hand of the priest.' 
 
 Coming now to Wesley's preaching : nothing could 
 be more interesting and instructive to us in this 
 house than to study both the matter and the manner 
 of that preaching. And that, because John Wesley 
 stands in the front rank, if not at the very head of all 
 preachers, for the immediate and abiding results of his 
 preaching. I can touch but shortly here on that all- 
 important subject. But you will do well to give some 
 time and some thought to that subject in entering on 
 your own preaching life. To begin \vith, and strange 
 as it may sound to some, there was little or nothing 
 that could be called popular either in the matter or in 
 the manner of Wesley's preaching. There was little or 
 no imaginative power in his preaching, there was little 
 or no dramatic power, there was little or no power of 
 illustration, there was next to nothing of those wonder- 
 ful pulpit qualities that made Whitefield's contempor- 
 aneous preaching so commanding. The run of Wesley's 
 sermons, it may be said, were far more fitted, as one 
 would think, for a congregation of Christian people, 
 for their establishment in the faith, for their advanced 
 edification, and for their spiritual comfort, than for the 
 outcast classes to which they were mostly preached. 
 And how such preaching took such a hold of those 
 classes will be a mystery to you as you read his Journal 
 and his sermons. If you take Wesley's famous sermon 
 which he preached, first at St. Mary's, Oxford, before 
 the University, and so often repeated in very different 
 places, and compare it with Spurgeon's sermon on the 
 same text, you will at once admit that the Tabernacle 
 
JOHN WESLEY 869 
 
 sermon has all the elements of popular power that 
 Wesley's sermon was almost wholly without. There 
 is a surge and a sweep of passion in Spurgeon that has 
 no parallel in Wesley. There is a thrill of pathos in 
 every sermon of Spurgeon's that you seldom or never 
 meet with in Wesley. Every preacher has his own talents. 
 And where clear statement and close reasoning are the 
 great features of Wesley's sermons, an all-compelling 
 eloquence carries you captive in Spurgeon's. Wesley is 
 not without real eloquence, and Spurgeon is not without 
 real logic. But while logic rules in Wesley, Spurgeon is 
 of pulpit passion all compact. After reading both those 
 sermons again and again, I repeat that Wesley's Oxford 
 sermon is not to be compared with Spurgeon's London 
 sermon. There is a richness, a fulness, a fascination, and 
 a heart-winningness about Spurgeon that Wesley, to my 
 mind, never came near. Why, then, you will ask, 
 Wesley's unparalleled success ? That, gentlemen, is your 
 problem, as young preachers ; a problem which you are, 
 with all your might and before you are much older, to work 
 out for yourselves. Only, take this key and try the lock 
 with it : Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, 
 saith the Lord. And this : Paul may plant and Apollos 
 water, but it is God who gives the increase. ' The best 
 key,' says Augustine, ' is that which opens the lock best.' 
 But this is such an interesting and such an important 
 subject that, before leaving it, I will let you hear some 
 other voices than mine upon Wesley's preaching. And 
 take first Richard Watson, in his powerful polemic 
 against Southey. Having to touch on his master's 
 sermons that great champion of Wesley's says : ' There 
 is nothing imaginative in their style, nothing calculated 
 to move the passion through the fancy, nothing 
 gorgeous, nothing mystic. They are addressed to 
 
 2 a 
 
370 JOHN WESLEY 
 
 the conscience, not to the imagination, and they in- 
 culcate spiritual religion only. This was the character 
 of Mr. Wesley's viva voce sermons, and it is the character 
 of his written ones.' Again, his latest biographer has 
 this candid passage : ' Wesley's published sermons do 
 not enhance his reputation, and they leave the reader 
 perplexed as to the secret of his great influence, and his 
 unparalleled popularity.' And Alexander Knox, an 
 almost worshipper of Wesley's, has a passage I would 
 not like you to miss. ' I spoke just now of John Wesley 
 being often too familiar : I believe I should rather say 
 that he often both spoke and wrote with insufficient 
 preparation ; and, by that means, fell into tenuity of 
 thought. But it is very remarkable, that, though he 
 talked so much with low people, and had always from 
 that class the great majority of his hearers, yet he 
 never sank into vulgarity, never deviated from the 
 style of a classical scholar, and a perfect gentleman. 
 In this respect, that is, in being familiar, yet not vulgar, 
 I consider my old friend as really one of the very first 
 models in the world. Had he possessed a more self- 
 directing mind, and a sounder judgment, he would have 
 been a paragon ; but, perhaps, that would have made 
 him less fit for his appropriate destination. I certainly 
 can claim no rank for John Wesley as a writer, if he 
 be tried by any accustomed standard. But why is that 
 so ? Merely because he preferred utility to every other 
 consideration in the world.' And so on to the end of a 
 very remarkable appreciation in the third volume of 
 Alexander Knox's works. 
 
 Look, now and henceforth, at John Wesley, like the 
 Apostle, in journeyings often, in perils by his own country- 
 men, in perils in the city, in perils among false brethren, 
 in weariness, in painfulness, in fastings often ; besides 
 
JOHN WESLEY 871 
 
 those things that came upon him daily, the care of all 
 the societies, if not of all the churches. Look at him as 
 he sets out to take, if not yet, ' the whole world as his 
 parish,' at any rate to take England, and Ireland, and 
 Wales and Scotland. Look at him, as he mounts his 
 daily horse, with his saddle-bags full of books ; and 
 look at him as he makes his saddle his study chair, and 
 his horse's shoulder his study desk. The books he read 
 on horseback, and the comments and criticisms he 
 penned on the books he read, all make his Journal to be 
 fascinating reading to any one with anything of a literary 
 mind. It would be to read the whole Journal to you 
 were I to attempt to tell you the range and the amount 
 of Wesley's reading and writing on horseback. And, 
 in like manner, it is quite impossible for me to show you 
 how every day's journey ended, the hours at which 
 the evangelist preached, the congregations he had at 
 all hours of the day and the night, the immediate 
 results of his sermons — results as immediate as his 
 own instantaneous conversion at a quarter to nine in 
 Aldersgate Street ; and, as time went on, his collecting 
 of his converts into Methodist-societies, his universally 
 acknowledged statesman-like ability in his legislation 
 for those societies, and in his administration of all their 
 affairs, doctrinal, disciplinary, financial, and all else ; 
 all that is to be read in minute detail, and at great length, 
 in his life-long Journal. You will read there how Wesley 
 made not only all England his parish in these ways, 
 but how he visited Scotland sixteen times, and Ireland 
 twenty-one times, usually taking Wales on his way to 
 and from Ireland. Wesley had set out on his evan- 
 gelistic journeys for some time before he began to preach 
 in the open air. Shreds of his High Churchism hung 
 about Wesley, and hindered his movements for long. 
 
372 JOHN WESLEY 
 
 In after days he made this confession, that, at one time 
 in his ministry he would almost have seen a sinner lost, 
 rather than he had not been saved in a consecrated 
 church and at canonical hours. It was to Whitefield 
 that Wesley owed his deliverance from his pride about 
 preaching anywhere but in a church. On that subject 
 Isaac Taylor has this : ' Wesley, at Whitefield's in- 
 vitation, and following the example he had set, com- 
 menced his public ministry as a field-preacher in 1739. 
 This was a course utterly repugnant to his most cherished 
 notions of church order, as well as to every instinct of 
 his nature. And, yet, it was by field-preaching, and 
 in no other possible way, that England could be 
 roused from its spiritual slumber, or Methodism be 
 spread over the country, and be rooted where it spread. 
 The men who commenced and achieved this arduous 
 service, and they were scholars and gentlemen, displayed 
 a courage far surpassing that which carries the soldier 
 through the hail-storm of the battle-field. Ten thousand 
 men might more easily be found who would confront a 
 battery, than two who, with the sensitiveness of educa- 
 tion about them, could mount a table by the roadside, 
 give out a psalm, and collect a mob.' And Taylor 
 proceeds : ' As a field preacher, the courage, the self- 
 possession, the temper, the tact which John Wesley 
 displayed place him in a very high position. When 
 encountering the ruffianism of mobs and magistrates, he 
 showed a firmness, as well as a guileless skill, combined 
 with the dignity and courtesy of a gentleman.' I am 
 sorely tempted to take time to tell you some of Wesley's 
 experiences and impressions in his preaching tours through 
 Scotland. But it will be better to let you come on all 
 that as you go through the Journal for yourselves. And, 
 as you go through the Scottish pages of the Journal, I 
 
JOHN WESLEY 873 
 
 promise you some right racy reading, as well as some 
 frank and not uninstructive criticism of the Scottish 
 nation and the Scottish Church. 
 
 ' His industry was half his genius,' says Lord Morley, 
 writing about Mr. Gladstone's habits of work. And the 
 same thing may be said of John Wesley. His pen was 
 never out of his hand. Had he never entered a pulpit, 
 nor preached an open-air sermon, the mere bibliography 
 of his pen would have been a noble record of a most 
 industrious life. Take this, not from a Methodist 
 eulogist, but from such a detached work as Chambers's 
 Encydopcedia. ' During the fifty years of his unparalleled 
 apostolate, John Wesley travelled 250,000 miles, and 
 preached forty thousand sermons. And yet, he managed 
 to do a prodigious amount of literary work. He wrote 
 for his lay preachers and for the societies short grammars 
 in the English, French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew 
 languages ; a compendium of logic ; extracts from 
 Phsedrus, Ovid, Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, Persius, Martial 
 and Sallust ; a complete English Dictionary ; com- 
 mentaries on the whole of the Old and New Testaments ; 
 a short Roman history ; a history of England from the 
 earliest times ; a compendium of Social Philosophy in 
 five volumes ; and a " Christian Library " consisting of 
 extracts from all the great theological writers of the 
 universal church. In addition to all this, he prepared 
 popular and cheap editions of the principal works of 
 Bunyan, Baxter, Edwards, Rutherford, Law, and many 
 others, and endless abridged biographies. His works 
 were so popular that, to use his own language, he 
 " became rich unawares." He made not less than 
 £30,000, every penny of which he distributed in charity 
 during his life.' Well might Dr. Hood Wilson say : 
 
374 JOHN WESLEY 
 
 ' If anything would shame us ministers into activity 
 and devotedness it should be the study of such a life as 
 John Wesley's. At every point he puts us to the blush. 
 ... It were well,' continues Dr. Wilson, ' that all our 
 ministers, and all our candidates for the ministry, should 
 make a study of the life and the labours of this apostolic 
 man. For one thing, they would learn the much-needed 
 lesson that Wesley's being able to overtake such an 
 amount of work — preaching, travelling, reading, writing, 
 overseeing, dealing with individuals — and all the time 
 keeping up an immense correspondence, his being able 
 to overtake all that is to be attributed to his inflexible 
 temperance, and to his unexampled economy of time.' 
 Go, gentlemen, and husband your time, and work, 
 and pray, and form habits of temperance and self- 
 denial half like John Wesley ; and, in your generation, 
 you will make your allotted part of Scotland a garden 
 of the Lord, as Wesley made so many parts of England. 
 But not without husbanding your time and denying 
 yourself like Wesley. ' No ! ' said a business man to 
 me the other day : ' no ! I cannot afford to sit in your 
 Presbytery, or to join any of your Committees ; you 
 ministers talk so much, and do so httle.' Go, gentlemen, 
 and make that imputation impossible in your manses, 
 and in your Committees, and in your Presbyteries, so 
 far as in you lies. 
 
 The record of Wesley's conference with his Methodist 
 preachers in Aberdeen raises an all-important question, 
 and reads us an all-important lesson. In the first place, 
 that record raises the not impertinent question as to 
 how Wesley himself would have held on in the same 
 congregation for a lifetime without monotony or weari- 
 ness or fainting. Now, gentlemen, not to discuss Wesley 
 
JOHN WESLEY 375 
 
 and his endless faith and love and power of perseverance 
 and power of endurance, that is what you will have to 
 face. That is to say, you will soon be called, and 
 ordained, and settled, and fixed, and, most likely for all 
 your days, in the same pulpit and pastoral charge. 
 How, then, are you to escape the dangers of that mono- 
 tony and weariness to your people and to yourselves, 
 which Wesley so much feared for his preachers, and took 
 such pains that they should not have to face ? 
 How are you to keep your pulpit, and your class, 
 and your prayer meeting fresh and full of power to 
 the end of a long lifetime ? Only in one way, gentle- 
 men ; and that is, by keeping yourselves fresh and full 
 of power. And that will only be attained and preserved 
 by you steadily working out your own personal salva- 
 tion ; and that with new freshness and new power 
 every day you live. If you really know, in your own 
 experience, what you profess to be praying and preaching 
 about ; if you really know in your own bitter experience 
 what sin really is, in its inwardness, in its persistence, 
 and in its unspeakable malignity ; and if, along with 
 that, you grow in the knowledge of all the intellectual 
 and spiritual mysteries of true sanctification, — that 
 manner of Hfe will be so inward with you, so deep, so 
 unsearchable, and so ever present with you, that every 
 new Sabbath your pulpit will be more fresh, more rich, 
 more pungent, and more powerful than it was last 
 Sabbath. The General Assembly will not need to 
 legislate concerning your ineflficiency, and your Presbytery 
 will not be scandahsed by your being what Luther calls 
 an ordained minister rotting within their bounds. All 
 such legislation, and all such administration, and all new- 
 fangled schemes of transfer and circulation are not at 
 all applicable to such a ministry as yours will be. They 
 
376 JOHN WESLEY 
 
 did not demand a change nor a circulation of ministers in 
 Anwoth, nor in Kidderminster, nor in Ettrick, nor in 
 Collace, nor in St. Peter's, Dundee, nor in Airlie, nor in 
 Blairgowrie, nor in Glenisla, nor in Cray, nor in Memus, 
 nor in Kirriemuir. And many of you will live to write 
 your names as honourably and as indelibly upon some as 
 yet unfamed spot in Scotland or elsewhere ; as honour- 
 ably and as lastingly as Rutherford has written his 
 name upon Anwoth, and Baxter upon Kidderminster, 
 and Boston upon Ettrick, and Bonar upon Collace, 
 and M'Cheyne upon St. Peter's, and White upon Airlie, 
 and Macdonald and Baxter upon Blairgowrie, and 
 Ferguson upon Alyth, and Simpson upon Glenisla, and 
 Robertson upon Cray, and Edgar upon Memus, and 
 Cormack upon Kirriemuir. And, to come to John 
 Wesley's own country and college. How did Thomas 
 Goodwin keep his University pulpit the freshest in the 
 whole of England, and that to eighty years of age, and 
 that in a land and in a day when the Puritan pulpit 
 made such unparalleled demands upon its occupants ; 
 such demands as no pulpit had ever made before or 
 has ever made since ? This is not the whole answer to 
 that question ; but this lies at the root of the whole 
 answer. It was Goodwin's practice, he confides to us, 
 to ' take a turn up and down his whole past life ' every 
 Sabbath morning, before he entered his pulpit. And 
 that constant habit of his, taken along with other kindred 
 habits of his, combined to make his pulpit the foremost, 
 the freshest, and the most powerful pulpit in all England 
 to the Puritan statesmen and the Puritan people, and 
 that to his extreme old age. Gentlemen, ' study down ' 
 your pulpit subjects, as it was said about Paul's best 
 expositor ; preach, and apply your preaching, first to 
 yourselves and then to your people, as Goodwin 
 
JOHN WESLEY 377 
 
 did, and as the men I have so honourably named did ; 
 and, hke them, you will be far more fresh, far more 
 powerful, far more commanding, far more interesting 
 and far more fruitful at fourscore than ever you will be 
 before that. So much so that neither you nor your 
 people will ever need, or will ever endure, either the 
 Methodist circulation or the efficiency legislation. 
 
 I shall not enter into Wesley's much too many con- 
 troversial writings further than to say, that none of 
 them all distresses me so much as that dispute which he 
 held with his former ' oracle,' as he called him, William 
 Law. It is deplorable to look back at it ; that two of 
 the most influential men, and best men, of that whole 
 century should have made themselves such a spectacle 
 of acrimony and recrimination. A large part, if not the 
 whole, of the truth of that most unhappy controversy 
 lay in this, that Law and Wesley, in their intellectual 
 life and in their religious experience, as well as in the 
 work that their Master had called them to do, were 
 perhaps as different as two able and good men could 
 well be. Wesley was fitted to be an awakening preacher, 
 while Law was never permitted to preach at all, but was 
 early set apart by Divine Providence to reflect, and to 
 read, and to write. The special work of Wesley's life was 
 to preach awakening sermons, and that to the more ignor- 
 ant and sunken classes of the English people. Whereas, 
 the special work of Law's life was to compel already 
 awakened and converted men, and especially among the 
 educated and intelligent classes, to a more serious and 
 consecrated life. And surely, if they could only both have 
 seen it, there was call enough and scope enough within the 
 lines of the spiritual life for two such signally gifted and 
 signally individual men as Law and Wesley were. We 
 
378 JOHN WESLEY 
 
 see now that William Law without John Wesley, and 
 John Wesley without William Law, would have left the 
 religious life and literature of that century both weak and 
 one-sided and unsafe. Could they both but have seen 
 it, both were indispensable — John Wesley to complete 
 William Law and William Law to complete John Wesley. 
 
 But Wesley's most unfortunate controversy was with 
 Whitefield and the other Calvinists of that day. Taught 
 as you have been within these walls, you know what 
 scriptural and doctrinal Calvinism really is. And when, 
 at any time, you wish to have all the questions connected 
 with what is called ' Calvinism ' powerfully and finally 
 cleared up, you have at hand the works of Dr. William 
 Cunningham, formerly of this College. And you will 
 find this whole question in a nut-shell in the four pages 
 under the head of ' Calvinism ' in Professor Wilham 
 Knight's Recollections of Dr. John Duncan, also formerly 
 of this College. One of Wesley's best biographers says 
 of the Journal that what had been originally a reUgious 
 time-table gradually broadens out into an autobiography. 
 So it does. But I for one, if I may say so without 
 offence, could well have spared some of the breadth of 
 the Journal for a little more depth. Why is it, gentle- 
 men, that no branch of the Church of Christ, since the 
 days of the Apostles till now, has been so rich in deep. 
 Scriptural, and spiritually experimental autobiographies 
 as just the so-called church of Calvin ? And why is it 
 that no church in the whole of Christendom has been 
 so rich in that best kind of all literature as just our 
 own Church of Scotland ? And it is well worthy of 
 consideration whether or no that fact had anything to 
 do with Wesley's want of success in Scotland. You will 
 consider that, and will judge for yourselves, as you 
 
JOHN WESLEY 379 
 
 work your way through Wesley's so bitterly anti-Calvin- 
 istic Journal. But, thank God, all that Methodist 
 bitterness has now passed wholly away. For I read, in 
 a great Methodist scholar of to-day these so welcome 
 words : ' The spirit of Calvinism that lives in the modern 
 Reformed Churches we can greatly admire. The deep 
 sense of the sinfulness of sin, the jorofound apprehension 
 of grace as utterly and unutterably undeserved, the 
 humility and the reverence that attend upon these 
 thoughts — all these are spiritual characteristics for which 
 we cannot be too thankful. There, indeed, lies at once 
 the source and the strength of all that is best in 
 Calvinism.' 
 
 As to Wesley's controversies about ' Perfection ' ; 
 when you wish to master that subject, besides Wesley's 
 sermons read Wesley's once oracle, William Law's 
 Christian Perfection, and Canon Mozley's criticism of 
 Wesley's Perfection, and John Owen's sixth and seventh 
 volumes : but, above all, read your own evil heart. 
 And, then, gentlemen, when you are driven of the Spirit 
 into any controversy whatsoever, refuse to enter into it, 
 unless He goes into that controversy with you. And 
 watch for His discharge to escape out of that controversy 
 as soon as you can. 
 
 The last and perhaps the best lesson that you will 
 learn from John Wesley's Journal is always and every- 
 where to preach your very best ; to preach every 
 Sabbath as if it were to be your last Sabbath ; to preach 
 as if you were never to see one of your hearers again till 
 you see them standing beside you before the Great 
 White Throne ; to preach when you are a candidate 
 so as to forget that you are a candidate, and so as to 
 make your hearers forget that they are sitting in judg- 
 ment upon your preaching. In short, to preach as John 
 
380 JOHN WESLEY 
 
 Wesley always preached, and as Richard Baxter always 
 preached ; that is to say, as ' a dying man to dying men.' 
 
 A long address and a rich one could be given on the 
 Hymnology of the Brothers Wesley. But I must con- 
 tent myself with merely naming a scholarly — and 
 everyway delightful — little book published the other 
 day and entitled The Hymns of Methodism in Thei^ 
 Literary Relations. It is a small book, but it is full of 
 suggestions for your sermons, and for your Bible Class 
 lessons, and for your prayer meetings. 
 
 And, now, gentlemen, I have done my best to point out 
 to you some of the more outstanding lessons of John 
 Wesley's Journal. But, to men like you, the whole 
 Journal is running over with lessons ; lessons about a 
 true, a deep, and a lasting conversion ; lessons about 
 true preaching, and the true motive in preaching ; lessons, 
 that I have not ventured to touch upon, concerning the 
 early laying of the foundation stone of an honourable 
 and a happy home ; lessons about ministerial reading 
 and writing ; lessons about debating and disputing ; 
 lessons about public and private prayer and praise ; 
 lessons about the scrupulous husbanding of every passing 
 moment of your allotted time ; and lessons as to how 
 you are to keep both yourselves and your preaching 
 fresh and fruitful to old age. In a word, you will do 
 well, at the beginning of your ministerial life, and, 
 indeed, all through it, to keep John Wesley's Journal 
 always lying open beside your study Bible. 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press 
 
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