LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 BX 5098 .W67 1894 
 Worley, George. 
 The Catholic revival of the 
 nineteenth century 
 
THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF THE 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 
 
 OF 
 
 The Nineteenth Century. 
 
 A BRIEF POPULAR ACCOUNT OF ITS ORIGIN, 
 HISTORY, LITERATURE, AND GENERAL 
 RESULTS. 
 
 Siy Xcctures 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE \VORLEY. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 BV 
 
 ' Diseases desperate grown 
 By desperate appliance are relieved, 
 Or not at all.' 
 
 Hamlet. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 
 1894. 
 
1 
 
 Digitized by 
 
 the Internet Archive 
 
 
 
 
 in 2015 
 
 
 
 https://archive.org/details/catholicrevivaloOOworl 
 
'Eo the 
 
 REV. C. P. GREENE, 
 
 Rector of Clapham, 
 UNDER WHOSE AUSPICES THESE LECTURES WERE GIVEN, 
 THE VOLUME IS INSCRIBED, 
 WITH THE author's KIND REGARDS. 
 
I 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction ------- ix 
 
 Preface - ------ xiii 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 A PRELIMINARY VIEW OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND - - I 
 
 LECTURE IL 
 
 PRECURSORS OF THE REVIVAL - - - - - 36 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 THE OXFORD MOVEMENT : ITS LEADERS AND SUPPORTERS - 57 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE OXFORD }~10V^}.IF.'ST— continued ■ • - - 76 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 THE LITERATURE OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL - - - 94 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 SOME FRUITS OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL - - - 122 
 
 I 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 T the request of the author of the following lectures 
 
 I have gladly consented to write a short introduction 
 to them. I have been greatly struck by the thoughtful 
 attention with which my friend of many years' standing has 
 followed the fortunes of the religious movement about 
 which he writes, amid the constant occupations of a com- 
 mercial life. He has evidently not only read the principal 
 books upon the Oxford Movement, but he has pondered 
 over them, and, after mastering them, has endeavoured to 
 utilize the information so acquired for the benefit of those 
 possessed of less knowledge and leisure than himself. The 
 lectures were delivered substantially as they now appear to 
 large gatherings of Sunday-school teachers. Mr. Worley 
 became acquainted with them through his own active 
 labours as a Sunday-school teacher, and in his endeavours 
 to promote lectures and other instrumentalities by which 
 those self-denying Church workers might be assisted to fulfil 
 more efficiently the important duty which they had under- 
 taken. The special value of these lectures appears to me 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 to lie in their viewing the Oxford Movement from a different 
 standpoint to that of any of the works on the subject which 
 have hitherto appeared. In the pamphlets upon the earlier 
 history of the Oxford tracts which were written by Mr. 
 Perceval and Mr. Palmer, in the ' Apologia ' of Dr. Newman, 
 in the history of the Oxford Movement by Dr. Church, 
 and in the autobiography of Mr. Isaac Williams, we 
 have a faithful record of the progress of events by men 
 who took an active part in the occurrences which they 
 narrate. In the ' Lives of Twelve Good Men,' by the late 
 Dean Burgon, and in Dr. Liddon's ' Life of Dr. Pusey ' we 
 have reliable detailed accounts of what occurred from 
 those who lived in daily intercourse with the persons whose 
 biographies they write, and who were themselves deeply 
 interested in, and thoroughly cognizant of, the events 
 which they describe \ whilst in portions of Dean Stanley's 
 ' Life of Dr. Arnold ' and in his own biography by Mr. 
 Prothero we have an account of the Oxford Move- 
 ment as it appeared to opponents. But in the writers 
 thus named friends and foes were alike members of the 
 same University, and therefore naturally regarded events 
 from an academic point of view, and under the influence of 
 impressions aroused by personally taking part in the many 
 contests, literary and otherwise, which brought their re- 
 spective opinions into collision. There are no such personal 
 relations with the people named in Mr. Worley's view of the 
 movement. 
 
INTRODUCTION xi 
 He probably never spoke to any of the writers with whose 
 opinions he sympathized. He watched the progress of events 
 from the outside, deeply interested in what was happening, 
 feeling that his own religious opinions were being formed on 
 principles which these writers advocated, but nevertheless 
 able to take that unimpassioned view of events which City 
 life naturally encourages. We have, therefore, in what he 
 has written a fair and faithful statement concerning the great 
 religious movement of our time from a lay point of view by 
 an earnest commercial man, who took a delight in reading 
 whatever was written on either side by influential persons 
 whose words were likely to carry weight. And in the views 
 of one such man we probably have a key to the opinions of 
 many others similarly circumstanced. In this consists the 
 special value of the following pages, which, it will be seen, 
 cover so much of the ground before the date of the Tract- 
 writers as is likely to interest those persons of a later genera- 
 tion who really care for the subject, but who have not 
 shared in the anxieties of the time of which they speak, and 
 who do not possess the opportunity or leisure necessary to 
 enable them to master the details of what happened during 
 the years with which they are concerned. To those so 
 circumstanced who wish to gain a correct idea of the more 
 important incidents connected with the Oxford movement, 
 I can confidently recommend the following lectures. 
 Whilst not committing myself to perfect agreement with 
 all the statements advanced, I can confidently say that, so 
 
xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 far as I have been able to study them, they may be relied 
 upon for the substantial accuracy and fairness with which 
 they are placed before the reader. 
 
 ROBERT GREGORY. 
 
 The Deanery, St. Paul's. 
 September, 1894. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 'HE following Lectures were delivered at Clapham 
 
 during last Lent to a number of teachers and others 
 interested in the subject. They are reproduced for the sake 
 of those who heard them and wished to see them in a per- 
 manent form, as well as for any others who may think them 
 useful in teaching or sufficiently interesting for their own 
 perusal. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say that, although the account 
 here given of the Catholic Revival is contained in that small 
 compass which the nature of the case required, it represents 
 a good deal of reading, as may be gathered from the re- 
 ferences and quotations which occur in these pages. 
 
 Rightly to understand the Revival, it has been necessary 
 to know something about the history and literature, eccle- 
 siastical and general, which preceded it, as well as the books 
 brought forth by the Tractarians, their critics and opponents, 
 during and after the Oxford Movement. ' The publications 
 
xiv PREFACE 
 
 of these men,' the Rev. T. Mozley observes, 'in whatever 
 rank or degree attached to the cause, whether movers, 
 original writers, translators, whether organized, or taking 
 their own lines, amount to an enormous mass of literature 
 sufificient to tax students in time to come.' 
 
 I had got through much of this reading in a random sort 
 of way long before I had any thoughts of applying it to a 
 special purpose, so that when the opportunity occurred I 
 had merely to systematize and arrange information pre- 
 viously obtained, and supplement it with such special 
 reading as I could get through on the spur of the moment. 
 In addition to reading, I have drawn on my memory for 
 certain facts, opinions, and practices which have come under 
 my observation from time to time, and which, as far as I am 
 aware, are found in no books. In both cases, however, I 
 have taken pains to verify what I have said, so that, on the 
 whole, the account here given is as close to the truth as I 
 could make it. Still, in sending a book of this or any other 
 kind to the publisher, one cannot help some misgivings 
 such as those expressed by M. Renan with regard to his 
 letters : ' Quand je relis ce que j'ai ferit, je m'aper^ois que 
 le morceau est tres faible, que j'y ai mis une foule de choses 
 dont je ne suis pas sur. Par d^sespoir, je ferme la lettre, 
 avec le sentiment de mettre a la poste quelque chose de 
 pitoyable.' However, my good friend, the Dean of St. Paul'."--, 
 
PREFACE XV 
 
 has been kind enough to take me under his wing in the 
 shape of an Introduction, of which, as an unknown writer, I 
 gratefully avail myself, as well as of his valuable suggestions 
 towards improving the text. 
 
 GEORGE WORLEY. 
 
 Michaelmas, 1894. 
 
THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF THE 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 A PRELIMINARY VIEW OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 r^HE removal of abuses in the Church was the main 
 
 object of the early Reformers and their adherents. 
 They were animated by a destructive and innovating 
 temper, which was at once a necessary consequence of 
 the abuses they sought to remove and the cause of their 
 success in removing them. I am not going to criticise 
 either the men or their motives now. Suffice it to say that 
 our Church owes them a great debt of gratitude for shaking 
 her free from the fetters cast around her in the Middle 
 Ages, for liberating her from the dominion of Rome, for 
 asserting the rights of individual reason and conscience, 
 for breaking down a great deal of superstition, and for 
 securing us a liberty in belief and practice which we might 
 never have enjoyed but for them. It must be obvious, 
 however, to every impartial student of Church history that 
 their policy was ^/instructive rather than c^^wstructive. Neces- 
 sarily so ; for when men are smarting under a tyrannous 
 system they naturally seek to destroy it before substituting 
 another whose existence is incompatible with it, and, in 
 fact, impossible while the tyranny endures. 
 
 I 
 
2 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 In this respect the Reformation is something like the 
 French Revolution. The excesses in both cases were 
 largely the result of previous misgovernment : the excesses 
 were to a great extent inevitable ; and the movements are 
 rather to be judged by their permanent results than by their 
 contemporaneous evils. Shakespeare says : 
 
 ' The evil that men do lives after them, 
 The good is oft interred with their bones.' 
 
 In great political and ecclesiastical movements the position 
 is often reversed. Evils frequently die with the movements 
 that give them birth; posterity enjoys their benefits. And 
 in England the disastrous consequences of the Reformation 
 were less obvious and less lasting than on the Continent. 
 Our insular position, and the natural conservatism of 
 English character, though not preventing the Reformation 
 from taking effect here, exercised upon it a restraining 
 influence which was not felt to the same extent in Germany. 
 Here two forces were simultaneously at work ; there was a 
 desire for reform, but there was also that reverence for 
 ancient landmarks which has always been displayed during 
 the great crises of English history. It is to this reforming, 
 though conservative, spirit, this co-existence and combina- 
 tion of apparently opposing, though not really inconsistent, 
 forces, that we owe the peculiar character of our Book of 
 Common Prayer. It obviously represents and provides for 
 two different schools of thought ; one in such parts as the 
 Thirty-Nine Articles (or the popular interpretation thereof), 
 and other productions of the Renaissance period ; the other 
 in those stately forms and creeds which have been retained 
 from earlier times. 
 
 During the great reign of Elizabeth the rival forces of 
 innovation and conservatism were frequently in collision, 
 and it became manifest to the leading spirits on either side 
 that there was a line beyond which they could not fellow 
 each other. It was during this reign that the Puritan sepa- 
 ration from the Church occurred, and the chief divines on 
 
PRELIMINAR Y VIE W OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 3 
 
 the Church side became alive to the necessity for supple- 
 menting the work of the earlier and more destructive 
 reformers by some definite scheme of theology, without 
 which the Church system, which was not based on a mere 
 argumetiium ad hominem, but required a special education 
 rightly to understand and appreciate, would fail to commend 
 itself to the general public. It was at this crisis that the 
 'judicious Hooker' arose, and wrote his books on the 
 Ecclesiastical Polity of the English Church, which have 
 lost none of their savour by the lapse of three centuries 
 (the first four books were published in 1594), and are still 
 appealed to as an authority on the doctrines and ritual of 
 the Church of England. 
 
 Hooker was followed by a series of writers representing 
 what has appropriately been called the Anglo-Catholic 
 school of theology— the school, that is, which, while recog- 
 nising the peculiarly Anglican nature of our Church, is yet 
 alive to the evils of separating her entirely from universal 
 Christendom, and especially from the doctrines and prac- 
 tices (where these can be clearly ascertained) of primitive 
 Christianity. Amongst the great divines of the Stuart 
 period were Dr. Lancelot Andrevves, Bishop of Winchester ; 
 Dr. Christopher Sutton ; Archbishop Laud ; Dr. Hall, 
 successively Bishop of Exeter and Norwich ; Dr. Ham- 
 mond, Chaplain to King Charles L ; Bishop Jeremy 
 Taylor ; Dr. Leighton, eventually Archbishop of Glasgow ; 
 Dr. Brevint, Dean of Lincoln ; Simon Patrick, Bishop of 
 Ely ; Dr. Addison, Dean of Lichfield ; Dr. Ken, Bishop 
 of Winchester ; Dr. Sparrow (like Hall), Bishop of Exeter 
 and Norwich ; Dr. Beveridge, Bishop of St. Asaph ; and, 
 somewhat later, the saintly Bishop Wilson, of Sodor and 
 Man. 
 
 Lord Macaulay, in his drastic style, says that Laud never 
 wrote anything above the capacity of an old woman. This 
 remark, by the way, should be placed side by side with 
 Carlyle's hasty expression that Keble had no more brains 
 
4 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 than an ordinary rabbit. I cannot suppose that either of 
 these critics seriously meant what he said, or that either 
 had read much of the man he was speaking about. 
 Anyhow, it is now generally admitted that the chain of 
 theologians I have mentioned (Laud included) have left 
 in their works a precious treasure to the Church of 
 England — a body of theology which will hold its own with 
 the writings of any other school or period. 
 
 These writers were succeeded, and their doctrines carried 
 on, by the Nonjurors, who suffered deprivation under 
 William and Mary, from a conscientious objection to 
 transfer their oath of allegiance from James II. to the new 
 rulers. In them the Church of England lost some of her 
 brightest ornaments, from whose loss she suffered, I may 
 say, till the date of the religious revival we are going to 
 study. 
 
 The Caroline divines and Nonjurors were replaced by 
 theologians of a different type, but it would be wrong to 
 suppose that their opinions were entirely extinguished 
 within the Church. Here and there were isolated Church- 
 men who still held their unfashionable doctrines, and based 
 their teaching and preaching on their writings. The latter 
 had special weight with clergymen of a literary turn; for 
 it is an indisputable fact that the opposite school, though 
 not destitute of great names, had done nothing, as a 
 whole, which could rank as permanent ecclesiastical litera- 
 ture. 
 
 The incomparable sermons of Jeremy Taylor, Barrow, 
 and South furnished nutriment to their successors, who, 
 though not perhaps able to produce such stuff of their 
 own, were quite able to appreciate what these men had left 
 behind them, and were quietly in sympathy with their 
 doctrines. Still, on the whole, the bulk of English clergy- 
 men, from the accession of William and Mary down to the 
 opening of the present century, necessarily held opinions 
 which were certainly not Catholic, nor, indeed, spiritual. 
 
PRELIMINAR Y VIE W OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 5 
 
 until, under the influence of Wiiitefield and Wesley at the end 
 of the last century, the school called 'Evangelical ' arose.* 
 
 For this state of things there were other than religious 
 causes. The second branch of the Stuart family were ot 
 somewhat different churchmanship from their predecessors, 
 and most members of the House of Brunswick have been out 
 of sympathy with the Church of England. I do not mean 
 that they have been hostile to it ; but they had been led to 
 identify it with the political party which was scarcely 
 friendly, certainly not actively friendly, to themselves, and 
 the political bias was assisted by the theology which they 
 
 * In the Rev. T. Mozley's ' Reminiscences of Oriel,' there is a sug- 
 gestive, though perhaps somewhat exaggerated, contrast between the 
 High Church and the Evangelical clergyman. He says : 
 
 ' It was the High Churchman who was pastor. The two things went 
 together naturally, for the High Churchman assumed all in his parish 
 to be his flock, all to be Christians — all on the road to heaven, though 
 requiring much help, guidance, and stimulus. Of course he had to 
 work quietly. There was no one to report or publish his talk. His 
 best things were said to one at a time. A hard day's work would not 
 be known even in the next parish. Talking daily with poor country 
 people, he became more and more like them — for we all grow like those 
 we are most with. His sympathies preyed on his purse as well as his 
 strength, and after a long spell of this work even an able man would 
 become fit for it and for nothing more. 
 
 ' The part of the Evangelical preacher was the very opposite of all 
 this. The great mass of the people committed to his care he assumed 
 to be utterly bad or hopelessly good — that is, hopelessly trusting to 
 good works ; or perhaps waiting for the day and hour when the divine 
 call was to reach them. . . . He could thus reserve his attention for 
 a few, and would naturally consult his own tastes and preferences in the 
 selection. Relieved thus from the dull reiteration of house to house 
 work, and from close parochial duty generally, he became mobilized. 
 He preached and heard preaching ; he spoke from platforms and heard 
 speeches ; he came across missionaries, philanthropists, and the flying 
 staff of societies. He saw something of the higher, richer, and more 
 educated classes. . . . These clergymen were known, while the others 
 were unknown. Evangelical preachers were announced and paraded 
 . . . they sought the most capacious and best situated churches, and 
 long before the Oxford Movement rich partisans were fast buying up 
 the most important pulpits for them.' 
 
6 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NLNETEENTLI CENTURY 
 
 brought with them from Germany. Of the Church of 
 England as a branch of the CathoHc Church they had little 
 or no conception. Various other forces were at work to 
 diminish the influence of the Anglo-Catholics. Amongst 
 them, I think we must reckon the wars in which England 
 was engaged with France during the latter part of the last, 
 and the early part of this, century. The absurd ideas of the 
 frog-eating Frenchman were extended to the Church to 
 which he was supposed to belong, and whatever comparisons 
 were set up between one and the other people and their 
 respective religions were naturally unfavourable to the 
 foreigner. Having been blessed with such victories as 
 Trafalgar and Waterloo — although there were many who, 
 like Napoleon, held that the Almighty was always on the 
 ide of the strongest armies — there was a notion floating in 
 .he public mind on this side of the Channel that we were 
 specially favoured by Providence as the custodians of the 
 Gospel ; and that particular form or portion of it which 
 happened to be popular at the time was, not unnaturally, 
 regarded as the right religion. And, further, England was 
 so elated at her victories, and held such prestige throughout 
 Europe, that by a very easy mental process the credit of her 
 transactions was assumed as the reward of her national high 
 qualities. And besides, so much interest centred in the 
 secular considerations consequent on a victorious campaign, 
 that religious considerations were subordinated or excluded. 
 With her success England became extremely worldly. All 
 this was, of course, intensified by the active co-operation 
 with Germany, where Protestantism prevailed. 
 
 The Georgian era has been called the siesta of the 
 English Church. It was a period of indifference and a|>athy 
 as far as religion is concerned ; but now and again the 
 darkness was relieved by an electric flash, as it were, from 
 the skies. In 1726 William Law (a Nonjuror) published his 
 ' Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life,' a book to which 
 Dr. Johnson tells us he owes his first religious impressions. 
 
PR EL IMINA R Y VIE W OF THE CHUR CH OF ENGLA ND 7 
 
 Somewhat later we have the rising of that great star on the 
 horizon, John Wesley. It is worth noticing that his first 
 serious thoughts were also attributed to Law's work, together 
 with Bishop Taylor's immortal ' Holy Living.' Christianity 
 in this country owes very much to the revival effected by 
 the Wesleys, Whitefield, and other like-minded preachers. 
 Their appeals, however, were rather directed to the emotions 
 than to the intellect. They attempted to convert the in- 
 dividual soul — a very necessary work, but obviously ele- 
 mentary. The building up of the individual in the faith, as 
 well as the holding together of numbers of people, requires 
 this elementary work to be supplemented by a system, by 
 regular teaching and regular practices, such as the Church 
 provides, but which were very much in abeyance in those 
 days, and whose want the revivalists themselves did not live 
 long enough to realize. We thus see that three forces were 
 in operation to the detriment of the Church of England, viz. : 
 
 (1) The Erastianism of the dominant party among the 
 clergy ; 
 
 (2) The engrossing nature of political and national 
 subjects, which excluded ecclesiastical matters from the 
 public mind, or at least obscured them ; and 
 
 (3) The predominance of emotional over dogmatic and 
 intellectual teaching. 
 
 I do not deny that each of these suggests interests which 
 have a legitimate place among the objects of human thought 
 and attention ; but as far as the Church of England is 
 concerned, their united weight was too heavy for her healthy 
 life and movement. Men lost the idea of the Church as an 
 independent organized body, free to exercise its functions 
 apart from the State, and as a Divinely-appointed society for 
 the custody of the truth, and responsible for the religious 
 education of the country. 
 
 The legislation of the early part of this century, as far as 
 it affected the Church, was only the practical application of 
 the public idea concerning it, and was of course damaging, 
 
8 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 or at least disturbing, e.g., the removal of Nonconformist 
 and Romanist disabilities. These, as we know, have since 
 been followed, as a necessary consequence, by the removal 
 of Jewish and atheist disabilities ; but that the leaders of the 
 Church were not quite destitute of their old independence 
 was strikingly illustrated at the time of the Reform Bill, 
 when the bishops exercised their legislative functions by 
 voting against it. The result was a threat from it? ex- 
 asperated promoters, couched in the historical words direct- 
 ing them to ' set their houses in order.' And in 1834 Lord 
 Ripon actually introduced a Bill (though it was rejected by 
 125 votes against 28) to suspend the legislative and judicial 
 functions of the Lords spiritual. 
 
 We can easily understand the growth of a belief among 
 Churchmen, who still retained any of the older notions about 
 the Church's independence, that the then rulers of the 
 country were bent on its destruction. The suppression of 
 ten Irish bishoprics, in defiance of Church opinion, showed 
 how ready the Government was to take liberties with the 
 time-honoured connection between the Church and realm, 
 which was now used as a lever to invade the rights and to 
 tamper with the constitution of the former. The resisting 
 power of the Church was rendered almost nugatory by the 
 suspension of her convocations. Under circumstances which 
 we need not go into now, these fell into abeyance in 17 17, 
 and were indefinitely prorogued till the middle of the present 
 century.* 
 
 As practically interwoven with the State, the Church, at 
 best, possesses little independent action. Its articles, 
 liturgy, organization as to benefices, etc., are all affected by 
 civil statutes, while its discipline falls within the scope of 
 the ecclesiastical courts, a class of tribunals apart from the 
 ministering clergy. The Church, even under the most 
 favourable circumstances, has a very limited jurisdiction, 
 
 *.The Provinces of Canterbury and York were respectively allowed 
 a semble in 1852 and 1806. 
 
PRELIM IN A R Y VIE W OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND g 
 
 and in the absence of convocation her weakness was of 
 course intensified. She had no means of consultation or 
 expressing her opinion as a body, and the prevailing senti- 
 ment on religious matters had nothing to correct it except 
 the isolated utterances of individual Churchmen, amongst 
 whom there was no sort of combination or mutual under- 
 standing that could be at all effective. It was felt very 
 generally in the secular world that it would be safer for the 
 public to be under the authority of Parliament than subject 
 to a body of ecclesiastics, who were likely to run into 
 excesses, and to put forth claims adverse to the ruling 
 political and religious opinions of the day, and there was 
 consequently no disposition in the State to give back to the 
 Church any of the powers which she was thought to have 
 forfeited.* 
 
 This brings us very roughly to the condition of the 
 Church in 1833, when John Keble preached his celebrated 
 sermon on ' National Apostasy,' which has always been 
 regarded as sounding the keynote of the revival. The title 
 seems a strong one, but it is scarcely too much for the 
 condition of things to which it refers. 
 
 I have hitherto spoken of general principles rather than 
 details ; but perhaps I had better go into the latter a little, 
 as illustrating the state of the Church better than any mere 
 generalities on the subject. When I was a little boy two 
 pictures used to figure in the shop-windows. These bore 
 the names of ' Brimstone ' and ' Treacle.' The first repre- 
 sented the enthusiastic and eloquent young Mr. Spurgeon, 
 full of subjects suggested by the well-known yellow mineral, 
 and the place where bad people were supposed to go. 
 ' Treacle ' represented the typical Evangelical preacher of 
 the day, with his hair carefully oiled and combed, with 
 black kid gloves upon his hands, which rested delicately 
 upon the enormous cushion then adorning the pulpit. His 
 
 * See Dr. Littledale's article on ' Convocation ' in ' Chambers's 
 Encyclopaedia. ' 
 
10 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 dress was the collegiate black gown, over which was thrown 
 a black stole of enormous width, and from his collar de- 
 pended two little white oblong flaps, technically known as 
 *the Commandments,' from a fancied resemblance to the 
 two tables of the law. The preachers represented by these 
 types practically divided the religious world between them. 
 With the celebrated Nonconformist we have, of course, 
 nothing to do except as illustrating a reaction against the 
 insipid platitudes of the Evangelical pulpit. The latter was 
 still under the influence of such divines as James Hervey, 
 author of ' Theron and Aspasio ' and ' Meditations among 
 the Tombs.'* He died in 1758, but his works enjoyed an 
 amazing popularity till well into this century, and his style 
 was much admired till Coleridge exposed its absurdities, 
 and helped to diminish the writer's influence. Another 
 rather later writer of the same school was the celebrated 
 Legh Richmond, author of ' The Young Cottager ' and ' The 
 Dairyman's Daughter,' who died in 1827. 
 
 Both these writers are now quite neglected. If anyone 
 will take the trouble to read a few pages of their works he 
 will notice the following characteristics : There is a great 
 deal of what would now be regarded as false sentiment, 
 more moralizing than would now be used, very little 
 historical information, except such as is purely scriptural, 
 still less of anything that can be called dogmatic teaching, 
 and there is absolutely nothing requiring an intellectual 
 
 * Hervey's ' Meditations ' suggests epitaphs and other monumental 
 inscriptions which throw an interesting light on the religious taste of 
 the eighteenth, and early nineteenth, century. There is a curious cor- 
 respondence between the architectural and literary styles. The visitor 
 to Westminster Abbey cannot fail to be struck by the monstrous design 
 of many of the tombs and the enormous length and flattering language 
 of many of the inscriptions, which contract so unfavourably with the 
 simple commemorations of earlier times, say, of the Norman abbots in 
 the Cloisters. The same want of taste is shown in tombstones in every 
 churchyard. There is rather a con-picuous instance at Norwood 
 Cemetery, in the tomb of Sir John Gilbart, who lies under several tons 
 of marble completely covered with an essay on Banking. 
 
PRELIMINARY VIEW OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND ii 
 
 effort to understand. Great stress is laid on faith, and, 
 although good works are not taught for their own sake, a 
 great deal of importance is given to moral goodness. The 
 effect of the whole is soothing rather than stimulating ; they 
 are not controversial, except now and then, when they point 
 out the errors of Rome and the advantages of Protestantism. 
 The conversion of the individual is a sine qua no7i, and so 
 is the duty of prayer ; but no stress is laid on Church 
 principles or the sacramental system. I have quoted these 
 two writers because it was on such models that the evan- 
 gelical preacher based his style. Their characteristic 
 qualities, whether beauties or blemishes, were those of the 
 school. With every disposition to acknowledge their good 
 influence, we must admit that they were deficient in 
 precisely those points which were most wanted in the lax 
 Churchmanship of their day. And no one will suppose 
 that the average preacher was up to the standard of his 
 best models. In the first quarter of this century the sermon 
 had sunk very generally to the level of a mild and easy 
 sedative, which quieted men's consciences with a sense of 
 duty performed in having listened to it, without requiring 
 more mental effort than was sufficient to produce a 
 pleasurable sensation in the listener. The enunciation of 
 duties generally unobserved, and feelings which could not 
 be realized, or which were of no practical value, fell Sunday 
 after Sunday with a soothing monotony on the ears of those 
 who listened or fell asleep. There was no practical influence 
 on the people ; the sermons were not clever enough for the 
 intellectual, and not stirring enough for the uneducated. 
 The searching philosophy and poetical illustration of the 
 Stuart divines had long passed away ; the intense earnest- 
 ness and vigour of the Methodists had followed, and the 
 pulpit had lost its power. 
 
 And yet the sermon still occupied a very important place 
 in the Sunday arrangements. The fact is evidenced by the 
 form of pulpit (now obsolete) called a three-decker. It 
 
1 2 CA THOLIC RE VI VA L OF NINE TEE NTH CENTUR Y 
 
 consisted of three stages : the first for the clerk, the second 
 for the reader of the prayers and lessons, the third and 
 highest for the preacher. This huge erection, which was 
 sufficiently high to command the galleries, used to stand at 
 the east end of the nave right in front of the altar, the view 
 of which it completely obscured. The altar itself was a 
 diminutive table as a rule, with the alms-dish standing up 
 on edge at the back in the place now usually occupied by 
 a cross, su]:)ported on each side by a bulky cushion, on 
 which the officiating clergy were wont to rest their elbows 
 or bury their heads while kneeling at their respective ends. 
 
 The pulpit and the altar were typical of the relative 
 positions of preaching and the Sacraments in the popular 
 judgment of the day. We all know that it is possible to 
 make too much of any single department in the Church 
 system. In the Middle Ages too much importance was 
 attached to sacerdotalism and the sacramental side of Church 
 life. Some of us have perhaps been in danger of repeating 
 the error. Certainly we are in danger of neglecting the 
 educational value of preaching. But in the first quarter of 
 this century the pulpit was glorified, and the ' balance of 
 power ' was destroyed. 
 
 In those days a wretched system of free seats was in 
 full vigour. At the back of the galleries, or in some other 
 obscure corner, these frightful free seats used to stand, 
 with their name written on them in bold characters, as if to 
 mark the humble condition of their occupants. Sometimes, 
 indeed, they were placed in a more conspicuous position — 
 e.g., down the middle of the nave. This arrangement was 
 better for seeing and hearing ; but the advantages were very 
 doubtful, counterbalanced as they were by exposure to a 
 cross-fire from the well-dressed congregation on either side. 
 
 But wherever the free seats were, they were always un- 
 comfortable — instruments of torture, in which the victim 
 could neither sit nor kneel easily ; in which, as a rule, he 
 could see little and hear less. In many respects they 
 
PRELIMINARY VIEW OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 13 
 
 remind one of the cheap seats at a theatre, except that there 
 was less of a scramble to get into them, for they were seldom 
 overcrowded. The Church of England was felt to be the 
 Church of the respectable, well-dressed, and well-to-do 
 classes. The poor were made to feel very emphatically that 
 even in Church they were in the presence of their superiors; 
 and, as if to mark as distinctly as possible the distance 
 between those in the free seats and those who rented their 
 sittings, the pevvs were raised to a height which completely 
 concealed their occupants from the vulgar eye, except while 
 standing, when their heads were just visible above the ledge. 
 The doors, moreover, were often provided with locks and 
 keys. Of course, it was right that the pews should be 
 guarded safely, for they were paid for, and were often fitted 
 up at the holders' expense with carpeting, cushions, and 
 hassocks, besides small cupboards for the service books, 
 sometimes even with sofas, tables, and fireplaces. Dean 
 Swift's verses may occur to some of us as a humorous 
 description of the pews of his time : 
 
 'A bedstead of the antique mode. 
 
 Compact of timber many a load ; 
 
 Such as our grandsires wont to use, 
 
 Was metamorphosed into pews ; 
 
 Which still their ancient nature keep 
 
 By lodging those disposed to sleep.' 
 
 Cases have been known — though possibly before the 
 time we are speaking of— where the tedium of a long service, 
 or the appetite engendered by it, has been relieved by the 
 entrance of a livery servant, between prayers and sermon, 
 with sherry and light refreshments.* 
 
 • It appears that pews had undergone some reduction since the time 
 of Bishop Corbet of Norw-ich, as his language concerning them would 
 scarcely be applicable in the nineteenth century. He died in 1635. 
 His remarks are as follows : 
 
 ' .Stately pews are now become tabernacles, with rings and curtains to 
 them. There wants nothing but beds to hear the Word of God on. 
 We have casements, locks, keys, and cushions — I had almost said 
 
14 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 When a gentleman entered his seat it used to be the 
 correct thing for him to go through the process known as 
 ' smelling his hat,' which consisted of holding that article of 
 costume gracefully in the right hand, and looking into it for 
 a minute or so (if such an expression may be used when 
 the eyes were closed) while saying his preparatory prayer. I 
 do not know whether this practice was dependent on the 
 hat being quite new, but I never saw a shabby hat used for 
 the purpose. Anyhow, it was not the custom to kneel for 
 prayer, either before or during service. In the latter case 
 an indolent compromise was adopted, the seat being re- 
 tained, while the head was plunged forward on to the book- 
 rest. 
 
 In extenuation of this apparent laziness and irreverence, 
 justice compels me to add that even the paid seals were 
 generally so constructed as to make kneeling a positive 
 torture. As all this may be set down to my imagination, I 
 may as well say that kneeling used to be all but impossible 
 at the Temple Church, the elevated foot-stools only per- 
 mitting a lounging posture. This was considerably after the 
 beautiful restoration of that church ; but whether it is true 
 now I do not know, as it is some years since I attended 
 service there. 
 
 I might have mentioned any number of ordinary churches 
 where the structural arrangements prohibited bodily worship, 
 though there was every provision otherwise for the comfort 
 of those who could afford the luxury of a pew. It is this 
 condition of things which Newman must have had in mind 
 when preaching his touching sermon on 'Worship a Pre- 
 paration for Christ's Coming.' 
 
 The following passage goes direct to the point : 
 
 bolsters and pillows — and for these we love the Church ! I will 
 not guess what is done in them, who sits, stands, or lies asleep at 
 prayers, communion, etc., but this I dare say, they are either to hide 
 disorder or proclaim pride.' — See the Rev. J. E. Vaux on 'Church 
 Folk-lore.' 
 
PRELIMINARY VIEW OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 15 
 
 ' The season is chill and dark, and the breath of the 
 morning is damj), and worshippers are few ; but all this 
 befits those who are by profession penitents and mourners, 
 watchers and pilgrims. 
 
 ' More dear to them that loneliness, more cheerful that 
 severity, and more bright that gloom, than all those aids 
 and appliances of luxury by which men nowadays attempt 
 to make prayer less disagreeable to them. True faith does 
 not covet comforts ; it only complains when it is forbidden 
 to kneel, when it reclines upon cushions, is protected by 
 curtains, and encompassed by warmth. Its only hardship is 
 to be hindered or to be ridiculed, when it would place itself 
 as a sinner before its judge. They who realize that awful 
 day when they shall see Him face to face, whose eyes are as 
 a flame of fire, will as little bargain to pray pleasantly now 
 as they will think of doing so then.'* 
 
 It was in October, 1840, that Macaulay's celebrated 
 criticism on Von Ranke's ' History of the Popes ' came out 
 in the Edinburgh Review. We must make allowances for 
 his rhetorical style ; but there is a vast deal of truth in that 
 passage in which he dilates on the respectability of the 
 Established Church, as distinguishing it from Rome on the 
 one hand, and from the sectaries on the other, and as 
 largely accounting for its lost influence with the masses. 
 After describing (rather flippantly) the conversion of a rough, 
 uneducated man by a powerful sermon, or some such 
 agency, Macaulay says : 
 
 ' For a man thus minded, there is within the pale of the 
 Establishment no place. He has been at no college, he 
 cannot construe a Greek author or write a Latin theme, and 
 he is told that, if he remains in the communion of the 
 Church, he must do so as a hearer, and that, if he is 
 resolved to be a teacher, he must begin by being a 
 schismatic. His choice is soon made. He harangues on 
 Tower Hill or in Smithfield. A congregation is formed ; a 
 ' ' Parochial and Plain Sermons,' vol. v. 
 
l6 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 license is obtained ; a plain brick building, with a desk and 
 benches, is run up, and named Ebenezer or Bethel. In a 
 few weeks the Church has lost for ever a hundred families, 
 not one of which entertained the least scruple about her 
 articles, her liturgy, her government, or her ceremonies. 
 Far different is the policy of the Church of Rome,' etc. 
 
 There was little provision in the Church of England for 
 the poor and uneducated. For their children there was 
 even less : the services seemed as if designed to repel rather 
 than to attract them. Children's services, bright, cheerful, 
 musical, were not yet ; the children's sermon was not in- 
 vented. Perched up in dangerous galleries, listening to 
 tedious sermons, their condition was truly pitiable. And 
 their minds were kept on the rack by the haunting presence 
 of that awful functionary in gold-banded hat and uniform, 
 armed with a far-reaching malacca cane — that ecclesiastical 
 policeman known as the beadle. In those hot and crowded 
 galleries the sun used to burn them by day and the gas by 
 night. By the way, the gas was always under globes of 
 ground-glass in those days, the effect of which on youthful 
 eyes was wholly to induce slumber. If any of my hearers 
 are troubled with insomnia, let me recommend them to fix 
 their eyes on a lamp-globe while a dull sermon is being read 
 to them. The effect is as soothing as any lullaby sung to 
 restless infant. 
 
 I do not care to be autobiographical, but it may be 
 interesting to mention the churches I attended in child- 
 hood. They were chiefly St. Peter's, ^\'alworth, St. Mark's, 
 Kennington, and St. Mary's, Newington, all important 
 parish churches, all churches of one type, in which the 
 features I have mentioned were well illustrated. Each had 
 its beadle in uniform, its three-decker pulpit, its high pews, 
 free seats, and diminutive communion-table with the usual 
 appendages. And the services were of one type also. The 
 Psalms were usually said in alternate verses by the minister 
 and people, the latter led by a clerk whose education had 
 
PRELIMINARY VIEW OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 17 
 
 been neglected, to whom the hard words were a sad 
 stumbling-block. The clerks, by the way, were often a 
 difficulty to the clergy with whom they officiated, and I 
 am reminded of a story told by a curate who kindly pro- 
 posed to educate his clerk in the matter of pronunciation. 
 It is scarcely necessary to say that the offer was declined 
 with the suggestive remark : ' Why, sir, if I was to pro- 
 nounce my words like you do, there would be no difference 
 between us 1' 
 
 I do not think there could be a better key to the general 
 position than the hymn-books then in vogue. Of course, 
 a free use was made of that collection by Tate and Brady 
 characterized by Bishop Wilberforce as a Dry Psalter, and 
 the hymns themselves, with a few noble exceptions, were 
 scarcely so good as the metrical version of the Psalms. 
 They were almost entirely of an Old Testament type ; and 
 while there were a great many allusions to the Omnipotent 
 Creator, the spacious firmament, to Zion and Canaan, and 
 so on, the person and character of Jesus Christ, to say 
 nothing of the Christian Church and her functions, were 
 sadly neglected. I must admit that some of the excep- 
 tional hymns to which I have referred are very beautiful, 
 and their merit has led to their preservation in modern 
 collections. But in nearly all hymns, whether good or bad, 
 the subjective character prevailed ; that is, their drift and 
 purpose was to give expression to the spiritual state of the 
 believer,' rather than to fix his devotion on an external 
 object of worship. 
 
 Most of these things, or of their most objectionable 
 features, have passed away. So great and so general has 
 been the change, that it would surprise us exceedingly if 
 we were to come upon a church now of the type I have 
 described, as we may occasionally in some out-of-the-way 
 village in Ireland, or even in rural England, too remote or 
 too isolated to be affected by the march of time. But less 
 than fifty years ago the description I have given would be 
 
[8 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 applicable to every church in town and country except those 
 marked places where the dangerous principles of the Oxford 
 Revivalists had found an entrance. Even there the outward 
 signs of the most advanced teaching were below the ritual 
 average of the present day. 
 
 One is sorry to add that the condition of the cathedrals 
 was scarcely more encouraging than that of ordinary parish 
 churches. I can remember going to St. Paul's in Dean 
 Milman's time, to the Sunday afternoon service. The nave 
 and space under the dome were unused, except on such 
 grand occasions as the annual gathering of the charity 
 children, when country visitors were, of course, prepared 
 to forego the quiet ambulatory they usually afforded. The 
 ordinary daily and Sunday services were carried on in the 
 choir, then shut in by enormous iron grills, which practically 
 made a separate chapel of it. Scholar and theologian 
 though the Dean undoubtedly was, good Churchman 
 though he was in a literary sense, the cathedral never 
 rose in his time much beyond the level of an interesting 
 historical monument. Things were pretty much the same 
 at Westminster Abbey, and, in fact, at most cathedrals and 
 collegiate churches throughout the country. Their con- 
 dition, of course, varied with the status of their respective 
 governing bodies. Many of the leading clergy had high 
 ideals individually ; but the ecclesiastical Zeitgeist sat as a 
 blight on the land, and it was hard to rise above the pre- 
 vailing tone. The architectural ' repairs and beautifyings ' 
 of the time strike us with amazement — the outward and 
 visible signs of the absent grace. It would fill a large 
 volume to describe the structural incongruities and mutila- 
 tions which our cathedrals and other fine churches under- 
 went during the religious siesta of the last and present 
 century, not at all owing to narrowness of funds or un- 
 willingness to spend them, but simply to the prevailing 
 ignorance of ecclesiastical art. I can only just refer to the 
 subject here. It must in justice be added that the sudden 
 
PRELIMINAR V VIE W OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 19 
 
 revival of Gothic art consequent on, or contemporaneous 
 with, the spread of the Oxford opinions was attended with 
 a reaction against all forms of art hut Gothic, and this 
 reaction resulted in many architectural mistakes as absurd 
 as those it displaced. But I must not dwell on a sub- 
 ject which will fall into its proper place in a subsequent 
 lecture. 
 
 To go back for a moment to the cathedral service, it was 
 notorious that the lay-clerks by whom it vs-as rendered — 
 excellent fellows in their way — were chosen almost entirely 
 on their musical qualifications ; and provided a man had 
 a captivating voice, especially that known as a 'cathedral 
 bass ' or a ' real alto ' (as distinguished from falsetto), it 
 mattered little what language he used, or what company 
 he kept, much less whether he ever said his prayers or 
 received the Holy Communion. The self-conceit of such 
 choirmen as were chosen solely for their voices was 
 notorious. The stereotyped phrase, ' Let us sing to the 
 praise and glory of God,' which preceded the announce- 
 ment of the hymn was too frequently a falsehood, the 
 music evidently being to the praise and glory of the singers. 
 If the Minor Canon happened to be musical, the choir 
 would just tolerate him; if not, he was despised or ignored. 
 There is a story of a choirman who even claimed pre- 
 cedence of the clergy on the authority of the Jewish ritual. 
 When asked for chapter and verse, he would quote 
 Psa. Ixviii. 25, his reading of which was, 'The singers go 
 before, the fuinisiers follow after,' etc. 
 
 It was amusing, in spite of its irreverence, to see the 
 choir coming into service sometimes, lounging up the nave 
 in a straggling procession, the hinder ones putting on steam 
 to catch up to those in front, adjusting their surplices as 
 they went, hideous garbs flung over trousers of various 
 patterns and colours unconcealed by cassocks. The chief 
 features in the services were, of course, the anthem and the 
 arrangement of the Canticles, technically known as zsennce 
 
20 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 delicious as musical performances, but utterly impossible to 
 be joined in by the congregation. 
 
 Snuff and acid-drops are harmless things enough in their 
 way, but it was rather objectionable to see the choir in- 
 dulging in them openly during the sermon and lessons, with 
 amiable courtesy passing them on to others who were un- 
 provided with those delicacies. And it was still more 
 objectionable to see the lounging and irreverent altitudes 
 assumed during some of the most solemn parts of the 
 service, although one must do cathedral choirs the justice 
 to say that they knelt as a rule, according to the rubrical 
 directions, while the congregations sat or bent forward in 
 the way previously described. The sermon, of course, 
 afforded the best opportunity for an easy lounge ; and if it 
 was more tedious than usual, there was a temptation to 
 transmit messages of a humorous nature, or to make 
 'facetious marginal notes in the music-books. I have seen 
 such altered titles of hymn-tunes as ' No. 4, Miles Lane,' 
 and ' I'm nearer my God than Joe Robinson.' 
 
 These were signs of the general laxity. In the case of 
 the professor of religion, there was the inevitable result of 
 familiarity with sacred things when not restrained by a 
 religious spirit. This, we know, is not peculiar to anytime; 
 but when everybody is lax the professional chorister or 
 clergyman will be tempted to go beyond other people, 
 partly in consequence of the monotonous repetition of 
 tedious duties, partly out of a dread of hypocrisy. In the 
 latter case he will often assume an outward irreverence 
 against his natural inclination. 
 
 Perhaps, however, there was less excuse on this ground 
 than we are generously inclined to allow, for it seems that 
 the cathedral authorities were not generally very rigid about 
 the attendance of their choristers. The boys were, of 
 course, bound to attend, and where they lived under a 
 common roof in the neighbourhood of the Cathedral there 
 was no difficulty in the matter. The men, however, with 
 
PRELIMINAR V VIEW OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 21 
 
 or without the system of deputizing, seem to have had a 
 pretty easy time of it. Even as recently as the time when 
 the present Dean of St. Paul's first assumed office at the 
 Cathedral we find him calling the choir together after 
 service, and publicly remonstrating with certain members 
 for irregular attendance. They had been in the habit of 
 coming and going pretty much as they pleased. And I was 
 told that when Dr. Bridge resumed the weekly choir-practice 
 at the Abbey, which had fallen into abeyance during the 
 latter part of Dr. Turk's time, there was a deal of grumbling 
 among the lay-clerks at the hardship. 
 
 But times have changed. Most of these things have 
 passed away, and with them possibly much that had better 
 have been retained. 
 
 It was to an inherent spirit of religion, though concealed 
 under such appearances as I have described, it was to a 
 religious soul, so to speak, that such revivals as those of 
 Wesley and Whitefield were able to appeal and owed their 
 success. It was to this, too, that the Oxford Movement 
 appealed. 
 
 English people, though very just and very generous, when 
 once convinced of the genuineness of the cause which 
 appeals to those qualities, are also very conservative by 
 nature. Though the traditions, the inherited religion, of 
 the opening years of this century were not the most ancient, 
 they were nevertheless sufficiently venerable to make it 
 extremely difficult to displace them. In the popular mind 
 the Church of England dated no further back than 
 Henry VIII. Luther, Cranmer, Ridley, and Hooper were 
 names revered as saints or demi gods ; and in their natural 
 devotion to the Reformation and its martyrs people forgot 
 that their Church had a far higher antiquity, a nobler 
 genealogy, and a more Catholic theology than the Reforma- 
 tion could show. 
 
 When, therefore, the Tractarians recalled attention to 
 older doctrines, it is not at all wonderful that the general 
 
22 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 public were surprised and alarmed. The prevailing 
 ignorance, and the absence of any systematic teaching to 
 the contrary, were quite sufificient to account for the popular 
 misconception of the aims and objects of those writers.* 
 
 But one is surprised now at the bishops of the time and 
 the authorities at Oxford, who must have been aware that 
 the doctrines brought forward were no ' fond thing vainly 
 imagined,' but rested on a line of authority from St. John 
 and St. Paul to St. Augustine, from St. Augustine to 
 Bishops Bull and Pearson, from these to Burton and Van 
 Mildert. 
 
 The tract-writers, as I have said, had a deep religious 
 principle to appeal to, which in the long run has done them 
 justice. At the time of their writing, however, this principle, 
 or religious instinct, acted in two directions. While, on 
 the one hand, it was open to receive the sublime ethical 
 
 * The following passage from one of Dr. Newman's sermons, though 
 unfortunately more or less true at all times, was specially applicable to 
 the time when it was written. ' Many a man gathers up, here and 
 there, some fragments of religious knowledge. He hears one thing 
 said in church, he sees another thing in the Prayer-Book ; and among 
 religious people, or in the world, he gains something more. In this 
 way he gets possession of sacred words and statements, knowing very 
 little about them really. He interprets them, as it may happen, 
 according to the various and inconsistent opinions which he has met 
 with, or he puts his own meaning upon them — that is, the meaning, as 
 must needs be, of an untaught, not to say a carnal and irreverent mind. 
 How can a man expect he shall discern and apprehend the real meaning 
 and language of Scripture if he has never approached it as a learner, 
 and waited on the Divine Author of it for the gift of wisdom ? By con- 
 tinual meditation on the sacred text, by diligent use of the Church's 
 instruction, he will come to understand what the Gospel doctrines are ; 
 but, most surely, if all the knowledge he has be gathered from a 
 sentence caught up here, and an argument heard there, even when he 
 is most orthodox in word, he has but a collection of phrases, on which 
 he puts, not the light meaning, but his own meaning. And the least 
 reflection must show you what a very poor and unworthy meaning, or, 
 rather, how false a meaning "the natural man" will put upon "the 
 things of the Spirit of God." ' — ' Parochial and Plain Sermons,' 
 Sermon xii., vol. iii. 
 
PRELIMINARY VIEW OF TFIE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 23 
 
 teaching of the rising school (which forms, for instance, 
 such a conspicuous feature in Dr. Newman's sermons), and 
 would possibly be led on to think that men who spoke so 
 profoundly on subjects which it could appreciate might be 
 equally well-informed on the abstruser doctrinal questions 
 which then had all the appearance of novelty, it might 
 occur to a reader unacquainted with the sincerity of the 
 writers that the philosophical and highly moral tone was 
 assumed, with Jesuitical cleverness, as a mask to conceal, 
 and as a vehicle to communicate, ' unsound ' teaching. The 
 fact is, that in those days, in the eyes of what was regarded 
 as the religious portion of the community, everything which 
 was not what is popularly called Evangelical was unsound. 
 
 The fashionable and popular religious literature of the 
 day will show what I mean in a moment. 
 
 The books on everyone's table, ranking next to the 
 Family Bible, were the fore-mentioned Hervey's ' Medita- 
 tions,' Baxter's ' Saints' Rest,' Abbott's ' Way to do Good ' 
 and ' Young Christian,' Bunyan's immortal ' Pilgrim's 
 Progress,' Legh Richmond's 'Dairyman's Daughter' and 
 ' Young Cottager,' with perhaps Wesley's beautiful collection 
 of hymns. Now, pray do not understand me as in any 
 way disparaging these and such-like works. Some of them 
 will last as long as the English language, and one and all 
 laid great stress on the necessity and blessedness of personal 
 religion. They did a vast deal of good in their generation, 
 and I am sorry that people have left off reading most of 
 them. But the defect in these excellent books, from the 
 Anglo-Catholic point of view, was that they were almost 
 entirely subjective. They take little or no account of the 
 Church as an organized and visible society; they attach 
 little importance to its distinctive doctrines. In fact, with 
 these writers the term ' Church ' simply meant all people 
 who 'called themselves Christians.' Whatever religious 
 body they attached themselves to, whatever the articles of 
 their belief, were matters of secondary importance, provided 
 
24 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NTNETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 they had the gift of faith, had been what is called saved or 
 converted, said their prayers, and led good lives. But 
 besides these things, it is obvious that there is an objective 
 side to religion ; that, independently of personal feelings 
 and emotions, there is ' the faith once delivered to the 
 saints ' — a society to whose custody that faith has been 
 entrusted, not merely a spiritual and invisible society, but 
 visible and organized, with its head and succession of 
 officers, its creeds and ceremonies. The main object of the 
 Oxford writers was to remind the English Church that this 
 faith was hers, that she was part of this universal or Catholic 
 Church, and not merely the creation of Henry VIII. or 
 Edward VI. ; that she had higher doctrines and higher 
 authority for them than those of the reformers of the 
 Renaissance, or the popular preachers and writers of the 
 day. 
 
 Bishop Wilberforce, a cautious observer of the movement, 
 sometimes friendly, sometimes critical, was keenly alive to 
 the danger of the time, and the need for an antidote. 
 Speaking of the popular tendency, he says: 'It is the error 
 of the earlier mystic, without his redeeming features of 
 abstraction from the world and intense devotion.' ' How 
 much healthier,' he goes on, ' is the tone of the true-hearted 
 man, who from his cell in Saxony raised his voice indeed 
 against the errors of the Popish system, but who could not 
 bear the jargon which teaches us to attain high ends by 
 throwing off the only means of reaching them ! With 
 homely earnestness he charges on the devil the delusion 
 which, continually crying, " Spirit ! Spirit ! Spirit !" destroys 
 the while all roads, bridges, scaling-ladders, and paths by 
 which the Spirit can enter — namely, the visible order 
 established by God in Holy Baptism, in outward forms, and 
 in His own Word.'* 
 
 Ttiis was strictly in accordance with the teaching of the 
 Tractarians. ' They had preached ' (Dean Church observes) 
 
 * Introduction to ' Eucharistica. ' 
 
PRELUMINARY VIEW OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 ' that the Church of England, with all its Protestant feeling, 
 and all its Protestant acts and history, was yet, as it pro- 
 fessed to be, part and parcel of the great historic Catholic 
 Church which had framed the Creeds, which had continued 
 the Sacraments, which had preached and taught out of the 
 Bible, which had given us our immemorial prayers. They 
 had spared no pains to make out this great commonplace 
 from history and theology ; nor had they spared pains, 
 while insisting on this dominant feature in the English 
 Church, to draw strongly and broadly the lines which dis- 
 tinguished it from Rome.'* 
 
 * ' Oxford Movement,' chap. xv. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 PRECURSORS OF THE REVIVAL. 
 
 'HE opening words of Schiller's ' Thirty Years' War ' 
 
 X are familiar to most readers. He says : ' From the 
 beginning of the religious war in Germany to the peace at 
 Miinster, hardly anything great and remarkable has happened 
 in the political world of Europe in which the Reformation 
 has not had the principal share.' We might go further, and 
 say that scarcely any important event has happened since 
 the Reformation which has not been affected, directly or 
 indirectly, by that movement. Especially is this true of 
 subsequent religious transactions on a large scale, whether 
 in Roman Catholic or Protestant countries. But the diver- 
 gence of their followers from the lines of the original actors 
 in that important drama is very striking. It is curious, for 
 instance, to observe that the modern German critical school, 
 which undoubtedly owes its existence to the teaching of 
 Martin Luther, has proceeded to deny the personal existence 
 of the devil, which was perhaps more of a reality to the 
 great Reformer than it has been to any other human being 
 since the times of the New Testament. On the other hand, 
 many subsequent thinkers, though belonging to religious 
 bodies which derive their origin, or, at least, much of their 
 character, from the Reformation, living at a time remote 
 from the immediate subjects of controversy, have been able 
 to take a calmer and less prejudiced view of the questions 
 
PKECUKSORS OF THE REVIVAL 
 
 27 
 
 at issue, and have gone back, as we should say, from the 
 principles of their founders. Hence the study of the 
 Reformation leads people in two opposite directions, which 
 we may call liberal and conservative. 
 
 Disregarding temporary and local opinions, the latter 
 has, in the main, been the effect of the Reformation on 
 the great body of English writers and English theology. 
 There have, of course, been distinguished scholars on the 
 extreme Protestant side ; but, taking English thinkers and 
 writers as a whole, from the time of Elizabeth to the present 
 day — those, that is, of sufficient calibre to be regarded as 
 classical — we shall find that the weight of their authority 
 has been, I will not say exactly counter to the Reformation, 
 but of a distinctly moderating tendency. At the time of 
 the Oxford Revival such writers happened to be temporarily 
 out of favour ; they were not read. This is the best ex- 
 planation of the ignorance, not only among the general 
 public, but in high ecclesiastical quarters, of the real object 
 of the leaders of the movement. It has become perfectly 
 clear since, though it was not at all clear to their contem- 
 poraries, that they were not stating new or foreign doctrine, 
 but merely reviving what was neglected, as ihey thought, to 
 the detriment of the English Church and the religious life 
 of the country. It will help us to enter into this view of 
 the case if we look into any of the ' Tracts for the Times,' 
 or other publications of the same writers. We shall find 
 that the doctrines therein resuscitated are usually of such 
 a commonplace and self-evident character as scarcely to 
 need insisting upon ; and it will be a matter of extreme 
 surprise to most of us that statements so harmless, and in 
 the main so true, should have created the sensation and 
 alarm which we know resulted from their publication. 
 
 The fact is, if it has done nothing else (and that it has 
 done a great deal more I hope to show as we go on), the 
 Oxford Movement has so far stimulated inquiry and his- 
 torical research, that the main points for which its leaders 
 
28 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 contended are now recognised as established truths — not 
 merely private and obscure opinions, but such as have been 
 substantiated by a consensus of historians and theologians 
 of the highest standing. It is rather for their bold and 
 unconventional treatment of old, than for the invention of 
 new subjects, that the credit of originality is due to the 
 Oxford writers.* 
 
 I am prepared to admit that, as in the case of the 
 Reformation, the followers of the Oxford Movement have 
 frequently gone beyond its originators. This happens with 
 all movements. They must necessarily be in one direction; 
 and a great party naturally attracts to it inferior spirits, who 
 are hurried along with the current without themselves carry- 
 ing sufificient ballast to steady their progress. Newman's 
 words on this point are worth quoting: 'There will ever 
 be a number of persons professing the opinions of a move- 
 
 * ' Our present state of peril is the result of a continuous and 
 lengthened efTort which has been maintained by the leaders of the 
 Romanizing party in the Church, with unwearied diligence, now for 
 nearly twenty years. Perhaps it might be said that the seeds of it have 
 been lying dormant from the period of the Reformation. Popery in the 
 seventh and subsequent centuries was but the development of that 
 mystery of iniquity which was working in the .'\postles' days. The 
 Romanizing principles of the present day are in like manner the resusci- 
 tation of tliat smouldering Pharisaism and overweening love of forms 
 and cerenmnie.s and Church authority which have ever pervaded a large 
 portion of the Church of England. It is but the calling into life and 
 active energy that deep-seated dislike to the truth as it is in Jesus, and 
 to the distinctive doctrines of grace, which the Apostle describes as 
 "the carnal mind, which is enmity against God." ' — 'An Appeal to the 
 Evangelical Members of the Church of England in reference to the 
 present Crisis,' by Daniel Wilson, M.A., Vicar of Islington. 
 
 I give this extract from a pamphlet published in iSjoby an opponent 
 of the movement. It shows that even from his point of view the 
 doctrines of the Tractarians were tolerably old ; and if we substitute 
 Catholic for Roman, and so on, it is pretty much such an account as a 
 friend might have written, except, of course, the condemnation of the 
 doctrines involved ; but even this is interesting, as showing what was 
 thought of tliem at the time. 
 
PRECURSOJ^S OF THE REVIVAL 
 
 29 
 
 ment party, who talk loudly and strangely, do odd or fierce 
 things, display themselves unnecessarily, and disgust other 
 people ; persons too young to be wise, too generous to be 
 cautious, too warm to be sober, or too intellectual to be 
 humble. Such persons will be very apt to attach them- 
 selves to particular persons, to use particular names, to say 
 things merely because others do, and to act in a party- 
 spirited way.'* 
 
 It is unfair, therefore, to charge back on the leaders of 
 any movement the excesses or failings of their successors, 
 as if these were necessarily involved, and contained, as it 
 were, in embryo, in their teaching. It would be as unfair, 
 for instance, to blame Dr. Pusey for all the extravagant 
 and meaningless ritual one meets with, as to make Luther 
 responsible for the scepticism and infidelity of modern 
 Germany. 
 
 The Tractarians had great precedents for what they said, 
 and it is of their precursors that I propose to speak this 
 evening. As I said in my first lecture, there has been a 
 great line of writers in the English Church on whose 
 theology the Oxford Tracts were based, and who substan- 
 tially corroborate their view of the Church as a society, and 
 of its separate doctrines. Of course, the Anglo-Catholic 
 teaching varied in degree according to the peculiarities of 
 individual writers, and varied still more at different periods. 
 Thus, the writers of the sixteenth century, more immediately 
 affected by the Reformation, were necessarily more emphatic 
 in their denunciations of what is called Popery than those 
 of the seventeenth century. But it would be a great mistake 
 to suppose that the latter had nothing to say against it. 
 The Caroline theologians were distinct Anglicans, and 
 many of them wrote and acted very decidedly against the 
 errors of Rome. For instance. Bishop Taylor wrote a 
 ' Dissuasive against Popery,' and his other writings abound 
 
 * Article on ' The State of Religious Parties,' published originally in 
 the Britisli Critic, for April, 1839, and quoted in 'The Apologia.' 
 
 1 
 
30 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 with matter to the same purpose. Dr. Brevint, though he 
 was not Protestant enough to prevent his expulsion by the 
 ParHamentary visitors, was, as he tells us, 'acquainted with 
 every corner of that' (the Roman) 'Church.' His prin- 
 cipal works, in fact, are ' The Mystery of the Roman Mass 
 laid open,' ' Saul and Samuel at Endor ; or, The New Ways 
 of Service and Salvation which tempt Men to Rome truly 
 represented and refuted.' There were also certain Latin 
 works of his exposing Roman corruptions. On the other 
 hand, there is his book on ' The Christian Sacrament and 
 Sacrifice,' republished in 1739, on the high recommendation 
 of it by Bishop Waterland in his Charge. 
 
 It is a well-known incident that when Dr. Patrick and 
 Dr. Jane (neither ultra-Protestants) were challenged to 
 defend their faith against two Roman priests in the presence 
 of James II., the King went off in a rage during the contest, 
 saying that he ' never heard a bad cause so well defended. 
 His Majesty made various attempts to draw Patrick over 
 to the Romish Church, but the Dean (as he then was) was 
 immovable. The Caroline writers, in short, held the 
 position since defined as the Via Media. They perhaps 
 understood the controversy with Rome better than any 
 other set of men, before or since, and were clearly opposed 
 to Romish error ; but where they differed from the reformers 
 of the previous century was just in this point : that whereas 
 the earlier set of men (very excusably) were not alive to 
 the necessity of a Church as a visible and organized society, 
 the latter were. Or perhaps it would be more correct to 
 say that the opinion of the early reformers about the Church 
 was like Coleridge's on the subject of ghosts : they had seen 
 too much to believe. 
 
 It is not at all to be wondered at, on the whole, that, 
 their views of the Church and the Christian priesthood 
 being almost identical, the Oxford writers should be full 
 of allusions to, and quotations from, their precursors of the 
 seventeenth century. ' It was true,' Newman remarks, ' that 
 
PRECUJiSORS OF THE REVIVAL 31 
 
 I held a large bold system of religion, very unlike the 
 Protestantism of the day ; but it was the concentration and 
 adjustment of the statements of great Anglican authorities, 
 and I had as much right to hold it as the Evangelical, and 
 more right than the Liberal, party could show, for asserting 
 their own respective doctrines. As I declared on occasion 
 of Tract XC, I claimed in .behalf of who would in the 
 Anglican Church the right of holding, with Bramhall, a 
 comprecation with the Saints, and the Mass all but Transub- 
 stantiation, with Andrewes ; or with Hooker, that Transub- 
 stantiation itself is not a point for Churches to part 
 communion upon ; or with Hammond, that a General 
 Council, truly such, never did, never shall, err in a matter 
 of faith ; or with Bull, that man had in paradise, and lost 
 on the fall, a supernatural habit of grace ; or with Thorn- 
 dike, that penance is a propitiation for post-baptismal sin ; 
 or with Pearson, that the all-powerful name of Jesus is no 
 otherwise given than in the Catholic Church.'* 
 
 It is a very striking feature of the movement (at all 
 events in its later stages), that a revival was induced by it, 
 not only of the Caroline theology, but also of the secular 
 history of that interesting period. I hope to refer to this 
 later on, when we come to the literature of the movement. 
 Suffice it to say here that several charming little historical 
 stories dealing with the fortunes of Cavaliers and Round- 
 heads were an indirect result of the controversy, in which 
 the sympathies of Churchmen were enlisted on behalf of 
 the Stuart family and their adherents as representing the 
 Church of England in its contest with Puritanism. As I 
 said before, the teaching of the Caroline divines was carried 
 on and extended by the Nonjurors, whose dispersion about 
 the country was of course favourable to the spread of their 
 opinions. 
 
 These opinions, political and religious, continued to be 
 held here and there long after the extinction of the party 
 * 'Apologia,' ch. iii. 
 
32 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 which propagated them. And the mere fact of men having 
 had the courage to suffer deprivation for them was an 
 inducement to others to think there was a good deal in 
 them as being worth suffering for. Rightly or wrongly, the 
 Nonjurors were invested with the credit of that secondary 
 sort of martyrdom which- consists in a wi/Iingfiess to die for 
 one's belief All this helped to keep alive in certain places 
 that traditional high view of the Church which the Oxford 
 school sought to revive and intensify, and accounts for the 
 ready reception of their writings in quarters previously under 
 Nonjuring influence. To use an illustration of Jeremy 
 Taylor's, it is easy to rekindle a taper when the wick is still 
 glowing.* Several of the Nonjurors were laymen, who, by 
 by reason of their official position, were obliged to take the 
 oath of allegiance to William and Mary or lose their places. 
 These were, of course, of the same tone of Churchmanship 
 as their priestly companions. The most distinguished of 
 these laymen in a literary sense were Robert Nelson, author 
 of the ' Fasts and Festivals,' still perhaps the best book of 
 its kind for elementary religious teachers, and William Law, 
 already mentioned as the author of the ' Serious Call.' 
 
 Among the illustrious laymen who have helped to per- 
 petuate the Anglo-Catholic school of theology, I ought not 
 to forget our good old friend Izaak Walton, best known by 
 his ' Complete Angler,' but also known to readers as one of 
 the most charming biographers in our language. His lives 
 of Dr. Donne, Wotton, Hooker, George Herbert, and 
 Sanderson show what he was himself from the Churchmen 
 he admired, and whose doctrines he cordially shared. This 
 book was a great favourite with Dr. Johnson (seven years 
 
 * Dean Burgon tells us that the father of Routh, of Magdalen, always 
 preached in his surplice at his place in Suffolk. And I have heard that 
 there are places where the Eucharistic vestments have never been 
 abandoned. Dr. Lee, writing to the GeiitUman's Magazine in 1863, 
 bays that " the primitive and patristic custom of reserving the Sacra- 
 ment has never been entirely given up in the ancient Church of 
 Scotland." 
 
PJ^ECURSOJ^S OF THE REVIVAL 
 
 33 
 
 of age when Queen Anne came to the throne), who was 
 also a thoroughgoing High Churchman of the old-fashioned 
 type.* 
 
 There was much in Dr. Johnson's opinions which would 
 have laid him open to censure at Oxford had he lived fifty 
 years later. For instance, you will remember that one of 
 the objectionable points in Tract XC. was the distinction 
 drawn by the writer between the Romish doctrine of pur- 
 gatory, which the 22nd Article condemns, and other possible 
 doctrines of purgatory, which he said, as the Article does 
 not mention, may consistently be held by those who sign it. 
 Dr. Johnson goes a step further, and maintains that even 
 the Romish doctrine of purgatory, unpopular as it was in 
 Protestant England, was not so utterly illogical that nothing 
 could be said for it. His conversation with Boswell on that 
 and a few other controverted subjects is worth reading. 
 
 Boswell asks : ' What do you think, sir, of purgatory as 
 believed by the Roman Catholics ?' Johnson : ' AVhy, sir, 
 it is a very harmless doctrine. They are of opinion that 
 the generality of mankind are neither so obstinately wicked 
 as to deserve everlasting punishment, nor so good as to 
 merit being admitted into the society of blessed spirits, and, 
 therefore, that God is graciously pleased to allow of a 
 middle state, where they may be purified by certain degrees 
 of suff'ering. You see, sir, there is nothing unreasonable in 
 this.' Boswell : ' But, then, sir, their Masses for the dead ?' 
 Johnson : 'Why, sir, if it be once established that there are 
 souls in purgatory, it is as proper to pray for them as for our 
 brethren of mankind who are yet in this life.' Boswell : 
 ' The idolatry of the Mass ?' Johnson : ' Sir, there is no 
 * There was, as is well known, a very interesting High Church 
 revival in Queen Anne's time, which is worth a separate study. In 
 this connexion I cannot help mentioning the numerous week-day 
 services in the City churches, as given in Paterson's ' Pietas Londinensis,' 
 which should be compared with the record of ' Daily Prayers in and 
 about the City,' quoted from a book of 1683 in No. 84 of 'Tracts for 
 the Times.' 
 
 3 
 
34 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 idolatry in the Mass. They believe God to be there, and 
 they adore Him.' Boswell : 'The worship of saints?' 
 Johnson : ' Sir, they do not worship saints ; they invoke 
 them. They only ask their prayers. I am talking all this 
 time of the doctrines of the Church of Rome. I grant you 
 that, in practice, purgatory is made a lucrative imposition, 
 and the people do become idolatrous, as they recommend 
 themselves to the tutelary protection of particular saints. 
 I think their giving the sacrament only in one kind is 
 criminal, because it is contrary to the express institution of 
 Christ, and I wonder how the Council of Trent admitted 
 it.' Boswell : ' Confession ?' Johnson : ' Why, I don't 
 know but that is a good thing. The Scripture says, 
 "Confess your faults one to another," and the priests 
 confess as well as the laity. Then it must be considered 
 that their absolution is only upon repentance, and often 
 upon penance also. You think your sins may be forgiven 
 without penance upon repentance alone.' 
 
 The fact is, Johnson was a believer in the Via Media. 
 When arguing with Romanists, he could doubtless have 
 given them first-rate reasons for being an Anglican, as his 
 biographer implies a few lines further on. But, like the 
 Tractarians, he seems to have thought that the Roman 
 Church was not so hopelessly bad, nor the English Church 
 so perfect as was popularly supposed. We cannot read 
 Boswell's fascinating biography without seeing that the 
 doctor was a devout member of the Anglo-Catholic Church, 
 and believed in her position between Rome on the one hand 
 and the various forms of dissent on the other. His ob- 
 servance of Good Friday is worth noticing by nineteenth- 
 century Churchmen. His touching and cautiously-worded 
 prayers on the occasion of his wife's death are also interesting 
 as throwing light on his ideas about the intermediate state.* 
 
 * ' On the 9th of April (1773), being Good Friday, I breakfasted with 
 him on tea and cross buns, Doctor Levett, as Frank called him, making 
 the tea. He carried me with him to the church of St. Clement Danes, 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE REVIVAL 
 
 35 
 
 Dr. Johnson died in 1784, but before he passed away a 
 literary constellation was appearing on the horizon, whose 
 influence, as preparatory to the Oxford Movement, has 
 hardly received sufficient recognition. I refer to the great 
 ' Wizard of the North,' Sir Walter Scott, and that group of 
 writers who were contemporaneous with him, and who, 
 from the circumstance of their common residence in the 
 Lake district, have been classified together in a single 
 school. This classification is somewhat arbitrary, for though 
 
 where he had his seat, and his behaviour was, as I had imagined to my- 
 self, solemnly devout. I shall never forget the tremulous earnestness 
 with which he pronounced the awful petition in the Litany : " In the 
 hour of death, and in the day of judgment, good Lord deliver us." We 
 went to church both in the morning and evening. In the interval 
 between the two services -we did not dine, but he read in the Greek New 
 Testament, and I turned over several of his books.' One of these books, 
 Boswell adds, was Archbishop Laud's Diary. — Boswell's ' Life of 
 Johnson.' 
 
 'April 26th, 1752, being after 12 at night of the 25th. — O Lord, 
 Governor of heaven and earth, in whose hands are embodied and 
 departed spirits, if Thou hast ordained the souls of the dead to minister 
 to the living, and appointed my departed wife to have care of me, grant 
 that I may enjoy the good effects of her attention and ministration, 
 whether exercised by appearance, impulses, dreams, or in any other 
 manner agreeable to Thy government. Forgive my presumption, 
 enlighten my ignorance, and however meaner agents are employed, 
 grant me the blessed influences of Thy Holy Spirit, through Jesus 
 Christ our Lord. Amen.' 
 
 '■March 28, 1753. — I kept this day as the anniversary of my Tetty's 
 death, with prayers and tears in the morning. In the evening I prayed 
 for her conditionally, if it were lawful.' — /bid. 
 
 On looking over the collection of Dr. Johnson's prayers, published at 
 the end of his works, I find the following intercessions for the departed, 
 which are even more pointed than the above : 
 
 ' I commend, O Lord, so far as it may be lawful, into Thy hands the 
 soul of my departed mother, beseeching Thee to grant her whatsoever 
 is most beneficial to her in her present state.'— 23, 1759. 
 
 ' Almighty God, who art the giver of all good, enable me to remember 
 with due thankfulness the comforts and advantages which I have 
 enjoyed by the friendship of Henry Thrale, for whom, so far as is law- 
 ful, I humbly implore Thy mercy in his present state.'— 22, 1781. 
 
36 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 the writers had much in common, especially in classical 
 elegance and puriiy of style, there was a marked individuality 
 in each case ; and, in fact, we frequently find them criticising 
 and disputing with each other on points of doctrine, literary 
 and ecclesiastical. Any coincidence of opinion among 
 them on our particular subject will therefore be all the more 
 interesting. 
 
 Their dates are as follows : 
 
 Sir Walter Scott 1771-1832 
 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge ... 1772-1834 
 Robert Southey... ... ... 1774-1843 
 
 William Wordsworth 17 70- 1850 
 
 Thomas De Quincey ... ... 1785-1859 
 
 Let us take them in order, and see if we can trace any 
 sympathy between them and the Oxford writers. 
 
 Everyone knows that the Prayer-Book of the Scottish 
 Episcopal Church, drawn up chiefly under the direction of 
 Archbishop Laud, is even more in accord with the primitive 
 liturgies, and has been less modified by Calvinistic influences 
 than the English Book of Common Prayer. Sir Walter 
 Scott was a devout member of the Scottish Episcopal 
 Church, and accepted its Prayer-Book con anwre. The 
 positions of the Scottish and Irish Episcopal Churches are 
 curiously reversed in their respective countries. Whereas 
 in Ireland the Protestant Church seems driven to an excess 
 of Protestantism by the proximity of the dominant Roman 
 Catholic religion, the Church in Scotland seems forced into 
 as strong a contrast as possible with the Presbyterian and 
 Puritan school, which holds the ruling position and State 
 advantages in that country. Consequently the Scottish 
 Episcopal Church has all along exhibited more of the 
 Catholic and less of the Protestant character, not only than 
 the sister Church in Ireland, but even than the Church of 
 England, where the distinction between one school and 
 another has not been so necessary. It is not at all 
 wonderful, therefore, that the Oxford writers were given to 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE REVIVAL 
 
 37 
 
 quoting the official documents of the Scottish Church as a 
 precedent for what they sought to revive in England ; and 
 that the leading Scottish Churchmen were more sympathetic, 
 or at least less antagonistic, to the movement than their 
 brethren south of the Tweed. 
 
 The Scottish Church, like the English, has been raised 
 by the movement ; but, as a matter of fact, the Scottish 
 Church in 1833 was in much the same position as it took 
 the Church of England twenty or thirty years to attain. Of 
 course I mean doctrinal ly, for outward ceremonial, the 
 natural outcome of the Catholic Revival, was scarcely 
 touched; it formed no part of the object of the revivalists. 
 Doctrinally, then, there was much sympathy between the 
 Scotch Episcopalians and the Oxford men. Sir Walter 
 Scott was what we should call an old-fashioned High Church- 
 man and Tory, for politics and churchmanship in his day, 
 as for long afterwards, seemed inseparably allied. He died 
 in 1832, the year before the movement assumed a definite 
 shape, and consequently says nothing directly about it ; but 
 his churchmanship being what it was, we shall look in vain 
 through his writings and recorded sayings for anything that 
 can be construed into an argument against the general 
 teaching of the movement, while we shall find very much in 
 support and anticipation of it. The whole tenor of his 
 writings is of that elevated and liberal type that we may 
 rightly call Catholic, and contains nothing likely to bring 
 ridicule on Catholic doctrine and practice. And there are 
 certain specific works of his distinctly tending to break 
 down misconceptions about the pre-Reformation Church, 
 which was so unpopular in the Protestant mind, but which, 
 after all, was still a part of that universal system with which 
 the revivalists sought to identify the Church of England. 
 The Church of the Middle Ages lives again in such poems 
 as ' Marmion,' ' Rokeby,' ' The Lord of the Isles,' and ' The 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel.' It would be hard to beat some 
 of the writer's cathedral scenes — such, for instance, as the 
 
38 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 description of Melrose by moonlight. Milton's celebrated 
 meditation in 'II Penseroso' may be finer; but in this case 
 it is a solitary instance of appreciation wrung from the 
 writer, as it were, by a momentary triumph of the poet over 
 the Puritan, whereas Scott is all through full of a steady 
 enthusiasm for what was really admirable in the Dark Ages,* 
 as they are called. His strong antiquarian and historical 
 sympathies led him to take a fairer view of the past. But it 
 was not merely a love of old architecture and old legends ; 
 he showed his readers that there was much real beauty in 
 the older ceremonial. I don't think there are any finer 
 descriptions than he gives us of religious processions or the 
 mediajval services. And what is more, he shows us that the 
 pre-Reformation Church was capable of producing noble, 
 chivalrous, humane, devout, and studious characters. 
 ' Ivanhoe,' ' Count Robert of Paris,' and ' The Talisman ' 
 show us something distinctly favourable of the Church of 
 the Crusaders ; ' The Monastery ' and ' The Abbot' enlist our 
 sympathies with its fallen greatness during the Reformation. 
 In Father Eustace, the hero of the latter story, we have a 
 scholarly and saintly character, the natural product of 
 Catholic training, but which Protestantism scarcely aims at 
 and seldom produces. In short, in these romances Scott 
 divests the ancient Church of her abuses or puts them in 
 the background, to reveal what was stately in her worship 
 and useful in her system. This was certainly in accord with 
 the work of the revivers. They set themselves to prove 
 that the Church of England was the ancient Church, minus 
 her superstitions and corruptions, identical with her in 
 system, orders, and fundamental doctrines. 
 
 Mediaivalism and Reformation had each their effect on 
 the Church, modifying its outward aspect and even its inner 
 life ; but after all they left its vital principles untouched — 
 the Church of to-day was not cut off by any movement or 
 phase of life froin the Church of the past. Sir Walter Scott, 
 I say, paved the way for the restoration of this doctrine. 
 
 lidl ~ iri'O -!~iir^ 7s, 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE REVIVAL 
 
 39 
 
 popularly ignored in the early part of this century — and he 
 did it in the pleasantest manner possible — under the guise 
 of poetry and romance. 
 
 I might also call your attention to his novels of the 
 Royalist and Roundhead period, such as ' The Legend of 
 Montrose,' ' Woodstock,' and ' Peveril of the Peak,' in which 
 his sympathies are clearly with the former and the Church. 
 These charming tales, as everybody knows, were eagerly 
 read throughout the country, and prepared the public mind 
 for a more definitely religious view of the points at issue 
 between the Church and the sectaries, such as was after- 
 wards set forth in certain romances and more serious works 
 of the Oxford school. I am afraid that the VVaverley novels 
 are no longer read as they ought to be ; but the effects of 
 Scott's influence can perhaps better be gauged now than at 
 the height of his popularity. Then it is quite possible it 
 was merely the historical and literary power of his writings 
 that was felt ; but men can scarcely ever get attached to any 
 period of the past, through any of its features, without 
 developing a taste for other features. The historical and 
 antiquarian interest would tend to create a doctrinal and 
 moral interest, and in this way a novel may do the work of 
 a sermon without the reader being conscious of its influence. 
 Anyhow, a friend has told me that his first serious im- 
 pressions about the Church were due to his reading the 
 Waverley novels at an age when he was incapable of 
 analyzing his thoughts. 
 
 Before leaving this part of our subject I should just like 
 to call your attention to Scott's love of the old hymns of the 
 Latin Church, in which he seems to have anticipated Dr. 
 Neale and other translators. We have a little specimen of 
 his work in a version of the ' Dies Irae,' published in 
 Hymns Ancient and Modern.* 
 
 Those who agree with the view of Scott's influence sug- 
 gested above will not be surprised to hear that .when 
 * No. 206, ' That Day of Wrath." 
 
40 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 Lockhart's ' Life of Scott ' came out, John Keble wrote a 
 review of it in the British Critic, full of loving sympathy 
 with its great subject, and valuable at this day as containing 
 Keble's judgment on the true objects and principles of 
 poetry. There was evidently a poetical and religious con- 
 necting link between Abbotsford and Hursley. 
 
 To be strictly chronological, I ought to have taken 
 Wordsworth before Scott, as he was born in the previous 
 year, but I thought it would be better to consider the lake- 
 writers together in deference to the received classification. 
 Those who have not read Coleridge's ' Biographia Literaria' 
 I would strongly advise to do so, for various reasons, but 
 chiefly at present because it contains in its twenty-second 
 chapter a masterly analysis of Wordsworth's poetry, of 
 which the defects and excellencies are carefully illustrated 
 by quotations. 
 
 We must admit that whatever influence Scott has exerted 
 on the mind of this century is due to his prose romances. 
 His poetry, though not destitute here and there of fire, is 
 too tame on the whole for modern readers. It was when 
 Byron, with his fiery genius and disregard of grammar, burst 
 upon the scene that Scott took to the species of prose in 
 which he excels, and it is a good thing for society that he 
 did so. Wordsworth holds a middle place between the 
 tameness of Scott and the licentiousness of Byron. He 
 combines some of the qualities of both. There is all the 
 religious seriousness of Scott, but it is lifted out of the con- 
 ventional groove. There is at least as much command of 
 language within the writer's chastened lines of thought as 
 Byron exhibits, but it is refined by the restrictions of his 
 conscience and a delicate sense of accuracy in adjusting 
 words to their meaning. The result is that many readers 
 who find Scott's verses too dull, and who have scruples 
 about Byron's morality, are drawn to Wordsworth. They 
 find in him both a religious and a linguistic satisfaction. 
 In short, he answers to the wants of the great body^of 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE REVIVAL 
 
 English readers. He rose in the nick of time to show that 
 religious and philosophical poetry need not be tedious, 
 and his influence on English thought and taste has been 
 immense. 
 
 It would be an exaggeration to count him pre-eminently 
 as nature's poet. Though he drew much of his inspiration 
 from nature, he drew quite as much from the recesses of 
 his inner consciousness. And being pre-eminently a re- 
 ligious man and a philosopher, there is scarcely one of his 
 poems, as he himself tells us, that does not direct attention 
 to some moral sentiment or to some philosophical principle 
 for the guidance of life. I have already said that the 
 popular religion of England was strongly subjective. It is 
 not surprising, therefore, that Wordsworth's poetry is largely 
 the expression of his own thoughts and feelings, which are, 
 of course, typical of the thoughts and feelings of many 
 other people. On the other hand, his fondness for nature 
 takes him frequently out of himself, and we must credit 
 him with raising the religious taste of his day from excessive 
 introspection to the contemplation of external objects. We 
 see here much in common between him and the author of 
 the 'Christian Year,' and when in 1839 he visited Oxford to 
 take up his doctorate, he received the heartfelt welcome 
 from his brother poet which left such a precious impression 
 on his memory. 
 
 Although Keble was indebted to Bishop Ken for the 
 general plan of his work, he owed to Wordsworth much of 
 that appreciation of nature, doubtless also some of that 
 felicity of expression, which is so marked a feature in both 
 writers. The principles on which they worked being alike, 
 we shall not be surprised to find an interesting doctrinal 
 agreement, a few instances of which I give below.* I may 
 
 * ' Twenty years ago, roaming one day (as so often I did) with our 
 immorlal Wordsworth, I took the liberty of telling him, at a point of 
 our walk where nobody could possibly overhear me, unless it were old 
 Father Helvellyn, that I feared his theological principles were not quite 
 
4? CATHOLIC REl'IVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 remind you that Wordsworth's ' Excursion ' was published 
 in 1814, his 'Ecclesiastical Sonnets' appeared in 1820, and 
 Keble's ' Christian Year' in 1827. 
 
 so sound as his friends would wish. They wanted tinkering a little. 
 But, what was worse, I did not see how they could be tinkered in the 
 particular case which prompted my remark ; for in that place to tinker, 
 or in any respect to alter, was to destroy. It was a passage in the 
 "Excursion," where the Solitary had described the baptismal rite as 
 washing away the taint of original sin, and, in fact, working the effect 
 which is called technically regeneration. In the " Excursion " this 
 view was advanced, not as the poet's separate opinion, but as the 
 avowed doctrine of the English Church, to which Church Wordsworth 
 and myself yielded gladly a filial reverence. But was this the doctrine 
 of the English Church? That I doubted ; and, judging by my own 
 casual experience, I fancied that a considerable majority in the Church 
 gave an interpretation to this sacrament, differing by much from that in 
 the "Excursion." Wordsworth was startled and disturbed at hearing 
 it whispered, even before Helvellyn, who is old enough to keep a 
 secret, that his theology^ might possibly limp a little. I, on my part, was 
 not sure that it did., but I feared so ; and as there was no chance that I 
 should be murdered for speaking freely (though the place was lonely and 
 the evening getting dusky, and W. W. had a natural resemblance to 
 Mrs. Ratcliffe's Schedoni and other assassins roaming through prose and 
 verse), I stood to my disagreeable communication with the courage of 
 a martyr. The question between us being one of mere fact (not what 
 ought to be the doctrine, but what -tvas the doctrine of our English 
 Church at that time), there was no opening for much discussion, and, on 
 Wordsworth's suggestion, it was agreed to refer the point to his learned 
 brother, Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, just then meditating a visit to his 
 native lakes. That visit in a short time " came off,'' and then, without 
 delay, our dispute " came on " for judgment. I had no bets upon the 
 issue ; one can't bet with Wordsworth, and I don't know that I should 
 have ventured to back myself in a case of that nature. However, I 
 felt a slight anxiety on the subject, which was very soon and kindly 
 removed by Dr. Wordsworth's deciding "sans phrase" that I, the 
 original mover of the strife, was wrong, wrong as wrong could be, with- 
 out an opening, in fact, to any possibility of being more wrong. To 
 this decision I bowed at once.' — De Quincey on Protestantism. 
 
 The passage referred to, which occurs in the fifth book of the ' Excur- 
 sion,' is as follows : 
 
 'And, when the pure 
 And consecrating element hath cleansed 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE REVIVAL 43 
 
 The mutual appreciation of Keble and Wordsworth is 
 thus related in Sir J. T. Coleridge's ' Life of Keble.' He 
 says : 
 
 The original stain, the child is thus received 
 Into the second ark, Christ's Church, with trust 
 That he, from wrath redeemed, therein shall float 
 Over the billows of this troublesome world 
 To the fair land of everlasting life.' 
 The same doctrine is stated in other words in Wordsworth's little 
 poem on baptism : 
 
 ' Blest be the Church, that watching o'er the needs 
 Of infancy, provides a timely shower, 
 Whose virtue changes to a Christian flower 
 The sinful product of a bed of weeds !' 
 It is scarcely necessary to say that Keble held the doctrine of 
 baptismal regeneration in its fullest sense. It is briefly stated in his 
 verses on ' Holy Baptism ' in the ' Christian Year ' : 
 
 'A few calm words of faith and prayer, 
 A few bright drops of holy dew, 
 Shall work a wonder there 
 Earth's charmers never knew.' 
 There is no time for a detailed comparison between the poets, but I 
 cannot refrain from quoting Wordsworth's exquisite lines on the Virgin, 
 which go about as far as anything Keble ever wrote. They should be 
 compared with his hymn on the Annunciation — 'Ave Maria ! blessed 
 Maid ' : 
 
 ' Mother ! whose virgin bosom was uncrost 
 With the least shade of thought to sin allied ; 
 Woman ! above all women glorified. 
 Our tainted nature's solitary boast ; 
 Purer than foam on central ocean tost ; 
 Brighter than Eastern skies at daybreak strewn 
 With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon 
 Before her wane begins on heaven's blue coast ; 
 Thy image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween. 
 Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend. 
 As to a visible power, in which did blend 
 All that was mixed and reconciled in thee 
 Of mother's love with maiden purity, 
 Of high with low, celestial with terrene !' 
 
 ' Ecclesiastical Sketches.' 
 
44 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 'This (1810-11) was a period when the Lake Poets, as 
 they were called, and especially Wordsworth and my uncle, 
 had scarcely any place in the literature of the country, 
 except as a mark for the satire of some real wits and some 
 misnamed critics of considerable repute. I possessed — the 
 gift of my uncle — the ' Lyrical Ballads ' and ' Wordsworth's 
 Poems ' (these last in the first edition). It is among the 
 pleasant recollections of my life that I first made the great 
 poet known to Keble. As might have been expected, he 
 read him with avidity. The admiration for his poetry, 
 which he conceived in youth, never waned in after-life ; 
 indeed, when he came to know the man, it was augmented 
 — I may rather say completed — by the respect and regard 
 which his character inspired. It was hardly possible for 
 Keble to be a very enthusiastic admirer of any poetry unless 
 he had at least conceived a good opinion of the writer. I 
 may say, in passing, that AVordsworth's admiration of the 
 author of the ' Christian Year,' and the volume itself, was in 
 after-life very warm. There were few of the many tributes 
 which he received which he set a greater value on than the 
 mention made of him by Keble in the Theatre at Oxford, 
 when he received his honorary degree, and the dedication 
 to him of the " Prselectiones." ' 
 
 The history of the world is a history of reactions. Great 
 movements occur from time to time with their disturbing 
 effects ; ' the fountains of the great deep are broken up.' 
 Things settle down. A period of comparative calm is suc- 
 ceeded by a period of stagnation, till another social eruption 
 happens, when the process of disturbance, chaos, settlement, 
 peace, stagnation, is repeated. The years preceding the 
 Oxford Revival were years of stagnation. The Reforma- 
 tion, the French Revolution, the Revival of Wesley, had 
 come and gone ; they had done their good and bad work. 
 Men's minds had been terribly stirred by them. The 
 excitement, not altogether unhealthy, ended, after the usual 
 gradations, in a quiet which was unhealthy. This, in the 
 
P/^ECUKSei^S OF THE REVIVAL 
 
 4S 
 
 natural and inevitable course of things, was to be succeeded 
 by a fresh agitation. 
 
 The Oxford Movement was merely one manifestation of 
 a mental activity which was making itself felt in various 
 directions. The mutterings of thunder were heard in the 
 air ; volcanic action was going on below. There were signs 
 of life and movement in the poetical, the religious, the 
 social, the philosophical world. France had had its move- 
 ment^, Germany had had its movements, in each case 
 determined by the character of the people of those countries. 
 It was now England's turn. 
 
 From its insular position England is necessarily rather 
 later than the rest of Europe in feeling, or at least in mani- 
 festing, the spirit of the age. As it was in the Renaissance, 
 so it was now. But she could not remain for ever un- 
 affected by forces which were exciting the rest of the 
 thinking, civilized world. The great Samuel Taylor Cole- 
 ridge had been educated in Germany, and had drunk deep 
 at the fountains of German scepticism and German 
 mysticism. He united in his own peculiar personality the 
 poet, the mystic, and the philosopher. He was an English 
 edition, so to speak, of Kant and Goethe. He did for 
 England in his day what Carlyle has done since. He 
 imported into English thought a vast deal from the land 
 of Luther with which we should otherwise have been un- 
 acquainted. Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Luther himself, 
 Lessing, and a host of others of whom Englishmen had 
 little knowledge, were absorbed by Coleridge into his own 
 somewhat chaotic mind, and given out again to English 
 readers either in actual translation or in the modified form 
 of Coleridge's philosophy.* 
 
 The contrast between him and Wordsworth is perhaps 
 best illustrated by their mutual agreement to write a separate 
 work simultaneously, each subject to be chosen by the 
 
 * Goethe was born in 1749, Kant in 1724, Lessing in 1729, and 
 Schiller in 1759. 
 
46 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 writer for himself as suitable to his particular genius. The 
 result was \Vordsworth's ' Excursion,' illustrating the force 
 of simply natural objects on a natural and unsophisticated 
 character, and Coleridge's ' Ancient Mariner,' which de- 
 pended entirely on the ' Imagination.' The works were 
 well chosen as typical of the cast of mind of each writer. 
 These great men, so different, and yet in many points with 
 such a strong affinity for each other, were both destined to 
 play an important part in the religious phenomena of the 
 time. In the year 1825 Coleridge published his remarkable 
 'Aids to Reflection,' in 1840 his 'Confessions of an 
 Inquiring Spirit.' 
 
 These books were of a different stamp to anything that 
 had yet appeared in England. There had been atheists, 
 professedly such, there had been sneering sceptics ; but 
 there had been nothing between them and the orthodox 
 apologists, whose works did duty as text-books for men in 
 training for orders.* 
 
 Coleridge, while allowing the utmost liberty to the play of 
 reason and intellect, while keeping his judgment open on 
 matters which he thought incapable of solution, while 
 weighing Church and Bible doctrines in the balances, and 
 deciding upon them on their own merits instead of simply 
 leaning on antiquity or authority, yet pursued all his in- 
 vestigation and criticism in a spirit of the deepest reverence. 
 The distinguishing feature of his writings is a Catholic 
 breadth of view. He is unfettered by the prejudices which 
 
 * Perhaps we may except Sir Thomas Browne's celebrated ' Religio 
 Medici ' (written in 1635), which seems to occupy a position between 
 works distinctly hostile and those yielding unquestioning obedience to 
 the received theology. But the ' Religio Medici,' as its name implies, 
 is rather a collection of one man's opinions, with his personal motives 
 for holding them, than an argumentative work for general use. It is 
 too eccentric and subjective to be logical. In many points, however, it 
 is anticipative of Coleridge, as well as of the Catholic and Broad 
 Church position. The writer's independence led him in various direc- 
 tions. 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE REVIVAL 
 
 47 
 
 it must be confessed give an appearance of bias to most 
 writings, whether critical or apologetic. His conclusions, 
 therefore, are always valuable, whether one agrees with them 
 or not. 
 
 Coleridge's mind and Coleridge's writings were the result 
 of a reaction against the insipid and unintellectual Pro- 
 testantism of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. 
 In one sense he was the precursor of ' Essays and Reviews,' 
 and the papers of ' Lux Mundi.' He also prepared the way 
 for the Catholic Revival by clearing the air, forcing men to 
 think, by asserting the rights of the intellect against the 
 emotions, by breaking down a good deal of Protestant 
 prejudice — e.g., as regards the verbal inspiration of Scripture 
 — the (entirely) spiritual character of the Church, the 
 (entirely) commemorative nature of the Eucharist, and so 
 on. Besides thus negatively serving the Catholic cause by 
 the removal of certain prejudices likely to operate against 
 it, his work was constructive ; and we find him laying down 
 here and there the same doctrines as the revivalists were 
 advocating — e.g., where he advocates the united authority 
 of the Bible and the Church : 'There are likewise sacred 
 writings, which, taken in connexion with the institution and 
 perpetuity of a visible Church, all believers revere as the 
 most precious boon of God, next to Christianity itself, and 
 attribute both their communication and preservation to an 
 especial Providence.' Or in the following view of the 
 Eucharist : ' After this course of study you may then take 
 up and peruse sentence by sentence the Communion Service, 
 the best of all comments on the Scriptures appertaining to 
 this mystery. And this is the preparation which will prove, 
 with God's grace, the surest preventive of, or antidote 
 against, the freezing poison, the lethargizing hemlock of the 
 doctrine of the Sacramentaries, according to whom the 
 Eucharist is a mere practical metaphor, in which things are 
 employed instead of articulated sounds for the exclusive 
 purpose of recalling to our minds the historical fact of our 
 
48 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 Lord's crucifixion ; in short (the profaneness is with them, 
 not with me), just the same as when Protestants drink a 
 glass of wine to the glorious memory of William III. ! True 
 it is that the remembrance is one end of the Sacrament; 
 but it is, " Do this in remembrajice of Ale " — -of all that Christ 
 was and is, hath done and is still doing for fallen mankind, 
 and, of course, of His crucifixion inclusively, but not of His 
 crucifixion alone. December 14, 1827.'* 
 
 Coleridge was, in fact, instrumental in bringing about in 
 the minds of many thinking men a similar change to that 
 which had occurred in his own mind. He was brought up 
 in Unitarian principles, which he eventually rejected. He 
 was feeling his way towards Catholic truth, a great deal of 
 which he apprehended ; and his evidence in its favour is the 
 more satisfactory, inasmuch as he never states an opinion or 
 doctrine without fully demonstrating its reasonableness. It 
 is significant that his ' Aids to Reflection ' consist very 
 largely of selected passages from the saintly Archbishop 
 Leighton, with Coleridge's comments and amplifications. I 
 believe this celebrated book is sometimes regarded as the 
 foundation of what is known as the Broad Church theology. 
 This school arose during the course of the Oxford Move- 
 ment. It was partly the result of a reaction against its 
 extreme tendencies, partly the combination of various forces, 
 not altogether unfriendly to it, but all, whether opposing the 
 medijEvalism of the movement or not, distinctly breaking 
 away from the Protestantism hitherto dominant. Both the 
 Catholic and the Broad Church schools were greatly in- 
 debted to Coleridge. Dean Church thus refers to him : 
 ' In England another recluse (the first was Mr. Alexander 
 Knox) of splendid genius and wayward humour had dealt 
 in his own way, with far-reaching msight, with vast reading, 
 and often with impressive eloquence, with the same subject 
 (the Christian Church) ; and his profound sympathy and 
 faith had been shared and reflected by a great poet. What 
 Coleridge and Wordsworth had put in the forefront of their 
 * ' Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit.' 
 
PRECU/iSOJiS OF THE REVIVAL 
 
 49 
 
 speculations and poetry, as the object of their profoundest 
 interest and of their highest hopes for mankind, might, of 
 course, fail to appear in the same light to others ; but it 
 could not fail, in those days at least, to attract attention, as 
 a matter of grave and well-founded importance. Coleridge's 
 theories of the Church were his own, and were very wide 
 of theories recognised by any of those who had to deal 
 practically with the question, and who were influenced in 
 one way or another by the traditional doctrines of theologians. 
 But Coleridge had lifted the subject to a very high level. 
 He had taken the simple but all-important step of viewing 
 the Church in its spiritual character as first and foremost, 
 and above all things essentially a religious society of Divine 
 institution, not dependent on the creation or will of man, or 
 on the privileges and honours which man might think fit to 
 assign to it ; and he had undoubtedly familiarized the minds 
 of many with this way of regarding it, however imperfect, or 
 cloudy, or unpractical they might find the development of 
 his ideas and his deductions from them.'* 
 
 However much these {i.e., the Catholic and Broad) schools 
 differed from each other (and they had much more in 
 common than a superficial observer might suppose, as has 
 since been proved by their partial coalescence), they differed 
 still more from the current religionism. There was at least 
 that sort of sympathy between them which must always 
 arise between two independent sets of thinkers and writers, 
 both in a minority, but both numbering some of the brightest 
 intellects of the day in their ranks. 
 
 It is noticeable that Coleridge and his brother-in-lawi 
 Southey, were both ardent admirers of Bishop Jeremy 
 Taylor. There is a beautiful passage in Southey's ' Thalaba,' 
 which is nothing more than a transcription from one of 
 Taylor's sermons slightly altered into blank verse, t 
 
 Coleridge again and again breaks out into quotation 
 
 * ' Oxford Movement,' ch. viii. 
 
 t It was in the course of a lecture on Bishop Taylor that I called 
 
 I 
 
so CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENT URY 
 
 from this master of poetic prose. The fascination which 
 Bishop Taylor exercised over both these men was perhaps 
 chiefly that of one poet on another. His boundless wealth 
 of illustration, whether from the world of nature or from the 
 poets of classical antiquity, the freedom and luxuriance of 
 his language, so different from the stereotyped manner of 
 the evangelical divines, was naturally appreciated by such 
 men as the Lake writers. But there was a deeper ground 
 of affinity. Taylor represented a school which was a re- 
 action against the narrow Protestantism and puritanism of 
 his day. This accounts for the liberality and generosity 
 which run through his works. His ' Liberty of Prophesy- 
 ing ' is perhaps the most remarkable book of its time, so 
 vastly ahead is it of temporary and local prejudice ; in fact, 
 
 attention to his influence on the Lake writers. The particular verse in 
 ' Thalaba ' is the i6th of Book VIII. : 
 
 ' . . . . behold this vine, 
 I found it a wild tree, whose wanton strength 
 Had swoln into irregular twigs 
 And bold excrescences, 
 And spent itself in leaves and little rings, 
 So in the flourish of its outwardness 
 
 Wasting the sap and strength 
 That should have given forth fruit ; 
 
 But when I prun'd the tree. 
 Then it grew temperate in its vain expense 
 Of useless leaves, and knotted, as thou seest, 
 Into these full, clear clusters, to repay 
 The hand that wisely wounded it.' 
 The original passage is as follows : ' For so have I known a 
 luxuriant vine swell into irregular twigs and bold excrescences, and 
 spend itself in leaves and little rings, and afford but trifling clusters to 
 the wine-press, and a faint return to his heart which longed to be re- 
 freshed with a full vintage ; but when the lord of the vine had caused 
 the dressers to cut the wilder plant and made it bleed, it grew temperate 
 in its vain expense of useless leaves, and knotted into fair and juicy 
 branches, and made accounts of that loss of blood by the return of fruit.' 
 
 Southey truly says that he has altered the unimprovable language of 
 the original as little as possible. 
 
PI^ECURSOKS OF THE REVIVAL 
 
 as has been sarcastically observed, it was in advance of the 
 writer himself in the days of his prosperity. Taylor, in 
 short, was one of those grand souls who belong to no school 
 or party; he was what we should call a Catholic in the 
 largest sense of the expression. Now, Robert Leighton, 
 who I have shown was Coleridge's model in the ' Aids,' was 
 very similarly constituted. He was worried by the Presby- 
 terians for his personal friendship with Romanists, while he 
 was too keenly alive to the errors of their Church to be 
 reckoned on their side theologically. This position of the 
 Via Media held by Taylor and held by Leighton, was also 
 attained by Coleridge and Southey. 
 
 While Coleridge was writing on the side of truth, as he 
 conceived it, in the language of ' philosophic meditation,' 
 Southey was busy on the same side as an essayist and 
 historian, in addition to what he produced in verse. His 
 ' Thalaba,' a poem, curiously enough, of which Dr. Newman 
 was one of the few admirers, appeared in 1801, and was 
 followed by several other poetical works. But, like Scott, it 
 is by his prose that Southey is best known, and by which he 
 has chiefly influenced his generation. From 1808 to 1838 
 he wrote over ninety articles for the Quarterly Review. 
 His mind, the result of his vast reading in various directions, 
 was eclectic, in the sense that it was a curious mixture 
 of English, French, and German philosophies — Goethe, 
 Rousseau, and Gibbon had each a pretty good share in the 
 formation of his views — while in religious matters, though 
 not free from the taint of Unitarianism, his weight has been 
 chiefly on the side of the Church. The wide and indepen- 
 dent field of his secular reading, while preventing him from 
 being what is called orthodox on all points of Church doctrine, 
 was a guarantee of his Catholicity in the broader sense of 
 the term. His one distinct ecclesiastical effort was his 
 'Book of the Church,' published in 1824, which has done 
 good service historically, in anticipation of doctrinal works 
 on the same subject since put forth by the Oxford writers. 
 
52 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 In a word, he broke away from the traditional low view of 
 the Church, and prepared his readers for higher and more 
 Catholic views of it than he himself actually stated. 
 
 In the article in the British Critic already referred to 
 (see note on p. 29), Cardinal Newman bears eloquent 
 witness to the good work of the writers I have mentioned. 
 I quote the passage as repeated in the ' Apologia ' : ' After 
 thus stating the phenomenon of the time, as it presented 
 itself to those who did not sympathize with it, the article 
 proceeds to account for it ; and this it does by considering 
 it as a reaction from the dry and superficial character of 
 the religious teaching and the literature of the last genera- 
 tion or century, and as a result of the need which was felt 
 both by the hearts and the intellects of the nation for a 
 deeper philosophy, and as the evidence and as the partial 
 fulfilment of that need, to which even the chief authors of 
 the then generation had borne witness. First, I mentioned 
 the literary influence of Walter Scott, who turned men's 
 minds in the direction of the Middle Ages. "The general 
 need," I said, "of something deeper and more attractive 
 than what had offered itself elsewhere may be considered 
 to have led to his popularity ; and by means of his popu- 
 larity he reacted on his readers, stimulating their mental 
 thirst, feeding their hopes, setting before them visions 
 which, when once seen, are not easily forgotten, and silently 
 indoctrinating them with nobler ideas, which might after- 
 wards be appealed to as first principles." Then I spoke 
 of Coleridge thus : "While history in prose and verse was 
 thus made the instrument of Church feehngs and opinions, 
 a philosophical basis for the same was laid in England by 
 a very original thinker, who, while he indulged a liberty of 
 speculation which no Christian can tolerate, and advocated 
 conclusions which were often heathen rather than Christian, 
 yet, after all, installed a higher philosophy into inquiring 
 minds than they had hitherto been accustomed to accept. 
 In this way he made trial of his age, and succeeded in 
 
PRECURSORS OF THE REVIVAL S3 
 
 interesting its genius in the cause of Catholic truth." Then 
 come Southey and Wordsworth, " two living poets, one of 
 whom in the department of fantastic fiction, the other in 
 that of philosophic meditation, have addressed themselves 
 to the same high principles and feelings, and carried 
 forward their readers in the same direction." '* 
 
 There is one more name about which I must say some- 
 thing as participating in the intellectual movements of the 
 day, and whose influence, I think, we may venture to throw 
 into the Catholic scale. I refer to Thomas de Quincey, 
 the English opium-eater. Master of language as he was, 
 he only wrote two books — one a little work on political 
 economy, the other a German romance called ' Kloster- 
 heim.' These two books will show the extent of his genius. 
 He wrote on an immense variety of subjects between them, 
 but all his other writings came out as magazine articles. 
 The reason, probably, was that, like his friend Coleridge, 
 he lacked the steady application which the manufacture of 
 books requires ; or possibly that the examination of minute 
 details in which his genius delighted, and which was con 
 stantly leading him off the main lines of his subject, would 
 prevent his undertakmg what he could scarcely have done 
 in an ordinary lifetime. 
 
 This probably applies to both writers. If I am not mis- 
 taken, both projected certain large works which were never 
 executed. Had they been more active, or more capable 
 of concentration and condensation, we might have had some 
 very instructive Church history from them. De Quincey 
 abounds in passages showing that he was not fettered by 
 Protestant prejudice. Thus, in commenting on Newman's 
 work on ' Development ' : 
 
 ' Without meaning to undertake a defence of Mr. 
 Newman (whose book I am as yet too slenderly acquainted 
 with), may I be allowed at this point to intercept a fal- 
 lacious view of that doctrine, as though essentially it 
 * ' Apologia,' ch. iii. 
 
54 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 proclaimed some imperfection in Christianity ? The im- 
 perfection is in us, the Christians, not in Christianity. . . . 
 In the course of a day or a year the sun passes through 
 a wide variety of positions, aspects, and corresponding 
 powers in relation to ourselves. Daily and annually he 
 is developed to us — he runs a cycle of development. Yet, 
 after all, this practical result does not argue any change or 
 imperfection, growth or decay, in the sun. This great orb 
 is stationary as regards his place, and unchanging as regards 
 his power. It is the subjective change in ourselves that 
 projects itself into this endless succession of apparent 
 changes in the object. Not otherwise on the scheme of 
 religious development,' etc.* 
 
 His remarks on casuistry, again, are very suggestive : 
 ' Our fashionable moral practitioner for this generation. 
 Dr. Paley, who prescribes for the consciences of both 
 universities, and, indeed, of most respectable householders, 
 has introduced a good deal of casuistry into his work, 
 though not under that name. In England there is an 
 aversion to the real name, founded partly on this, — that 
 casuistry has been most cultivated by Roman Catholic 
 divines, and too much with a view to an indulgent and 
 dispensing morality, and partly on the excessive subdivision 
 and hair-splitting of cases, which tends to the infinite 
 injury of morals, by perplexing and tampering with the 
 conscience, and by presuming morality to be above the 
 powers of any but the subtlest minds. All this, however, 
 is but the abuse of casuistry ; and without casuistry of some 
 sort or other no practical decision could be made in the 
 accidents of daily life,' etc.t 
 
 This vein of thought reappears elsewhere in De Quincey, 
 notably in his ' Essay on Casuistry.' 
 
 I have tried to show that there has been a chain of 
 writers from the days of the Reformation to the opening 
 * ' Essay on Protestantism.' 
 f Note to Letter II. to a young man. 
 
PRECURSOI^S OF THE REVIVAL 
 
 55 
 
 of the present century by whom the Catholic theology was 
 kept alive within the Church of England ; that the Oxford 
 men were not stating new doctrines so much as recurring 
 to the hereditary teaching ; that when they arose men's 
 minds were stirred in various directions ; that various re- 
 ligious movements were in embryo, and that the so-called 
 Oxford Movement was but one of many manifestations of 
 an intellectual activity then permeating educated society. 
 And consequently, in addition to the older writers to whom 
 the Tractarians were able to appeal, they had their imme- 
 diate precursors and contemporaries, who (involuntarily, 
 perhaps, but still most effectually) prepared the public mind 
 for the reception of the truths they had to deliver. To put 
 it in Cardinal Newman's own words : ' Those doctrines 
 were in the air — the movement in which they were taking 
 part was the birth of a crisis rather than of a place.''"' Or 
 in the words of Dean Church : ' The time was ripe for 
 great collisions of principles and aims ; for the decom- 
 position of elements which had been hitherto united ; for 
 sifting them out of their old combinations, and regrouping 
 them according to their more natural affinities. It was a 
 time for the formation and development of unexpected 
 novelties in teaching and practical effort. There was a 
 great historic Church party imperfectly conscious of its 
 position and responsibilities ; there was an active but 
 declining pietistic school resting on a feeble intellectual 
 basis and narrow and meagre interpretations of Scripture, 
 and strong only in its circle of philanthropic work ; there 
 was, confronting both, a rising body of inquisitive and, in 
 some ways, menacing thought. To men deeply interested 
 in religion the ground seemed confused and treacherous. 
 There was room, and there was a call, for new effort ; but 
 to find the resources for it, it seemed necessary to cut down 
 deep below the level of what even good men accepted as 
 the adequate expression of Christianity, and its fit applica- 
 * 'Apologia.' 
 
56 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 tion to the conditions of the nineteenth century.'* Or, 
 again, in the words of Dean Burgon : ' To read of the 
 great Church Revival of 1833 as it presents itself to the 
 imagination of certain writers, one would suppose that, in 
 their account, the publication of the earliest of the "Tracts 
 for the Times" had the magical effect of kindling into glory 
 the dead embers of an all but extinct Church. The plain 
 truth is, that the smouldering materials for the cheerful 
 blaze which followed the efforts made in 1832-3-4 had been 
 accumulating unobserved for many years — had been the 
 residuum of the altar-fires of a long succession of holy 
 and earnest men. ... As at another famous occasion of 
 national apostasy, God was found to have "reserved to 
 Himself seven thousand" who had retained their hold on 
 Catholic truth amid every discouragement. . . . Church 
 feeling was evoked, not created, by the movement of i833.'t 
 This last quotation is followed by a list of about forty 
 men to whom the remark applied, not one of whom I have 
 mentioned, because I have rather sought to trace the origin 
 of the movement through courses not usually supposed to 
 have any connexion with it, than through such more obvious 
 channels as the Dean refers to. 
 
 * 'Oxford Movement,' ch. i. 
 
 t Biographical sketch of Hugh James Rose. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 THE OXFORD MOVEMENT : ITS LEADERS AND SUPPORTERS. 
 
 AFTER the death of John Keble, Cardinal Newman 
 was asked to write something about the man and his 
 works. He respectfully declined on the ground of their 
 old acquaintance, which made criticism impossible, as it 
 included so much that could not be publicly discussed 
 without violating the sacred laws of friendship. Some such 
 feeling as this must necessarily be present to any thoughtful 
 person when contemplating the lives of great men departed, 
 especially men of marked sanctity of character whose works 
 have made them in a sense his personal friends. And the 
 reluctance to speak freely will naturally be greater when 
 those men belong to our own times, when the details of 
 their lives are more or less familiar to everybody, and when 
 numberless recollections will be stirred in the minds of 
 one's hearers, whether friendly or adverse to the characters 
 concerned. 
 
 It is with a strong feeling of hesitation, therefore, not to 
 say of reverential regard, that I venture to say anything 
 about those great men who are regarded as the prime 
 movers in the Catholic revival. But our subject requires 
 me to say something, and the stage at which we have 
 arrived makes it necessary that I should say it at once. 
 
 To recur to a remark which I have previously let fall. We 
 must all have been struck by the fact that great movements 
 
 1 
 
58 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 usually originate with a single person, who possibly gives 
 them a name, or, at all events, to whose individual energy 
 they can be traced. The peculiarity of the Oxford Move- 
 ment is that it seems rather to have been the birth of the 
 times, to have been due to some spirit stirring the air and 
 affecting a number of people simultaneously, than to have 
 arisen in any single mind whom alone we can hold re- 
 sponsible for it. There can be no doubt whatever that 
 Newman was the master-mind throughout, though he 
 modestly disclaims the position of a leader, and the public 
 instinct was probably correct in conferring the name of 
 Newtiianifes on the party as pointing to the great personality 
 which was its inspiring genius. But that there really was 
 some doubt about the leadership, or that different people 
 were inclined to place it elsewhere according to their 
 notions of personal influence, or that the movement assumed 
 a different character from time to time as one or other of 
 its agents became more prominent, is evidenced by the fact 
 that the name was repeatedly changed. 
 
 The Rev. T. Mozley says that ' had Keble remained 
 quite as he was for two or three years more, and others 
 been content to preach and to talk, half Oxford and a great 
 part of England would have been called Kebkans to this 
 day most probably.' Dr. Pusey's name was ultimately 
 adopted as implying the most permanent and solid, though 
 not the most brilliant, influence. But, as Dean Church 
 suggests, the reason was probably that it contained a touch 
 of the comic when supplemented by the usual affix. 
 
 An old clerical friend of mine used to tell a story about 
 a visitor to a country church where such mild innovations 
 as a surpliced choir and preaching in a surplice had been 
 introduced. ' Pray,' said the stranger to the verger, ' are 
 there 7nany Puseyites about in this neighbourhood ?' ' Well, 
 sir,' replied the verger, ' there still be a few left, but there's 
 not so many as there used to be.' 'Oh, indeed; I am 
 very glad to hear it. And, pray, how do you account for 
 
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT 
 
 59 
 
 the falling off ?' ' Why, the fact is, sir, we takes their eggs 
 ill the spring.' The rustic attendant thought that peewits 
 were referred to. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the name in general use was first 
 Newmanites, then Puseyites, both names being, as usual, 
 bestowed by outsiders, and however honourable they may 
 have since become (indeed, they have become so honour- 
 able that they have been discontinued), they originally 
 conveyed, and were intended to convey, a certain amount 
 of ridicule. 
 
 The meeting of friends and the ventilation of subjects, 
 which eventually found expression in the ' Tracts for the 
 Times,' dates back to the year 1829, when Newman and 
 certain fellows and undergraduates of the University began 
 to meet twice a week for the study of Scripture. As 
 T. Mozley points out, there was a curious resemblance 
 between these meetings and those of Wesley and his 
 friends exactly a hundred years before. It seems that 
 biblical scholarship was in a very low state at the University 
 in those days, and though the New Testament was studied, 
 the exercises chiefly consisted of construing and examining 
 some points of grammatical scholarship. Those who wished 
 to derive any special religious benefit from the Bible had to 
 do so from their private reading or from conversation at 
 such gatherings as Newman and his friends arranged. 
 
 The first book chosen for consideration was the Revela- 
 tion of St. John the Divine, for the simple reason that 
 prophecy was then a favourite subject, and students were 
 much exercised in attempts at the identification of Anti- 
 christ. The choice apparently lay between Mohammed, 
 Napoleon Buonaparte, the Pope, and the Church of Rome. 
 The days had gone by when the first could seriously be 
 considered, and the downfall of the second at Waterloo 
 decided the question against the unfortunate Papacy. At 
 least, if that were 7iot, the difficulty was to discover who (or 
 what) was Antichrist. 
 
6o CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF m.VETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 The resemblance of Rome to the supposed characteristics 
 was sufficiently close in the Protestant apprehension, but 
 people of a Catholic disposition naturally argued that to be 
 like Antichrist implied a resemblance to Christ Himself. 
 
 An ingenious compromise presented itself by transferring 
 the identity from the Church of Rome to the pagan city, 
 over which the old spirit of heathenism might still be sup- 
 posed to hover. Questions of doctrinal difference between 
 England and Rome were then quite in abeyance, possibly 
 because they had been settled so satisfactorily long ago that 
 it was thought waste of time to reopen them. Anyhow, 
 there was a general ignorance on such subjects, and they 
 were not taught officially at the University or from the 
 pulpit. We can easily understand that from this very cir- 
 cumstance points of Roman controversy would naturally be 
 raised at these private meetings which could not be dis- 
 cussed elsewhere. This would also be the inevitable 
 tendency of the prophetic matter ; and the particular cir- 
 cumstances of the Church of England, referred to in our 
 first lecture, would stimulate inquiry in the same direction. 
 Anyhow, such questions were raised and discussed, and the 
 whole subject of the relations of England to Rome was 
 reopened, with the inevitable result of a contrast between 
 the two Churches, and an examination of the weak points 
 of the former. Here subjects were ventilated which after- 
 wards came before the public, and minds were stirred to 
 think who afterwards wrote so ably about them. 
 
 It may be interesting to notice, in passing, the relations 
 between Newman and his college pupils when he was 
 one of the tutors of Oriel. He was on much closer 
 terms of friendship with them than usually subsisted 
 in Oxford between tutors and pupils. He did more 
 for them, and expected more from them, than was enough 
 to satisfy the average teacher. And his influence was of 
 course immense, as must always be the case where a 
 man of superior intellect and scholarship unbends to those 
 
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT 6l 
 
 beneath him officially. This is perhaps the proper place to 
 mention that in tracing the career of this great man we shall 
 find it divides itself into four very natural stages. He was 
 first influential as a tutor, then as a parish priest, then as a 
 preacher, and lastly as a writer, each of which meant an 
 extension of influence beyond that which preceded it. 
 
 The spirit which was at work quietly at Oxford, and in 
 various minds elsewhere, was evoked into public activity 
 several years later by an event which has given a date to the 
 revival. 'On July 14, 1833,' Cardinal Newman tells us in 
 his ' Apologia,' ' 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.' 
 
 In a letter to his father's old friend, Mr. Richards, Keble 
 refers to the immediate result of his sermon as follows : 
 
 ' Some of my friends at Oxford — persons worthy of much 
 confidence — are wishing for a kind of association to cir- 
 culate right notions on the Apostolical Succession, and also 
 for the defence of the Prayer-Book against any sort of 
 profane innovation, which seems too likely to be attempted. 
 Might we hope for your countenance and support if such a 
 thing should be set on foot ? Isaac Williams, I think, has 
 been written to, and can give you all particulars about it. 
 I cannot help hoping that there is still a good deal of 
 cordial Church feeling about the country, which it is very 
 desirable to encourage in a quiet way, and to get people to 
 dwell on it a little more.' 
 
 If man is a microcosm, I suppose we may fairly compare 
 a great public movement with what sometimes happens in 
 the life of an individual. Circumstances have led a man's 
 thoughts in a particular direction — say to be uneasy about 
 his own spiritual state, or about the condition of his fellow- 
 men. He goes on thinking about the matter, perhaps dis- 
 cussing it with anyone who will give him a hearing, till it 
 takes such hold of his mind as to exclude every other 
 
 1 
 
62 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 subject. In common parlance, he goes mad upon it. 
 Perhaps the expression is true, or it may be merely a way 
 of putting that excessive interest and enthusiasm which 
 ordinary men cannot account for on any other hypothesis. 
 While the man is in this condition something happens to 
 him. He has been a great sinner ; he hears a striking 
 sermon, is converted, and founds a new religious order. 
 He hears a powerful political speech, and is converted in 
 another sense into a patriot. If his genius is of a hterary 
 turn, his lonely imaginings are stirred into activity by some 
 literary masterpiece. His latent talent is brought out, and 
 he writes a famous book. 
 
 In every such case thought precedes action, and the latter 
 is evoked by a collision of the subjective with the objective. 
 The man does something which leaves a mark on society, 
 gets him a great name, or perhaps the honour of martyrdom. 
 This is often the history of great public benefactors, of 
 great religious teachers, of great writers. And when a 
 number of people are simultaneously stirred by the same 
 impulse, however cold and phlegmatic they may be in their 
 own nature, they become heated and inflamed by mutual 
 contact. The result will depend on the character of the 
 persons concerned. It may be a deadly fanaticism, such as 
 is exhibited in great rebellions, or a healthy enthusiasm for 
 the moral or religious benefit of society. In one case we 
 may have such a movement as the French Revolution ; in 
 the other such a philanthropic movement as that for the 
 abolition of slavery, or a religious revival like that we are 
 considering. 
 
 Mr. Keble's sermon was the immediate occasion for that 
 systematic course of action which resulted in the ' Tracts for 
 the Times.' It was, as it were, the trumpet which called 
 men together for united and concentrated effort, who had 
 hitherto been thinking and acting separately. The first 
 practical step was a small meeting of friends, held at the 
 parsonage of Mr. Hugh James Rose, at Hadleigh, in 
 
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT 
 
 63 
 
 Suffolk, during the same month (July) in which the sermon 
 was preached. At this gathering the thoughts and anxieties 
 which had filled the minds of a number of earnest Church- 
 men, and had brought them into communication with one 
 another, came to a head, and issued in a decision to act in 
 concert. 
 
 It is a striking fact that Mr. Rose, whose name is not 
 now popularly associated with the revival, was at that 
 initial stage its presiding genius, and his high character and 
 literary distinction made him the most suitable person to 
 call together such a meeting and to control its deliberations. 
 The fourth volume of Newman's ' Parochial Sermons ' bears 
 the following beautiful dedication: 'To the Rev. Hugh 
 James Rose, B.D., Principal of King's College, London, 
 and domestic Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 who when hearts were failing bade us stir up the gift that 
 was in us, and betake ourselves to our true Mother.' 
 
 Mr. Rose's allies were Mr. William Palmer, Mr. A. 
 Perceval, Mr. Froude, Mr. Keble, and Mr. Newman, the 
 first four of whom only were actually present, while the last 
 two acted by correspondence. All these men were in 
 complete agreement on the main subject, but, as we should 
 expect from men of their marked personality and individual 
 habits of thought, they otherwise differed considerably. 
 
 For an account of Mr. Rose I cannot do better than quote 
 the words of Dean Church : ' Mr. Rose was a man whose 
 name and whose influence, as his friends thought, have 
 been overshadowed and overlooked in the popular view of 
 the Church Revival. It owed to him, they held, not only 
 its first impulse, but all that was best and most hopeful in 
 it, and when it lost him, it lost its wisest and ablest guide 
 and inspirer. It is certainly true that when that Revival 
 began he was much more distinguished and important than 
 any of the other persons interested in it. As far as could be 
 seen at the time, he was the most accomplished divine and 
 teacher in the English Church. He was a really learned 
 
64 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 man. He had the intellect and energy and literary skill to 
 use his learning. He was a man of singularly elevated and 
 religious character ; he had something of the eye and temper 
 of a statesman, and he had already a high position. He 
 was profoundly loyal to the Church, and keenly interested 
 in whatever affected its condition and its fortunes. As early 
 as 1825 he had in some lectures at Cambridge called the 
 attention of English Churchmen to the state of religious 
 thought and speculation in Germany, and to the mischiefs 
 likely to react on English theology from the rationalizing 
 temper and methods which had supplanted the old Lutheran 
 teaching ; and this had led to a sharp controversy with Mr. 
 Pusey, as he was then, who thought that Mr. Rose had both 
 exaggerated the fact itself, and had not adequately given 
 the historical account of it. He had the prudence, but not 
 the backwardness, of a man of large knowledge and con- 
 siderable experience of the world. More alive to difficulties 
 and dangers than his younger associates, he showed his 
 courage and his unselfish earnestness in his frank sympathy 
 with them, daring and outspoken as they were, and in his 
 willingness to share with them the risks of an undertaking 
 of which no one knew better than he what were likely to be 
 the difficulties. He certainly was a person who might be 
 expected to have a chief part in directing anything with 
 which he was connected. His countenance and his indirect 
 influence were very important elements, both in the stirring 
 of thought which led to the Hadleigh resolutions, and in 
 giving its form to what was then decided upon. But his 
 action in the movement was impeded by his failure in 
 health and cut short by his early death, January, 1839.'* 
 
 Dean Burgon speaks of him as follows : ' It will become 
 more and more apparent as we proceed that if to any one 
 man is to be assigned the honour of having originated the 
 great Catholic Revival of our times, that man was Hugh 
 
 * ' Oxford Movement.' — The correct date of his death was December 
 22, 1838. 
 
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT 65 
 
 James Rose. For my own part, I am inclined to think that 
 it fares with such movements as it fares with rivers. Their 
 true source, their actual fountain-head, is remote, is in- 
 significant. A confluence of brooks produces in time a 
 stream, into which many tributaries discharge themselves ; 
 the channel deepens, widens, receives somewhere a con- 
 siderable accession of waters, and now, behold, it has 
 become a mighty river ! ... So was it with the great 
 Catholic Revival of which we speak. But it remains true, 
 for all that, that amid the forms which crowd around us, 
 and the voices which make themselves heard above the 
 " hurly-burly," when the history of a great work is to be 
 deliberately committed to writing, one authoritative voice, 
 one commanding figure becomes conspicuous beyond the 
 rest ; and posterity will recognise the fact that it was Hugh 
 James Rose who was the true moving cause of that stirring 
 of the waters which made an indelible impress on the 
 Church of England between fifty and sixty years ago, and 
 which it is customary to date from the autumn of 1833. It 
 was he who, so early as the year 1822, had pointed out to the 
 clergy Internal Uttiofi as " the best safeguard against the 
 dangers of the Church." In 1825, as we have seen, from 
 the University pulpit at Cambridge, he had directed atten- 
 tion to the state of German Protestantism — a spectacle 
 of warning to the Church of England. But it was by his 
 soul-stirring discourses on the commission of the clergy, 
 preached before the same University in 1826, that he chiefly 
 recalled men's attention to those great Church principles 
 which had all but universally fallen into neglect, if not 
 oblivion. . . . Now, therefore, when the sky grew darkest 
 and most threatening (1829-1831), and the muttering 
 thunder was filling men's souls with a terrible anticipation 
 of the coming storm, all eyes were instinctively turned to 
 him as the fittest to lead and to guide. The bishops should 
 have taken the initiative, and put themselves at the head 
 of the movement ; but not one of them stirred, and no one 
 
 5 
 
66 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 dared approach them. The diocesan organization to which 
 the genius of Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, some 
 twenty years later, imparted such efficient flexibility, as yet 
 existed only in theory. Let it in fairness be confessed that 
 the traditional cumbrous exclusiveness of their exalted 
 station, not to say the suspicions under which they laboured 
 as a body, disqualified our then bishops from the kind of 
 action which at the close of the first quarter of the present 
 century had become a necessity. Thus it happened that a 
 standard-bearer had to be sought for elsewhere ; and, as we 
 have said, the man on whom Churchmen fixed their hopes 
 was Hugh James Rose.'* 
 
 Dean Church writes as follows of Mr. William Palmer, of 
 W orcester College : ' He had been educated at Trinity 
 College, Dublin, but he had transferred his home to Oxford, 
 both in the University and in the city. He was a man of 
 exact and scholastic mind, well equipped at all points in 
 controversial theology, strong in clear theories and precise 
 definitions, familiar with objections current in the schools 
 and with the answers to them, and well versed in all the 
 questions, arguments, and authorities belonging to the great 
 debate with Rome. He had definite and well-arranged 
 ideas about the nature and office of the Church ; and, from 
 his study of the Roman controversy, he had at command 
 the distinctions necessary to discriminate between things 
 which popular views confused, and to protect the doctrines 
 characteristic of the Church from being identified with 
 Romanism. Especially he had given great attention to the 
 public devotional language and forms of the Church, and 
 had produced by far the best book in the English language 
 on the history and significance of the offices of the English 
 Church — the "Origines Liturgicse," published at the Univer- 
 sity Press in 1832. It was a book to give a man authority 
 with divines and scholars ; and among those with whom at 
 this time he acted no one had so compact and defensible a 
 * ' Lives of Twelve Good Men.' 
 
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT 
 
 67 
 
 theory, even if it was somewhat rigid and technical, of the 
 peculiar constitution of the English Church as Mr. Palmer. 
 With the deepest belief in his theory, he saw great dangers 
 threatening, partly from general ignorance and looseness of 
 thought, partly from antagonistic ideas and principles only 
 too distinct and too popular ; and he threw all his learning 
 and zeal on the side of those who, like himself, were alive 
 to those dangers, and were prepared for a great efifort to 
 counteract them.'* 
 
 As regards Mr. A. Perceval, the Rev. T. Mozley describes 
 his connection with the movement as casual ; he says : 
 
 'Several writers, in particular Mr. Perceval, conceived a 
 most extraordinary idea of the "Hadleigh Conference," as 
 if it were at once a great beginning and a great finality. 
 They who heard of it as one of the many incidents of the 
 day can only be surprised that any man of sense should 
 think it possible Newman, or even Froude, should be com- 
 prised and shut up by a few strokes of the pen, and 
 henceforth warranted to keep pace with so very casual an 
 acquaintance as Mr. Perceval. 't 
 
 On the other hand fairness compels us to reckon Mr. 
 Perceval among the chief actors in the early stages of the 
 movement, in furtherance of which he had done good 
 service, even before the meeting at Hadleigh, by the 
 publication of a work which he regarded as the first of the 
 'Tracts for the Times.' It was a small catechism called the 
 'Churchman's Manual,' intended as a sort of supplement 
 to the Church Catechism for giving instruction about the 
 Church and its ministers, which was certainly omitted from 
 the ofificial work. Mr. Rose, Mr. Palmer, and Mr. Froude 
 were also instrumental in its compilation, i.e., in the way 
 of suggestion and revision, and it was submitted to a great 
 many theological experts before publication, with the view 
 of such careful construction as should secure for it the 
 imprimatur of the Bench of Bishops. This, however, was 
 * ' Oxford Movement.' t 'Reminiscences.' 
 
68 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 refused, as, although no objection was raised to the contents 
 of the book, it was not thought expedient to give it official 
 sanction. In one sense this little Catechism was the first 
 of the Tracts, or, rather, their precursor ; but it does not 
 belong to the series, and has been completely overshadowed 
 by the more weighty publications of greater writers. 
 
 We now come to Richard Hurrell Froude, whom Mozley 
 is inclined to place on a level with Newman in the specula- 
 tive question (as he calls it) as to who was the master spirit 
 of the movement. 
 
 ' Froude was a man,' he says, ' such as there are now 
 and then, of whom it is impossible for those that have 
 known him to speak without exceeding the bounds of 
 common admiration and affection. He was elder brother 
 of William, the distinguished engineer, who died lately, 
 after rendering, and while still rendering, most important 
 services to the Admiralty, and of Anthony, the well-known 
 historian, the sons of Archdeacon Froude, a scholar and no 
 mean artist. Richard came to Oriel from Eton, a school 
 which does not make every boy a scholar, if it even tries 
 to do so, but which somehow implants in every nature a 
 generous ambition of one kind or other. As an under- 
 graduate he waged a ruthless war against sophistry and loud 
 talk, and he gibbeted one or two victims, labelling their 
 sophisms with their names. Elected to a Fellowship, and 
 now the companion of Newman and Pusey, not to speak 
 of elders and juniors, he had to wield his weapons more 
 reverentially and warily. But he had no wish to do other- 
 wise. 
 
 ' His figure and manner were such as to command the 
 confidence and affection of those about him. Tall, erect, 
 very thin, never resting or sparing himself, investigating 
 and explaining with unwearied energy, incisive in his lan- 
 guage, and with a certain fiery force of look and tone, he 
 seemed a sort of angelic presence to weaker natures. He 
 slashed at the shams, phrases, and disguises in which the 
 
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT 
 
 69 
 
 lazy or the pretentious veil their real ignorance or folly. 
 His features readily expressed every varying mood of play- 
 fulness, sadness, and awe. There were those about him 
 who would rather writhe under his most cutting sarcasms 
 than miss their part in the workings of his sympathy and 
 genius. Froude was a Tory, of that transcendental idea 
 of the English gentleman which forms the basis of Toryism. 
 He was a High Churchman of the uncompromising school, 
 very early taking part with Anselm, Becket, Laud, and the 
 Nonjurors. Woe to anyone who dropped in his hearing such 
 phrases as the " dark ages," " superstition," "bigotry," " right 
 of private judgment," " enlightenment," " march of mind " or 
 " progress." When a strong man of science fell back on 
 " law," or a " subtle medium," or any other device for making 
 matter its own lord and master, it was as if a fox had 
 broken cover ; there ensued a chase and no mercy. Luxury, 
 show, and even comfort he despised and denounced."" 
 
 In the original draft of this lecture and in its actual 
 delivery I had inserted a brief sketch of the other members 
 of the Hadleigh conference — Keble and Newman, as well 
 as of Dr. Pusey and the other leading contributors to the 
 * Tracts for the Times.' With the exception of a few 
 personal recollections, the information then given is too 
 well known to need a public repetition, and I therefore 
 omit it, supposing that most people interested in the subject 
 have read Coleridge's or Lock's ' Life of Keble,' Cardinal 
 Newman's 'Apologia ' (in which he is practically his own 
 biographer), and the volumes that have appeared of Canon 
 Liddon's inagnum opus on Dr. Pusey. It may be useful, 
 however, to say a few words about the Tracts themselves, 
 which obtained the name of Tradarians to their authors 
 and those sharing their opinions. The first three bear the 
 
 * ' Reminiscences.' — Those who have time should supplement 
 the above with the graphic recollections of FrouJe (communicated by 
 Lord Blachford) in the third chapter of Dean Church's ' Oxford Move- 
 ment.' 
 
70 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 date of September 9, 1833; I'^st was published on 
 February 27, 1841, and, as shall shortly be explained, 
 brought the series to an abrupt termination. Their object 
 was to call attention to such doctrines as the apostolic 
 succession, the real (though spiritual) presence of Christ in 
 the Eucharist, baptismal regeneration, the true nature of 
 the Christian Church, its authority, constitution, doctrines, 
 and ritual. These doctrines were practically ignored at the 
 time, and it was to this circumstance that the writers attri- 
 buted the state of degradation into which the Church of 
 England had fallen. It was in their revival, therefore, that 
 they placed their hopes of its restoration to life and energy. 
 But the intention of the writers cannot better be stated than 
 in their own words, prefixed in the shape of an ' advertise- 
 ment ' to the first forty-six Tracts, when they were collected 
 into a volume towards the end of the year 1834 : 
 
 ' The following tracts were published with the object of 
 contributing something towards the practical revival of 
 doctrines which, although held by the great divines of our 
 Church, at present have become obsolete with the majority 
 of her members, and are withdrawn from public view even 
 by the more learned and orthodox few who still adhere to 
 them. The apostolic succession, the Holy Catholic Church, 
 were principles of action in the minds of our predecessors 
 of the seventeenth century ; but in proportion as the main- 
 tenance of the Church has been secured by law, her ministers 
 have been under the temptation of leaning on an arm of 
 flesh instead of her own Divinely-provided discipline, a 
 temptation increased by political events and arrangements 
 which need not here be more than alluded to.' 
 
 Dr. Pusey had previously given a single Tract (No. 18) 
 to the series, but it was not till about this time that he 
 became connected with them as an active contributor. His 
 accession, as Dr. Newman states, was a great gain, both 
 from the weight of his personal character and influence, and 
 from the change which his co-operation induced in the 
 
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT 
 
 71 
 
 character of the papers, which from brief leaflets were 
 expanded into treatises of permanent theological value. 
 
 ' Dr. Pusey was, to use the common expression, a host in 
 himself ; he was able to give a name, a form, and a per- 
 sonality to what was without him a sort of mob. . . . Such 
 was the benefit which he conferred on the movement 
 externally ; nor were the internal advantages at all inferior 
 to it. He was a man of large designs ; he had a hopeful, 
 sanguine mind ; he had no fear of others ; he was haunted 
 by no intellectual perplexities. . . . Dr. Pusey's influence 
 was felt at once. He saw that there ought to be more 
 sobriety, more gravity, more careful pains, more sense of 
 responsibility in the Tracts and in the whole movement. It 
 was through him that the character of the Tracts was 
 changed. When he gave to us his 'Tract on Fasting' he 
 put his initials to it. In 1835 he published his elaborate 
 ' Treatise on Baptism,' which was followed by other Tracts 
 from different authors, if not of equal learning, yet of equal 
 power and appositeness.'* 
 
 The excitement caused by these papers is scarcely in- 
 telligible to us at the present day, now that the doctrines 
 contended for are so generally held ; but they appeared 
 amid such profound ignorance, and such dense incapacity 
 to distinguish between Roman and Catholic, that people 
 were frightened out of their wits at what they thought was 
 unmitigated Popery. The Tracts which created the greatest 
 alarm were those (Nos. 80 and 87) by Isaac Williams, on 
 'Reserve in Communicating Religious Knowledge,' and 
 the last of the series (decidedly not the least), No. 90, by 
 John Henry Newman. 
 
 Both these writers ran directly counter to the popular 
 religious notions of the day — the first in pointing out certain 
 dangers in that unreserved circulation of Scripture which 
 was thought the chief bulwark of Protestantism, and in 
 popularizing (or vulgarizing) such a sacred doctrine as that 
 * ' Apologia.' 
 
72 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 of the Atonement ; the second in appearing to sanction 
 certain Romish doctrines, which the Articles had hitherto 
 been understood to condemn. 
 
 As regards religious knowledge, that there are dangers in 
 too great freedom in both the points I have mentioned 
 will generally be granted. We have an illustration in 
 modern elementary education, i.e., in conveying a know- 
 ledge of the Bible without a corresponding training of 
 character. The words of Tract LXXX. are as appropriate as 
 if they had just been written for a School Board controversy: 
 
 ' With regard to national schools, I would be careful not 
 to say anything that might appear to depreciate the value of 
 religious knowledge, but to say that such knowledge is a 
 treasure of so transcendent a nature, that it must be handled 
 with sacred care, is not to depreciate, but to exalt its value. 
 As our Lord led persons gradually to the knowledge of the 
 truth by quiet teaching, by leading them to observe His 
 works, by drawing out their self-denial and engaging their 
 confidence, so, in obedience to His command " to make 
 disciples of all nations," the system of the Church is that of 
 parental and pastoral training, and building up by practical 
 instruction, such as catechizing and the use of a constant 
 devotional form. These not having been sufficiently carried 
 on has given rise to two effects : the one is an undue pre- 
 ponderance given to preaching, in order to supply the want, 
 as if it were powerfully to bring to the heart that knowledge 
 which has not been received into the character by gradual 
 inculcation and discipline ; the other effect has been the 
 system of large national schools, the object of which is 
 contrary to the spirit of the Church, to impart sacred know- 
 ledge without any of this training as coinciding with it, 
 except in a very limited way, and to inculcate knowledge 
 without adequately instilling a sense of its practical im- 
 portance.' 
 
 And as regards the unreserved communication of sacred 
 doctrines, every sensible Churchman must be alive to its 
 
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT 
 
 73 
 
 dangers, with the spectacle before him of certain modern 
 sects, who in their anxiety to bring home the Gospel (as it 
 is called, which is practically limited to the Atonement) to 
 the minds of uneducated people, have adopted a slang 
 vocabulary and vulgar illustrations for the purpose, to the 
 detriment of that spirit of reverence which the Church system 
 tends to secure. 
 
 But the strong position of the writer is attested by a 
 critic of an opposite school, who, amidst a good deal of 
 blame, acknowledges the general force of the Tract as 
 follows: 'These arguments, which are scattered over the 
 Tracts without much regard to order, are drawn from a 
 variety of sources. Philosophy and natural instinct, Scripture 
 and tradition, are all made to combine in enforcing the 
 duty of reserve for which the writer pleads. And he is 
 able to show, apparently to his own perfect satisfaction, that 
 we are contradicting the best established principles of 
 mental philosophy, resisting the right impulses of the nature 
 which God has bestowed upon us, going against the genius 
 and spirit of all Divine teaching, whether in providence or 
 revelation, but more especially rejecting the lesson which is 
 taught us by the example of the blessed Lord Himself, and 
 finally opposing the principles of the Catholic Church, when 
 we publish this great mystery to men of unholy lives.'* 
 
 As regards Tract XC, that there was an error of judgment 
 in the time of its issue, and the mode in which the subject 
 was treated, may be conceded — in fact, I believe, has 
 practically been conceded by the author himself But 
 that there was a need for some such elucidation of the 
 Articles has been made clear by the various works on them 
 which have since appeared, notably the celebrated work of 
 Dr. Harold Browne, which have also made it clear that the 
 Articles do admit of the Catholic interpretation put upon 
 them by Dr. Newman in his Tract. His own opinion may 
 
 * Charge of Bishop O'Brien of Ossory to his clergy, published in 
 1843. 
 
74 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 be gathered from the letter he addressed in 1841 to Canon 
 Jelf as an Apologia for what he had written : 
 
 ' In truth there is at this moment a great progress of the 
 religious mind of our Church to something deeper and 
 truer than satisfied the last century. I always have con- 
 tended, and will contend, that it is not satisfactorily 
 accounted for by any particular movement of individuals 
 on a particular spot. The poets and philosophers of the 
 age have borne witness to it many years. Those great 
 names in our literature — Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Wordsworth, 
 Mr. Coleridge — though in different ways and with essential 
 differences one from another, and perhaps from any Church 
 system, still all bear witness to it. Mr. Alexander Knox 
 in Ireland bears a most surprising witness to it. The 
 system of Mr. Irving is another witness to it. The age is 
 moving towards something, and most unhappily the one 
 religious Communion among us which has of late years 
 been practically in possession of this something is the 
 Church of Rome. She alone, amid all the errors and evils 
 of her practical system, has given free scope to the feelings of 
 awe, mystery, tenderness, reverence, devotedness, and other 
 feelings which may be especially called Catholic. The 
 question, then, is, whether we shall give them up to the 
 Roman Church, or claim them for ourselves, as we well 
 may, by reverting to that older system, which has of late 
 years indeed been superseded, but which has been, and is, 
 quite congenial (to say the least), I should rather say proper 
 and natural, or even necessary to the Church.' And here 
 follow the significant words : ' But if we do give them up, 
 then we must give up the men who cherish them. We 
 must consent either to give up the men, or to admit their 
 principles.'* 
 
 Before following the further course of the movement, it 
 * Letter addressed to the Rev. R. W. Jelf, D.D., Canon of Christ 
 
 Church, in explanation of the 90th ' Tract for the Times,' by the author, 
 
 1841. 
 
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT 
 
 75 
 
 may be useful if I give a list of the Tracts and their authors, 
 as compiled by Dean Burgon with the assistance of Arch- 
 deacon Harrison. 
 
 Of the ninety Tracts, eighteen are reprints from the 
 writings of old English divines : viz., twelve (Nos. 37, 39, 
 42, 44, 46, 48, 50, 53, 55, 62, 65, 70) derived from the 
 works of Bishop Wilson ; three (Nos, 26, 27, 28) from 
 Bishop Cosin ; one (No. 25) from Bishop Beveridge ; 07ie 
 (No. 64) from Bishop Bull; 07ie (No. 72) from Archbishop 
 Ussher. 
 
 Four are Catena (Nos. 74, 76, 78, 81). The last was by 
 Archdeacon Harrison, and had a Tract by Dr. Pusey pre- 
 fixed. 
 
 Of the remaining sixty-eight, twenty-seven were by J. H. 
 Newman (viz., Nos. i, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 19, 20, 21, 31, 
 33, 34, 38, 41, 45, 47, 71, 73, 75, 79, 82, 83, 85, 88, 90). 
 Eight by John Keble (Nos. 4, 13, 40, 52, 54, 57, 60, 89). 
 Six by Dr. Pusey (Nos. 18, 66, 67, 68, 69, 77). 
 
 Four were by J. VV. Bowden (Nos. 5, 29, 30, 56). Four 
 by Thomas Keble (Nos. 12, 22, 43, 84). Four by Arch- 
 deacon Harrison (Nos. 16, 17, 24, 49). 
 
 Three were by the Hon. A. P. Perceval (Nos. 23, 35, 36). 
 Tliree by R. H. Froude (Nos. 9, 59, 63). Three by Isaac 
 Williams (Nos. 80, 86, 87). 
 
 One was by Alfred Menzies (No. 14)3 07ie by C. P. Eden 
 (No. 32). 
 
 No. 15 was the joint production of W. Palmer and J. H. 
 Newman. No. 51 is attributed to R. F. Wilson, but the 
 authorship is uncertain. The authorship of Nos. 58 and 61 
 is unknown. 
 
 No. 8 is attributed above to Newman, but it is disputed 
 whether he or Froude wrote it. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE OXFORD MOVEMENT {continued). 
 
 TRACT XC. fell upon Oxford and the religious world 
 like a thunderbolt. It was published on February 27, 
 1 84 1, and on the 8th of the following month four Senior 
 Tutors addressed the editor, charging the Tract with 
 suggesting a way to enable men to violate their engage- 
 ments with the University. 
 
 On the 15th the Board of Heads of Houses met and 
 published their judgment, without waiting for Mr. New- 
 man's reply, which was known to be in the press, and 
 which, when it eventually came out, was found to be dated 
 March 13. 
 
 The judgment is as follows: 'At a meeting of the Vice- 
 Chancellor, Heads of Houses, and Proctors in the Dele- 
 gates' Room, March 15, 1841. Resolved — that the modes 
 of interpretation, such as are suggested in the said Tract, 
 evading rather than explaining the sense of the Thirty-nine 
 Articles, and reconciling subscription to them with the 
 adoption of errors, which they were designed to counteract, 
 •defeat the object, and are inconsistent with the due 
 observance of the above-mentioned statutes. — P. Wvxter, 
 Vice-Chancellor.' 
 
 At this crisis in the Church's history one feels quite sorry 
 for the bishops of the time. On one hand we are told 
 that, had their theology been more accurate and extensive, 
 
 I 
 
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT— CONTINUED 77 
 
 they would have seen that there was nothing in the 
 Tractarian papers really inconsistent with the Prayer-Book 
 and the authority of the best English divines, and had they 
 extended their fatherly protection to the writers they might 
 have steered the movement clear of its dangers, saved the 
 seceders from leaving the Church, and shared in whatever 
 credit may have been due to the revival. On the other 
 hand they are severely blamed by their Protestant friends 
 for not discerning the 'undoubted leanings ' of the Tracts 
 from the opening numbers, and for not nipping the incipient 
 Popery in the bud. Thus the Rev. Daniel Wilson, in the 
 'Appeal' before quoted, says: ' Nor can the mournful fact 
 be concealed that a want of due vigilance and faithfulness 
 to the cause of Protestant truth was evinced at this period 
 by many of those who might have exercised their authority 
 in the Church for the suppression of these novel doctrines. 
 The heresies which now threaten us might apparently have 
 been nipped in the bud if our ecclesiastical rulers had 
 united in a firm protest against them. It would be un- 
 becoming in a mere presbyter to say more on this delicate 
 subject. Difficulties of a peculiar nature doubtless pre- 
 sented themselves to any combined movement on the part 
 of the Bench of Bishops. Still, the fact cannot be denied 
 that the very step which some of the bishops were ready 
 to adopt in protesting against the recent decision of the 
 Privy Council was not taken to suppress the introduction 
 of Romanizing principles into the Church. Many even of 
 those bishops who in their public charges expressed their 
 disapproval of these doctrines, mingled their admonitions 
 with so many expressions of respect for the motives of the 
 movement party, as greatly to weaken the effect of their 
 reproof. Nor have the influential laity and leading parochial 
 clergy been free from blame in this matter. With a few 
 noble exceptions, there has been too much caution and 
 reserve manifested by all parties.' 
 
 Whether the bishops were half persuaded by the cogent 
 
78 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 reasoning of the Tracts, as it presented itself to their 
 dormant theological sense, or whether, in the disturbed 
 condition of the Church, they found it impossible to adopt 
 any concerted action, they exhibited throughout the move- 
 ment a good deal of that dignified apathy which was supposed 
 to be the leading characteristic of their high station. But 
 on this occasion, whatever they usually did, or abstained 
 from doing, collectively, they agreed, almost to a man, with 
 the decision of the Oxford Board, and the unfortunate 
 Tract was pelted with anathemas from one Episcopal 
 throne after another. Thus O'Brien, Bishop of Ossory : 
 
 ' Throughout the whole Tract, the dishonest casuistry to 
 which the Jesuits have given a name is employed upon a 
 scale to which it would be hard to find a parallel, except 
 in the more notorious of their own writings. I should 
 despair of conveying anything like a full impression of the 
 shifting, evasive, and disingenuous sophistry with which the 
 purpose of the Tract is followed out.' 
 
 And : ' A mode of escape from the fair force of the 
 most solemn and sacred obligations — by such sophistry and 
 evasion, by such shifts and contrivances, as a man could 
 not apply to the very lightest of the engagements of common 
 life without forfeiting all reputation for integrity and good 
 faith.' 
 
 Bagot, Bishop of Oxford : 
 
 ' A system of interpretation which is so subtle that by it 
 the Articles may be made to mean anything or nothing.' 
 Kaye, Bishop of Lincoln : 
 
 ' It appears to me a proceeding inconsistent with religious 
 sincerity, and calculated to deaden the perception of truth 
 in the mind, both of him who puts forth such interpreta- 
 tions, and of them to whom they are addressed. What will 
 be the ultimate result of the course pursued by the learned 
 author of the Tract in question remains to be seen.' 
 
 Ponsonby, Bishop of Derry : 
 
 ' It becomes your duty to guard the inesHmable treasure. 
 
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT— CONTINUED 
 
 79 
 
 which in her Articles our Church has handed down to us, 
 from false interpolations.' 
 
 Mant, Bishop of Down and Connor and Dromore : 
 ' A process for ascertaining the truth the very contrary to 
 that which our Church has prescribed, the consequences of 
 which must needs be the co-existence of subscription to the 
 Articles with an inward belief of the very errors which the 
 Articles themselves were framed to counteract.'* 
 Copleston, Bishop of Llandafif : 
 
 ' Loose and dangerous doctrine ; a dishonest course 
 tending to corrupt the conscience and to destroy all con- 
 fidence between man and man ; a want of principle which 
 ought to exclude the subscriber, not only from sacred 
 functions, but from every office of important trust.' 
 
 Dr. Close, of Cheltenham (afterwards Dean of Carlisle) : 
 ' I should be sorry to trust the author of that Tract with 
 my purse.' 
 
 Dr. Whately (then Archbishop of Dublin) seems to mingle 
 his condemnation with a touch of irony at the Articles 
 themselves : 
 
 'Neither the reformers of our Church nor any other 
 human being could frame any expressions such as not to 
 admit of being explained away, or the consequences of 
 them somehow evaded, by an ingenious person, who should 
 resolutely set himself to the task.' 
 
 In my last lecture I quoted from Newman himself as to 
 the real object of the Tract, to which I may add the calm 
 and unbiased opinion of Dean Church : ' It was anything 
 but what it was taken to mean by the authorities — an in- 
 tentional move in favour of Rome. It was intended to 
 reconcile a large and growing class of minds, penetrated 
 
 * Though Bishop Jeremy Taylor, who occupied the same see some 
 200 years before, expresses himself thus : ' In such (i.e., doubtful) cases 
 let the Articles be made with as great latitude of sense as they can ; and 
 so that subscriptions be made to the form of words, let the subscribers 
 understand them in what sense they please, which the truth of God will 
 suffer, and the words can be capable of.' — ' Ductor Dubitanttum.' 
 
8o CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 and disgusted with the ignorance and injustice of much of 
 the current controversial assumptions against Rome, to a 
 larger and more defensible view of the position of the 
 English Church. And this was done by calling attention 
 to that which was not now for the first time observed — to 
 the loose and unguarded mode of speaking visible in the 
 later controversial Articles, and to the contrast between 
 them and the technical and precise theology of the first five 
 Articles. The Articles need not mean all which they were 
 supposed popularly to mean against what was Catholic in 
 Roman doctrine. This was urged in simple good faith ; it 
 was but the necessary assumption of all who held with the 
 Catholic theology, which the Tractarians all along main- 
 tained that they had a right to teach ; it left plenty of 
 ground of difference with unreformed and usurping Rome.'* 
 Yet he admits that it was a mistake or miscalculation. 
 Like all such bold declarations, while the Tract elicited 
 plenty of venom from those who did not agree with it, it 
 had the effect of drawing out many expressions of sympathy 
 from those who were in advance of their time in their views 
 about it. One notable instance was in the case of Dr. 
 Walter Farquhar Hook, Vicar of Leeds, who writes as 
 follows in a letter to his diocesan, the Bishop of Ripon : 
 ' The moment I heard that Mr. Newman was to be silenced, 
 not by argument, but by usurped authority, that moment I 
 determined to renounce my intention of pointing out in 
 Tract XC. what I considered to be its errors ; that moment I 
 determined to take my stand with Mr. Newman, because, 
 though I did not approve of a particular Tract, yet in 
 general principles — in the very principle advocated in that 
 Tract — I did agree with him. In a word, I was compelled 
 by circumstances to act as a party man. And in justice to 
 one whom I am proud to call my friend, I am bound to say 
 that Mr. Newman's explanatory letter to Dr. Jelf is, to my 
 mind, perfectly satisfactory.' 
 
 * ' 0.\ford Movement,' ch. xv. 
 
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT— CONTINUED 8i 
 
 As this celebrated Tract brought the series to an end, 
 and seems to mark a distinct epoch in the history of the 
 Church of England, it may not be out of place here to take 
 a brief survey of its influence on religious opinion : 
 
 In the first place, we notice that it draws a strong line of 
 demarcation between the school which it represented and 
 another school which had been rising at Oxford almost con- 
 currently with it. Both schools were manifestations, in 
 opposite directions, of that wholesome discontent with the 
 state of things in general, and of religious things in par- 
 ticular, which could not but be felt by serious men of all 
 shades of opinion. One school had supposed the remedies 
 to lie in a recurrence to old principles which had been 
 neglected, and as they considered those principles to have 
 been damaged by the Reformation, they proposed a return 
 to the authorities which had preceded that movement, or to 
 those whose influence had been to moderate its extreme 
 tendencies. The other school, speaking generally, were for 
 commencing de novo, and reopening the question of the 
 Divine idea about the Church, which they did not regard as 
 satisfactorily realized either by Catholicism or Protestantism. 
 On both sides, as must always be the case where men of 
 strong personality are concerned, there was much difference 
 of opinion in detail ; but, on the whole, the Catholic school 
 were more disposed to yield their personal views to a 
 central authority, while their rivals were for the greater 
 liberty of individualism. 
 
 Among the various theories of the Church put forth ai 
 the time there are three which require special notice. Mr. 
 Ward's ' Ideal of a Christian Church,' which shall be con- 
 sidered later, illustrates the extreme view on one side; 
 while two Oxford teachers — viz.. Dr. Whately and Dr. 
 Arnold — -developed theories of their own, which, of course, 
 differed immensely from Ward's ' Ideal,' but also differed 
 very much from each other. 
 
 The 'Letters of an Episcopalian,' published in 1826, 
 
 6 
 
82 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 exhibit Dr. Whately's conception of the Church as an 
 organized society introduced into the world by Christ 
 Himself, endued with definite spiritual powers, and, whether 
 connected with the State or not, having an independent 
 existence and inalienable claims with its own moral standard, 
 and spirit, and character. Dr. Arnold's idea was far simpler. 
 He divided the world into Christians and non-Christians, 
 the former believing in, and worshipping, Christ, the mere 
 fact of their doing so constituting them mto a church (or 
 society) in what he understood to be the sense of the word 
 in the New Testament. 
 
 To put it briefly, the former of these Churches was a 
 visible and tangible, the latter an invisible and purely 
 ' spiritual, body. They differed obviously from each other, 
 
 but both were alike, and both differed from the Tractarian 
 view in these points : First, in neither scheme did it matter 
 much about individual beliefs ; secondly, in neither of them 
 were the sacraments a necessity; thirdly, although both 
 recognised the need of a clergy, it was rather as teachers 
 than priests that they were regarded. In other words, they 
 excluded, or reduced the importance of, what the Tractarians 
 considered essential — viz., religious dogma, sacraments, and 
 a sacerdotal system. Those who held the views of Dr. 
 Whately and Dr. Arnold eventually merged into what is 
 known as the Broad Church school, with which we associate 
 such names as Stanley, Maurice, and Kingsley. 
 
 It will be obvious to the impartial student that both this 
 and the school against which it was a reaction hold the 
 truth between them. Either view of the Church, if held 
 exclusively, is capable of being pushed to a pernicious 
 extreme. Each is a wholesome correction of the other. 
 And now that we have passed beyond the circumstances 
 which brought these different opinions into violent contrast, 
 many good Churchmen can see their way to hold them 
 conjointly in such combination and proportion as to preserve 
 at once the integrity of the Catholic faith and the liberty 
 
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT— CONTINUED 8.5 
 
 and independence of the individual. In its ordinary state, 
 the co-existence of opposite schools of thought, within 
 certain limits, is a condition of the Church's healthy life 
 and activity. But at great crises of its history one will 
 naturally become more important than the other, according 
 to the peculiar evils of the time which it, and not its rival, 
 will he the more likely to counteract. 
 
 Among the religious phenomena of the present day we 
 have to count the reconciliation of opinions which were 
 thought irreconcilable in 184 1. At that date one of the 
 most obvious results of Tract XC. was to draw out clearly 
 the distinction between opposite schools of thought, each 
 of which regarded its rival as hostile to the interests of the 
 Church to which, both belonged. 
 
 The Broad Church school, like the Tractarian. was a 
 result of that 'Spirit in the air' to which reference has 
 already been made. Each gained a certain intensity or 
 suffered certain modifications from the pro.ximity of the 
 other. The tendencies of each were, in fact, driven further 
 by the antagonism of its rival than would have been the 
 case had both been very weak, or had either been sufficiently 
 strong to exclude the other from the field. It would lead 
 us too far from our immediate subject to follow the course 
 of such individuals on either side as realized the extreme 
 tendencies of their party. But this much may be said : 
 On one hand, the celebrated papers called ' Essays and 
 Reviews ' show us the direction in which one set of 
 opinions was going ; on the other hanil, we see the 
 conservative and mediteval tendencies leading others 
 beyond the lines originally contemplated in the revival, 
 leading them, in fact, to leave the Church of their baptism 
 for the Roman Communion. 
 
 If we had asked. Why ? we should have received one 
 answer, and one only, at the time : ' The Tractarian Move- 
 ment could logically lead them nowhere else. This had 
 been foreseen from the first.' But at this distance we can 
 
 I 
 
84 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 afford to look at the matter fairly, and shall be disposed to 
 give weight to the following considerations : 
 
 In the first place, as has been already observed, the 
 tendency of every movement is to drive men strongly in 
 one direction, with the result that some are naturally carried 
 further than others. We have an illustration in point, in 
 the case of that very clever, though very eccentric, man, 
 Mr. W. G. Ward, whose nature was of that ardent, im- 
 petuous sort, which may lead a man to do great things, but 
 which prevents him from being a philosopher. This led 
 him, while yet in the English Church, to break out into a 
 criticism of her system and an exposure of her weak points, 
 which we could better have understood from an enemy. It 
 was an instance probably of a man of keen susceptibilities 
 smarting under certain grievances, and, as usual in such 
 cases, speaking out freely everything that was in his mind, 
 without weighing his words, without considering their effect 
 on others. The work in which this undutiful spirit is 
 exhibited is his ' Ideal of a Christian Church,' published in 
 1844, of which a writer in the Tablet (a Romish paper) 
 observes : 
 
 ' It is a volume distinguished for its abhorrence of every 
 shred of Protestantism, for deep sympathy with the Roman 
 Church, for disgust and loathing at the present condition, 
 theoretical and practical, of the Establishment. But of all 
 its distinguishing features, we confess that we can find none 
 more eminent than this — the extraordinary capacity of the 
 author for standing upright and balancing himself on an 
 invisible point, for walking in perfect sincerity upon a line, 
 compared with which the edge of the keenest razor is 
 breadth unlimited.' 
 
 Readers of Mr. Ward's interesting biography, lately 
 published, will have no difficulty in finding parallels for his 
 eccentric Churchmanship in other parts of his attractive but 
 erratic disposition. In judging Mr. Ward, or anyone else 
 who deviated from the ' sober standard of feeling,' which 
 
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT— CONTINUED 85 
 
 Keble tells us is the ordinary result of the teaching of the 
 Church of England, we must remember that the circum- 
 stances of the time were provocative of anything but sober 
 feelings in sensitive people. Men are apt to say unpleasant 
 things when they are angry. Still, one cannot help regarding 
 Mr. Ward as an illustration of that wayward and capricious 
 following which Newman himself regrets as always attached 
 to a movement party : ' persons who talk loudly and 
 strangely, do odd or fierce things, display themselves un- 
 necessarily, and disgust other people.' 
 
 The great Cardinal himself illustrates another class of 
 mind, influenced by the same circumstances, probably 
 feeling them as . keenly, but behaving very differently. 
 Nothing is more striking in the history of the movement 
 than his self-suppression under every form of provocation, 
 and the uniform calmness of his language. It is a remark- 
 able case of obedience under difficulties. His example in 
 the matter of yielding to authority, and in respectful and 
 temperate language when speaking of or to his ecclesiastical 
 superiors (men vastly inferior to himself) is very touching, 
 and might well have been followed by some of his successors. 
 He resembled Mr. A\'ard, however, in taking that irrevocable 
 step which has been a permanent loss to the Church of 
 England. 
 
 The story of his conversion has been told by himself in 
 the fascinating pages of his 'Apologia.' The growth and 
 development of his religious opinions as there narrated is 
 one of the most absorbing psychological studies in the 
 English language. The turning-point in his career was 
 briefly this: In the year 1831 he was invited to contribute 
 a volume to the Theological Library about to be published 
 by Mr. Rivington. His contribution was to be called ' The 
 History of the Principal Councils.' The series was to 
 consist of handy little volumes, uniform, aud with suitable 
 embellishments. Newman, who had not yet won any 
 considerable literary reputation, willingly undertook the 
 
86 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 task, which was never fulfilled in the form intended. But 
 in 1833 Newman's labours revealed themselves in 'The 
 History of the Arians,' containing the account of a sitigle 
 council, which, however, was more than enough for the 
 limits prescribed. It was while pursuing his investigations 
 on this subject, which naturally took him into the study of 
 the early heresies, that he saw what he describes as the 
 ghost which alarmed him about the English Church, and 
 eventually took him to Rome. It was nothing more nor 
 less than the identification of the Anglican Church, as 
 dating from the Reformation, with certain early heretical 
 sects, who, as he thought, had similarly cut themselves 
 off from the Catholic body. However excellent the 
 Church of England might he, the mere fact of her separa- 
 tion from the central authority was enough, in his view, to 
 make her a mere sect. On the other hand, he had all 
 along been imjjressed with the greatness of the Roman 
 Church ; formerly it had impressed him with the greatness 
 of Antichrist ; now it was impressive with the greatness of 
 a wonderful system, commanding from the extent and 
 imperial authority of its dominion, mysterious in its 
 organization, influence, devotion, and claims to infallibility. 
 As a member of the Church of Engl.-vnd, he was of course 
 alive to its defects, and he probably thought he had 
 discovered in the Roman system, of whose interior working 
 and evils he was necessarily ignorant, a certainty, whereas 
 the Anglican was at best a doubtful expedient. The fact is, 
 his mind was too logical to be satisfied with the anomalous 
 compromise which the Church of this country, and at that 
 time, appeared to present. He was struck with the spectacle 
 of external completeness, with the logical and consistent 
 position which the Church of Rome appeared to hold. He 
 had taken in a part, an important part, but not the 7i'hole, of 
 a great subject. He failed to take account of the whole 
 range of Church and secular history, and to make allowances 
 for the imperfections and inconsistencies which must be 
 
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT-CONTINUED 87 
 
 found in any church, and for the diversities of mind and 
 character which lead men to take different views and 
 different courses, which must be provided for in comparing 
 one branch of the Church with another, and which, in an 
 important sense, are as Divine as the Church itself. In 
 oiher words, the actual working Church must always fall 
 short here and there, if we look at it over an extended 
 period, of the Divine ideal, or the theoretical Church ; and 
 in this respect the Church of Rome, to those who know her 
 intimately, appears as likely to have forfeited her privileges 
 as our own. 
 
 These are suggested as typical of the motives which led 
 two classes of people to Rome. Between them there would 
 of course be any number of others, too numerous to classify, 
 as varying with the circumstances and state of mind of 
 individuals. There were intellectual and devotional wants 
 of various kinds operating separately or together to lead 
 people where they thought they should be satisfied. But 
 as far as I have been able to discover, there were no 
 secessions worth mentioning on those childish inducements 
 which occur at once to the vulgar mind — e.g., the love of 
 theatrical effect in the act of secession, the morbid excite- 
 ment of disturbing friendships, or the attractions of music, 
 relics, flowers, candles, rosaries, and other accessories of 
 worship which make up the popular idea of Romanism. 
 In the case of Mr. Newman the step was carefully weighed, 
 long deferred, and only taken at the expense of such self- 
 abnegation and mental suffering as are a complete guarantee 
 of its sincerity. The secessions, which were the result of 
 his example, would appear to have been equally deliberate, 
 that is, in the mental process which preceded the final act. 
 Such an act would always appear sudden and unaccount- 
 able to those who had not been taken into the confidence 
 of the seceders during their uncertainties and anxieties. 
 But even in the more impulsive cases there is no reason to 
 suspect people of insincerity. As a matter of fact, in every 
 
88 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 case worth mentioning there was everything to lose in a 
 worldly sense — social advantages, chances of promotion, 
 and so forth — the gain being entirely of a spiritual and 
 personal nature. It was a ' venture of faith ' from the point 
 of view of the person concerned. On the whole, it is 
 impossible to avoid the conclusion that, had the authorities 
 in Oxford and the Church shown a more conciliatory and 
 intelligent spirit, the wave of secession might have been 
 arrested. 
 
 ' Was it wonderful,' Dean Church observes, ' when men 
 were told that the Church of England was no place for 
 them, that they were breaking their vows and violating 
 solemn engagements by acting as its ministers, and that in 
 order to preserve the respect of honest men they should 
 leave it, that the question of change, far off as it had once 
 seemed, came within " measurable distance " ? The genera- 
 tion to which they belonged had been brought up with 
 strong exhortations to be real and to hate shams ; and now 
 the question was forced on them whether it was not a sham 
 for the English Church to call itself Catholic ; whether a 
 body of teaching which was denounced by its authorities, 
 however it might look on paper and be defended by learn- 
 ing, could be more than a plausible literary hypothesis in 
 contrast to the great working system of which the head was 
 Rome. When we consider the singular and anomalous 
 position on any theory, including the Roman, of the 
 English Church, with what great differences its various 
 features and elements have been prominent at different 
 times, how largely its history has been marked by contra- 
 dictory facts and appearances, and how hard it is for anyone 
 to keep all, according to their real importance, simultaneously 
 in view ; when we remember, also, what are the temptations 
 of human nature in great collisions of religious belief, the 
 excitement and passion of the time, the mixed character of 
 all religious zeal, the natural inevitable anger which accom- 
 panies it wiien resisted, the fervour which welcomes self- 
 
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT— CONTINUED 
 
 89 
 
 sacrifice for the truth ; and when we think of all this kept 
 aglow by the continuous provocation of unfair and harsh 
 dealing from persons who were scarcely entitled to be severe 
 judges, the wonder is, human nature being what it is, not 
 that so many went, but that so many stayed.'" 
 
 Whatever we may think now of Tract XC. and the ' Ideal 
 of a Church,' there can be no doubt that their publication 
 was prejudicial to the movement by raising suspicions which 
 might have been set at rest by works of a more guarded and 
 conciliatory nature. Whether the same amount of per- 
 manent good would have resulted is open to question. 
 But these works certainly postponed the work of the move- 
 ment, and alienated certain moderate men who had hitherto 
 been friendly, but who were unable to follow the writers in 
 their rapid advance. They were an injury to the movement 
 inflicted on itself, though, of course, intensified by the 
 public condemnation which followed on their piiblication. 
 
 In addition to the mischief wrought from within, the 
 Tractarians were to suffer two blows from without, which 
 form part of the history of the movement, and must be 
 briefly noticed. In 1841 Keble vacated the Poetry Pro- 
 fessorship, and in a competition for the vacancy between 
 Isaac Williams and Mr. Garbett the latter was elected by a 
 majority of three votes to two. Mr. Garbett is spoken of 
 as a gentleman of high culture, and with some acquaintance 
 with foreign literature, then a rare accomplishment in the 
 University, but he had given no evidence whatever of his 
 poetical qualifications. Mr. Williams had shown in his 
 ' Baptistery ' that he was a poet, and was capable of using 
 his gifts for the same high ends as those which Keble and 
 Wordsworth had always kept in view, namely, the elevation 
 of character and the inculcation of religious and moral 
 teaching. The contest, however, did not turn on the 
 literary knowledge or poetical gifts of the competitors, but 
 on the question of Church principles, and Mr. Williams had 
 * ' Oxford Movement,' ch. xv. 
 
90 CATHOLIC REVIVAL UI- NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 been identified with the advanced guard of the unpopular 
 party since the publication of his Tracts on Reserve. I 
 have already said something about those papers. As 
 regards the man himself, he is described as retiring and 
 modest to a fault, who could scarcely see a dozen people 
 together without wishing to hide himself. But it was his 
 misfortune to expose himself to popular indignation as the 
 author of the first really objectionable paper in the series, 
 unfortunate in its title, and supposed to embody all the 
 secret aims of the party. It was owing to the well-meant 
 but injudicious intervention of Dr. Pusey that the contest 
 was carried on and decided on religious grounds, and the 
 consequence was that Isaac Williams was defeated by a 
 man who could not write a line of jjoetry. Under the cir- 
 cumstances the defeat extended to the party who had sup- 
 ported the unsuccessful candidate. It was looked upon by 
 them and their opponents as a public condemnation of 
 principles which both sides felt to be at stake. 
 
 The second external blow to the movement was the sus- 
 pension of Dr. Pusey for a period of two years on the 
 ground of the doctrine said to be contained in his sermon 
 on ' The Holy Eucharist a Comfort to the Penitent,' preached 
 at Christ Church on the 4th Sunday after Easter (May 24), 
 1843. The story has been told at some length, and, I 
 believe, for the first time, in Dean Church's admirable work 
 on the movement. It will be sufficient to say here that the 
 whole proceeding savours of unfairness and irregularity, and 
 most people would now regard the grounds of the sus- 
 pension as insufficient. His judges carefully abstained from 
 pointing out the particular passage or passages in which the 
 objectionable doctrine was conveyed, but based their censure 
 on the general tone of the sermon, which they seem to have 
 regarded as approaching dangerously near to the scholastic 
 theory. As Dr. Pusey states in his preface, he was conscious 
 of his own entire adherence to the formularies of the English 
 Church, and having guarded against misconception at the 
 
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT-CONTINUED 
 
 outset by expressing his belief that the elements ' remained 
 in their natural substances,' and avoiding any definition of 
 the mode in which the mystery was brought about, he had 
 no fear of being misunderstood. The sermon was devotional 
 rather than controversial, and was fully in accord with the 
 sentiment of the judicious Hooker, 'that men should more 
 give themselves to meditate with silence what we have by 
 the Sacrament, and less to dispute of the manner how.' 
 But Dr. Pusey could not honestly have expressed any- 
 thing short of that doctrine of the Real Presence which 
 he held in common with the most authoritative Anglican 
 divines. 
 
 The sacred nature of the subject precluded an argu- 
 mentative treatment in the sermon itself, but the question 
 having been raised, it was published with an appendix, 
 which abundantly supported the author's position by quota- 
 tions from the ' Homily on the Sacrament,' Bishop Ridley, 
 Hooker, Overall, Andrewes, Dr. Donne, Sutton, Laud, 
 Bishop Forbes, Archbishop Bramhall, Cosin, Sparrow, 
 Hammond, Thorndike, Jeremy Taylor, Bishop Ken, Bever- 
 idge. Bull, Hickes, Comber, Wilson, and others. 
 
 Perhaps the best comment on the transaction is the fact 
 that Dr. Pusey was in due time restored, without having 
 uttered or written a word which could be considered as a 
 retractation. On the 4th Sunday after Epiphany, 1846, he 
 again preached before the University. The sermon on 
 the 'Entire Absolution of the Penitent' has now become 
 historical. I should have said that in the former sermon 
 the Holy Eucharist was specially considered as a means of 
 conveying pardon. And now, on his restoration to the 
 pulpit, Dr. Pusey takes up the thread of his subject precisely 
 at the point where he left it about three years before in 
 words which, in spite of their solemnity, are apt to provoke 
 a smile at the irony they contain. 'It will be in the 
 memory of some,' he says, ' that when, nearly three years 
 past, Almighty God (for " secret faults " which He knoweth, 
 
92 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 and from which, I trust, He willed thereby the rather to 
 " cleanse " me) allowed me to be deprived for a time of this 
 my office among you, I was endeavouring to mitigate the 
 stern doctrine of the heavy character of a Christian's sins 
 by pointing out the mercies of God,' etc. ' And now, 
 brethren, I would proceed to speak of that great authorita- 
 tive act whereby God in the Church still forgives the sins 
 of the penitent.' 
 
 In the second sermon no attempt was made to explain 
 any misconceptions which might have been raised by the 
 first ; much less was there any withdrawal of the doctrine 
 therein set forth. One sermon is merely the continuation 
 and complement of the other. If the comparison be not 
 irreverent, these sermons may be regarded as the Alpha and 
 Omega of the movement, for they contain the two funda- 
 mental doctrines to whose neglect the Church of England 
 owed its debasement, and to whose restoration the Tracta- 
 rians naturally looked for a recovery of its life and vigour, 
 namely, a higher view of the Sacraments (especially that of 
 the Lord's Supper), and a higher view of the position and 
 responsibilities of the clergy to whose ministration the 
 Sacraments had been entrusted. The suspension of Dr. 
 Pusey was a temporary blow to the movement, and showed 
 that at the particular time the doctrines at stake were not 
 those of the official representatives of the Church ; but it is 
 not too much to say that he who stated them so courageously 
 has so far gained his point that, even if his teaching is not 
 generally held, it stands on too secure a basis of authority 
 and practice to be ever again ignored. 
 
 That the Tractarians were right in their view of the root 
 of evil in the Church is evident from the revival of religion 
 which has followed on their teaching. That their anti- 
 cipations have been more than realized I hope to show in 
 my last lecture. The Oxford Movement has been, in a 
 very real sense, the salvation of the Church of England. 
 Though retarded by the events I have just tried to relate, 
 
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT— CONTINUED 93 
 
 the revival was not frustrated ; its enemies thought it was 
 not seriously interrupted.* 
 
 * ' The clear and logical style (of the Tracts) attracted the reader. 
 The earnestness and devotion of the writers gave confidence .... the 
 influence of Mr. Newman and Dr. Pusey rapidly increased. The 
 sermons of the former at St. Mary's, Oxford, on the Sunday afternoons, 
 were precisely calculated to awaken doubts in the minds of his auditors 
 in reference to the distinctive doctrines of the Reformation. . . . The 
 series of Oxford Tracts came to a sudden close at the suggestion of 
 the diocesan. But this was merely a change in the mode of assault ; the 
 efforts against Protestant truth were redoubled. The silencing of Dr. 
 Pusey in the University pulpit, and the condemnation of Mr. Ward's 
 book, hardly served to check for a moment the rising tide. The British 
 Critic, and other similar publications, became the recognised organs of 
 the party, and enabled them in a still more unblushing manner, under 
 the cover of anonymous authorship, to insult the Reformation.' — ' Our 
 Protestant Faith in Danger ' : Rev. Daniel Wilson. 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 THE LITERATURE OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL. 
 
 EVERY great movement naturally has its own peculiar 
 features. If the movement we are now considering 
 is distinguished in any way from others, it is in its intellectual 
 and literary character. There was nothing popular about 
 it ; it made no appeal to the senses, nor availed itself of 
 any of those oratorical, emotional, or exciting means by 
 which the masses are most directly, if not most effectually, 
 reached. To use Lord Macaulay's words (applied to a 
 different subject), it ' moved the intellects which have 
 moved the world,' and it moved them by the persuasive 
 force and logic of its writings. In saying this I hope I 
 shall not be supposed to ignore the religious impulse which 
 lay at the root of the movement, and was, of course, the 
 ultimate cause of its success. If, however, the Tractarians 
 had been mere religious enthusiasts they might have done a 
 great work in the Church and have left an impression on 
 their age, but the results would have been different. They 
 would not have affected the same class of people ; their work 
 might have permeated society from below upwards, but I 
 question whether it would ultimately have been so extensive 
 or so permanent. There are obviously two ways of affecting 
 society. It may be done {has been done) by bringing 
 together large masses of people, and by powerful addresses 
 or other external excitements stirring them up to act as one 
 man. Popular movements of this kind are always attended 
 
THE LITERATURE OF THE CATHOLIC REVLVAL 95 
 
 with considerable danger, and are very apt to defeat their 
 own object. But this mode of reviving public interest 
 was precluded by the very nature of the subject. The 
 alternative was to work, as it were, from the centre towards 
 the circumference. The very nature of the great actors in 
 the revival made this the only possible method, and in 
 pursuing it they had before them the example of the 
 Founder of Christianity, Who, beginning with a few chosen 
 disciples, gradually enlarged the circle of His influence till 
 His teaching was extended over the earth as the ' waters 
 cover the sea.' The real work of the movement was not done 
 at large public meetings, unless a devout congregation here 
 and there in church caii be so called, but in the hearts and 
 brains of thoughtful people, in the quiet and solitude of 
 studies and libraries. In its later stages, as the circle of 
 its influence extended, the revival naturally altered its 
 character, and became more exoteric in its teaching and 
 its methods. But its original force lay in its religious 
 literature ; and all through the Oxford Movement, properly 
 so called, i.e., from 1833 to 1845, its work was chiefly done 
 by the pens of the v\riters associated with it, and by the 
 quiet work in their parishes of those who championed its 
 opinions. If this movement had done nothing else, it 
 would still have rendered the Church an invaluable service 
 in the writings of its leaders and supporters — nay, in much 
 of the writings of its opponents, whether for a controversial 
 or independent character — for it is pretty certain that the 
 pens of opposite or divergent schools were set in motion 
 by the questions raised in the 'Tracts for the Times.' 
 
 I have already said all that was necessary about these 
 celebrated papers in tracing the course of the movement. 
 In point of importance one is naturally obliged to give them 
 the first place. Next to them in importance, but before 
 them in a literary sense, the place of honour must be given 
 to those wonderful sermons preached by Mr. Newman at 
 the four o'clock services on Sunday afternoons at St. Mary's, 
 
96 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINLThENIH CENTURY 
 
 Oxford. In some respects these sermons were even more 
 important than the Tracts, for it is doubtful whether the 
 movement would have gone on without them ; it is quite 
 certain that without them it would not have been what it was. 
 ' Even people who heard them continually,' Dean Church 
 observes, ' and felt them to be different from any other 
 sermons, hardly estimated their real power, or knew at the 
 time the influence which the sermons were having upon 
 them. Plain, direct, unornamented, clothed in English that 
 was only pure and lucid, free from any faults of taste, 
 strong in their flexibility and perfect command both of 
 language and thought, they were the expression of a 
 piercing and large insight into character and conscience 
 and motives, of a sympathy at once most tender and most 
 stern with the temjjted and the wavering, of an absolute 
 and burning faith in God and His counsels, in His love, in 
 His judgments, in the awful glory of His generosity and 
 His magnificence. They made men think of the things 
 which the preacher spoke of, and not of the sermon or the 
 preacher. Since 1828 this preaching had been going on at 
 St. Mary's, growing in purpose and directness as the years 
 went on, though it could hardly be more intense than in 
 some of its earliest examples. While men were reading and 
 talking about the Tracts, they were hearing the sermons ; 
 and in the sermons they heard the living meaning, and 
 reason, and bearing of the Tracts, their ethical affinities, their 
 moral standard. The sermons created a moral atmosphere, 
 in which men judged the questions in debate.'* 
 
 * Oxford Movement. — The late Principal J. C. Shairp, Professor 
 of Humanity, St. Andrew's, a Presbyterian, describes Newman's 
 preaching thus : 
 
 ' The centre from which his power went forth was the pulpit of St. 
 Mary's, with those wonderful afternoon sermons. Sunday after Sunday, 
 year by year, they went on, each continuing and deepening the impres- 
 sion produced by the last. As the hour interfered with the dinner-hour 
 of the colleges, most men preferred a warm dinner without Newman's 
 sermon to a cold one with it ; so the audience was not crowded — the 
 
THE LITERATURE OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 97 
 
 I Strongly recommend everyone who has not read these 
 sermons to set to work and read them forthwith. 'The 
 
 large church little more than half filled. The service was very simple 
 — no pomp, no ritualism ; for it was characteristic of the leading men 
 of the movement that they left these things to the weaker brethren. 
 Their thoughts, at all events, were set on great questions which touched 
 the heart of unseen things. About the service the most remarkable 
 thing was the beauty, the silver intonation of Mr. Newman's voice as he 
 read the lessons. When he began to preach a stranger was not likely 
 to be much struck. Here was no vehemence, no declamation, no show 
 of elaborate argument, so that one who came prepared to hear " a great 
 intellectual effort" was almost sure to go away disappointed. . . . 
 Those who never heard him might fancy that his sermons would 
 generally be about Apostolical succession, or rights of the Church, or 
 against Dissenters. Nothing of the kind. Vou might hear him preach 
 for weeks without an allusion to these things. What there was of High 
 Church teaching was implied rather than enforced. The local, the 
 temporary and the modern were ennobled by the presence of the 
 Catholic truth belonging to all ages that pervaded the whole. His 
 power showed itself chiefly in the new and unlooked-for way in which 
 he touched into life old truths, moral or spiritual, which all Christians 
 acknowledge, but most have ceased to feel ; when he spoke of "unreal 
 words," of the "individuality of the soul," of the "invisible world," of 
 a "particular Providence"; or, again, of the "ventures of faith," 
 " warfare the condition of victory," " the Cross of Christ the measure of 
 the world," "the Church a home for the lonely." As he spoke, how 
 the old truth became new ! how it came home with a meaning never 
 felt before ! He laid his finger, how gently, yet how powerfully, on 
 some inner place in the hearer's heart, and told him things about him- 
 self he had never known till then. Subtlest truths, which it would 
 have taken philosophers pages of circumlocution and big words to state, 
 were dropped out by the way in a sentence or two of the most transparent 
 Saxon. What delicacy of style, yet what strength ! how simple, yet how 
 suggestive ! how homely, yet how refined ! how penetrating, yet how 
 tender-hearted ! If now and then there was a forlorn undertone which 
 at the time seemed inexplicable, you might be perplexed at the drift of 
 what he said, but you felt all the more drawn to the speaker. . . . 
 After hearing these sermons, you might come away still not believing 
 the tenets peculiar to the High Church system ; but you would be 
 harder than most men if you did not feel more than ever ashamed of 
 coarseness, selfishness, worldliness ; if you did not feel the things of 
 faith brought closer to the soul.' 
 
 7 
 
98 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 Parochial and Plain Sermons,' as they are called, are 
 published in eight volumes, the first six containing the 
 author's Parochial Sermons, the seventh and eighth his 
 contribution to the series of Plain Sermons by certain con- 
 tributors to the 'Tracts for the Times.'* 
 
 I recommend people to read them wherever I have a 
 chance, not only in connection with the study of the re- 
 ligious movement which they so distinctly furthered, but 
 for these reasons : first, as models of English composition ; 
 secondly, for their philosophical and moral value — they are 
 far from being dry dogmatic discourses ; thirdly, because if 
 a person had read nothing else in theology he would find 
 in them a very good Churchman's education ; and, lastly, 
 because I have personally felt the weight of their influence 
 in the formation of character and opinion. Most people 
 who have been influenced by books at all can point to 
 certain favourite works which have left a deeper impression 
 than others. If I thought that my own experience was at 
 all peculiar, I should not mention it in public ; but most 
 people will probably agree with me in the ethical value of 
 Bacon's ' Essays,' Jeremy Taylor's 'Holy Living and Dying,' 
 Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' Dante's 'Divine Comedy.' To 
 these many will be disposed to add Newman's 'Sermons.' 
 Perhaps a few 'opinions of the press,' from papers of 
 very different opinions in other matters, will be interesting 
 from their agreement on this subject. 
 
 The Nonconformist says : ' In reading these sermons, it 
 is impossible to withhold one's high admiration for the 
 many fine qualities which they display : plain, unambiguous 
 statement of Christian doctrine according to the preacher's 
 view of it ; practical application of Church dogmas to 
 individual life, character and conduct ; instructive exposition 
 
 * They are now to be had at the low price of 3s. 6d. a volume in 
 Messrs. Longman's Silver Library, the only objection to which is the 
 binding, « hich seems unsuitable for theological books. 
 
THE LITERATURE OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL gg 
 
 of Scripture — all conveyed in a faultless style and with well- 
 sustained eloquence.' 
 
 i:h.& Pall Mall Gazette : ' They are undeniably models of 
 style in writing of the most faultless kind. As addresses 
 to a miscellaneous multitude, they would have been failures; 
 but as addresses to a cultivated audience of University 
 students and tutors, they are without a rival.' 
 
 The Saiurday Review : ' Dr. Newman's sermons stand 
 by themselves in modern English literature ; it might be 
 said in English literature generally. There have been 
 equally great masterpieces of English writing in this form of 
 composition, and there have been preachers whose theo- 
 logical depth, acquaintance 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 he does, and those who are famous for the power 
 and results of their preaching do not write as he does. 
 His sermons have done more, perhaps, than any one thing 
 to mould and quicken and brace the religious temper of 
 our time ; they have acted with equal force on those who 
 were nearest and those who were furthest from him in 
 theological opinion.' 
 
 These and many other notices to the same effect might 
 be illustrated by any number of quotations from the 
 sermons. The matchless clearness and vigour of the style 
 would naturally make them admired by literary men, ami 
 will secure them a permanent place among the great 
 masters of our language. It is probable that they have 
 done more for the Catholic Revival than any other writings 
 of the same school, and they have probably had a wider 
 influence among people more or less opposed to it. The 
 reason, I think, is that the doctrines which run through 
 them are seldom brought into painful prominence as 
 dogmatic certainties, but are stated with a sort of polite 
 hesitation, as an educated gentleman might be expected to 
 state them in conversation with an opponent, though, at the 
 
100 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 same time, they are supported by an elaborateness of argu- 
 ment which makes them almost irresistible. And they 
 exhibit a profound and extensive knowledge of character 
 such as one might rather expect from a man of the world 
 than from a student and recluse, who must necessarily have 
 spent more time among books and in the offices of religion 
 than in general society. 
 
 There are passages in them which for practical wisdom 
 and insight into motive might well make up a text-book for 
 the guidance of a man of business. The fact is that, like 
 most other great writings, they are to a great extent auto- 
 biographical. The discussions and arguments are not 
 merely the imaginationes ad libitum of one who was beating 
 the air, but are those which the author himself passed 
 through in arriving at a solution of the difficulties under 
 review. This makes them particularly valuable to in- 
 tellectual people, who are more disposed to accept a 
 probable suggestion than a definite dogmatic statement on 
 any question incapable of mathematical demonstration. 
 Where, however, the subject is settled for the author by the 
 authority of the Bible or the Church, the truth, as he con- 
 ceived it, is fearlessly stated. 
 
 The strength of Ur. Newman's sermons and of his other 
 writings lies in the fact that he was no mere theologian, 
 but had had a very wide reading in secular literature. His 
 knowledge of Gibbon, for instance, is proverbial ; and it is 
 said that he had made an immense number of extracts from 
 that historian, whole passages from whom he could recite 
 word for word. It should be said that he very seldom 
 introduces a quotation into his sermons, and they are quite 
 remarkable for the absence of illustrations or images, as I 
 believe they are technically called. In this respect these 
 sermons are the very antipodes of those of Jeremy Taylor, 
 every other line of which is a quotation or poetical image. 
 You will notice that every sermon in the collection has a 
 title giving the key to its contents, though most of them 
 
THE LITERATURE OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL loi 
 
 contain much collateral matter which could not be inferred 
 from the titles. Bishop Wilberforce attributed the popu- 
 larity of the sermons to this practice of the author's, and I 
 think he goes on to say that he was the first preacher who 
 adopted the practice. He must mean among modern 
 preachers, for it is not unknown in old sermons. Those of 
 Bishop Taylor, for instance, are a case in point. 
 
 Those who have read Newman's sermons will want to 
 read more ; and, as is not always the case, even with the 
 most celebrated writers, almost everything that he wrote is 
 worth reading, whether one is entirely persuaded by his 
 teaching or not. His ' Essays on Miracles,' ' Historical 
 Sketches,' ' Apologia,' and ' Grammar of Assent ' are all 
 worth careful study, besides his pretty little historical story 
 of ' Callista ' — a picture of the Church in North Africa in 
 the third century. With one exception,* I have not yet 
 read any of the Cardinal's sermons in the Church of Rome, 
 but I am told that they exhibit a greater freedom of style 
 than those he preached in the Anglican Communion ; they 
 are quoted as less classically severe, but not so destitute of 
 illustrations. 
 
 But I must not forget his poems, especially the ' Dream 
 of Gerontius,' which, according to Edmund Yates, unfolds 
 a more vivid picture of the invisible world than anything in 
 literature since the time of Dante. Some years ago Mr. 
 Yates wrote a series of sketches in the World on ' Celebrities 
 at Home,' in which such different personalities as Mr. 
 Spurgeon, Ouida the novelist, and Cardinal Newman are 
 exhibited in private life. The writer's visit to the oratory 
 at Edgbaston is very interesting, and sets the Cardinal 
 before us, as it were, in the flesh, and tells us of his relaxa- 
 tions, such as playing on the violin, and his love of a good 
 novel. His favourite novelists are said to have been Sir 
 
 ■* The funeral sermon preaclied at the Requiem Mass for Mr. Hope- 
 Scott, at the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street, on 
 May 5, 1873. 
 
102 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 Walter Scott, Thackeray, and Mrs. Gaskell. There is one 
 anecdote which shows his humility : After he had written 
 the ' Dream of Gerontius,' he thought so little of it that he 
 pitched it into a waste-paper basket, from which it was 
 rescued by one of the brethren, who thought it deserved a 
 better fate. You will remember that the beautiful hymn, 
 ' Praise to the Holiest in the height,' is taken from this 
 poem. It is touching to recollect that the ' Dream ' was an 
 inseparable pocket-companion with General Gordon ; and 
 after his death it was sent by a relative to the Cardinal, who 
 was deeply moved by the General's notes in the margin, 
 showing tlie value he set upon the little book. 
 
 You will remember a few years ago there was a discussion 
 about the 'best hundred books.' In giving his opinion on 
 the subject, Professor Ruskin had marked Scott, 'Read every 
 word.' Whatever people may profess to think about the 
 great novelist, I am afraid there are very few who carry out 
 Ruskin's advice literally. Life is probably too short to 
 read ' every word ' of any author ; but if there is one more 
 than another who might be so read without waste of time, I 
 should be disposed to say his name was Newman.* 
 
 I fear that I must dismiss Keble's and Pusey's sermons, 
 which also belong to the literature of the movement, more 
 briefly. Keble's are interesting, and, as we should expect 
 from a writer of his poetical mind, they contain many 
 beautiful illustrations. But if there is one thing that strikes 
 us more than another in reading them, it is the self- 
 suppression under which the author apparently labours, 
 probably from a conscientious obligation to simplify his 
 thoughts and language so as to keep well within the com- 
 prehension of his hearers. The English is, of course, 
 
 * As illustrating the decline in Scott, there is a liitle anecdote in 
 Professor Ornsby's ' Memoirs of .Mr. J- R- Hope-Scott,' to the effect 
 that one of the Fathers at the Birmingham Oratory had actually found 
 it necessary (o offer a prize for the getting up of ' Kenilworth,' to induce 
 the youths under education there to read it, so tedious has Scott become 
 to the present generation. 
 
THE LIIEKATURE OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 103 
 
 classically pure, but one misses that piercing insight into 
 life and character, as well as those fascinating philosophical 
 passages which rivet the mind in Newman. It seems that 
 Newman was incapable of suppressing himself entirely. 
 The opening of his sermons is often extremely simple, but 
 as the subject develops the author seems unconsciously led 
 away by his thoughts into deeper profundities than he at 
 first had in view ; consequently the sermons, with the 
 plainest possible beginning, become the most elaborate as 
 the leading thought is pursued through all its ramifications 
 in the writer's mind. Keble, on the other hand, seems 
 always under the dominion of some restraining influence, as 
 if his congregation and their practical benefit were before 
 him throughout. It must be admitted, of course, that 
 Keble's intellect was less piercing and comprehensive than 
 that of his great compeer ; and it is also necessary to 
 remember that the two preachers as a rule were addressing 
 entirely different congregations. Had they changed places, 
 it is probable that neither would have been so successful. 
 As far as Keble's prose writings are concerned, he is 
 probably at his best in those miscellaneous essays which 
 involve a combination of secular with religious considera- 
 tions, and where the author felt himself free to give play to 
 his thoughts and language. The review of Lockhart's ' Life 
 of Scott,' written for the British Critic in 1838, is an 
 excellent specimen of his style in this direction. 
 
 His essays have been reprinted as a collection, and for the 
 reason I have suggested they are much more interesting 
 reading than his sermons. Of course, a preacher's first duty 
 is to his parishioners, and a sermon otherwise highly 
 entertaining and instructive as an intellectual feat might be 
 utterly useless as regards those who heard it. Keble's 
 main object was the religious education of a village con- 
 gre;iation. 
 
 His ' Letters of Spiritual Counsel ' are very instructive, 
 containing as they do the results of his wide experience as a 
 
I04 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 spiritual guide. It is hardly necessary to say that a revival of 
 the Catholic idea of the priestly office would be followed as 
 a necessary consequence by a revival of the practice of 
 auricular confession ; but even before this had become at all 
 general those who were in any way known to favour it were 
 consulted very largely in cases of conscience, even by those 
 who fell short of the complete Sacramental idea. I suppose 
 there is in every mind a desire for some particeps curarum, 
 either of a parental or sacerdotal character; and the 
 enunciation of the doctrine of penance and absolution met 
 with a response in many quarters where grief had been 
 silently endured simply because no suitable outlet had been 
 revealed for it. The leaders of the movement had their full 
 share of sacred confidences ; and after the secession of 
 Newman the full weight of this kind of consultation 
 naturally fell on Mr. Keble and Dr. Pusey. 
 
 The correspondence of both men in this way alone was 
 simply enormous. The experience derived from it is ex- 
 hibited in a general way in their writings, but Keble em- 
 bodied the results of his experience in the letters referred 
 to, or rather selected such cases as he judged to be of 
 general interest, for I believe none of the letters are purely 
 imaginary. They were all on questions actually raised by 
 living correspondents, to whom the originals had been 
 addressed. 
 
 To turn to Dr. Pusey : the feature about his sermons 
 which perhaps first strikes the ordinary reader is their great 
 length, which is very remarkable in these days of short 
 sermons. It is worth noticing, in passing, that we are in- 
 debted to certain followers of the revival for an abbreviation 
 of the average length of the sermon — possibly on the 
 example of Dr. Newman, whose discourses seldom exceed 
 ten or twelve pages. Pusey's were considerably longer, and 
 if it had not been for the preacher's impressive voice and 
 manner they would not have been endured. Sir F. Doyle 
 tells us in a humorous way that he had a grudge against the 
 
THE LITERATURE OF THE CATHOL/C REVIVAL 105 
 
 doctor in this matter, as he generally made him late for 
 dinner. 'Pusey's voice,' says Mozley, 'might want music 
 and flexibility, but whatever the cause, it was a powerful 
 engine. A man with a harsh, or rumbling, or husky, or 
 squeaky voice, preaching those sermons, would never have 
 been listened to.'* 
 
 The reason why these sermons are so long I believe to be 
 — not that Dr. Pusey had no time to make them shorter, 
 but simply that, whatever subject he dealt with, he was 
 obliged, from the nature of his mind, to develop it to its 
 fullest extent, to look at it from every point, to justify com- 
 pletely ' the ways of God to man.' It seems as if Dr. 
 Pusey could not write a short paper. It has been already 
 mentioned that from the time of his active connection with 
 the ' Tracts for the Times ' there was a manifest difference in 
 their size. From short, pithy papers, such as tracts are 
 usually supposed to be, they became elaborate treatises, 
 Pusey's contributions taking the lead in this respect. His 
 Tract on baptism covers several hundred pages, and, as 
 Dean Church remarks, is by far the most complete exposi- 
 tion of the subject which has yet appeared in the English 
 language. Still, if one has the patience to read them, 
 Pusey's sermons will be found very rewarding. They 
 contain a valuable body of theology, in whose composition 
 the author's rich stores of knowledge, from the Fathers to 
 modern German writers, are displayed. But the enormous 
 range of his studies formed the sanie sort of impediment in 
 his case as in that of many distinguished German theologians; 
 his movements were hampered thereby, and his sermons 
 lack that easy arrangement often exhibited by men of far 
 less information. 
 
 There is a linguistic defect, too, that one notices, which 
 also seems due to the writer's extensive acquisitions. I 
 think it was at the early age of twenty-eight that he became 
 Regius Professor of Hebrew. To this he added other 
 * ' Reminiscences of Oriel.' 
 
io6 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTUKY 
 
 Oriental as well as the European languages. I cannot 
 help thinking that his English suffers from this embarrass- 
 ment of riches. The complexities of foreign grammars and 
 foreign modes of expression obtruded themselves on his 
 English composition, making it somewhat heavy, so that one 
 feels again and again as if it is a translation rather than a 
 piece of original writing that one is reading. In other 
 words, had he been less learned, his English would probably 
 have been more readable. 
 
 But the charm, the power of Dr. Pusey's discourses 
 depends on other, and far higher, qualities than those of 
 mere words and arrangement. There is his fatherly manner 
 — ' My sons ' is his favourite way of addressing the Oxford 
 men — a manner springing out of his sympathy and love of 
 others. There is his deep spiritual insight into their minds 
 and souls. He had the virtues of a confessor — viz., that 
 sweet disposition which attracts people to unbosom their 
 secrets, the grace to console, and the knowledge to guide 
 them in difficulties. His sermons are the result of a pro- 
 found and extensive acquaintance with human weakness 
 and human capabilities, combined with a lively sense of the 
 Divine presence and co-operation in human affairs. God 
 and the soul is their keynote. If it be not irreverent to 
 allocate the three Oxford leaders to the Trinity of man's 
 being, I should say that Pusey answered to the soul, 
 Newman to the mind, and Keble to the body — that is, as the 
 poet of nature, by recognising and elevating the physical. 
 By a little stretch of allegory it could be shown that this 
 division corresponds with their respective parts in the 
 revival. 
 
 This leads me to say something about the poetry of the 
 movement. Here the first place will naturally be given to 
 the 'Christian Year.' As the author states in the preface, 
 it is a series of compositions adapted with more or less 
 propriety to the successive portions of the Prayer-Book, 
 whose leading principle it is intended to illustrate — viz., 
 
THE LITERATURE OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL ^o^ 
 
 ' the importance of a sound rule of faith and of a sober 
 standard of feehng in matters of practical religion.' 
 Although the writer himself had a very modest opinion of 
 its merits, it is scarcely too much to say that this book has 
 had more influence in the direction indicated in his words 
 just quoted than any book of recent times, and it has 
 perhaps had a wider circulation. Whether a man is High 
 Church or Low Church, or no Church at all, he generally 
 possesses a copy of the 'Christian Year'; many devout 
 people make a pocket-companion of it, and read or learn 
 the hymns as they occur at the Church seasons. As I 
 have already said, Keble owed the general idea and the 
 title to Bishop Ken's collection. It is a curious sort of 
 coincidence that the only hymns of Ken's which have 
 survived the oblivion of the rest of his book are those for 
 morning and evening. These are in almost every hymnal 
 to this day, and very near them will be found Keble's 
 morning and evening hymns. 
 
 The ' Lyra Innocentium ' is decidedly a book to read. 
 It has rather gone out of fashion, partly as following the 
 inevitable fate of all books, which, unless their over- 
 whelming merit makes them classical, find their way to the 
 upper shelves of one's bookcase after a few years of popu- 
 larity. The ' Lyra Innocentium ' is inferior on the whole 
 to the * Christian Year.' But the neglect into which it has 
 fallen is partly due to a misconception of its contents. 
 Whereas the verses are supposed to be for children, they 
 are really about children, and are meant for the edification 
 of grown-up people. We also owe to the movement the 
 'Lyra Apostolica' from its poetical supporters, the 'Bap- 
 tistery' by Isaac \Villiams, and Newman's 'Verses on 
 Various Occasions.' 
 
 I do not want to claim for the movement more than its 
 due ; but there cannot be any doubt that we owe several 
 excellent collections of hymns to the stimulating influence of 
 its poetical writers — e.g., the charming ' Lyra Germanica ' 
 
lo8 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 by Miss Winkworth, the ' Lyra Anglicana ' collected by 
 the Rev. R. H. Baynes, and any number of other collec- 
 tions from the Catholic and other schools. 
 
 The fact is, the Oxford poets felt a great want in English 
 hymnology, and did a good deal to supply it, and others 
 have followed their example on different theological lines. 
 The result is that the ' Christian Year ' marks a distinct 
 epoch in the history of English hymns. Before 1830 they 
 were little better than metrical versions of the Psalms, 
 redeemed, of course, by some beautiful hymns of a subjective 
 kind by such writers as Cowper, Newton, Toplady, and the 
 Wesleys. The change consequent on the Catholic Revival 
 is very striking; and if we compare such a collection as 
 ' Ancient and Modern ' with the most popular hymnal 
 before its time — say, the ' Mitre ' — we shall see the differ- 
 ence in the large number of first-rate new English hymns, 
 besides translations from the Greek, Latin, and German, 
 which have been added to our store. 
 
 When I was a small choir-boy the ' Hymnal Noted ' was 
 brought out by the Rev. Thomas Helmore. It was dis- 
 tinctly on the lines of the Catholic movement, and was, of 
 course, only used in what we should call the most 'advanced' 
 churches. It consisted of translations from the Latin office- 
 hymns, almost entirely the work of Dr. Neale, set to the 
 ancient melodies, with more or less suitability, by Mr. 
 Helmore. Our first reformers had regretted the loss of 
 these fine old hymns, which they were obliged to forego in 
 the absence of adequate translators. This book was an 
 attempt at realizing their wishes. It has almost entirely 
 ceased to be used as a collection,* though many of its 
 separate hymns have been incorporated into ' Hymns 
 Ancient and Modern.' The old hymns thus preserved 
 
 * It is still used for the office hymns at St. Alban's, Holborn ; St. 
 Barnabas, Pimlico, and a few other churches ; but even there it is sup- 
 plemented by more modern collections — e.g., the 'People's Hymnal,' 
 or 'Ancient and Modern.' 
 
THE LITERATURE OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 109 
 
 have been altered (some regard them as improved, others 
 as spoilt) to bring them up (or down) to modern taste. 
 The fact is, the ' Hymnal Noted,' like certain other things 
 which owed their birth to the revival, has been found too 
 medieval for the present day, and was bound to die a 
 natural death, under the tnodern reaction against the 
 medisevalism of the earlier Tractarians. But it did good in 
 introducing a more objective style of hymn into our public 
 worship. And while this book has died out of use, its 
 place has been taken by ' Ancient and Modern,' which aims 
 at meeting the old and new taste from all sorts of sources. 
 The success of this collection, which was first brought out 
 in 1 86 1, has been quite phenomenal. On the one hand, as 
 was to be expected, it raised a storm of opposition to the 
 doctrines involved;* on the other hand, it called forth 
 several important works on hymnology, various collections 
 of sacred lyrics for private use, about fifty supplements to, 
 and new editions of, books in common use, and about a 
 hundred entirely new collections. It is true that all this 
 might have come about independently of the Catholic 
 Revival. Those who think otherwise naturally pomt to the 
 elevated doctrinal tone of the religious poetry since written, 
 and also to many distinguished new hymn-uriters of the 
 Catholic school, as establishing the connection between the 
 poetical and the religious revival. 
 
 It is worth a passing remark that a corresponding want 
 has been felt, and a similar influence has been at work to 
 remedy it, outside the English Church. Father Faber, the 
 eloquent convert from the Anglican Communion, wrote a 
 collection of hymns for use at the Brompton Oratory, from 
 which the general favourites, ' The Pilgrims of the Night ' 
 and ' O Paradise !' are taken. While the English Church 
 had no office-hymns worth mentioning, the Romanists had 
 
 * Dr. Colenso, for instance, condemned it in strong terms on the 
 ground of the worship which it involved, or implied, to Jesus Christ, 
 whose equality in the Godhead he disputed. 
 
no CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 nothing hut office-hymns ; and, as Father Faber tells us, it 
 was no uncommon thing to find a devout Romanist poring 
 over the pages of John and Charles Wesley in search of 
 something which his own Church had not provided. 
 Curiously enough, while the English Church wanted 
 objective hymns, the Roman wanted the subjective. Both 
 have been supplied to some extent with what they wanted, 
 and I think both are indebted to the same religious move- 
 ment for the realization of their want, and for what has 
 been done to meet it. Before leaving the subject of 
 hymns I ought not to forget the beautiful 'Hymns for 
 Children,' by Mrs. C. F. Alexander, or the numerous 
 Christmas and Easter carols, which are undoubtedly fruits 
 of the Catholic Revival. 
 
 There was one branch of literature which the Oxford 
 writers almost entirely neglected, and that was Biblical 
 criticism. Dr. Pusey's works on the ' Minor Prophets ' and 
 his exposition of the Book of Daniel are the solitary 
 exceptions. Mozley says with great candour : They set 
 forth ' no original views of duty, and not much to meet the 
 great problems of the age, though a good deal to impede 
 their solution. AVith regard to absence of Biblical criticism, 
 it is best to state the facts, and leave them to themselves. 
 There was hardly such a thing as Biblical criticism in this 
 country at the beginning of this century. Poole's Synopsis 
 contained all that an ordinary clergyman could wish to 
 know. Arnold is described as in all his glory at Rugby, 
 with Poole's Synopsis on one side and Facciolati on the 
 other. He knew the value of the book ; but at that very 
 time, if a country clergyman chanced to find that he had 
 two copies of the work, and therefore had one to spare, he 
 would have found it difficult to obtain five shillings for the 
 five volumes.'* 
 
 People differ very much about the translations of the 
 Fathers undertaken by the Oxford writers. Some put them 
 * ' Reminiscences.' 
 
THE LITERATURE OF THE CATHOLIC REVLVAL iii 
 
 almost on a level with Holy Scripture ; others regard them 
 as useless lumber, or, at all events, think that the precious 
 jewels they contain are so rare and far apart that life is too 
 short to search for them. These people ought to be the 
 first to give the meed of praise to any set of men who were 
 ready to sacrifice days and nights to the mastery of the 
 patristic Greek and Latin, and to the still harder task of 
 rendering them into facile and attractive English. Whatever 
 the practical and permanent results of their labours, they 
 undoubtedly stirred up a taste in this venerable field of 
 theology. Besides the editions sent forth from Oxford and 
 Cambridge, there were numerous publications by private 
 translators, who preferred to work independently to being 
 hampered with the restrictions of a series. And the revival 
 of taste extended to collectors, who used to ransack the 
 second-hand bookstalls in search of Augustines and Chry- 
 sostoms, with the result that prices went up considerably. 
 Mozley tells us that those who acquired old copies about 
 this time will often find the old 7s. 6d. not quite rubbed out 
 on the fly-leaf, and in its place substituted five guineas. 
 Those who are disposed to speak flippantly of the Fathers 
 may just be reminded that Macaulay was very fond of St. 
 Chrysostom, and carried his huge tomes with him during a 
 long foreign journey. Who shall say that he owes none of 
 his attractions to the golden-mouthed ? 
 
 There is one field of literature which owes a great deal 
 to the Oxford Movement — viz., that devoted to the history, 
 construction, and significance of the offices of the English 
 Church as contained in the Book of Common Prayer. A 
 stimulus was given to liturgical studies some years before 
 the movement. Shepherd, a clergyman of much promise, 
 had announced a Prayer-Book with historical illustrations, 
 and was working at it vigorously when he died. The work, 
 thus left in a fragmentary state, was eventually published 
 by his daughter. That a very wide interest was felt in the 
 subject was proved by the fact that the subscriptions 
 
112 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 amounted to several thousand pounds. This interest may 
 have been chiefly of an antiquarian kind. Many a man 
 who has got the money will spend thousands in illuminated 
 missals and breviaries without being at all a Churchman. 
 But the antiquary often paves the way for the theologian. 
 
 In 1832, a year before the appearance of the first ' Tract 
 for the Times,' William Palmer brought out his ' Origines 
 Liturgicse,' than which, as Mozley observes, 'there is not a 
 more interesting work to a scholar and divine, and hardly a 
 more useful one to an ordinary clergyman.' Dean Church 
 speaks of it as ' by far the best book in the English language 
 on the subject.' 
 
 This work, and others that followed it, were more than 
 mere researches into antiquity. They were devotional, and 
 had a distinctly doctrinal, in addition to an historical, 
 object. They were intended to show, and did show very 
 effectively, that the outward forms and ritual of the English 
 Church were inseparably interwoven with its teaching, and 
 that both had descended to it from the earliest ages of 
 Christianity. Especially valuable in this direction also are 
 the works of another writer of the same school, the Rev. 
 John Mason Neale, whose translations of the liturgies of 
 SS. Basil and Chrysostom and others have done so much 
 to popularize this class of studies, and to make our own 
 offices more interesting and intelligible. It was books of 
 this kind which gave the impetus to liturgical study that has 
 resulted in the many manuals we now possess on the 
 Prayer-Book. With the exception of Wheatly's now some- 
 what obsolete work, there was very little in this way to be 
 had before 1850. Now we have our Blunts, Procters, 
 Maclears, Wordsworths, Harold Brownes, and Evan 
 Daniels bringing out something fresh every year on every 
 part of the Prayer-Book, from the Communion-oflSce to the 
 Thirty-nine Articles. And a revival, or, rather, an original 
 spirit of inquiry, has been stirred up consequently in regard 
 to all sorts of ancient and foreign liturgies, whether orthodox 
 
THE LITERATURE OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 113 
 
 or so-called heretical. By a very easy transition the attention 
 thus aroused has been turned to the serious literature in 
 general of other Communions. Pascal, Massillon, Bour- 
 daloue, Bossuet, representing the French Church ; Luis de 
 Granada, Antonio de Guevara, and other Spanish eccle- 
 siastics have been translated and ' adapted ' for English 
 readers, who scarcely knew their names fifty years ago. 
 
 It is to this spirit of Catholic sympathy that we owe the 
 translation of such works as Rosmini's ' Five Wounds of the 
 Church,' introduced a few years ago to English readers by 
 the late Canon Liddon. That revered name recalls a host 
 of hterary recollections of which the Canon's figure was the 
 centre. As the disciple and exponent of Dr. Pusey, and at 
 the same time the trusted friend and adviser of a younger 
 generation, who began where the Oxford Movement left off, 
 he formed a connecting-link between the older Tractarian 
 school and its modern developments. His sermons and 
 other precious works, while fully recognising the modern 
 spirit of inquiry and healthy criticism, have had perhaps 
 more weight than any other recent writings to keep this 
 tendency within legitimate bounds. His name suggests 
 many others eminent in the pulpit and in literature — fruits 
 of the Revival certainly — but it will not be necessary to 
 speak of men whom everyone can hear, or of books that are 
 on every table. 
 
 There is a lighter literature of the movement that ii 
 worth mentioning, especially as it is passing out of the 
 knowledge of the present generation of readers. I refer to 
 the many little historical tales, chiefly published by Messrs. 
 Parker and Joseph Masters. They illustrated striking 
 periods and events in Church history. Dr. Neale, before 
 mentioned as a liturgist, stands also in the front rank as a 
 good teller of stories. Independently of the natural fate of 
 all books not absolutely immortal, their drawback, under the 
 altered conditions of Church thought and feeling at the 
 present day, lies in the author's strong mediaeval sympathies. 
 
 8 
 
114 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 He was essentially a medievalist and antiquary ; and while 
 his qualities of this kind permeate all his books, and give 
 them a charm of their own for readers similarly minded, I 
 think they prevented them from being read very extensively. 
 Speaking for myself, I confess that as a boy I much pre- 
 ferred tales of English life and character to the most 
 picturesque descriptions of saints, martyrs, and persecu- 
 tions. If all boys are more or less alike, I can understand 
 the neglect which has fallen on Dr. Neale's ' Lent Legends' 
 and ' Tales of Christian Heroism but it might do some of 
 us good to read them now as a corrective to the sensational 
 taste of the present day. There were two other good story- 
 tellers of one's youth that deserve a better fate. The Rev. 
 William Gresley, Prebendary of Lichfield, gave us the ' Siege 
 of Lichfield,' a tale of the bloody conflict between Cavaliers 
 and Roundheads; 'The Forest of Arden,' a tale of the 
 Reformation ; and ' Coniston Hall,' a tale of the Revolution 
 of 1688. 
 
 And the Rev. F. E. Paget, Rector of Elford, gave us 
 such favourites as ' Tales of the Village ' and ' Tales of the 
 Village Children.' Each of these wrote plenty more — 
 sermons, essays, moral counsels, magazine articles, etc., all on 
 the lines of the movement. They were extremely sensible 
 works, and would strike us now as wonderfully moderate ; 
 but in their day they were regarded as among the subtle 
 devices of the enemy to mislead the young and innocent. 
 
 I must not forget the pretty allegories by the Rev. 
 Edward Monro — e.g., 'The Combatants,' 'The Journey 
 Home,' 'The Vast Army,' etc. — all w^ell-written, but liable 
 to two defects, which, as I am bound to be impartial, I may 
 as well mention. First, it must be confessed they were 
 rather feeble by the side of the immortal ' Pilgrim's 
 Progress' of John Bunyan, which has spoilt people for all 
 other religious allegories. Macaulay was amusingly severe 
 on such imitations. I give his remarks below.* 
 
 * ' The peculiar glory of Bunyan is that those who most hated his doc- 
 trines have tried to borrow the help of his genius. A Catholic version 
 
THE LITERATURE OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 115 
 
 Another writer of allegories, to whom the same criticism 
 applies, was the Rev. W. Adams. The second defect 
 under which they both laboured was a species of false 
 sentiment which pervaded their little books like the odour 
 of faded flowers. This quality was even more conspicuous 
 in certain pretty domestic tales which came out at about 
 the same time. In the allegories, of course, one was pre- 
 pared for an idealism and exaltation of character which would 
 appear forced and unnatural in a description of actual life. 
 Even to my juvenile sense ' Harry and Archie, or the 
 First and Last Communion ' (Monro) created a feeling of 
 nausea from its general air of unreality, and it was just this 
 quality which prevented boys of my age from enjoying such 
 very good stories, in spite of their attractions otherwise. 
 
 Whatever Dr. Neale's peculiarities were, there was no 
 want of robustness about him. His ideas were too ascetic, 
 
 of his parable may be seen with the head of the Virgin in the title-page. 
 On the other hand, those Antinomians for whom his Calvinism is not 
 strong enough may study the pilgrimage of Hephzibah, in which nothing 
 will be found which can be construed into an admission of free agency 
 and universal redemption. But the most extraordinary of all the acts of 
 vandalism by which a fine work of art was ever defaced w.is committed 
 so late as the year 1853. It was determined to transform the " Pilgrim's 
 Progress " into a Tractarian book. The task was not easy, for it was 
 necessary to make the two Sacraments the most prominent objects in 
 the allegory ; and of all Christian theologians, avowed Quakers ex- 
 cepted, Bunyan was the one in whose system the Sacraments held the 
 least prominent place. However, the Wicket-gate became a type of 
 Baptism, and the House Beautiful of the Eucharist. The effect of this 
 change is such as surely the ingenious person who made it never con- 
 templated ; for as not a single pilgrim passes through the Wicket-gate 
 in infancy, and as Faithful hurries past the House Beautiful without 
 stopping, the lesson which the fable in its altered shape teaches is, 
 that none but adults ought to be baptized, and that the Eucharist may 
 safely be neglected. Nobody would have discovered from the original 
 " Pilgrim's Progress" that the author was not a PDedobaptist. To turn 
 his book into a book against predobaptism was an achievement reserved 
 for an Anglo-Catholic divine.' — (Article on John Bunyan in the Encyclo- 
 fadia Britannica. ) 
 
Il6 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURA 
 
 and he had too great an abhorrence of all the ways of 
 Dissenters (whose stories for children were then specially 
 sentimental) to be a sentimentalist himself. To compare 
 small things with great — there was the same sort of dif- 
 ference between him and some of his compeers as adult 
 readers notice between Thackeray and Dickens. The 
 pathos of the former makes one feel an awkward sensation 
 about the throat, or inclined to wipe one's spectacles, 
 because it is perfectly real and natural. There was a rugged 
 and masculine grandeur about some of Neale's translated 
 hymns, together with an antique freedom of expression, 
 which has been softened down (some think to their detri- 
 ment) by modern editors. But where pathos was inevitable. 
 Dr. Neale could be very affecting — the more so, of course, 
 because he was true to nature.* 
 
 Of all the writers of fiction on the side of the Catholic 
 Revival the most voluminous and the most widely read is 
 Miss C. M. Yonge. Like her friend John Keble, she set 
 apart a large portion of her profits for religious objects. 
 ' The Heir of Redclyffe,' for instance, went to fit out the 
 missionary schooner Southern Cross for Bishop Selwyn ; 
 and the proceeds of ' The Daisy Chain ' were devoted to 
 the building of a missionary college at Auckland, New 
 Zealand. 
 
 I remember that about the time of Confirmation some 
 senior friends kindly lent me ' The Heir of Redclyflfe,' then 
 
 * On the first point, compare his original translation of the ' Urbs 
 Beata' as written for the ' Hymnal Noted,' e.g., 
 ' From celestial realms descending, 
 Ready for the nuptial bed, 
 To His presence, deck'd with jewels, 
 
 By her Lord shall she be led : 
 All her streets, and all her bulwarks, 
 Of pure gold are fashioned ' — 
 with the version in ' Ancient and Modern.' 
 
 The second point is well illustrated in the ' Stichera of the Last Kiss," 
 from his ' Hymns of the Eastern Church,' which are very touching. 
 
THE LITERATURE OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 117 
 
 a new book, in hopes of making it a vehicle for religious 
 instruction. But I was much more interested in 'Oliver 
 Twist,' ' Uncle Tom's Cabin,' and the weekly instalments 
 of 'Woman and her Master' in ihe London Journal ; and 
 when my good friends asked me how I liked such and 
 such incidents, I am afraid I had too much respect for their 
 feelings to be strictly veracious, for I found that excellent 
 book extremely dry and tedious. 
 
 A very striking feature of the period was the large number 
 of tales for choristers which came out during the height of 
 the Oxford Movement and for some years afterwards. The 
 following are just a few from an old publisher's list. 
 
 ' The Chorister Brothers,' ' The Children of the Chapel,' 
 'In the Choir and out of the Choir,' 'The Island Choir, 
 or, The Children of the Child Jesus ;' ' The Two Surplices,' 
 'The Chorister's Fall,' 'The Choristers of St. Mary's,' 
 ' Little Walter the Lame Chorister,' ' Michael the Chorister,' 
 'The Singers,' 'The Little Choristers, or. Is it Fair?' 
 
 Some of these excellent little books were open to the 
 same objection as the sacred allegories and the other 
 stories I have just mentioned, that is in a certain unreality 
 there was about them. The mischievous and precocious little 
 imp with whom we are all familiar can hardly be described 
 as a devout chorister, in spite of his angelic face and white 
 surplice : as a rule he is not given to religious exercises, 
 nor does he languish and die early. And a further objection 
 which might be urged against these tales, from a literary point 
 of view, was that they were written 'for a purpose.' One 
 hates books written for a purpose, as a rule, but in this case 
 I think it justifies them. 
 
 In my first lecture I mentioned the laxity and irreverence 
 of choirs in the days preceding the Oxford Movement, or 
 before there had been time for its effects to be at all general. 
 I referred specially to cathedral choirs ; but even in ordinary 
 churches there was sad need for a reformation. As a 
 remedy there were two points which the Catholic revivahsts 
 
Ii8 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 aimed at, first, to infuse a religious tone into choristers; 
 and, secondly, to vest them in surplices. The surplice had 
 the outward advantage of an appropriate uniform, besides 
 being a reminder to him who wore it of the spirit in which 
 his work ought to be done. 
 
 The inculcation of these ideas was the ' purpose ' of the 
 tales for choristers which came out in shoals while there 
 was any demand for them. The use of the surplice and 
 cassock (I think the second was a little later in general 
 adoption) was, of course, advocated in more serious books; 
 but the advantage of these vestments was kept well to the 
 front in the stories, and I doubt whether any of the 
 heavier arguments which were employed have done so much 
 to make them popular. Now that surpliced choirs are so 
 general, it is hard to conceive the prejudice which waited 
 on their introduction. The unpretentious little tales I 
 have mentioned did their share towards removing this pre- 
 judice, and (what is more important) in helping to raise the 
 tone of choristers in character and behaviour. In churches 
 where the surplice was introduced there was a marked im- 
 provement in the men and boys, and a good deal more 
 supervision over their musical and religious training than 
 had hitherto been bestowed. It became almost a siiie qua 
 non that the adult chorister should be a communicant, and 
 not merely a man with a voice ; and the choir-boys were 
 well looked after by the clergy — almost always prepared 
 for Confirmation, and that at an earlier age than had been 
 the rule. The result was manifest in the persons them- 
 selves, and in the way they rendered divine service. 
 
 Now that musical services and surpliced choirs are the 
 rule, it is to be feared that we are in danger of the usual 
 penalty of success — in other words, that the standard aimed 
 at among choristers and their trainers is not so high, at all 
 events in a religious sense, as it was when the surplice was 
 looked upon as a rag of Popery. But besides tales, there 
 were numerous books of devotion for choristers. Perhaps 
 
THE LITERATURE OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL iig 
 
 the most celebrated was one called 'The Devout Chorister,' 
 consisting of thoughts on his vocation, and a manual of 
 prayers for his use, by Thomas Frederick Smith, Fellow 
 of Magdalene. The copy I have was given to me by an 
 old friend who had joined the Roman Church with his 
 mother, and in turning out his old Anglican books, he 
 presented me with that and some others which he thought 
 I should take care of. The author makes a suggestion in 
 the preface which is perhaps as appropriate to-day as it was 
 in 1848.* 
 
 There were any number of books of devotion for the 
 general public, some excellent, some, as was to be expected 
 at a time of religious fervour, going just a little beyond the 
 bounds of common-sense. ' The Manual,' for instance (by 
 the Rev. W. E. Heygate), which its title-page describes as 
 ' chiefly intended for the poor,' gives some advice on read- 
 ing which we should now think rather childish. 
 
 ' A poor man has not much time for reading, and there- 
 fore it is necessary to spend that little well : neither is he 
 the best judge of what is true or false, or of what is good 
 or bad for him. The poor, therefore, should never buy the 
 tracts and cheap prints and songs which are hawked about. 
 One half of them is bad, and the other half useless. Nor 
 should the poor man read newspapers, which will only 
 trouble and deceive him, unless there is some great news, 
 
 * ' It is also much to be desired that some kind of ccEiiobium or 
 college should be founded in the precincts of our cathedral and colle- 
 giate churches, for the education and training of such choristers who 
 may be willing to devote their after-life to the service of the Church, 
 either as lay teachers or in Holy Orders. The absence of some pro- 
 vision of this kind for choristers, some means of retaining them for 
 ecclesiastical employments, where a right disposition is not wanting on 
 their own part, must be painfully felt in many ways ; for it seems not 
 only injurious to them, but a reflection on the Church's maternal care, 
 that they who have dedicated the first-fruits of their years and strength 
 to the special service of her courts, should be turned adrift at a most 
 critical period of life, for no other reason than because their voice 
 breaks down, or their minstrelsy becomes exhausted.' 
 
120 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 like a battle, or a shipwreck, or a fire. . . . The poor 
 man's books are his Bible and Prayer-Book, and this book, 
 and, if he can get them. Nelson's " Fasts and Festivals," 
 " The Imitation of Christ," and such others as the clergy- 
 man of the parish may lend or give.' 
 
 Some years ago an intelligent British workman spotted 
 the passage, and wrote to Mr. Gladstone, as in some way 
 identified with the religious party who had been guilty of cir- 
 culating such 'pernicious trash,' to ask him what bethought 
 of it. Mr. Gladstone replied that he had never heard of 
 the book, and that the advice must be taken cunt gram as 
 the opinion of one man, who was alone responsible for it. 
 
 It would take too long to mention the scores of ' Little 
 Prayer-Books,' 'Altar Manuals,' 'Meditations,' etc., which 
 belong to the movement. Whether they all belong to 
 literature is a question. Many of them were too exotic in 
 character to be permanent favourites with Anglicans ; others, 
 however, being compiled from the best English and foreign 
 theologians, did a great deal to raise the devotional taste 
 here. In fact, they did much to create it. Two of 
 the most deservedly popular books of this kind, both 
 thoroughly English in their character, were ' Steps to the 
 Altar,' by Mr. Scudamore, and ' Eucharistica.' The latter 
 was anonymously compiled, but issued with an introduction 
 by Samuel Wilberforce, then Bishop of Oxford. It consists 
 entirely of prayers and readings from the great English 
 divines from Hooker to Bishop AVilson — and, I believe, 
 may still be had in new editions. Many others have gone 
 the way of all books, for even here the influence of fashion 
 is felt, and what pleased one generation is forgotten by the 
 next. 
 
 It will be seen at once that I have only just touched the 
 fringe of a very wide subject. I have mentioned some of 
 the leading authors, favouring or distinctly supporting the 
 Catholic Revival, and have said a little about some of their 
 best-known books. I have also mentioned some inferior 
 
THE LITERATURE OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 12 1 
 
 men and some inferior books, in a literary sense, which 
 nevertheless have had a good deal of influence collectively 
 in the same direction. 
 
 To deal with the subject exhaustively would be the work 
 of a life-time, for I do not think there has ever been a 
 movement, secular or religious, which has involved so much 
 writing. Indeed its already voluminous collection is being 
 added to largely every year. 
 
 Almost every species of composition on which I have 
 touched as emanating from the Catholic side has led to 
 writings of different schools, either to modify what their 
 authors considered an inaccurate theology, or emphatically 
 to contradict it, or to meet the wants of their own disciples, 
 or haply to express the views of thinkers who differed from 
 everybody else in the world. 
 
 In conclusion, allow me to say, what probably is too well 
 known to need saying at all, that in whatever other way 
 the reign of our gracious Queen is distinguished, one of its 
 leading characteristics will be its wonderful literature — 
 exceeding even that of Queen Elizabeth and of Queen 
 Anne put together — and one of its most valuable parts 
 will be the literature of the Catholic Revival. 
 
 As in other cases where a literature is so extensive in 
 bulk and range of subjects, there will, of course, be a great 
 deal of rubbish that will go to line the inside of trunks or 
 to wrap up small purchases of grocery ; but, while this dis- 
 appears, the really solid part will remain a treasure to our 
 Church as long as her services are conducted and her 
 sermons preached in the English language. 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 SOME FRUITS OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL. 
 
 QUITE lately I heard our esteemed rector preach a 
 sermon without a text. I am now going to reverse 
 the process by giving you a text without a sermon. My 
 remarks will not be of that serious and dignified nature to 
 entitle them to be called a sermon, but as a peg to hang 
 my remarks upon, I will borrow a text from the Rev. Daniel 
 Wilson's 'Appeal to Evangelicals' (1850), from which I 
 have already made one or two quotations. He says : 
 
 ' No efforts have been omitted by the opposite party to 
 imbue the Church at large with their novel views. Music, 
 painting, poetry, architecture, eloquent appeals to the feel- 
 ings, tales for the young, parables, similitudes, every species 
 of attraction that ingenuity could invent, or refined taste 
 suggest, has been put in requisition. All classes of society 
 have been assailed. The press has been largely tampered 
 with. Our public institutions have been made the vehicle 
 of proselytism. The plague has spread to our colonial 
 possessions, and exhibits itself there in a form still more 
 open and undisguised than at home.' 
 
 As early as 1835, Mr. Newman issued a pamphlet re- 
 commending the restoration of suffragan bishops as a 
 means of effecting a more equal distribution of episcopal 
 duties. It would be unfair to claim for the Oxford Move- 
 ment all the credit of the increase in the episcopate which 
 
SOME FRUITS OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 123 
 
 has come about since that date, but it is interesting to see 
 its leader advocating the very means which have since been 
 adopted, and caUing attention to the very Act of Parha- 
 ment (26 Henry VIII., c. 14) on whose authority the 
 suffragan bishops have been appointed, as sufficient for the 
 purpose, without involving organic changes. If the increase 
 in the episcopate is not altogether due to the movement, 
 it is at least due to that religious activity to which the 
 movement itself owes its birth, and which the movement 
 in return has done very much to help forward. At the 
 beginning of the eighteenth century there were not so many 
 people in the whole of England and Wales as there are 
 now in the London postal district. The country was then 
 divided into twenty-si.x dioceses, the population and revenues 
 of which varied so greatly that in 183 1 a Royal Commission 
 was appointed to inquire into the whole matter of Episcopal 
 income and patronage. The result of the deliberations of 
 this Commission was a proposal that, for greater efficiency 
 of administration, the bishops' incomes should be equalized 
 to a considerable extent, and the area of the dioceses 
 rearranged : but it was ttot proposed to increase the number 
 of bishops. It was in accordance with this programme, 
 and in consequence of some popular proceedings in the 
 particular case, that the Commissioners obtained the sup- 
 pression of the see of Bristol. In 1836 its territory was 
 divided among the dioceses of Gloucester, Salisbury, and 
 Bath and Wells, the title and cathedral falling to the see of 
 Gloucester, which had the name of Bristol attached to it. 
 
 Simultaneously with this partition of the see of Bristol, 
 and aided by its revenues, the new diocese of Ripon was 
 created for half Yorkshire. But the rapid growth of the 
 Northern and Midland towns made the creation of fresh 
 bishoprics imperative, a mere redistribution of those already 
 in existence being insufficient for the wants of the increased 
 population, and the localities in which the increase had 
 chiefly taken place. The result has been the creation of 
 
124 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 the new dioceses of Manchester, St. Albans, Liverpool, 
 Newcastle, Southwell, and Wakefield ; while in the South 
 of England an ancient diocese in Cornwall has been revived, 
 and an Act of Parliament has recently been obtained to 
 restore that of Bristol, which ought never to have been 
 suppressed ; and, as the required endowment has been 
 obtained, a bishop will no doubt soon be appointed. We 
 thus see that the twenty-six dioceses have been increased to 
 thirty-two, presided over by as many bishops, in addition to 
 the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. But it was not 
 till 1870 that Newman's special suggestion was realized by 
 the restoration of the long dormant class of suffragan 
 bishops. Their number is now seventeen ; and it is scarcely 
 necessary to say that they form a considerable factor in the 
 home episcopate. It is interesting to notice, in passing, 
 that during the consecration of Dr. Mackenzie, the first of 
 these suffragan bishops, the Greek Archbishop of Syra and 
 Tenos happened to be staying in England, and took part 
 in the ceremony, an act of. intercourse between East and 
 West which is full of significance. 
 
 The development of the colonial episcopate has been 
 going on simultaneously. Though initiated in 1787, it had 
 numbered no more than five sees down to 1836 ; but in 
 1 84 1 a fund for its increase was inaugurated, and the work 
 has since been going on rapidly. In this sense, if in no 
 other, 'the plague has spread to our colonial possessions.' 
 
 Here are signs of life which it is impossible to ignore, 
 and no one but a bitter partisan will deny that the restora- 
 tion of that life is to a great extent due to the Oxford 
 Movement. Sixty years ago the fortunes of the Church of 
 England had sunk to the lowest ebb ; hope was all but ex- 
 tinguished ; the Church's days seemed numbered. Few 
 men now living have before them the condition of the 
 Church as it was at that time ; and yet to appreciate rightly 
 what she is now it is necessary to recall what she was then. 
 As I said in my first lecture, the antagonistic feeling was 
 
SOME FRUITS OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 125 
 
 summed up in 1834 by Lord Ripon introducing his Bill 
 into Parliament for the suspension of the legislative and 
 judicial functions of the bishops. The Bill did not pass, 
 but that such a proposal should have been seriously en- 
 tertained speaks volumes for the political and religious 
 conditions under which it was brought forward. These 
 conditions are vividly and accurately described by the Rev. 
 William Palmer in his ' Narrative of Events connected with 
 the Publication of the Tracts for the Times,' and also in 
 an article written by him for the Contemporary Review in 
 May, 1883 : 
 
 'The press groaned beneath the perpetual issue of 
 pamphlets, treatises, discourses — all bent on the reforma- 
 tion and correction of the Church from head to foot. To 
 open one of these disquisitions — which undertook at a 
 week's notice to present a spick-and-span new creation, in 
 which imperfection was to be unknown — you might suppose 
 that the Church of England was a mass of corruption, folly, 
 and bigotry. Everything was wrong, and required a radical 
 change. Nothing could be hoped for, except after the ex- 
 pulsion of bishops from the House of Lords, the overthrow 
 of chapters, the abolition of religion in the Universities, the 
 radical reform of the worship and the doctrine of the 
 Church in a liberal direction. The Prayer-Book was to be 
 divested of its antique rubbish, swept clean of the super- 
 naturalism which had descended to it from the Middle 
 Ages, relieved of those continual professions of belief in the 
 Trinity, the deity of Christ, the belief in Divine providence, 
 and other points which so greatly troubled the delicate 
 consciences of those Christians who were anxious to 
 iraternize with Unitarianism and Infidelity. The Church 
 of England of the future was to become a congeries of 
 sects at utter variance with each other in doctrine and 
 discipline, each preserving its distinctive peculiarities, with 
 the single exception of the present Church of England, 
 which, by authority of Parliament, and without any refer- 
 
126 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NIMETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 ence to the wishes of its bishops, clergy, or people, was to 
 be arbitrarily remodelled and vitally changed.* 
 
 'Such was the disorganization of the public mind that 
 Dr. Arnold of Rugby ventured to propose that all denomi- 
 nations should be united by Act of Parliament with the 
 Church of England, on the principle of retaining all their 
 distinctive errors and absurdities.'! 
 
 ' What claims special notice in all these proposed changes 
 was the spirit of irreverence which was widely characteristic 
 of the period, together with the prevailing want of principle. 
 All who have written on the events of that time have 
 noticed the extreme and dangerous unsettlement of opinion 
 which manifested itself about the year 1830, the era when 
 the reform mania was at its height, and when " reform " was 
 decided to be the panacea for every human ill. In the 
 midst of this revolutionary turmoil the Church and Christi- 
 anity were in danger of being- swept from their old founda- 
 tions, and replaced upon the philosophic basis of the 
 nineteenth century. 
 
 On comparing the Church of England then with what she 
 is now, one is inclined to say with Shakespeare, ' Look here 
 upon this picture and on this.' But more important than 
 any increase in tiumbers has been the increase in fervour and 
 activity on the part of individual bishops, which has never 
 been more marked at any period of the Church's history 
 than during the years succeeding the Oxford Movement. 
 To this, I think, we are largely indebted to the influence 
 and example of that single prelate who was appointed to 
 the See of Oxford at the critical period of 1845— I refer, of 
 course, to Samuel Wilberforce. It had been the custom for 
 speakers on public platforms, when alluding to our episcopal 
 overseers, to compare them to certain useful but immovable 
 
 * Palmer, in the Conter?iporary Review. 
 t Palmer's narrative. 
 
 X Ibid. Quoted by Dean Burgon in his 'Life of Hugh James 
 Rose.' 
 
SOME FRUITS OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 127 
 
 pieces of timber used to support the metals on railroads, 
 and technically known as sleepers ; or, to put it in the more 
 polite language of Dean Burgon, ' the popular notion of a 
 bishop's office before his (Wilberforce's) time was connected 
 above all things with images of dignified leisure and serene 
 isolation.' 
 
 ' Should it ever come to be inquired hereafter,' the Dean 
 continues, ' Wherein does Wilberforce's claim to the 
 Church's gratitude chiefly consist ? the answer ought not to 
 be far to seek. He imparted a new character to the work 
 of an English bishop ; left on the entire episcopate the 
 abiding impress of his own earnest spirit and extraordinary 
 genius. Ever since Samuel Wilberforce was appointed to 
 the See of Oxford the office of a bishop has been identified 
 with nothing so much as incessant labour, ubiquitous 
 exertion, the utmost publicity. Wilberforce set before 
 himself the necessity of restoring to full efficiency the 
 ancient mechanism of the diocese. Thus his rural deans 
 were not only taught to hold chapters, and to submit for 
 discussion questions of the day to the clergy of their re- 
 spective rural deaneries, reporting the result to the Bishop, 
 but they were periodically invited to Cuddesdon for de- 
 liberation with their chief. In this way were first set on 
 foot those many diocesan associations, which, under his 
 personal guidance, were in the end brought to a state of 
 the highest efficiency. Countless were the schemes he 
 originated for stimulating the religious life of his diocese, 
 as by local conferences, by gatherings of the clergy and 
 laity, by public meetings held for Church purposes, etc.'* 
 
 The Dean adds a very interesting account of Wilber- 
 force's work in the conduct of missions, and in inaugurating 
 those special Lenten courses of sermons which have since 
 grown into an institution. Both these departments of 
 Church work may be said to owe their life to the Bishop 
 who had the courage to suggest or guide them at a time 
 * Burgon on Samuel Wilberforce. 
 
128 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 when such agencies were sorely needed, but when any in- 
 discretion in their conduct would have been fatal to their 
 continuance. And besides originating new works, we owe 
 to him the infusion of fresh life and character into the mode 
 of administering ordinations and confirmations, which from 
 dry and formal ceremonies he changed into such impressive 
 services as could never be forgotten by those who were 
 present. This was largely owing to the strong personality 
 of him who presided over them, and to the personal interest 
 which he took in each individual candidate, as well as to 
 those wonderful addresses in which he turned to account 
 the passing incidents of the moment as types and parables 
 for the conveyance of his teaching. If he did not originate, 
 he at least made a great deal more of the confirmation 
 addresses than had ever been done before. 
 
 I had the pleasure of hearing him on more than one 
 occasion, but the last has become peculiarly impressive from 
 the circumstance that it was only a few days before he met 
 with the accident which caused his death. It was during 
 the summer of 1873 ^hat he administered the rite of con- 
 firmation at St. Peter's Church, Vauxhall, and I believe he 
 never administered it again anywhere. His biographer's 
 description of his general mode of administration would 
 here be peculiarly appropriate. 
 
 ' Sympathy with the young was a marked feature in his 
 character, and he felt mtensely the possibilities for good 
 which were before the young people presented to him. 
 Then, it was one of Bishop Wilberforce's peculiar gifts that, 
 when he did thus realize anything very deeply, his whole 
 bearing, voice and gesture — aye, and countenance — were, 
 if such an expression may be permitted, transfigured by 
 the thought or feeling which possessed him ; so that the 
 living man as he stood before you was, almost without 
 words, the expression of that feeling. When, in addition 
 to all this, his power of language is remembered, the 
 energy and deep feeling which was apparent in every sen- 
 
SOME FRUITS OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 129 
 
 tence and every tone, together with his charm of voice 
 and special fertility and variety of phrase, no one will be 
 surprised at the prodigious impression which his confirma- 
 tions always made alike upon the young and upon the 
 old.'* 
 
 It should also be mentioned that we owe the restoration 
 of the Church Convocations, which, as I have already stated, 
 had been dormant for about one hundred and fifty years, 
 to him more than to any other single man. In the institu- 
 tion, too, of Cuddesdon Training College, the clergy have a 
 continual reminder of their obligations to this distinguished 
 prelate. It will be remembered that he was transferred 
 from the Deanery of Westminster to the Bishopric of 
 Oxford in October. 1845, Newman's secession, 
 
 and when we consider that his administration of the diocese 
 extended over one of the most critical periods in the history 
 of the Church of England — including as it did the troublous 
 days of the Hampden controversy, the Gorham judgment, 
 the publication of ' Essays and Reviews,' the ' higher 
 criticism,' of Dr. Colenso, to say nothing of the special 
 difficulties consequent on the Oxford Movement — we shall 
 perhaps be inclined to see a special Providence in the 
 appointment of such a man to such a place. He has been 
 called the ' remodeller of the episcopate.' Certainly the 
 episcopate has put on a new character under his influence 
 and example. It is satisfactory that its renewed life and 
 energy are not confined to any particular school in the 
 Church, but I suppose no one will deny that they have 
 been most fully exhibited in that school which we identify 
 with the Catholic Revival, and to which, after all, Bishop 
 Wilberforce belonged more than to any other. That he 
 was unable to follow it into all its developments is not to 
 say that he was not with it in leading principles. These, 
 and the simple practices which they involved, were met 
 with even more violent opposition in their day than the 
 * Life. 
 
 9 
 
130 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 more imposing manifestations of doctrine and ritual which 
 have followed in later stages of the revival. 
 
 VVilberforce used to say that he belonged to no school or 
 party — possibly in the sense that the Catholic Church is 
 neither one nor the other — but the preachers he gathered 
 round him for the Lenten and Mission Sermons before 
 mentioned, though widely selected, included many names 
 of such marked Churchmanship as an opponent of the 
 revival would certainly not have included, at a time when 
 prejudice was high against them. Moberly, Wordsworth, 
 Magee, Milman, Alford, Goulburn, Butler, Pusey, Liddon, 
 Benson, Randall, Carter, Evans and Skinner, are a few 
 who in their turn have become fresh centres of activity to 
 carry on the Church's work, certainly not on the lines of 
 ultra-Protestantism. 
 
 The change that has taken place in the number and 
 character of the chief pastors of the Church is at least 
 equalled by the improvement in the inferior clergy. What- 
 ever we may think about the incompetence or indolence of 
 particular men, there surely never was a time when the 
 clergy as a body have exhibited more knowledge and 
 industry, and more of that earnest and religious spirit 
 which is likely to make their work a success, than at the 
 present day. 
 
 I am far from saying that it is High Churchmen or 
 Ritualists alone to whom this remark applies. One ought 
 to be glad to acknowledge the good qualities of men of all 
 schools ; but if the improvement is due to anything, it is 
 surely due in great measure to that high view of the 
 ministerial office insisted on by the Tract writers, to that 
 doctrine of sacerdotalism for which they were abused, and 
 which, according to the interpretation put upon it, may 
 become either one of the most powerful instruments for 
 good, or the greatest means of corruption within the Church. 
 From the Erastianism which regarded the clergyman as 
 nothing more than a state-paid agent for the discharge of 
 
SOME FRUITS OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 131 
 
 certain duties, and the delivery of certain lectures, little 
 spiritual good was to be expected. This certainly was the 
 popular idea of a minister before the revival ; but it has 
 since been made perfectly clear that ordination carries with 
 it certain special graces and special responsibilities. 
 
 In Newman's expressive language, a man feels now that he 
 can hardly expect to undertake the sacred office ' without 
 being sprinkled with the blood of other souls.' In other 
 words, a clergyman has not only to preach sermons, and 
 perform marriages and burials, or even to be a benevolent 
 and agreeable gentleman, but to administer the sacraments, 
 of which he is the. custodian, and to be all that is compre- 
 hended in the word ' Priest.' 
 
 It is interesting to notice, in passing, the general prejudice 
 which used to attach to that word, as well as the word 
 'Catholic,' till quite recently. Both perfectly innocent words 
 in themselves, they have had an exaggerated meaning in-/ 
 fused into them (not altogether unreasonably) so that people 
 became quite frightened at them. Their legitimate place 
 in the vocabulary of the English Churchman is a fruit of 
 the revival. 
 
 But the renewal of zeal has by no means been confined 
 to the clergy. The desire to lead a higher kind of life, and 
 to do some special work for the Church, resulting from the 
 Anglo-Catholic teaching, has shown itself in a very striking 
 manner in the establishment of those numerous societies 
 for men and for women within the Church, which are among 
 the phenomena of the age. I think the oldest of these 
 societies is the ' Guild of the Holy Trinity,' founded at 
 Oxford in 1844. Cambridge and Durham Universities have 
 followed this example by the foundation of similar Guilds, 
 with the same hallowed dedication, the former in 1857, the 
 latter not till 1885. Besides these we have 
 
 The Guild of St. Luke (1864) for the medical profession ; 
 
 The Guild of the Holy Standard for the army ; and 
 
 The Guild of the Holy Cross (1872) for the railway service. 
 
132 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 One of the oldest and best known of these societies is the 
 Guild of St. Alban, called after the British protomartyr, 
 which has branches at various places in London and the 
 country, and even in the colonies. This was started in the 
 year of the great Exhibition { 1 85 1 ), and at the most unlikely 
 place of Birmingham. It has done a splendid work in its 
 time ; but its members regret that it does not go on in- 
 creasing. The great reason ought to be satisfactory, viz., 
 that nearly every parish has its own particular societies, 
 and there is therefore less inducement to join an outside 
 institution than when it was the only outlet for zeal in that 
 direction. The fact is that the desire for such organizations 
 is so general, and their usefulness so fully recognised, that 
 one finds them locally established everywhere, whether 
 called by the name of ' guild,' ' society,' ' association,' or 
 what not. If I was giving a paper on Guilds, I might be 
 disposed to say something against them, for, of course, they 
 have their dangers. All I say now is that all schools of 
 Churchmen — High, Low, and Broad — have adopted them, 
 and they are almost a sine qua twn in a well-ordered parish. 
 
 Even the mediaeval idea of life in community, and the 
 stricter discipline which a common residence and perpetual 
 obedience involve, is not unknown, and is favourably re- 
 garded in high ecclesiastical quarters. Among me7i, how- 
 ever, it cannot be said to have succeeded. Sisterhoods, on 
 the other hand, have become a very popular institution. I 
 think a great deal of the prejudice against this species of 
 devotion was removed by the splendid work done by 
 Florence Nightingale (herself not a sister) in the Crimea, 
 under whom some of the members of the sisterhood 
 founded by Dr. Pusey in 1845 had worked. That par- 
 ticular sisterhood, the first in England, was broken up in 
 1855, after the Crimean war, and the members were dis- 
 persed to form the nucleus of other societies of the same 
 kind. The Sisterhoods of St. Margaret, East Grinstead ; 
 St. Raphael's, Bristol; All Saints', Margaret Street; the 
 
SOME FRUITS OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 133 
 
 Sisters of the Church, Kilburn ; the Sisterhoods of St. John 
 the Baptist, Clewer ; of St. Mary, Wantage ; and of St. 
 Peter, Horbury, near Wakefield ; are a few of the most im- 
 portant of those communities which have sprung up through- 
 out the country within half a century. The words 'brother- 
 hood,' 'sisterhood,' and 'guild,' have gone through the 
 same phases of dislike, suspicion, guarded acceptance and 
 positive approval, as the other words just mentioned, and 
 illustrate the course of Church thought on the particular 
 subjects. Whether we approve or disapprove of those 
 institutions, their existence is a palpable fact, and one that 
 is certainly a fruit of the Catholic Revival. The date of 
 their foundation, and the names of those under whose 
 fostering care they have been developed, are sufficient to 
 identify them with the school which has the glory of their 
 invention, but the priiiciple is more widely recognised ; and 
 it is interesting to notice among certain Nonconformists — 
 e.g., Wesleyans and Congregationalists — the formation of 
 religious societies with titles, if not with objects, which those 
 bodies would have looked upon with abhorrence thirty 
 years ago. 
 
 I ought just to notice the humbler, but perhaps equally 
 important, communicants' guilds which have been estab- 
 lished, under one name or another, in many parishes, partly 
 to do Church work, but specially to promote reverence for 
 the Holy Eucharist and regular attendance at the celebra- 
 tions. These, of course, vary very much in their character, 
 from the advanced ' Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament ' 
 to the ordinary mild Anglican society. Their varying 
 character is a healthy sign, as showing that schools, in other 
 respects very different, have a common regard for the great 
 Christian mystery. If the Oxford writers had one object in 
 view more than another, it surely was to revive the ancient 
 reverence for the Sacraments as the appointed channels of 
 grace. This object has been well answered in the vasdy 
 different ideas about Holy Communion which are held now 
 
134 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 as compared with 1845, enormous increase in the 
 
 number of communicants. This can only be spoken of in 
 a general way, for the subject is too sacred to be made a 
 matter of statistics, to say nothing of the danger of esti- 
 mating real religious progress by the mere criterion of 
 numbers. But the outward and visible sign is surely some 
 indication of the inward and spiritual grace. And it must 
 be confessed that the churches where the greatest stress has 
 been laid on this point, and where the most visible results 
 have been obtained, have been also those where the out- 
 ward ceremonial has been accompanied by a corresponding 
 spirituality in life and instruction. The number of com- 
 municants at such leading churches as St. Barnabas, Pimlico; 
 All Saints', Margaret Street; St. Alban's, Holborn; St. 
 Augustine's, Kilburn; St. John the Divine, Vassall Road; 
 and St. Agnes, Kennington Park, is astonishing, especially 
 on the great festivals — e.g., Easter, Whitsunday, or Christ- 
 mas — when the communicants are equal to several ordinary 
 congregations. 
 
 The mention of churches leads me to say something 
 about a more material evidence of the revival, which would 
 perhaps strike the mere gatherer of statistics as its most 
 significant development. I refer to church architecture. 
 The condition of England during the first quarter of this 
 century reminds one of Constantinople in 330 a.d., when 
 the first Christian emperor pitched upon it for his capital. 
 In both cases there were plenty of ancient models, but pro- 
 found ignorance of art, and scarcely anybody capable of 
 restoring an old building or designing a new one. ' Re- 
 paired and beautified ' was an inscription frequently found 
 in old churches, but, considering the alterations indicated by 
 these words, we should be inclined to look upon them as a 
 falsehood. Where a new building was necessitated, the 
 architectural taste of the day involved its erection in a style 
 of barbarous ugliness. There was a church near Oxford, 
 for instance, which Mozley mentions as resembling nothing 
 
SOME FRUITS OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 135 
 
 SO much in its general proportions as a ' boiled rabbit.' 
 Another has been mentioned to me, the style of which 
 was called ' Day and Martin,' from its external resem- 
 blance to one of that celebrated firm's bottles of blacking. 
 A stranger, seeing its interior for the first time (I have the 
 anecdote from a clergyman, and therefore it must be 
 strictly true), remarked to the verger that, whatever else 
 happened in that church, there would be no danger of 
 idolatry, for it resembled nothing in heaven or earth, or in 
 the waters under the earth. 
 
 In the early days of the revival self-denial was inculcated 
 in various ways. Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving were 
 taught as the keys to heaven. I am afraid there has been 
 a falling off in these points of late years, necessarily so 
 perhaps as regards the great body o?' church-goers, who can 
 hardly be expected to come up to the level of a select few. 
 With an extended popularity every movement is apt to lose 
 some of its original fervour. Anyhow, the amounts given 
 by individuals for church building in the early days would 
 surprise us. It was not at all an unknown thing for people 
 to deny themselves a Continental holiday, or even greater 
 necessities, for the sake of contributing towarjs the erection 
 of churches on the Catholic lines where they were felt to be 
 wanted. The mere getting of money for the purpose was 
 no great difficulty where people of means were so terribly in 
 earnest. St. Barnabas, Pimlico, cost ^30,000. All Saints', 
 Margaret Street (built to perpetuate the Margaret Chapel, 
 where such men as Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Hope-Scott 
 used to attend), cost double that amount. This will illus- 
 trate what was going on here and there all over the country. 
 All Saints', Clifton, can scarcely have cost less than St. 
 Barnabas, and the beautiful church at Bodelwyddan, near 
 St. Asaph, built by the Dowager Lady Willoughby de Broke, 
 is quoted at ^{^35,000. Whether built by the generosity of 
 a single person or by public subscription, churches of this 
 kind rose up between 1840 and i860, if not exactly ' like an 
 
136 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 exhalation,' at all events with sufficient rapidity to alarm 
 ultra-Protestants at the spread of the Oxford teaching. The 
 necessity for building seemed to generate a school of 
 architects. It is with those days that we associate the 
 names of Pugin, Butterfield, Street, Scott, and Pearson. It 
 was a case of supply and demand. Gothic work was wanted, 
 and such Gothic architects as these arose and built. It 
 was characteristic of the movement that Gothic, and not 
 the classical or Renaissance, was considered the most suit- 
 able style. It was to pre-Reformation times that the 
 revivalists looked back, through their abhorrence of the 
 iconoclastic destruction consequent on the Puritan supre- 
 macy, and the many beautiful specimens of Gothic art in 
 England were naturally taken as models. The symbolism 
 which this species of architecture contained in such abun- 
 dance was, moreover, inseparably allied with Christian 
 doctrine, which can scarcely be said of the Renaissance 
 style. On the one hand, this may illustrate the thoroughly 
 English nature of the revival ; on the other hand, it must 
 be confessed that the devotion to one style was pushed to 
 a length which now strikes us as ridiculous. No beauty, no 
 appropriateness, was seen in any other style. It became 
 practically an article of the Oxford creed that unless a man 
 believed in Gothic architecture (and Gregorian music) he 
 could not be a good Churchman. I am told that one of 
 the Mozleys (I forget which) had been heard to say, when 
 his views had become more enlarged, that he remembered 
 the time when he felt it quite impossible to say his prayers 
 in a gallery. 
 
 The effect of this absurd doctrine was seen in two very 
 striking ways. There was a tendency to make every little 
 bit of a parish church like a cathedral, with its side chapels, 
 separate altars, etc., which necessitated everything on such 
 a small scale as to destroy the object of a church for a 
 united congregation ; and secondly, it was thought necessary, 
 in undoing the churchwardens' repairs and beautifications 
 
SOME FRUITS OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 137 
 
 of the last century, to go to the other extreme, and to put 
 up Gothic chancels, Gothic reredoses, Gothic pulpits, and 
 Gothic ornaments in every church which came under re- 
 novation. Consequently much really good Renaissance 
 work was ruthlessly destroyed as unchristian, and a hybrid 
 and incongruous mixture of styles which had no sort of 
 agreement was the result. This was just one of those crazes 
 which are apt to occur in every reactionary movement where 
 zeal is apt to get the better of knowledge. Even in brand- 
 new Gothic churches mistakes were made during the educa- 
 tion of the school of architects to which I have referred. 
 
 We have got past these mistakes now. Gothic art has 
 been thoroughly studied, and the exclusive devotion to it 
 has been followed by an eclecticism which recognises beauty 
 in every style. As illustrating the change, Mr. Pearson 
 lately told a friend of mine that he was quite glad of the 
 eclectic and really more Catholic taste which recent times 
 had developed, as the exclusion of one style by another, or, 
 rather, of all styles by one, was detrimental to real artistic 
 progress. 
 
 The effect of the revival on ecclesiastical architecture is 
 seen in the present almost perfect condition of our cathedrals, 
 as contrasted with the picture of them which I drew in my 
 first lecture, in the improvement in our great parish churches, 
 and in the numerous beautiful new churches which have 
 been set up throughout the length and breadth of the 
 country to provide for our increasing population. The in- 
 teresting return of Lord Hampton upon church-building for 
 the period of thirty-four years — viz., from 1840 to 1874 — 
 shows that during that time a sum of ^^25, 548,703 was 
 raised for the building and restoration of cathedrals and 
 churches. It is well known that this return was by no 
 means complete ; and it is estimated that if it could have 
 been made so, it would have represented an annual ex- 
 penditure of at least a million pounds sterling upon this 
 branch of Church work. It may be interesting to supple- 
 
138 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 ment this statement by the fact that from 1882 to 1890 
 inclusive a total sum of nearly eleven millions was raised 
 (exactly 0,918,81 1 ) for church building and restoration, 
 endowment of benefices, parsonage-houses, and burial- 
 grounds. The figures represent voluntary offerings alone, 
 grants from the Ecclesiastical Commission and of other 
 bodies holding Church property in trust being carefully 
 excluded. The figures were supplied by the incumbents of 
 the livings concerned, and may safely be taken as accurate.* 
 Facts like these prove that the Church of England is a 
 living reality. I casually referred to music. Let me say a 
 few more words about it. It is well known that in the 
 Middle Ages, when Gothic architecture had attained its 
 perfect development, music was in its infancy. At the time 
 when the great cathedrals were built the science of harmony 
 was unknown, and the music of the Church was necessarily 
 the Gregorian plain-song. Thus it happened that by a very 
 natural association of ideas the two things, which had merely 
 
 * ' It is in no spirit of boastfulness, but rather for the purpose of 
 encouragement, that we give the following particulars as to the volun- 
 tary offerings of Church-people during the year 1892. It must be pre- 
 mised that we do not include grants from the Ecclesiastical Commis- 
 sioners or Queen Anne's Bounty, neither individual offerings privately 
 contributed to societies and institutions. We find that a sum of 
 153,693 was devoted to the building, restoration and furnishing of 
 churches; to the enlargement of burial-grounds, £t,\-,i'&<); to the 
 endowment of benefices, ^161,505 ; and to the erection of parsonage 
 houses, ;^94,6ii. The grand total under the head of Church work 
 amounts to /l, 441,098, towards which the four dioceses of Wales gave 
 the handsome sum of ^'90,042. Under the head of elementary educa- 
 Inon we find that the amount spent by the Church was ^■923, 304, appor- 
 tioned as follows : ;^I09,234 for the building and enlargement of schools 
 and training colleges, and for the maintenance of the same, ;if8l4, 070. 
 The large amount collected for the schools argues a very keen interest 
 in education on the part of Churchmen, coupled with considerable self- 
 denial, and for this reason we have given the above figures, as also in 
 the hope that many who have hitherto held back from the work will 
 add their own to the splendid efforts of their fellow Churchmen.' — The 
 Church Times for March 2, 1894. 
 
SOME FRUITS OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 139 
 
 an accidental connexion, were inseparably allied in the 
 minds of the revivalists, and Gothic architecture and Gre- 
 gorian music were held to be in their respective ways the 
 only proper exponents of Catholic doctrine. Consequently 
 Gregorian tones were introduced at most of the representa- 
 tive churches. Books were written on the theory and 
 practice of plain-song, the libraries of England and the 
 Continent were ransacked for ancient melodies, psalters and 
 hymnals were arranged on the old models thus brought to 
 light, associations were formed for popularizing the subject, 
 and a great stimulus was given to it. This absurd identifi- 
 cation of things which had no necessary connexion has 
 given way with time, and there are very few churches now 
 where an entirely Gregorian service obtains. Even at the 
 special services of the Gregorian association at St. Paul's it 
 has been found desirable to relieve the severity of the per- 
 formance by something a little less archaic in the shape of 
 a favourite hymn or anthem. There has, in short, been 
 a reaction, and people have got to see the mistake of ex- 
 cluding the best German, Italian, or Anglican work from the 
 service of religion. It was no uncommon thing in the early 
 days of the revival to hear an advanced man speak of such 
 and such a church as in a benighted condition because 
 ' Anglicans ' were still used there for the psalms. Now 
 people are more eclectic, and can see beauties in every style. 
 The same stages of thought have been gone through here, 
 in fact, as in architecture. The severe and simple music of 
 the Gregorian school had one great recommendation from a 
 religious point of view, and that was that, as a rule, the con- 
 gregation were able to take their share of the service, instead 
 of simply listening to the choir. Now, it is to be feared 
 that the reaction against the old severity is tending towards 
 the exclusion of the vox populi in certain churches where 
 elaborate masses are performed — very beautiful as works of 
 art, but utterly impossible to be joined in by the average 
 church-goer. And this state of things unfortunately occurs 
 
140 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 at some of those churches where a few years back this was 
 the very objection urged against everything that was not 
 Gregorian. Only a few months ago certain letters appeared 
 in the Church Times from old worshippers at St. Alban's, 
 Holborn, who resented the changes introduced there by a 
 new organist or choirmaster as destroying the congregational 
 character of the services. And this is not an isolated 
 case. 
 
 It certainly would be a great pity if the distinctive feature 
 of the Prayer-Book, as compared with the Roman Breviary 
 and Missal, were in any way tampered with. That the 
 Church consists of the laity as well as the clergy, and that 
 each has its part to perform, were facts continually before 
 the minds of its compilers in arranging the public offices. 
 In the early years of the revival great stress was accordingly 
 laid on the recitation of creeds and responses and the sing- 
 ing of psalms and hymns by the congregation, and the effect 
 is very impressive at those churches where the services are 
 still conducted on this principle. Impartial Romanists 
 (e.g., St. George Mivart) recognise this as one of the strong 
 points of Anglicanism, and speak with admiration of the 
 heartiness and enthusiasm of such services as compared 
 with the Roman offices, in which the congregation can take 
 little or no audible part. In spite, therefore, of the narrow- 
 ness of the ultra-Gregorian school, their intentions were so 
 far quite in accordance with the spirit of the Book of 
 Common Prayer. We owe them a debt of gratitude for 
 bringing out the rights of the congregation, and for pro- 
 viding for them according to their knowledge. The now 
 almost universal practice of singing the Psalms and Can- 
 ticles, instead of merely the Gloria Patri which concludes 
 them, dates from the Gregorian revival, and is largely owing 
 to the principles on which its advocates insisted. As I said 
 before, we have got beyond them in their exclusive devotion 
 to one species of music. 
 
 What we have to guard against now is that our services 
 
SOME FRUITS OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 141 
 
 do not become too musical. I'here is a disposition at many 
 churches, not quite so advanced as those just mentioned as 
 imitating the Roman use, to take the cathedral service as a 
 model. As far as the congregation is concerned, the result 
 is precisely the same, for where so much prominence is 
 given to elaborate anthems and settings of the Canticles, to 
 say nothing of difficult chants for the Psalms — frequently 
 quite out of the reach of male voices in pitch — the share of 
 the people is reduced to a wretched minimum.* 
 
 There is another very serious danger in the supremacy of 
 music, and that is the degradation of preaching which seems 
 likely to follow in consequence. 
 
 The old Puritan discourse of two hours t would be too 
 oppressive. The miserable little composition, for which the 
 word sermotiette has been expressly coined, is scarcely more 
 tolerable. The great masters of the revival did not err in 
 this way. There has been a great falling off from the 
 elaborate fulness of Dr. Pusey, from the classical elegance 
 of Dr. Newman, among their successors, of many of whom 
 it may be said in Bacon's words, ' They may have the same 
 veins, but there is not the same blood in them as in those 
 
 * The contrast between the chaste and simple services of the Trac- 
 tarians and those fashionable with some of their successors, musically 
 and otherwise, might well be described in the words of Ernest Renan ; 
 ' Ma venue a Paris fut le passage d'une religion a une autre. Mon 
 Christianisme de Bretagne ne ressemblait pas plus a celui que je trouvais 
 ici qu'une vieille toile, dure comme une planche, ne ressemble a de la 
 percale. Ce n'etait pas la meme religion. Mes vieux pretres, dans 
 leur lourde chape romane, m'apparaissaient comme les mages, ayant les 
 paroles de I'eternite ; maintenant, ce qu'on me presentait, c'etait une 
 religion d'indienne et de calicot, une piete musquee, enrubanee, une 
 devotion de petites bougies et de petits pots de fleurs, une theologie de 
 demoiselles, sans solidite, d'un style indefinissable, composite comme le 
 frontispiece polychrome d'un livre d'Heures de chez Lebel.' — 
 ' Souvenirs.' 
 
 t There is a story of a preacher of this school who used to turn the 
 hour-glass when half-way through his exhortation, with the significant 
 remark, 'Brethren, let us have another glass before we part.' 
 
142 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 of the ancients.' A favourite argument with those who 
 cannot preach is that the sermon is not the principal object 
 for which we come to church. This is perfectly true ; but 
 the sermon has its legitimate place in the church service, 
 and the fact of a certain school having made too much of it 
 is no reason for another disparaging it. The names of the 
 great preachers of the revival ought to be enough to show 
 that a good sermon is perfectly consistent with a proper 
 regard for the Sacraments, and that it is at least as powerful 
 an influence and attraction to certain minds as music. 
 
 In one sense the general falling off in preaching of late 
 years may be regarded as an outcome of the revival, 
 inasmuch as it is partly due to a reaction against the undue 
 importance which the old evangelical school attached to 
 preaching, and, further, because the extreme indolence of 
 that school in the days preceding the revival — I mean as 
 regards the ordinary work of a parish priest — has been 
 succeeded by an almost restless activity. Where this 
 activity is displayed in secular duties, as it too frequently is, 
 which might be left to laymen, or left to take care of them- 
 selves, the remedy is of course in a clergyman's own hands. 
 
 Where the work done is entirely sacerdotal, one does not 
 care to criticise. Yet here we are confronted with the 
 curious fact that some of the most successful preachers in 
 the highest sense, and judged by the results of their teach- 
 ing, have been men otherwise most hardly pressed; such 
 as, for instance, some of our bishops, who have had scarcely 
 a moment to call their own, or men like Mr. Mackonochie 
 and Mr. I.owder, whose lives have been spent from morning 
 till night in parochial ministration, and that of a very trying 
 kind to the intellect and bodily health. 
 
 Where the modern clergyman falls short of his Anglo- 
 Catholic predecessors is chiefly in the neglect of reading. 
 The Tractarians were essentially reading men. They were 
 themselves well fed, or they would not have been able to 
 feed others so well. The parochial clergy of to-day are, as 
 
SOME FRUITS OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 143 
 
 a rule, so overloaded with external duties that their own 
 education is apt to be neglected. And, in addition to not 
 reading for their sermons, they have given up the practice 
 of writing them. 
 
 In the early days of the revival the written sermon was 
 the rule. A reaction has followed in favour of extempo- 
 raneous preaching, as it is called, and the result is that a 
 flow of words about nothing is too often mistaken for 
 eloquence, and that thought is conspicuously absent. 
 Another distinguishing feature between the revivalists and 
 their successors is that the former naturally made use of the 
 sermon for the purpose of teaching. Now, sermons are too 
 frequently mere exhortations, and the result is quite a sur- 
 prising amount of ignorance, even in so-called Catholic 
 congregations, about the raison d'etre of Catholic doctrines. 
 Church history, the history and structure of the Prayer- 
 Book, and other matters, which the Tractarians taught well, 
 and which might still be taught with advantage from the 
 pulpit. For the fact is that although there never has been 
 a time like the present for cheap books, people generally do 
 not read in the proper sense of the word, and if they are 
 to be taught systematically, it must be by others who have 
 previously mastered the special subject. I have spoken 
 freely in this matter because, in common with many laymen, 
 I feel keenly the danger pointed out, and also that the 
 remedies seem so simple.* 
 
 Perhaps the most obvious result of the revival is what has 
 been called its ' Ritualistic development.' The extent to 
 which this has spread could neither be foreseen nor provided 
 for by the writers of the ' Tracts for the Times,' of whose 
 doctrines it is of course the outcome. On the one hand it 
 has involved the separation from the so-called Ritualists of 
 many men of great ability who were ready to go with the 
 
 * It is by no means implied that the decline in preaching is confined 
 to any special school. All schools have been more or less affected by 
 the causes suggested. 
 
144 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 movement in its purely intellectual and spiritual work ; on 
 the other hand, it cannot be denied that the most influential 
 Tractarians, as far as they have lived to see the outward 
 manifestation of their teaching, have consistently supported 
 their successors in theory, whether they went with them in 
 practice or not. For, in fact, nothing could be more 
 natural or more logical than that the revival of the study of 
 those ancient liturgies on which our Prayer-Book is based 
 should be followed by a restoration of our services to the 
 ancient models ; that is, to the condition in which they were 
 before the supremacy of Puritan and Calvinistic influences, 
 and consequently by a restoration of those ' ornaments of 
 the Church and of the ministers thereof which were in use 
 when the Prayer-Book was compiled, and which the Rubric 
 tells us are still to be ' retained and be in use.' It is now 
 generally admitted that in bringing this restoration about 
 there has been a want of discretion, partly owing to a natural 
 ignorance of what was good or bad ritual, of what was 
 English or what was merely exotic, when the study of the 
 subject had to be begun ab initio, and when there was no 
 continuous practice to appeal to ; partly out of an equally 
 natural confusion between trifling details and matters of 
 vital importance. On the part of the ritualists there has 
 often been extravagance instead of decency and order. 
 But the opposition to perfectly harmless and legitimate 
 restorations has often been quite as absurd on the part of 
 those who objected to them. It is remarkable, however, 
 that, on the whole, there has been much less opposition to 
 the elaborate ceremonial and ornate vestments more recently 
 introduced than there was to the enunciation of the doctrines 
 on which they are based, or to the very simple ritual which 
 contented the Tractarians who preached and wrote those 
 doctrines. 
 
 I have a very interesting work in the ' Farewell Letter to 
 his Parishioners,' by the Rev. W. J. E. Bennett, of St. 
 Paul's, Knightsbridge, and St. Barnabas, Pimlico, written on 
 
SOME FRUITS OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 145 
 
 his resignation in 1851. Those who are not old enough to 
 remember what happened may see from this htde book that 
 preaching in a surplice, the invocation before sermons, 
 bowing at the Gloria and name of Jesus, the use of two 
 candles on the altar, a movable altar cross, and altar 
 flowers, besides such structural arrangements as a rood- 
 screen, credence-table, aumbry, piscina, sedilia, etc., which 
 are now thought nothing about, and are so general as to 
 be no longer the marks of any particular school or party, 
 were in their day the subjects of vehement discussion, some 
 of them the occasion of public riots at the churches where 
 they were introduced. The men who contended for these 
 things have won the day, and have been succeeded by 
 others who, beginning where they left oft", have gone on to 
 the full Eucharistic vestments and an amount of ceremony 
 ' never dreamt of in the philosophy ' of the Tractarians. 
 
 Although this development is one of the chief con- 
 sequences of the Oxford Movement, there has been another 
 influence at work to bring it about than a purely religious 
 influence — I mean the revival of art in general, and of art 
 in particular as an accessory to worship. Even this, how- 
 ever, is largely traceable to the stimulus of the Catholic 
 Revival, or, if you prefer to put it so, to the general revival 
 of which both were manifestations. This resuscitation of 
 art in connection with religious worship was considered some 
 years ago by Mr. Gladstone in an article on ' The Courses 
 of Religious Thought,' written by him for the Contemporary 
 Review at a time when j)rosecution was considered a proper 
 remedy for ritualistic e.xtravagance, and when the Public 
 Worship Regulation Act was in embryo. I have not read 
 the paper since its first appearance, but I think Mr. Glad- 
 stone's argument is that the restoration of coloured vest- 
 ments and other ecclesiastical needlework, etc., was as 
 natural a result of the modern art revival as the improved 
 taste in crockery ware and wall-papers, and that Romish 
 doctrine was no more involved in one than the other. 
 
146 CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 It was pointed out to me by a clerical friend at the time 
 that Mr. Gladstone had merely looked at the subject from 
 one point of view, namely, as answering to the require- 
 ments of an artistic worshipper, or of an artistic age, but 
 had ignored its Divine aspect, viz., as a fitting investiture 
 to the great act of Christian sacrifice. The latter was, of 
 course, the reason why so much importance was attached 
 to ancient costume and ceremonial by those who fought 
 for their restoration ; but it is quite possible that a 
 merely cesthetic view was taken by the general public, 
 who have gradually come to enjoy things which it would 
 have been infinitely more difficult to restore in an inartistic 
 age. 
 
 In Bacon's words, 'it is a light thing to be quoted in so 
 serious a matter,' but there are people who think that the 
 ecclesiastical revival has had a certain influence on the 
 drama, and that the Church scenes in Shakespeare and 
 Goethe, which have lately been produced w-ith marvellous 
 historical accuracy, would not have been possible before the 
 Oxford Movement, when art was conspicuously absent in 
 the actual worship of the English Church. 
 
 The whole question of ritual, as it has been reopened 
 during the Catholic Revival, reminds one of the Eastern 
 Iconoclastic Controversy of the eighth and ninth centuries. 
 Then, as now, and probably always will be, the difference of 
 opinion about externals is rooted in the essential differences 
 in human nature. Where one person prefers simplicity, 
 another prefers, perhaps even requires, such outward and 
 visible aids to worship as are a positive hindrance to his 
 neighbour. The Church seems now to recognise this fact, 
 and its members have agreed to differ where there can never 
 be a complete reconciliation. In vestc varietas sit, scissura 
 non sit. 
 
 Anyhow, no one can compare the Church of England 
 services now with what they were in 1830 without acknow- 
 ledging the influence of the Catholic Revival, even on the 
 
SOME FRUITS OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 147 
 
 least Catholic of the schools of which the Church is com- 
 posed. 
 
 Before I conclude, I should like to mention one or two 
 external peculiarities adopted by the ' Puseyites,' as they 
 were called, during the early stages of the movement. They 
 had their origin in the ascetic character of the leading 
 revivalists, and, being very generally adopted by their 
 followers, became^ badges of the party. Such was the 
 custom of dressing in black, or, at least, of wearing a black 
 neck-tie, which prevailed among gentlemen whose lives 
 were as near an approach to the ' religious,' in the technical 
 sense, as could be led by men outside a monastery. 
 
 The costume of the clergy was, of course, still more 
 marked, and has gone through various modifications and 
 developments according to the varying ideas of ' correct- 
 ness ' at different times, or as suggested by the inventive 
 genius of ecclesiastical tailors. The particular form of 
 waistcoat, for instance, which was known as the M.B. 
 ( = Mark of the Beast) was specially distinctive of the 
 'advanced' man; but as its use became more extended it 
 lost its original significance, and was discontinued by the 
 original wearer, and, in fact, became almost the badge of an 
 Evangelical. Hats have gone through a similar process. 
 The brims of felt hats have been gradually enlarged, till 
 only men of strong opinions and great personal courage 
 could venture out in them. A reaction has ensued, and 
 the silk hat of the ordinary English gentleman, and of the 
 Romish priest in this country, has become the usual cover- 
 ing of an 'advanced' head, the felt hat being left to the 
 clergyman of mild Anglican views. Cassocks and neck- 
 ties, too, have in their turn followed the various phases of 
 the movement. 
 
 It became very general among the Anglo-Catholics to use 
 the letter 5. for Saint, instead of the St. of Protestants and 
 Romanists. That custom also has become so general as to 
 lose its party significance. The result is that the higher 
 
148 CA7H0L1C REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 Churchmen have now returned to the old form. The same 
 remark applies to the practice of dating letters, etc., from the 
 particular saint's day on which they were written, instead of 
 the ordinary day of the month. 
 
 These harmless peculiarities have, to a great extent, dis- 
 appeared as the revival has attained a more truly catholic 
 and liberal character, and as Nature has asserted itself 
 against the inevitable narrowness of a small and earnest 
 party. 
 
 There were two matters of far greater importance on 
 which the views of the advanced school had got to be too 
 restricted to stand the test of time. Both had their origin 
 in an ascetic view of life, right and proper enough probably 
 at particular ages of the world, but which required con- 
 siderable modification to suit the conditions of life in the 
 nineteenth century. The first of these was the result of a 
 reaction against the easy and self-indulgent habits charac- 
 teristic of society and the Church before the Oxford Move- 
 ment, 
 
 In the days when churches were closed from Sunday to 
 Sunday it was not likely that the Ecclesiastical Calendar 
 would be observed. Scarcely anybody kept the season of 
 Lent, for instance, and there were still fewer who thought of 
 keeping Friday. In fact, this day was found to be an 
 extremely convenient one for dinner-parlies, or going to the 
 theatre. One of the first points, therefore, on which the 
 revivalists insisted was the observance of fast -days as 
 appointed by the Prayer-Book, and the necessity for a strict 
 and disciplined life generally. Like all good things, how- 
 ever, this wholesome doctrine was pushed to excess by 
 Anglo-Catholics of a later school, who seemed to take their 
 idea of a proper physique from the attenuated figures in a 
 stained-glass window. In this, however, it must be con- 
 fessed that they carried out their doctrines most faithfully 
 in their own persons, which they succeeded in reducing to 
 the model of a St. Antony or Simeon Stylites, and which 
 
SOME FRUITS OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 149 
 
 were only held together by continual courses of medicine and 
 by the extreme energy of their minds. The Rev. T. Mozley, 
 speaking of the time when he would not touch meat on a 
 fast-day, tells us of the horror with which he had heard of a 
 friend punishing himself on cold mutton simply because he 
 disliked it :{and he adds that, at the time of writing, he had 
 eome to think him an extremely sensible man ^//This is an 
 instance of the change of view that has occurred on the 
 whole subject of self-discipline. As long as this is secured, 
 people are less attentive to the letter of the law, and to the 
 manner ho7i'. 
 
 The other jiuint, wliich has also been modified by time, 
 was an exaltation of celibacy, and a tendency consequently 
 to look upon married people as somewhat lower in the scale 
 of saintliness, and with lower prospects in the future state, 
 than those who remained single. I do not know that this 
 was ever formally stated in so many words, but I think I 
 could lay my finger on passages in which the doctrine is 
 suggested, and I know of clergymen who have implied as 
 much in their sermons. In a case of this kind, however, 
 where there was a continual argument to the contrary in 
 human nature, the doctrine was not likely to become 
 dangerous by its general acceptance. I am not aware now 
 that it is ever heard ; and, as far as my personal experience 
 goes, those who advocated it most violently have one after 
 another joined the ranks of the Benedicts. 
 
 A fact that is sometimes urged against the Catholic 
 revival is its ' Romeward tendency,' in proof of which its 
 opponents quote, what there is no disputing and no need to 
 dispute, that a certain number of people who were carried 
 along with the current have been landed in the Roman 
 Communion. As far as these secessions took place during 
 the Oxford Movement, they were, as I have already shown, 
 only partially traceable to the teaching of the movement 
 party. There was then a ' wave of secession,' as it has been 
 called ; and, looking at the state of the Church of England 
 
ISO CATHOLIC REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 at the time, one cannot be surprised, however much one 
 may regret it. But that movement and its consequences 
 have so entirely altered the circumstances and character of 
 the English Church that the temptations to leave her on the 
 ground of finding something better elsewhere are now very 
 rarely felt. Now and then one hears of a distinguished 
 perversion — the Romanists take care that it shall be heard 
 of — and, of course, there is a certain amount of proselytizing 
 always going on at such places as the Brompton Oratory 
 among people who may just as well belong to the Roman 
 Church as any other. But the majority of English Church- 
 men, lay and clerical, are contented to remain where 
 they are. 
 
 I mention this matter now to point out the effect on the 
 Roman Church itself of the accession of such English 
 gentlemen as Newman, Manning, F. W. Faber, F. Oakeley, 
 and others who joined her about the same time and under 
 similar motives. It is evident that the importation of such 
 men has had the effect of introducing into the Roman 
 Church here a powerful Anglican element which has had 
 considerable influence as a corrective to the Italian and 
 other foreign elements of which it must otherwise have 
 chiefly consisted. With all their supposed Romish inclina- 
 tions, these men had much more in common with the old 
 hereditary Catholicism here, which was English first and 
 Roman afterwards, than with the modern Ultramontanism 
 introduced by the Italian mission on the establishment of 
 the Roman hierarchy in 1850. 
 
 It is true that the Anglican converts have not always gone 
 in the same direction within the Church of their adoption, 
 but, on the whole, they have had sufficient weight and 
 sufiicient coherence among themselves to form the nucleus 
 of a new school, combining the acceptance of the leading 
 doctrines of Romanism with much of the modern scientific 
 and philosophical spirit. There is, in fact, a strong re- 
 semblance between the school thus generated and the inde- 
 
SOME FRUITS OF THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 151 
 
 pendent Gallican school across the water, both in simplicity 
 of doctrine and ritual and in liberty of thought, in both of 
 which points it presents an equally strong contrast to the 
 tendencies of Ultramontanism. I may mention, in passing, 
 that I am told those who wish to see the foreign and English 
 parties at work side by side, and with an easy opportunity 
 of contrasting them, may do so, or might have done ,so 
 recently, at the Church of St. Etheldrcda in Ely Place, 
 where the simple services, as conducted by Father Lockhart, 
 were very different to the ' religion musquee et enruban^e ' 
 of the Italian missioners in the same building. There are 
 few Anglican churches more severely simple than Cardinal 
 Newman's chapel at Edgbaston. 
 
 It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that this new 
 school of English Romanism has gathered to itself much of 
 the wealth and influence of the old Roman Catholic families, 
 of the ducal houses who have never changed their religion, 
 besides such modern intellect as has gone over since the 
 establishment of the hierarchy. However satisfied the earlier 
 seceders were in their own consciences with the step they 
 had taken (and I suppose everyone else is convinced of 
 their personal sincerity), there was necessarily much in their 
 new religion to which they could never get accustomed. 
 Partly, therefore, for themselves, partly perhaps with an eye 
 to the progress of the Church of their adoption, partly un- 
 consciously, and without any design at all, but simply by 
 virtue of their irrepressible genius, they have done a good 
 deal to Anglicize the Romish Church in this country. This 
 Anglican character is observable in the preaching, the 
 literature, the architecture, and the public worship of that 
 Church ; and if it is to make any progress here, it will be 
 in proportion as it adheres to the principles thus infused 
 into it. 
 
 If the English Church is true to its vocation, it need 
 never fear the competition of its rival. But if in the course 
 of lime it should unhappily degenerate, say into its condition 
 
152 CATHOLIC REl'IVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 before the Oxford Movement, I am afraid there will still be 
 a chance of the fulfilment of Macaulay's celebrated prophecy 
 — viz., that the Romish religion will be supreme while the 
 New Zealander sits on a broken arch of London Bridge 
 sketching the ruins of St. Paul's. The possibility of such a 
 result, remote though it be, lies in the Anglican character 
 given to the Romish Church by those who have joined her 
 from the Church of their baptism. Men knowing the 
 strength and weakness of the English Church, men ac- 
 quainted with every point of the controversy between 
 England and Rome, men educated at English Universities, 
 men fully equipped in literature and philosophy, men who 
 can preach and write, men well read in theology, and, what 
 is more, in English life and character, have thought it right 
 to transfer their allegiance to the Roman camp, and have 
 furnished it with the weapons which can alone make it for- 
 midable in this country. 
 
 It will be a bad day for the English Church if it is ever 
 tempted to rely on the privileges supposed to be conferred 
 by Establishment instead of those Catholic principles which 
 are its surest foundation. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Elliot stock, 62, Fatemostei Ro^u, Lonaon, E.C.