^voTw^^cffg;^ ^fOtOGICAL St>»^ BR 50 .R533 1866 Rigg, James H. 1821-1909 Essays for the times ESSAYS FOR THE TIMES ECCLESIASTICAL AND SOCIAL SUBJECTS. BY JAMES H.^RIGG, D.l). AU'l'HOR OP " MODRRN ANOI.ICAN TH KOIjOOY . LONDON : ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G. 1866. LONDON : PRINTKD BY JAMES BEVERIDOE, THANET PLACE, STRAND. PREFACE. I SEND forth this volume with some hope that it may assist in bringing Christian thinkers to an agree- ment on some of the pressing questions of the day. Whatever may be the worth of the papers here bound together, there can be no doubt as to the importance of the subjects with which they deal. Apart from purely dogmatic or specifically religious questions, and from strictly political controversies, it will be con- ceded that the subjects handled in this volume include most of those which are recognised as of primary and pressing moment at the present time. The last two papers were published in the London Quarterly Review eight or ten years ago. It will be found, however, that they are as pertinent to present controversies as if they liad been written in the pre- sent year. The essay on " Popular Education" bears difoctlv oil that subject in all its breadth, as dis- iv PREFACE. cussed in the recent session of Parliament, and as sure to be again discussed at the earliest opportunity. The English, the Irish, and the Colonial systems are exhibited, in their respective principles, with the special purpose and reason of each. The essay on the "Origin, Causes, and Cure of Pauperism," bears immediately on the question of land-tenure in Great Britain and in Ireland, and, although written so long ago, anticipates in its principles and indications the course of legislation on which Parliament has lately entered. Of the other papers, some are now for the first time published, and all are of recent date, except that on the " Bible and Human Progress," which was delivered as a Lecture in Exeter Hall in 1858, and is here re-printed, after revision, by the kind permis- sian of the Committee of the Young Men's Christian Association. All the papers will be found to have a certain unity. Tiie title of the Lecture indicates the scope of the whole volume. They are directly concerned with the question of " Human Progress ;" and they all recog- nise Christianity as furnishing the laws and the life out of which the progress of the world is continu- ally to unfold itself. Hence the primary importance of sucli rjuestions as that of "the Vocation and PREFACE. Training of the Clergy;" hence, the national import- ance of siicli ecclesiastical controversies as those in which the names of Pusey and Newman recur. A less intolerant and exclusive ecclesiastical system is no truly or directly opposed to the political and moral well-being of a nation, than is a system of religious scepticism ; Church superstitions are as pernicious as philosophical unbelief Moreover superstition con- tinually provokes and produces infidelity. What relation m}^ own particular church may sus- tain towards other churches, and in particular towards the Established Church, is a matter of minor import- ance; so far as this volume is concerned, is a veiy slight and altogether incidental question. Neverthe- less, it seemed necessary, in order that my readers might perfectly understand my point of view, and be enabled completely to appreciate what I have to say in relation to the Church of Enc-land and to other o churches, that I should give some preliminary explana- tions on this point. This I have done accordingly, in the first instance and in a few words. It will be observed that in some of the papers I use the reviewer's style; while in others I speak in the first person singular, as I should \va\q iJreibrred to do througlioul. TI10 oxplMiialion will lie nnticipatod VI • PEEFACE. With one exception, all the papers in which the plural form is used, have been published as reviews ; and in the case of the one exception, the essay was originally prepared with a view to its first appearing in the London Quarterly Review ; but as an unavoidable delay prevented its publication in April last, it is now first published in this volume.* JAMES H. RIGG. Folkestone, June 10th, 1866. * I have to ask the reader at p. 10, line 13 from the bottom, to supply the words of grace after means. CONTENTS. V\OK I. A .FEW WORDS ON THE RELATIONS OF WESLEYAN METHODISM TO THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH . . 1 II. THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLERGY ... 12 III. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH — DEFECTS AND REMEDIES . 73 IV. THE PURITAN ANCESTORS AND HIGH-CHURCH PARENTS OF THE WBSLEYS. A SKETCH AND A STUDY. 1630—1750 106 V. KINGSLEY AND NEWMAN 170 VI. PUSEY's EIRENICON 223 VII. ARCHBISHOP MANNING AND DOCTOR PUSEY ON " THE WORKINGS OF THE HOLY GHOST" AMONG SEPARA- TISTS AND SCHISMATICS, OR ULTRAMONTANE CHARITY versus Anglican charity 274 Vlll CONTENTS. PAGI! VI fT. THE HISTORY OF HETERODOX SPECULATION . . . 285 I IX. THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGRESS 329 X. PAUPERISM, LAND TENURE, AND THE CLERGY . . . 381 XI. THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM . . . 398 XII. POPULAR EDUCATION 461 ESSAYS FOR THE TIMES. o;»Jo INTRODUCTORY. A FEW WOEDS ON THE RELATIONS OF WESLEYAN METHODISM TO THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. In three of the following papers, the first three in order, I have touched on questions connected with the Established Church of this country. It will be seen that I have done so in no spirit of animosity, and with no sectarian view, but with perfect independence. Being mj^self a minister of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, I desire to offer a very few words of explanation in regard to the relations of Methodism to the Church of England. There has been a wide-spread impression that Wesleyan Methodists are barely separated from the Established Church of England ; that, so far as they are separated, such separa- tion is in violation of their own original principles ; and that they might, without any great violence or difficulty, be re- united with the Established Chfirch. It is high time that such delusions on these points as have prevailed should be dissipated ; and I wish to take this opportunity of contributing to dispel them. To take these points, then, in the reverse order from that in which I have stated them. I have no hesitation in saying that there is not the remotest possibility of the Weslej^an Methodist Church ever being absorbed in the Church of England. And I doubt whether, out of the many hundreds 2 ESSAYS FOE THE TIMES. of Wesleyan ministers, and of the hundreds of thousands of Wesleyan communicants, there are altogether a score of persons who would not smile with supreme amusement if such a proposal were presented to them. Just ten years ago an article, on this precise question, was published in the London Quarterly Review* which, it is no violation of confidence now to say, was from the pen of a very dis- tinguished Wesleyan minister, the Eev. W. Arthur, who, there is little doubt, will be elected in a few weeks to the highest office in the Wesleyan Church, the Presidency of its annual Conference. In this able and comprehensive article the whole question is luminously discussed ; and it is demonstrated that any union between Methodism and the Established Church is simply impossible ; that such a union must imply a sacrifice on the part of Methodism of its claim to be a church, on the part of its clergy of their character as ordained ministers of Christ, and on the part of all its adherents, whether ministers or lay members, of all that is distinctive in its organization and institutions, and of its very highest and most cherished Christian principles — one of these being the position of sisterly fellowship and evan- gelical communion in which it now stands towards all other Protestant Churches, whether at home or abroad, the EstabHshed Church alone excepted. In the same article, also, it is demonstrated that a union of Methodism with the EstabHshed Church, if that were possible, could not fail to be injurious, both to the Church of England itself and to the interests of our common Christianity. What might happen if (jjer imjMssihilc) the Church of England itself were altogether remodelled, so as to become a comprehensive na- tional church,— a sort of Protestant cathedral establishment, including as it were, under one roof Episcopal, Congrega- tional, and Methodist " chapels," it is quite idle to speculate. * July, 1856. I WESLEYAN METHODISM NOT TO BE ABSORBED. 3 And as to the second of the points I have mentioned — viz., that the continued separation of the Wesleyan Church from the Church of England is in violation of the original principles of Methodism, the same article is equally clear and conclusive. It is shown that Mr. Wesley's adherence to the Church of England was in his latest years much more a matter of filial instinct than of conviction, and was in very important respects exceedingly loose. The Wesleys, in their life-time, were, for the most part, excluded from preaching in the churches of the establishment, because, first of all, of their evangelical doctrine; and, afterwards, of their ''irregu- larities." It is shown that by his irregularities — his extem- pore praying, his forming societies, his commissioning lay preachers, and ordaining ministers — Mr. Wesley himself, in his life-time, made a virtual separation between himself and his societies, on the one hand, and the Church of England, on the other. It is shown that the character of the clergy was such that, passionately as Mr. Wesley loved the Church and her services, and utterly as he shrank from the thought of separation, he was compelled, too often, to give at least his passive consent to his people's absenting themselves from church. The reviewer quotes Mr. Wesley's own words as follows : "My conclusion, which I cannot yet give up, that it is lawful to continue in the Church, stands, I know not how, almost without any premises that are to bear its weight. I know the original doctrines of the Church are sound ; I know her worship is, in the main, pure and scriptural. But if 'the essence of the Church of England, considered as such, consists in her orders and laws ' (many of which I myself can say nothing for), ' and not in her worship and doctrines,' those who separate from her have a far stronger plea than ever I was sensible of."* Moreover, in the same article, just emphasis is given to • Wesley's Works, Vol. XIII. pp. 164, 10.5. b2 4 ESSAYS FOR THE TIMES. the fact that Mr. Wesley's irregularities, in many instances, amounted to decisive acts of ecclesiastical independency. Such were the administration of the Lord's Supper in Methodist " houses," the appointment of prayers and preach- ing in church hours, the ordination of some of his preachers to the administration of the sacraments, and all pastoral acts and offices ; and, finally, the full organization of a church government for the American Methodists, under the hands of " superintendents," or " bishops," who received their specific orders from him. In fact, it is very evident that Mr. Wesley was not without the foresight of what was likely to haj)pen when he should be taken from the head of his people. He would not do anything directly or positively to advance this result. He used all his authority, and his utmost efforts in every way, at least to retard, if not to prevent it. He loved the Church of England only less than he loved the work of God. To have been the head of a separate body would have been grief and pain to him. He was happy in the latest years of his life, when the aged patriarch was coming into extensive honour, to find many churches thrown open to him. He was persuaded that it was not his vocation to lead away a separation, or fully to organize an independent church. In his life-time at least he trusted to be able to prevent such a consummation. He ordained ministers to give the sacraments in different parts of England, as well as in Scotland and America, that he might thus still the just outcry of the people whom the parish clergy drove from the Lord's table, or who could not receive the communion from the hands of openly immoral "priests." By this measure he put off the inevitable day of avowed separation. But he only put it off. He was even, in postponing it, educating both the people and their preachers for the state of separation and the mutual relations which that state ME. WESLEY PREPARED THE WAY FOR SEPARATION. 5 would involve. No doubt he saw this. But his plan through life had been to trust and follow Providence, not anticipating troubles before the time, nor allowing himself to be deterred by probable consequences, by difficulties and complications looming in the future, from doing what he felt to be right and needful for the time present. He trusted to Providence the future of the people whom he had been the instrument of raising up. Was there not a Conference of preachers ? Were there not among them men of counsel and might ? Had they not before their eyes the precedent of an inde- pendent and organized Methodism in America ? Was not Dr. Coke, who had acted in America as "superintendent," a member of the British Conference ? And was there not the same God to guide the preachers in Conference as there had been to guide him ? * After Wesley's death the people were no longer restrained by tender reverence for him from urging loudly and almost universally what they had so long felt. " The trustees," indeed, including many gentlemen of superior position strongly attached to the Church of England, and many others who looked with a sense of superiority on the i:)oor, humble, Methodist itinerant, and did not wish to see him invested with the character of an ordained minister — "the trustees," for the most part, opposed the demands of the members at large. They pleaded for " the Church," and "the old way." With them was a considerable section of the preachers, including some men of great eminence. And for several years the Conference, on the whole, was under the influence of the trustees and these leading preachers. Others there were, however, among the preachers, of not less eminence, who were of a different mind. And, mean- time, the people were determined to obtain their evangelical and ecclesiastical " rights," as they considered and called * See the paper on the " ruritaii Ancestors and High Chiir<.h Parents of the Wesleys." 6 ESSAYS FOR THE TIMES. their demands. The agitation became more violent and the feehng more intense every year. Nor was the excitement lessened by the fact that, as very many Methodists had been dm-ing many years, so many were still being, repelled by the clergy from the Lord's table. Accordingly, in 1795, four years after Mr. Wesley's death, the " Plan of Pacification " was adopted, by which a way was opened to the " Societies " for obtaining, each by each as they might insist upon them, the church privileges which they had so long desired. In virtue of that '' Plan " the Methodist preachers became " pastors " as well as " teachers," ministers in the full sense, and Methodism became manifestly, what it had long been virtually, a separate church. The next thing was to lay a due basis of church government, and to acknowledge the right of the societies, as belonging to a free and voluntary church, to be admitted to a voice in connexion with its legislature and government. That point was conceded, in principle, by the Conference legislation of 1797, which laid the foundation for all that has been since effected in the way of lay co-operation in ecclesiastical affairs, and by which Methodism has been developed into the finest sphere for lay influence in the world. Such having been the antecedents of modern Methodism, what its present aspect is towards the Church of England may be understood without difficulty. There may yet be some ministers, chiefly, if not exclusively, among the seniors of the Conference, who retain towards the Established Church much of that filial instinct of admiration and reverence which John Wesley cherished to his dying day. In times past some of these have been like those English of the pale in Ireland, who were said to be " Hibernis ijjsis Hihcrnlores." There have been Wesleyan ministers, I am not sure but there are still a few such, who have felt such a reverence for the formularies of the Church of England that they would be more unwilling to consent to any change in them whatever METHODISTS AND CHUBCH METHODISTS. 7 than almost any Churchman of enlarged and moderately liberal views. But if any such examples of strong Church Methodism yet remain, their number must be very small indeed. All such Methodists would, of course, have strongly contended for Church-rates. But, besides such as these, if any such there be, there are at least a few others, who, whilst they own no allegiance to the Anglican Church, have yet not been prepared to support any movement for the unconditional abolition of Church-rates. They look upon the cathedrals and the ancient parish churches as national edifices ; and, this being the case, they are unwilling, by leaving them to be sustained merely by the Church of England, to recognise them as the property of a sect. This is a point, however, on which many Wesleyan Methodists, whatever their general or their ecclesiastical politics, have had to confess themselves perplexed. Undoubtedly, however, the great majority of Wesleyans are passively opposed to Church-rates ; they heartily dislike them, although few of them may have joined in any agitation against them. Wesleyan Methodists generally study to " be quiet and to mind their own business." They have seldom been active politicians ; perhaps they have taken less interest in poli- tics than an enlightened Christian patriotism would dictate. They have commonly a strong Conservative bias. They dislike political agitation. They have received a maxim from their founder, of which they are very fond — " Be the friends of all, the enemies of none." They dissent, as a matter of fact, at least most of them, from the discipline and dominant policy of the Church of England. They dissent, also, utterly from High Church doctrine. But Dissent is no part of their ecclesiastical creed. They are not educated in it as a principle. They would like to help to mend the Church of England, if they saw clearly how ; and, as this is the Church by law endowed and established, they feel that they have, as every English- 8 ESSAYS FOR THE TIMES. man must have, an interest and a right in seeing that Church well organized and well administered. But, until they see clearly what is to be done in order to its amendment, they are generally content to sit still and say very little. Few of them profess to have mastered all the intricacies of law and equity connected with the question of church establishments. They cannot see that it is a law of nature, or of morals, or of the Gospel, that all church endowments are necessarily un- lawful. And they find it difficult to distinguish specifically between the endowments of dissenting chapels and a con- siderable proportion, at least, of the endowments of the Church of England. For the most part, as I imagine, they have a sort of obscure idea somewhere posited within, — they are under the influence of an instinctive feeling, seldom con- sciously defined,— that the best thing would be, to remove from the constitution and administration of the Church of England whatever is unjust in itself, or inconsistent with the spiritual freedom and efficiency of the Church ; that if this could be done, and the Church could be brought on the whole to work manifestly well as a Christian and national institu- tion, the abstract question of endowments would hardly be worth discussing ; whereas, if it should become a national evil, a public nuisance, the sooner the endowments were applied to some good object the better. Not being educated in the ab- stract science of the question, that is the practical view which Methodists generally take of it. Some of them, indeed, who have paid some attention to the subject, are inclined to maintain that the question of endowments can never be an abstract question at all ; that it is altogether a question of circumstances ; that the question is not one of lawful- ness, but of good or bad effects, and that that is a ques- tion of conditions and circumstances; nay, that in certain circumstances endowments are an absolute necessity, if Christianity is to take root in a country or among a people. WESLEYAN METHODISTS AND POLITICAL DISSENTEKS. 9 As to this matter of endowment, Wesleyan Methodists have one special advantage. They are altogether disin- terested. They have no endowments themselves. On this point I have written something in the paper on the " Voca- tion and Training of the Clergy," which follows these intro- ductory observations. In general it may be said that Methodists have no ill feel- ing against the Established Church as such. Considering how contemptuously they have been treated, not seldom, but com- monly, now for a hundred years past, this is very remarkable. But they remember that the Wesleys were Churchmen ; and like other Englishmen, they are proud of the greatness, the wealth, the splendour, the potent organization, and, above all, the historic celebrities of their national Ghurch. But it is well that it should be known that, speaking generally'', neither ministers nor people now acknowledge any allegiance, or any- thing like a filial relation to the Church of England. We are as independent of the Church,of England as those are who call themselves Dissenters, or as we are of the Dissenters themselves. We have been smitten on both cheeks by both parties. But we cannot keep up a feud, nor make a prin- ciple out of our grievances. We desire, in very deed, to be " the friends of all and enemies of none." If needs be, we can be independent, but we try to be not unfair or unfriendly, critics of both. Narrow Methodists may often have been, — too full of their own system and its praises, — but no one can attribute to them Ishmael's character. Their position has been like that of Israel, as described by the Gentile prophet. " This people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations." Like Ishmael, too, in one respect, it has often seemed as if " every man's hand " had been "against" them. But even those wiio do not love them will hardly allege that " their hand " has been " against every man." 10 ESSAYS FOR THE TIMES. Such is the attitude towards the Church of England which is generally occupied hy Methodists at this day. During the last thirty years, within my own recollection, it has become very greatly more independent than it was. The jmhlic eulogies of the " venerable establishment," from the lips of Wesleyan ministers, which were common thirty years ago, and which were often so savoury in their simplicity, as to excite sometimes the wonder of Churchmen, and some- times their contempt, are now very seldom heard. Metho- dism has outgrown the fulsome fashions which had been handed down to it. It has become in this respect at least more manly than it was. I do not mean to say that in no respect it has deteriorated, but I confess that as to this point I think the change is not for the worse. Speaking generally, the repugnance of Wesleyan Methodists to join the Church of England is stronger than that of Dis- senters. Methodism means close and lively Christian fellow- ship— class meetings and prayer meetings. These are not to be had in the Church of England. Dissenters, who go over to the Church, miss only the prayer meetings and the church meetings; nor are these so great a feature with them as their special means^' are with the Methodists. The objec- tion of Dissenters to join the Church of England, at the present day, is often reduced very much to a question of ecclesiastical principle. The main difficulty in many cases is the question of congregational independency as opposed to endowed episcopaHanism. But this is a matter of opinion, not of spiritual feeling. There are many Dissenters who have no strong convictions respecting it. The majority even of those who attend dissenting chapels have no enthusiasm on the subject. It is probable that many more persons who have been educated as Dissenters go over to the Church of England than of Wesleyan Methodists. This is undoubtedly the case as respects the ministers, and I believe it to be more METHODISM IS RECEDING FROM THE ANGLICAN CHURCH. 11 extensively so as respects the laity. All mistakes, therefore, on the points I have now briefly touched ujjon should be at an end. Methodism is not approaching nearer to the Church of England. No real Methodist could ever find himself con- tent and at home in the stately but cold cloisters of the Anglican Church. Methodists much prefer their oAvn sanc- tuary, which, though it be less and lowlier, has in it much more of the life and joy and fellowship which befit the com- munion of saints. THE VOCATION AND TEAINING OF THE CLERGY.* At a cei-tain incipient stage in the consolidation and progress of every nation, teachers of religion, professing to be divinely commissioned, have become the educators of the people, and have given the law to the national civilisation. On this point Coleridge, in one of the most interesting of his tracts, lays down certain principles and distinctions, which, though fundamentally erroneous, so neighbour upon the truth, and represent so plausible a perversion of it, that it will well serve our purpose to quote his words. Let it be premised that he uses the word " clerisy " as one of a wider significance than " clergy," and to designate, with the largest comprehensiveness, the learned and educating order of which he speaks ; and that he uses the word " Church " in a cor- responding latitude of signification. " The clerisy of the nation, or National Church," says Coleridge, " in its primary acceptance and original intention, comprehended the learaed of all denominations, the sages and professors of all the so- called liberal arts and sciences, the possession and application of which •constitute the civilisation of a country, — as well as the theological. The last was, indeed, placed at the head of aU ; and of good right did * Lon. Quarterly Reviexv, July, 1862. Bishop of Oxford. Oxford and London : 1. " Addresses to the Candidates for J. H. and James Parker. Ordination, on the Questions in the '2. The Quarterly Eeview. 'No. CGXXU., Ordination Service." By isamuel, Lord April, 1862. London: Murray. THE RELATION OF THE CLERGY TO CR'ILISATION. 13 it claim the precedence. But why ? Because under the name of theology, or divinity, were contained the interjiretation of languages, the conversation and tradition of past events, &c.; and lastly, the ground-knowledge, the prima scientia, as it was named, philosophy, or the doctrine and discipline of ideas. ... I may be allowed, there- fore, to express the final cause of the whole by the office and purpose of the greater part ; and this is to form and train up the people of the country to be obedient, free, useful, organizable subjects, citizens, and patriots, living for the benefit of the State, and prepared to die for its defence. The proper object and end of the national Church is civili- sation with freedom, &c. . . . " In relation to the national Church, Christianity, or the Church of Christ, is a blessed accident, a providential boon, a grace of God, a mighty and faithful friend, the envoy, indeed, and liege subject of another state, but which can neither administer the laws nor promote the ends of this other state, which is not of the world, without advan- tage, direct or indirect, to the true interests of the states, the aggregate of which we mean by the world, i. e. the civilised world." — Church and State, pp. 49, 50, 58—60. In contradistinction to Coleridge's theory, we hold that in the commencement of all civilisations the primary and proper function of what he designates the " clerisy" has been purely religious. They were the authoritative religious teachers, the prophets or priests, of the people ; and each kind of civilisa- tion has been immediately determined by its characteristic religion. We agree with Coleridge, that " because the science of theology was the root and the trunk of the knowledges that civilised man, because it gave unity and the circulating sap of life to all other sciences, because under the name ' theo- logy' were comprised all the main aids, instruments, and materials, of national education," therefore the religion of the country became " the nisiis formativus of the body politic, the shaping and informing spirit which educes or elicits the latent man in all the natives of the soil." This principle holds good in regard to each characteristic body of religious traditions and observances in each great nation. Hence the 14 THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLERGY. religions of the world have moulded the respective civilisa- tions of the world. But to say, as Coleridge says, that, on this account, the teachers of theology have had precedence over other teachers and other classes, is to invert the rela- tions of things. They have had such precedence, not because they were recognised as the teachers of the jjrima scientia, but because of their acknowledged claims as the representatives of the Divine knowledge and will. Their utterances have been paramount, because they have been regarded as the expression of the Divine mind, and as, therefore, prescribing the law of morals, and exhibiting the perfection of wisdom. For this reason, they have had authority and power to mould minds and consciences, to govern law, and custom, and cere- mony, to form civilisations, and determine the limits and conditions of human progress. Perhaps in China only has there been any organisation corresponding to a " national clerisy" which was not founded directly on a theology or m}i;hology ; and, assuredly, the phsenomenon must have been a secondary refinement, not the original system and machi- nery of civilisation and moral control. From all this it fol- lows that the Coleridgean theory of a learned and civilising order, as constituting the original idea and primary principle of the " nationality," or " national clerisy " or " Church," is founded in error. The primary idea is that of divinely com- missioned teachers, — witnesses for God. We look upon a national Church as simply a necessary element in the life and progress of any nation which, from a condition of heathenish barbarism, is just beginning to im- bilje, and is resolved to adopt, the principles of Christianity. No one can in a philosophical spirit study the civil and poli- tical history of our own Anglo- Saxondom, from its origines onwards, without coming to the conclusion that to welcome, and to endow with lands, the teachers of the Christian reli- gion, was the only thing which an earnest and enlightened A NATIONAL CHURCH IN ITS BEGINNINGS. 15 patriotism could, in the earliest times, have done, in order to consolidate the nation, to afford it the requisite instruction, to imbue it with Christian ideas, to lay the foundation of a Christian commonwealth. We feel persuaded that no philo- sophical student of history, who, for the time being, lives in the midst of the generation of which he reads, whatever may be his own ecclesiastical convictions or preferences, would dispute this. It is impossible that such a historian as Dr. Vaughan, Congregationalist though he is, should hold any other view. Had he lived in the days of Alfred, as an en- lightened and patriotic man, he must have been a State Churchman, he must have been in favour of endowing in due proportion the Christian teachers. Even at this day, in many heathen tribes, — among the Kaffirs of South Africa, and the islanders of Polynesia, — the representatives of the London (or Congregationalist) Society find themselves, under certain circumstances, compelled to accept lands from the tribes, or chieftains, in endowment of the missionary pastors. In this sense, and to this extent, all candid and thoughtful men must admit the principle of a national and endowed Church. The modern principle of the Liberation Society is one which could only have been conceived in the midst of modern conditions and ideas. To contend that in England there never ought to have been a State Church is to contend that the times of the Heptarchy ought never to have existed, that such a complex fact as Anglo- Saxondom ought never to have come to be, that the realm of England ought not to have taken shape, that the early conditions, the growth, the development of the nation ought to have been altogether different from what they were. It is to contend against the course of Providence and the stream of events. Given an early, aggressive, and, as yet, undivided Christianity, sjn-ead- ing from race to race, implanting the grand ideas of the Gospel, impressing kings and princes, claiming to regulate IG THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLERGY. political aims, to reform the relations of men, to discard all olden landmarks of faith and policy, to sweep away customs, ceremonies and mythologies; given also such conditions of social, civil, and military organization, such national tradi- tions and superstitions, such an entire complex of life and tendency, as actually existed among the Teutonic and Saxon tribes, in the seventh and eighth centuries ; and a national and nationally endowed Christian organization could not but be the result of the impact of the former upon the latter. To suppose that a system of congregational voluntaryism could by possibility have emerged out of the coalition or the con- flict, out of the intercourse and the combination, in Siuj pos- sible variety or proportions, of such elements as have now been described, is an outrageous anachronism, into which no really intelligent student of history could fall. But, whilst we hold this conclusion to be indisputable, except by the unintelligent, we must add that it does not in the least follow from what has now been stated, that, in the case of a new nation being constituted, in an age of advanced thought, by the absorption and fusion of different races, and by the union 'of different ecclesiastical denominations under one civil compact, it would be well, even if it were possible, to constitute any one ecclesiastical organization the Na- tional Church of the country. Such a course would have been equally impossible and undesirable in the United States ; and the course of legislation and of events is proving that in all the great colonies of this country no one Christian denomination will be suffered to take precedence, unless by mere courtesy, of the rest ; and that no one of them will be specially endowed out of the public revenues. Neither will what we have conceded above in the least bar the inquiry whether in the case of an old country where a particular church has, from the very beginnings of the nation itself, been endowed and regarded as the National Church, a A NATIONAL CnURCH AS THE NATION DE^'ELOPES. 17 time must not come, when the conditions of the national faith and life — its variety, its freedom, its manifoldness — will have become incompatible with the maintenance, as respects the endowed and National Church, of many of its ancient and original prescriptions and precepts. What in its fundamental arrangements was adapted to a primitive age, to the condi- tions of an undivided Christianity, to a period of general ignorance and intellectual stagnancy, is hardly likely, not- withstanding a partial Eeformation three hundred years ago, to be well adapted, as an organization, to the conditions of modern life. It seems probable, a priori, that administrative reforms, new economical adjustments, some disengagement from political and secular interference and control, some con- cession to lay advancement in Christian knowledge, some relaxation of "priestly" exclusiveness and predominance, a more distinct recognition of the congregation of believers, as constituting the body of the Christian Church, and of the spiritual and ecclesiastical claims of the congregation, both as respects spiritual fellowship, in its various forms, and Church discipline ; — that such changes as these must, in the nineteenth century, have become necessary in the case of a National Church, the fundamental conditions and organiza- tion of which were determined more than a thousand years ago, and which, during the Tudor period, was, so far as re- spected its organization and discipline, scarcely otherwise reformed than by being transferred from the control of the Pope and his legates, to that of the Sovereign, his ministers, and the great landowners of the country. We are not, however, about to write an article on Church reform, but on the vocation and training of the Christian ministry. And, if we have said so much on the question of a National Church, it is to free ourselves, in limine, fi'om the danger of being misconceived in our reference to the national clergy and their vocation, either by superstitiously immovable 18 THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OP THE CLERGY. Cburcli-of-England men, on the one hand, or by those who wish to be considered pure voluntaries, but whom we presume to consider ultra-voluntaries, on the other ; and because, in an ancient and conservative country like our own, old ideas are so tenacious, and old fashions so authoritative, that it is impossible to deal intelligibly and convincingly with the general question of ministerial vocation and ministerial train- ing until certain fallacious views on the subject, arising out of the ambiguous and somewhat anomalous position of the clergy of the Established Church, have been disposed of. In the remarkable tract from which we have already quoted, Coleridge distinguishes between the function of the clergy of the Established Church, in so far as they constitute what he calls a " clerisy," and their function, so far as they constitute the spiritual pastors and teachers of the people. In the former view, they are, as he explains, appointed and paid by the commonwealth, to do the work of imparting and keeping alive among the iDeople the elements of a Christian civilisation. They are to be the centres of educating influence and agency throughout the country: and, regarding them as such, the State, in its political and secular character, endows and upholds them. But, at the same time, according to the theory of Coleridge, they hold a relation to the Church as a spiritual body ; they do her spiritual work, and wield her spiritual authority. This, Coleridge teaches, is in virtue of a commission derived from a higher source than the State, in its political character ; and this spiritual authority and work, though in coalition with State authority and control, is yet altogether independent of it. The inference is that, even when, as clergy, acting in their spiritual capacity, they are grievously defective, they may yet, as a national clerisy, be doing the State good service, and fairly earning their pecuniary recompense, and the professional consideration and influence which attach to their position. THE TRUE VOCATION OF THE CLERGY. 19 Now, that all Christian ministers, whether belonging to the endowed and ancient Church of this kingdom, or to the modern "denominations," are centres of educating and civil- ising influence, and, as such, are doing a most important work in the land, is an unquestionable truth. Still it is impossible for the clerical '' order" to be regarded as, co- ordinately, a clerisy, in Coleridge's sense, and as especially endowed by the State in virtue of this its co-ordinate function and character, without its subsiding into a false and inferior position. It may actually do the work of a clerisy, but there is nothing in the principles on which the order is constituted and organized, or in the forms by which individual members are introduced into it, to show that the ends of a " clerisy" (as such) are in the least regarded as appertaining to the clergy. Their functions — their only necessary functions — are exclusively spiritual ; their vows exclusively spiritual ; the nature of their calling is defined, express, exclusive ; theirs is entirely a spiritual calling. The solemn forms of their ordination proclaim them to be divinely moved to this spiritual work to which they are absolutely devoted by a sacro-sanct dedication and life-long separation. The '* idea'' of a clerisy, therefore, to speak as befits us when debating a point with Coleridge, will not coalesce with that of the spiritual pastorate ; and although the clergy may do the work of the " clerisy," it is only as a fruit and consequence of their spiritual work, not at all by virtue of the strict and necessary combination, in the one order of the parochial clergy, of the two co-ordinate ideas of the clerisy and the Christian ministry. Doubtless, however, as a matter of fact, the notion to a considerable extent prevailing among the gentry of England, as to the clergy and their functions, has been rather that of the " clerisy," as laid down by Coleridge, than that of men absolutely devoted to the performance of apostolic work in c2 20 THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLEEGY. the apostolic si)irit. The latter, indeed, is the idea of the Church, as such ; it is the idea expressed or implied in all the formularies. But the former has been the current con- ception, extensively embodied in every-day practice. To be among gentlemen a gentlemanly and, if need be, a scholarly companion ; to be a kind and sympathizing friend, and an influential adviser among the poor ; to do the routine work of Church duty, so far as requisite, with competent ability and decent reverence, — has been, and, to a considerable extent, still is, the summary conception of -a clergyman's vocation. If this had been all that he had professed and engaged to be and do, we will not contend that it might not have been a useful and honourable vocation : that is a point which just now we are not concerned to argue. But what the clergyman had vowed to do and be, was something vastly higher and more spiritual than this. How far, even at this day, — when the necessity of clerical devotion, and the sanctity of the spiritual character which belongs to the ministry, are felt so much more, among all classes, than in former times — the idea of the " clerisy" still prevails within the Church of England, may be understood from the tone and scope of a remarkable article on the " Training of the Clergy," which has recently appeared in the most popular and widely circulated of our quarterly con- temporaries. " The special function of the English clergy," it is there laid down, " is: first, to supply a multitude of centres dispersed and planted throughout the kingdom, round which, in every parish, the voluntary energies of the citizens may be gathered and organized for purposes of good ; and, secondly, to infuse into all the operations of the empire, from the lowest to the highest, that principle of elevated conscien- tiousness which may render external restriction wholly un- necessary. This is the abstract theory to be kept in view both by the statesman and the churchman." To this THE GENTLEMANLY VIEW OF THE PROFESSION. 21 " abstract theory," the Divine ordinance of the Christian pastorate is reduced. Such are the terms in which, for scientific purposes, the reviewer would, as a churchman, formulate all that is contemplated in the Divine vocation of the sacred ministry. The reminiscence of Coleridge in the sentences quoted is very evident; the forgetfulness of Christ's doctrine and St. Paul's teaching and example is equally evident. The function defined would, no doubt, constitute a high and honourable calling ; but it is not that of those who " watch for souls, as they that must give account ;" it is not that of those who are bound to profess themselves " inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon them the office and ministry" of the Christian " priesthood." After such a fundamental definition, it was only to be expected that the very first qualification laid down by the writer of that ai-ticle as necessary to a parochial clergyman should be, that he must be "practically conversant with society and life;" inasmuch as "his immediate, his special work is active com- munication with other men." Doubtless, under any view of the ministerial calling, at least among Protestants, active communication with other men will be included as necessary; yet in many churches this would be regarded as subordinate to the work of expounding Holy Scripture, and of presiding with Christian wisdom in meetings of the church. Indeed, among Presbyterians and Congregationalists, many of the duties ordinarily regarded as peculiarly appertaining to the office of a parochial clergjTnan, are understood to be the special charge of the " ruling elders," or the " deacons," under the general direction of the " pastor and teacher," who is expected to be much in his study, and to devote him- self peculiarly to the " ministry of the Word ;" and among the various families of Methodists, the minister is, to some extent, relieved of the same class of duties by the " leaders, "over whom, however, he presides at the "leaders' 22 THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLERGY. meeting," and through whom he is sufficiently informed as to the condition and necessities of his flock, and made aware of such cases as may requfre his special interposition and personal offices. The writer of the same article further says, that " the work of the parochial clergy is incompatible with the profound learning, and almost unearthly saintliness and withdrawal from the world, which constitute to so many minds the ideal of the minister of heaven, and without which, maintained somewhere or another in the body of the Church, the Church cannot i^erform its functions ;" and he would point to " our colleges, universities, cathedral bodies, as the natural localities" where " such high qualities" might be expected "to be found and provided." "Both truth and holiness," he says, "risk defilement — risk at least the lowering of their tone — by too much collision with the world." It is jDlain, indeed, from the whole scope of the article, that, in the judgment of the writer, a man may easily be too good for a parish priest ; and that " a very saintly tone of spiritual life" would be a serious disadvantage to a working, every-day clergyman. He hopes to see the time when " colleges, universities, cathedrals," shall become the retreats where " the prophets of the English Church" may find " refuges and nurseries," in which they may cherish their spirituality and pursue their learned studies, and where they may keep up, for the special benefit of the parochial '•'priests,'' " a reserve force of knowledge, and a most elevated standard of spiritual life," such as these "priests" themselves, "the hard labourers, the rough battlers with the world," may look up to with admiration and longing, but cannot be expected to reach or exemplify. Such is the highest ideal which the writer of the article to which we refer thinks possible. " It may be," he says, a few pages farther on, and in precise consistency with these sentiments, " that for the ordinary. CAN SAINTLINESS BE A DISQUALIFICATION ? 23 the daily work of the Church, coarser materials and rougher tools may be needed. It may be that minds purer than the average of human nature, with too clear a contemplation of a spiritual world — too true a knowledge of human misery and human depravity — too keen a horror of evil — too acute sympathy with suffering — too burning an aspiration for a better and a hapi)ier scene than this world offers, are unfit and unable to fight the rough battle of this life." From which it would seem to be a direct consequence that the more a minister approaches in character, spirit, and sympathy to his blessed Master, the less fitted he may not unlikely be for doing his Master's work among men ; that the pure and spiritually-minded Timothy was probably not so well fitted to be the helper of Paul as the more ordinary-minded Barnabas or Mark ; and that our Saviour's prayer for His disciples must be understood in a modified sense, or as suitable for such only of His ministers as dwell in colleges, universities, or cathedral establishments: "As Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so send I them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth." Nay, it is difficult to come to any conclusion but that, in all likelihood, the great apostle of the Gentiles, than whom there has never been one who had to "labour harder," or do more "rough battling" with the world, might have done his work better, if he had rested content with a less " elevated standard of spiritual life." How opposed such crude and semi-worldly theorizing as the above is to facts, our readers will hardly need to be reminded. We shall not quote all the centuries in disproof of the assumptions which it involves. It will suffice to mention a few well-known modern names. The late Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh, was a city clergyman, yet a man both of deep godliness, and of profound biblical and theo- logical knowledge. The late John Angell James was a town 24 THE VOCATION AND TKAINING OF THE CLERGY. pastor, laden with the cares of a very large Church and congregation; and yet he maintained for fifty years such a " saintly" character, and exhibited such '' an elevated standard of sijiritual life," as can scarcely be equalled among cloistered divinity j)rofessors, or ample-leisured as well as amply-dowered canons, sequestered in their cathedral closes. And, if we look to the list of writers, upon whom at this moment the ^^ork of championing the orthodoxy of the Church of England is devolved, or the more miscellaneous list of Enghsh clerical contributors to Dr. William Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, or the.general theological authorship of the Established Church — we shall find that comparatively little, even of that which is of the highest quality and the most lasting value, has been composed in the retirement of university life. A country rector or vicar, with an ample income, aided by an efficient curate, is better situated, even for the prosecution of his studies, than the university resident. How can it be otherwise ? The tutors at the university must give their principal attention to their pupils, and in the vacations need rest and change ; the pro- fessors, if earnest men, will be specially engaged upon their lectures ; and, as for the heads, are we not told of them by the Eeviewer, that "there are college estates to be superintended, college accounts to be kept, college pro- perty to be improved; councils, and committees, and dele- gacies which absorb the day; hospitalities which occupy the evening?" Eesidence at the university will, by the opportunities of social intercourse which it affords, quicken and brighten the faculties ; the abundant supply of modern books and of periodicals will enable the residents to keep abreast of modern thought; the ancient and magnificent' libraries will afford the means of reading upon any par- ticular subject; but the general tone and accompaniments of university life are not favourable to profound learning. UNIVERSITY RESIDENCE AND PARISH DUTIES. 25 and are still less so, we hardly need to add, to profound spirituality of mind. A man may, indeed, become as learned as he will and can, at a university; there are instruments and opportunities : but the examples and the incitements are, for the most part, wanting. So also a man may be as godly and prayerful a working Christian there as the most devoted incumbent in his parish ; but, as a matter of fact, he is rather likely to become either carnal and careless, like the reverend volunteers, who smoke their short pipes, and sport their uniform among their brother riflemen; or pseudo- philosophical and innovating, like the Platonizers now at Cambridge, and the sceptical school which has its centre at Oxford ; or recluse and mediaeval, like some that still linger at Oxford, and others, more gifted, who once had their abode there, but who, to use the eloquent words of Bishop Wilberforce, have taken their flight " on the wings of an unbounded scepticism into the bosom of an unfathomed superstition." How true are the sentences of the same eloquent prelate which are closely connected with the words we have quoted ! " They who have retired from the busy world to contemplation and a cell, have found, ere now, too often, that the Satan whom they fled from in the crowd has travelled on before them to meet them in the waste. Self- confidence, fondness for speculation, love of singularity, separation from their brethren, and then the misty visions of the darkening eye, the eager throbbings of the narrowing heart, heresy, schism, unbelief, and apostasy, — these are the special dangers of the un watchful Christian student."* If anything can counteract these besetments, and secure the heart in the midst of these dangers, it is that the student should have a duly proportioned share of the practical duties of the ministry, and be brought face to face with the real facts of life, and the experiences of the inquiring, the * AiMresxes to Cdiniiihiles, 26 THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLERGY. repentant, the afflicted, and the rejoicmg Christian heart. Let it be observed, we are not contending that the position of a hard-working curate^s that which is the most favourable to the acquisition of learning — this would be mere folly ; nor that the clergyman who thinks it to be his chief business to keep on visiting terms with all his better-class parishioners, from the lord of the manor downwards, and to enact the part of universal counsellor and referee in all litigated matters of business throughout the parish, is likely to be the most saintly minister ; but we have been indicating the grounds on which we are prepared to maintain that devoted piety is a pre-eminent qualification for the work of a spiritual pastor, that comi:)etent learning and assiduous devotion to study may fitly be expected in those who have been set apart to this office, and that, among the ranks of the working clergy, whether of the Establishment or of other denominations, we may legitimately hope to find not unfrequently exemplified that union of Christian saintliness with profound learning which raises the character of the Christian minister to its highest style and type. Indeed, we should have thought that the names of Hooker, Leighton, and Baxter, in former times, and of Afford and Ellicott at the present day, would have been sufficient to settle this question. It is evident, however, that the misconception which we have been endeavouring to expose — and which could hardly have pervaded an article so able, so well-informed, and so thoroughly up to the modern Angolican standard of feeling and aim, as that in the Quarterly Review, if it had not been more or less prevalent throughout the length and breadth of orthodox and high-bred English Churchism — is founded, whether the writer may have been conscious of it or not, on that notion of the clergy as constituting primarily a class of civil officers, endowed and appointed by the State, to act strictly within the limits of their several parishes, as centres LOWER AND HIGHER VIEWS. 27 of civilising and humanising influence, which Coleridge has expressly set forth as a part of his philosophy. It is natural, indeed, that such a notion should arise and prevail, as respects clergy in the position and circumstances of the parochial ministers of the Church of England. It might have been anticipated that those who know the mem- bers of their flock (so called) only as parishioners, who can hold with them as a spiritual congregation no truly mutual fellowship ; and who, as a matter of fact, can exercise no spiritual jurisdiction or discipline, either over, or in con- junction with, the company of believers ; — those who, to sum all up in one word, know no living Church except as merged and held in solution within the world ; would, in many in- stances, come practically to regard themselves, and to be regarded by others, as little more than a professional class of state officers, appointed to maintain the rites and ceremonies of public worship for the general good of societ}^ and to exercise a wholesome civilising influence, each of them within his particular district, upon the nation at large. Nevertheless, the influence of that revival of religious earnest- ness which for many years past has been spreading through all the- better classes of English society, has awakened a very different sentiment, not only among the clergy in general, but among the public at large. Evidences of this abound even in the article from which we have been quoting. The immense majority of the English clergy during the last century seem to have lost sight entirely of their Divine vocation ; now most of them have at least thought something about this momentous question, and many rightly apprehend and feel its supreme importance. An ancient perversion, however, is not soon altogether dislodged. Hence we find the lower view still mingling with the higher, the carnal still qualifying the spiritual interpretation of the work and calling of the Christian ministry. 28 THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLERGY. Nor will the commonwealth be in any respect a loser on account of the change of sentiment to which we have referred. On the contrary, in this matter, as in that of the national education of children, the more strictly and fully the work of the Christian Church is performed, according to the purity of its spiritual purpose, the better at the same time will the work of civilisation be performed for the State. There is no teaching which so searches the soul with wholesome light, and opens it to the humble love and welcome of all truth and duty, as the spiritual teaching of Christ's whole truth ; there is no example so civilising and elevating as the example, given by Christ's own minister, of a true and devoted Christian life ; there is no energy, which, with such constant force, such unswerving truth, such an unerring instinct of divinely- prompted wisdom, animates the deep heart of a nation, and determines its advancement, as the energy of Christian allegiance and devotion when rooted in the breasts of the Christian leaders of opinion and action in the land. The one business of a Christian minister, alike within and beyond the pale of the Established Church of this realm, is to preach Christ in all ways, and himself to be a " living epistle of Christ, known and read of all men." Seldom has this great and primary truth been more impres- sively set forth than by the Bishop of Oxford in his Addresses to Candidates for Ordination. The writer in the Quarterly contemplates with evident contentment, as one of the three great classes, from which it is to be expected that the ranks of the parish clergy will be supplied, "those whose standard has not reached bej^ond that of average humanity, — decent, respectable and orderly, but regarding holy orders rather as a pleasing, and safe, and gentlemanly profession, than in its profounder and more spiritual relations ;" and he endeavours to suggest the best means whereby clerical neophytes of this class may be schooled into an adequate degree of earnestness THE VIEWS OF THE BISHOP OF OXFORD. 29 and elevation for the due discharge of their office as parochial clergy. He accepts the fact as it is, lifts up no remonstrance, utters no reproof, but endeavours to show the best means of utilising it. But the bishop takes altogether another tone : — " Take, for instance, the first seeking for holy orders. A young man has been destined to it by his friends, perhaps by pious friends ; he is naturally of a quiet disposition, has no strong passions to lead him astray, has no robust qualities to fit him to struggle for a high place in the rougher walks of life ; he is early destined for the ministry as a profession ; he finds himself so destined, and he acquiesces ; he grows up a thoroughly respectable young man, with no definite religious character, no strongly marked features of inward piety, no ' fire in his bones ' unless he bears Christ's witness, no ' woe is me if I preach not the Gospel : ' but it is a mode of life which suits him ; he wishes and hopes to be useful, to get his comforts round him, to take a gentle- man's rank in society, and, in retui'n for giving up the possible chance of wealth or worldly distinction, to have without much effort an ascer- tained place in good society, and, perhaps, if matters turn out favourably, facilities for early family life and its quiet happiness. Now all this is in itself perfectly unobjectionable. But then observe, this young man is taught to say that ' he trusts that he is inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to undertake this office, to the glory of God.' Is this true ? Has he ever thought, thought deeply, earnestly, with all his soul, as a man must think who is giving up his life to such an object, about the 'glory of God' in the matter? Has he ever devoted him- self, on his knees, with a true searching of heart, to the high service of his God ? Has the ' love of Christ ' ever ' constrained ' him. ? Alas ! in how many cases must we say, Never ! Why, then, do not such men perceive the utter unreality of what they are saying ? Very much, no doubt, because the act itself appears so good that they believe they may take for granted that it is done to the glory of God. It seems to them that these words are intended to describe the whole class of which they are members ; they do not dream that to make them rcaUy true of themselves there is absolute need of a personal, individual devotion of themselves to God. Thus it comes to pass that they enter on their office under a delusion ; a delusion which, in too many cases, is never dispelled on this side of the judgment-day. They preach, they 30 THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLERGY. bc'iiitizc, they visit the sick, tliey catechize, they celebrate the holy communion, just as other men go to the counting-house, or the court of law, or the senate, ineaning to live by it, to be respected, to be able to respect themselves ; but taking for granted, without a shadow of reason for their judgment, because there is a religious aspect about all the acts of their profession, that they are living for the glory of God, and are on their way to the sure reward." — Addresses, pp. 26 — 28. " Purity and sincerity of intention impart so much of their own blessed character to the whole conduct, that every act of the Kfe be- comes instinct with an energy and force which enables it to beat down opposition, and at the same time with a tenderness and patience which give to it a most winning persuasiveness in dealing with others. And there LS no counterfeit of this great gift, which, in the whole bearing of a life, can produce at all the same effects. The light enshrined in the centre of the character pervades it all, and streams forth from every part of it with an ever-present radiance ; so that, viewing our great work even on its natural side, no other power can compensate for the want of this in our endeavours to bring living souls to submit themselves to the yoke of our Lord." — Ibid. p. 22. " Your one work is to win souls to Christ ; not to produce a certain general decency and amendment in the face of society around you, but as God's instrument, and through the power of Christ's name, to work in living souls the mighty marvel of theii" true conversion." — Ibid. p. 12. These are excellent and heart-stirring words, and may be taken as setting forth that doctrine, concerning the voca- tion and duties of the Christian ministry, which is generally recognised among orthodox and evangehcal Churches. Here and henceforth, we go upon common ground, whether our readers and companions be Churchmen or Dissenters, Con- formists or Nonconformists, so they be not men of extreme and singular opinions. Writing in England, in a Eeformed Protestant country, the Established Church of which is pro- scribed by the Church of Eome as heretical and schismatic, and with the Scottish Churches close at hand, and the Continental Protestant and Eeformed Churches within our view, across the narrow Channel, we do not think it worth our AN ENLIGHTENED AND LIBERAL QUARTERLY REVIEWER. 31 while to debate with weak-minded or superstitionsly blinded Churchmen the ridiculous dogma of " aj)ostolical succession," as understood in the exclusive High-Church. Eome, and Eome alone, is consistent in holding this dogma ; but even Eoman divines, with all their trained subtilty, cannot redeem it from its intrinsic incredibility, or disguise the degrading as well as absurd materialism which constitutes its essence. But we must be allowed to ask what the reviewer in the Quarterly can mean, if he be not, as we cannot imagine that he is, an upholder of this dogma, when he assumes that the clergy of the Established Church, and they alone, appear before their flock as commissioned and sent, and that all other ministers come before the people of England as iinautJiorised intruders. " Whoso voice," asks our contemporary, " is to rouse shame, and encourage hope, and promise aid, and reinforce self-respect, but that of tlie parochial clergyman, who comes not as an unauthorised in- tnider, but because he is sent ? Few of us realise the potency of that one condition of the Christian ministry, preaching because they are sent, because it is their duty, their business, their commission ; and not that officiousncss, against which the English mind rebels with singular repugnance, a self-pretentious interference with the private concerns of others." We might have remained in doubt as to the intent of the latter of these sentences, the point of which lacks the illustration which truth and experience should have supplied, but for the appended foot-note, which, as a curiosity worthy of some investigation, a rare specimen of the Quarterli/ Revieicer's enlightenment and liberality in this present jcdv 18G2, a piece of modern mediievalism such as the middle of the nineteenth century could hardly have been expected to produce, we shall gratify our readers by subjoining, that it may be duly commemorated and preserved in our pages. " It is often supposed that the self-instituted and self-authorised exertions of other rehgious bodies are more acceptable to tlio poor tliau 32 THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLEEGY. tho regular mission of the Churcli of England. "We took pains some years since to substantiate and verify the following anecdote : — A clergyman, from whom we received the statement, was appointed by his bishop to act as a sort of missionary to the labourers employed in foiTQing a railway. He interposed one day to remonstrate against some profane and blasphemous language, and was received with abuse and violence, till he told them that he was not interfering of himself, but was sent by the bishop. ' 0, Sir, if you are sent by the bishop, that is another question. "We are much obliged for his thinking about us. We took you for a Methodist parson.' Another time he went on a Sunday into one of the huts, in which a group were gathered together, and oflfered to read prayers to them. All assented and knelt down but one, who rudely refused to kneel, and refused to remove his hat. As soon as the clergyman began the confession from the Prayer Book, he too knelt down, behaved with decency and attention, and, as he rose up from his knees, repeated the same observation : ' 0, Sir, if you are a real clergyman, that is another thing ; we took you for a Methodist parson.' " The taste of this " anecdote," or these anecdotes, — for it seems to us that there are two, — is execrahle, the cleric that penned them (a clergyman undoubtedly he is) may be a clever writer, and an able man in his own sphere, but his range of vision must be somewhat narrow, and his gentle- manliness, upon which no doubt he plumes himself, is evidently far from perfect. Still, however remarkable it may be that a writer for the Quarterly at the present day should have garnished his article with such stories as these, it is yet more extraordinary that the editor of the Quarterly should have suffered them to be printed in its pages. Let that, however, pass; and let us take a look at the stories themselves. They may be true, but they have not, we think, yielded their true interpretation to the relator of them. As he seems to be disposed to collect such "anecdotes,"— first of all carefully "verifying" them,— we wonder that in the " several years " which have elapsed since he put these in his common-place-book, he has not been so fortunate as to meet ILLrSTEATIVE ANECDOTES. 33 with a few more which might have confirmed or supplemented them. Hitheiiio his gleanings would seem to have been somewhat scanty. At any rate, if not the stories themselves, at least the reviewer's interpretation, lacks confirmation. We can imagine the slyly civil sarcasm — the characteristic irony, which his comrades would appreciate more intelligently than the clergyman appears to have done — with which the " navvy" in the first case expressed the obligation of himself and companions to the bishop for thinking of them, and the quiet "chaft*" which he put off upon the Churchman, when he told him that they had " taken him for a Methodist parson." And as to the second story, we confess it surjmses us to hear that a nav\^y supposed that a " Methodist parson " would offer to read prayers in a hut to his mates and himself; though we do not doubt that, as soon as the beautiful words of the Confession began to be repeated, with the reverence for such language which few na\wies would with- hold, he would kneel down, and behave with decency and attention. The reviewer's stories remind us of a statement made by the Rev. Edward Monro, formerly incumbent of Harrow Weald, and well known as the writer of three earnest and impressive tracts, entitled. The Church and the Million, Nos. I., II., and III., and also as a thoroughly resolute and devoted working clergyman. Though Mr. Monro is a decided Churchman, his calibre is considerably larger — as we presume to judge — than that of the reviewer's clergyman ; and his published state- ment will, we fanc}'', weigh for much more. He intimately knows the class of men of whom he writes, — the same class of railway labourers to which the reviewer's stories relate. " I had had some handbills printed," says Mr. Monro, " concerning the service I proposed to have for them on the following Sunday, in a shed on the line. , . . The workshop occupants were rather more D 34 THE VOCATION ANP TEAINING OF THE CLEEGY. theological than those of the tap-room. They plied me with several qi;estions as to my position. Some thought I was a Baptist, some a Wesleyan, some a Jesuit, — none took me for a clergyman of the Church of England, Their strong and main hostility, indirectly ex- pressed, was against that latter body. " The sheds and workshops had done as good service as the tap- room. The men were trusting me, and I was being looked upon more and more as a kind of amphibious ' navvy,' a cross between a Wesleyan tract-distributor and a Eoman Catholic Priest. Their great horror I found on all hands to be of a ' parson.' I felt I might freely dispense with the title, and be anything they liked best. Anyhow, they were fish for my net, and I must catch them somehow. One man for a moment perplexed me by putting to me before a number of others very pointedly, ' If, then, you are what you seem, you will not care what form a man uses, so as he truly serves Jesus Christ.' I felt a moment's difficulty in the answer, but I floated past that rock. It was not the occasion for narrowness of view or of statement." — The Church and the Million, No. II., p. 7. Here, now, was a man with a heart and soul in his Master's work. Many such there are at present among the clergy of the Estabhshed Church ; and all good men rejoice to know it. We fancy that his experience sufficiently disposes of the question raised by the reviewer as to the feeling of the labouring poor towards " real clergymen," in comparison with " Methodist parsons." We cannot refrain from adding, however, that neither the reviewer's clergyman, nor, we imagine, the reviewer himself, supposing him to be a clergy- man, would have " floated past that rock," as Mr. Monro did. The one evidently was not prepared to dispense with his "forms," seeing that he went to "read prayers" to the navvies in their "hut;" and neither the one nor the other would be able to " dispense with the title," since it is the virtue of the bishop's mandate, or at least the character of a " real clergyman," which procures for them acceptance among navvies. No wonder that the strong, good-natured fellows showed a sort of contemptuous indulgence to the CLERICAL ASSUMPTIONS. O naive argument and appeal of such a weakling as the bishop's clergyman. But now let us look for a moment at the assumptions con- tained in what we have quoted from the Quarterly Review. It seems the Church of England has a " mission," a " regular mission;" but, forsooth, Methodism has, and has had, no "mission." Yet, but for Methodism, and the "mission" of Methodism, what would now have been the condition of England and of the Church of England ? The Bishop of Oxford, high Churchman as he is, would teach the reviewer, as he has before now taught the public, other doctrine than this. But to say no more just now of " Methodist parsons," or the "mission of Methodism," let us be allowed to affirm that the city missionary has his "mission" from Christ to the poor, no less than the parish clergyman ; and that, as a rule, whether his mission be accounted " regular" or not, he is much better received, and more immediately and heartily trusted by the poor than the " real clergj^man," perhaps also than the "Methodist parson" himself. At the same time, it is granted that when the parochial clergyman takes to working among the working classes and the poor, in the spirit of Mr. Monro, — or the Methodist home-missionary minister, in the spirit of several whom we have the happiness to know in London, Manchester, and elsewhere, — their full confidence is soon won, and the labour of the working ministers amply repaid. Whether the reviewer means to claim for the Anglican clergy an exclusive authorisation from Christ, or from the State, to "unlatch the door" of the poor and sinful home, " and enter ivith a right to speak words of comfoii;, and calls to exertion," is open to doubt. Probably he refers chiefly to the presumed authority of the State. His views of the ministry are in general so Erastian and utilitarian, that (as we have intimated) we can hardly suspect him of being a d2 36 THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLERGY. superstitious upholder of "priestly" authority and the dogma of " the apostolical succession." Nor does he throughout his article seem in the least to recognise the " call of Christ," or the "inward motion of the Holy Ghost," as essential to the office of the Christian ministry. But the authority of the State, merely as such, to commission a Christian minister, is, in effect, a self-contradictory notion. Every man, more- over, "has a right" to enter where he is made welcome; and assuredly the visits of the " Methodist parson," or leader, or sick-visitor, and of the pious town-missionary or tract- distributor, are being daily welcomed in thousands of homes, into which the "real clergyman" never enters, not as the visits of " unauthorised intruders," but of the messengers of Christ. Is it come to this, that no one "has a right" to enter the homes of the miserable but the parochial clergy, that all else are " unauthorised intruders," chargeable with a " self-pretentious interference with the private concerns of others ?" Then what is to become of Christian charity? Are the parochial clergy to have the monopoly of the blessect work of " clothing the naked," and of visiting those that are " sick and in prison," — and a monopoly too of the reward annexed by our Saviour to such acts ?" (Matt, xxv.) Happy indeed has it been for the poor in England in past times, nay, happy is it still, that such a monopoly has not been suffered. One word more will we say on the offensive passages we have quoted. It is the very spirit which breathes through these passages which has alienated from many of the parish clergy, and to some extent from the clergy at large, the good- will and confidence of the poor. Such a spirit cannot but beget a "self-pretentious" temper in the clergy themselves, and lead to " self-pretentious interferences." Such inter- ferences, on the part of any man or woman, whether squire or lady of the manor, whether clergyman or clergyman's wife, are felt by the poor, who are naturally extremely sensitive on THE QUALIFICATIONS FOR THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 37 this point, to be those of "unauthorised intruders." No ''regular mission" can prevent this consequence. The work and vocation of the Christian ministry being such as we have seen, it follows that there is no one thing so vitally necessary for the well-being of a nation, as that its clergy should be men truly called and fully qualified to discharge the duties of their office. The tone of the nation's morality, the strain and tendency of its progress, the cha- racter of its civilisation, depend mainly upon the character of the national clergy, viewed collectively, and as embracing all denominations. It is theirs to wield the truth of God in the strength and wisdom of the Divine Spirit, theirs to be the instruments of converting energy to the souls of men ; theirs to teach and enforce all the practical duties of family and social life ; theirs to instruct, out of God's Word, the various classes of the citizens in their relations and responsibilities towards each other, as men and as Christians ; theirs to set before the money-making man a nobler and better object than that of the mere accumulation of wealth, and to teach him the right moral principles to be kept in view both in its accumulation and its distribution ; theirs to infuse, directly by their doctrine, and indirectly by their example and in- fluence, a Christian spirit into the legislation of the country, to bring our senators to understand, according to the beautiful words of Coleridge, that " not without celestial observations can even terrestrial charts be accurately constructed," and that '' the Bible" should be, as to fundamental principles, ** the statesman's manual." In a word, it is their peculiar calling to devote themselves, in the name of Christ, and with the help of His Spirit, to the grand work of diffusing through the whole intelligence and life of the nation the principles of Christian equity, brotherhood and charity. No inquiry can be more interesting or important than that which respects the due supply and the right training of 38 THE VOCATION AKD TEAINING OF THE CLEKGY. those upon whom, as a class, devolves such a charge and responsibilit3\ It is certain that at no fonner period was the standard of character and of general ability and attainment requisite for the ef&cient discharge of the duties of the Christian ministry, so high as at present. Whether the supply of late hxis, on the whole, been adequate to the demand, is another question. We believe that, more or less, in all denominations, the need is extensively felt of a more largely informed, completely trained, and broadly effective, ministry. A thoroughly disciplined energy, the union of unimpaired fervour with systematic culture, of believing sim^jlicity and integrity with oi^en-miuded candour and fearless inquiry and research ; such is the combination of qualities peculiarly called for at this time; such is the general type of ministerial character to which it is desirable that all Christian ministers should, according to their various capacities, and with due regard to their necessary differences of temperament, be conformed. It is given to but few men to exemplify such complex excellence as we have described ; but all truly called ministers of Christ may approximate towards it, and the nearer they come to it will be the better qualified to serve their generation. But the cold and tame, or the merely passionate and impulsive, or the ignorantly dogmatic, or the narrowly traditional, — above all, the easy-going professional gentleman, — will find the real work of the ministry in this age unsuited to them, and certainly will altogether fail of the accomplishment of its true ends. In the Church of England there is a great outcry just now as to the shortening supply of duly qualified candidates for "the office of the priesthood."* The younger son, or the * We use the term " priesthood " here land. Priest so used (at least by us) and elsewhere in accommodation to the should be taken as equivalent to prcs- language of the Prayer Book, and the bt/ter, not as having any relation to <^ommon ueage of the Church of Eng- sacrificial acts. THE PRESENT STANDARD AND PRESENT SUPPLY. 39 aspirant after a quiet gentlemanly life, no longer regards the life of a beneficed clergyman as the easy and pleasant affair which the billiard-playing or fox-hunting country- gentlemen who (for the most part) held the comfortable livings of this country fifty years ago, knew how to make it. The civil service now takes off some of those studious youths of narrow means, who in our fathers' times might have been destined for the Church. Bold riders and crack shots find a more congenial sphere now-a-days in the army or even the navy — professions which have for a number of years past been growing in popularity — than could ever be opened to them by the assumption (save the mark!) of holy orders. And, in this critical and questioning age, an increasing number have shrunk from declaring their con- sent to the forms and formularies contained in the Prayer Book. It is to be feared that this last impediment has not merely kept away sceptics and latitudinarians, but that it has barred from entrance into the Church not a few of the ablest and best of the men, who might other- wise have been devoted to her ser\dce. This is but one of the many baneful and blighting results of the Act of 16G2, — an Act of tyrannous and bigoted intent, and of most calamitous operation, upon which rests the condemn- ing brand of the noblest intellects and largest hearts within the Church of England itself, as well as of the universal Protestant Church beyond its pale. Cases which have come within our own knowledge warrant us in believing that many who now ofiiciate without the Church of England would at this time have been ministers within her community but for that ill-omened Act.* • The Bishop of Oxford, in one of the arising out of the terms of subscription, debates, on Lord Ebury's Bill, for relax- Very probably not. It was not to be ing the terms of subscription, stated that expected that candidates would appear he had not found among the candidates before him in order to object to that for ordination any difhculty or objection which was inevitable, and which, in 40 THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLERGY. As respects the Presbyterian and the Nonconformist Churches of Great Britain, our observation and inquiries incline us to the conclusion that the supply of ministerial candidates is at least equal in its numerical proportion, and is superior in its absolute quality, to what it has ever been. But it may be doubted whether, in its relative quality, it is equal to the requirements of the present age. We mean to say, that a higher relative quality of general intellect and attainment is requisite now for ministerial competency in the full sense than at any former period. There has been of late years, among the community at large, a sudden overflow of notions and ideas which has filled the minds of men with questionings on all points, and especially on theology. The present is, to an unprecedented extent, an age of theological thought. The thought may not be deep, but it is busy. Keal knowledge may not have greatly increased, but, through the agency of the cheap press, (itself the result conjointly of mechanical invention, of legislative reform, and of diffused elementary education,) the public mind has been put in possession of the speculations, the doubts, the conclusions, of every man whose position, or whose abilities, or whose audacity or singularity, has enabled him to attract general attention. Now those who, of them- selves, know little or nothing, who have neither time nor capacity for mastering any subject on their own account, may yet be very receptive, at least in passing, of the opinions and deciding to enter the ministry of the contents of the Prayer Bool:, notwith- Church, they had ah'eady detemiined to standing the incongruities which it in- undcrgo. But will his lordship under- eludes, the repugnance of many phrases, take to say that many who otherwise and some forms of prayer, in its services, would have come to him, and who, as to the essential evangelical Protestantism orthodox and gifted men, would have of its Articles, and its dread words of hcen acquisitions to the Church, have sweeping anathema? Does the bishop not been jireventcd from applying to understand why Isaac Taylor never him by the " assent and consent " which took orders, and Thomas Binney stands was required to " all and every " the out as a Congregational Dissenter? ATTAINMENTS NEEDFUL IN THE PRESENT DAY. 41 conclusions of others ; if not convinced of their truth, they may be perplexed and unsettled by them ; and though theii- own attainments may be exceedingly slender, it may yet be necessary for their " pastors and teachers" to be men of by no means slender attainments, in order to deliver them from their perplexities and preserve them from error. The less profound and real a man's knowledge of the subjects about which he reads, the more subjects he will be able to read about ; the superficial reader may easily, and will often, be a wide reader : but the instructor whose business it is to hold himself ready, as far as possible, to defend the truth against error, w^hilst he should be as widely informed respecting opinions of any importance as any of his flock, must also have mastered the real knowledge neces- sary to an examination of those opinions, in their grounds and tendencies. The one may do little besides take note of results and conclusions ; the other must investigate processes, must scrutinise premisses, analyse arguments, and master the essential points of each subject. It is obvious, therefore, that in propoi-tion to the superficial, and, consequently, multi- farious, character of the knowledge possessed by the com- munity at large, is likely to be the demand made upon the mind and resources of the Christian ministry. The real advancement in intelligence, in knowledge, in true culture, on the part of the people generally, may not have been great ; in some important respects there may be really, as regards very many, less of sound knowledge, exact thought, and genuine intellectual cultivation than there was in the days of our fathers ; nevertheless, in this age of cheap literature and diffused ideas, the Christian minister must be far in advance of the generation of his fathers, as respects both breadth and depth of thought and Imowlcdgc, or else he will find himself unequal to the work which is required at his hands. The relative attainments of the Christian 42 THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLERGY. ministry at the present day need to be greatly higher than at any former period. Hence, although the supply of candidates for the ministry be not relatively inferior, in re- spect of general intelligence and culture, to the generation of candidates twenty or thirty years past, this will not meet the case. They must be relatively much superior. Ministerial training and culture, at this day, must be carried out much more thoroughly, and on a much broader basis, even in proportion to the general intelligence of the age, than ever before ; and the culture of the Christian ministry should, as a whole, be more catholic and thorough than that of any other profession. It follows from these considerations that it never was so desirable as at present, that the candidates for the ministry should be men of large and accurate general attainments. Three things must combine in order to a minister's being fully equal to the requirements of his office; — "the gifts and calling of God," general culture, and biblical and theo- logical knowledge. Without the first there is no intrinsic and personal fitness or qualification ; without the second his ministry must lose all its special adaptation to the passing time, and be altogether unsuitable to any but the more ignorant of the congregation ; without the third a man may be an " exhorter," but cannot be a "pastor and teacher," or do his appointed part in " feeding the flock." The first is, doubtless, the essential and Divine qualification. A man possessed of it ought to become a pastor after God's own heart, and there is blame or deficiency somewhere if he does not; no man can possess the requisite natural gifts and Divine grace for exercising the Christian ministry, without, at the same time, possessing superior energy and aptitude for the attainment of all the needful knowledge and intellectual discipline. Preaching and pastoral gifts imply at least an average, generally a superior, share of LIBEKAL CULTUKE DEMANDED. 43 general readiness and ability ; and there is nothing which stirs ui) to such an intensity of healthy action the whole inner life of a man as the force and fire of Divine faith and love. It will sometimes he the case that among the lower and more ignorant classes of our working population a gifted man shines out, evidently made to he a preacher. To furnish such a man with the needful general culture, and professional knowledge and training, will, no doubt, require a prolonged course of instruction. But, in proportion to the original disadvantages, in the midst of which his gifts made them- selves known, must have been the special force and bright- ness of his natural talents, and the peculiar energy of the Divine baptism which called them out into exercise and recognition. Such a man will make rapid progress when brought under systematic culture, and will abundantly repay the labour bestowed on him. Doubtless, however, there is always a disadvantage in so late an introduction to general and special learning as is implied in cases of this class. Other things being equal, a candidate's fitness for the Christian ministry is greatly enhanced by the fact of his having enjoyed the discipline of a liberal education. The apostles, and the apostolic age, must never be pleaded in the way of precedent or example, as respects uninspired men in an age like the present. Yet, even in the case of the apostles, it must ever be borne in mind Whose instructions the twelve had enjoyed during three years' close attendance on Him ; and that one of the special qualifications of St. Paul for his great mission was, undoubtedly, the systematic education which he had received, and the superior knowledge of society and the world which he possessed. In 1845, at a " Conference of Delegates from the Committees of various Theological Colleges connected with the Independent Churches of England and Wales," the late Dr. R. W. Hamilton, in a 44 THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLERGY. paper which he read bearing upon this subject, made the following remarks, which are still more appropriate at the present time than they were in 1845 : " The times which are going over us, and their immediate future, must require a form of mental power and impression which no mere rude force can supersede. Strength is wanted, but it needs to be refined. The thoroughly-educated alone can hope, with rare exceptions, to accomplish this. With the greatest weight no coarseness need be mixed." " Young men, having enjoyed early culture, would be exempted from that which is characteristic of a deferred education. This tardy beginning almost invariably confesses itself. It is the o-^i/xaOla of which the ancient critics spoke. Like the dark vein of the finest sculpture, it constantly re-appears, and gives a sinister expression to the whole. It is all but impossible to conceal the early neglect. Scholars from the horn-book, from the youth up, ah ovo, though they may be less meri- torious than those who have broken away from trade and ignorance, still are better scholars." This consideration raises the question as to the classes from which it is desirable that the supply of candidates for the ministry should chiefly be drawn. Chiefly, we should answer, in due submission to the sovereignty of the Divine will and vocation, from the upper portion of the middle stratum of the community among whom they are to minister, but also, in properly graduated proportions, from all the other classes, both higher and lower. The education of the class we have specified will afford a fair basis on which may afterwards be grounded a full and thorough training in general attainments and in the knowledge and discipline specially appropriate to the ministry. A body of ministers chiefly drawn from that class will be likely to command the sympathy, and will be allied with the families, of the most influential section of the congregation, or community, FROM WHAT CLASSES TO BE DRAWN. 45 to which they belong. A comfortable maintenance will not be grudged to them, either because, being born to wealth and independence, they are supposed to be unbecomingly burdening the Churches, or, on the other hand, because, being born to penury, their lot is envied, and their claims are resented as excessive. The few really wealthy ministers in such a community, who have been drawn from the highest classes, will be regarded as ornaments and moral supports to their own order and the Church at large, their judicious liberality will be fully appreciated, and their cases will be felt to be altogether exceptional ; while those who, from amongst the poor, have been raised to the position of pastors, will have been enabled to rise by the force of talents and of devotion, which in the eyes of the people, — ever generous towards genuine cases of this class, — make their claim to liberal support fully equal to that of the ministers drawn from the classes above them. The general principle which we have just laid down will, in our judgment, apply to ministers of every denomination. As respects the Church of England, indeed, the argument drawn from the question of maintenance does not apply. But, on other grounds, the same general conclusion will hold good. The parish clergyman must be a man of superior education, and of gentlemanly manners, or he is altogether unfit for his vocation. That many of the very highest class should become clergymen is not to be expected, — if only because the class itself is so small, — nor, as we conceive, to be desired ; but from the ranks of " born gentlemen " it is undoubtedly desirable that many should enter the ministry of the Church of England ; nor less so, especially for the service of our large towns, that many of the sons of merchants, some from the class of tradesmen, and a few men, of transcendent energy and rare dveotion, from the cottages of the poor, should fill up the ranks of the same 46 THE VOCATION AND TBAINING OF THE CLEKGY. ministry. So, again, as respects the Presbyterian, Con- gregationalist, Wesleyan, and various Methodist bodies, the same general canon will hold good. In the case of such a community as the " Primitive Methodists," so called, the candidates for the ministry drawn even from their " upper middle class " will, we imagine, be very deficient in the education properly requisite for the Christian ministry. Nevertheless, in comparison with the general attainments of their congregations, their education would, we should think, be relatively sufficient, at least, with the help of the theological institutions which, if we are not mistaken, are now being established among this zealous and useful Wesleyoid community. Further, it seems to us that it might reasonably have been hoped that the majority of candidates for the ministry would have been derived, in the various churches, from the families of the class we have indicated. Such families are, generally sj)eaking, the most intimately acquainted with the condition and interests of the Church, the most actively engaged in its affairs, see the most of its ministers, and give them their daughters in marriage ; and the sons of such families possess, in a superior degree, the preliminary edu- cation and culture so desirable for ministerial candidates. And, as a matter of fact, the clergy of the Church of Eng- land are, to a large extent, drawn from this class. Social considerations and the prospect of professional distinction are still strong enough, notwithstanding the drawbacks noted a while since, to attract a large number from the upper, and especially the " upper middle," classes of general society, into the ministry of the Church of England. The same also holds good, so far as we can learn, (though not to the same extent,) of the various Scottish Churches, all the ministers of which have received a university education, and have passed through a very thorough course of biblical TOO FEW DRAWN FRO:\I THE SUPERIOR CLASSES. 47 and theological instruction. But among the Congrega- tionalists and Wesleyan Methodists we believe that a pre- ponderant proportion of the ministry is derived from the lower and less educated classes. The causes of this evil — an evil we cannot doubt it to be — form an interesting and important subject of inquiry. We will touch upon some of them. It is not, we apprehend, to any serious extent, owing to the comparative scantiness of the ministerial stipend, that so few young men of the superior classes appear as ministerial candidates. The average stipend is scanty, — injuriously so, — much inferior to the income of a tradesman of the better class ; but the spiritual young men of the class of which we speak would not be deterred merely by this consideration from seeking the ministry. Indeed, as a general rule, they would have personal resources which, added to the proper ministerial income, would enable them to command all the modest comforts and the intellectual aids needful for their position. Still, it must be noted that, on this account, there is, for young men of superior education and good prospects, no in- ducement to seek the ministerial office ; whereas, on this same account, young men of the lower classes, in their ignorance of the actual charges and demands which come upon Christian ministers and their families, are likely often to have a mis- taken view of probable advantages which will arise to them- selves. Again, as regards social status, the position of a minister among English Nonconformists seems to offer little or nothing to the desire of the educated and well-to-do 3'oung man. In some respects, indeed, the position of the minister might seem enviable ; but, among Nonconformists, it does not, as in the Church of England, necessarily secure, by a sort of professional right and passport, a superior social standing ; while there is associated with it a feeling of dependence upon voluntary public support, — of pecuniary dependence, — which 48 THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLERGY. is unpleasing to the natural heart of the manful young gentleman. There can scarcely be said, on the whole, to be any obvious attraction to the ministerial office for the young man of superior social position, but that of spiritual service and consecration. Whereas the attractions to other callings are numerous and powerful ; wealth, ambition, the pleasures (it may be the lawful pleasures) of society, the excitement of a stirring life, the desire or authority of a father, who seems to need his son's counsel and help in business, — all such motives as these are arrayed on the other side. Hence it is no wonder that the number of young men from the superior classes who offer themselves for the ministry is much smaller, even in proportion, than of those from the lower classes. These latter have many natural inducements to seek the promotion of the ministry, and none, we may say, to decline it ; while the former have many natural induce- ments to shrink from it, and but few and insignificant, comparatively speaking, to seek it. The fact, however, is one which, account for it as we may, is greatly to be deplored. A blessed day will it be for the Church and the world when, in due proportion, in the proportion which, from their education and opportunities, they are competent to furnish, the superior classes of the various denominations shall supply their quota to the Christian ministry. Not until then will the Christian army move well all together, and all classes be rightly pervaded with the Christian life and spirit. Not until then will the ministry itself attain its due position and influence. It is certain, too, that in thus shrinking from the pastoral work and responsibility, the young men of our better families, whatever may be their own impressions to the contrary, do really lose greatly, in this world as well as for the next ; and that those fathers — the class, perhaps, chiefly to blame in this matter — who never contemplate such a calling as possible for THE HIGHEST STYLE OF PROFESSIONAL LIFE. 49 their sons, -but who, if it is ever for a moment presented, discourage it with a fro\\Ti, are really sinning against God, the Church, and then- own children. A truly called and gifted minister, especially if he has been brought up in the superior circles of his own Church, will exercise a much higher and more pervasive influence, will do unspeakably more good, will enjoy far rarer and more exquisite pleasures, — being at the same time liable to peculiar, but pure and blessed, and truly Christian, sorrows, — mil lead altogether a higher style of life, will have more of heaven on earth, will live nearer to God, and have richer fellowship with Christ, and doubtless be far more highly blest in eternity, than could possibly have been the case, if he had yielded to carnal motives, and chosen a secular business or pro- fession,— no matter what might in that case have been his success or attainments. Wealth can purchase many luxuries, but none comparable to the rare experiences of the gifted and faithful minister of Christ. Professional eminence can secure rank, influence, and useful activity ; but it cannot place the lawyer, or even the physician, in a position equal in true, though humble, dignity, or in usefulness and beneficent influence, to that of the equally eminent minister of Christ. "We know but of one way in which the Churches can secure for their ministry a larger proportion of young men of the better classes. The character of the ministry must in every way be improved to the uttermost ; all care and pains must be taken to insure that the ministry, as a whole, shall be divinely called, godly and devoted, learned and diligent, wise and practical, eloquent and effective : " by pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left." The higher is the character of any body of Christian ministers 50 THE VOCATION AND TEAINING OF THE CLEBGY. in all these respects; the more truly and impressively Christian they are ; the more powerful will be the attraction which they exert upon all ingenuous Christian minds, but especially upon Christian young men of the better classes. And it must be borne in mind that, besides the other con- siderations which we have noted, the presumed disinterested- ness of their devotion to the ministry gives to young men of these classes a value and an authority in the Church which otherwise they could not possess. Let it be understood, however, — we have already implied this, but we feel it to be necessary to set it down explicitly, — that we have no desire whatever that the ranks of the ministry should be filled up exclusively from the superior classes. On the contrary, we would have some of all classes ; if possible, down to the very lowest. One of the great benefits which w^e anticipate from the spread of popular education is that the gifts and capabilities of the lowliest will be brought to light, and that, from the rustic labourer's cottage, a few, it cannot be many, will rise to eminence in every rank and calling ; and assuredly the Christian ministry should receive its full share of accessions from the poorest of the people. We cannot and would not forget that Carey, the illustrious Baptist missionary, was a poor shoemaker, and that John Hunt, the gifted and noble Wesleyan missionary in Fiji, was an illiterate farm labourer. It is well for the ministry itself that it should represent all classes. It is conducive to its vigour, its breadth of sympathy, and its legitimate influence, that its ranks should be reinforced from every grade of society, and that in its councils and assemblies the sons of the rich and the poor, of the well-born and the lowly, should meet together in the holy service of that " Lord who is the Maker of them all." The effects upon general society of such a minglmg and harmony cannot but be most bene- ficial ; rightly understood, too, it affords a prophecy of good THE STIPEND OF A CHRISTIAN MINISTER. 51 things to come, for the world at large on earth, and for the Church in heaven. We have said that we do not suppose the mere narrowness and insufficiency of the average ministerial stipend to form any appreciahle element among the influences which have contributed to restrict the supply of the ministry so greatly to the lower classes. Having said this, however, we feel it to be needful to add that, in our judgment, the general standard of ministerial income is injuriously low. It ought, as a general rule, to be rather above the average income of the better class tradesmen in the same church ; it is generally much below this standard. No man is at liberty to enter the ministry from mercenary motives ; but every minister has a right to expect that he be enabled to live in such a way as to have domestic comfort, and the means of providing for the intellectual as well as bodily wants of himself and his family. It is not every man who is called, like the American Methodist Bishop Asbury, to forego all thoughts of family life, that he may prosecute the ministry. A minister ought, ordinarily, for the glory of God, and for his own well-being in all respects, to be a married man. But this being so, he must look at the possibilities of maintaining his wife and family. There is many a minister's wife, — the poor curate's, the country pastor's, the Methodist preacher's, in hard and poor country circuits, — who has literally worn out her strength and health, and sacrificed her life, in endeavouring, without the needful domestic help, to perform the work of her household, and to " provide things honest in sight of all men." The tenderly- nurtured lady, the delicate young wife, well fitted by intelli- gence, manners, and piety to fill the place of a pastor's wife, finds herself altogether lacking the robust strength which her actual position requires, and unable to cope with the daily demands upon her physical system involved in pecuniary anxiety, household toil, and family care; and after a few E 2 52 THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLERGY. years of sad but brave and patient struggling against circum- stances, she sinks to a premature grave. This is no fancy picture, but a painful truth of experience too often realised. Do not let it be supposed that this is only a modern com- plaint. In John Wesley's days, a very large proportion of his preachers were obliged to abandon the ministerial work altogether, in order that by settling in business they might obtain a maintenance for their families. Among the Metho- dists in America it has been from the first and is still a common practice for a minister, when he finds his family beginning to increase around him, to "locate," as it is called, i. e., to settle on a farm, or in a business, that he may provide for those dependent upon him. It has been customary to do this in the very prime of life, just at the time when the experience and ripened powers of the minister would have made his labours of the highest value to the Church. After some years of location, it has often been the case, that, having realised a competency, and settled some of his children, he has returned into the ranks of the itinerant ministry. But more often he has remained in his retirement, preaching, no doubt, and occasionally ministering the sacraments, anoma- lous as this may seem, but really a layman and a tradesman or a farmer to the end of his days. And in the case of the poor parochial clergy of this country, we know that many of them have been driven to eke out their living by school- keeping; while the poor dissenting clergy not only keep schools, but do a little farming, and invent other contrivances which need not be specified, in order to increase their scanty means. The straitened Methodist minister is in this respect alone, that he is prohibited and precluded from entering in any way, direct or indirect, into business, and that, owing to his itinerancy, he cannot, by means of a well-stocked garden, cultivated with his own hands, and the quiet and practical help and sympathy which gathers and grows around I NECESSITY OF A GOOD LIBRARY. 63 a worthy pastor, long resident in the same place, secure those compensations which might otherwise be open to him. At the same time it should be stated that the minimum income of Weslej'an ministers — we speak not now of the poorly paid "Primitive" preachers, male or female — is higher than that of other denominations. But the maintenance in decent comfort, and so as to exempt him from that constant heart-wearing anxiety, un- relieved by hope or opportunity of bettering himself, which would disqualify him for the performance of his ministerial duties, though it be the first necessity of a minister's outward life, does not limit and determine the extent of the provision which should be made for him. If a minister is to teach and preach, he must read ; and books are as absolute a necessity for his mind and heart, as food and raiment for the bodily wants of himself and his children. This is a thought which, we fancy, never enters into the mind of many good people. And yet it is worth then- pondering. The chief reason, as we are persuaded, why the preaching of many ministers is poor, dry, meagre, profitless, uninteresting and unrefreshing, good neither for mind nor heart, is, that the straitened preachers, finding it barely possible to live on their incomes, never buy a book of any value from year's end to year's end. Many such poor parsons there be. They are not wanting in sense nor in the gift of speech ; but, consumed by care, and un- refreshed by communion with the thoughts of any of the good or great, the wonder is that they can preach at all — not that their preaching is sapless and spiritless. Nor do we hold it to be enough that ministers should be able to live, with due and steady economy, in comfort and good heart, and to spare a few pounds a year for books ; they ought to have, over and above this, the means of distributing to the poor, and of showing hospitality, in accordance with the apostolic injunction. What a luxury is it to deny ourselves, 54 THE VOCATION AND TKAINING OF THE CLEBGY. now and then, even of fair comforts, and often of pleasant and lawful helps or joys, in order to bestow upon others ! In this there is Christian satisfaction, and the self-denial is but the fair price of the rare pleasure which it brings. But to be obliged to exercise cruel self-denial, and to be swallowed up with perpetual anxiety, in order hardly and barely to live, that is painful work indeed, to which no true minister of Christ should be condemned. Charity and hospitality are the duties of the ministry ; to perform them should therefore be placed within his reach. Let us add a word as to that Christian duty of hospitality. If it were within the power of the clergy, as it ought always to be, to show this "without grudging," how many happy consequences might, and, in fair proportion, would, flow from this ! What a pleasure, what a benefit, for the minister to be able, from time to time, to welcome to his house the very poor of his flock ! On the other hand, how much good fellowship might be promoted among the better classes, how much absurd exclusiveness might be broken down, how much mischievous shyness and jealousy might be cured ; what a pattern of rational. Christian, and truly refined entertainment and intercourse might be set before the congregation, if occasionally the pastor could assemble under his own roof those who, by real intelligence and by community of principle and sym- pathy, are fitted to harmonize with and to improve each other, but whom accident, the want of opportunity, or the prejudices and bondage of mere caste, keep apart ! The pastor ought to be the social centre of his own congrega- tion, as well as their spiritual teacher or superintendent. It is not the right thing for him to feel, and others to feel, that it is his ever to claim and receive hospitality, but never to bestow it. His heart prompts him to " use hospitality without grudging," but his circumstances, as a rule, pre- clude it. PECUNIAKY REQUIREMENTS OF A MINISTER. 55 So, moreover, as regards public benevolence, patriotic funds, national memorials, the pastor ought to be in a position, not, indeed, to take the lead as regards the amount of his contributions ; but to bear a fair and decent share, by way of evincing in his own personal practice the sjTupathy of the Christian Church and the Christian spiiit with all that is benevolent, patriotic, and truly noble. Let what we have now advanced be well considered, and we cannot doubt that its truth and importance will be felt. We do not mean that the position of the minister ought to be splendid, his appointments sumptuous, his furniture rich, or the dress of himself and family either showy or costly ; but he ought to have the means, with strict economy, to maintain himself and his family in credit and comfort, and to purchase the requisite books for his library ; his house and surroundings ought to be such that the higher class may visit him without shame or discomfoii;, and the poor with confidence and friendship ; and he should have something to spare for other charities. The better Dissent- ing Churches in England, and the superior Presbyterian charges in Scotland, have reached this standard. But the average ministerial stipend in both countries, especially in England, is much below this mark. We have passed in review the question of the work and calling of the Christian ministry, of the classes from which the ranks of the ministry should chiefly be drawn, and of the style of maintenance which it should be the aim of the Churches to secure for it. The only other point on which we shall offer any observations, is that of the right means whereby to secure an adequate supply of properly qualilied ministers. We have already stated the three particulars which go to constitute a properly qualified Christian minister, viz., the gifts and vocation of God, general culture, and biblical and theological learning, or, let us be allowed to 66 THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLERGY. say, as more fully and exactly imiDressing our meaning, professional training and equipment. The first of these three qualifications comes from God; but it is the duty of the Church to provide, in its own organization, means for eliciting and ascertaining the gifts and testing the vocation : the second may be possessed, by candidates in favourable circumstances, in such a degree as to render any special interference or agency on the part of the Church unneces- sary ; but, if this is not the case, it is the duty of the Church to provide it : the third may, perhaps, in a few cases, be obtained in an adequate degree through the private diligence of the candidates themselves, making good use of superior opjDortunities ; but in all cases, moreover, it is a thing in itself highly desirable that the candidate should, if possible, have the advantage of systematic instruction, imparted by responsible public teachers appointed by the Church; and, in the great majority of cases, especially in the present day, such systematic instruction ought to be regarded as an absolute necessity. The great defect of the Churches, speaking generally, is in regard to the first of these three particulars. With the exception of the Methodist Churches, no Church either in England or Scotland possesses, as a part of its essential organization, the means of eliciting the preaching gifts, and fairly testing, in limine, (where it obviously ought to be tested,) the ministerial vocation, of the youth who aspires to be a candidate. In the Church of England a young man decides, or his friends decide for him, whether he will " enter the Church" or not; but he has had no opportunity of exercising any gifts in public, whether of prayer or exhorta- tion, neither has the Church any voice whatever in the matter. There is no testimony of the people, no commen- dation or designation exercised by the congregation of the faithful, directly or indirectly. It is much the same in the PRELIMINARY TESTS AS TO THE MINISTERIAL VOCATION. 57 Presbyterian Churches : the subsequent exammations are strict and thorough ; proof must be given of a serious spirit, soundness in doctrine, and godly life ; but the de- termination to enter the ministry is the private resolution of the candidate himself; the Church at least has no voice in the matter. The youth goes as a student to the Uni- versity; while there, he decides whether he will or will not become a minister, too often, it is to be feared, as he would decide whether or not he will become an advocate or a physician. He has given no evidence that he is " apt to teach ;" he has received from the people of the Lord no designation or commendation to the office of the Christian ministry. Nor is it much otherwise among the Congre- gationalist and Baptist Churches. It is true, that in the Sunday School some fair indications of "aptness to teach" others than mere children, may be afforded. Occasionally, too, in country congregations which have no regular minister, and are dependent upon supplies of "students," or the exhortations of a deacon, or, in uncommon instances, of a "gifted brother," a young man may possibly be called upon to address the people ; but these are rare exceptions. As a rule, Congregationalists and Baptist Churches know as little of the free exercise of gifts by members of the congre- gation, or of lay co-operation in the work of preaching, as even the congregations of the Church of England. Neither do they make it, as we think they might well do, an indis- pensable condition, that candidates for the ministry shall have received the testimony of the Church with which they are associated, at least so far as respects then* spi- rituality of mind and general weight of character. The pai-t of the Chui-ches in ascertaining and testing, in eliciting and cherishing, the qualifications of young men for the work of the Christian ministry, is of little significance. They may, indeed, have some voice in the matter ; their 58 THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLERGY. testimony and recommendation, as respects certain points of experience and character, in many instances accom- panies and sustains the candidate in his entrance upon his collegiate studies: so far the Churches may, and often do, exercise an appreciable, though very partial, influence in the designation of the candidate for his work, and to this extent there is an advance beyond the Church of England and the Presbyterian bodies. Moreover, it is re- quired that each candidate shall have been a Church- member, and shall have afforded "credible evidences of conversion and sanctification," the testimony to this effect of at least the pastor being necessary. We entirely consent to the words of the Eev. Walter Scott, in his paper read at that " Conference of Delegates" to which we have already made reference ; that "it is to the honour of Independents that they have ever been deeply sensible of the vast import- ance of genuine, and even superior, piety in the ministers of the Gospel, and have made more vigorous and systematic efforts to secure this essential qualification than any other section of the professed followers of Jesus Christ, with the exception of the Methodists." Nevertheless, we presume that none would attempt to dispute the general truth of the statements we are about to quote from one who cannot but be well informed on the subject, and whose honesty is unimpeachable. " The modem process which terminates in giving to a vacant Church a minister of spiritual things, and which qualifies the subject of it for taking the oversight of a Christian community, is xisually after this sort. A youth, generally from fifteen to two or three and twenty years of age, is happily, and through the mercy of God, brought into a state of sympathy with the Gospel, receives the life-giving message, and rejoices in its salvation. . . He burns to consecrate his life to God, and experience has not yet instructed him that he may do so in any honourable calling. His thoughts and desires turn towards the ministry. . . Events favour his wishes, and ripen them into decision. I MINISTERIAL DESIGNATION AND PllEPARATION. 59 He seeks and obtains an introduction into a theological seminary, where, in company with others like-minded, he travels tlirough a routine of study, classical, mathematical, philosophical, excgctical, and theological, exercising himself, occasionally, in delivering discourses from neighbouring pulpits, and shielded, more or less carefully, by the regulations of the place, from the numerous temptations with which society abounds. At the close of his course, extending over three, four, or five years, an invitation commonly awaits him from a destitute Church, which, having approved of his ' aptness to teach,' calls him to the ' oversight,' and receives him as an ' elder.' . . . " It is to be observed that, by our present method, the most im- portant steps which can influence the character, or affect the efficiency of the future teachers of truth, are taken before the religious principle can have proved its genuineness, and before intellectual aptitude and (pialifications can be determined. . . Our academies, founded upon an eleemosynary basis, and offering an easy egress to an honourable and useful occupation, tend to insure, if anything can do, a large admixture of inferior influences in motives which should be kept unusually pure. . . An education, in a great measure technical, having consumed exactly that portion of life within which a choice of calling is feasible, leaves a young man, at the end of his preparatory course, even when he has discovered his original mistake, nearly precluded from altering his destination." — Miall's British Churches, Second Edition, pp. 169, 170. Such is the evidence of Mr. Miall as to the system of minis- terial designation and preparation which obtains in his own body. The facts being so, the following reflections of Mr. Miall on this special point, — on many points, we need hardly say, we differ very widely from him, though we always admire his ability and his honesty, — seem to us to be most just : — " I much doubt whether, in the method of ministerial training we now pursue, we do not invert the order which the genius of Christianitj suggests as most desirable. I think it would be possible for the churches to wait the unfolding and ripening of spiritual character in their members, before giving practical aid to those contemplating the episcopal office. . . Surely, if things were well ordered, and the spirit of the Gospel were sincerely cherished, those desires which young men feel in the early days of their religious life for employment in the 60 THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLERGY. ministry, might be fostered as desires possible to be realised at some future period ; and, pursuing their several worldly callings, and de- voting such leisure as they could get to intellectual improvement, exercising, too, as opportunity offered, their ' gifts,' they might leave to the churches, in whose bosom they have their home, to determine for them .whether, and when, they should enter office, as teachers in Christ's kingdom." — MialVs British Churches, Second Edition, pp. 171, 172. What Mr. Miall here suggests as desirable is, in fact, the principle on which the Wesleyan Church has, from the be- ginning, proceeded. Their class-meetings, prayer-meetings, band-meetings ; the prayer-leader's office and opportunities, naturally inviting and opening the way to occasional simple and fervent exhortations; the "exhorter's" work, the orga- nized multitude of " local" or lay " preachers," each of whom is on the look-out for promising young men, who may, by and by, be proposed at the " local-preachers' quarterly meeting," to be taken on the " plan ; " all these points are harmonized into a system, by means of which teaching and preaching gifts are elicited and tested, fostered, and at the same time trained. Thus adequate opportunities are afforded for ascer- taining a young man's aptitude and vocation for the ministry, before his decision is made to offer himself as a candidate for its work and vows. Nor is this all. Not only must he have been accepted and employed as a "local-preacher" before he can be received as a candidate for the regular ministry, but he must also have received the recommendation of the " quarterly meeting " of the " circuit " in which he has been employed. Still further, he is required to pass a searching examination as to religious experience, doctrinal knowledge and orthodoxy, ministerial "gifts," and "fruit of his labours," before the ministerial synod of the " district " or province (as the word might be interpreted) in which the " circuit " is included ; and a yet more formidable examination in TESTS AND GUAEDS AMONG WESLEYAN METHODISTS. 61 London, which lasts several days, before a large committee or board, specially appointed by the Conference to conduct the collective examination of all the candidates for the year from all the districts in Great Britain, prior to their cases being finally presented to the Conference for acceptance or rejection as candidates. It is not until after all this that the candidate enters as a student into the Theological Institu- tions of the Connexion, i.e., if he does enter; for the weak point of the Methodist practice seems to be, that a large proportion of the candidates go at once into the itinerant work without any systematic training, and that this pro- portion, owing to the deficiency of accommodation in the Theological Institutions, has of late years increased in what we should almost be disposed to regard as an alarming ratio. It must be remembered, however, that these untrained young men do not go to be the sole pastors of any churches ; they are associated with senior ministers in the same circuit, always with at least one, generally with two, occasionally with three ; and also that they are still, and remain for four years, candidates on probation, of whose reading some oversight, of late years increasingly strict and systematic, is taken by the ministerial assemblies of the district within which they are appointed to labour. As respects, then, the first of the three particulars included in the general duty which devolves upon the Church, of taking measures to secure an adequate supply of properly qualified ministers, viz., [that it should, as a part of its essential organi- zation, provide the means for eliciting and ascertaining the gifts, and testing the vocation, of those who are to enter the Christian ministry, our conclusion is that, so far as we know, all the different churches of the country, though in various degrees, are essentially defective, with the sole exception of the Methodists. Very many, there can be no doubt, are the cases in which energies of a superior class " wither for want 62 THE VOCATION AND TKAINING OF THE CLERGY. of scope and exercise; many more in which the germs of useful talent, always environed by a cold atmosphere of routine, and stimulated by no external process of culture, never unfold themselves, and pass away from their appointed scene of opportunity, without having so much as disclosed their presence." The second particular relates to the general culture which, if the candidates do not already possess it in due measure, it is the duty of the Church to provide. Now, as respects this point, the clergy of the Church of England may be presumed to be beyond criticism because of their university education, though, in good sooth, there are far more ignorant and narrowly prejudiced uniTOrsity men than could well be imagined. To suppose that a man must needs be learned, because he writes B.A. after his name, to suppose even that his degree implies of necessity that he must be well-read in Greek, is merely a popular fallacy. Still, university gra- duates, as a rule, must be men imbued with a due tincture of classical and general scholarship ; and the recent improve- ments in the university system have done much to impart a broad and liberal character to the collegiate culture, and to insure that the graduates shall not only be well-bred gentlemen, and well-read scholars, in the narrower sense, but men who commence life with a sufficient introduction to the general scientific and economic knowledge of the age. In Scotland, too, the candidates for the ministry in the different Presbyterian Churches may be assumed to be all of them well- educated men. All of them must have passed through a full curriculum at the national universities, embracing four years' study of classics, logic, moral and natural philosophy, before they can begin the study of theology : they must produce evidence that they have gone through this course, before they can be received into any theological college or seminary. The United Presbyterian Church, indeed, so far relaxes this rule, MINISTERIAL EDUCATION AMONG PRESBYTERIANS. 63 as to admit students to commence their theological studies at the end of their third year at college ; but this is with the distinct proviso, that they must complete their university course within one year from the commencement of their special theological studies. Graduates of the Scottish uni- versities, indeed, can very seldom compete with English university-men in classical or mathematical learning ; hut, on the whole, their education is broader in its basis, is better proportioned in its constituent parts, and more adapted to supply the foundation of general culture on which the pro- fessional training of a minister may rest, than that given in the English universities. As respects English Congregational and Baptist ministers, we must distinguish two classes, — those who go through no course of instruction, and those who, as students, pass through one of the various colleges of the denomination to which they belong. There are a large number of pastors of small churches, who have received no training whatever. Some of these began by being Methodist local preachers, but have since been transformed, by a longer or shorter process, into settled Dissenting pastors. Others had growTi to be deacons, chiefly in small country churches or in very small town churches — especially in London, where there are many such — which cannot afford an adequate stipend for a regularly educated and properly qualified pastor. These deacons, in due time, if men of some theological knowledge, of strict life, of talents for business, and (though last, hardly least) of some speaking power, succeed to the pastorship. In some cases, on this promotion, they give up then- business ; in others, they retain it. Such pastorships as these are not uncommon among the rural Independents of the southern and eastern counties ; they are frequently found among High Calvinist Particular Baptists ; both among Baptists and Inde- pendents, as we have intimated, they are common in London, which is a great training ground of such pastors, whence they 64 THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLERGY. are sometimes translated, with some Mat, to take the pastoral charge of a country church, in which the words, from London, after the pastor's name, count for a trifle. There are thus two classes among the English Congregational Dissenters, the trained and the untrained, the gentlemanly and highly cultured, and the underbred and ignorant, the men of the liberal school of modern Calvinism, and the narrow and dog- matic partisans of the harsh and acrid school. In what we are about to say, we shall speak only of the former and suj^erior class. For their accomplishment in all the requisite ''humanities" which belong to the training desirable for a minister, the Congregationalists and Baptists have made noble provision in their different colleges in London, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Devonshire, Somersetshire, and elsewhere. Among their tutors or professors, also, they number, and have num- bered, some men of eminence and learning, equal to any who may be found within the splendid Established Church of this country. The late Dr. Pye Smith, author of the Scripture Testimony to the Messiah, was theological tutor at Homerton College. Dr. Vaughan, the distinguished historian and essayist, was for many years the principal of the Lancashire Independent College. He has been succeeded by Mr. Eogers, the profound and accomplished author of the Eclipse of Faith, who had previously for many years been the classical and philosophical tutor at the Spring Hill Theological College. Dr. William Smith, the learned editor of the various classical dictionaries, and of the Dictionary of the Bible, who is also classical examiner at the London University, has throughout been connected, as tutor, with Dissenting colleges, and is now on the staff of the New College, near London. Dr. W. L. Alexander is the professor of theology in the Theological Hall of the Congregational Churches in Scotland. Other well-known DISSENTING COLLEGES. G5 names, such as Dr. Halley, and Dr. Alliott, stand forth in the list of able and learned men who constitute the "faculties," as the Scotch theologians would say, of the Dis- senting colleges. Of these colleges the Congregationalists have ten, the Baptists not more, we believe, than about half that number. The course of general instruction embraced in the pro- gramme of these seminaries, includes the English language, classics, mathematics, logic, history, mental and moral philosophy, natural history and science ; the student re- mains from three to five years, — in several of the colleges the term is five, — and continues to prosecute his studies in these branches during the whole term. The first year and a half is usually devoted exclusively to general culture, as preliminary to the theological course ; and during this period the student is not allowed to preach. This last point is, we think, a weakness in the arrange- ments of the Dissenting colleges. To us nothing seems more e\ddent than that no student should enter a college, who has not given proof of his possessing the fundamental gifts of a " preacher," and that during the whole term of his residence these gifts should be kept in exercise, in how- ever informal and unpretending a way. Many a young man who could talk heartily to a company of people in a plain way before he enters college, will lose entirely this fundamental qualification, will acquire a painful self-con- sciousness, and a most embarrassing habit of self-criticism, dui'ing his first eighteen months' silent schooling and student- ship; and, when again he attempts to speak, will not only have lost the faculty of plain, homely, colloquial address, but will have adopted a stiff, bookish style, exceedingly in- appropriate to the work of a preacher. His mind will have effected a transmigration out of a free and easy garb of ex- pression, which left him at liberty to use his natural faculties F 0,6 THE VOCATION AND TKAINING OF THE CLERGY. ^ and to move without restraint, into a formal suit of methods and phrases, in which he moves with stiff precision, and with lamentable lack of power. The collegiate course of the Dissenters makes their ministers scholars and philosophers, and often also accomplished divines ; to some men of superior gifts, especially if they had early advantages of education, it impai-ts a culture and finish which qualify them to take rank with the best and best-educated men of any church ; but, on the whole, it fails, in an adequate measure, to supply the pulpits of the denominations with " powerful preachers." Moreover, we cannot but believe that an enforced abstinence, during the first eighteen months of their college-life, from theological study, and from all practice in exhortation or preaching, must, in a number of cases, quench the lively sense of the ministerial call, which all candidates ought to feel burning within them, and exercise a very injurious in- fluence upon their spiritual experience and life. J It would seem, too, that the protracted term and somewhat ^ formidable character of the college course tend to keep down the number of students more than is desirable. The expense must deter not a few; there being only a very limited pro- vision for assisting those who have no pecuniary resources of their own, or through the help of friends : others who, with some training, might have become useful pastors of country churches, shrink from a four or five years' course, and feel that their health and habits have unfitted them to pass through so strict and protracted an ordeal. We observe that, at the " Conference of Delegates," in 1845, the Eev. J. Frost read a paper on " The Expediency of a Seminary in which only an English Theological Education should be given, or, in addition, such acquaintance with the Original Languages of Holy Scriptures, as is attainable without previous study of the Greek and Latin Classics ;" and that the " Conference" passed a resolution favourable to the SUPPLY AND DEMAND AMONG DISSENTERS. 67 principle of such au education ; but were of opinion " that it would be more appropriately given in the homes of competent ministers receiving small numbers under their care, than in any institution formed expressly for the purpose." We dare not impugn this decision ; but, if it is not more extensively acted on in future than has been in the past, there will still be a serious lack in this respect. We learn from a paper by the Eev. Professor Newth, read at the commencement of the last session of the New College, that whereas the annual demand of mmisters, among the Congregationalists, to supply vacancies at home and abroad, cannot be set down at less than ninety, the yearly supply from the colleges is reckoned at fifty-one. So that the supply from the colleges is only a fraction more than fifty- six per cent, and the number of churches supplied other- wise than with trained ministers is more than forty-three per cent. The general conclusion at which we arrive is that, as re- spects the English Dissenting Churches, provision is made for affording the rising pastorate a most excellent general education, as scholars and gentlemen, in the theological colleges ; but that this provision is not so strictly auxiliary as it should be to the paramount object of training the candidates to be preachers of the Gospel and spiritual pas- tors of Christ's flock. The provision made by the Wesleyans for general culture is altogether subordinate to the great object of training in biblical and theological knowledge, and in the work of preaching. The term of residence at the Institutions was originally, and is nominally, three years; but the demands of the Connexion, during several recent years of rapid growth and extension, have reduced the term, in the majority of cases, from three to two, — a result which, though it may f2 68 THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLERGY. be unavoidable, cannot be regarded without regret. Wesleyan students have the advantage over those of other churches, that they have all been strictly and repeatedly tested as to gifts and character, before they enter the Institution. This of necessity insures that, as a class, they are young men of superior talents and energy. Many of them, however, have possessed scarcely any educational advantages, and absolutely require all the instruction, both general and pro- fessional, which they can master during the three years' term. That the term is not prolonged to four or five years is, we think, not a matter of regret, especially when it is remembered, that, after leaving the Institution, four years must elapse for the two years' students, and three years for the three years' students, before they can be accepted and ordained as "ministers in full connexion;" and that, in the mean time, they are under supervision as to their general, and especially their theological, reading. This last arrangement, in particular, and indeed the general position which they hold as young ministers, relieved from the direct responsibility of government, during the early part of their course, gives them a very special advantage. One of the resolutions, adopted at the " Conference of Congregational Delegates," to which we have several times referred, was to the effect that " eminent advantages would be realised by youthful brethren, were they to occupy some interval between the close of their academic course, and their entrance on full pastoral responsibilities, in further prose- cution of study, and in preparatory ministerial labours." The Wesleyan system secures this advantage for all its ministers. In the foregoing remarks we have been led to anticipate, in some degree, so far as regards the chief English Non- conformist bodies, what properly belongs to the third par- ticular included in the duty of the Church, with respect to PROFESSIONAL TRAINING AND EQUIPMENT. 69 making provision for a supply of properly qualified ministers. This third particular refers to the projDer professional training and equipment, which belongs to ministers as such. Here, as in what relates to ascertaining si^iritual qualifications and natural gifts, the Church of England, up to the present time, has been organically and absolutely defective. St. Bees, indeed, has imparted a Calvinistic theological training to its students ; but this was but a small and solitary insti- tution, whose influence did not extend far, and whose reputa- tion has never stood high. The St. Bees clergy have been regarded as an inferior class ; certainly in general know- ledge they have been very inferior, not only to the body of the Anglican clergy, but to the great majority of Dis- senting ministers ; and although in theology they have been better trained and informed than many of their clerical brethren, who, in education and breeding, were so much their superiors, yet their theology has been of a cramped school. Now, however, in this, as in many other respects, the Church of England is manifesting admirable wisdom and energy, and institutions are rising in rapid succession, the object of which is to provide a suitable moral and theo- logical training for university-graduates who are designed for the Christian ministry. Such institutions already exist at Wells, — this seems to take the lead in all respects, — Lichfield, Chichester, Exeter, Cuddesden ; and others are likely to be established. No doubt ere long they will be dis- tributed over the whole country. The seats of the ancient feudal civilisation, where the territorial influence of the Church of England is overwhelming, will lead the way ; the northern counties, and the manufacturing districts, will follow presently. We could most heartily wish these in- stitutions God speed, were it not, especially considering their locations, that we dread the priestly and exclusive spirit in which they nre too likely to be constituted and 70 THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLERGY. conducted. We cannot take it as a good omen tlrat an article devoted to their advocacy, and the exposition of their purpose and claims, should be pervaded by such a spirit as that on which we have taken leave to remark in the former part of this article. We cannot doubt that the best-accomplished clergy in Great Britain, take them for all in all, are the Scottish ministers of all the great denominations. . Their four years' course at the university is followed up by a four years' course of special theological instruction. Nothing can be more thorough or complete than the programme of one of these courses which lies before us. Many godly helps, too, are afforded to the students, and their spiritual condition and progress is a matter of primary care. Still the students do not preach— a vital defect ; nor, as we have already re- marked, have th:ey passed through any preliminary testing as to their gifts, or received any commendation from a church. No after-instruction can, in our judgment, com- pensate for the lack of such preliminary probation. If the Wesleyans could secure for all their candidates, even the most highly educated, at least some systematic theological training; and for all who require it, the full term of three years at their Theological Institutions, their ministers would, on the whole, have 'superior -advantages over those of any other denomination. The Presbji;erians and Congregatioiialists would send forth a larger proportion of highly accomplished general scholars and biblical exegetes ; the Church of England would still excel in the breeding, the polish, the gentlemanly culture, of its ministers ; and, by means of its now rising theological institutions, would produce, in greater numbers than heretofore, eloquent and effective preachers; but for the combination of fair exe- getical and theological knowledge, and competent general information and intelligence, with thorough business habits, ADYANTAGKS AND DEFECTS AMONG WKSLEYAXS. 71 with knowledge of men and things, and, above all, with effective and cultivated preaching faculty, — at once strong and flexible, — the Wesleyan ministry ought, if all were trained as we have described, to be, as a body, unequalled. No other community of ministers, taking their course from first to last, have equal advantages. If, however, it be true — as we are informed on excellent authority, — that for some years past the Wesleyan Con- ference has been sending forth into its home ministry more men without any tincture of regular education and training than it has sent out trained ; and that, at this moment, there is accommodation in the two Theological Institutions (one at Eichmond, Surrey, the other at Didsbury, Man- chester) for little more than one half of the number of students required to keep up a supply of trained ministers, both in the home and the missionary departments ; we think so grave a fact as this ought to compel the earnest heed of all who have any part or interest in the manage- ment of either connexional or circuit affairs. Such a fact seems to us, as we have already said, to be scarcely less than alarming. If this continue, the Wesleyan ministry must fall behind the age, and lose caste and influence among the collective ministry of the English churches : two orders of men will grow up within the Connexion, the trained and the untrained, separated from each other in culture, sympathy, and general tendencies ; the inferior " circuits " and the inferior ministry will hang together ; the superior circuits and the superior ministry will form a sort of upper Methodism; these two parts and parties will diverge from each other more and more widely; there will be danger of sourness, distrust, jealousy, and schism. Besides which, it is a manifest injustice that, of the self- same class of men equally needing education, " one should be taken and another left ;" one sent straight away into 72 THE VOCATION AND TRAINING OF THE CLERGY. a circuit, perhaps because he is a year older, and another sent to the Institution for a two years' training. The evil, we believe, is beginning to be recognised in its serious magnitude; unless it be remedied, and that speedily, trouble must come of it. The Wesleyan Foreign Missions are generously sustained; at home £100,000 are raised for this object ; but to educate the ministry is a nearer, more pressing, necessity. Missions and everything else must suffer if this be not done. Of late years the Home Fund, for extending the work, and establishing fixed missions in the most destitute and demoralised districts of our thickly populated centres of industry, has been revived and en- larged, and now its income — for all purposes, it is true — is not less, we believe, than £20,000 a year; but the training of ministers is a work which comes before sending them forth on mission work, whether abroad or at home. The Wesleyan Connexion must fully rouse itself to meet the present emergency, or its influence, now seemingly greater than ever, and still in the ascendant, must in- fallibly decline, and its whole style and character retro- grade.* * Since this article was written, the Branch-Institution for training Wes- Didsbury Wesleyan Institution has been leyan ministers, which is to be located much enlarged, and steps taken for pro- near Leeds, viding, without further delay, a third THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH : DEFECTS AND REMEDIES.* The publication in 1854 of the returns of the Census for Eeligious Worship inaugm-ated a new chapter in the history of the Church of England. One of the earliest results of this publication was Dr. Wordsworth's eloquent and elaborate work "On Eeligious Restoration in England,"— "a Series of Sermons preached in Westminster Abbey at the Boyle Lecture" (in 1854). Since then, the same general subject has been kept constantly before the public. Sermons and pamphlets in great abundance have continued to issue from the press. Dr. Wordsworth, especially, has not ceased to press his views by all available methods ; his letter to Lord Dungannon being one of the ablest and best known of the minor publications which the discussion has called forth. Bishops and leading statesmen, at diocesan meetings and elsewhere, have dilated on the evils complained of, the objects to be aimed at in order to the remedy of those evils, the claims, the capabilities, and the duties of the Church of England, the plans and methods by which its ejBiciency may be augmented and its supremacy secured. Convocation has in the interval — at least the Convocation of Canterbury — become a power of some reality ; and many proposals and * LonA. Quarterly Review, January, Lectures." By John Sandford, B.D. 18C3. Archdeacon of Coventry. London : " The Mission and Extension of the Longmans. 1862. (Being the " Bamp- Church at Home, considered in Eight ton Lectures " for 1861.) 7-i THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH : DEFECTS AND REMEDIES. discussions relating to the general subject have occupied the attention of both the Houses. And, finally, the vital and commanding importance of the questions which have been raised is signalised by the call of Archdeacon Sandford, as Bampton Lecturer, to direct the attention of the University of Oxford, in the first place, and of the whole Church, to *' the Mission and Extension of the Church at Home." During the past autumn (1862), the remarkable speech of Mr. Disraeli at High Wycombe, on occasion of a Meeting of the Association for the Augmentation of Small Benefices in the Diocese of Oxford, attracted great attention, and called forth the comments of the public press. A former speech of Mr. Disraeli's, relating to Church matters, is quoted, at con- siderable length, and with commendation, by Mr. Sandford, in the volume before us ; and it is very evident that the brilliant statesman in return has carefully studied the Arch- deacon's Lectures. In fact, the measures which he recom- mends as remedies for the deficiencies of the Church of England are an epitome of what is set forth by Mr. Sandford with the same view. To quote an article in the Times for November 3rd, Mr. Disraeli "oflers five remedies : The Church is to obtain a command over popular education ; the Episco- pate is to be increased ; the ' lay-element ' is to be developed and organized ; the parochial system is to be strengthened ; and the clergy are to be made more efficient." Here, in fact, is the pith of Ai'chdeacon Sandford's recommendations. The volume before us, however, is one which will well repay a somewhat detailed examination. Its frank confessions are always instructive, and sometimes piquant ; its notes are full of interesting evidence as to the prevailing spirit and the present projects of Churchmen ; the character, and the eccle- siastical and theological views, of the Lecturer himself come clearly out in his writing, and are deserving of attention and remark. ARCHDEACON SANDFORD. 75 To begin with the Lecturer himself : Mr. Sandford belongs to a class of clergy of whom we imagine not a large number now survive. We presume that, although a dignitary in the Church of England, he is himself a native of Scotland, — pro- bably of the Scottish border. His lectures are inscribed to the memory of his two brothers, one of whom was the late distinguished scholar, Sir D. K. Sandford, and the other Mr. Erskine Douglas Sandford, late Sheriff of Galloway. It is forty years since Mr. Sandford entered the ministry of the Episcopal Church. He has been from the beginning an active parish clergyman, has sustained the office of examining chap- lain to the Bishop of Worcester, and has for a number of years past had official charge of the important Archdeaconry of Coventr3\ He is a man of business, of experience, and of energy. Most carefully, however, does he disclaim the character of a speculative philosopher or theologian. " My subject," he says at the close of his last Lecture, "has led me to speak chiefly of the Church's active life. It indeed best became me to handle topics with which I am myself familiar. But am I therefore unmindful of the labours of men of more sedentary lives and recondite pursuits?" &c. (p. 219). And he prefaces his discussions by this modest sentence, " Had any course of Lectures addressed to what may be deemed by some the more immediate necessities of academic thought been before the electors, it would not have been my privilege to address you to-day" (p. 3). Now we have no doubt that, as Mr. Sandford is evidently a man of high and honourable principles, so he is a modest man ; and therefore we would not put to an improper use such candid admissions as these. We do not doubt that the Archdeacon is a divine of some learning, and that he was fairly competent to the duties of examining chaplain so long as he held that office. At the same time, no one can carefully read this volume without coming to the conclusion that, although the 76 THE ESTABLISHED CHUECH : DEFECTS AND REMEDIES. author must of necessity have written very much, he is no master of style. His writing is not ineffective, and .at times approaches eloquence; it is always manly, unpretending, unaffected, and thoroughly earnest : but the craft of English composition has evidently not been a cherished study with him. Doubtless his useful, busy life has held him otherwise engaged — perhaps, much better engaged — than in building up sentences and balancing periods, although that, too, in its place and for right ends is, to those who have the voca- tion, a noble and truly useful business. As a specimen, however, of the earnest, unfinished onwardness with which he sets forth his thoughts, — of the substantial interest and power, and yet the defect of art and mastery, which charac- terizes his writing, — let us transcribe one passage : " That any right-minded man can contemplate the moral and reli- gious state of this country without serious misgivings, is next to impossible. The national standard and practice so often at variance with Scripture — the multiform shapes of misbelief and infidelity, which among us no longer seek the shade, but court observation — the discon- tent and socialism of large and banded masses of our operatives — the flagrant and unblushing vice and intemperance of oixr streets — the inadequate influence exercised by the Church over the bulk of the people — the numerous separatists from its fold — added to which, the attitude of hostility which many of these have recently assumed ; above all, the feuds and divisions within the Church itself — what Christian man can ever view these things without great heaviness and continual sorrow of heart ! " — Page 6. Mr. Sandford's ecclesiastical and theological tenets are such as might be expected from what we have already stated. He is a practical English High-Churchman, without any special superstitions, any subtleties, or any eccentricities ; and he believes strongly and generously in the Church and Church- men, as such. He appears to take little heed of the varieties of church-schools, and to understand nothing whatever of the tendencies and perils of philosophical heresy. Henry AN ORTHODOX HIGH CHURCHMAN. 77 of Exeter, the Dean of Chichester, the late Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, and even Mr. Maurice himself, seem to be quoted by him with equal cordiality, and equally without exception or caveat. Nevei-theless, Mr. Sandford himself is both orthodox and high. He accepts fully what he states to be the unques- tionable doctrine of his Church, that ' ' our Bishops are the successors of the Apostles ; that our Priests are the repre- sentatives of those on whom any of the Twelve laid holy hands;" and "that our Deacons exercise an office equivalent to that possessed by the earliest Seven !" He maintains that, in Ordination and the Sacraments, the Bishops and "Priests" (so-called) are the official and personal channels of grace *to "priests" and people; that the "blessings they dispense are real, though they may not themselves partake of them ;" and that the prophetic commission and authority invests them each and all (p. 26). He teaches that "baptism is the bath and grave of sin, in which the soul is both cleansed and vivified, and through the Holy Ghost participates in Christ's atoning blood and resurrection power" (p. 26). Our high ecclesiastic further regards with the gravest dis- satisfaction the ecclesiastico-political legislation of modern times. He admits, indeed, that " our legislature has rightly abolished tests which, to create civil disabilities, profaned a sacrament, and were practically an outrage on religion." But he regards the enactment by which it is requu'ed that all infants must, within a certain time after their bii'th, be registered by the registrar of the district, as a measure the effect of which is "to supplant Baptism by an act of Eegis- tration," The inference is, that he would have baptism of infants made compulsory, as indeed it formerly was ; or that he would leave the legislature without the means of ascer- taining the number and the dates of bu'ths in the country. To be consistent, Mr. Sandford should desii'e to bring back those 78 THE ESTABLISHED CHUKCH : DEFECTS AND REMEDIES. "ages of faith," or at any rate those following ages of a despotic and Erastian state-churchism, when the children of all parents were required, under severe penalties, to. be brought to the parish clergyman for baptism. This is still the law in Eomish and in Lutheran countries. But surely this also is "to profane a sacrament," and is practically " an outrage to religion." His most orthodox, but most unenlightened, Anglicanism is yet farther signalised by his having persuaded himself that a " society similarly organized" with the Church of England, " with like creed and like polity, existed in these realms at a date coeval with the apostles" (p. 40). He maintains, moreover, as a true son of the Church, in time-honoured formula, that "the Church has autliority in controversies of faith " (p. 48), a proposition which (he does not appear to see) is in one sense a mere truism, or very little better, as true at any rate of the Moravian, the Pres- b3i;erian, or the Methodist Church, or even of a separate Congregational Church, as of the Episcopal Church of Eng- land; while, in any larger and loftier sense, it amounts to nothing less than a claim of spiritual and quasi-Popish despotism, such as it is suicidal in the " Eeformed Church of England" to assert. He holds that the interpretation of Scripture must be "ac- cording to the rule of ecclesiastical and catholic sense " (p. 48), and acknowledges as the standard of doctrinal and eccle- siastical perfection "the consent and practice of the Church catholic in its primitive purity" (p. 50), as ascertained from the early patristic writings ; — not seeming to have recognised the fact, so largely demonstrated in Mr. Taylor's hitherto un- answered work on " Ancient Christianity," that the earlier body of patristic writings, later than the apostolic age, is full of the evidences of existing, allowed, and progressive diver- sities, errors, and corruptions, both in doctrine and practice. A GOOD CHUECHMAN. 79 He finds the ''hermeneutical tradition of the English Church " in the Liturgy and Prayer-Book. This was his answer — he really seems to have no doubt as to its being a conclusive and triumphant answer — to the question on this point not long '* since proposed to himself in a tone of triumph within the walls of the Vatican " (p. GO). He is evidently blind to the truth, which is yet so obvious, that if the Church of England takes up, in the way of offence or defence, that sword of " tradition," it cannot fail to perish by the self-same sword, wrested out of its hands and turned against itself by the elder and more consistent hierarchy of Eome. Tradition is doubtless a most important witness ; rightly cross-examined, — for its utterances are manifold and not seldom contradictory, — it may throw light on many perplexing points, and even afford conclusive evidence . as to some important matters ; but tradition exalted into an authoritative interpreter cannot fail utterly to confound and mislead. Mr. Sandford, good Churchman as he is, and notwith- standing much personal liberality of feeling, and no doubt a perfect gentlemanliness and courtesy of behaviour towards Nonconformists, has a pious horror of " Dissent," which he appears to consider the sorest of existing evils, and as in- cluding all evils in one. He of course identifies dissent with schism, according to the " tradition of the elders," which, all scholars must surely admit, " makes void" the actual texts of Holy Writ, just interpreted. And he stands in amazement, if not in alarm, at that " spurious charity" which "goes so far as to demand that we should not pray against it, that the word 'schism' should be expunged from our Liturgy" (p. 70). Surely it is a thing to be wondered at that such dignitaries as Archdeacon Sandford do not perceive that the right reason for retaining that most excellent petition in the Liturgy is not, that it is fitting for the Church of England to pray to be 80 THE ESTABLISHED CHUKCH : DEFECTS AND REMEDIES. delivered from the Dissenting sects, but that the afflictive " schisms " within that Church itself, the discord which tortures its own vitals, are indeed a sore evil, from which all its faithful members may well pray to be delivered. But, as befits his school, — though this be not the very highest "Anglican" school, and has but imperfect sympathy with ritualist and semi-Eomanist follies or superstitions, — Archdeacon Sandford looks upon Dissent as much more radically and essentially evil than Popery. " How — it may be asked — has Romanism stood its ground for so many centuries, and held its sway over so large a portion of Christendom, in spite of its manifold corruptions, and transparent impostures? And how, though the marks of decrepitude and the tokens of decay are upon it, does it seem still to renew its youth, and recruit its strength ? Is it not because it is a branch of Christ's Church, though a recreant and a fallen one ? " And why is it, that forms of Protestant Nonconformity never per- manently thrive : that the society which boasts of a Watts and a Doddridge, and other eminent names, has in so many instances decayed and died out, or become Unitarian ? — but that the very principle in which Dissent originates involves its disruption and extinction. " Again, why is it that the successive assaults that have been made on the Church of England seem only to rectify and consolidate it ? — but because these show where it has failed, — and thus serve to resuscitate some dormant grace or latent principle, and cause it to bring forth from its spiritual armoury and furbish some weapons that have been allowed to rust." — Pp. 201, 202. The parallel with Popery, into which the Lecturer has in this extract inadvertently brought his ot;\ti Church, does not to us at least appear to reflect much honour on that Church. But we would point attention more particularly to the fact that Dissent — merely and abstractedly as Dissent — is brought into contrast with Kome to the disadvantage of the former. Yet, in what did his own Church originate but in Dissent, Dissent from Eome ? Whether Dissent be wrong or right, schismatic and evil or the expression of self-sacriticing truth THE ESTABLISHED CHUKCH AND " DISSENT." 81 md righteousness, depends entirely on circumstances. To issert that " the very principle in which Dissent originates nvolves its disruption and extinction," as it is here asserted ivithout any guard or qualification, is perilous folly on the part of an English Churchman, is to put a trenchant weapon jito the hands of the Romanist adversary. As a matter of fact. Dissent, in the general sense in which Archdeacon Sandford uses the term, as equivalent with Non- conformity, originated in a conscientious and righteous resist- mce to ecclesiastical tyranny. Is such a principle of action 3ne which of necessity involves *' disruption and extinction ?" It is, at the least, singularly premature, in the face of the results of the religious census, to say that "Dissent" — that "forms of Protestant Nonconformity" — can never permanently thrive. There can be no question of the immense strides cvhich have been taken by the Congregational Dissenters since the commencement of the present century. For our own part, indeed, we are persuaded (as are many besides Binney and Spurgeon among Congregationalists themselves) that the iso- lation of the Congregational Chui'ches is a great cause of weak- Qess to the Independents and Baptists, is a serious injury, whether in respect of doctrine, moral power, or denominational development. Nevertheless, in all our large towns, Congrega- tional Independency holds a position of great influence ; and, on the whole, its power in this country is much greater in proportion than it was at the beginning of the last century. As respects doctrinal heresy, moreover, the Church of Eng- land has no advantage over Dissent. It is true that the English Presbyterianism of 1662 has languished into feeble- ness, and also, for the most part, fallen into heresy. Still Dissent in general has but partaken of the same influences which have left their mark upon the Church of England. The same age which saw a Clarke, a Conyers Middleton, and a Hoadley in the Established Church, nurtured the Socinianism 82 THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH : DEFECTS AND REMEDIES. of Priestley, and gave his early training to Belsliam. The evangelical revival which has visited the Church of England within the last forty years took firm hold, at an earlier period, of the Dissenting Churches ; and for nearly half a century the Dissenting Clergy and Churches, as a whole, have been eminently orthodox and evangelical. Surely the Archdeacon, remembering the history of the past, and in view of the iDresent state of the Church of England, should beware of claiming orthodoxy as the inseparable heritage of the Established Church, or of stigmatizing Dissent as of necessity tending to heresy. It appears from the Archdeacon's style of argument and remark, not only that he regards the Church of Eome as a " branch of Christ's Church," although a "recreant and fallen one," but that he does not admit the various denominations of "Protestant Nonconformity" to be in any sense branches of Christ's Church. There can be no doubt, after this, of the exalted Anglicanism of the Lecturer. We hardly know, judging from an indication here and there, whether or not Mr. Sandford intends to include Methodism, as undoubtedly it should be included, among " the forms of Protestant Nonconformity." Surely he will not deny that Methodism, at any rate, has "thriven" during the last century ; or that its progress, all things considered, has been greater since its separation from the Church of England than it was previously. The Wesleyan Methodists, indeed, have always and rightly objected to be called Dissenters. Their organization did not originate in Dissent ; Dissent from the Church of England had nothing whatever to do with any part of their peculiar and essential economy as Methodists. Me- thodism went forth from the tents of the Mother- Church, because it was, in fact, driven forth. The Church of England counted Methodism as a Hagar, and thrust her out into the wilderness with her sons. If these have not proved to be as THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH AND METHODISM. 8'i Ishmael, but have rather been blessed and led mto settled possessions like the children of Israel, this has been through the good hand of God which has been upon them for good. Yet 'Mr. Sandford, unmindful as are nearly all of his Church — or else, which were strange to suppose, ignorant — of the part, not of a mother, but of a harsh stepmother {Injtista noverca), which the Church of England played towards Methodism, complains mournfully of the " separate and rival altars raised by the followers of John Wesley" (p. 11); complains of " separate altars " set up by those who, coming humbly to the "altars" of the Church of England, were repulsed from them in crowds, often by '' priests" no better than the sons of Eli. It is certain, indeed, that, even though the Methodists had been treated with a wise and politic generosity and kind- liness, their organization could not always have remained attached to the Church of England ; the connexion was too formal, there was no community of genius and life, and the new outgrowth was far too large and ponderous to be retained by a tie so slight and artificial. It is certain also that those earnest and often eloquent men, — men, for the most part, superior in theological attainment to the parish clergy, — who, at the time of Mr. Wesley's death, acted as the preachers and spiritual shepherds of the Methodist people, could not have been always withheld from "ministering at the altar," as a Churchman might say; — from completing then- pastoral character and functions by assuming their obvious right to administer to their flocks the Christian sacraments. Nevertheless, at certain points, Mr. Sandford's personal can- dour and liberality of character get the better of his ecclesias- tical prejudices. It is not much to say, yet it is sufficient to discriminate him from the genuine Tractarian school, that he recognises the true, though (as he conceives) incomplete, church character of the Continental Protestant Churches. " It is one G 2 84 THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH : DEFECTS AND REMEDIES. thing," he says, '* to unchurch those who differ from us, and another to uphold our true position" (p. 43). Although he thinks it his duty, when comparing his own Church with others in this country, to speak of "the Church and the Sects," yet he g5es so far as to admit, in manifest reference to the era which culminated in 1662, that " it is difficult to say whether the domineering spirit of the one (party), or the narrow- mindedness and contumacy of the other, was most to be deplored." Though not ourselves prepared to admit the "con- tumacy" of Baxter and his friends, we mark some spirit of candour and concession in this passage. Moreover, having occasion to refer to Mr. Binney's interesting and suggestive volume on Church-Life in Australia, he speaks of it in high terms of " admiration," and designates Mr. Binney an "eminent Nonconformist divine" (p. 10). As respects his own Church and the differences of opinion and, to some extent, of forms, which are found within it, Mr. Sandford is, as might he expected, in favour of a large and tolerant comprehension. " The necessary conditions are, Truth, Comprehension, Charity. Its tests and formulas of doctrine ought, therefore, to he few and simple, laying traps for none, excluding none who do not perversely exclude them- selves. Otherwise, the Church becomes a sect " (p. 53). This is one of the points on which our High-Churchman refers (in a note) to Mr. Maurice's remarks, in his "im- portant work, entitled. The Kingdom of Christ." " Important work," indeed; but it is evident that Mr. Sandford does not understand what is its true import, and wherein consists its importance. Moreover, the "Charity" of Mr. Sandford is not of such a quality as to enable him to love Nonconformists any otherwise than as erring and contumacious, though it may be unconsciously erring, subjects of his own queenly Church. Even Dr. Wordsworth admits that Nonconformists, ARCHDEACON SANDFORD's POINT OF VIEW. 8o though unhapjiily in a state of schism, may yet be children of God, and spiritual members of Christ, claiming all such as real, though not willing, members of the apostolic Church of England — the only possible Church of this country. Mr. Sandford, we apprehend, substantially agrees in this, as in most things, with his abler and more learned brother of Westminster. For the rest, Mr. Sandford looks with great and natural rej)ugnance upon the strifes and divisions which disturb and rend his own Church. "Nothing," he insists, "can justify the jealousies, the party names, the separate interests, which embroil and divide Churchmen. Those parti-coloured banners under which silly men and women range themselves, — those criminations which they bandy to and fro, — their jubilations at the preference and preponderance of their ovm clique, — the readiness with which they receive and propagate reports in- jurious to those who differ from them, — impede religion and degrade the Church " (p. 73). Such is the man, such his principles and views, whose ex- position of the defects and needs of his Church, and of the remedies which are to bring to her full prosperity and functional perfection, we are now about to analyse. Such a man reading the Bampton Lectures at Oxford may speak with authority, and out of the fulness of experience and knowledge. Perhaps we cannot better introduce our readers, at a glance, to the Lecturer's point of view, than by quoting some pages in his closing lecture, in which he sums up, in general terms, a great part of what he had set forth in preceding lectures : "When wc view the past, the wonder ought not to bo, that the English Church has a great work still to do and much ground to recover, — that there are numerous dissidents from its fold, — that there are multitudes ostcnsiblj- belonging to it, baptized with its baptism, called by its name, — whose spiritual condition is a scandal 80 THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH : DEFECTS AND REMEDIES. and a snare to it. If it liad not been a true branch, of Christ's Church, and planted on the Eock of Ages, it must have come to an end long ago. When we recall its somnolency, its unfaithfulness, its repose on an arm of flesh — what lias been called the dreariness of political Anglicanism — how, for long, its dignitaries, and emoluments, and the trusts these involved, were bestowed — how its cxu-es were served — how its parochial offices were filled — what was the condition of its fabrics, and the manner in which its services were performed, — we must feel that but for its Liturgy, and its seminal principles of life, and the truths of which it is the depository — and, above all, the infinite forbearance of God, — its light must have been quenched, and its candlestick removed out of its place. " But then, to invalidate its claims as a Church, you have to prove that its system is to blame ; that its principles are erroneous ; that it fails, when the conditions of success are complied with. "There is no question about the lethargy, and the nepotism, and the shortcomings, and the wrong doings of so-called Churchmen in days gone by, — any more than there is about their imperfections and failures now. But these are attributable to a neglect of the true principles and actual mission of our Church. They occurred because its rule was disobeyed, and its observances were neglected, and its truths were kept back, and its offices were improperly filled — because what it enjoined was set at nought, and what it forbade was done. Had its spirit been iinderstood, and its requirements complied with, the religious life of those who belonged to it would have been alto- gether different. We should have had devotion in the reading-desk, and light in the pulpit, and exemplary holiness in the parish. *' To establish the Church of England in the heart of the nation — to recover those who have forsaken its fold — you must embody its principles, exhibit its doctrines, and exemplify its teaching. " It asks for greater fi-eedom, and for fuUer development — to have its parochial and diocesan system carried out — to have its offices properly filled, and its ordinances duly administered. It needs more bishops, more clergy, more abundant and more efficient ministrations, more co-operation on the part of its members, more systematic reli- gious training, more places of worship. It needs to have its property secured, and rightly dispensed. It needs to have the means of mani- festing tself to every man's conscience, and carrying its message to every man's door. THE HONESTY OF THE LECTURER. 87 "The National Church cannot adequately discharge its mission, — but it is misrepresented and misunderstood — if it Ls cramped, and crippled, and badly served ; if it is shorn of its strength ; if you deal with it as the Philistines did with Samson. " Give it greater liberty, and greater scope ; give it a due supply of the weapons of its spiritual armoiiry. Let its apostles, and its teachers, and its helps, and its governments, and its administrations, be such as are enjoined in Scripture, and are proportioned to the exigencies of the day. Give it rulers and pastors according to God's heart. And then see if it will not approve itself as the Spouse of Christ, and the spi- ritual mother of your people." — Pp. 198-201. There can be no doubt as to the honesty with which Mr. Saudford has laid bare the failings and faults of his Church ; there can equally be no doubt of the justice of his criticisms, and the accuracy of his statements. The whole volume is in perfect accordance with the Lecturer's assertion towards its close : "I have wished to exaggerate nothing, to extenuate nothing, to keep back nothing; but to admit blemishes and deficiencies, candidly and explicitly; and to put forth remedies, as they have suggested themselves to my own mind during a varied pastoral experience of many years " (p. 196). Mr. Sandford begins to deal with this branch of his subject in his third lecture. He draws a somewhat gloomy picture of the general condition of the English nation. " Six millions in England are calculated never to enter a place of worship, or make any profession of religion. The National Church has little hold of the operative classes ; of the middle order of the community in our large cities, many are disaffected to the Establishment. And as to the bulk of the humbler classes of om* people, it would be easy to furnish instances from amongst them of as profound an ignorance of God, and of a moral degradation as gross and intensified, as ever existed in Pagan Rome, or could be found to-day in Central Africa " (p. 67). Infidelity, licentiousness, profanity, commercial dishonesty, combine to fix a mark of unrighteousness and irreligion upon 88 THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH : DEFECTS AND REMEDIES. the age, notwithstanding all the religious zeal and life with which these sore evils are intermingled (pp. 68, 69). Secta- rian divisions aggi'avate all these evils, and prevent the easy and effectual apiDlication of the needful remedies. Dissent is "among the foremost" of the "obstructions" which impede the conscientious and earnest minded pastor (p. 69). Dis- union within the Church itself, although the Lecturer hopes it may be what he calls a "decreasing hindrance," is yet another and most serious obstacle in the way of the Church's efficiency and prevalence. The evils, however, which the Lecturer thus describes are rather effects than causes. It is his business to search into the causes of the state of things which he exhibits as so lamentable, with a view to discover the remedies. .The first of these causes which the Lecturer sets forth is the insufficient supply of clergy in the country, especially in the large towns. Ignoring, of course, the clergy and the Church-organizations of all other denominations but his ovm, he states the "theory" of "our parochial scheme" to be "a clergyman for each thousand" of the people; but for to^vn parishes thinks the demand may be limited to a pastor for two or three thousand. He points to the city of Worcester as a bright example of what ought to be in other towns. In that city there are at least twenty clergy to the thirty-two thousand inhabitants. Unfortunately, however, for his argument, it is the fact that such cities as Worcester, Norwich, Exeter, and Hereford, and such towns as Cirencester, where the influence of the Church of England is universal and all-controlling, are notorious as being deficient, notwithstanding theii' outward devotion to the Established Church, in general intelligence, public spirit, and civic and social morality, especially as compared with towns of the same size, and under the like general conditions, where there is a more even balance between Churchmanship and Nonconformity, such as York, Lincoln, Bedford, or Penzance, DEFECTS. 89 or even as larger towns, under less favourable circumstances in many respects, such as Hull. Our observation and ex- perience have taught us that a town is best off which is well provided with both Episcopal and Nonconformist congre- gations in about equal proportions, and so as fairly to com- mand the whole population. Another defect of modern Church-of-Englandism which Mr. Sandford insists upon is the want of adequate provision for the poor in the churches, and in general the pew- system, which he would altogether explode. It is well known that this is the feeling of Churchmen generally. As anxious to carry out thoroughly and consistently the principles of State- Churchism, they can have no other feeling. The idea of universal pervasion dictates this; the perfection of the paro- chial theory demands it. But if, as we believe, the Church of England, although retaining its endowments and its sacred edifices, is destined never again to be the spiritual mother, in real influence and efficiency, of more than a moiety of the people of England, then the pew-question may well be re- garded in another light. To insist upon the sittings being all free, even in Anglican churches, may perhaps be to lose the substance in pursuing the shadow. Here, however, is the dilemma, which is certainly a grave one. In parish churches to charge pew-rents is obviously inconsistent, inequitable, and illegal, — contrary to the very definition of a parish church. And yet pew-holders claim their customary family- pews as their own property, and will suffer none else to occupy them, — evidently an abuse and dishonesty. Hence the demand that pews should be abolished. The district churches are not in the same difficulty, and, but for the pew system, would often be seriously deficient in revenue. The pew-rents compensate for the poverty of the endowinent. Mr. Sandford would have the endowments increased, and the pew- rents done away. But can the former be accomplished ? 90 THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH : DEFECTS AND REMEDIES. Whatever, however, may be the varieties of opinion re- specting the question of pews and pew-rents, there are some points in which all Christian people ought to be agreed. The sittings for the poor ought to be as convenient as those for the well-to-do, ought to be easy of access from the door, and as near to it as can be well arranged, and ought to be in full proportion to the requirements of the surrounding popula- tion : — " It is in evidence," says the Lecturer, " on the testimony of one who held the office of archdeacon, that in a church in which, by Act of Parhament, one-thhd of the sittings was reserved for the poor, the warden, on being asked to point them out, said at last, ' I have one free sitting in one pew.' It was a little bracket in the passage. * But, said he, ' the poor never comes here ; it serves me to put my hat upon." " In a church in London it was ehcited by the Bishop of Exeter, that the free sittings, which are in the roof, out of sight of the minister in both the pulpit and the reading-desk, must be reached by an ascent of nearly one hundred steps." — Page 79. These may be extreme cases ; but there are many approach- ing to them in iniquity. That these are parish churches is a grievous aggravation of the offence. But even in proprietary churches, and in denominational chapels, it is an undeniable offence against the spirit of Christianity that there should be an inadequate supply of comfortable and accessible free sittings. In some instances with which we are acquainted there are none, or none available; in few is there the just and upright proportion. All this is lamentably adverse to the spread of Christianity among the masses of the people. The family-pew, indeed, is to us a beautiful sight, and a truly blessed institution; and on all hands it is conceded that perfectly free churches must do away with family-pews. The model of Komanist cathedrals and churches is set before us, with much ignorant sentimentalism about the devotion of the poor people, who are seen at all hours of the day, THE PEW-SYSTEM. 91 and on all days of the week, thronging the pavements. But surely those who prefer this sight to that of the well-filled and intelligently-devout circle of the family-pew, have yet to learn in what consists the" true "beauty of holiness," are strangers to the meaning of "reasonable service." By no means, indeed, are we prepared to relinquish pews. We can in no respect afford to dispense with them. The loss of the moral and religious influence of the family-pew would be irreparable. And although this be a much lower consideration, yet the pecuniary loss would be most serious ; we imagine, in its kind equally irreparable. The charge for the advantage of a fixed sitting in the house of God — not otherwise to be secured — is one which no one grudges, which all feel to be reasonable. At the same time we lift up our voice against luxurious saloon-pews for the rich, standing in odious contrast with the stifl', cold, cramped, and comfortless seats for the poor. We would, in fact, have no difference between the free seats and the pews, except such fittings and furniture as the occupiers of the pews might see good to provide. Mr. Sandford, whom on this as on all other points Mr. Disraeli followed, in his speech at the Wycombe Diocesan Meeting, to which we have already referred, regards the small endo-^-ments of many of the clerical incumbencies as another great evil, and points with undisguised discontent to the large Church possessions in the hands of lay impro- priators. He thinks that "the spoliation" of which he com- plains, " the confiscation of ecclesiastical revenue in the six- teenth century," was "the cause of much of the spiritual destitution under which we labour " (p. 100). This is one of the weakest and most prejudiced portions of his volume. He shuts his eyes to most material facts, in order to bring himself to this conclusion. He forgets that the present spiritual destitution is not, for the most part, co-incident with 92 THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH : DEFECTS AND REMEDIES. those parts of the country where the possessions of the Church are in the hands of lay impropriators, but is concentrated in limited areas, where population has multiplied owing to the new forces of modern industry, and for which no ecclesiastical provisions of a thousand years ago could have in the least sufficed; he forgets, too, that since the time of "spoliation" there have been many and heavy Parliamentary grants and endowments, which have furnished at least a quota worthy of note towards repairing the losses of which he complains ; he forgets that Church property has shared, to a remarkable extent, both in town and country, in the advantages of modern enterprise, and that its value has in consequence been so greatly enhanced that, whatever may be its relative amount, as compared with the ecclesiastical wealth of the fifteenth century, the English Church, of the poverty of which he and Mr. Disraeli complain, is at this moment the wealthiest national church in the world. Indeed, if many of the clergy are in deep poverty, the better-placed are in a good measure, on the showing of the Lecturer himself, liable to be charged with the "spoliation" of their poorer brethren. It is well known that the first-fruits and tenths of all Church lands had been usurped by the Eoman see, and that to this usurpation the Crown succeeded in Tudor times. It is also known that Queen Anne absolutely remitted these first-fruits and tenths in the case of the poorest livings, and made them over, in the case of the better livings, to the Church of England as a general fund for the augmentation of the income of poor livings. This is what is called Queen Anne's Bounty. Now these first-fruits and tenths constitute evidently a sort of tax on the richer livings for the benefit of the poorer, with this important point, however, to be noted, that they never belonged — at least, that from time immemorial they have not belonged — to the incumbent clergy, but either to the Romish see or to the Crown. The fact is, however, MISAPPROPRIATION OF REVENUES. 93 that the greatest part of the benefit, intended only for the poorer clergy, has been reaped by the wealthier : " It cannot be doubted," says the Lecturer, " that the present valua- tion, by which the payments of the clergy to Queen Anne's Bounty are regulated, bears no sort of proportion to the actual value. The assessment was originally made in the reign of Henry VIII. ; it has never since been re-\ised ; it is not one-fourth of the present nett value on an average ; in the case of some of our larger benefices it is con- siderably less." — Page 103. " If the real ' tenths' of the ecclesiastical nett incomes were now paid, and first-fruits left out entii'ely, the actual product would not be less than .£300,000 per annum. In heu of this, if a rate were imposed graduating upwards upon all livings above £200 yearly, beginning with sixpence in the pound, it would, without hurting any one, raise a nett yearly sum of £120,000, and provide for the endowment of seventy or eighty churches yearly, at £1,500 average each." — Page 225. The passages which we are about to quote are very sug- gestive. Nonconformist readers may here and there with advantage take a hint to themselves. They, too, have not unfrequently thought of multiplying places of worship, when they should first have seen to the due maintenance of the pastors. Many amongst them, again, have, in their ignorance and their desire of finding an excuse for inclining towards the Chm'ch of the wealthy and the fashionable, attributed to their own clergy failings which this passage proves, and men of understanding and education would have perceived, to be more justly chargeable on the clergy of the Establishment : — " I would put it to men of intelligence and generous nature, whether, if they expect to have clergy with the education of scholars, and the habits, much more the principles, of gentlemen, they must not afford them the means to maintain a respectable position in society — whether, if allowed to marry, the clergy should not have provision to bring up and to educate their children — whether, if they are to bo alert and diligent, — with clear heads and hearts enlarged in the day-time, — they must not be allowed theu- night's rest unbroken by the gnawings 94 THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH : DEFECTS AND REMEDIES. of care, and the pressure of pecuniary anxiety — whether, in a rich and luxurious ago like this, when talent finds a ready market, and every profession has its recompense, the clergy ought to be the de- pendent ministers of independent congregations. " I urge this the more, because the poverty of the pastor and the opulence of his flock are not unfrequently painfully contrasted ; and it is in rich and thriving communities that the disproportion between the services and the emoluments of the clergy is at times most observ- able."—Pp. 97, 98. " Another hindrance to the mission of the Church — and that of terrible magnitude — is the poverty of many of our most laborious incumbencies. It may even be stated, as the rule, that the clergy are worst remunerated where their duties are most onerous. The cry, tUl very recently, has been for buildings, when the primary consideration should have been endowment. And public and private charity has been lavished upon churches, while the clergymen who serve them have been left to starve. " The evil in every way of such a system is tremendous. You place a man with onerous and anxious duties, and with crippled means, in the midst of a dense, and impoverished, and disaffected population. You overtask his physical and mental energies. You throw him into hourly contact with distress, which he can by no possibility relieve. You deprive him of the influence which the exercise of a wise benevo- lence would procure him. You demand from him superhuman exer- tions, when his spirit is broken, and his rest disturbed by his own domestic anxieties. You drive one incumbent to eke out his liveli- hood by tuition, and another by secular employment. You extort such confessions as these : ' My clerical income is so wretched that I am not able to devote my whole time, as I ought to do, to my church and district :' ' My endowment is only ,£80, and, being a family man, I am obliged to educate my children myseK.' " As one consequence, we have a lower type of man and feebler ministrations, where ability and energy are most required. Ordinarily our best and ablest men are not found in the most important and pro- minent pastoral positions. Our town parishes are often inadequately served. And just where commanding qualities are most called for — in the centres of intelligence and civilisation — our Church is often the worst represented ; while generally there are complaints, — and these loud and increasing, — that the homilies of the clergy faD below both INADEQUATE PAYMENT OF THE CLERGY. 95 the requirements and the literature of our age, and that the press, and not the pxilpit, is the instructor of our people. " Noble exceptions there doubtless are ; — and men of lofty intellect, and a zeal truly apostolic, may be found labouring on a pittance in the most important, as vrch as in the poorest and most degraded, districts. Yet it is the complaint of one, perhaps the most qualified of any man in England to speak on such a subject, — I mean the present Dean of Chichester, — that the best educated of our clergy are not commonly found in the great manufacturing towns, where their in- fluence is most required: 'where we have a commercial aristocracy, fuU of enterprise and intellect, whose minds, from constant exercise, are vigorous and acute ; men of literature and science, — who, if they are to find in the clergy their associates and friends, must find in them companions, not only their superiors in theological science, but at least their equals in every department of human learning.' And then men talk of the inefficiency of the clergy, of their lack of eloquence and learning, of the failure of the parochial system, of the degeneracy of the Church, — even of Christianity itself as effete, and of the Gospel as having lost its power, — when in fact the action of the Church is suspended, and the agencies of religion are either crippled or with- held. And this in the face of what is now happily established — that wherever, with a reliance upon God, the suitable agencies are em- ployed, the Church recovers its influence, and the cause of vital Chris- tianity revives."— Pp. 81-83. To the poverty of so many of the livings Mr. Sandford attributes in great measure the deficient supply of competent and able candidates for the ministry. The inducements pre- sented to able and vigorous young men by other professions are so superior, he thinks, in most respects, to those offered by the ministry of the Church, that the greater number of such men are "being drafted into secular professions " (p. 83). That this has its effect in reducing the number of competent and educated candidates, we do not doubt. But, as we have ah-eady shown in this volume, the whole system of the Church of England in regard to its candidates for the ministry is faulty, and needs to be revolutionised. If the supply of can- didates from the best classes were all that could be desired, 9G THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH : DEFECTS AND REMEDIES. still the means to convert this superior material into " able ministers of the New Testament " are wanting. To fill the ranks of the clergy with thinkers, scholars, gentlemen, men of vigour and knowledge of the world, is one thing; to fill them with Christian pastors and teachers is, after all, a higher and another thing. To judge by the tests to which the candidate for orders is subjected, one might suppose that unfit persons could never find their way into the sacred places of the Establishment. His bishop, his college, the parish in which he has resided, vouchers of the highest respectability, must all combine in attesting the excellence of the candidate's character, and his qualifications for the holy office; and he must undergo a personal examination " of some days' duration," in his " scho- lastic and theological attainments, and religious principle and creed" (pp. 117, 118). Nevertheless, Archdeacon Sandford bears witness that, "notwithstanding these precautions, unfit persons do at times gain admittance into the orders of our Church. Without personal piety, without religious earnest- ness, without any aptitude or liking for sacred functions, — even with a conscious distaste for these, — it may be, with loose habits and a damaged reputation, — persons sometimes intrude themselves into our ministry " (p. 119). The reason of this is not far to seek. The demand for clergymen much exceeds the supply of suitable candidates; consequently un- suitable persons must be ordained, or the livings and curacies lie vacant. The way to cure this evil, is to take steps for ascertaining, calling forth, and then for efficiently instructing and training, duly gifted and qualified men for the work of the ministry. Till this is done, it can be of no avail to multiply tests and vouchers. Mr. Sandford, as we shall see, is fully awake to the truth of this. Meantime, let us hear his complaints respecting the deficiencies of many of the . clerical neophytes of his Church. CURRENT COMPLAINTS AND PRESENT DEMANDS. 97 " As, therefore, our Church would retain its hold on the national mind, and maintain the cause of God amongst us, its clergy must be duly qualified for their mission. They must be conversant with the themes they undertake to handle, and apt to teach others also. Meagre attainments, a bad address, want of rhetorical power, are not compatible with their position as public instructors in days like these. " The laity complain of the bad elocution of many of our younger clergy, of their inexperience in pastoral duties, of their mediocrity in the pulpit, of their want of breadth of view, and grasp of mind, — of their inability to catechise a class in the national school, or to take a part in parochial details, or to address an audience with the freedom and force which might be expected from a well-educated gentleman, much more from ' a scribe instructed unto the kingdom of heaven.' They allege that our newly- ordained curates, for the most part, are mere no\'ices in the sick-room, and in domiciliaiy visitation ; and are neither so ripe in attainment, nor so ready in utterance, as the licentiates of dissenting bodies. " They allege, moreover, that in the cuiTcnt literature of the day, — even in the newspapers, — religious topics are handled with a vigour nnd an ability, rarely to be met with in the discourses of the clergy. •' Now it must be admitted by all, who take a practical view of the subject, that the standard proposed to the clergy of this country is not only a high one, but demands qualifications almost incompatible. They are required to be diligent in pastoral duties, and at the same time furnished for public ministrations ; ' they are to serve tables,' and yet to ' give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.' They are to ' meditate upon these things, and to give themselves whoUj^ to them ; that their profiting may appear to all ;' yet withal to be prompt and diligent in practical details. " Other communions recognise in those who minister a diversity of gifts, and admit of a division of labour. And this on the principle laid down by the Apostles, 'that having gifts diff'ering according to the grace that is given,' * as every man hath received the gift, he should minister as of the ability that God giveth.' Thus Eome selects her instruments with regard to their different qualifications; and assigns to each his appropriate work. Amongst Dissenters, oratorical gifts are believed to be chiefly prized ; and ministerial energj' to be mainly employed in the pulpit. But with us every man m orders — whatever his capacity — whether priest or deacon — is H 98 THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH : DEFECTS AND REMEDIES. expected to be student, pastor, preacher ; to occupy the pulpit, to work the parish, to di'Ul the school, to manage the accounts, to superintend the charities, to take the lead in every beneficent and scientific institution ; and to bear a prominent part in the social intercourse of life. " It avails little to cavil at such requirements ; still less to take umbrage at strictures which, if sometimes unreasonable, cannot harm us, if we learn fi'om them a more excellent way. Our wisdom is to see that, as far as may be, our acquirements and practice as clergy- men keep jiace with the spirit and standard of our age. " And this pleads forcibly for some formative process, some distinct preparatory training for Holy Orders, such as is insisted on in every other walk of life. Professional training is required in all to whom secular interests are committed. We trust neither our persons nor our property to the ignorant or the inexperienced. We do not con- sider it enough that practitioners should have good natural abilities, and have received a superior general education ; in them we require special preparatory study, and professional practical knowledge." — Pp. 123-126. " We are, as a Church, without any such special systematic training for the clerical ofiice; and in this respect are unfavourably contrasted with almost every other religious body. " The Church of Eome has its Propaganda, and numerous semi- naries for educating its clergy in every part of its obedience. The Protestant communions of Germany, Switzerland, and Scotland are similarly provided. So is the reformed Episcopal Church of America. Amongst the dissenting denominations in our own country also there is regular and systematic preparation for their ministry. Can it then, be a matter of surprise if many of the most practical, experienced, and pious members of the English Church feel and deplore its deficiency in this respect, — and ask for the future pastors of its people that course of study and special training, which the theological students of aU other religious communities enjoy ?" — Page 127. Mr. Sandford expresses himself as favourable to such sup- plementary theological institutions, for the reception and training of University graduates, as those already spoken of in this volume. It would appear, however, that, lecturing in Oxford, he felt in some degree restrained from saying all NEED OF SPECIAL TRAINING FOR THE CLERGY. 99 that he feels on that subject. There is a prejudice at Oxford, shared by a number of eminent professors and college digni- taries, against any course of instruction elsewhere than in the University. Obvious reasons might account for a jealous feeling on the part of college professors in regard to any sup- plementary collegiate institutions; there may also be some just ground for the doubts which have been entertained by many as to the healthy tendency of such institutions. Every- thing must, of course, depend on the influences which prevail within them ; these may he priestly, castish, or monastic. It is also evident that a two years' training in such a supple- mentary college, added to a three or four years' residence at the University, involves a very long abstraction from family life and the general world, and also a considerable addition of expense to the student or his family. Nevertheless, it would seem to be very difficult to secure within the Univer- sity, and during their term of residence as under-graduates, the requisite special instruction and discipline and the right influence for students, in order to prepare them duly for entering upon the responsibilities and engagements of the pastoral office. The first vital deficiency prolongs its evil influence throughout. There exists no instrumentality for eliciting, cherishing, and testing beforehand the spirit and qualifications of candidates for the ministry. Young men are left, after they have gone to the University, to decide upon "the Church," as they might upon any other profes- sion. There is no preliminary exercise of gifts, no call of the Church, no opportunity for a clear manifestation of mental and spiritual adaptation, and of a providential designation. Mr. Sandford evidently doubts as to the possibility of the Universities affording the needful special preparation for the candidates. He prefers, and he approves, the method of instruction in theological colleges. But he is most of all in favour of a plan to which the attention of Nonconformists h2 100 THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH : DEFECTS AND REMEDIES. has often been directed, and which, so far as it has been em- ployed among them, under prudent care and favourable cir- cumstances, has produced as good results as it appears to have done within Mr. Sandford's experience, in the case of young men training for the Anglican ministry. He is "mainly in favour" of such " a course of teaching and training supple- mental to the Universities, as may be furnished in a well- ordered parish, under the supervision of an incumbent of adequate ability and experience." " It has always appeared to me," lie says, " that the insight iuto pastoral work, the practice in the schools, the domiciliary visitation, the acquaintance with parochial machinery, the contact with the middle and poorer classes, the points, in fact, in which oar younger clergy are generally and, under existing circumstances, necessarily so deficient, would be better attained in this than in any other way." — Page 137. Mr. Sandford, as we have seen, does not spare to expose the deficiencies of his own Church and of his brother clergy. He speaks with a brave and wise candour on such points, such as, we fear, Nonconformist ministers do not always exemplify, when speaking of their own Churches. But in his notes he introduces quotations, chiefly from critics of his own community, which are much more outspoken than even his own text. For example, in reference to the point with which we have been dealing, he gives in a note an extract from an article in the Christian Remembrancer for January, 1862, on Father Felix and his conferences at Notre Dame, from which we quote the following passages : — " Most worthy of imitation, in one notable respect at least, is the system of theological and pulpit training existing in the French Church Among us, theology is seldom studied as a science, frequently it is not studied at all. . . . " In another respect does this portion of the life of Father Felix teach us a valuable lesson. When once we do possess an able and eloquent preacher, what use do we make of him ? Is he placed in such an appropriate sphere of duty as is likely to aflford full and ANGLICAN PREACHERS AND PREACHING. 101 unfettered scope to his powers ? .... No ! instead of regularly, or at least at stated periods, occupjang our cathedral or metropolitan pulpits, ho may be vegetating, unhonoured and unknown, on some paltry curacy in some remote village, or be relegated to the headship of a school, or the vice-principalship of a hall, Avith but scanty oppor- timities of exercising his peculiar talents, and even then possibly only in a veiy limited and contracted sphere." — Pp. 124, 125, From the same article the lecturer quotes with approval the following passage : — " The tameucss, the monotony, the want of naturalness and reality, the undignified attitude, the listless and inexpressive countenance, the soul-withering coldness, with which sermons arc delivered in this country, strike foreigners particularly. If there be some exaggera- tion, there is at the same time much truth in the following passage from Coquerel's recently published volume on Preaching. [Here we translate.] "The Anglican bishop or clergyman, conveniently supported (accoucU) on a velvet cushion large enough to receive his portfolio, read with the most contented placidity, without risking any other action than the movement of turning the leaf, and scarcely allowed himself, at distant intervals, what is called the ' waving of the hand,' that is to say, the effort of lifting the hand to let it fall again imme- diately on the edge (rehord) of the pulpit. It was a systematic and constant denial given to the old maxim, that action is the essence of oratory." — Pago 293. Another point on which Mr. Sandford insists, is the ne- cessity of more effective and economical provision for pro- ceeding against and dealing with clerical delinquents. He remarks, in a note (pp. 119-123), that "in the recent no- torious case of the Bishop of London versus Bonwell, though the defendant was cast in every case, his Lordship's expenses are understood to have exceeded £1,200 " (p. 290). But, as respects that which is the great and vital deficiency of the Chui-ch of England, the absence of any provision what- ever, either for living and truly reciprocal Christian fellow- ship, or for godly discipline, among the professed members 102 THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH : DEFECTS AND REMEDIES. and communicants of the Church, Mr. Sanclford says not one word. That evil, in the constitution of the Erastian and secularised Church of England, lies too deep to he eradicated. They will be the best friends and the most effective defenders of this grand and beautiful, but mixed and worldly. Church- establishment, who shall show the way to her reform in this vital i3oint. This lies at the root of all her defects and evils ; and if this could be remedied, other things, in due course, would right themselves. To several of the remedies proposed by Mr. Sandford for the faults and defects of the Church of England, we have been led to refer in speaking of the evils which they are intended to meet. He would multiply clergymen, divide parishes, largely increase the number of districts. He would improve poor endowments, without materially reducing the number and wealth of the rich preferments.* He calculates that to ac- complish what he deems necessary there would be required an addition of 2,300 clergymen, and of an annual revenue of half a million of money. He would very largely increase the number of the bishops, and would abate materially from the splendour of their estate, leaving, however, a certain number of great " spiritual peers " still in the Upper House of Parliament. " What is asked for," he tells us, "is prelates of an humbler type, less dependent for their station upon * "We do not exactly admii'e the while the income is £1,300 a year, manner in which the Archdeacon keeps Staple, it appears, hss been or is to be clear of the idea of improving the poorer sepai'ated from Adisham. In that case, livings by subtracting from those rich the income of Adisham will be reduced benefices in which the actual amount of to £700 ; but the population will be labour and responsibility is out of all only 410. (See Times, November 8th, proportion small when compared with 1862.) About £1 12.9. per inhabitant, the income. Take, for instance, the including children — not much less than living of Adisham and Staple, to which £8 per family ! If all such cases as these was presented IMr. Villiers, and about were duly rectified, there would at least which so much was said in the papers. be a sensible and material contribution The population is very small indeed. towards the reform so greatly needed. EVILS AND REMEDIES. 103 outward rank than on the sacredness of their office ; — who would command respect by their learning, and win affection by their ai)ostolic labours and their exemplary devotion and self-denial" (p. 110). He would call into action a sort of inferior diaconate, un- paid spiritual labourers, whose office should not be indelible, nor conferred by ordination, but by the commission of the bishop, and revocable by his act. Their office would be, in effect, that of Scripture-reader and sick-visitor combined (pp. 112, 113). He is in favour of organizing and employing deaconesses, hi harmony with the principles of Protestantism, and as a pai-t of the established machinery of the Church. He would further associate the laity with the clergy, not in Convention or in Synods, but in all works of practical Christian enterprise and charity, and especially in church- meetings and on diocesan committees. He would obtain the sway of religious education through the land, not only by means of Day-schools, but, if possible, of Sunday-schools. Here, however, we must interject a word. It is impossible to read the Archdeacon's observations, and the passages which he quotes, especially in his Notes, on the subject of Sunday-schools, without being impressed wdth the conviction that the Church of England, notwithstanding its zeal in schooling the children of the people (for the most part, after a certain low type), will never gain much sway by means of its educational activity, until it better under- stands the secret of conducting these schools with interest and efficiency. Church Sunday-schools, it appears, are commonly places of dull drudgery which the children feel the greatest repugnance to attend, and are conducted by an inferior and illiterate class of teachers. Dr. Hessey, in his Bampton Lectures, had borne testimony to the same effect, and has attained to the recondite and notable con- 104 THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH : DEFECTS AND REMEDIES. elusion that, to relieve the task-work of the Sunday-schools, and to prevent the effect of them from being to infuse into the children's minds a hatred of the Lord's Day — a play- ground, which he designates " a recreation-ground," should be provided in connexion with every Sunday-school, in which the children should be allowed certain " regulated amuse- ments at intervals throughout the day." Mr. Sandford approves of Dr. Hessey's suggestion, and quotes at length "the important passage" in which it is given. To those who are familiar with the lively, happy Sunday-schools of Nonconformists, especially in the North of England, all this will sound passing strange. But strangest of all will appear to such the remedy by which Mr. Sandford and Dr. Hessey would win their scholars to a due and religious ob- servance of the Day of Christ. The Archdeacon touches but lightly upon the question of liturgical revision. It is evident, however, that he is altogether favourable to certain moderate, yet impoi"tant, changes, which might go far towards removing scruples and offences on the right hand and on the left (p. 187). We can hardly be mistaken also in supposing that his influence has been in favour of the relaxation of the terms of sub- scription for clergymen. If all should be accomplished which is sketched in these Lectures, — and doubtless much of it will be accomplished, probably before many years have gone by, — the benefit will be great to the Church of England, to our common Chris- tianity, to the nation at large. Not less will the benefit be great, as we think, to the other Christian denominations of this land. It is evident that the leaders of reform in the Church of England are, generally speaking, well agreed among themselves as to the platform according to which their Church is to be reformed. There is a very close con- formity between what Dr. Wordsworth proposed in 1854 and PROBABLE REFORMS IN THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 105 what Mr. Sandford now recommends. We expect to see the greatest part of it accomplished, if our lives should be spared for ten or fifteen years. But all this will not restore to the Church of England the spu-itual supremacy within this nation. The living organiza- tions and manifold forms now conspicuous in England will not cease or languish. Episcopalianism will be a great power, but not the only, hardly the paramount, organiza- tion. In truth without such a radical reform as shall make effectual provision for true reciprocal fellowship and for godly discipline among its members, and shall also ex- tricate its polity and administration from the meshes of lay-patronage and of merely political control, the Church of England, whatever functional and merely administrative improvements may be eflected, will still remain a mixed, worldly, and, to a large extent, a spiritually ineffective Church. Other Churches may be, in some degree, liable to the like charges; but the worst abuses of the Church of England are inseparably bound up with its constitution, as by law established. As ourselves well-wishers of the Established Church, and desirous that its days may be pro- longed in growing efficiency and undiminished lustre, we trust that a wise, well-considered, and at the same time thorough, reform may adapt it to the conditions of the incoming age, and save it from divisions, from degeneracy, and from decay. THE PUEITAN ANCESTORS AND HIGH-CHUECH PARENTS OF THE WESLEYS: A SKETCH AND A STUDY. 1630—1750.* The propensity to hero-worship, which is part of our human nature, includes within its scope heroines no less than heroes. To this all heathen mythology and the legendary history of every nation bear witness. Still more emphatically is the same fact verified by the Eoman hagiology. Nor has the tendency which finds its most striking exemplification in the fervent Mariolatry of the Eomish superstition been without its influence in purer churches than that of Eome, and in both the early and the later ages of Christianity. The names of Helena, the empress mother of Constantine ; of the empress Theodora ; of Monica, the mother of Au- gustine ; of Margaret of Valois, the idol of the Huguenots ; of Queen Elizabeth ; are all instances of the same tendency. The merits of all these women have been passionately magnified. They have been exalted into heroines or saints ; and their admirers have taken their fill of that woman- worship in which most people so greatly delight. Having these thoughts in our mind, we opened Mr. Kirk's book in a somewhat critical mood. We were disposed • London Quar. Review, ATpvil, 1864. Biography." By the Rev. John Kii'k. "The Mother of the Wesley s : a London: H. J. Tresidder. 1864. THE MOTHER OF THE WESLEYS. 107 to be critical equally ui)on our own prepossessions in favour of Susanna Wesley, and upon the homage which we expected to be paid to her by her biographer. The result, however, has been different from what we had expected. We had previously read a good deal respecting the mother of the Wesleys, and had bestowed some study upon her character ; but we had never set ourselves coolly and critically to investigate and estimate her claims to the admiration which has grown up for her among the Methodists, and of which the latest and most eloquent tribute has been paid by Mr. Punshon, in his lecture on Wesley. We had never seriously oitempted to distinguish and determine how much of the homage rendered to her was due to her personal merits, and how much had been superadded on account of her relationship to the founder of Methodism. We have now endeavoured to do this ; and we have to say that the more we have studied the life and character of Mrs. Wesley, the higher has risen our estimate of her excellence as a Christian wife and mother, and of the rare gifts and ac- complishments of understanding, by which she was enabled to exercise so wonderful an influence on the training ■ and development, intellectual no less than moral, of one of the most gifted and every way remarkable families of which the world has any knowledge. Mr. Kirk's volume, however, is not merely a biography of Mrs. Wesley ; it is quite as much a biography of her husband ; it sketches the history also, so far as this is known, of the ancestry of both Mr. and Mrs. Wesley ; and it furnishes us with a particular account of all the children of Mr. and Mrs. Wesley of whom separate memoirs had not previously been published. This is as it should be ; what was needed was an authentic and sufficient account of the Epworth family. For such a volume there has long been a demand, which Mr. Kirk has now satisfied. We are happy 108 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. to avail ourselves of its apiDearance, and of the help which it affords, to give a view of the ancestral antecedents and influences and the family life which environed the Wesleys, and which contributed towards determining their character and their course. It is not a fact to be lightly passed over, that the Wesleys were well-bred on both sides and for many generations. So far as can be ascertained, several unbroken lines of ancestry, all of whom were gentlemen, scholars, divines, and earnest Christians — of women, too, of corresponding quality and character — converged in the family at Epworth. The influence upon the character of such breeding, con- tinued through successive generations, is a point which has not been suJEticiently studied. It is great as respects the quickness and culture of the intellectual faculties. It is still greater as respects temper and disposition. The true and thorough gentleman, merely as a gentleman, has been so bred as to exemplify many of the secondary virtues of Christian culture, many of those results (for such they are indirectly) of the highest and most penetrating Christian refinement, which a man destitute of original culture, even though he may have much more of the power of godliness in his heart than many a true gentleman, yet finds it often exceedingly difficult even to apprehend in their true deli- cacy, and as appertaining to the humanities, and therefore the moralities, of a perfect Christianity, and finds it still more difficult to exemplify in his ordinary life and prac- tice- It is true, emphatically true, as Young says, that *' a Christian is the highest style of man," and, as John Wesley often said and wrote, that a Christian in the fullest sense, "a perfect Christian," must be in the very highest sense a gentleman, and the only " perfect " gentleman. Nevertheless, Christianity has much more to contend with than is generally apprehended, when it has to struggle GENTLE NURTURE. 109 against the prejudices and distempers of a narrow and ungentle nurture. As only transcendent genius can fully overcome the intellectual disadvantages of original neglect or misculture ; so nothing less than the purest and most exalted Christianity can so thoroughly refine the nature as entirely to efface the traces of original ill-breeding, in violence of speech, narrow prejudice, a readiness to impute mean and evil motives, a petty misjudging of others, an aptness to take undue advantage of others, and many other besetments to which those are peculiarly liable who, in their early nurture, have known little or nothing of self- control, who have not been schooled in consideration for the feelings and opinions of others, who have lived in a dark and narrow petty world of ignorance, prejudice, contention, and unrestrained passion. It will be understood that we do not intend by good breeding, wealthy or luxurious nurture ; but education con- ducted on such maxims as in the course of the ages Christian philosophy, instructed by experience, has ascer- tained and established ; we mean, in fact, an enlightened, enlarged, and generous nurture, in harmony with the highest ethical teaching of the ancients, as embodied in Cicero's Offices, in harmony, also, — and this 'is the test, — with the Divine ethics of our Lord and His apostles. Such, at least in its main principles^and general outline, and after making due allowance for human misapprehension and infirmity, had been the education, in successive generations, of nearly all the ancestors of the Wesleys. The Wesley, or more anciently Westley, or Westleigh, family is undoubtedly of Saxon origin, as the name indicates, notwithstanding Dr. Clarke's amusing and characteristic fancy that it may have been derived from the Arabic, through the Spanish. Families of the name seem to have been common in Wessex from'' an early period ; and to have 110 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. occupied a good position, some being landowners, and a considerable number belonging to the clergy. Among the landowners we find a Westley family so early as the reign of Edward I., represented by Edward Westley, of Westley, whose son married a knight's daughter.* " In the borough records of Weymouth," says the Eev. W. Beal, " the writer finds that in 1655 Jasper, the son of Ephraim Westley, gent.," [a Puritan, probably, from his Christian name,] " resided in this town. The Gentleman's Magazine for 1735, page 332, informs us that, in a county immediately adjoin- ing, Henry Hughes Westley, Esq., died on the 2nd of June. At Tarent, in Dorset, in 1752, died Martha, the daughter of Thomas Westley, Esq,"f Those whose names follow are known to have held church preferment ; George Westley, treasurer of Sarum, 1403 ; John Westeley, a prebendary, Vicar of Sturminster, Newton, about the same period ; John Westley, Bachelor in Degrees, rector of Langton Maltravers, 1481. There was also Isabel Westleigh, a nun of Shaftesbury Abbey. I The family of the brothers Wesley, of Epworth, cannot, however, be traced farther back with any certainty than their great-grandfather Bartholomew Westley, a Puritan clergy- man of Dorsetshire, who seems to have been born about the year 1595. He was brought up at one of the universities — there can be little doubt at Oxford. Oxford lies much nearer to Dorsetshire than Cambridge does, and has, we believe, been much more commonly resorted to by students from the west and south-west of England than the sister university ; moreover, Bartholomew Westley's son, grandson, and great-grandsons were all educated at Oxford. At the university he studied physic as well as divinity, which, in * Clarke's Wesley Family, Second | "Wesley Family, vol. i., p. 5; Smith's Edition, vol. i., p. 54. History of Methodism, Third Edition, fBeal's Fathers of the "Wesley Family, vol. i., p. 51. First Edition, pp. 8, 9. THE WESTLEYS. Ill the troubles of his later life, stood him in good stead. Where he passed the earlier years of his ministry is not known, but in 1640 he succeeded the sequestered rector of Charmouth, in Dorsetshire, and in 1650 he was appointed also to the rectory of Catherston, a parish immediately adjoining, the two churches being about a mile apart. From the former parish he was ejected as an intruder after the Restoration. The precise date of his ejection was March 4th, 1662, five months before the sadly memorable day of his own name saint. He seems to have lost the living of Catherston, as a consequence of the Act of Uniformity. St. Bartholomew's Day is the 24th of August. Benjamin Bird, his successor at Catherston, was appointed rector on the 14th of October in the same year. Mr. Westley, being deprived of his benefices, fell back upon his medical know- ledge, and for the rest of his days practised j)hysic for a living. He lived to mourn, in his extreme old age, the premature death of his pious and persecuted son John. In what year he died is not known, but it was shortly after his son, who would seem to have finished his troubled course in 1678.* For a complete vindication of the memory of this excellent Presb}i;erian minister from some imputations thrown upon it by Anthony a-Wood, we must refer to Dr. Smith's History of Methodism, and Mr. Deal's tract on The Wesley Fathers. All that can be learnt of him goes to prove that he was a man of learning, integrity, and admirable Chiistian temper and discretion. Not the least part of his praise is the manner in which he brought up his son John, who may not have excelled his father in learning and godliness, but who seems to have much surj^assed him in the gifts of a preacher and in energy of character. One reason of this, however, may be that his character was formed and his powers were called into exercise in times * Wesley Family, vol. i,, p. 25. 112 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. of much intenser life than the period of his father's early manhood, and that, while the father's ejectment came upon him when he was already far advanced in life, the son was launched into the midst of a sea of controversy and of troubles, when he was just rising into the flower of his age. The fires of a relentless persecution, which raged with increasing fury for nearly twenty years, during the very prime of his life, fused his faith, his courage, and all the energies of his soul into a glow such as can only be wrought up in the souls of persecuted confessors. John Westley, in several important respects the prototype of his grandson John Wesley, of Epworth and Oxford, was born about 1636, and consecrated to the ministry by his father from his infancy. He feared the Lord from his youth, and " was deeply convinced of sin, and had a serious concern for his salvation, when a lad at school."* Soon after this, he began to keep a diary, a practice which he continued with little intermission to the end of his life, and in which he was followed, a century later, by his grandson and namesake, the founder of Methodism. He went early, as was then customary, to Oxford, where he was a student of New Inn Hall, and in due course took his degrees of B.A. and M.A. He had the good fortune to be at the University during the vice-chancellorship of John Owen. Among his contemporaries were Thomas Goodwin, Stephen Charnock, Theophilus Gale, and John Howe. He applied himself par- ticularly to the study of the oriental languages ; and by his exemplary conduct commended himself to the high esteem of the vice-chancellor. It is no wonder that he adopted views as to church-government substantially the same as those held by the resident head of his university, that head being John Owen, and by such a contemporary as John Howe.t * Wesley Family, p. 32. 55 ; Smith's History of Methodism, t Fathers of the Wesley Family, p. vol. i., p. 60. JOHN WESTLEY THE PURITAN. 113 After leaving Oxford, John Westley is first heard of as a member of " a jDarticular church at Melcomb, in Dorsetshire," by which "he was sent to preach among the seamen, and at Eadipole, a village about two miles from Weymouth. This, his first appointment, was simply a commission to preach the Gospel. No church was then placed under his care, nor was he charged with the administration of the sacraments. On the death of Mr. Walton, 1658, Mr. Westley [being at the time about twenty-two years of age] became the minister of Winterborn Whitchurch [in the same county]. He was invited by the people to this office, and, having been appointed by the trustees of the parish, received in due time the approval of the ' triers.' " * We have taken the last paragraph from Dr. Smith's excel- lent history. Perhaps, however, in one pai*ticular, it is hardly exact. Mr. Westley was inducted, — a churchman would say intruded, — into the vicarage of Winterborn, but he never became the " minister " of the parish in the full ecclesiastical sense. In that most remarkable conversation which he held a few years later with Dr. Ironside, the Bishop of Bristol (it would seem to have taken place about the beginning of 1661), and the account of which w^as transcribed from his Journal by Dr. Calamy, and has since been republished in part by the founder of Methodism in his Journals (vol. iii.), and in full by Dr. Clarke in The Wesley Family, John Westley expressly says that he had not been called to the office of the ministry, but only to the work of preaching. He moreover explains that as the people to whom he ministered at Winterborn were not a " gathered church," i.e., not a duly and (as ho would deem) apostolically organized church, he could not, with his views, hold or exercise the office of the ministry among them. He might and did exercise his gifts as a preacher there, as else- where, where he had opportunity; but, he says, "they are • * Sinitli's History of Methodism, vol. i., pp. 60, 61. I 114 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. not a people that are fit objects for me to exercise ofiice-work among them." He had not been " ordained," but he was " sent to preach the Gospel," having " had a mission from God and man," and, in particular, having been sent forth to do this work by the " church of Christ at Melcomb," as he described what the bishop stigmatizes as " that factious and heretical church." The following morceau from the interest- ing dialogue between the bishop and the young sectarian preacher is so suggestive that we must quote it : — " Westley. — I shall desii-e several things may be laid together which I look on as justifying my preaching. 1 . I was devoted to the service from my infancy. 2. I was educated thereto, at school and in the university. <' Bishop. — What university were you of? " Westley. — Oxon. " Bishop. — What house ? " Westley. — New Inn Hall. " Bishop. — What age are you? , " Westley. — Twenty-five. " Bishop. — No, sure, you are not ! " Westley. — 3. As a son of the prophets, after I had taken my degrees, T preached in the country, being approved of by judicious able Christians, ministers, and others. 4. It pleased God to seal my labour with success, in the apparent conversion of several souls. " Bishop. — Yea, that Ls, it may be, to your own way. " Westley. — ^Yea, to the power of godliness, from ignorance and profaneness. If it please your lordship to lay down any evidences of godliness agreeing with the Scriptures, and if they be not found in those persons intended, I am content to be discharged from my ministry ; I will stand or fall by the issue thereof. " Bishop. — You. talk of the power of godliness such as you fancy. " Westley. — Yea, the reality of religion. Let us appeal to any common-place book for evidences of grace, and they are found in and upon these converts. "Bishop. — How many are there of them ? " Westle?/. — I number not the people. " Bishop. — Where are they ? . JOHN WESTLEY AND THE BISHOP. 115 " Westleif. — A^Ticrever I have been called to pi'each. At Radpole, Melcomb, Turnwood, Whitchurch, and at sea. I shall add another ingi'edient of my mission. 5. "VNTien the church saw the presence of God going along with me, they did by fasting and prayer, in a day set apart for that end, seek an abundant blessing on my endeavours. " BisJiop. — A particular church ? " Westleif. — Yes, my lord. I am not ashamed to own myself a member of one. ''Bishop, — Why, you mistake the apostles' intent. They went about to convert heathens, and so did what they did. You have no waiTant for your particular churches." — Wesley Family, vol. pp. 42, 43. The whole dialogue is full of interest. One point to be noted is the admirable good-breeding, as well as Christian temper, which the young evangelist shows in his intercourse with the bishop, who, on his part also, by no means dis- credited his education and high position. There is a fine combination of manly self-respect, perfect courtesy, trained intelligence, and true religious knowledge, in the replies of John Westley to "his lordship." But what is most remark- able is the exact correspondence in many important par- ticulars between the principles and maxims of the sectary of the seventeenth century, as expressed in this conversation, and those which were afterwards embodied by his apostolic grandson in the discipline of Methodism. These particulars have been fully brought out by Dr. Clarke in his Wesley Family. John Westley himself was a lay preacher and an itinerant evangelist. And the very first principle on which the system of Methodist itinerancy originally proceeded, which was brought into operation in the case of Thomas Maxfield, John Wesley's first lay preacher, and on which at present Methodism depends for its supply of " local preachers," and of candidates for the full ministry, is that distinction between rocatio ad opus and vocatlo ad munus on which John Westley laid so much stress. Moreover, the threefold test which Mr. i2 116 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. Westley offers to the bishop as authenticating his assumption of the calling of a preacher or evangelist (" preaching gifts," "preaching graces," and "success"), is identical with that which was adopted by John Wesley {grace, gifts, and fruit), and which is still a main feature in the economy of Methodism. Dr. Clarke, in view of this subject, was fully justified in say- ing, "that Methodism, in its grand principles of economy, and the means by which they were brought into action, has had its specific, healthy, though slowly vegetating, seeds, in the original members of the Wesley family." Indeed, if there were not direct evidence to the contrary, it would inevitably be inferred from the Minutes of the Methodist Conference for 1746 (the third Conference), under date Wednesday, May 14th, that John Wesley must have been familiar with all the principles and maxims of his ancestor, and must, when those Minutes were drawn up, have had his grand- father's journal distinctly in remembrance, if not before his eyes.* And yet it is almost certain that, up to that time, he had never seen John Westley's journal, and that the identity of principles was the result only of similarity of character, purpose, and circumstances, not at all of any direct influence which the principles of the grandfather had exerted on the grandson. It was only in 1741 that Wesley had his eyes opened to the lawfulness of lay-preaching by the seal of the Divine blessing on the preaching of Maxfield. Up to that time no man could have been a more single-minded and absolute High Churchman in the matter of lay-preaching; no man could have been in all respects a more exclusive priest and Episcopalian. It was not until January 20th, 1746, that by reading Lord Justice King's Account of the Primitive Church, he became convinced, " notwithstanding the vehement prejudice of his education," as he himself says in his Journal under that date, that " bishops and * Minutes of the Methodist Conference, vol. i. (new edition), pp. 30, 31. JOHN WESTLEY AND JOHN WESLEY. 117 presbyters are essentially of one order." And when in 1705 lie publishes in his Journal, we presume from Calamy's Nonconformists' Memorial, an extract from the account of his grandfather's conversation with the Bishop of Bristol, he prefaces the extract by a sentence which can hardly be construed as bearing any other sense than that then for the first time he had become acquainted with it.* We imagine, indeed, that not much of the early history of John Westley, who died when his children were very young, had filtered through the High Church rector of Epworth to the knowledge of the still more High Church Methodist brothers of Oxford. The coincidence, therefore, between the views of the Oxford itinerant Independent in 1661, and those of the High Church Oxford Methodist and evangelist of 1746, cannot well be referred to any acquaintance which the grandson possessed with the specific principles and opinions of his father's father. Young John Westley, when fresh from Oxford, where he had won the favour of one so eminent and of so much authority with Cromwell and the ruling party in the Commonwealth as the Vice-chancellor Owen, and when he had given proof, within a very short time of his settle- ment at Melcomb, of "preaching gifts" such as are not often found in combination with high scholarship, must, for a year or two, have had such a prospect of advance- ment in the clerical career which seemed to lie before him as few young men besides could anticipate. One evi- dence of this may be traced in his marriage. He mar- ried, in what year does not appear, but certainly while • "HaviDg a remarkable conversa- by himself,) and the then Bishop of tion put into my hands, which some will Bristol. I may be excused if it ap- probably be pleased to sec, I may in- pears more remarkable to me than it sert it here as well as elsewhere. It will do to an unconcerned person." IS a conversation between my father's Weslei/'s Journals, vol. iii., pp. 204 — father, (taken down in short-hand 208. 118 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. very young, a lady of distinguislied connexions, being the niece of the quaint and famous Thomas Fuller, and the daughter of the Eev. John White, so long known as "the patriarch of Dorchester," a minister of the highest mark among the Puritan party, and who was for some time chairman of the Westminster Assembly of Divines.* He is said, by Calamy, to have had a "numerous family," although the names of four only have been preserved, — Matthew, Timothy, Elizabeth, and Samuel; and we have no account whatever of Timothy or Elizabeth. But with the death of Cromwell, in 1659, the prospects of John Westley were darkened. He was "necessitated" soon after- wards " to set up a school, that he might be able to maintain his growing family," and very soon after this his troubles began. We take from Mr. Kirk's volume the following summary of his history, from the time of the Eestoration (1660) to that of his death in 1678 : — " The dark clouds now gathered over this devout and hard-working pastor. A succession of storms discharged their violence upon his head. Base informers brought false and scandalous accusations against him, and secured his imprisonment for six months, without a trial. An unbending Independent *in his ecclesiastical principles, his refusal to read the Book of Common Prayer led to new troubles. There was a long interview with his diocesan, in which he displayed a scholarship, logic, and Christian temper which we cannot fad to admire. Then came the Act of Uniformity, and on the memorable 17th of August, 1662, he preached an impressive farewell sermon ' to a weeping audience ' from that most appropriate of aU texts, * And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up, and give to you an mherit- ance among them that are sanctified.' After lingering a few months in his old parish, during which time his son Samuel was born, and baptized in the church from which his father had so recently been ' thrust out,' he retired to Weymouth. The landlady who gave him shelter, was fined twenty pounds for the ofiience ; while he was * Wesley's Works, vol. xii., p. 125 ; Mother of the Wesleys, p. 17. '.. THE SUFFERINGS OF JOHN WKSTLEY. 119 commanded to pay five shillings a week, ' to be levied by distress.' He wandered to Bridgewater, llmiuster, and Taunton, where ' he met with great kindness and friendship from aU three denominations of Dissentei'S, who were afterwards very kind to him and his nume- rous family.' Then ' a gentleman who had a very good house at Preston, two or three miles from Melcomb, gave him free liberty to Uve in it without paying any rent.' He accepted this unlooked-for kindness as a marked interposition of Providence, wondering how it came to pass, ' that he who had forfeited all the mercies of life should have any habitation at aU, when other precious saints were destitute ;' and that he should have ' such an house of abode, while others had only poor mean cottages.' " Then came terrible temptations about fulfilling his caU to preach the Gospel. Silenced at home, he meditated a ' removal beyond sea, either to Maryland or Surinam. After much consideration and adnce, he determined to abide in the land of his nativity, and there take his lot.' Preaching only in private, he kept himseK longer out of the hands of his enemies than many of his brethren. ' But, notwithstanding all his prudence in managing his meetings, he was often disturbed ; several times apprehended ; and four times cast into prison.' In his ' many straits and difiiculties,' he was * wonder- fully supported and comforted, and many times surprisingly relieved and delivered.' Finally, he was ' called by a number of serious Chris- tians at Poole to be their pastor ; and in that relation he continued to the day of his death, administering all ordinances to them as oppor- tunity offered.' ■~ " His manifold and heavy trials, — all the result of his unflinching adherence to the testimony which he held, — soon prepared him for an early grave. ' The removal of many eminent Christians into another world, who were his intimate acquaintance and kind friends ; the great decay of serious religion among many that made a profes- sion ; and the increasing rage of the enemies of real godliness, mani- festly seized and sunk his spirits. And having filled up his part of what is behind of the afflictions of Christ in the flesh, for his body's sake, which is the Church, and finished the work given him to do, he was taken out of this vale of tears, to that world, where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest, when he had not been much longer an inhabitant here below than his blessed Master, whom he served with his whole heart, according to the best light ho 120 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. had.' Denied sepulture within the walls of the sacred edifice, his remains lie undistinguished among the common graves of the church- yard. In that day when the * many that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake,' John Westley shall ' come forth unto everlasting life ;' while many of his persecutors shall arise to ' shame and ever- lasting contempt," — The Mother of the Wesley s, pp. 46-48. One feature in the character of John Westley should be particularly noticed. Although his ecclesiastical opinions were at the opposite pole from High-Churchism, he had none of the temper of the low fanatic or ignorant sectary. He was firm, but prudent ; faithful, but courteous and gentle ; and so full of Catholic charity, that, like his Oxford con- temporary, the great John Howe, he practised " occasional conformity" with the Established Church, the church of those by whom he was proscribed and persecuted. As we have already intimated, his aged father lived to bury his godly son. His wife survived him about forty years. For some time she was probably assisted by her kinsfolk and her husband's friends ; but for many years before her death she was dependent upon her sons, and we find the Eector of Epworth, during the period of his greatest poverty, and when overwhelmed by his own embarrassments, contribut- ing 5640 in one sum, and £10 a year, towards the relief of his aged mother.* Of the two sons of whom we have any record, Matthew, the elder, having no doubt been grounded in classical and liberal learning by his father, was brought up to the medical profession. The eldest son of such a stock was not likely to be left without friends to provide for his education, and to give him a good introduction in his profession among the well-to-do Nonconformists of the metropolis, where he settled in business. It is certain that he obtained a large and lucra- tive practice as surgeon and accoucheur, that he rated as a * Wesley Family, vol. i., p. 73. MATTHEW WESTLEY THE IIICII UXCLE. 121 man of literary taste and knowledge, had the reputation of a wit, travelled extensively on the Continent and in England, was kind to the family of his brother the rector, and adopted and provided for several of the daughters ; but was scan- dalized, on his one visit to the Epworth rectory, at the extreme poverty of the family, as shown in furniture, dress, and fare, and could not comprehend how his brother, with such a iDreferment as the rectory of Epworth, could be found in such circumstances. He retained his Nonconformity to the end of his life, but held it with a certain polite dis- passionateness and an indifference to points of controversy, which exposed him to the charge of religious laxity, and even to the suspicion of scepticism ; for which, however, there appears to have been no real foundation whatever. His memory was embalmed in the Gentleman's Magazine by an elegy from the pen of his niece Mehetabel (Mrs. Wright), the most gifted of the daughters of the Epworth rectory, whom, being a childless widower, he had adopted and portioned. Few things are more piquant than the glimpses afforded us, in Mrs. Susannah Westley's letters and sundry other docu- ments, of the visit of the rich London doctor, attended by his servant (both master and man on horseback, of course), to the bare and comfortless parsonage and homestead at Epworth rectory, where he found his brother buried in his great work on Job, and his lady-like and accomplished sister- in-law, with her clever and spirited daughters, scantily and meanly clad, and poorly dieted, in a chill, half-furnished house. The glimpse we get, also, in his homeward journey from Scarborough, of his stay at Lincoln during several days, and of his hospitalities there to his nieces, several of whom were at that time engaged at Lincoln in school-keep- ing, is exceedingly suggestive. It is plain enough that the London gentleman thought his brother's High-Churchman- ship had turned out a bad speculation. In a rectory, not 122 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. of the poorest, he had expected the comforts and appoint- ments of a landed gentleman, as he says in a letter, " of considerable estate ;" and he fomid himself wofuUy disap- pointed. At the same time nothing can be more evident than that he conceived an admiration for his sister-in-law, and was greatly taken with his nieces ; so taken, that he lingers at Lincoln day after day, that he may have the pleasure of treating them at his inn, and sharing their company. The rector of Epworth, notwithstanding, was a man of a far larger mould and higher character than the pros- perous brother who severely criticized his manage ; and, in a letter which he wrote in reply to his brother's strictures, fully vindicated his honourable poverty. So far we have anticipated what belongs to a later page in this sketch, because we shall not again return to the figure of Matthew AVestley. He died in June, 1737, two years after his brother, and six years after his visit to Epworth. We bid good bye to the prim, proper, gentlemanly, intelligent and skilful, moderate and worldly-wise, London surgeon, — a ladies' doctor, as he was, and pre-eminently a ladies' man. Who could have imagined him to be own brother to the strong, sturdy, ponderously learned, unbusiness-like, poor parson of Epworth, always in debt and difficulty, a most unworldly-wise honest partisan, not to say bigot, in Church and State, a stern though just disciplinarian in his parish; mobbed, wronged, outraged, but standing fast in his in- tegrity; at one time and for years one of the most unpopular men in his part of the country, yet finally conquering the respect of all classes ; and, after a life of brave and noble though sometimes ill-guided struggles against poverty and obloquy, dying in great honour, and all but out of debt, amidst the regrets of his people, and surrounded by one of the finest families in England ? THE MATERNAL ANCESTllY OF THE WESLEYS. 123 We shall recur presc^ntly to the history of the (Epworth rector the), High-Church son of the sectarian confessor of Melcomh and Whitchurch. We must now direct our attention to the ancestry of the Wesleys on the mother's side. The maternal grandfather of John and Charles Wesley was Dr. Annesley, a foremost name among the ejected Nonconformists, his high merits in other respects heing enhanced by his noble presence and his patrician descent. The Annesley family were settled in Nottinghamshire before the Conquest, and after the Conquest took the surname De Aneslei from their estate. In the reign of Charles I., Francis Annesley was created Baron Mount Norris and Viscount Valentia, and held the offices of Secretary of State and Vice-treasurer of Ireland. His eldest sou, Arthur Annesley, was the first Earl of Anglesea. Dr. Samuel Annesle3% Mrs. Susannah Wesley's father, was the grandson of Lord Valentia and nephew of Lord Anglesea, by a younger brother of the latter, whose name has not been handed down, and who died when his son Samuel was only four years old. The date of Dr. Amiesley's birth was 1620 ; his grandmother, that is, as we understand it, his mother's mother, was a woman eminent for piety, who, dying not long before the child was born, requested that, if a boy, his name might be Samuel. By his mother he was brought up in the fear of the Lord ; and, as his disposition was early determined towards the work of the ministry, he was, like the prophet his name- sake, trained with a view to his future sacred vocation from his earliest years. The strict and churchly (though not superstitious) education for which the Puritan gentry were conspicuous, was not an irksome bondage to young Annesley, but a congenial rule. He searched and knew the Scriptures from a child. The place of Samuel Annesley' s birth, as Mr. Kirk's in- dustrious research has now made out, was Haseley, a small 124 THE ANCESTKY OF THE WESLEYS. village four miles north-west of Warwick. It is probable that his jjarents' property, which was considerable and de- scended to himself, lay here. Where Samuel was educated, whether at home or at any public school, is not known ; but the former is the more likely supposition. At fifteen years of age, that is, in the year 1635, young Annesley was entered of Queen's College, Oxford, where he graduated in due course. In 1643 or 1644, he was ordained, probably according to the Presbyterian form. Mr. Kirk seems to doubt the tradition that in 1644 he became chaplain to the " Globe" man-of-war, which carried the flag of the lord high admiral, the Earl of Warwick, and that through his influence in part he obtained the diploma of LL.D. For this demur, however, no grounds are assigned; and to us it appears as if the hereditary and territorial connection between the family of the squire of Haseley, and the great noble of the neighbouring castle of Warwick, lent some probability to the account. It is certain, however, that in November, 1644, Mr. Annesley was already settled in the valuable living of Cliffe, in Kent, where he took the place of a jovial and scandalous parson who had been sequestered for his incompetency and immorality. After a rough be- ginning, he had great success at Cliffe. He left this parish soon after the date of Charles the First's execution, having, it is said, incurred the displeasure of Cromwell by his denunciations of the Protector, and of the deed by which the king was put to death. Coming to London, he became the minister " of the smallest parish in London," — perhaps that of St. John the Evangelist. In 1657 he was made lecturer of St. Paul's, by the appointment of Cromwell ; and in October, 1658, by the favour of Eichard Cromwell, " Crip- plegate was made glad by his settlement therein." He thus ministered to two of the largest congregations in London. On May 14th, 1659, the Parliament appointed him one of DR. ANNESLEY. 12o the commissioners for the approbation and admission of ministers of the Gospel. At the Eestoration he presented to the king a petition for confirmation in his lectureship, in which he showed that, like many more of the moderate Presbyterians, he had altogether disapproved, and that he had " publicly detested," as he says, " the horrid murder" of Charles I. He lost the lectureship, but the living of St. Giles's was confirmed to him by the king's presentation, dated August 28th, 1660. The living was worth £700 a year, — a very large sum in those days. It must be re- membered that the interest of Dr. Annesley's relation, the Earl of Anglesea, was of some worth with the king. On Bartholomew's Day, however, he had to quit. His name stands among many others, including some yet more illus- trious than his own, as one of those London ministers who signed the memorial to the king against the passing of that black and iniquitous Act. The signatures of Manton, Bates, White, Wills, Vinke, Calamy, Annesley, and fourteen more were afiixed to this document. For ten years Dr. Annesley is lost sight of amid these troublous days. His private fortune, however, availed for the supply of his own needs, and those of his large family, and also for the relief of many of his poorer friends. Though often in danger, and though at least once the warrant was drawn out for his apprehension, and would have been signed, but for the sudden death of the magistrate who had the matter in hand, he seems to have escaped imprisonment. No doubt his family connexions, his great influence among his Nonconformist brethren, and his own temper and discretion, all contributed to this immunity. When the Declaration of Indulgence was issued in 1672, ho licensed a meeting-house in Little St. Helen's, now St. Helen's Place, Bishopsgate Street, where he raised a large and flourishing church, of which he continued 126 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. pastor till his death. He took a leading part in ail the assemblies, the lectures, the theological undertakings, of the Nonconformists so long as he lived. He was himself the main support of the well-known Morning Lecture. He is said to have been reckoned among "the Dissenters " as a sort of second St. Paul. His high family, his experience, his fortune, his unstinting generosity, and his fine and dignified person, added to his effectiveness as a minister and his admirable Christian character, ap- pear to have secured him this position. Daniel De Foe was brought up under his ministry, and has celebrated his character and embalmed his memory in a well-known elegy, the heartiness and intrinsic interest of which have conferred upon it a vitality which its poetic merits could not have secured. "His remains were deposited by the side of his wife's in Shoreditch Church; and Dunton," the well-known and eccentric bookseller, his son-in-law, " states, that the Countess of Anglesea desired, on her death-bed, to be buried, as she expressed it, ' upon the cof&n of that good man. Dr. Annesley.'"* The wife of Dr. Annesley here referred to was his second wife, his first having, after a very short union, died at Cliffe in 1646. . Among the many points cleared up by Mr. Kirk, one is the question as to who was Dr. Annesley's second wife, the mother of Mrs. Susanna Wesley.f He has clearly shown that she was the daughter of no less re- markable a person than Mr. John White, a noted member of the Long Parliament, chairman of the " Committee for Plundered Ministers," and author of the Century of Scan- * Wesley Family, vol. i., p. 375. iiess." Where Mr. Wesley says this, f Mother of the Wcsleys, pp. 17-19. we have not' been able to find; and One point, however, Mr. Kiik has left Mr. Kirk gives no reference. But the in confusion. lie quotes Mr. Wesley as fjict is, that her grandfather was not a saying, that his mother's " father and preacher of righteousness : he was an grandfather were preachers of righteous- active Puritan lawyer. THE TWO WHITES. 127 chtloiis Malifinant Priests, who, being a lawyer, took an active part in the Westminster Assembly, and who w^as buried in 1644 at the Temple Church, with great cere- mony, the members of the House of Commons attending his funeral. It is a notable coincidence, that the fathers of the two grandmothers of the Wesleys bore the same Christian and surname, were both eminent Puritans, the one as a divine and the other as a lawyer, and both took a leading part in the Assembly of Divines. The result of this survey of the ancestry of the Wesleys is, that we find on the father's side three successive descents of clergymen, trained at Oxford, and another clergyman of great eminence, as his maternal grandfather ; and that on the mother's side we find a peer, that peer's younger son, and a clergyman of distinguished position and character, in successive descent, and, as her maternal grandfather, a lawyer of eminent position, especially as a Member of Parliament and public servant. Three out of the five clergy- men certainly, most probably four, not improbably all five, were educated at Oxford ; four of the five, all except Samuel Westley, of Epwoi-th, were staunch Puritan confessors who had proved their attachment to their principles by the en- durance of severe losses and great sufferings. The lawyer was of the same party; but, having lived through the op- pressions which provoked the civil war, and taken a leading part in the Parliamentary proceedings, by wdiich the despotism of Charles and Laud was overthrown, died, as the power of the Parliament was rising to its height, in the year of the Ijattle of Marston Moor. Among all the generations of the Wesley ancestry, so far back as these can be traced, there was not an ignorant or ill-bred person. The men were either divines trained at the university, or gentry of good position and liberal culture ; the women were ladies of gentle and generous nurture. And, as Mr. Wesley him- 128 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. self remarks in a letter to his brother Charles, the doc- trine which the divines preached was ever the " genuine Gospel." "With such an ancestry, the wonder is that the Noncon- formity in the Wesley blood was so long in coming out. Extremes, however, beget extremes ; and, as we shall have occasion soon to note, violent political dissent so disgusted the father of the Wesleys as to transform him, in the raw heat of his young temper and fiery prejudices, into a violent Churchman. Under such influences his sons continued during their earlier life. Charles remained theoretically a High Churchman to the end of his days. Nevertheless his stinging satires — a Churchman might call them lampoons — upon the bishops and clergy, and his own free and unscru- pulous ecclesiastical irregularities in personal practice, form- ing as these did an amusing contrast to his High Church prejudices and theories, were sufficient to vindicate his title to the blood of the Westleys, the Annesleys, and the Whites. As regards John, there can be no doubt that in his mature years he became fully conscious of the near alliance, in ecclesiastical principles and in theological doctrine, between himself and the most moderate of the Puritans, that he felt great union in spirit with Bartholomew and John Westley and Samuel Annesley, and that his own views as to the Act of Uniformity and the policy of those who passed that Act came to be in substantial harmony with those of his nonconforming ancestry. We have seen that it was in 1746 that Mr. Wesley read Lord Justice King's Account of the Pyimitke Church, Avliich made him virtually a Presbyterian, so far as respects the fundamental principles of ecclesiastical government. Under date Newccistle, March 27th, 1747, in one of his letters to "Mr. John Smith" (supposed to be Dr. Seeker, Bishop of Oxford, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury), Mr. Wesley JOHN Wesley's views as to the puritans. 129 says, " I look upon Mr. Cartwright and the body of Puritans in that age to have been both the most learned and the most pious men that were then in the English nation. Nor did they separate from the Church, but were driven out of it, whether they would or no. The vengeance of God, which fell on the posterity of their persecutors, I think, is no impu- tation on Mr. Cartwright or them, but a wonderful scene of Divine Providence," &c.* It is interesting to note, that just twelve days before the date of this letter, viz., on Friday, March 13th, Mr. Wesley being at the time at his northern home, from which he dates his letter to Mr. Smith, the following entry occurs in his Journal: — "In some of the following days I snatched a few hours to read ' The History of the Puritans.' I stand in amaze : first, at the execrable spirit of persecution which drove those venerable men out of the Church ; and with which Queen Elizabeth's clergy were as deeply tinctured as ever Queen Mary's were ; secondly, at the weakness of those holy confessors, many of whom spent so much of their time and strength in disputing about surplices and hoods, or kneeling at the Lord's Supper."t In April, 1754, again, he says, " In my hours of walk- ing,"— at his Paddington retreat,—" I read Dr. Calamy's Abridgment of Mr. Baxter's Life. What a scene is opened here ! In spite of all the prejudices of education, I could not but see that the poor Nonconformists had been used without justice or mercy; and that many of the Protestant bishops of King Charles [the Second] had neither more re- ligion nor humanity than the Popish bishops of Queen Mary." I In his interesting and able " Free Thoughts on the Present State of Public Affairs," which were written in 1768, he says, " Few will affirm the character of King Charles [I.J, even allowing the account given by Lord Claren- don to be punctually true in every respect, to be as faultless * Works, vol. xii. p. 82. f Ibid. vol. ii. p. 48. J Ibid. p. 297. K 130 THE ANCESTEY OF THE WESLEYS. as that of King George." Again, be speaks of "the furious drivers" (referring by name to Strafford and Laud) •who surrounded " poor lung Charles." He says, " The re- quiring tonnage and poundage, the imposing ship-money, the prosecutions in the Bishops' Courts, in the High Com- mission Court, and in the Star Chamber, were real and intolerable grievances. What is there in the present ad- ministration which bears any resemblance to these ? . . . . Is Mr. Burke the same calm, wise, disinterested man that Mr. Hampden was? And where shall we find twenty noblemen and twenty gentlemen (to name no more) in the present opposition whom any impartial man will set on a level with the same number of those that opposed King Charles and his ministry?"* In 1775 he published a history of England, in which he says of Charles I., "He was rigor- ously just; but is supposed to have been wanting in sin- cerity." It is not very easy to reconcile the two parts of this sentence, as his brother Charles pointed out to him in several letters of earnest and almost indignant remon- strance. But what is to be noted is, that Mr. Wesley felt bound to retain the qualifying clause. In a letter dated November 3rd, 1775, he says, "No man is a good judge in his own cause. I believe I am tolerably impartial; but you are not (at least was not some time since) with regard to King Charles the First."! And his final answer to his brother was, " I cannot in conscience say less evil of him. "I It is only fair to add that, so far as regards the Treaty of Uxbridge, Mr. Wesley afterwards, uj)on reading the origiual papers in Thurloe's Memoirs, justified the king in breaking off that treaty.§ But there is no reason to suppose, however much he blamed the Parliament in its later proceedings, that he changed his opinion as to the character of Charles, * Works, vol. xi. p. 27. X Life of Charles Wesley, vol. ii. p. 305. t Ibid. vol. xii. p, 136. § Works, vol. iv. p. 209. JOHN WTESLEY ON THE ACTS OF UNIFOKMITY, 131 and of the measures by which the nation was driven into revolt. On Sunday, January 30th, 1785, being the day of "King Charles the Martyr," Mr. Wesley preached in London, probably at City-road, from the text, "Eighteous art Thou, 0 Lord, and true in thy judgments." He says, " I endea- voured to point out those sins which were the chief cause of that awful transaction we commemorate this day. I believe the chief sin which brought the king to the block was his persecuting the real Christians. Hereby he drove them into the hands of designing men, which issued in his own destruc- tion." * If such was Mr. Wesley's judgment as to the first Charles, it may be anticipated how he would regard the enormities associated with the name of the second. " Bloody Queen Mary was a lamb, a mere dove in comparison of him."f This sentence refers particularly to the persecution in Scotland, but, as regards those *' two public monuments, the Act of Uniformity and the Act against Conventicles," the following are his utterances in his " Thoughts upon Liberty." "By this glorious Act" — of Uniformity — "thou- sands of men, guilty of no crime, were at one stroke, they and their families, turned out of house and home, and re- duced to little less than beggary, for no other fault, real or pretended, but because they could not assent and consent to that manner of worship which their worthy governors prescribed, because they did not dare to worship God ac- cording to other men's consciences." " By virtue of the Act against Conventicles, if any continued to worship God ac- cording to their own conscience, they were first robbed of their own substance, and, if they persisted, of their liberty: often of their lives also. For this crime, under ' our most religious and gracious king,' (what were they who publicly told God he was such ?) Englishmen were not only spoiled of their goods, but denied even the use of the • Works, vol. iv. p. 283. t I^i^^- '^'ol- "i- P- 296. k2 132 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. free air, — yea, and the light of the sun, being thrust by hundreds into dark and loathsome prisons."* John Wesley's mature judgment respecting the Puritan controversy, it is evident from these extracts, was decidedly in favour of the Puritans, altogether opposed to their per- secutors. He may have thought, he did think, many of them narrow and prejudiced in their objections ; but he regarded their persecutors as yet more narrow in their requirements, and as in the highest degree oppressive. As for Charles the Second's bishops, such as Shelton, for example, we have seen what was his opinion of them. In these views he differed widely from his brother Charles; but he only anticipated the judgment which has been in the present age established by the concurrent voice of all" the well-informed authorities in the Church of England itself, with the exception of those who belong to the revived Laudian party. " This strait waistcoat for men's con- sciences," said the late Archdeacon Hare, in reference to the Act of Uniformity of 1662, " could scarcely have been devised, except by persons themselves of seared consciences and hard hearts — by persons ready to gulp down any oath without scruple about more or less. Verily, when I think of that calamitous and unprincipled Act, — of the men by whom it was enacted, Charles II. and the aristocracy and gentry of his reign, — of the holy men against whom it was enacted, — it seems almost like a prologue to the profligacy and infidelity which followed closely upon it. . . . We may bless God, for that He has given such grace and power to weak, frail human hearts, that meek and humble men, when strengthened by His Spirit, are not to be driven out of the path in which their conscience commands them to walk, by the leagued forces of King and Parliament and Convocation, by the severest penal enactments, or * Works, >ol. xi. p. 37. JOHN avesley's churchmanship. 133 even by the bitter pang of having to leave their loved flocks."* Wesley, notwithstanding, remained a Church of England man in all his tastes and sympathies to the end of his days. He was not such a zealot as his brother Charles, who said that he would rather see his brother John " smiling in his coffin" than "a dissenting minister." But he loved the liturgy, the comely order, the cloistered universities, the faithful homilies, the grand divinity, the venerable cathedrals, the rich church-music, all the wealth of intellect, the chas- tened splendour of worship, " the beauty of holiness," of the national Church. Still he was not so absolute a Church- man by any means as High-Church curates are apt to su^Dpose. He would not leave the Church of England him- self, nor suffer, so long as he lived, that his congregations, save here and there where the circumstances were excep- tional, should be separated from the Church. But he felt that his preachers needed to exercise, and did exercise, great forbearance in submitting year after year to be merely the preachers, instead of the pastors, of the flock. And it is plain that he thought it likely that before long after his decease, the separation which, during his life, would have been intolerable to himself and inexpedient on general grounds, would take place. To his brother Charles he said, in 1755, " Do you not understand that they all promised by Thomas Walsh not to administer, even among them- selves ? I think that an huge point given up ; perhaps more than they could give up with a good conscience. I do not fluctuate yet ; but I cannot answer the arguments • Hare's Miscellaneous Pamphlets, parable to this cold-blooded persecution, p. 35. " The Church of England," says had been inflicted by the late powers, the judicial Hallam, " had, doubtless, even in the ferment and fiuy of a civil her provocations ; but she made the war." — History of England, l2mo. ed. retaliation much more than commen- vol . ii. p. 350. iurate to the injury. No severity, com- 134 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. on that side the question. Joseph Cownley says, ' For such and such reasons, I dare not hear a drunkard preach or read prayers.' I answer, I dare. But I cannot answer his reasons." Again, in 1761, " I do not at all think (to tell you a secret) that the work will ever be destroyed. Church or no Church. What has been done to prevent the Methodists leaving the Church, you will see in the Minutes of the Con- ference. I told you before, with regard to Norwich, cUxi. I have done at the last Conference all I can or dare do. Allow me liberty of conscience, as I allow you." And in 1780, " Kead Bishop Stillingfleet's Irenicon, or any impai-tial history of the ancient Church, and I believe you will think as I do. I verily believe I have as gt>od a right to ordain as to administer the Lord's Supper. But I see abundance of reasons why I should not use that right, unless I was turned out of the Church." " The last time I was at Scar- borough, I earnestly exhorted our people to go to church ; and I went myself. But the wretched minister preached such a sermon that I could not in conscience advise them to hear him any more."* Mr. Wesley did, in fact, in the year 1784, ordain Coke and Asbury for America, — Coke, being already a presbyter of the Church of England, to be superintendent {i.e., bishop), and Asbury to be elder and superintendent (i.('., presb}i;er and bishoj)) ; in 1785, he " set apart three of our well-tried preachers," as he says, "to minister for Scotland;" and in 1787, — the year before the death of his brother Charles — assisted by the Eev. J. Creighton and the Eev. Peard Dickenson, presbji;ers of the Church of England, he ordained Alexander Mather, Thomas Eankin, and Henry Moore, for the service of the Methodist " Societies " in England. Lord Mansfield told Charles Wesley that ordination was separation. No doubt this is in a sense true. Thus far, accordingly, * Works, vol. xii. pp. 109, 113, 137, 144. JOHN WESLEY ON SEPARATION FROM THE CHURCH. 135 Jolm Wesley proceeded in the direction of separation. Nevertheless, he might justly adhere, 'in 1787, to what he wrote to his brother and published in 1785. " I no more separate from the Church now than I did in 1758. I sub- mit still (though sometimes with a doubting conscience) to 'mitred infidels.'* I do, indeed, vary from them in some points of doctrine, and in some points of discipline ; but not a hair's breadth farther than I believe to be meet, right, and my bounden duty. I walk still by the same rule I have done for between forty and fifty years. I do nothing rashly."! We have taken occasion from our view of the Puritan and Nonconforming ancestry of the Wesleys to advert to John Wesley's own principles and practice on the subject of church conformity and ecclesiastical discipline. We are not sorry to avail ourselves of the opportunity to do this, as the facts of the case seem still to be not so well known as they should be, after the publication of Dr. Smith's and Dr. Stevens's histories of Methodism has put all that belongs to the subject within the easy reach of the general reader. As respects Charles Wesley's most intense but most incon- sistent and insubordinate High-Churchmanship, we cannot afford space here for any details. Nor must we venture even to enliven our prose by quotations from his stinging satires upon the state of the Church and the character of churchmen in his day. It is high time that we returned to the history of Samuel Westley, the rector of Epworth, the lineal heir- of such wealth of Nonconformist orthodoxy and confessional merit, but himself an early convert to the church of his parents' and grandparents' persecutors. His was no com- mon character. The mere fact of such a transformation is sufficient to claim particular examination. Other cir- * Charles Wesley's expression. t Smith's History ol" Methodism, vol. i. pp. 512-52G, .047. 186 THE ANCESTEY OF THE WESLEYS. cumstances will attract our attention, as we consider hia life and story. Samuel Westley, according to the decisive evidence of the parish register, was born at Winterborn Whitchurch, on December 17th, 1662. When his father died (in 1678), he was a pupil at the Dorchester Free School, and " nearly ready for the university." Some friends of his family sent him, thereupon, to London, to be entered at one of the Nonconformist private academies as a candidate for the ministry among the Nonconformists. Beaching town in March, 1678, he found that the divine under whose care he was to have been placed had recently died. For a time he went to a grammar school, probably as an assistant, where he had the prospect, if he thought fit, of proceeding to the university. The Nonconformists, however, seem to have been anxious, as well they might be, to secure for their ministry the scion of such a stock ; and offered a provision of thirty pounds a year, if he would go to Stepney Academy, at that time under the care of the Kev. Edward Veal. To Stepney he went accordingly. In London he would have the entry, as the son and grandson of distinguished confessors, and for the sake of his mother's kindred no less than his father's, into the best Nonconformist circles, including as among the most distinguished families that of Dr. Annesley. Here, too, he heard such men as Charnock preach, and once heard Bunyan. His mind must have been greatly quickened, his powers highly stimulated. Academies and colleges, moreover, always have been and are always likely to be, from the zest and competition of their common life, a sort of forcing-houses for youthful minds, not often conducive, unless powerfully qualified and counteracted, to the truest and best develop- ment of their powers. Young men in such places often become fond of " chop logic" and of satire, disputatious and SAMUEL WESTLEY IN HIS YOUTH. 137 presumptuous, " beady, high minded." As to young Westley — he was a bright, sharp youngster ; he had a turn for verses ; and soon, accordingly, be became " a dabbler in rh}TQe and faction." In this, he was encouraged and ap- plauded; sometimes even received cash payment for his " silly lamj)oons." His effusions were printed ; and grave divines suggested subjects, and corrected some of his pro- ductions for the press. Upwards of two years Samuel Westley thus spent with Mr. Yeal, when, this minister having suffered prosecution and being compelled to break up his "academy," Mr. Westley transferred himself to a similar institution at Stoke New- ington, conducted by the Eev. Charles Morton. Here he remained more than a j^ear longer. Meantime, however, he was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with himself, with Nonconformity, and with his position and prospects. The simple fact is that young Westley had been placed in a position which could onl}' be made congenial and happy by deep religious convictions of duty. Such convictions he did not possess. He was designated to the office of a Christian minister ; but at this time and for some years afterwards it is evident that he was destitute of any sense of a true and spiritual vocation to that ministry. He had taken to it pro- fessionally, not, as his father and grandfather had done, for the sake of God's glory and with a heart full of steadfast passionate devotion. A merely professional preference for the office of " the i^riesthood" would be no qualification for an aspirant to a benefice in the Established Church; but no man could worthily, usefull}^ or happily, tread in the steps of the Baxters, Howes, and Charnocks, or the Annesleys, Calamys, and Westleys, of the age preceding, whose heart had not been kindled by Divine fire, who had not the burning inner vocation of a New Testament prophet. John Westley, his father, had spoken of himself to the Bishop of Bristol 138 THE ANCESTEY OF THE WESLEYS. as "a son of the jn'opliets." His son Samuel was cer- tainly not as yet in the succession. Matthew Henry, at the time a law student, was intimate with some of the students at Stoke Newington, and seems to have been indebted to their learned and excellent tutor for occasional lessons in theology. How he profited in the Nonconformist ministry, we know well; he had the vocation, Samuel Westley was out of his element. Uneasy where he was, he cast longing eyes towards the University, where his ancestors had been trained. There was life and learning ; the young life of the choicest of the nation, the learning of centuries. Once at least before he had hoped to secure his entrance there, but had been disappointed. With such views and with defective spiritual convictions and aims, what wonder that Samuel Westley grew disgusted with his " academies," and dreamed and yearned after Oxford. Moreover, it appears that some of his kinsmen, probably on his mother's side, who resided in a remote part of the country, we may presume somewhere about Dorsetshire, were ministers of the Esta- blished Church. One of these "reverend and worthy" kins- men visited him at Morton's seminary, and '' gave him such arguments against that schism in which he was then em- barked, as added weight to his reflections when he begun to think of leaving it." But beyond all these considerations, the Nonconformity of 1682 was very inferior in strength and grandeur to the Puritanism of fifty years before. The nation was no longer capable of such fruit as it had borne in the last generation. It was passing through a stage of deepening degeneracy. The Commonwealth, with all its glories, had in pai-t prepared the way for this. There was probably less religion, and certainly more hypocrisy, in 1659 than in 1640. A show of austere and punctilious godliness had be- come fashionable; the result was a wide-spread growiih of sanctimonious hypocrisy, and, on the part of a large section DEGENEBACY OF NONCONFORMITY. 139 of the nation, a rooted disgust at everything like moral restraint or religious solemnity. Then followed the Ee- storation, with its floods of unbridled licentiousness and its fashion of unbelief. Then St. Bartholomew's Day silenced by thousands the holiest and ablest preachers in the land, and suppressed the growth of godly ministers who should have risen up into the ojffiices of the Church. Twenty years had passed since that period, years of increasing irreligion and corruption of every kind. The king was a pensioner of Louis of France ; French manners and French morals had debased the dignity and purity of the country of Cecil and Hampden ; the manliness of the nation was in process of decomposition ; the Christian faith and heart of the people were dying out : a downward course had been entered upon, so far as respected the national life and character, which neither the Eevolution of 1688 nor the victories of Marl- borough could effectually arrest, which reached its lowest point in the reign of George II., and from which England was only redeemed by the religious movement of which Methodism was the chief instrument and the representative. Great principles could not maintain their ground in such an age ; the more noble or sacred any course might be, the less likely was it to obtain popular support. Hence, in 1682, Nonconformity was fast losing its grandeur. It had no political party to sustain it. It had lost the heart of the nation. Puritanism had been identified with a great struggle for political liberty, with gallant resistance against a crush- ing and cruel despotism. Hence, in great part, its hold upon the nation at large ; hence its grandeur and sacredness in theu' eyes. But that great movement had worn itself out, Puritanism under the Commonwealth had done violence to national prejudices, offended popular taste, proscribed the pastimes and pleasures alike of high and of low. This, in the case of a nation not as yet very far removed from 140 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. Popish times, and from the licence of Popish and mediaeval manners, whose squires and yeomen were still in a high degree coarse, ignorant, and jovial, was more than could be endured. " New wine" had been " put into old bottles," and the result was that the bottles burst and the wine was spilled. Moreover, the multiplicity of dissenting sects, and the ignorance, fanaticism, and presumption of not a few self-constituted sectarian teachers, had disgusted the rude but useful common-sense of the average Englishman of the period. From the combined effect of these causes, and causes such as these, Puritanism lost its hold upon the people of England. But for this, the ministers and Par- liament of Charles II. could not have carried into effect their policy of proscription and persecution. The people in 1662 were not prepared to run the hazard of another revolution, or, indeed, to run any hazard at all, in behalf of the Puritan divines, whose character, notwithstanding, multitudes among them revered, and whose cruel sufferings multitudes more commiserated. They might pity the poor victims, but they would not rally to the cause. The consequence was, that as years passed away, what had once been a great and noble party, identified with all that was truest, freest, and most godly in England, became little more than a sectarian remnant. Most of the great leaders among the Puritans were dead or aged. In an age of deepening heartless- ness and vice, their plain worship and strict maxims found less and less favour. Occasionally, when such a man as Baxter was " shamefully treated " by such a monster as Jeffreys, there was some movement of indignation. But this did not interfere with the general decline of the cause. Not only did the Dissenters, as in 1682 they were beginning to be called, decline in general influence; but the life and purpose which animated their organizations became a much POLITICAL DISSENT. l4l smaller and less noble force than it had been. The great divines among the Puritans had been educated at the national universities, and had ruled as stars within the pale of what was truly the national Church, including as it then did almost all varieties of orthodox belief. And, so far as they belonged to a party, it was a great national party. Their souls stood within the full sweep of all the great currents of national controversy and national energy and feeling. They gave law to a nation's stir and strife. It was otherwise with the young Dissenters who frequented *' semi- naries " and " academies " in 1682. Unless they studied with a sacred devotion to the cause of God's truth and Gospel preaching, as did such men as Matthew Henry and Philip Doddridge, unless their studies and their calling were en- nobled by the purity of their consecration and the holiness of their character, they fell down to the level of mere sectarian teachers, whose life was to be cribbed within the strait limits first of a small and " particular " seminary, and then of a small and " particular " church. If such men were not pre-eminently religious, they of necessity be- came merely political, and sought to justify their Dissent, and to aggrandise their cause, by putting prominently and chiefly forward the political principles with which their dissent was associated. Only thus could Presbyterian neophj^tes of a secular spirit — standing apart from anything like a national or even an organized Presbyterianism — avoid the sense of utter isolation and insignificance. Only thus could those who taught the virtue of Independency in churches, who had therefore no sense of a great and united brotherhood of ministers and sisterhood of churches to sustain and inspire them, and who were destitute of the fervid religious conse- cration of soul to the work of the pastor or evangelist which would invest the office with dignity under any circumstances, be prevented from becoming conscious of the irksome bondage 142 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. within the limits of a sejDarate cell to which they were about to consign themselves. Accordingly, the academies became to a large extent iDoli- tical. Pasquils were written against the bishops and clergy ; political satires were in vogue ; those who were not devoted to spiritual self-culture and to preparation for a godly and soul-saving ministry, relieved in this way their tedium and employed their spare hours. Young Westley did all this. He also wrote foolish verses, verses sometimes indelicate as well as foolish. It would appear, moreover, from his own circumstantial accounts, published in after life, that coarse and lewd conversation was by no means uncommon among the students. After making every deduction on account of the circumstances under which he, as a Churchman, was led to write, and afterwards to vindicate, his account of his education among the Dissenters, we fear so much in general must be accepted as undoubted. The radical evil, however, was that neither Samuel Westley nor his offend- ing pompanions were truly converted, or had a sense of their Divine vocation to the work of the ministry. The turning-point came at last. " Being a young man of spirit," writes his son John, " he was pitched upon to answer some severe invectives" recently published against the Dissenters. He had, as we have seen, for some time had his misgivings about Dissent ; to him, at any rate, it was not the holy thing it had been to his forefathers. He had seen the seamy side of a worn garment. True, it had been hallowed by the sufferings of his ancestors, and had still the love of many of the excellent of the earth. But the education of Samuel Westley, a smart, wilful, and fatherless lad, had not been such as to teach him humility. His self-confidence had been nurtured; his powers of dis- putation had been unduly stimulated. What wonder, then, that he soon discovered himself to be "wiser than all his YOUNG WESTLEY GOES TO OXFORD. 143 teachers?" "During his preparation for the task which had been assigned him," Mr. Kirk tells us (p. 55), " ho saw reason to change his opinions." The result was that, instead of writing the answer, " he renounced the Dissenters and at- tached himself to the Established Church." This was in 1G83, when, according to Mr. Kirk's reckoning, he was twenty-one years of age. At this time he lodged in London with his mother and an old aunt, both strong Dissenters. Not daring to tell them of his change of views, he "rose betimes one August morn- ing (1G83), walked all the way to Oxford," and entered himself as a " servitor of Exeter College." Here he main- tained himself partly by helping other students, and partly by his pen, as is shown at large by Dr. Clarke in his IVcsleij Fnmihj, He took forty-five shillings to college, but he left it with a much better furnished purse. Here, too, his character seems to have ripened and improved. Among his Dissenting friends he had been peevish and violent ; the University took this out of him. Moreover, he gave evidence of the awakening within him of a true pastoral feeling of compassion and responsibility by visiting the prisoners confined in the castle, as his sons did fifty years later. The important change in the opinions of Samuel Westley, which we have endeavoured to elucidate, had its counter- part in the case of a very young, but very superior and precocious, damsel, belonging to one of the most -distin- guished families among the London Dissenters ; and it seems not improbable, as Mr. Kirk suggests, that the two ec- clesiastical conversions stand to each other in some degree in the relation of cause and effect. Westley was intimate at Dr. Annesley's. When Dunton, the bookseller, with whom Westley was afterwards much associated in literary un- dei-takings, was married to Elizabeth Annesley in 1682, 144 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. Westley was of the party, and presented an " Epithalamium." The following year Mr. Westley abandoned Dissent; the following year, also, Miss Susanna Annesley, whom he after- wards married, abandoned Dissent, being at the time only thirteen years of age. It can hardly be doubted that the one of these events did much to determine the other. If she were old enough, and had sense enough, to make up her mind on the subject, she was old enough to take a deep interest in its discussion, and to be the confidante of Samuel Westley respecting his views and the reason of his change. She, too, had, it may be observed, near kins- folk who were members of the Church of England, — the family, to wit, of the Earl of Anglesea, whose wife, as we have seen, was strongly attached to Dr. Annesley. That Susanna Annesley, at the early age of thirteen, abandoned the ministry of her venerable father, and went alone to Shoreditch Church, is hardly to be supposed. But from that age the convictions of the highly educated and inde- pendent girl were decided. Probably she, no less than her lover, had been disgusted with much that she had seen of Stepney and Stoke Newington students, so different from the spirit and deportment of her parents, from the manners and carriage of her noble relatives, from the ideal which she would have pictured of Puritan godliness and spirituality. She had fallen on an unheroic age ; the bald- ness of the meeting-house was no longer redeemed by the heavenliness of the confessors. There was not, indeed, more godliness in the Established Church than in Dissent ; probably there was much less. But there was no pretence of superior godliness. And there were at this time great preachers in the London churches — such men as Barrow, Tillotson, Tenison, Stillingfieet, South, and Sherlock, with whom, for popular effect, even such a man as Charnock could hardly compare ; while the solemn beauty of the services satisfied her taste and SUSANNA ANNESLEY BECOMES A CHURCHWOMAN. 145 Avon her admiration. So from this time forth Sukey Annesley is known in her father's family as the young Chm'chwoman, and by her noble father indulged accordingly. She is the flower of the family. Others are more beautiful, though she is fair; but none more cultivated and accom- plished, — none so thoughtful and thorough as she. The young collegian has gained her heart; the family under- stand that, and let her know that they understand it. Susanna goes to church sometimes ; more and more fre- quently as she expands into a noble woman ; after her mar- riage, which will not be delayed any longer than needful, she will be a Churchwoman altogether. Thus, if the Puritans could not transmit to her lover and herself their ecclesiastical principles, at least they transmitted a bold independence of judgment and of conduct.* As a convert from Puritanism,, it was to be expected that the Oxford freshman would enter the University an extreme Tory in Church and State. Oxford was a congenial soil into which to transplant a zealous High-Church neoph}i;e. For many years this University had been, to borrow the words of Hallam, " the sanctuary of unspotted loyalty, as some would say, — a sink of all that was most abject in servility, as less courtly tongues might murmur." And now it was about to ascend to heights of loyal devotion — or to descend to depths of servile degradation — which it had not previously reached. Westley entered Exeter College in August, 1683, at a time when the absolutism of Charles II. • The early maturity of the young age. Both documents are wonderful ly Puritans is exceedingly remarkable. In staid, thoughtful, and old-fashioned ; the Life of Matthew Henry, by J. they abound in sage reflections and Bickerton Williams, which is prefixed doctrinal statements. In those perilous to some modern editions of his Com- and solemn times the children of the mcntary, we have a letter from yoimg Puritans seem never to have been Matthew to his father, written in his young. Matthew Henry gravely cx- fourtccntli year, and also a review of his amined himself when he was eleven ivliL,'ious experience written at the same years old. 14G THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. was every month becoming more resolute and unrelenting, and when the legal atrocities of Jeffreys were filling the country with sorrow, indignation, and terror. Neverthe- less, this was the period chosen by the University for passing the famous decree against "pernicious books," in which the political doctrines not only of Milton, but of Locke, were anathematized, and the volumes containing them ordered to be burnt ; "in which, among the articles placed upon the same level with the vilest doctrines of the Jesuits, was the maxim that the sovereignty of Eng- land is in the three estates of king, lords, and commons; that the king has only a co-ordinate power, and may be overruled by the other two:" a decree which was itself, in its turn, publicly burned by an order of the House of Lords in 1709. But whatever might be the zeal of the University in general on behalf of the doctrines of Divine right and passive obedience, it would appear that Mr. Samuel Westley distanced most of his contemporaries in the race of loyalist subservience. It is said, indeed, by Mr. Kirk, as it had been more strongly said by others, that Mr. Westley was no supporter of the policy of James IL, (1685-1688,) and his own authority is adduced to prove that the conduct of the bigot king in regard to Magdalen College — the first thing which wakened up the University in general to a perception of the true nature of his designs and of his essentially despotic principles and character — made such an impression on Mr. Westley that from that time he ceased to place any confidence in the tyrant. That this memorable passage in the history of the Uni- versity made an abiding impression on the mind of Samuel Westley, as on all true Protestants at the University, is hardly to be doubted. Nevertheless, there is decisive evi- dence— heartily do we wish it were otherwise — that Mr. Westley continued after this to degrade his pen by using SAMUEL WESTLEY AT OXPOKD. 147 it in fulsome eulogy of the Popish despot. It was in September, 1687, that King James visited Oxford, and, as Macaulay says, treated the fellows of Magdalen " with an insolence such as had never been sho'wn to their prede- cessors by the Puritan visitors." It was on the 27th of May, in the following year, (1088,) that the seven bishops were summoned . to appear on the 8th of June before the king in council. On the 8th of June they were sent to the Tower, two days before the Prince of Wales, the "Old Pretender," was born. On the 29th of the same month the bishops were acquitted. By this time the national feel- ing against the king was at its height, and the reaction in the University itself, which had commenced in the pre- vious autumn, had grown very strong. Nevertheless, at a later date than the last of these trans- actions, Samuel Westley, of Exeter College, published some lines on the birth of the prince, which show how decided an adherent he continued to be of James even up to this period, and within so few weeks of the Eevolution. In Ellis's Correspondence, under date June 28th, 1688, — the day before the acquittal of the bishops, — there is found the following entry : — " We expect verses gratulatory upon the birth of the prince from both the Universities, and also from the Society of Magdalen College, in a particular book by themselves." To understand this entry, it must be borne in mind that at this time, through the violent and tyrannical impositions of the king, Magdalen College had been converted into a Jesuit seminary. In accordance with this notice, there very soon appeared a volume from the Oxford press, entitled Strena Natnl'it'ue Acadcmice Oxoniensis in Clarhslmum Principan, in which is published what it is large courtesy to call a " poem " on the occasion, bearing the sig- nature of " Sam. Wesley, A.B., of Exeter College." In this sorry production Ariosto is represented as descending l2 148 THE ANCESTKY OF THE WESLEYS. from the celestial regions to sing of " Este and England's wondrous heir." It is said that " his father's soul shines through his mother's eyes," and that he is " formed all of bravery and love." The panegyrist proceeds, — " Thus look'd great James, when he, in Dimkirk field, Before hard fate retired, but could not jield ; Or when his thunders, at Batavia hurl'd, Pale Neptune scared, and all his watery world." The poet predicts the glorious future of the new-bom child, and even goes so far, notwithstanding what had taken l^lace the year before, as to picture his paying a visit to Oxford :— " I see thy loyal waters, Isis, moved (For never English prince but Isis loved,) When he comes there : these venerable men. Who met great James, how do they crowd again ! Again each cluster'd street and house prepare. With flowers and hearts, to attend great James's heir. The lively youths then- valour fain would try. And almost wish for some new enemy. Greater than him,* who but too quickly fell. Whom they prepared to entertain so well." From this effusion it is only too evident that Samuel Westley retained his extreme Toryism to the end of the reign of James II. He may have had misgivings, but he stood by his Divine-right principles to the last. Only "the logic of facts," in the accomplishment of the great Revolution, by the landing of William of Orange, in the late autumn of the same year, (November 5th, 1688,) seems to have made any decided impression on his ser- vile political principles. It is superfluous, after this, to add * Monmouth. SAMUEL westley's tolitical pkinciples. 149 that there is no truth whatever in the story so long cur- rent, that he preached on occasion of the famous " Decla- ration of Indulgence" from the text, " Be it known unto thee, 0 king, that we will not serve thy gods," &c. At the time when that declaration was issued, Samuel Westley was not even in orders, Mr, Kirk has had the merit of correcting an error, as to this point, of long standing, which had been endorsed even by such writers as Southey and Macaula}'', and had passed into the current stream of all Methodistic history.* It is necessary for us to correct another error in Dr. Clarke's interesting but very loose collectanea respecting Mr. Westley, He has strangely en- titled the verses from which we have lately quoted as " On the Death of the Prince of Wales." We presume that he was in his haste misled by the last few lines, in which Ariosto is represented as breaking off from his strain of gratulatory prophecy, because recalled to Elysium; — "he mounts and fills his seat among the blest." But the title of the volume, and his OAvn quotations from Ellis and Evelyn, should have kept him right, even if he had not adverted to the fact that the Prince born in 1688 did not die, but survived to become the Pretender to the English CYOvm. This copy of verses must have been one of the last things published by Mr. Westley before his leaving the Uni- versity. Having taken his B.A, degree, he was ordainecl deacon at Bromley, by the Bishop of Kochester, August 17th • The real hero of the auccdotc so in-law, and is addressed as " sire " in long ciuTent of Mr. Samuel Wesley, the poom. Hence the confusion which Sen., was the llev. John Berry. The has transferred the anecdote in question story is told by Samuel Wesley, Jun., from the father-in-law to tlic father. in an cIckv on Mr. Berry, entitled " The See a letter in the (Sixjtcnny) Weskj/a?!- Parish Priest," which will be found at Methodist Magazine for September, page 95 of the last edition of his poems 1863, from the pen of the venerable (edited by the late Mr. Nichols). Mr. biographer of the Kcv. Charles Wesley, Berry was the younger Wesley's father- the Rev. Thonuvs Jackson. 150 THE ANCESTEY OF THE "W^SLEYS. 1688, and priest at St. Andrew's Holborn, by the Bishop of London, on the 26th of the following February. On leaving Oxford he seems to have dropped a letter of his name and to have materially modified his politics. Henceforth he sub- scribed himself, and must be spoken of, not as Westley, but as Wesley; henceforth also his Jacobitism seems to have subsided into mere High-Churchism, of an intrepid active character. No doubt his change of residence from Oxford to London, and the renewal in social life of his intercourse with his dissenting friends, had much to do with this change of political tone. A man may be as absurd a bigot or doctrinaire as he i^leases in a cloister, among his brother ccenobites ; but he must become practical and common-sense in the daily rub of London literary and political life. It appears, more- over, that, being an equally ready and needy writer, he "wrote and printed the first thing that appeared in defence of the government, after the accession" of William and Mary. Nor was he content with a single pamphlet ; he " wrote a great many little pieces more, both in prose and verse, with the same view." The Marquis of Normanby became his patron ; and the queen had him on her list of those whose claims merited favourable consideration. Mr. Wesley had supported himself well during his col- legiate life by helping other students and by his literary industry. There is no need to speak of his juvenile pro- duction entitled " Maggots," published by Dunton, his brother-in-law, soon after his going to Oxford. His prin- cipal maintenance seems to have been derived from his co- editorship in the Athenian Oracle, of which Dunton was the publisher. After he left the university, his chief source of pecuniary supply would appear to have still been Dunton's Oracle, and various literary projects in which Wesley lent Dunton a hand. His first appointment in the Church was a curacy of ag28 a year (1688-9). After this he obtained a MARRIAGE AND POVERTY. 151 naval chaplaincy of £70, which he held a year. It was probably in 1689 that he commenced his metrical Life of Christ. In 1690 he married, on a London curacy of £B2 a year. It was a humble home to which Susanna Annesley went, when she left her father's house, and poverty was her companion all her life through. Her husband and she, however, " boarded in London or the neighbourhood, with- out going into debt." In the autumn of 1690 the Marquis of Normanby presented Wesley to the living of South Ormsby in Lincolnshire, worth at that time <£50 a year. . Hither the husband and wife, with one infant, removed from the great metropolis, with which they had been so long familiar, hence- forth to spend a hard, sequestered life among the uncultivated rustics of Lincolnshire. Wesley himself describes the par- sonage as " a mean cot, composed of reeds and clay." Their family rapidly increased, " one child additional per annum." To live upon the income of the rectory was, of course, impossible ; but the diligent and accomplished young wife did all that thrift and management might do "to make ends meet," while her sturdy husband endeavom-ed to eke out his scanty means by his pen. Whilst here, he published his Life of Christ, of which the queen accepted the dedica- tion, and which, though ponderously dull, as well as fairly ballasted with learning, is believed not to have been an unprofitable speculation. Here, too, he published a treatise on the Hebrew points ; while his most lucrative^ though least congenial, occupation was still in connexion with j Dunton's Athenian Oracle, one third of which he wrote with his own hand. Six years thus passed away at South Ormsby. The wonder is not that pecuniary embarrassment slowly accu- mulated, in spite of all that the brave couple could do in the way of striving and stinting, but that this accumulation was so slow and so small as we find that it was. It seems to have been Avithin a few months, earlier or 152 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. later, of the beginning of 1697, that Mr. Wesley was pre- sented to the rectory of Epworth, " in accordance probably with some wish or promise of" the late queen, who did not forget her client. The living was in itself a good one, being worth, in the currency of those days, about £200 a year. But Mr. Wesley's family was large : he was in debt : the fees necessary to be paid before entering on the living added considerably to this debt; and an additional outlay was requu'ed in order to furnish the parsonage, and to stock the farm and bring it properly into cultivation. All these things together made up such a load of embarrassment as rendered his |)osition at Epworth little less discouraging than it had been at South Ormsby. Moreover, as rector of Epworth, his time was so much occupied by business, and his ecclesiastical position was so far dignified, that it was not likely he v/ould be at liberty to write for Dunton as he had formerly done, or to make so much out of the Athenian Oracle. He was called upon to take a leading part in the ecclesiastical business of the archdeaconry and diocese; we find him preaching a visitation sermon, and appointed three times to go to London as " convocation man," an appoint- ment which, if it were honourable, and congenial to the disposition and talents of the rector, yet involved the ne- cessity not only of absence from his estate and family, but of residence in London for many weeks together at his own charges. The rector soon found himself hard pressed to procure the cash he needed, and especially to meet the '* interest-money." Then he had many and costly losses and troubles. His " one barn of six bales" fell down twelve months after his entering on the rectory, and had to be rebuilt. Four years afterwards, in 1702, a third of his thatched parsonage was burnt to the ground. Already the rector felt as if he were a victim doomed to misfortune. When the news reached him, at the other end of the town, THE RECTOR IK JAIL. 153 that the parsonage was on fire, but his family safe, he exclaimed, "For which God be praised, as well as for what He has taken ! I find 'tis some happiness to have been miserable ; for my mind has been so blunted with former misfortmies that this scarce made any impression upon me." Within twelve months after this, " his entire growth of flax, on which he relied to satisfy some of his hungry creditors, was consumed in the field." Then came the contested elec- tion of 1705, in which the rector zealously espoused the Tory, which was at this time both the unpopular and the anti- ministerial, side. One result of this was that he was deprived of, the chaplaincy of a regiment which he had obtained from the Duke of Marlborough, as he himself said in a letter to the Archbishop of York, "with so much expense and trouble." Another was that he was arrested, immediately after the election, on the suit of one of the opposite party, for a debt of less than thirty pounds, and consigned to Lin- coln Castle. Now the worst had come to the worst, and he was " at rest," in " the haven where he had long expected to be." "A jail," he says, "is a paradise in comparison of the life I led before I came hither." In his " new parish" the undaunted rector set himself at once to work for the good of his "brother jail-birds." At the rectory the heroic wife bore herself with such " fortitude and generous patience" as only a noble woman in adversity can show. Money she had none, — not a coin; the household lived on bread and milk; bread probably made from the wheat of their glebe, milk cei-tainly obtained from their o^m dairy. What she could to help her husband she did ; she sent him her little jewellery, including her wedding ring. Three months the rector re- mained in prison, cheered the while by the letters of Archbishop Sharp, of York, and by the kind exertions of many friends. When he left Lincoln, half his debts, which amounted in all to ii'300, were paid, and arrangements made for liquidating 154 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. the remainder. He had sent back to his wife her trinkets, precious as memorials, though of no great account as money's woi*th. But his misfortunes were not at an end. He was released from Lincoln Castle in 1705 ; and for several years after this date must have been in comparatively comfortable circum- stances, so far as household means were concerned. The ill-will of his parishioners, however, continued. Not only was he a high Tory in his Church and State politics, but he was a rigid disciplinarian in his parish. The canon law was by no means a dead letter in Epworth. Presentations in the bishop's court were not infrequent ; penances, painful and shameful penances, were exacted from convicted violators of the law of chastity ; excommunication was a real poTV'er. In many ways had the parishioners shown their malice against the rector ; his dog had been mutilated, his cattle stabbed ; and it seems most likely that to the deliberate malice of some of his evil-minded parishioners must be attributed the burning of his flax, if not also of his parsonage. In 1709 the parsonage was again on fire, and this time was burnt to the ground. This, too, was probably the work of incendiaries. It was this second fire from which the child John Wesley was barely rescued by the bravery of two of the parishioners.* Now, then, the stone of Tantalus is again at the bottom of the hill ; the parsonage must be rebuilt, and all the rector's * " The next day, as the rector pen- father's words, when John, the last sively paced the garden, surveying the of his children, was brought to him blackened ruins of the house, he picked in a neighbour's house : " Come, neigh- up a leaf of his cherished and expensive bours, let us kneel dovra; let us give Polyglott Bible, in which just one soli- thanks to God. He has given me tary sentence was legible : Vade, vende all my eight children : I am rich omnia qua habes, et attolle crucem, et enough." Well done. Christian heart sequere Me. ' Go, sell all that thou of oak, firm and true, stem and strong, hast, and take up thy cross, and fol- but sound and loving ! John Wes- low Me.' " — Mother of the Wesleys, ley took for his motto in after life, p. 84. Few will not have heard, or "Is not this a brand plucked from the having heard can have forgotten, the burning?" EXTREME HARDSHIPS. 155 work is to do over again. Wesley was not again arrested, but lie was never from this time fully free from debt. When he died, however, a quarter of a century later, hrs debts did not exceed ^100, and there was property enough to defray them all. Meantime he had brought up a very numerous family ; had sent three sons to the university ; and, in the midst of his own straits, never failed to contribute £10 per annum towards the support of his aged mother, the widow of John Westley of Whitworth, to whom also, in the earlier part of his married life, he had advanced 5^40 in one sum to save her from distress. It is pitiful to see how extreme were the hardships en- dured by this noble family. In 1701, writing to his true friend the Archbishop of York, the rector says : " Never came any thing' more like a gift from heaven. Wednesday evening my wife and I clubbed and joined stocks, which came but to six shillbujs, to send for coals. Thursday morning I received the ten iwiimW (from the Countess of Northampton) ; and " at night my wife was delivered [of twins]. Glory be to God for His unspeakable goodness !"* In a letter addressed by Mrs. Susanna Wesley to her brother Samuel, in the East Indies, (one of the most affect- ing letters we ever read,) she says: "Mr. Wesley rebuilt his house in less than one year ; but nearly thirteen years are elapsed since it was burned, yet it is not half furnished, nor his wife and children half clothed to this day." "The late Archbishop of York once said to me, (when my master was m Lincoln Castle,) among other things, ' Tell me,' said he, ' Mrs. Wesley, whether you ever really wanted bread?' 'My lord,' said I, 'I will freely OT\-n to your grace that, strictly speaking, I never did want bread. But then, I had so much care to get it before it was eat, and to pay for it after, as has often made it very unpleasant * Wcsloy Family, vol. i. p. 198. 156 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. to me.' " " As to my own affairs," says Keziah Wesley in January, 1722, writing to her brother John, " there is nothing remarkable, for want of money and clothes was what I was alwaj^s used to."* Again, in July of the same year, she writes to the same: " My mother's ill health, which was often occasioned by her want of clothes or convenient meat;^ and my own constant ill-health these three years past, weighed much more with me than anything else."t The paterfamilias himself, writing from Wroot to his son John, then at Oxford, under date Ajml 1st, 1726, says: — " I had botli yours since your election : in both you express yom* self as becomes you, for what I had willingly, though with much greater difl8.culty than you imagine, done for you ; for the last twelve- month pinched me so hard, that I'm forced to beg time of your brother Sam, till after harvest, to pay him the iilO that he lent you ; nor shall I have so much as that, J question whether £5, to keep my family from May-day till after harvest ; and don't expect I shall be able to do ^anything for Charles when ho goes to the university. And what will be my own fate, God knows, before the summer be over ; sed passi graviora. Wherever I am, my Jacky is FelloAV of Lincoln ! " — Wesley Family, vol. i. p. 306. There can be little doubt that Mr. Wesley was but a poor man of business. He himself admits as much; and his wife makes the same admission. He made a very un- satisfactory agent in the affairs of his wife's wealthy brother, Samuel Annesley, the Indian civilian, for which all the family had to suffer ; and he managed his own farm and money matters but indifferently. But a more honest, hard- working man than Samuel Wesley never lived, as he him- self has proved in his letter of defence to his London brother Matthew, and as Epworth and Lincolnshire well knew. And so high was his reputation for integrity, that he never found any difficulty in borrowing money ; and even * Wesley Family, pp. 389, 391. f Ibid., vol. ii., pp. 37P, 380. THE CHARACTER OF THE RECTOR. 157 usurers showed their respect for him by lending money at the ordinary rate of interest. For, indeed, long before his death, this true and sturdy Christian Englishman had con- quered the respect of his parishioners and neighbours, and had won the affection of not a few. There was a generous quality of heart and soul in the High-Church son of the Puritan confessor, notwithstanding the austerity, almost amounting to harshness, of his early character, which years ripened and sorrows mellowed into nobleness and loving strength. Nothing can be in finer tone than the letters written to his sons during the latter years of his life. His clearness and force of intellect he preserved to the end. Nor could anything well be more affecting than the history of his closing days. The narrative was beautifully given by the brothers John and Charles, especially by the latter in a long letter to Samuel Wesley, of Tiverton ; and the fine epitome of it in the pages of Southey's Life of Wesley has been often quoted. Mr. Kirk has set the marks of his well-directed research in every part of the ground over which he travels. And he has done some service to the memory of the rector of Epworth, by resolving some anecdotes which were cur- rent respecting him into mere legends, having but a slender foundation in fact. For instance, the rector is said to have selected a certain " psalm before the sermon," in order that the second line might be dolefully sung out by his clerk, newly arrayed in the rector's last cast-off wig, a world too wide and big for the head-piece of the small and self-important official. But, unfortunately for the story, no such couplet as " Liko to an owl in ivy bush. That rueful thing am I," is to be found in Sterlfbold and Hopkins's version, which was 158 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. in use in the church, or in any other psalter which has fallen in the way of Mr. Kirk or any of his friends. *' We never saw more of it," adds Mr. Kirk, "than the two lines quoted; and the most confident advocates of the genuineness of the story have not condescended to hint at its authorship, or point to the version or collection in which it may be found." We are bound, however, to say that the lines seem to us to be too genuine to have been invented for the sake of the story ; nor, indeed, can we conceive how the story could have come to be current, if there had been no foundation for it. Mr. Kirk suggests that the verses may have been composed by the clerk himself, if such ever were given out. We confess that it does not seem to us absolutely incre- dible that they may have been composed by the rector, with a view to their application to the clerk; and that this is probably the fact of the case, if the story is in any degree and manner true. Dr. Clarke avers that he gives the anec- dote as it was told to him by John Wesley. Here we must leave the matter : the story does not well hang together ; indeed, its incongruities awaken strong suspicion; and yet the source from which it is derived, its raciness, its cir- cumstantiality, nay, the very fact that the lines, while apt for the occasion, are not to be found in any version, — all together seem to afford some intrinsic evidence of its authenticity. Mr. Kirk's wholesome scepticism is also exercised upon the story that for twelve months the rector of Epworth absented himself from his home because his wife would not respond at family worship to the prayer for the King (William HI.)/' This account rests also upon the authority of John Wesley; yet it is certain that, whatever foundation there may be for it, the statement made by the son is at least exaggerated. There can be no doubt, indeed, that Mrs. Wesley, being in principle a strict Jacobite, did not respond in the family THE rector's absences FROM HOME. 159 when prayer was offered for King William. The extracts which Mr. Kirk has given from her private papers render that miqiiestionable. With her this was a point of con- science. And it may be conceived how the rector, so thorough a priest as he was, would resent an interference with the supremacy of his will in conducting worship for his family. There must have been sore trouble on this point. It must be to this, we imagine, that the father refers in writing to his son Samuel in 1730, when, in enumerating the proofs of his attachment to the settlement of the crown and consti- tution in 1688, he says, "And that I ever had. the most tf^nder affection and deepest veneration for my sovereign and the royal family; on which account it is no secret to you, though it is to most others, that I have undergone the most sensible pains and inconveniences of my whole life, and that for a great many years together ; and yet have still, I thank God, retained my integrity firm and immoveable, till I have conquered at the last."* Neverthe- less, Mr. Kirk, by a collation of dates and of facts, has shown that the separation could not have continued for twelve months as alleged, nor indeed for more than nine months ; and that as the cause of difference must have been eleven years old, there is some improbability as to its having occurred at all. Let us add that the rector was " Convo- cation man" that same year ; and even though he might prolong his stay from home beyond the limit of the session, we may hope that there was some reason for it, other than the recusancy of his wife.f * Wesley Family, vol. i. p. 320, Moreover, as John Wesley states that t We must, however, add that what he was the first child born after this the rector might have endured while his separation, which he strangely enough children were very young, he may have regarded as the cause of the Old Gcoftrcy resolved to endure no longer when their visitation, there is here a i)oint and cir- eldcst child, Samuel, had come to the cumstantiality which adds exactness and age of eleven, and was still at home. authority to his statement. It may after 160 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. Ill justice to that noble-hearted lady, the rector's wife, it is proper here to say that the real gist of the difference between herself and her husband seems to have been that she was true to her principles and that he was not. Long after the heats of early life were spent,, when he was ap- proaching his septenary, in the letter which he wrote in reply to the accusations of his brother Matthew, he indi- cates his ovm political principles, speaking perhaps the more pointedly because his brother was a Dissenter. Of his children he says " that he hopes they are all High-Church, and for inriohihle jxissirc obedience ; from which, if any of them should be so wicked as to degenerate, he cannot tell whether he could prevail with himself to give them his blessing."* It is plain that to a man of such principles the glorious revolution of 1688 should have been a great crime — mere rebellion. Mr. Wesley, however, was always loyal to " the powers that be." With him the de facto king was ever king de jure. Having become convinced, at the eleventh hour, and after leaving Oxford for London, that James II. was bent on destroying the liberties both of Church and State, he had heartily embraced the cause of William, and ever afterwards unflinchingly stood by it. Susanna Annesley, however, cherishing High-Church principles in the midst of a Puritan family, and regarding the cause of the Stuarts as the cause of honour, chivalry, and the fair and glorious Church of England, clung with the partisanship and devotion of a glowing girl, to the cause of James, to what she es- teemed as the sacred cause of loyalty, royalty, and misfor- tune ; and when, in after years, she heard of her Stuart all have so been that neither party could, peated his absences from home, until, at the time, give way upon tliis "point by the death of King William in 1702, of conscience;" and that Wesley de- the most pressing cause of variance had parted on this account abruptly on his ceased. journey to London, and remained away * Wesley Family, vol. i. p. 235. the longer, and from time to time re- THE JACOBITE LOYALISM OF SUSANNA WESLEY. IGl sovereign as an exiled dependent, and of his son and heir as a forlorn and almost friendless prince, she still adhered to the political faith (with her a part of her religion) of her youthful prime. To blame such constancy would be mon- strous ; it was a feeling, a principle, a necessity for the genuine High-Churchwoman. Thousands more such loyalists there were in England for many years after the incoming of the eighteenth century. Nor is it in the least to be wondered at in one of however strong a mind, who seems scarcely to have left her remote country home even once, from the time when, at twenty years of age, she quitted the great city in which she had always lived to accompany her husband to his poor rectory, until, more than forty years afterwards, on her husband's death, she left it to find a shifting home thence- forward amongst her sons and daughters. At the same time an active, stirring clergyman, like her husband, who had his way to push, and was in desperate need of patronage and pre- ferment, who mingled much with political and ecclesiastical business, who knew men, and appreciated facts, and could not be insensible that William had given a new lease of life and prosperity to the realm, both Church and State, could not be expected, for the sake of an abstract dogma, however much he might have admired and loved it, to isolate himself from the world of action and progress, to ignore the decisions of Providence, to contend vainly against a manifest destiny, and to cut himself off from all chance of preferment. He was a High-Chm*chman, and, until William came in, had been a Tory ; but he had common sense, and was too practical a man to be a Jacobite. He was religiously careful ever to submit himself to the " powers that be." He obtained a chaplaincy from the Whig Duke of Marlborough, partly as a consequence of his eulogistic poem on that hero. He dedicated three weighty productions of his pen to three successive queens, — the Life of Christ to Mary ; the History of the Old and New M 162 THE ANCESTEY OF THE WESLEYS. Testament to Anne; and his last and most elaborate work on Job, a ponderous monument of learning, which was posthumously published, to Caroline. It was, as we have noted, through the favour of Mary, that he obtained the living of Epwoi"th. It is no wonder that he was no Jacobite, and that he resented his wife's refusal to join in the prayer for William. Still it is impossible not to respect the disinterested and woman-like devotion with which Susanna Wesley clung to the defeated cause. The only thing, we confess, which we cannot well excuse in the conduct of the rector of Epworth, is the unrelenting sternness with which he compelled his accomj)lished daughter Mehetabel to carry into effect a rash promise, the result of sore disappointment in her affections, and impale herself in a living martyrdom by becoming the wife of an illiterate sot and profligate, like the plumber Wright. The letter which this remarkable woman wrote to her father in relation to this matter, and which is printed in Clarke's Wesley Family, is of a very painful character, and suggests that father Wesley must have been not only stern, but at times harsh in his rule of his family. It must be admitted, indeed, that they all had not only bright faculties but strong wills; and that they needed a firm, strong hand to guide them. But Mrs. Wesley's guidance, though surely firm enough, seems always to have been loving and considerate. No higher tribute could there be to a mother than the tone of respectful and grateful, yet free and even playful, con- fidence in which all her children, whether sons or daughters, write to this rare woman, this almost unequalled mother. We shall not make any attempt to estimate the value of Mr. Wesley's labours as an author. He was, certainly, but an indifferent poet, even if the most be made of EupoUs' Hymn to the Creator. That he was a learned man, cannot be denied ; for a poor parochial clergyman, a man of uncommon THE ATTAINIVEENTS OF THE RECTOR. 1G3 learning. Ho had made Hebrew his special study, taking with this Chaldee and Syriac. He was pre-eminently a biblical student, and planned a publication somewhat re- sembling what Bagster has furnished in his Polyglott. He must have been a superior preacher, if we may judge from the few indications which remain to us of the estimate in which he was held, and from his Letter to a Curate, a pro- duction of great interest and superior merit, learned, earnest, racy, and practical, the quintessence of many years' learn- ing and experience earnestly and rapidly prepared, originally for the benefit of Mr. Hoole, who came to be his curate. This valuable tract is reprinted entire in the appendix to the Rev. Thomas Jackson's admirable Memoir of Charles Wesley. There is one passage in it which we cannot refrain from quoting. " * But who cannot read prayers ?' I am clearly of another mind, and think there are but few who can or do perform it as it ought to be done. I fancy I have not heard many in my life that have done it in perfection, out of college-chapels, and cathedrals ; and truly not over many there either ; though these are likely to be the best schools, if one could he so happy as to light on a right master. I know not but I may have heard nn hundred who have preached well to one who has read prayers so ; and it is well if one main reason, for it be not that they may have preached better sermons than their own, though they cannot read prayers with a better voice and better sense than their own. I have known persons of the soundest judgment, who would give a near guess at a man's capacity, by his way of reading the prayers ; though that criterion may not be infal- Uble, because some persons of sense may be got into an ill manner of reading, or may have so unfortunate an ear or pipe that they may be masters neither of their own cadency nor pronunciation. Yet I know not but it may hold tnie, that no man without good parts, or, at least, tolerable ones, assisted with great observation and application, can read prayers as they ought to be read, especially in a pubUc congregation." — Life of Charles Wesley, vol. ii. p. 507. It is perhaps, however, yet more pertinent to the scope of this article to refer to two of the rector's minor pro- m2 104 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. ductions which notably anticipate some of the principles many years afterwards carried into operation by his sons, John especially. One of these is the " Letter concerning the Eeligious Societies," which was published in 1699. In this letter, which is printed at length in the first volume of the Wesleij Family, Wesley argues that such societies are in full harmony with the spiiit of primitive Christianity, that they would supply the lack in the Church of England of that element of strength and influence which the Church of the Middle Ages found in monastic institutions, that they would be great helps to earnest and active parish ministers, and that in every way they would conduce to the life of the Church. He rebuts the allegation of their schismatic tendency; and shows their lawfulness and fitness as an organization in the following paragraph : — " Public assemblies in the Church, though constantly and devoutly attended by the members of these societies, yet must be owned to be improper, on several accounts, for those excellent ends which they propose in their stated meetings. 'Tis not there proper to discourse of many things which fall under their care, nor is there any room for Christian conversation, if it were decent to practise it. Pious discourse must be owned as necessary as it is a delightful employ- ment to all good Christians ; and yet what more generally and shamefully neglected, and even by the accursed rules of civUity exploded out of the world ? This practice that late excellent person, Dr. Goodman, has endeavoured to retrieve, and has recommended it in so charming a manner in his Winter Evening Conference, that he would not have failed of making many converts to it, had there' been virtue enough left in the world to make use of his directions. Now, if this religious discourse be lawful and commendable where it is accidental, or among a few persons only, I would fain to know how it should come to be otherwise, when it is stated and regulated, and among a greater number ? Is it any more a conventicle than any other meetings? Is there any law that it offends against? Is it any greater crime to meet and sing psalms together, than to sing pro- fane songs or waste hours in impertinent chat or drinking ? Indeed, THE FATHER OF THE WESLEYS. 165 one would almost wonder how a design of nature should come to have any enemies ; nor can I sec any reason why good men should be dis- couraged from joining in it by those hard words, faction, singularity, and the like, when all possible care is taken to give no just offence in the management of it." — Wesley FcimUij, vol. i. pp. 150, 151. This letter, taken in conjunction with that to his curate, may serve to show that the faculties of method and organi- zation, for which his sons were so remarkable, were pos- sessed by theii* father as well as by their mother. Much as the Wesleys owed to their mother, they owed not a little also to their father, who throughout kept a full and prac- tical correspondence with them, who counselled and guided them during theii- college life, and by his example and du-ections, when they were at home, in their youth and early manhood, impressed his bias upon them. Moreover, we cannot but recognise in such a letter as that from which we have now quoted, that the High-Church rector had not lost all the flavour and spnit of that Puritan fellowship, that earnest spnitual life, with which he had been imbued in his youth. The other writing of Mr. Wesley's to which we must refer is his " broad and comprehensive scheme," as Dr. Smith calls it, " for the complete evangelization of the East," to which he procured the sanction and signature of the Arch bishop of York, and which he supports in the most emphatic and persuasive way by the offer of his own services. "If," he says, in conclusion, "£'100 per annum might be allowed me, and £40 I must pay my curate in my absence, either from the East India Company or otherwise, I should be ready to venture my life on this occasion, provided any way might be found to secure a subsistence for my family, in case of my decease in those countries."* Surely here speaks the father of John Wesley, the grandfather of Me- thodism. How remarkably the spii'it and principles of John * Mother of the Wesleys, p. 130. 166 THE ANCESTRY OF THE WESLEYS. Westley of Whitchurch, the rector's father, re-appeared in John Wesley, we have already noted. Nor is the resem- blance less undeniable in cei-tain salient particulars between the father and his son. Samuel Westley, the undergraduate at Oxford, visiting the prisoners in the common prison ; the rector in his parish, diligent in all his duty, strict and yet, as extant correspondence shows, just and considerate in his enforcement of discipline; the apologist of "the re- ligious societies;" the propounder of the magnificent mis- sionary scheme; must be acknowledged to be the worthy father of the Wesleys. He was a learned man, a compre- hensive thinker, a racy writer and speaker, a brave worker, a manly soul, hasty, impetuous, hot, but loving, liberal, and true. The most unfortunate passage in his life was his fierce and protracted controversy with his old friends, the Dissenters, arising out of the unauthorised publication of a private letter which he had written to a friend, and in his trenchant prosecution of which he was urged on by the great prelate of York, to whom he was so much indebted. Yet it is to be noted that his adversary in that controversy seems to have confessed himseK worsted, both by not attempting to reply to Mr. Wesley's last publica- tion, and by himself afterwards conforming to the Church of England.* It must also be remembered that Wesley was always peaceable and friendly in his private relations with the Dissenters. It would have been a shame indeed if the son of such ancestors, the son-in-law of such a Noncon- formist, the brother-in-law of such a woman as Ann Annesley,f had been a mere intolerant High Churchman. Our space is exhausted, and we cannot attempt to bring Mrs. Wesley into view. There is the less need to do this, * Wesley Family, vol. i. p. 181. Church of England," refer to this lady, t There is reason to believe that the who became the wife of Mi\ Fremantle. lines of Sam. Wesley, Jim. " On the See Samuel Weslei/'s Poems by Nichols, Death of a Friend, a Dissenter from the pp. 319, 543. SUSANNA WESLEY. 167 both because her character is better understood than her husband's, and her influence on her sons more justly ap- preciated, and because Mr. Kirk furnishes our readers with the opportunity of doing this fully for themselves. The Rev. W. M. Punshon has depicted Susanna Wesley with more eloquence and felicity than any previous speaker or writer. His lecture is not yet published, but has been heard by many of our readers. These will be prepared to welcome Mr. Kirk's biography. Susanna Wesley was not the woman of exquisite beauty that she has been supposed to be. The picture which has been engraved and circulated as representing her in her youth (a beautiful lady dressed a la mode), was not a portrait of the lady of the rectory. But we have as a frontispiece to this volume a genuine portrait of her in her old age. She was a graceful and noble English lady, but not strikingly beautiful. But she was wise, witty, accomplished ; she had a masculine intellect, stored with theology, as if she were a divine, and at the same time highly cultivated in due feminine studies ; she had a tender, brave, woman's heart,full of affec- tion and truth ; she was refined, methodical, highly bred, and carried these qualities into all her education, imbued with them all her children. She was the sole instructress of her daughters, all of whom, so far as appears, wrote English of the clearest sense and purest quality, and were women of spnit, principle, and refinement. She herself is one of the best female writers of English, — simple, chaste, nervous Eng- lish,— of her own or any age ; her writing is distinguished by disciplined strength, often by exquisite, most quiet pathos. For her daughters she prepared digests of divinity, which might have been written by a bishop. On similar subjects she corresponded with her sons when they had attained to man's estate. Yet she gave her household play in their plea- sures and pursuits, and remained her daughters' confidante in their maturer years. 168 THE ANCESTBY OF THE WESLEYS. Nor was she unworthy in her religious principles and practice of the stock from which she had descended, as witness her " Meetings" in the kitchen of the parsonage, and her noble letter to her husband when he was alarmed at the bruit of such proceedings. Isaac Taylor, in his Wesley and Methodism, — a w^ork which contains so much of crude speculation and unfounded as- sertion, and at the same time so much of ripe wisdom, suggestive thought, and Catholic feeling, — makes the fol- lowing observation : — ** It must not be regarded as a refine- ment when it is affirmed that the special characteristics of religious communities do go do^vn to the second, third, and fourth generation, in the instance of families that have walked forth from the enclosure within which they were born and bred. Family peculiarities may have disappeared, — the physical type, perhaps, has been lost ; and yet a note of the religious pedigree survives, and reappears in grand- children, sons, and daughters. The Wesleys, John and Charles, if not Samuel, inherited from both father and mother qualities most serviceable for their after work, which their father, if not mother, would have disallowed and rooted out from their bosoms."* How remarkably this dictum holds good, as regards the paternal ancestors of the Weslej^s, it has been a main object of this article to set forth. Mr. Kirk shows how fully the words of Mr. Taylor are justified, so far as they relate to Mrs. Wesley. We do not, indeed, believe, with Mr. Taylor, that " mind is from the mother ;" but nothing can be more certain than that, to quote his words closely following what we have already cited, Susanna Wesley "conferred upon her sons whatever advantage they might derive from her composite excellencies as a zealous church- woman, yet rich in a dowry of nonconforming virtues."! How far Mrs. Wesley influenced her sons in the opening • Wesley ami Methodism, pp. IS, 19. f Ibid. THE SISTERS OF THE VVESLEYS. 1G9 chapters of Methodist history ; and how far also her in- fluence told upon the personal character of her sons ; is well exhibited by Mr. Kirk. It must have been a singular and exquisite pleasure to the brothers to have their venerable mother with them, to receive her smile and blessing in her latest years, and to rejoice over her departure in the same faith and hope wdiich were their joy and life. Mr. Ivirk has carried his memoir to its true conclusion by telling us most of what is known respecting the daughters of Mrs. Wesley, a marvellous cluster of fine women, among whom that gifted but unfortunate woman, the poetess, Mehetabel, (Mrs. Wright,) and the no less afflicted, but more richly comforted Mrs. Hall, the friend of Dr. Johnson, shine conspicuous. Had these ladies not been the children of poverty, how different might have been their lot ! The misfortunes of the greater number of them move our keenest sympathy ; but throughout it is evident that their noble training and their high principles, while no doubt they intensified their sufleiings, also opened for them special sources of strength and consolation, and, finally, by the grace of God, were the means of helping them to come with all their troubles and without one exception to the bosom of their Saviour and to blessed rest and hope in prospect of a better inheritance. The words of Dr. Adam Clarke, at the close of his Wesley Famihj, in relation to the whole family at Epworth, are of such truth and weight that with them we will finish this article : " Such a family I have never read of, heard of, or known ; nor, since the days of Abraham and Sarah, and Joseph and Mary of Nazareth, has there ever been a family to which the human race has been more indebted." MR. KINGSLEY AND DE. NEWMAN.* A THEOLOGICAL controversy between Professor Kingsley and Dr. Newman cannot but have a special interest. They are two of the greatest living masters of English ; and they are men of strongly contrasted characters and opinions. Mr. Kingsley excels in insight — insight into the hearts of men, into the power of principles, into the life and meaning of past ages ; and possesses, in consequence, notwithstanding certain questionable tendencies, a living truth of appre- hension, which often lights him to the innermost philo- sophy of history and of life, so far as this may be attained by the feebleness of human thought. Dr. Newman excels in detailed exposition and analysis, in subtlety of hypothesis, in logical fence, in intellectual persuasion — being of all living men, perhaps, the most fitted by gifts of understanding to be the expounder and apologist of an ecclesiastical party. Mr. Kingsley, again, represents a school of thought most profoundly, and at the same time intelligently, opposed to Popery ; while Dr. Newman has been essentially a Papist almost from the first ; would seem indeed to have been a predestined Papist. * London Quarterly Bevieiv, October, Charles Kingsley, M.A. Fourth Edi- 1864. tion. Macmilhin. 1864. L "Mr. Kingsley and Dr. Ne\^Tnan : 3. "Apologia pro Vita sua ; being a a Correspondence, &c." Longmans. Reply to a Pamphlet entitled, ' What, 1864. then, does Dr. Newman mean ? '" By 2. "What, then, does Dr. Ne^vman John Henry Newman, D.D. Long- mean?* A Reply, &c." By the Rev. mans. 1864. THE MERELY PERSONAL CONTROVERSY. 171 But a liiglier interest than any merely or necessarily in- volved in such a controversy actually emerges in the one which we have undertaken to review. Dr. Newman gives lis his own autobiography during the most critical years of his life, and in so doing furnishes the natural history of the Tractarian movement at Oxford from its rise about 1833 to his final and complete absorption in Eomanism about twelve years later. It is this which constitutes the chief value of this controversy; and which will make Dr. Newman's Ajwlogla pro Vita sua one of the cardinal authorities to be consulted hereafter by the historian of Britain in the nine- teenth century. With so important a matter awaiting our attention, we must be as brief as possible in our notice of a merely personal dispute between Professor Kingsley and Father Newman. In the main we hold Mr. Kingsley not to have committed wrong in this matter. Where he was mistaken, it was scarcely possible that he should not have been mistaken. Dr. NewTnan, indeed, has convincingly established his own personal truthfulness. Whatever in his course or his teaching may have seemed inconsistent with personal sincerity, we now see must be attributed partly to the very difficult circum- stances in which he was placed, which at a certain period rendered a policy of reserve the only one possible for him, and partly to the singularly subtle power of casuistry which is not only possessed by Dr. Newman, but by which he is himself not unfrequently mastered and possessed. Dr. New- man himself is still a truthful man, after all his saturation with Popish doctrine ; not, we fear, altogether superior to artifice, cei-tainly not superior to the influence of self-delusion, but yet incapable of conscious and deliberate untruth. Con- Bidering the intellectual character of the author of Tract XC, and of the Lectures on Anglicanism, this is much to say. It is surprising that one whom Tractarian casuistry 172 ME. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. had carried so far in 1841, should not by the moral theology of Rome have been drifted much further during the last twenty years. It is hardly, however, to be expected that a pre-eminently outspoken Protestant Englishman like Mr. Kingsley should himself have been able to furnish the solution to whatever in Dr. Newman's character and writings might seem inconsistent with strict and earnest truthfulness, which Dr. Newman has now furnished; and therefore we cannot consider Mr. Kingsley to blame for the mistakes and misconstructions in regard to this point which, on Dr. Newman's showing, he has committed. It now appears from Dr. Whately's remains, as published by his daughter, that he had put a much more unfavourable construction on Dr. Newman's character and policy than Mr. Kingsley appears to have done. And yet, as Dr. Newman fully states in his Apologia, Dr. Wliately had been his intimate friend at Oxford* and had had peculiar opportunities of knowing his character. Whately, too, lived through all the Tractarian movement in full conversance with its history. He is, moreover, the last man to be suspected of an ungenerous or uncharitable habit of construction, in judging of other men and opposite parties. Nevertheless he had arrived at the settled conclusion, which, as Dr. Newman admits, has been shared by nearly the whole world, then and since, that the Tractarian leader at Oxford deliberately pursued a policy characterized by deep design and conscious duplicity. Such being the state of the case, we cannot sympathize in Dr. Newman's indignation against Professor Kingsley because of his imputations. Dr. New- man's intellectual perversity is much more to be blamed than Mr. Kingsley's uncharitableness. In truth, all the world must know — Dr. Newman is a recluse, as he tells us, and lives out of the world — that Mr. Kingsley is less likely than most men to be guilty of uncharitably construing other men's character and motives. But the truth was long ago expressed THE PERSONAL CONTROVERSY DEFINED. 173 by Archdeacon Hare, whom neither Dr. Newman nor any man will venture to charge with want of generosity or of charity, in Note T. to his Contest with Rome, relating to a passage in Dr.' Newman's Lectures on Anglicanism. " There, in that Lecture, you see Dr. Newman, the priest of the Church of Kome. What! you ask, has a moral imraly sis struck him? Alas ! so it must be. His intellect is keen and bright as ever. What then can have thus paralysed him ? The gripe of Kome."* Mr. Kingsley expresses the same judgment in other words when, in reference to Dr. Newman's sermon On the Theory of Developments in Meligious Doctrine, he says, " And yet I do not call this conscious dishonesty. The man who wi'ote that sermon was already past the possibility of such a sin. It is simple credulity, the child of scepticism. Credulity, frightened at itself, trying to hide its absurdity alike from itself and from the world by quibbles and reti- cences which it thinks jjrudent and clever; and, like the hunted ostrich, fancying that because it thrusts its head into the sand, its whole body is invisible."! But so far as Mr. Kingsley is concerned, the first and chief questions are — Was he to blame morally or intellect- ually in his original imputation against Dr. Newman ? and, so far as he was mistaken in that imputation, did he make suitable and sufficient amends ? The other questions are — Has he, in his defence against Dr. Newman's criticism and rejoinder, substantially exculpated himself? and, has he, or has he not, furnished Dr. Newman in that defence with new and substantial ground for complaint ? ^Ir. Kingsley's original charge in Macmillan's IMagazine was, that Dr. NewTuan has taught, in effect, that " truth, for its own sake, need not, and on the whole ought not, to be a vii'tue with the Roman clergy ; that cunning is the weapon which heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the * Hare's Charges, &c. vol. iii. p. 185. f What, then, does Dr. Newman mean? p. 41. 174 MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage." Now if, instead of the word " cunning" the diplomatic word "prudence " had been used, we apprehend that there are few of our readers who would not, with " X. Y.," the mutual friend of Dr. Newman and Mr. Kingsley, "confess plainly" that they would "not even have thought that Dr. Newman or any of his communion would think it unjust." That, however, is not now the question, but whether from the tenor of Dr. Newman's writings Mr. Kingsley was justified in attributing such a sen- timent pointedly and specifically to him. When challenged by Dr. Newman on this point, Mr. Kingsley stated, in effect, that he conceived himself justified in what he had said by " many passages " in Dr. Newman's writings, but that he particularly referred to one of the Sermons on Subjects of the Day, (1844,) entitled. Wisdom and Innocence. Now, in our judgment, this sermon, though it may not fully and beyond exception demonstrate precisely what Mr. Kingsley has founded upon it, does, especially when taken in connexion vdth much in Dr. Newman's other writings, fairly justify his inference. That is to say, it affords such a basis of moral probability for that inference as nearly all persons would regard as conclusive, though a subtle and critical logician might be able to devise an interpretation which would save the credit of Dr. Newman's conscious teaching and intention on the subject of truth. Dr. Newman, indeed, in the representation of the case as between Mr. Kingsley and himself, has attempted to foreclose the question by speaking of this as a " Protestant" sermon. This is a specimen of the sophistical adroitness which has gained Dr. Newman a dubious reputation as to the matter of truth. How far, in the years 1843 and 1844, Dr. Newman was, and had been for many years, from even supposing himself or desiring to be thought a Protestant, is now confessed and NEWJIAN WAS A ROMANIST IN 1843. 175 explained in this Apologia. That be had for many years scorned and abjured the name of Protestant is indeed notorious. Still, he thinks good to urge that in a generic sense he may fairly describe himself as being at that time a Protestant, inasmuch as he was still a clergyman of the Established Church. But surely this poor quibble may not serve him. The proof is now complete, on his own showing, that in 1843 when he preached, and in 1844 when he pub- lished, the sermon in question, he was in all essential points of theological dogma and ecclesiastical taste and principle a Komanist at heart. In truth, as Mr. Kingsley urges, the evidence of the sermon itself is decisive. '' The humble monk, and the holy nun, and other regulars," are held forth as exemplary instances of Christians, " Christians after the very pattern given us in Scripture," who continue in the world the Christianity of the Bible." " Who hut these" asks the preacher, " give up home and friends, wealth and ease, good name and liberty of will, for the kingdom of heaven?" In these monks and nuns, elaborately described as the very ideals of Christian purity, tenderness, and meek- ness, he finds "the image of St. Paul, or St. Peter (!), or St. John, or of Mary the mother of Mark (!)." And yet Dr. Newman has the courage to uphold this as the sermon of ''a Protestant." Moreover, " sacramental confession and the celibacy of the clergy" are spoken of as characteristics of the Christian Church which " tend to consolidate the body politic in the relation of rulers and subjects." And yet Dr. Newman complains that Mr. Kingsley should quote this sermon in evidence of the tenets which he holds and has long held as a Eomish priest. We know of nothing in the way of quibbling more abjectly poor, more puerile and sophistical, than many of the at- tempts which Dr. Newman makes to fasten " blots" on Mr. Kingsley in regard to this sermon. Dr. Newman, as we have 172 MR. KINOSLEY AND DR. NEA\']MAX. had carried so far iu 1841, should not by the moral theology of Rome have been drifted much further during the last twenty years. It is hardl}^ however, to be expected that a pre-eminently outspoken Protestant Englishman like Mr. Kingsley should himself have been able to furnish the solution to whatever in Dr. Newman's character and writings might seem inconsistent with strict and earnest truthfulness, which Dr. Newman has now furnished ; and therefore we cannot consider Mr. Kingsley to blame for the mistakes and misconstructions in regard to this point which, on Dr. Newman's showing, he has committed. It now appears from Dr. Whately's remains, as published by his daughter, that he had put a much more unfavourable construction on Dr. Newman's character and policy than Mr. Kingsley appears to have done. And yet, as Dr. Newman fully states in his Apologia, Dr. Whately had been his intimate friend at Oxford* and had had peculiar opportunities of knowing his character. Whately, too, lived through all the Tractarian movement in full conversance with its history. He is, moreover, the last man to be suspected of an ungenerous or uncharitable habit of construction, in judging of other men and opposite parties. Nevertheless he had arrived at the settled conclusion, which, as Dr. Newman admits, has been shared by nearly the whole world, then and since, that the Tractarian leader at Oxford deliberately pursued a policy characterized by deep design and conscious duplicity. Such being the state of the case, we cannot sympathize in Dr. Newman's indignation against Professor Kingsley because of his imputations. Dr. New- man's intellectual perversity is much more to be blamed than Mr. Kingsley's uncharitableness. In truth, all the world must know — Dr. Newman is a recluse, as he tells us, and lives out of the world — that Mr. Kingsley is less likely than most men to be guilty of uncharitably construing other men's character and motives. But the truth was? long ago expressed THE PERSONAL CONTROVERSY DEFINED. 173 by Archdeacon Hare, whom neither Dr. Newman nor any man will venture to charge with want of generosity or of charity, in Note T. to his Contest tvlth Rome, relating to a passage in Dr. Newman's Lectures on Anglicanism. "There, in that Lecture, you see Dr. Newman, the priest of the Church of Rome. What! you ask, has a moi'al ixiralys'is struck him? Alas ! so it must be. His intellect is keen and bright as ever. What then can have thus paralysed him ? The gripe of Rome."* Mr. Kingsley expresses the same judgment in other words when, in reference to Dr. Newman's sermon On the Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine, he says, ** And yet I do not call this conscious dishonesty. The man who wrote that sermon was already past the possibility of such a sin. It is simple credulity, the child of scepticism. Credulity, frightened at itself, trying to hide its absurdity alike from itself and from the world by quibbles and reti- cences which it thinks prudent and clever; and, like the hunted ostrich, fancying that because it thrusts its head into the sand, its whole body is invisible. "t But so far as Mr. Kingsley is concerned, the first and chief questions are — Was he to blame morally or intellect- ually in his original imputation against Dr. Newman ? and, 80 far as he was mistaken in that imputation, did he make suitable and sufficient amends ? The other questions are — Has he, in his defence against Dr. Newman's criticism and rejoinder, substantially exculpated himself? and, has he, or has he not, furnished Dr. Newman in that defence with new and substantial ground for complaint ? Mr. Kingsley's original charge in Macmillan's Magazine was, that Dr. Newman has taught, in effect, that *' truth, for its own sake, need not, and on the whole ought not, to be a vu'tue with the Roman clergy ; that cunning is the weapon which heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the * Hare's Charges, &c. vol. iii. p. 185. f What, then, does Dr. Newnmn mean? p. 41. 174 MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage." Now if, instead of the word " cunning " the diplomatic word " prudence " had been used, we apprehend that there are few of our readers who would not, with " X. Y.," the mutual friend of Dr. Newman and Mr. Kingsley, "confess plainly" that they would "not even have thought that Dr. Newman or any of his communion would think it unjust." That, however, is not now the question, but whether from the tenor of Dr. Newman's writings Mr. Kingsley was justified in attributing such a sen- timent pointedly and specifically to him. When challenged by Dr. Newman on this point, Mr. Kingsley stated, in effect, that he conceived himself justified in what he had said by "many passages" in Dr. Newman's writings, but that he particularly referred to one of the Sermons on Subjects of the Day, (1844,) entitled. Wisdom and Innocence. Now, in our judgment, this sermon, though it may not fully and beyond exception demonstrate precisely what Mr. Kingsley has founded upon it, does, especially when taken in connexion with much in Dr. Newman's other writings, fairly justify his inference. That is to say, it affords such a basis of moral probability for that inference as nearly all persons would regard as conclusive, though a subtle and critical logician might be able to devise an interpretation which would save the credit of Dr. Newman's conscious teaching and intention on the subject of truth. Dr. Newman, indeed, in the representation of the case as between Mr. Kingsley and himself, has attempted to foreclose the question by speaking of this as a " Protestant" sermon. This is a specimen of the sophistical adroitness which has gained Dr. Newman a dubious reputation as to the matter of truth. How far, in the years 1843 and 1844, Dr. Newman was, and had been for many years, from even supposing himself or desiring to be thought a Protestant, is now confessed and NEWMAN WAS A ROMANIST IN 1843. 175 explained in this Apoloc/ia. That he had for many years scorned and abjured the name of Protestant is indeed notorious. Still, he thinks good to urge that in a generic sense he may fairly describe himself as being at that time a Protestant, inasmuch as he was still a clergyman of the Established Church. But surely this poor quibble may not serve him. The proof is now complete, on his own showing, that in 1843 when he preached, and in 1844 when he pub- lished, the sermon in question, he was in all essential points of theological dogma and ecclesiastical taste and principle a Eomanist at heart. In truth, as Mr. Kingsley urges, the evidence of the sermon itself is decisive. " The humble monk, and the holy nun, and other regulars," are held forth as exemplary instances of Christians, "Christians after the very pattern given us in Scripture," who continue in the world the Christianity of the Bible." " Who but these," asks the preacher, " give up home and friends, wealth and ease, good name and liberty of will, for the kingdom of heaven ?" In these monks and nuns, elaborately described as the very ideals of Christian purity, tenderness, and meek- ness, he finds "the image of St. Paul, or St. Peter (!), or St. John, or of Mary the mother of Mark (!)." And yet Dr. Newman has the courage to uphold this as the sermon of " a Protestant." Moreover, " sacramental confession and the celibacy of the clergy" are spoken of as characteristics of the Christian Church which " tend to consolidate the body politic in the relation of rulers and subjects." And yet Dr. Newman complains that Mr. Kingsley should quote this sermon in evidence of the tenets which he holds and has long held as a Eomish priest. We know of nothing in the way of quibbling more abjectly poor, more puerile and sophistical, than many of the at- tempts which Dr. Newman makes to fasten " blots" on Mr. Kingsley in regard to this sermon. Dr. Newman, as we have 180 MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. of a Christian, under any or all circumstances. He finds " blot tu-o," " a second fault in logic," (how characteristic an indictment !) in Mr. Kingsley's affirming that according to Dr. Newman "monks and nuns are the only perfect Chris- tians;" and " bad logic again," "blot three,'" in the assertion that " monks and nuns are the only true Bible Christians." Yet surely in all these cases Mr. Kingsley is justified by Dr. Newman's own words. We conclude, then, after all that Dr. Newman has said, that the sermon on "Wisdom and Innocence" was in fact a Eomanist sermon, and may fairly be quoted in evidence of the doctrine which Dr. Newman has taught as a Romanist. It was the sermon of a convert from Protestantism to the doctrines of the Church of Rome. If in any respect Dr. Newman's views are now different, they will have yet more largely diverged from the Protestant standards and be more completely saturated with the doctrines and the casuistry of Rome. We are prepared now, therefore, to entertain the question whether this said sermon on " Wisdom and Innocence" war- rants the inference that truth for its own sake on the whole neither need nor ought to be counted a virtue with the Roman clergy, but that " cunning is the weapon given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage." It must be admitted that, after his manner, Mr. Kingsley has here expressed himself very forcibly; it may not be denied that there is a touch of exaggeration in the phrasing; but whether Mr. Kingsley was not substantially warranted in what he wrote, or at least may not be very fairly ex- cused for having understood Dr. Newman's words in the sense he has indicated, may be judged from the following extracts from the sermon in question. The text being Matt. X. 16, the preacher, in answer to the question, How EVIDENCE FOR MR. KINGSLEY's CHARGE. 181 Christians, not being allowed to fight, are to defend them- selves, answers, " They were allowed the arms, that is, the arts, of the defenceless." After adducing a number of ana- logies from the cases of "captives" and "slaves," "ill-used and oppressed children," and "the subjects of a despot," of whom it is said that they "exercise the inalienable right of self-defence in such methods as they best may," he adds, " The servants of Christ are forbidden to defend themselves by violence; but they are not forbidden other means; direct means are not allowed, but others are even commanded. For instance, foresight, avoidance, prudence and skill, as in the text, 'Be ye wise as serpents.'" He says further, "It is as if the more we are forbidden violence, the more we are exhorted to prudence ; as if it were our bounden duty to rival the wicked in endowments of mind and to excel them in their exercise." " If there be one reproach," he says, "more than another which has been cast upon the Church, it is that of fraud and cunning." He insists, in- deed, that the "wisdom" of Christians is to be "harmless ;" but this, and not its truthfalncss, is the one and only mark which he specifies as "the correction of wisdom, securing it against the corruption of craft and deceit." He says, more specifically, that "it is very difficult to make the world understand the difference between an outward obedience and an inward assent." He then refers in illustration to the relations between the early Christians and the heathen magistrates ; and adds " that when religious men outwardly conform, on the score of duty, to the powers that be, the world is easily led into the mistake that they have re- nounced their opinions, as well as submitted their actions ; and it feels or affects surprise to find that their opinions remain; and it considers or calls this an inconsistency or duplicity." Surely we need quote no more. Enough has been cited 182 MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. to show that Mr. Kingsley may be fairly held excused for the construction he has put on Dr. Newman's sermon. Dr. Newman, indeed, now comes forth with his explana- tions. He professes to disclose to us something of the secret history and special meaning of the sermon. He shows us how it was intended as a sort of apology for his own re- ticence, under many imputations and provocations. So be it; and be it also conceded that the preacher could deliver such doctrine in all personal sincerity and truthfulness of spirit ; that he intended to teach nothing inconsistent with integrity and honesty; that his unlucky "analogies" were suggested merely by his intellectual subtlety, and must be held to imply no moral obliquity. All this we are ready to concede ; we would make every allowance for the idiosyn- crasy of the author of Tract XC. and of the Lectures on Anglicanism. Still we have a right to ask. Was Mr. Kingsley to blame for the interpretation which he put upon the tone and teaching of this sermon ? We echo Mr. Kingsley's own question, " How was he to know that the preacher did not foresee" the probable effect of his sermon upon the admiring disciples who would hear or read it in making them "affected, artificial, sly, shifty, ready for concealments and equivoca- tions ?" Dr. Newman, indeed, tells us that the sermons in this volume of 1844 are rather to be regarded " as essays than as preachments," and accuses Mr. Kingsley of " sup- pressing (blot nine) an important fact stated in the ad- vertisement," viz., that "a few words and sentences" have here and there been added ; censuring him at the same time for not presuming, what Dr. Newman's memory, "so far as it goes, bears him out " in affirming, that the par- ticular passage, quoted some four pages back, in relation to Sacramental Confession and Celibacy, was not preached at all. This, however, is a wretchedly lame reason for demand- ing that " this volume of sermons" should " not be criticized " COMMON MANLY FRANKNESS." 183 at all as iDreacbments." The substance of the sermon in question cannot have been materially changed ; the doctrine is the same, and proves the same as regards Dr. Newman, whether it be regarded as preachment or essay : at most, indeed, but "a few words or sentences have been added." The effect, too, of ihe sermon in 1844 would be the same on Dr. Newman's followers and admirers whether it be regarded as an essay or a sermon. Surely, also, it is a trifle too much for Dr. Newman to expect, considering all his antecedents, and especially considering the tone and tenor of this very sermon, that Mr. Kingsley should have known, "by that common manly frankness, if he had it, by which we put confidence in others till they are proved to have forfeited it,"* that Dr. Newman meant nothing like ai-tifice, or slyness, or deceit. This controversy, indeed, is in proof that " common manly frankness" is a quality but ill-employed when used in dealing with Father Newman. Had Mr. Kingsley been less frank, had he shown less " confidence," in his acceptance of Father Newman's denials, the latter would not have en- joyed the advantage which Mr. Kingsley's concessions have given him, and which, in our judgment, he has somewhat ungenerously used. We have given our reasons for con- cluding that Mr. Kingsley was fairly justified in the con- struction which he put on Dr. Newman's sermon, and therefore substantially justified in the passing reference which, in his article on Froude's History in Macmillan's Magazine, he made to Dr. Newman's teaching on the sub- ject of truth and the morals of Church controversy. We are further of opinion that on Dr. Newman's challenging and denying with apparent earnestness Mr. Kingsley's in- ferences, the latter did all that a Christian gentleman was bound to do in the partial retraction which ho publicly * Appendix, p. 20. 184 MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. made. This, however, did not satisfy Dr. Newman. He saw that he had his oj^ponent at a disadvantage, a dis- advantage arising out of the " manly frankness" of his too ready concession; and he determined to push his own advantage to the utmost. Hence the infinitely clever, but not very creditable, "reflections" wdth which he closes the correspondence between himself and Mr. Kingsley, as pub- lished by himself. As a specimen of lawyer-like fencing, these reflections cannot be surpassed; hence, perhaps, the unbounded admiration with which they were received by such congenial critics as the writers in the Saturday Re- view, and mdeed a large portion of the daily and weekly press. If, however, these reflections be analysed, it will be discovered that they appear to secure an easy victory for Dr. Newman, only by an easy assumption of the very point in question. Dr. Newman assumes, (1.) That the sermon preached at St. Mary's was the sermon of a Protestant, because the preacher — himself — was at the time Vicar of St. Mary's. Yet the preacher at the very time had utterly renounced and was ready to anathematize all that is in- tended in the word Protestant ; and, moreover, was, although Vicar of St. Mary's, in every essential point a Eomanist. He assumes, (2.) That Mr. Kingsley was not at liberty to state his own impression as to the general doctrinal tone and tenor of a certain sermon without being prepared, at the first challenge, either to draw out in detail all the grounds and reasons of his impression, or else publicly and completely to confess, recant, and apologize. But would Dr. Newman himself or any man consent to be bound by this rule ? Is no man at liberty to give an opinion or an impression, however carefully and conscientiously formed, except under the liability of being compelled to satisfy such a demand ? If this were the case, condensed criticism would become impracticable — condensed history would be equally POSITION OF MR. KINGSLEY JUSTIFIED. 185 impracticable ; the burden of the critic's or historian's of&ce would be far too heavy to be borne. Mr. Kingsley had surely a right to state his views as to the general tone and tendency of Dr. Newman's teaching on this or any other point ; and when challenged, he had undoubtedly the right to point to this particular sermon, and say, — " There is sufficient evidence ; I am content to be judged by that." It is altogether unreasonable for Dr. Newman to contend that Mr. Kingsley was bound actually to prove his point, in the first instance, or at the first challenge, by an analysis of the sermon, and by elaborate argumentation. In reply to Dr. Newman's earnest denial, Mr. Kingsley had every right to say, — "I retain my opinion notwithstanding as to the tone and tendency of that sermon, as preached and printed. You may not have meant it so — in the^ face of your earnest denial, your affirmation of your own unaltered and old Eng- lish sense of truthfulness and honour, I am fully prepared to believe, and therefore publicly to declare that I believe, that you did not so mean it ; that the artfulness you com- mend means nothing inconsistent with sincerity, the pru- dence of which you speak nothing akin to evil cunning, that yom* casuistry though subtle has nothing in it of w^hat the general world, including many Papist writers and speakers, would call Jesuitical. So much I am prepared frankly to concede, and publicly to admit ; and, doing as I would be done by, to declare my regret at having mistaken your mean- ing. But I refuse to say more than this ; to take any blame to myself for what I have thought or written, or to declare that your words will not bear the sense which I was led to put upon them." We maintain that Mr. Kingsley had I every right to take up such ground as this; — that he was not bound beforehand to enter into detailed quotation and proof, where the question was of the tone and moral com- plexion of a whole sermon; and that in accepting Dr. 186 MR. KINGSLEY AND DE. NEWMAN. Newman's personal assertion, he did all that, as a gentleman and a Christian, he was bound to do ; reserving to himself of course a final appeal to the sermon in extenso, if Dr. Newman should refuse to accept his qualified amends, and should resolutely prolong the controversy. Dr. Newman by his "reflections" has provoked Mr. Kingsley to make his appeal. The Oratorian Father chose to throw away the scabbard — to defy to battle a roiitrance. The Protestant Professor has been compelled to accept the challenge and answer the defiance. The result is his jDamphlet, entitled, What, then, docs Dr. Neivman mean'? ""WTiether," lie says, " Dr. Newman lost his temper, or whether he thought that he had gained an advantage over me, or whether he wanted a more complete apology than I chose to give, whatever, 1 say, may have been his reasons, he suddenly changed his tone of dignity and courtesy for one of which I shall only say that it shows sadly hoAV the atmosphere of the Eomish priesthood has degraded his notions of what is due to himself ; and when he published (as I am much obliged to him for doing) the whole correspondence, he ai^pended to it certain re- flections, in which he attempted to convict me of not having beheved the accusation which I had made. There remains nothing for me, then, but to justify my mistake, as far as I can." Mr. Kingsley, we venture to think, has fully excused, has even warranted, his own "mistake." Having been un- generously used and publicly defied, he has dealt heavy blows. His hands were indeed mufiled and restrained by his own concessions. Nevertheless, he has made strong fight. He was bound to respect throughout the postulate which he had himself admitted— that Dr. Newman never intends, either in the sermon in question or elsewhere, anything inconsistent with veracity, that he is never posi- tively and consciously untruthful. Had his hands not been thus restrained ; had he been at liberty to use the ordinary weapons of a controversialist, to take words in the most unfavourable construction, when that construction seemed A NECESSITY AND AN OPPORTUNITY. 187 fairly to fit in with the context of tlie passage, and the general scope of the argument, and to interpret Dr. New- man's casuistry and moral teaching in malam ixirtem by the analogy of the most approved Eomanist authorities ; he would have been able to do much more conclusive exe- cution. As it is, however, he has well defended himself and greatly damaged his opponent. Occasionally, indeed, in the heat of the controversy, he seems unawares to have forgotten his postulate, and so to have dealt some strokes scarcely within the accepted conditions of the argument. He is by nature a generous opponent ; but he felt that he had already shown too much generosity to Dr. Newman, and could not afford to throw away on him any more of that fine quality. Occasionally, too, he misses his aim. He falls into a few mistakes as to minor questions of authorship or of chronology, of which his astute adversary knows how to take the full advantage. But on the whole we repeat that in our judgment he makes out a good case for himself and a damaging case for his antagonist, whom, in acquitting of conscious dishonesty, he convicts of intellectual obliquity and self-delusion. Such a pamphlet as Mr. Kingsley's made for Dr. Newman at once a necessitij and an o2)portiinity. A necessity — for, if left without a reply, a manifest victory would remain for Mr. Kingsley, and Dr. Newman's power of self-delusion and extraordinary quality of "frantic honesty," would have acquired an unenviable celebrity. Such a result of the controversy, on the whole, for the purposes of his Church, would have left Father Newman even more damaged and with less of moral influenco than when he was chiefly known as the author of Tract XC, of the Theory of Develop- ment, and of the Lectures on Anglicanism. But besides the necessity of the case, here was for a subtle and practised logician and controversialist a great npiiortunity. Now, at 188 MK. KINGSLEY AND DB. NEWMAN. length, for the first time within the last twenty years, and to a greater extent than even in 1839 or 1845, Dr. Newman commands the attention of the whole British public — of the whole Protestant world. Shall he not now say what is to be said for himself, that he may be more than reinstated in moral power and influence, and for his Church, that he may exhibit to his sympathetic and admiring readers — to an unequalled circle and auditory — the claims of his adopted Church to their confidence and their affections ? Dr. New- man is too devoted, too enterprising, too energetic, a son and servant of his Church not to avail himself of such an opportunity as this. In the Apologia, accordingly, after some preliminary dis- cussion with Mr. Kingsley as to his " method of disputa- tion," and the " true mode of meeting him," he gives a "history of his religious opinions," (1.) "Up to 1833," when the Tractarian movement commenced. (2.) From " 1833 to 1839," when Tract XC. was written, and havmg been written was successively condemned by most of the bishops, was formally censured by the " Hebdomadal Board " of the university, and the series of Tracts for the Times stopped. (3.) " From 1839 to 1841," during which time he was becoming more and more alienated from the Church of England, until the establishment of the Jerusalem Bishopric brought matters to a crisis, and completed in him the conviction that the Church of England was degraded and altogether adrift. (4.) From 1841 to 1845, when he cut the last cable that bound him to his Anglican moorings, and went over bodily — his spirit had been long gone — to the Church of Rome. Then follows a "general answer to Mr. Kingsley," and then an appendix containing an " answer in detail to Mr. Kingsley's accusation." So far as the specific reply to Mr. Kingsley is concerned, we have very little more to say. Here and there he convicts THE APOLOGIA. 189 him of an iucidental error ; but he does not, as we think, shake his main positions. How, in some cases, he hits Mr. Kingsley's "blots" we have seen. The greater number of his hits are of the same class ; though sometimes they are true and strong. Whatever may be the bitter earnest^ with which Mr. Kingsley writes. Dr. Newman excels him in acrid sarcasm. Unfortunately, however, he is ignorant of the personal character of his opponent — ignorant, also, we imagine, of his writings. Hence he indulges in sarcastic insinuations as to his uucharitableness and his lack of power to enter into the views and to understand the motives of other men, which are ridiculously inapplicable to the author of Yeast, of Hypatid, and of The Saint's Tragedy. Leaving the personal controversy between Dr. Newman and Mr. Kingsley, we desire now to avail ourselves of the disclosures contained in the Apologia, in order to attain to a better comprehension of Dr. Newman's own character and case, and of the movement with which his name is indis- solubly associated. More than twenty years ago the Hon. and Kev. A. P. Perceval, whom Dr. Ne^inan mentions in the Avologia as one of the first company of Tractarian leaders, published " a collection of papers connected with the theological movement of 1833 ;" in which much in- terestmg information was afforded respecting the origin of that movement, information as to some particulars more full and precise than is now given by Dr. Newman. To that publication the present volume by Dr. Newman may be regarded as in some sort a supplement. Mr. Perceval was more particular in his disclosures with regard to the earliest steps in the definite formation of the party; Dr. Newman dwells at length chiefly on the preparatory in- fluences and the after stages. His in fact is an auto- biography, and shows how he became, first, a Tractarian, and afterwards a Romanist. A full authoritative history 190 MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. and elucidation of the Tracts for the Times is'all that is now wanting to complete our knowledge of the Tractarian jDarty and movement. We cannot enter upon this part of our task without reminding ourselves and our readers that J. H. Newman, now of the Oratory, at Birmingham, and F. W. Newman, the spiritualistic deist, were born of the same parents ai)d brought up in the same home. How widely these two brothers have diverged is known to all men ; but perhaps could not be more emphatically indicated than in one sentence of these autobiographical revelations of Dr. New- man's. " From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion ; I know no other religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery " (p. 120). Whereas, F. W. Newman's religion has long been a religion without dogma : mere devotional sentiment and sublimated aspiration. Neverthe- less, with this fundamental difference, there are very note- worthy points of agreement between the brothers. Both believe in " conversion," — this being a leading fact in the experience of Dr. Newman, as stated in this volume, and a leading fact also in the experience of the author of The Soul and of Phases of Faith. Both have, step by step, receded from the evangelical school in which they received their early Christian nurture ; and although they have re- ceded in opposite directions, yet beneath the contrariety there has been a deep agreement. F. W. Newman, yielding to "free thought," to sceptical tendencies, has unbound coil after coil of dogma and of ecclesiastical tenet, until his re- ligion has been reduced to sentiment. Through the stages of Anabaptism, Plymouth Brotherism, and we know not what more, he has arrived at that region of pantheistic abstraction and illusion in which he has long been wandering, seeking rest and finding none. Father Newman, no less J. II. NEWMAN AND F. W. NE\VT\IAN. 191 intellectually sceptical than his brother, dreamy, enthu- siastic, idealist, from a child, has found refuge from his critical and consuming unbelief only by recoiling into the arms of Papal infallibility, and has persuaded himself that there is no possible medium in logic between atheism or pantheism and Popery — i.e., between his brother's position and his own (p. 329). " I was brought up," says Dr, Newman, " from a child to take great delight in reading the Bible ; but I had no formed religious convictions till I was fifteen. Of course I had perfect knowledge of my Catechism." " I used to wish the Arabian tales were true ; my imagination ran on unknown influences, on magical powers and talismans. . . I thought life might be a dream, or I an angel, and all this world a deception, my fellow-angels, by a playful device, concealing themselves from me, and deceiving me with the semblance of a material world." " I was very superstitious, and for some time previous to my conversion, (when I was fifteen,) used constantly to cross myscK on going into the dark." — rp. 55, 56. On the first page of his first Latin verse book. Dr. Newman, after a lapse of some thirty years, found, he tells us, " a device which almost took his breath away with surprise." His name is written in the first page in his " schoolboy hand," — John H. Newman, Feb. 11th, 1811, Verse Book. " Between ' Yerse' and ' Book,' he says, ' I have drawn the figure of a solid cross upright, and next to it is what may indeed be meant for a necklace, but what I cannot make out to be anything else than a set of beads suspended, with a little cross attached. At this time I was not quite ten years old " — Pp. 57, 58. In the childhood of such a man these indications are cer- tainly remarkable, especially as his home was perfectly free fi'om anything which savoured of Popery, and his school altogether ** free," as he Bays, " from Catholic ideas." We cannot but note a natural affinity, manifesting itself thus early, at the same time for a kind of idealistic scepticism, and for all kinds of sentimental superstitions. It is likely 192 MK. KINGSLEY AND DK, NEWMAN. enough, indeed, that he had got some of his quasi-Popish sentimentalism or superstition " from some romance," as he himself suggests, "Mrs. Kadcliffe's or Miss Porter's;" but this does not in the least invalidate the inference we have just drawn. At fourteen, he read Tom Paine; also "some of Hume's Essays, and perhaps that on Miracles." " At least," he testifies, "so I gave my father to understand; hut perhaps it was a brag " (p. 58). This last clause gives a hint of intellectual vanity, as having been one of his ruling charac- teristics as a boy. His account of his conversion is so interesting that we must quote it at length : — " "WTien I was fifteen, (in the autumn of 1816,) a great change of thought took place in me. I fell under the influences of a definite Creed, and received into my intellect impressions of dogma, which, through God's mercy, have never been effaced or obscured. Above and beyond the conversations and sermons of the excellent man, long dead, who was the human means of this beginning of Divine faith in me, was the effect of the books which he put into my hands, all of the school of Calvin. One of the first books I read was a work of Romaine's ; I neither recollect the title nor the contents, except one doctrine, which of course I do not include among those which I believe to have come from a Divine source, viz., the doctrine of final perseverance. I received it at once, and believed that the inward conversion of which I was conscious, (and of which I stiU am more certain than that I have hands and feet,) would last into the next life, and that I was elected to eternal glory. I have no consciousness that this belief had any tendency whatever to lead me to be careless about pleasing God. I retained it tUl the age of twenty-one, when it gradually faded away; but I believe that it had some influence on my opinions, in the direction of those childish imaginations which I have already mentioned, viz., in isolating me from the objects which surrounded me, in confirming me in my mis- trust of the reality of material phenomena, and making me rest in the thought of two and two only supreme and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator ; — for while I considered myself predestined to salvation, I thought others simply passed over, not Newman's obligations to thomas scott. 193 predestined to eternal death. I only thonght of the mercy to myself. " The detestable doctrine last mentioned is simply denied and abjured, unless my memory strangely deceives me, by the writer who made a deeper impression on my mind than any other, and to whom (humanly speaking) I almost owe my soul, — Thomas Scott, of Aston Sandford. I so admired and delighted in his writings, that, when I was an undergraduate, I thought of making a visit to his par- sonage, in order to see a man whom I so deeply revered. I hardly think I could have given up the idea of this expedition, even after I had taken my degree ; for the news of his death in 1821 came upon me as a dis- appointment as weU as a sorrow. I hung upon the lips of Daniel Wilson, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, as in two sermons at St. John's Chapel he gave the history of Scott's life and death. I had been pos- sessed of his Essays from a boy ; his Commentary I bought when I was au undergraduate. . . " Calvinists make a sharj) separation between the elect and the world ; there is much in this that is parallel or cognate to the CathoHc doctrine ; but they go on to say, as I understand them, very differently from Catholicism, — that the converted and the uncon- verted can be discriminated by man, that the justified are conscious of their state of justification, and that the regenerate cannot fall away. Catholics, on the other hand, shade and soften the awful antagonism between good and evil, which is one of their dogmas, by holding that there are different degrees of justification, that there is a great difference in point of gravity between sin and sin, that there is the possibility and the danger of falling away, and that there is no certain knowledge given to any one that he is simply in a state of grace, and much less that he is to persevere to the end : of the Calvinistic tenets the only one which took root in my mind was the fact of heaven and hell, Divine favour and Divine wrath, of the justified and the unjustified. The notion that the regenerate and the justified were one and the same, and that the regenerate, as such, had the gift of perseverance, remained with me not many years, as I have said already " Cpp. 58— G2). It appears that the dogmatic faith which he then received, permanently to retain, included the doctrine of the Trinity, 194 Mil. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. the necessity of pardon and holiness, the doctrines of eternal punishment and eternal blessedness. There are some inconsistencies in what we have now quoted, of which it is proper to take notice. He tells us that he could more easily doubt whether he had hands or feet than whether he was really converted at this time. And yet he states the " Catholic " doctrine to be that " there is no certain knowledge given to any one that he is in a state of grace." We wish more particularly, however, to note that Dr. Newman, by his own repeated confession, was truly and " inwardly converted," and brought into a state of justification, to the saving of " his soul," through the influence of Calvinistic doctrine, of Protestant evangehcal teaching and preaching. This conversion Father Newman shows no disposition whatever to disown or discredit, but much the contrary. This is a fact which we gladly recog- nise. It is hardly, how^ever, as we think, consistent, — and on this account it is the more noteworthy, — with those views respecting salvation within or without the pale of the so- called Catholic Church, which prevail in the Eomish com- munion. For it must be observed that the admission is, not merely that a Protestant may possibly obtain mercy, on the plea of " invincible ignorance or prejudice," but that the work of personal salvation may be, that in the case of Dr. Newman himself it was, effectually done in the heart, soul, life, of a sinful man, not by means of any priestly intervention, or sacramental operation, or office or ministration of the true Church, but by means of the doctrine preached by a Calvinistic "heretic." (See p. 251.) Whether such a concession as this can be made to quadrate with the dogmas of apostolical succession and sacramental efficacy, or the pretensions of an exclusive Church, we more than doubt. In the same year of his conversion (1816) young New- NEWMAN READS MILNER AND NEWTOX. 105 man "read Joseph Milner's Church History, and was nothing short of enamoured of the long extracts from St. Augustine and the other Fathers which he found there." Simultaneously he read " Newton on the Prophecies ; " and 80 became convinced that the Pope was Antichrist. The influence of these two works he represents as being "each contrary to each," and as " planting in him the seeds of an intellectual inconsistency which disabled him for a long course of years" (p. 62). In the same year, a great year in his life, influenced chiefly by the ardour of a missionary spirit, (how the same spirit took hold of his brother Francis is well known,) the enthusiastic youth conceived the idea that he was called to consecrate himself, in leading a single life, to the active and unfettered service of Christ and His kingdom. In this respect his feeling coincided with that of the founder of Methodism a centmy earlier, between whose course and his own indeed other and striking analogies will presently be pointed out, the more striking because of the yet more remarkable contrasts by which they are set off. This con- viction retained its hold on Newman, with very little inter- mission, throughout his career at Oxford, and found its final consummation and satisfaction in his admission into the celibate priesthood of the Romish church. In 1822, when Newman had been a year or two at Oxford, he came under high and potent influences. His Calvinism had soon begun to melt away at the University. The first person of great w^eight and importance who took him in hand was Dr. Hawkins, then and now Provost of Oriel, who schooled his intellect, occasionally " snubbing him severely," who helped him in sermonising, from whom he learnt the doctrine of "Baptismal Regeneration," who taught him to magnify the ofi&ce and worth of tradition, especially as in the first instance the one primitive and oral teacher of o2 196 MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. Christian doctrine. One ominous result of Dr. Hawkins' teaching and influence was that Newman lost his interest in the Bible Society, and after a time withdrew his name from the subscription list. Opposite and sceptical influences concurring from the first with the high ecclesiastical tendencies of some leading minds at Oxford, we find that from Blanco White Ne^vman learned " freer views on the subject of inspiration than were usual in the Church of England at the time" (p. 65). In 1823 he learned "the doctrine of apostolical succession" from the Kev. William James, Fellow of Oriel, to whose teaching, however, he listened at first with some impatience. In 1825 Dr. Whately, being Principal of Alban Hall, made Newman his Vice-President. He taught Newman "to see with his own eyes and walk with his own feet." The two, however, before very long began to part company. Their minds were "too different to remain long on one line." Newman, however, was strongly attached to Whately; and has always cherished " a real affection for his memory," notwithstanding "the sharp things about him" which Whately " inserted in his later works." What Whately mainly did for Newman, besides helping to train his under- standing, was to fix in him anti-Erastian views of Church polity, — i.e. to teach him that the Church ought to be aloof from and superior to political control (p. 69). One temporary effect of Newman's intercourse with such thinkers as Blanco White and Whately seems to have been a certain tendency to "liberalism," intellectual and political, which now for a few years (1825 — 1827) made some im- pression upon him. He speaks of "a certain disdain for antiquity which had been growing on him for several years," and which even showed itself in some flij)pant language against the Fathers in the Encyclopcsdia Metropolltana. He also, at this period, was one of the petitioners for the relief THE TRANSIENT LIBERALISM OF NEWMAN. 107 of the Romanists from their disabilities, being at the same time in theological views very decidedly opposed to Popery. At the end of 1827, however, "two great blows, illness and bereavement," reclaimed him from intellectual liberalism, and filled him with the spirit of a religious devotee, whoso views, at no time well-balanced, and liberalised only in pro- portion as the spirit of an intellectual criticism grew upon him, — never by a true moral and religious largeness and breadth, — were from this time forth steadily to narrow and harden, until he found his final and congenial home in Popery. "In 1829 came the formal break between Dr. Whately and him," on occasion of Mr. Peel's attempted re-election after the passing of Catholic Emancipation. Newman, having now (within a brief twelvemonth) recanted his short- lived liberalism, took part in opposing the too convincible statesman. Whately exacted his revenge with characteristic humour. He asked Newman to meet at dinner a set of the least intellectual portbibbers of Oxford ; placed him between "Provost This and Principal That, and then asked him if he was proud of his friends " (p. 73). Already Newman had come under the influence of Keble and Froude. From this time forth these two men had much to do with moulding his character (p. 73). Newman, however, was himself growing to be a power at Oxford. Less original than "Whately, or Keble, or Froude, he had more persuasive power, more of the qualities of a teacher, more potency of intellectual fellowship, than either of them, or than any man of the ecclesiastical party with which he came to be identified. In 1825-6 he wrote some Essays by which he became kno\^1l — one especially on the Miracles of Scripture; he became about the same time a tutor in his College; in 1826 he preached his first Uni- versity sermon. " He came out of his shell, and remained out of it till 1841." During these fifteen years he moulded 198 MK. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. many minds at Oxford. We have already referred to Keble, and E. H. Froude (of the Remains) as having, before 1829, acquired influence over Newman. Besides these two, must be named E. J. Wilberforce, (afterwards Archdeacon,) with whom he was particularly ''intimate and affectionate." " Thus we discern," says the autobiographer, "the first elements of that movement afterwards called Tractarian." Of the relation of Mr. Keble (Froude's tutor, be it re- membered) to this movement he speaks in a passage of so much importance that we must quote it in full :— " The true and primary author of it, however, as is usual with great motive-powers, was out of sight. Having carried oif as a mere boy the highest honours of the University, he had turned from the admiration which haunted his steps, and sought for a better and holier satisfaction in pastoral work in the country. Need I say that I am speaking of John Keble ? The first time that I was in a room with him was on occasion of my election to a fellowship at Oriel, when I was sent for into the Tower, to shake hands with the Provost and Fellows. How is that hour fixed in my memory after the changes of forty-two years, forty-two this very day on which I write ! I have lately had a letter in my hands, which I sent at the time to my great friend, John Bowden, with whom I passed almost exclusively my undergraduate years. ' I had to hasten to the Tower,' I say to him, * to receive the congratulations of aU the Fellows. I bore it tiU Keble took my hand, and then felt so abashed and unworthy of the honour done me, that I seemed desirous of quite sinking into the ground,' His had been the first name which I had heard spoken of, with reverence rather than admiration, when I came up to Oxford. When one day I was walking in High-street with my dear earliest friend just mentioned, with what eagerness did he ciy out, ' There's Keble !' And with what awe did I look at him ! Then at another time I heard a Master of Arts of my college give an account how he had just then had occasion to intro- duce himself on some business to Keble, and how gentle, courteous, and unaff'ected Keble had been, so as almost to put him out of countenance. Then too it was reported, truly or falsely, how a rising man of brilliant reputation, the present Dean of St. Paid's, Dr. Milmau, admired and loved him, adding, that somehow he was KEBLE AND FBOUDE. 199 unlike any one else. Ho-wever, at the time when I was elected Fellow of Oriel he was not in residence, and he was shy of mo for years in consequence of the marks which I bore upon me of the evangelical and liberal schools. At least so I have ever thought. Hurrell Froude brought us together about 1838 ; it is one of the sayings preserved in his Remains, — ' Do you know the story of the murderer who had done one good thing in his life ? "Well ; if I was ever asked what good deed I had ever done, I should say that I had brought Keble and Newman to understand each other ' " (pp. 75—77). Keble's CJiristian Year, with its symbolism and its sacra- mental spii'it, its intense and all-pervading devotion, and its transformation of all material phenomena into spiritual types ; and Keble's teaching as to the nature of religious faith; are especially referred to as having given a colour and character to Newman's theology, and as having de- veloped his ecclesiastical tastes and sympathies. Of Hurrell Froude, Newman speaks as might be expected. There were a few men, but few we imagine, who really loved Froude. Foremost of this number was Newman. Keble loved him as a tutor loves a devoted and enthusiastic pupil. But upon Newman he seems to have had the in- fluence of a daring yet congenial spirit, upon one much more subtle and cautious. He eulogizes him highly, as "a man of the highest gifts " and the most various ability, withal as "gentle," "tender," "playful," "patiently considerate in discussion," and " winning " (p. 84). He further says, " His opinions arrested and influenced me, even when they did not gain my assent. He professed openly his admiration of the Church of Eome, and his hatred of the Eeformers. (!) He delighted in the notion of an hierarchical system, of sacerdotal power, and of full ecclesiastical liberty. He felt scorn of the maxim, " The Bible and the Bible only is the religion of Protestants ; " and he gloried in accepting tra- dition as a main instrument of religious teaching. He 200 MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. had a high severe idea of the intrinsic excellence of Virginity, and he considered the blessed Virgin its great pattern. He delighted in thinking of the saints ; he had a keen appreciation of the idea of sanctity, its possibility and its heights ; and he was more than inclined to believe a large amount of miraculous interference as occurring in the early and middle ages. He embraced the principle of penance and mortification. He had a deep devotion to the Eeal Presence, in which he had a firm faith. He was powerfully drawn to the Mediaeval Church, but not to the Primitive" (p. 85). Here is a pleasant x^icture of a "gentle," "tender," "playful," Fellow of a Protestant Uni- versity. After this, can we doubt that Newman's sermons published in 1844 were " Protestant sermons ?" Newman was " in the closest and most affectionate fi'iendship " with Froude from 1829 till his death in 1836, and, as we know, took part with Keble in editing his Remains* Under such influences Mr. Newman had returned to his early love for the " Fathers." Under far other lights than that of Milner's evangelical Calvinism, he now undertook the systematic study of them. He began in 1828 with Ignatius and Justin. From 1830 he was for two or three years engaged on his History of the Arians, at the in- stance of Mr. H. J. Eose, of whose influence on Newman we shall soon have more to say. His studies of ante-Nicene Church history deepened his sympathy with the dogmatic teaching, the philosophy, and the traditions, of the Church of the third and fourth centuries. In particular, he was * " I have read Froude's volume," young man, and a clergyman of the says Dr. Arnold hi 1838, in a letter to Church of England, reviles all those Dr. Hawkins, referring to the first volume persons whom the accordant voice of of the first part of the Remains, " and I that Church, without distinction of think that its predominant quality is party, has agreed to honour, even extraordinary impudence. I never saw perhaps with an excess of admira- a more remarkable instance of that tion." — Arnold's Life, vol. ii. P- quality than the way in which he, a 111. Newman's philosophical mysticism. 201 attracted to the Alexandrian philosophy and theology, of ■which he gives an eloquent description. " Nature was a parable ; Scripture was an allegory ; pagan literature, philo- sophy, and mythology, properly understood, were but a pre- paration for the Gospel. The Greek poets and sages were to a certain extent prophets ; for ' thoughts beyond their thought to those high bards were given.' There had been a Divine dispensation granted to the Jews ; there had been in some sense a dispensation carried on in favour of the Gentiles." Such are the central touches of his description. With this passage before us we can understand the sympathy with Dr. Newman's teaching which, Mr. Kingsley testifies, was felt by himself among a multitude of others, until, by such preaching as that contained in the sermons of 1844, Newman had estranged from himself the moral sympathy of all who, like Kingsley, held fast by a true and plain- speaking Protestantism. The following passage strikingly harmonizes with those glimpses of Newman's boyhood which we noted some pages back : — " I suppose it was to the Alexandrian school and to the early Church that I owe in particular what I definitely held about the angels. I viewed them, not only as the nainisters employed by the Creator in the Jewish and Christian dispensations, as we find on the face of Scripture, but as carrying on, as Scripture also implies, the economy of the visible world. I considered them as the real causes of motion, light and life, and of those elementary principles of the physical universe, which, when ofi'ered in their developments to our senses, suggest to us the notion of cause and effect, and of what are caUed the laws of nature. I have drawn out this doctrine in my sermon for Michaehnas-day, written not later than 1834. I say of the angels, ' Every breath of air and ray of light and heat, every beautiful prospect, is, as it were, the skirts of their garments, the waving of the robes of those whose faces see God.' Again, I ask, what would be the thoughts of a man who, ' when examining a flower, or an herb, or a pebble, or a ray of light, which he treats as some- thing so 1)cneath him in the scale of existence, suddenly discovered 202 MK. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. that he was in the presence of some powerful being who was hidden behind the visible things he was inspecting, who, though concealing His wise hand, was giving them their beauty, grace, and perfection, as being God's instrument for the purpose, nay, whose robe and ornaments those objects were, which he was so eager to analyse?' and I therefore remark that ' we may say with grateful and simple hearts with the three holy children, ' " 0 all ye works of the Lord, &c., &c., bless ye the Lord, praise Him,, and magnify Him for ever." ' " Also, besides the hosts of evil spirits, I considered there was a middle race, Saifiovui, neither in heaven nor in hell; partially fallen, capricious, wayward ; noble or crafty, benevolent or malicious, as the case might be. They gave a sort of inspiration or intelligence to races, nations, and classes of men. Hence the action of bodies politic and associations, which is so different often from that of the individuals who compose them. Hence the character and the instinct of states and governments, of religious communities and communions. I thought they were inhabited by unseen intelligences. My preference of the personal to the abstract would naturally lead me to this view. I thought it countenanced by the mention of ' the Prince of Persia' in the Prophet Daniel ; and I think I considered that it was of such intermediate beings that the Apocalypse spoke, when it introduced ' the Angels of the Seven Churches.' " In 1837 I made a further development of this doctrine. I said to my great friend, Samuel Francis Wood, in a letter which came into my hands on his death, ' I have an idea. The mass of the Fathers, (Justin, Athenagoras, Irenajus, Clement, Tertullian, Origen, Lactantius, Sulpicius, Ambrose, N'azianzen,) hold that, though Satan feU from the beginning, the Angels fell before the deluge, falling in love with the daughters of men. This has lately come across me as a remarkable solution of a notion which I cannot help holding. Daniel speaks as if each nation had its guardian Angel. I cannot but think that there are beings with a great deal of good in them, yet with great defects, who are the animating principles of certain institutions, &c., &c Take England, with many high virtues, and yet a low Catholicism. It seems to me that John Bull is a spirit neither of heaven nor hell. . . . Has not the Christian Church, in its parts, surrendered itself to one or other of these simulations of the truth ? How are we to avoid Scylla and Chaiybdis and go straight on to the very image of Christ ?' "—Pp. 90-93. Newman's intellectual character. 203 What now have we here ? The calm philosopher ? the profound divine ? the wise and true expositor ? Assuredly neither of these. Here is fancy, susceptibility, genius, dreamy speculation ; here is beauty and eloquence ; but, after all, the philosophy is at best but poetry, while the exposition is weak and absurd. This man may be a per- suasive teacher, an eloquent preacher; but he is not a safe thinker, a sound biblical scholar, or a wise divine. From his boyhood, at once fanciful, sceptical, and super- stitious ; never brought into contact with the various strife and life of the outer world, or the practical claims and duties of home life ; the child has now become a cloistered enthusiast, — a student, a scholar, a controver- siaUst, with many accomplishments, with such faculties as are the instruments of discussion and persuasion, most highly cultured, most fully developed; but without that calm, stedfast, self-suppressing, devotion to the study of history, for its own sake, as the record of humanity, to the study of nature and science, for their own sake, as the unerring revelation of the God of the universe, and, above all, to the study of the Word of God, in its own simplicit}^ as the revelation of the God of holiness and love,— without which speculation cannot but degenerate into fancy, con- troversy into word-play, and theology into traditional error and priestly invention. Prejudice, in such cases, is too likely to furnish the premiss, fancy the sj)eculative power, and self-interest the logic, by which an ecclesiastical and theological system is constituted and compacted. And now we approach the starting point of the Tractarian movement. It was the epoch of 1832-3. The great Eeform agitation was going on. " The Whigs had come into power; Lord Grey had told the bishops to set their house in order» and some of the prelates had been insulted and threatened " (p. 94). The revolution had been consummated in France. 204 MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. Eevolutionary principles seemed to be in the ascendant, both in England and almost throughout Europe. The Church appeared to be in danger. The hierarchy must now rally the aristocracy to its aid, and in return the Church must throw its regis around the aristocracy. The new school in Oxford was, in fact, a reaction from the rising liberalism of that University. Its members had already adopted the Divine-right doctrines and the High-Church maxims of 1687. Now was the time, when Toryism throughout the country was rallying to its strongholds, for the new school to take the tide of reaction at its flood, and so to float themselves onward to "fortune" and to victory. The British Magazine had already begun its work under the able editing of Mr. Eose. From December, 1832, until the following Midsummer, Newman was on a continental tour, much of the time in company with Froude. At Eome they began the Lyra Apostolica, which appeared monthly in the British Magazine. At Eome, also, when the friends were taking leave of Monsignore Wiseman, and " he had courteously expressed a wish that they might make a second visit to Eome," Newman answered with great gravity, " We have a work to do in England." With this impression deeply and passionately infixed in his mind Newman returned to England. By this time the Eeform Bill had for some time been law. Serious ecclesiastical " reforms" were threatened. Newman reached his mother's house, having travelled from Lyons day and night, on Tuesday, July 9th, 1833. His brother Francis had arrived from Persia only a few hours earlier. " The following Sunday, July 14th, Mr. Keble preached the assize sermon in the University pulpit. It was published under the title of National Apostasy.'' "I have ever con- sidered and kept the day," says Father Newman, " as the start of the religious movement of 1833 " (p. 100). THE ORIGIN OF THE TRACTAKIAN MOVEMENT. 205 Here, then, we are at the very origin of the proper and full Tractarian movement. It is curious to think that this Home- ward tendency derived its earliest impulse from that rising opposition to "liberalism" in 1828-9, which showed itself in the rejection of Mr. Peel from the representation of his Universit,y, because of his part in the measure of " Catholic Emancipation." Notwithstanding the influence of Froude, indeed, Newman for some years after this period retained more or less the spirit of antagonism to Popery which he had derived from his early teachers. He could not as yet quite give up either his evangelical doctrine and sympathies or his antipathy against Eome. The idea rising within him, one which he has since had the satisfaction of holding up to ridicule for its intrinsic absurdity, was that the Church of England, with its primitive doctrine and apostolical suc- cession, is the true Catholic Church, the Western represen- tative, in the direct line and without bar or forfeiture, of apostolic Christianity, and entitled to claim precedence even of the Eastern orthodox Church ; and that the Eoman Church was in a state of heresy and schism. The last thing which at this time he would have thought possible would have been, that he himself should abandon the Church of England for Eomanism. He earnestly desired, however, to see the Church of England completely and harmoniously developed and freed from the trammels of State control, in a word, to see ac- complished what he contemplated as a " second Keformation." " With the Establishment thus divided and threatened, thus ig- norant of its true strength, I compared that fresh vigorous power of which I was reading in the first centuries. In her triumphant zeal on behalf of that rrimcval Mystery, to which I had had so great a devotion from my youth, I recognised the movement of my spiritual mother. ' Incessu patuit Dea.' The self-conquest of her Ascetics, the patience of her Martyrs, the m-esistible determination of her Bishops, the joyous swing of her advance, both exalted and abashed mc. I said to myself, ' Look on this picture and on that ;' I felt 208 MR. KINQSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. affection for my own Church, but not tenderness ; I felt dismay at her prospects, anger and scorn at her do-nothing perplexity. 1 thought that if liberalism once got a footing within her, it was sure of the victory in the event. I saw that Reformation principles were powerless to rescue her. As to leaving her, the thought never crossed my imagination ; still I ever kept before me that there was something greater than the Established Church, and that that was the Church Catholic and Apostolic, set up from the beginning, of which she was but the local presence and organ. She was nothing, unless she was this. She must be dealt with strongly, or she would be lost. There was need of a second Reformation " (pp. 94-95). On his return from the Continent, Newman found the move- ment ah'eady beginning to take form. Keble, Fronde, W. Palmer of Dublin and Worcester College, (not W. Palmer of Magdalen, now a Romanist,) Perceval and Eose, were of the company. Dr. Hawkins seems never to have been of their counsels. With these leaders* Mr. Newman was immediately joined. Mr. Eose took a chief part in the first organization of the party, (which, indeed, may be said to have been constituted at a conference held at his house at Hadleigh,) and con- tinued, we believe, to edit the British Magazine till his death in 1838. To him Newman, in 1838, dedicated a volume of sermons, as the man " who, when hearts were failing, bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to ^ our true Mother " (p. 105). He appears on the whole, to have been by far the lai'gest and most loveable spirit of the fraternity ; and Dr. Newman has given a beautiful sketch of his character. He was, however, a Cambridge, not an Oxford, man, and he died before the movement came to its crisis. It seems plain, from Dr. Newman's testimony, that, if he had lived, he would rather have retired — as others have done — from the position he had been led to occupy than have * For a full view of the constituents we may refer to Mr. Perceval's pam- of the party at this particular moment, plilct. THE TRACTS FOR THE TIMES. 207 gone forward with the movement to its proper end. Eose was a " practical man" and a " conservative ;" therein con- trasting strongly with Fronde. These pages do not reveal as much as might have been expected in regard to the commencement, conduct, and various authorship of the Tracts for the Times. From Mr. Perceval's pamphlet it might have been inferred that the well-known " Churchman's Manual," on which so much pains was bestowed by Perceval, who drew the first sketch, and by Eose, Newman, Froude, and the rest, was the first of the Tracts for the Times, in which case Perceval rather than Newman might have been regarded as their first ori- ginator. Dr. Newman, however, claims the origination of the series of Tracts as entirely his own affair. " I had out of my own head begun the Tracts ; and these, as represent- ing the antagonist principle of personality, were looked upon by Mr. Palmer's friends" — including, as it would seem, (p. 110,) Mr. Perceval — " with some alarm." Keble and Froude, however, supported Newman, and presently Pusey came up to his help, bringing a large accession of authority. The relation of Dr. Pusey to them and to the movement is thus set forth : — " It was under these circumstances, that Dr. Pusey joined us. I had known him wcU since 1827-8, and had felt for him an enthu- siastic admiration. I used to call him o fiiyaq. His great learning, his immense diligence, his scholarlike mind, his simple devotion to the cause of religion, overcame me ; and great of course was my joy, when in the last days of 1833 he showed a disposition to make common cause with us. His Tract on Fasting appeared as one of the series with the date of December 21. He was not, however, I think, fuUy associated in the Movement till 1835 and 1836, when he published his Tract on Baptism, and started the Library of the Fathers. He at once gave to us a position and a name. Without him we should have had no chance, especially at the early date of 1834, of making any serious resistance to the liberal aggression. But 208 MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. Dr. Pusey was a Professor and Canon of Christ Church ; he had a vast influence in consequence of his deep religious seriousness, the munificence of his charities, his Professorship, his family connexions, and his easy relations with University authorities. He was to the Movement all that Mr. Rose might have been, with that indispensable addition, which was wanting to Mr. Eose, the intimate friendship and the familiar daily society of the persons who had commenced it. And he had that special claim on their attachment, which lies in the living presence of a faithful and loyal affectionateness. There was hence- forth a man who could be the head and centre of the zealous people in every part of the country, who were adopting the new opinions ; and not only so, but there was one who furnished the Movement with a front to the world, and gained for it a recognition from other parties in the University. In 1829 Mr. Froude, or Mr. R. Wilberforce, or Mr. Newman were but individuals ; and, when they ranged themselves in the contest of that year on the side of Sir Robert Inglis, men on either side only asked with surprise how they got there, and attached no significancy to the fact ; but Dr. Pusey was, to use the common expression, a host in himself; he was able to give a name, a form, and a personality to what was without him a sort of mob ; and when various parties had to meet together in order to resist the liberal acts of the Government, we of the Movement took our place by right among them. " Such was the benefit which he conferred on the Movement externally : nor was the internal advantage 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 per- plexities. People are apt to say that he was once nearer to the Catholic Church than he is now ; I pray God that he may be one day far nearer to the Catholic Church than he was then ; for I believe that, in his reason and judgment, all the time that I knew him, he never was near to it at all. When I became a Catholic, I was often asked, 'What of Dr. Pusey?' When I said that I did not see symptoms of his doing as I had done, I was sometimes thought uncharitable. If confidence in his position is (as it is) a fii'st essential in the leader of a party, Dr. Pusey had it. The most remarkable instance of this, was his statement, in one of his subsequent defences of the Movement, when too it had advanced a considerable way in the direction of Rome, that among its hopeful peculiarities was its DR. PUSEY's relation TO " THE MOVEMENT." 209 ' stationarincss.' lie made it in good faith ; it was his subjective view of it. 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 pubhshed his elaborate Treatise on Baptism, which was fol- lowed by other Tracts from different authors, if not of equal learning, yet of equal power and appositencss. The Catenas of Anglican divines which occur in the Series, though projected, T think, by me, were executed with a like aim at greater accuracy and method. In 1836 he advertised his great project for a Translation of the Fathers : — but I must return to myself, I am not writing the histoiy either of Dr. Puscy or of the Movement ; but it is a pleasure to me to have been able to introduce here reminiscences of the place which he held in it, which have so direct a bearing on myself, that they are no digression from my narrative " (pp. 136 — 139). Meantime we have some very curious glimpses of the character and style of Newman himself, at this time the chief agitator and by far the most fertile and active writer connected with "the movement," which he promoted by per- sonal influence and interviews, and by correspondence, both private and public, including a series of letters published in the Record newspaper. " I did not care whether my visits were made to High Church or Low Church ; I wished to make a strong pull in union with all who were opposed to the principles of liberalism, whoever they might be. Giving my name to the Editor, I commenced a series of letters in the Record newspaper : they ran to a considerable length ; and were borne by him with great coui'tesy and patience. They were headed as bemg on ' Church Reform.' The first was on the Revival of Church Discipline ; the second, on its Scripture proof ; the thii'd, on the application of the doctrine ; the fourth was an answer to objections; the fifth was on the benefits of discipline. And then the series was abruptly brought to a termination. . . . The Editor sent a very civil letter, apologising for the non-appearance of mj- sixth commuuioa- P 210 MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. tion, on the grouud that it contained an attack upon ' Temperance Societies,' about which he did not wish a controversy in his columns. He added, however, his serious regret at the character of the Tracts. I had subscribed a small sum in 1828 towards the first start of the Record. "Acts of the officious character, which I have been describing, were .... the fruit of that exuberant and joyous energy ^vith which I had returned from abroad, and which I never had before or since. I had the exultation of health restored, and home regained .... My health and strength came back to me with such a rebound, that some friends at Oxford, on seeing me, did not well know that it was I, and hesitated before they spoke to me. And I had the con- sciousness that I was employed in that work which I had been dreaming about, and which I felt to be so momentous and inspiring- I had a supreme confidence in our cause; we were upholding that primitive Christianity which was delivered for all time by the early teachers of the Church, and which was registered and attested in the Anglican formularies and by the Anglican divines. That ancient < religion had weU nigh faded away out of the land, through the political changes of the last 150 years, and it must be restored. It ; would be in fact a second Reformation : — a better reformation, for ' it would be a return not to the sixteenth centuiy, but to the seven, j teenth. No time was to be lost, for the Whigs had come to do ■ their worst, and the rescue might come too late .... I despised every : rival system of doctrine and its arguments. As to the High Church \ and the Low Church, I thought that the one had not much more of | a logical basis than the other ; while I had a thorough contempt for ! the evangelical. I had a real respect for the character of many of \ the advocates of each party, but that did not give cogency to their arguments. . . . There was a double aspect in my bearing towards others, which it is necessary for me to enlarge upon. My be- ' haviour had a mixture in it both of fierceness and of sport ; and on j this account, I dare say, it gave offence to many ; nor am I here ! defending it. " I wished men to agree with me, and I walked with them step by i step, as far as they would go ; this I did sincerely ; but if they i wo\ild stop, I did not much care about it, but walked on, with some \ satisfaction that I had brought them so far. I liked to make them , preach the truth without knowing it, and encouraged them to do NEWMANS SELF-REVPHiATIONS. 211 SO. It was a satisfaction to me that the Record had allowed me to say so much in its columns, without remonstrance. I was amused to hear of one of the Bishops, who, on reading an early Tract on the Apostolical Succession, could not make up his mind whether he held the doctrine or not. I was not distressed at the wonder or anger of dull and self-conceited men, at propositions which they did not understand. When a correspondent, in good faith, wrote to a newspaper, to say that the 'Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist,' spoken of in the Tract, was a false print for ' Sacrament,' I thought the mistake too pleasant to be corrected before I was asked about it. I was not unwilling to draw an opponent on step by step to the brink of some intellectual absurdity, and to leave him to get back as he could. I was not unwilling to play with a man, who asked me impertinent questions. I think I had in my mouth the word of the Wise man, ' Answer a fool according to his folly,' especially if he was prying or spiteful. I was reckless of the gossip which was circulated about me ; and when I might easily have set it right, did not deign to do so. Also I used irony in conversation, when matter-of-fact men would not see what I meant. " This absolute confidence in my cause, which led me to the im- prudence or wantonness which I have been instancing, also laid me open, not unfairly, to the opposite charge of fierceness in certain steps which I took, or words which I published. In the ' Lyra Apostolica,' I have said that, before learning to love we must ' learn to hate ;' though I had explained my words by adding ' hatred of sin.' In one of my first Sermons I said, ' I do not shrink from uttering my fiiTQ conviction that it would be a gain to the country were it vastly more superstitious, more bigotted, more gloomy, more fierce in its religion than at present it shows itself to be.' I added, of course, that it would be an absurdity to suppose such tempers of mind desirable in themselves. The corrector of the press bore these strong epithets till he got to ' more fierce,' and then he put in the margin a query. In the very first page of the first Tract, I said of the Bishops, that, ' black event though it would be for the country, yet we could not wish them a more blessed termination of their coiu'se, than the spoiling of their goods and martyrdom.' In consequence of a passage in my work upon the Arian History, a northern dignitary wrote to accuse me of wishing to re-establish the blood and torture of the Inquisition. Contrasting heretics and p 2 212 MK. KINOSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. heresiarchs, I had said, 'the latter should meet with no mercy; he assumes the office of the Tempter, and so far forth as his error goes, must be dealt with by the competent authority, as if he were embodied evil. To spare him is a false and dangerous pity. It is to endanger the souls of thousands, and it is uncharitable to- wards himself.' I cannot deny that this is a very fierce passage; but Arius was banished, not burned; and it is only fair to my- self to say that neither at this, nor any other time of my Hfe, not even when I was fiercest, could I have even cut off a Puritan's ears, and I think the sight of a Spanish auto-da-fe would have been the death of me. Again, when one of my friends, of liberal and evangelical opinions, wrote to expostulate with me on the course I was taking, I said that we would ride over him and his, as Othniel prevailed over Chushan-rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia. Again, 1 would have no dealings with my brother, and I put my conduct upon a syllogism. I said, ' St. Paul bids us avoid those who cause divisions : you cause divisions ; therefore I must avoid you.' I dissuaded a lady from at- tending the marriage of a sister who had seceded from the AngUcan Church."— Pp. 111—118. This picture is certainly not attractive. Here is a com- bination of intellectual and hierarchical pride and ambition, from which it was not likely that the fruits of truth and peace would grow. The man who has since had so much to unlearn, nay, wdio at that very time had changed and unlearnt so much, is here depicted by his own hand as full of an overweening self-confidence, as a sort of hierarchical champion proud of his Church and his orders, but prouder still of his logic, and in this spirit conceiting himself to be the destined leader of a greater and a second Eeformation. We cannot read of his " fierceness" and " sport," without being reminded of what is written in Scripture respecting the man who " scatters firebrands and arrows," and asks, " Am I not in sport ?" We cannot think of a " second Eeformation" headed by such a spirit, without being re- minded of the " first," without contrasting Newman and Luther. Fierce indeed was the latter often, but withal how PETTINESS OF TIUCTARIAN CLIQUE. 213 humble before God, how exercised in prayers and agonies, how far from any mere gladiatorship, from play, or show, or "sport;" how solemnly, tearfully, awfully, in earnest; compelled to face the whole world by the unconquerable convictions of his conscience, doing violence to himself in doing battle with the Princes, the Emperor, the Prelates, the Pope, all the great ones of the earth ; constrained to stand forth in the ever-famous Diet with the grand word on his lips : " Here I stand, God help me, I can do no other!" That is a truly sublime spectacle; not so the view which Father Newman has given of himself as he was at Oxford thirty years ago ; not so the " reforming " phrensy of the man who " could not even have cut off a Puritan's ears." It is but too evident that in Newman at this time there was more of the " knowledge " that " puffeth up" than of the "charity" which "edifieth;" that per- sonal, and especially intellectual, vanity was from the be- ginning a ruling element in his character ; and that the pettiness which besets the cloistered and settled denizens of a mere University, a society of " heads," and " fellows," and tutors, and graduates, and under-graduates, a mere aggre- gation of schools, and schoolmasters, and overgro^Ti, and for the most part daintily and imperfectly educated, school- boys, clings throughout to the ideas, the tactics, all the ways, of the Tractarian coterie. Their estimate of them- selves, of the work they were doing or could do, of their influence on the nation, of their relations to the Church of England, and to the Churches of Christendom, was ridiculously exaggerated. Of the forces of the national life, of the motive power of the world's progress, of the character of England's Protestantism, they knew nothing truly. They could influence their pupils ; but knew not that they could beyond this produce no profound impres- sion. They could iml)ue a school of clerical neophytes, 21-1 MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. and preiDare many for going over to Rome ; but most vain and absurd was their expectation, that in this way they could reform the temper of English Protestantism, reverse the set and current of its sympathies, and impregnate the nation with the ecclesiastical and political principles of the Church and State of the Stuarts. They could bring back the cavalier frenzy to Oxford, as a modern antique fancy, as the latest fashion, the newest rage ; but they could not revolutionise the advancing policy of the British nation and empire. They could bring back again the " old style" to a somewhat antiquated University ; but they could not put back the calendar of Time, or the hand of Divine Destiny on the horologue of the world. Their Anglo-Catholicism was an abnormal growth ; it was a mere hisus scholarum, the product of the forcing-houses of Oxford. It could not live in the soil or atmosphere of English liberty and progress; it had no rooting in the national sympathies, no community with the national life. Hence it withered before the breath of public opinion, and collapsed under the unfriendly touch of a feeble episcopal finger. Even such a man as Bishop Bagot was able to suppress the Tractarian movement, because, weak and wavering in him- self, his word yet represented the rising majesty of English Protestantism. We have already referred to the case of Wesley at Oxford in 1735 as affording some analogies to that of Newman at the same University in 1835. Both men were deeply re- ligious; both intellectually critical and sceptical; both, at the same time, in regard to matters of faith and testimony, especially in relation to the unseen world, were liable to the imputation of credulity; both were Fellows of the University ; both pre-eminent as masters of logic ; both college tutors and University examiners ; the personal in- fluence of both with their juniors, and especially their NEWMAN AND JOHN WESLEY. 215 pupils, was singularly potent; both felt persuaded that they had a special work to do, a mission to accomplish, and that in order to accomplish their work and mission they must act upon the mind of the clergy by means of then- position and influence at Oxford ; both men also be- heved themselves to be called to serve God and His Church in a single life ; and finally both were wedded to an ex- treme High Church theory of discipline and doctrine, John Wesley being quite as far gone in this respect in 1735 as Newman himself was in 1835, — and indeed carrying his rigid rubricism and his asceticism very much farther than the Tractarians at any time carried theirs ; and yet the one became the founder of a new semi-Dissenting, sub- stantially Nonconformist, Church, while the other has " de- veloped" and "developed" till he has finally become Father Newman of the Oratory at Birmingham. The parallel is very remarkable and complete up to a certain point, and for a great distance; and yet how wide the ultimate divergence ! The reason of the final disparity, however, is not far to seek. John Wesley began as a High Churchman, having been educated under the highest Church influences at home. He was led by a remarkable chain of providential events, and after he had left Oxford far away, to become con- versant with the professors, the examples, and the teachers, of a truly spiritual religion, a religion w^hich laid the chief stress on the doctrines of faith and holiness. From the lips of a man not in the " ai^stolical succession," so called, he received the scriptural doctrine of salvation by faith, and through his instrumentality was brought to the enjoyment of a power and fulness of religion which he had never before known. From that time ceremonies and hierarchical theories lost their empire over his mind and heart ; and holding fast to the doctrines, the work, the spread, of f'vangolical rehgion, as the one main and sure thing for 21 G MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. him, he found a clue which brought him forth into the clear field of Gospel truth and labour in which he spent the remainder of his life. Whereas Newman, beginning as a dogmatic Calvinist, deeply persuaded of the truths of the Trinity, heaven, hell, and his own personal election, by a " conversion" in connexion with which we hear nothing of self-abasement, or deep contrition, found himself at Oxford in an atmosphere of doctrinal dialectics and ecclesiastical symj^athies utterly unfriendly to the form of evangelical doctrine which he had imbibed from such men as Thomas Scott and Daniel Wilson. There his clerical destination, in combination with the influences of the place, speedily warmed into active life hierarchical predilections and High Church tendencies which had hitherto been latent. He unlearnt the doctrine . of election, and adopted the dogma of baptismal regeneration, without, as it would seem, a single struggle, and under no very constraining force of argument, on the strength of the late Archbishop Sumner's representation of "apostolic preaching." That his doctrine of "baiDtismal regeneration," however, had ever been the same with that taught by the late venerable Primate, may well be doubted. In a listless walk round Christ Church Meadow (p. 67), he learnt the dogma of Apostolic Succession. Thus he dropped without difficulty, one after the other, the peculiarities of Calvinism, and adopted the tenets of High Churchmanship. He had embraced the former through the force of sympathy. Through the force of sympathy he adopted the latter. With Newman, as with people of a commoner sort, feelings, jDre- possessions, prejudices, have determined the creed ; his logic has ever been an after thought and a mere instrument of defence or of persuasion. In this, as in many other re- spects, Newman's is eminently a feminine mind, — poetic, impressible, receptive and reproductive, rather than original and commanding. It is evident from what he himself tells THE LAW OF NEWMAN's COUKSE. 217 US that lib grew inevitably to be a Romanist, that bis changes were the result not so much of any clearly defined or de- finable arguments as of the influences which continually surrounded him. And he has also told us what a paramount sway was exerted over his own spirit by that of his far bolder friend Froude. In one sentence of his description of Froudc's character and opinions we have the key to all that Newman afterwards became. " He delighted in the notion of an hierarchical system, of sacerdotal power, and of full ecclesiastical liberty" (p. 85). Such was Froude so early as 1828 or 1829. Such was Newman's master. We need not wonder at the subsequent development of Newman's own opinions. They went in the direction of sacerdotal power, of hierarchical dignity and complete- ness. Hence the dogma of apostolical succession, somewhat wearily and reluctantly imbibed by the graduate, who had scarcely laid aside his Calvinism, and had not as yet given up the doctrine of justification by faith, became presently the leading tenet of himself and all his school, from which the authority of tradition, the doctrine of " the keys," sacramental efficacy ex opere operato, and in due course all the essential doctrines of Popery must follow. From the day that this became the great polar principle of his school, all the steps of his subsequent course were already decided, and his final arrival at Piome became a mere question of time and logical consistency. Wiser men than himself saw this almost from the beginning, and foretold it. In nothing was the real shallowness of Newman and his school more manifest than in their inability for so many years to discern the inevitable tendency of their own doctrines, and the dii-ection of their own progress. Theirs was throughout the progress of mere sciolists, who are spelling out, syllable by syllable, the meaning of the k'ssons they are learning ; they lived from hand to mouth ; 218 MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. they learnt and proved in their own disastrous experience what a comprehensive theological science would have fore- seen and foreknown from the beginning. This book of confessions, this misnamed Apologia, fully establishes the personal honesty and veracity of Newman ; but it does this at the expense of his intellectual reputation. It is a humiliating tissue of disclosures ; it reveals an acute, subtle, spirit, penned up with narrow limits, and exercismg its faculties in a dim and darkling sphere, groping its way from premiss to consequence, often from fallacy to fallacy, and only discerning the error of the latest fallacy through which it has passed in order to plunge into a new, subtler, deeper, and more perilous, error, until at last utterly wearied out it sinks down, self-blinded, to find its rest henceforth within the arms of Popish tyranny and superstition. Wesley shook himself finally free from Popery and Popish tendencies, because he came forth from the cloister, to preach to the mixed and outside multitudes Christ's free Gospel, the Gospel of a conscious salvation from sin through faith in Christ. Newman went on from an ill-grounded and pre- sumptuous Calvinism, through Tractarianism, into Popery, because he remained in the cloister, and, conceiting himself to be a priest, was enamoured of priestly prerogative and ecclesiastical power. Here, however, we must hold our hand. We cannot, in the present paper, farther pursue the outline of this mo- mentous and instructive history. The develoj)ment of Anglo-Catholicism; the polemics of the British Magazine and Britisli Critic ; the solemn trivialities, the perverted conscientiousness, the weak subtleties, of the Tract-writers; the casuistry of Tract XC. ; the collapse which came upon the whole party, especially Newman, when the unsophisti- cated Protestant feeling of the nation compelled at length even feeble and temporising Bishop Bagot, of Oxford, to • THE FUNDAMENTAL ERRORS. 219 coiiclemn that notorious piece of special pleading, and im- pose an inhibition on the series ; the steps by which Dr. Newman gradually discovered his own true character and position as a churchman and theologian ; the long agony of .doubt and reluctance through which he was at length forced to the conclusion, that in sympathy, in doctrine, in heart and life, he was and long had been a Romanist ; his struggles with Protestant prepossessions, with social in- fluences, with the authority and affectionate remonstrances of friends, with the considerations of personal credit and interest, and nearly every motive that could sway a man in his position, before he could bring himself to the con- viction that it was his duty to join the Church of Rome; the manner in which, finally, the necessities of his per- verted spiritual state, powerfully seconded by the clamorous requu-ement of the organs of public opinion, constrained him to quit the communion of the Church of England for that of the Pope of Eome : all this invites and would well repay criticism, but must be passed by. Nor can we even attempt to examine the argument by ^vhicll Dr. Newman endeavours to justify his own present position as a Eomanist. There are many questions of the highest interest and of fundamental importance, of which we must postpone the discussion. The definition of the Christian Church, and the nature of the Church's organic unity, are points which lie at the foundation of the whole controversy ; and in a radical fallacy respecting these points, we should expect to find the logical irpwrov -v/reOSo?, as in hierarchical self-seeking we should undoubtedly find the moral irpMTov ylrevSo^, the fundamental error, from which the whole Tractarian misgrowth was developed. According to Newman's own representation, indeed, the two principles which have been truly fundamental in his own mind ever .^ince his conversion, and have constituted, so to speak, 220 MR. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. his intellectual identity as a theologian, are those of a definite dogmatic teaching, as needful to a true faith, and of the aj)Ostolical succession. The former of these is not peculiar to Tractarianism or to Popery ; the latter, there- fore, constitutes the differentia of what we may, after Arnold, call Newmanism. But we must not dwell upon this fundamental point, much less pursue the controversy which centres here into its many branches. Two things only will we note in this last paragraph of the present paper. The first is, the singular and supreme instance and evidence of the essential narrowness and pettiness of the "Anglo- Catholic" party, which is afforded by the bigoted and fanatical intensity of abhorrence with which Newman viewed the establishment, by the conjoint action of the British and Prussian mon- archies, of the Bishopric of Jerusalem. That which Hare regarded, with some pardonable exaggeration, as the happiest omen of union for the great Churches of Protestantism, and of progress for Christianity, Newman regarded as nothing less than a disgrace, a degradation, a profanation. With the consummation of this calamity, his last hope of reform, resuscitation, or spiritual glory, for the "Anglo- Catholic " Church faded into settled and unmixed darkness. From that moment he was death-stricken as an English churchman. Having sent to his Bishop, and published to the world, his solemn Protest against this heinous sin, he betook himself to a more deeply cloistered life than ever, and evidently felt that his predestined place must sooner or later be Eome. This was the drop too much of bitterness in his cup. The spirit of the whole of his Protest is con- densed in two sentences: "Whereas the recognition of heresy, direct or indirect, goes far to destroy such claim, [to be considered a branch of the Catholic Church,] in the case of any religious body advancing it ; and whereas COLERIDGE ON THE CONFESSIONAL. 221 Lutheranism and Calvinism are heresies, repugnant to Scripture, springing up three centuries since, and anathe- matized hy East as well as West. ... On these grounds, I in my place, being a priest of the English Church, and Vicar of St". Mary's, by way of relieving my conscience, do hereby solemnly protest, &c." The other matter which we desire especially to note is, that, in his general apology for Eomanism, contained in Part VII., Dr. Newman never once refers to that which is the central and most pestilent abuse and corruption of Popery, that corruptlo opthnl y^hith is indeed pesslma, that perversion of the instincts of Christian sympathy and fellowship, in which lies the essential power of Popery as a yoke of bondage and engine of oppression and demoralisation, — we mean the doctrine of auricular confession. If this were eradicated from Popery, it would be a comparatively innocent system, and might even perhaps be trusted to reform and presently revolutionise itself. But with this the boasted semper eaclem of the Piomish usurpa- tion becomes a hopeless bond of tyranny, falsehood, and universal and inevitable corruption. With this in view, the truth-loving philosopher or critic is constrained, the more he studies the whole subject, the more absolutely to approve and adopt, in regard to the Piomish communion, the terrible words of Coleridge, whom none can brand as a Protestant bigot : " When I contemplate the whole system, as it affects the great fundamental principles of morality, the term firma, as it were, of our humanity; then trace its operation on the sources and conditions of national strength and well-being ; and, lastly, consider its woeful influence on the innocence and sanctity of the female mind and imagination, on the faith and happiness, the gentle fragrancy and unnoticed ever-present verdure of domestic life, — I can with difficulty avoid applying to it what the rabbins fable of the fratricide Cain, after the curse, that the firm 222 ME. KINGSLEY AND DR. NEWMAN. ' eartJi trembled wherever he strode, and the grass turned black beneath his feet.'"* We can but pity the infatuation of a gifted man who, brought up an English Protestant, can now uj)hold the infallibility of the men or the conclaves, the Popes or the Councils, that are the organs of such a system as this. Still more profoundly must we compassionate such a man when he confesses that for him there is no medium between the belief in Papal infallibility, and the position of an atheist or pantheist. In other words, although the famous Bull IncfablUs, by which the present Pope has exalted into an Article of Faith the popular Romanist dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, contradicts in every paragraph the Bulls of former Popes, Father Newman's logic, and the necessities of his ecclesiastical position, compel him to uphold the Papal infallibility, or else to abandon all religion and all faith. Who would not pity such a martyr to his conscientious perversity ? How rare a victim is here sacrificed ! What fine faculties are here wrecked ! How cruel is the dilemma in which a cultivated and honest Eomanist finds himself placed ! * Biog. Lit vol. i. pp. 131-32. PUSEY'S EIRENICON.* People had been deceiving themselves into the idea that the Ultra-Tractarian had been growing Evangelical. But the fact is, that Dr. Pusey is just as evangelical now as he was twelve months ago, when there seemed to be a rai)prochcment between him and the Record ; and, though this may be deemed a strange saying, he was just as evan- gehcal twenty-three years ago when he was preparing his famous sermon on the Eucharist, and thirty years ago, when he wrote his Treatise on Baptism, as he has ever been; just as orthodox as when he earned the thanks of all orthodox Christian students by publishing his Com- mentary on the Minor Prophets and his Lectures on Daniel. It is very significant of the character of the man, that on the fly-leaf of this Eirenicon (misnamed the volume has ah'eady proved to be) there are advertised as "in the press," besides Pai-t IV. of his Minor Prophets, and the fourth thousand of his Daniel the Prophet, — " a Preface, chiefly his- torical, to Tract XC. of the Tracts for the Times, together with Tract XC." What Dr. Newman says of Dr. Pusey in his Ajjologia has been already quoted in the preceding paper. The key to his character, given by his old friend, explains all that might have been deemed inconsistent. Dr. Pusey has " a hopeful, * 1. "An Eirenicon, in a Letter to the E. B. Pusey, D.D. &c. Parkers and Author of the ' Christian Year.'" By Rivingtons. London. 1865. 224 pusey's eirenicon. sanguine mind;" and is "haunted by no intellectual per- plexities," Dr. Newman has never regarded Dr. Pusey at any time as being, in his own " reason and judgment, near Rome at all." "When his own party " had advanced," as Dr. Newman witnesses, " a considerable way in the direction of Eome," Dr. Pusey was still rejoicing in the extraordinary confidence and conviction, that " among its hopeful pecu- liarities was its * stationariness.' " He made a statement to this effect. Dr. Newman assures us, " in good faith," This " was his subjective view of it." Dr. Newman himself has never seen " any symptoms" which could lead him to expect that Dr. Pusey would " do as" his friend "had done."* For more than thirty years past Dr. Pusey has been essentially Eomanist in dogma, and yet thoroughly Anglican, according to his own conception of what high and proper Anglicanism is ; Anglican in predilection and sjTnpathy, Anglican according to the Anglicanism of Bram- hall and Laud. At the present time some of the writers and literary organs of the evangelical party in the Church of England are unduly angry with Dr. Pusey. Last year they had begun to have good hopes that, after all, he was not so far apart from them. Now all these hopes are dashed to the ground, and they are tempted to be unjust. Their language of imputation now contrasts somewhat sharply with the respectful style in which, a few months ago, the learned semi-Papist was spoken of in the same organs, at least, if not by the same writers. Meantime, the profanum vulgus, the common multitude of readers who understand scarcely anything whatever about doctrinal theolog}^ and are as ignorant of the history of the Oxford movement of thirty years ago as if it had taken j)lace three centuries since, are perfectly confounded. All they know about the * See the passage quoted in full at p. 203 of this volume. POPULAR VIEWS AS TO DR. PUSKY. 225 matter may be summed up thus : When they were young, they learnt to think of Dr. Pusey as a sly, bad man, a rank Papist at heart, who believed in the Mass, who taught and heard Confession, who was the favoured priest of Miss Sellun and her " sisters " at Plymouth. Within the last few j'ears they have found Dr. Pusey in good favour with many sound doctrinal Church people. He has come forth as a champion against the new-fangled, unbelieving school of "liberal" parsons. He has seemed to be looked upon lately by good people of all sorts as being, notwithstanding his High Churchism, not only a very learned and able, but a truly Christian man, with not a little, moreover, of what earnest evangelical Christians call " experimental religion " about him ; as somehow, in spite of his suspicious leanings, him- self a sort of evangelical Christian at heart. Now to find themselves all at once thrown back from their more recently acquired ideas about this singular man, ideas with which they had scarcely become altogether familiar, and to be told that, after all, Dr. Pusey is a Papist, or little better, is very perplexing to the multitude of whom we speak — those who have little chance of reading at all, unless they " read" as they " run." The " rough and ready" solution, of course, is that Dr. Pusey is a crafty heresiarch, who found it convenient, in his campaigns against the rationalising party in the Church, to seek the fellowship of the Evangelicals, but now, having been reproved for so doing, and challenged as to his position in general, by his former associate. Dr. Manning, and being appealed to by Mr. Keble to make his defence against Dr. Manning, finds himself constrained to endeavour to reconcile his present with his past, his sympathy with Evangelicals with his ultra-High-Churchism, his ultra-High-Churchism with his Church of Englandism, his Tridcntine theology with his refusal to join the Church of Rome. Of course his tactics are Q Z"it> FCSEl S KjKK. ICON. denounced as Jesuitical ; an arriere i^ensee (to quote from one of bis critics) is suspected in all that he says and does. Nor will his reputation for honesty be improved by the news which comes to hand as we are writing, that he has been visiting two Eomanist Bishops in the South of France, and that at Bordeaux he spent his Sunday in the convent of the Dominicans. Nevertheless, Dr. Pusey, though blinded and doting on one point, is an honest man. There is no evidence that, during the last thirty years, Dr. Pusey has in any respect materially varied in the doctrinal and ecclesiastical ground which he has defined and occupied as his own. He stands now just where he stood when his name was given to the Oxford Tract move- ment, and he has been standing on the same ground all the time. His views may be self-contradictory ; but that does not affect the question. A man who can believe as Dr. Pusey professes to believe in his sermon on the Eucharist, can believe any quantity of self-contradictions. His special doctrine of the Real Presence, the Puseyite Consubstantiation, is yet more uncouthly self-contradictory than even the Eomish doctrine of Transubstantiation, as to the contradictions and absurdities of which Jeremy Taylor says so many hard and witty things, things which if any modern Low-Churchman or Dissenter were to say of Dr. Pusey's doctrine, he would forthwith be charged by the earnest and unhesitating devotee with profanity or even blasphemy.* But, notwithstanding its contradictions, which Dr. Pusey contrives to get over by means of that merely verbal logic, which can find its way out of anything, because the verbal distinctions are mistaken for realities, Dr. Pusey has for more than a generation past believed wholly and absolutely in this doctrine of Consubstantiation. Let this teach us that Dr. Pusey may honestly believe many things in common with the evangelically orthodox ; and yet, * See the preface to Dr. Pusey's Sermon ou the Eucharist. INCONSISTENCY NOT DISHONESTY. 227 • in other things, go to the length of Tridentine Popery in his divergence from the common principles of English Protes- tantism. He may as honestly agree with the Record in opposition to Piationalism, as the Record may honestly agree with the great Eomish Theologians respecting the doctrine of the Trinity. But here lies the fallacy which leads so many into un- charitable judgments, which betrays narrow and hasty men into making untenable charges of dishonesty or hypocrisy. It is scarcely possible to set any limits to the power of the human mind to believe in contradictions. A man can indeed believe any sort of contradiction except a contra- diction in terms. Dr. Pusey is essentially one with the Romanists, at least in dogmatic definition, respecting the doctrine of justification by faith. It is inferred from this that, therefore, he can have no sympathy or fellowship with evangelical life or with experimental religion. Hence, when it is found in his Commentarj^ that he has sympathy with what is spiritual and experimental, with the life of sancti- fication, with the habitual faith of the Christian saint, readers are confounded and they know not what to believe. The natural conclusion has been that there must have been some exaggeration in reference to his semi-Popery, or that his views when he wrote that Commentary must have materially changed from the time when he published his treatise on Baptism and his sermon on the Eucharist. But in truth, there has been no change whatever. Pascal was a genuine Komanist, although not an Ultra- montane ; but who will deny the truly Christian and ex- perimental character of his piety ? It is easy, indeed, to sec how his Eomanist errors darkened his soul and made his religion, in some respects, not only morbid, but even repulsive. But respecting his genuine Christian experience, there can be no doubt. And so as to the Jansonists in y2 223 PUSEY'jS BIIIEXICON. general. They are, in a sense, the counterparts in the history of the Church of Eome to the Oxford High-Church party in the history of the Church of England. They were reformers at heart, but yet they could not bring themselves to leave the Church of their birth and of their nation. They clung to the dogmas and decrees of the Church, even whilst evading the authority of Bishops and Popes, and although they also clave with their hearts to doctrines of grace logically irreconcilable with the dogmas of Trent, if not also with the Creed of Pope Pius IV. By Jesuits and Ultramontanes they were denounced as hypocrites ; and, finally, they were either silenced or ejected. And they ivere, no doubt, grossly inconsistent ; as loyal sons of the Church, they occupied an anomalous position ; in these respects they stood in much the same relation to the Eomanist communion as that in which the Tractarian party have stood to the Church of England. Still they were not dis- honest ; neither is Dr. Pusey. Pascal and Arnauld, however, inclined towards truth and light, endeavouring to escape from manifest dishonesty and corruption ; whereas the un- happy Oxford Eomanisers are leaving the light for the darkness. The cause of this will be seen presently. The Apologia of Dr. Newman has compelled his con- temporaries to revise the judgment which they had passed upon him. If ever casuistry seemed to be possessed by the spirit of crafty falsehood, "paltering with us" throughout " in a double sense," it was the casuistry of Tract XC. And yet from the Apologia it seems to be certain that Dr. Newman was never a consciously dishonest man. He was a man whose over-subtlety blinded him. He possessed a highly- trained faculty of mental obliquity, a faculty which long aud skilful culture had developed to a marvellous and pernicious perfection. He had acquired the power of duping himself. But he retained, in an important sense, his moral integrity HIGH CHURCH CASUISTRY. 229 notwitlistandmg ; he never ceased to be, in the main, an honourable and conscientious English gentleman. We grant that it is not only very hard to conceive how Dr. Newman could throughout be in any sense an honest man, but also that there is some danger lest, in exercising charity towards either him or Dr. Pusey, or any of their school, we might seem to apologize for what, to all common apprehension, must aj^pear to be dishonest craft.* Still we believe that what we have stated will be found to be demonstrable. The truth is, that men trained, as the Tractarians had been trained, and as all Romanist theologians have been trained, in a school of verbal quibbling and scholastic subtleties, have lost the power of appreciating truth. Their theology is all words. They have not learned to look in the face any fact of life or of nature. They are viere logicians, k petitio princ'qyii is alwa3'S latent in their definitions, or distinctions, or propositions. And so they can believe anything. "What student of philosophy knows not that a portentous system of merely verbal metaphysics was inrcnied in order to ex- pound and defend the doctrine of Transubstantiation ; a system to which there is actually no truth or reality, no fact of nature or life, corresponding? Of course on this system of pseudo-metaphysical quibbling, Transubstantiation may be defended. This system is borrowed by the Trac- tarians ; and they are able to believe that what Eomanists call the accidents — what they call the substance — of bread • Father Newman, iiulcccl, seems now it, I gave up my living, as having no to be somewliat dissatisfied with Tract right to retain it." lie quotes, from his XC. He admits that " the Traet did " Loss and Gain " wliat, tliough put into not carry its object and conditions on the lips of an interlocutor, is his own its face, and necessarily lay ojieu to in- present judgment resjiecting his own terpretations very far from the true one. Traet, " The view is specious certainly. I considered," he says, " that my inter- But you have no sanction to show me. pretation of the Articles would stand, As it stands, it is a mere tlieory struck provided the parties imposing tliem out by individuals." — Newmuns Letter allowed it. When in the event tiic to Puac;/, pp. 15, 16. Bishops and pui'lic npiniiui did not allow 230 pusey's eirenicon. and wine can remain, and yet the bread be the very Body, and the wine the very Blood, of the Saviour. To all others these are the craziest of absurdities and contradictions. But it is not so to the Romanist or to the Tractarian. After this, to consubstantiate Protestant evangelical truth, i.e., a certain modicum of it, with the Tridentine Articles, or to transubstantiate the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles into a system of quasi-Tridentine theology, is a practi- cable feat. Whilst, therefore, we extend our charity so far as to believe in the sincerity of Dr. Pusey and of Dr. Newman, we do but the more emphatically signalise our condemnation of that wretched system of scholastic quibbling, inherited from the Middle Ages, that unreal method of mental culture, which has so greatly contributed to develope into its rank luxuriance the semi-Popery of Oxford. We wonder the less at the animosity with which all traditional truth is regarded by a large and growing party at the University. It could not but be foreseen that an infidel reaction would follow the Popish movement. The semi-Papists were infidel to the God of inductive law, of science, of nature, of life ; the others, by a too natural revulsion, become infidel to the God of revelation and theology. These observations have, we trust, served the purpose which throughout has been kept in view. They have been designed to show how Dr. Pusey has been, from the first, consistent with himself in his professions and in his course. As Pascal, and Fenelon, and Thomas a Kempis, and the Marquis de Renti, although all of them honest " Cathohcs," and all of them bound by the Decrees of the Tridentine Council, were yet good men who loved and trusted in Christ, and lived to God a life of prayer and faith, in virtue of truths which, however inconsistently, they yet held vitally in connection with a dogmatic adherence to principles alto- DU. PUSEY AND THB EVANGELICALS. 2]1 getlier contrary ; so Dr. Pusey contrives, in iiolding to the mildest interpretation of the Tridentine Canons and Decrees, at the same time to hold fast vitally by such blessed truths of our Christian Gospel, as suffice to bring him into union with his Saviour and into sympathy, at many points, with evangelical Christians.* There are some statements in Dr. Pusey's Eirenicon which bear directly on the point we have now under consideration. Dr. Manning having spoken of Dr. Pusey's co-operation with the Evangelical party as, on his part, " a drifting back from old moorings," the following is Dr. Pusey's explanation and defence : — " Ever since I knew them (which was not in my earliest years) I have loved those who are called ' Evangelicals.' I loved them because they loved our Lord. I loved them for their zeal for souls. I often thought them narrow; yet I was often drawn to individuals among them more than to others who held truths in common with myself, which the Evangelicals did not hold, at least explicitly. I beUeved them to be 'of the truth.' I have ever believed and believe, that their faith was and is, on some points of doctrine, much truer * Juliti Wesley held strong opinions real inward Cliristians ? And yet what as to Uomish doctrine. He says in one a heap of erroneous opinions do they place that he has "the same assurance hold, delivered by tradition fi-om their that Jesus is the Christ, and that no fathers." " Let us then," he says in Ilomanist can expect to be saved, ac- another place, "make all that allowance cording to the terms of His covenant.'' to others which, were we in their place. Yet no man exercised a more candid we would desire for themselves. Who and charitable judgment in regard to that knows the amazing power of cdu- individuals. " Persons," he says, " may cation can expect a member of the be ([uite right in their opinions, and yet Church of Home either to think or have no religion at all ; and, on the speak clearly on this subject [Jiistirtca- other hand, i)ersons may be truly reU- tion] ? And yet, if he had heard even gious, who hold many wrong opinions. dying Bellarmine cry out when he was Can anyone possibly doul)t of this, wliile asked, — ' Unto which of the saints wilt there arc Romanists in the world? For thou turn?' — Fiilere meritis Christi tutis- who can deny, not only that many of simuin — 'It is safest to trust in the merits them furinerly have been truly religious, of Christ' — would he have affirmed that as Thomas a Kompis, Gregory Lopez, notwithstanding his wrong opinions, he and the Marquis de Kenti, but that had no share in this righteousness ? " — many of them, even at this day, are Wor/is i. 208; vi. 186, 187 ; v. 2-24. 232 pusey's eirenicon. than their words. 1 Lelieved and believe that they are often withheld from the clear and full sight of the truth by an inveterate prejudifse, that that truth, as held by us, is united with error, or with indistinct acknowledgement of other truths which they themselves hold sacred. Whilst, then, I lived in society, I ever sought them out, both out of love for themselves, and because I believed that nothing (with God's help) so dispels untiaie jjrejudice as personal intercourse, heart to heart, with those against whom that prejudice is entertained. I sought to point out to them our common basis of faith. T never met with any who hold the Lutheran doctrine of justification, that 'justifying faith is that whereby a person believes himself to be justified.' To others, who were not Calvinists, I used to say, ' I believe all which you believe ; we only part when you deny.' I formed some lasting friendships with some among them who have finished their course, and with others who still remain. "When occasion came, as in some of bur struggles at Oxford, we acted together. . . . "It was not then anything new that when, in high places, funda- mental truths had been denied, I sought to unite with those, some of whom had often spoken against me, but against whom I had never spoken. It was the pent-up longing of years I had long felt that common zeal for faith could alone bring together those who are opposed ; I hojjed that, through that common zeal and love, inveterate prejudices which hindered the reception of truth would be dispelled. . . . " But while, on the one hand, I profess plainly that love for the Evangelicals which I ever had, I may be, perhaps, the more bound to say, that, in no matter of faith, nor in my thankfulness to God for my faith, have I changed. This was understood on both sides. We united to oppose unbelief, holding each what each believed that God had taught him." — Eirenicon, pp. 4-6. We have now cleared the way for our criticism of the matter of Dr. Pusey's volume. After the explanations which have been given, we may, without shrinking, pursue our argu- ment. There is no need that the largest charity and the most religious abstinence from the imputation of motives should blind the eye of the critic as to what is in itself true or false, right or wrong. There may be charity for the devotee, whilst there is utter feud with the superstition. There may be pity, HOLDING TllK TKUTH IK LOVE. 2C3 and even, on other grounds, respect for the blmded casuibt, who is sorel}^ pressed between his reason and conscience on t'.ie one hand, and his theological training and ecclesiastical necessities on the other, but there should be pitiless war with the theological falsehoods and ecclesiastical impostures and tyrannies which have riveted on his soul such a yoke of bond- age and lies. In what we have to say, we have no intention to enter into any minor questions. Dr. Fuse}' may have made a minor mistake respecting the consecration of Archbishop Parker, and he may have committed a serious error in his adduction of Bishop Latimer as, in his latter days, favouring prayers to the saints. We shall not spend any time on such matters, although not unimportant in themselves, further than to say that Dr. Pusey's undeniable error respecting Latimer's faith in his latter days cannot hfive been other than merely accidental. To impute evil intent is simply absurd ; and is therefore inexcusable in its uncharitableness. Dr. Pusey could not have been mad enough, in such a book, to set down knowingly a palpable untruth in regard to the history of such a man as Latimer. Dr. Pusey must have known that ten thousand critical eyes would sift all the state- ments of his volume. The error was of course a piece of carelessness. Dr. Pusey is very learned and generally very careful ; but as Homer sometimes drops off into a doze of dulness, so Dr. Pusey now and then makes an error in his- torical statement, trusting too much, probably, to the research of some friend, Stillingfleet's //•. 9. THE PUBPOSE OF THK EIRENICON. 235 section in his own Church, a section whom the majority of the nation regard as schismatic and heretical. Possibly, how- ever, Dr. Pusey, being, as Father Newman says, a ** sanguine" man, may expect that before the time comes for Anglican and Komanist union, his party may have become absolutely dominant in the Anglican Church, and, we confess, we ourselves are of opinion that the predominance of semi- Popery in the Church of England and the union of that Church with Rome may be looked for at the same period. When the former happens, the latter may be regarded as not impossible. But in part, also, Dr. Pusey's volume is an indictment and argument against extra-Tridentine popular Popery, against Ultramontane Popery, and, in particular, against the dog- mas of Papal Infallibility and the Immaculate Conception of the Lord's Mother. Nothing better or more decisive could be desired than his argumentation against these dogmas. In fact, the Mariolatry of Rome fairly beats Dr. Pusey. He exhibits its fearful excesses of impiety and blasphemy unsparingly and impressively. The Bull Inefabilis seems to him to seal the character of modern Popery. What before might be regarded as mere vulgar excess and ignorant de- votion, has by that Bull been exalted into an article of faith. Taken in connection with the dogma of the Popish Infalli- bility, as exhibited in the last Encyclical, it appears almost to shut the door against any possibility of reform in the Roman Church. It is plain that as he pursued his subject, and before he came to the end of his volume, Dr. Pusc}' had well nigh given up whatever hopes of a union, at some distant day, between Rome and Canterbury, he may have tried in the earlier portions of his book to cherish. It will have been gathered from what has been stated, that the union between the two communions of which Dr. Pusey has dreamed, is alwavs assumed to ]»p between Pligh 236 pusey's eikenicon. Anglicanism and Galilean Eomanism. Dr. Pusey, on his own showing, can have had no hope of union between his own party and Ultramontane Popery. He would be prepared to recognise the Primacy of the Bishop of Eome, but not his infallibility, nor, w^e may be sure, his political preten- sions. It is strange that Dr. Pusey does not see that thus to condition his scheme of a possible union is to nullify it. If the union is to be wdth the whole Koman com- munion, as such, he must accept what this communion, as a whole, has accepted, the blasphemous claims of the Pope and the dogma of the Immaculate Conception included. If the union is to take place with the great and whole Eoman Church, calling itself Catholic, he must accept, together with the union, all the claims of that Church to be the one Church of Christ, its assumption of apostolicity, catho- licit}^ purity, and infallibility ; its excommunication and anathematization of other churches, east and west, in- cluding the Greek communion and his own church. Is the Eoman Communion, in consenting to a union between itself and the Anglican Church, to annul its own acts and deeds so far as these have condemned the Anglican communion ? Can Dr. Pusey imagine the possibility of this ? Or would the Anglican Church consent to seek penitently for re- union, confessing its schism and rebellion, and suing " with • bated breath and whispering humbleness ?" Or is there any hope that, beforehand, the Eomish Communion, which lias now accepted the dogma of the Immaculate Con- ception, which is ruled by a Pope and conclave, of whose policy and principles the Bull IneffaUlls and the last En- cyclical are the expressions, and the priesthood of which are now so predominantly Ultramontane, will, of its own accord, have retraced its course, rescinded its anathemas, retracted its dogma of the Immaculate Conception, made fair and friendly overtures to East and West, and, in so doing, DR. I'LSEY AND ARCHBISHOP WAKE. 237 confessed that, in the past, it has erred, both in respect of Christian charit}", and in the determination of points of faith ? If there be no hope of this, then what possibility can there be of any reconciliation between the Eomanist and Anglican communions ?* Dr. Pusc}', indeed, pleads the authority of great names in favour of the idea which he has cherished of a possibility of reunion. He would build upon the precedent of Arch- bishop Wake in his well-known correspondence with Dupin. But, as Mr. Hobart Seymour has shown in the Record, and as is indeed manifest upon the face of the account which Dr. Maclaine has given of the correspondence in the ap- pendix to his translation of Mosheim, Archbishop Wake's object was not to attach the English Church to the Koman Communion, but to detach the Galilean Church from the Roman Communion. The Ai-chbishop, more sagacious than Dr. Pusey, knew that the only chance of any reform of the Romish communion was, by the uprising of national Catholic Churches, on such a basis as that which the Galilean liberties might have afforded ; so that each in succession organizing and reforming itself, without violently departing from the unity of Roman doctrine and discipline, or even, perhaps, at first rejecting the Papal primacy, their independent action might in the end effectually break up the political unity of the Popish Church, might destroy the ecclesiastical tyranny of the Pope, might nullify the pretence of Papal infallibility, and open the way in each nation to doctrinal rectification and a return to primitive truth and simplicity. If, in the early part of the eighteenth centur}', the church of Bossuet and Dupin, the cluu-ch also, we • " I cannot wonder," says Dr. New- content to let them drop. Such repre- nian, " that you begin with stipulating sentations as yours are necessarv' to conditions of union, though I do not open the subject in debate ; they ascer- concur iu tiiem myself, and think that tain how the land lies, and serve to iu the event you yourself would be clear the ground." 238 pusey's eirenicon; may add, of Pascal and Ariiauld and Fenolon, could have been detached from Roman unity, and France could have been induced to assume the attitude and take the position now held by Italy, no doubt a great thing would have been accomplished. Nor in tlie age of Dupin was such an idea Utopian, although, after Jesuits and devotees obtained the control of the court and council chamber, all hope of any such consummation vanished. Wake's aim, accordingly, was to foster the latent Protestantism of France, in the hope that the French Catholic Church might follow, to some extent, the precedent of the Church of England, under the lead of a monarch following to some extent the precedent of Henry VIII. The Archbishop wished to associate the Church of France with that of England in national in- dividuality and independence, so that both might be com- bined against Eome ; and he was anxious that, if possible, there should be to such an extent a sj^nibolic agreement between them in matters of faith, that at least there might be intercommunion. All this was worthy of an ecclesiastical statesman like Dr. Wake ; of whom it must also be remembered that, in this respect also, unlike Dr. Pusey, his love of peace and unity was so impartial and comprehensive that he did not merely seek to establish intercommunion between the national churches of England and France, but frankly admitted the valid ecclesiastical character of Presb}d;erian and other non-episcopal churches, and the validity of the ministerial acts performed by the pastors of such churches.* It will be seen at once that Dr. Pusey's dream is a totally different thing from the scheme which Archbishoj) "Wake for a season entertained. The latter might have been practicable, and was founded on wise and far-sighted views of policy. The former is altogether impracticable; and, if * Cj'.ic Miicliiiue's Mobheiin, tlie lubt chapter. DR. PUSRY IS A TRIDENTINE ROMANIST. 239 practicable, could only degrade and enslave the Church of England. But this is not all. Dr. Pusey does not dare to suggest any essential alteration in the Tridentine dogmas. All that he seeks is such " explanations," as would leave, here and there, only a mhiiinum j^ossihlle of meaning as that which the Church would exact as necessary and de fide. Supposing, then, " explanations " to be graciously accorded, he would pin the faith of the Anglican Church to the Tridentine canons and decrees. And the " explanations " which would content him, are such as Dupin at least, if not also Bossuet, would have conceded. To these Dr. Pusey, more- over, would add, what would have been the farthest thing possible from the thought of Archbishop Wake, a recognition of the Primacy of the Piomish See. From this it is plain that Dr. Pusey is at this moment about as good a Papist as was Bossuet or Dupin. Protestant is a name which he rejects. We may add that under no variety or category can he be classed as receiving the doctrines of the Pieformation. Ho rejects equally the doctrine of Luther as to faith ; the doctrine of Calvin as to grace and the sacraments ; and the doctrines of the Articles and Homilies of the Church of England, as interpreted by the writings of the Anglican Reformers. He can only be defined as a mild and en- lightened Romanist, who would interpret the Tridentine decrees in the sense least obnoxious to Protestant Christians. He believes, like some of the most eminent Romanist di^•ines, not in Papal infallibility, but in the infallibility of General Councils of the whole Church. He agrees, further, with that more enlightened class of Romanists, who would not interpret and supplement Scripture abso- lutely by tradition, but would rest upon Scrijjture and tradition in their mutual and conjoint illumination, guarding the testimony and authority of tradition by Scripture, as 240 pusey's eirenicon. that which alone is absolutely sure and true ; and he would limit the authority of tradition, if he knew how, by the rule of Quod semper, quod ubiqul, quod ah omnibus. This last particular, we may here note, is the only point of difference between Dr. Pusey and himself which Dr. Manning specifies as essential and insuperable. " Our se- paration," he says, " was my own act in abandoning as untenable the Anglican Church and its rule of faith, Scripture and antiquity, which they (Pusey and his friends) still hold, and in submitting to the voice of the Catholic and Eoman Church at this hour, which I believe to be the sole authoritative interpreter of Scripture and of antiquity. This principle no friend known to me in the Church of England has ever accepted."* According to Dr. Newman, however, there is no difference between the views of Dr. Pusey and those of Eomanists on this same point of the mutual relations and respective authority of Scripture and Tradition. "The difference " on this point " between Catholics and Angli- cans," Dr. Newman contends, " is merely one of words."! If so, then. Dr. Pusey is to all intents and purposes a Komanist in faith and doctrine. Dr. Pusey cannot indeed go all lengths with the Pvoman Church, as judged by its vulgar faith and ordinary teaching and practice. Moreover, his rejection of Papal Infallibility and of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception would preclude him from being a good modern Papist. But his faith coincides with that of the more enlightened Eomanists of the naturalised English or of the Gallican School. He is assuredly not an adherent of the Eeformed faith. Dr. Pusey does not approve of the Invocation of Saints, under the most modified form of it. He argues against it convincingly and persuasively. Still, it appears, he would not object to the Tridentine decree which determines that "it * Workings, Sec. p. 5. f Letter, pp. 13, 14. POINTS OF PTFFEKENCE FROM POPTTLATl UOMAXIS^M. 211 is good and useful to invoke them, and to liave recourse to their prayers, help, and assistance, to obtain favours from God, Sec" (pp. 100—114). We suppose he thinks that though not the best thing in itself, though of dangerous tendency, however minified or explained, though a practice which he would never himself countenance, it may yet, under certain circumstances, and to certain persons, be " good and useful." But this is painfully oblique casuistry ; especially where the dogma of a Church Council is in question. He admits that the mrre " ora pro nobis," duly "explained," need "not have led any to stop short in the Saints, nor have called forth any protest, and of zeal for God's honour." But he points out how much fui-ther than this the popular use of prayers to the saints has gone, and especially "that vast s^^stem as to the Blessed Virgin, which to all of us has been the special ' crux ' of the Roman system." He quotes and adopts the words of one who, he sa3^s, " appreciated highly what is good and holy in the Roman Church," (Dr. Newman was the writer, though he does not give the name,) to the effect that this worship " comes as near idolatry as can be supposed in a church, of which it is said, ' the idols He shall utterly abolish.' " He adds, " I have often myself had to try to re- move the rooted conviction that Roman Catholics are actual 'idolaters.'" On this point, finally, he would in his Con- cordat with the Roman Communion, settle and conclude as follows: "Since then the lawfulness or usefulness of asking the saints to pray for us is alone laid down as 'of faith,' there is a large scope for providing that, in case of a reunion, our people should not be flooded with these devotions, which to us are most alien. Nothing which seems to interfere with exclusive trust or reliance on Jesus will, without some great revolution, gain hold of the hearts of the English people" (p. 111). R 242 pusey's eirenicon. He follows up this determination of the matter by quoting a long passage from a republication, by himself, fifteen years ago, of a Romanist Book of Devotions, which he " transplanted into the English Church," but from which he " omitted all mention of the Invocation of Saints." We need only to quote the first and last sentences of this extract. "However it may be explained by Eoman CathoHc controversialists, to be no more than asking the prayers of members of Christ yet in the flesh, still, in use, it is plainly more." " Generally, for members of the English Church, who desire the prayers of the departed, it has to him ever seemed safest to pray for them to Him, ' of Whom and through Whom and to Whom are all things, our God and our all,' Who, according to the current Eoman explana- tion also, reveals to them the desire of those below to have their prayers" (pp. 112 — 114). The slyness of that last turn is amusing. It reminds us of the sharpness of some arch and ingenious child. It is plain that Dr. Pusey has not studied Eoman divinity for nothing. He can turn the flank of a Eomanist in argument by a dexterous manoeuvre learnt in the school of Eomanist theological logic. He accepts the Eomanist explanation of prayers to saints, and presto 1 by virtue of this very explana- tion, he does away with such prayers at a stroke. But, observe, this is not done, as a reductio ad ahsurdum of the practice, which is the use a Protestant would make of so fair a rejoinder. It is done gravely. Dr. Pusey still believes that the doctrine, as defined by the Council of Trent, is one to which the Anglican Church might subscribe. He is willing to say himself, and to invite his whole Church to join in saying, that to pray to the saints is a "good and useful" practice. For his own spiritual uses, however, he will have none of it. Twenty-four years ago, in his "Letter to Dr. Jelf, in expla- nation of No. XC. &c," Newman expressed himself as follows: HOW NEAR PUSEY HAS COME TO ROME. 243 " I want certain points to be left open. I am not speaking for myself in one way or another ; I am not examining the scripturalness, safety, propriety, or expedience of the points in question ; but I desire that it may not be supposed as utterly unlawful for such private Christians as feel they can do it with a clear conscience, to allow a comprecation with the saints as Bramhall does, or to hold with Andrews that, taking away the doctrine of transubstantiation from the mass, we shall have no dispute about the sacrifice ; ... or to hold with Hammond that no general council, truly such, ever did, or shall err in any matter of faith ; . . . or with Thorndike, that works of humiliation and penance are requisite to render God again propitious to those who fall from the grace of baptism," &c. Such was Newman's position twenty-four years ago. Dr. Pusey stands to-day a little in advance of the same posi- tion— a little nearer Eome. Newman bespoke tolerance for the doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass minus transubstantia- tion; Dr. Pusey teaches a doctrine of the Eucharist perfectly equivalent, as he himself argues, with the tridentine dogma of transubstantiation. Newman would have had the point of " comprecation with the saints" left open. Dr. Pusey is prepared to accept, and would have his Church accept, a de- termination of the Council of Trent which pronounces the invocation of saints to be " good and useful." In another point Dr. Pusey is in advance of the posi- tion which Newman held in 1841. He will not admit that Romanists are idolatrous in their worship of the Virgin, and yet he has himself in this very volume demonstrated with overwhelming and damning evidence that this wor- ship is often, is commonly, utterly idolatrous. We only need to take his owm heads of argument and evidence, as given in the Table of Contents to his volume, in order to be con- vinced how absolutely idolatrous he has proved the Roman Mariolatry to be. Some of these heads are as follows : — ■ r2 244 pusey's eieenicon. "Doctrine as to the Blessed Virgin formed on the doc- trine as to Jesus;" "Mary our Co-Eedemptress ; " "Held to have obtained 'of congruity' for us all which Jesus gained of condignity;" "To have given Jesus, as being something of her own, to die for us ;" " Jesus, in dying for us, said to have obeyed His mother's will;" "Dogmatic ; precision of this language ;" " Minute parallel of the offices and prerogatives of Mary with those of Jesus ;" " Souls 'born j of God and Mary' ;" " Mary, indwelling the soul, is said to pre- pare the soul for Jesus and the Holy Ghost;" " The comple- i ment of the Trinity;" " Co-Present with our Lord in the Holy j Eucharist." How Dr. Pusey can deny that, when Mary is thus j honoured and worshipped, there is rank and awful idolatry, j passes our comprehension. Newman, in 1841, did not hesi- 1 tate explicitly and fully to adopt as his own the following | passage from an article in the British Critic, written in 1825 by ^ Dr. Lloyd, afterwards Bishop of Oxford. "On the question | whether the Invocation of Saints, professed and practised by j the Church of Eome, is idolatrous or not, our opinion is this ; I that in the public formularies of their Church, and even in the i belief and practice of the best informed among them, there is | nothing of idolatry, although, as we have said, we deem that s practice altogether unscriptural and unwarranted ; but we do j consider the principles relating to the worship of the Virgin j calculated to lead in the end to positive idolatry ; and we are : well convinced, and we have strong grounds for our conviction, i that a large portion of the lower classes are in this point j guilty of it. Whether the Invocation of Angels or of Saints I has produced the same effect, we are not able to decide."*; What man of common sense can doubt that the Invoca-i tion of Angels and Saints must produce the same effect? We, however, have quoted this passage as additional evidence !j to show that Newman was, in 1841, not quite so far gone • Newman's Letter to Jelf, as quoted in Dr. Pusey's new preface, pp. xxiii. xxir. MORE ROMANISING THAN TRACT XC. 245 from Protestant integrity as Dr. Pusey is in 1866. In 1845 Newman was gone to Rome. It is hardly to be Lelievecl, in- deed, that Pusey, the " stationary," will ever leave the Church of England. Neither do we desire to say a word as if to urge him across the Rubicon, still it is only proper that all should know what are Dr. Pusey's opinions, which he has never declared so plainly as at the present time.* We shall not attempt to follow Dr. Pusey through all the refinements by which he endeavours to eliminate from the determinations of the Council of Trent whatever to the Eng- Hsh mind might appear grossly offensive or manifestly super- stitious. His subtleties are the very same which, as first put forth m Tract XC, so utterly disgusted the nation. They are not, however, worked out so elaborately, and they do not give the same impression of special pleading and consummate artifice. The dogma of Purgatory is refined and reduced to a shadowy film ; Purgatory may possibly be no more than the shame and searching which even a pardoned believer might feel in the midst of the revelations of the Judgment-day. The veneration of images and relics might be nothing more, in its last refinement, than a child's kissing the crucifix, or a church- man's bowing to the " altar." The dogma of transubstantia- tion is condemned by English divines only "because of their misapprehension of the terms of scholastic philosophy; it differs only in name from the true High-Church doctrine of the Real Presence. In this way all that is Romanist is "explained" so as to bring it within the horizon of belief embraced in the system of "Anglican Catholicism." • At the time of the Gorhain con- could have gone in no other way than troversy, Dr. Pusey, as appeared from tliat of closing my eyes, and accepting hisownstatemcnt, was very nearly gone. whatever was put before me" (p. 98). " For myself, I have always felt tiiat had That is, as the context shows to be (which God of His mercy avert here- his undoubted meaning, he would have after also) the English Church, by ac- gone over and swallowed whole all ccptiug heresy, driven me out of it, I lioman doctrine. 246 pusey's eirenicon. We have scarcely adverted, in all this, to the main doc- trine, by which the distinction between Popery and the Ee- formed Churches may be said to be essentially defined — we refer, of course, to that of justification. As to this, Dr. Pusey takes it for granted, without ^y subterfuge or apology, without any circumlocution or veil, that the agreement be- tween his party and the theology of Trent is, and between his Church and the same theology, ought to be, perfect. " There is not one statement in the elaborate chapters on justification in the Council of Trent which any of us could fail of receiving; nor is there one of their anathemas on the subjects, which in the least rejects any statement of the Church of England" (p. 19). Here we shall do our readers the favour to reproduce a golden passage from the famous Sermon on Justification of the "judicious Hooker," who is perhaps the truest and most genuine representative of the pure, highly cultivated, philosophic, and orthodox English Churchman, to be found in all the annals of the English Church ; neither Calvinist nor Arminian, neither Puritan nor Laudian, neither Presbyterian nor high prelatical; but a great, calm, luminous. Churchman, whose name has always been both a glory and a defence to the Church of England, and whom the Romanising party are most eager to quote, whenever in his large and comprehensive tolerance, or in his candid and all-weighing eclecticism, he seems at any point to incline in their favour. "That grand question," he says, "that hangeth in controversy be- tween us and Eome, is about the matter of justifying righteousness. We disagree, about the nature and essence of the medicine whereby Christ cureth our disease, about the manner of applying it, about the number and the power of means which God requireth in us for the effectual ai)plying thereof to our soul's comfort. "V\Tien they are required to show ivhat the righteousness is whereby a Christian man is justified: they answer, that it is a divine spiritual quality ; which quality, received into the soul, doth first make it to be one of them who are born of God, HOOKER ON JUSTIFICATION. 247 and secondly endue it with power to bring forth such works as they do that are born of him; even as the soul of man, being joined to his body, doth first make him to be of the number of reasonable creatures, and secondly enable him to perform the natural functions which are proper to his kind : that it maketh the soul amiable and gracious in the sight of God, in regard whereof*l.o'is termed Grace; that it purgoth, purifieth, and washeth out, all the stains and pollutions of sins; that, by it, through the merit of Christ, we are delivered, as from sin, so from eternal death and condemnation, the reward of sin. This grace they will have to he applied b;/ infusion. The first receipt of Grace, in their divinity, is thejirst justification; the increase thereof, the second justifi- cation. As Grace may be increased by the merit of good works: so it may be diminished by the demerit of sins venial; it may be lost by mortal sin. Inasmuch, therefore, as it is needful, in the one case to repair, in the other to recover the loss which is made, the infusion of Grace hath her sundry after-meals : for the which cause they make many ways to apply the infusion of Grace. It is applied to infants througli Baptism, without either faith or works : and, in them, really it taketh away original sin and the punishment due unto it. It is applied unto infidels and wicked men in the frst justification, through Bap- tism, without works, yet not •without faith: and it taketh away sins, both actual and original together, with all whatsoever punishment, eternal or temporal, thereby deserved. Unto such as have attained the first justification, that is to say, this first receipt of Grace, it is applied farther by good works to the increase of former Grace : which is tlie second justification. If they work more and more, Grace doth more increase: and they are more justified. To such as diminish it by venial sins, it is applied by lioly water, Ave Marias, crossings. Papal salutations, and such like : which serve for reparations of Grace decayed. To such as have lost it through mortal sin, it is applied by the sacra- ment (as they term it) of penance : which sacrament hath force to confer Grace anew ; yet in such sort, that, being so conferred, it hath not altogether so much power as at the first. For it only cleanscth out the stain or- guilt of sin committed : and changeth the punishment eternal, into a temporal satisfactory punishment here, if time do serve, if not, hereafter to be endured ; except it be lightened by masses, works of charity, pilgrimages, fasts, and such like ; or be shortened by pardon, by term, or by plcnaiy pardon (piite removed and taken away. This is the mj-stery of the Man of Siu. This )naze the Church of Itotne doth cause 248 pusey's eirenicon. her foUoiuers to tread when they ash her the way to justification. Whether they speak of the first or second justification, they make it the essence of a divine quality inherent, they make it righteousness ivhich is in us. If it be in iis, then it is ours as our souls are ours, though we have them from God, and can hold them no longer than pleaseth Him ; for if He withdrew the breath of our nostrils, we fall to dust. But the righteous- ness, wherein we must be found if we will be justified, is not our own. Therefore we cannot be justified by any inherent quality. The Church of Rome in teaching justijication by inherent Grace, doth pervert the truth of Christ : and by the hands of the Apostles, we have received otherwise than she teacheth. Now, concerning the righteousness of sanc- tijication, we deny it not to be inherent : we grant, that, unless we work, we have it not. Only we distinguish it, as a thing different in nature from tJie righteousness of justijication. By the one we are interested in the right of inheriting : by the other, we are brought to the actual possession of eternal bliss. And so the end of both is ever- lasting life." — Moolcer's Discourse on Justijication, S)-c. This grand and luminous passage ought to be decisive on the question of justification. What Hooker describes is, we need hardly say, the very doctrine of the Council of Trent. He who holds this doctrine has no relation to the doctrines of the Eeformation, except as an opponent, and has as- suredly given up all part in the true theology of the Church of England, at least as expounded in her articles. All Popish abuses and corruptions — as the passage we have quoted so admirably shows, grew out of this, the Tridentine doctrine of justification. This is the doctrinal basis of them all ; as the fiction of Apostolical Succession is the j)riestly assumption, for the support of which, this doctrine of justification and all the other corruptions have become necessary. To quote the words of the late Kev. G. S. Faber, in which he excellently sums up what Hooker has proved, "it is the Eomish doctrine of justification that gives value to Indulgences, need to Purgatory, use to the sacrament of penance, motive to the invocation of saints, DR. pusey's concessions. 240 credence to the existence of the sacred treasure of super- erogatory merits ; that makes auricular confession tolerable, and all the vain inventions of meritorious will-worship precious."* Such being the state of the case, it is no marvel if Dr. Piisey longs for a union with Eome, and is prepared to accej^t the theology of Trent. He agrees with the Eomish doctrine of justification. He believes in baptismal regenera- tion and sacramental efficacy ; but not in justification by faith. He believes (as set forth in his writings on Baptism) that there can be no assurance of pardon for mortal sin after baptism ; and that venial sins (mark the Popish dis- tinction) have to be wij^ed away by contrition, by penance, by humble recej)tion of the Eucharist, by prayer, almsgiving, and the like. He cannot but in conformity with these things believe in auricular confession, in the Divine authority of priestly counsel and guidance, and in the sacramental authority and efficacy of priestly absolution. What wonder if he admits that indulgences may be expedient and just, rightly administered, if he inclines towards a belief in Pur- gatory, if he looks favourably on the whole body of Piomish doctrine and, finding himself able and willing, with certain explanations, to assent to the Tridentine canons and de- crees. To a man who, with his esoteric faith and his passionate yearnings towards Piome, has yet attested his agreement with the Thirty-nine Articles, it must be at least as easy a thing, one would think, to subscribe to the theology of the famous Eomish Council. One thing is not a little remarkable in the Eirrnicon, that Dr. Pivsey says barely one word about absolution or con- fession. To Dr. Manning's charge that the Anglican Church " propagates unbelief" in five out of the seven Sacraments of the Church, he replies in effect, as he had said muny * Faber's rrovinoial Letters, vol. i. y. 132. 250 pusey's eibenicon. years before, and as Newman had said in Tract XC, that the English Church does not deny that the five are in some sense sacraments, but only that they are to be ranked with the two great sacraments, the sacraments par excellence, which are absolutely necessary to salvation and to the communica- tion of sanctifying grace. As to extreme unction, moreover, he objects that, w^hat was originally intended for the re- covery of the sick, has come to be used on behalf of those, and those only, appointed to die. The other sacraments (so- called) he acknowledges as sacraments in a sense. He quotes, not unfairly, the articles of the Church of England, as implying that absolution is in some sense a sacrament, when it says that " absolution is no such sacrament as Baptism and the Lord's Supper," and again that " neither it nor any other sacrament else be such sacraments as Bap- tism and the Communion are." And this, so far as we can find, is all that he says upon the subject. It is evident, accordingly, that he assumes the substantial agreement of the English and the Eomish Church, as to this particular, just as Newman had done before him. He takes it for granted that priestly absolution, and, therefore, that the practice of confession, is a part of the economy of the Church of England, just as hundreds of Popish - hearted clergymen paid out of the tithes of this Protestant England are now doing in all parts of this land. That a distinct trace, nay, that something very like an implied sanction in principle, of private confession and priestly absolution, has been left in the formularies of our imperfectly reformed Church, is one of our national cala- mities. But for all that, there is no one point in regard to which the feeling of the English nation is more deep and settled than this, that the very blackest heart of rank and festering evil in all the monstrous and myriad-bodied frame of Popish falsehood and corruption is this Confessional. DR. PUSEY AND THE CONFESSIONAL. 251 Here is the bond and fetter of spiritual thraldom ; here is the fuel and incitement of inordinate desire ; here man is unmanned before his man-god ; here woman is degraded and demoralised underneath the probe of the unsparing morbid anatomist who pries into her most sacred secrets, and drags to day what she had never made known to the mother that bore her ; here man and woman together learn to tremble beneath the knowledge, the terrible knowledge, and the awful sout-enthralling prerogative of one who, as Father Confessor, usurps the place of the Searcher of Hearts, and, in his character of Pardoner, usurps the in- communicable attribute of the Eternal Judge. It was to this frightful curse of the Confessional that Coleridge referred in those scathing words which we quoted at the close of our last paper. And yet as regards this the very worst part of Popery, Dr. Pusey is altogether one with it, and assumes that the English Church is one. Let us, then, see what it is that the Council of Trent says on this subject, that as here Dr. Pusey utters no caveat and asks for no softening, we may understand how far his conformity to Kome on such a point may take him. Thus, then, declares the Council of Trent, with whose Canons and Decrees Dr. Pusey contends that the English Church might agree, provided only they were " explained," iu a mild and conciliatory sense. " The Catholic Church has always understood that a full confession of sins was in- stituted by the Lord as a part of the sacrament of penance, and that it is necessary by the Divine appomtment for all who sin after baptism, because our Lord Jesus Christ, when He was about to ascend from earth to heaven, left His priests in His place as presidents and judges, to whom all mortal offences into which the faithful might fall should be honestly and fully submitted, that they might pronounce sentence of 252 pusey's eirenicon. remission or retention of sins by the power of the keys." Furthermore, the Council pronounces, "If any one shall deny that sacramental confession was instituted, or is necessary to salvation, by Divine right, or shall say that the practice of private confession to a priest is foreign from the institu- tion and command of Christ, and is only a human invention, let him be anathema." We have now seen what are Dr. Pusey's views and de- sires, what is his theological and ecclesiastical position. The question cannot but arise. How can such a man as Dr. Pusey, born an English gentleman, brought up an English scholar, a man of learning, of ability, o£ moral worth, yet be weak enough and blinded enough so far to forget, or to despise, so far at least to forego, all that belongs to the hard-won English "liberties," as to be willing to coalesce with Eomanism and to accept the primacy of the Pope ; so far to betray the priceless blessing of indi- vidual liberty of heart and soul as to be ready to welcome the soul-crushing tyranny of the Confessional; so far to do violence to his own spiritual persuasions and affections as to allow the invocation of saints and to apologize for the veneration of relics ; so far to degrade the grand and ancient national Church of England, of which he speaks such " glorious things," as to propose that she should sue for reconciliation to the corrupt Church which has excom- municated and anathematized her, even while he himself shows forth the deep, the growing, the terrible, extent of her corruption? How are we to account in such a man for such apparent insensibility to all that belongs to the glory of his country and of his Church, such doting infatuation? Neither do these questions belong only to Dr. Pusey and his case. The like questions may be asked as to a large proportion of the High Church clergy of England. Many, indeed, of these are mere cleui^nl pctits maHrcs — fops in sacer- HOW ENGLISH GENTLEMEN COME TO BE T10MANIST8. 253 dotal long-clothes, who horrow their ecclesiastical "fashions" from Eome, as milliners and " modistes " borrow their " fashions " from Paris ; or else vulgar upstart priests, ignorant and low-bred, but preposterousl}'' ambitious of spiritual power, bent upon playing the Pope on their small stage; who, contemplating themselves and their fellows in the glass of ecclesiastical pretensions, and living apart from true men and all manly thought, in an atmosphere made sickly with the incense of " sill}' women," fondly ween that the England of the nineteenth century may be brought back to what they imagine— for their ideas are but the children's dreams of minds as feeble and puerile as they are vain and insolent — was the spiritual condition of the England of " the ages of faith," as the ages of blind superstition have been called by the Popishly devout. But, although many of the Anglican High Churchmen are such as we have now attempted to describe, there are others of a far higher class, in regard to whom much the same questions might be asked, as we have propounded in regard to Dr. Pusey. We will try, then, to give some answer to the questions we have raised. It might be said that all about which we are in difficulty arises from the influence of early education acting on a special temperament. And no doubt education may have something to do with the matter. Dr. Pusey himself has informed us in his Preface to his too celebrated, though little read, sermon on the Eucharist, that he learnt his theology as to the Sacrifice of the Eucharist and the Eeal Presence from Bramhall and Andrewcs. But here the question recurs, whence came the bias towards Popish mysticism and sacerdotalism of Bramhall and Andrewes, and the old historical High Church school m England ? Perhaps it may be said that, as, to be poets, men must be born poets ; and, as Coleridge affirms, to be 254 pusey's eirenicox. Platonists, men must be born Platonists ; so religious mysticism, and something like a superstitious veneration for ecclesiastical persons and ecclesiastical authority, seem to be tendencies natural to some men. We do not, how- ever, think that this is a sufficient answer to our questions. The facts with which we are dealing are too common, and cover too broad a surface, within a certain region, to be accounted for by any individual idiosyncrasies ; while, at the same time, beyond that region, they are not found at all except in a very mild and mitigated form. There must, therefore, be something in the circumstances common to the clergy of the Church of England, bred at our Univer- sities, especially at Oxford, which must account for the phaenomena in question. If Cambridge has never been infected to the same extent as Oxford, this must be attri- buted mainly to the different bias in the studies of that University; — mathematics, inductive science, and metaphy- sical studies in the school of Locke, being counteractives to superstition, while the predominantly classical and scholastic character of the Oxford curriculum, at least until very modern reforms had effected some essential changes, had little or no tendency to foster independence of thought or genuine philosophy. We must accordingly endeavour to discover some general cause or causes for the phaenomena which we have described. To us these causes have long appeared to be such as we will now proceed to explain. In the first place, there has been a fundamental error as to that in which consists the unity and continuity of the Church of Christ. No other view has seemed to present itself as pos- sible to the minds of Anglican thinkers than that the unity of the Church must be that of an external organic whole, united in some external centre or head ; and consequently that the continuity of the Church must depend upon the unbroken GENERAL CAUSES OF ROMAN TENDENCIES. ' 255 organic identity and continuance of this external and visible whole. No doubt the pre-occupation of the minds of Anglican thinkers by this conception, to the exclusion of any view more spiritual, profound, and Scriptural, must be attributed in part to the prevalence, from very early times, of hierarchical and externalist ideas transmitted through the national Uni- versities of the country, as also through the writings of the great divines of the Eoman Communion; and, in part, to the prevalence of those ideas as to a national Chm-ch and national Christianit3% which have grown up in the country since the Reformation, and which, substituting the Iving, the Council, and the Parliament for the Pope, the Conclave, and the General Council, are little else than an adaptation of the ecclesiastical theory of Eome, and, so far as the present point is concerned, agree in principle with that theory. In part, also, the almost unchallenged do- minion of this externalist view must be attributed to the fact that Anglican divines, as a rule, read nothing but what is Anglican, and therefore receive very little illumination from the freer, larger, and more spiritual ideas, which as to many points, are circulating in Nonconformist circles, and which, to a large extent, influence the political and ecclesiastical sympathies and convictions of that half of the English nation which is beyond the pale of the National Establishment, and between which and the body of Church- men there is, as to so many important points, as little of sympathy or mutual intelligence as if they belonged to different races and different hemispheres. Proceeding upon the assumption wdiich we have defined, Anglican divines are at a loss to expound our Lord's promise to Peter after his Confession of Faith in any sense which does not imply that the Church of Eome must have been from the beginning a true Church, i.e. truly a Church of Christ, and was for ages the greatest and most legitimate 256 pusey's eirenicon. representative of the Apostolic and Primitive Cliiireli, at least in its Western Branch ; and that it must still be admitted to be the greatest and most impressive embodiment of Christianity in the world, the most signal evidence, both in respect of its unity and its continuity, of the fulfilment of the promise that " the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church of Christ." Unfortunately, moreover, a line of reply to this argument has been taken by some excellent men, which was perhaps, on the whole, more likely to confirm the Anglican High Churchman in his view, than to convince him of his error. The late truly venerable Master of Sherburn Hospital, the learned, able, and every way admirable George Stanley Faber, in his argument on this matter, affords an instance of what we mean. Conceding to the High Churchmen their principle, that our Lord's promise implies the continuance of some external organization, as that visible Church against which the Gates of Hell w^ere not to prevail, Mr. Faber found the visible Church, to which the promise applied, in the ancient Christian communities of the Valleys — the Vaudois and the Albigenses. Here, he argued, w^ere primitive and orthodox churches, w^hose continuity was unbroken, and which had been preserved doctrinally pure amidst the corruptions and idolatries of the Eoman Communion ; here, therefore, was the true and faithful residuary Apostolic Church, which, amidst the growing apostacy of the Church of Eome, must be held to be the legitimate representa- tive, as it was the lineal descendant of the Primitive and Apostolic Church ; here the truth was kept alive during the dreary ages of deepening corruption and superstition ; hence the ancient churches of Bohemia borrowed light and life; hence, in effect, sprang the life which through Huss and Jerome was transmitted to Luther, and which blossomed forth afresh so mightily in the Eeformation. THE UNITY AND CONTINUITY OF THE CHURCH. 267 There is, no doubt, something fascinating to many English Protestants in this view. No true-hearted Protestant can regard without the deepest sj^mpathy the Churches of the Valleys, so ancient in their origin, so primitive in their discipline, so orthodox in doctrine, so cruelly persecuted, so faithful in confession, so brave in the endurance of un- paralleled sufferings, so wonderfully preserved, and now so happily revived. Well might these churches adopt as then- symbol the Bush in Horeb, " burning, but not con- sumed." Nevertheless, Mr. Faber's argument, however ingenious, is one which will not bear criticism ; and our sym- pathy for the churches in the Valleys must not blind us to its fallacies. Such an argument was never likely to convince Anglican Eomanisers. It was in fact too ingenious, as the French say, trop fine. There are several strong ob- jections to it. (1.) As Rome was the great and guilty per- secutor of these churches, this interpretation of the promise, on the conceded principle of understanding its terms as referring to external organizations, must imply that by the " Gates of Hell " are intended the power and resources of the Eoman See, thus identifying the Eomish Communion, as an external organization and as a specific identity, with the seat and dominion of Satan. When and how, it could not but be asked, did the Roman See become thus abso- lutely the seat and dominion of Satan ? When and how did its identity change, so that from Christian it became Satanic ? To those, who understand by the Church of Christ a visible organization, with an unbroken identity, such a question is embarrassing. Was the Roman unity of Churches in the fifth century already identical with the Gates of Hell ? If so, when and how did it so become ? If not, when and how did it become so afterwards ? (2.) Another objection to this interpretation is that it ignores the fact that, notwithstanding the apostacies of the Roman 258 pusey's eirenicon. Court and Conclave, notwithstanding the persistent wicked- ness of the Eoman policy, notwithstanding the blasphemies of the Papal assumptions and decrees, there was yet, even during " the dark ages," some Christian life — a good " leaven" as well as an evil, a " mystery of godliness" as well as a "mystery of iniquity" — working among the adherents of the Eomish Communion. To a large extent, the blasphe- mies and corruptions of Eoman doctrine have been invented by or on behalf of the Eoman Court and Conclave, and have been forced, first, on the priesthood of the various nations, many of whom have always at first resisted so far as they dared, and then, by the priesthood, on their flocks. The " Catholic Church " (so called) and the Eoman Court are by no means to be absolutely identified. This being the case, it can hardly be doubted, even if we allow all that is claimed, in respect of doctrinal purity and primitive discipline and morals, on behalf of the Churches of the Valleys, (and it is probable that their eulogists in their revulsion from foul Eomish calumnies, have carried these claims too far), that, in the vast fields of the Eoman Catholic Communion, there were, even during the period when the fearful and fiendish persecutions of the Valley Churches was carried on, in absolute number many more living members of Christ, many more belonging to the unity of His mystical body, than could be numbered among those Churches. In which case, to make all these members of Christ to be members of the " Synagogue of Satan," and limit the efficacy of the Lord's Promise absolutely to the mere fraction of Christian people to be found among the Churches of the Valleys, would seem to be a very question- able position. (3.) Another objection arises from the fact that, besides the Eoman Communion, there was during the middle ages, existing in continuous integrity, so far as merely outward organization is concerned, also the THE ROCK AND THE GATES OF HELL. 259 ancient and "orthodox" Greek Church. Is this church to be excluded ? Then in the Valley Churches alone, amidst the immense expanse of Western and Eastern Christendom, is "the Church" to be found, and the promise of the Lord fulfilled. Or is the Eastern Church to be a co-heir of the promise ? Then there is a new dilemma. Apart from what is specifically Roman and Papal, the Western Church is by most historians believed to have been for more than a thousand years past superior, on the whole, to the Eastern. At all events, although happily for itself not precluded from internal self-reformation by Papal Bulls, or by decrees and definitions, such as those of the Western Councils ending with Trent, yet for ignorance, for gross idolatry, for general superstition, for prevalent demorali- sation, it would appear that altogether the Eastern Church has been and is in even a lower state than the Western Church. Hence to make the Eastern to be an heir of the Promise, while the wiiole Western Church, as a church, is disinherited, would seem to be impossible. Constrained by such considerations as these, it is not wonderful if English divines have declined to accept Mr. Faber's solution of the question in debate ; if they have, on the whole, only felt the more confirmed, by his unsatis- factory attempt to find another heir to the promise to the exclusion of Piome, in their own interpretation which re- cognises in Rome the chief heir and main representative of primitive and patristic Christianity. We are ourselves convinced that the same fundamental fallacy underlies both this interpretation and that of the High Church party. We apprehend that the first and strict sense of our Lord's words was completely fulfilled within the earliest ages of Christianity; and that the inner sense, the principle, of the promise has been ever since fulfilled and fulfilling in universal Christendom, but is not attached s2 260 PUSEY'd EIRENICON. to any specific and external church organization whatever. The promise, in its original reference, was fulfilled when, in spite of all that the enemies of Christ and His kingdom could do, the Apostolic Church was built up from its first foundations, and rose into impregnable strength and security. AVlien Peter, who made the great fundamental Confession, had become — first on the Day of Pentecost at Jerusalem, and afterwards in the family of Cornelius, at the Pentecost of the Gentile converts — the chief instrument of founding the Christian Church of both Jews and Gentiles ; when, after the destruction of Jerusalem, the Christian Church was established, in the midst of the nations, the one and sole life amidst universal degeneracy and decay ; when, during ages of persecution, the Church still continued to rise into vaster and mightier proportions ; and when, finally, having outlived all persecutions, she came to be acknowledged among the nations as the greatest of powers and as truly divine ; when all this was accomplished, the promise of our Lord was in its outward aspect amply and conclusively fulfilled. The Lord did "build" His "Church upon the Eock;" and "the Gates of Hell" did "not prevail against it." It had defied the utmost malice and resources of all avowedly, purely, organically, heathenish and anti-Christian forces. If, after that, cor- ruption should arise from within, this would be a new condition to which other promises would apply, a condition not contemplated in this promise, at least when regarded as having an outward aspect and an outward fulfilment. If, indeed, any should contend that we are to give to the promise a more inward and spiritual sense; if by the "Gates of Hell" we are to understand internal princiijles of evil, " wicked spirits in heavenly places" warring against good spirits and good principles ; then we must also give to the word " Church " an inward and spiritual meaning, and inter- TRUE INTEllPRETATIOX OF THE PROMISE. 261 pret it US signifying the good and the true, the life and the truth, contained within the outward and visible organization. Without doubt, indeed, the promise to Peter must be under- stood as including, besides the sense in which it was immedi- ately fulfilled, an implicit promise and prophecy, that Christ's kingdom should never fail, that He should always have a people on the earth, and that the spiritual forces which con- stitute the energies of His kingdom should be victorious in the conflict with evil and the powers of evil. When our Lord promised to build His Church on the Rock, in spite of all the antagonism of the " Gates of Hell," the idea must be excluded that the work so established could be allowed afterwards to fall to pieces by internal corruption. Within the Church which He thus founded, it must be understood, was enshrined the life and salvation of the world for all ages. But if we are to interpret the promise in question as a direct prophecy of the permanence of Christ's Church among men to the end of time, and if we are to understand the Church of Christ, thus spoken of, as that which is outward and universal, in that case we must expound the word Church (literally congregation) as meaning the total multitude of Christ's own people from age to age, in whatever outward organization or communion they may be found. All these are "one body in Christ." As they are living men, they are visible ; as their unity is in Christ, this is a thing invisible ; their organic unity is therefore a thing spiritual and invisible, while their individual persons are visible, and their activities are external. Thus understood, it is evident that there has always been a Church of Christ among men, a multitude of living and . visible Christians ; and that against this Church, against the might of this multitude of living Christians, ever operating among then- fellows, and constituting collectively "the leaven" which has been more and more leavening "the lump," the "Crates of Hell," the powers of darlmess, have never pro- 262 pusey's eibenicon. vailed. The promise of Christ has thus been in a two-fold sense fulfilled; in its literal and primary meaning, and in the spiritual principle — that of the assured and ultimate triumph of Christ and His Kingdom, — which lay at the heart of the promise. The many good who have at all times been found in the Eoman Communion itself ; the outbreak, from the veiy bosom of that communion, notwithstanding the determined opposi- tion of the Eoman Court, acting under the orders of the " Gates of Hell," of such life as is shown in the unfailing chain of witnesses to primitive truth, such as Bernard with all his faults and errors, Grossetete, Wicklyfe, Huss, Jerome, Luther and Savonarola; the illustrious sanctity, since the Reformation, of such Romanist names as we have before mentioned in this paper ; the very Reformation itself, attesting as that did a latent life in the heart of the "Catholic" Church, notwithstanding many foul corruptions in its body ; the truth and life of the Martyr-Churches of the Valleys ; the good that th^re has been, be it more or less, in the Greek Church, and in the Nestorian and other Eastern Churches : the gradual advance, in virtue of the conjoint operation of all the truth and all the life existent in Christendom, of the whole modern world in freedom, truth, and godliness ; an advance which, taking the whole sphere into account, may be said to have been growing from the first; all these things together may be held to prove that the "Gates of Hell" have not prevailed against Christ's Church. The leaven has ever been working. Christ's king- dom has still 'been coming. Christ's promise has been fulfilled. Such is the interpretation which we put upon our Lord's promise, an interpretation which appears to us fully to satisfy the text, and by means of which, at the same time, we are delivered from the perplexities which attend any UNITY AND CONTINUITY NOT EXTERNAL. 263 interpretation which explains our Lord's promise as refer- ring to one continuous external organization — as the Church against which the powers of Hell should not prevail. The Roman Church claims to he the one true Church, and ex- communicates all other churches ; the Orthodox claims to be the one, and excommunicates likewise the Roman Communion and all Eastern churches besides itself. According to certain monstrously absurd Anglicans, of the sort that can swallow a camel, the Anglican Church is the one apostolic and Catholic Chm'ch,tlie Roman Communion being heretical and schismatic, and the Greek — well, we really do not know what position these rare Anglicans assign to the Orthodox Greek Church. Such are the difficulties by which the interpretation of this passage is beset, on the principle of externality, difficulties 80 utterly intractable that they ought of themselves to suffice for the refutation of the principle of interpretation on which they rest in common. It is no wonder, so long as men cling to this principle, that they should be led to admit the high claims of the Roman Church, as perhaps the least absurd of all the alternatives before them. It is possible, indeed, on the principle of externality, to maintain that all the orthodox Churches lineally descended from the primitive and early patristic church are branches of the one Catholic Church, and that defect of inter- communion does not of necessity violate unit}'. This is the position which Dr. Pusey maintains with great ability (pp. GO, 70). But it is hardly possible, on this principle, to do more than contend that the Anglican Church may claim to stand on the same level of primitive and apostolic right and authority as the Roman and Greek Churclies. And against this conclusion there lies the ominous fact, which Dr. Pusey ignores, that the Roman Church has ex- communicated and anathematized the English ; while the English has separated from the Roman. The Anglican 264 pusey's eirenicon. Church is not merely (as Dr. Pusey says) " independent of" the Eoman, as the African was in the days of Augustine. The Anglican Church is cut off from the Eoman Communion, to which it must also be added, that the Anglican Church is held by the Greek Church to be schismatic, if not ex- communicate. What we have now explained is the main consideration by which the best sort of English High Churchmen in all ages have been led to look with reverence towards Eome and to seek for reconciliation with it. But this is by no means all. A much more vulgar inducement has operated with a lower and a larger class, and more or less perhaps wdth High Churchmen of every class. That inducement is suggested by the partisan cry of the whole clan of High- Churchmen — Apostolical Succession. This dogma is indeed based on a monstrous, incredible, utterly unhistorical assumption. Still it is a necessary postulate in the theory of an absolutely exclusive church. A church claims to be the necessary and exclusive vehicle of saving grace. How is such a claim to be sustained on behalf of its ministra- tions ? Is saving efficacy to be made conditional on sound- ness of biblical interpretation, on a true representation of the life, death, and doctrine of Christ, of the history of the Apostolic Church, of the teachings of the apostles, on the gifts and learning, on the godliness and Christian graces, on the fidelity and efficiency, as preachers and pastors, of the ministers of the churches ? But as to these high properties and powers no monopoly can be set up. As to all these matters, there have always been the grossest shortcomings and transgressions, on the part of a vast pro- portion of the ministers and the services connected with the exclusive church or churches, w^hile on the part of the churches to be excluded there has often been, as to these very particulars, a manifest and most effective superiority. APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION AND SACRAMENTAL EFFICACY. 265 How, then, is the exclusiveness to be established, the monoj^oly to be made good, the claim of the one church to be alone the Church of Christ, to be sustained ? Since, tried by every overt test, by every appreciable condition of orthodoxy, of learning, of grace, of gifts, of power, of fruits and effects, the exclusive church is rather at a dis- advantage than otherwise as compared with the dissentient or nonconformist, it may be, the anathematized and excom- municated, at all events, the schismatic churches ; it follows that the test of validity and legitimac}^ must be found in some occult property or quality necessarily connected with the organization of the church and the transmission of its ministr3^ The dogma that a certain grace and virtue, a specifically ministerial grace and virtue, is necessarily con- ferred by the imposition of the bishop's hands in ordination, which accordingly must take rank as a sacrament, and which High Anglican Churchmen, no less than Eomanists, do regard as a sacrament of grace — admirably answers all the neces- sities of the case. The exclusive Anglican Church, therefore, no less than the Eomanist, holds " for dear life" to this figment of Apostolical Succession, and the associated super- stition of transmitted grace and virtue. The doctrine is a truly awful doctrine — that, in virtue of the Episcopal manipulation, all the ordained receive, in the act and sacra- ment of ordination, "the Holy Ghost." Other things follow from this. The exclusive priesthood must be made the exclusive channels of grace and salvation. This must be provided for. Those who submit themselves to their ministry m?/s? he saved, and they only; unless God have private and uncovenanted dealings of mercy with the others. But how is this to be secured ? Simply by a repetition of the same manoeuvre. By ordination a scanda- lous man, who remains a scandalous liver, is yet made a true priest of God, endued with the Holy Ghost. So it must 266 pusey's eirenicon. - be provided that by the priestly offices of these ordained men, and in virtue of submission to those offices alone, men. may and shall be recipients of inward and saving grace. Hence the doctrines of Baptismal Regeneration, through the mere act of the priest, and of Sacramental Salvation, through the mere reception of the elements which these priests have made vital, and divine, and soul-saving by their consecration. Any other test, here again, would break down. Ministers of churches out of the pale may be godly, pure, orthodox, instructive, eloquent, awakening, convincing ; their ministry may be attended by the most undeniable moral effects : they may be the means of reclaiming a province, of morally renovating a kingdom ; while the ministers of the exclusive church may be manifestly inferior, as a class, in most of these characteristics; may often be childishly weak, hopelessly ineloquent, notoriously sceptical, utterly negligent, scandalously immoral ; their ministry may have no witness in the consciousness, moral or intellectual, of their hearers ; it may be attended by no good results, may even be a means of demoralisation. Nevertheless, by the doctrines of Sacramental Efficacy supplementing the dogma of Apostolical Succession, their spiritual monopoly is sealed, and salvation is ensured to those, and those only, who attend their ministrations. Thus the doctrines of grace are meta- morphosed into a system of "divine magic," an imposing and hierarchical fetishism. Moral effects have no place in this system, no proper relation to salvation. Grace is degraded into a charm; Christianity is depraved into a superstition. Scripture teaches that the Spirit "bloweth where it listeth ;" but these doctrines chain the Spirit and His influences down to the line of hierarchical working, and make them dependent on priestly " intention " and mani- pulation. These doctrines do, in respect to the Lord Christ and the Holy Spirit, just what certain theories of ANGLICAN CHURCHMEN. 267 the universe do for God and Providence ; tliey jDut their free activity so far back, and hold their actual operation to be so absolutely bound to certain lines of creaturely action and causation, that the thought of them need never enter the mind, and their present influence is altogether done away. The " priests " of the " succession " are made to be the authorised, the exclusive, and, if they only will and mean it, the necessary and unfailing, purveyors of grace to those who, with a full belief in their power and their monoj)oly, come to them for salvation. The saving in- fluences of the Divine Si)ii'it are, as it were, physically incorporated with the ecclesiastical organization.* This system is common to Anglican High Churchism with Koman Catholicism. In virtue of this theory, not a few Anglican Churchmen in this country ape the Eoman lofti- ness, and fulminate their Anglican crackers instead of the Roman thunder. They endeavour to compensate for their own excommunication and anathematization by Eome by excom- municating others, by unchurching other churches, and, as often as they dare, refusing to bury their dead. No wonder that, on the score of such essential agreement in spirit. * With what we have above written signs of grace, but also to impart it, may be compared the following sen- they complete the mystic relation which tences from Ranke's History of the man is sup])oscd to hold with God. . . Popes: — The Holy Ghost dwells in the Church " When the justification within a man evermore. . . It was of a piece with this is progressive, and that too in a con- indwelling of the divine element, that tinned development, the sacraments, by the justifying principle also should re- means of which it is commenced, or side in man himself, tiiat the grace after being commenced, is promoted, or bound up with the visible sacrament after being lost, is recovered, become in- becomes step by step imparted to him, dispensable to it. .. But these sacraments and embraces his life and death. The embrace the whole life of man and all visible is at the same time the true the successive steps of its development ; church, which had been called the in- they lie at the foundation of the bier- visible. It can acknowledge no reli- archy, in so far as it govenis the days gious existence beyond its circle." — and hours of a man's existence ; and as Rankers History, book ii. they arc understood not onlv to be the 268 pusey's eirenicon. pretension, and anti-Christian dogma, High Anglicans should yearningly long after Eome. It is too evident, however he may try to supplement it by interpolating between its dogmas the real truths of Christian doctrine and life, so far as these can by the utmost ingenuity be interpolated among such dogmas, that Dr. Pusey holds to the whole of this system of theurgic super- stition, this lamentable mockery of spiritual functions and daring assumption of spiritual gifts and powers. And, of course, to this extent he is still further identified with Eome and Eoman doctrine. But in his case, and in the case of such men as Keble, the i^roceres of the Tractarian school, there is still another, and a much better, reason why they desire, if it were possible, to see the breach healed between Anglicanism and Eomanism. They earnestly desire the unity of Christendom. If the English and the Eoman Churches could but be brought into union; and then if a friendly intercommunion could be established between the Western Church and the Greek; they would utter the Nunc Dimittis of Simeon. They say, Is the breach to go farther and farther ? Is there never to be a united Christendom ? We wonder greatly that even Dr. Pusey does not see that such a union is never to be brought about on his own principle and proposal. Dr. Wake was wise and right in the view he took of this matter. Dr. Pusey is weak and wrong. He would concede the Primacy of the Eoman See; he would bring the National Church of England into at least a quasi-organic union with Eome. Whereas the Primacy of the Pope is the fetter of bondage, bondage under the tyranny of falsehood, blasphemy, and a com- pacted system of fearful corruptions, which, so long as it is not broken, must ever prevent a union between Eoman Catholicism and all churches, national or merely denomina- tional, in which there is truth, freedom, and purity. So PROSPECTS OF CATHOLIC UNITY. '269 long as the Papal Supremacy lasts the Roman Communion is bound to all its traditions, must go ' encumbered with the weight of all its millennial growth and accumulation of corruptions, impieties, and contradictions. Take this iron-woven swaddling band from off the limbs and the Hfe of the great Western Church, and she will be able to arise and to move freely. Break up the Papal yoke, cast off the Papal incubus, throw to the winds the Papal Supremacy, and national Catholic Churches may grow up in the midst of rising national liberty, and may gradually purge and reform themselves. They would not call them- selves Protestant ; but they would be national, with their own synods, and with separate governments. How soon would this be the case in Italy, notwithstanding the fears of Dr. Puse}'— fears no doubt increased by his interviews with French bishops and monks, — if only the Popish tem- poralities and the personal supremacy and infallibility of the Pope were out of the way ? how soon in France ? how soon in Germany ? We lament to see that, as respects this question of union with Eome, Dr. Pusey is under a wretched infatuation. Since his book was published, he appears, we presume in consequence of communications he has received from Romanist dignitaries and interviews with monks and bishops at Bordeaux and Orleans, to have become still weaker on this point than before. In his letter in the Guardian in reply to Archdeacon Wordsworth he gives, with grave respect, the last physiological refinement — a most revolting re- finement— which he has learned from his Romanist teachers respecting the mode of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin. In the same letter, also, he repeats his persuasion, previously expressed in a letter to the Times, that the Pope and his counsellors would consent to make terms with the Anglican Church, as a Church, such as 270 pusey's eikenicon. would respect the English and Anglican liberties, and would receive this Church back into communion on the same conditions as an individual convert, i.e. on condition of merely subscribing the creed of Po^De Pius IV. Now this is such a marvel of doting, as we never could have ex- pected Dr. Pusey to perpetrate. So low has our champion against Eationalism fallen ! So far has he, on the strength of his lately resuscitated name and influence, presumed to test the forbearance of English Protestantism ! So grossly has he insulted, by his arguments and proposals, the Church of which he is a member! Will she "go bending down at the soles of the feet " of Kome ? Will she bear to be advised and persuaded thus to come down and sit in the dust, and to go to grind at Babylon ? Dr. Pusey has committed a lamentable folly. His authority in England is gone for ever. But, though this is sad enough^ it is sadder still to think that he has probably done what he has done not without some warranty from the state of feeling which is prevailing more and more within his own Church. It must not be lost sight of, that in his republica- tion of his old friend's Tract XC, with a bold and outspoken defensive Preface, he is backed by the authority and co- operation of Mr. Keble, whose letter in vindication of the same tract, written and circulated twenty-five years ago, is now for the first time given to the world. It is evident that Dr. Pusey and Mr. Keble regard the present time as favourable to a reassertion, with greater boldness than ever, of all Tractarian Eomanism. And Dr. Newman, in his letter, assumes that Dr. Pusey does, in fact, speak for High Churchmen generally, and rejoices accordingly. These con- siderations invest the present subject with a truly solemn gravity ; they are of evil augury for England and the Church of England. No wonder that the sagacious Father of the Birmingham Oratory writes in high spirits, and evidently ANGLICANISM AND NONCONFOKMITY. 271 anticipates that his " dear Pusey," notwithstanding his advanced age, may yet come over to Rome. We fear that this state of things portends deepening schism, heresy that will "eat" more and more "as a canker," and a conflict inevitable and terrible, through which alone must lie the way to true Catholicity, to ecclesiastical liberty, to theo- logical purity and unity, for England and the English Churches. Eationalism and Romanism will both be very greatly strengthened by Dr. Pusey's grievous folly. On the evangelical Nonconformists of England, and on Presbyterian orthodoxy, as it appears to us, must now rest such a responsibility for asserting and maintaining Scriptural authority and truth, as has never in the history of this nation, or perhaps of any nation, rested before on non- episcopal Churches. We trust that they will prove, by the Divine help, equal to this solemn emergency. Dr. Pusey, indeed, with that rare faculty for inverting cause and effect which belongs to men of his school, makes the orthodoxy and the life of English Nonconformists to be absolutely dependent on, and derived from, the orthodoxy and life of the Established Church of England. The heresies and spiritual death of the Continental Protestant Churches he traces to their defect of "Apostolical Succession" and Episcopal government (pp. 283-4). We wonder it did not occur to Dr. Pusey that the history of religion and religious life in Scotland is a demonstrative refutation of his views. It must be plain to a candid and well-informed student of history that Erastian State-Churchism, carried out in a spirit of complete intolerance, has been the source of the heresies and irreligion of Germany and Switzerland ; while the resolute spirit of individual liberty, especially as respects the conscience, which has established itself in England, has, by securing liberty for Nonconformity^ saved the country from a fate similar to that of Continental Protestantism. 272 PUSETf's EIRENICON. State intolerance in religious matters must, in a Protestant country far more surely and directly than in a Popish, produce, outwardly an hypocritical uniformity, inwardly spiritual death and speculative infidelity. English love of liberty has saved England from this ; and, on the other hand, English Puritanism, Nonconformity, and Methodism have saved the Church of England from spiritual decrepi- tude and helplessness. Now, the life within and the life without the Established Church, and the error within and the error without, are all w^orking together to give shape to the future of England's religious history. Rationalism and Eomanism between them are darkly overshadowing the English Church ; each intensifies and augments the other. The Nonconformists of England have need to come to the rescue for the sake of the Anglican Church and of the English nation. Upon them, we repeat, in conjunction with the Presbyterians of North Britain, must rest here- after, more than heretofore, the responsibility of holding the golden mean in doctrine and discipline, between tradi- tionary servility on the one side, and rationalistic innovations on the other. ARCHBISHOP MANNING AND DOCTOR PUSEY ON "THE WORKINGS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT" AMONG SEPA- RATISTS AND SCHISMATICS, OR ULTRAMONTANE CHARITY VERSUS ANGLICAN CHARITY. Circumstances alter cases. This is a truism. But, if not a truism as obvious, it is a truth scarcely less certain or universal, that an entire change in a man's relation to anj' given set of circumstances will alter his judgment in regard to them almost as greatlj' as if the circumstances themselves were altogether changed. Who would have imagined it possible that Nonconformists might have to make their appeal to Dr. Manning against the misapprehensions of Dr. Pusey ? Yet it is come to something like this. Dr. Pusey is incapable of judging Nonconformists with full intelligence or perfect fau*ness, because of the prejudice which clings to him as an Anglican Churchman. Dr. Manning, years ago, would, as he himself intimates, have been quite as much incapacitated by the like prejudice from forming a clear and sound judgment in regard to "Dissenting" piety and theology as Dr. Pusey. But now that Dr. Manning has removed quite away to that alien sphere frdhi which he regards from the same distance and with impartial pity both the pious " Churchman " and the pious " Dissenter," his views as to the respective merits of the Churchman and the Dissenter are so materially modified, that the English Protestant Nonconformist is T 274 ULTRAMONTANE CHARITY AND ANGLICAN CHARITY. enabled to call in the Eomanist Nonconformist as his witness or umpire when he desires to protest against Dr. Pusey's assumption of ecclesiastical and theological supe- riority or of superior saintliness on behalf of his own Church as compared with British Non-Episcopal Churches. Dr. Pusey's " Eirenicon," indeed, is written in a spirit of charity towards those who differ from him in theological opinions, provided only they hold to the doctrine of the Atone- ment. This charity extends not only to his " evangelical " brethren of the Church of England, but to orthodox and evangelical Nonconformists. And he goes as far in his concessions to such wanderers from the true fold as an Anglican semi-Papist can be expected to go. But still he unchurches all Non-Episcopal communities ; and claims for the pious votaries of High-Churchism, in virtue especially of their Sacramental Grace and Life, a style of piety altogether more saintly and heavenly than that of the best of Nonconformists. Since his book came out small popes in different parts of England have condescended to express them- selves towards Wesleyans and Dissenters in terms bor- rowed from Dr. Pusey's book, denying the validity of their church orders and ordinances, but at the same time allowing that, individually, their Christian experience may be genuine and their Christian character high, and that their irregular and unecclesiastical ministrations may be to some the means and channels of personally sancti- fying grace. It is consoling, however, to Nonconformists who, — with some goodwill, not unmixed with a sense of the ludicrous, with some admiration not unmixed with disgust, — receive these acknowledgments from Anglo-Catholics, to know that precisely the same measure is meted out to Anglo-Catholics themselves which they mete to Protestant Nonconformists. What Dr. Pusey says, with embarrassed DR. PUSEY's CH^miTY. 275 affability, to me, Archbishop Manning, with a bland smile and with superior grace, says to Dr. Pusey. " God blosseth," says the Anglican Doctor, " through the Sacraments ; and God blesseth through truth. If a AVcsleyan minister preaches his naked Gospel, that 'we are all sinners,' that 'Christ died to save sinners,' that ' He bids all sinners come to Him,' and saith, ' whoso Cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out,' this is, of course, funda- mental Gospel-truth, and, when God blesses through it those who know no more. He blesseth them through faithful reception of His truth. So again, as to the Presbyterians. They deny, in regard to the Holj' Communion, what we believe ; and their account of their Communion is somewhat less than what toe mean by a spiritual Communion. For they speak, rather, of ' ascending in mind into heaven,' and feeding upon Jesus there by faith, than of praying Him to come by His Spirit into the soul. I mean, that the Calviaist Confessions seem to me to speak rather of man's part than of His; of what faith, enabled by Him, does, than of what it receives. Still, be this as it may, they ^ijeak of a religious act ; and although (as some of them say) there is no need, to this end, of any thing outward, and what they describe might be done in eveiy prayer, still, doubtless. He Whom they seek, is found by them, for that which they seek. They seek a sjDiritual communion, and doubtless God admits them to that spiritual communion with Him which they desire. Nay, in Baptism He gives them more than they know of or believe I do not mean any disparagement to any pious Presbyterians, but, believing the Holy Eucharist to be what we, in common with the whole Ancient Church, know It to be, we cannot but know that they who receive It worthily, have a much greater closeness of union with our Lord, than they who do not. Presbyterians have what tJiey believe ; we, what ive believe. But they who have observed pious Presbyterians and pious English CathoHcs, have discerned among our people a spiritual life, of a kind which was not among theirs ; in a word, a sacramental life." 4. "It is in accordance with the truth of the Sacrament, that the enlarged life among us, has especially taken the form of increased sacra- ments. The Wesleyan bodies would increase their prayer-meetings, which some of them have spoken of to me as tJieir ' means of grace.' Protestant bodies have their revivals; the Church of England multiplies the celebration of its Sacraments." — Eirenicon, pp. 272 — 27(3. T '2. 276 ULTRAMONTANE CHARITY AND ANGLICAN CHARITY. I will not dwell upon the mistake convej'ed in the last sentence. Even Dr. Pusey might have known that not prayer-meetings, but class-meetings and love-feasts, are the peculiar and characteristic means of grace among Wesleyan Methodists. While, at the same time, although Dr. Pusey, in conformity with the demands of his church theory, may be obliged to deny the validity and sacramental efficacy of the sacramental ordinances among Wesleyans, he ought to be aware that all intelligent Wesleyans regard the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper as the most solemn and affecting, the most highly spiritual, the most heavenly, of their means of grace. Leaving this, however, I ask attention to the ingenious and charitable device by which the Coryphaeus of High Churchmen endeavours to reconcile his exclusive sacramentarian theory with his charity. The Nonconformist may be sanctified and saved, the Spirit co-operating with the truth, tlie '' naked Gospel," which is received from the lips of the preacher ; but this is only as it may be, for " the Spirit bloweth where it listeth." But the reverent recipient of the consecrated elements at the hand of the jmest, whether any gospel have been preached or not, must be a partaker of saving grace, and of " sacramental life." Grace and salva- tion are held in tail by the Apostolic and Catholic Priesthood. Salvation waits of necessity on their ministrations. One cannot read such j^assages as these without pitying these Churchmen in their dire perplexity. Neither can one well avoid thinking of the Apostle Paul, and his " naked gospel." The Wesleyan minister, I apjjrehend, is in good company. •' I came," says Paul, " not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel." " We preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to them which are saved, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the Power of God and the Wisdom of God." This is the very " naked gospel " ol the Wesleyan minister. AilCHBISHOP manning's CHARITY. 277 Leaving aside, however, all questions of doctrine and all comment on the opinions and principles contained in what has been quoted, let us see how Dr. Manning, on his part, deals with Anrilican Nonconformists. Dr. Pusey has learnt his lesson of charitable exclusiveness from Dr. Manning. Before he enacted the part of condescending High Church charity towards Wesleyans and Dissenters, he had had the advantage of seeing how Dr. Manning enacted the like part of condescending charity towards schismatics in general, and towards Anglican Churchmen in particular. With high impartial charity the foremost among the prelates of " Catholicism " shows himself indulgent to the involuntary errors of all. What it is evident that Dr. Pusey keenly feels is, that his ancient friend allows no superiority to Dr. Pusey over the " Wesleyan minister," but, on the whole, rather gives the Presb}i;erian and Dissenter an advantage over the Episcopalian. " The English people as a body are baptized, and therefore elevated to the order of supernatural grace. Every infant, and also every adult baptized, having the necessary dispositions, is thereby placed in a state of justification ; and, if they die without committing any mortal sin, vfould certainly be saved. They are also, in the sight of the Church, CathoHcs. S. Augustine says, ' Ecclesia etiam inter cos qui foris sunt per baptismum generat suos.' .... With perfect confidence of faith, we extend the shelter of this truth over the millions of infants and young children who every year pass to their Heavenly Father. We extend it also in hope to many more who grow \\\) in their baptismal grace. Catholic missionaries in this country have often assured me of a fact, attested also by my own experience, that they have received into the Church persons grown to adult Ufe, in whom their baptismal grace was still preserved. Now how can we then be supposed to regard such persons as no better than heathens ? To ascribe the good lives of such persons to the power of natm-e would be Pelagianism. To deny their goodness would bo Jansenism. And, with such a consciousness, how could any one logavd his past spiritual life in the Church of England as a mockery ? 278 ULTRAMONTANE CHAEITY AND ANGLICAN CHARITY. I have no deeper conviction than that the grace of the Holy Spirit was with me from my earliest consciousness. Though at the time, perhaps, I knew it not as I know it now, yet I can clearly perceive the order and chain of grace hy which God mercifully led me onward from childhood to the age of twenty years. From that time the interior workings of His light and grace, which continued through all my life, till the hour in which that light and grace had its per- fect work, to which all its operations had heen converging, in sub- mission to the fulness of truth, and of the Spirit in the Church of God, is a reality as profoundly certain, intimate, and sensible to me now as that I live. Fever have I by the lightest word breathed a doubt of this fact in the Divine order of grace. Never have I allowed any one who has come to me for guidance or instruction to harbour a doubt of the iJast workings of grace in them. It would be not only a sin of ingratitude, but a sin against truth. The working of the Holy Spirit in individual souls is, as I have said, as old as the fall of man, and as wide as the human race. It is not we who ever breathe or harbour a doubt of this. It is rather they who accuse xis of it. Because, to believe such an error possible in others, shows how little consciousness there must be of the true doctrine of grace in themselves. And such, I am forced to add, is my belief, because I know by experience how inadequately I understood the doctrine of grace until I learned it of the Catholic Church. And I trace the same inadequate conception of the workings of grace in almost eveiy Anglican writer I know, not excepting even those who are nearest to the truth. " But, further, our theologians teach, not only that the state of bap- tismal innocence exists, and may be preserved out of the Church, but that they who in good faith are out of it, if they shall correspond with the grace they have already received, will receive an increase or aug- mentation of grace. I do not for a moment doubt that there are to be found among the English people individuals who practice in a high degree the four cardinal virtues, and in no small degree, though Avith the limits and blemishes inseparable from their state, the three theo- logical virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity, infused into them in their baptism. I do not think, my dear friend, in aU that I have said or written in ihe last fourteen years, that you can find a word implying so much as a doubt of these workings of the Holy Spirit among all the baptised who are separated from the Catholic Church. " I will go further still. The doctrine, ' extra ecdesiam nulla salus, INCULPABLE SCHISMATICS. 279 is to be interpreted both by dogmatic and by moral theology. As a dogma, Theologians teach that many belong to the Church who are out of its visible unity ; as a moral truth, that to be out of the Church is no personal sin, except to those who sin in being out of it. That is, they will be lost, not because they are fjeogntphiccdhj out of it, but because they are cidpahly out of it. And they who are culpably out of it are those who know — or might, and therefore ought to know, — that it is their duty to submit to it. The Church teaches that men may be incidpably out of its pale. Now they are inculpably out of it who are and have always been either physically or morally unable to see their obligation to submit to it. And thej^ only are culpably out of it who are both physically and morally able to know that it is God's will that they should submit to the Church ; and either knowing it will not obey that knowledge, or, not knowing it, are culpable for that ignorance. I "v\dU say then at once, that we ajjply this benign law of our Divine Master as far as possible to the English people. First, it is applicable in the letter to the whole multitude of those baptised persons who are under the age of reason. Secondly, to all who are in good faith, of whatsoever age they be ; such as a great many of the poor and unlettered, to whom it is often physically, and very often morally impossible to judge which is the true revelation or Church of God. I say physically, because in these three hundred years the Catholic Church has been so swept off the face of England that nine or ten generations of men have lived and died without the faith being so much as proposed to them, or the Church ever visible to them ; and I say morally, because the great majority of the poor, from life-long prejudice, are often incapable of judging in questions so removed from the primary truths of conscience and Christianity. Of such simjile persons it may be said that, iufcnitihus (eqidparantar, they are to be classed morally with infants. Again, to these may be added the un- learned in all classes, among, whom many have no contact with the Catholic Church, or with Catholic books. Under this head will come a great number of wives and daughters, whose freedom of religious enquiry and religious thought is unjustly limited or suspended by the authority of parents and husbands. Add, lastly, the large class who have been studiously brought up, with all the dominant authority of the English tradition'of three hundred years, to believe sincerely, and without a doubt, that the Catholic Church is corrupt, has changed the doctrines of the faith, and that the author of the Reformation is the 280 ULTRAMONTANE CHARITY A^■D ANGLICAN CHARITY. Spirit of holiness and trutli. It may seem incredible to some that such an illusion exists. But it is credible to me, because for nearly forty years of my life I was fully possessed by this erroneous belief. To all such 2:)ei'sons it is morally difficult in no small degree to discover the falsehood of this illusion. All the better parts of their nature are engaged in its support; dutifulness, self- mistrust, submission, respect for others older, better, more learned than themselves, all combine to form a false conscience of the duty to refuse to hear anything against ' the religion of their fathers,' ' the Church of their baptism,' or to read anything -which could unsettle them. Such people are told that it is their duty to extinguish a doubt against the Church of England, as they would extinguish a temptation against their virtue. A conscience so subdued and held in subjection exercises true virtues upon a false object, and renders to a human authority the submissive trust which is due only to the Divine voice of the Church of God " For the reasons above given we make the largest allowance for all who are in invincible ignorance ; always supposing that there is a pre- paration of heart to embrace the truth when they see it, at any cost, a desire to know it, and a faithful use of the means of knowing it, such as study, docility, prayer, and the like. But I do not now enter into the case of the educated or the learned, or of those who have liberty of mind and means of inquiry. I cannot class them under the above enumeration of those who are in culpably out of the truth. I leave them, therefore, to the only Judge of all men " It must not, however, be forgotten, for a moment, that this apphes to the whole English people, of all forms of Christianity, or, as it is called, of all denominations. "What I have said does not recognise the grace of the Church of England as such. The working of grace in the Church of England is a truth we joyfully hold and always teach. But we as joyfully recognise the working of the Holy Spirit among Dissenters of every kind. Indeed, I must say that I am far more able to assure myself of the invincible ignorance of Dissenters as a mass than of Anglicans as a mass. They are far more deprived of what survived of Catholic truth ; far more distant from the idea of a Church ; far more traditionally opposed to it by the prejudice of education ; I must add, for the most part, far more simple in their belief in the person and passion of our Divine Lord. Their- piety is more like the personal service of disciples to a personal Master than the Anglican piety, which has always been more dim and distant from this central THE archbishop's OPINION OF ENGLISH NONCONFOKMISTS. 281 light of souls. Witness Jeremy Taylor's "\vorksf much as I have loved them, compared -with Baxter's, or even those of Andrcwcs compared with Leighton's, who was formed by the Kirk of Scotland " With truth, then, I can say that I rejoice in all the operations of the Holy Spirit cut of the Catholic Church, whether in the Anglican or other Protestant bodies ; not that those communions are thereby invested with any supernatural character, but because more souls, I trust, are saved. If I have a greater joy over these workings of grace in the Church of England, it is only because more that are dear to me are in it, for whom every day I never fail to pray. These graces to individuals were given before the Church was founded, and are given still out of its unity. They are no more tokens of an ecclesiastical character, or a sacramental power in the Church of England, than in the Kirk of Scotland, or in the Weslcyan connexion ; they prove only the manifold grace of God, which, after all the sins of men, and in the midst of all the ruins they have made, still works in the souls for whom Christ died. Such, then, is our estimate of the Church of England in regard to the grace that works not hy it, nor through it, but in it, and among those who^ without faults of their own, are detained by it from the true Church of their baptism.". . . . "To be just, I must say that if the Church of England be a barrier against infidelity, the Dissenters must also be admitted to a share in this office and commendation. And in truth I do not know among the Dissenters any works like the Essays and lleviews, or any Biblical criticism like that of Dr. Colenso. They may not be very dogmatic in their teaching, but they bear their witness for Christianity as a Divine revelation, for the Scriptures as an inspired book, and, I must add further, for the personal Christianity of conversion and repentance, with an explicitness and consistency which is not less effectual against infidelity than the testimony of the Church of England. I do not think the Wesleyan Conference or the authorities of the Three Denomi- nations would accept rcadilj' this assumed superiority of the Anglican Church as a witness against unbelief. They would not unjustly point to the doctrinal confusions of the Church of England as causes of scepticism, from which they are comparatively free. And I am bound to say that I think they would have an advantage. I well remember that while I was in the Church of England I used to i-egard Dissenters from it with a certain, I will not say aversion, but distance and recoil. I never remember to have borne animosity against them, or to havo 282 ULTRAMONTANE CHARITY AND ANGLICAN CHARITY. attacked or pursued them with unkindness, I always believed many of them to be veiy earnest and devoted men, I did not like their theology, and I believed them to be in disobedience to the Church of England; but I respected them, and lived at peace with them. Indeed, I may say that some of the best people I have ever known out of the Church were Dissenters or children of Dissenters. Never- theless, I had a dislike of their system, and of their meeting-houses. They seemed to me to be rivals of the Church of England, and my loyalty to it made me look somewhat impatiently upon them. But I remember, from the hour I submitted to the Catholic Church, all this underwent a sensible change. I saw that the whole revelation was perpetuated in the Church alone, and that all forms of Christianity lying round about it were but fragments more or less mutilated. But with this a sensible increase of kindly feeling grew upon me. The Church of England and the Dissenting Communions all alike appeared to me to be upon the same level. I rejoiced in all the truth that remains in them, in all the good I could see or hope in them, and all the workings of the Holy Spirit in them. I had no temptation to animosity towards them ; for neither they nor the Church of England could be rivals of the imperishable and immutable Church of God. The only sense, then, in which I could regard the Church of England as a barrier against infidelity I must extend also to the Dissenting bodies ; and I cannot put this high, for reasons I will give." — Workings of the Holy Spirit in the Church of England, pp. 10 — 20, 31—33. These are undoubtedly the severest rebukes, from the ;aiost authoritative quarter, which Anglican Churchmen have jet received. Dr. Pusey's charity looks pale and narrow by the side of the Archbishop's ; while the setting down, by the quondam Oxford man, of exclusive Anglican pretensions, js as just as it is decisive. The petty Eomanism of the High Anglican was never so effectually humbled. It is not for Dr. Pusey or any High Anglican to deny the orthodoxy, the precedence, the church authority, of Eome, so long as these Anglican exaltados profess to derive their own authority from the same common source and through the same line of priestly succession, and so long as they are willing to THE ARCHBISHOP AND HIGH AKGLICANS. 283 admit the theology of Trent and the primacy of the Pope. Their position is utterly untenable, and nothing is so likely to make them feel it, as such writing as that which has now been quoted. The position which the Archbishop of Westminster oc- cupies in regard to Dr. Puscy is precisely equivalent with that which Dr. Pusey assumes towards Nonconformists. Mutatis mutandis, the following propositions maintained by Dr. Manning, would be maintained by Dr. Pusey. Put Non- conformist Churches for the Church of England, and these propositions will express the High Churchman's position. '" Let me, then, say at once, " 1. That in denying the Church of England to be the Catholic Chui'ch, or any part of it, or in any divine and true sense a church at all, and in denying the validity of its absolutions and its orders, no Catholic ever denies the workings of the Spirit of God or the operations of grace in it. " 2, That in affirming the workings of grace in the Church of Eng- land no Catholic ever thereby affirms that it possesses the character of a Church."— /6a?. p. 8. So the Ultramontane Prelate qualifies and guards his admissions in regard to the personal godliness and Chris- tianity of many Anglican schismatics ; and after just the same manner do the small popes in English parish churches, of whom I have spoken, guard and qualify the admissions which they are constrained to make in regard to the true Christian character and experience of many Nonconformists. To a Nonconformist it cannot but be interesting to see the High Churchman put into the corner as a heretic and schis- matic, to see " the engineer hoist with his own petard." Dr. Manning's letter to Dr. Pusey is entitled " The Work- ings of the Holy Ghost in the Church of England." Dr. Pusey had, in his pamphlet on " The Legal Force of a recent Judgment of the Privy Council," seemed almost to intimate 234 ULTRAMONTANE CHARITY AND ANGLICAN CHARITY, that Dr. Manning was one of those Roman Catholics who do not " rejoice in all the workings of God the Holy Ghost in the Church of England," and are not " saddened in what weakens her," hut rather one of those who " triumph" in her buffetings and her disasters. It is to this point that Dr. Manning addresses himself in his pamphlet. Its purport is to show that he does specially rejoice in the workings of the Holy Ghost in the Church of England, for some special reasons; but he adds that he also rejoices in the workings of the Holy Ghost in all other religious communities, and indeed "throughout the whole human race." Meantime he refuses to admit the pre-eminence of the Church of England over other Protestant English churches, or that it has been the " great bulwark against infidelity" in this land. Without entering farther into this controversy, I have thought it would be instructive to note how Dr. Manning's broad charity, Ultramontane as he is, has constrained Dr. Pusey to utter forth the charity towards Nonconformists which, I doubt not, he has long cherished in his heart, but whicTi appears to a disadvantage by the side of the loftier charity of the Arch-Prelate of English Eomanism; to note, also, how Dr. Manning "takes down" the pride of Anglicans in his com- parison of them with Nonconformists ; in a word, to com- pare the ideas of the two old friends, — former co-labourers, present opponents from the camps respectively of Angli- canism and Piomanism, — respecting " the workings of the Holy Spirit " among those whom they respectively regard as schismatics and separatists from the true Church of Christ. THE HISTORY OF HETERODOX SPECULATIOX.* There can be no field of historical inqiiiiy more profoundly interesting or more important than that which Dr. Farrar has treated in his Bampton Lectures delivered in 1862. To trace the course of critical, and especially of sceptical, thought in reference to the Christian Eevelation ; to exhibit the relations of such thought in- every age to the general intellectual condition and character of that age ; to show how each successive shape or phase of unbelief which passes across the field of vision is only the projection cast from some form of philosophical speculation, at that time standing prominently forth to view ; to classify the manifold varieties of sceptical error, and to trace the substantial identity which in every age, amidst all changes of form and aspect, cha- racterizes the various fundamental genera of unbelief; to discriminate between the permanent moral causes which predispose to error in its various kinds, and the intellectual conditions which determine tlie shape and dialect of the different forms of error ; — thus by a critical survey and analysis to define the cycles in which error and heresy have revolved and reappeared, and to show the progress really made, even in this recurrence and rej)etition ; — to make it ♦ Lund. Quartnly Review, Jan. 1864. on the Foundation of the late Rev. John "A Critical History of Free Thought Bampton, M.A., Canon of Salislmry." in Reference to the Christian Religion. By Adam Storey Farrar, M.A., Michel Eight Lectures preached before the Fellow, of Queen's College, Oxford. University of Oxford, in the year 1862, London : John Murray. 1862. 286 THE HISTORY OF HETERODOX SPECULATION. apparent, that as the wheel of speculation revolves on its axis, the body of thought is at the same time sweej)ing onward in its path, — that the new errors which reproduce the old include also something more, something deeper or subtler than the old, and that on each renewal of the con- flict the fresh answer on behalf of truth which refutes the ancient and ever-recurring error includes an ampler induc- tion and develops a profounder insight and research : in this manner to demonstrate, by a grand historical argument, that by degrees error is being exhausted, while truth and certainty are ever winning their way more clearly and fully into all the folds and recesses, the windings and subtleties, of that vast and voluminous whole of human doubt, and misgiving, and speculation, which has gathered through the ages, and which rests in heavy masses upon the faith and intelligence of the Christian world : — to do all this is one of the noblest undertakings to which a Christian thinker could devote himself. Here is the very epic of intellectual conflict and controversy. What forces have been arrayed on either side ! what leaders of thought, what champions of faith or of doubt, have left behind them undying names ! On this broad field how often have faith and hope seemed to be cast down, and yet again with greater might than ever have risen to victory ! The issues of this grand epic are to determine w^iether the progress of the world is through clouds and conflicts into clear light and final faith and peace, or into universal and impenetrable dark- ness,— into everlasting confusion and unrest. Such is the work which Dr. Farrar has been bold enough to essay. With exemplary diligence he has availed himself of the unrivalled facilities for research which are at the command of an Oxford Fellow and Tutor; he has approached his task in an admirable spirit of candour towards all thinkers, and of religious reverence towards the Christian THE lecturer's UNDERTAiaNG. 287 Revelation, and the result is a very learned, orthodox, and useful book. But we cannot say that he has j)i'oduced an en- tirely satisfactory work. There is a lack of power to use with easy grace or with conclusive effect the immense mass of materials which his industry has accumulated. His work hardly leaves the reader with the impression that the writer is fully at home among the subjects which pass under review; it is scarcely possible to resist the conclusion that much of the learning has been too hastily got up for the occasion. The style is often obscure, and oftener still the composition is slovenly, while the suggestive hints and felicitous touches which reveal the highly trained master in philosophy are too seldom apparent. The contrast is remarkable in these respects between Dr. Farrar's volume and Professor Hansel's famous Lectures on the Limits of lieligioKS Thought. Nevertheless, as an outline of a grand history, these Lectures will be highly apj)reciated by scholars, especially by theologians. They are, indeed, in some respects, the most elaborate series of Lectures delivered as yet at Oxford "on the foundation of the late Eev. John Bampton." No attempt is made to retain the form of a sermon, except in prefixing a text of Scripture to each Lecture as a sort of motto. Each Lecture is, in fact, a closely-wi-itten chapter of history, without anything like an address to a body of hearers, with the exception of a few pages at the close of the last Lecture. Including the Preface and the Notes, here are upwards of seven hundred large pages of compact historical matter. All the schools and all the leaders of sceptical thought in regard to religion are here passed in review. The book supplies a desideratum ; as a trustworthy summary and index it is invaluable : no theological student can afford to be without it. The Lectui-er discerns four great " crises of the Christian 288 THE HISTORY OF HETERODOX BPECULATION. faitli in Europe," viz. (1), the struggle with heathen philo- sophy from about a.d. 160 to 360 ; (2) the struggle against the sceptical tendencies of scholasticism in the Middle Ages (1100—1400) ; (3) the conflict in Italy between the Christian faith and the literary or classical infidelity of the Eenaissance (1400 — 1625) ; and (4) the controversy of Christianity with modern unbelieving philosophy in three forms, viz., English Deism, French Infidelity, and German Eationalism. The history of heresies is excluded from this view. The history with which the Lecturer is concerned is not that of doctrinal variations and aberrations, but that of the successive revolts of human reason against Divine revelation under any objective and authoritative form. In his first Lecture, which is more carefully written than some of the rest, after defining the four crises indicated in the last paragraph, he proceeds to illustrate the nature of the causes which have led the human mind to revolt against the authority of Divine revelation. Of these causes he recognises two classes. The first and most deeply seated is the class of moral causes, which, through the strong bias of the moral judgment or the heart, predispose and determine the understanding to unbelief. Sometimes the truth is presented with such an admixture of repulsive superstitions, or religion is so discredited by the character of its professed representatives and champions, that honest and virtuous minds recoil from all association with that which comes to them in such evil company, and in such an unfavourable disguise. " Who can doubt, that the corrupt lives of Christians in the later centuries of the Middle Ages, the avarice of the Avignon popes, the selfishness shown in the great schism, the simony and nepotism of the Roman court in the fifteenth century, excited disgust and hatred to- wards Christianity in the hearts of the literary men of the Renaissance, which disqualified them for the reception of the Christian evidences ; 1 THE CAUSES OF UNBELIEF. 289 or that the social disaffection in the last century in France incensed the mind against the Church that supported alleged public abuses, until it blinded a Yoltaire from seeing any goodness in Christianity ; or that the religious intolerance shown within the present century by the ecclesiastical power in Italy drove a Leopardi and a Bini into doubt ; or that the sense of supposed personal wrong and social isolation, deepened the unbelief of Shelley and of Heinrich Heine? Whatever other motives may have operated in these respective cases, the prejudices which arose from the causes just named doubt- less created an antecedent impi'ession against religion, which impeded the lending an unbiassed ear to its evidence." — Pp. 22, 23. Such instances as these excite, and ought to excite, more or less of compassion for those who have heen placed in circumstances so unfavourable to the reception of Divine truth. But there is another and a more common class of cases in which the repugnance to the teachings of Divine revelation results originally and chiefly, if not only, from the unhappy and evil moral state of the unbeliever himself, from inherent arrogance of character, assuming the form of intellectual pride, from dominant selfishness, or from impurity. " Though we must not rashly judge our neigh- bour, nor attempt to measure in any particular mind the precise amount of doubt which is due to moral causes, yet it is evident that where a free-thinker is a man of immoral or unspiritual life, whose interests incline him to disbelieve in the reality of Christianity, his arguments may reasonably be suspected to be suggested by sins of character, and by dislike to the moral standard of the Chris- tian religion " (p. 19). Such causes of unbelief as Have now been indicated Mr. i Farrar defines as " emotional causes," in contradistinction l! from " intellectual causes," of which he speaks afterwards. || To us the epithet " emotional " seems here to be ill-applied. ' Two or three times the lecturer uses the word " moral " instead of " emotional." That is undoubtedly the right 290 THE HISTORY OF HETERODOX SPECULATION. word; but surely the two adjectives are very far from being equivalent. " A brief analysis," says the lecturer, " must here be given of the mode in which the moral is united with the intellectual in the formation of opinions. This is the more necessary, lest we should seem to commit the mistake of ignoring the existence or importance of the emotional element, if the restriction of our point of view to the intellectual should hereafter prevent frequent references to it " (p. 18). And again, on the next page : " The in- fluence of the moral causes in generating doubt, though sometimes exaggerated, is nevertheless real. Psychological analysis shows that the emotions operate immediately on the will, and the will on the intellect. Consequently, the emotion of dislike is able through the will to prejudice the judgment, and cause disbelief of a doctrine against which it is directed " (p. 19). " The emotion of dislike " is, we apprehend, a somewhat novel and hardly an accurate com- bination of words. The word " dislike " is so vague and generic in its meaning as to include several emotions. Fear, hate, jealousy, envy, contempt, are all, we suppose, " emotions of dislike ;" so that, while it might be allowed to speak of " an emotion of dislike," it is altogether in- compatible with di£t'"r>ctness or exactness of stjde to speak of " the emotion of dislike," as if this were a separate force or feeling in the breast. But, apart from and beyond this inexactness, we conceive that to speak characteristically and almost throughout of the moral causes which prejudice the mind against the reception of Christianity as " the emotional causes," is, by an unfortunate choice of terms, to lower the moral imiDortance of the subject. The word "emotional" in itself suggests no more thought of moral responsibility than the word " intellectual," as every student of Bishop Butler's sermons will at once admit. Conscience and moral quality have no more necessary connection MOKAL AXD INTELLECTUAL CAUSES OF UNBELIEF. 291 with the one than the other, although indirectly a moral element may enter largely into both. Mr. Farrar intends to distinguish between moral and intellectual causes of unbehef. By " emotional causes," he means causes which arise out of the moral state of the heart, or which derive their force from moral judgments, upon which mistaken inferences are founded. We submit to Mr. Farrar, that the word "emotional" does not describe such causes. In a critical history of free thought respecting matters of rehgion, in an elaborate work by a Master and Fellow of Oxford, chosen by that great University as Bampton Lec- turer, such inaccuracies as these should not occur. The object of the lecturer, however, is not to deal with the moral, but with the intellectual, causes of unbelief. The former, as he justly explains, cannot be separated from the latter by an actual analysis ; whereas, the latter can be distinctly traced in their influence and their history. The moral cause amalgamates itself with the intellectual; the influence of the moral cause is latent, however powerful ; whatever may be the subtle spkit of evil which inspires the objection against revelation, that objection itself, in its actual body and form, presents itself as an argument to the intellect. The following is Mr. Farrar's explanation of the sense in which he uses the word "cause" in the investigation which he has undertaken, and of the problem which he seeks to solve : — "But we intend by 'cause' two things: either the sources of knowledge which have from age to age thrown their materials into I the stream of thought, and compeUed reason to re-mvcstigate rehgion I and try to harmonize the new knowledge with the old behcfs ; or else I the ultimate intellectual grounds or tests of truth on which the decision in such cases has been based, the most general types of thought into which the forms of doubt can be analysed. The problem is this : — Given, these two terms : on the one hand the series of opinions known u 2 292 THE HISTORY OF HETERODOX SPECULATION. as the history of free thought in religion ; on the other the uniformity of mode in which reason has operated, Interjiolate two steps to connect them together, which will show respectively the materials of knowledge which reason at successive moments brought to hear on religion, and the ultimate standards of truth which it adopted in apply- ing this material to it. It is the attempt to supply the answer to this problem that will give organic unity to these lectures." — Pp. 28, 'z 9. In the former part of this extract there is a somewhat perplexing confusion of thought and expression. It would seem as if the " tests of truth " were " forms of doubt " and "types of thought." But apart from this confusion, from which it is not worth while to stay to extricate Mr. Farrar and our readers, by showing in what relation "tests of truth " stand to "forms of doubt," and to their respective " types of thought," the object of these Lectures is clearly and well defined in this extract. It is a merit to have so distinctly conceived what is perhaps the greatest and most important problem for the investigation of a philosophical theologian which this age or the history of Christianity has presented. The "materials of knowledge" on which "free thought" has operated in connection with religion are, as Mr. Farrar explains, chiefly those supplied by literary criticism and science. The ultimate tests of truth referred to are those furnished, or supposed to be furnished, by sense, — "the sen- sational consciousness revealing to us the world of matter," by the intuitive reason, — "revealing the world of mind," and by "feeling" revealing "that of emotion." "The sensa- tionalist" makes his appeal to the first of these; "the idealist" to the second ; " the mystic" to the third. Mr. Farrar points out the characteristic dangers to which, in applying their respective tests to matters of religion, the sensationalist, the idealist, and the mystic are exposed. The tendency of sensationalism is "to obliterate mystery by empirical rationalism, and to reduce piety to morality, I THE ULTIMATE TESTS OF TRUTH. 293 morality to experience, the Churcli to a political institution, religion to a ritual system, and its evidence to external historic testimony" (p. 37). The danger on the side of the intuitional philosophy is, that if " the intuitive faculty be regarded as giving a noble grasj) over the fact of God as an infinite spirit (sic), it may cause the mind to relax its hold on the idea of the Divine personality, and fall into Pantheism, and identify God with the universe, not by de- grading spirit to matter, but by elevating matter to spirit" (p. 42). Or " it may attempt to develop a religion wholly a priori, and assert its right to create as well as to verify." Its general tendency will be to "render religion subjective in its character, uncertain in its doctrines, individual in its constitution" (p. 42). Similar, also, will be the tendency of that mysticism which constitutes the feelings the test of truth in matters of re- ligion. Mr. Farrar, indeed, hardly distinguishes between the tendencies of " intuitional theology" and of mysticism. Nor do we think they are easily to be discriminated. The egoistic idealist, if he be also an earnest Christian, can hardly fail to be a mystic. What, from his point of view, are the feelings on which the mystic relies as his assurance of truth, but intuitions, moral or emotional intuitions ? Have not the mystics of all ages, if they have aspired to be in any sense philosophers, been adherents of the realistic, the intuitional philosophy ? What was the philosophy which underlay the mysticism of the pseudo-Dionysius, so far as he had a philosophy, but a Pantheistic idealism? Was not Eckhai-t the very prototype of Hegel? Was not the theology of Tauler and Euysbroek almost identical, in its main features, with that of Schleiermacher and Coleridge in these later days ? Are not the school of Mam-ice and Kingsley, in our time, intuitionalists in philosophy and mystical in their theology ? We do not say that all mystics 294 THE HISTOKY OF HETERODOX SPECULATION. are adherents of the high intuitional philosophy; but we do conceive that the intuitional philosophy loar excellence, transcendental idealism in its various kinds, when applied to Christian Theology, can only produce mysticism. Mr. Farrar guards himself from saying or being supposed to imply, that the use of the tests of truth which he has thus indicated leads of necessity to any of those forms of theological error which he has specified ; he speaks only of their tendency. Neither does he undertake to arbitrate between these different tests of truth, in order to decide which is a true -test, or how far each may be true if rightly applied. He intimates, however, that truth is probably to be found in a selection from them all. For our own part, we apprehend that truth is to be found in their combination, and in their just respective application. Professor Mansel, long ago, in his Prolegomena Logica, illustrated the manner in which this might be done ; and Dr. M'Cosh, in his In- tuitions of the Mind, has contributed many valuable and suggestive hints towards the construction of a comprehensive and complete philosophy of this subject. The lecturer, as preliminary to this part of his discussion, and in illustration of the manner in which the current phi- losoj)hy of each age affects the received standard by which truth is tested, had set forth the instances of three great poets in widely different ages, Milton, Pope, and Tennyson. He concludes and sums up his illustration thus : — "In Milton the appeal is made to the revelation of God in the book; in Pope to the revelation in nature ; in the living poet, to the revelation in man's soul, the type of the infinite Spirit and interpreter of God's universe and God's book " (p. 32). Two of these instances are distinctly apposite to the lecturer's purpose. Pope is a legitimate representative of the sensa- tionalist and materialistic tendency ; Tennyson of the spirit of the modified intuitional philosophy which in this country PHILOSOPHY AND DOUBT. 295 represents the idealism of the present age ; German tran- Bcendentahsm not having as yet heen naturalised in England, but dwindling and degenerating when transplanted so as not to transcend, at least in regard to common matters, our stubborn English common-sense. But Milton represents neither the philosophy of the sensational school, nor ideal- ism, nor the philosophy of feeling. He represents no inde- pendent or proper school of philosophy whatever. To quote Mr. Farrar's own words, " His philosophy is Hebrew : he hesitates not to interpret the Divine counsels ; but it is by the supposed light of revelation. Doubt is unknown to him" (p. 31). His case stands in contrast, therefore, with that of any and every writer who presumes in any way to bring revelation to the test of philosoph}^ Doubt- less he had reasons for his faith ; but he hardly seems to have conceived, any more than the multitudes of simple Christians still to be found, thank God, even in this age of philosophies, that those reasons must repose upon or form a part of some primary philosophy, itself resting upon foundations independent of revelation. The philo- sophy of Milton, in fact, was deduced from the Scriptures, instead of the Scriptures being brought to the touchstone of his philosophy. He had a philosophy, an elaborate philosophy, — in some parts, moreover, most curiously and picturesquely materialistic, — but he found the main prin- ciples of this philosophy in his Bible. What besides he included in it was nothing more than the system of crude speculations which were made to sustain the empirical science of his day. This instance of Milton, therefore, suggests to us a prin- ciple, which is fully illustrated in Mr. Farrar's volume. The ages in which there has been little or no unbelief were those in which philosophy was deductive, not, properly speaking, speculative, and in which the Bible was one of 296 THE HISTORY OF HETERODOX SPECULATION. the great sources — wherever its authority could be made to ai)pl3% the paramount source — of all philosophical illu- mination and determination. This was the case generally throughout the Middle Ages. Literary criticism, of which something had been known in the ages in which Celsus assailed and Origen defended the Scriptures, in which Chrysostom comjDosed his Honailies and Jerome his Com- mentaries, had j)erished in the overthrow of imperial civili- sation and culture ; and superstitious legends of the most grotesque and monstrous character were received equally by priests and people, by gentle and simple, with the same faith as the great facts of Holy Writ. Science was as yet unknown ; and therefore no contradiction could be alleged or thought of between its discoveries and any of the statements contained in Scripture. There was a soi-t of philosophy, a philosophy, indeed, distinguished by not a little profound thought, and developed in the works of a series of reasoners, whose logical subtlety and skill have perhaps never been surpassed ; but this philosophy was purely deductive. The sources from which all conclusions and solutions, as to all possible questions, were derived were the doctrines of the Church and the principles of the Aristotelian philosophy, as that was then misappre- hended : for in truth the middle-age Aristotelianism was a modified Platonism, expounded and applied according to the rules of the Aristotelian logic, and was altogether second-hand, having come to the middle-age doctors partly through such Latin writers as Boethius, and partly through translations of Arabic translations of Aristotle. These two sources of authority furnished the axioms, from which all philosophy (so called) was deduced. Aristotle and the Scriptures could not disagree — i. e., they were not allowed to disagree. Somehow a harmony was always established and maintained between these two authorities ; and then THE AGES OF FAITH. 297 all else flowed from these. There was no controversy with sense ; there was no appeal to consciousness, whether under the name of experience, or intuition, or in any other form. There was therefore no unhelief. It is diffi- cult, indeed, to believe that there was not concealed, or at least stifled and suppressed, unhelief in such a Pan- theistic logician as John Scotus Erigena, and in such a metaphysical genius and dialectician as Abelard ; but at least all was made to sound fair, a plausible double entendre was kept up, the authority of Holy Scripture was not assailed, the doctrines of the Church were orthodoxly pro- fessed in phrase and formulary ; or if at any time a doctor, such as Abelard, was convicted of having been led by his logic or philosophy into heterodoxy or the confines of damnable heresy, on such conviction he made his con- fession of penitence, recanted, and was restored. Such were "the ages of faith." There was no such thing as an independent philosophy, no such thing as philosophy at all, in a true sense ; there was only logic. Aristotle mis- interpreted, and the Bible as expounded by "the Church," — these were two pillars which sustained all speculation. There could be no unbelief. There was boundless super- stition. There was little pure or genuine faith. With the middle-age world in view, we can understand how true may be the words of the poet, — " There lives more faith in honest doubt. Believe me, than in half the creeds." The Eeformation substituted the Bible for the Church, the Bible for the decrees of popes and the determinations of councils, as the foundation of faith and the fountain of doctrine. It also broke the yoke of scholasticism, at least of the Aristotelian and middle-age scholasticism. No doubt also it was the great medium through which the law of progress in human thought, and the impulse of 298 THE HISTOKY OF HETERODOX SPECULATION. liberty, made themselves felt throughout the breadth of Europe, especially of Protestant Europe. Still the Eefor- mation brought with it no seeds of philosophy, as any portion of its dower. It did indeed bring immediately in its train the spirit of biblical criticism and the principle of intellectual liberty. But philosophy was an afterbirth of the ages. The Keformation exalted the Bible ; the glory of that Divine book was its great discovery ; a dis- covery great enough to fill the hearts of men for two centuries to come. These tw^o centuries were pre-eminently theological ages. Men were busy working the mine which the Eeformation had opened, bringing forth its treasures, and arranging them into systems of faith and doctrine. Biblical study and theological discussion and speculation were every- thing. All scholars were learned theologians, though they might be pedants as base and graceless as the monarch to whom our authorised translation of the Bible is dedicated. It was natural that in such a period philosophy should be altogether dependent on theology. All speculation was still, as in the Middle Ages, conducted on the method of the deductive logic. The Bible, for the most part, sufficed as the source of metaphysical principles ; natural science was merely empirical, and all ancient authorities and modern guesses were jumbled together as the sources from which solutions of problems should be deduced or dis- coveries be — we may fairly say — ' invented.' We have already seen that the philosophy of Milton was Hebrew; such was the character of the Puritan philosophy in general; such also of the continental philosophy during the same period. As jet men had no idea whatever of the very nature of true philosophical speculation. They had not learned to question their senses, or to note and study their intuitions. Consciousness was to them no re- velation; they had but dim apprehensions of any relation THE EFFECT OF THE REFORMATION ON THOUGHT. 299 between their faith in the Divine counsels and the deep feelings or insatiate yearnings of their souls. They hardly took cognisance of such feelings and yearnings ; the world to them was only an objective world ; the dim under-world of the subjective, as containing the reflection of the eternal upper-world, was a thought which had scarcely entered their minds. Hence in the two centuries following the Eeformation there are still rare traces of unbelief. It is true, indeed, that there was a strong subjective element in the religious mysticism of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This, however, did not affect the sin- cerely professed orthodoxy of the mystics, not even probably in so extreme a case of transcendental mysticism as that of Eckhart. Nor did they seek for a philosophical revela- tion in their own subjective consciousness. They revelled in moods and contemplations, in trances and ecstasies ; but theirs was a passive mysticism ; the subjective melted away in the grand and divine objective. Theirs was, to use the distinctive epithets of Mr. Vaughan, in his Hours with the Mystics, rather the theopathetic than the theosophistic mysticism. It contemplated Divine truth, beaut}', and holiness ; it dissolved in the bliss of the Divine presence ; but it did not deduce from its supposed consciousness of the Divine any system of philosophy. This middle-age mysticism was, in truth, the natural reaction, in the days when the grand and simple teachings of a vernacular Bible wx're not known, from a formal and ceremonial religion of show, mummerj^ and task-work. But it was not an infidel reaction ; it sought to find a heart in things and a ground of truth, by spiritual asceticism of the higher kind, by lofty abstraction, and by religious contemplations. But it adhered, strictly for the most part, with sincere profession perhaps in all cases, to the doctrines and determinations of "the Church." It is true that these mvstics honoured 300 THE HISTORY OF HETERODOX SPECULATION. the pseudo-Dionysius, rank Pantheist that he was, as a saint, and dubbed the paganish Boethius a " doctor ;" but this they did in the ignorance and simplicity of their hearts. These remarks will serve to explain the reason why the history of unbelieving speculation must be distributed into the epochs which are successively presented to our view in Mr. Farrar's history. First there was the highly-wrought struggle between the rising faith of Christ and the philo- sophy and the manifold cults of the old pagan world. This came to an end with the downfall of heathenism — to an utter end when all the philosophy and criticism of the old world were overwhelmed in the ruins of the Eoman empire. This period is treated by Mr. Farrar in his second lecture. The third deals with the struggles, such as they were, of " free thought during the middle ages," with the epoch of the Ee- naissance, and with the "rise of free thought in modern times." " We have studied," tliiis Mr. Farrar opeus his third lecture, " the history of unbelief down to the fall of heatlienism. A period of more than seven hundred years elapses before a second crisis of doubt occurs in Church history. The interval was a time of social disso- lution and reconstruction ; and when the traces of the free criticism of religion reappear, the world in which they manifest themselves is new. Fresh races have been introduced, institutions unknown to the ancient civilisation have mingled with or have replaced the old ; and the ancient language of the Roman empire has dissolved into the Romance tongues. But Christianity has lived through the deluge, and been the ark of refuge in the storm ; and its claims are now tested by the young world which emerged into being when the waters of con- fusion had retired. The silence of reason in this interval was not the result of the abundance of piety, but of the prevalence of ignorance ; a sign of the absence of inquiry, not of the presence of moral and mental satisfaction. Even when speculation revived, and reason re- examined religion, the literary monuments in which expression is given to doubt are so few, that it will be possible in the present lecture not ABELAED AND THE TWELFTH CEXTUEY. 301 only to include the account of tlie second and third crises which mark the course of free thought in Church history, but even to pass beyond them, to watch the dawn of unbelieving criticism caused by the rise of the modern philosophy which ushers in the fourth of the great crises named in a previous lecture." — Pp. 104, 105. "What the lecturer regards as the second crisis of free thought we do not regard as a crisis at all, much less as a " great crisis." There was no crisis of free thought in the twelfth century ; if there were such a crisis, what came of it, what was the course of the movement, what its result ? The Sic et Non of Abelard will hardly sufdce alone to constitute a movement or mark a great crisis. It may have been a premonition; Abelard himself may be regarded as a forerunner of the movement of modern criticism and scepticism. But Abelard founded no school, and initiated no great and cumulative movement ; neither did he bring any earlier movement to a consummation or a crisis. Mr. Farrar, indeed, leaves it somewhat uncertain whether Abelard is or is not to be regarded as a religious sceptic, while it is certain, as we have already noted, that he was professedly orthodox. The other indications of a sceptical crisis in the later middle-ages (1100 — 1400) adduced by the lecturer are yet more trifling. The idea of progress in religion was set forth a century after Abelard in the Fran- ciscan book entitled The Everlasting Gospel. But Mr. Farrar himself says of this production, " It is doubtful whether the book was really intended to be sceptical, — more probably it was mystical " (p. 121). Moreover, the daring and irre- ligious Emperor Frederick II. was reported to have " spoken of Moses, Christ, and Mahomet, as the three great impostors who had respectively deceived the Jews, the Christians, and the Arabs " (p. 123). This, if true, may tend to show that there was impiety and unbelief to be found in high places, and especially among the opponents of papal usurpation, 302 THE HISTORY OF HETERODOX SPECULATION. in the thirteenth century ; but it goes no way towards proving that there was any " movement " or " crisis of free thought." The same idea as was thus attributed to Frederick was supposed at one time to be expounded in a book entitled De Tr'ibus Impostoribus. It appears, however, that "the existence of the book is legendary; no one ever saw it ; and the two distinct works which now bear the title can be shown to have been composed respectively in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries " (p. 124). Finally, the influence of the Mahometan philosophy of Averroes is said to have had some effect in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in creating a Pantheistic disbelief of immortality. " The doctrine of Averroes was attacked by Aquinas ; and though the amount of its influence can hardly be estimated, we have the means of tracing the growth of dislike to its author in Christian lands, which is an incidental probability (sic) of the increasing danger to Christianity arising from it " (p. 125). There is evidently not much in this last instance of free thought. Moreover, Averroes stands in no way connected, so far as appears, with Abelard, or any movement which Abelard can be supposed to have initiated. Nor, indeed, if the utmost is made of all the foregoing instances taken together, do they go any way towards proving that there was a struggle or crisis of free thought in the twelfth and two following centuries. Where there is a crisis, there must be a rise, and growth, and consummation. Here there is nothing of the kind. There is no pretence of continuity or unity, of progress or consummation, in connection with the sporadic and individual cases of free -thinking, real or alleged, which have been noted,^ — and which are all that Mr. Farrar brings forward. In all this there is no "movement" or "crisis of free thought." It was otherwise with the unbelief of the Kenaissance ; THE UNBELIEF OF THE RENAISSANCE. 303 here there was a definite cause, a distinct and definable movement, a crisis and consummation, and finall}^ an end of the movement, partly through the distracting and coun- teractive forces of the Eeformation, partly by the exhaustion of the original motive energy, — the power of revived classic lore, — partly through the absorption into the general literary and philosophic life of Europe, of the elements developed in the movement. The ages of mediaeval darlmess and superstition were fast drawing to a close. The mind of Europe was beginning to put forth the faculties and forces of adolescence ; the recovery of Greek literature, through the opening to the western world of the treasures long sealed up in the Byzantine capital, brought the lights and culture of the classic and Alexandrian paganism to inform and im- pregnate the opening intellect and virgin energies of middle- age Europe, the slowness of whose unfolding was only in proportion to the grand and manifold capabilities which belonged to its vast collective life. What was to be expected, under such circumstances, and especially in an age when the wcrd of God was bound and imprisoned, and when the seat and home dominions of the Church were rotting away under a foul and stagnant deluge of impiety and corruption, but that the neophyte scholarship of Europe, and above all of Italy, should be intoxicated by the fresh draughts of classical litera- ture and philosophy, and that the Renaissance should witness a revulsion on the part of many scholars from the superstitions of a corrupt and heathenish Christianity to the philosophic refinements and subtleties by which Grecian and Alexandrian sages had endeavoured to reconcile cultui'ed minds to a pantheistic heathenism ? The lecturer, whose treatment of the Renaissance period is clear and able, traces two principal movements of unbelief in this period, "the one caused by literature, a return to a spirit of heathenism " analogous to that exemplified a 304 THE HISTORY OF HETERODOX SPECULATION. » thousand years earlier in the case of Julian; "the second caused by philosophy, a revival of pantheism," perhaps also of atheism. The first of these movements " had its seat for the most part in Tuscany and Eome," and is illus- trated in the pages of Eanke. To a circle of leisurely and luxurious scholars, who in Eome had never caught a glimpse of the " beauty of holiness," to whom Christianity appeared as little better than a collection of legends, who could have no reverence for monkish pretences to sanctity, or for the mock-divinity of an hierarchical system of religion over which such popes as the Borgias had but recently presided — the writings of the ancient classics came as a new love, whose charms and attractions were only the more suited to their taste, because they included "so much that was sensual and unchaste. The Pope himself, Leo X., set the fashion of enthusiastic devotion to the ancient heathen literature. The proscription was removed, which for cen- turies had been in force against plays; and comedies fashioned after the model of Plautus and Terence were performed in the presence of his Holiness. Art forsook Christianity-, that she might portray the lust-stained fables of antiquity. The Ciceronians of Italy affected great con- tempt for the Bible because of its style. The Scrij)tures were translated in the phrase of Virgil and Horace, to render them presentable in good society. Cardinal Bembo, undoubtedly a master of style both in Latin and Italian, instead of the Holy Spirit, wrote the hreath of the Heavenly Zephyr; instead of to forgive sins — to lend the Manes and the sovereign God ; and instead of Christ the Son of God — Minerva sprung from the forehead of Jupiter, More than one pope was believed to be an atheist. It was reckoned at Eome a piece of good breeding to impugn Christianity. At the Papal court the ordinances of the Church were treated with contempt, and texts of Scripture were scarcely quoted THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE RENAISSANCE. 305 but with a sneer. Erasmus, on his visit to Eome, was confounded at the blasphemies which he heard, and the coarse and revolting infidelity which prevailed.* The poetry of Ariosto and his contemporaries reflects the current fashion of the age ; it is not only impure, but profane and impious. ■ • But besides the literary reaction in the direction of heathenism, there was a distinct philosophic movement. Plato and Plotinus were revered by one school, Aristotle by another, as the lawgivers of philosophy. The former school tended to pantheism, the latter to atheism. Florence was the chief seat of Platonism, and the Medicis were the patrons of this fashion in philosophy. Marsilius Ficinus became a veritable worshipper of Plato, taking Plotinus for the most pai-t as his expositor. Pico, or Picus, of Mirandola, was another leader in the same Platonizing school. The scej)tical tendency of this school was brought to a climax in the person of Giordano Bruno, who was burnt at Eome as a heretic and misbeliever, on the 17th of February, 1600. Mr. Farrar, indeed, speaks of Bruno as an Averroist ; but this is certainly a mistake. The Aver- roists were Aristotelians, and were currently designated Peripatetics ; whereas Bruno was an intensely bitter anti- Aristotelian and a professed adherent, in general, of the Neo-Platonist philosophy. The rival school, which followed the teaching of Averroes, the Arabian physician and philo- sopher, and professed the philosophy of Aristotle, was represented chiefly by the University of Padua. Its ten- dency was materialistic and atheistic. Its chief free-thinking representatives were Peter Pomponatius, in the early pai-t of the period, and Vanini at its close. This last, like his contemporary Bruno of the other school, led an errant life * See Rankc'd Popcfi, book i. chnpter ii. ; and D'Aubign^'s Reformation, book i. chapter iii. 306 THE HISTORY OF HETERODOX SPECULATION. of controversy, and perished in the flames of the Inquisition. He was burnt at Toulouse in 1619. With these men ended the infidel propagandism which had arisen out of the Kenaissance. The Jesuit organization and the Inquisition on the one hand, and the Keformation on the other, availed for the complete extinction of this secondary and obsolete philosophy. Neither was it a " good seed," nor, being such as it was in quality and kind, had it any " root in itself." It was no wonder, therefore, that it " endured " only "for a while," and that in the time of tribulation and persecution it " withered away." It was altogether a reflection from the lights of long bygone ages — from the splendid, though fallacious, speculations of a former world. It stood in no vital relationship either to the general wants and tendencies of the age in which it came forth, or to the middle-age philosophy which had preceded it. It w^as a modern antique, a sentiment, a fashion. It was unchristian, when not anti-Christian. It was a derivative heathenism; an untimely resuscitation of an obsolete and outworn past. Such a phsenomenon could not last. It is remarkable, as Mr. Farrar has not failed to note, that this revived paganism was restricted within the limits of the purely Eomanistic regions, and chiefly of Italy. Wherever the Eeformation prevailed, or had to any considerable extent leavened the thoughts and spirit of the people, men had something deeper and more earnest to do than to endeavour to resuscitate and deck out a long-buried pagan philosophy. When the spiritual earnestness of the Eeformation made itself felt, the controversy between Plato and Aristotle was forgotten, and pantheism and atheism exhaled. The question was between a living Christianity, and a corrupt, dying, Papacy; between liberty and bondage ; the "glorious Gospel of the blessed God," and a system of cunningly devised fables. POPERY AND REVrVED PAGANISM. 307 In such an atmosphere as this, a second-hand unbehef could not live. In England alone among the countries of the Keformation do we find some slight trace of the influence of the Renaissance in producing unbelief — wonderfully exalted, however, and purified, as compared with the Italian type of " free thought." Platonism took some hold on the England of Queen Elizabeth — nearly a century later than the Platonism of the Italian Renaissance ; — it produced a certain laxity of faith and breadth of speculation ; somewhat later still, in the case, almost a solitary case, of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, it led to a form of unbelieving realism, a high-class type of deistic unbelief. But Lord Herbert stands, so far as we know, alone ; he had neither teacher nor associate nor successor. Where Popery was at once most corrupt and most absolute, and where at the same time polite culture was carried to the greatest height, just there it w^as to be expected that scepticism would flourish — and yet that the scepticism itself would be rather superficial and a la mode than deep, or earnest, or enduring. Accordingly in Italy the scepticism of which we have been speaking took hold. Spain was too backward and barbarous to be exposed to the same in- fluences. France was to a very small extent infected. In part it was Protestantised ; war and political strife, more- over, occupied the nation. And whereas Italy had many centres of intelligence and of speculation, in France, Paris alone was the seat and centre of philosophic thought, and there the great subjects we have noted — Protestantism, Jesuitism, war, politics, the Gallican liberties — kept philo- sophic dilettantism aloof. In connection with this subject, Mr. Farrar makes a strildng and valuable remark : — " It is worthy of remark that such facts arc a refutation of tlie attack which has frcciuently been made on Protestantism, as the cause of eclecticism and mischief. The two great crises in Church history, x2 308 THE HISTORY OF HETERODOX SPECULATION. when faith almost entirely died out, and free thought developed into total disbelief of the supernatural, have been in Eomish countries ; viz., in Italy in this period, and in France during the eighteenth century. In both the experiment of the authoritative system of the Cathohc religion had a fair trial, and was found wanting." — P. 136. While in Popish Europe the influence of the Eenaissance was dying out, or being absorbed, and while the counter- Eeformation of Jesuitism was growing into ascendency and disjplacing the indifference and latitudinarianism which had prevailed at the opening of the sixteenth century, the Eeformation in Northern and North-Western Europe had initiated a period of hearty Christian faith and of orthodox theological study, which for a century and a half precluded any infidel movement of thought. There was accordingly throughout Europe a period of repose from unbelieving assault or speculation. Protestantism was build- ing up its various orthodoxies, Lutheran, or Calvinistic, or Anglican ; Jesuitism was diligently labouring, and with no little success, to win back the ground which Popery had lost, especially in central Europe. In the latter part of the seventeenth century, however, symptoms may be discerned betokening the approach of a period of sceptical criticism; and in the early part of the eighteenth century infidelity was fast becoming common and fashionable throughout Europe. In Lutheran Germany, an iron-bound dogmatism, a subtle theological scholasticism, and a merciless and restless intolerance, had grown up after the death of Melancthon, which for more than a century had at once provoked opposition and repressed the honest expression of free thought. The consequence was that men had learned to disguise unbelief as faith ; and that, as Mosheim notes in his History, an infinite variety of belief or un- belief was sheltered in universities and ecclesiastical pre- ferments throughout Germany, under cover of orthodox THE SOURCES OF MODERN UNBELIEF. 800 professions, subscribed b}'- theologians as a mere matter of form. In France the apostasy of Henri Quatre, the re- pression of Protestantism, the vices of the clergy, the tyranny of the privileged classes, the universal corruption of morals, the despotism of the crown, had combined to dissolve virtue and faith throughout all classes of the nation. In England, the reaction from Puritanism, the contagion of the profligate courts of the restored Stuart princes, High Church tyranny, and the influence of French literature, had so demoralised and debased the nation, as to leave it but little above the level of France. In Germany, accordingly, the way was prepared for intellectual and speculative iniidelity ; in France and England for infidelit}' among all classes, and especially for a superficial, fashion- able, and profane infidelit}^ Moreover, causes operating at a deeper level, and con- nected with the progressive development of thought and science, had begun to combine theii- influence in the same general direction. The philosophy of Bacon was beginning to be appreciated! Its tendency was to destroy the authority of all mere dogmatism, and to found all faith and philo- sophy— of course, also, ultimately all theology — on an appeal to judicially ascertained facts. The unbelief of Hobbes was a one-sided and distorted deduction from the principles of Bacon's philosophy. The system of Condillac, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, was a trun- cated philosoplw, founded on an imperfect induction. The Modern Positivism, in like manner, is a specimen of im- perfect and mutilated induction, — a false derivative from the principles of Bacon. Locke's philosophy, on the other hand, must be accepted, in the main, as a genuine appli- cation of the inductive method to metaphysical philosophy. The fact we are now illustrating is, that the Baconian philosophy initiated a spirit and method of critical investi- 310 THE HISTORY OF HETERODOX SPECULATION. gation, "which was opposed to all merely conventional forms of faith, to all factitious mysteries, and to all transcenden- talism of whatever school. Here was a sceptical force, wholesome, needful, but capable of being rashly or mis- takenly directed against the holiest things. In the same age as Bacon appeared Descartes, who first enunciated the principle of the apj^eal to consciousness, which lies at the foundation of all true metai^hysical science. This princij)le was developed by Spinoza into a system of mathematical pantheism. This principle, apjDlied according to the spirit of the inductive method, led Locke to the discovery and development of his system of psychology. Unfairly applied, it led Berkeley to his idealism. In- geniously misaj)plied, it produced the sensational nihilism of Hume. lATaat we would here specially note is, that as the Baconian philosophy introduced a new test of truth as to science in general, and especially natural science, so the principle of Descartes superadded a co-ordinate test of truth as related to the world of consciousness. The two tests of inductive demonstration and of conformity to the facts of consciousness are now the grand principles of evidence. On one or both of these all scientific certainty depends. But, besides the philosophy of Bacon and the fruitful principle of Descartes, both of which began to give law to speculation and science in the early pai-t of the eighteenth century, the same epoch witnessed the rise of the science of literary, and especially of biblical, criticism. The labours of Bengel had done not a little towards laying the foun- dations of New-Testament criticism. Mill and Wetstein carried forward, with admirable ability and erudition, the work which the pious commentator had so well begun. And from this time forth, the materials, the canons, the problems and solutions, which go to make up the science of biblical criticism, continued to accumulate. The ultimate THE RISE OF B115L1CAL CRITICISM. 311 tests of truth in the science of literary criticism, as in all science, are those of Bacon and Descartes. The way was now shown to apply these in the region of literature, to the determination of questions relating to the true text of the author, and to the genuineness of the productions alleged to be from his pen. Scripture was included, so far as these points at least are concerned, in the general scope of this science ; and thus the questions of the genuineness and authenticity of the Sacred Writings came to be the subject of critical discussion, and it began to appear doubtful whether Scripture might not be seriously reduced in its contents, and the canon on which the faith of the Church rests be materially, perhaps irreparably, impaired. To what lengths criticism uj)on these subjects has been carried in modern times is w^ell knoA,\^i. The point we are engaged in illustrating is that the development of the science of literary criticism, in which — with certain guards — biblical criticism must of necessity be included, could not but open questions as to the canon of Scripture and the text and contents of the holy books, which would suggest sceptical doubts, and would be likel}^ in many minds to engender positive unbelief. Besides the branch of strictly literary criticism, there grew up, we may here note, at a later date, and in the way of natural sequence, the science of historical criticism, the subject of which is the contents of alleged histories, apart from the question of their textual integrit}^ — or rather on the assumption of that integrity. This branch has led to the discovery of anachronisms, incoherencies, impossi- bilities, in profane history, such as have rendered necessary the reconstruction of much of the earlier annals of the nations. It was of course to be expected that the tests employed by this criticism would be applied to the sacred writings. How they have been applied within the present century, with what 312 THE HISTOKY OF HETEKODOX SPECULATION. irreverence, and with what destructive results, are matters sufficiently known. We note here that this branch of criticism was a direct and necessary consequence of the development of the science of literary criticism in the eighteenth and the beginning of the present century. Finally, from the beginning of the eighteenth century natural science began rapidly and grandly to unfold its laws and harmonies, and to display its marvellous dis- coveries. These have seemed to reduce the sphere of the supernatural. They have tended so to absorb attention in the material and sensible and calculable as to efface the sense of the spiritual. They have also brought to view facts and systems of facts which were opposed to what, under other lights, had been accepted as the meaning of certain passages of Scripture ; and which therefore appeared, for a time at least, to contradict the authority of Holy Writ. From these different causes in combination there arose in the eighteenth century, and during a considerable part of the present century there continued to deepen and spread, a tide of sceptical thought in regard to reve- lation, very far more mighty and formidable than any opposition to Divine truth which the world had previously known. We have endeavoured in the foregoing view to supply a conspectus of the causes of modern unbelief, such as Mr. Farrar has not given, but which may be abundantly illustrated from the valuable and instructive pages (pp. 147 — 479) in which he has minutely traced the rise and progress of modern infidelity throughout the different countries of Germany and Western Europe. The three great movements have been English deism and French infidelity in the seventeenth century (Lectures iv. and v.), German rationalism and pantheistic unbelief from the days of Semler and Kant to the present time (Lectures vi. UNBELIEF IN GEEMANY, FRANCE, AND ENGLAND. 813 and vii.), modern French free thought, as exemplified chiefly in the cases of Eenan, Scherer, and Reuss (Lecture vii.), and the modern English rationalism (Lecture viii.). There is a fact in connexion with the history of infidelity which Mr. Farrar appears not to have noted, but which we regard as significant and important. The age of deistic unbelief may be said to have passed away. The struggle is now and is to be henceforth between the Bible and pantheism. F. Newman tries hard to be a deistic infidel, but is carried, in spite of himself, and further than he is aware, towards a pantheistic view of Deity. Theodore Parker was a deist. But neither of these has fully entered into the intellectual requirements and necessities of the conflict. By the great German thinkers, the leaders of French thought, and the men among ourselves who have entered most profoundly into the meaning and the issues of the present controversy of thought, it is universally felt that deistic infidelitj^ is obsolete — that the question is between a personal God with the Bible and an impersonal divinity in all things. Men who do not see this have not studied the course of the world's intellectual discipline and pro- gress, have not qualified themselves by the requisite aaKTjaa to enter as athletes into the arena of philosophic and theological controversy in the present day, or perhaps are altogether defective in the philosophic insight which is necessary to qualify a man to criticize philosophy. No one who has not so presented to himself all the conditions of the case— all that is involved in the conception of an Eternal Cause and an Infinite Power and Life — as to have felt, intellectually, what Archdeacon Hare spoke of as "the fascination of pantheism," can understand the real question at issue. M. Saisset, in his Modern Pantheism, has done this ; and if there is any writer the study ' of whom can impart the insight of which we have spoken to one as yet 314 THE HISTORY OF HETERODOX SPECULATION. a stranger to it, it is M. Saisset, although on several points — especially as to the eternity and infinity of crea- tion— he is by no means a safe guide. Mr. Farrar, we suspect, has never as yet so posited himself at the centre of philosophy as to gain the insight of which we have spoken. If he had, he would not have spoken in his third Lecture (p. 140) as if there were no intermediate theory possible between the pantheism which asserts the eternity of matter and the impersonality of mind, and the theism which asserts the creation of matter " in the beginning " by the free act of Deity. There have undoubtedly been theists who held the eternity of matter : and of theistic idealists we suspect there are not a few who hold the dependent eternity of creation. M. Saisset, indeed, w4iom Mr. Farrar often quotes, appears to hold this view. So, doubtless, do many German theists, more or less closely approximating to orthodoxy. So do Messrs. Maurice and Kingsle3^ To us such a conception appears to be little less than con- tradictory; as also does M. Saisset's hypothesis as to the infinity of creation. Nevertheless, such views not only have been held, but at this moment are held by a large and probably increasing number of thinkers. That such a view should to any considerable extent prevail among professed adherents of the Christian faith ; that it should be held by so acute and accomplished an ojjponent of pantheism as M. Saisset; is the strongest instance of "the fascination of pantheism " with which we are acquainted. If Mr. Farrar's German studies had been more thorough — if his matter had been less hastily got up for the occasion — this is a point which he could hardly have failed to note. The intellect has much to say for pantheism, much to say against the conception of a personal God. Nevertheless the intellect has so much more to say against pantheism ; the conception, whilst presenting a seeming smooth surface THEISM AND PANTHEISM. 315 of harmony, is found to enfold under the veil of its nebulous splendour so many utter contradictions, such inextricable confusion ; that mere logic bids us back to accept the principle of a personal God, with all the stupendous mys- teries and oppressive difficulties which this involves. The conception of a personal Deity is difficult, immeasm'ably difficult ; but it is not contradictory, much less a heap and confusion of contradictions, as on analysis the pan- theistic theory is seen to be. And then the heart and the conscience revolt from pantheism in indignation and affright, while they respond loyally and instinctively to the thought of a personal God and Father. But when once pantheism is conclusively rejected, and theism fully and intelligently accepted, the Bible remains no longer a difficulty to our faith. If there be a personal God, miracles fall easily into place as a part of His manifestations, as in harmony with the highest law of His character and government. Revela- tion becomes a natural corollary from the fact of His existence ; prophecy befits miracle and revelation ; the mysteries and difficulties which surround His counsels and government are not greater, as Butler's immortal argument showed, if we accept the Bible than if we reject it, while they are alleviated and brightened by the discoveries of Revelation, especially hj the Gospel of Christ. And what- ever, in the matter of the Revelation, might at first and on a superficial view appear strange, anomalous, perhaps even grotesque — even this, to one who rises to an elevation from which he can survey mankind as a whole, from its early to its latest days, and in its different varieties of character and development, and from which also he can take a comprehensive view of Providence, appears no longer anomalous, however remarkable, but, by its very strange- ness, only marks out the more impressively some striking truth, some general law, it may be, of the Divine govern- 31G THE HISTORY OF HETERODOX SPECULATION. ment. When once a personal Deity is heartily believed, we repeat it, Eevelation becomes probable, and the difficulties which appear on the surface in respect to the matter of such revelation, seem to the profound thinker to be small indeed. Hence it was a wise saying of Coleridge, that after having once been constrained, with all its mysteries, to accept the fact of a personal God, he found all further difficulties trivial in comparison. The argument of Butler, indeed, may be said to have given the death-blow to mere deism, the shallow deism of the English freethinkers a century ago. The same argument, elaborated with wonderful skill and eloquence, a^^plied wdth inimitable aptness, humour, and force, has been reproduced in our own day by the author of the Eclijise of Fakli. That work has effectually disposed of the infidelity of Newman, Parker, and of the semi-German school. Mr. Farrar speaks in several places with some disparagement of Mr. Eogers' argument, because of his frequent use of the dilemma ; and indeed condemns the dilemma, as not a persuasive or con- vincing form of argument (pp. 527, 528, 662). Now the dilemma is but a combination of syllogisms; to cashier the dilemma is to condemn the syllogism. Mr. Farrar, therefore, to be consistent, must give up logic altogether. Indeterminate eclectic as he appears to be in his philo- sophy, he is yet hardly prepared, we imagine, to go that length. That would be to go farther even than Maurice himself, with all his antipathy to the forms of logic. No doubt there is great danger in the use of so cogent and constrictive an argument, lest the terms should not be rightly stated. Moreover, a dilemma is of comparatively little use except to sil&nce an opponent, when it merely presents a choice of difficulties in respect to a subject alto- gether beyond the compass of human comprehension. So used, it presents no final conclusion in which the mind can ENGLISH DEISM, FRENCH ATHEISM, GERMAN PANTHEISM. 317 rest. But "when it clearly and undeniably presents a choice between difficulties on the one side, which yet are not im- possibilities, and utter impossibilities on the other, its power as an argument to compel the acceptance of truth, notwith- standing what might otherwise have appeared very serious difficulties, renders it a conclusive and invaluable instrument of reasoning. Deism is the profession of the unbeliever who is as yet a neophyte in the controversy between faith and unbelief. The profound and disciplined sceptic cannot remain in the half- way house of deism ; he must either go back to revelation, or onward to atheism or pantheism. It was inevitable that infidelity, on its rise in the eighteenth century, should be deistic. The faith in a personal God had saturated the consciousness of Christendom. No other idea of the Divine could easily enter men's minds. To dislike the holy law and precepts of the Bible was natural to a profligate age: to criticize the difficulties and revolt from the mysteries which lie on the surface of Scripture was natural to the intelligent classes, in an age which was distinguished not less by the shallow showiness of its general culture than by its prevailing profligacy. Hence the minds of the free- thinking polite world, when once infidelity began to be a fashion, betook themselves to deism. But this could not last. In England the deists were fairly silenced and con- founded by Butler and Paley. In France the deism of Voltaire and Eousseau worked on in a very few years to the atheism of Diderot and Laplace. In Germany various causes concurred, almost from the first, to give a pantheistic character to unbelief. The distinction in tone and tendency between the deistic unbelief of England, the atheistic unbelief of France, and the pantheistic unbelief of Germany, is one well deserving of attention, and to which, so far as respects Germany, 318 THE HISTORY OF HETERODOX SPECULATION. Mr. Farrar hardly appears to have given attention. England was saved from the downward road of infidelity, as Mr. Farrar has well noted, hy Butler on the one hand, and by Wesley on the other, doubtless more by the latter than even the former. After the middle of the century, a tide of life set in upon the nation, bringing back faith with it. In France all classes were demoralised by causes to which we have already referred. Neither faith nor heart was left in the nation ; no religious reverence, little family truth or affection. In such a nation it was to be expected that atheism would prevail. A dissolute, infidel Church, in the midst of a reckless, dissolute nation, implied atheism as the only creed of the country. But in the land of Luther, Melancthon, and Qilcolampadius, the land of Arndt, Spener, Bengel, Francke, there was still faith and truth among the people at large ; religious reverence and family affection had always been characteristic of the German nation. There was at the same time less of general and superficial culture among the different classes of the people. The learned few, the simple, hearty, many, still imbued with the genial, jovial, but withal reverent, religiousness, which seems to be the natural growth of the Lutheran fatherland, — these together made up the whole of the German heart and mind. Among such a peoi)le infidelity, when it did take root, would naturally be profounder in its intellectual character than among the French, would be more subtle and refined, would invest itself with a certain halo of pseudo-religious- ness, would be distinguished by a certain clinging to the phrase and sentiment of reverence for the Divine ; all which conditions are fulfilled in pantheistic unbelief, but are alien from naked atheism. Nevertheless, pantheism is but veiled atheism. The French are less subtle, less comprehensive, possibly less profound, than the Germans ; but they see more clearly PANTHEISM IS VEILED ATHEISM. 319 vrhat is the real fact of the case, and they s^y with inimit- able distinctness what they mean. Strip pantheism of all German involutions of thought and of all mere investitures of language, and in its naked truth it stands forth as mere atheism. We have given some illustrations of the hold which certain pantheistic tendencies have on some of the philosophic professors of a theistic faith. Let us now re- mark, on the other side, that every form which pantheism takes, every disguise which it assumes, to hide from itself and from the world its real character, is a tribute extorted from Atheism to the truth of Theism, a testimony borne by atheism to the necessity which all men feel for assuming the existence of Deity. What Eobespierre is reported to have said with reference to political government and national well- being, that if there were not a God, it would be necessary to invent one, is felt to be true by pantheistic philosophers in regard to nature. So monstrous a conception is that of this universe without a governing mind ; so clearly and directly do the infinite harmonies of the universe imply a designing and governing intelligence; so indubitably does the might and life of the universe, ever coming forth anew, ever springing up afresh, ever unfolding and advancing, imply a central living Power, one with the infinite governing intelligence ; that pantheists, in order to seem to speak and write intelligibly, are compelled to invest Nature with the qualities which they deny to Deity, to attribute a spirit to the whole machine because they deny the existence of the Great Mechanist, to personify a harmony and unity which is but an abstraction, which, on their ovm theoiy, is itself but a grand accident, a result without a cause, because they refuse to believe in a personal God. We shall not attempt to follow the lecturer in his pains- taking and valuable history of the rise and progress to the present time of German unbelief. He had found himself 320 THE HISTOKY OF HETERODOX SPECULATION. unable to give this without, p.t the same time, giving a history of the whole theological movement in Germany during the present century. Several years ago, in an article on the Religion of Germany,* we gave a slight sketch of this movement, with which, on the whole, the much more detailed view presented by the lecturer well agrees. We doubt, indeed, whether he has allowed its due force to the moral effect upon Germany, and especially upon Prussia, of the calamities inflicted by the wars with Bonaparte. These calamities quenched indifferentism in blood and agony ; and German loyalists learned, from the abject heartlessness of their own unworthy countrymen, that even patriotism will die where faith in God and His word of truth have become extinct. We cannot doubt, also, that Mr. Farrar's estimate of Schleiermacher's Christianity, which he fears will be regarded by many as too low, is really too high. To us it is beyond question that Schleiermacher was a pantheist. He cherished a certain faith, no doubt, in historical Christianity and the mission of Jesus. No doubt, also, he initiated the movement towards a fuller and truer faith in Christ and Christianity, which was carried forward by his disciple Neander and farther forward still by Olshausen, Tholuck, and others. But his God was "an indefinite substance, not a personal spirit." On the whole, however, there is no view of German theology, in its modern history, and its actual condition, which has yet been given to the English public, comparable for fulness and accuracy to that presented by Mr. Farrar in the sixth and seventh lectures of this course. A very valuable conspectus of German theologians arranged according to schools and ten- dencies is given in note 42. We are surprised, however, at the place there assigned to Stier, who surely is not behind, but far in advance of, Gieseler in orthodoxy and reverence for * See No. XIX. of the London Quartet ly Feview. BELIEF AND UNBELIEF NOW IN GERMANY. 321 the word of revelation, who moreover has but very lately deceased, and surely should not be reckoned as having accom- plished his theological course prior to 1835. He was but little the senior of Hengstenberg, who is placed between 1833 and 1862 ; but who began his theological course considerably earlier than the former year. On the whole, Mr. Farrar gathers good hope from his survey of German theology. On the side of free criticism he regards Ewald as very much nearer the truth than Eichhorn ; while a host of believing critics and theologians, instructed and disciplined by the long controversy with the giants of unbelieving criticism, have arisen to expound and defend the Scrip- tures and the orthodox faith. The school of Strauss and Feuerbach are now regarded as outside the Christian Church ; parties are more truly defined ; and even Hegeli- anism, in its right-hand school, has produced such a theologian as Dorner, who, if hardly in all respects orthodox, has yet rendered great service to Christian faith and doctrine. We, however, cannot forget that much of the German orthodoxy is of royal eliciting, and is directly connected with despotic theories of Church and State ; and, on the whole, as respects Germany, we are not able to do more than " rejoice with trembling." The latter part of the seventh lecture is occupied with the history of the more modern unbelief in France. The low ideology of France, the different forms of communism, — such as St. Simonianism, Fourierism, and the rest, — Cousin's eclecticism, Comte's positivism, and finally the scmi-Hegeli- anism of such writers as Eenan, Eeuss, and Scherer, pass in review. On this we have only to remark that De Pres- sense assuredly merits a much more decisive vindication from the calumnies of the ignorant ecclesiastical journalists who have classed him with the latitudiuarian school than Mr. Farrar has ventured to offer. It is true that he is anti- 322 THE HISTORY OF HETERODOX SPECULATION. Calvinist and aiiti- State Church ; it must be admitted also that his views respecting inspiration, though far in advance of the general continental standard, fall below the English standard. But the brilliant ecclesiastical historian of French Protestantism is, notwithstanding, one of the most orthodox, as he is one of the ablest, leaders of thought on the Con- tinent. We would further note that to compare the position held by the late lamented Vinet, the well-known theologian, and the intimate friend of the late Dr. Charles Cook, for several years President of the Wesleyan Conference in France, with that held in Germany by Neander, or even by Tholuck, is to do that great and good man a grave injustice. In the former part of his eighth lecture Mr. Farrar sketches slightly the recent history of free thought in Eng- land and America. A few pages sum up what the lecturer has to say respecting Carlyle and Emerson, Messrs. E. W. Mackay and Gregg, and Miss Hennell. More space is given to Theodore Parker and Francis Newman. Mr. Farrar then comes to ground which has been already carefully explored, the school of Coleridge, — including especially Maurice and Kingsley, — and the school of Jowett, with the respective distinctions between the two schools. We cannot altogether congratulate the lecturer on the manner in which he has treated this subject. Sometimes he has found distinctions where there are none, as when he gives expression to the singular judgment, — certainly incorrect and without foundation, — that Mr. Kingsley's writings are more strongly tinctured with Neo-Platonism than Mr. Maurice's (p. 468). Sometimes he makes mis- statements which betray a marvellous misunderstanding of the philosophic style, as when he makes Mr. Kingsley, in his Hypatia, expound Neo-Platonism as Monotheism (p. 65). Such an error as this Professor Kingsley is quite incapable of; and indeed throughout Hyimtia the contrary ENGLISH SCHOOLS. .323 view is taught. Still the view which he presents as to the general character of the two schools, and as to their mutual distinctions and relations, is generally correct.* A * In a note ujion page 466 Mr. Farrar does me the honour to refer to my vohimc entitled Modern Anglican Theo- logy. In this note there is one serious en-or, and several things which are fairly open to remark. Mr. Farrar admits that my work " gives the clue to the interpretation of many 'points which are usually felt to be obscure in the systems of the several writers de- scribed." He, however, is of opinion that the author has not " sufficiently distinguished between" the school of Maurice and Kingslej' on the one hand, and that of Jowett on the other; and represents him as erroneously making Jowett to be "a disciple of Coleridge." It is marvellous how Mr. Farrar could stumble into so utter a mistake as this. What he alleges is precisely and com- pletely the reverse of the truth. As this is a strong statement, especially when made in reference to a judgment pronounced by such a man as Mr. Farrar in regard to a contemporary work which he has studied and which must have been in his hands, I must prove my* assertion by quotations. In the very opening of the volume, on the third page of the first edition, on the tenth page of the second edition, will be found these plain words: " Though Mr. Jowett's theology will be discussed in this volume, and though the influence of Coleridge upon him has not been small, yet he cannot he called one of his disciples. He sees through and despises the Neo-Platonist disguise which serves to veil from Messrs. Mam-ice and Kingsley the really inherent Pantheism of the doctrines," &e. So again at the close of chap. iii. (p. 40, second edition; p. 31, first edi- tion) it is said, " Jowett, though taking Y a tone and impulse from Coleridge, bor- rowing some views and many thoughts from him, is of a more direct and in- tensely Pantheistic school, and altogether an independent theologian. " What makes Mr. Fan-ar's error the more extraordinary is, that I have devoted a separate chapter to the consideration of " Professor Jowett's Relations to the Coleridgean School " — chap. xii. of the first, and xiii. of the second, edition; and that in this chapter I have not only shown the points of resemblance, but of opposition and controversy, between the school of Maurice, Kingsley, and J. L. Davies, and the new school of Jowett. I strongly contrast the philosophy and the general characteristics of the ti'ue Coleridgeans and of Mr. Jowett. I devoted several pages to this contrast; and I assign as my reason for so doing that " even well-informed journals have seemed to be totally in the dark both as to the common ground on which these two varieties of heresy rest, and as to the specific and characteristic dif- ferences which distinguish the one from the other " (first edition, p. 277; second edition, p. 299). These words were originally published, it must be re- membered, in 1856, in the London Quarterly Review, at a time when the public indiscriminately classed together Maurice, Kingsley, Jowett, and all of the so-called " Broad Church " school. Let me be permitted to give one morc extract from the same page as the last quotation. "Neither will it do to class together Messrs. Maurice and Jowett as adepts of the same philosophy and uji- holders of the same theology. They know, and their respective follower.^ know, that this is not the case. Alrcaily a controversv has commenced between 324 THE HISTORY OF HETERODOX SPECULATION. natural delicacy in dealing with the writings of living men, some of them contemporaries and acquaintances in his own University, has evidently greatly restrained, and in some instances impaired and enfeebled, Mr. Farrar's criti- cism of these two schools, especially, we think, of that which may be called the Oxford Kationalistic school. Alto- gether his sketch of English contemporary unbelief is somewhat slight and unsatisfactory. But the remainder of this his last lecture is characterized by high merits, both intellectual and moral. In fifty-five carefully written pages he sums up the results of his inquiry, and gathers into one view the lessons to be derived from the historical survey through which he has conducted his readers. He proves the utility of the investigation in wliich he has been engaged ; he defends, needlessly, one would hope, the noble tone of candour and moderation which he has preserved throughout in speaking of unbelievers and their opinions; he reiterates some of the explanations which he had given in his first lecture respecting the connection between moral and intellectual causes of unbelief. He then shows what has been "the office of doubt in history." He gives instances of its value in destroying Eoman Catholic errors ; he shows that in some cases free inquiry is forced upon men by the presentation of new knowledge, the two schools." For several pages myself the trouble of examining the farther I pursue this subject; and alto- remainder of the note, though there are gether I devote not less than a dozen one or two other points which tempt pages in thig one chapter to defining criticism. I will, however, say that I wherein Mr. Jowett differs radically am at a loss to understand what the in philosophy, and not unimportantly lecturer means by affirming that Moffern also in theology and theological ten- Anglican Theology is written from a dency, from the school of Maurice and Wesleyan point of view. It is written Kingsley. Mr. Jowett is shown to from the point of view of an orthodox belong to the school of semi-Hegelian and evangelical Armiuianism. That is naturalists, in contradistinction from all the Wesleyanism contained in the that of the Coleridgean Neo-riatonizing book, and it has been much more ex- mystics, tensively read by non-Wesleyans than After settling this point, I may spare by Wesleyans. THE NOBLE DOUBTER. 325 the reLitions of which to that which has bueu accepted as revelation required to be adjusted ; and that in the hands of Providence the effect of doubt has been to elicit a fuller and deeper apprehension of truth. Perhaps, in this part of his summing up, Mr. Farrar would have done well to draw the distinction between doubt and un- belief, which he has elsewhere indicated, and especially between the doubts of one who desires earnestly to believe all the revelation of God, and who only departs with the deepest religious reluctance from the faith and doctrine in which he has been brought up, and the doubts of those who rejoice in their unbelief, and treat with hardy irreverence the whole subject of revelation. It is very possible for doubt, searching and sceptical doubt, to be merely intellectual, the scrutiny of a mind which, whilst on general grounds it holds immovably fast to faith and revelation, is yet resolved to examine truth on every side and to its very foundations, and is especially resolved to understand the difficulties of the honest doubter. Thus to entertain doubt, thus to search and weigh all that can be fairly said on behalf of unbelief, can be the vocation of but few ; and demands the deepest reverence and humility of heart on the part of the inquirer : but the man who is called and qualified to accomplish this work, although he is a profound doubter, is so far from being an un- believer, that of all men he possesses the deepest, firmest, and noblest faith. And such men must be reckoned among the most devoted friends of truth, and the most devoted friends of truth, and the most gifted and honoui-ed servants of the God of truth. Others, doubtless, there are of whose heart doubt gets hold against their will. Of some of these, at a later point in this lecture, Mr. Farrar has drawn, probably from the life, an afi'ecting picture : — 32G THE HISTORY OF HETERODOX SPECULATION. " Doubts like these, where they exist in a high-principled and delicate mind, are the saddest sight in nature. The spirit that feels them does not try to proselytise ; they are his sorrow ; he wishes not others to taste their bitterness, . . . Whoever has known the bitter- ness of the thought of a universe unguided by a God of justice, and without an eternity wherein the cry of an afflicted creation shall no longer remain unavenged, has known the first taste of the cup of sorrow which is mournfully drunk by spirits such as we are describing. And who that has known it would grudge the labour of a life, if, by example, by exhortation, by prayer, he might be the means of rescuing one such soul ? . . . *' If, however, there is any fiield which requires the presence of a moral means, it is this ; and we who believe in a God who careth so nmch for man that He spared not His own Son for our sakes, may weU look upwards for help in such instances ; in hope that the infinite Father, whose love overlooks not one single solitary case of sorrowing doubt, will condescend to reveal Himself to all such hearts which are groping after Him, if haply they may find Him. The soul of such doubters is like the clouded sky ; the warming beams of the Son of Eighteousness can alone absorb the mist, and restore the unclouded brightness of a believing heart." — Pp. 507, 508. Such cases as these, however, are, as Mr. Farrar says, " rare." The unbeliever is too generally irreverent, and, as we must hold, deeply guilty. Yet, as Mr. Farrar has shown, the daring and defiant unbelief even of such is overruled for the promotion of the Divine truth and glory. From the history of the past the lecturer endeavours to show what are the doubts most likely to present them- selves at the present time, and the best modes of meeting them. Like De Pressense, of whose History of the Three First Centuries of the Christian Church he makes large use in his second lecture, relating chiefly to the same period, Mr. Farrar discerns in the present age a marked analogy to the declining period of Eoman civilisation in regard to philosophic eclecticism, and the general tendency to pantheistic unbelief and to the disintegration of all FINAL CONFLICTS. 327 existing faith. And lie is of opinion that theologians at the present day would do well to imitate the Christian apologists of the early centuries in ''presenting the philo- sophical prior to the historical evidence, in order to create the sense of religious want before exhibiting Christianity as the Divine supply for it " (p. 513 ; Analysis, p. Iv.). He gives reasons, as it appears to us good reasons, for the encouraging conclusion, "that no new difficulties can be presented hereafter, distinct in kind from the present ;" being at the same time of opinion that "no kinds of evi- dence, at present unknown, can be presented on behalf of Christianity" (p. 500; Analysis, p. liv.). Whence it would ^appear that this is " the last time ;" and that if the pantheistic Antichrist can now be thoroughly van- quished, the great controversies of the faith will have been fought out. May Heaven so grant ! He takes up last of all the question of the authority and inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. His observations on this head, although some of his views hardly satisfy us, contain much persuasive wisdom, and the treatment, though necessarily brief, is remarkably comprehensive and suggestive. Altogether the eighth is an excellent lecture, worthy of the grandeur and importance of the investiga- tion which it brings to a close, an impressive summary of the lessons to be learnt from the History of Free ThoKr/ht in Religion. We regret that we have had occasion to point out some defects in the present volume of Bampton Lectures. With all Mr. Farrar's trained industry and high scholarly ac- quirements, it is not long enough since he entered upon the profound studies and researches which belong to such a work as these Lectures ; while, as respects style and general power of engaging and impressive exposition, although there are not wanting many pages, and occasionally whole sections 328 THE HISTORY OF HETERODOX SPECULATION. which are well written, yet the work, as a whole, is pain- fully marred by such blunders and confusions in expression as we have in passing slightly indicated. Such, however, are Mr. Farrar's talents, training, and application, and so great are the advantages for thorough scholarship which his position affords him, that we yet expect to greet from his pen works which in form no less than in substance will be worthy to be crowned by the theological criticism of the age. Learned men should never forget that whether their works live or die depends not so much on the matter which they contain, as on the form in which they make their presentment to the intelligence of their own age and to the research of ages to come. THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGEESS.* How vast, bow inconceivably great, is tbe difference be- tween tbis modern world in wbicb we live, and tbat ancient world in wbicb Socrates conversed and Plato wrote, in wbicb Demostbenes contended witb sucb keen and cleaving force of fiery argument and personal invective against tbosc wbom be regarded as tbe enslavers of democratic Greece, and Cicero, in rolling periods of vebement but majestic eloquence, burled bis bot tbunders against tbe betrayers of aristocratic Kome — tbe world wbicb Alexander so swiftly and speedily overran witb bis Macedonians, and wbicb tbe legions of Eome beld prostrate at tbe feet of tbe empurpled Csesars ! Tbere was in tbat old world eloquence of speccb and wisdom in counsel. Tbere were liberties for wbicb patriots bravely bled; and splendid empires wbicb were consolidated and governed by deep statecraft, and defended and enlarged by unsur- passed generalsbip. Poets of undying fame poured fortb tbe glorious tide of epic song; or embodied in dramatic forms, witb wonderful faculty of conception and m*astery. of expression, old tragic bistories of sin and sorrow ; or composed sweet sunny pastorals, full of pleasant pictures and of bome-coming sentiments and fancies ; or struck tbe lyre to tbe" soft melodies of love, or swept its cbords under tbe inspiration of war's fierce passions and tbe battle storm. Tbere were writers of bistory, wbo bave left bcbind tbem * Originally delivered as a Lecture in_ Exeter Hull. 330 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGRESS. performances, some of which, in certain points of graphic excellence, are not easily to be surpassed. There were philosophers, who, if puerile in some of their passages of quibbling dialectics, nevertheless, showed, in other respects, a wonderful subtilty and profundity of thought, and a not less wonderful grandeur and elevation of imagination ; lonely and noble souls, whom we cannot but revere as well as admire, wrestling so strongly and patiently with the in- scrutable problems of being and life, " Grey spirits, yearning in desire To follow knowledge, like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought." There were, too, the glories of art and architecture, such as, within their proper limits, have never, even in modern times, been excelled, and are likely to remain models for all ages to come. Yet, with all this, again I say, how vast the difference between that old world and this happier modern world of ours. Patriots bled for liberty. But what was the liberty for which they bled ? What was Athens, at its best, but a fickle and turbulent democracy, ungrateful to its noblest sons, and swayed to and fro by able and artful demagogues, who knew how to flatter the vanity and pander to the passions of the multitude, who were prepared to appease them with victims, and to humour their tastes by gorgeous shows, by adorning and enriching their city, and by main- taining at j_^whatever cost the efficiency and splendour of their theatre ? What, again, at their best, were the liberties of Eome ? Long "did the grand Eoman aristocracy lord it over Jan oppressed commonalty ; then during a brief and tumultuous period, following a desperate and protracted contest, the Eoman commons held a precarious mastership over the fortunes of the republic, and controlled the power of the proud senate ; then, in the midst of a raging sea THE ANCIENT WORLD. 331 of uproar and dissension, the demagogues rode in upon the crest of the popular tide, and Rome's liberties, such as they had been, were to be found no more. Dictator, Triumvir, Imperator, successively assume the purple ; the throne of the Caesars is set on high, though still, as if in mockery, the names and forms of ancient dignity and liberty remain ; and the very spirit of freedom dies out of the carcase of the bloated and overgrown empire. True, balanced, progressive liberty, was a thing unknown to the ancient world. The great mass of the population, indeed — everywhere alike — were wretched slaves who had no rights whatever, over whom their lords had absolute power, even to life or death. There were poets in the classic world — poets whose fame will not die. But, however musical may be their " numerous verse," however choice their words and phrases, however bright the colours, and however distinct and beautiful the forms, inwoven in the tissue of their song ; nay, however just and charming may often be their sentiments, yet these are merely earthly poets. They soar not heavenward ; they float not on starry wing in heavenly places ; they serve the god of this world. It were well, indeed, if much of the later classic poetry, especially the Roman, were no worse than merely earthly; it is horribly indecent. And j^et, worst of all, to that world there was no indecenc3^ In another than the Scripture sense of the words, the men of that world were "naked and not ashamed." Not poets alone, but also philosophers — even the greatest of them — were in- sensible to the criminality of the most flagitious vices. Sensual enormities of the most unnatural character nxe referred to in Plato's dialogues with a bland indifi'crence and pleasantry which seems sadly strange to us. To the abominable character of such crimes even Socrates would appear to have been insensible. No deeds of heroism, no 332 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGRESS. wonders of oratory, no splendour of genius, far less any magnificence of architecture or lustre of arts, can relieve the heavy darkness, as of the shadow of death, which rests on such a moral scene as this. But, in truth, the outward splendour of Athens and of Eome, splendid as those cities undoubtedly were, is, like the worth of Greek and Eoman liberty and the merits of classic poetry, in some danger of being overrated. Temples and palaces were magnificent ; but, within sight of them, sometimes within their shadow, might be seen in every direction the hut of the wretched pauper who was fed by the state-dole. Tens of thousands of the inhabitants of imperial Eome, there is reason to suppose, had no other habitation than the streets, no nightly shelter but that which might be furnished by arch or aqueduct. There were in Eome no "refuges for the homeless poor;" as, in fact, there were no charitable institutions whatever. There are sad, I think shameful, contrasts of wealth and poverty, luxury and destitution, in London; but whatever London may be, Eome was incomparably worse. In the words of Mr. Howson, the learned and eloquent historian of St. Paul, it was " like London with all its miseries, vices, and follies exaggerated, and without Christianity." In one word, the classic lands, with all their splendid trophies and triumphs, were but heathen lands. As Cole- ridge has truly said, pantheism was the religion of the philosophers, if they were not utter sceptics, and poly- theism of the common people. The god of the former was a passionless and impersonal abstraction — a soii; of personified order of nature, or a mere common unity and life, supposed to pervade and work through all things, or a remote metaphysical First Cause (so called), a law and principle without a heart ; such was the god of the philo- sophers, of the pantheists. The common people worshipped ANCIENT CIVILISATION. 333 " gocls many and lords many ;" but these gods were only the exaggerated shadows and projections of then- own fears, fancies, and passions, and their worship could only de- moralise and debase. These were the gods whose temples arose in beauty and splendour — whose foul legends were commemorated in life-like sculptures on frieze and pedi- ment—whose statues were the ornament and glory of the far-famed centres of classic culture and ancient dominion. These ruled the civic show, the public life, the solemn ritual, the legal ceremonial, of Greece and Rome. These, with their legends, their processions, and their worship, debauched the morals, debased the character, and darkened all the glory of the ancient world. In the midst of beauty, pomp, and civic grandeur — of swelling triumphs and ex- tending conquests — of splendid skies, bright scenery, a richly teeming earth, of refined and various culture — the people sat in darkness. Night lay upon their souls and upon their prospects. No philosopher could discover ground for hope of a better day ; no seer could discern a dawning beam. Perhaps the most obvious characteristic of ancient civi- lisation, as compared wdth modern — a characteristic which implies its essential defect as being heathen, and not Christian — is that it grew up, in successive epochs, out of distinct nationalities, but was not moulded or carried forward by any common life of humanity as such ; and that, as a consequence of this, though there was undoubted progress, yet there was no proper continuity of progress. The splendid barbaric semi-civilisation which laj^ entombed beneath the accumulated soil and earth-drift where once had been Nineveh and Babylon, might never have existed; on the world's progress it left no trace. The civilisation of Egypt herself, highly developed as it was, seems to have had very little effect on the rest of the world. The very key to the 334 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGRESS. hieroglyphics was lost ; the meaning and purpose of the pyramids remained unknown. Egypt never ceased to be a mystery and a riddle ; the very land of the sphynx. When civilisation was decaying in Greece, few could have surmised that it was to survive in Eome ; nor, in fact, was Koman civilisation, properly speaking, the offspring of that of Greece. It had an independent root of its own, and would have grown to maturity if Greece had never been known. Each successive civilisation of the ancient world was, in fact, indigenous and national. The last and, in many respects, the greatest, was that of Eome. Without losing its own national character, it absorbed into itself much that had belonged to Grecian and Grseco-Oriental culture. It overspread the world, draining the springs and sapping the energies of all that did not become a part of itself. Within its vast horizon it had no rival, and could have no successor. Hence when, in its turn, it began insensibly to decay, it seemed as if the whole world were falling into the " sere and yellow leaf." When it was evi- dently d3dng out, the world was hopeless of a new spring. Die Rome did at last. It was, in fact, dead long before it was despoiled by the barbarians. The secret of its " decline and fall " was the same as of the fall of every empire which had preceded it. Like the Prodigal Son, it had wasted its goods. Each nation brought with it as its heritage some portion of primitive truth and traditional morality. This was the salt which kept it from rank corruption — the cement which held it from dissolution. As long as a suf- ficient proportion of this remained, the nation might continue to advance and develope, and to carry onward the civilisation it had inherited. But its very advancement created for it snares and dangers. Philosophy might be cultivated, but the fruit of this tree of knowledge was most commonly intoxicating and delusive, rather than elevating NO CONTINUITY OF ANCIENT CIVILISATION. 335 or strengthening. Arts and sciences might advance, but these only multipHed the temptations to display and luxury. Conquests might enrich the State, and foreign knowledge and refinement be added to it ; but these proved ever to be only sources of increasing vice and degeneracy. A select few, like Tacitus and the Antonines, in the latest days of Eome, might, perhaps, still combine with the increased knowledge of their times the austere morality and nobleness of the forefathers of their race ; but all beneath them became more and more hollow-hearted, degenerate, and depraved, until, in the end, " the whole head sick, and the whole heart faint, having no soundness in it," the long-dying nation, shattered by the strong arm of some less degenerate rival, fell with a crash, and its carcase was given to be food for the birds of prey. Something like this happened in the case of Greece, overthrown as she was by the rising power of Eome. But far more signally was it fulfilled in the case of Eome herself. Thus does all ancient history give the lie to that prin- ciple which has been so boldly advocated by a writer of more learning than mastery of his learning, of more breadth of view than profundity of reflection, of more acuteness than philosojihic patience and subtilty of thought, and of more audacity than power. It might have been held, as long ago demonstrated, that the progress of morals and of the world's well-being does not depend merely or primarily upon the forces and acquisitions of the intellect; but that even intellectual progress itself implies as a necessary condition a previous moral foundation, and dejDends for its permanence on a coincident moral advancement. Mr. Buckle's philosophy would be true, if there were no such independent and proper faculty in man as conscience. He, a philosopher, has committed the grave fault of ignoring this spring of man's life, this constituent of his natiu-e. He 33G THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGKESS. evidently regards it as ultimately a mere function of the intellect. And what a world was it when Eome had fallen ! Those who trampled the life out of the empire were not merely barbarians ; they were the savage fanatics of barbarism. The fairest and richest provinces of the empire they turned into utter deserts, as some of them remain to this day. But more precious than the harvests of Africa or the vintages of Italy were the treasures of science, philosophy, and art, the long results of classic genius and culture, which perished in the common wreck. They quenched the last ray of i)hilosoi)hy in Europe, and left scarcely a trace of literary culture. They took a fierce and brute delight in despoiling and dismantling the temples, and in defacing or shattering the sculpture and statuary, which adorned the sumptuous cities of the empire. The civilisation which a thousand years of -gm- gress had developed and matured, was all but obliterated in a century. True, the period of its vigour was past ; its branches were no longer fresh and leafy, as in its prime; its moss-grown trunk was hollow and decaying; and its life was dying down in its roots. True, too, that its fruit, however fair in seeming, had been evil as well as good. But yet it was majestic in its grandeur, and venerable in its antiquity. Nevertheless, the Northern hordes, not con- tent with stripping it of its fruit and breaking down its branches, rested not till they had plucked it up by its very roots. Thus was brought back to the Western world the reign of " chaos and old night." Still the Eastern or Byzantine empire retained its civilisation and coherence ; each year, however, becoming more effeminate and degenerate. What a question now is it to ask ourselves. What would have become of the world from this time without Christianity? What would have become of the Byzantine empire without TF THERE HAD BEEN NO CHRIST. 337 it may be to some extent conjectured from that which it actually was and came to be, notwithstanding the energy and unity which it derived from its Christianity. Had it been only heathen — its heathenism, too, of foreign impor- tation, as it was, and of a mixed and mongrel character, having no roots in the soil of the empire, no authority of tradition, no prestige of antiquity, no principle of unity in itself, no vital relation to the civil or political institutions of the empire — had it been only heathen, the Byzantine empire must have succumbed, as the Western did, under the assaults of such terrible barbarians as the Avars and the Huns, and have expired seven centuries or more before the period when, after long decay and pressure, it actually gasped its last. Christianity, though itself infected in blood and degenerated in spirit by heathenish admixtures of philo- sophy and idolatry, was yet the life of the Eastern empire. Eclecticism may for a time flourish as a philosophy, as it did in Alexandria; but an eclectic heathenism, a mosaic of many mythologies, can never sustain the political fabric of an empire. Such an eclectic heathenism is no better than a fanciful and masquerading scepticism — it is no re- ligion at all ; and we may depend upon it that no state can be hold in internal cohesion, or defend itself against external assaults, that is without a faith and without a worship. For centuries, as it has been well said, there had been only two faiths and only two worships in the Roman world — one the worship of the emperor, the other the faith of Christ. Zeus and Mars, Horus and Serapis, had long been superannuated deities. Who be- lieved in them? Side by side, or face to face, they had been quietly arranged in the Roman Pantheon ; but that very Pantheon, in becoming the common temple of a world- wide empire, had in fact become the common sepulchre of all the faiths. 838 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGRESS. Had there been no Christianity, there could have been no Mohammedanism. The idea of Mohammedanism is a derivative from the Bible revelation and the Christian faith. But for the monotheism of Moses, and the mission of Jesus Christ, there could have been no Prophet of Mecca, and no law of the Koran. What a world, then, let me again say, would this have become, if, when Eome fell, there had been within it no Christian faith ! Were it possible to suppose that there could have been a Judaism without a Christianity, an Old Testament without a New, we should be apt to say that some Jewish conqueror must have arisen to lead forth his people, as Mohammed did the tribes of the desert, to rule over the nations with a rod of iron, and to give unity to a distracted 'world, making Jerusalem his throne, and the nations his footstool. But if, as Mr. Buckle would have us believe, the pro- gress of this world has been simply and purely intellectual — if the religions of the various nations are themselves but the expressions, the crystallized results, and the indices of their intellectual status and advancement — mere registers and records of progress, not vital forces in themselves — then we have a right to separate and seclude from the rest of the world an element so individual and so isolated as that of Judaism — a people so alien and alone as the sons of Israel — and to ask what would, what could, have become of the Eoman world, if there had been no Bible, no Moses or Christ, no St. Paul or St. John, no Augustine or Athanasius, no Christian Justinian, no possibility of a Mohammed ? Surely a more hopeless night would have settled over Europe than it had ever known. Far, far away, and now forgotten for ages, perhaps for ever, the heroic glories of which Homer sang, the young enterprise of ardent Hellas, the culture of the Grecian prime, the law and majesty of patrician Eome, — farewell, a long and THE NEW LIFE FOR THE WORLD, 309 probably a last farewell, to all that the classic ages had known of oratory, and history, and poetry, of science and of art. Such as is now the condition of the roving tribes of America, as compared with the civilisation of which remains have been found in the interior of that continent ; such might the condition of the inhabitants of this famous Europe have become, as compared with its ancient glory. It might have been filled with frag- mentary tribes and races, preying continually on each other, tending to retrograde in civilisation rather than to advance, and scarcely any of them raised above the level of what the Germanic tribes themselves were when they dwelt in the Thuringian forests. Tartar chieftains, Persic fire-worshippers, even perhaps Brahman conquerors, might have pushed their victories within these limits, and from them possibly might have been derived a second and inferior civilisation. Europe, in fact, was by the irruption of the barbarians broken up into fragments without a common life, except the rising life of Christianity. There was a strange mix- ture and medley of tongues, costumes, and worships. Upon the wreck of the old mjihologies, already confounded and intermixed, came crashing down the strong-handed and bloody gods of the North. - Odin and Thor, Hesus and Hertha, came to claim the precedence over Mars and Jupiter, and every deity, male or female, of the ancient world. What a chaos of faiths ! what inextricable con- fusion of contending powers ! The new gods displacing the old, and then jostling each other ! In the midst of all this confusion, however, there was the one principle of unity — the one spring of new and victorious life — to which I have referred. The Christian faith survived the wreck of all things else — the Christian Church outrode the storm. A deep, dense night, which z 2 840 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGRESS. all the researches of antiquarians have been unable to penetrate, save at a point here and there, rested upon the face of the mingled nations. " Darkness was upon the deep." But the Spirit of God was moving upon the chaotic waters. The process we cannot trace, but, by the results, when at length the curtain began to lift, we know that the work was going on. The deepest darkness was in the sixth and seventh centuries. After that period the' gloom began slowly to lessen. Light was growing. The nations had received, for the most part, a common faith, though mixed with much heathenism. For the first time in the world's history, though divided into many kingdoms, they possessed a common consciousness and life ; they owned the same God and Father; they felt that they belonged to a common humanity, redeemed by one God and Saviour, and included in one covenant of grace. Here was the beginning of a Christian world — of a new and world-wide civilisation. We must not, however, forget that there was a Jewish civilisation as well as a heathen, and that this, unlike the heathen, so far as it was nationally characteristic, was from its early beginning to its full maturity sustained and developed by divinely revealed truth. Let us, therefore, briefly glance at the history of this civilisation, and try to gather the lessons which are to be derived from it, so far as these appertain to our present purpose. Eightly regarded, Jewish civilisation must be confessed to be the most wonderful, and incomparably the most exalted and beneficent in character, of the national developments of the ancient world. The names of Moses, David, Solomon, Isaiah, and Daniel, stand as memorials of its glory. Its immediate sphere was limited, but how sublime is its story, how pure and elevated its worship and morality, how un- approachable the majesty and splendour of its literature, JEWISH CIVILISATION. 841 how wide its influence upon the nations, how unquench- able its vitality ! Egypt, a cruel foster-mother, would have strangled the infant people in its cradle ; but the devices of the oppressor were in vain. Through a long and troubled youth, from the time of Moses till David, its history is but a record of incessant conflicts with surrounding war- like tribes. In the days of its sad decline, from Solomon to Zedekiah, it suffered greatly from similar conflicts. It was shattered by the mace of Nebuchadnezzar ; and in Babylon was once more an oppressed captive in the " house of bondage," as in its early days in Egypt. Nevertheless, the nation lived on, was again restored to the land of its fathers, rejoiced again in its priests and its prophets, saw its military glories revived under the Maccabees, wore out the prowess and ambition of the kings both " of the south" and "of the north," and only succumbed finally to the all-victorious power of Eome. " The sceptre did not depart from Judali, nor the law-giver from between his feet, until Shiloh came." The years of properly Grecian history, even counting from the age preceding the seige of Troy, cannot be made to number a thousand. The duration of the Eoman power may be reckoned at about a thousand years. But the interval from the time of Abraham to that of Vespasian embraces a period ap- proaching to two thousand years. Nor did the Jewish faith and culture die, as did those of heathen nations. There was that in Judaism which could not die. It lent its best elements to Christianity, which is, in fact, only Judaism transfigured and transformed. As Christianity its spirit entered into the life of the nations, and began to rule the destinies of the world. For this, notwithstanding national unfaithfulness, and consequent national degeneracy and political decline, there had been a 342 THE BLBLE AND HUMAN PROGRESS. continually advancing preparation. In spite of idolatry and apostacy, a glorious line of intellectual and moral progress may be traced throughout the records of Judaism. David rose to a loftier height of prophetic vision and spiritual rapture than even Moses ; Isaiah and Jeremiah stood upon still higher ground than David. Zechariah and Malachi, cannot, indeed, compare in purity and splendour of diction with Isaiah ; nor were they called upon, like him and Jeremiah, to denounce the burden of the Lord against grand and gigantic empires. They stood as prophets within a smaller earthly sphere, and they uttered their oracles in an inferior dialect, to a diminished and de- pressed nation. Nevertheless, there seems good reason to believe that their knowledge of truth, especially Divine truth, was broader and more Catholic than that of the proi^hets who went before, and their view of the coming dispensation clearer and more full.* Nor, though the i)ro- phetic order ceased from the time of Malachi, must we thence infer that the Spirit who inspired the prophets no longer visited the hearts of Jewish servants of the Lord, or that the process of spiritual advancement was stayed. In the line of the elect it was still carried forward, notwithstand- ing the deepening formalism and heartlessness of the nation at large. At the period of the Saviour's coming there were to be found such "Israelites indeed " as devout Zacharias and holy Elizabeth; there were Simeon and Anna, venerable as well as ancient, blameless in life, filled with the Si^irit, " waiting for the consolation of Israel ;" there was John the Baptist, * Some idea of the general progress writer excels in practical wisdom, as of the Jews in moral and spiritual well as moral purity and elevation, culture, during the period succeeding any writing of classic antiquity. Yet Malachi, which is often regarded as an it teaches no esoteric doctrines of age of darkness and decline, may he an exclusive school of philosophy, gained from the Book of Wisdom, but the current morality and the contained in the Apocrypha. This approved wisdom of the Jewish production of an unin.«pired Jewish masters. JUDAISM AND PAGANISM. 343 greatest of preachers and most illustrious of prophets ; there was even, most marvellous of all, a Jewish maiden found meet to become the mother of her heavenly Lord. Thus were the true Jewish seed, the Israel within Israel, " the remnant according to the election of grace," found, in the fulness of the time, ripened in knowledge and wisdom by the experience of ages, disciplined and perfected by a wonderful Divine education, elevated and inspired by long converse with rapt seers, in readiness to welcome the long- promised Saviour and King, and to hail the dawn of Christian glory. We see the Mosaic dispensation itself, represented in the person of aged Simeon, and saying, " Lord, now lettest Thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation." The spirit of the dying dispensation was, under a brighter and more majestic form, to reappear in Christianity. Nor was it thus alone that the Jewish race performed its appropriate part in the preparation of the world for the reception of the Christian faith and life. Finally cured, from the time of the Babylonian captivity, of all tendency to idolatry, scattered by the dispersion throughout the wholo world, they became, in the wonderful ordering of Divino Providence, a main instrument in preparing the way for Christianity. For two centuries before the coming of Christ, their Scriptures, in the Greek tongue, were acces- sible to the commercial and cultivated classes of every laud. Great was their zeal in gaining proselytes, and as great their success. The nations of the world were aweary of their gods — there was nothing in their mythology — nor was there any more in their philosophy — to satisfy the deep cravings of their nature. The Jew alone had a living faith — a pure and noble worship — a sublime theology — a lofty morality. He alone believed in a God-du-ected historic past, and a glorious and triumphant future. So, 344 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROOKESS. though the Roman satmst might scorn the exchisive — and, truth to tell, too often sordid — race ; yet, in every great city, and throughout every province of the empire, the Jewish faith counted crowds of proselytes. "The conquered," says Seneca, " have given laws to the conquerors." From these Jewish prosel}i;es, less fettered by national pride and narrow prejudice than the " Hebrews of the Hebrews," were gathered a large proj)ortion of St. Paul's first converts ; and these generally formed the nuclei of the mingled churches of Jews and Gentiles eventually collected. It appears, then, that even before the revelation of Chris- tianity the direct line and law of the world's only sure and stable progress were coincident with the advance and pre- valence of Bible truth and knowledge. Each new accession of knowledge added to the permanent body of light in the world's common atmosphere. Each prophet and holy man, as he arose, became a centre and fountain of health and energy to the world's true life. Every breath of influence from the Divine Spirit which found entrance into any man, lent an onward and an undying impulse to advancing truth and righteousness. But great as were the uses and services of the Old Testament Scriptures in carrying forward the education of the race, it is to the Christianity of the entire Bible that modern progress owes its peculiar forces and characteristics. I have already, in pointing out a grand defect of all heathen civilisations, referred to the sense of human brother- hood in Christ as one of the peculiar and characteristic forces of Christian civilisation. Compared with Christianity, even Judaism was greatly wanting in this. The principle is taught — prominently and emphatically taught — in the Scrip- tures of the Old Testament; but it is not expressly taught. The " calling of the Gentiles," and the fellowship of the nations in the coming Messiah, was a prophetic " mystery" THE PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIANITY. 345 the glorious meaning of which was not understood until after Christ had come. Meantime, the peculiar institutions of Judaism were exclusive, and, instead of tending to unite all nations on a common platform, set up a "middle wall of partition" between Jew and Gentile. Hence Judaism, though admirably fitted for its own conservative ends, and to be a preparatory dispensation, was not adapted to the breadth of humanity, was not fitted, as it was not designed, to be the religion of the world. Another principle of transcendent force in the Christian life, is what has been called the principle of individuality — the sense of our personal and immediate responsibility to God, and of the dependence of our eternal future upon our present relations to the Divine and unseen. In this popular paganism may be said to have been wholly wanting ; and even the Jewish dispensation, as compared with the Christian, was very imperfectly adapted to call forth this principle. I do not forget such things as the faith of Abraham, and the choice of Joshua, and the nobleness of Daniel ; neither have I forgotten that spirit of personal devotion which breathes through the Psalms. But Judaism did not, like Christianity, go forth to conflict with all other religions. It reigned alone, enduring no controversj', and held its own by power as well as by right. It dwelt in the midst of no religion of doul)t and debate, and con- templated no possibility of struggle or persecution as against itself. Whereas persecution, in the case of Christianity, called forth the mighty power of conscience and the ac- companying sense of individuality. Christianity brought individual man face to face with God, as receiving from Him a faith and law which thereafter it were treason and impiety against Heaven to surrender to any terror or authority of man. The words of Peter and John to the Jewish Sanhe- drim enfold the principle of this new force of Christianity— 346 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGRESS. the mightiest that the world could know: — "Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." In these words we recognise the master-spring of liberty and progress for the race — of Christian heroism, of the prevalence of truth, of the full development of man, of the world's unresting ad- vancement and final redemption. These two principles, then — the sense of brotherhood in Christ, and the sense and force of individuality — have mainly contributed to form and mould the Christian civili- sation. They have given intensity and elevation to the whole tone of thought and feeling, have enlarged, ennobled, and sublimed all that belongs to the intellect and heart — have made nations cax)able of true and progressive liberty, and laid the foundation of social brotherhood, equity, and well-being. The Old Testament Scriptures did their work in the preparatory dispensation. And they still have their mission and their message to us. They can never become obsolete or be superseded. They not only throw light upon the past, but contain sublime utterances of Divine truth, and lessons of lofty morality, for all nations and for all time. And without them the New Testament would be unauthoritative and unintelligible. They are an integral and a glorious part of our Divine Eevelation. They receive, however, their perfection in the New Testament. This is the complement and supplement of the Old, and is intended to operate immediately upon mankind at large, in all its breadth and all its varieties. Christianity is no partial or preparatory dispensation. Its empire is to be universal, and its issues are in eternity. It belongs to the perfection of Christianity that it should not be, like the Mosaic dispensation, a progressive revela- THE BIBLE TUE SEED PLOT OF PROGRESS. 347 tion. In form and letter, it was completed by those who were originally commissioned to publish it. Since the close of the first century nothing has been added to it, and no one now expects that an}i;hing can or will be added. In one respect, however, this distinction between Judaism and Christianity is more apparent than real. For, under the influence of that Spirit, the peculiar dowry of the Chris- tian dispensation. Who has been given to " convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment," and to lead Christians "into all truth," by "taking of the things of Christ," and " revealing " them unto men — under this Divine influence, the true spirit and meaning of the Sacred Scriptures have been ever unfolding from age to age. So that in this sense the revelation is still progrcssice. The light of Divine truth is still growing and spreading ; the conscience of men, and the common consciousness of man- kind, are becoming more refined and sensitive ; the meaning and practical application of Christian doctrines and principles are becoming better and better understood. The Bible is, in truth, the seed-plot of all real progress. It does not contain all knowledge, but it contains that quickening truth, and there is connected with it that spirit and principle of life, which fit and discipline the soul for acquiring knowledge most surely and effectually, and which give the ability to use aright the knowledge acquired. It teaches the master-truth, by means of which the heart is regenerated, and thereby the mind and soul filled with a divine fire and replenished with an undying and heavenly energy. It reveals to earthly men a sublime moral and sph'itual world, and thus enlarges and exalts their entire being. It hallows aU human relations ; deepens, refines, and sanctifies the affections, and sufl'uses the whole soul with divine love and immortal faith. It inculcates grand principles of truth and righteousness, the meaning and 348 THE PIBLE AND HUMAN PROGRESS. glory of which are illustrated and developed by time and experience. It brings home to each man the all-quickening sense of his individual responsibility to God, and binds the races and nations in brotherhood, by its fundamental doctrines of a common sin and a common Saviour, by its revelation of " God in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself." It provides beforehand regulative principles by which all conditions of society, all voluntary communities, and all national polities, should be ordered. All time is a commentary on its meaning, which comes out more gloriously from age to age. The Bible has already, so far as regards a considerable portion of the world, " renewed the face of the earth." What a work has been accomplished ! Let us recall the picture on which we lately gazed, of Europe as it was after the downfall of the Eoman empire. Those "ages" were '* dark " indeed. There was " no open vision." An all but rayless night lay upon the face of Europe. The light of the Bible, which, even during the worst period of the Eoman empire, had never ceased to shine within the limits of professedly Christian communities, now suffered a long and disastrous eclipse. If it gave light at all, it was but within the precincts of some secluded monastery. Few, even among priests or monks, could read ; and none but they had the opportunity to read the Bible. Even the services of the Church were performed in a dead language. Nevertheless, at this very time society was preparing for the freedom and life of coming ages. The new and virgin soil which the barbarian flood had brought upon the face of the earth, was receiving the seeds, and being impregnated with the life, of the Christian civilisation. Christian doctrines, it is true, were little known. Christian worship was grossly paganised. But a few mighty Christian CHRISTIAN CIVILISATION. 349 principles, which, even in the absence of the Bible, could not be forgotten or unfelt, had entered into the life of the world. It could not be forgotten that Christ had died for all men, and that God was the Father of all men. Nor were there wanting, here and there, men who, like Boniface in one sort, and Bernard in another, lived in the faith of the Bible, diffused, with whatever perversions and admix- tures, its great doctrines, and moved the world by their spiritual forces more mightily than all its conquerors. Under such influences as these, heathen nations were an- nexed to the pale of Christendom, lessons of justice and mercy were taught to princes and jpotentates ; the blessed- ness of self-denial and charity was magnified ; peaceful and civilising arts were cultivated and diffused ; the harsh- ness of feudalism was mitigated, and its virtues were exalted ; serfdom was first alleviated and then done away. A sure foundation was thus laid for civil and social advancement. By a necessary consequence, intelligence was quickened, and learning began to revive. The revived energies of intellect reacted upon the knowledge of Christianity ; mighty masters of logical and theological science arose ; and the general mind of Europe began to stir and awake. There appeared great precursors of the Reformation ; then came the general revival of learning, the invention of printing, and the Reformation itself. Thus the spirit of Christianity moulded anew the life of the nations and the polities of the world — impregnated the whole soil of society with its principles, and the world's atmosphere with its in- fluences ; and created a civilisation as distinctively Chris- tian — notwithstanding many lamentable exceptions and drawbacks — as that of Greece or Rome was Pagan. At the time of the Reformation, the sun came clearly out from behind the long-intercepting darkness. The Bible was again brought into immediate contact with the souls 850 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGRESS, of men. And, though clouds and darkness still linger in many parts, and nowhere is the air perfectly transparent, yet we know that the truth will shine more and more unto the perfect day. The effect of the Bible upon modern progress may be viewed under these cardinal particulars — its influence upon philosophy, upon science, upon poetry and art, upon general literature, upon liberty, and upon social well-being. Philosophy is a great name, perhaps not so great a thing. It strives to answer the questions — What and whence are we, and what and whence this universe ? And again, — What is to become of us and this universe ? But these are questions which philosophy has found herself unable to answer. The utmost she has ever been able to ac- complish has been to justify and expound to herself, in some degree, the answers to these questions which had been already handed down by tradition or given by revela- tion. Left to herself, philosophy has ever found, and could not but find, existence and destiny to be problems utterly inscrutable. The only approximation to an apparent solution which has ever suggested itself to mere philosophy, has been one or other form of pantheism. The unaided mind of man is incapable of conceiving of true creation — of "the free production of a universe by an infinite Essence." The spirit of man never scaled by logic to the sublimity of that stupendous thought — "Let there be light, and there was light;" or, as it is otherwise expressed by the Psalmist, "He spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast." The endeavour of philosophers, there- fore, from first to last, was to imagine how the organized universe might be developed out of pre-existmg rude and formless matter, by means of some inworking power and principle of movement and order, which they chose, as I may say figuratively, to call God. This power and THE BIBLE AND PHILOSOPIIY. 351 principle, this heartless and impersonal Divinity, they tried to imagine as somehow identified with the material universe, and as influencing and moulding it by a sort of universal, omnipotent, and omniscient instinct — by a sort of instinct, I say, not by conscious Wisdom, voluntary Power, or loving Providence. They had various theories, they gave their speculations different forms, but this was the common character of all the attempts by which they vainly essayed to bridge the gulf between the Eternal Self-Existent and this shadowy and changing world. Thus has human specu- lation on all these subjects, in seeking to wing its way from the earthly region of sense and matter of fact to the empyrean of ultimate truth and of original causes, ever fallen down ingloriously into the weltering chaos of pantheism. A subtle and developed pantheism is the substance of Brahmanic Vedantism ; a grosser pantheism w^as taught by Thales and the succeeding physical philosophers of the Ionian and early Grecian schools ; a sort of mathematical pantheism was the doctrine of Pythagoras ; pantheism is inwoven in the dreamy folds of Platonic idealism ; a panthe- istic necessitarianism was the Stoic creed and a pantheistic fate the Stoic God ; a most complex and logically reticulated pantheism, in some respects nearly resembling that of the Brahmanical philosophers, was taught by the Nco-Platonists of Alexandria. The only alternative left to philosophers, if they rejected pantheism, was to accept the atheistic ma- terialism of Democritus and Epicurus ; unless, indeed, with )^'iser Socrates, they resolved to refrain from all speculation as to physical causes, and confined themselves to accepting and expounding the traditional faith in Providence and morals, in a personal God and a moral government of the universe. " Thus the world by wisdom knew not God," It was reserved for the Scriptures to declare to all nations His 352 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGRESS. glory. The Scriptures, indeed, do not answer philosophically the questions with which philosophy deals. They do not remove the difficulties which surround all reasoning and all logical inquiry upon these questions. They do not explain what the act of creation is, how the world was brought into being, how matter can act upon mind, or mind, i.e., will, upon matter. These mysteries are left just what and where they were. But the Scriptures settle the facts of the case ; about which, most of all, the earnest- minded among the philosophers were concerned ; for the sake of endeavouring to determine which they were con- tinually attracted, as by a fascination, to these deep subjects. The Scriptures proclaim the fact of creation; they make known the glory of the Creator ; and thus dispel the mists of pantheistic speculation. They teach that the Creator, by whose will and fiat the world was made and is ever governed, is One and Alone, and thus annihilate at a touch the clouds of rival or inferior divinities which filled the Olympus of the ancients. Pantheism and polytheism die by one blow. They teach that man was by God created upright, but found out many inventions ; thus the Platonic dream of pre-existence is put to flight. They reveal a celestial world of spiritual and endless glory and blessing; and thus, by a living and transcendent reality, throw into deep shadow and oblivion that supercelestial sphere of archetypal ideas which Plato so wonderfully imagined, and about which Kingsley makes his Frank Leigh rave so de- liciously. They set forth against the red sky of a burning world Christ's great white throne of universal judgment, and thus displace the Oriental and Pythagorean doctrine, which Plato also adopted, of the metempsychosis. They bring life and immortality to light, and, therefore, men trouble themselves to grope no longer. The effect of the Bible upon philosophy has been to THE LIMITS OF PHILOSOPHY. 353 restrict her within narrower and humbler limits than those within which she affected to take her ancient range. The great lesson taught has been that she has no plumb-lino wherewith to sound the mysteries of being ; that the length and breadth and depth and height of the infinite and eternal, are utterly bej^ond her ken ; that it is altogether in vain for her to seek after the innermost secrets of power and change, and life and death. She can observe and classify the facts of consciousness, the phsenomena of mind, she can take cognisance of conditions and relations ; but the deepest problems of being can only be answered in a sense which human reason is incompetent positively to realise or truly to understand. It is true that men did not learn this lesson all at once. In the first ages of Christianity, traditional philosophy, with its roll of starry names, still solicited their regards. Novel and ingenious speculations were set up in rivalry to the Christian revelations, and were expounded and defended with no small power of logic and rhetoric. Many of the early Christians had been brought up in the schools of the prevalent philosophy, and retained a strong predilection for its methods and its subtleties. The Bible, too, was not brought near enough to the people at large, nor was its simple meaning suffered to shine out. Afterwards, in the middle ages, its light was all but extinguished; while Plato and Aristotle, at first or second hand, were closely studied, and the mystic phrases of certain more-than-half- heathenish, though nominally Christian, writers of the Alexandrian complexion of false philosophy, were, from their rhapsodical obscurity and their continual references to what they spoke of as converse with Deity and par- ticipation of the Divine, mistaken for effusions of ecstatic saintlinesff. Nevertheless, the leaven was working ; the true Bible influence was spreading and deepening ; evan- A A 354 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGRESS. gelical truth, in its genuine character, gradually asserted its power over the mind and heart ; the middle-age mystics became less pantheistic and more truly devout and believing. Tauler even prepared, in some degree, the way for the coming of Luther ; and, with Luther's appearance, the reign of scholasticism and of ambitious and delusive philo- sophizing was over. No John Scotus Erigena has since appeared, but only an Angelus Silesius, a Behmen, and a Swedenborg. Pity that in these times such teachers as Coleridge, Maurice, and Kingsley, should have been trying to lead men back from the day-light which for three cen- turies has been spreading broadly over the face of Christ- endom, to the clouds and darkness which the night of heathenism had left behind, which so long hung heavily over the morn of Christianity, and which only the free breezes of modern thought, waked up at the era of the Reformation, and the growing light of Scriptural knowledge, have been able to disperse. Philosophy, then, under the reign of Bible-truth, has been compelled to take a lower seat. Men no longer look to it as to a revelation. It takes its rank as one of the inductive sciences. But it is learning — it has almost learnt — that the region of true causation lies altogether beyond its sphere — that the penetralia of being and ultimate reality are utterly inaccessible to human reason. Modern German philosophy, indeed, has not — or had not until very lately — learnt this lesson. The reason is obvious — the German transcendentalist did not regard the Bible as a Divine revelation. Therefore, Schelling and Hegel have not advanced a step in real progress beyond the point which Plotinus had reached fifteen hundred years ago ; have scarcely, indeed, advanced beyond the point around which Brahminical pantheism revolved nearly three thousand years ago. Poor ill-matched human logic, dealing THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE. 355 impotently with the Absolute and Infinite, runs continually the same round from age to age, and reproduces identical absurdities and contradictions. Eefusing to receive as finnl the authority of the Word of God, the seekers after wisdom — *' Find no end, in wandering mazes lost." It is gratifying, however, to learn that this transcen- dental philosophy, fruit as it was of an intellectual pride which forgot that the very forces and culture of the in- tellect itself were due to the Christianity which it under- took to deny and defy — this philosophy has now in Germany fallen into almost entire neglect. Science, no less than philosophy, has folt the influence of the Bible. By sweeping away the cobwebs of pagan philo- sophy and the conceits and subtleties of mediaeval scholasti- cism, the Bible cleared the way for modern science. The spirit which the Bible inspires is also the true spirit of scientific inquiry. I have already had occasion to remind you, that during the lingering night of the middle ages men were practically without a Bible — though not without a Biblical tradition, however corrupted. Being practically without the Bible, they did not live as within the light and under the sense of a revelation. The old phisolophy, moreover, as we have seen, had infected all the literature that was left to the world. Many times there were monks and earnest men who had no Bible, but who had some semi-pantheistic book of mystic false devotion, or some old tome of paganish philosophy. And in the speculations of pre-Christian thinkers, philosophy and science were not distinguished from each other ; the physical was as yet one with the meta- physical. Hence, in the scholastic philosoph}- — the philo- sophy of the middle ages — the deductive spirit still ruled, and there seemed to be no dawning of the true principles of inductive science. Nevertheless, beneath the shadow of scholasticism itself, the beginnings of modern science were A A 2 356 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGRESS. growing up. Strong and simple-mincled men, who believed in God, in the Bible, and in nature, as the handiwork of God, but who did not believe in scholasticism, nor, some- times, in the Pope, were observing, registering, and ex- perimenting, and thus laying the foundations on which such grand structures of knowledge have since been reared. It must never be forgotten that an obscure friar, called Eoger Bacon, lived centuries before the appearance of Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, and that after ages have been in doubt which was the greater philosopher of the two. But Lord Bacon must ever stand forth as the great repre- sentative of modern science. He was truly a great philo- sopher, in the best sense of a wise truth-seeker. Most in- tolerant was he of mere speculations and hypotheses, of unprofitable philosophic discussions and subtleties, of scho- lasticism in the lump. But he believed in his Bible, and he believed in the wisdom and providence of God. It was his profound conviction that only by waiting, watching, learning, most patiently and humbly, to know what it is that God says, and to understand what it is that God has done, can man know anj^thing truly, or lay up any know- ledge in store for the times to come. This is the true Christian, and the true Protestant temper. The word and the works of God are our only revelation. "Man," says Bacon, "as the minister and interpreter of nature, does and understands as much as his observations on the order of nature, either with regard to things or the mind, permit him, and neither knows nor is capable of more." " The sole cause and root of almost every defect in the sciences is this, that while we falsely admire and extol the powers of the human mind, we do not search for its real helps." " The subtlety of nature is far beyond that of sense or understanding; so that the specious meditations, specula- hacon's aphorisms. 357 tions, and theories of mankind, are but a sort of insanity, only there is no one to stand by and observe it." "There is no small difference between the illusive con- ceptions of the human mind and the ideas of the Divine mind —that is to say between certain idle dogmas and the real stamp and impression of created objects, as they are found in nature." These grand sentences are culled from Bacon's aphorisms, and it is upon such maxims as these that modern science is founded. Philosophers now-a-days are but the reverent ministers and interpreters of nature ; they first spell out to themselves, letter by letter, and syllable by syllable, and then read to others, the laws and ideas of the Divine mind, as these are expressed in the outward universe. How candid, how patient, how humble, must be the true students of science ! All prepossessions must be held in abeyance, all discoloration of prejudice removed from the pure atmosphere of observation and thought, all pride of intellect must be cast down, all that belongs to the man's o^vn will and self must be dumb and still — that the ways of Nature may be truly traced, that the works of God may be rightly read. Well -would it have been for the truth of Bil)lical Theology, and for the peace of the Church, if the candid, teachable, and self-denying temper of the true induc- tive philosopher had always been found in the students of the Sacred Word. But, at any rate, it must be admitted that precisely such is the temper wdiich benefits the study of God's Word — precisely such the temper which the faith and doctrines of that Word arc adapted to inspire. There have been, doubtless, men of science who were not believers in the Bible, as there have been Bible- students who were more or less hostile to' science. But it is, notwithstanding, a most unnatural divorce which puts asunder the Word and the works of God. The 358 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGRESS. Bible-student who is unfriendly to science must be a man of the letter rather than the spirit — not one of the noblest, truest, or profoundest students of the Sacred Word. And the man of science who denies or slights the Bible will not, as a rule, be one of the noblest of the sons of science. In point of fact, though there may often have been a mere mathematical philosopher, like Laplace, who has been an unbeliever, this has seldom been the case with the true inductive philosopher who comes into contact with Nature's living processes, and hears the perpetual whisper of her living voice. A crowd of names rise up to illustrate thia statement. In Britain the succession has been well sustained from the time of Newton and Boyle to the present age, in which the names of Buckland, and Fleming, and Miller, and Sedgwick, and Brewster, are but among the most obvious instances of a very numerous class. On the Continent, indeed, there have been learned men of the modem inductive school who wei-e pantheists, but only because for a while, m Germany — not indeed among those who constitute the heart and bulk of the nation, but among the so-called philosophers, who, intoxicated by the pride of intellect and logical culture, had undertaken with the ell-wand of their own Keason to measure the Universe, — pantheism was the all but uni- versal faith. But such a creed could not continue to prevail without inductive science greviously suffering. In- deed the transcendental philosophy of Germany has, in its general influence, and especially in some marked in- stances, shown itself to be insensible or hostile to the claims and merits of the inductive philosophy. Happily, however, the pantheistic delusion in Germany has well nigh passed away. In France the names of Cuvier and Ampere stand out to show how well the claims of Chris- tianitv and of science harmonize. SCIENCE AND PANTHEISM. 359 Certain it is that that faith in a personal God and Father which the Bible teaches cannot but add great in- terest and attractiveness to the studies of the natural philosopher. Let this faith be removed — the faith in the Christian's God — and a living science seems to be at once transformed into a dead register. We talk of the wisdom, the power, the order, the benevolence of Nature. But let Nature be conceived of as apart from a living pro- vidence and a personal God, and then what do such ex- pressions mean ? They have no true or real meaning. They are utterly illusive. Is all the wisdom, are all the marvellous adjustments, of Nature but — the happy con- junctures— the exquisite chance-unsons — of we know not what ? When lost in admiration of marvellous organiza- tions— complexly apt and beautiful contrivances — of what seem like the most kind and beneficent provisions, is the soul that is beginning to glow with wonder at this seem- ing Wisdom, and to swell with thankfulness because of this seeming Love, to be chilled into blank amazement and confusion by the thought that there is no Being of wisdom and benevolence who can be thanked or adored because of these His wonderful works ? Surely this were enough to darken the universe to the explorer of Nature's mysteries, and to fill his soul with perpetual melancholy and confusion. On the other hand, how Nature shines with new glory to him who not only believes it to be the handiwork of God, but believes and knows that God to be his Father ! To such an one " Nature, throwing wide Her veil opacjue, discloses with a smile The Author of her heauties, who, retii'ed Behind His own creation, works unseen I3y the impure, and hears His power denied. The soul that sees Him, or receives sublimed New faculties, or learns at least to emploj- 360 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGRESS. More worthily the powers she owned before ; Discerns in all things what, with stupid gaze Of ignorance, till then she overlooked — ' A ray of heavenly light, gilding all forms Terrestrial — in the vast and the minute The unambiguous footsteps of the God Who gives its Justre to an insect's wing, And wheels His throne upon the rolling worlds." But to the soul thus replenished and sublimed, not only do nature and science become new things, radiant with a spiritual and divine glory ; all things are to such a soul made new. Thus poetry and art receive a new life and a new glory. I have classed Poetry and Art together, for their object, speaking generally, may be said to be the same. Painting and sculpture represent to the eye such scenes as poetry would describe in words. Music is the natural accom- paniment of verse ; its tones and harmonies of thrilling power, or of " linked sweetness long drawn out," are in- tended to excite feelings of the same class with those which are produced by lyric verse. Poetry, in all its kinds — Art, in all its varieties, — deals with the emotional susceptibilities of our nature, with our sense of the beautiful, the noble, the sublime, the terrible, the pitiful. Into no sphere could Christianity be expected to introduce a richer fund of new life than into this. The Christianity which has enlightened and schooled philosophy, and stimulated and ennobled science, has at the same time poured a flood of glory ui)on the outward world of nature, and invested with a sacred and awful majesty the inner world of the spirit. It has touched all things — human life most of all — with sublimity and grandeur. It has quickened and ennobled the whole soul, both mind and heart ; it has called into exercise a new order of faculties ; it has re- POETRY AND ART. 361 „vealed to the spirit a new world of transcendent glory. Wliat power and what pathos have thus been added to man's nature ! What poetry, what painting, what music, have been awakened into " glorious birth ! " Comparing the Christian with the classic world, Professor Wilson beautifully says * : " We seem to feel more pro- foundly than, they — to see, as it were, into a new world. . . . Since the revelation of Christianity, all moral thought has been sanctified by religion. Keligion has given it a purity, a solemnity, a sublimity, which, even amongst the noblest of the heathen, we shall look for in vain. The knowledge that shone but by fits and dimly on the eyes of Socrates and Plato, 'that rolled in vain to find the light,' has descended over many lands, into the huts ' where poor men lie ; ' and thoughts are familiar there, beneath the low and smoky roofs, higher far than ever flowed from the lips of Grecian sage meditating among the magnifi- cence of his pillared temples." "Eeligion," he adds — the Christian religion — "has made poetry far more profoundly tender, more overpoweringly pathetic, more humane and thoughtful far, more humble as well as more high." "As human nature has been so greatly purified and elevated by the Christian religion, poetry, which deals with human nature in all its dearest and most intimate concerns, must have partaken of that purity and that elevation, and may now be a far holier and more sacred inspiration than when it was fabled to be the gift of Apollo and the Muses. We may not cir- cumscribe its sphere. To what cerulean heights shall not the wing of poetry soar? Into what dungeon-gloom shall she not descend ? " Again, says Archdeacon Hare— I love to quote such high names as authorities against the old heresy, which now, born * Rccicatioii.s, vol. ii. pp. 49, 50. 362 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGRESS. again out of due time, Mr. Buckle lias fathered ; and it would be easy to multiply testimonies to a similar effect from such authors as F. Sclilegel, Neander, and De Quincy — Archdeacon Hare says, " Much has been written of late years about the spiritual genius of modern times, as contrasted with the pre- dominance of the animal and sensuous life in the classical notions of antiquity. But when the source of this difference has been sought after, the seekers have gone far astray. One set have talked about the influence of climate ; as if the sky and soil of Italy had undergone some wonderful change between the days of Augustus and those when Dante sang and Giotto painted. Others have taken their stand among the Northern nations, echoing Montesquieus celebrated re- mark, that this fine system w^as found in the woods ; as though mead and beer could not intoxicate as well as w^ine ; as though Walhalla, with its blood and skull-cups, were less sensual than the Elysian islands of the blessed. A third party have gone a journey into the East ; as if it were possible for the human spirit to be more imbruted, more bemired with sensuality, than amid the voluptuousness' and macerations of Oriental religions. The praise is not of man, but of God. It is only by His light that we see light. If we are at all better than these first men, who were of the earth, earthy, it is because the second Man was the Lord from Heaven."* Modern Poetry was baptized at its birth, not in the Cas- talian fount, but in the waters of " Siloa's brook, that flowed fast by the Oracle of God." What a contrast between Homer and Dante ! And how many of the greatest poets since Dante have sung under a like inspiration ! The names of Spencer, and Milton, and Young, and Thomson, and Cowper, and Montgomery, among English poets only, will occur at once to every one. Shakspeare, it is true, was a * Guesses at Truth, vol. i. pp. 249 — 251. MODERN POETRY. 363 child of earth and nature ; human life in the present is his proper sphere. But yet the world which he painted was at all times, and no matter how masqued, a Clnistian and not a heathen world ; the jDrinciples, feelings, and fancies which teem from his lifeful poetry are those of modern and Christian times. The pulse of our rich Elizabethan spring-time beats within his soul. The grand impulse of the Eeformation — the awakening forces which followed the unfettering of the Bible — the free, fresh airs of the young life of reformed England — these helped to rear into per* feetion the genius of Shakspeare. Other great poets there have been — I need only name Pope and Bja-on — who have too often breathed a spirit any- thing but Christian. But as to such, I remark, that they may have been great as artists, even when degrading their character as poets in the true sense, by dealing with earthly things in a selfish and worldly spirit, and, moreover, that even when hostile to Christianity, they could not escape from the impulse and energy and expansive power which, in common with all men, they had received into their soul from the Christian life ; nay, it may be further said, that when rising into true sublimity, or melted and melting by fine pathos, they owed their inspiration, little as they might deem it, to the grandeur or to the tenderness of Christian truth. Wordsworth is a poet of a different order from these. Throughout a great part of his writings, as was, with a noble fidelity, pointed out by Professor Wilson, he is studiously unchristian — a mere deistical philosopher — a better sort of nature-worshipper — his religion, what he has himself called "the religion of the woods." But, nevertheless, the high morale of his philosophy, and the tenderness, beauty, and rapture with which he describes natural scenery, as also the lowliness with which his muse condescends to " low men's huts," and all the matters of 364 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PBOGRESS. their common, homely life, are, in effect, borrowed without; acknowledgment from Christianity. But what has been the consequence of this sad abstinence from any recognition of the Cross, the Saviour, and the Bible ? His greatest poem is cold, comparatively tame, and permanently unpopular. Never will it, like the " Task" of Cowper, become a house- hold book for all the folk of England. We have a great living poet. His exquisite poem, " In Memoriam," is admired by a large circle of refined thinkers, is often tpuching in its pathos, and sometimes rises to the moral sublime. Why? Because it treats profoundly of such thoughts and feelings as Christianity has stirred in the deep hearts of the most earnest men of the age. But why, notwithstanding its transcendent merits, is it yet hardly to be described as a popular poem? One reason is that it, likewise, can scarcely be called Christian. Why, again, are his wonderful artist-like sketches of classic studies, and fabling fancies, so little read by most people, while the " May Queen" is on every lip ? Need I answer why? Modern painting, too, yet more than modern Poetry, was, in its earliest beginning, distinctively and emphatically Christian. Pictures were, in those days, to all but a very few, the only reading books ; to the devout they afforded the only version of the Bible — often, alas ! grossly corrupted and interpolated — which they could read. Hence the " storied windows richly dight," and the pictured altar- pieces. The first struggling conceptions of the artist, so rudely expressed and so painfully executed, yet showing such genuine truth and life, were endeavours to delineate sacred events and scenes of the Christian history. The wonderful rapidity with which the art advanced, and the perfection of its early maturity, must be attributed to the single-minded enthusiasm and devotion with which it was cultivated bv men whose souls were filled with ideals derived MODEEN PAINTING. 365 from meditation upon Christian themes and histories. In illustration of this, I need but mention the names of the chief fathers of Christian art. There was Cimabue, one of the earliest, who lived 600 years ago. Stiff and timid seems his handling, but still there is in the faces that he drew an expression such as never exalted a heathen painting — a gleam of spiritual beauty such as no wonder of mere classic art, however exquisitely wrought, could show. There was Giotto, the congenial friend of Dante, and son-in-law of Cimabue. There was the pious enthusiast, Angelico Fiesole, whose every work of art was a holy task and an offering of earnest devotion, who mingled prayer incessantly with his happy and elevating labour, and who believed that he wrought under the inspiration of Heaven. There was Francesco Francia, Fra Bartolomeo, and great Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and Michael Angelo. Nor was it other- wise with regard to Flemish and German than with regard to Italian art, as the names of Van Eyck, Mabuse, Holbein, and Albert Durer, may suffice to testify. Scarcely, indeed, had the glory of the primary school of Italian painting declared itself, when a rival school, the Venetian, began to turn aside from the path on which the painters I have named were walking. The luxury of proud Venice corruj)ted the purity of art, and the growing degeneracy of the age hastened its downfall, Titian went back to heathen dreams, and, seeking his inspiration from Ovid, more often than from Christian story, endeavoured, with his glowing colours and brilliant hand, to embody in paintings of appropriate style and character the unclean fables of classic mj^thology. Or even if he treated Christian subjects, he commonly treated them in a voluptuous and earthly, not in a Christian spirit. Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, Guido Eeni, and others, followed in Titian's wake. Even the great Correggio, beautiful as are his productions, and though, in many respects, he must 3GG THE BIBLE AMD HUMAN PROGKESS, be classed with the highest masters of his art, and con- sidered worthy to have been the contemporary of Ka- phael, was, as regards some of his most celebrated paintings, utterly and shamefully heathen in the spirit and choice of subjects. The consequence of this apostacy from truth and purity is well known. Art in Italy fell into decline and degradation. The predominance of the animal and the sensuous over the spiritual was followed by a period of servile imitation. High aims were lost ; the love of art was no longer but another name for the love of truth and beauty in outward expression. Artists became mere copyists of flesh and blood, or of the Avorks of those who had lived before them — they were no longer poets — they lived no longer in the world of ideal realities. Painting, however, at its best, in pre-Eeformation times, was too narrow in its range, and too materialistic in its character. The Eeformation came to renovate and emanci- pate art, together with all other good things. This was not, it is true, accomplished all at once. At first men had generally sterner work to do than to paint, or to look at painting. It is true, likewise, that Protestant painters have not commonly treated subjects distinctively Biblical. The Puritanical reaction, which for centuries caused a distaste for such subjects, is neither to be wondered at, nor, I think, to be censured. Nor is it to be desired that art, in Protestant lands, should ever again be employed, as by the Eoman Church, to embody all sorts of fancies, perhaps fables, about Christ and about Christian saints or worthies, real or re- puted. Men must not be at liberty to turn Christianity into a tissue of romantic, perhaps absurd, fictions. Nay, even if a Eaphael in genius should arise among Protestants, it is probable that the scrupulous and susceptible reverence which belongs to Protestantism in its highest forms, so different from the vulgar and irreverent familiarity which ART AND THE REFORMATION. 367 is bred among the adherents of Rome by the tawdry or revolting pictures, and the histrionic exhibitions, of the current continental Popery, would prevent such an artist from doing any such work in these days as was so nobly done by the simple-minded, yet glorious Raphael, in that dawning-time. Yet for all that, I think it may be shown that the Reformation has made art a more catholic and glorious — a more truly Christian — thing than it was before. Art in Protestant lands, in England especially, has left her perpetual vigil within the humanly-built temple, or the cloistral monastery, to go forth into the temple of the universe. For altar-light she has the sun by day, the moon and stars by night ; for roof and dome, the heavens ; for retiring aisle or cloistered shade, she has the " o'er-hung valley;" for gallery or choir, the mountain height; for organ's peal, the " solemn forest hymn," or the roar of the far -resounding main; for pictured master -pieces, on which to linger with fascinated gaze, the enchanting scenes of Nature in all her various moods. The Bible has thrown a new glory over all creation, and has filled with a sacred light, and touched with a holy splendour, all things earthly. Religion is no longer immured as in a dungeon, or chained up by aiiiificial rules, and surrounded by a chevanx-de-frise of artificial sins. She is free of the universe ; and, like her Lord, " rejoices in the habitable paiiis of the earth," and in all "the works of His hands." Hence landscape painting has, since the Reformation, developed so wonderfully, and especially in this country. The Reformation, too, not only removed the shadow which Popery had thrown upon the earth, but the ban with which she darkens all common life, all but the gloomy life of " the religious," which needs no darkening. The Bible shows us Christ beginning His public ministry by attending a marriage-feast, and turning water into wine. So Christianity consecrates and gladdens domestic 368 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGRESS. affections and family intercourse, and throws a glow of heavenly brightness upon all the common things of life. Then why should not Art paint the homely joys and sorrows of the family ; why not lend herself to commemorate all daily experiences of lowly as well as of historic men ? In doing this she does not degrade herself, but ennoble. She does but act in the true spirit of Christianity. Thus art has become, since the Eeformation, especially in thoroughly reformed countries like England, truly catholic. When merely popish, she is narrow and sectarian. She rehearses glorious scenes and histories of the past — depicts to the eye what poets have sung — celebrates all daily events which make life memorable to its possessor — revels in the wide world of God, feasting upon its choicest beauties and sub- limest glories. Nor has she in so doing abandoned her specifically Christian mission. How many martyr histories has recent art commemorated ! How many scenes of family devotion has she symbolized ! And though the Protestant painter may think it of doubtful piety and reverence to paint baby-Christs, and may even hesitate to paint Madonnas, yet how many fine Madonna faces — with a prodigal richness of realising art — may be seen scattered over the treasured pictures of Christian scenes, which abound in the collections of this favoured land. The prevalence of true Biblical Chris- tianity among the women of this country has filled it with faces on which is stamped the highest expression of Christian beauty ; and the choicest conceptions and most perfect pro- ductions of the great Italian master may here be commonly paralleled among the pure and believing daughters of our land. Such faces are reproduced in the paintings of our artists ; and thus, instead of separate master-pieces striving to represent symbolically the purity and glory of one woman, blessed though she were above all others, we have such forms and faces as might have best served to symbolize hers among THE BIBLE AND PAINTING. 369 the common ornaments of our family groups and every-day scenes. Nor is it only in such ways as I have been attempting to describe that a free Bible Christianity tends to develop a large, and loving, and catholic art. Wherever the homes of a country are the happiest and most cherished, and at the same time the most richly fitted and furnished with all that belongs to comfort and taste, this latter condition being in part a consequence of the former, in such a land art will flourish most. The dear family home must be furnished with appropriate paintings and engravings. The beautiful landscape ; the historical scene, of which all have read or heard with so much interest ; the Bible subject, which even the little ones can understand; the family group, which appeals to the sympathies of all — these must be the ornaments of a home, which is the chosen seat of domestic union, of pure and peaceful enjoyments, of taste and affection. Such homes most abound where the Bible has most asserted its power ; above all other countries, they abound in England. No wonder, then, that Eng- land has for many years been the chosen resort of artists. It tells a happy tale for our country that landscape and domestic scenes are most in request among our people. Still further, the peace and security which prevail through- out our land, and that fresh and finished beauty which cveiywhere belongs to it — as the fruit of a long, unbroken Christian civilisation — fill it with such scenery as the artist loves, and make its hills and vales, its woods and streams, its fells and lakes, its parks and farm-yards, its villas and its cottages, its beauteous bays and busy harbours, the chosen haunt and school of the devotee to art. After what I have said as to the influence of Christianity on poetry and painting, I need not dwell at any length upon its influence on Music. I have already said that music is B B 370 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGRESS. the natural accompaniment of song. I may add that it is the artistic exjpression, by means of the sympathies which are suggested by modulated sounds, of all the emotions of our nature. Accordingly, whatever deepens and enriches the source of song must add depth and force to the fountain of music. Music sways and is swayed by the feelings ; it is the exponent and the enchantress of the passions. The Christianity which has expanded and ennobled the whole soul ; which has deepened, refined, and intensified all the sympathies and emotions of our nature, cannot but have quickened the spirit and augmented the power of music. Classic paganism played upon a lyre ; Christianity inspires and rules the mighty organ. Or if she at times may use the lyre, she has added to it many strings since the days of Timotheus. What but Christianity could have developed our modern art, whether vocal or instrumental ? From w^hat theme but that of the "Messiah" could have flowed the sublimities or the veins of tranced yet governed sweetness which belong to the music of Handel ? We know, in fact, that Christian themes and Christian devotion hare made modern music what it is. The graceful beauty and sustained power of Haydn, the marvellous and manifold genius of Handel, the strains of the rich Mozart, now almost oppressive in their solemn — I had nearly said their gorgeous — sadness, at other times wildly and pathetically sweet ; the weird- like melodies and unearthly power and majesty of Men- delssohn— have all been inspired and carried to their utmost pitch by the glorious themes of Holy Writ. I have referred to the " Messiah " of Handel ; let me also mention as highly suggestive names, illustrative of the truth we are consider- ing, the "Creation" of Haydn, the "Eequiem" and the " Stabat Mater Dolorosa " of Mozart, the " St. Paul " and " Elijah " of Mendelssohn. It is true, doubtless, that modem music includes the light as well as the sacred ; and that CHRISTIANITY AND MUSIC, 371 the same masters who have composed oratorios have often composed operatic music. This, however, is only what was to be exj)ccted. Sufficient for me that the greatest masters are both most grand and most tender when their theme is sacred. The same organ which is made to re- sound an anthem, can use its flute stop to play a gay air or sweet merry melody, or can thunder with its bass in accompaniment to a grand march. The same violin which has wailed out its part in the " Stabat Mater Dolorosa " may also be played to accompany the evolutions of the operatic artiste. What I argue is, that the main progress and the present calibre of the musical power and art have been dependent on the power and inspiration of Christian themes. After what I have said on the influence of the Bible upon philosophy, science, poetry and art, I need add but little on the subject of its effects upon general literature. The Bible and Christianity have refreshed and replenished the springs of human thought and feeling. No department, therefore, of intellectual or moral activity could fail to participate in the general quickening and enlargement. From the founts of Christianity a new stream of life has issued, and all along its course it is continually reinforced by fresh supplies from Heaven. It may flash and foam in the cataract of the fierce and rapid ode, or pour its bright and tinted waters down the cascade of gentler minstrels}', or wind its beauteous way through the meandering vale of poetic dreamland; it may spread out into the broad, deep lake of philosophic contem- plation, in which the heavens above are stedfastly reflected, and along with them the mountain barriers which shut in all the scene, and seemed to inframe and imprison the verj' . heavens themselves ; it may roll the deep and constant tide of historic research and reflection beneath the shadow of muse-haunted heights, of lofty peaks whereon prophets have B B 2 372 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGRESS. their everlasting stand, of dark mysterious caverns of sin and woe, or between the plains on which once stood the empire-cities of the world, and where the fights of heroes have decided the world's destiny; or it may divide its mighty waters into many streams, enclosing between them many an enchanted isle of terror and beauty, nurturing many a fertile meadow, many a stretch of rich corn-land, many a noble grove, many a various and delightful garden, but at the same time also, it must be admitted, feeding, here and there, the deadly mangrove swamp or the foetid fen; but, in all cases, the stream remains the same. It can never lose the impulse, the life, the character which it received in that high table-land of prophetic and apostolic inspiration, and from those fountains of regenerating power, from which it flowed. Poetry, philosophy and science, history, and general literature, are all but the various ex- pressions and results of the same renovated energy. Nor can that energy, once imparted, spend itself by time or distance. The Spirit works through all time ; is infusing His replenishing influences into the heart and intellect at every point in the line of progress; the same dews and rains from Heaven which f eed the sources, are found all along the course of the stream ; the same fresh breath which woke up in the far-off mountains of its birth follows its current unceasingly ; and finally, the grand and growing tide, having filled the long valley of Christian civilisation with its glorious and prevailing life, shall pour forth its rolling waters to meet the ocean of eternity. It may now, as I have said, sometimes feed the fen and make fat the swamp. The very fertility which it brings may thus be turned into evil. But not the less is its fruitfulness a blessing, and its force and life victorious for good. The marshes shall one day be healed ; and only trees of health and life be planted by the banks of the river. ■ CHEISTIANITY AND GENEEAL LITEKATURE. 373 I think you will have understood my parahle, and appre- ciated its force as bearing upon the relation of Christianity to general literature. But it would be unpardonable in me to pass from this point without specifically referring to the Bible, as itself a part of literature, the centre and sun of literature, the standard and supreme law-giver, '' the tree of life planted in the midst of the garden." What a literature is the Bible in itself ! How majestically dignified and true its history ! how pure and lofty its ethics ! how divine and sublimely simple its philosophy ! how elevated and inspiring its poetry ! What pathos, what pleading, what irony, what invective does it contain ! What divine ideas of creation and redemption, of power and pity, of righteousness, of pardon, and of love, of meekness and heroism, of humbleness and holiness, give character to its teaching ! What a fountain is the Bible, merely thus con- sidered, from which to impregnate aU modern literature ! But the Bible is not alone. With the W^ord works the Divine Spirit. Thus the best literature of the world be- comes more and more distinctly Christian. This is un- doubtedly the case in England; and what is in England must rule what is to be in other lands. For our literature, take it for all in all, is admitted to be the richest and greatest in the world. But, indeed, we may see how other nations are following in the same course. In Germany, Christianity has asserted its power, even under pantheistic forms. But now pantheism is confessed to be a failure ; and Christianity, even in Germany, is victorious. In France the progress of Christianity, its increasing power upon the living thought of the land, is most obvious. And the genius of the great French infidels of the last age has been unable to preserve their works from that neglect and all but oblivion which they have merited by their unbelief and immorality. I liavc been detained so long upon the subjects which have 374 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGEESS. passed before us, that I have scarcely left mj^self any time for those remaining. So far as my next point — the influence of the Bible on freedom — is concerned, I the less regret this, because not very long ago, the Eev. Asa Mahan, from America, delivered in this place, and to the Christian young men of the Association, a very excellent lecture on this particular subject. Mr. Mahan showed how the Christian, being brought into immediate contact with his Maker, through His Word and His Spirit, is made free and inde- pendent in thought and act, and yet withal reverent and humble ; that such a man is incapable of being bound by mere authority, and need and ought not to be so bound ; that he is entitled to enjoy, and is competent to exercise with advantage to himself and to others, the great privilege of freedom. Sure I am, that no nation composed, to any considerable extent, of such men — men who converse with God, whose souls are made large and strong by medita- tion on the deep things of God and of eternity — can long be dealt with as children. Such men were our Puritan forefathers, who achieved liberty for this land. Nor need any fear to entrust such men with liberty. For while they claim, within the limits prescribed by morality, to guide themselves, and think for themselves — as those who have read "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good" — they are taught by the same Scriptures which warrant them to claim this freedom, not to interfere with the liberty of others. On the other hand, no country is fit for liberty, in the full English sense, until a free religious life has taken a good hold of the mind and heart of the nation. It is an unhappy thing for a nation, when its ideas as to civil liberty are in advance of its development of true religious freedom. True religious life — the life of the Christian con- grogation and the individual life of the Christian man — must CHRISTLA-NITY AND LIBERTY. 375 prepare a nation for the full exercise of civil and political liberty. Why is Spain unfit for liberty, incompetent to bear or use it, though the theory of liberty has long been understood by its best statesmen, and though attempts have, from time to time, been made — made unprosperously — to admit the nation, in part, to its practical exercise ? Why was the liberty of the newspaper press, while it was enjoyed in France, on the whole, a most predominant and pestilential nuisance ? — and why have the French never yet learned to discriminate between a selfish equality for all and true personal liberty for all? There is but one answer. There is very little true and free religious life in those lauds ; very little enlightened and conscientious piety toward God. Why, again, are all German states — even those called Protestant — still in statu, j^iipillari, with no true idea of what liberty means, and not competent, as yet, to undertake self-government ? Still the same answer. Theirs has not been a Bible-creed, but a com-t- creed ; not a popular religion and worship, but a state- religion administered, as state-officials, by a university- trained clergy. Religious individuality has scarcely any existence in many parts. The life of the congregation is unknown. Religion is a state ordinance, and it is under police inspection and control. The rights of conscience are neither respected nor understood. Intolerance of all but the state religions is the principle of the law. This must be altered before Germany can be a free land. Men must be at liberty to choose their own worship; they must be set free toward God ; they must feel their true dignity, as immediately related to Him, and must act upon it. They must cease, in these first and grandest matters, to be mere children, and to be treated as such. Till then elections, chambers, discussions, will be of no avail. They will still be but a nation in nonage. They will possess 876 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGEESS. the forms and banners of freedom, without its life. Chris- tian individuality in each man is the foundation of national greatness. But with individuality must be united — with a true Christian individuality will be united — a sense of Christian brotherhood. Then liberty is not only consistent with, but conducive to, social well-being in the widest sense. The influence of Christianity on social well-being is the last point to which I wish especially to direct your attention to-night. From the fall of the Eoman empire until now, Christianity has been gradually asserting and enforcing, with slowly but surely cumulative power, the law of human brotherhood. I can but give a brief and hasty catalogue of some of her more easily remembered triumphs. Chris- ■tianity has abolished serfdom, blotted out the savage laws which disgraced all the statute-books of EurojDe, made law in most European lands common and equal for all of every class ; she has humanised manners, put an end to judicial combats, abated and in this country all but abolished duelling, and, except in such unhappy Popish countries as Spain and Italy, done away with hereditary blood-feuds and revenges; she has mitigated the evils of war, and put a stop, in Western Europe at least, to mere wars of conquest or aggrandizement ; she has induced the leading nations to make costly provision for the wants of the unemployed poor; has scattered over the land alms- houses, hospitals, and charitable institutions of every kind; she has in most countries abolished, and everywhere greatly diminished, the slave-trade, and throughout a great part of the world has extinguished slavery itself. Christianity has provided nurses for the sick and poor, has widely diffused among the upper classes a care for the lodging and family comfort of their brethren in the lowest ranks of society ; has taught us of late that reformatories are to SOCIA ADVANCEMENT. 377 be preferred to prisons ; has provided ragged schools for unfortunate children who could not otherwise be taught ; has organized great and admirable systems of Christian education for the children of the common people : she has interfered on behalf of the overworked factory operative and miner ; of the counter-drudge, toiling through his six- teen hours of pent-up labour; of the women and the children, who were employed in excessive and degrading toil ; of the poor, overwrought needlewoman. One of the greatest boons she has conferred on society has been the elevation, brought about by her influence, of the condition and whole estate of womanhood in Christian lands ; and perhaps there is no more remarkable and characteristic monument of her power than the magnificent female litera- ture of the present day. Only Christianity could have produced a Mary Somerville, or a Felicia Hemans, or a Florence Nightingale. In a thousand ways does Christianity exercise her ministry of mercy on behalf of all who are in need or distress, tending in every way to redress the hardships and inequalities of society. She reminds the high of his common origin with the lowest ; she impresses upon the wealthy his responsibilities as a steward for his wealth ; she teaches men to be just in all their dealings, and to understand that mercy to the needy and distressed is a part of justice ; she lends dignity to those of low degree, and imparts living hope and consolation to those who are in trouble or adversity. Such a power must be one of social reform and progress. It is, in fact, the greatest spring of such progress, and it cannot fail to be remarked even by the careless that nearly every legal measure or organized movement in favour of any social amelioration and reform, has been in the first instance, and until public opinion was decided on its behalf, sug- gested and promoted by men of undoubted Christian cha- 378 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGRESS. racter. The names of Wilberforce and his coadjutors, and of the Earl of Shaftesbury and his, will be sufficient to refer to. Very much indeed remains still to be done in this and in all the particulars on which I have spoken to-night, before Christianity can in any fair measure be held to have accomplished its mission. Much has yet, doubtless, to be learnt by philosophy, especially in its relation to the Bible. Many discoveries are yet to be made by science. Poetry and art have not yet clothed themselves with all the riches of grandeur and beauty in nature, history, and Christian truth, nor absorbed as into a focus the highest splendours and glories of the sphere in which they dwell. Liberty is not yet so perfectly developed, even in this land, as — if Christianity more and more asserts its power — we may one day hope to see it; and, in most other lands, the blessing of Christian liberty is as yet but little known. And that social progress and well-being of which I have last spoken is, as yet, far from having attained, in the most favoured countries, to a fair development. There are yet too many wrongs and miseries in this thronged world of ours for any man to be content with things as they are. The cottages of our poor in country villages — the wretched dens in which they crowd together in our large towns — the condition of too many of our lodging-houses — the state of sanitary reform in the neigh- bourhoods where the crowded poor live — the state of the law as to the purchase of land, and the actual condition in which the land is too often fettered — the lack of object in life for the poor day labourer to set before himself, and, as resulting from this, the hopelessly depressed con- dition in which he lives — his consequent want alike of providence and of healthy desire or ambition — the degraded and animalised character of a large proportion of our THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE. 379 English peasantry, itself the natural, not to say necessary consequence of such things as I have now glanced at — the still prevailing want of education — tho "great social evil;" these things, and such things as these, come rushing through the mind when we think of what even England ought to be, but is not. These things must be amended ; they will one day be amended, or Christianity is not the divine power which we believe it to be. I expect a long day for the world. I believe that as yet the sun is but a few hours above the horizon. These things shall be rectified. Mighty, indeed, are the adver- saries. Selfishness in all its forms is mighty ; and all the forms of selfishness combine then- forces against Chris- tianity. She contends against "the world, the flesh, and the devil." But she is mightier than all put together. The Spirit of God is the strongest power in the world; it will out-wear, out-dare, out-do all others. Christian men are the strongest and highest men in the world. Christian principles are the strongest and longest-lived principles in the world ; nothing can stifle, slay, or drown them. Associated Christian men can vanquish all others in a free land. A Christian nation is mightier than all others, stands higher, is more prosperous, and they must follow her. The past triumphs of Christianity have been its hardest, and are the pledges of its future triumphs. Those to come shall be its grandest and most glorious. What a nation will this be when a Bible shall be the treasure of every home, and when its principles rule in every department ; when it shall be the " Statesman's Manual," as Coleridge said; when it shall be the trades- man's code of principle, and the cottager's comfort and companion; when it supplies the rule of every family, and brings peace into every house ; then what a country shall this be ! No need of the priest in such a land either 380 THE BIBLE AND HUMAN PROGRESS. for consolation or to bear confession; the woman in her sorrow will go to her Bible for the one, and to her God to make the other. What preachers then should we have in our pulpits, preaching to such a people, and what bearers in the pew ! How would rich and poor, high and low, meet together in the presence of that God who is the Maker of them all ! Am I wrong in believing that thus it shall be not in one land only, but in all lands ? The sun shall rise to his meridian height, and from that glorious and unchanging zenith shall pour his rays into every hidden corner, and down each remotest valley of this wide earth. The treasures of the darkness shall be brought forth ; the capabilities of the earth shall all be called into requisition : a Bible civilisation shall join into one all nations and all lands. " The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord." PAUPERISM, LAND TENURE, AND THE CLERGY. In the essay which follows this Paper, I have endeavoured to trace the rise, and ascertain the causes, of the pauperism of England, and so to indicate the true remedy for that which is the great stain on the glory of our land. My attention was first arrested hy the subject some twelve years ago. For two years I had been resident in Guernsey, where, although the labouring class is poor enough, pauper- ism is unknown, and improvidence is no more a charac- teristic of the labourer, except it be the imported workman, than of the shopkeeper. I then came to reside near Brentford, a sub-metropolitan town, where the poverty, the improvidence, the sordid misery, of a large proportion of the labouring classes are very painfully evident. I could not but ask myself the reason of the difference between the poor labourer in the Norman isle, where population is exceedingly dense and there is comparatively little wealth or enterprise, and the labourer in Middlesex. The first discovery I made was that the condition of the poor, as a class, depended very much on the sort of homes in which they lived; the next, that the poor in Brentford, and in all the country round, could not by any exertions of their own command such homes as could afford a proper soil for virtue and thrift to grow on ; the third, that one main reason of this was the operation, in the past and the 382 PAUPERISM, LAND TENURE, AND THE CLERGY. present, of the laws of entail and settlement, above all, the impossibility of the English peasant, like the Guernseyman, becoming his own landlord. In a word, I found that, ultimately, the radical and seemingly constitutional dif- ference between the character of the peasant of the Norman isle and the English labourer is to be traced to the difference of the law of land-tenure and land-sale in Guernsey and in England. The result of this discovery was the publi- cation of an article on the subject in the London Quarterly Review, which attracted a good deal of attention at the time, and which, as here reprinted, follows next after the present paper. During the eight years which have passed since that article was published, all my observation, which has travelled over a very wide circle, and all my reading have confirmed me in the views which are there set forth. And, although legislation on behalf of the lowest and least intelligent classes, when their interests appear to be in conflict with the interests, and are certainly opposed to the prejudices, of the classes above them, proceeds at a very slow pace, yet by degrees legislation is beginning to move on the lines indicated in my essay. The greatest improvement effected of late years has been in the enactment of the " Union Chargeability Bill." It is idle to hope, however, that that bill will provide a remedy for the pauperism of England. It mitigates some terrible evils, which had been increasing year by year. But it does not even offer to go to the root of the mischief. Neither can all that has been done by such philanthropists as Lord Shaftesbury, and Miss Coutts, and, above all, that most royal of benefactors, Mr. Peabody, do more than alleviate sectional evils. All that is done by such benefactors is so far, so good. But it is, compared to the depth and magnitude of the great radical evil, but little — very little. The pauperism APPEAL TO THE CLERGY. 383 and social wretchedness of so large a xiroportion of the English nation must be traced back to our national history and institutions ; their causes lie deep in the foundations of the past, and are almost as wide as the nation itself. The case is one to be dealt with on the broad scale ; by national measures. I could wish that my brethren the clergy of different denominations could see that this is no secular question, but one of righteousness and of religion ; a question of social morality, one which lies at the foundation of all that belongs to the true Christian reformation of England. In my humble judgment, there is no class of men who are either so well placed for understanding the merits of this question, or so bound to take it up, as the clergy. Social inequalities and disabilities, directly producing demoralisation, will not soon be seen or acknowledged in their true character by those who seem to be the gainers by them, or even by those who, placed more or less aloof, are not themselves sharers in their evil consequences, nor in a position to observe distinctly, in such a case, the operation of cause and effect. So long as the middle classes of Britain are the freest and most prosperous in the world, so long as justice is done to the crowded masses of our well-paid manufacturing operatives, who know how to make their demands be heard, and so long as the gentle and high- born of this land continue to regard the present condition of the lower labouring classes, especially the peasantry, as natural and inevitable, and as one in regard to which their only duty is to alleviate it as far as may be by charity and condescending sympathies, as towards an essentially inferior and permanently dependent race ; so long there is little likelihood of anything effectual being done to lift into true liberty and into manly hopefulness and self-reliance the poorest of the land, unless Christian philanthroi^y 384 PAUPERISM, LAND TENURE, AND THE CLERGY. assert its power, and unless, as called upon by their sacred office, the ministers of Christ take their place in exposing the social wrongs from which social immorality directly results. Who is to he attorney for the poor and needy ? Who is to undertake for the helpless and suffering ? Should not the minister of Christ, above all men, do this ? Are Hildebrand and his priests to enter into heaven before High Church or Evangelical clergymen, before Churchmen and Dissenters, of the present day, because they interposed between the weak that were wronged and their feudal masters, while the modern clergyman is careful, both in the pulpit and out of it, to avoid whatever could possibly intimate that legislators or landlords, the rich or the high- born, have in any serious measure misapprehended the social position and rights of their inferiors, have failed in their duty towards those of low degree ? I cannot doubt that those political economists are de- monstratively right w^io, like Laing, and Mill, and Fawcett, maintain that the laws which regulate the disposal of land, especially in small quantities, and for building purposes, lie at the root of all that concerns the social condition of the 2jeople, i.e. (the definition may be worth noting), of the working classes, of these islands. Temperance, providence, and hope are what the British poor need to make them the pride of their country : and whether they, or the working poor of any country, are distinguished by these qualities or by the reverse depends mainly upon the nature of the laws to which we have referred. Pauperism in this country is regarded as a necessity. As things are, it is a necessity, arising out of the nature of our legislation. The pauperism of England is not only a de- plorable evil, it is a monstrous anomaly, — an ulcer that proves disease, — a glaring contradiction to our wealth and THE LOWER WORKIXO CLASSES 385 seeming prosperity, which laj^s us open to the just reproach of the foreigner. The few only, in rich England, possess a competency ; the great multitude are improvident and pauperised. The few, i.e., the middle and upper classes, are tln-ifty and temperate ; the multitude are sensual and reckless. Yet are the few and the many mainly of the same race, children of free Britain. The well-to-do classes have, indeed, a short and easy expla- nation to give when attention is pointed to the actual con- dition of the millions of England. " It is their incurable drunkenness," we are told on every side. But it is not all drink ; besides the drink — and in the case of those who are i}ot drunkards — there is the recklessness, the improvidence. Pass from the middle at once into the heart of the lower working classes, and the nature of the English people seems suddenly to have been inverted. The middle classes of England are proverbial for prudent economy; the main portion of the lower operative classes for reckless waste ; the middle classes are characteristically home-loving, "domestic;" the multitude two grades below them scarcely know the mean- ing of the word home ; the middle classes are peculiarly neat, tidy, and cleanly, in their person, dress, homes, and all things ; a large proportion of the population which fills the back streets of our great towns, and swarms in the crowded cottages of our rural villages, is precisely the reverse. Whence this contrast ? Are the middle classes and the worldng classes of alien races ? The middle classes a hundred years ago drank hard, and the upper classes harder still ; yet drunkenness in their case did not bring with it all the evils of which we speak. If the middle classes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries di'ank deep, they did not forget prudence, economy, clean- liness ; they were, notwithstanding, thrifty and home-losing folk. Whereas, where there is no excess in drinking among c c 386 PAUPEKISM, LAND TENURE, AND THE CLERGY. our working men, there is Btill too commonly wastefulness at their homes. I admit, of course, that drunkenness aggravates every evil, and is itself the source of very much that we have described. But is it enough to look upon drunkenness as a cause of evil? Drunkenness, on the broad scale and as a characteristic of a class, is much more an effect than a cause — an effect of removable causes — " a very curable malady." The last fifty years have seen it all but die out among the upper classes of this country. What brings the lower classes under the bondage of drink ? Chiefly, tJie want of homes. In the village, where two families are crowded into one small cottage, or the one family with its many small children, its adolescent lads and lasses, and its grown-up male lodgers, fills the common room with litter and discomfort, and precludes the possibility of delicacy or neatness — nay, often of decency — in the inner arrangements of the house, or in the habits of the inmates; of course, tliere no home can be found for husband, or rising lad, or lodger. Neither can even the dispiiited and humble wife retain, if she has ever acquired, habits of neatness and self-respect under such circumstances. She can take no honest pride in her house, can have no love for it as her neat and cherished home, well kept and not unadorned. Too often it is a wretched double cell, where misery cowers, and where chastity and decency can scarcely survive. Domestic tenderness can scarcely bloom in such an atmo- sphere. Female delicacy must be unknown. It is impossible that the richly clustering family affections can be developed in due Christian, or even, in a just sense, in true human, proportions. The house is to all the family nothing more than a needful but unlovely place of shelter ; with hardly a comfort, with hardly an ornament, full of cumber, litter, and care. Such are the homes of the great majority of THE SOITTHERN PEASANTRY, 887 our English peasantry in the southern, western, and south raicUand districts, and of ver}^ many in every part of the land ; such, also, are the cottages of the labouring poor in wide districts of Scotland and in many parts of Wales. The peasant who inhabits such hovels is in character with them. He is not, as poets and theorists have painted, England's glory, but her disgrace; the nursling of the parish, the dependant of the squire ; brought into the world by the parish doctor, pensioned on parish pay, buried in a parish coffin ; dependent on the squire's will for such shelter as his poor cottage affords, precluded from becoming himself the owner of a j^ard of land, and debarred, even when he might otherwise have been able and willing, from adding anything to his house which might render it a decent home for his sons and daughters, and fit for a Christian's habitation. Kad I hazarded such assertions as these a few years ago, I should have incurred the indignation of many honestly incredulous readers. They had been brought up in the faith that England is, in all respects, and for all its population, the freest and happiest country in the world ; that the English poor might all be well off if they would, and are better off' than the people of any other nation ; they have been accustomed to shut their eyes to the meaning of the great fact of our unexampled national pauperism ; they seemed to suppose that the villages of England are beautiful retreats in a veritable Arcadia, that their cottages are charming habitations for their lirethren and sisters of the rural class ; that a southern ploughman on 9.S. or lOs. a week ought to be able to live decently and hopefully, and to bring up his children creditably; and that if, when he is old and rheumatic, and receives notice to quit his cottage, he has not by that time saved enough out of his weekly pittance to keep him comfortably for the rest of his life, he ought to be very thankful to the bounty of that c c 2 888 PAUPERISM, LAND TENURE, AND THE CLERGY. great nation which, if it has left him at the mercy of some great landlord for a cottage while he could work, and by its feudal restrictions has made it impossible that he could ever acquire a garden plot and a homestead to call his own, has yet provided for her friendless and feeble sons and daughters, in the time of their old age, the charitable refuge of the poorhouse ; — where, though the husband and wife be parted by a wall, and can never more live together as one, they may, notwithstanding, be favoured now and then with the privilege of seeing and speaking to each other for a brief season. A few years ago, as I have said, such statements as I have now made respecting the dwellings of the rustic poor would, by the majority of well-to-do Englishmen and Englishwomen, have been simply scouted as incredible, and many would have thought the writer little better than a Chartist agitator. It is true that all that I have now said was proved long ago, by irrefragable evidence. The authorities on which the essay which follows this paper is founded had abundantly demonstrated that things have been as we have described them. In that essay, indeed, I had ventured to give a view in slight outline of what I have now depicted in colours approximating towards the actual truth. But I did not dare to speak out plainly what I knew would be discredited by so many as to damage in other respects the effect of my historical exposition and argument. For what Englishman, above all, what English lady, unless on personal examination of the evidence, could be brought to believe what has been stated? Did not the fair lady drive through the villages ? She could see, as the peasants and children dropt their curtseys, no such things as were pretended. The cottages looked neat outside with the creepers growing up before them ; the village was picturesque, the air fresh, the stream HOVELS AND HOMES. 389 clear and sweet, the old cliurcli charming. Now, however, the evidence of Blue Books, poi)ularised by the discus- sion on the Union Chargeability Bill of 1864, the letters with which, autumn after autumn, all the daily papers teem, and such notorious cases, now and again brought to light, as that of John Cross, the Dorset labourer, have served to produce an impression as to the condition, sanitary, social, and in all respects, of our rural popula- tion which, it may be hoped, will endure long enough to settle into national conviction and abiding result. And if such are the village-homes of the peasantry, I do not need to waste any words in insisting that a large proportion of the lower working classes, including nearly all the day-labourers, in London, and all our large to^Mis, — who lodge, two rooms to a family, or sometimes a family to a room, in the lowest slums and alleys of the lowest and most unhealthy parts of the town, — are, if pos- sible, in a worse condition than their fellows in agricultural districts. Now, our proposition is that those who pig and litter together in such holes, not homes, must, as a class, inevit- ably be drunkards. They cannot stay "at home" when the day's work is done ; they have nothing for it, then, but to go to the only clean, warm, and comfortable room accessible to them, i.e., to the room at the public-house. Nor is this all. What are to be the man's pleasures, when his work is done ? A man w^ho has such a " home " can have no moral or intellectual enjoymient. He therefore betakes himself to the lowest physical pleasures, and all the more fiercely because his oppoi-tunitics of enjoj-ment are so limited. Nor is this all. Sleeping in fetid, poisonous air,— and it is in such air that millions of English working men and women, with their children, sleep,— debases a man's blood. 390 PAUPERISM, LAND TENURE, AND THE CLERGY. depresses his spirits, impairs bis appetite and digestion, and enfeebles bis whole frame. How is his languor to be met, his depression to be relieved, bis flagging strength to be spurred to exertion ? He knows but of one specific, one cure-all, though, alas ! he knows too that it is a curse- all, — he must drink. It is too plain for any earnest philanthropist to deny it. It is proclaimed, not only by Professor Kingsley but by the Earl of Shaftesbury, that the drunkenness of the lower classes of our people, so far as it prevails, depends mainly on the quality of their homes. If they are to be reformed, as a class, from the vice of drunkenness, their social circumstances must be amended. These are the cause of their degradation. This truth, I say, is coming to be admitted. Hence, in our large towns, the model lodging-houses and the model cottages which have of late years been built. Hence, too, such noble examples as that of the Duke of Bedford, in the way of cottage building for the labourers on his estate. Still, ■ in our judgment, this is but a palliative ; it does not go to the root of the evil. Benevolent associations can only in the end effect their object on the broad scale, if they lead to the adoption of such legal provisions as shall secure, gradually, it may be at first, for the people, i.e., the labouring classes, in all time to come, a proper supply of separate tenements, and the power to ensure this supply by their oivn efforts. It is altogether wrong that the needs of the poor, their plain rights, should ever be left dependent upon private will or caprice ; or even, especially in large towns, upon what is called the law of supply and demand, though that is not so bad as the other. Things moral and sacred cannot so be left. Already, indeed, our city and town corporations do in a variety of ways confess their respon- THE POOR MAN HIS OWN LANDLORD. 301 sibility as to the sanitary and social, which implies the moral, condition of their respective boroughs. But it is of all things the least justifiable, the most inconsistent with the boasted freedom and fair dealing of England, that the number, the dimensions, and the condition, in all respects, except as to furnitui'e and surface cleanliness, of the cottages of the poor in this country should be left entirely at the will of the landlord, whose interest it is (or seems to be) to have them as few in number as possible, because of the poor-rates ; who is often too burdened wdth debts to attend well to keeping up his property; who may be careless, or may be represented by a hard or unprincipled steward, or may be altogether an absentee. The only real cure for the lamentable state of things which we have been contemplating, is that which is pointed out in the following essay. I was glad to find that in his good little book, "Better Daj^s for Worldng People," Dr. Blaikie came to the same conclusion, as respects the towTi operatives, to which I had come as respects the working classes at large. He clearly sees that at the root of this problem lies the question of " houses versus hovels," which forms the subject of one of his chapters, and he has attained to the right conclusion respecting it. "To make the problem soluble," he says, " the element of rent must be eliminated entirely. Term-day must cease to have any terrors for the working man. The dreaded visit of the landlord demanding his money must become a thing of the past. The old Hebrew Arcadia must be brought back, when every man sat under his vine and his fig-tree, none making him afraid. . . . The working man must get quit of the landlord, by becoming the landlord himself. He must do all over the country what has been done so well at Birmingham and other places, invest his own savings in his own house. Let him do this, either with money accumulated in his 392 PAUPERISM, LAND TENURE, AND THE CLERGY. earlier years, according to the plan which we have been urging so strongly, or by means of the assistance which investment societies are willing to give him." Even for the peasant labourer, as I have shown in the following essay, this is far from being an impossible solution. Given a sufficiently strong motive to early providence ; given a plot of land and a house within a visible distance, and given the requisite facility for purchasing land at its market value, and the peasant of England would not be in worse circumstances than the Swiss, the Belgian, or the Guernsey peasant. I will not, however, further pursue here a topic which is the proper theme of the next paper. I will only here direct attention to what, even as the law stands, may be done in palliation of existing evils, and in preparation for the better time which is certainly coming. An interesting article from the pen, if I mistake not, of Dr. Blaikie, from one of whose publications I have just quoted, appeared a few years ago in the North British Beriew, Feb. 1861, under the title " Large Farms and the Peasantry of the Scottish Lowlands." This article was designed to show that where, in any country, large farms are the only tenancies, the effect upon the peasantry is very dispiriting and demoralising; and that, besides large farms as one element in the agricultural prospects of a nation, there must be other holdings, if both the land and the people are to be duly cultivated and cared for. Large farms he acknowledges, as all candid men must acknowledge, to have been the great instrument hitherto, in connection with adequate capital, in stimulating scientific agriculture, in carrying forward " high farming" in this country to its present pitch. And he desires that large farms should always be obtainable, in a fair proportion to the total number of farms, as prizes in the general market, LARGE AND SMALL FARMS. 393 and for the sake of those leaders of the agricultural com- munity who shall possess such a combination of large capital with experience, science, and enterprise, as may enable them to work such farms to advantage. But besides these, he would have homesteads and holdings of every gradation of value and acreage, from the good cottage with its large garden, through the small "pendicle" of from three to ten acres, and small farms of forty or fifty acres, to the large holding of two thousand acres. He hints, more- over, that he should be pleased if there were any hope of seeing, mixed up with the class of labourer-holders, that of peasant-pro])rietors ; but seems to imagine that any such consummation is far too good to be hoped for in feudal Britain, notwithstanding the high authority in its favour. The reviewer gives emphatic utterance to a most important truth. Whilst making the admissions which I have already stated as to the actual benefits to agriculture in this country which have arisen out of the system of large farms, he adds that "it is not a truth valid for all places and all times that large farms are the only arrangement that will ensure the highest state of husbandry." He shows, more- over, that that very distinguished agriculturist. Sir John Sinclair, himself an advocate for large farms, and writing at the time when the feeling in favour of large farms was at its highest (1814), nevertheless explains and demonstrates how such farms are needed in a predominant proportion at the commencement of a career of agricultural advance- ment; but showi*^that afterwards, as agricultural skill and science become fully developed and widely diffused, a mix- ture of farms of smaller size and of various gradations, would be advantageous. Moreover, the reviewer adduces decisive evidence that in Dumfriesshire, where holdings and farms of every gradation of size are let on long leases, the 394 PAUPERISM, LAND TENURE, AND THE CLERGY, result is, on the whole, superior as to profit and pro- ductiveness to what is found in the Lothians, where there are none but large farms ; with this great additional ad- vantage, that ijauperism in these parts is almost extinguished. But I am not so much concerned with the comparative results of large farming, and of other systems, as regards the crops that are got off the earth. The main question is the effect of one or another system on the people. Does any man, not utterly besotted with pelf, suppose that it will pay, in the long run, that it will pay the nation, — aye, or pay him in any true sense, — to grow enormous crops on his acres, while the labourers, as a class, are depressed and barbarised ? Which is the more valuable crop to the nation, turnips or peasants ? If, to cultivate the land high, the peasantry, instead of being cultured, must be debased, is it worth a patriot's or a Christian's while to insist upon high farming ? The nation, and in particular the land- owners, have a duty to perform — a duty of stewardship, on behalf of their fellow men, their brethren, their country- men. They are the nation's farm, — and this farm should be cultivated well and highly. That this may be done, and yet the land be loaded with the very heaviest crops, I am optimist enough heartily to believe. But, doubtless, there are two ways of doing it. There were two ways of acquir- ing wealth by factory-labour. The old way sacrificed the operative; but it was needful, we were told, since manufactures must be carried on ; and it was on the whole good for the country, we were told, since an enormous production was attained, to which the world had seen no parallel. But the ten hours' bill came, teaching that the bodies and souls of the peojDle must first be looked to. Well, wealth is made still, but better made ; not always so easily, but on the whole more safely; and a manufacturing population is growing up healthy, animated, intelligent, whereas, on the THE nation's farm. 395 old plan, they were rapidly deteriorating from generation to generation. So we may be sure that eventually farming will be more productive, and that every class will be benefited, in proportion as land is so farmed, and let, and held, as shall most conduce to the training up of a virtuous, self-reliant, provident, and hopeful labouring class. We ought never to forget the principle which has been already laid down that the labouring population of England are, pre-eminently, the people of England. For their benefit, more than for that of any other class, — if classes are ever to be separately regarded, — should the Government be carried on and the laws be made. At any rate, to defend any law, or system, or method, by which they suffer, on the plea that, on the whole, it is good for the nation, is an absurdity; or, if not an absurdity, a most insulting piece of arrogance. The comparatively small minority ought never to be spoken or thought of as the nation. The witness of the reviewer is true when, having admitted the benefits, in various ways, of the large farms, ho adds that " the peasantry have not, on the whole, shared equally in those benefits." The large farms have been combined with an artificially, unnaturally, injuriously restricted num- ber of labourers' cottages. The feudal powder of the landlord, the trammels of entail, and the fear of increasing the number of poor to be supported, have led to this result. Hence a disproportionate number of single labourers, for whose lodging there has been no natural and proper provision ; who have herded together in the kitchen and out-houses, or have been lodged in the " bothy." The former system is incm-ably bad; the latter, by care, and zeal, and conscience on the part of the employers, may be made comfortable, and pos- sibly even a means of improvement. But, as a matter of fact, this is seldom the case ; while at the best all is de- pendent on the liberality and enlightenment of the farmer. 396 PAUPERISM, LAND TENURE, AND THE CLERGY. or the landowner, or both ; usually all depends on the farmer. The other evil of an exclusive system of large farms is, as the reviewer puts it, that the peasantry " are shut out from all hope of bettering themselves, and compelled to a life-long routine of day labour." The reviewer has here pronounced the deepest possible condemnation of the system. No more cleaving curse, nor one that eats its way more deeply and ruinously into the moral stamina and character of a race than this can be conceived. A race of labourers so shut out cannot be expected to be self-reliant, or hope- ful, or provident, or temperate. Such men, of course must be pauperised; the very system which sets itself, by its restrictive policy, to prevent the increase of poor- rates, ensures the fact and the permanence of pauperism. The contrary system cures pauperism at the root, as is well shown in the reviewer's paper. But it also benefits every class, not only the agricultural labourer, but all labourers, the small tradesman, the large farmer himself, and finally, and most of all, the landowner. All this has been abundantly proved by fifty years' experience in Dum- friesshire ; is set forth in a conclusive pamphlet by an agriculturist of the very highest authority (Charles Stewart, Esq., of Hill Side) ; and is well epitomized in the North British. All that is wanted to make the result perfect is a system of free sale and cheap transfer of land, such as has prevented pauperism in the Channel Islands, and ex- tinguished it in Switzerland. A few peasant -proprietors sprinkled among Mr. Stewart's leaseholders would complete the arrangement which at present we so much admire. And if the law of entail, and the sale and transfer of land were reformed, these results would follow without further legis- lation. A sample of the working of such a reform may already be seen in some parts of Ireland, long cursed with PROGEESS OF IDEAS. 397 feudal restrictions, with mortgages, and all incumbrances, but now filling up with thrift, and industry, and plenty. I have preferred to leave the following essay as it was written, with only a few paragraphs omitted. Since it was written, something has been done towards preparing the way for the registration of titles and the cheap and easy transfer of land. And that much more w^ill before very long be done, may be inferred from the utterances of so accom- plished a lawyer as Sir James P. Wilde, at the Social Science Congress of 1864, held at York, where he presided over the Jurisprudence Department, and delivered an almost un- equalled inaugural discourse on the subject entrusted to his Presidency. In the course of that admirable discourse he said much which bears upon the matter now under consideration. I can only quote, however, one sentence. He speaks of our present system of legal exposition and administration as having broken down, and describes the consequence as being that " our real property is bound in the clogs and shackles of feudal rights, and that our laws of personalty are tainted with analogies largely drawn from the same extinct system." Some bills brought before Parliament, also, during this session by Mr. Torrens and other members agree with the principles indicated in my essay. I do not doubt that, as time passes, the legislation of this country must be brought more and more into harmony with those principles. THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OE ENGLISH PAUPERISM.* Some fifteen or twenty years ago the temper of a large proportion of the lower industrial classes in this country was so turbulent and threatening, as to fill the minds of serious men with deep alarm, and to lead to an earnest and general movement in behalf of their moral and social elevation. For some years past there has certainly been a great apparent improvement. Is this improvement radical or superficial? Have we reason, as a nation, to be content with the present condition and prospects of our operative population? And may we safely leave time and the pro- gress of events to work out a complete cure for remaining evils ? Above all, is the pauperism for which this nation is unhappily proverbial, and which may be taken as the concrete of all our national evils, and the source of all our disorders and discontents, in a fair way to be remedied ? Our answers to these questions will appear in the course of this paper. About the period to which we have referred, a seditious Chartism had deeply infected the operative classes, and the favourite theme at many popular gatherings was the curse of British aristocracy and the wrongs of Englishmen. The principles of the French Kevolution were avowed and ex- pounded, and the glory of American democracy was the subject of interminable admiration and eulogy. But Char- * London Quarterly Review, October, 1858. CHARTIST DISCONTENT. 399 tism, when brought to the test, proved itself to be as weak and cowardly as it had been vaunting and vapouring ; many of the Chartist leaders turned out to be as selfish and mer- cenary as they could have been, if they had been born aristocrats ; land-schemes ignominiously failed ; and so the Chartist bubble burst, and the Chartist spirit was broken. Since that period. Providence has greatly favoured Britain. The gold-fields have taken away a large proportion of our surplus population, and opened a sphere for that restless energy which might otherwise have wrought mischief at home. Free-trade has greatly developed manufactures, and at the same time revolutionised and regenerated agriculture. It has been so ordered that, for the most part, when the price of corn has been high, trade has been, notwithstanding, generally good ; and when employment has been scarce, provisions have been low. The attention of the Christian Church has of late years been very earnestly directed towards ameliorating the condition, as well social as religious, of the lower classes. The character of the education provided for these classes has been immensely improved, and especially has been impregnated with a more earnest and religious spirit. Excellent cheap periodicals, adapted expressly to the tastes and needs of working men and their families, have been established. The penny-postage, in itself a grand moral and educational agent, and an unspeakable boon to the poorer families of the land, has come into full operation. What there was of truth and justice in the representations and claims of Chartists and democratic agitators has found exponents and advocates among those who are, in the highest sense, the nobility of the land. Much has been done, and is still doing, to remove hardships and redress grievances. Law, no longer content merely to administer according to usage and statute, — or, at the most, aiming at nothing higher than a sternly just arbitration between con- 400 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. tending claims, — is now aspiring to be benevolent and paternal. It recognises an equity which transcends such things as the laws of inheritance or the rights of vendor and purchaser, and rises to the great Divine principles of mutual truth, service, and love. Land has been partially unlocked ; monopolies have been broken ; the duty of pro- viding primary education for those who have not the oppor- tunity of obtaining it for themselves has come to be admitted and even in some measure conscientiously discharged. Nor has the great and fundamental duty of providing fit and proper dwellings for the poor been altogether lost sight of by the legislature, though, indeed, as regards this all-im- portant point, it is sadly little, in the way of legislation, that has hitherto been accomplished, or even attempted. The proprietors of the land, however, and the great em- ployers of labour, are of themselves doing something ; some are doing much and well. In not a few instances, indeed, they are largely contributing to advance the material and moral interests of their dependants. The result from all this is, that better principles, sounder information, greater comfort, and a much more contented spirit, have during the last fifteen years been extensively diffused among the upper sections of the operative classes. Nevertheless we are sadly convinced that, with all this improvement, there yet remains a very large portion of the lower strata of society little, if at all, affected by it. The proportion of our working people who read cheap periodicals of a wholesome tendency, or even a weekly newspaper, with anything like regularity or intelligence, is much smaller than many suppose. Indeed, the great majority of the lower classes are still unable to read, or can do so only in a painful and imperfect manner. The crowds who attend public meet- ings, and who applaud the popular orator when he utters clap-trap common-places about Britain's liberties and glories, I THE LOWEST CLASSES. 401 contain, as a rule, very few indeed of those to whom we now refer. The public house, the low theatre, and places worse than these, are their customary haunts. While in the classes above them sobriety, intelligence, and right prin- ciple are gaining ground, there is reason to fear that, among these, ignorance not less dense, and depravity far more intense and energetic, prevail, than has been the case with any equal proportion of Britain's sons of toil in former ages. Here there is still stored up fuel for sedition to ignite. Here is Britain's weakness and canker. Here is her intestine disease, threatening the vitals of the body politic. There is but too much reason to fear that Dr. Guthrie's warning is well founded. " Look," exclaims that noble man, who possesses no less benevolence than genius, and whose prac- tical insight and sagacity are not inferior to his eloquence, " look at London and Glasgow. He must be blind who sees nothing alarming in the moral aspect of these commercial capitals. There ignorance and irreligion are washing away the soil from beneath the lowest courses of the social fabric. Let that continue, let the undermining process go on till a convulsion comes, and no power on earth can keep the pyramid from toppling over, bringing down throne and altar, and all that stands above, in a common ruin." We have, during several years past, devoted much attention to this subject ; we have endeavoured to estimate the cir- cumstances and influences which, for better or for worse, bear upon the condition and prospects of the great multitude of our countrymen ; we have made it our business care- fully to weigh facts and evidence on all sides ; and we have arrived at a settled conviction, that evils of fearful power and intensity threaten the foundations of our national well-being, which only a truly Christian energy of wisdom and benevolence can remedy and subdue. This conviction we share with all, so far as we have been able D D 402 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. to learn, who have thoroughly and impartially examined the matter. " There is a poor, blind Samson in this land * * * * Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand. And shake the pillars of this commonweal, TiU the vast temple of our liberties A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies." It has been too often the case, from the days of Cassandra dovrawards, that warnings to nations have been given in vain. But the monitory voices from statesmen, from phi- losophers, from poets, and from Christian ministers, which have, during the present century, been uttered in the ears of the British nation, in regard to the dangers and duties peculiar to this " age of great cities " and of aggregated labourers, have not, we are j)ersuaded, been in vain. Apathy is passing away ; many noble spirits are leading in the van of moral and social improvement. Already the move- ment is seen and felt. The thunderous clouds that once hung heavy and lowering over half the prospect are rolling steadily away : for a while, indeed, they may collect them- selves in consolidated blackness on the horizon, and, appear- ing thus more formidable in their retreat than in their gathering and prevalence, may seem to threaten deluge and destruction. But, with the blessing of Providence, we hope to see them continue to pass away, until the sun shines grandly in a cloudless heaven. If Christians are true to their Lord, their faith, and their duty to their fellows, this must be the case. But they should know, and all should know, that this victory is not to be gained but by ardent love and holy devotion, by prayer and self-sacrifice, after the pattern of Christ, and in the strength of God. Of the glories of his country what loyal Briton can be insensible or unmindful ? Our unrivalled empire ; our CONTEASTS AND ANOMALIES IN ENGLAND. 403 secure and splendid monarchy ; our magnificent aristocracy, peerless among the iwhlesse of Europe, not only on account of the refinement, accomplishment, and wealth, for which it is pre-eminent, but, most of all, because of the truly noble qualities which add lustre and unenvied distinction to many of its members ; the freedom and the statesmanly discipline and spirit of our legislature ; our wonderful free press, which wields a power so unparalleled, on the whole so wisely and so well ; our unequalled commerce ; our stupendous manufactures ; our national self-government, self-reliance, and indomitable energy; the godly reverence and Christian principle which, to so considerable an extent, pervade our middle and upper classes ; the Christian zeal of the British Churches, and the manifold benevolence which, in a thousand forms of voluntary charity, distinguishes the nation : all these are characteristics which, in degree at least, if not in kind, are peculiar to Britain among European nations ; and, taken collectively, they exhibit a summary of virtues and advantages of which a patriot spirit may perhaps be pardonably proud. Yet we are bound to say that our national pauperism and the coarse and fierce animalism of our lower orders are our opprobrium in the sight of Europe. We are the richest nation ; and yet, at any rate within the limits of Northern and Western Europe, our common people are, beyond comparison, the most pauperised. There is amongst us more refinement, and more true and energetic Christianity, than in any European land ; and yet our operatives of the lower sort are indis- putably more drunken, more coarsely vicious, more brutal in their manners, than are the lower orders of any other nation. How startling are these contrasts and anomalies ! The problem which benevolent and patriotic men, for a number of years past, have set themselves to solve, is, how to remedy this condition of things. Some have directed D D 2 404 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. attention to one supposed remedy, some to another. Per- haps the common error, into which nearly all have fallen, has been to suppose that their particular remedy could alone, or all but alone, accomplish the great reformation needed. Little aware apparently how complex is the great social disorder which needs to be rectified ; from how many roots it has grown up, and how variously combined and mutually perplexed have been its ramifications ; each school of political philosophers, each sect of practical philanthro- pists, has had its own specific. Whereas, in truth, there is no hope whatever of anything like a complete cure for this wound and disease of " the daughter of our people," except in a combination of many ameliorative principles and agencies, all growing out of the one root of Christian love and brotherhood. Nothing, perhaps, has been so generally regarded as the one and the all-sufficient remedy for the improvidence, pauperism, and demoralisation of what are called "the masses " of our population, as Christian education. And, assuredly, there is no one remedial agent which is likely to accomplish so much as this, if we can only find the means to provide and to apply it. But, in order to the eventual success of the great educational enterprise itself, it is necessary, in the first instance, to understand that by edu- cational provision alone what all Christian educationists so much desire can never be accomplished. In fact, unless other reforms are advancing hand in hand with educational improvement and progress, it will not be possible to provide, nor, if the means were provided, would it be possible to apply and impart, a Christian education for all the children of the lower orders ; nor, if it were provided and imparted in the schools, would it be possible thus to counteract and subdue the hostile, anti-Christian, demoralising education which existing social causes and conditions conspire to EDUCATIONAL INFLUEXCI":S. 405 render inevitable out of school. Let it never be forgotten that the home, the street, the workshop, the pit and factory, the stakes and prizes of social and political life, cheap news- papers and periodicals, the laws and institutions of the country, form the effectual means and incentives of our national education : tJicse train up the men and women, the citizens and parents, of our land. Doubtless the school and pulpit may do a great deal directly for those who come regularly under their influence. But yet much of their work must be destroyed, if the subjects of their instruction are at the same time continually under the action of hostile influences. And how great are the multi- tudes who come very slightly and irregularly, if at all, within the range of Christian school training ! while still larger numbers never go near church or chapel, after they have been released from their constrained attendance as Sunday scholars. The general and very obvious conclusion is, that unless the power of our national Christianity can prevail to reach those social habits and institutions, those civil or political conditions, and those moral influences, which have combined to give form and character to the operative com- monalty of England, the work which needs to be accom- plished must be left to a great extent undone. School education alone can by no means achieve the grand result of making the working people of Britain frugal and provi- dent, sober, moral, and well behaved. And, even though it could, still it is not possible to devise any plan by which, apart from other reforms, the children of the poor can very extensively or efficiently be brought under the influence of such education. The coarseness and violence — what one is compelled to designate by the harsh term, brutcdlsm — of the lowest classes of England has its varieties. There is one brutalism of Lan- cashire, and another of Norfolk, one of Northumberland, and 406 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. another of Dorsetshire ; one of the agricultural labourer, which again has its subvarieties, another of the "navvy," the collier, the foundryman, the Staffordshire potter, the Birmingham mechanic, the Sheffield cutler, the factory opera- tive ; but in all such varieties, there is a common substratum. They are but modifications of the same fundamental character. The low and reeking lodging-houses of our great towns, in- deed, where human beings litter together like unclean cattle, are, on their present scale, a foul modem institution, and the intense and disgusting demoralisation which they en- gender must be considered as an extreme and exceptional phaBnomenon. As such, we shall take no account of it in the discussion on which we are now entering. Yet it is necessary to remark, in passing, that even for this, the unwholesome and overcrowded dwellings of the English poor, not only in large towns but in country villages, must be considered as having helped to prepare the way. Still this abomination, one is thankful to know, has no title to be accounted peculiarly English, except in so far as England possesses more towns and cities overcrowded with immense operative and migratory populations than any other country of Christendom. In Paris, and in New York, the same evil is to be found fully developed, — in the former city in excess, perhaps, of all that is known in London. At Berlin it is not found, owing to the stringent and admirable municipal and police regulations. And to municipal and police regulations must we look for its effectual remedy in this country. We have just stated our judgment that, speaking, of course, generally, there is one fundamental character which belongs in common to the coarse animalism of the lower classes of England. A distinction might, indeed, be drawn between the character, in this respect, of the serf-like peasantry of the agricultural counties which lie south of the Trent and of the Dee, and that of the well-paid and energetic but MODIFICATIONS OF THE GENERAL TYPE, 407 improvident operatives of our large manufacturing towns. These latter, however, are in our opinion little other than the same race under diverse conditions. Closely aggregated in large numbers, relieved from the conditions of praedial dependence, in the receipt of ample wages, which they have never been educated to use aright, made aware how necessary they are to their employers, taught by combination their collective power, — the servile units of the glebe have, in one or two generations, been changed into what our masses of manufacturing operatives now are. What could be expected but that those whose forefathers were what the English peasantry were too generally in the latter part of the last century, and the first third of the present, should, when placed in circumstances which at the same time surrounded them with temptations, and provided ample means for the indulgence of their passions, show themselves to be just what too many of oui* operatives have been ? What pleasures could a population know, born and bred under such influences as had ever surrounded them, except those of sensual in- dulgence and excitement ? For what else had they been pre- pared or trained ? Let their parentage be considered, the atmosphere in which they were brought up, the homes in which, for lack of better, they were compelled to live, the cruel long hours of their labour, for many years, and the consequent exhaustion of their frames, producing a craving after unnatural stimulus even stronger and more importunate than the cry of their weariness for rest, — and the wonder rather is that the operatives of England are not worse, on the whole, than that they are no better. Sunday schools alone, there can be no doubt, prevented, in the last genera- tion, the utter demoralisation and decomposition of society in the classes of which we speak. These saved the common- wealth from ruin,— and hardly saved it. Our escape has been narrower than nianv deem. 408 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. Notwithstanding a basis of manly, honest, and often generous qualities, the common character of all the uneducated and unelevated classes of the English labouring population includes, as marked and obvious features, improvidence, dis- trust of their superiors, discontent at their social position, and a predominant passion for gross animal gratification. Of this general character we regard the rude, heavy, un- hopeful English peasant, who knows no indulgence or relaxa- tion but that of the ale-house, and lives equally without content and without ambition, as affording the fundamental type, which, like all other things English, possesses a marked individuality. It differs decidedly from the Irish type of peasant degradation. Something of this may be due to the effect of race. The Kelt and the Saxon may be expected to differ. Yet we think but little stress is to be laid upon this* There is, probably, much more Keltic blood in the southern and western counties of England, — and, also, more Saxon blood in some of the southern and even western parts of Ireland, than has been generally supposed. We apprehend that a Saxon population, under the same conditions as the southern and western Irish peasantry, would have grown up into very much the same sort of people as the Irish have been; while a Keltic population, exposed to the same influences, through successive generations, as the midland and southern peasantry of England, would not have been essentially dif- ferent at the present day from the actual cultivators of the soil. The Irish peasant is poorer and yet more reckless than the Englishman ; but he is not so sullen or so spiritless. His body is not so muscular or so strongly set as that of the Anglo-Saxon husbandman, on whose frame the hard and unintermitted toil of thirty generations has stamped its unmistakable impress, and, correspondently, he is a less persevering and less vigorous labourer ; but, as a general THE ENGLISH AND THE IRISH PEASANT. 409 rule, his stature is taller and his step far more free and elastic than that of the sturdy but slow and stunted labourer of our southern counties. There are wild moun- tainous districts of the west, indeed, in which the lowest type of the Irish peasantry is found, that must be taken as exceptions to our general statement ; and as many from those regions cross the Channel to tramp through England in the complex character of mendicant labourers, no doubt some have received from them an impression as to the Irish peasantry very different from what our observations are intended to convey. But no one can have travelled through the south of Ireland without having noticed what we state. The Tipperary and Kilkenny peasantry are proverbially tall, Connemara has been famed for its " giants," and many of both sexes throughout the south, are, spite of their rags, fine figures, and graceful in their movements. While looking at them, we have ceased to wonder at what has been regarded as no better than the arch-agitator's blarney, when he spoke of the Irish as the " finest pisantry in the world ;" and we have even felt saddened as we mentally contrasted with what we saw before us the bearing and appearance of our own Southern labourers. For the tattered Irish peasant, living in a mud hovel, is, after all, a gentleman in his bearing ; whereas there is generally either a cringing servility or a sullen doggedness in the demeanour of the south Saxon labourer. The Irishman is, besides, far more intelligent and ready-witted than the Saxon husbandman. The fact is, that the Irishman, if underfed, has not been overworked. His life has not been one of unceasing and oppressive labour. Nor has his condition been one of perpetual servitude. With all his poverty, he has been, to a considerable extent, his own master. Half starved, or satisfying his appetite on light and innutritious fare,— far worse housed and clad than 410 THE OBIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. the poorest English labourer, ofteu mdeed almost half-naked — oppressed by middle-men exactors of rack rent; with all this the Irish cottier has been, from father to son, and from generation to generation, a tenant, and not merely a day-labourer.* Every Irishman is, in his own esteem, and is esteemed by his fellows, a gentleman ; every Irishwoman a lady. All this has its false, its ridiculous and its mischievous aspect ; but yet it has helped to preserve the Irish, under unparalleled disadvantages and misfortunes, from becoming altogether degraded and embruted. To these considerations must be added the influence of the priesthood, which was formerly of a much better character than during the last forty years, and which, though in many respects a terrible evil, has not been without a civillising potency. The people have universally been in habits of familiar intercourse with a set of men who had, for the most part, received the education of gentlemen, and who have been their teachers and counsellors, exercising among them the functions of a wonderful moral police, taking cognisance of thoughts, feelings, motives, and conduct, which an English boor would allow neither the parson nor the magistrate to talk to him about. Hence it has come to pass that though idle, reckless, and, within certain limits, unprincipled, even to a proverb, — though far less able of body, as well as less inured to • " Almost alone among mankind," gain; if he is lazy or intemperate, it says Mr. J. S. Mill, " the Irish cottier is is at his landlord's expense. ... He has in this condition, that he can scarcely be nothing to hope, and nothing to fear either better or worse off by any act of except being dispossessed of his holding ; his own. Ifby extra exertion he doubled and against this he protects himself by the produce of his bit of land, .... his the ultima ratio of a defensive civil war." only gain would be to have more left to — Mill's Political Economy, vol. i., p. pay to his landlord ; if he had twenty 389. children, they would still be fed first, Neither this description, however, nor and the landlord could only take what that of the text, applies strictly to was left. If he were industrious or pru- Ireland as it now is. It was true of dent, nobody but his landlord would Ireland prior to 1847. THE ENGLISH PEASANT. 411 labour, than the Englishman, — the Irish peasant is, at the same time, less brutalised in his general character, and is almost free from that sort of sullen servility so characteristic of the English rustic. He loves a drop of "the cratur," but is seldom really sottish in his tastes and habits. He is, or at least was till within a few years past, fond of a fight at a fair, but has not been greatly given to beating his wife. He knows how to speak to his betters, and often contrives to get and keep enough schooling to enable him to read the county news. If the lowest of the Irish, driven by poverty from their homes, transplanted to new associations, and heaped together in our great towns, are among the very worst part of our urban population, this will not invalidate the general truth of the picture we have drawn. In our American and Australian colonies few do BO well, in all respects, as the Irish emigrants. The English peasant has the bearing of one who is in a condition of conscious degradation. He has an air of desperate resignation to a hoj^eless fate. He never forgets that liberty should be his birthright : but he appears to feel that a serf-like condition is his actual lot. Too poor is he to move from where he is, too low to rise from his present condition. He is practically tied to his "settlement," and, being born a labourer, he feels that labourers he and his must die. He belongs to a great and free nation ; he bears the grand name of " English- man;" he considers himself really as good as the nobleman or gentleman on whose estate he works. But he looks from far l)elow, in utter and bitter hopelessness, upon the wealth and luxury of those above him, feeling that while pleasures and grandeur are for them, he can scarcely, through life, even taste of comfort ; that he can have no prospect for his old age but the common poor-house, with a wall between himself and his wife, if both should live till so 412 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. sad a time, and that his children after him must like himself toil, and slave, and die. To an Englishman such a condition must have horrors unspeakable, if steadily contemplated. Why, then, should those look forward to whom forethought can only bring misery? In these respects the condition of the English " son of the soil" contrasts with that of the born legal serf. The Kussian bond-slave of the estate has never tasted or seen, has not even imagined liberty, nor his fathers before him. The idea is to him as yet unknown. His body is fed ; his house, clothing, and fuel are sure ; sure to him, and to his de- scendants after him; if he cannot leave the soil, so neither can he be left without a provision for his bodily and family necessaries. It is true his bread is black, and his diet altogether coarse ; but he has never thought of better. Hence, notwithstanding revolts in more recently annexed and enslaved provinces, the customary yoke has hitherto been borne, for the most part, with a sort of stolid patience and content. To this condition dreadful miseries and vices attach themselves ; but there is not the same con- sciousness of degradation or bitter repugnance to his lot as English pauperism tends to engender. Hence also, in some respects, there is even less brutalism, and that precisely because the poor wretches are so abject, so utterly slavish, so helplessly dependent, so implicitly and mechanically obedient to the will of their lords. In fact English brutalism arises out of a combination o^ causes. At the bottom of them all is a condition of hereditary pauperism which has now been operating for four or five centuries. But the effect of this pauperism has been modified and determined as to its special character by the contrast of general comfort, of frequent luxury, of abounding wealth, of unfettered privilege, in the middle and upper classes ; by that sort of independence which springs from THE QUESTION OF RACE ELIMINATED. 413 neglect ; by the al3sence or feebleness of the restraints of master shiiD, education, law, and love. This brutalism of the lower classes of England has often been supposed to depend upon the qualities of the race. It is believed to be in the island blood, just as certainly as the peculiar qualities of the British mastiff or bull-dog are hereditary. But to which of the elements of race, that have gone to make up the national character,' are we then to suppose it to be due ? Is it the blood of the fierce Norse wassailer which still riots in the veins of the northern working-man ? How, then, does it happen that, where that blood is purest, among the peasantry of remote Norwegian mountains, we find frugality, and provi- dence, and mildness of manners, to be prevalent in so high a degree ? Or shall we say that it is not the Danish but the German element to which must be traced our national tendency to rude excess? Still we are met by the fact that, notwithstanding all the beer-drinking of the hard-headed Germans, the manners of the German peasantry are as pleasant as those of the English boor are rude, while their saving and thrifty habits are pro- verbial. It is not, then, to the qualities of the British race, as such, — it is to no influence bred in the blood and bone of our nation, — that we are to attribute our national defects. Nor can our insular condition be made to account for anything more than a certain amount of pride and reserve. Temperance, thrift, and household graces and virtues, are as likely to flourish in an island as on the mamland. As little can we lay the fault on our stormy sky and changeful seasons. These tend rather — as is evident from the experience of our middle and upper classes — to endear the homes of England to their inmates, and to promote domestic virtue, comfort, and refine- ment. If the prevalence of fogs or storms were the 414 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. cause of surly rudeness or boisterous excess, the simple and kindly Norwegian, and the civil and homely Hol- lander, would not have presented the contrast which they do present, in these respects, to so many of our own countrymen. In our opinion the ccmrseness, violence, and intemperance of so many of the lower classes in England is mainly and fundamentally owing to that pauperism which, alas ! has, for ages and ages past, been a "domestic institution" of our land. If English brutalism has transcended the sphere of our established and ordinary pauperism, this is what none need wonder at. It is with us Englishmen very much as it is with our horses. Every one knows, in the latter case, that the quality of all the intermediate sorts — hunter, hackney, coach-horse, or what not — depends on that of the two extremes, — of such as Lord Derby's Toxophilite at the one end, and of Buxton's or Meux's dray-horses at the other. These are the two factors which determine the quality of all between ; nor can either of these be deteriorated, but all the others suffer. Just so is it with the people of England. Our peasantry constitute a fundamental factor in determining the quality of the nation; and pauperism has for ages past degraded and demoralised our peasantry. Hence improvidence and rude animalism have become the hereditary habit and constitutional temper of our lower orders. Many of these are far removed above the pauperised indigence which was the inheritance of their fathers and forefathers. But what has been inwrought for centuries into the life and habits of the lower people cannot soon or easily be worked out. Hence, in too many cases, that recklessness which was the natural consequence of a hopeless and hereditary pauperism, still continues when the operative has been lifted to a position in which his resources are amply sufficient for his needs, and only forethought and PAUPERISIM THE FUNDAMENTAL EVIL. 415 exertion are required to enable him to find for himself, and to show to his family, the hopeful path of social improve- ment and elevation. What is worse still, and peculiarly disheartening, is, to find that increase of wages, which might have afforded the foundation for the sure and steady eleva- tion of the working man and his family in the scale of society, is, in very many instances, so abused as to deepen the degradation of the workman, and to increase the wretchedness of his ill-used wife and neglected children ; so that the evils which had their first root in a hopeless poverty, seem often to be aggravated, for a time, when that poverty is done away. It is clear that the want of education, as well as an hereditary and constitutional animalism, has much to do with this last result. Men who have never been prepared, by a proper education, to relish any rational enjojTnent, and whose hearts have never been renewed by Divine grace, seek naturally, almost inevitably, for re- laxation and excitement in the indulgence of their animal passions. If the view which we have now indicated is correct, im- portant conclusions follow. If the pauperism of England is one of the fundamental causes of the too generally degraded and depraved condition of the lower orders of its working classes, then it is manifest that so long as this continues, — and at present its rate of abatement is exceed- ingly, almost inappreciably, slow, — all attempts, by means merely or chiefly of educational provision, to effect the mental and moral elevation of the common people of England, must, to a great extent, be neutralised. The removal of this pauperism is the first thing to be aimed at by our Government. That education alone will suffice to remove it, no practically well-informed philanthropist can suppose. In fact, its existence, to so great an extent, precludes the possibility of applying and rendering actually 416 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. available, where they are most required, the means of education already provided ; and, viewing this pauperism in all its bearings, in all the conditions which it implies, and in all the consequences which it involves, it must be further said, that whatever education might be imparted to those brought up within the sphere of its daily, nightly, and hourly influences, must in a sadly large proportion of instances be almost thrown away. It is necessary to know the causes of this English pauperism, if we would ascertain the way to its cure. There must be some peculiar causes to account for a phfenomenon so peculiar. In no other nation do we find anything like it. We must not, indeed, compare England with Naples, or the poor that crowd * our unions ' with the lazzaroni of the south Italian capital. There the prodigal fertility of the soil, which yields the most abundant returns, though scarcely any labour is bestowed upon it, and the luxurious climate, which, while it almost compels to indolent enjoyment, renders clothing and shelter all but superfluities, combine with the prevalence of an ignoble and superstitious Popery, to reduce the lower population to a condition bordering upon that of savage life. Neither, for reasons of a similar character, would it be right to make any comparison between our English poor and the Spanish peasantry. And yet, in sober truth, the pauperised section of England's population would, in most respects, suffer by a comparison with the Spanish peasantry. The latter are generally sober, contented, and well supplied with the comforts of life. They are, for the most part, neither paupers, nor in any fear of pauperism. But what we may fairly ask is, why a very much larger section of the population in this country is thoroughly im- provident and pauperised than is or ever has been the case in France ; where, as a rule, sobriety, providence, and in- dependence are the characteristics of the peasantry. We THE PAUPEKISM OF ENGLAND. 417 may fairly ask why, in many of the Swiss cantons, and in the Tyrol, in many parts, also, of Rhenish Germany, pauperism is, in fact, all but unknown. Why, again, should the peasantry of Jersey or Guernsey, where the population is very much denser than in England, form, in these re- spects, such an amazing contrast to that of our own land ? "Why is it that only in Bohemia, and a few other of the most backward and impoverished portions of the Austrian Empire, can we find any parallel to that which has for centuries been the normal condition of a large proportion of the English poor ? England is the wealthiest and most fruitful country in the world; in no country is so much money gained, or so much paid for wages; in no country is the revenue so large ; nowhere is the land farmed so well or to so much profit ; in no country are the middle and upper classes so amply supplied with all comforts, so refined or well-educated in every sense ; in no European country do all classes, from the middle upwards, advance so rapidly in all that belongs to the highest civilisation : then why, in such a land, are there, in proportion, more dependent, unprovided poor than in any other ? Why, in such a land, is there more reckless improvidence than in any other ? To answer this question it is necessary to trace the stream of pauperism to its sources. Pauperism is no recent phas- nomenon in English history ; it is no result, as some have supposed, of modern manufactures, though, in some in- stances, it may have been aggravated by them. Who can doubt, indeed, that the manufactures of England have always been, on the whole, a great boon to her working population; and that they must furnish the means, in great part, and in combination with co-operative and coun- teractive agencies and influences, of ultimately redeeming them from the condition which we now deplore ? Ages E E 418 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. before the modern development of manufactures in this country, pauperism was at least as larevalent in proportion as it is now. It has always, indeed, and in all nations, been a popular delusion and a poetical fiction, that the former times were much better than these. There was once, romancers will have it, " merrie England" in the "good old times." " A time there was, ere England's griefs began, "When every rood of ground maintain'd its man ; For him light Labour spread her wholesome store, And gave what life required, but gave no more : His best companions, innocence and health, And his best riches, ignorance of wealth." So sang Goldsmith nearly a century ago, before the *' curse " of modern manufactures had come in. But when we come to investigate, this poetical Elysium is found to retreat very far back indeed, until our further inquiries are lost in the mists of antique fable and tradition. One of Shakspeare's characters, supposed to be speaking in the days of Henry the Sixth, — so long ago, — is made to say, that "it was never merrie England since gentlemen came up." Where, in fact, are w^e to find an age of popular freedom, virtue, comfort, and content, in the history of England ? Was it in the Druid times? The accounts left by Cnesar and Tacitus may help us to answer that. Was it under the Eoman domination ? at the time of the Saxon invasion ? amid the discords and mutual wars of the Heptarchy? when the Danes were ravaging all the coasts and half the interior with fire and sword? Or must we find it in the gleaming interlude of peace and comparative prosperity which followed the victories and the qualified ascendancy of Alfred ? or in the short-lived tranquillity and progress of the reign of Edward the Confessor? Unlikely as it might seem, it is probable that the nearest approach to any such WHAT ENGLISH HEDGES TEACH. 419 condition of things as the poet has described and popular dreams have pictured, is to be found in the period to which we have last referred. At least, if it is not to be found here, we are sure that it cannot be found later. • " The green net- work of hedges," says Mr. Laing, " spread over the face of England, that peculiar charm of English land, must have been formed at some very peculiar period in the history of the Enghsh people. It must have been the work of a nation of small proprietors long employed upon it. We view it as an embellishment only, and frequently as an encumbrance, rather than a CDnvenicnce, in husbandry ; but it is a memorial of an extinct social condition, which has prevailed in some former and distant age in England. ... In Scotland, in France, in Germany, in all European countries in which the feudal system gave the original law and tenure of land, no small properties fenced all round from each other have existed of old, unless, it may be, in a few small localities. In England, the history of society and of property is written upon the face of the country. This immense work must have been executed in the six hundred years between the final departure of the Eomans and the Norman conquest. The open un- enclosed surface of those districts of France which belonged to the earlier kings of our Noi'man line, shows that in those provinces in their time no subdivisions of the land by numerous small permanent enclosures had ever been required or formed. The small enclosures in England must have been made in a different state of society, before the Norman con(piest, yet probably after the llomans left the country. No country occupied by the Romans shows any such traces of subdivision among a small proprietary. . . . The Saxons and Danes — one people in the principles of their laws, institutions, and languages, although in different states of civilisation — must have woven this immense veil over the face of the land during the six centuries they possessed England, under a social arrangement in which their law of partition of property among all the children, excluding the feudal principle of primogeniture, would produce this subdivision of the land into small distinct fields." ^ This seems to be not only an acute and ingenious, but a very probable supposition. It must, however, be remem- bered, if we grant its truth, that, though the true feudal • Laing's Notes of a Traveller. First Series. Part i. clia]). ii. E E 2 420 THE OKIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. system was not established in Saxon or Danish England, yet the peasant holders who cultivated the land, and in whose families it descended (perhaps according to the Norse custom of subdivision), were not the owners of the soil. The churl paid service to the earl for the land he cultivated- His tenure was but a species of villenage. As long as he rendered the service due to the lord, he could not be dis- possessed of the land he occupied; but neither could he leave the land, or refuse body-service to the chief who owned it. Thus, in Saxon times, was every township or manor divided between the chief or prince (who held the demesne) and his liegemen or followers. These latter were the ceorls (churls), cottars, or bondes — a sort of peasant proprietors, only that, as we have seen, they were adsciipti gleha, tied to the land, and owed, instead of rent, personal service to the lord. But beneath this class was another, the class of theoives, or serfs, consisting of captives taken in war, or criminals degraded and sold as a punishment for their offences. These last, though they, too, may often have occupied a little land, seem to have been in the lowest possible condition of slaves. But though, in some respects, the condition of the Saxon or Danish "villains" or "churls," who formed the great body of the people, may have resembled that of peasant proprietors ; though in peaceful and prosperous times rude plenty, and a tolerable condition of general freedom and equality, may have belonged to their lot in life ; though, possibly, in the latest years of the Saxon period, during the days of the Confessor, a state of settled peace and of fair prosperity may have carried the general liberty and contentment to a height before unknown; still few will suppose that the condition of the lower classes in the cen- turies which preceded the Norman invasion was one to be envied by any of us in these days. It is not among rude VILLENAGE AND SERFDOM. 421 anJ rioting Saxons, nor among wild and cruel Danes, that we must look for the past golden age of "liherty, equality, and fraternity." English peasants might still have, at most times, plentiful diet, and to spare, if they could he content now to fare as Saxon " villains " fared of old. Hard times and short wages are known now; but cruel raids and ravages, unkindly seasons, and desolating floods, too often, in those times, filled the shires of old England with hitter mourning of the bereaved, with famine, and pestilence, and misery of every kind. Besides this, there must have been many cases of lordly oppression and cruel wrong, even as regarded the cottars or villains : how much more in regard to the unfriended serfs, who possessed no rights, and whom no law defended ! Assuredly England was far from a i)ara- dise, in those days, for any class of its inhabitants, whether lord or villain, earl or churl, freeman or serf. And so far as regarded the lower classes in particular, their condition, at best, was one of rude libei-ty and coarse abundance, not greatly elevated above the savage state ; while to paint the horrors of the lowest and worst condition in which even villains, not to speak of serfs, were often found, would need a firm hand and strong colours. Nevertheless, whatever may have been the disadvantages and sufferings of the cottar and serf population before the Norman conquest, these were greatly aggravated when their Saxon or Danish lords were exchanged for foreign tyrants, and when the laws and customs of Edward the Confessor, as the old code was called, gave place to complete and universal feudalism. Of the depressed and degraded con- dition of the subject peasant population, whether called villains or serfs, there is no need to speak. The impression made upon the common people by theii- -^Tongs and op- pressions may be understood from the proverb already quoted from Shakspeare, and which, no doubt, the great dramatist 422 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. had many a time heard repeated in the greenwood by the foresters of his own Warwickshire. " It was never merrie world in England since gentlemen " — a pre-eminently Norman word, a word smacking strongly of the feudal pride of race for which the Normans were so distinguished — "since gentle- men came up,'" i.e., since the Saxons were subdued by the proud Norman chivalry. Nearly all the common people were either villains, tied to the land and to the township or lordship, or bond-serfs, the personal property of their lords. Very few, indeed, were the small freeholders, or the free tenants ; and these were so much at the mercy of the un- scrupulous lords of the soil in their neighbourhood, that it was no uncommon thing for them to renoulice their freedom and become villains adscripti glehce, that they might thus purchase protection at the cost of their liberty. There were besides these, of course, burghers, and free craftsmen, members of trades' guilds ; but the number of these was comparatively small. The great bulk of the population, the commonalty of England, for centuries after the Norman Conquest, consisted of these depressed " sons of the soil." These were the progenitors of the English peasant population of later days. The southern agricultural labourers of to-day are, for the most part, the lineal descendants of the serf and villain population of the southern counties of Britain six centuries ago. Nor is it difficult to trace the stages by which the condition of their ancestors gradually changed into that of the modern day-labourer — a change in some things for the better, but in some things also for the worse. Serfdom became gradually mitigated in character, often rather from the necessities than the good-will of the lords. In its grosser form the spirit of the Church was oj)posed to it, and many were the bondmen who were manumitted by their lords as a religious duty, and to gain favour with heaven. Villenage lingered much longer in the land, and VILLENAGE PASSING AWAY. 423 rather died or wore itself out than was abolished. Indeed, neither kind of servitude ' seems ever to have been abolished by statute. Villenage, though comparatively rare, was by no means extinct in the fifteenth century. " In the year 1514, we find a charter of Henry VIII., enfranchising two slaves belonging to one of his manors. As late as the year 1574, there is a commission from Queen Elizabeth with respect to the manumission of certain bondmen belonging to her."* Such facts as these are, of themselves, in our judgment, suflicient to refute the opinions of those who, like Kingsley and Froude, would have us to believe that the condition of the peasant labourer in the time of Queen Elizabeth, or even of Henry VIII., was one of manly liberty and great abundance. Considering that at the beginning of this period the general prevalence of serfdom had scarcely gone by more than three generations, and that the institution still lingered in many parts of the land, this is to us simply incredible. Whatever changes, for better or for worse, have taken place in the condition of the staple population of this country, have taken place gradually, and in the earlier periods must have taken place very gradually. Nothing less than such a convulsion as the great French Revolution could have produced, within a single century, so entire a transformation in the condition of the peasant cultivator. Two centuries and a-half were needed to melt away serfdom and villenage from the land. The movement which began in the four- teenth century (individual cases of manumission there had of course been before) was not comjjleted till the middle of the sixteenth. More than traces of villenage still remained in the days of Elizabeth. But how could this consist with such a universal condition of hearty enjoyment and material * Robertson's Charles V., note 20. remained bond-slaves, tied to the coal cs- The colliers in certain parts of Scotland tatCjUntilenfranchisedbystatuteinlTOS)! 42'1 THE OEIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. prosperity among the lowest classes as Kingsley paints in his Westward Ho? The single intervening reign of Henry VII., however peaceful and prosperous, could by no means suffice to put such a distance between the England of the Civil Wars, and the England of Henry Tudor and Elizabeth, as the representations of Froude and Kingsley imply. These authors may have studied the Eecords, and diligently read original sources. But this is little to the purpose. It is notorious how little light ancient chronicles throw upon the condition of the common poor. Their writers had an eye for barbaric splendour, and celebrated the prowess and pageantry of the upper classes ; but it was not their vocation to speak of the condition of villains or of serfs. Nor do statutes which prescribe wages for the skilled craftsman — in many cases, be it remembered, unable to follow his calling during a great part of the year, and often, doubtless, at other times unable to obtain employment — avail anything in reference to the condition or wages of the poor cultivator — churl or villain still in common parlance, even though his bond to the soil, or his personal thraldom to its lord, were broken. We have intimated that this change of condition for the ** villain" was, in some respects, for the worse rather than for the better. If, when his tie to the land and the land's lord ceased, the ground which he had cultivated for his own use had been made his own, with the right to sell or bequeath it, or any portion of it, as might seem best, his condition would have been bettered, and a class of peasant proprietors would have been created, labourers still, and by no means entrenching on the "demesnes" of the lords, but in a position to become the founders of a frugal, provident, independent order of men, who might have contributed greatly to the strength and excellence of the nation. In some instances this was done, and hence, MODERN GERMAN VILLENAGE. 425 in great part, arose the yeomanry and the copyholders of England. This was especially the case in those parts of the country where the ancient British influence had lingered longest, and where feudalism had never attained to entire predominance, — such as Cumbria, Wales, and Cornwall.* The same thing was fully carried out in the Norman isles, where the lords and the " villains " were all of the same race, and where the old Norse law of in- heritance never ceased, to a great extent, to prevail. Hence have arisen the peasant proprietors of these lovely islands, so famed for their temperance and thrift. The same thing substantially took place in Lombardy, and in many parts of Switzerland, in both of which countries the peasantry are proverbially frugal and prosperous. The like happened, to a considerable extent, in Spain, and also, to a still greater extent, in France. In all these cases, be it observed, the people and their lords were of one race. In German}', as a rule, villenage was not abolished till after the beginning of the present century. Up to that time, in not a few parts, serfdom still prevailed, while nearly all the cultivators of the soil were still peasants adscripti glclxc, owing certain dues and services to their manorial lords. But as a direct and most happy con- • In reference to the " statesmen " centuries " a perfect republic of shep- of Cumberland and Westmoreland, Mr. herds and agriculturists, proprietors, for J. y. Mill remarks, " There is but one the most part, of the lands they occu- voice, among those acquainted with the pied and cultivated ; the members of country, on the admirable effects of this which existed in the midst of a powerful tenure of land in those counties. No empire, like an ideal society : neither other agricultural population in Eng- high-born nobleman, knight, nor esquire land could have furnished the original was here; but many of these humble of Wordsworth's peasantry." In a note sous of the hills had a consciousness he quotes some very striking passages, that the land which they walked over relating to these peasantry, from Words- and tilled had for more than five hundred worth's little work on the scenery of the years been possessed by men of their Lakes. A few sentences we cull from name and blood." Mill's Political the quotations. The upper part of the Economy, vol. i. p. 311. dales is spoken of as having been for 426 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. sequence of the French Eevohition, this condition of things was done away throughout nearly the whole extent of Germany, within the first twenty years of the present century. It was, however, done away on the principle that, with certain abatements and subtractions, in com- pensation for the dues and services which were taken from the owners of the soil, the peasants should become the pro- prietors of the land they tilled. At the same time provision was made for the eflicient education of the now enfranchised I)opulation. The result, on the whole, has been successful beyond all that could have been expected. Instead of a pauper peasantry, Germany, in those parts of it which are well administered, has a thrifty and provident race of well- to-do peasant proprietors.* by the military, imprisoned, and flogged. . . . This system was in full vigour up to the beginning of the present century, and not merely in remote and unfre- quented corners of the Continent, but in the centre of her civilisation; all round Hamburg and Lubeck, for in- stance, in Holstein, Schleswig, Hanover, Brunswig, and all over Prussia. Besides these baronial estates, with the born serfs attached to them, there were peasant estates, which held generally of some baron, but were distinct proper- ties, paying as feu duties or quit-i"ents so many days' labour in the week, with other feudal services and payments. The acknowledgment of these as dis- tinct legal properties, not to be recalled, so long as the peasant performed the services and payments established either by usage or by writings, was the first great step in Prussia towards the change in the condition of the peasantiy. It was stretched so far as to include the serfs located on the outskirts of the barony, and paying daily labour for their patches of land, who, by long usage and occupation for generations. * The following (slightly abridged) quotation from Mr. Laing will illustrate not only the statement contained in the text, but also many remarks in the dis- cussion which follows: — "Previous to 1800, landed property was, on the greater part of the Con- tinent, divided into noble or baronial, and peasant, roturier, or not noble holdings. The baronial estates, by far the greatest in extent, had the peasantry who were born on the land adscripti glebcE ; had a right to their labour every day for the cultivation of the domain; had civil and criminal jurisdiction over them in the baronial court of the estate ; had a baronial judge, a baronial prison, and a bai'onial bailiff to flog them for neglect of work or other baronial ottences. These slaves were allowed cottages with land upon the outskirts of the estate, and cultivated their own patches in the houi's or days when their labour was not required on the barony lands. They paid tithes and dues out of their crops to the minister, the surgeon, the school- master, and the barony judge. ... If the serf deserted, he was brought back CONTRASTS IN GERMANY AND ENGLAND. 427 The dates at which these changes were effected for all parts of Germany, are given by De Tocqueville in note D to his work on France before the Revolution of 1789. Gene- rally they range from 1804 to 1814. But serfdom was not abolished in Lnsatia till 1832, nor in Hohenzollern-Sig- maringen till 1833. But what happened in these cases did not take place in England. The lords and the villains were of different races ; feudalism was carried to its utmost height ; the proud spirit of the Norman aristocrats could brook no owners of land who w^ere not of their own blood. Had there been good understanding and mutual affection between the lord and his villains, these, remaining on the land from genera- tion to generation, would have gradually grown into j)easant IH'oprietors. But the turbulent spirit of the Saxon peasant, who could not forget the bitterness of the foreign yoke, and the answering contempt of the Norman gentleman, prevented this from being brought about. The peasants were glad to break away from their tie. The price which they paid for their liberty was the forfeiture of the land which they had cultivated. This was often a good bargain for the lord, — more often, it may be feared, a bad bargain for the peasant. What the lord lost was but, for the most part, the pcr- had become a kind of hereditary tenants, measure, which was projected and not to be distinguished from what we carried into effect by Stein and I lardeii- would call copyholders. Prince Harden- berg in a succession of edicts, from that burg's energetic administration made all of October 9th, 1807, up to June Ttli, these occupants the absolute proprietors 1821, is the great and redeeming glory of their several holdings, and had of the reign of Frederick William III., the quit-rents valued, commuted, and and, like all great and good measures, bought up from the dominant property, was accomplished with much less difii- under inspection of commissioners, by culty than was anticipated. Feudality the surrender of a portion of the land had become cflcte."— Zainf/'*- Notes of of the servient property, if the peasant a Traveller. First Series. Part i. liad no money f>)r the purchase of the chap. iii. redemption. This great ami t;nod 428 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. sonal service and the partial labour of his villain, the value of which in many cases was little or nothing. All the labour or service that he required could be much better done by far fewer persons, entirely devoted to the work. What he gained was the land which had maintained his villain and family. This he might sell, and so convert into treasure what hac] been before all but valueless ; or he might take it into his own domain, and farm it to the best advantage. Whereas the villain or serf, having ob- tained his freedom, must either pay his lord a money-rent for the land which he had cultivated, or he must leave it altogether, and go forth portionless into the world. In any case his children had lost their inheritance. The land which had descended in their family of right, so long as they held the servile relation, passed altogether into the hand and property of the lords of the domain, when they had become freemen. The effect of this could not but presently begin to tell. Doubtless from this time the land, in many cases, came to be better farmed, and to yield a much larger return both of produce and of money- value. But it supported in comfort fewer families in proportion to the population. The increased profits were not divided equally among all those who laboured upon it, but were swept into the revenue of the lord. The wealth of the country grew apace ; but the cultivators were, at least relatively, and many of them positively, poorer and more depressed than they had ever been. Whereas formerly, the surplus labour of the villains and their sons, beyond what was merely sufficient to obtain present necessaries for their families, went to augment their common stock of comforts and of property, now the em- X)loyer purchased of them all their strength and skill at the lowest rate for which it was to be had. And as fewer hands could, with harder work and better system, do all RISE OF BEGGAR PAUPERISM. 429 and more than all that had been done before, there was, so far as we can find, almost always a surplus of labour in the general market, which enabled the employers to get their work done for just ^ little as was necessary to feed and clothe their labourers from day to day. It is plain how all this was likely to work, and history tells us how it did work. The first two notices on the Statute Book of the existence in the land of pauperism and beggary occur within the reign of Edward III., in the years 1349 and 1376. In the previous century the upward movement of the English commonalty had begun; and, by this time, the enfran- chisement of the servile classes had made great progress. The statute of 1376 throws some light upon the sjjirit in which this movement proceeded. It enacts severe punish- ments for "runaway servants" (or slaves?) ; it speaks of the runaways as turning " staff-strikers;" and is eloquent against " sturdy rogues." In the reign of Eichard II. we have three statutes on the same subject, of the dates respectively of 1382, 1388, and 1391 ; in the second of which we find the fact recognised, for the first time, that there was a class of destitute poor, who were so through misfortune or old age, and not from any fault or unwillingness to labour on their own part. Of these it appears that there were at that time great numbers. They are commended to charity. In 1402, under the reign of Henry IV., there is a further statute referring to the same subject. All these acts prescribed severe penalties against thieving and mendicancy, but all in vain. During the civil wars Parliament had no leisure to attend to this subject. Besides which it is likely enough ■ that many strollers, whether called " thieves" or " mendi- cants," turned soldiers on one side or the other, and found slaughter and robbery furnish occupation greatly to .their taste. But, in the reign of Henry VII., Parliament was again obliged to turn its attention to what appears to have 430 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CUBE OF PAUrERISM, by this time become a greatly aggravated evil. And hence- forward we find, extending throughout the palmy period of England's greatness under the Tudor dynasty, — when some would have us think that employment never failed and plenty was the uniform attendant of diligence, — a series of savage and barbarous statutes relating to this subject, which prove that the evil of pauperism was deep and desperate. One of these, passed in 1547, under the reign of Edward VI., and which re-enacted with certain aggravations a former cruel law of Henry VIII., provided that all vagabonds, being " whole and mighty in body," should be branded with a red- hot iron, and made " the slaves" for two years of the persons informing against them. This law did in fact re-enact slavery under its most cruel and revolting forms. All these statutes agreed in forbidding, under terrible penalties, "sturdy and valiant beggars" from going about to beg, and in re- quiring them to labour for their living. But not one pre- scribed how labour was to be found for them. This was the pinch of the case. High wages might, for half the year, be given to skilled craftsmen ; but the poor day labourers were left, in many instances, without employment. Sometimes parishes were ordered to find them employment ; but hoiD is not defined. It must be plain to every attentive reader of the history and records of the sixteenth century that a perpetually increasing torrent of vagrants, most of them " sturdy and valiant beg- gars," was pouring through the whole land. We have seen that this had begun before the dissolution of the monasteries; nor can it be supposed, as it has been by many, that that event had any considerable effect in permanently increasing the number of vagrants. There is evidence to show that the monasteries at this time did much less in the way of providing for the poor than has been supposed ; and there can be little doubt that they bred full as much pauperism and vagrancy BEGINNINGS OF THE POOR LAWS. 431 as they relieved. Henry VIII. is said to have hanged seventy- two thousand robbers and vagabonds ; but, to judge from the statutes of Edward VL, the evil increased notwithstandino'. It continued to increase throughout the sixteenth century, — the period of Mr. Froude's admiration, the era of good Queen Bess, in reference to which Mr. Kingsley says so many grand things true and untrue, — till at length, in the very reign of Elizabeth herself, by the Acts of 1562, and especially of IGOl, unemployed poor were for the first time made rateable on the parish. In 1G62 was enacted the old Law of Settlement, bind- ing the labourer to his parish, and so restoring, in one respect, the slavish law of villenage, but without the compensating advantage of that law. This oppressive enactment was patientl}' borne more than a century, not having been re- pealed till 1795. This brings us to the year when the final and most pernicious system of Poor Law management under the old Poor Law was introduced into this country. Times were bad. The American war had impoverished and dis- couraged the country; then came the war against revolu- tionary France, with its drain and its reverses. There were, in the latter part of the last century, and in the beginning of the present, — in what some probably still persist in regarding as the " good old times," — many bad harvests, and, as a con- sequence, the price of bread and provisions was often very high. Under these cu'cumstances all sufiered, many suffered greatly, and the labouring classes were several times reduced to an almost desperate condition. These facts may perhaps help to account for the rise and spread of the system of Poor Law administration to which we have referred. That system itself rapidly tended to demoralise and degrade the population of the southern and south-midland agricultural counties of this country. The recent wonderful development of manu- factures saved, to a considerable extent, the northern counties from its pernicious operation. 432 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. This system seems to have been first distinctly arranged and acted on by the Berkshire magistrates. It is set forth in the minutes of a magistrates' meeting, held at Speenhamland, near Newbury, on May 6th, 1795, and puhiished in the Read- ing Mercury of that date.* It provided, with the best and most humane intentions, that relief should be given to the poor, whether in or out of employment, making up the wages of all alike in a certain ratio according to the number in the family. Thus the labourers were rendered independent of labour, and the consciences of the farmers relieved from all responsibility as to adapting their rate of wages to the price of provisions, or to the industry and skill of the labourer. Thus all distinctions as to payment were done away. "Whether the labourer were indolent or diligent, slovenly or careful, ignorant or skilful, it was all the same. Character lost aU marketable value. The industrious small farmer was taxed to make up the pay of the idle and dissolute labourer, who was made to fare as well as himself. " Independence was discouraged, improvidence was rewarded, and the labouring class was proclaimed free of those moral restraints which act so beneficially in all other orders of the community." For forty years this ruinous system was in force ; and the amount of idleness, vice, perjury, and crime of every kind which it bred, it is impossible to calculate. It would have broken down the agricultural interest, but that the war and the Corn Laws together kept up an unnaturally high price of corn. Such a price ought to have given high wages to the poor; but the Poor Law kept down wages, and enabled the farmer, who was usually also an overseer, to get the deficiency of wages paid out of the public purse. But such a system could not have failed, in the end, to bring ruin upon all classes. It demoralised the character and destroyed the manliness of * See Appendix (B) to First Annual Report of Poor Law Comniissioners. No. 4. Mr. Hall's Report. EFFECTS OF THE OLD POOR LAW. 433 the southern labourer; it buried the small tradesman or farmer, however industrious, under the weight of parochial taxation. The close of the war made matters worse. Prices fell some- what, and the labour market was glutted. Those who left the army were for the most i^art idle and vicious, and not unfrequently also ferocious. The brand of those evils has deeply scarred the character of the labouring classes in those counties where this system was fully carried out. In Glou- cestershire things were not so bad as in the southern counties generally, owing probably to the woollen manufacture in that county. The system was cautiously and prudently worked. There the poor rate averaged about 8s. lid. for each inha- bitant, man, woman, and child. But in Wiltshire it rose as high as 1G.5. 7d. ; in Suffolk as 30s., and even 40s., — a per- fectly frightful amount of taxation. And there, accordingly, we find that all was rotten from one end to the other, — contractor, farmers, and paupers, altogether completely demoralised.* The above slight sketch will afford some idea of the con- dition of the English poor in the various ages of our history. No doubt there have been better and worse times ; but never at any time, since they became legally " free," have these classes been otherwise than dependent and pauperized. The old Poor Law did but aggravate an evil centuries old. It did but take the last touch of old English manliness from the character of those who had never known what true indepen- dence meant ; it infused the true spirit of serfs into those whose position had never been much more than nominally superior to that of serfdom. It met the pauper spirit by giving to it the beggar's dole ; it adapted itself to the im- providence of the labourer by setting a premium on idleness and levpng a tax on industry. It could never have been * See Appendix (B) to First Annual Report of Poor Law Commissioners. No. 2. F F 434 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. carried out, as it was, if servile ideas had not been widely diffused among the labouring population, and if the farmers and gentry had not been long accustomed to regard the labourers as mere pauper pensioners. It no doubt made everything worse, but it effected no transformation of cha- racter. That system has happily been done away. In our judgment the present system is incomparably to be preferred. And we cannot doubt that the result of the change has been some improvement in the manliness and self-reliance of the southern and south-midland peasantry. But to our thinking it is something monstrous and altogether discreditable, that such a stupendous mechanism as that of the present Poor Laws should have become necessary. It is only custom that has reconciled us to it. If, for the first time, its meaning and connections were exhibited to us, we should feel how unnatural must be the condition of things which has rendered it necessary for us. We have pointed out one fundamental injustice, as we deem it, which was done to the labouring class as an order, in their being sent forth to flood the labour market un- portioned. They and their families were not more than the labour which had been bestowed upon the land could provide the means of supporting ; but yet they were more than were actually required to keep that quantity of land under culture, or, at least, they were more than were needed to make it pro- duce as much revenue as before to the landowners. Had they become freeholders of the land they had occupied, though with some abatement by way of compensation to the lord of the demesne, their own interest in the soil would have been quickened, while their sons would still have furnished labour enough to till efficiently, for hire, the land of the lord. Thus all might have advanced together, and many more families have been comfortably provided for from the land. That first error, however, is long past helping now ; yet the injury done THE EFFECT OF FEUDAL UESTRICTIONS. 435 is not past healing, as we hope. The truth is, that the origi- nal disj)ortioning of the cultivators was a much less serious grievance than that feudal principle which prevented them from ever becoming owners of land. Here has been the pecu- liar hardship and evil of feudalism in this English land. Not only had the labourer no property in land ; but, speaking generally and practically, he could acquire none. A strict entail ordinarily forbade the proprietor from alienating the smallest portion of it ; besides which, the legal expenses of sale — another consequence of the complexity of feudal titles and tenures — were of themselves sufficient to prevent a poor man from ever hoping to become an owner of land. He could not even buy a plot on which to build his own cottage. He was condemned to take the hovel which might happen to be vacant at the time. But, liable to be ejected from it at the shortest notice, he naturally and properly was unwilling to make the smallest outlay upon it. How different a man would he have become, if he could only have hoped, by any amount of thrift and industry, to attain to the ownership of his own homestead, however humble, on which he might work as a labour of love, and which he might leave, both cottage and plot of land, to his widow or his children after him ! The feeling of home and ownership ; the desire of gaining for oneself and for one's family afterwards a name, a rooting, and a place of rest, on the. soil of one's own land; are perhaps the strongest among man's domestic passions ; and assuredly there are, apart from the power of true reli- gion, no principles of our nature which afford so effectual a leverage as these for raising men to a sense of their own responsibilities. Men will, as a rule, become frugal and provident, when they see before them, within a reasonable distance, the prospect of obtaining an independent home and some propei-ty in the land of their fathers ; and the habit of providence once acquired will be transmitted from father to F F 2 43G THE OEIGIN, CAUSES, ATs^D CUEE OF PAUPEEISM. son. But the peasantry of England have been among the most unprovided and hopeless of freemen. When young, they might save a little ; hut to what purpose ? The utmost they could save would go no way towards making them in- dependent ; a life's long toil would barely suffice to enable them to purchase a little property, if propei-ties were to be sold. And, after all, in very many cases, land was not to be had for any money. A few years ago it was esti- mated, by competent authorities, that at least four-fifths of the United Kingdom were held in perpetual mortmain, or so fettered by family settlements as effectually to exclude the land from the public market. And, according to the existing laws of entail, though the period of strict settlement does not ordinarily exceed sixty years, it may, in extreme, yet possible, cases, be extended to one hundred and fifty years. In our humble judgment, one important step will be taken towards elevating the social status and habits of the peasantry of this country, in the first place, and ultimately of the working classes at large, when the market in land is made, for certain objects and to certain parties, more free than is as yet the case, notwithstanding some recent relaxations, and when the expenses of sale and transfer are reduced to a trifle. Throughout those parts of the Continent where pauperism is scarcely known, and in our own proverbially prosperous and ha]3py Norman isles, land is free, and its sale and transfer are equally inexpensive and secure. Hence investments in land are universal. Peasants and working people prefer such investments to the use of savings' banks. We are happy to know that this subject has not escaped the attention of our legislators. The most distinguished political economists have insisted upon it ; eminent Chancery barristers have given their evidence and testimony ; the Devon Land Commission has added the weight of its recommendation ; and Parliament itself has begun to move, especially as regards Ireland. But, THE LIBERATION OF LAND. 437 if we could, we would greatly speed the movement of law reform in this matter. What we advocate is very tardy justice. Why, in these matters, should England lag so long behind other European nations ? What a wonderful effect for good have the land sales produced in Ireland ! As if by magic, a race of energetic proprietors and farmers, large and small, has sprung up — some of them from the peasant class — and some districts of Ireland are being regenerated. But England's labouring population needs to be regenerated, scarcely less than Ireland did. We do not, indeed, expect that to set land free w^ould of itself effect a social transformation. Nor have we any idea that the general subdivision of the land among 'a peasant-like proprietary would prove a boon to England. Indeed, the very reverse is our conviction. A small proprietary will be thrifty and diligent, but too little educated, too prejudiced, and too poor, to carry forward great improvements, or to make the best of their land. For minute, painstaking husbandry, and for careful and saving personal habits, a peasant projirietary are not to be equalled. But, as a rule, they must needs lack science, capital, andenterx^rise. In France the greater part of the land is subdivided among a peasant proprietary. The effect has been that this proprietary has become saving and diligent to a proverb ; and that the land which they till is cultivated like a garden. In English farming there is far less economy of ground, and of what are called natural manm'es, than in France. But yet England yields twice as much produce from her laud, on an average, as France. Science, capital, and manufacturing enterprise, applied to the soil on a large scale, have made the difference. It is notorious, moreover, that, as a rule, the wonderful advance of English agriculture is due more to the energy, enlightenment, and wealth of the great landowners, than even to the skill and enter- prise of large farmers ; and that small farmers and petty 438 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. proprietors have equally lagged in the rear of modern improvements. We cannot but see, furthermore, that in countries where, as in Switzerland, the law requires the subdivision of property among all the children, and the land is entirely in the hands of a numerous body of petty proprietors, a limit must be set to the upward growth and to the national development of the people. The law and the institutions of the country tend to keep all down to a certain level. There can be no upper class possessing the requisite combination of wealth and leisure to attain to the largest views and the highest culture, and capable of leading the nation onward towards the most perfect development of its mental and moral, as well as material, resources. In such a country art will lack patrons of taste and of munificence ; scholarship will be wanting in elegance and elevation ; society will be deficient in that grace and refinement which are the characteristics of a true aristocracy; and even the Senate and the Cabinet of the nation will fall short in the most admirable qualities of a sagacious and comprehensive statesmanship, and m the noblest attributes of a large and lofty eloquence. It is possible that a subdivision of the land among many peasant proprietors may be the system most suitable to the conditions of a republican confederation of small cantons of the peculiar character which belongs to Switzerland. Nor have we any doubt, that, as has been abundantly shown by such able political economists as Mill and Laing, and by many other modern writers of eminence, both English and continental, the practical limit at which the process of sub- division is all but uniformly arrested, is the minimmn quantity of laud necessary to support one family in tolerable comfort, the co-heirs receiving compensation from the eldest son for their portions, when the land has been reduced to this mlni- III II III, so as to prevent the subdivision from proceeding THE PEASANTRY OF OTHER LANDS. 430 farther.* But, for the reasons which have been just assigned, we should certainly not wish to see the Swiss or French principle of subdivision adopted in this country. Nor, indeed, should wc omit to note that, so far as mere money or money's worth, in the way of weekly income, is concerned, the Eng- lish labourers and operatives are undoubtedly, on the whole, in a better position than the Swiss and French peasantry. If their habits were as frugal, if their cookery was as econo- mical, if then- diet and clothing were as homely, even English day labourers would be as well off, in this respect, as most of the French, the Swiss, and the Ehenish peasantry. If they saved their early wages as carefully, and postponed for a few years their marriages, they might be better off. But then they have not, and cannot obtain, the roomy and com- fortable Swiss homestead, the house and garden of their own, the independent position in life, or the prospect for the time of old age, which are the heritage of the Swiss, or the Tyro- lese, or the Rhenish peasant. Hence the English are, from father to son, paupers, and have no hope but this. In Switzerland, the Tyrol, the Ehenish provinces, the Vosges (of France), pauperism is scarcely known. We wish to look at this subject with perfect fairness. Our object is to understand precisely in what the English labourers are lacking, and what is likely to be the means of adding this to them. We find that, in a word, all they lack is frugality and providence, with the prospect of an inde- pendent provision, to be attained by the exercise of these qualities, and which may be enjoyed by them in the time of their old age. All that they want belongs to the ordinary * Notwithstanding all that has been ings " is not parallel to that of pea- written by the writers referred to in the sant proprietors, but, on, the contrary, is text, so little is the suhjectof peasant ])ro- in every respect in antithetic contrast to l)rictorship even yet understood in this it. On this point any who may want ni- country, that we fear it may be necessary formation will do well to refer to a well- to point out that the ease of Irish cottiers known and brilliant chapter in Laiiiy's ;iik1 their coiitimiailv subdivided " hold- Notes of a Traveller. First Series. 440 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. character of hundreds of thousands of peasantry in western and central Europe, who, in respect of the value of their labour, and likewise of the weekly income which, estimated according to a money value, that labour brings them in, are decidedly inferior to our own countrymen. To what is this striking contrast owing ? Not to religious causes, assuredly ; (the difference, indeed, is found among both Protestants and Papists ;) not to the nature of the general laws, morals, and government of the continental countries, as compared with our own. Nay, in all these respects, Protestant and free Britain must be held by us to have greatly the advantage over all continental lands. Not to the inferior demand for labour in this country, or to our inferior productiveness, either in agriculture or manufac- tures. In these respects, likewise^ we are without com- petitors. . As little can the good effect which we mark on the Continent be attributed to a centralised police system. For police, though it may repress crime, can never teach frugality or self-respect. The only cause to which we can refer the difference, is that to which, in this article, we have directed the attention of our readers. Are we then to rest content that, in regard to this vital point, great and wealthy Britain should be a sad and shameful spectacle in the eyes of Europe ? Are we still to go on, at a charge of five millions a year in mere poor-rates, not to speak of our enormous expense for criminal provision, which is itself mainly owing to the same cause, — are we to go on providing reservoirs for this deep and wide overflow of pauperism, and doing nothing more ? Or shall we not rather try to check it at its fountain, and absorb it in its course ? Unhappily, as matters stand, the very provision we make for the wants of our pauper population tends to aggravate that desperate recklessness from which our pauperism, for the most part, springs. OPPOSITE EXTKEMES. 4.4^1 Again we say that we have no wish to set up the condition of Switzerland or of France, as it stands, as a model for admiration. We do not share the raptm-es of Mr. Kay as to the amount of " moral restraint" (as Malthusians call it) which the Swiss and French peasantry exercise, and are compelled to exercise, in postponing till about the age of thirty their marriages, any more than we can admire the remarkable advice given to some French paupers by M. Dunoyer, and on which Mr. Laing comments with such just and fine severity, that they should show their prudence and self-restraint " en cvitant avec un soin extreme de rendre leur mariage plus fdcond que lenr industrie."* We have no desire that the next English census should show the same result as the last French ; or that all the frame of social life, especially so far as the questions connected with marriage are concerned, should be so thoroughly demoralised as is the case through a great portion of the Continent, especially some of those parts of it, the social economy of which Mr. Kay so highly lauds. We believe, on the contrary, that for a large community to be com- pelled, from prudential motives, all but uniformly to postpone marriage to a late period must be a fruitful source of frightful immorality. But, on the other hand, over-early marriages, recklessly contracted between raw youths of twenty and girls of seventeen, are an evil scarcely, if at all, of less magnitude than the other. The former is the continental evil, where the subdivision of land universally obtams; the latter is the Irish and English evil, where the old law of entail still prevails to so large an extent, and where peasants possess no j)roperty, and no prospect of being able to realise any. A certain combination or compromise, in which the two conditions meet and check each other, would furnish the proper * Laing's Notes, &c., chap. x. (Switzerlaml). 442 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. medium. But what we wish to particularise is the powerful prudential habit which is implied by such a uniform post- ponement of marriage as is the rule in Switzerland, and in many parts of France. The very quality in which our peasantry are so wanting, is possessed by the peasantry of these districts almost in excess. " This class of the inhabitants," says Mr. Laing, "would no more think of marrying without means to live in a decent waj^', than any gentleman's sons and daughters in England." " It is not to the intelligence alone," says Mr. Mill, " that the situa- tion of a peasant proprietor is full of improving influences. It is no less proj}itious to the moral virtues of prudence, temperance, and self- control. The labourer who possesses property, whether he can read and write, or not, has, as Mr. Laing remarks, ' an educated mind ; he has forethouf/ht, caution, and reflection, guiding every action ; he knows the value of restraint, and is in the constant and habitual exercise of it.'* It is remarkable how this proposition is borne out by the cha- racter of the rural population in almost every civilised country where peasant properties are frequent. Day-labourers, where the labouring class mainly consists of them, are usually improvident; they spend carelessly to the full extent of their means, and let the future shift for itself. . . . The tendency of peasant proprietors, and of those who hope to become proprietors, is to the contrary extreme. They deny themselves reasonable indulgences, and live wretchedly, in order to economize. In Switzerland almost every one saves who has any means of saving. The case of the Flemish farmers I have already mentioned. Among the French, though a pleasure-loving and reputed to be a self- indulgent people, the spirit of thrift is difi'used through the rural population in a manner most gratifying as a whole, and which, in individual instances, errs rather on the side of excess than defect. . . . But some excess in this direction is a small and passing evil, compared with recklessness and improvidence in the labouring classes, and a cheap price to pay for the inestimable worth of the virtue of self- dependence, as the general characteristic of a people, — a quality indis- pensable, in the case of a labouring class, even to any tolerable degree of physical comfort, and by which the peasantry of France, and of * Residence in Norway, p. 20. SAXONY AND BOHEMIA. 443 most other countries where there is a considerable class of peasant proprietors, are distinguished beyond any other labouring population." - — MilVs FoUtical Economy, vol i. pp. 346-7. " In England," Mr, Mill elsewhere observes, " where the labourer has no investment for his savings but the savings' bank, and no position to which he can rise by any exercise of economy, except, perhaps, that of a petty shopkeeper, with its chances of bankruptcy, there is nothing at all resembling the intense spirit of thrift which -takes possession of one who, being a day labourer, can raise himself by saving to the con- dition of a landed proprietor." — Ibid. p. 359. The following passages are taken from the work of Mr. Kay, whose volumes are replete with valuable information, though defective in method, full of repetition, and altogether one- sided in the view which they present of continental, civil, and educational economy. The first is part of an extract which Mr. Kay gives from a work by the Prussian Counsellor Eeichensperger on questions connected with agriculture. " It is these labourers, entirely without possessions, whether they live in the towns or in the country districts, whether they are found in the factories or behind the plough, who are the really dangerous members of society. The real ground of their dangerous character lies in their freedom from any moral restraint, caused by the hopeless- ness and poverty of their social position. The evils with which the position of these classes threatens society, can only be avoided by removing the helplessness and destitution of their social position. The simplest, most efficacious, and most legitimate means, by which to attain this great end, is to free landed property from aU restrictions preventing its sale, and gradually, and by means of the natural sale of the lands, to enable the labourers to acquire property." — A'ay, vol. i, p. 72. " Saxony and Bohemia," says Mr. Kay, " lie side by side. The majority of the people of these two countries speak the same language, profess the same religion, and belong to the same race ; but the con- dition of the peasants of the two countries is as different as can well be imagined. ... In Saxony, which I have visited and carefidly in- spected twice, there is very little pauperism ; the people are well and comfortably clad ; beggars arc hardly ever met with ; the lumpes of 444 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. the peasantry are remarkably large, higli, roomy, convenient, sub- stantially built, constantly whitewashed, and orderly in appearance ; the children are always clean, well-dressed, and very polite in their manners ; there is little or no difference between the appearance of the children of the poor and the rich ; the l^nd is perhaps better cultivated than in any other part of Europe ; and the general condition of the peasantry more prosperous than that of any other I have seen, except it be that of the j)easantry of the cantons of Benie, Yaud, and Neufchatel in Switzerland, or of the Ehine Provinces of Pnissia. . . . In Bohemia, on the other hand, a totally different spectacle presents itself, and one which cannot fail to strike any intelligent traveller with astonishment. The moment he has crossed the Saxon frontier, the traveller finds himself surrounded by crowds of beggars of the most miserable appearance ; where even those peasants who do not beg are very poorly dressed, wear no shoes or stockings, and often appear in rags. The cottages are very small and wretched ; the villages are generally only collections of the most miserable wooden cabins of one story ; and the land itself is only half cultivated, and presents about the same contrast to Saxony as Ireland does to England." — Kay, vol. i. pp. 11, 12. The causes of this contrast are, that in Saxony the land is free from entail restrictions, and, to a great extent, divided among a peasant proprietary, and that a superior class of schools has long been provided for the children; while in Bohemia the land is strictly entailed in the families of an absentee nobility, who very generally leave their propei-ty to be managed by agents, and spend their rents in Vienna ; and although schools are provided under the authority of govern- ment, these are of an inferior character, and are restricted from educating the children, as we should say, " above their station," Such schools are, in fact, the natural correlative of a system of strict and unbroken entail. In truth such a system is part and parcel of feudalism, from which it cannot be consistently separated. The rigid entail of vast properties implies in strict logical consistency that the proprietors should still be feudal lords, and the cottars feudal serfs. Let THE LAW OF ENTAIL. 445 these latter be truly emancipated, let them be educated as freemen, let them be treated as entitled to equal privileges and opportunities with other men, and as desemng to be barred by birth or blood from no position which another sub- ject holds, and it will be seen that feudalism must be broken up, and strict entail must give way. Already the law of entail has been modified in England. There can no longer be a rigid entail in perpetuity. The law is limited in its operation to two lives ; it can be barred or broken upon occasion, to meet new family exigencies, or the claims of creditors in certain cases, or the requirements of a great religious community, such as the Scotch Free Church, or the necessities of a borough, or a railway under- taking. In Ireland the impending ruin of the country com- pelled a bold and startling breach upon all entail rights, the success of which has led to further legislation for that country in the same direction. The principle of feudalism is, therefore, entirely broken down ; but in detail much more requires to be done, in order to gain the needful practical fruits of liberty, so far as regards the land. There are muni- cipal boroughs which on one side are completely barred up and restrained from development, because the land is tied up in entail, or because the proprietor does not choose to sell. This is really a monstrous injustice. And throughout the countless villages of England, the all but universal rule is that no land is to be bought by any poor man. To us nothing seems more fundamentally necessary in a free country, or more evidently clear, than that the law ought to give to every borough the absolute right, as it would do to a railway com- pany, of purchasing from any and every proprietor whatever land may be needed for the convenient accommodation of its resident population in the way of house and garden room, and for the health and recreation of its inlial)itants in the way of squares or parks. As little can we doubt that, in 446 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. some way, there should be secured for every village or town- ship the means of providing every inhabitant with a comfort- able home, whether he choose to rent it or to purchase it as his own. That the owners of property should have the power to limit the cottage accommodation, according to their will, or that they should, by the nature of their tenure, be pre- vented from selling ground on which poor men may make themselves a home, is what we are fully persuaded the English people will not much longer bear. Where there is a will, there is a way ; and whatever difficulties there may be in finding out a method of adjustment, the thing must cer- tainly be accomplished. The Poor Law organization, in con- nection with a system of land tribunals, would probably afford the basis on which a scheme of parochial or township management and authority, as to such points as these, might be constructed. And the long-demanded registry of titles will make transfer of property easy and cheap, and its tenure sure. England is the country of compromises and amalgama- tions. Our population is a rich amalgam ; our constitution is a system of compromises. Our judicial procedures and our legislation are full of compromises ; our Church, as by law established, is a compromise founded upon a compromise. Unlike most other countries of Europe where the peasantry have been fully emancipated from oppression and from pr£edial ties, England will retain her wealthy landed aristo- cracy, as the Corinthian capital of her column, as the diadem upon her head. She will also retain her large and wealthy agricultural tenants, a race of men of whom she has great reason to be proud, the fit appendage and counterpart of her nobility. Many of these will, no doubt, to some considerable extent, become proprietors of land. In the neighbourhood of large towns, and where the land is jDarticularly rich and pro- fitable, a smaller class of farms will be in great request, FUTURE PROGRESS. 447 manageable by men of moderate capital and great skill or energy. As agricultural intelligence and science grow up to something like maturity, and become diffused through the agricultural community, and as capital becomes more abun- dant, a class of freeholders, cultivating their own estates of moderate size, will emulate in wealth and prosperity the large tenant farmers. Large farms will come to be worked by firms in partnership, and a class of able managers will be employed, who will often rise to the position hi partners. Small farms wall be rare, and only tenanted to profit by men of more than ordinary skill, science, and personal energy, who, by means of these, may be able to work their way upward to larger holdings. There will be countless multi- tudes of small tenements, with a few acres of ground attached, which will be owned and occupied by peasant labourers, whose sons are mostly occupied as day-labourers upon large neighbouring farms, and by operatives or small shopkeepers who have invested their savings in their purchase. We hold that every labourer ought to be able, if he has the means, to purchase a cottage and a small plot of land, so as to provide himself a home. The man that toils upon the ground has a right to have his own home there. The dependence of labourers u^wn miserable cottage vacancies, and the insuffi- cient number as well as accommodation of the rural cottages, compelling indecent habits and a disgusting overcrowding of the inmates, are crying evils and public nuisances that need at once to be remedied. After one generation had provided them- selves with cottage homes and gardens, the increase in demand for them would not be very great. And what more beautiful sight than to see the domain of the wealthy landowner belted round by border-lines of cottages, the property of a happy, thrifty, independent peasantry, whose families gain their living by working on the estate ? There is nothing incompatible and impracticable in this. It would still be open to the landlord 448 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. to build and let cottages if he pleased. And if tbey were sucli as the Duke of Bedford and Lord Leicester have built for their labourers, the peasants might", if they had security against sudden ejectment, in some instances prefer renting such tenements to buying or building their own. The com- petition, in these cases, would be wholesome. The effect of such a reform as we advocate would not only be to set before the young labourer an object to save for, — a worfliy hope and ambition which he might reasonably expect to attain, — thus tending to make him frugal and provident ; it would also effect a revolution in the dwellings of the poor throughout the rural districts. Let any one compare the homes of the peasant proprietors of the Ehine- land, of Switzerland, of the Tyrol, or of the Norman Isles, with the hovels of too many of our peasantry, and he will see what nations and races not so fond of comfort as we English are reputed to be will do for themselves, when they feel that they are building, enlarging, improving, beautifying their own homes. Here, then, would come in another grand educational influence, without the co- operation of which much of the instruction bestowed in schools must be in vain. J The operation of all this upon the labourer's hopes and views for his family will be apparent. The peasant pro- prietors of Switzerland set a high value on education for their children ; they know its worth. Let a man have a chance of rising a little way in the world, of leaving a place and a name behind for his family, and helping to set them a little higher than he has climbed himself; such a man will know how to prize school training for his children. In fact, let frugality, providence, and an honourable ambi- tion, once be developed in the character of the poor man ; and he cannot but begin intelligently and far-sightedly to regard the future career of his offspring. How can the hope- COrXTKY AND TUWN. 449 less, reckless, from hand-to-mouth labourer be expected to care for his child's education ? This refers to the peasantry of the country. But whatever acts upon their character, must re-act upon the character of the town operatives. Besides, these also would be acted upon directly by such reforms as have been indicated. There are few working men to whom the prospect of an easy investment of their money in land or houses would not prove much more stimulating than the premium offered by the Savings' Bank. Moreover, better cottages in the country would lead to better cottages in the towns. In towns, however, other things ought to be done. Corporations should do their duty, in securing a full proportion of com- fortable separate cottages, with yards or gardens, as far as possible, for the use of the labouring population, and by enforcing the strictest regulations and scrutiny in regard to lodging-houses. London has set a sad example by building handsome streets and forgetting to provide cheap and clean and wholesome accommodation for the poor. For how much of the dreadful demoralisation of London and our large towns generally is this sort of neglect to blame ! Assuredly, education in many cases will be of little purpose BO long as our slums and courts, and many-storied tene- ments in low neighbourhoods, remain as they are. Their education is undoing the Christian school education. We are happy, indeed, to know that already something in the direction we have indicated is being accomplished in different parts of the country, and especially in some of our manufacturing towns. The difficulties in the way of getting land are in part overcome, though at a considerable cost both of money and, in sofne cases, of uncertainty as to tenure, by Freehold Land Societies and Benefit Building Societies. What are called " Freehold Assurance Societies " have also begun to attract public attention. All these con- u G 450 THE OEIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. trivances, however, are circuitous, expensive, and more or less surrounded by risk and uncertainty; and, consequently, their efficiency for the purposes they are contemplating is greatly impaired. As a general rule, also, they are only available for the town populations ; the agricultural peasantry they scarcely reach. The popularity, however, of these societies, with all their disadvantages, and the extent to which they are beneficially operative in the way of inducing habits of providence among the labouring classes, afford a strong argument in favour of such reforms as we have advocated in this article, and warrant the hope that they would conduce to important results in the way of improving the general character of our working men. It is proper also to state that we by no means ignore the beneficial operation of Friendly Societies, of Working Men's Associations, and the like. All these things are good ; but it is only of late that they have come under wise and safe regulations. We hail with pleasure, also, such reforms as have been made in regard to the law of limited liability, and look for good results, at least, in the way of educating the general mind of the operative community, from co-operative stores, partnerships en com- mandite, and similar methods of uniting working men in common undertakings and responsibilities. But to give these arrangements fair play and a full opportunity of exerting their due influence, there needs a removal of existing legal difficulties and restrictions.* Let these reforms be completed ; let the hand be set free as we have argued that it should be ; let parks be added in our great towns, good and cheap libraries be provided, wholesome cheap literature be multiplied, and then the preliminary conditions to the success of any national pro- * It must be remembered that these pages stand as they were written more than eight years ago. THE DEVON LAND COMMISSION. 451 vision of education will be fairly fulfilled. That, in ad- dition to such measures as have now been indicated, other provisions may be necessary to protect the child from the selfish cupidity of the parent or of the employer of labour, is very probable. But these provisions would rather be supplementary than preliminary ; and therefore we need not here advert to them. Lest any should be disposed to dismiss the views which we have presumed to advocate as radical, if not revolu- tionary, or, at least, as visionary, we will here quote a few sentences from the conclusion of the Eeport of the " Devon Land Commission," than which a higher authority on this subject could not be cited. " Your Committee think the importance of removing obstructions to the secure investment of their savings to the middle and working classes cannot he overrated, because this is a consideration upon which the industry^ enterprise, and forethourjht of those classes greaily depend. . . . Your Committee have proceeded to examine existing obstacles to such investments, and to consider how far it may be practicable to remove them, and in what manner this may be accomplished. Invest- ments in land, or landed securities, are much desh-ed by the middle and working classes ; but the uncertainty and complexity of titles, and the length and expense of conveyances, together with the cost of stamps, place this species of investment generally beyond the reach of those parties, and also often prove insecure investments. ... It is the conviction of your Committee, that if such measures were carried into effect, a stimulus would be given to the industry of the country likely to cause additional cmjiloyment and contentment without injury to any class, and with added security to the welfare of all." And as to the ultimate result to be hoped for, and towards which the reforms we have advocated may be expected powerfully to contribute, we cannot do better than cite the following passages from Mr. Mill. The reference of the former is to regenerated Ireland, but we wish to apply it in its main features to England. " Wo may hope to see from the present lazy, apathetic, reckless, a G 2 452 TUE OKIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. lawless, and improvident Ireland, a new Ireland arise, consisting of peasant proprietors with something to lose, and of hired labourers with something to gain ; the former attached to peace and law through the possession of property, the latter through the hope of it ; while the agriculture of one half of Ireland" (say, of a small part of England) " would be conducted on the best system of small cultivation, and that of the other half" (say, the remainder) " on the best principles of large farming and the combination of labour." — Mill, vol. i., p. 414. " These landed estates" (he is referring now, in particular, to pro- perties which he proposes to grant to industrious peasants in England, as in Ireland, out of waste lands, the quantity of which, however, is of course very small in the former country as compared with the latter) " might, if it were thought necessary, be made indivisible by law ; though if the plan worked in the manner designed, I should not ap- prehend any objectionable degree of subdivision. The desire to possess one of these small properties would probably become, as on the Con- tinent, an inducement to prudence and economy pervading the whole labouring population ; and that great desideratum among a people of hired labourers be provided, an intermediate class between them and their employers, affording them the double advantage of an object for their hopes, and, as there would be good reason to anticipate, an example for their imitation." — Ibid. p. 467. We shall be understood to assume the necessity, in con- currence with such improvements as have been suggested, of affording to the children of our w^orking classes the means of acquiring a thoroughly excellent education. Only we must insist that it is of no use to provide the means and machinery of an admirable education for those who are not sent to gain the advantage of it, or who are sent so little, or so irregularly, that they scarcely obtain any benefit from it, and, in the course of one or two years* collision with the actual working conditions of life, lose what little they may have seemed to gain. " I consider," says Mr. Mitchell, " ten years to be the present normal age at which the English labourers' school period ceases."* It appears, indeed, that, on the whole, * Essays upon Educational Subjects, p. 2. EDUCATIONAL' INFLUENCES. 453 the age at which labourers' children leave school j&nally, that they may go to work, has been for some years going backwards. It is true that Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Mitchell report otherwise for their districts, which are the Lanca- shire and East Midland respectively. But the rest of Her Majesty's inspectors agree in their representations to the effect just stated. Mr. Moncrieff, moreover, has not only furnished evidence in support of this conclusion from his own district, the Northern Counties, but has proved in- contestably that the same conclusion holds good on an average of the whole kingdom.* Indeed, it would seem that, as a general rule, the better the school, the shorter the stay of the children. The parents aj)pear to suppose that education is at an end, when a certain amount of ability to read and write has been acquired by the child, however otherwise untaught, and at however tender an age. The virtue of educational training is not understood by them. The general tendency, however, to shorten the term of school attendance is not confined within the circle of the inspected schools. Mr. Flint, lately emploj'^ed as organizing master and assistant diocesan inspector, in connexion with the National Society, has furnished a valuable contribution to the volume of Essays, published under the direction of the Educational Conference of 1857, which gives some of " the evidence afforded by schools, not under Government inspection, as to the early age at which children are taken from school." " Appealing to my own experience in the matter," says Mr. Flint, I " I am of opinion that the average age of the scholars in the first ' classes of our schools has decreased, during the last twelve years, from j 12, 13, and 14, to 9, 10, and 11 years. ... I conclude that not quite one-fourth of the aggregate number in schools continue their attend- ance to the age of 12, and that even these are children not of the poor ♦ F.diicational Blue Book. 18.17 P, I'l'- 474 477. 454 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURB OF PAUPERISM. but of the small farmer, shopkeeper, foreman, and respectable artisan, who are intended for apprenticeship and clerkship." — Essays upon Educational Subjects, pp. 14, 15. He further states that "thirty-five per cent, of all the children in the schools have finished their school training at the age of nine ; " and that little less than one-half finish nearer the age of ten than eleven (pp. 15, 25). What. is the inevitable consequence of this? "The child," says Mr. Mitchell, " leaves school, goes to work, and, in course of a year, knows nothing at all" (p. 10). Elsewhere we are informed, in the same paper, on the authority of an experienced clergyman, whose testimony is cited and cor- roborated by Mr. Flint, that " the most promising lads are continually removed just at a time when their previous instruction is beginning to tell upon them, with a certainty that in a few months what little knowledge they may have acquired will all have vanished away "-(p. 23). To the same effect, Mr. H. S. Tremenheere, a most competent and dispassionate witness, says, in his Eeport for 1856 on the State of the Population in the Mining Districts, — " What is now, by universal consent, in all but a very few and very favoured districts, the mental condition of the very great majority, probably at least three-fourths, of the boys and young men in the coal mining districts, tvho have passed through the excellent schools that are now everywhere accessible to them, and gone to the work and occupation of their lives ? Within two or three years after they have left school, they are found to have lost nearly the whole of the little ever learnt ; they cannot read in a manner to profit by, or take the least pleasure in, reading ; they cannot understand the common language of books ; they cannot write a letter ; they are unable to do a simple sum in arithmetic." Mr. Tremenheere's testimony is remarkably corroborated by that of Mr. Nicholas Wood, as given by Mr. Stewart, in his Report on Education in the Northern Counties of OBSTACLES TO EDUCATION. 455 England for the Year 1855. Mr. Wood speaks of himself as having had " pretty extensive experience in coal mines ; " and states, that *'at the annual bindings there is scarcely a man or boy who signs his own name to the bond; and yet these men and boys have gone through the schools, and we suppose that they have learnt to read and write ; but they have left school at so early an age," &c. It is even doubted whether, in some parts of the country, the proportion of educated children belonging to the lower labouring classes is not diminishing ;* while it is cei-tain that in very many parts the incentives to crime, and, in s^Dite of the increased force and vigilance of our police, the actual amount of juvenile crime, have, during the last ten years, seriously augmented. There can be no doubt, indeed, that the children of our small shopkeepers, and our higher class of skilled mechanics, have for some years past been receiving a very excellent education ; better decidedly than the present middle class received in their youth. But this does not touch the ranks of pauperism and brutalism. The light of edu- cation, where it is collected into a focus, is brighter and more intense than before, and illuminates a certain contracted space most hopefully and pleasantly; but the dark margin around this bright circle does not sensibly diminish in extent • or obscurity. Indeed, whether because such is actually the case, or from contrast, it seems to very many to be, both mentally and morally, darker than ever. Now the question is. What is to be done to remedy this state of things ? Some little may be expected from the extension of half time ; but no one dreams that a general compulsory law of education can be passed, or, on the other hand, that anything short of this in the way of legislation could meet the case. Certi- ficates and prize schemes have done good among the better class to which we have already referred; but they have • See Mr. Norris's Educational Report, Blue Book, 1854-6, p. 547. 458 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. scarcely touched the mass, and already the expense of them is becoming heavy. Government has laid out much money, where, in many instances, if the population had, for the most part, been as willing as they have been able, much less might have suf&ced. More, however, is still asked for in the way of premium and incentive. And yet, after all, these rewards and incentives cannot even be hoped to do more than graze the surface of the difficulties which lie in the way of a great and thorough educational success. Even pupil teachers in many instances are hard to get, because parents set little value on an educational course of life, and want (rather than need) present money-help in wages from their children ; and when they are obtained, it happens, not in- deed frequently, but still too often, that they come from homes the manners and morals of which unfit them for their work. As we have seen, the better the education given, the sooner, as a general rule, is the child taken from school and sent to work. All these obstructions and discouragements arise from one and the same cause. The meaning and worth of a true education are altogether unknown to the parents. And they all point to one and the same truth, that until the parents of our lower orders, as a class, have more self-respect, more ♦forethought and frugality, better homes, purer and truer pleasures, and less pressure of pecuniary necessity, which last result will come by forethought and frugality, it is use- less to expect that they will suffer their children to be pro- perly educated, while it is next to certain that their own home education of these children will undo whatever good may have been gained at school. " A vast work," says Mr. Mann, in his memorable Census Report, " evidently lies before us in the education of the parents, ere we can expect them to be in earnest for the education of their children." Again, the same gentleman Bays, as truly as beautifully, — LAND TENURl': AND EDUCATION. 457 " ^^'hat is wanted, is the creation of a more benignant atmosphere. However carefully the tree of knowledge may be jilanted, and how- ever diligently tended, it can never grow to fruitfulness or beauty in an uncongenial air. Concurrently with all direct attempts to cultivate the general intelligence, there needs to be a vigorous endeavour to alleviate, if not remove, that social wretchedness which blights all educational promise, and to shed around the growing popular mind an affluence of wholesome light on which the half-developed plant may feed and thrive." Let us add here the closing paragraph of the essay — On the Voluntary Half-Time Schemes — of the Kev. C. H. Bromby, the able principal of the Cheltenham Traimng College : — "In conclusion, I cannot withhold the sentiment, that, enthusiastic as I am in the advocacy of popular education, my enthusiasm only belongs to it as to one of many instruments of improvement which the present social condition of our people requires. The social evil is too gigantic to be assailed by any single weapon. "VYe need new organizations to raise the educational condition of the people ; but co- ordinately, and pff)-2 'passu, we need more efficacious instruments for improving their physical condition. The extension of bath houses, and [improved] dwelling-houses, the legislative control of savings' banks and insurance societies, the restriction of the sale of moral poisons, as well in publications as in beer and spirits, the parallel encouragement of popular games, concerts, and public parks, and whatever else encourages the hoardiacj instead of the dissipation of the wages of industry, will, at least in another generation, do more to secure the co-operation of parents in behalf of their children, than all the theories and tentative remedies put together, and brought to bear upon a mass too sunken and degenerated to value life, except as it ministers to sensual, animal, and transient pleasures." — Essays, ^'c, pp. 264, 2G5. Here we are brought fairly back to the main theme of this article, — the necessity of throwing open to the poor labouring man the opportunity of freely acquiring land. Let the feudal impediments be removed ; let the registry of titles make them sure ; let the cost of stamps be reduced ; 458 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISM. besides opening the market, this will almost annihilate the present enormous legal expenses. Legislation is advancing on this path for Ireland, and entering upon it for England. This reform accomplished will surely, though at first of course slowly, give rise to a movement which, operating at every point, and with increasing power from year to year, will, in our belief, do very much towards elevating, both socially and intellectually, the working classes of this country. More than any other legislative remedy, or com- bination of remedies, will this tend, to quote Mr. Bromby's words, " to encourage the hoarding instead of the dissipation of the wages of industry," to inspire hope and a right^am- bition, to teach forethought, thrift, and self-respect, to transform our peasants and operatives from a half-revo- lutionary uncemented mass, into a body of orderly and conservative citizens and subjects; to fill our country with roomy and comfortable homesteads for the poor ; to provide suitable home influences for the children ; to give parents that " educated mind" which will lead them to understand the value of education for their offspring, and dispose as well as enable them to take advantage of those admirable educational provisions now made for their benefit. " Another aspect of peasant properties," says Mr. Mill, " in which it is essential that they should be considered, is that of an instrument of popular education. It is difficult to imagine what theory of education that can be, which can attach no importance to such an instrument. Books and schooling are absolutely necessary to education, but not all sufficient. . . . Some of the disparagers of small properties lay great stress on the cares and anxieties which beset the peasant proprietor of the Ehineland or Flanders. It is precisely those cares and anxieties which tend to make him a superior being to an English day-labourer. It is, to be sure, rather abusing the privilege of fair argument to represent the condition of a day-labourer as not an anxious one. . . . The day -labourer has, in the existing state of society and population, 1 EDUCATIONAL MOTIVES. 459 many of the anxieties which have not an invigorating effect on the mind, and none of those which have. The position of the peasant pro- prietor of Flanders is the reverse. . . . His anxieties are the ordinary vicissitudes of more and less ; his cares are that he takes his fair share of the business of life ; that ho is a free human being, and not per- petually a child, which seems to bo the approved condition of the labouring classes according to the prevailing philanthropy. He is no longer a being of a different order from the middle classes ; he has pursuits and objects like those which occupy them and give to their intellects the greatest part of the cultivation which they receive. . . . The possession of property will not prevent the peasant from being coarse, selfish, and narrow minded. These things depend on other influences, . . . But this great stimulus to one kind of mental activity, in no way impedes any other means of intellectual development. On the contrary, by cultivating the habit of turning to practical use every fragment of knowledge acquired, it helps to render that schooling and reading fniitful which, without some such auxiliary influences, are, in too, many cases, like seed thrown upon a rock." — Mill, vol. i. pp. 344, 340. Far be it from us to undervalue what has been accom- plished in the way of national education. We believe that the fouiidation has been laid of a better and more efficient system, whether regarded morally or intellectually, than is to be found in any other country. But it is not and ought not to be concealed, that what has been done has been rather in the way of improving the quality of the education given to the upper section of the lower, and the lower section of the middle, classes, and in the way of laying a platform for a great national system, than of really educating the masses of the nation. Nor can it be expected that, as things are, the progress of the next ten years will equal that of the past. It becomes more difficult each year to force education any farther. In 1841 the per-centage of men and women who signed their names when married was 59*25 ; in 1855 it was (U-fi5. This advance in fifteen years of such revolutionary 450 THE ORIGIN, CAUSES, AND CURE OF PAUPERISE. energy in matters of education can hardly be considered satisfactory. But in the following fifteen years we must look for a much slower rate of progress, if social relations and land-tenures are to remain just what they are. Mean- time the labour market will still assert its power and make its claims felt. If some new impulse cannot be given, it will be long enough, at this rate, before England will possess an educated industrial population. But the change must come. Let us be thankful that knowledge and trained habits of intelligence, in combination with religious principles and impressions, have, during the past twelve years, made such unexampled progress among the lower middle classes. To them has come a new light, a new life, a new dispensation. The reaction on the lowest classes must do some amount of good ; though, at the same time, in man}' instances, for a while, it only seems to separate them the more widely from the classes immediately above them. But the great good which iiAist result from what has been accomplished will be, that the middle classes will be brought to see and feel the needs of those below them, and will make their voice heard on behalf of their full and speedy emancipation. Employers will become more enlightened and less prejudiced ; our educational deficiencies will yearly become a thing less tolerable; and all classes, except the lowest themselves, will soon be determined to understand the causes of England's pauperism and brutal ignorance. The remedies will then be applied ; and those Christian Churches which best improve their present position and opportunities, will be best prepared to take advantage of the rising tide of collective educational advance. POPULAR EDUCATION.* A KEASONABLE and responsible being in a state of probation must need information and moral control. One who ad- vances from the instincts of infancy to the intelligence and passions of manhood can only develop his character healthily and perfectly under certain conditions of culture. Even the plant needs what we may call " education," if it is to exhibit its perfect type, and to put forth all its capabilities ; the soil and the climate must be sorted to its nature, the care and attention of the cultivator must defend it from harms, shelter it from blight and blast, keep clear from impoverishing weeds the ground in which it is planted, and supply the soil con- tinually with the appropriate elements of nutriment and strength. The domesticated animal demands analogous care, if he is to answer fully the purposes of his master : air, and exercise, and diet must all be proportioned and adapted to his constitution ; his ver}^ temper must be studied and managed; otherwise perfection cannot be attained. But much more must education — a complete education, which has regard to every constituent of his being — be necessary for man. In proportion to the complexity of our human nature, to its manifold sensibility and excitability, to its capacity of development or perversion, in proportion as it is sublime in its highest reach of faculty or sj'mpathy, as it is divine in its noblest strain of self-denying love and hohness, * London Quarterly Review, July, 18J'J. 462 POPULAR EDUCATION. as it is wretched in its lowest degradation, and Satanic in its darkest rebellion, is the argument the stronger, and the necessity the more imperative, that man should be wisely and completely educated. A complete human education must include the physical, the intellectual, and the moral elements of man's nature. What God has joined together and made mutually helpful and dependent, man must not separate. No one of these elements can be neglected without injury to the others. Even as regards mere physical perfection, who can doubt that God loves to see men fully grown and perfectly pro- portioned, that it is His will that they should be such, each according to his proper type and constitution ? How, then, can men but love to look upon physical beauty, strength, and health ? Moreover, physical health and perfectness have much to do with intellectual soundness and energy, and even with moral rectitude and virtue. We must still abide by the old motto, and insist not only on the mens sana, but, in order to this, as well as for its own sake, on the corpus sanum. On the other hand, mental exercise and discipline, within certain limits, are even favourable to bodily energy and activity ; and moral rectitude, including in this the control of our passions, is indispensable to completeness and per- manence of bodily health. Yet more intimately connected with each other are mental culture and moral discipline. " "Want of education," says Mr. J. D. Morell, " abandons vast masses of our population to the necessity of low and sensual enjoy- ment. I say the necessity, because all persons engaged in continuous labour require mental relaxation and refreshment. Where the mind is too contracted in its sphere of ideas to appreciate and enjoy innocent and rational amusement, nothing is left but to find it in stimulating the passions and pandering to the senses. Hence it is that all our large towns are beset at every turn with low taverns and places of vulgar amusement, where crowds collect together to find mental relaxation, and shake off the weariness of the day's toil by p A COMPLETE HUMAN EDUCATION. 4G3 drinking, smoking, and ribaldry of a most demoralising character. Laws are powerless to restrain this tendency. Even temperance, though it ciu-bs many sore evils, yet changes rather than eradicates the propensity of animal indulgence. Mental cultivation alone can cut away the root of the evil, because it alone can open up the means of finding enjoyment in better and purer pursuits. Moreover, when moral and religious training are combined with intellectual develop- ment, the better path is not merely opened, but the duty of treading in it is armed with sanctions before which human nature cannot fail to bow so long as the conscience remains unseared, and the springs of faith are not wholly dried up." — Minutes of Committee of Council on Education for 1857-8, p. 511. We could not endorse to the full extent the sentiments contained in this extract. When mere mental culture has done its best, one root, the deepest root, of our propensity for animal indulgence will still remain in the natural passions of the heart. So far is it from being strictly true that educa- tion alone can cut away the root of this evil, that we doubt whether alone it ever wrought its radical cure. It does indeed " open up the means of finding enjoyment in better and purer pursuits ;" and to do this is a great matter, since it thus effects a powerful and salutary diversion of the mind ; but surely it must not be said that mental culture only can do this. A true spiritual conversion — the regeneration of the inner man — will do it much more effectually, and from a deeper and more inward centre will transfuse the whole soul with a diviner power, with a heavenly life and fire. Nevertheless, taking the passage with these corrections and abatements, who does not see that Mr. Morell's words contain a most important truth ? For the unconverted man of fervid temperament, low sensualism does become a sort of necessity, if his superior faculties have received no kind of culture. ** Ignorance," says the liev. F. Watldns, " knowing and feeling nothing but bodily wants, has no thought beyond selfish gratification, and no appeal but to brute power, tastes 464 PurULAR EDUCATION. nothing of repose but in tlie torpidity of the gorged serpent, and realises nothing of contentment but in the listlessness and vacuity of swinish satiety." * Mental culture and discipline must, then, exercise an in- fluence, on the whole, powerfully antagonist to mere sen- sualism,— the natural condition into which the utterly ignorant gravitate, who have bodies, but have not yet found their souls, at least in their nobler faculties, — who have animal instincts and passions, but are only very dimly con- scious of those powers within them, of reason, imagination, and moral capacity and influence, by which they stand " a little lower than the angels." But, more this, mental dis- cipline is moral discipline. The systematic and successful culture of the understanding implies the continual exercise of moral control. No man or boy can be an assiduous student without a rigid and steady self-repression, or without energetic and constant effort to collect and command his powers. This is assuredly moral discipline, so far as it goes ; not such indeed as to reach the conscience or the deep places of the heart; not involving that truest — in a just sense that- only true — self-denial, which consists in the subjection of a man's own will to the will of God ; but still a sort and amount of moral control, of the highest value in the common affairs of life, a discipline of patience and constancy, and resolute resistance of the lower desires and passions, in itself highly favourable to temperance and virtue, and no mean or un- worthy preparation and auxiliarj' in anticipation of the diviner conquests and culture obtained through heavenly truth and grace. Assuredly, however, the highest and most needful part of man's education is that which directly regards his nature as a moral and responsible being. This respects not only time but eternity, and secures best the interests of time by * Minutes of Committee of Council on Education for 1857-8, p. 304. GOODNESS IS POWER. 4fi5 a right appreciation of the life which is eternal ; this in- volves, of necessity, when real and healthy, a certain amount of mental intelligence and culture, of the most effectual and serviceable kind ; it moreover secures such a condition of temper, and balance of the faculties, such equilibrium of soul, such a power of self-command, and such steadfast tenacity of purpose, such an elevation and intensity of spirit, as are most likely to insure success in every undertaking, whether of every-day business, or of mental application, or of individual enterprise. The Eev. J. Scott, of the Wesleyan Normal College, Westminster, has published an address to the students in that institution, of which the happily chosen title is, " Goodness is Power." This is a maxim of profound truth and universal application, which should always be coupled with that so often misinterpreted adage, " Knowledge is power." The spiritual life is at once the highest and the deepest in man, the strongest and the most enduring. Its seat is in the \eYj core and centre of his being, and its energy is all-pervasive and all-regenerative. If this has not been kindled from above, the man is not yet himself. The force and fire of this life alone can unseal all his powers, wake up his dormant faculties, and bring forth into action the entire and complete soul, according to the good design and gracious purpose of its Maker. What strength, what patience, what earnest honesty of purpose, what largeness and nobleness of spirit, what tenderness of sjinpathy, does true goodness impart, begotten and sustained by the Divine Spirit ! The object of education, then, must be to cultivate and develope the entire man, body, mind, and spirit, so that he may stand forth a complete and symmetrical whole. This is what every wise Christian desires for every man. But, alas ! hitherto no approximation to this general result has \ been anywhere realized. The population of our own laud H H 466 POPULAE EDUCATION. presents, for the most part, a picture painfully contrasting with this ideal. We may at once be sure, from the slightest intercourse with many of our countrymen, often from their mere aspect and manners, that they have never received anything like systematic human culture. The mere appear- ance of a flower or a tree will often reveal the conditions under which it has grown up. If its growth is stunted, its form imperfect, its colours dim; we know that the flower has been planted in a poor or unfriendly soil, and that the climate has been ungenial and the sunlight scanty. If the trees are small in size, alike trunk, and branch, and leaf; if they are uncouth and unshapely in their appearance, and instead of standing upright and spreading their branches forth equally on every side, are almost bare on one side, and bent and twisted in the opposite direction ; the very sight of such trees is sufficient to inform us that they have struggled hard for life in a bleak and barren region of frost and tempest. How different are such jioivers from the favourites of the parterre, where soil and sun and shelter combine to bring their forms to perfect symmetry, and to give brilliancy to their colours ! and how different such trees from those of the ancient wood, growing from generation to generation on the sheltered yet sunny slope which rises from the alluvial valley to meet the towering hill ! So must the observant student of mankind be struck with the contrast in speech, manners, readiness of apprehension, amiability of depoii;- ment, and physical development, between the better classes in this country and the generations who are born to hope- less poverty and toil, or those who, though ordinarily, per- haps, well supplied with food and wages, and in a position to hope for some advancement, have, unhappily, never been taught to relish intellectual pleasures, or to restrain fierce or brutal passions. It may easily be seen, in one class of cases, that "chill penury" and despairing apathy have de- THE EDUCATED AND THE UNEDUCATED. 407 pressed and stunted manhood into sj^iritloss yet sullen degra- dation; in another, that uncontrolled selfishness and rage and lust have warped and twisted and deformed the whole character; while, in yet other cases, the combined effects of poverty, and vice, and hopelessness, and furious passion, have almost blotted out the last trace of human nobleness. That mere education can ever absolutely cure such evils as these, we do not believe. Alas ! even in what are called the educated classes, — where education, however, it must be borne in mind, is commonly altogether one-sided and defec- tive,— we are well aware that there is a most distressing amount of vice and evil passion. Nevertheless the actual contrast, to which we have just referred, and which is so striking, even though imperfect, is itself a proof of what education can do. So far as this contrast goes, it is entirely the result of educational methods and influences. Were the education given to the superior classes more thorough and more truly Christian, the contrast would be so much the stronger and more striking. Were the education the best attainable, combining, as we cannot but believe they might be combined, physical, intellectual, and moral culture, how much happier, more decided, more abiding results would flow from it than are now to be found, on the average, even in the best educated circles ! We have no intention to set forth a bristling array of statistics in order to demonstrate that large numbers of our countrymen are in painful need of education. There are broad facts which are sufficient to prove this, without any elaborate argumentation. That, in 1855, according . to the Eegistrar-General's returns, the average /or (ill h England of those who, on occasion of their marriage, ri were unable to sign their names, should have been thirty- I five per cent., or more than one-third ; that drunkenness should still, though somewhat diminishing, bo the curse H H 2 468 POPULAR EDUCATION. and disgrace of Britain, beyond all the nations of the world ; that ours, being enormously the wealthiest nation, should, more than any other, be afSicted with pauperism, and that this evil of pauperism should often be the sorest where wages are highest, because of the reckless impro- vidence of a large proportion of the labouring population ; these we take to be great and unanswerable arguments, affording an overwhelming demonstration that the great majority of the working-classes, i.e., that the majority of the nation, are as yet altogether uneducated. They know their business ; they are often skilled labourers ; but they have been trained to nothing good besides. There are im- mense numbers of families in the manufacturing towns in the receipt, through the labour of the several members, of £3 and £4 a week, often with very little mtermission from year to year. The rent of the house in which they live is not more than £7 or £8 ; clothing and provisions are cheap ; and yet, in very many cases, they barely make ends meet. Their outlay is heavy, and they have nothing to show for it ; the wardrobe may be gaudy and expensive, but it is scanty and ill-kept ; the furniture is often poor and ill- conditioned ; library, of course, there is none. Yet in a house within a stone's throw of theirs, of considerably higher rental, lives the hard-working clergyman, on an income decidedly smaller than theirs. His house is neatly furnished ; he has a library, far too small, no doubt, jet select and valuable, and from time to time, out of his hard savings from other expenses, supplied with standard works of history and theology ; his thrifty wife has provided for him, and herself, and their clustering children, a wardrobe, much of it of her own making, yet neat, and seemly, and sufficient ; a maid-of-all-work is kept and paid ; the children are some taught at home and others sent to good schools; a little store is left for the charities both of husband and wife, A CONTRAST. 469 aii'l to supplement the fallings-off at the National School. Now what makes all this difference in these two cases? Wh}' is the one family poor and out-at-elbows and ill-at- ease on the same income, which, in the other case, is made to supply the various wants necessarily connected with the social position, the ministerial responsibilities, the refinements and charities of a clergjTnan's family ? There is hut one answer to be given. Education has made the difference. The one is the ordinary result of the want of education on the part of the father and the mother; the other the every-day demonstration of what education can do for a class. Too often, though happily not, by any means, in all cases, the operative's home is such as has been slightly sketched, even though he may not be a drunkard or a spendthrift ; while, in nearly all cases, the poor clergyman's family is at once frugal and refined, well economized and in every way well ordered. The clergjnuan may not always be an earnest Christian ; but, merely on this account, the result in such cases will not greatly vary. He and his family are educated in conformity with their position and its responsibilities. Hence the result we see. When, however, we speak of the effects produced by education on character and conduct, we by no means in- I tend a mere school education. Education neither begins i nor ends at school. It begins on the mother's lap, is carried forward with all but decisive power, for good or evil, by the earliest influences of the home circle, and is finally completed by those examples, incentives, and as- sociations, which, after school years are past, assert their sway over the character of youth in the scenes and occupa- tions of opening life. Thus is our manhood formed, thus the plastic elements are moulded until the type is finally fixed, and we stand forth such as we are afterwards to be known.- Nevertheless, though the school education of a man is but 470 POPULAR EDUCATION. a part, ofteu the least part, of the total influences which go to determine his character, yet, in many cases, it affords an opportunity of peculiar value and importance, such as can only by it be afforded. In cases where the home training, the school education, social influences, and the professional education of the youth for his future employment, all strictly agree in character and tendency, so that each successive stage is but a further advance in the same line of progress, we may fairly say that the relative importance of the school education is greatly diminished. But where this period affords the only op- portunity for wise and systematic intellectual and (espe- cially) moral training ; where home influences are but random influences, and much more for evil than for good ; and w^here, as soon as ever the school years are over, the youth goes forth into an unorderly world of selfish and strong-passioned comrades, who have known little or nothing of what may justly be called "education;" then the school years become of unspeakable value and im- portance. Under such circumstances, they afford the only opportunity of correcting the evil influences of earlier, and forearming against those of later, years. How far such an opportunity can be used to any material advantage will obviously depend, partly on the length of time during which it lasts, and partly on the systematic skill and efficiency with which the teacher, gifted and trained for his vocation, can, notwithstanding all opposing influences, seize hold of the faculties and affections of the scholar as they unfold under his experienced manipulation, and strongly direct them in the bent of good. This, we take it, is the real meaning and peculiar value of school education as needed especially for the lower classes. Its main object is to supply a corrective to evil influences at home, and in the general circle in which the child moves, or is in- THE SPECUL VALUE OF bCHOOL EDUCATION. 471 tended to move ; or it seeks to supply the deficiencies of parental training, and to do that systematically, enduringly, and completely, which the unskilled and uninstructed parent, at the hest, attempts clumsily and unsuccessfully. What is the standard up to which each child should, if j)Ossible, be educated, or whether any absolute standard exists ; and by what methods an appropriate and effective education may be most surely and completely imparted to the scholar ; — are questions on which there has been much, and might be endless, controversy ; but the results of the experiments that have been in operation, on so vast a scale, for a number ,of years past, have gone far 2)racticalUj to settle them. Some have endeavoured, by psychological reasoning and investigation, to ascertain how, and in what order, every faculty appertaining to humanity may be waked up in each soul, until the whole organism has been brought to unfold its powers in orderly succession and perfect symmetry. This being ascertained, a course of education, in correspondence with the results obtained, has been devised, through which, as a general introduction to future and special education, each child must be carried. This sort of theory has been, as might be expected, j)i'Osecuted with great zeal and ingenuity in Germany. And Mr. Morell seems, in some degree, to have adopted it. " The whole art of education," ho says, " lies really in laying hold of the human faculties one after the other as they come in view, and then applying the proper stimulus and the proper nutriment to each. This aid to the natural expansion of the mental powers is a boon of which no child, in a civilised country, should be deprived." — Minutes, 4e-> 1854-5, p. 611. Now, undoubtedly, there is important truth in this view ; and it may serve, if rightly applied, by the light of a carefully watched experience, to assist in fixing a minimiun of education, in various fundamental and essential respects, 472 POPULAR EDUCATION. which should be insured to every child. But, if it is to be understood (Mr. Morell, we are persuaded, would not intend his words to be so understood) as meaning that every faculty and susceptibility of every child must be reached and wakened, and then guided and trained into a right bent, before he leaves school, it aims at far more than can ever be accomplished ; and, aiming at so much, will accomplish but little ; striving to spread over so wide a surface, will leave the work, at every point, very slightly and imperfectly performed. Something must surely be left to be unfolded under the leading and teaching of Providence ; and it must be remembered, that only by means of the necessities, opportunities, duties, instances, and examples, of actual life, can the education of any man be really completed. There are, however, certain cardinal faculties which, if not schooled and drilled in early life, till ease and rapidity of movement and evolution have been secured, are never likely to be brought into effectual play at all ; and which, at the same time, easily prepare the mind and lead the way, if there be any energy of soul, for the acquisition afterwards, by a process of self-education, of whatever further discipline is needed, and for the successive development of the powers that may yet remain latent. While these cardinal faculties lie inactive under the con- gestion of ignorance and apathy, the man must remain — under ordinary circumstances — animalised and degraded. When he has felt the power and obtained the use and government of these, his way is open, unless poverty and unfriendly laws block it up, to steady advancement and elevation. Such an education, and such an amount of it, may surel}^ be claimed for every man, as shall by moral and religious training, give him light and power to command and use all that he is and has ; and, at the same time, by the awakening and culture of the leading powers of I EDUCATIONAL MINIMU>r. 473 his unclerstandiiig, shall make him bugiu to feul, aiitl opuu to him the way to learn more and more perfectly, irJiat he is and has. No man ought to he left in such a position of ignorance and intellectual and moral hebetude and help- lessness, that he cannot, under anything like ordinary conditions, take even the first step towards intellectual and moral elevation and culture. Every man ought so to be set on his feet, and to be led so far onwards and upwards, that he may be able to mount at least upon the first rung of the ladder by which he may ascend, however slowl}', yet continually, higher and higher, if not always in social status, at any rate in the fellowship of mind with mind. In this sense, we heartily accept and repeat Mr. Kingsley's words : — " If man living in civilised society has one right ho can demand, it is this, that the State which exists by his labour shall enable him to develop, or, at least, not hinder his developing, his whole faculties to theu' very utmost, however lofty that may be. AYhile a man who might be an author remains a spade- di-udge, or a journeyman vs^hile he has capacities for a master ; while any man able to rise in life remains by social circumstances lower than he is wilbng to place himself, that man has a right to complain of the State's injustice and neglect." — Yeast, p. 110. It may not be easy to define the precise amount of instruction, and quality of education, which will suffice to put the scholar into a position to make good use of all his subsequent opportunities, and to rise, if he will, steadily upwards. But an example will very distinctly and in- telligibly illustrate what in the foregoing paragraph we have intended to convey. In the Rev. F. Watkins' General Report for the year 1857 on Church of England Schools inspected in Yorkshire, he lays before the Committee of Council four documents which had recently and casually come into his hands, and offers some comments upon them. " The first is a letter from a pupil-teacher (gii'l) in a school of the manufacturing districts, which certainly does much credit to her Intel- 474 POPULAB EDUCATION. ligence and right appreciation of her duties ; the second is from a child in the first class of a good school, and shows both right feeling and considerable intelligence ; the third is a notice written by the over- seers of a villlage in the East Eiding, taken (not by myself) from the church door, and brought to me that I might judge of the state of education in the parish ; and the fourth is a letter addressed to myself by a middle-aged and respectable labourer in a Yorkshire village." (1.) LETTER. " Reverend Sib, — My father wishes me to write to you and ask your advice uj^on a subject that gives me great uneasiness. I am a pupil-teacher at St. school, and am now in my third year. The schools became mixed in the early part of the year, and for some time I taught a mixed class ; but since Midsummer I have taught the first class of girls, and have had them entireli/ to myself in the girls' school. " I have had no system but my own to work by, no judgment but my own to depend ujjon ; in short, I have just taught them as I liked. In the afternoon I have taught needlework to all the girls. The reason why I have had to do this is because we have had no mistress. " But this is not the worst ; I have not had a lesson this year. I asked once if I might not receive lessons from the master, since there was no mistress, but was told that the Government would not allow girls to be taught by a master. " Now, I think, in the first place, that it is very wrong to intrust me, so young and consequently so inexperienced as I am, with so important a charge; and, secondly, I think I shall not pass the examination. The inspector will say, ' She is not qualified to teach what a girl ought to teach at the end of the third year ; ' and so I shall lose a whole year's salary, besides a wtole year's tuition, though I shall have had double the work, and more than double the care, that I ought to have had. " Shall I be sent home at the examination, or might I be transferred to some other school ? Please to send me your opinion upon the sub- ject, and you will greatly oblige, " Your obedient servant, « Eev. F. Watkins. " E. D." (2.) EXERCISE. " Question. — Show what you mean by ' love, honour, and succour your mother.' EXAMPLES. 475 " To show my love to my mother, fii'st, I do what she bids me gene • rally. If she sends me an errand, I try to make all tho haste back again I can ; I do all I can to assist her ; I pray for her, and love her better than any one else in the world ; if my mother is ill, I wait upon her because I know that she cannot do it for herself ; and if I did not, it would bo disobeying the commandment of our Lord's Apostle, when he said, ' Children, obey your parents.' — M. H." (3.) NOTICE. " A vestry Meeting Whill be held In The scoolrum on Fraiday, the 20th, at 7 o'clock, for the Nomenation of Gardians & overseers for the in suing year. ^^ > Overseers." (4.) LETTER ABOUT A DOG. " Sir, i received your noat About the dog, and i have got a very good one, a tarrer, c is about 18 months ould, he has been bred and brot hup in , and the Gentium that e beloned to, e Swaped me for my bitsh, for he had wanted her before, and hi hae a youn one of her for my Self, and as you wanted one I cannot recommend to you a beter, so please ser rite me a faw lines back, for he base beean huse to children & is a good house dog. The prise of the dog is ten shillines, he his clear of the distemper. Pleas send "Wither you will send for him, or i must bring him hover if e will Suit, it will be on Saterday, if you dond Send for him. (Signed) " Mr. W. B." " These papers are thus accidentally brought together, and amongst a mass of similar evidence they testify, I think, to two important points : — First, that the new system, with all its shortcomings, does produce better fi'uit than the old ; and, secondly, that whatever some persons may choose to assert, there is an amount of ignorance in tho working classes (ay, and in the class a little above them also) wliich is almost incredible to those who have not looked weU into the subject, or who have never ventured from the wide and beaten high road of lifo into the bye lanes and tortuous paths of rural existence. "VVTio can believe that the parish officers who framed and signed the notice above can have an intelligent apprehension of the Church prayers, or arc able to receive with profit the plainest sermons delivered ' in a tongue' which ought to be ' understanded of the common people ?' Or, on the other hand, who would doubt that the writer of the very sensible pupil-teacher's letter is a young person whose heart and mind have 476 POPULAR EDUCATION. both been strongly and beneficially influenced by her education at school, or that the school which furnishes such correspondents is doing a great and wholesome work for the country at large ? 0 ! si sic omnes.' Minutes 4-c., 1857-8, pp. 302, 303. The pupil-teaclier, whose beautifully expressed and in every way superior letter Mr. Watldns has thus published, was not, probably, at the time of writing it, more than sixteen years old, being but in her third year of apprenticeship. Who does not see that she has not only acquired considerable knowledge, but, what is much more important than even knowledge, mental discipline, —and moral discipline with this — the poAver to use her knowledge skilfully, to combine and apply her faculties according to her exigencies, and so as to carry out her well-conceived purposes ? She has gained the command of her powers, whether of observation, reflec- tion, or expression ; and so has become the mistress of her own capacities, and the directress of her own development. The key has thus been put into her hands by which she can open gate after gate of mental and moral advancement, and pass successfully onwards into inner and higher circles of intelligence and enjoyment. Who does not also perceive that the small school-girl who wrote No. 2 is in a fair way, perhaps not to equal the pupil-teacher, but at least to become an improving and an advancing woman ? While, on the other hand, it is but too plain that not only the labouring man, but even the overseers, unless some very special and excep- tional power and influence should come to rouse and renovate them, must continue, for want of mental culture and disci- pline, to stagnate all their lives at the same level at which they were fixed in early manhood.* * " That improvement is needed," says formula used by the men in his employ Mr. Watkins, in his Report on Schools when they wish to quit it, written always in Yorkshire for 1854, "the following by the same sci'ibe, as the best writer notice given me by a considerable coal- and speller of the whole company. I master in the south of Yorkshire, may only regret that the handwriting cannot show. He tells me that this is the be shown, as well as the spelling and READING, WRITING, AND GRAMMAR. 477 Undoubtedly, so far as regards merely mental culture, the first and most needful thing is, that the child should acquire the power of reading with ease and fluency. If this is once fairly accomplished, so that reading ceases to be an irksome task, and becomes instead a pleasant pastime, the way is opened for the indefinite acquisition of knovdedge. But in order to this, it is not enough to teach letters, and sj^elling, and pronunciation. These things the teacher may be ever hammering into the child for months and years together, and yet he may never learn to read with intelligence and ease. His apprehensive faculties must be brought into play, and he must be drilled into the easy and ready use of them; a certain amount of general knowledge must be imparted, especially about " common things ;" and some clear understandmg must be gained, together with some readiness in the application, of the rudiments and ordinary proprieties of grammatical si3eech ; otherwise the scholar will not be able to read with ease or much advantage. Unless he gets so far as this, he will seldom keep up his reading after he has left school ; for, never having experienced pleasure, or indeed anything but trouble, in his attempts to read, and never having found himself much the wiser for what he has stumblingly spelled through, he has acquired no taste for the employment, is little sensible of the loss he suffers by his ignorance, and easily comes to the conclusion that the labour of learning is by far too hard for such as himself, and that the advantage by no means compensates for the trouble.* Besides, he is wearied with his daily toil, and shrinks from giving the style: — " Octoder 17, 1853. Master goiug to tivkc a voyage, for his health's William higgen hi hear dy giv you Won sake, to " China.". " Wc be on'y three month notis to leav you imploymcut. days a-going," he explained. When lloDAT Right," — Minutes, jfc.,lS54-5, advised to read, he liad made answer J). 441. that he "couldn't make nmch out o* * Mr. White found at Hull, airing redin'; 'ud rather work the jack-plane himself in the Cemetery, a Lincolnshire all day than read.'' — A Munlh in York- village carpenter, who, as he said, was shire, y. 15. 478 POPULAR EDUCATION. requisite pains to the task of learning to read, when his daily work is done. So, in a few years, though he learned after a fashion to read at school, yet he comes to swell the number of those adults, so large a proportion still of England's population, who can neither read nor write. If, on the contrary, the scholar has once learned to read easily and intelligently, there is little fear as to his keeping up the habit, and increasing his knowledge continually. The Bible, prayer-book, and hymn-book, at church, or chapel, or Sunday-school, the cheap periodical and the penny news- paper, will afford him abundant and continual exercise for his accomplishment, both on his own account and for the benefit of his neighbours. Thus his mind will be stirred and kept alive ; thus it may be fed and disciplined, enriched and enlarged. It can hardly be said that it is less important to acquire the command of a legible hand than the power of reading with ease and propriety. The one acquirement should advance almost ^jari 2^'^'-^^^'^ "^i^^ t^® other. For, next to the cheap Bible and the cheap newspaper, there is no instru- ment of education so powerful, whether intellectually or morally considered, as that of the penny postage, both as enabling the poor to send and to receive letters. Of Grammar we have already spoken, in passing, as an indispensable elementary subject of education in the primary school. It is by no means such a favourite branch as Geo^ graphy and History; but except in so far as these must, to a certain extent, be incidentally taught in order to the acquisition of the needful amount of general knowledge about ** common things," and to the intelligent apprehension of the reading lessons, it is undoubtedly more indispensable. The child who has learned to read easily and well, can afterwards purvey for himself what amount of historical and geographical knowledge he requires ; but the minutiae of grammar, if not AEITHMETIC, DRAWING, AND MUSIC. 479 acquired at school, and drilled into the understanding and memory by a competent teacher, are not likely ever to be mastered afterwards. Instruction in Arithmetic is not only a necessity for the ordinary business of life, but most valuable, when rightly taught, as an intellectual discipline. Besides which, it affords a test of mathematical genius, and itself forms an appropriate introduction to the pursuit of mathematics. The rudiments of drawing, and of music, again, are very easily taught to children at school, and with great advantage to their training, taste, and culture. Music, especially, is a most beneficial element of power and organization in a school ; while, in these days of refinement and of competi- tion in art and manufacture between our own and other nations, it is obviously very desirable, on public grounds, that native talent for art should be early discovered and duly developed. Moreover, genius for art or music being a special and original endowment, adequate in many cases to determine the future line in life of the possessor, it is desirable that its existence should be ascertained as early as possible, and the entire plan of education disposed accordingly. If God has endowed a soul with powers which fit it best for success in the culture of art, it would be a pity indeed for poverty and ignorance to suppress its manifestation, or to repress ts development. A national education should provide, as far as possible, that the endowments bestowed by Provi- dence be early recognised and brought fully into play. If a child is well grounded in the branches of Imowlcdgo we have now indicated, he has, in fact, an introduction to any walk of intellect, and, at the same time, to all the practical business of life. We have said nothing of the classical or modern languages. The scholar who, in English learning, shows a decided genius for lingual studies, may well advance to the acquisition of other languages besides 480 POPULAR EDUCATION, his own ; and, according to the present systems of education patronised by government, has commonly the opportunity of so doing. Nor have we said anything about science and natural philosophy. Certain rudimentary lessons in these, certain obvious and interesting applications of them, are taught by all intelligent schoolmasters, as among the best methods of eliciting and stimulating the general faculties of the mind. If the scholar is to go further than this, he must do so after he has left the primary school. The neces- sary minimum of intellectual culture will, we think, be secured by some such quota of instruction as we have now indicated. The lad who has fairly mastered this will, hereafter, be able to help himself. Nor have we any reason to alter the general outline, in order to adapt it to the case of girls. Onlj'-, in their case, there must be added careful and thorough instruc- tion in those household accomplishments which are an indispensable part of their education. We observe that Her Majesty's Inspectors are tolerably unanimous in approving some such general scheme of instruction as we have now sketched, and that, from whatever point of view they may have originally approached the subject of education, to a practical result substantially agreeing with our conclusions have all bodies of educationists finally concurred in coming. Of course, this minimum being secured as a foundation, the schools in different districts of country may be reasonably expected to exhibit— they do in fact exhibit — special adapta- tions, according to the prevalent occupations and necessities of the labouring population. In some rural parishes in- dustrial training in the gardens and fields has been ad- vantageously combined with school-instruction — though, in most cases, this combination seems to be a failure — in the Potteries drawing is a principal part of the school- instruction— in sea-port towns the rudiments of astronomy PARTIES RESPONSIBLE. 481 and navigation are imparted to the more advanced scholars, and so forth. Such are our views as to the general standard of instruction, which, in combination with thorough, loving, pervasive, moral and religious training, ought to constitute the substratum and absolute minimum of education for every Christian child. How deplorably distant the nation is from having hitherto realised this conception, -we have already indicated. Yet it certainly ought to be realised. Until it is, all who come short of the requisite provision are, in fact, suffering wrong. They are held back from what they ought to possess ; and no Christian man, himself in the enjoyment of Christian culture and the opportunity of advancement, can innocently rest at ease whilst his fellow-subjects are compelled to want the same blessings. But then the questions arise, How can these blessings be secured for all ? And who are immediately bound and responsible to take measures and use means for supplying them ? The conclusion to which the practical common-sense of England at large has come respecting these questions is, we suppose few will dispute, something like the following. 1. As parents must he the first educators of their children, (for good or for evil,) and as they have, both by the law of the land, and according to the law of God, a peculiar right and authority as respects their children, so upon the parents primaril}', whether in the sight of God or of man, must devolve the business and the duty of educating their children. But, 2. As the ordinance of Christian baptism not only binds parents to bring up their children "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," but pledges Christian ministers and the congregation- of Christian believers to a joint (though, it may be, secondary) responsi- bility with the parents in the accomplishment of this work, it must be a duty incumbent on the Church of Christ in general, and upon Christian ministers in particular, as far as possible, I I 482 POPULAR EDUCATION. to see to it that effectual provision be made for the Christian instruction and discipline of the children. If the parents ade- quately do this, the case is satisfied ; although, even in such cases, the ministers of Christ, and according to their oppor- tunity, the members of the Church, cannot be held absolved from all interest or concern as to the progress of those who were by baptism admitted into the fellowship of the Church. But if the parents are unable or indisposed themselves fully to discharge the duty of training their children in Christian knowledge and practice, there is then an imperative obligation laid upon the Christian Church, and especially, as its instru- ments and representatives, upon the ministers of Christ, to supplement by their own care and provision parental defi- ciencies. Moreover, as the Church of Christ can set no limits to its responsibilities, except its means of exercising influence; and ought to set none to its love; as it must in its spirit be essentially missionary and catholic ; and as it has a special call, in the spirit of its Master and Head, to care most for those who are neediest ; — so it cannot restrain its sympathies or its responsibilities within the bounds of its own pale of membership, but must most earnestly and unweariedly seek to gather into the embrace of its own instruction and ordinances all such children as by their own parents are left to grow up in ignorance of Christian duty. Acting on these principles, Christian Sunday-schools and denominational day- schools of every name have been most rightly multiplied throughout Christian lands. 3. But, thirdl}^ there is still another party, if we may so speak, directly interested in the right education of the rising generation ; and that is, the nation collectively considered. Were, indeed, the entire nation, in all its individual members, intelligently and thoroughly Christian, this third relationship and responsi- bility would gradually merge in the second, as indeed the second would in the first. But as long as a large proportion ULTKA-VOLUNTARIES. 483 of the population remains altogether without Christian dis- cipline, or anything that can be called moral training and human culture, — burdening the land with pauperism, and disgracing it with vice and crime; so long there will still remain, after all that the Church has done, a moral obligation and a political necessity for the nation on its own account — for the commonwealth as such — to do what lies in its power to remedy such evils ; — that is, as education is one of the things mainly needed, to supply the requisite education. But though the practical common sense of England has generally adopted conclusions substantially identical with these, — which, indeed, are the old principles which have from the first obtained in Christian communities and nations, — yet, within the last fifteen or twenty years, a contrary doctrine has been extensively propagated by those who, by other classes, are generally designated ultra-voluntaries. Through fear, on the one hand, of the usurpation by the Established Church of the function of national education, as if this were a right in- herent in the Church endowed by the State, neither to be controlled in its exercise by any co-ordination of lay associates, or of political functionaries, nor to be shared with any dissent- ing Christian communities ; and, on the other hand, through jealousy of the theories and projects of secular educationists, who would make the education of the people altogether an aftair of the State, and would entirely separate it from religious influences or Church co-operation ; a large class of energetic men, belonging chiefly to the Baptist and Independent deno- minations, but including also a certain proportion(we believe a very small proportion) of Wesleyans, have been led to adopt the principle, that the education of the people is a matter to be left entirely to voluntary exertions, and that " all Government interference with the education of the people is at variance with sound principle, involving a departure from the legiti- mate province of Government." The parents are the parties I I 2 484 POPULAE EDUCATION. primarily, and in a sense, only, responsible, according to these theorists, for the education of their children. The parents may, to a certain extent, voluntarily delegate their responsibility to the schoolmaster they choose, or to the Church and its ministers, as affording aid to their own efforts, or assisting to carry out their own wishes. But the State can have no authority in such a matter: to claim this for the State would be a treason to parental rights, an invasion of parental responsibilities, an investiture of the State with moral functions, a demand of despotism in which lies con- cealed, however subtly disguised, all the peril and poison of continental centralisation and imperialism. This is the sort of language now indulged in by many of those who, up to the year 1843, were among the most zealous upholders of the duty of national education by the State. But in that year Sir James Graham gave them a fright from which they have never since recovered. The terror thus induced has assumed the chronic form of a phobia] and now* the Marquis of Lausdowne, Lord John Eussell, and Sir J. P. K. Shuttleworth, as educationists, are regarded with as much distrust by these ultra-volun- taries as even the Bishop of Exeter. In fact, these Whig educators, with, we may add. Lord Brougham as their Coryphaeus, are suspected of being, consciously or un- consciously, leagued in a design fraught with peril to the liberties and to the mental and moral independence of the uneducated crime-and-pauperism-breeding classes of the English population ! — or else, if not of these, of the educated, newspaper-reading portion of the working people ! To UB the doctrine which we have endeavoured to state in the form most plausible, and most likely to secure popular sympathy, seems, when fairly undressed and ex- amined in puns naturalibus, to be as monstrous a miscon- * In 1859. THE NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY. 486 ception as was ever proposed with all confidence as a party cry, and as the basis of an organized agitation. Many of the men who have adopted and paraded it, we cannot but regard personally with great respect, especially one who has lately been most worthily elected a member of the Imperial Legislature by the suffrages of his fellow- townsmen. Nothing, in fact, but the high character and the ability of this gentleman could have enabled the anti- State-education doctrine to take so strong a hold of the convictions of many Nonconformists, especially those of Yorkshire ; though even his energy, ability, and extensive influence would have produced a far less considerable im- pression, but for the affinity between the anti- State-education theory and the anti-State-and-Church principle which has been adopted by modern Congregationalist Dissenters. Nevertheless, all the Congregational leaders have not been persuaded to agree with Mr. Baines's views. There are not to be found two more distinguished ministers and leaders among Congregatioualists than Dr. Vaughan and Mr. Binney ; both of whom, likewise, must be numbered among the most powerful upholders of anti-State-and- Church principles. And yet both of these maintain that to provide for the adequate moral and intellectual training and cultm-e of those who cannot otherwise obtain it, is a plain and imperative part of the responsibility which devolves upon the commonwealth as such ; and, of course, both maintain also, that whatever affinity there may seem to be between the anti-State-education principle and the anti-State-and-Church principle, there is between them, in reality, no logical connection or inter-dependence. On what ground, let us ask, is it assumed that parents alone have any authority or responsibility in the matter of a child's education ? Do they alone suffer if the edu- cation of the child is neglected ? On the contrary, do they 48G POPULAR EDUCATION. not often seem to suffer less than others on this account, and to be far less sensible of the disgrace, and misery, and evil which result from their children's want of educa- tion ? Society, of necessity, suffers from the want of education on the part of the rising race ; is society to have no defence against the parents' criminal and selfish neglect ? But it may not be a case of wilful negligence on the part of the parents. It may be that they are themselves unable to provide for the education of their children. And it may further be that the conditions of society itself — the long operation in the past of injurious laws, the pressure of competition in life, the evils entailed by a long war — have, without any fault of their own, so limited the intellectual development of the parents them- selves, and so depressed and burdened them with poverty, that it is out of their power to do anything for the right education of their children, even though they might be anxious for them to receive such an education. Is the society, then, which has brought this evil, — been the means of inflicting this deepest of all losses and injuries, — upon both parents and children, debarred from doing anjihing to repair its own wrong ? The injury has been inflicted through national laws and institutions ; and society, i.e., the nation collectively, can only undo the injury by analogous means. Every parent and every child is not only a member of a family, but of the nation. The parent does not exist for himself, but for society. So the child is not the pro- perty of the parent, nor does he exist only for him. Not only must his evil education and his ill-doing transcend, in their effects, the family circle, but his powers for good are intended to be called forth and exercised on behalf of the world in which his lot is cast, of the human society in which he is to dwell. The parent, in the authority which he exercises over the child, is but a steward and THE GROUNDS AND LIMITS OF NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY. 487 guardian acting on behalf of God and of the nation. The nation, it is true, cannot claim an absolute right and authority in all matters over either parent or child. It cannot coerce the conscience, and has no right to make the attempt. It cannot enter the sphere of religious conviction, or interfere between God and the conscience of either parent or child. But it can claim to regulate almost all except this, if there is any liability of injustice or wrong being inflicted by the stronger upon the weaker, by the parent upon the child of tender years. And, in particular, if the parent is either unable or unwilling to afford his child such an education as is necessary to restrain him from crime, to elevate him above pauj)erism, and to fit him for discharging his duty as a member of the common- wealth,— much more if he is educating him in a contrary direction, — it becomes the right and the duty of the State to interpose on behalf not only of the child's just claims, but of its own well-being, and to take measures for pro- viding and imparting such an education. The relation of the parent to the child is, so far at least as regards this life, transitory ; that of the child to the nation, permanent. Parents presently die ; but society remains. Family life is tributary to national life ; the latter encloses the former, both preceding and surviving it. Family training is intended to prepare for national life and civil and political responsibilities. The less, then, within the limits already laid down, must be regulated by the greater. The well-being of society, of the nation, must, if needs be, assert its claims and authority as to the training of those who are to be its constituent members, no less than the peace and order of the family must be enforced in the due subordination and instruction of its members. And, if parents are the rightful guardians of the peace and morality of the family, so the legislative 488 POPULAB EDUCATION. and administrative authorities of the nation are the rightful guardians of the interests of society. In this sense, "the powers that be," in the one case no less than the other, " are ordained of God." These representatives of national authority do actually require of every citizen a certain standard of external morality, and punish for breaches of law. They thus undeniably, and without any controversy as to their right in so doing, exercise, to this extent, functions clearly analogous to those exercised by the parent on behalf of the family. Then who can deny them the authority to go somewhat farther, and, seeing that they require of the citizen the observance of a certain standard of morality, to take care that he be adequately educated for the fulfilment of this requirement ? If that parent would be justly blamed who demanded morality of his children, but never taught it them ; w^ho required an orderly and peaceful behaviour, and yet suffered them to associate with disorderly companions, and to run wild at the time when they might be under salutary training; surely, on similar grounds, a State which sets up strict laws, and punishes for the breach of them, and yet suffers millions of those who are to be its citizens to grow up in ignorance and immorality, without even an attempt to reclaim or to instruct them, must be liable to the severest condem- ■ nation. Such a State would be seeking to "reap where it had not sown," and to "gather where it had not straw^ed." And such a State w^ould England be, if, while she boasts of her rigid justice, and glories in her ample and liberal provision of judicial machinery, she should at the same time disclaim all responsibility or obligation as to the establishment of schools for the morally untrained ; if she set up many gallows, but no school-houses ; and spent much on judges and executioners, but nothing on schoolmasters. Surely, as Dr. Yaughan has well and often put it, "govern- DR. VAUGHAN NOT AN ULXriA-VOLUNTAUY. 489 meiit MAY," at least, " be a moral teacher to the extent that it MUST be a moral admmistrator." As our argument has implied, we are prepared to go still further than this in investing the government with responsibility and authority. But if we go so far only as this, we leave the ultra- volun- taries altogether behind. " The Government," says Sir J. P. Kay Shuttleworth, in his masterly work on Public Education, " has functions which it can neither dele- gate nor forego. It must arrest, and i)unish, even to the penalty of death, the violator of the law. But are English laws, like those of the ancient tyrant, to be so written that none can read ? or, which is equivalent, are the ignorant to perish for the breach of what they cannot understand? Are they to continue to suffer for sensuality, from which they have not been weaned? for turbulence, which is the passionate excess of suffering and error ? Is the Executive to be the rude means by which the corruptions and the crimes of society are to be extirpated, but to be without pity for the victims of its edicts — a passionless executioner ? Assuredly not. Prevention is before cure, and immeasurably better than punishment. The school is a more salutaiy agent than the reformatory prison ; and none can recal him who has experienced the last penalty of the law. The State has also charged property with security for the life of the indigent. That is not simi)ly an act of police enabling the law to suppress vagabondage, and thus increasing the safety of society. It is also an act of moral administration. The relief of indigence is a work of Chi-istian charity, inseparable from the highest moral sanctions and considerations. . . . Nor can the government treat the pauper as a mere animal. The moral conditions of his being must be recognised. In charging itself with the relief of indigence, the State becomes responsible for educa- tion and religious instruction." — Public Education, pp. 287, 288. " Is government, then, in no sense a moral agent ? May it incarce- rate criminals, and separate itself, as an impassive spectator, from all the festering moral pollution of the common wards of the old prison, and the terrible agonies of the separate cell ? Has it no message of peace and redemption intrusted to it by Him "VVTio said to the penitent thief upon the cross, 'To-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise?' Are the Howards and the Frys alone to convey this message ? Or is the workhouse merely a pauper farm, where certain human animals 490 POPULAR EDUCATION. are to be fed at the least cost to the parish, till, nailed between rough boards, their bodies are buried, like dogs, by the sexton and the beadle? Is this a Christian household, or a pauper 6arracooH? Can the State separate itself from certain grave and high responsibilities, as to the spiritual future of these unfortunates ? Are the children to remain ignorant and rude ; the adults, servile or disaffected helots ; the aged, torpid expectants of a grave without hope ? Axe the army and the navy to be disciplined in the terrible array of war, for the destruction of human life, with every animal energy centupled in force, by death-like engines, by organization, and the maddening sympathy of numbers ? and is no still small voice to whisper, ' Blessed are the meek. . . . Blessed are the merciful. . . . Blessed arc the peace- makers?' " If these are conclusions which no one can adopt, where is the moral agency of the State to stop ? Apparently, government cannot separate itself from responsibility for the mental and moral condition of the criminal, pauper, and military population. " What is the distinction between the reckless indigent classes out of the workhouse, and those within its walls ? They are both within the reach of voluntary agency. The City missionary may penetrate to both. But has government a responsibility for the moral depravity and mental incapacity of the one, which it in no degree partakes with respect to the other'?"— Ibid., pp. 281, 282. " The municipal and parochial organization, and the county govern- ment, are, in like manner, moral administrations. They have charge of the local police, the gaols, the lunatic asylums ; and even in that which is most mechanical in their spheres of action a moral govern- ment developes itself. . . . Society appears daily more sensible of these moral wants. Hence it has recently provided for the apphcation of the parochial rates to the establishment of baths and washhouses for the poor, it has provided for the inspection of lodging-houses, and it may be hoped that, ere long, our streets wiU cease to be the open mart of a shameless prostitution." — Public Education, p. 288. We conclude, from such considerations as these, that Government has an undoubted responsibility as to the edu- cation, moral and mental, of those who are to be its subjects. The immediate responsibilitj^ indeed, must, in the order of nature, and according to the providential arrangements of i THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY OF THE STATE. 401 society, devolve upon the parents ; but a secondary responsi- bility rests upon the State. If the parents fail of that which, in reference to the civil and political responsibilities and well- being of their children, and consequently also in reference to the well-being of the commonwealth, is their manifest duty to their children, it is incumbent upon the State, so far as may be in its power, to redress this double wrong — this wrong equally to the children themselves, and to society at large. Or if the parents, willing to do the best for their children, are yet unable to provide for them that bare minimum of education which is needful to put them in such a position, and to secure for them such a power of self-development, that they may be able to advance in the scale of intellectual and moral, i.e., of human progress ; in this case, likewise, as an act of justice to the children, and also out of regard to the general interests of society, the government is bound to do what may lie in its power towards enabling the parents to supply their children's necessity. And still further, even though the bare require- ments of this minimum should be fulfilled, and a tolerable sort of education be commonly given to the rising youth of any class in society; yet if at the same time the general standard of education be, and, if left to the operation of ordinary causes, be likely to remain, far inferior to what it is desirable that it should be, for the good of society, the development of the national mind and resources, the elevation and refinement of morality, and the general pro- gress of the race ; it is the mere fanaticism of ultra-volun- taryism to deny that government has a right to take action to the extent required for the accomphshment of such desirable results. Surely it must be admitted that society, under the intelligent and responsible guidance of the legis- lature, and in response to a crying need, not only may but ought to endeavour, as far as possible, to remove a 492 POPULAE EDUCATION. mischievous monoiDoly of ignorance and error, which selfish competition and groping empiricism had combined to induce, in regard to the estate of man's intelligent and immortal part. After all, we cannot concede that government is but an organized confederacy for removing all impediments out of the way of merely selfish instincts and energies, and letting them rule the world without opposition. It is wonderful the amount of nonsense which is con- fidently talked upon such subjects as these. We are told, for instance, with a triumphant air, that in this, as in all matters, the supply will follow the demand. What does this mean ? Do the people who use this language intend to say that good schools will, according to natural and necessary laws, be forthcoming in proportion to the necessity for them ? or, that they will be furnished as soon as people have found out the want of them ? If the former were true, of course the whole question of national education would be at an end. Not only would it be perfectly gratuitous for the government to give itself any anxiety upon the subject, but it would be equally gratuitous for any private benevolence, or any denomi- national zeal and organization, to be expended upon the matter. If that were the case, of course there would be really no educational deficiency anywhere. No sooner would any need exist in any place than immediately it would begin to be supplied. If the latter is the interpre- tation of the maxim which, with profound incomprehension, some sages are in the habit of quoting, our answer is twofold. First, it is not true that as soon as people have begun to feel the want of better schools, such schools will be in a way to be provided. Before such a result could follow, several conditions must be fulfilled. The feeling must be generally and widely spread among those who themselves are the parties directly interested ; there must, moreover, be SITPLY DOES NOT FOLLOW DEMAND. 403 a due appreciation of the exigent and imperative character of the newly-discovered need, that it is no secondary, but a primary, necessity, for human beings to be rightly educated, a necessity to be put on a par even with the want of bread, to be accounted far more pressing than any want of mere conveniences, one the supply of which for their children would be cheaply purchased by the parents at the cost of much self-denial; and finally there must be the ability as well as the disposition, on the part of the parents, to pay the high price which a good education, if only to be provided according to the ordi- nary laws of supply and demand, could not but involve. It must be remembered that to prepare a good teacher is a costly thing; and, moreover, that an intelligent, first-class teacher must and ought to be well paid. And, in fact, until government helped to make the way plain to an education both cheap and good, it was the case that though nothing was more common than to pay a high price for a most worthless, albeit pretentious, edu- cation, a good education was certainly not to be any where obtained by poor jjeople at what to them would seem a possible price. By this time the error is exploded which formerly prevailed, that to teach well the elements of knowledge requires nothing more than elementary know- ledge, that to train and instruct the children of the poor is a task demanding but low attainments and little talent. Thanks to government interposition it is now pretty well understood that teaching is a science which must be studied, and an art which must be systematically acquired ; and that, in some respects, the training needs to be more borough, the science more perfect, the tact nicer, the skill and aptitude more delicate and cultured, of those who undertake to awaken and discipline the faculties and to mould the character of the children of tlie poorer and 494 POPULAR EDUCATION. more neglected classes, than of those whose office it is to instruct in more favoured circles. To attempt to carry the maxims of free-trade and of a misapplied political economy into the region of mind and morals, in the way done by those whose opinions we are combating, is most absurd. Push these maxims to their legitimate issue, and they will be found opposed to all efforts of Christian charity to establish schools. Un- doubtedly these are an interference in a sense with free- trade, and show that the denominations — ultra-voluntaries included — are not content to leave the supply to be regulated by the demand. The present government system is certainly, again, tantamount to a system of protection ; yet it almost entirely avoids all the evils connected with anything in the nature of monopoly, by providing that all shall be impartially aided who do the State real service, and that the superiority in the amount of help gained shall be in proportion, partly to the voluntary offerings for the good of the commonwealth contributed by the promoters of any school, partly to the excellence and accomplishments of the master, and partly to the proved efficiency of the school in attracting numbers, in retaining scholars, and in providing in every way for a superior education. As long as the supply was in fact left to be regulated by the demand, what a supply it was ! Who can lament for the introduction of u system which has almost banished those wretched schools, kept too commonly by broken-down (often drinking and unprincipled) tradesmen, by those who had proved themselves incompetent to conduct any actual business of life well and prosperously, or by maimed work- men, or military pensioners, or ignorant old women? Doubtless, there were some deserving persons, many of them reduced widows, or orphan daughters who had seen better days. Of this last class, it is a comfort to think FREE TRADE MAXIMS NOT APPLICABLE. 495 that a considerable proportion have found employment in connection \\dth the better state of things. But the great majority of the schools were utterly worthless. And how can we be sufficiently thankful for the new life which the present system is infusing into the old National Schools, which, speaking generally, were more inefficient than can easily be imagined, and which seem, for the most part, to have been officered and conducted by their managers as if these felt it to be a religious duty to teach the children as little as possible beyond the duty of attending church and obeying their betters in life ? We had marked and indeed transcribed some passages for quotation, from the Eeports of Her Majesty's Inspectors, which would have illustrated and amply justified the state- ments we have now made ; but our limits compel us to omit them. They would have shown what the old race of schoolmasters was, and that, though dying out, the race is not yet extinct or quite without scions of the real old stock. They would have shown, too, by the testimony of such men as Canon Moseley and the Rev. W. J. Kennedy, what the old National Schools were, and that, of the uninspected schools, there is still a large pro- portion not greatly elevated in character above the type which prevailed twenty years ago.* With the exception of an almost inappreciable fraction, it may be s aid that all the religious day-schools supplied by voluntary zeal, fifteen or twenty years ago, were Church schools, i. c, such National Schools as we have described. Where such schools were not, the dame's school and the Sunday-school together ordinarily afforded all the education the poor child ever got. The result is seen in the drunk- enness and pauperism, the vice and crime, of the lower classes of England. Altogether exceptional instances of * See Minutes of Committee of Council, 1850-1, pp. 148-9 ; and 1854, pp. 518-19. 406 POPULAR EDUCATION. bodily and mental vigour, of constitutional resolution and energy, such as that of George Stephenson, must not be pleaded in reply to this general statement. To quote the words of Sir J. P. Kay Shuttleworth, in his admir- able address at the Wesleyan Educational Meeting, in the Centenary Hall, last May,* " Their intellectual faculty enabled Brindley, Simpson, and Stephenson, to work out their own mental triumph unaided. But I would not have it so for the future. For one strong swimmer who has been enabled to reach the shore, how many have perished !" It is to remove mental and moral disabilities, to rescue children from the oppression of circumstances, to elevate a degraded class unable to help themselves, to vindicate for every English child its birthright of true freedom, to break down the unconscious tyranny of the educated classes, to enfranchise the serfs of ignorance, that the British government has been compelled at length to in- terfere. Is it the duty of the State to provide food and clothing for those unable to provide them for themselves, — unable too often through their own fault, — and not equally the duty of government to furnish to helpless children that which, while it is a much higher boon, is for a reasonable and immortal spirit an equal necessity, the sense and quickening within them of their own humanity, of the powers and faculties which lift them above the tyranny of their animal nature, and fit them for the fellowship of mind with mind ? Who will maintain that while men must not be suffered by the State to perish for lack of " the bread that perisheth," they may, nay, that they must, be left, hapless and unhelped, to lack the aliment of their higher natures, and to live a life of unrelieved darkness and unschooled passion which is worse than death ? For ourselves, we are prepared to demand that the State * In 1859. MIDDLE CLASS SCHOOLS. " 407 go yet farther than it has clone, and make some provision not only for elevating (as it is doing) the education of the working classes, but for defending the middle classes from that educational imposition which has, ever since there were middle classes, been commonly inflicted upon them. "We do not wonder that .the Irish are petitioning for middle-class schools, as a completing link to connect their National Schools and their colleges. For England we should make no such demand. But we are prepared to require that Government should take means to encourage the formation of colleges, under its own inspection, for the training of masters for middle-class schools. Why should quackery in medicine be proscribed, but no means afforded of discriminating between quackery and science, plausible pretension and true art, in education ? Why should there be diplomas in the one case and not in the other, — Government supervision and authority in the one case, without any foolish talk about free-trade, and not in the other ? Is the prevalence of dishonest, unreal, faulty educational methods and practices a less considerable evil to a State, than of imperfect and false principles and methods of medical treatment ? Or is it really more easy, more a matter within the competence of every pretender, to become a safe and wise educator, than to become an able physician ? Are the bodies of men more valuable than their souls ? In the past legislation of England, — at least, in its modern legislation, — there has been much wisdom for the body and for material interests, and but little for the soul. Hence it is that maxims which, in a late and mature condition of material development and commercial inter- course, have been found to be wise and right, are, without any consideration of the difference in the cases, applied to the sphere of mental and moral duties and relations. The principles of ultra-voluntaryism,— extreme free-trade K K 498 POPULAR EDUCATION. principles, — cannot be safely or justly applied even to the material interests of a community in an early stage of its development. In Ireland it has been found necessary (not only in the intellectual and moral sphere to establish a' national system of schools and colleges, but) for the deve- lopment of its material industry, to provide that the baronies may tax themselves in order to the establishment of a system of railways. So in India, our Government finds itself compelled to adopt a policy the reverse of that which rules in the legislation of this conntry. It must not follow the tendencies of the people or peoples of India, but lead them. It not only encourages or forms educational establishments, but it undertakes to cut canals and con- struct railways. And no one would blame, but on the contrary, all applaud, if it were to devote a part of its revenue to prepare the way for the cultivation of cotton, by surveying and experimenting, and affording premiums and facilities.* Now all this is contrary to the principles of free-trade, if taken absolutely and unconditionally. The fact is, that in order to put a nation or a class into the way of self-development, it is the duty of the State to take the initiative, whether in the material or in the m.ental and moral sphere. But after they have fairly and intelligently entered on the path of self-development, Govern- ment will do wisely to allow them, both individually and collectively, to work out their own onward way with as little interference as possible. The business of Government will then be rather to follow, than to attempt to control; watching, that it may learn from, the unfolding instincts and tendencies of the class or of the nation. Hitherto, what are called the masses of this nation have not been put in a way, collectively, of self-development. When they have. Government will have little to do but to * The date of the writing in the text must be remembered — 1 859. AVHAT POLITICAL ECONOMY REALLY TEACHES. 409 leave them alone, or to follow the instincts and demands which successively arise among them, satisfying what in them is true, removing, if possible, the causes from which proceed false and evil elements of opinion and desire. Perhaps, when the nation has attained to its full intellectual and moral majority, it may be found that there is no longer any need for any State endowment or aid in the matter of education. Perhaps, alike in the material, the educational, and the eccle- siastical departments of the national life, "free-trade," perfect voluntary action, may then rule, without any need either of prompting or of control. But as yet we are far from that day. There yet remains, however, the question, how a national education may be secured, in w^iich, while the State concurs, it does not control; but leaves the primary obligation still to rest upon the parents, only interfering in case of clear and proved neglect of duty ; and, while it aids, by means of the information and intelligence at its command, in the discovery and perfection of principles and methods, does not dictate ; and, while it conditionally endows, leaves the energies of Churches and the charities of individuals full scope, and does not remove from the parents the just burden of providing from their o"wn means, as far as in them lies, for the education of their children. " The problem to be solved," to use Sir J. P. K. Shuttleworth's words at the meeting already referred to, " was in what way the civil power could obtain security for the efficiency of the secular instruction, while it recognised the right of the parent to direct the education of his child, and the claim of the communion to retain the school as a part of its religious organization." That is his neat and summary way of i^utting the case, in which he acknowledges the right of the communion (provided the education it gives be consistent with the well-being of the State) to be left free to instruct religiously the children committed to its care by their parents, as well as the right of the parents to be the primary educators K k2 600 POPULAR EDUCATION. of their cliildren. Perhaps, however, it may justly be said that ultimately and really the latter right involves the former. The consciences of the parents must be respected ; there- fore we cannot have in England, as in continental countries, where the English ideas as to religious liberty have not yet been established, a system of primary schools strictly con- nected with the Established Church, and placed altogether under her direction as to religious instruction. According to the old State-and-Church theory of this country, — on which rest the foundations of our ancient colleges, grammar-schools, and educational charities, — this would have been the only constitutional method of providing for national education. Fifty years ago few statesmen — even thirty years back few Anglican clergymen — would have entertained the thought of any other scheme, except to denounce it as revolutionary, if not infidel. So lately as 1843, the education clauses in Sir James Graham's Factory Bill seemed to be constructed on the assumption that the clergy of the Established — the quasi- National — Church had a constitutional right to be the directors, as to the religious element, of whatever might be provided as in any sort a national system of education. And there is yet a considerable section of Churchmen in this country, who adhere to this mediaeval principle. They still maintain, in Church Unions and secret conclaves, that it is the sacred and indefeasible right of their order to take the oversight and direction, at least in matters spiritual, of all educational efforts and enterprises conducted by the State ; and they regard the assistance rendered by the State to Dissenting schools as nothing less than a misappropriation of revenues of which they ought themselves to have the control. Nor can we wonder that this should be the case, when we reflect that only some thirty years have passed away since the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts.* So narrow is the deep and * In 1859. HIGH CHUIICU DEMANDS. 501 impassable gulf by which the present liberty of deiiomi- nationalism in this country is separated from the territory of medievalism, which yet, to the general feeling of the country, seems as if it were centuries distant from us. The outcry and agitation, however, of 1843 proclaimed the doom of the High-Church theory of national education ; and from that period its upholders have seldom spoken out their sentiments in public. The last notable echoes of the old-world party-cry of this arrogant section of Churchmen were heard, eight or nine years ago, in the discussions between the Govern- ment and themselves about the management of National Schools. At a Church-Education Meeting held in February, 1860, the Eev. G. A. Denison, the great champion of this party, expressed very distinctly the principles which govern their views and demands. He vehemently inveighed against the educational " department of the civil power," because they refused to admit that " the ministers of Christ are to be trusted, solely and exclusively, with the education of His people ;" he maintained imperatively that " for the discharge of that duty they are solely and exclusively responsible before God and man."* The Eev. Archdeacon and his fellows have no business in Protestant England in the middle of the nine- teenth century. Since it is their misfortune not to have been born in the Middle Ages, the best thing they can do in these degenerate and unchurchly times is first to go over to the Romish Church, and then to migrate to Austria. There, under the shadow of the Concordat,! they would find their natural rest. In this country they are out of date ; their principles can never, even for a passing season, dominate again. Hence the simple solution of the vexed question of national education which would be yielded by the application of Mr. Denison's principle can never be of use in England. Parents must have their rights of conscience and their parental * Shuttleworth's Public Education, p. 0. t I" 1^59. 50*2 POPULAR EDUCATION. authority resx^ected in the education of their children ; Dissent- ing denominations likewise must have their right recognised, in conjunction with the parents, to educate the children of their congregations ; the State also claims the right to fix a minimum standard of education at least for those citizen children who are to be educated in part through its aid. Ultramontane pretensions as to " national " education can no longer be listened to in this country.* There is another class of educationists at the opposite pole to that of the extreme High Church, whose scheme of national education would be almost equally simple. This is what is called the secular party. They would have the government to provide merely a secular education, leaving the religious element to be supplied either by the parents at home or by the ministers of the different denominations attending the schools at certain times. The school teacher would not be allowed to teach any particular form or creed of religion ; but he would be expected to inculcate morality. Now we must concede a few points to the advocates of this system. We concede, then, that, under certain conditions, it might constitute a fair platform of national education. No such system, indeed, is to be found in operation on the Con- tinent. All the continental systems are, in fact, founded on the principle that the Established Church (or churches) must, at least as the executive, have a principal share in the direction of national education. There is in all these systems a strict connection between the school and the Church ; though only in those countries where Jesuitism is in ascendency does the State cease to be a power co-ordinate with the Church. But in the United States, and likewise in some of our colonies, as * Archdeacon Denison's recent course this opportunity of recommending Mr. in regard to the " Conscience Clause " Oakley's admirable pamphlet on the shows that he retains most fully all his " Conscience Clause." Mr. Oakley is old principles of priestly exclusiveness an enlightened clergyman, who under- and intolerance. I am glad to take stands the age in which he lives. THE SECULAR SYSTEM. 503 in Canada, and in the Cape Colony, we find the secular system in operation. Nor can it be said that the effects of the experi- ment, as tried in either the United States or our colonies, have been such as to furnish ground, under all circumstances of societ}^ for an absolute and unconditional condemnation of the system. Authorities are so divided as to the effect of the States' system of national education, that only a rash man would, we should think, pronounce positively upon the case in its entire breadth. It seems not an unreasonable conclusion, that in some places, and under certain circumstances, the schools answer well, both as to their intellectual and moral training, and that in other cases they produce different results. The reason of this we may presently come to indicate. As to the Canadian experiment, however, there seems to be no reason to doubt that, on the whole, it has been successful. We have before us a Report of the Normal, Model, Grammar, and Common Schools in Upper' Canada, for the year 1855, drawn up by the Rev. Dr. Egerton Ej^erson, an eminent Canadian Wesleyan minister, and the chief superintendent of education for the province. These schools are supported partly by a grant from the legislature, but in considerably larger proportion by local assessment. The teachers are " examined and licensed by a county board according to a programme prepared by the council of public instruction." They are not yet obliged to have received a training at a normal college; but year by year, as the supply from the normal college goes on to in- crease, such a training becomes more generally required. It is evidently designed that, eventually, except in very special cases, none but such teachers shall be employed. The principles upon which Dr. Ryerson defends the Canadian system, are much the same as those set forth by the "National School Association" in this country. He tells us that he has " shown from the Holy Scriptures, and the canons, formularies, and disciplinary regulations of religious 504 POPULAR EDUCATION. persuasions, that the training up of children ' in the nurture and admonition of the Lord' clearly devolves upon parents and professed teachers of religion, and not upon civil govern- ment." He is bold enough, moreover, to say — not sufficiently discriminating between those cases in which the schoolmaster, as a mere Church-and- State official, teaches religion accord- ing to a strict line of prescription and routine, from which he can depart only at his peril ; and those in which, as now in England, the master has freely chosen his own creed and church, and teaches the children of those w^ho have also freely chosen his instructions and the religious teaching of his community for their children — Dr. Eyerson is bold enough to say that " all countries where these laws of nature and religion have been violated, by transferring to the government teacher of the day-school what belongs to parents and pastors, have been characterized by both vice and ignorance." To affirm that Prussia is a country distinguished by ignorance, as well as vice, is, as we have said, bold. Yet understanding by "government teacher" such a mere State official as we have described, it may be admitted that there is a considerable basis of truth for this strong sentence. Dr. Eyerson, however, would by no means, he tells us, exclude religion from the sphere of education. On the contrary, he says, in terms fully as strong as any advocate of the union of religious teaching and influence with secular instruction could possibly use, — "There is no education, properly speaking, without religion; any more than there is a man without a soul, or a world with- out an atmosphere, or day without the sun. Eeligion is the soul of education, as it is the life of the soul of man, the atmosphere in which he inhales the breath of immortality, the sunlight in which he beholds the face of the glory of God." But if so, what sort of an education is that which is given, on Dr. Eyerson's principles, in the common schools? If the common school teachers are not " to train up children THE CANADIAN COMMON SCHOOLS. 605 in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," if for them to do this is a " violation of the laws of nature and religion," then the education they give must be, being " without religion, no education, properly speaking." At best, they do but give the bod}^, and the body is utterly soulless and lifeless, except in as far as, by an altogether independent operation, at other seasons, through other media, the life may be added to it, and somehow mixed with it, by the instruction of parents and pastors. But what if parents are incapable of thus instructing, and if pastors there are none ? It must be remembered that in Canada there are no State-appointed pastors. Nevertheless, as we have said, we are not prepared to affirm that the common school education of Canada has been hitherto, and must be in the future, only a failure. If the practical operation of systems is often worse, it is also often better, than the theory. The practice of men and the working of theories may be happily inconsistent with their professed principles. Most inconsistently, but most happily, Dr. Eyerson says, " The text-books, and the whole teaching and government of the school, are re- quired to be based upon and in harmony with Christian principles;" and it appears, moreover, that the State does " recommend and ■pyovide facilities for religious instruction and exercises ;" and even that it may be "a matter of private voluntary arrangement between the parents and teacher," — so as "not to interfere with the ordinary exercises of the school in regard to other pupils," — that the pupil should be taught "to recite his catechism," and receive general " religious instruction." There can be no doubt, moreover, that commonly in Upper Canada the "parents and pastors" do supply, very efficiently, outside of the school, religious instruction and influence. The population of Upper Canada, at least the Protestant portion of it, is, to begin with, largely impregnated by 506 POPULAR EDUCATION. religious life, and those stirring and pervasive influences which attend the operations of free, energetic, and missionary denominational zeal and competition. They have, from the beginning, been a superior class of colonists ; nearly all attend church ; (they never distinguish between church and chapel or meeting-house ;) all have before them a prospect of rising in life ; they have never included any considerable proportion of the sunken, reckless class, nor many even of the class of utterly sensual and improvident, though it may be skilled, labourers. The children of such a population grow up, therefore, under civilising and more or less moralising influences, — they dwell in the upper regions which are pervaded by the common light of Chris- tianity. For those so circumstanced undoubtedly secular schools, though probably not the best thing, may yet be sufficient. Many of our readers doubtless received their education in part at what might be termed, in modern phrase, — for, when we went to school, such distinctions were not yet thought of — a secular school. Our schools, indeed, were not wholly secular. What school is? We repeated the collect on the Monday morning which had been read at church the day before ; in the Reader or the Speaker, we read moral and even religious pieces ; we were taught to recite Cowper's Lines on his Mother's Picture ; we were made acquainted with the Paradise Lost. No instruction given in English schools could be wholly secular. English literature has derived too much of its life and power from Christian sources for this to be possible. Besides which, before ever we went to school, our mothers had taught us the Catechism, and hymns from Watts, and Barbauld, and Jane Taylor, and Wesley ; we had been trained to pray, and had heard the Bible daily read ; we had been used, Sunday by Sunday, to attend at church or chapel. And after we began to go to school, there were KOMAN CATHOLIC SCHOOLS IN CANADA. 507 still the same influences, the morning and the evening prayers, the Christian home atmosphere, the holy Sabbath with its cheerful solemnities. The week-day school was not the chief thing in such a life as this, so far as regarded moral influences. It was but a small part of our total education, a daily parenthesis between morning and evening, a weekly parenthesis between Sunday and Sunday, in its whole extent but a parenthesis between the early home lessons of childhood and the social influences of ripening youth. To those placed in such circumstances it is of com- paratively small account that their school education should be secular. This is but a fractional part of their entire education, and by no means the most potent in its moral influences. Now the Canada public schools, intended for the benefit of a thriving, hopeful, ambitious, and, we may say, Christianly moral population, stand precisely thus related to those whom they educate in secular things. They are intended for the instruction of the children of a Christian people, who grow up under salutary parental and pastoral influence, not for the elevation of a particular class. So far as the Eoman Catholic population of the Canadian provinces is concerned, it may be different. But, as regards these, two things arc to be noted. In Lower Canada, where the great majority of the population is Eomanist, they have " separate schools," which are, as regards religion, under the direction of the priesthood ; and they are earnestly seeking to obtain a like privilege in Upper Canada, though it is to be hoped that they may not succeed. The priests will always see to it that the children of their flock get as much Popery as is at all likely to do them any good. A Popish community of the lower orders will never be utterly irreligious, whatever else they may be ; and the basis of religion which they do get, will be greatly improved in 508 POPULAE EDUCATION. quality by admixture with the secular elements of a good general English education. Whereas, if the schools are left under the predominant direction and influence of the priesthood, whatever tends to real liberty and independence of thought will, as far as possible, be rejDressed; the children will be trained, as to the noblest and highest sub- jects of moral and religious science, in mental servility ; the schools will be essentially defective in that comprehensive human culture which is adapted to bring out all the powers of the man, and to fit him to be a free and intelligent citizen. Even as regards the Popish population of Canada, therefore, we should undoubtedly prefer the continuance of the " common school" system as it is, to the universal adoption of such a system as in Lower Canada puts the schools altogether under the sway of the priests. Perhaps a medium between the two might be devised; but we doubt if such a medium has yet been anywhere hit upon. Had the English government not yielded so much in their controversy with the Eoman Catholic authorities in this country ; had they abided firmly by the position which they originally took up, secured the full develojiment and co-ordination of lay influence in the school committees, and maintained, as guardians of the liberty of Englishmen, in this and other ways, and especially by means of impartial inspectors, such a style of management, and such a standard of general mental discipline and attainment, as would have insured the free, loyal, and thoroughly manly culture of the scholars, notwithstanding the co-operation and, within certain limits, co-ordination of the priestly power; then we think that the English system of Government aid and inspection in Eoman Catholic schools might have been preferable to any other known. But as the Government, notwithstanding a long and severe struggle, found itself compelled to concede so much as it has done to ultramontrane pretensions, as to THE SPECIAL CASE OF CANADA. 509 the management of Eomanist schools in this country, we confess that the common schools of Canada seem likeh', in our judgment, to supply a salutary national provision for Roman Catholic children better, on the whole, than the aided Eoman Catholic schools of England. The Canadian system, then, we are prepared to admit, works well, on the whole, for the population of Canada. It is a provision of education for a Christian people, in a new countr}', where Presbyteriauism and Methodism have leavened the whole population with their life and energy, and done much towards producing a general elevation of mental and moral character, and where every man lives under the influence of strong incentives to a wholesome ambition. It is not a provision designed mainly for the rescue and elevation of the lower classes of the population in an old feudal country, where ignorance, intemperance, and religious unbelief or indifference, have long been the too general characteristics of these classes. Dr. Ryerson says : — " Willie the general success of the school system, duiing the year, has been an increase over that of preceding years, the people of Upper Canada have evinced an unprecedented unanimity and determination to maintain it in aU its integrity. It secures to all what all havo a right to claim, — equal and impartial protection. It provides equally for all classes of the commvmity ;" [not only " common schools," but "grammar schools" and "coUeges" come within the range of its inspection and provision]. " 'No example of proselytism, under its operations, has ever occurred ; and no charge of partiality, in its administration, has ever been substantiated. No less than three liundred and ninety-six Roman Catholic teachers are employed in teaching the pubhc schools ; and a corresponding or larger proportion of the superannuated teachers to whom pensions have been granted, are Roman Cathohcs." — Anmuil Report Sfc. p. 9. We believe that the public schools of the Cape Colony are arranged and regulated very much on the same prin- ciples as the Canadian schools ; and that they are working 510 POPULAR EDUCATION. well. But in that colony, as in Canada, the conditions of society are in many respects contrasted with those of England ; and the object of the public schools differs essen- tially from that which is contemplated by the English day- schools for the poor. In England no such system as that which we have been considering could possibly work. No modification of it could meet the case of those whom it is most of all necessary to help. We do not need State provision of schools and colleges for our highest classes. Such schools as Eton and Harrow, together with our national univer- sities, already meet the case of these. Some national ex- amination and supervision of at least our universities had, indeed, long been required, and has recently been effected ; and the State will doubtless exercise its educational func- tions in respect of these for the future more vigilantly and authoritatively than in the past.* But no new en- dowment or provision is necessary. The case of the upper middle classes is met by the best grammar-schools, and by private establishments of a superior character. Govern- ment may possibly enforce visitations and enquiries in regard to the former, and may, some day, require diplomas of those who conduct the latter; but it will never attempt to find a substitute for them by any system of public schools. The lower middle classes send the children to private day-schools and boarding-schools, too commonly of the sort some pages back indicated by us; but, though government will, it is to be hoped, assist in the establish- ment of training colleges for the education of private schoolmasters, and require some guarantee of their efficiency, before they are permitted to "practise" in the scholastic profession, it is almost certain they will never venture, as regards these schools, to interfere further than this with ♦ Since the text was written the Public Schools' Commission has done its work. WHAT IS NEEDED IN ENGLAND. 611 the operation of the general laws of supply and demand. We do not, therefore, in England, require a strictly national system of education. But we do require the establishment of a system of schools, covering the whole country, by w^hich there may be secured to the children of the lower orders such a minimum of education, if no more, as in the early part of this article we have endeavoured to describe. And the immediate necessity for such a system of schools arises even more from the prevalent want, in the homes of the lowest classes, of the moral influences of a Christian civilisation, than from the gross defects of the schools for the poor which alone were, prior to the introduction of the present system of State inspection and aid, to be commonly met with. A work of elevation and moralisation for a large section of the community is to be accomplished. Not only are Christian influences to be provided which the parents do not supply, but these influences are to be provided in order to neutralise, in a large proportion of cases, the counter influences of home and of society. Those are to be educated, whom no parents train in the fear of God, and whom no pastors have the opportunity of taking under their care. In schools intended to meet this want, religion must assuredly be the principal thing. The power of religious truth and motives must be the great lever with which to elevate those whose case is to be provided for. The force of re- ligious character must be the great secret of the master's power to train and mould his scholars. The patience and love of Christian zeal and charity must be the prime quali- fications for success in his work. The efficacy of his per- suasion to control the will and change the bias must be derived from his own truly Christian spirit and purpose. A grand moral work is to be done. It can only be done by powerful moral forces and aj)pliances. There can be 512 POPULAR EDUCATION. no such appliances apart from definite Christian truths and distinctly Christian powers. There can, in our mind, be no doubt that not to make Christian truths and motives predominant in any system of moral training, must be a vital defect. Here, we think, is one of the weak places of the Canadian system. It is likely, we admit, that, in many instances, the teachers in their schools are thoroughly Christian, without being de- nominational; and that they thus exercise a moral control over their scholars, because they exert a directly and ex- pressly Christian influence. But, in the Government Normal Schools, — the schools where the teachers who are to train others are themselves trained, — how can they be fully pre- pared for their duty, as moral trainers, unless specific Christian instruction be mingled with their other engage- ments, and a specifically Christian spirit be made to inspire and regulate all the arrangements and departments of the college ? In this country it is found by experience, that the power of Christian truth and life must be the master- force in a training college, if it is to be eminently successful in its results. There can scarcely be a doubt in the mind of one who impartially examines both the Government returns as to the examination of the training colleges, and the inspectors' reports as to the actual working of the day-schools of the different denominations, that, on the whole, the most successful of the English Normal Colleges is that of the Wesleyans, over which the Eev. John Scott presides. It is certain that the Wesleyan schools are, for the most part, better attended, and that they retain their children at school more steadily and to a later period, than any other schools. This success in infant training is pre-eminent. One great secret of all this is, undoubtedly, the pervasive power of the Christian life as maintained in the Wesleyan Normal College. All the teachers are decided THE WORK TO BE DONE IN ENGLAND. 513 Christians ; religion, cheerful but practical, regulates all the arrangements ; Christianity rules in the College, and likewise in all the schools of the community. How power- fully, and yet how lovingly, this 'element is brought to bear on the students, may be understood by any one who will read the Principal's admirable series of inaugural addresses, to one of which, under the title. Goodness is Power, we have already referred. The work to be done in this country is, in fact, pre- eminently Christian and missionary work ; the men and women that are to do it effectually need to be a " religious order;" they must have a special vocation for their work, and must undertake it with a sense of this vocation, and of their Christian responsibility to fulfil it ; otherwise it will never be effectually done. No task-work in this de- partment will ever be successful work ; the teacher who performs his part in a perfunctory spirit will never be an efficient teacher. Nor is it even sufficient that the teacher should love the work in which he is engaged ; he must love those whom he teaches. His soul full of- Christian benevolence and " yearning charity," he must look through the eyes of the pupil into his heart ; ho must bring himself into relations of loving power and human sympathy with the "inner man" of the child under his care; otherwise he ^^-ill not be able to gain any advantage over the spirits of those who have been left to follow their own mere instincts, and have never received any training but that which is unchristian. Only a Christian teacher, who cleaves to his vocation from motives far higher than any that are merely secular and selfish, can be and do all this. And the lower the teacher desires to reach in his en- deavours to educate the rising population ; the more morally needy and socially degraded is the class for the benefit of which his efforts are to be used ; the more necessary, h L 514 POPULAR EDUCATION. that is to say, and beneficent, whether looked at from a patriot's or a Christian's point of view, is his work and calling ; the more absolutely requisite it is that he should possess these Christian qualities as a teacher. The work of education that England needs at this day, in order that she may possess a common people, intelligent, industrious, frugal, and moral, can only be accomplished by means of teachers themselves Christianly trained, and whose vocation it is, above all things, to train the children of the lower classes Christianly. Nor will any teachers of secular know- ledge be so successful, . other things being equal, as those who, with and before all besides, make it their study and their joy to be Christian teachers. This reasoning about England is only partially applicable to the case of Scotland, whose parish schools have supplied to a great portion of her staple population, for centuries past, just that educational provision for want of which the English poor have been commonly so far inferior in intelligence and frugality to the Scotch. Many of these schools, however, have become insufficient, and stand now in the way of better, that might else be established. And besides, there is a certain, and by no means an incon- siderable, portion of the population of the large Scotch towns degraded almost beyond comparison with London itself. So that there is some necessity in Scotland for a supply of schools and teachers such as we have last had in view. In Scotland, in fact, originated not only the celebrated Glasgow system of education, but Eagged Schools; and the ope- rations of the Committee of Privy Council extend to Scotland as well as to England. Still our observations only partially apply to that country, nor are they fully applicable to Ireland. Of course the Irish stood greatly in need of education at the time when, under the auspices of the late Earl Grey and the present Earl of Derby, then Secretary for Ireland, IRELAND AND THE IRISH NATIONAL SYSTEM. 615 the National system was brought into operation. Yet there was not in Ireland a.nj considerable class corre- sponding to that the needs of which have in this country compelled the modern educational movement. The re- marks which we made some pages back as to the con- dition of the population in Canada apply, in one respect, to Ireland. The people there have never been irreligious. The Protestants in the south belong, all but universally, to classes the lowest of which is several grades above the general level of the Eomanist population ; and home and Church influences supply a Christianly moral element in the education of the children. If a stranger goes into a Protestant Sunday-school in the south of Ireland he will find no children of the poor. The Sunday-school, in fact, furnished a system of biblical and catechetical instruction for those who have no need to be taught to read or to be instructed in the first rudiments of faith and morals. To a considerable extent, also, with the exception that many of the children are from poor families, the case is the same in the manufacturing districts of the north, where among the Protestants Presbyterianism prevails, and where the Scotch element predominates. As to the Roman Catholics, in Ireland as in Canada, whatever else they maj'' be, they are not irreligious, nor is their religious instruction, such as it is, neglected by the priests. What was mainly wanted for Ireland, therefore, — wanted especially, almost exclusively, for the sake of the Eomanist population, — was a free and efficient secular education, conducted by true, upright, honourable men, who held fast a sincere and fervent faith in the main Bible facts and moral principles of our common Christianity. All that the Government could attempt to do was to improve the mental and moral staple, so far as that might lie in their power, of those whose Romanism was an irremediable evil, — in L L 2 .OIG POPULAR EDUCATION. the hope of thus in the end mitigating and elevating Irish Popery and the general Irish character. This, in our judgment, no intelligent and impartial inquirer, who takes all things duly into account, can long doubt that the National Schools have to a gratifying extent effected. The present improved and improving condition of Ireland is probably more due, ultimately, to this cause than to any other. We hold it to have been, indeed, a great and most mischievous mistake that, when the National scheme was first promulgated, the Protestant denominations of Ireland, headed by the Established Church and the Presbyterians, refused to do anything but oppose and denounce the measure. Had they, instead of this, offered it their support and co-opera- tion, on certain moderate and reasonable conditions, doubtless they might have added such provisions and guards to the system, and have brought such influence to the National Board, as would have prevented not a little evil, and insured a far larger amount of good. One strong point in favour of the system is that, equally by the bigoted Protestant party — and Irish Protestant bigotry, when of the genuine quality, is a " parlous thing," only to be paralleled in the opposite extreme of MacHalism or Cullenism — and by the Ultra- montane Eomanists, the National system has, from the beginning hitherto, been bitterly disliked. The Protestant bigots are, however, diminished in number, and have lowered their tone ; the experience of twent^y years having shown that the system was not absolutely the black and evil thing which they had painted it. The Eomanist bigots, on the contrary, increase in number, and become more fierce in their opposition and more exacting in their de- mands; for the natural and sufficient reason that they find that the system, notwithstanding all their chicane and management, all their adulteration of its teaching and methods, and all the influence in favour of Popery which EFFORTS AGAINST THE IRISH SYSTEM. 517 they so zealously and ably infuse into it or combine with it, makes Romanists in Ireland too intelligent and in- quiring and mentally independent, and prepares them, in many cases, to embrace Protestantism when they reach America. Both the Protestant and the Romanist bigots brought their combined influence to bear upon the late Government,* in order to induce them to extend to Ireland the present English system of, grants in aid to denomi- national schools. Ou» most earnest hope is that they may not succeed in their design. Grants to exclusively Romanist schools in Ireland — where the influence of in- spection could not tell as it does in this free country — would, in our judgment, be a very unhappy substitute for the present system. The methods and text-books of the Irish National Board are well known to be of the very first class ; nor can they, under the present system, ever become generally Romanised; because the Presbyterians have, for some years past, seen it to be their wisdom, retracing the false steps of former years, to connect them- selves with the National system. Usually, too, the teachers are very efficiently trained. At present, in neighbourhoods where the Presbyterian element predommates, the Irish National School is generally Presbyterian, and stands in connection with the Presbyterian minister and congregation ; but the Romanist children do not learn the Presb}-terian catechism, nor attend when the minister is present. Where the neighbourhood is predominantly Romanist, the school is visited by the priest ; but it is forbidden to require a Protestant child to receive religious instruction. Sometimes there is in the same town or parish a school for each communion. The Presbyterians are highly satisfied with the bargain they have made. Speaking generally, it may * The Govcniment of Lord Derby gcticnlly put forth to in(hRMice the in 1858—9. Similar ellibrts, it is well iidininistration.s of Lord Pahnerston kiKiwii, liavc been of" h\tc most eiicr- and Lord JJiisscll. 518 POPULAR EDUCATION. be said that in all cases the children are brought under direct and constant religious instruction and influence. The total education they receive is not a secular education. The Irish universally may be said to be strictly attached either to church, meeting-house, or chapel. There are in that island no infidel or religiously indifferent masses of population.* The peculiar case of England, we have shown, demands that, in order to elevate the sensual and improvident cha- racter of so large a portion of the lowest strata of society, a distinctively Christian education should be given by trained Christian teachers to the children in the schools. At the same time we have seen that the responsibility of providing the requisite religious element cannot be left to any one Church in the land. The freedom and variety of religious life in this countr}^ prevents that being contemplated as possible. How then can the religious element in education be allowed its right place, as giving energy, direction, and regulation to the whole, and yet no partiality be shown to any particular communion ? The most immediately obvious reply to this question would probably be, b}^ a s^^stem of instruction in which, being catholicly Christian, all de- nominations, or at any rate all Protestant denominations, might unite in common. Unitarianism would not practi- cally present much difficulty in the way of this, as those attached to this denomination are almost universally placed in a rank of society which is above the need of elementary public schools. And for the Jews provision might be made apart. Accordingly, in conformity with this principle, the British and Foreign School Society was established, ori- ginally in 1805, though not at that time under its present * Very shortly after the publica- Presbyterians by connecting many of tion of this article, the Irish Wes- tlieir Day-Schools with the National leyans followed the example of the Board. THE "BRITISH SCHOOL*' SYSTEM. 619 name. The differences of religious belief in this country are, however, too many and too strongly held to suffer such a system as this ever to become adequate to the needs of the country. The British and Foreign School Society has furnished a most valuable element in the recent educational progress of England ; but its operations could not but, on the whole, lack the zeal, the energy, the religious enthusiasm, requisite for a successful prosecution of the great work of bringing under training and instruction the ignorant and morally destitute multitudes of the rising population ; nor could it ever be expected to obtain extensive support. Not very often could Protestant Dissenters be brought to unite their labours on a common platform ; and as to the Church joining the Dissenting combination, that of course was out of the question. " If," says Dr. Temple, '• it were possible to fiucl in every district men belonging to eacli denomination, sufficiently interested in religious movements to be leaders in their respective communions, yet suffici- ently large-minded to be superior to all prejudices, it is conceivable that managing committees on the comprehensive principle might be every- where formed, . . . But everywhere to unite tlie officers of every denomination that might happen to be in a district, would be a hope- less undertaking. Above all, it is peculiarly difficult to unite in one bond the clergy of the Church with the preachers or ministers of Dis- senting communities." — Oxford Essays, 1856, p. 223, The reason which Dr. Temple assigiis for the last statement is a curious instance of unconscious inversion of facts and relations, under the influence of bias. " The Dissenters," he says, " for many reasons are more hostile to the Church than to one another." This statement is, no doubt, true ; but surely it has nothing to do with the fact of which it is assigned as the reason. AVe never heard of Dissenting ministers generally refushig to meet Church clergymen on common Christian and philanthropic ground, and on equal terms. It is notoriously the clergy 520 POPULAR EDUCATION. of the Establishment who, under such circumstances, make it their rule, with exceedingly rare exceptions, to refuse to meet the Dissenting ministers. The British and Foreign, or Comprehensive, system, however, for such reasons as have now been indicated, could never be the basis of a general system of public education. There remained then no feasible plan for providing a system of national education in this country, except that which, under the sagacious guidance of Sir J. P. Kay Shuttleworth, was actually adopted by the Government. To this, in fact, the Government was at last shut up by public opinion. Lord Melbourne's ministry had, in 1839, set forth the outline of a scheme which wore the general aspect of something like secularism, or of a very latitu- dinarian Christianity. On a calm review of the past, we do not believe that history will condemn the action of the Whig government in this matter. They were pledged to bring in a measure for the education of the lower classes of the people. Such a measure they saw clearly could not be based on the High- Church theory, which regarded the clergy of the Establishment as of right the educational executive of the nation. As professed liberals, and protectors of Dissenting liberty, they in particular could never proceed in legislation on such a theory. There seemed, therefore, to be no alternative but to endeavour to make direct and definite provision only for secular instruction, and "to protect the rights of conscience by securing perfect liberty to the parent to select the school and to regulate the religious instruction of the child." At the same, time they sought to bespeak a general Christian character for their teaching, by "distin- guishing the instruction in religion as consisting of what was general, or what was accepted throughout Christendom as the foundation of Christian morality and doctrine ; and secondly, of what was special, or of those matters of instruction which THE WHIG MEASURE OF 1839. 521 were the characteristic distinctions of separate communions." On these principles they proposed to found, in the first instance, a Normal School, in order to feel their way and prepare their teachers, before proceeding to multiply their primary schools throughout the country. This scheme was heartily suppoi-ted by a large propoi'tion of the Baptists and Independents, but was opposed by the Church of England and the Wesleyans. The Anglican Church had an obvious special ground for opposing a scheme which ignored the assumed right of her clergy to be the educational executive of the State. But, besides this special ground, there was a common ground of objection to the proposed plan, which was strongly urged by both Churchmen and Wesle3^ans. These communions, again to quote Su* J. P. Kay Shuttleworth, " regarded the school as the nursery of the congregation, in which its children and youth were to be trained, not simply in the rudiments of biblical and catechetical knowledge, but in those sentiments without which mental cultivation does not develope into a Christian life."* Granting — and this would be, in our judg- ment, a prodigally candid and liberal concession — granting that the "teacher might train his scholars in all the common rudiments of faith and duty, unoxceptionably, under the guidance of local managers, representing our common Chris- tianity;" granting that "the managers might exercise the utmost vigilance against ever^-thing which could sap the foun- dations of our common faith ;" and that " this might be done universally with success, and without rej^roach;" still, says Sir J. P. Kay Shuttleworth, "the doubt remained whether such a training would as effectually prepare the scholars for those acts of worship which are, in the great mass of the people, not simply significant external signs, but the means by which * Our quotations, here and elsewhere, are taken from a full and acturate from Sir J. P. Kay Shuttlcworth's Ad- Kc)iort contained in tlie Watchman dress at the Wesleyan Centenary Hall, newspaper, for May 11th, 1859. 622 POPULAR EDUCATION. a religious life is fostered." Not staying to criticize the peculiarity of the language in these last-quoted clauses, — but merely remarking, in passing, that those " acts of worship," in public and private, are the most potent means of jDurifying and reforming the inmost character, as we believe, of all men, whatever their rank or education, — we heartily accept and adopt the able speaker's conclusion, that "the doubt was legitimate and genuine." We do not, we repeat, join with those who censure the Government of 1839 for their action in this matter ; but we feel assured that the ground of objection, as now stated, which was taken by Churchmen, Wesleyans, and, we must add, by a portion of the Congregational Dis- senters, was solid and tenable. The instincts of evangelical conservatism did not, in this case, mislead; the sagacity of the Church leaders of the agitation against the Government proposal was not at fault. " The proposal of the Government met with so general an opposition that, notwithstanding the desire which probably existed in the House of Commons to take the first step towards founding a common school, it was felt that this plan could not be carried into execution. The ministry itself staggered under the blow which the opposi- tion (in the storm of reprobation excited by this proposal) was enabled to inflict upon it." Sir J. P. Kay Shuttleworth him- self— who no doubt had a principal share in the preparation of the Government scheme, and who had published anony- mously a semi-official pamphlet in exposition of the grounds and principles of what was proposed — bore the brunt of a most virulent controversy. In particular, his pamphlet was assailed with great violence in a Charge of the redoubtable Henry Bishop of Exeter. ■ In 1843, the Conservative party, through the medium of Sir James Graham's Factories Bill, brought forward a proposal for providing a measure of j)ublic education — on behalf of factory children — on the principle, not of THE FACTORIES BILL OF 1843. £23 religious equality, but of religious toleration, the Church of England' being regarded as the ordinary and nationally authorised educatrix of the people. This measure — but coldly supported by Churchmen, because it went so far in the direc- tion of religious toleration as to recognize the right of Dissent- ing parents to defend their children, if they thought good, against enforced religious instruction by the Anglican clergy — evoked a perfect tempest of agitation among Dissenters of every class throughout the community, to the stress of which the Conservative Ministr}^ were obliged to give wa}', b}'^ withdrawing their measure. Thus warned back by the voice of the people from at- tempting to establish a system of national education on the foundation either of a latitudinarian indill'crentism or of High-Church exclusivism, the educational officers of the State were compelled to examine carefully their position, and to study the development and tendencies of the national life of the English people, so far as regarded the matter of education. They found that the tide of denominationalism had set strongly in. To attempt to establish a national system on the platform of the British and Foreign School Society was out of the question, for the reasons lately assigned by us. Indeed, that Society itself "encountered em- barrassment, by the growth, among its chief supporters, of the principle of denominational action." For the zeal of the Establishment in the multipl3ang of National Schools had awakened the Dissenting denominations to a perception of the fact, that the time was come when the Church must look to the Day School to accomplish what, with very grati- fying, yet after all, only partial, success, it had in the former generation endeavoured to accomplish b}' means of the Sunday School. It had become manifest that, as society advanced in wealth and culture, and as the nation 524 POPULAR EDUCATION. was stirred more deeply from year to year by an all- awaliening energy, the standard of the Church's culture must be raised ; that as secular intelligence spread, as cheap literature was multiplied, as wages increased, and as worldly temptations and influences became more numerous and powerful, the Church's Christian education must become more systematic, penetrating, and pervasive. The school- inaster must stand by the side of the clergyman; the day- school by the side of the Church. In 1805 or 1808* had been established, on unsectarian principles, the "Eoyal Lancasterian Institution," afterwards known as the British and Foreign School Society. In 1811 was established the " National Society for promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church." The clergy of the Establishment had the sagacity to discern, before most others, the " signs of the times." Wesleyan Methodis^ji, in 1811, had hardly jet settled into a distinctive form of Church communion, and therefore had not assumed its comprehensive duties. Dissenters were not yet awake to the advantages offered to them by the rising " spirit of the age," and were altogether deficient in denominational zeal and organization. But the leaders of the educational movement in the Anglican Church saw that the season was coming which would make day-schools to be at once their necessity and their opportunity. Between 1801 and 1811, the Church of England had established 350 schools ; in the period 1811—1821 she established 756 ; in 1821—1831, 987; in 1831—1842, 2,002 ; in 1841—1851, 3,448. In 1846, when the present system of denominational aid was just about to commence, she had 17,015 schools, with 955,865 scholars, of which schools 6,798, containing 526,754 scholars, were connected with the National Societ3^ At that date there were scarcely any Protestant day-schools besides in * Mr. Mann says 1808 ; Sir J. P. Kay Sluittleworth, 1805. THE ZEAL OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 525 England, except those of the British and Foreign School Society. The Wesleyan Methodists at that time had but about 70 day-schools altogether, most of them small and inefficient. In 1851, the number of children in Church schools would seem to have been less than in 1846, there being, according to the census, 929,471 scholars in 10,555 schools, of which 3,995 schools, containing 493,876 scholars, were numbered as National Schools. Yet in 1851, not- withstanding the augmented zeal and activity, during five years' operation of the Minutes of Council of the various Dissenting denominations, we find that there were in all England only 1,188,786 scholars in day-schools, in any degree supported by religious bodies. So that the Church of England had in her schools 78 per cent, of all the children educated in religious day-schools. In 1846 she must have had more than 80 per cent., or four-fifths of all. Since 1851, however, it would appear that the Church of England has fully recovered, or more than recovered, its ground. According to the returns published by the National Society, *' the entire number of children attending week-day schools belonging to the Church in 1857 was 1,187,086, as compared with 955,865 in 1847." If this statement is accurate, it seems to suggest that the returns of 1851 can hardly have been complete. This being the state of affairs, it is no wonder that the Nonconformist bodies had begun to feel the need of stand- ing on the defensive, and providing denominational da}'- schools of their own. It was plain that, unless they did this, there was some danger lest the strictly Church of England education given to the children of their people — to four-fifths of the children taught in religious day- schools in England — should before very long supplant theii- pecuHar principles in the popular mind, and leave them only to be upheld by a certain poi-tion of the middle class. 526 POPULAR EDUCATION. Accordingly, in 1843, the " Congregational Board of Edu- cation" was founded. And in the same year the Wesleyan Methodists raised a fund of £20,000, and began to devote to educational purposes the proceeds of a yearly collection. The Educational Committee of this body had, however, commenced its operations in 1839. At length, in 1846, under the ministry of Lord John Eussell, the Educational Committee of Privy Council came forth with a fresh scheme, the fruit of some years' study of principles and of the religious and social condition and tendencies of England. The able and accomplished secretary had not passed through controversies, and made unsuccessful attempts, to no profit. His philosophical sagacity and his earnestness of benevolent purpose has helloed him to devise a plan which, if not, in its first outline and scope, perfect or all-suf&cient, was safe, practicable, adapted to meet the wants of the denominations, economical for the public purse, likely to be pre-eminently effi(;ient so far as it could be brought into operation, capable of indefinite development, and probably not incapable of admitting into harmonious incorporation with itself all the spontaneous powers and sources of whatever boards or bodies might afterwards appear to have any authority or responsibility in regard to the Christian education of citizen-children. The plan was truly English in its character. It availed itself of existing organizations, and of already wakened zeal ; its Bcope was to graft the new upon the old ; to quicken, to develop, to regulate, to enlarge, but not to extirpate or abolish. Past controversies, to quote once more from the highest living authority upon these points, had — "left the impression that the convictions expressed by the religious communions of England were entitled to more respect in such a matter than even the will of the civil power. The civil government had done THE MINUTES OF COUNCIL OF 1846. 527 little or nothing for the education of the people since the foundation of the Grammar-schools, chiefly in the days of Edward and Elizabeth. The religious communions had, towards the latter end of the last century, founded, and had since with remarkable zeal and success greatly extended and improved, the Sunday-schools of England and Wales. Such elementary Day-schools as existed owed their origin to the same zeal of Christian congregations. Those schools were for the most part supported by congregational subscriptions and collections, managed by the ministers and principal laymen, and conducted by a teacher appointed by them. The number of these schools was to be weighed against their comparative inefficiency. Their resources in school-peiice and subscriptions formed no insignificant contribution towards the cost of a new national institution, which could not be supported in efficiency without the annual outlay of millions. The zeal of the managers, the \agilance of the ministers, the character and motives of the teachers, were such as might be brought into successful comparison with those of any body of civil functionaries. If, therefore, the age was not ripe for a school common to our religious faith, was it not required from a statesman to accept the aid of this religious organi- sation, in order to make it the means of giving an education which should ultimately eradicate the barbarism of ignorance from our people? " The decision of Lord John Paissell's Cabinet was in the affirmative, and the Secretary of the Committee of Council was ready with his scheme. Much preliminary work had akeady been accomplished during the seven years of stirring controversy which had preceded. " In the background in- quiries had been diHgently pursued ; a school of method had been tried ; the training of pupil-teachers in a model school, and in a college, had been experimentally tested. Each portion of the matter of instruction and various methods had been examined, under circumstances which prepared public opinion for future action." The result was the pubHcation, under Government and Parliamentary sanction, of the cele- brated Minutes of Council of 1846,— a noble and enduring monument of the philosophic and statesmanlike ability of 528 POPULAK EDUCATION. their chief author, and the greatest boon to England which any one hand has prepared, or any one Cabinet conferred, during the present generation. It is hardly possible to over- estimate the value of a measure which has "reconciled the denominational system with civil and religious liberty, and added the fervour of religion to the foresight of the State, in providing and giving efficiency to the common schools of this country." These Minutes have been welcomed with gratitude by all religious denominations in this country. Only the secularists and the ultra-voluntaryists are opposed to them. The Na- tional Board and the Eoman Catholics made hard terms with the Government, and succeeded in obtaining too much con- cession to their principles of priestly jDrerogative. In consent- ing to aid in the work of denominational education, it is undoubtedly the duty of the State to secure the rights of civil and religious liberty, the development of lay co-operation and influence, that the teacher shall not be the mere creature and unconditional servant of the clergyman, minister, or priest. The State is bound, within its sphere of action or influence, to preserve the spirit of a regulated, but real, liberty every- where ; and to see to it that no school be helped by its money which does not teach and train the scholars as free men. Liberty of thought and liberty of conscience are principles which must regulate the methods and mechanism of every English public school. We doubt whether, in the cases referred to, the Government, firmly as they contended for these principles during a protracted correspondence, ought at length to have yielded so far as they did. But, nevertheless, we confess that we have no scrujiles of conscience as to the aid of Eoman Catholic schools under these Minutes. If the Government have not maintained all that they should have done, they have yet gained a good deal. Schools assisted by their aid, managed according to their regulations, and visited THE DENOMINATIONAL SYSTEM. 529 by their inspectors, cannot after all be mere seminaries of ignorant and bigoted Popery, such as Eomanist schools would otherwise have been. The effect of Government inter- ference and oversight is, _29?'o tanto, anti-Popish. The Roman Catholics educated in these establishments must grow up, as a class, more imbued with the spirit of liberty and more accessible to a wholesome public opinion, than if they had been taught in ordinary Popish schools. Hence the dread with which the existence of these schools has inspired some of the bigoted Eomanist party in this country. The very methods of education required in the public schools are antagonistic to the spirit of an abject, ignorant, besottted Popery. Let any one consider the case of the tens of thousands of Irish in the large towns of Lancashire, what they have been and are, and what their children were growing up to be, and then consider whether an education at schools under Govern- ment inspection will not make this stratum of society not only more intelligent, but more loyal and less virulently Piomanist, than if they had only known such low-caste Popish influence as they had previously been liable to. This case is precisely the opposite of that of Maynooth, where Government gives money,^ot to train children to be free and loj-al citizens, but to make citizens into disloyal priests, owning allegiance to a foreign prince-priest ; and where Government exercises no power of visitation and inspection as to morals, methods, or matter of instruction. If indeed it were compulsory on the children of any district, not being Romanists, to attend Romanist schools, that would be an intolerable evil. But none send their children to these schools hut Romanists or indifferentists. The parent, not being a Romanist, who sends his child to a Romanist school, does so merely because he so chooses. In so doing, he proves himself to be a religious indifferentist, a practical unbeliever or a callous latitudinarian ; and the child of such a parent will not be taught a worse 530 POPULAR EDUCATION'. religion than his father's even though he be taught at a Eoman Catholic school. Nevertheless, it is possible that the plan of education by- denominational zeal and government aid is not yet fully mature and complete. It can hardly, one would imagine, be superseded.* The State is indebted to it to the amount of the immense sums voluntarily contributed, but still more for the voluntary zeal, the sagacity, the educational enthusiasm, the truly missionary spirit, the baptism of Christian life and love, which no money could purchase, no civil or muni- cipal elections insure, no State training impart. Govern- ment owes to denominational zeal the basis on which it has been building and the success it has achieved. It can hardly venture to set all this aside. But as yet the most truly destitute places are not touched ; — for Government requires more than cent, per cent, for that which it grants ; — the children of the lowest strata have not been reached; the selfishness of parents still remains the great obstacle in the way of the education of the children ; the landowners, farmers, and manufacturers, most bound to contribute to the work of educating their people, often contribute little or nothing; the resources of voluntaryism have been taxed, in certain directions, until they can hardly be expected to yield much more. Much has been done ; a foundation has been laid for all that needs to be accomplished ; but the great majority of the working classes are still growing up un- educated. The simple truth seems to be that until, by such reforms as those indicated in the essay preceding this, in combination with the direct influences of Christian zeal and sympathy, the general conditions of the labourer's life have been improved, and a moral and social atmosphere has been created around * "Written in 1859. THE WOKK REMAINING TO BE DONE. 03 1 him, more favourable to self-respect, to providence and social refinement, and to the formation of the true parental character, the work of educational advancement must con- tinue to be much slower than the sanguine and one-idea educationist is willing to believe. School-education is a great thing ; but, single-handed, it cannot accomplish all, nor indeed very much. It must occupy its place as one of the most potent among many co-ordinate and co-operative agencies for the elevation of the people of this land. So regarded, it is not only important, but absolutely essential. In concert with other agencies, it must take a foremost rank ; it is second to none, except to home-influence. But if condemned, by a stagnant policy, in matters of sani- tary and social legislation, to remain alone, it cannot but be comparatively powerless and valueless. It cannot in reality be applied, in a large proportion of cases ; and, if it were applied, its efficacy would often be altogether neutralised. Since the foregoing essay was first published, the New Code, happily very greatly modified from the original draught brought in by Mr. Lowe, has come into operation. I must not be tempted here into a criticism of this code. All I will say is, that it has " wrought no deliverance," has brought no help where help was most needed. It bears hardly on the schools in poor and backward rural districts, where a child needs a preliminary education before there is any hope of its learning to read fluently and intelligently ; it works well in schools which were previously under favourable conditions, and in successful operation. Its one conspicuous merit, the individual examinations, might have been combined with the old code ; of which, indeed, as, in its most mature form, 532 POPULAR EDUCATION. defined and recommended to Government by Sir J. P. Kay Shuttlewortli, it constituted a distinct part and provision. But to make all the pecuniary assistance of the Government dependent upon the immediate "results" of a technical examination in the three elementary subjects of education was a piece of low, short-sighted, empiricism, such as neither a true philosopher, nor a true statesman could have been guilty of. THE END. BEVEHIDGK, TKINTER, TUANJST PLACE, TEWPLE BaIC, W.tl. 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