BX5199.M3 A5 1884b v. 2 Maurice, Frederick Denison 1805-1872. Life of Frederick Denison Maurice Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/lifeoffrederickd02maur_0 THE LIFE 01? FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE CHIEFLY TOLD IN HIS OWN LETTEES EDITED BY HIS SON FE.EDBEICK MAUEICE WITH PORTRAITS IN TWO VOLUMES Vol. II. MAOMILLAN AND CO. 1884 CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. 1849, LATTER HALF — REilEMCRANCES OF F. D. M. AT THIS TIME BY RROFESSOR BRENTANO AND OTHERS — THE MEETINGS WITH WORKING-MEN RESUMED TENDENCY TOWARDS CO-OPERATION — LETTER FROM STUDENT ON NEWSPAPER ATTACKS — MAYHEw's LETTERS ON "LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR " — LETTER TO MR. HORT ON QUESTION OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT — PERIOD OF HESITATION BEFORE COMMITTING HIMSELF TO ACTION — 1850 — BEGINNING OF THE CO-OPERATIVE MOVEMENT — THE NAME CHRISTIAN SOCIALIST — LETTER TO MR. HORT ON A COURSE OF PHILOSOPHICAL READING — PRACTICAL DIFFICULTIES AND ACTION ON THEM — EXPLANATION OF OBJECTS AND VIEWS OF CHRISTIAN SOCIALISTS 1 CHAPTEE II. 1850, CONTINUED — A GENERAL STORM OF OBLOQUY ASSAILS MY FATHER AND HIS FRIENDS — IN THE MIDST OF IT MR. SLANEY's COMMITTEE REPORTS TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS IN FAVOUR OF CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES — 1851, AND JANUARY 1852 — MR. HOLYOAKE LEADS THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM AND IS FOLLOWED BY BOTH ' QUARTERLIES ' — THE COUNCIL OF KINg's COLLEGE, ETC 50- CHAPTER III. JANUARY 1852-SEPTEMBER 1852. THE GREAT IRON TRADES STRIKE — UNWILLINGNESS TO URGE IMMEDIATE CO-OPERATION ON THE MEN; OR TO DO ANYTHING TO MAKE THE SPLIT BETWEEN EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYED PERMANENT MR. KINGSLEY's ' WHO ARE THE FRIENDS OF ORDER ? ' RENEWED CONFERENCES WITH WORKING-MEN — MR. VOL. II. h iv CONTENTS. slaney's bill at length gives legal form to the ' CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS — THE CHARTER OF QUEEN'S COLLEGE OBTAINED SOON AFTERWARDS MR. KINGSLEY's ' PERSEUS ' AND ' PHAETHON ' LORD GODERICH ON " THE DUTY OF THE AGE " F. D. M. ON DEMOCRACY — A DIGGER .... 103-138 CHAPTER IV. SEPTEMBER 1852-APRIL 1853. HYPATIA AND AUGUSTINE — THE DANGER TO UNITARIANS OF A VIOLENT REACTION THE SABBATH QUESTION AT THE CRYSTAL PALACE— THE ATHANASIAN CREED THE ' PROPHETS AND KINGS ' — LETTER INDICATING INTENTION TO GIVE SOON A FULLER EXPRESSION TO HIS THOUGHTS PRESENT VIEW OF ' SUBSCRIPTION NO BONDAGE ' MENTIONS TO HIS SISTER A FORTHCOMING BOOK ADDRESSED TO UNITARIANS — THE RECONSTITUTION OF THE FRIENDS OF CO-OPERATORS UNDER THE NEW ACT HOSTILITY OF POPULAR AGITATORS — CONFLICTING VIEWS . . . 139-162 CHAPTEE V. APRIL 1853-NOVEMBER 1853. PUBLICATION OF THE ' THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS ' CORRESPONDENCE WITH DR. JELF ACTION OF KING's COLLEGE COUNCIL LONG CONTINUED ' RECORD ' ATTACK, MIXING CO-OPERATION AND THEO- LOGY AS CONCURRENT OFFENCES — EXPULSION FROM KINg's COLLEGE 163-209 CHAPTER VI. NOVEMBER 1853-BEGINNING OF 1855. PUBLIC OPINION DECLARES ITSELF AGAINST ITS WORSHIPPERS — F. D. M. RESIGNS HIS POSITION AT QUEEn's COLLEGE, AND OFFERS TO RESIGN LINCOLN'S INN CAUSES LEADING TO THE FOUNDING OF THE WORKING-MEn's COLLEGE — DR. CANDLISH's ATTACK — SERMONS ON SACRIFICE — LONG LETTER ON THE OC- CUPATIONS OF THE FUTURE STATE — VIEW OF RELATION OF BUNSEN's LINE OF THOUGHT TO HIS OAVN . . . 210-254 CONTENTS. V CHAPTEE YII. PAGE JANUARY 1855-JUNE 1856. DEATH OF ARCHDEACON HARE — THE CRIMEAN WAR — WORKING- WOMEn's classes — LONG CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. KINGSLEY ON DOUBTS OF VARIOUS KINDS — FOREIGN TOUR — THE SUNDAY QUESTION 255-283 CHAPTER VIII. GENERAL, AND FROM JUNE 1856-AUGUST 1857. HOME LIFE — PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS, ETC. — M0^T:S TO RUSSELL SQUARE — RETURNS TO QUEEn's COLLEGE .... 284-307 CHAPTEE IX. SEPTEMBER 1857-SEPTEMBER 1858. LECTURES ON THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN — LETTER TO MR. LANGLEY GIVING AN ACCOUNT OF THESE AND OF A LONG CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. MANSEL INDIAN MUTINIES DIFFICULTIES AS TO SUNDAY AT WORKING-MEN's COLLEGE — ANONYMOUS WRITING AND SIGNED ARTICLES — "l". . 308-326 CHAPTEE X. 1858 AND 1859, AND BEGINNING OF 1860. THE BATTLE WITH ORTHODOX AGNOSTICISM — MR. MANSEL's BAMPTON LECTURES, 1858 ' WHAT IS REVELATION ? ' — "MR. MANSEL's EXAMINATION OF MR. MAURICE's STRICTURES " — ' SEQUEL TO WHAT IS REVELATION?' 327-355 CHAPTEE XI. APRIL 1860-OCTOBER 1861. LORD EBURY's SCHEME FOR THE REVISION OF THE PRAYER-BOOK — 'THE LITCRGY AND THE DISSENTERS ' — APPOINTMENT TO ST. PETER's, VERE STEEET — FURIOUS ATTACK ON HIM APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA IN LETTER TO A FRIEND A STRANGER's PRO- TEST AGAINST MISSTATEMENTS ABOUT HIM — COUNTER MOVE- vi CONTENTS. MENT AROUSED BY THE ATTACK — FINAL BLOW TO THE TYRANNY OF THE * RECORD ' — ' ESSAYS AND REVIEWS ' — THE PANIC — * TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE ' — WOLFf's TRAVELS . 356-397 CHAPTER XII. OCTOBER 1861-AUGUST 1862. DR. LUSHINGTON's JUDGMENT ON HEATH — THE REFUSAL TO PAY MR. JOWETT HIS SALARY — VALUE OF THE ARTICLES AS PLEDGES OF LIBERTY — CONTINUATION OF * TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE ' — THE INSPIRATION OF ST. PAUL — PUBLICATION OF LAST PART OF ' MORAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY ' — THE PER- SONALITY OF THE DEVIL MRS. OLIPHANT's 'LIFE OF EDWARD IRVING' — CARLYLE AND IRVING — AN IMPORTANT PIECE OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN CONNECTION WITH IRVING — ON LEGENDS — TWO LETTERS ON THE ATHANASIAN CREED — ON THE CALLINGS OF MEN 398-420 CHAPTER XIII. AUGUST 1862-JUNE 1863. DR. COLENSO ON THE PENTATEUCH— MY FATHER'S EMBARRASSMENT — INTENSE DESIRE TO OPPOSE THE BISHOP's VIEW — GREAT UN- WILLINGNESS TO GO WITH A MULTITUDE AGAINST HIM — WISHES TO RESIGN LIVING AT VERE STREET IN ORDER MORE STRONGLY TO ASSERT HIS ATTACHMENT TO THE ENGLISH CHURCH CHANGE OF PURPOSE AND ITS MOTIVES 421-455 CHAPTER XIV. JUNE 1863-JUNE 1864. THE MEETINGS OF CLERGY AND LAITY AT MR. KEMPE's RECTORY — M. RENAN's 'vie DE JESUS '—the DECISION OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL ON DR. LUSHINGTON's JUDGMENT ON THE WORD "ETERNAL," AND ON VERBAL INSPIRATION — THE GREAT ALLI- ANCE OF DR. PUSEY AND THE ' RECORD ' — MY FATHER'S PRO- TEST— ' THE WORSHIP OF DIFFERENT GODS ' — CORRESPONDENCE ON THE WORD " ETERNAL " — LETTER TO A MAN^TROUBLED WITH DOUBTS — ON GOD AS THE REDEEMER OF THE WILL OBJECTS TO REMOVAL OF ATHANASIAN CREED ..... 456-484 CONTENTS. vii CHAPTER XV. SEPTEMBER 1864-OCTOBER 1865. PAGE THE COLENSO QUESTION IN THE LAW COURTS AND IN SOUTH AFRICA — LETTER OF ADVICE FOR SOUTH AFRICA — LETTER TO STANLEY ON SUBSCRIPTION, EXPLAINING NATURE OF HIS OWN CHANGE OF VIEW — ' THE NAME IN BAPTISM ' — * THE DIVINE CHARITY ' IN LETTERS TO MR. KINGSLEY — LINCOLN'S ASSASSINATION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF A THEOCRACY — THE DIVINE WORD — ]\IR. HUGHES AS MEMBER FOR LAMBETH — ART AND SCIENCE IN RELATION TO ROMANISM AND PRO- TESTANTISM— EXPLAINS TO MR. KINGSLEY THE HISTORY OF HIS VIEWS ABOUT SUBSCRIPTION 485-507 CHAPTER XVI. NOVEMBER 1865-SEPTEMBER 1866. PUBLICATION OF * ROBERTSON'S LIFE AND LETTERS' — LETTER ON EVIDENCES — PEARSON ON THE CREED CORNEWALL LEWIS AS CRITIC — butler's * ANALOGY ' — * ECCE HOMO ' — MR. KING's PRO- POSAL TO EXPOSE THE * RECORD ' WRITERS — WHY F. D. M. STOPPED IT — DR. PUSEy's ' EIRENICON ' — DR. NEWMAn's LETTER IN REPLY — DEAN STANLEY ON BOTH — THE * HEALING OF THE WOUNDS OF THE DAUGHTER OF MY PEOPLE' — WISHES BISHOP EWING TO EDIT A SERIES OF ' CONFESSIONS ' — VISIT TO OXFORD AND THOUGHTS THERE — ON ETERNAL LIFE AND ON THE POSSI- BILITY OF SORROW IN HEAVEN — THE COMMANDMENTS . 508-525 CHAPTER XVII. A CHAPTER WITHOUT DATE, BEING A GATHERING OF FALLACIES . 526-541 CHAPTER XVIII. SEPTEMBER 1866-OCTOBER 1867. ELECTION TO KNI6HTSBRIDGE PROFESSORSHIP, CAMBRIDGE — ON MAZ- ZINI — F. D. M.'S REVIEW OF THE WORK DONE SIXTEEN YEARS BEFORE — MEETING AT WORKING-MEN's COLLEGE — INAUGURAL LECTURE IN SENATE HOUSE — HABITS AND PERSONAL APPEAR- ANCE AT THIS TIME — DEMOCRACY — ON THE POSSIBILITY OF viii CONTENTS. SOREOW IN HEAVEN AND ON ST. PATJL's ACCOUNT OF THE RE- SURRECTION— ON THE REPULSION PRODUCED ON DISSENTERS BY THE ATHAN ASIAN CREED 542-564 CHAPTER XIX. OCTOBER 1867-SEPTEMBER 1868. THE PAN-ANGLICAN CONFERENCE — CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE BISHOP OF ARGYLL — THE PRAYER-BOOK — THE CATHOLIC FAITH -—FAITH THE TRUSTER DIFFERENCE AND INDIFFERENCE LECTURES ON NATIONAL MORALITY — RELATION OF THE CON- SCIENCE TO REVELATION AND TO MAN THE "l" V. PSYCHO- LOGY TO THE FATHER OF A YOUNG MAN ABOUT TO JOIN THE CHURCH OF ROME 565-583 CHAPTEE XX. SEPTEMBER 1868-MARCH 1870. LETTERS TO THE ' DAILY NEWS ' ON CHURCH AND STATE — VIEW OF THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM SPIRIT AND LAW LIFE IN DEATH ON GUIZOT's ' LIVES OF LOUIS IX. AND CALVIN ' DEFINITIONS OF A SACRAMENT DESTRUCTIVE OF ITS ESSENCE THE ASCENSION AS THE DESTRUCTION OF PRIESTCRAFT — ON THE DANGER OF COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS RESIGNS, FROM ILL- HEALTH, ST. Peter's, vere street — the gathering to the FINAL COMMUNION USE OF " REVELATION " IN THE NEW TESTAMENT FEMALE SUFFRAGE DEAN STANLEY, F. D. M., AND THE BROAD CHURCHMEN AN ARTICLE BY MR. LESLIE STEPHEN BRINGS THE RELATIONS OF THESE TO AN ISSUE F. D. M.'s RELATION TO SCIENCE AND SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM . . 584-609 CHAPTER XXI. MARCH 1870-JULY 1871. THE EDUCATION QUESTION— MEETING AT EXETER HALL ON THE EDUCATION QUESTION — JOHN STUART MILL THE CATECHISM SYMPATHY WITH MR. FORSTER'S EDUCATION BILL — PROSECUTION OF MR. BENNETT — FEELINGS ABOUT THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR LETTER ON KNOWLEDGE BY THE DEPARTED OF THE DOINGS AND THOUGHTS OF THOSE WHO REMAIN — THE ATTITUDE OF CONTENTS. I'Ar.E THE RITUALISTS TOWARDS THE COMMISSION ON RITUAL — LIFE AT CAMBRIDGE DURING LATER YEARS — ACCEPTS THE CURE OF ST. Edward's, Cambridge — the sunny autumn of life . 610-634 THE LAST HOURS CHAPTEE XXII. MARCH- APRIL 1, 1872. 635-643 " I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister'd vertne, nnexercis'd and unbreatli'd, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortall garland is to be run for, notwithstanding dust and heat." — Milton's Areopagitica. EEKATA. VOL. II. Page G, line 8 from bottom. For Communism, both " read " Com- munism both," Page 10, line 11 from top. For " none which " read " none, which " Page 51, For " 0. Brien " read " O'Brien." Page 51 and page 54 in several places. For " Nicholay " read " Nicolay " Page G2, last line of quotation from Miss Fox. For thank worthy" read " thank-worthy " Page 93. In address of letter. For "December 51, 1851" read "De- cember 30th, 1851." Page 124, line 3 from top. For " coincides with his, I think " read coincides with his. I think " Page 137, line 18 from top. For " harmony the only secret " read " har- mony, the only secret " Page 145, Ime 10 from top. For " mercy, yet " read " mercy. Yet " Page 167, line 2 from bottom. For "don't, though" read "don't. Though " Page 167, last line. For " rise again. I also " read " rise again, I also " Page 171, line 16 from bottom. For " the grips of" read " the grip of" Page 355, page heading. For " Mouth " read " Month." Page 399, lines 5, and 6 from bottom. For " of the reformers of the Creeds, and of " read " of the reformers, of the Creeds and of " Page 416, page heading. For " F. M. 65 " read " F. M. 56." Page 4i)2, page lieading. For " F. M. 57 " read " F. M. 58." Page 492, line 18 from top. For " consciences of members " read " con- sciences of numbers " Page 499, first line of letter to Mr. John Hodgkin. For " 11,00 " read '11,000 " Page 506, page heading. For " F. M. 59 " read " F. M. 60." Page 529. For " Mr. Rigga, a " read " Mr. Rigg, a " Page 559. For " Tiie Doctrines of Sacrifice " read " The Doctrine of Sacrifice " Page 582, page heading. For " F. M. 62 " read " F. M. 63." Page 641, Une 16 from bottom. For " the Father the Son, and the " read " the Father, the Son, and the " VOL. n. c xii EBB AT A. I wish to draw attention here to what I have said, in the first few pages of this volume, as to certain characteristics of my father's letters, which make it very unfair to draw inferences from his letters as to the exact nature of those to which they are answers. Further it must be noticed that it often happens that the selection of a particular letter, as in itself the most valuable for the purposes of my father's life, leaves an unfair impression of his relations, on the whole, with the correspondent to whom it has been addressed. As an instance I may cite the case of the two letters on pp. 471-477, to Mr. Lyttelton. No one will be surprised at the selection of those letters ; but, as they are of a somewhat controversial nature, they, if taken as representa- tive of my father's relation to Mr. Lyttelton, with whom he was always on the most friendly of terms, will not convey a true picture. The frontispiece to Volume II. is an engraving by F. HoU, after a portrait by Lowes Dickinson. LIFE OP FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE. CHAPTER I. "Tlie Times are great; wliat time is not?" — Sjxinish Gypsy. 1849, LATTER HALF REMEMBEAXCES OF F. D. M. AT THIS TIME BY PROFESSOR BRENTANO AND OTHERS — THE MEETINGS WITH WORK- ING MEN RESUMED TENDENCY TOWARDS CO-OPERATION — LETTER FROM STUDENT ON NEWSPAPER ATTACKS — MAYHEw's LETTERS ON " LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR " LETTER TO MR. HOET ON QUESTION OF FUTURE PUNISHMHNT PERIOD OF HESITATION BEFORE COMMITTING HIMSELF TO ACTION BEGINNING OF THE CO-OPERATIVE MOVEMENT — THE NAME CHRISTIAN SOCIALIST — PRACTICAL DIFFICULTIES AND ACTION ON THEM EXPLANATION OF OBJECTS AND VIEWS OF CHRISTIAN SOCIALISTS. The time liad come, in my father's life, when it was certain that a movement of which he would be the leader must begin. Friends were gathered round him. They and he believed that the times were out of joint, and were anxiously watching for some mode by which, within their own sphere, they might help to put them right. They had come into actual contact with the working men; they were hearing the men's own difficulties and their own proposals. It remained as yet unsettled in what way the friends could oiBTer their best help, but the body of professional men — lawyers, doctors, clergymen and others — were resolved not to disperse without offering their services to any cause which, after careful examination, might seem to deserve support. VOL. II. ' ^ B 2 EEBB BBmTANO'S BECOLLECTIONS. [1849. F. M. 44. At siicli a moment, just before the movement begins, it is well to give a sketcb of the leader as he appeared to a distinguished foreigner who was about this time visiting England. On the whole, I believe, it will be better to describe my father's home life and habits after the story of his life has been followed through the storm, into which he was now about to plunge, and into somewhat calmer waters. Herr Brentano, the present Professor of Political Economy at Strasburg, has recently thus recorded his own and Mr. Hiiber's remembrance of my father. After speaking of the dangerous severance of classes which had at this time shown itself in England, and tracing with great skill the causes of this national weakness, he goes on. ' In this condition of things arose Frederick Denison Maurice. B. A. Hiiber has described him as " a man, whom very few of Ms contemporaries and countrymen equalled in inward piety, genuine patriotism, intellectual gifts, and in a cultivation, many sided, free, and altogether thorough ; whom not many of them equalled in disposition, character, and life, and especially in that true sweetness of character which was the result of the proportion and harmony of so many gifts and efforts." I can thoroughly confirm this statement from my personal knowledge. The characteristic of the man which left the deepest impression on me was a striking union of severe earnestness of purpose with irresistible kindliness. These two qualities were at once the cause and the effect of the complete drenching of his whole being in Christianity. It is necessary to explain quite clearly what this implies. * Nothing is more common than to meet people who em- phatically describe themselves as Christians, and talk about Christianity. Nothing is more rare than men who in all their decisions and acts are naturally guided by the Christian spirit. * People believe in Christianity in general ; but in each separate case they believe in self, with all its interests, inclinations, prejudices, and whims. Maurice was not merely guided in CHAP. I.J ELOQUENCE NOT OBATOBY. S his general views of the world by Christian doctrines ; it was impossible for him to think of any aspect of nature or of social life otherwise than from the Christian point of view, nor could he enter into any relation with men in which that Christ- ianity which had transfused itself into his flesh and blood, did not find expression in the simplicity and gentleness which combined with his earnestness to form that loving sympathy which was so free from any trace of arrogance or self-seeking. ' Such a man was evidently marked out by his whole nature to exercise the influence of an apostle." * The influence which he exercised was certainly in no way •due to oratory. Of oratory as a faculty of persuading men, he had the most profound dread, partly due to his thinking that it had been a bane and injury to Sterling. It was character- istic of him to say of one for whom he had respect as a statesman, " but I fear he is too much of an orator to be good for him as a man." But though he neither had nor cultivated any of the ordinary arts of speaking, there were times when the intensity of his feeling, the outpouring of his spirit under conditions which powerfully wrought upon him, produced an impression on an audience that hardly any oratory could have done. " I never heard such eloquence," is an expression used of him on many occasions by various letter-writers. " He left us all trembling with emotion," writes Miss Fox of a lecture at Queen's College. It was, however, always the eloquence of the intense expression of a great spirit rather than that of carefully chosen words. It came forth like a delivered message. It was no attempt to play upon the passions or to wield the wills of any present audience. His whole power as a chairman or president lay in his faculty of bringing out the best that had been said by each, and giving some harmony to the most discordant elements ; never in leading some popular cry and giving it language. The most perfect expression, given to the feeling he produced, came off-hand one day, in a street in * I quote from an unpublished translation, by my brother, of Herr Bren- tano's most interesting history (just published) of the Co-operative Movement in England. B 2 4 ©EION TI nA0O^. [1849. F. M. U. Cambridge, from Dr. Thompson the present Master of Trinity. Meeting Canon Norris, who had just returned from hearing a University sermon by my father and was speaking of it, " Yes ! " said Dr. Thompson " there is about that man Oelov n irdOo^'' The words would not be so expressive as they are if their full force could be given in a translation. They convey the sense of a man speaking forth under the influence of a divine possession. His letters present a peculiarity very characteristic of him. I must warn all who read them from drawing too exact infer- ences as to the nature of the letters to which they are answers. The very same quality of sympathy which made men value him as a leader in the peculiar sense I have just spoken of, gave also a peculiar quality to his answers to letters. He always cared for the man who was writing to him, not for the particular questions put to him. He was in no wise ready or willing to supply answers that would save his correspondent from seeking for truth as it might present itself to the corres- pondent himself. He writes always in eager sympathy with his friend in the difficulties he believes to be troubling the man himself. Often he does not exactly understand precisely what these are. As a rule he carefully avoids a specific answer to the specific question put to him. He does this deliberately and on prin- ciple; dreading lest he should thereby substitute himself as leader and answerer for Him to whom he believed that it was his duty to turn the eyes of all men. Most of those to whom he wrote have been anxious to own the help which he thus gave them. Here is a representative sentence, written from a layman to a brother, about some words of my father's, the like of which lies in many forms before me. " Griving you no definite directions what to do or how to act — suggesting no cry — with no taking points for use in smashing Komanists, High Churchmen, or Evangelicals, and yet somehow giving you far more knowledge of the whole thing than any one else has or can do." But those who came to him or wrote to him, not wanting this at all, not wanting to clear their own road to CHAP. I.J PECULIABITY IN THE LETTEBS. 5 truth, but wanting to find some solution which would enable them to repeat the old religious formulae, to them unreal, and in some kind of way to reconcile the philosophy which was for them real with these shadows — these men sooner or later gave him up with disgust^ and with a disgust that was passionate and unreasoning in proportion to the disappointment they had experienced. From them, even more than from the religious formulae-mongers, came those direct misstatements of what he said and of his line of thought, which made so much of the surrounding atmosphere of foggy misconception through which, from the time in which he began to be a conspicuous figure in London and in England, it was his fate to move. It will be convenient, before returning to the thread of the history of the movement, to illustrate, by a specific instance, the tendency, which my father's letters sometimes have, to leave a false impression of the nature of the letters to which they are answers. On page 517, Vol. I., there is a letter to Mr. Kingsley on Mr. Fronde's ' Nemesis of Faith,' in w^hich occurs this passage, I know what you mean about the passages which tormented and upset you. Do not suppose that I do not expect them to have that effect and that I did not feel them myself." From which it might seem that Mr. Kingsley had acknowledged that the book had troubled his own faith. That was not the case. He had spoken only of the effect he feared it would have on others. There are letters in this volume written to Mr. Kingsley to meet difficulties of his own, of the kind recorded in the ' Letters and Memories,' but in this sense the ' Nemesis of Faith ' never troubled him at all. This is only one illustration out of many that I might give. I believe that this fact will be found to give to the letters both a peculiarity and a value of their own. They are letters written to actual men often in actual trouble, and though they do not deal always accurately with the detail of the matter now long since become quite unimportant, they meet the case on human grounds of general human interest. To return to the history of the movement which was now about to begin. 6 CO-OPEBATION IN 1840. \F. M. 44. As the conferences with the working-men proceeded at the Cranbourne Tavern the subject of co-operation was more and more forced upon the attention of those who there met the working-men. It is by no means easy now to realise the aspect under which co-operation presented itself in 1849. It was completely identified in the minds of the workmen themselves with anti-Christian views. To the general public in England all proposals for co-operation came branded with the stigma of anti-Christian Kevolutionary Communism. But as the dis- cussions went on it became more and more clear to the clergymen and laymen Avho took part in them that ideas had been connected together which were in reality not allied but opposed to one another. More and more clearly they began. to see that it was impossible to resist the truth of ^^much that was said by the working-men, although it was confused with much that was false. At first an efi"ort was made to regulate the subjects of discussion ; but the question of forming co- operative societies for workmen forced itself upon them, more especially at a conference which took place shortly before my father left London in the summer. To Mr. Ludlow, ' Bradley, Newton Abbot, August 13, 1849. ' My dear Feiend, * .... I am now fixed here and cannot leave for the present,. Pray tell our friends how very much it has grieved me to break my engagement with them, and how many points I would have strained to keep it. Pray take the chair yourself,, and speak for yourself and from yourself your thoughts about Home Colonisation and Communism, both which will be worth many bushels of mine. I cannot blame the speakers for leaving the original subject. I think Kingsley's denun- ciation (right or wrong) of pauper proprietors forced the- question of Communism upon us, and I fancy that if one started from any point of Cooper's we should inevitably in. this day be brought to that topic. There was the most remarkable, and it seems to me instructive and edifying. CHAP. I.] MONASTEBIES—CO-OPEBATIVE SOCIETIES. 7 inconsistency in tlie speakers. I never heard a stronger witness for the power of the will to regulate and command circumstances than came from those Socialist worshippers of circumstances. I think they should be made to feel that Communism, in whatever sense it is a principle of the New Moral World, is a most important principle of the old world, and that every monastic institution — properly so called — was a Communist institution to all intents and purposes. The idea of Christian Communism has been a most vigorous and generative one in all ages, and must be destined to a full development in ours. * P. S. I have called on the writer in the Becord (through Mr. Bickersteth) to come forward and accuse me to the Arch- bishop of Canterbury as visitor of King's College. I hope that will bring things to a crisis.' He went up, however, and did preside at this meeting. But he was unable to attend the next meeting on August 28th, as he was in the house of his wife's mother who was dying. To Mr. Ludloiv. ' Bradlej', Kewton Abbot, August 25, 1849. ' My dear Fkiexd, *I should have liked very much to be with you on the 28th. It is the eve of my birthday. I have been about 44 years in the world and I feel that I have done almost nothing of the work that I was sent into it to do. The strong sense of a vocation — I may say, for you will not misunderstand me and set down the words to mere vanity — of a vocation to be a Church Eeformer has struggled in my own mind with great natural indolence and despondency, and in my social inter- course with the incapacity of joining those who seek Keforma- tion, but who give a meaning to the word which seems to me frivolous and false. I cannot enter into a party for the sake of compassing an end which involves the destruction of party. I have therefore been more delighted than most other persons would have been at the opportunity of meeting earnesi 8 THE LAW OUGHT TO DEFEND PERSONAL RIGHTS. people as friends and not as allies who must assuredly be agents, perhaps the main agents, in bringing about whatever changes, good or evil, take place during the next ten years. I am most thankful to be able to connect Church Keforma- tion with social Keformation — to have all one's thoughts tested by their application to actual work and by their power of meeting the wants of suffering, discontented, resolute men. Whatever will not stand that trial is not good for much. I am sure that all which is of God in my desires and methods will ; that what is my own will be exposed and cast out as it ought to be. ' I should wish to have told poor Hetherington, who asked me in so touching a manner to use my influence with the Government on behalf of their plans, that if I wrote to Sir George Grey as he did, I should be sure of meeting with the same treatment, and with much better excuse ; I do not see why a busy secretary of state may not throw the suggestions of a theorist like me into the fire, though he is bound to heed the cries of one who tells what he has suffered, and what he fancies would be a means of redress. But though I have not the slightest direct power of acting on the minds of statesmen, I do not think myself the least absolved from the duty of helping all I can to give the Communist principle a fair trial. On the contrary, I am convinced that the obliga- tions of clergymen in this respect are stronger and their opportunities greater than those of Sir George Grey and Lord John Kussell. The State, I think, cannot be Com- munist ; never will be ; never ought to be. It is by nature and law Conservative of individual rights, individual possessions. To uphold them it may be compelled (it must be) to recognise another principle than that of individual rights and property ; but only by accident ; only by going out of its own sphere, as it so rightly did in the case of the factory children. But the Church, 1 hold, is Communist in principle ; Conserva- tive of property and individual rights only by accident ; bound to recognise them, but not as its own special work ; not as the chief object of human society or existence. The union THE CHURCH SAYS " YOURS IS NOT YOUR OWN." 9 of Church and State, of bodies existing for opposite ends, each necessary to the other, is, it seems to me, precisely that which should accomplish the fusion of the principles of Communism and of property. A Church without a State must proclaim Proudhon's doctrine if it is consistent with itself; a State without a Church is merely supported by Jew brokers and must ultimately become only a stock exchange. Those who on High Church, Low Church or Dissenting grounds cry out for the abolition of this union are working unconsciously towards one or other of these ends, or rather towards the most tremendous struggle of two opposing, and, in their separation, equally destructive and godless principles. What I say is : To accomplish the best objects of those who desire this dissolution — to remove the fearful mischief which they rightly see follows from our present condition — we want the Church fully to understand her own foundation, fully to work out the Communism which is implied in her existence. She has been for a long while looking upon herself merely as a witness for the principle of property, merely as a second State instituted to embody and protect it. So far as her outward position is concerned this ignominious theory has involved all the degradation and state-subser- viency of which, on different grounds, Mr. Denison and Baptist Noel complain. But it has led to worse inward consequences of which they do not complain, but which they both in their different ways have been promoting ; to a low view I mean of spiritual blessings, to a habit of regarding them as the property of an exclusive body or of the individual elect ; not as treasures like the light and air of which all may partake together : hence to a misunderstanding, contraction, or underrealising of the truths of God's Absolute, Fatherly Love, of the Incarnation, of the Sacrifice for all, which are the great elements of Christianity as the Kevelation to mankind and the universe. * Church Eeformation therefore, in its highest sense, I conceive involves theologiccdhj the reassertion of these truths in their fullness apart from their Calvinistical and Tractarian limita- 10 UNION OF SPIBIT AND LAW. [F. M. U, tions or dilutions ; socially the assertion on tlie ground of these truths of an actual living community under Christ in which no man has a right to call anything that he has his own but in which there is spiritual fellowship and practical co-opera- tion ; nationally the assertion of a union, grounded not on alliances and compromises but on the constitution of things, between this Universal Community and the State of which the principle is Personal Distinction and the symbol Property. For this I desire to labour in all ways, being most careful to choose none by self will or from mere calculations of expedi- ency, and to avoid none which God points out, because it may seem dangerous to oneself or to mere formal onlookers, I believe whoever enters on this path must lay his account with opposition, active or passive, from all quarters, must eagerly welcome and set down for gain all tokens of sympathy ; must have no confidence in himself; must cultivate entire confidence in God and in the certainty of His purposes. It will and must be a long battle, in which many, even standard bearers, will fall. But the issue is not to be doubted ; let us. work and trust for it. *P. S. Brewer (63 Queen's Koad, Bayswater), who takes the liveliest interest in our meetings, would I am sure preside, or would only be deterred by an unreasonable modesty from doing so, at the next meeting, if you think it important to have a clergyman. Mr. Elliott would also do exceedingly well, or Hughes's friend at Paddington.' Ultimately "Hughes's friend" — Mr. Septimus Hansard — took the chair, and a very curious scene ended the meeting. The National Anthem was started as a finale. A number of the still rampant revolutionary chartists began to hiss. Mr. Thom. Hughes sprang on to a chair, and in a voice that all could hear, announced that the first man who hissed the Queen's name would have personally to settle accounts with him. As Mr. Hughes's fist was well known as one not to be despised, this gave a moment's pause. Mr. Hansard desired the pianist to strike up loudly ; and any further attempts at CHAP. I.] THE EFFECT OF BELIGIOUS" JOUBNALS. 11 hissing only adcied force to the tumult of enthusiastic singing- with which the words were given forth by the loyal members of the meeting. From an old Piqnl of F. D. M., to one of the Professors of King s College. ' EeyerEND and dear Sir, * September 10, 1849. * After much deliberation, I have resolved to write to you on a subject which, for many months, has caused very great pain to many of my fellow-students and myself; but one, which — while we were strictly speaking " in statu pupillari " — it would not have been becoming in us to have asked your kind advice upon. But now I can preserve silence no longer,, and the article in last Monday evening's Record has made me so indignant, that I have resolved to trouble you with this letter. * I can sincerely assure you, that, while Mr. Maurice was being- abused in that wicked and shameless way, in which the English Review on the one side, and the Record with its- friends, the Morning Herald and the Standard, on the other, strove to outvie each other, many of us were so enraged that we really burned to be able ourselves to do something to stem the torrent of falsehood and malignity ; but you will readily see that then our hands were tied. I write to ask you, are they thus tied now ? It is useless to correspond with the Record'^ editor, for, without committing the slightest breach ■ of charity, I must be allowed to declare that he seems, poor unhappy man, to labour to mis-state facts, and tell false- hoods, and to link men and their teaching together — to whom I fear, in his very heart, he knows he is doing an injustice. AYere any of us to write to him there is no- trusting him to insert our letter fairly — so this plan I have never seriously contemplated adopting. * The plain state of the case seems to be this. Ought hundreds, (can I not say thousands ?) of Christian families who think so highly of the Record, really to be under the delusion that Mr. Maurice has been teaching us Infidelity, Pantheism, 12 TRUTH AND HONESTY, WHEBE FOUND f [F. M. 44. Sabellianism, Universalism, and the like ? — all of wliicli he has been again and again, and week after week, accused of. I have myself read the articles wherein his teaching has been so wilfully and wickedly perverted. It is not right, it must not be, that these well-meaning people should be thus deceived. Forgive me, my dear sir, for writing thus strongly. I am simply giving utterance to what has for months been rankling within me — and you know how we all love and reverence our dear professor. ' What I have to propose for your kind consideration is this : would it be of any avail for a considerable number of us students to state plainly and shortly how indignant we have felt while Mr. Maurice has been thus maligned ; what were also the general characteristics of his teaching, and how he strove in all his lectures to stir us up to love and revere that word of God — his belief in the inspiration of which the Record so unscrupulously charges him with denying. Things ought not to be allowed to remain as they are. ' Allow me to state that the feelings which I have described as actuating so many of us, were all but unanimously expressed. Can we then in any way, either those who have left the college (consisting of those of us who are daily striving to teach others, while daily benefiting from Mr. Maurice's own teaching, and those who are still preparing for the sacred ministry), or can we in a body, both old and present students — and with what delight would we do this ! — come forward and state the simple truth, so that all candid people may rightfully judge on this painful and solemn subject ? Our own theological department is now suffering, and will hereafter suffer, from these abominable attacks. I freely confess to you that I bless God daily that I went to King's College : for I have learnt from all our professors lessons which have deeply sunk into my heart ; and if, with all my manifold inperfections, God does call me into the ministry, I shall be, hour by hour, in my ministrations to others, but reflecting back the light, humanly speaking, which was so freely shed on us there.' 1849.] " LONDON LABOUB AND THE LONDON POOBr 13 Mr. Ludlow paid a visit to Paris during the summer vacation and came back full of the " then really magnificent movement of the Associations Ouvrieres which," as he says, seemed to meet the very mischiefs we were anxious to grapple with." Whilst the conferences were being carried on, a series of articles were begun by Mr. H. Mayhew in the Morning Chronicle on " London Labour and the London Poor." They presented a picture of misery and destitution ; they showed an impotence on the part of the working classes, in many trades at least, to make fair terms for themselves, an utter failure of the principle of demand and supply to regulate with satisfactory results the relations of employer and employed, which startled those who knew most of the poor of London. Even in the statements put forward by the working-men themselves no such complete evidence had been given. The men for the most part knew very little of the circumstances of any trade but their own, and were able to give only their personal experiences. Most of those who were working with my father were becoming under these various stimulants anxious for some vigorous action. My father was divided between many feelings : an extreme dread of becoming the leader of a party and of stepping beyond his proper sphere of work ; a strong feeling of the gravity of the crisis and of the impossibility of its being met by politicians alone ; a fear of adopting some course, that should not be the right one, from the mere notion that something must be done ; a determination not to be deterred from adopting the best course from any fears of personal loss or of public opinion. The weekly meetings at his house continued throughout the autumn. On September 25th one of the Morning Chronicle articles gave an account of the condition of Bermondsey so appalling that for the moment the energies of all were diverted into the direction of sanitary reform. Mr. Kingsley came up to their meetings and threw himself vigorously into the cause. Whilst this subject was mainly occupying them it happened that the Eegius Professorship of Divinity at Cambridge fell vacant. To this matter the next letter refers. 14 BEGIUS PBOFESSOBSHIP OF DIVINITY. [F. 3L 44. F. D. M. to Archdeacon Hare. ' My dear Julius, *' Xovember 2, 1849. ^ Many things besides the falling of the horses seem to point in the direction of the professorship — if you can but make up your mind to become a resident in Cambridge, which I think from what I hear will be necessary. It would be a great and noble sacrifice for a noble end, but one which I could not urge you to make, sure as I am that you will be rewarded if you do. ^ Bunsen has just been here. I was out when he came ; when I returned he said he must have some private conversation with me. It seems that he was with Prince Albert yesterday ; the Prince had just received a letter from the Bishop of Oxford pressing Trench's great merits and fitness for the professorship. He asked Bunsen's opinion. He agreed in all that Wilberforce had said, but maintained that I was the £tter man. The Prince, according to his report, was much interested by his panegyric and begged to see my books or some of them. I told Bunsen at once of your intention to stand. He was of course exceedingly surprised and delighted. It had never entered into his head, he said, that you would give up Hurstmonceaux. I asked him if that was necessary. He said he thought it would be. At all events he will write at once to the Prince unsaying his recommendation of me and hinting that it is possible you may be induced to come forward. I told him that I was quite out of the question. I belong now to Oxford and am to preach there on Advent Sunday. Men at Cambridge would not think of me, nor should I wish them to do it. Some day or other I may set up for private tuition at the other school — I mean when I am driven from King's College and suspended by the Bishop of London. I begged Bunsen to say, as he was well inclined to do, that if you did not stand no one could be so good as Trench. He feels with me the all-importance of keeping out M. The mischief he will do to those who receive and to those who reject his teaching is unspeakable. I CHAP. I.] LETTEB ON ETEBNAL PUNISHJIENT. 15 hope, therefore, there will be no — even accidental — collision of interests. Nor do I fear it, for I am sure you and Trench will perfectly understand one another. I have not written to him. I am sure he will retire at once if you are an- nounced.' To Mr, F. J. A. Eort. ' 21 Queen Square, Bloomsbuiy, Xov. 23, 1849. 'My dear Sir, ^ Perhaps I shall best show my interest in the subject which is occupying your mind, and my gratitude for your confidence, if I tell you something of the processes of thought through which I have myself passed, while endeavouring to arrive at the truth. * I was brought up in the belief of universal restitution ; I was taught that the idea of eternal punishment could not consist with the goodness and mercy of God. When I came to think and feel for myself, I began to suspect these determinations. It did not seem to me that the views I had learnt respecting sin accorded with my experience of it, or with the facts which I saw in the world. I had a certain revolting, partly of intellect and partly of conscience, against what struck me as a feeble notion of the Divine perfections, one which represented good 7iature as the highest of them. Nor could I acquiesce in the unfair distortions of the text of Scripture by which, as I thought, they justified their conclusions ; for I had always learnt to reverence the Scriptures, not to set them aside. I did not see how alcovco^ could mean one thing when it was joined with KoXaac'^, and another when it was joined with ^corj. * I do not mean that these were very deep, vital convictions ; they were honest opinions as far as they went, though mixed with much intellectual pride. I despised the Universalist and Unitarian as weak ; I do not know that I found anything at all better. ' When I began in earnest to seek God for myself, the feeling that I needed a deliverer from an overwhelming weight of selfishness was the predominant one in my mind. Then I 16 LETTEB ON ETEBNAL PUNISHMENT found it more and more impossible to trust in any Being who did not hate selfishness, and who did not desire to raise His creatures out of it. Such a Being was altogether difi'erent from the mere image of good nature I had seen among Universalists. He was also very different from the mere Sovereign whom I heard of amongst Calvinists, and who it seemed to me was worshipped by a great portion of the religious world. But I thought He was just that Being who was exhibited in the cross of Jesus Christ. If I might believe His words, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father ;" if in His death the whole wisdom and power of God did shine forth, there was One to whom I might fly from the demon of self, there was One who could break his bonds asunder. This was and is the ground of my faith. The more I have thought and felt, the more has the Scripture met my thoughts and feelings, by exhibiting God to me in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself ; the more have I been sure that I was meant to trust this Being absolutely, universally — that my sin was not trusting Him. The certainty of one absolute in goodness whom I could call Father, has more and more obliged me to believe in a Son, to believe Him, as the Church believes Him, to be consubstantial w4th the Father ; the more have I recognised the impossibility of a perfect all- comprehending unity, or of any living fellowship between me and my fellow-men, or of any practical faith in myself unless I confessed a Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son, distinct from them, perfectly one with them. ^ I can say, I did not receive this of man, neither was I taught it. Every glimpse I have of it has come to me through great confusions and darkness. With it has come the belief that God has redeemed mankind, that He has chosen a family to be witnesses of that redemption, that we who are baptised into that family must claim for ourselves the title of sons of God, must witness to others that they have a claim to it as well as we. ' You may think I am going a long way round to get at your question ; but I really know no other road. The starting- CHAP. I.J AND GOD'S BEDEMPTION OF 3IANKIND. 17 ^oint of the Gospel, as I read it, is the absolute Love of God ; the reivard of the Gospel is the knowledge of that love. It is brought near to us by the Gospel, so the Apostles speak : the kingdom of God is revealed to men ; they are declared to be inheritors of it. The condemnation is declared to be choosing darkness rather than light, hating Christ and the Father." A rebel state of will, at war with God, is the highest, completest misery. So far I think all go, in words at least. All will admit that damnation is in some sense loss of God's presence, that the curse lies in the rejection of love, separation from love, abandonment to self. All admit that God has sent His Son to save us from this perdition ; from every other as included in this or the consequent of it. ^ St. John repeating our Lord's most awful prayer takes me a step farther. " This," he says, " is eternal life, that they may know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." At first we shrink from the strict meaning of these words. We suppose they do not mean that eternal life is the knowledge of God, but only that those who obtain that knowledge or that life will retain it through eternity. But when I ask myself, "Do I then know what eternity is? Do I mean by eternity a certain very, very long time ? " I am shocked and startled at once by my want of faith and want of reason. Our Lord has been training us by His beautiful, blessed teaching to see eternity as something altogether out of time, to connect it with Him who is, and was, and is to come. He has been teaching me that I have a spirit which cannot rest in time, which must strive after the living, the permanent, the eternal, after God Himself. He has been telling me that He has come to bring me into this state, that He is the way to it. How dare I then depart from His own definition ? How dare I impute my own low meaning of " eternal " to Him, and read myself into His words, when He is raising me to another meaning infinitely more accordant with the witness of my conscience, not involving the contradictions which my own does ? VOL. II. c 18 LETTEB ON ETEBNAL PUNISHMENT * Now, believing from my heart that the Tvorcls in the twenty-fifth' of St. Matthew are quite as much oui* Lord's words as those in the seventeenth of St. John, I am bound by reverence to Him — and if not by that, even by ordinary philological honesty — to apply to the former the meaning which I have learnt from the latter, this being the strictest I can get. I am bound to apply that meaning to both cases in which the word is used, getting rid of the difference which our translators have (not honestly, or with great carelessness) introduced between " everlasting " and " eternal." I am bound to believe that the eternal life into which the righteous go is that knowledge of God which is eternal life ; I am bound to suppose that the eternal punishment into which those on the left hand go, is the loss of that eternal life — what is elsewhere called " eternal death." * Now, if you ask me on the strength of this passage, or of any similar one, to dogmatise on the duration of future punish- ment, I feel obliged to say, " I cannot do so. I find here at least nothing on the subject. I cannot apply the idea of time to the word eternal." I feel that I cannot ; everybody feels it. What do the continual experiments to heap hundreds of thousands of years upon hundreds of thousands of years, and then the confession, ''After all we are no nearer to eternity," mean, if not this ? Do they not show that we are not even on the wmj to the idea of eternity ? Might we not just as well have stoj^ped at the hundredth year or the first ? But this trifling becomes very serious and shocking, if there is a great and awful idea of eternity which our Lord would teach us, which belongs to our own inmost selves, and which we are flying from by these efforts to get it into another region. For the idea of enjoying God or being without God, we unawares substitute that Mahometan felicity or Mahometan torment which you speak of, and the whole of Christianity becomes depraved in consequence. ' And yet do I then dogmatise on the other side ? Do I fall back on the theory of Universal Eestitution, which in my early days I found so unsatisfactory ? No ; J find it cold and. CHAP. I.J AND GOD 'S BEDE3IPTI0N OF MANKIND. 19 unsatisfactory still. I cannot speak of God punishing for a number of years, and then ceasing to punish, or of the wicked expiating their crimes by a certain amount of penalties. The idea of a rebel will is, to those who know in themselves what it is, far too awful for such arrangements as these. A man who feels what sin means, who feels it as the contradic- tion to God's nature, the perfectly holy, and blessed, and loving nature, cannot find any comfort in the thought of God leaving men alone, or hold out such a prospect as a comfort to his fellows. He feels that God is altogether Love, Light with no darkness at all. But then that which is without God, that which loves darkness, that which resists Love, must not it be miserable? And can it not fix itself in misery ? Has it not a power of defying that which seeks to subdue it ? I know in myself that it has. I know that we may struggle with the Light, that we may choose death. But I know also that Love does overcome this rebellion. I know that I am bound to believe that its power is greater than every other. I am sure that Christ's death proves that death, hell, hatred, are not so strong as their opposites. How can I reconcile these contradictory discoveries? I cannot reconcile them. I know no theory which can. But I can trust in Him who has reconciled the world to Himself. I can leave all in His hands. I dare not fix any limits to the power of His love. I cannot tell what are the limits to the power of a rebel will. I know that no man can be blessed, except his will is in accordance with God's will. I know it must be by an action on the will that love triumphs. Though I have no faith in man's theory of Universal Kestitu- tion, I am taught to expect "a restitution of all things, which God who cannot lie has promised since the world began." I am obliged to believe that we are living in a restored order ; I am sure that restored order will be carried out by the full triumph of God's loving will. How that should take place while any rebellious will remains in His universe I cannot tell, though it is not for me to say that it is impossible ; I do not want to say it, I wish to trust God c 2 20 LETTER ON ETERNAL PUNISHMENT, absolutely, and not to trust in any conclusion of my own understanding at all. ' My duty then I feel is this : 1. To assert that which I know, that which God has revealed, His absolute universal love in all possible ways, and without any limitation. 2. To tell my- self and all men, that to know this love and to be moulded by it is tJie blessing we are to seek. 3. To say that this is eternal life. 4. To say that the want of it is death. 5. To say that if they believe in the Son of God they have eternal life. 6. To say that if they have not the Son of God they have not life. 7. Not to say who has the Son of God, because I do not know. 8. Not to say how long any one may remain in eternal death, because I do not know. 9. Not to say that all will necessarily be raised out of eternal death, because I do not know. 10. Not to judge any before the time, or to judge other men at all, because Christ has said, "Judge not that ye be not judged." 11. Not to play with Scripture by quoting passages which have not the slightest connection with the subject, such as "Where the tree falleth it shall lie." 12. Not to invent a scheme of purgatory and so take upon myself the office of the Divine Judge. 13. Not to deny God a right of using punishments at any time or anywhere for the reformation of His creatures. 14. Not to contradict Christ's words, " These shall be beaten with few, these with many stripes," for the sake of main- taining a theory of the equality of sins. 15. Not to think any punishment of God's so great as His saying " Let them alone." ' These rules I have laid down for myself, and have tried to act upon, how imperfectly God knows. One remark I would wish to make further on this point. You speak of the Liturgy and Athanasian Creed as if they laid upon us some new burden. But they merely adopt the language of Scripture respect- ing eternal punishment. Whatever meaning you give it in the New Testament, that you must of course give it in our services. And I am very sure that in this case, as in others, they are instruments of deliverance from the corruption CHAP. I.J THE PERSONALITY OF THE DEVIL. 21 aud materialism of the popular theology. They do lead iis to feel practically that the knowledge of God is eternal life, and the loss of God is eternal death. If we use them faith- fully, we shall be educated out of the carnal into the Christian idea of eternity. Do you not find that it is so with bed-ridden women and humble peasants ? They know inwardly that Christ does not mean millions of billions of years of enjoyment by eternal life. They are not good at numeration. But they worship the Father of an infinite majesty, His honourable, true and only Son, and the Holy Ghost the Comforter. Thus they find His promise made good to them, and they are not afraid of His ever ceasing to make it good to them. ' You think you do not find a distinct recognition of the devil's personality in my books. I am sorry if it is so. I am afraid I have been corrupted by speaking to a j)olite congregation. I do agree with my dear friend Charles Kingsley, and admire him for the boldness with which he has said that the devil is shamming dead, but that he never was busier than now. I do not know what he is by theological arguments, but I know by what I feel. I am sure there is one near me accusing God and my brethren to me. He is not myself ; I should go mad if I thought he was. He is near my neighbours ; I am sure he is not identical with my neigh- bours. I must hate them if I believed he was. But oh ! most of all, I am liorrorstruck at the thought that we may confound him with God ; the perfect darkness with the perfect light. I dare not deny that it is an evil will that tempts me ; else I should begin to think evil is in God's creation, and is not the revolt from God, resistance to Him. If he is an evil will, he must, I think, be a person. The Word upholds his existence, not his evil. That is in him- self; that is the mysterious, awful possibility implied in his being a will. I need scarcely say that I do not mean by this acknowledgment of an evil spirit that I acknowledge a material devil. But does any one ? * When I spoke in the first edition of my ' Kingdom of Christ ' 22 END OF LETTER ON ETERNAL PUNLSHMENT. of satisfaction offered by Christ to the devil, I was quoting from Bishop Hooper, and I wished to startle the admirers of our Eeformers with the thought hoAv vast a difference there must be between a theology which described the devil as demanding a price of blood, and God as demanding it. I did, however, recognise a deep practical meaning in Hooper's statement. It seems to me that in sore conflicts with the tempter one may find great comfort in saying, Thou hast no claim on me ; thou hast been paid full measure, pressed down and running over." And if justice is done to the feeling which is implied in this language, I believe the mind is freer to receive the full idea of that satisfaction which the Son made to the Father, that perfect reflex of His own love which He presented to Him, when He gave up His soul and body to death ; when He showed forth the fullness of the Divine love in human suffering. I cannot think there is any object so perfectly satisfying to Him who is absolutely and perfectly Love as this sacrifice. Though I see but a very little way into its meaning, I do feel that it is the atonement of God and man ; and that to feed upon it must be the communion between God and man, the bond of fellowship between all creatures, the rest of each soul. In that sacrament, and in the acts of trust and charity which belong to it, we shall, I think, enter into the deepest sense of Christ's substitution — by which I mean His entire identification of Himself with our sufferings and sorrows ; His intense feeling and endurance of our sins, as only One perfectly pure and loving could feel and endure them ; His representation of us as the living, victorious Head of humanity at the right hand of His Father. There may be more, must be infinitely more, in it than I perceive ; but this I am sure is there. If He has redeemed men from the devil and atoned them to God, He has done for us that which we need — that is eternal life — we may be content. And to return to the first subject, I believe that in prayers, sacraments, sorrows, works for our fellow-men, we shall see more than we can ask or think, more than all the theories «HAP. I.] WILL NOT FOBM A ''HEALTH LEAGUE.'' 23 in tlie world can enable iis to ask or think, of tliat ransom made for all, to be testified in due time. . . , ' Chol6ra was raging tlirougliout tlie coiintr}^ Sanitary- neglect had manifestly increased the severity of its ravages. Most of those who were now working with him became anxious to set on foot a health league." Mr. Kingsley had warmly approved. In order to realise the experience which prompted the next letter, which gives my father's reasons for resisting the scheme, it is necessary to recall the enthusiasm with which, in 1838, he had thrown himself into what v/as practically an education league, the resuscitated National Society. That experiment had, as it seemed to my father, culminated in the rowdy scenes which he has described in his letters to Miss Hare. It seemed to him, however, that, in that -case, he had only seen from within the same evil against which he had been all his life fighting, in the various High Church and Low Church party unions — all started with many noble aspirations, but all condemned, as he believed, by the results to which they had led. To Mr. Ludlotv, ' My dear Friend, ' 21 Queen's Square, Xov. 24, 184[». ^ It was with much self suspicion and a grievous sense of inflicting pain upon you that I threw cold, or, what is worse perhaps, tepid water over your plan last Monday. I should have to go into a long personal history if I undertook to explain how the dread of societies, clubs, leagues, has grown up in me, how I have fought with it and often wished to overcome it, how it has returned again and again upon me with evidences which I cannot doubt, of being a Divine not fi diabolical inspiration. Yet whenever a suggestion of the kind you have made comes to me, I have the strongest feeling that all my conclusions may be wrong, that I may be merely gratifying a do-nothing instinct which no one is more •conscious of than I am, and which no one has yielded to more shamefully. 24 DBEAD OF MEBE MECHANISM, [1849. F, M. 44. ' I feel the force of tery mucli of what you say, especially of your remarks about the shilling subscription and the im- portance and the possibility of making the people feel that they are not done for, either in the matter of health or education, but are fellow-workers with the rich in procuring both. A member of the Bible Society, still more a Wesleyan Methodist, might tell you that your complaint did not affect them, that their penny a week subscriptions were an anti- cipation of your project. Still 1 believe that you have touched a sore place in the proceedings of the National Society especially, and that we should all earnestly consider the right remedy. ' But the more I think of it the more it seems to me that this is only a symptom of the disease which lies deep in the vitals of all our societies, whether for religious or economical purposes. You have not understood my objection to them. If by the Church I meant the bishops j;/z«s a certain number of dignified and undignified clergymen and certain represen- tatives of the laity, the National Society w^ould answer well enough to my conception : I should say the Church had taken cognisance of the want of teaching in the country. But meaning by the Church a body sacramentally united to Christ, this combination of Eight Eeverends and Eeverends meeting in the Sanctuary at Westminster to legislate for the people of England, is in my eyes a very secular body. When it was trying to work by means of the diocesan and parochial organisation of the country, I overlooked the radical vice of its own constitution and hoped that it would call into existence that which would supersede itself. That dream has faded away. The meetings for party agitation, the lists of subscriptions intended to excite competition and appealing to the lowest feelings, should have warned me of what has followed and of what is to follow. The National Society will either become a mere dead log or it will be inspired with a false demoniacal life by a set of Church clubs which I do believe will ten years hence have left the Jacobin Club and every other at an immeasurable distance behind them CHAP. I.] AND OF THE COURTING OF PUBLIC OPINION. 25 in tlie race of wickedness. I speak what I feel ; would that I trembled ten thousand times more than I do at my own prophecy ! ' To all you say about the rapid success of the Anti-Corn Law League, I answer in the words of the Bhagavad-Grita : " Those who W'Orship the Devatas obtain speedy answers to their prayers." Cobden, Bright, Fox, are the very specimens of this kind of w^orshipper. They laid their sacrifices on the altars of the evil spirit called Public Opinion, and they have or have had their reward. I grant you that the living and true God worked His own ends by their means, but their idolatry has produced curses and I greatly fear will produce more. ' But I am not going to evade your appeal to my conscience by these gloomy forebodings about the results of other people's doings. If they are true they are calls to earnest exertion, not reasons for shrinking from it. I will tell you then at once what I should like to substitute for your League. That is too big language. I do not like using it ; but if you take Christopher Sly from his ale-house, put robes upon him and address him as a king, you must reckon upon his giving himself airs and in due time learning to order you about in very regal style. It is your own doing, and you must take the consequence. ' So far from thinking that men who are conscious of their obligations are to wait till certain authorities of the State or of the Church begin working for one object or another, I believe that there is a sphere within w^hich we all are Church and State authorities and are bound to act as such. The duties of neighbourhood I confess ; and think that I ought to do far more than I have ever begun to do for Ormond Yard. If you will come to me, as many of you as please, at any time to think what may be done for that place as to health or teaching, I shall be most glad to see you. I speak in this cold way because my mind is just now possessed with another thought, to which I wish to draw your attention, even at the risk (though I do not think that will be the effect) of neglecting the other. 26 WISE TO WOBK IN HIS OWN PLACE [1849. F. M. 44. ^ When you first spoke to me it was as the Chaplain of Lincohi's Inn. You wished that I coukl do something there to unite such young men as woukl be disposed to join in working for the poor in that locality. Your (I scarcely have courage to say our) Ormond Y^ard meetings grew out of that suggestion. I think my discouragement or inactivity led you to change your original conception for another. ]\Iy present proposition then is yours not mine, modified only by the circumstances which have occurred since and by an inward sense of the responsibilities of my position, which I owe under God chiefly to you. It seems to me more and more that my preaching once a week is a poor thing if it bear no fruit in action ; that I may talk about the Church as a family for ever if I do not try to show that it can, ever under any circumstances, fulfil some of the obligations of one ; that the Devil will not the least object to my saying that the Church has a bearing upon all common life, if I take no pains that my particular Church should bear upon it at all ; that he will be very grateful to me for telling my flock on the thanksgiving day that we could all find duties if we looked for them, provided neither my flock nor I look out for any. Lincoln's Inn is a very powerful body of cultivated men in the midst of as bad a neighbourhood for health and probably education as most in London. If a small body of us could unite to do some- thing for that place our bond would be surely a quasi- sacramental one — a much better one than that of any club or league, even if it did put D.Gr. on its tickets. We might work in good fellowship with the clergy, Eedwear and xluriol both worthy and useful men, of the surrounding districts ; we might call in our brethren in the Lord, Walter Cooper,* Shorterf and others, to help us and to tell us what the people want ; we might ally ourselves with the medical men of King's College Hospital, health or the dwellings of the poor being one primary object ; we might also have our inspectors of educa- tion ; we might set on foot our ragged schools ; we should * Ex-Chartist tailor. t Ex-Chartist watchmaker. CHAP. I.] AXD WITH HIS OWN PEOPLE. 27 liave the aid of your ally, Self.* I should be bound by my office to take any position you like to assign me ; though I should desire that my colleagues Anderson t and Hawkins, who I am sure would cordially favour such a movement and the latter of whom has a very desirable share of radicalism, might take their proper precedence of me and give such help as they can. It seems to me that such a movement as this, which as I said before is yours not mine (I will take the shame or honour of my " league" name, though I do not remember when I bestowed it, if you will father this enterprise), must spread by degrees into different circles ; that the Templars may come to feel their obligations ; King's College also ; and that thus by degrees we shall have a living, primarily local, ultimately universal organisation which may not only do much more work, much more abiding work than a league, but may serve as a powerful counteraction to those godless, exclusive no-church Church unions that are springing up, and also which may supply the place of the Exeter Hall societies when they die of inanition, as in due time they must. I speak as a clergy- man to you as a lawyer. May we not by God's blessing help to secure both our professions from perishing ? * P. S. A word about Kingsley — I did not dream that you were stimulating him to work in which he was not more than ready to engage ; I am never afraid of your hurting him ; but, thinking as I do that he is a Thalaba with a commission to slay magicians and put the Eblis band which possesses our land to rout, I am jealous of anything which is likely to turn him out of his predestined course and may make him waste the God-given strength. I am sure the dark spirit must be at work to divert so dangerous an enemy, and God keep us all from being agents of the Evil One in this or any of his devices.' Sidney Herbert had been led by the revelations of the con- dition of the needlewomen made in London Labour and the * A Scripture-reader. t The Preacher of Lincohi's Inn. 28 OBJECTS TO CBITTCISM OF THE SCHEMES OF OTHEBS. London Poor " to propose a scheme for their emigration. Mr. Mansfield, strongly possessed by the belief that co-operation and not emigration was the remedy for the evils exposed, wrote a letter to the Morning Chronicle declaring that adequately paid work ought to be found and could be found for the women in London. It was in reference to this letter that the next was written. To Mr. Ludlow. ' My dear Friend, ' December 6, 1840. ' Mansfield is right in saying that Sidney Herbert's scheme ought not to make us comfortable and leave us free to eat, drink and be merry. He is wrong in his assumption that these women must be better and happier on their own soil than in Australia, or that it is not a good and noble thing to help people who will work to begin the world in a clear open country if they like it, or that they will of necessity not like it, or that it is more right to send out lazy people who will not do any good than those who will do much. That, I hold to be an accursed doctrine, on which it will be a sin and shame to act. Colonisation is not transportation ; it is a brave, hearty, Saxon, Christian work. To stir up women or men to engage in it is to stir them up to feel that they are women and men in the highest, truest sense of the words. * I do not like this endless protesting and treading upon other people's toes. It is not acting, however it may seem to be acting. It is only swelling the confused noises of the world and hindering action, which, if not the best possible, is good for something. I can see a hundred blunders in every scheme that is proposed if I sit down to look for them, but is not that precisely the very thing we have been all doing and are to leave ofi' doing ? If we are to have more charity, in God's name let us begin with showing a little of it towards one another and, bearing with the weakness of good sugges- tions, helping them forward and trying to make them better. I like Mansfield's spirit exceedingly, and wish I had more of CHAP. I.J WORK, AND LET WORK! 29 it ; but let liim not ^'aste it in hysterical utterances about past wickedness, our own or other people's, but contribute his help to the solution of the problem, without despising any poor brother who may be tasking his faculties to the same purpose. I could go mad too ; and these bewildering charges and counter-charges and protests and objections upset my head and heart more even than the evils which upon such terms can never be remedied. " Ten grains of calomel." " No, Bleed ! Bleed ! " " Fool ! Mesmerism is the only thing." " How dare you say so ? " " There is Hydropathy ; there is Homoeopathy." Thank you, doctors, one and all. You may draw the curtain. The patient is gone." Poor England ! its tongue is foul ; its pulse flutter- ing ; it is dying of inanition and repletion ; and we are debating and protesting ! Let us devise a Socialist home Colonisation as soon as you please ; provided only we give it a ground to stand upon, the sooner the better. But in the meantime here is this emigration. The sea is not an evil element for English men or women. They do not think it so. You have no business to put it into their heads, l^ou destroy a part of their life if you do. Therefore let us help Sidney Herbert and Lord Ashley, say I, and get them, if they will, to help us when we have anything to ask their help in. ^ P.S. Written at night. Somewhat surly ; but true on the whole, and confirmed by my morning's judgment. Friday.' To Mr. Luclloiv. ' My dear Friend, ' December 1849. ' I am very thankful to you for reproving me. If I have been unjust to Mansfield, or have checked his ardour, or shown want of sympathy with him, I have done a great wrong for which I desire to repent. I am a cold-blooded animal, very incapable, I know, of entering into the enthusiasms of better men, and often likely to discourage them greatly. The con- sciousness of this often keeps me aloof from them, as feel I am doing them harm. But I have sometimes thought that 30 THE FBIENDS BECOME RESTIVE. [1849. F. M. 44. I might be of use in warning those for whom I feel a deep and strong interest, against a tendency which I feel in myself and which I have seen producing most melancholy effects. I mean a tendency to be quick-sighted in detecting all errors in the schemes of other men, and to set up their own in opposition to them. Oh ! the bitter scorn which I have seen Newmanites indulging at the schemes of Evangelicals, scorn in which I have been well inclined to join ; and now the frost which has come on themselves, their incapacity of all healthy action. I could get the good will of you all very soon by flattering that habit of mind, and I am often tempted to do it. But God will not let me : and therefore He will not let me ever be the leader or subleader of any school or party in this land. For the only condition of the existence of such a school or party is the denunciation and execration of every other. I find myself becoming more and more solitary. I see that I am wide as the poles from Hare about the baptismal question. He wishes to make every one comfortable in the Church ; and I Avant no one to be comfortable in it, so cross- grained am I. Yet I seek for unity in my own wild way. He will be here to-night if you can possibly come in to meet him. Tennyson may also perhaps be here.' There does not appear to be anything in either of the two letters last given to imply that my father was unwilling to enter into any scheme for helping forward co-operation among the working-men. They appear to show that he was only anxious not to make co-operation an excuse for interfering with any work that might be done by others ; but Mr. Ludlow says : The way in which Mr. Maurice [in the last two letters] seemed to check our efforts in this new direction was a great dis- appointment to us. We had yielded as to the * Health-league,' which would no doubt have transcended the powers of nobodies like ourselves, and which indeed only excited any very strong feeling amongst a few of us. But the sense that something must be done towards promoting associated labour was strong in CHAP. I.] DECIDE ON DEFINITE ACTION; HE JOINS. 31 almost every one of us who were tlien grouped round Mr. Maurice. It was admitted by all that the conferences held with the working-men had unmistakeably shown this subject to be one uppermost in their thoughts and desires. We could no longer remain content either with mere talk on the one hand, or with evening schooling and some individual visiting of the poor on the other." " It was determined that I should ask a few friends to dinner one day to consider the subject of setting up some co-operative workshops." " Having regard to his late expressions of opinion, it was decided not to ask Mr. Maurice, but simply to tell him what we proposed to do. To our surprise and delight he invited himself, and not only offered no opposition, but entered heartily into the plan." This dinner, which took place in December, is referred to in Huo-hes's ' Tract on Christian Socialism.' " o ' My dear KixGSLEY, ' Januniy 2, 1850. ' I cannot tell how I have been able to go on till the second day of the New Year without wishing you and your wife and your children all Christmas blessings and all good things in the next half century. But one gets into such a stupid, helpless way of neglecting one's best friends, even those with whom I exchanged such cordial greetings the beginning of last year, and from whom I have received so many benefits in the course of it. We both have good cause of thankso-ivino- for what has befallen us individually since we parted at Ilfracombe, and must take in a stock of heart for the national troubles that are coming, and that must surely reach us and affect us deeply. However, late or early, here I am wishing you God speed. * I like your tract exceedingly.* So far as it is done it is as good as can be. One or two words may perhaps be spared which one would like for one's own sake, but which may damage the cause in some people's eyes, whom we would wish if possible * ' Cheap Clothes and Xasty.' 32 SELFISHNESS NOT TEE LAW OF LIFE. [1850. F.M.U. to have with us. I like your method of dealing with the subject, because you do not commit yourself to any specific social plan or any approbation of the j)artnership scheme for its own sake. I do not see my way farther than this. Com- petition is put forth as the law of the universe. That is a lie. The time is come for us to declare that it is a lie by word and deed. I see no way but associating for work instead of for strikes. I do not say or think we feel that the relation of employer and employed is not a true relation. I do not determine that wages may not be a righteous mode of expressing that relation. But at present it is clear that this relation is destroyed, that the payment of wages is nothing but a deception. We may restore the whole state of things : we may bring in a new one. God will decide that. His voice has gone forth clearly bidding us come forward to fight against the present state of things ; to call men to repent- ance first of all, but then also, as it seems to me, to give them an opportunity of showing their repentance and bring- ing forth fruits worthy of it. This is my notion of a Tailors' Association, which I see must lead to something serious and should not be undertaken except with great seriousness ; which may or may not lead to any new arrangement about work and profit. Given a moral state, and it seems to me the Morning Chronicle revelations are rather in favour of the conclusion that the old position of master and labourer might be a healthy one. But it is no old position we are contending with, but an accursed new one, the product of a hateful, devilish theory which must be fought with to the death. ^ By the bye the English Bsvieiv contains an article on the ' Saint's Tragedy ' full of high praise both of your political economy and your poetry, though very rightly denouncing my vanity for putting myself forward to introduce you to the world, and very wisely advising you to have as little to do with me as possible. It seems a very good article, this part of it especially, which I am sure ought to determine us, when the play comes to a second edition, to strike my name CHAP. T.] SELECTION AND INCLUSION 3,^ out of it altogether. I have had the pleasure and honour, which was all I desired, of sharing any obloquy you might incur from Eomanists and Puseyites ; and now I feel I am only doing you a serious injury by letting it be supposed that your poetry, which is so free and hearty, has anything to do ■ with a set of opinions. I shall always be glad to think I have even the least claim of sponsorship for such a title, but it can now answer for itself, and I have no business to be leading it in my strings. Love to my true godchild* and his sister, and also to your dear wife, from Mrs. Maurice and my -children. Their message is too long for my paper, including kisses and New Year's blessings unspeakable.' To Mr, Ludlow, ' My dear Friend, * Saturday, January 5, 1850. ^" I have been thinking about our series of tracts. It has struck me that this is a branch of the business which we must, for the present at least, take into our own hands. I do not mean that we should not ask help — all possible help from Walter Cooper, Le Chevalier and others, but that the tracts should not be discussed at our general Association meetings, but rather at our select Monday evening meetings. We can then give them a determinately Christian character — determined in the sense in which the ' Politics for the People ' had that •character, without in the least obliging ourselves to any ex- clusiveness in our fellowship with tailors and others. These are the two conditions I want to secure. 1st. Full power of expressing all we believe and of making that which we believe the foundation of our acts. 2nd. Full freedom to unite for practical purposes with all whom we may find it expedient to bring into our circle, viz. all men of honest purpose, whatever their intellectual confusions may be. If we have tracts to present at our meetings of tailors, I have no doubt of their being all the more acceptable for their Christian and Church tone, because it will be an agreeable * Maurice Kingsley : "true" as compared with the 'Saint's Tragedy,' which he is disclaiming. VOL. II. D 34 THE NAMING OF TEE MOVEMENT [F. M. U. surprise to our friends that we should bring that tone to bear upon their wants and upon the social doctrine. But if we became partners in authorship with them we should get into a great many unnecessary conflicts or at all events questions, which might embarrass all our proceedings. I do not think there will be any difficulty in this arrangement if it is well deliberated on before we meet on Tuesday.' The next letter is one of great importance, because it shows the feeling which prompted the adoption of the name " Christian Socialist." It will probably seem to many now that when the object of the friends was simply to set up a number of working-men's co-operative associations, in order to enable the men to free themselves from their slavery to the cruel " Sweaters " system, it was a mistake to adopt a name like " Socialism," which conveyed a number of ideas with which my father had no sympathy; but the fact is that it was the very idea of co-operative societies — the very bodies which are now looked upon as so essentially conservative in their character — that offended society in 1850. As will be seen in the course of the narrative, there was no absurdity connected with equal wages, or the national workshops in Paris, or any of the extravagances of democratic socialism which were not assumed as necessarily involved in the mere fact of establishing these associations. Everything that was most distinctly repudiated by all the words and acts of my father and his friends was asserted to be the thing they were preaching and practising. There is not the smallest evidence that this was due to the adopted name. It was due to hostility to the very thing ta which, under the patronage of the Queen and Prince in 1883, every newspaper writer in England is cap in hand. To Mr, Ludloiv. *My dear Friend, ' Hastings, Wednesday Evening, 1850. ' I see it clearly. We must not beat about the bush. What right have we to address the English people? We must have something special to tell them, or we ought not to CHAP. I.] " CHBISTIAN socialism:' 35 speak. * Tracts on Christian Socialism ' is, it seems to me, the only title which will define our object, and will commit us at once to the conflict we must engage in sooner or later with the unsocial Christians and the unchristian Socialists. It is a great thing not to leave people to poke out our object and proclaim it with infinite triumph. " Why, you are Socialists in disguise." " ' In disguise not a bit of it. There it is staring you in the face upon the title page ! " " You want to thrust in ever so much priestcraft under a good revolutionary name." " "Well, did not we warn you of it ? Did we not profess that our intended something was quite difi'erent from what your Owenish lecturers meant." This is the fair play which English people like, and which will save us from a number of long prefaces, paraphrases, apologetical statements which waste time when one wants to be getting to business.' To Mr. Daniel Macmillan. ' My dear Macmillan, ' February 7, 1850. * I do not know whether I ever thanked you for sending me that kind Scotch review of my friends and me, which it was very soothing to all our vanities to read after the shocks they sometimes suffer on this side the Tweed. I do not know either if I told you how glad I should be of any introduction to any King's College youths from you or any of your friends. I fancy I omitted to tell you so, because it was the end of term when you wrote and I was not likely to benefit by your letters then. Now I should be exceedingly glad if you will tell me of any you would like me to know. * Those Morning Chronicle letters have set us all grieving, thinking, and I hope in some measure acting. One association of tailors in which the working-men are to receive the profits has been started, I hope with a real prospect of co-operation and success; it begins operations on Monday in Castle Street, Oxford Street. We shall send you a list of prices ; pray make it known in Cambridge, and say how much I feel interested in it to any who may take the least interest in me. I hope also that a Needlewomen's Association on the same D 2 36 BIGHTEOUS WBATH: UNRIGHTEOUS BITTERNESS. principle, only witli more superintendence from ladies, will be begun shortly. It is but a first start ; perhaps we shall fail utterly ; but the principle I think is sound, and will spread and bear fruit hereafter. Our great desire is to Christianise Socialism. We wish to begin working on a small scale, but also to explain what we mean by a series of tracts. I have written the first, which is a dialogue. The series we have called boldly ' Tracts on Christian Socialism.' * Is there any chance of circulation ? It is what we have talked of so often coming to some expression. Let me know what you think would be the best method of proceeding.' ' 21, Queen's Square, February 28, 1850. ' My dear Kingsley, * Has Ludlow told you of our Chartist poet * in Castle Street ? He is not quite a Locke, but he has I think some real stuff in him. I hope he will not be spoiled. All our tailors seem to feel themselves so much better and freer men since they began to think better of the gentlefolk that I am afraid for their sakes more than for any one's else, lest we should be too ferocious. I know how hard it is to find the exact point where righteous wrath ends, and unrighteous bitterness begins, still more to know how much of the first it is wise, and therefore godly to pour out ; but I am sure God can teach us the limit, and that He will not leave us to our own random conclusions and acts. I have caught myself tripping so often that I have become very self-distrustful and some- times think that it is better to hold one's tongue and buy clothes. * Our needlewomen have not struck at all, but are very thriving. We had a momentary hitch in the Committee. Now all is right and our Prime-Minister, who is a very capital one and exceedingly well able to manage a Cabinet, returns to office on her own terms. I have every certainty that we are on a right tack ; of success I am hopeful. We have admitted nine women, who are all promising.' * Gerald Mashey. CHAP. I.] PLATO THE COMMENTATOB ON PLATO. 37 To Mr, F. J. A. Hort. (Who had consulted him as to a course of philosophical reading, and told him of that prescribed by Dr. Whewell.) ' March 5, 1850. * ... I do not pronounce whether that which Dr. Whewell has marked out for you is abstractedly the best or not. But the benefit of yielding up one's own judgment in such a case, of not being compelled to make a line for oneself with the imminent risk of changing it twenty times a month, always getting a glimpse of a better which turns out to be a worse, is unspeakable. It is one of the acts of obedience which carries, I believe, the surest reward with it. Alas ! I know it chiefly by the punishment of disobedience. * But I am not at all sure that you could materially improve the list of books the Professor has given you. My own taste and feeling would have led me to omit Stewart. I am afraid I am not just to him ; for he has admirers at whose feet I should be glad to sit. But he does, I confess, fill me with wind. I do not get strength and nourishment from him. Perhaps on that account I might be all the better for taking a dose of him occasionally ; and you, if you agree with me in any measure, will not suffer from that which you find unpalatable. *For this slight and moderate penance you have the richest compensation, as wholesome and strong diet as a man could desire. I am not acquainted with the ' Charmides I doubt if I ever read it. But I never have taken up any dialogue of Plato without getting more from it than from any book not in the Bible. I do not think it signifies much where you begin. The attempts to systematise his writings seem to me in general unfortunate ; his own beautiful and wonderful method is contained in each one, and any one thoroughly studied is the initiation to the rest. I would advise you to reject no helps. Cousin and Schleiermacher will both be very useful ; but Plato is the commentator on Plato, and it is a great mistake, I am sure, to fancy that any one else can 38 FBENCH, GEBMAN AND ENGLISH THOUGHT. [1850. interpret him as well. I think too that our English judicial and dramatical hahit of mind is more akin to his than either the French or the German, great as the skill of the former is in catching his points, and of the latter in tracing out the course of his thought. I should conceive an ordinary German would have failed utterly in translating him, from his con- fidence in his own knowledge of philosophical terminology and his passion for system. Schleiermacher is a happy exception in both respects, at least so it strikes me ; he was content to be a learner and he sought for method, not system. Still I cannot think that he or any one of his countrymen could follow the windings of the dialogue with the thorough delight and sympathy which seem to me possible for a very third-rate English student. Plato's humour in Cousin's hand often becomes ijersiflage, yet on the whole the clearness of the French style, if it be shallow, seems to me to reflect the image better than the other. I am, however, no judge of this matter, and I rather speak in parable to tell you what I believe is true of the moral science itself. There is nothing I desire more than that we should be Englishmen and not either Scotchmen, Frenchmen, or Germans in our studies of whatever kind they be. For this reason, if for no other, I should adhere to my principle of keeping metaphysics in entire subordination to ethics. We may, I think, be most successful ethical students in virtue of those practical habits which we always cast aside when we plunge after Frenchmen or Germans into metaphysical speculations. I do not admit for a moment, when I talk of plunging, that they must needs go deeper into spiritual questions than we do ; I believe the deepest philosophy is that which lies under the business of life and explains it. *I have always contended that Plato is quite as practical as Aristotle ; nay, that if he is rightly studied as he would have us study him, in connection with the life and purposes of Socrates, he is more practical. But I am sure Aristotle has excellences of a very high kind which Plato has not, and I am very glad that Dr. Whewell has given him so conspicuous cHAr. I.] PLATO, ABISTOTLE AND THE TEAR 1850. 39 a place in liis ciirriciilum. I would advise you to study tlie ' Politics ' as well as tlie Nicliomacliean Ethics ; and not to forget the Khetoric, though I should not be disposed to give it as much time as one might be tempted to do by its remark- able acuteness, vivacity, and variety. The ' Politics,' though it may be difficult always to trace the course of the thought, seems to me a book of the highest value ; I am most thankful for what it taught me. It should be combined with the study of the Eepublic by any one who is meditating on ecclesiastical or civil polity. I think I learned to feel the preciousness of the Bible as a history and the absolute impossibility of a • Church which had not a divine history for its basis — sup- posing it to have the finest philosophy in the world — very much through these books illustrated by the experience of my own life and of our own times. ' I am glad you are taught by the Professor to connect politics with ethics, and international law with national law, through Grotius or any other medium. I know scarcely anything of Grotius, but I dare to say he may serve better than a deeper philosopher for the purpose of suggesting questions which he is not likely to answer : on the w^hole I should hold fast to Plato and Aristotle, and make the other books of the course illustrative of them. Our modern Socialist questions which, as you say, must press more and more upon us will, I conceive, present themselves to you again and again while you are busy with these ancients. And it is a grand thing to read the newspapers by their light, and them by the light of the newspapers. * I send you my tract in this letter. You shall have the second soon. I do not suppose they will be read much, but they may set some people thinking who will do something better themselves. I do not wish to represent it as any onei'it in the working-men to join a trading fraternity ; but neither do I think it is any merit to join a purely religious or benevolent fraternity. It seems to me the right thing to do both one and the other kind of work according to the Gospel, and that is all I see about it.' 40 THE " COUNCIL OF PBOMOTEBS" [1850. F, M. 44, Walter Cooper, the ex-Chartist, a tailor who had paved the way for the conferences at the Cranbourn Tavern, had been naturally selected to organise the first association, that of the tailors. That was opened and began work before any other. But as fresh opportunities presented themselves and the working-men of different trades began to ask for help in setting up associations, it became necessary to give to the movement a more regular form. The friends organised a " So- ciety for promoting Working-men's Associations," the principles and rules of which were set forth in one of the ' Tracts on Christian Socialism.' The friends themselves, with one or two of the working-men and others who were added from time to time, formed a " Council of Promoters " for this society. Virtually, therefore, at this time there were two sets which met weekly at my father's house^on different days, viz. the old body of Lincoln's Inn men, who came now ostensibly only for the Bible class ; and the more general " Council of Promoters," which met for business and included several besides those who came to the other meetings. The heterogeneous character of the more private meeting has been already explained, and new elements made the " Council of Promoters " even more markedly diverse in its composition, and in the views and opinions of its members. In order, however, to follow the letters which will be given, and to understand, so far as is necessary for the purposes of my father's life, the nature of the problems discussed in them, it will be convenient here to make clear three lines of thought which gradually came out more and more, and the relation of which to one another determined at least my father's action. First of all there was the pure business side of the question. From time to time this assumed difi'erent degrees of importance, and different members took different views about it. From this point of view the main thing was to make the associations succeed, and to take such steps as- would lead to this result. Secondly, there was what may be called the Christian- Socialist view ]oa7^ excellence. Those who took this view desired 41 to reconstitute society on the basis of co-operation as a great Christian and true social principle, and to banish out of society everything which opposed itself to these principles. Thirdly, there was my father's point of view. He applied to the case before him precisely the same principles as had guided him in each successive stage of his manhood. He found it declared as a principle that selfishness was the basis of society and the law of the universe. He eagerly accepted co-operation " as a practical j)rotest against that assumption. But in his tract, in his many lectures, in all that he ever uttered on the question of co-operation as well as in the letters to be given, he maintained that all the great work that has been achieved by society in its existing form has been achieved by the mutual co-operation of men, and that it has been where selfishness has intruded itself that rottenness and mischief have followed in its train. He dreaded the tendency to make Christian Social- ism," as such, an excuse for denouncing all who were not Christian Socialists, and equally the temptation for himself to leave his own proper business and become involved in matters which would altogether prevent him from asserting the prin- ciple he had at heart. Beyond all things he dreaded becoming- the head of a imrty of Christian Socialists. His great wish was to Christianise Socialism, not to Christian-Socialise the universe. He believed that there were great truths involved in the principle of co-operation which were essentially Christian truths, and that as these had acquired a bad name because of the falsehoods that were mixed up with them, it was pre- eminently the business of a man who was set to preach truth to face the personal obloquy that would attend the task of separating the true from the false and defending the true. The first question of practical business that presented itself for solution to the " Council of Promoters " forced my father to express some of these thoughts more strongly than before. The working managers of the associations considered it essential to have a central organisation which should form a bond between the individual associations, and serve as a check upon irregu- 42 WILL EFFECTIVE MECHANISM [F. M. 44. larities. Mr. Ludlow wrote to urge my father to become, with himself and others, a member of the Central Board " to be thus formed. My father's reply was as follows : — ' My dear Friend, ' March 17, 1850. ^ I should have been as much affected by the arguments as I am by the tone of your letter, if I had not seen Sully and conversed with him on the subject of the central board this morning. ^ How much pain it caused me to feel that I was crossing a scheme of his, which was as dear to him as his life, and was incurring all the dislike and contempt from him and his friends which you say must be your portion if you follow me in my reactionary course, I will not say. ^ How much additional conviction I gained from his words that the line I have marked out for myself, for no one else, is the right one ; that any other would involve me in a fatal desertion of the principles upon which I have for years striven to act, and above all of that principle of fellowship and brotherhood in work which I have felt called to assert with greater loudness of late, I will attempt to explain. ^ He said plainly — I appeal to Hughes and Campbell whether I am misrepresenting him, — that the associations were actuated by a thoroughly mercenary, selfish, competitive spirit ; that they aimed merely at a more successful rivalship than is possible on the present system ; that consequently they would, of course, produce results much worse than those which the present individual competition was producing unless they were directed by a central board which would organise them efficiently and scientifically, or at least set before them an efficient and scientific mode of organising themselves. ' This is the doctrine of a man whom you believe and I believe to be one of the honestest and noblest specimens of the English Socialist school. Now, do I complain of him for believing in this power of organisation to make sets of men with an evil moral purpose good and useful ? Certainly not. i . CHAP. I.] MAKE AN EVIL SPIBIT GOOD 9 43 It is part of the creed which has grown with his growth and strengthened with his strength. It must he the hardest thing in the world for him to throw it off. Nor do I helieve that he does really hold these men in whom he takes so earnest an interest to be the mere devils he describes them as being ! I believe no such thing. I am certain he knows that there are higher, truer impulses and desires with them, and that these are leading them to co-operation and brother- hood in spite of all the selfishness which is drawing them asunder. But the more I entertain this conviction the more solemnly am I bound not to confirm him in what I ever have held and do now hold to be a lie, the more am I bound to bear witness for that truth which is at work in his mind, and which must work itself out there if he is really to help his brethren out of bondage into freedom. If I join his central board, I say, he teaches me to say, " My purpose is to turn a number of warring forces, each seeking the other's destruction, into harmony, by certain scientific arrangements of mine concerning production and consumption." Now, what I have said, and so long as I have breath in my body hope to say, is this, " I acknowledge in these warring creatures an element of peace and harmony, the work of God's spirit. To that I speak in each of them. I can speak to nothing else. If the Son of peace be there my peace will rest upon them ; if not, it will return to me again. I have no hope of entering into terms of peace with the devil. I have no notion that I can make him my servant by a mere ingenious and extensive combination. I believe the more skilful and large the com- bination of such elements, the worse and the more deadly will be the result." Talk as much as you like about putting the hand to the plough and drawing back. I never did put my hand to this plough. I have put my hand to another from which I should draw back at once and for ever if I tolerated by any word or act the maxim which Sully distinctly avows and upon which he rests the necessity of a central board. Talk as you like about my system-phobia. It is this which I mean by system, it is U OUGHT THE APPEAL TO BE TO THE BEST [F. M. 44. this which I have hated in the Church, the State, the family, the heart, and which I see coming out more fearfully every day — the organisation of evil powers for the sake of pro- ducing good effects. Sully, who had to my surprise read some parts of my ' Kingdom of Christ,' saw and said at once, with his usual honesty, that I was consistent with myself and was acting on the maxims I had avowed there, thougk he seemed to have hoped that I had by this time seen their folly and futility. That I have not done. God's order seems to me more than ever the antagonist of man's systems ; Christian Socialism is in my mind the assertion of God's order. Every attempt, however small and feeble, to bring it forth I honour and desire to assist. Every attempt to hide it under a great machinery, call it Organisation of Labour, Central Board, or what you like, I must protest against as hindering the gradual development of what I regard as a divine purpose, as an attempt to create a new constitution of society, when what we want is that the old constitution should exhibit its true functions and energies. * For that distinction I exist only to testify. The sooner God pleases that I shall finish my testimony for it, and that some other and more faithful and more wise protestant shall appear, the less will be my sorrow. For having considered and tried to count the cost, I see this only before me, ever increasing misunderstanding, ever increasing incapacity of being a fellow-worker even while I desire to be that and nothing else. To guide and govern is not my business ; I am ashamed to think that you should, any of you, allow the notion in your minds that it is. Sganarelle might be beaten into a doctor, but Christopher Sly could only be made a king when he was drunk. I am not quite drunk and I don't want to be a king, though I am thankful to claim to be one of a family of kings and priests, and am bound to assert the authority of the true King by whom, and not by central boards, associations- are prevented from breaking into atoms. And in His name^ and in assertion of His rights, I will with God's help continue to declare in your ears, and in the ears of the half-dozen who- CHAP. I.] OB THE WORST IN A MAN? 45 are awake on Sunday afternoons, that no Privy Councils, National Councils, or QEcumenical Councils ever did lay, or ever can lay, a foundation for men's souls and God's Church to rest upon. That is what I said in my sermon. I did affirm distinctly that Christ had used councils and might use them when and how He pleased, as He may, for aught I know, construct central boards for the management of trade fraternities. But I do say that neither the Council nor the Central Board can make the fraternity, or establish the law or principle of it, and that if we build churches upon the decrees of councils, or associations upon decrees of central boards, we build upon the sand, and that when the rain comes our houses will fall, and that great will be the fall of them. * "What you say about the influence over the working-men, coming from you, if you formed part of a central board, is I am sure mere delusion. Sully has a strong will and has all the theory of organisation at his fingers' ends. He must guide and you follow, or if not, you must be continually making a vexatious and painful resistance to him upon points, main- taining a useless and expensive war of posts while the real difference of principle between you is kept out of sight.' To Mr. Ludlow. * Ephraim Lodge, Mount Ephraim, " ' My dear Friend, ' Tunbridge Wells, March 26, 1850. ^ I had a conversation with Le Chevalier before I left town which seemed to me to set the whole question between us in a much clearer light than I had before seen it. His great wish seems to be that the original promoters of the first Association should continue to act in the character which was at first assigned them and in no other, at least for the present. This position with whatever responsibilities it may involve, I think is a reasonable one and one to which we are already pledged, and so far as I am concerned I have not the least desire to shrink from it. I judge from a paper of Hughes which he has sent me this morning, that this is the hint upon 46 THE POLITICO-ECONOMICAL QUESTION [F. M. 45. whicli you are all at present disposed to act. I am very thankful if I am right in my conjecture. * I feel with you that we need light and that God is most willing ' to vouchsafe it if we seek it humbly. Passion week and Easter week have for me an indescribable stillness and awful- ness, from all that they are in themselves and have been in my own history. Yet I have chiefly to confess my own utterly dull and hardhearted use of them, and to thank Grod for teaching me that I must depend wholly on Him, and not on them — a lesson slowly learnt, very imperfectly received, but worth all the suffering and humiliation by which it has been, in a measure, forced upon me. May God bless you abundantly in this time and all times, and make you a true associate of Christian brotherhood and fatherhood wherever you are.' As a consequence, the " CentraVBoard " was formed of the managers of the several associations, and dealt with pure questions of business detail, the ''promoters" remained a generally superintending body, engaged in furnishing assistance and advice, in acting as referees and arbiters when called on, in defending and promulgating their principles, in gathering and disseminating information. ' Ephraim Lodge, Mount Ephraim, ' My dear MkS. Kick,* ' Tnnbridge AVells, March 28, 1850. * I am very much obliged to you for letting me see the letter of your friend Mr. Schwabe. It expresses intelligently and benevolently the feelings and opinions of a large, respectable :and powerful class of our countrymen, whose arguments and whose experience are entitled to great attention, even when they are presented in a much more dogmatical and intolerant form. He has, you will have perceived, entirely mistaken * A French translation of this letter has already appeared in 'Richard Cobden. Notes sur ses Voyages, Corrcspondances, et Souvenirs, recueilliespar M""- Salis-Schwabe,' Paris 1879, p. Ill, where will also be found the letter to which it is an answer, and a further letter addressed to Mrs. Rich in response to the letter of my father's here given. CHAP. I.] "15 SELF-SEEKING THE LAW OF LIFEf' 47 our plan, when he assumes that an association of workmen must pay all equally. There is no occasion to discuss his views of human nature or working nature as they bear upon that point, because wath the exception (I believe, but am not sure) of Louis Blanc, I do not know that any supporter of co-operation urges or recommends that course. ' Le Chevalier, w^ho for twenty years has been mixed up with every Socialist thing, and has been more engaged in working them out than most, not only advocates the weekly payment of labourers according to the work they do, but thinks that the ultimate division of profits ought to follow the same rule. ' Little as I know about the subject, I am quite inclined to agree with your correspondent, and to acknowledge the force of his argument against making the industrious pay for the idle. When he makes the valuable and important concession that competition may be excessive, it seems to me that he gives up the whole question. It is not then the law upon which trade or human life is to be regulated. Let it come in under whatever modifications he thinks reasonable, it must come in as a mere make-weight or additional stimulus to act upon men who are primarily moved by some quite difierent inspiration. If we can settle what that inspiration is, I have no fear that we shall allow competition more than its legitimate influence, or that it will claim it for itself. At present it boasts to be the one governing motive of human-beings. Eeason declares, the most painful experience proves, that if it does govern it is destructive of Society — that it sets up every individual against^^his neighbour. The good master, by your correspondent's showing, is the one who allows least influence to the principle of competition in determining his own acts towards the workmen, and the one who is most careful that he shall rule competition, making it, as he says, a competition for excellence instead of cheapness, and that competition shall not rule him. I accept the definition and fully believe that the more encouragement we give to the principle of associa- tion, the more of such masters we shall form. Your corres- pondent thinks so too, only he tacitly encourages the work- 48 WHICH IS BEST, TO STBIKE OB TO WORK? [1850. men to associate for strikes instead of for labour. I apprehend, speaking of course in profound ignorance and merely from common sense, that every successful strike tends to give the workmen a very undue and dangerous sense of their own power, and a very alarming contempt for their employer, and that every unsuccessful strike drives them to desperate and wild courses. In urging them to direct their passion for association, which can never cease among them,- and is just now especially rampant, into a different channel, I think we are favouring the cause of order, diminishing the rage against capital and helping the manufacturers much more than they will help themselves if they merely raise a wild cry against Socialism. There is much no doubt, as a very distant and ultimate consideration, in what your correspondent says about the impossibility of large enterprises with present loss being risked by associations of mere workmen. We certainly shall not be able, if we wished it, to apply the principle except to those trades which do not require those long waitings for returns, or where these merely lead to extravagant and ruinous speculations. If a healthy tone is restored to those occupations by the unspeculative labourer taking the main interest in them, I must think that the benefit to morality will be very considerable. If great commercial enterprises require the co-operation and predominance of the capitalist, as I am not at all disposed to deny that they do, then the capitalist will find his proper field. He will be obliged, I believe, in due time to admit his workmen to a share of his profits, but I question exceedingly whether he will find those workmen at all disposed to controvert his judgment about the best way of realising ultimate advantages, if he gives them an adequate support commensurate to their services, such support of course to be deducted from their future gains. In the meantime, so far as I can observe, the workmen are most glad, only too glad, to defer to the experienced and intelligent capitalist, if they see that he has their interest at heart as well as his own. SHALL THIS GBEAT POWEB BE GOOD OB EVIL? 49 * The principle of association, I am convinced, has taken too strong a hold on the minds of the working classes for any power directly to fight against it. It may be worked well or ill, destructively or savingly. It seems to me that every man is bound to ask himself, every member of the middle or manufacturing class especially, What can we do to lessen the present evils ? ' VOL. II. E 60 TEE STOBM BUBSTS. [F. M. 44. CHAPTEE II. " Look back along the great names of history ; there is none whose life has been other than this. They to whom it has been given to do the really highest work on this earth, whoever they are — Jew or Gentile, Pagan or Christian, warriors, legislators, philosophers, priests, poets, kings, slaves — one and all, their fate has been the same — the same bitter cup has been given them to drink." — Fronde's England's Forgotten Worthies. 1850 continued — 1851, 1852 — a general storm of obloquy ASSAILS MY FATHER AND HIS FRIENDS — IN THE MIDST OF IT MR. SLANEY's COMMITTEE REPORTS TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS IN FAVOUR OF CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES — MR. HOLYOAKE LEADS THE ATTACK ON CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM AND IS FOLLOWED BY BOTH ' QUARTERLIES ' THE COUNCIL OF KING's COLLEGE, ETC. Mr. Schwabe's letter, to which that given at the end of the last chapter was an answer, marks the attitude assumed at this time towards the Christian Socialists by one large body of the political economists of the day. A letter given in the course of that chapter will have suggested that the religious news- papers and their followers in the daily press had not been slow to seize the moment, when the motives and views of my father and his friends were specially misunderstood, to begin a regular crusade against his theological views ; not that the writers were in the abstract anxious to oppose the efforts to do good, for the sake of which not a few of the Christian Socialists had sacrificed all personal prospects, had alienated many of their dearest friends, and had in some cases made even severer sacrifices than these ; but on the broad principle, which, with unbroken regularity, so far as I have come across it historically, marked the conduct of these self-styled "religious," * anonymous writers, CHAP. II.] THE MOBALS OF ^'BELIGIOUS" WBITEBS. 51 that tlie time when it is most righteous to denounce a man, from whom you differ in opinion, is the moment when you know that he has no chance of having a fair hearing, and when every mis- statement that you make against him will be greedily swallowed. At this particular moment it had become the correct thing to do to denounce every effort, no matter what, by which my father had endeavoured to do service. The lectures which had been delivered by him and others at the opening of " Queen's College " in 1848 had been pub- lished in the course of 1849. His contributions had consisted of, (a) ' Queen's College, London, its Object and Method.' (h) ' On Theology.' (c) ' Address at the End of the First Term.' AVith these had been published lectures by Messrs. Kingsley, Brasseur, Bernays, S. Clark, A. D. Strettell, C. G. Nicholay, 0. Brien, Jackson, HuLlah, W. Sterndale-Bennett. H. Warren, and T. G. Hall. In the March, 1850, number of the ' Quarterly ' (No. CLXXII.), a fierce denunciation of all these lecturers appeared. To this, in behalf of them all, my father replied in ' A Letter ' to the Bishop of London, which was published in the spring of 1850. It would be useless to go into such a controversy now : but any one who cares for a specimen of the possible reckless- ness of a Quarterly Eeviewer in levying charges against public men, may find it worth while to compare the article and the reply. Whilst the newspapers were for the most part denouncing * I use tlie term liere, as elsewhere, of those journals only which are Amtten on the assumption that thej^ and their readers represent all that is good among men, and that the fact of differing from them is a sufficient excuse for bringing exevj kind of accusation against other men. There were other journals, which, whatever name they assmned, believed that the fact of their calling themselves "religious" did not absolve them from the ordinary rules of justice and of right. To these my father was often able to appeal ; they, often more readily than others, did justice to his appeal to truth and right as larger than their shibboleths, vide p. 85, infra. E 2 52 MB. SLANETS COMMITTEE. [F. M. 45, Christian Socialism, and all connected witli it, a member of Parliament, Mr. Slaney, obtained a Committee to inquire into the " Investments for the savings of the middle and working classes." As soon as the Committee began work they found that the- witnesses from whom they could obtain most information were the barristers, who had been engaged in the conferences with the working-men and had been endeavouring to enable the- latter to secure the fruits of their own industry. Mr. Ludlow was the first witness examined ; Mr. Hughes, Mr. Yansittart-Neale, and others of the " promoters," followed.. This led to the examination before the Committee of Messrs. Millbank, one of the secretaries of the Association, Walter Cooper, James Clarkson, a baker, and others of the working-men concerned in the associations, so that the subject was thoroughly ventilated and brought under the cognisance of Parliament. Finally John Stuart Mill was examined and gave some of the strongest evidence that was recorded as to the Conservative character of co-operative associations, e.^. : " I think there is no^ way in which the working-classes can make so beneficial a use of their savings, both to themselves and to society, as by the formation of associations to carry on the business with which they are acquainted, and in which they are themselves engaged as work-people, provided always that experience should show that these associations can keep together." At this time the great practical difficulty in the way of working-men's associations was the fact that they could noi form themselves without extravagant cost into legally cor- porate bodies. There was, therefore, nothing to prevent a dis- honest member from cheating, or even ruining a society. On this rock many of the associations set up by Owen, and others, had split. No adequate security could be ofi'ered for borrowed capital. On being asked whether he would think it well that legislative facility should be ofi'ered to the men for associating, and " for preventing fraud among themselves, by summary jurisdiction before a magistrate," Mr. Mill answered : I should think that hardly anything which the legislature can do in the present state of society, and the present state of the VSE AND ABUSE OF BLUE-BOOKS. TAKING OBDERS. 53 feelings of the working classes, would be more useful than that." The report was printed on the 5th of July. But it in no way moderated the fierceness of the attacks by which the promoters were assailed, for the simple reason that it was not read by the reviewers. The ' Edinburgh,' which fully accepted John Stuart Mill as the great political economist of the day, published six months later an attack upon the attempt to give co-operation a fair trial, in an article which absolutely ignored the existence of the Blue Book which dealt with the subject. In July my father went abroad and spent several weeks at Godesberg and Heidelberg with his family. He went with Mr. Trench on a trip to Baden Baden, Frankfort, Strasburg, yisiting the Murgthal from Baden. He was passing through the press his sermons, soon afterwards published, on 'The Church a Family,' and 'The Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament,' and was, as in all vacations and spare moments, engaged on the ' Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy.' He saw something of Dorner and other German thinkers, and was especially glad to hear what he could of the " Innere Mission," but no records of the visit of any interest remain. * My dear Kixgsley, ' October 20, 1850. * I am satisfied that this is a time in which men of talent should be encouraged to take orders if they can do it honestly. I would have all laymen feel that they are called by God to their difi'erent offices, but I do not think they will feel it if we do not feel our call more distinctly, and assert it against all doubts in our own minds and apparent contradictions from without. "We are called, and we may believe that we are ; anything that the devil says to the contrary in any wise notwithstanding. If X. has not great moral objections, which he should never stifle, but which he should not either presume to be unsurmountable, I should say to him with all my heart, " Join us " — and especially would urge him to be your curate. Love to Mrs. Kingsley ; I hope I may believe your report of yourself ; but do not come on Wednesday.' 54 BESIGNS CEAIBMANSHIP OF QUEEN'S COLLEGE. * Alton Locke ' had been published in the spring of 1850. The Record led off the attack against it. In order to protect Queen's College from the imputation of being associated with its author, and partly frightened no doubt by the general attack on Queen's College made by the ' Quarterly,' Mr.Nicholay,. one of the professors, wrote to the Becord to explain that Mr. Kingsley no longer belonged to the college — the fact being that my father had only proposed Mr. Kingsley 's joining them when he hoped that Mr. Kingsley would have been appointed as his assistant at King's College, and that Mr. Kingsley had found the strain and expense of coming up for the Queen's College lectures from Eversley too great to be borne for that object alone, and had accordingly resigned. As soon as Mr. Nicholay's letter appeared, my father at once resigned his office as chairman of the committee which managed the affairs of the college. Hitherto no governing council had been created, but my father was anxious that one should be appointed. Subsequently a charter was obtained, which Mr. Ludlow drew up for them, and a council independent of the professors was appointed. To Mrs. Maurice. ' My dearest Mother, ' November 14, 1850. * I think if I could explain the reasons of my conduct to you, as I hope to do when I see you, it would not seem to you that I acted merely upon a sudden impulse in resigning my office at Queen's College. It was quite necessary for me to take care that I was not committed to expressions of opinion re- specting Kingsley and his book, which would have made the working-men consider all my language about them hollow and insincere, and that I should on the other hand not take advantage of the confidence which the supporters of Queen's College had gained from Nicholay's statement in the Becord^ when I did not concur in it. ' He has, however, made an explanation which I think satis- factory, and I have agreed to act as chairman of the committee,, till the new council is appointed, it being understood that the CHAP. II.J THE ' CHBISTIAN SOCIALIST.' 55 office is vacant and that they have power to fill it up as they please. If they choose me I shall accept it, because they will do it with their eyes open. I have seen more reason since I have conversed with different members of the committee, and found how much their views and mine differ respecting the course which Kingsley and I are taking, to believe that some step of the kind Avas indispensable. But I am very anxious not to set up my own judgment against that of friends, and I hope I have now satisfied them that I had no wish to leave the college if I could do it any good by remaining.' The necessity for some organ which should serve as a means of communication between those who in all parts of the kingdom were becoming interested in the subject of co-operation, was now generally felt among my father's friends. His own profound dislike to newspaper writing made him at first resist and after- wards reluctantly submit to the necessity. Mr. Ludlow agreed to become editor, and the Christian Socialist appeared for the first time on November the 2nd, 1850. My father wrote very little for it. Some long letters on education in the form of a correspondence between himself and an M.P., and a tale, ' The Experiences of Thomas Brad- foot, Schoolmaster,' were his only considerable contributions. Occasionally he interfered on some issue which he regarded as a matter of principle. He was ordinarily in this and other matters so anxious that opinions widely differing from his own should not be checked by any expressions of his about them, that it not unfrequently happened that his friends fancied for some time they were carrying him along with them, and then when he was called on for his personal sanction, suddenly found themselves brought face to face with a decisive objection on his part. In each of these cases his decision was finally ac- cepted. There were at this time monthly " conferences," between the promoters and working-men associates," at which all points connected with the movement were discussed. 56 CO-OPEBATIVE BUSINESS, [F. M. 45. To Archdeacon Hare. * My dear Julius, 'December 5, 1850. * . . . . We had a conference whicli would have interested you very much. The people told us very frankly their suspicions of us, and proclaimed their democratical dislike of our managers. But they called out a strong counter feeling, which showed how much they are learning by association.' In the beginning of January 1851 Mr. Hughes, Mr. Lees, and my father went on a tour throughout Lancashire, be- ginning at Manchester on January 1st, to gather and spread information in relation to working-men's co-operative societies. Walter Cooper had made a similar tour in September 1850, and a second in December. The idea was being taken up and associations formed in many towns throughout the country. My father delivered lectures in various places — London, South- ampton, etc. — in defence of the cause. Various questions in connection with the several associations were being continually referred to him. Correspondence with all parts of the country was continually increasing. As each association was set up in London its circumstances had to be discussed by the Council of Promoters. It was his special business to prevent the very great divergence of view which often existed among them from rendering all common work impossible, and to endeavour to carry out on this small scale the principle which he had been advocating at each crisis in the history of the Church, that of giving to each active idea full play, and of resisting the " negative " efforts to crush it. Mr. Kingsley was beginning his study of the Alexandrian schools with a view to the production of ' Hypatia,' and consulted him as to the books to be read.* ' My dear Kingsley, 'January 15, 1851. * To understand the Platonists of the fourth century I conceive you should read the Enneads of Plotinus, who belongs to the * The letter is that to which the one in Mr. Kingsley's ' Life,' vol. i. p. 264, smaller edition, is an answer. CHAP. II. J ADVICE FOB STUDY. GOD JUSTIFIED. 57 tliird. He is, I apprehend, immeasurably the greatest and the lawgiver of the rest. The life of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus will give you a notion of their efforts to combine miracle-working and a semi-divine person with philosophy. You should also read Clemens to see the working of the tendency in its highest Christian form, and you must go back to Philo to see its earlier Jewish starting- point. The Christian Alexandrian school is worthy to be thoroughly restudied, I should think : its influence on Athanasius and the Arian controversy was very great indeed. By all means read the noble little book of Athan- asius against the Gentiles if you have it ; it is full of deep wisdom. . . . ^ P.S. Holyoake has declared war : the ' Eclectic' on behalf of the Dissenters is inclined to be hostile (though polite to ' Alton Locke ') ; the ' Edinburgh ' will no doubt be a broadside. You young men must fight, if it is necessary. Consule Planco, I might have borne arms, but not now.' The close personal acquaintance, which my father and his friends had now begun to form, with the more thoughtful spirits among the working-men of London, and the freedom with which they had succeeded in inducing the men to speak their thoughts to them, led to the discovery of a feeling about the God whom they supposed to be the object of Christian worship, which was one simply of bitter hostility and re- pugnance. Scoldings had only driven them away, and at the easy platitudes of many of the clergy they had simply laughed. Mr. Kingsley undertook to tackle the actual points which were raised by the ' Eeasoner,' the anti-Christian publication of which Mr. Holyoake was the editor. He wrote a series of articles in the ' Christian Socialist,' under the title " God justified to the People," and while preparing the third, which was on the massacres of the Canaanite nations by the Jews, he wrote to ask my father for his thoughts on the subject, subsequently sending him the letter which he intended to publish. To this my father's next letter refers. 58 THE CANAANITE WABS. [F. M. 45. ' My dear Kingsley, 'January 30, 1851. ' I shall not fulfil my promise of saying anything to you about the Canaanites, because you have told me more than I ever knew, and have cleared up the whole subject to me marvel- lously. I approve of your letter, and I think Ludlow will : you have managed it so skilfully and in a way so much to conciliate his prejudices. The only thing I should wish you to bring out more distinctly in these letters (it does not apply more to this one than to any other of the series), is that God, according to the scripture view of His character and dealings, cannot make men right by any exercise of omni- potence. Of course, everything you are writing presumes this ; but it must be repeated in plain words again and again : people do so cleave to the notion of naked poiver being able to act upon wills, and it is such a justification of God to the people that He educates the will and does not crush it. I think I first saw light about the Canaanites in this way. My dear brother-in-law, John Sterling, had convinced me most clearly that Alexander, instead of deserving to be denounced, was doing a mighty work in bringing Greek civilisation to bear upon Asia ; yet he was utterly horrified at the Jewish wars. I asked myself why ? what was the end of each ? and if it was an end for humanity, and a higher end than the other, was it wrong to say God was the author of it ? Could it be any one else ? But this you have worked out more clearly than I did then, or have done since. You see the Chronicle made one or two alterations in your letter to show that they and we are not in the same boat.' * My dear Kingsley, * February 6, 1851. ' I duly forwarded each chapter of ^ Yeast ' to Parker the day I received it. I cannot easily tell you how deeply they have interested me. I should not have had the courage to write them if I had had the power, but I dare not alter anything or recommend the suppression of anything. I hope and believe they will not merely reveal the thoughts of many hearts, but carry healing to them. The last chapter touches fibres CHAP. II.] CHABACTEBISTICS OF PEBIOD 1800-1850. "wliich will quiver in every one, but they must be touched, and you have done it with real gentleness and wisdom. God bless you.' ' My dear KinGSLEY, ' February 25, 1851. * I am sure that you are right, "Wordsworth's Prelude seems to me the dying utterance of the half century we have just passed through, the expression — the English expression at least — of all that self-building process in which, according to their diflerent schemes and principles, Byron, Goethe, Wordsworth, the Evangelicals (Protestant and Komanist), were all engaged, which their novels, poems, experiences, prayers, were setting forth, in which God, under whatever name, or in whatevei* aspect. He presented Himself to them, was still the agent only in fitting them to be world-wise, men of genius, artists, saints. For us there must be something else intended — either the mere science millennium of Comte,'^from which good Lord deliver us, or the knowledge and life of God as the ground of all human and earthly knowledge and life. You have a right then to wind up the biography of a sporting man with the Trinity better than Berkeley has his tar-water treatise. Let no one rob you of the right.' ' xUy dear KixGSLEY, ' March 23, 1851. * Be quite sure that you must not, cannot, and shall not leave the Council of Promoters. The notion of our being injured by association with you, or not expecting to be pelted by High Churchmen, Low Churchmen and no Churchmen ! If you go on that ground I must leave all the societies I have anything to do with. The truth is, I am afraid ' Yeast ' is going to be rather too popular and respectable. After your civil speeches to the Guardian I should not wonder if they discovered it to be, what it is, a specially orthodox book. After all, our greatest enemies will be of the Newman * and Greg school * i.e. F. W. Newman (not J. H.). :Mr. Greg was the writer of the * Ev.linbiu-gh Review ' attack. INCIDENTS OF THE WAR. [F. M. 45. ^ Talking of that, I mean to write to Greg and claim all the merit of your letter about veracity and gentlemanly feeling. I have done so to H. Merivale, who is angry at the allusion to him. It is rather too bad that, when you are so courteous and well-bred in your own newspaper outcomings, you should be pelted for adopting my ferocities. I shall tell Mr. Greg that I hold myself fully entitled to impeach the veracity of any anonymous critic who says that black is white, though the moment he drops his mask and becomes an ordinary flesh-and-blood Englishman, I instantly acknowledge his claim to the plea of " invincible ignorance," and every other for that case made and provided — which is no fiction, for I do respect Greg the manufacturer, though not the reviewer.' The following was written on the last sheet of an article l)y Mr. Ludlow, which was therefore suppressed. ' My dear Friend, * April, 1851. No ! No ! No ! Don't insert this for the world. It is wrong in all ways. Wrong because it shows a sensitiveness to opinion which we ought to keep down in our hearts, wrong because it really perverts the meaning of the Times and appropriates words to ourselves which may not have been intended for us, wrong, above all, because it brings us into connection with that Chartist-Socialist movement with which Thornton Hunt wishes to connect us and from which, for the sake of truth, we must be as free as possible. I do not rejoice in that attempt to unite Socialism with Chartism. I believe it is a silly sham. You will repent deeply of the letter, if it goes in, for many a long day.' To Mr, F. J. A. Hort ' May 1851. In 1838, when T. Acland told me of the plan which he and his friends had formed, of restoring the educational efficiency of the parochial and diocesan system of the Church through the National Society, I asked him whether any- thing could be done through that effete body. He said he CHAP. II.] 3I0BAL POWER AND LEGAL POWER. 61 thought much might be done with it. I admired the effort though no one could help seeing how it was marred by vulgar political agitation, which they I believe in their hearts dis- liked, but which was set on foot to galvanise the central body. They kept it to its work till 1842. Then it made a convulsive struggle for schoolrooms by pleading that they were meaning to put down Chartism. What could be a more fatal sign of want of faith in education itself than this eagerness to draw arguments for it from the selfishness of the higher classes ? * , . . . Three years ago I was induced, by a very ingenious and able speech of the Bishop of Oxford, to think that it might be useful in securing better terms for the schools, and in saving the conductors of them from a sacrifice of independence. But the more I have reflected on the subject since, the less have I been able to maintain that opinion.' Also to Mr. F. J. A. Eort. . j,,^^ i85l. ' . . . . Our parishes we believe indicate the idea of co-operation between the clergyman and every class of those committed to him. It is for him as God's servant and soldier to work out the idea, believing that no management clauses will be the least obstruction to him, if he knows how to use spiritual power with his people ; and that no Denisonian Chartism about the rights of the clergy will help him the least, if he has faith in a system instead of faith in God. The manage- ment clauses put the clergy upon their mettle : they try whether the real moral power of rule is in them. But they do not really do this as much as the old system — which people pretend to worship, without understanding it — did. The clergyman, I suppose, has a legal supremacy in vestries ; why in the name of wonder do so few exercise it ? The truth is, no legislation can make a man, or endow him with the faculties of a man.' On June 11, 1851, Miss Caroline Fox was present at one of the Associates' Tea Meetings at St. Martin's Hall, and thus €2 3IISS FOTS NOTES. A SOCIALIST DINNEB. [F. M. 4.5. records in her Journal the impression it made on her : — " Our chairman, F. D. Maurice, is at his post behind the urn, but he springs up to welcome his friends. He seemed nervous, for there was no arranged plan of the evening. In listening to the workmen's speeches, especially Walter Cooper's (cousin to the author of the ' Purgatory of Suicides '), we could not help feeling very thankful that such fiery spirits had been brought under such high and holy influences, leading them to appre- hend self-sacrifice as the vital principle on which all successful co-operation must be founded. One hopeful feature in this associative experiment is that they are prepared and expect to make mistakes in application, but the principles of sympathy and self-sacrifice they hold by for ever. Archdeacon Hare was delighted at the spirit and genius of some of the speakers ; there was so much of calm practical wisdom, so much of applied Christianity, humbly acknowledging its origin, as made it altogether a deeply interesting and thank worthy occasion." — Journal of Caroline Fox, ii., 170. To Mr. Ludlow. ' My dear Friend, * June, 1851. * Mr. James Marshall has written me two notes to urge that I would, if possible, persuade you to join Kingsley and me at dinner at their house next Saturday (I suppose seven, but I will ascertain exactly). It is strictly for Socialist purposes. They have 2000 men in their employ and really want to talk with us about them.' The dinner was " for Socialist purposes " in a sense of which my father was not aware when he wrote. A number of the political economists of pure blood, who were at that time the fiercest in opposition to co-operation, had been invited to meet the defenders of it, and a battle royal had been designed by the hosts. But as Mr. Ludlow describes the dinner : " James Marshall was a very shy man and never dared enter on the subject, no more did any one else, each standing on the defensive. So that from first to last the conversation was of CHAP, n.) SEEN AND UNSEEN BELATIONS. 63 the most general description, one of the oddest incidents in it being, that Mr. Maurice set both the M.P.'s right on some point of parliamentary practice. Had Mrs. Marshall been present, things would have no doubt turned out quite differently." In July he went down with his youngest son (seven years old) to visit his srster Priscilla, then very ill, at Hastings. To his Wife. ' Hastings, July 9, 1851. ' E has been on the beach with me the last two hours, and very good. He says he likes the sea much more than he did ; he used to care only about the ships and reading the names on them ; I think he was conscious of a new kind of feeling at sight of the waves. ^ This day twenty years ago, about the time I am writing, my sister Emma died. I believe she has been with me often when I did not know it ; and that we are really surrounded by all that we have lost. I do not think we bring them to us by our thoughts and recollections, but that they are present with us, and that we should believe it more if we believed that God was with us.' To Mr. Ludlow, ' My dear Friend, ' Hastings, July 11, 1851. have just been writing to Hullah upon a subject in which I think we also ought to take an interest, and which may ultimately, if not immediately, help us in our special objects. Old Barber Beaumont, it seems, shortly before his death, established an institution at Stepney which was to promote the civilisation of working-men in that neighbourhood and in London generally. A house was built containing a room capable of holding 1200 people, a concert-room with an organ in addition, and some apartments for a curator. His direc- tions were so indefinite that the present Mr. Beaumont applied to the Court of Chancery for a plan. It was decided that the whole fell to him by the statute of mortmain. But he is very desirous of doing justice to his father's intentions. C4 A BEPBESENTATIVE APPLICATION FOB HELP. They have been prevented during the progress of the suit (he being very busy in his own fire-office work at the other end of the town), the room being used partly for dancing, partly for some infidel lectures, partly for anti-Papal meetings, &c. ' There is about £300 a year for the support of the institution, which may be increased by contributions, if a reasonable and extensive scheme can be suggested. Mr. Beaumont, who seems to be a very worthy man, has applied to a clergyman who is staying here to give him a plan, and he has asked my help in concocting one. * The nature of the building made me think at once of Hullah as a man who could do most and least violently to turn it from a mere place of popular amusement into one of valuable instruction. But along with this there may be much else done, either in the way of lectures or classes, which must be brought directly home to the working-men's feelings and interests. The population, you know, consists to a great extent of sailors. Will you send me suggestions ? Would Mansfield give a chemical, Walsh a sanitary, Penrose an architectural lecture ? and could we make out something of a programme of lectures for the year ; not all of pro- moters, but with a proper mixture ? * The clergyman I have spoken of is from Northampton. He is much interested in the Socialist movement. I hope we may get through him at the Northampton shoemakers and the Lancaster stockingers. He speaks of the immense loss the Church has suffered in Anderdon and Bathurst, who would have thrown themselves into this or any great Christian movement for labourers, but have now thrown themselves into Eomanism. The other clergy about him he has not much hope of. ' There is a young man named Dimsdale, a barrister, living in Half Moon Street, with great desire to be useful and means of being so, very shy, who, I am told, has written a review of * Alton Locke ' for the ' Westminster ' and goes out seeking for knowledge about the working-men. I shall call upon him when I come to London. Can any of you make him out ? ' THE DIFFICULTIES OF PBACTICAL CO-OP EE AT lOX. G5 Lectures were as a consequence of this proposal delivered by several of the promoters. In July an attempt was made, chiefly by Mr. Ludlow, to set on foot an " East-end Needlewomen's Workshop." It was set up under a joint committee of my father's friends and of out- siders. " Mostly," says Mr. Ludlow, " big folk who took, with the exception of one City missionary, no trouble whatever in the matter. The workshop was established in Wellclose Square, and was the first and last attempt we made at this kind of joint work." To Mr. Ludloio. ' My dear Friend, ' July 24, 1S51. * I like the plan very much. Mrs. Maurice hopes you will think about a school for Eed Lion Square : she fancies it will be more important than a creche there. Mrs. H. was very anxious for a school. ^ I think you had better not put my name on the committee. It seemed to me providential that Kingsley and I were out of the way, as our names were likely to disgust Lord Shaftesbury and his friends. But do as you think best for the cause. I had thought of proposing to take the rent of the house in Eed Lion Square, for which I am responsible, upon myself. But perhaps you would wish it to be self-supporting, and this might destroy its character in that respect. 'Will you therefore put me down at present for £25 ; I hope to give more by-and-by.' He spent the summer vacation in a cottage lent him by Mr. Marshall of Patterdale. To Mrs. Maurice. 'Old Church Cottage, UUeswater, near Penrith, ' My dearest Mother, ' -^^S^st 8, 1851. *We reached this beautiful cottage about three o'clock yesterday, and found our servants, who had arrived a few hours before, and had everything ready for us. The dwelling is far prettier than we had expected, covered with plants and VOL. n. F 66 '''MIDST NATURE'S OLD FELICITIES." [F. M. 46. flowers, and in a garden going down to the lake. The lake is here very shallow, so that the children conld come to no harm if they fell into it in any place within our domain ; but we shall of course not allow them even to get a wetting if we can help it, and I do not think they are at all anxious for one. We are not quite at the most striking part of the lake, but it is very lovely, and at the back of the house we see the hills around in great glory. * Miss Holdsworth and the Sterlings are in great delight with their quarters, and the boys, I need not say, equally so. We are, however, setting to work this morning with lessons, and they seem rather anxious for some employment. I hope we may not look out merely for recreation, but really to receive some good, from all the beauty about us, that we may impart to others hereafter.' To Archdeacon Hare. ^ , -.o lori * September 13, 1851. ' The lake and hills are looking gloriously in this bright weather, though they will bear clouds well, and perhaps are the better for them. We have been reading Euskin's chapters on clouds and water, trying a little to verify his observations. I do not know that we have done that, but at all events he is very instructive and sharpens one's own faculty of seeing, which I find is naturally very dull.' To Rev. M. Maurice. * Old Cliurch, September 25, 1851. * My deakest Father, .... We hope to leave this beautiful place early on Monday morning, and to come homewards through Carlisle, New- castle, Durham, York, Lincoln, and Cambridge. We shall then, if all be well, reach London late on Wednesday evening. I wish to show Georgina and the rest of our party some of the remarkable things in the north, as we may not soon come to it again ; and Georgina has an especial wish to see Cambridge. The distance is not very much greater now that there are railways in all directions, and we shall see something of CHAP. II.] - THE SPIRIT OF A LEABNERr 67 your old country, of wliich I had a glimpse a few years ago that made me wish to know more of it. We have had a very beautiful time here; September till to-day has been nearly as fine a month as I ever remember. Now the weather is breaking up, and we shall probably see little more of the sun. But the hills are glorious in all seasons. ' I have been busy looking over the proofs of some sermons on the Old Testament, which I hope soon to present to you. I am also writing on the Gospels. It will be a great delight and cause of thankfulness if I may give these to you all, as I have thought much of them, and there is nothing I so much wish to bring out. Those which are printed I should like to come and read to you if we are permitted to meet again. May God bless you, my dearest father.' It will be convenient here to bring to a focus some of the views and thoughts which, at this and all times, determined my father's course through life. The letters to his sister Priscilla, in early life, contain the frequent expression of an aspiration for the " spirit of a learner." Now this tone of mind— this desire to consider whatever came before him in the spirit of a learner " — is the key-note of my father's life. This constant condition of his mind, that of a man looking up to a divine teacher, his Father, which is by no means always expressly avowed by him, precisely because it was so habitual with him, explains two very opposite observations in regard to him made by his friends. Dean Stanley, in the eloquent sermon preached on the Sunday after my father's death, spoke of the way in which every incident in the history of Europe and the world, and every wave of thought which passed over them, produced their impression and left their mark upon my father's mind and spirit. Yet some have said that his great characteristic was that he was entirely uninfluenced by other men. There is a sense in which both these statements are true, though I think that those who follow this life closely will see that the Dean's is very much the more true of the two. My father was not influenced by any other man in this r 2 68 THE STUDIES OF A STUDENT. [chap. ir. sense, that he accepted as oracular their utterances; or that because of his regard and admiration for them he believed anything to be right, which if it had been brought before him by some very inferior person would not equally have impressed him. He was no respecter of persons. But no one who ever saw him among a knot of other men of what- ever age, and whatever class, no one who ever sat with him whilst he was reading a newspaper, a novel, or the most learned of treatises, could have failed to notice this of him as his dis- tinctive characteristic — that the thought that was always present to his mind was, " what are we to learn from this ? what truth is there here ? " Mr. Kingsiey has said of him : ^' if that character had a fault, it was this : that his humility was carried to an extreme ; that unaware alike of his own intellectual and his own practical and governing power, he would submit at times when he ought to have ruled, and listen where he ought to have commanded. Save on one point — wherever the interests of duty, honour, chivalry, pity, mercy were, or even seemed in the least at stake, then the humble man became terrible, the docile man uncompromising, and from the gentlest of lips came forth a ' Thou shalt not ' of noble indignation, even of noble scorn." But it was not merely of thoughts as they came from other men's lips and pens that he was a " student." The course of events seemed to him quite as much a part of the divine and fatherly education of the world, and he modified his position on many questions as he found reason to believe that certain of his ideas and thoughts had been proved not to be in accordance with the will of God, as it revealed itself in the progressive history of the time. His letters about the admission of the Jews to Parliament, and the succession of his letters about the relation of the clergy to education, will I think best illustrate this influence on his mind ; but it was always potent. Again, precisely because of the readiness with which he admitted any truth which was presented to him, it followed inevitably that at certain times certain truths pressed on him more forcibly thaii others, and though the central thought was CHAP. II.] IN WHAT SENSE A SEEB. 69 never changed, the forms in which it found expression varied very much from time to time. This is somewhat quaintly shown in his correspondence, his letters to each of his friends having a generic type of their own, and in some cases his letters from the houses of different friends being also generically distinct. Now, speaking broadly, of all this he was fully conscious. He was firmly convinced that no two men's education is exactly alike, and that it is not intended to be alike. Therefore he dreaded at all times lest he should make the thoughts which he felt he was bound to deliver as true, the authority which other men were to accept. Alike in his conversations, in his ordinary letters, and in his controversies, he endeavoured to place himself at the point of view of the man he was addressing. His appeal was not " here is this truth which I deliver to you as complete, and to be received by you without modification," but this : you yourself must from your own premisses necessarily go with me thus far." His desire thus to deal with all other men as being under the same Teacher as himself, but having each been dealt with differently according to the method which was best for them, led him habitually to that form of an " argumentum ad hominem " which men in general almost resent as something inadequate if not unfair. From the same faith he resisted on all occasions the attempt to suppress opinion, no matter how much he might differ from it himself, lest in its suppression truths which had been brought home to other men, and which he had not seen so clearly, should be crushed. Though this motive will be seen constantly determining his action, his thoughts on the subject could scarcely be more fully illustrated than in the two con- secutive letters on pp. 463 to 471, Yol. I. One of these is to Dr. Barry on the representative thinkers of the past, among whom he carefully selects as best worth reading many from whom he strongly differed : the second is to Mr. Scott on the question of working with men who took an altogether different standpoint from his own. He had, as a consequence of this desire for the free expression of opinion, an extreme reverence for the opinions of minorities, believing that truth when it 70 BEVEBENCE FOB MINOBITIES. [F. M. 46. first comes into the world is always to be found amongst minorities, and only gradually conquers the votes of majorities. It follows that from his earliest years, and with an ever- increasing determination, he was the declared antagonist of what he considered the great idolatry of the day, the worship of Public Opinion and of the tendency to trample down those whose opinions do not coincide with what is supposed to be ^'Public Opinion." The contest on both sides became more and more bitter from the mode in which, on more than one occasion those who professed to be the exponents of public opinion privately endeavoured to coerce him into submitting to their dictates by threatening him with the consequences which would follow to himself if they turned their whole battery upon him. In every instance of the kind his resolution to fight to the last such an iniquitous perversion of a pretended appeal to the public conscience was instant and unchangeable. The 'English Keview ' had begun this mode of warfare. The editor had in a short paragraph about one of my father's books made charges which, when called to account for them, he had been utterly unable to substantiate. Unwilling to apologise publicly for the mistake, but obliged privately to confess that he could find no passages to justify his charge, he sent my father a message threatening that, if pressed, he would make a sweeping attack upon the theological teaching at King's College. My father had at once defied the editor to do his worst, saying that only good could come to any of his colleagues from any exposure of their teaching that might follow. To this the editor had replied by the article which drew forth from Archdeacon Hare his letter, " Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." Similarly during a long course of years, whilst the Becord was directing against my father one attack after another, the chief writer was continually making to him private overtures for peace. But my father caring very little for the injuries which the Becord was certainly able to inflict upon prospects, which as has been seen he distinctly refused to set before him- self, and with evidence continually coming before him of the C^AP. II.] MB, CHOKERS ATTACK. 71 moral mischief whicli the Record was doing — the envy, hatred, and uncharitableness, and the infidelity which it was spread- ing among the religious families to which it was admitted — utterly repudiated these overtures, and left to this man the consistent course of representing him publicly as a person of a kind whom no one ought to have as a friend, while privately he assured my father that he did not think he had an enemy in the world. In September 1851, a fresh attack of a yet grosser kind appeared in a very different quarter. It would nowadays be no surprise to most Englishmen to be told of any article, no matter how immoral or mean, having appeared in a "religious" newspaper, but that which I am about to give appeared in the most grave. Conservative and respectable of all the organs of public opinion. If these things were done in the green tree it may be judged what was done in the dry, and what measure of truth there was in the hailstorm of calumny with which at this time my father and his friends were assailed. My father's letter to the Bishop of London appears to have hit somewhat hard Mr. J. Wilson Croker, who at that time held a peculiar position in relation to the ' Quarterly Keview.' He was not editor, but he had the right to insert certain articles whether the editor wished it or not. He had not, I believe, been himself the author of the article on " Queen's College " in the ' Quarterly Keview,' but he had been annoyed by the reply, and as the special friend of Lord Lyndhurst he had no doubt resented my father's opposition in 1840. In the September number for 1851 Mr. Croker took his revenge.* The article is headed " Eevolutionary Literature," and collects a long list of French books, giving as the only English works except a Government report : ' Politics for the People,' London, 1848. ' The Message of the Church to Labouring Men,' C. Kingsley. ' Alton Locke, * It should be said that Lockhart, who was editor at the time, made no secret of his disgust at the article. But then that fact did not reach one reader of it in a hundred. 72 A PAPEB THAT MUST BE GIVEN. [1851 Tailor and Poet : an Autobiography,' C. Kingsley. * Yeast : a Problem/ C. Kingsley. * Keasons for Co-operation ' : a lecture delivered at the office for Promoting Working Men's Associa- tions. To which is added * God and Mammon ' : a sermon to young men preached in St. John's District Church, St. Pancras, by F. D. Maurice, M.A., Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn, 1851." After a number of pages devoted to showing that Socialism was tJie evil in the existing condition of France, Mr. Croker, turning to England, proceeds as follows, the italics being in every case in the original : * The number and infamy of the cheap publications in which these principles are [preached to the people, forbid one entering into any detailed examination of them ; we rather choose to borrow a rapid, but able and accurate, sketch of their general aspect, which appeared in the leading article of the Times of the 3rd September last. Though it was then read, no doubt, by most of our readers, as well as by thousands of others, we are glad to reproduce and recall it to a somewhat less ephemeral existence. After some observa- tions on the subject of national education, not dissimilar in general from those we have heretofore ventured to suggest as to education in Ireland, the writer proceeds — * " At the present moment, in the very heart of this apparently well-ordered community, there is an amount of evil teaching actively going on, quite enough to startle, if not to alarm the most firm-minded man among us. Systems the most destructive of the peace, the happiness, and the virtue of society, are boldly, perseveringly, and without let or hindrance, openly taught and recommended to the acceptance of the people with great zeal, if not with great ability. Cheap publications containing the wildest and most anarchical doctrines are scattered broadcast over the land, in which religion and morality are perverted and scoffed at, and every rule of conduct which experience has sanctioned, and on which the very existence of society depends, openly assailed ; CHAP. II.] BECAUSE OTHERWISE INCREDIBLE. 73 while in their place are sought to be established doctrines as . outrageous as the maddest ravings of furious insanity — as wicked as the most devilish spirit could hj possibility have devised. Murder is openly advocated — all property is declared to he rohhery — the rules by tvhich marriage is declared sacred and inviolate are treated as the dreams of dotage — obedience of every description is denounced as a criminal cowardice — law^ as at present constituted, is asserted to be a mere device for enslaving mankind — and morality is described as an efficient auxiliary to law, for the same mischievous purposed' ***** [The quotation is continued through a couple of pages more, during which the Times reviewer gives extracts from the lowest possible type of inflammatory papers ; then Mr. Croker resumes.] * All this seems, to use the eloquent writer's expression, so terrible as to admit of no aggravation, and yet there is some- thing worse behind — not, to be sure, in the doctrines them- selves— worse is impossible ; but in the means by which they are propagated. * Incredible as it may appear, there is, it seems, a clique of educated and clever, but wayward-minded men — the most prominent of them, two clergymen of the Church of England — who from, as it seems, a morbid craving for notoriety or a crazy straining after parodox, have taken up the unnatural and unhallowed task of preaching, in the press and from the pulpit, not indeed such open, undisguised Jacobinism and jacquerie as we have just been quoting, but, under the name of " Christian Socialism,'' the same doctrines in a form not the less dangerous for being less honest. The first produc- tions of this sect, or school, that attracted our notice, were the periodical tracts (since collected into a volume) called * Politics for the Peojjle.' We are informed that the names of most of the contributors to this work are no secret, any more their respective shares in it. But we shall only mention those of the Eev. Frederick Maurice and the Eev. Charles Kingsley, who have affixed their names to other 74 WAS IT POSSIBLY A MISTAKE f [1851. F. M, 46. publications which seem to us of similar character and principles. Mr. Maurice, we understand, is considered the founder and head of the school, and it certainly adds to our surprise to find the reputed editor of ' Politics for the People ' and the avowed author of other works, theological as well as political, of a still more heterodox character, occupying the professorial chair of Divinity in King's College, London,' It may perhaps be thought that Mr. Croker was here simply misinformed, that he was not aware that the extracts in the Times article were taken from the very literature the hope of resisting the evil influence of which had produced the Christian-Socialist " movement. Unfortunately the remainder of the article absolutely belies this idea. Mr. Croker quotes freely, in order to pervert their meaning, from papers which must have made him perfectly aware ivhat the objects of the Christian Socialists " were. The article was a conscious and deliberate attempt to represent the men who were at death- grip with these evils as if they were aiding and abetting them. And this was done at a time when, under the mistaken assump- tion which Mr. Croker's reading of their paper must have removed from his own mind, the advertisements of the Christian Socialists were refused insertion in most newspapers, and when most booksellers refused to keep copies of it, so that the * Quarterly ' reviewer could securely trust that his inversion of the fact would be received throughout the English world without a chance of reply. Mr. Croker figured before the world as specially anxious to conquer this particular mischief. The one contribution which he in fact offered to the fight was to bring false accusations against the men who had made real sacrifices to attain the very end he professed to aim at ; men who had begun to work whilst he was sleeping. Meantime, amid the hailstorm of which I have just given a specimen, the " promoters " worked on. It was extremely unlikely that any men would join such a body in the teeth of such a storm who were not pretty earnest in their convictions, and such earnestness is apt to be qualified with a tendency to CHAP. II.] PB ACTIO AL DIFFICULTIES. 75 assert with great fervour the importance of each man's personal opinions. Every question, therefore, was discussed with no little warmth, and the process of drawing up the original constitu- tion of the society had been a slow one. For that purpose the promoters had met morning after morning at 6 a.m. at 458 New Oxford Street, not for the most part progressing more rapidly than some three or four words per hour. By this means a constitution had at length been drawn up which was embodied in No. 5 of the tracts on Christian Socialism. By this constitution the Council of Promoters, which {vide p. 40) had been in existence long before the details were settled, was formed of twelve ordinary members besides the President, and an unlimited number of honorary and corres- ponding members ; a constitution was provided for any body of workmen wishing to form an association, the great object of which was to assist the men to obtain as much protection from the law as the existing state of legislation permitted until a modification of the statutes on partnership could be obtained. After the friends had begun work, Mr. Yansittart-Neale joined the council, ready to expend capital in the cause, and with many new ideas on the subject. Amongst other things, he suggested the formation of a central co-operative agency which, in his view and in Mr. Hughes's, was, as nearly as the law then permitted, a model of the great wholesale co-operative society which now does business with 1000 stores throughout the country. But in the then existing state of the law it appeared to them necessary, for the security of the money lent upon it, to form this agency into a trading company. Mr. Neale and Mr. Hughes became trustees for it. It had been for some time in existence when Mr. Ludlow, who had always disliked its form, had his attention directed to a circular which had been issued by this agency without reference to the Council of Promoters. On his return from a tour through the provinces in behalf of the movement, he brought the 76 A 3I0ST CHABACTEBISTCI LETTER. [F. M. 46. subject of the relationship of this agency, to the council before the latter body. Not being able to attend the meeting of the council at which the matter was discussed, he wrote my father a letter to lay before the council. To this letter the following was an answer. To Mr. Ludlow. ' My dear Friend, ' November 7, 1851, ' I did not deliver your letter last night to the council, but tore it up. For this very irregular proceeding I am open to any censure you please. I take upon myself the responsibility of it. I am sure that I did what was right. And now I call upon you frankly to say that what you did was wrong. I know well what a semblance there was in it of truth and adherence to principle. The devil deceives us continually with such semblances ; by how many thousands have I been deceived? But you were really risking a principle — the , whole principle of association and brotherhood, for the sake of a particular notion of yours respecting the necessary way of carrying it out. ' I believe that the result to which we came last night goes really much farther than your " severance " would have done, because we shall now put our independent working upon a principle which we can and shall explain to the world, while yours would have looked very like a mere suspicion o-f particular persons. ' We have solemnly declared, and shall tell the central board and the public, that we are distinct from the agency, and are not responsible for any of their acts. I am appointed on my own responsibility to say why this is so. This is accomplished without a schism, Neale and Hughes perfectly concurring in it. We are not pledged in any way individ- ually or collectively to support the agency. I resisted Furnivall's proposition that we should give any such pledge, as being an unfair compulsion upon members of the council, even supposing they were a minority, who might disapprove of the agency or any of its doings. If we cannot work with j CHAP. II.] THE CONSTITUTION OF KING'S COLLEGE. 77 the members of the agency upon these terras, they or we must resign. We are bound to give them credit for a con- scientious willingness to do so. I, at least, will not be a ' party to any excommunication of them, which I believe would be a schismatical act on our parts, most injurious to j the working-men. ' ' I earnestly implore you to work with me, that the dividing, warring, godless tendencies in each of our hearts which are keeping us apart, and making association impossible, may be kept down and extirpated. We cannot be Christian Socialists upon any other terms. I am continually discovering fresh evils and heresies in myself. I want your help in destroying them.' King's College was founded at the time when the need for a University, to which the sons of dissenters might be admitted, had led to the establishment of the University of London and of University College. The object of its founders had been to have a college distinctively to represent the teaching of the English Church in the heart of the Metropolis, in which the new college unconnected with her teaching was to be set up. As, however, it was necessary to collect funds by private sub- scription, it was essential that a place in the governing body should be given to the original subscribers. Hence in the constitution of the college two elements were introduced into the governing council. Twenty-four members of it were elected from the general body of the shareholders and members of the college. Eighteen consisted of governors, either ex- officio, viz. the Lord Chancellor, the Archbishop of York (the chairman), the Bishop of London, the Chief Justice of England, the Speaker, the Home Secretary, the Lord Mayor, the Dean of St. Paul's, and the Dean of Westminster ; or personally named in the original charter, or the successors of those who were so named, as Sir Kobert Inglis, the Duke of Kutland, the Marquis of Bristol, Marquis of Cholmondeley, Earl Brownlow, Earl Home, Earl of Harrowby, Lord Eadstock. Thus the majority consisted of wealthy peers of sufficiently 78 MR. CROKERS SUCCESS [F. M. 46. strong ecclesiastical and religious feeling to have contributed largely to an institution intended to support the Churcli of England against dissent. It was tolerably certain, therefore, that such a body would pretty faithfully represent the current opinion of the wealthy classes upon religious subjects, and that at this particular period the current opinion represented would be that of which the Record was the travestie. Under such circumstances, the following correspondence represents what might naturally have been expected to occur after such an article as that in the * Quarterly.' It will be seen that Dr. Jelf s letters were laid before the council, so that I use them as public documents addressed to my father. His letters are from drafts, not in all cases complete, and from which some trifling alterations may have been made in the copy that was sent by him. From Dr. Jelf to F. D. M. * K. C, L., November 7, 1851. ^ My dear Professor Maurice, ' It is with great reluctance that I write to you on a subject which has for some time engaged my painful and anxious attention. ' After the last meeting of the council, just as the members were departing, a conversation arose, in the course of which great uneasiness was expressed about you. The immediate occasion of the discussion was the article of the ^ Quarterly,' which had just then appeared ; but what was said referred not so much to the article itself — ^which few had read — as to the uncom- fortable feeling which, independently of the article, was manifesting itself in various quarters. The impression seemed to be that you were unconsciously identifying yourself with language and designs of which you would be the first to disapprove. * The result was, that I was requested in an unofficial way to consider the matter carefully. In compliance with that CHAP. II.] WITH KING'S COLLEGE COUNCIL. 79 request I have, at such intervals of leisure as I could command, looked into the publications bearing upon Christian Socialism. ' Setting aside the question as to the truth or falsehood of the economic theory which you are advocating, I have simply inquired whether your mode of handling the subject is such as to deserve the harsh language used by the reviewer, and I frankly declare that, while there seems much cause for regret that you should be devoting yourself to such an object, and while many of your expressions appear open to grave objections, yet I see nothing in any writings avowedly your own, inconsistent per se with your position as a pro- fessor of divinity in this college. ' I wish I could end here, or that I could speak in similar terms of Mr. Kingsley's writings ; but it is unfortunately a part of my duty to speak plainly about him, and I confess that I have rarely met with a more reckless and dangerous writer. His mode of using Scripture is, to my mind, indescribably irreverent (I allude more particularly to the sermon * to which your letter is prefixed), and in general his arguments and language strike me as in a high degree inflammatory, such as without curing the rich of their faults, must set the poor against the rich — in fact, his language is occasionally almost insurrectionary. * Now you may very likely differ from Mr. Kingsley with regard to the tendency of such language. But forgive my saying that, while you are found on several occasions side by side with Mr. Kingsley — so much so that your name, with your designation as Professor of King's College, is paraded in conjunction with his on large placards in inky characters in Fleet Street — you never, so far as I can discover, express the * Strange how reverend critics disagree ! This was the sermon which Bishoj) Blomfield, after he had read it, so entirely approved that he withdrew a censure he had pronounced on it before he had read it. It was the one which led to the shameful scene in which a London incumbent, who had invited Mr. Kingsley to his pulpit, with a full knowledge of Kingsley's views, publicly denounced his guest in church. 80 A PRINCIPAL'S IDEAS OF EVIDENCE. [F. M. 46 slightest disapprobation of what he says. I need not enlarge upon the consequences which such presumed approbation, unless openly disavowed, is likely to bring, not only upon the theological department, but even upon the department of general literature and science, and by implication upon the whole college. * All this is serious enough ; but I will confess that my fears of the consequences have been much increased by what I read in yesterday's Guardian. It is there stated that Mr. Kingsley is avowedly associated (and paraded in a placard) with several notorious infidels, as contributing articles to the Leader, sl paper, I believe, advocating Socialism and Communism. In that paper a report is given of a funeral oration delivered by one of these associated writers over an infidel adulteress, in which he speaks of the " distorted memory of our oivn Paine." Now it is to be hoped that Mr. Kingsley will openly disavow this connection, or that you will openly disavow Mr. Kingsley. Otherwise it may be said justly, " Mr. Maurice is identified with Mr. Kingsley, and Mr. Kingsley is identified with Mr. Holyoake, and Mr. Holyoake is identified with Tom Paine. . . . There are only three links between King's College and the author of the ' Eights of Man.' Let me entreat you to take prompt and decisive measures to vindicate your character, to vindicate ours, from these horrible imputations. It may not be too late. But the council is thoroughly alarmed, and unless you are prepared to allay their just apprehensions, the best advice which your most sincere friend could give you, would be to resign your office without delay.' ' 21 Queen's Square, November 8, 1851. 'My dear Mr. Principal, ^ I found your letter on my return from the country this after- noon. I lose no time in answering it. I do not wonder that you should have been astonished and alarmed by the article in the Guardian. I heard of its CHAr. II.] THE ANSWER. 81 existence first from Mr. Kingsley this very morning : I have not seen it myself, but he tells me that the moment he read it he wrote an answer to this effect : — that he had never in his life written an article in the Leader, except a letter in refutation of some communistic and Owenite opinions which were defended by one of its contributors ; that the publication of his name on the list of its contributors was an impudent attempt to involve him in opinions which he utterly dis- claimed and hated; that Mr. Holyoake had personally attacked him on several occasions ; that he (Mr. Kingsley) had in a very marked manner, in letters expressly addressed to those who were likely to be Mr. Holyoake's readers, denounced his doctrines. I was perfectly aware of these ■ facts before. I knew that Mr. Kingsley lived for no other purpose than to assert the truths which Mr. Holyoake and the writers in the Leader deny. I knew that he had been the means of delivering some directly from the infidelity which has spread so widely among the working classes, and that he had led numbers to feel an affection towards Chris- tianity and the Church which they never felt before. Of course it is a matter of opinion — in some measure also a question of experience — whether he is taking a right or wrong method to effect these objects. * Those who have adopted an opposite method will of course condemn his. Those who have adopted an opposite method successfully can bring reasons for condemning him. But that these are the objects which are dear to him beyond any others in the world, I am certain. If I were to use any language, or to do any acts which should convey to the minds of any men the impression that I admitted any of the charges which have been made against him in the ' Quarterly Eeview' or elsewhere, I should be guilty of a dastardly falsehood. * Mr. Croker's article in the ' Quarterly Keview ' was denounced in two newspapers of the highest respectability, the Morning Chronicle Q^n^ the Spectator, as containing a series of shameful misrepresentations. With neither of these papers have I VOL. II. G 82 A ''FBIENDLY" SUGGESTION. [F. M. 46. or has Mr. Kingsley the slightest connection, nor have they any sympathy with our economical views. An eminent judge told a near connection of mine that he ought not to answer the ' Quarterly ' article in my hehalf, or to let me answer it, because its iniquity was so very obvious. But if the council really believes any one of the charges which that article contained, I am ready to exjoose its statements sentence by sentence. ' Permit me to say, my dear sir, that these are far too serious to permit of my adopting the course which you as a friend have kindly suggested to me. I cannot resign my office while such insinuations are current respecting me. I should be unworthy of the position which I have occupied in your college, utterly unworthy to be a minister of the English Church, if I took such a step. I ask for a full examination of anything I have ever written or uttered in any way. If it should be found that I have been unfaithful to my trust, the council is bound to deprive me of it. If not, I ought to have a full acquittal. ' ' I do not ask the least mercy of the council ; but I ask them as English gentlemen not to [pronounce judgment before they have received any but anonymous evidence.]'* ' K. C, L , November 9, 1851. * My dear Professor Maurice, * I must just thank you for your letter, which I need not say most triumphantly refutes all imputations connected with the Holyoake notion, and I am thankful to say completely annihilates any apprehensions on that score. The residuum of my anxieties I shall now be able to deal with more calmly; and as soon as I have leisure I will communicate with you again. 'I presume you will have no objection to my imparting to the council on Friday the substance, if not the letter, of your answer. I hope you do not fancy that I advised you to _ * Incomplete,— F, 11, CHAP. II.] « JUST apprehensions:' 83 resign — I only put it as an alternative. With respect to the Holyoake affair you have taken the other alternative. * I think we might still devise some method (without any com- promise of your high-minded resolves) to bring the remainder of the suspicions against you under the same alternative, i.e. that of " allaying the just apprehensions of the council." * Be assured that as no one would rejoice more than myself at such a solution of our embarrassments, so no one would more sincerely deplore the severance of our connection.' ' 21 Queen's Square, November 12, 1851. *My pear Mr. Principal, * I write these lines in consequence of some remarks which fell from you in the course of our conversation this morning. * It has been objected to me an,d to some of my friends that we are countenancing doctrines, and promoting practices, which are connected in a great many minds with a disbelief in Christianity, which are connected in the minds of most with the subversion of order and property. I answer that we have tried to teach the working-men in our words what we have tried to show them by our acts — that Christianity is the only means of promoting their well-being and counter- acting the moral evils which lie at the root of their physical evils. I answer again that we have protested against the spirit of competition and rivalry, precisely because we believe it is leading to anarchy, and must destroy at last the pro- perty of the rich as well as the existence of the poor. * It is objected that we do not fully believe in the Bible as an authoritative teacher, and seek for some modern rationalistic way of explaining its origin, or its doctrines, or its facts. * I answer — we have found an unbelief in the authority of the Bible very common among the working-men ; we have found infidel notions of all kinds prevailing among them ; we have found these notions gaining immense strength from the notion that the Scripture refers to a future world, and not to the present. 'Our great object has been to encounter this infidelity, by G 2 84 THE BIBLE: HOW USED BY THE FBIENDS. [1851. showing them that the Bible, taken in its most simple literal sense, declares God to be the present ruler of the world, and that if they have faith in Him and in His word, they will find a help and teacher in their daily perplexities, in their common life, which will save them from resorting to dema- gogues as ignorant as themselves. We are therefore obliged to discredit all fantastical neological notions of the Bible, and to present it as the authentic declaration of Grod's mind and will to His creatures. 'It has been objected that there is a strong public opinion against us, and that it is exhibited in the attacks which have been made upon us in different journals. I answer that there is a strong opinion against us, and that the journals faithfully represent the nature and quality of it. I will, therefore, enumerate the opponents who have helped most to form this public opinion. ' First, we were denounced in the first article of the ' Edinburgh Eeview ' for last J anuary — an article which was much praised and pronounced to be decisive in a great many circles. It was written by Mr. Greg, a gentleman, I believe, of un- exceptionable character and much benevolence, but who has since published an elaborate attack on the Old Testament and the inspiration of the Scriptures. Secondly, we have been bitterly and perseveringly assailed in the Daili/ Neivs^ a paper of considerable circulation, supporting the views of Mr. Cobden, and as hostile to the English clergy as any which appears in Great Britain. Thirdly, we have been much abused in the Tablet, the most ferocious of Koman Catholic organs. Fourthly, we have been thought worthy of more than one attack by the Eclectic Bevieiv, the organ of the most democratic English dissenters. Lastly, we have been mixed up with the revolutionary writers of France in the last ' Quarterly Eeview ' by Mr. Croker, who, if he has been somewhat more openly and outrageously unscrupulous in his false quotations of us than of those whom he has previously reviewed, yet has had the honour of libelling nearly every ' person (Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Harcourt were among them) •CHAP. II.] FBimDS, FOES, AND ACTIONS, 85 who have made earnest efforts for the good of every class of their fellow-creatures — who has the further honour of being the chosen friend and agent of a nobleman who .... These have been our assailants. The journals which have spoken with toleration and kindness of us have nearly all been strongly religious journals, and of different schools — a High Church * Quarterly Keview ' (from which personally I had no right to look for any favour) ; a Scottish Quarterly Eeview established by Br. Chalmers and Dr. Brewster, the organ of the Free Church party ; and the Watchman, the most moderate of the Wesleyan papers. It has been objected to me indi- vidually, that as a professor in a college I have no business to occupy myself with associations of working-men. I answer : both my colleagues in the theological department are occupied most beneficially to themselves and to others, out of college hours, in parochial duties, one in London, the other in the country ; both of them in writing books, one of them in special labours for his Hebrew brethren. One of my col- leagues in the general department has the care of the soldiers of London ; all I believe have some duties or other which bring them in contact with persons of a different rank, besides those whom they teach in the college. * Their classes in the college I believe are infinitely the better for their labours and studies out of it. I think it should be shown, not taken for granted, that mine are the worse for any humble tasks in which I may have been engaged. * If they can be shown to be evil in themselves, I am condemned of course. If not, I venture to submit that they are not made evil by my connection with the college. Should the council see fit to decree that I should cease to aid the efforts of those friends who are striving to improve the physical and moral condition of the working-men, or cease to be a pro- fessor in the college, I shall, without a moment's hesitation, take the latter alternative. * For there are hundreds of men in the English Church ready and able to fill the honourable offices which I should vacate. There are not at present many (I have no doubt there 86 A COMMITTEE OF INQUIBY. [F. M. 46. will be soon a great number) who feel as strongly as I do, that, unless we on our side strive heart and soul to show the working classes that the Church is their best friend, and is ready to make every sacrifice for their sake, we shall not only lose all hold over them, but over the upper classes to which we have sacrificed them. Of course this conviction of mine is nothing to the council or to any one else, but it is everything to me, and therefore, with God's help, I shall act upon it.' 'K. C, L., November 14, 1851. * My dear Professor Maurice, ' The correspondence which has passed between us was read to-day in the council, and a clerical committee of inquiry, to include myself, was named. No one will rejoice more cordially than I shall do, if the result is such as to " allay the just apprehensions of the council." To Archdeacon Hare. My dear Julius, ' November 19, 1851. ' Very hearty thanks for Esther's letters and yours. I entirely agree with you about my own duty in this business. I think also with you that I ought to be very thankful that the secret mutterings have brought forth an open act, and that I have an opportunity of explaining myself. I am perfectly satisfied with the tribunal to which my conduct is submitted ; if I had had to choose, I should have made scarcely any altera- tions. I expect all justice from them, but I do not expect that I shall retain my place in the college. They are ap- pointed to consider what may be done to "allay the just apprehensions of the council." Now I can do nothing whatever to allay them. If I gave up the working associa- tions, which I believe would be a great sin, I should feel myself obliged to begin some similar undertaking the next day. I cannot promise to be less responsible for the teaching of the society than heretofore. I shall probably be more responsible, as the promoters wish to make their teaching CHAP. II.] EXPECTATIONS OF ITS DECISION. 87 more definitely Christian, and therefore propose to put it under my direction. I shall confess no imprudences, for though I may have been guilty of thousands, the word might mean one thing to the council and quite another to me. I shall not disclaim any friend or consent to give up the name "Christian Socialism," or pledge myself to avoid any acts in future which have given offence in time past. I should merely patch up a momentary reconciliation if I did any of these things, and be accused continually of violating the compact. Therefore my best hope is that the clerical committee should express general approbation of my be- haviour as far as the college has been concerned, should speak honourably of the Socialist movement, and should then recommend me to depart ; which recommendation, upon these conditions, I should at once comply with. For I should get a clerical, even an Episcopal sanction for the associations ; I should cease to be under a government which will never regard me except with suspicion ; and the Church would not be committed with the working-men, and the freedom of my colleagues could not be prejudiced by any unfair treat- ment of me. This, therefore, is the result which I look forward to as both probable and desirable. At the same time, I hope that I shall do nothing to precipitate a decision of this kind. And I am quite sure that Grod will manage the matter better than I should. ' There is not the least reason why you should come to town, and I hope you will not think of it, at least not till you come naturally in December. I am sure the judges will be inclined to be only too partial to me. I do not fancy that of the laymen in the council ; but the clergy, with the exception perhaps of Harrison, have not I should think an atom of prejudice against me. The Bishop of London may suspect me occasionally, but I have no reason to think that he has any habitually unkind impressions about me. ' Georgina sends her best love, and joins with me in the desire that you will not interrupt better employments out of kindness to me. I cannot say how much I care about your 88 TEE DUTY OF THE HOUB. [F. 31. 46. love, but I foresee no issue for which all who love me may not unite with me in being thankful.' ' My dear Julius, ' November 22, 1851. * I have not the least dream of becoming editor of the Christian Socialist. I have been too often burnt in the periodical fire not to have a reasonable dread of it. I opposed the undertaking at first, but was overruled by Ludlow's strong- feeling of its necessity. "What will be done with it now is uncertain. ' The tract which I enclose, and which you may not have seen, was written to meet some difficulties which have arisen recently in our movement. In conformity with the maxims of it, one of the promoters, the least definitely Christian among them, wishes me to undertake the responsibility of all the publications issued by the society, in order that it may have a thoroughly Christian character, and yet that individual members may not be held to more than they believe. I have asked him to suspend his proposal for the present, and he has done so. But I do not know that I can ultimately refuse to assume a position which I certainly did not seek, but which may have the efi'ect of making our purposes and methods more consistent. I should not do more ; I should only suggest works to others and overlook them. * Many thanks for all your kind words. I am delighted that you and Esther think with me that I must give up everything rather than the work of association.' To Mr. J. N. Langleij. ' 21 Queen's Square, Bloomsbuiy, November 2G, 1851. ' My dear Sir, * Letters come like all things else under a divine guidance — just when they are wanted. I should have to tell you a long story if I explained why yours reached me just at the moment when I was in need of the encouragement which it brought. A little before, some rather hard words which had their own CHAP. II.] AN ANSWEB TO "I OWE ALL TO YOUr 89 commission, and I hope executed it, had crushed me rather more than was right : yours were a message of another kind, and showed me how wonderfully wounds and smarts are weighed and tempered by the Great Physician. * However, that is a somewhat selfish way of looking into the deeply interesting annals of your experience which you have furnished me with. It is exceedingly comfortable to think how individual that experience is, and yet how general ; how each person has to go through it himself, and to feel it as his own, and yet how much it is the type of his age — of his nation, of his kind. It is that kind of discipline we are all undergoing — that kind of lesson each of us has to learn — that w^e may be Independents and Churchmen, neither without the other, distinct beings and members of a body. If I have helped you through any steps of the process, God be thanked. The human agency is a very blessed part of His economy ; still the best any one of us can do is to teach his brother how he may do without him, and yet not cease to care for him. * I should think from your direction that you must be living with an old acquaintance of my family — at least the elders of his with the elders of mine — Mr. Dowson. You will judge from this that I have some connection and early sympathy with Unitarians as well as other dissenters ; one which I believe binds me to the fulfilment of some tasks which I have much and sinfully neglected. I think I know the evil of Uni- tarianism and the good which might be brought from beneath that evil better than many. The deeper my conviction of the truth of the name into which we are baptized as the ground and reconciliation of all truth has become, the more have I felt a desire to recognise that which I believe they hold or are trying to hold ; the more strongly and passion- ately I believe in a universal atonement and sacrifice, the more do I desire to extricate them from some of the confusions into which the narrow and dark representations of that master- principle and key-note of social harmony have driven them. * I shall be delighted to hear from you on these and all kindred topics, and all that are interesting you. My answer is very 90 BEPOBT OF THE CLEBICAL COMMITTEE. [J^.lf.46. unworthy of the letter which called it forth, but you must excuse it as I have a good deal of business, and some of a rather trying kind, just now on my hands.' From Dr. J elf, ' King's College, London, December 20, 1851. My dear Professor Maurice, ' I am requested by the council to forward to you the report of the committee appointed to inquire into the tendency of certain of your own writings, and also of certain others which appear to have been sanctioned by you; the copy which I enclose having been furnished to me by order of the council for that purpose : — * " The Committee appointed the 14th of November, 1851, for the purpose of considering, in conjunction with the Principal, the tendency of certain works alleged to have been published by the Kev. F. D. Maurice, resolve to make the following report : " 1. The Committee desire in the first place to record their grateful sense of the value of Professor Maurice's services, of the earnest zeal with which he discharges the duties of his office, and especially of the beneficial influence which he exercises over the students of the college generally, and of the theological department in particular ; and they see no ground for an abatement of confidence in the soundness of his theological teachings as a professor in this college. ^ " 2. With respect to the particular subject which the committee were appointed to consider, they are well assured that, what- ever may be the merits or demerits of what is called 'Christian Socialism ' considered as an economic theory, the scheme which' has been set forth under that designation — a designa- tion in their opinion not happily chosen — is believed by those who have devised it to be the most efi'ectual antidote to * Socialism ' commonly so called ; and the committee cannot doubt that Professor Maurice has lent his aid to the carrying out of that scheme, under a deep sense of his responsibility to the Church, and in a spirit of genuine Christian philan- " THOU WAST CALLED TO GUBSE AND BEHOLD/" 91 thropy directed to the removal of great social evils, the existence of which is acknowledged and deplored. '"The Committee entertain a high sense of the feelings and motives which have prompted him to such efforts ; and, al- lowance being made for occasional obscurity or want of caution in certain modes of expression, there appears to them to be nothing in his own writings on this subject, which does not admit of a favourable construction or which is inconsistent with his office as professor of divinity in this college. ' " 3. At the same time the committee cannot refrain from ex- pressing their regret at finding that Professor Maurice's name has been mixed up with publications on the same subject which they consider to be of very questionable tendency, so as to give rise to a general impression in regard to him which the committee are persuaded is not warranted by the character of his teaching in the college."' * 21 Queen's Square, December 20, 1851. * My dear Mr. Principal, ' I beg to thank you for forwarding to me the report which was received and adopted* at the meeting of the council yesterday. ' I cannot be sufficiently grateful for the language in which that report is expressed, and for the kindness with which I have been treated by you and by the council on this and on every other occasion. 'I cannot think that individually I have any right to the approba- tion which the council has bestowed upon my teaching, but I thankfully accept it as a testimony of the confidence which the governing body of the college has in those to whom the care of the students is committed. I hope to show by greater zeal and diligence how much we all feel the value of such encouragement. ' I thank the council also most sincerely for their remarks upon my proceedings out of the college. Nothing can be more generous, I must add more just, than their explanation of the * This was a mistake of my father's ; the report of the clerical committee had not been adopted by the council. — Vide infra. 92 SOUTHEY'S VIEWS ON CO-OPEBATION [JP. M. 4G. reasons which have led me and others to adopt the phrase Christian Socialism " as descriptive of our opinions. * Our object has been to separate, in what seemed to us the most effectual way, that Socialism, which Mr. Southey * and other eminent Conservatives believed to be the best solution of the practical difficulties of England, from Communism, Eed Kepublicanism, or any anarchical opinion whatsoever. ' We did not feel ourselves justified in giving even that modified support to some of Mr. Owen's economical views which Mr. Southey so freely tendered to them, unless we could bear a more emphatic and decided protest than he bore against Mr. Owen's religious sentiments and theories. We did not adopt the word Christian " merely as a qualifying adjective. We believe that Christianity has the power of regenerating whatever it comes in contact with, of making that morally healthful and vigorous which apart from it must be either mischievous or inefficient. We found, from what we know of the working-men in England, that the conviction was spreading more and more widely among them, that Law and Christianity were merely the supports and agents of capital. We wished to show them both by words and deeds that Law and Christianity are the only protectors of all classes from the selfishness which is the destruction of all. So far as we can do this, we are helping to avert those tremendous social convulsions, which, as recent experience proves, may be the efi'ect of lawless experiments to preserve property, as well as of violent conspiracies against it. ' I certainly felt when I engaged in those tasks that I was carrying out the main principle of the college, which treats the Church as the great instrument of intellectual and social improvement ; and though I felt no temptation to use my lectures for the purpose of preaching any opinion which was peculiar to myself, I have felt that I was practically illus- trating the lessons which I have learnt myself and endea- voured to teach my pupils in national and ecclesiastical * The point of this reference to Southey is tliat Southey had been himself the Editor of the * Quarterly.' WHEN SOUTHEY WAS EDITOB OF THE ' QUABTEBLY: 93 history. If I have committed any serious mistakes or have led others to commit them while I have been pressing this object, I am glad to receive the correction of judges so able and so impartial as those to whom my conduct has been submitted. In any trifling efforts which I have'* The next letter is a public one, which was read and entered on the minutes of the council. ' 13 Beacon, Exmouth, December 51, 1851. ' My dear Mr. Principal, ' I received an official intimation from the secretary of King's College, that the council, on the 14th of November last, had appointed a committee to examine into certain parts of my conduct respecting which you had written to me previously. I expressed to you at that time, in a private interview, my gratitude to the council for their compliance with my wish, conveyed to them through you, that my acts and words in and out of the college might be submitted to a thorough investi- gation. As you have transmitted to me, by direction of the council, the report which embodies the judgment of the com- mittee, I may now venture to express more formally my thanks for the kindness with which I have been treated, on this and on every other occasion, by the governing body of the college. The part of the report which alludes to my relations with the students of the general and theological departments will, I trust, have the effect of urging me to labour more diligently, so long as I am connected with the college, that I may deserve a commendation which I feel has been far too liberally bestowed, and with too little knowledge of the defects of which my conscience bears witness. The passages which allude to those proceedings out of the" college which have exposed me to especial animadversion, I feel to be most generous. The one which explains the reasons that have induced me and others to adopt the name of " Christian Socialists," I must also claim as most just. We certainly * Eemainder not in draft. 94 NATUBE OF TEE SOCIETIES FOBMED. [1851. F M. ie. believe that the Socialism which Mr. Southey, and other eminent Conservatives, accepted as a solution of some of the greatest practical difficulties of England, if it were based upon Christianity, might be the most powerful protection of the land against anarchical notions and practices, whether taking the name of Socialism or adopted as precautions against it. We have formed small associations among working-men for the carrying on of their own trades, in which the Sunday is a day of rest, intemperance is checked, political agitation is discouraged. We know that by so doing we have led some workmen to see the folly and danger of strikes, that we have provoked the hostility of many incendiaries, that we have especially offended those who were using the distresses of the lower orders as argu- ments for infidelity. The efforts in which I have taken part for these objects are very limited and inconsiderable. As an individual I have done almost nothing to aid them. I believe that the fact that a clergyman holding office in your college is connected with them has helped to diminish some pre- judices which a portion of the working class entertained against his order, and to make their minds more ready for the reception of Christian teaching. If there is any singu- larity in my position, no one would rejoice so much as myself that it should be removed by the general co-operation of my brethren, and that I should be as little noticed in the crowd as I ought to be. * The report speaks with great kindness of some responsibility which the committee believe I have incurred in the opinion of the public for the statements of other persons. I am bound to say that if I have ever put myself forward pre- sumptuously and unnecessarily as a defender of my friends, I have done so, not in consequence of their solicitations, but in spite of them. I had the strongest convictions, from my intimate knowledge of them, that their objects were thoroughly Christian, that they were earnest and devoted members of the Church of England, that they abhorred revolutions as much as I did. If any expressions of theirs "IF YOU BBEAD FALSE SLANDEB, DISMISS ME!" 95 had led good and wise men to a different conclusion, or liad given those, who were neither, a handle for misrepresenting them, I wished to assert what I felt to be the truth respect- ing them, the more because I was certain that they possessed talents and powers of usefulness which did not belong to me, and that their temptations, though not greater than mine, were of an entirely different kind. ' Though I cannot retract one word which I have said in their favour, I am convinced that it would have been better for them if I had been silent. I ought to have known that I had no credit or popularity of my own, which could make me fit to be a voucher for others. If I offer this conviction to the committee as a security against the danger to which I have exposed, as they think, the college and myself, rather than - any direct pledges as to [my future conduct, it is because I am persuaded that such pledges when special, are not applicable to new circumstances, when general, are open to a number of different interpreta- tions. The tenderness with which the committee has treated my conduct, even when it seemed to them blameable, might tempt me to use phrases which would express my desire to conform in all respects to their wishes. I believe real gratitude to them rather obliges me to indulge in no vague professions. I am sure I am not worthy to continue one of the teachers of the college a moment longer than I retain the confidence of those who have shown such anxiety to allow for my mistakes and defend my intentions. ' I cannot expect or even hope that the organs of public opinion in the religious world will treat me more favourably than they have done hitherto, or will hesitate to identify me not only with friends whom I honour and love, but with those whom they and I feel that we are solemnly pledged to resist. Should it seem to the council that the censures of the press are so detrimental to the college that it cannot retain a professor who is subject to them, I shall at once bow to that judgment and resign my office. But I hope they will find that one who does not acknowledge the authority of news- 96 EXPLAINS DIFFERENCES IN TWO LAST LETTEBS. papers is most willing to submit to yours, and most rejoiced that lie is bound to obey the chairman of the council* as his father in God ! 'It may be right to mention that the paper called the Christian Socialist, to which I said in a former letter that I had con- tributed, will, after the beginning of the year, cease to contain any political or general articles, and will be entitled the Journal of Association.^ 'My dear Julius, ' December 31, 1851. * All blessings of the old and new year be with you all. I had hoped this letter would have reached you on New Year's Day. But I am afraid it is not possible, as you have no day post, but the second has a good mark in my calendar,! and every day in the year I trust may be a holy one to us and you. ' My interview with Dr. Jelf led me to think that he was afraid of venturing a step beyond the strict direction of the council^ I suppose because he knows that some members of it are in nowise well-affected to me, and might make any overdoing of his an excuse for opening the question again. All he said of me and my teaching was most kind ; but he seemed annoyed that I should dictate to the council in what way they ought to deal with me. Under these circumstances I do not think it would be fair to him, or safe for myself, to write to the Bishop of London. I enclose the letter which I sent yesterday to the Principal, and which he will read on Friday week (I presume) to the council. I have altered my previous letter, not only because it assumed that the council had adopted the report, but because Dr. Jelf seemed to think that I had evaded the intention of the report in the passage respect- ing responsibility for the writings of others. It did not refer, he said, to the Christian Socialist, but to the letters and prefaces I had written in support of Kingsley. My impres- sion is that I shall not be meddled with ; if I am, the testi- mony of the clerical members of the council in my favour * Bishop Blomfield. f The day he became engaged to marry Miss Hare. CHAP. II.] A BIRTHDAY LETTER. 97 is of far greater worth to me than any censure from the rest. 'I can think of nothing more terrible than the combination of Louis Napoleon, the representative of the triumph of money and the sword over law, order and faith, with Montalembert and the whole priest party. It is a nearer approximation to that complete embodiment of Antichrist which our prophets look for in our time than I was prepared for ; though I have long thought that many of their guesses have a kind of inspiration which is totally unconnected with any wisdom, or truth, in the interpretations.' To Rev. M. Maurice, * 13 Beacon, Exmouth, December 31, 1851. ' My dearest Father, • * I hope this letter will reach you on the first day of the new year, and will bring you all the best and dearest wishes which we can offer you for the time that is coming. Julius says we ought to wish every one a happy old year instead of a happy new one ; that is to say, I suppose, we should wish that all the time which is past should be full of good re- collections, and so should be a pledge of good hopes. I cannot desire anything so good for you, my dearest father or for myself and all that are dear to me, as that we should know the blessings which do not belong to one year or another, but which are the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever — which are very near us, and which are stored up in Christ for all who will receive them. I have felt more of late than ever before how close the invisible kingdom is to us, and how strange it is that we do not more enter into it and apprehend the treasures of it. May God teach us all how Christmas explains to us the years that are past and those which are to be, here or in another world. * You said you should like to see the judgment of the committee appointed by King's College upon me. I enclose it for you. I am very grateful for it, as much for the sake of those who love me as for my own.' VOL. II. H 98 "DO PENANCE AT THE ALTAB OF OPINION!'' From Br. J elf, * King's College, London, January 17, 1852. ' My dear Professor Maurice, ^In yonr official letter addressed to me there is a passage wHcli is open to misconstruction, and to wliicli I think it right to recall your attention. ' You say : Although I cannot retract one word which I have said in their favour, I am convinced that it would have been better for them if I had been silent." ' Now you will see that in the point of view taken by the council it is no part of their business to consider whether your defence of certain writers was better for those writers. All the council are concerned with is, the question whether it would not have been better for King's College if you had been silent — and I would submit to you, whether it would not have been wiser for you to look at the matter as if you were in the council's place, and whether you might not even now add the words, "as well as for King's College." This would surely be as true a statement of your convictions as that which you have made ; in fact, it would make your statement complete. As it now stands you seem to ignore the fact that your silence would have been better for the college. ' While on the subject of your letters, I could honestly mention another point on which there is something I could desiderate. Would it be too much to expect of you, considering the delicate treatment you have received of the committee, that you should add somewhere, " that you will do your utmost to bear in mind the duty and importance of not compromis- ing the college " ? ' You would give no further pledge by words like these, than what every jprofessor impliedly undertakes virtute officii. But this insertion would remove the impression felt by some (forgive my candidly stating that impression) that you are too proud or too obstinate to condescend to allay the just apprehensions of the council, l^ou will understand that this communication is the result of my own reflection alone ; CHAP, n.] ''WOBSHIP OF OPINION TOO HABD FOB ME!'' 99 and made in the earnest desire that this unhappy business may by common consent be brought to a satisfactory conclusion.' ' My dear Mr. Principal, ' January 21, 1852. ' If I had alluded to the opinions or interests of my friends, or of myself, for any other purpose than that of allaying the apprehensions of the council, I should have been guilty of more than all the impertinence which you impute to me. I said that my friends did not desire my apologies, and I believed that I had done them harm, to prove that I was not likely to repeat the acts which the committee had complained of. * Practical men I knew valued practical securities more than vague professions. I could offer no greater security than this, that my defences of my friends had in my judgment failed of the purpose for which I made them. If I had said that they injured the college, I should have said what I did not know. If I had said that they might prove injurious to it, I should only have repeated what the committee had said with an authority to which I bowed, and to which my words could add no weight. You ask me to give a pledge that I will not hereafter do anything to compromise the college. I should be most happy to use those words if I could attach to them any definite meaning. ^ But it seems to me that an unconscientious man would readily take such a pledge, because he would be sure that he could always explain it away, that a conscientious man who had taken it could scarcely preach a sermon without asking himself whether there were no words in it which might offend some person, who had a son in the college, or who might think of sending one to it. The generous treatment I have received from the committee does not appear to me a reason for resorting to ambiguous language, when the language of the report is so grave, distinct, and courteous. ' The council requires that its professors should be citizens, churchmen, in some cases clergymen. It assumes that, in these characters, they have contracted certain general obliga- H 2 100 " THE OBLIGATIONS I ACKNOWLEDGE." [F. M. 46, tions, before they contracted the special obligations which belong to them in virtue of their office. I have always felt that these special obligations are very real and binding. I have never fancied that I had the least right to allow any theories of mine respecting education, any plans respecting the particular department entrusted to my care, any caprices, tastes, private convenience, to interfere with the principles, administration, harmonious working of the society into which I had sought and obtained admission. These elder duties I have endeavoured to consider and fulfil on their own grounds; though I have never forgotten that the councili had the fullest right to remove me from my position in the college at any moment, if on any account whatsoever I had lost their confidence. If you have found me "proud and obstinate " in that sphere of action, in which, during eight years, you have had an opportunity of observing me closely, I am sure you will call upon the council, for that reason, to- dismiss me from my office. But I submit that there are other motives, besides pride and obstinacy, which may make me desirous that the council should determine, after a strict examination of my conduct, and not in consequence of any pledges general or special, whether they can or cannot con- tinue to trust me as a teacher in this college. *P.S. — I would earnestly request that this letter, with the one to which it is an answer, may be laid before the council at their meeting on Friday.' From the Secretary/. ' Dear Sir, ' King's College, London, January 23, 1852. * I beg to forward to you the enclosed resolutions passed at a special meeting of the council held this day.' Extracts from the minutes of the council of King's College, London, held January 23, 1852 : — ' Eesolved, * That the council receive with satisfaction the report of the committee " that Professor Maurice's services have been of 'IF THOU WOBSHIP THE IMAGE, WELL; IFNOT—'' 101 great value, that he has discharged the duties of his office with earnest zeal, and that he has exercised a beneficial influence over the students of the college, and that there is no ground for an abatement of confidence in the soundness of his theological teaching as a professor in the college. *That with reference to the tendency of certain writings of Professor Maurice, the council are relieved from much Anxiety by the assurance of the committee that allowance being made for occasional obscurity, or want of caution in certain modes of expression, there appears to them to be nothing in Professor Maurice's own writings on the subject of Christian Socialism which does not admit of a favourable construction, or which is inconsistent with his office as professor of divinity in this college. ^ That the council participate in the regret expressed by the committee at finding that Professor Maurice's name has been mixed up with publications on the same subject, which they consider to be of very questionable tendency, so as to give rise to a general impression with regard to him which the committee are persuaded is not warranted by the character of his teaching in the college. * That the deepening or simple continuance of such impression on the public mind would be likely to produce consequences to the college which the council are persuaded no one will regret more seriously than Professor Maurice, but they feel warranted in entertaining a confident hope from the tenor of his letter to the Principal of December 30, 1851, as well as from the zeal which he has always displayed for the interest of the college, that, by increased caution for the future on his part, any further measures on theirs will be rendered un- necessary.' The differences between the report of the committee and the resolution adopted by the council are very suggestive. It is evident that the hostile Lords had never calculated that an investigation gravely conducted by the Bishop of London (Blomfield), Dr. Jelf, the Dean of St. Paul's (Milman), Arch- 102 NO MOBE CLEBICAL COMMITTEES! [1852. deacon Harrison, Eev. J. S. M. Anderson, could result in a decision which would be so diametrically contrary to the dictates of current public opinion. As will be seen hereafter, they did not forget the lesson, and resolved that in future they would incur no such risks of a judicial investigation of facts interfering with the carrying out of the righteous decrees of current popular religious periodicals. Even this modified re- solution of the council was not carried without considerable opposition, despite the report of the committee. CHAP. III.] THE GEE AT STBIKE. 103 CHAPTEK III. *' Many of us persuade ourselves, all of us have probably at one time yielded to the opinion that reputation is necessary for the sake of usefulness. Every hour, I think, will show us more and more that the concern about reputation is the great hindrance to usefulness ; that if we desire to be useful, w^e must struggle against it night and day." — F. D. M. 1852. — THE GREAT IRON TRADES STRIKE — UNWILLINGNESS TO URGE IMMEDIATE CO-OPERATION ON THE MEN ; OR TO DO ANYTHING TO MAKE THE SPLIT BETWEEN EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYED MORE PERMANENT — MR. KINGSLEy's ' WHO ARE THE FRIENDS OF ORDER ? ' RENEWED CONFERENCES WITH WORKING-MEN — MR. SLANEy's bill at LENGTH GIVES LEGAL FORM TO THE CO- OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS — THE CHARTER OF QUEEn's COLLEGE OBTAINED SOON AFTERWARDS — MR. KINGSLEy's ' PERSEUS ' AND * PHAETHON ' LORD GODERICH ON " THE DUTY OF THE AGE " — • F. D. M. ON DEMOCRACY — A DIGGER. A GREAT strike and lock-out on an enormous scale throughout the engineering and iron trades of the country now occupied the attention of the promoters. Some of the men had threatened a strike for December 31, 1851. The masters replied by a general lock-out on January 10, 1852. A year earlier representatives of the executive of the men's amalgamated society had consulted the Council of Promoters as to the most profitable mode of employing their accumulated funds; and for more than eighteen months the question of co-operation had been discussed in the iron trade. The promoters had thus become personally acquainted with many of the men engaged in the new struggle. Some of the promoters endeavoured to bring about a recon- 104 "I WILL NOT BUN [F. M. 46. ciliation between masters and men ; others wished to urge the men to join all together in a grand co-operative society ; others wished the men to take advantage of any offers made them by individual masters, since the employers were by no means united, and to form associations only of picked men. My father was very anxious to prevent any false step from spreading ruin and injuring the future relationships of employers and employed, under pretence of offering a nostrum to the acceptance of the men. He had no small amount of resistance to encounter from some of the more eager champions of co- operation as the immediate remedy for every ill. Mr. Ludlow had given up the editorship of the Christian Socialist to Mr. Hughes at the beginning of the new year, when it became the Journal of Association. A very powerful appeal to the men of the amalgamated trades, which appears in the number of the Journal for January 24, was forwarded to my father by Mr. Ludlow, and to this the next letter refers. Mr. Ludlow was surprised that my father should have forwarded this letter (which is written strongly in behalf of co-operation, but is at the same time an appeal to all the self-sacrifice, pluck, and character of the men), whilst yet my father himself was at the council urging patience and moderation. Like most of my father's friends, he assumed at the time that my father's wish, that an earnest and honest expression of thought should not be checked, implied that he agreed with the conclusions arrived at by the writer. Intellectually it was a misunderstanding of the same kind as that of the religious newspapers. The consistency, with which my father adhered throughout life to the principle of aiding the expression of opinions from which he differed, was not easily recognised in each separate instance of it. To Mr, Ludlow. ' My dear Friend, 'January 28, 1852. * I kept your letter back for one or two posts, that I might do nothing hastily. I feel sure, however, that nothing but good can come from words so full of love and sincerity. I have therefore sent it on. It does express faithfully what seems to CHAP. III.] UNLESS I AM sent:' 105 me at present the best, I should say the only possible, course. If God opens my eyes to see that I am wrong, I hope I shall at once confess it ; if He shows me any way in which I can lawfully give help, I think I shall not be slow to take it. I may be nervously afraid of overdoing. I know you think I am, in a great many cases ; but I have suffered from the overdoing of others, and I have sinned in that way, not once or twice, myself. I hope it is not altogether cowardice, though I may have a great leaven of it, which makes me tremble to run where I have no message, or am not sent. I know God is working ; if I may work with Him, it is a blessing unspeakable ; but to let His working by mine is terrible. However, I have infinite reasons for asking for- giveness of my friends, as well as of Him, for omissions, as well as commissions, innumerable. I shall in time wear out their patience, not, I trust, that which is absolute and eternal. Also to Mr. Ludlow. ' My dear Friend, 'January' 31, 1852. ' I did not at once answer your letter, for the task of self- justification becomes every day more irksome to me, and I am beginning in most cases to prefer that judgment should go by default against me. But as far graver matters than my character are at stake, I will say a few words on the points to which you allude * I am urging that we should not in any case run before we are sent, or till we have a message, and that it requires very great and earnest consideration to know where we are sent, and what our message is. It seems to me that the event of ten thousand being thrown out of employment has struck you by its imposing vastness ; that you have felt as you ought to feel the immense importance of the crisis ; but that you have concluded as you ought not to conclude, that, because it is vast and important, therefore we should be in a hurry to proclaim our conclusions upon it, or should decide that it must be meant to give us an opportunity of announcing broadly and nakedly what we believe to be the remedy for the evil. 106 SOBE EXPEBIENCES. [F. M. 46. * This may be a call of God ; it may be a temptation of the devil, it may be — I am satisfied it is, both. I wish, therefore, to see how we may obey the call, and resist the temptation, and when I am trying to do so, I cannot be merely talked down by being told that I am afraid of my own shadow — when possibly it is not that, but the shadows of ten thousand gaunt and starving men, with their wives and children, that I am afraid of, or what is to me scarcely less terrible, the shadow of the principle of co-operation exchanged for its substance. I am obliged to speak much more determinately, authoritatively and insolently than I have any liking to do, specially when Louis and Furnivall are present, because I must make them understand that it is not folly or cowardice at times to sit still, and that they are not absolute judges a priori what are and are not those times. A little boy whose elder brother had set him up on a great heap of stools to act Gamaliel, while he sat at his feet as Paul, when the stools came down, and he fell on his head, cried out, " I won't be 'Maliel any more." I have often made the same resolution, having as little right as the little boy to my insecure position, and tumbling as awkwardly. But, as long as you choose to pretend that I am, for my office sake, in any sense a Gamaliel to any of those who I trust will some day be almost as unlike me as Paul was to his master, so long I must take my chance of being considered an obstructive, of being charged with flying from my shadow, of being thought to be under evil influence, of being suspected of aiming to stop, or make obstructions, to the movement in which I have taken part. Such experiences are not new ; often those who have to pass through them deserve much heavier accusations, and need them. I am sure I am not an exception.' Also to Mr, Ludlow. ' My dear Friend, ' 1852. *I have not been urging the amalgamated iron trades to an unconditional surrender. I have not seen Newton, or any one who represents their interests. What I said to the council DOES BIGHT ALWAYS GAIN BY SEEMING MIGHT? 107 was that I believed an unconditional surrender might be the right way of showing the brute force there was in capital, and of bringing thercase of the working-men fairly before the public, as a struggle of human beings against mere money power. ' But I will not ask the men to starve, unless I can starve with them. I will not put the cause of association in hazard by pressing it upon them as a remedy, when they may not have the means of making it a remedy. I will not deceive them by false promises and hopes, and call upon them for sacrifices, which they may not be morally or physically able to make. I am certain that I am right in this: we have an awful responsibility as counsellors of the working-men, and as defenders of the principle of association. I will not give up a real good for a seeming one. I did not suppose the iron-workers could be induced, or ought to be induced under present circumstances, to surrender ; but I did think, that that alternative might be set before them, in quite a different way from that in which it has been presented to them hitherto, not as an escape from what is right, but as a way of en- forcing it. Of course, I know that what I said had a sound of compromise in it. I don't care a fig for sounds. I did not mean compromise, but the very reverse of it. I did not mean the dereliction of a principle, but the assertion of one. ' P.S. — Newton, I understand, meant to propose a course at the meeting to-day which was much better than mine. He was ready to give up circulars, or any point of honour, if the masters will concede, as the Times said they would, the principle for which they are contending.' It will, perhaps, illustrate my father's view expressed in the foregoing letter, if I mention that he used often to refer to the trial of Hampden during the civil wars, as the all important point in determining for the time the national feeling on the subject of the king's government, because Hampden teas con- demned. He always maintained that the conviction was by this means forced home upon the national conscience, that the 108 STEEBING THE BOAT. [F. M. 46. law courts could not be depended on to enforce justice and ancient law, because power lay with the king to override them : and thus the law-abiding sense of the nation was driven over to the side opposed to the king. Now, such an instance as this was in my father's mind an historical lesson, which he, the student of the great Educator, felt bound to accept, and would often apply. I cannot give proof for my assertion ; but I am convinced that it was present to his mind on this occasion. ' Eraser's Magazine' for January, 1852, contained an attack, not specially severe, upon the ' Christian Socialists.' Mr. Kingsley was at the time contributing successive portions of ' Hypatia ' to Eraser. To these facts the next letter refers. * My dear Kingsley, ' February 7, 1852. * Hughes has shown me your letter to the editor of ' Eraser.' I do not think you ought to send it. So far as I can interpret the code, or the unwritten law, of magazine ethics, no easy task I admit, there is no obligation in one contributor to respect the faith of another, nor any call for one whose faith has been maligned to strike work in consequence. What I think you have the right, and, which is perhaps more to the purpose in any questions relating to the press, the potver to do is, to insist upon John Parker or the editor, whoever he may be, inserting an article of yours (to be signed, if you will follow my recommendation, not C. Kingsley, but " A Christian Socialist "), stating very quietly, temperately, and decisively, the real faith which we profess, why it is Conservative and not destructive, why it is necessary for the present crisis, what we have and have not to do with the Inquirer* Such a paper, written as you could write it, would be valuable to us just now in many ways — as a lecture to friends as well as enemies, as a sotto voce hint to Louis and Ludlow, no less than an open admonition to the Times, Chronicle, * Which newspaper had attacked the Christian Socialists ; ergo ' Fraser ' had assumed, that there must be some leaning towards tlie sceptical views of the Inquirer, among the Christian Socialists ; just as Dr. Jelf had, on similar grounds, made the assumption that they agreed with Mr. Holyoake. CHAP. III.] ON AUGUSTINE. 109 * Fraser,' &c. I am very thankful that the imprudent garrulity of Fraser's man has laid him open to this infliction, and fixes you as the person to administer it. We might never have had such a chance anywhere but for this very bearable and on the whole convenient kick. * Hypatia ' seems to me very powerful, and in general true. The world has become very un dramatic, and will therefore, of course, mistake your meaning, and give you credit for wdiat you do not mean. ' Do not tread needlessly on any one's toes ; and sometimes sacrifice a tempting description, that you may avoid the reputation of being voluptuous, which will hinder people from doing you justice. I do not recommend you ever to make any real sacrifice to prudence of dramatical truth, for I believe the age needs it. One character I miss which seems necessary to complete the picture of the age, an earnest Latin, not of Italy, but probably with a mixture of African blood. * Kead Augustine's * Confessions ' again, note their entire contrast with the modern methodistical confessions : the confession of God is always in him, and the search after Him.' ' My dear Kingsley, * February 11, 1852. * You will not arrive at the difi'erentia of the Latin merely from the ' Confessions,' important as they are. If you have time to take a glance at theDe CivitateDei^ especially the metaphysical parts of it (that on the homo secundum Deum and the homo secundum hommem taught me more than all the metaphysical books I ever came in contact with, and threw back a wonder- ful light on Plato), you will, I think, discover, far better than I can tell you, wherein the Latin excelled the Greek, and w^as the witness and prophet of a regenerate social order for the universe, not merely, which is the best that can be said of Cyril or of Chrysostom, a brave antagonist, as a regenerate individual man, of a detestable social system. The real strength of Augustine was acquired, I conceive, through his early baptism in the Styx of Manichaeanism, and his discovery that God must be the deliverer from it. I do not say that he 110 THE BIBTH OF TEE MODEBN WOBLD. [F. M. 46. ever shook off the distemper ; it came back again frequently in his battle with Pelagius, and I think also with the Donatists, to whose real conviction I should suppose he never did justice, but was content to produce an unsatisfactory- exposition of the parable of the good and bad fish against them. Nevertheless, he did learn and believe inwardly, however he might waver, that the world which God has made must be good. And therefore he had to believe also that there is an order at the bottom of it, and that this may and must vindicate itself some day. This inward persuasion belonged, as I hold, to Augustine qua Latin, though it was rooted in him by peculiar experiences, and was affected, on the whole not expanded or improved, by his African birth and education. And therefore the Latin mind could meet the Gothic and combine with it, while the Greek regarded it as merely uncouth and frightful. The reverence for women and the dream of a domestic life, however alien from the existing condition of the Western Empire, were capable of assimilating with those older parts of the Latin character which the Christian Church educated and again made mighty. From this union I need not tell you the modern West has been born, and a very glorious birth I hold it to be, though the child may have passed through rickets, croup, scarlet fever, and every other disease to which flesh is heir, and many to which spirit is heir, after it went to school and since it has been stalking about as a full grown gentle- man. The love of order and concentration in the Latin may have given birth to popedoms, empires, military despotisms, without end ; the savage old Goth may have had his indepen- dence, private judgment, Germanic conceits, and all the rest of it ; but the two together make something better than has yet been, though, I trust, to be hammered into Greek and Jew in the days which are to be. Now what strikes me is, that as you have different Greek and Jew specimens of the expiring world, you ought not onlj/ to have a Gothic specimen of the new world. Merely as a lively contrast to Alexandrian civilisation and corruption he may be sufficient, not as a CHAP. III.] INSTINCTIVE DESTRUCTION OF OWN MSS. Ill complete picture of the elements out of which God would make a Christendom. But though I speak decisively, I have a very strong secret opinion that you know infinitely more about the laws of dramatic art, and the demands of your own subject, than I do, and I should be sorry if I tempted you to put any figure upon the canvas, which would disturb the grouping of those which are there already.' ' My dear KinGSLEY, ' February 21, 1852. * Parker has sent me the letter. I quite approve of the publica- tion, and so does Hughes upon my representation of its contents : he has not yet read it. I think it may do much good. But I made a stupid blunder when you returned the two sheets on Monday. * Thinking one was only my own nonsense which you had copied, with improvements, I burnt that one in a great hurry and found to my horror that the next sheet did not connect with the previous one. As I knew it was important that Parker should have it that day, I wrote in two or three sentences which I think made the whole good sense, and were in the spirit of those which I recollected. Still it is hardly fair to you that you should not have your own say. Shall I send back the MSS. to be filled up ? There cannot be much omitted, but I will send it you if you please on Monday, or else give it at once to a printer, and send you the proofs, in which you can make alterations if you find them necessary. Will you describe it (I like the first title very much), "A Letter to ^Fraser's Magazine ' in Answer, &c.," or how otherwise ? However, you can settle that by-and-by. ^ I wish you were in London. I am very anxious about the next step of the engineers. They purpose to call a meeting of all the trade societies to ask for their help and sympathy. They asked me, through Hughes, to preside. I said that if I had a case to go with, I would at once call on the Bishop of London and ask him what he would like me to do, but that I did not think I had a case ; that it seemed to me too much like throwing away the scabbard, and proclaiming that the 112 WHO ABE THE FRIENDS OF OBDEB ? [1852. war with capitalists was begun. Neale thought that they might change the meeting into one for a petition to the legislature asking them to support their own law, permitting combinations, against the determination of the masters to- make it nugatory. ' I saw Newton yesterday and told him that this was the sugges- tion of the council. He gave, I think, very good reasons why that would be a hopeless course, and might lead the House to repeal, or at least restrict the law, instead of enlarging it ; but I was not convinced by his arguments in favour of the meeting, though they were able and such as gave me a very favourable opinion of his sense. Especially I urged him not to bring forward the plan of a great bank for co-operation, without the most careful consideration of the principle and the details. *I am sure the men are gaining ground now through the wildness of the masters, but a false move may be ruinous. Tell me what your opinion is. I want to get at the clergy and see if they can do anything. Hughes had agreed to go with me to the Bishop of Oxford. Your letter may do much good in this way ; but it should be a pamphlet to the upper classes, not a tract for the lower.' It would appear, however, that ultimately Parker declined to publish the letter, for it bears on its title-page the names of E. Lumley and J. J. Bezer, the latter a man who had been set up as a publisher by the promoters, no living publisher venturing to commit himself to the risk of publishing, in the teeth of the storm of public opinion, either the Christian Socialist or the * Tracts on Christian Socialism.' The title adopted by Mr. Kingsley for his letter was, " Who are the Friends of Order ? A reply to certain observations in a late number of * Eraser's Magazine.' " The conferences with working-men which had taken place in 1849 had, on the setting up of the various associations, gradually merged in the conferences between the promoters and associates. At first, whilst all the questions connected with THE CONFEBENCF.S WITH WOBKING-MEN BESUMEB. 113 association were new, it had been more convenient to discuss them among those who were interested in them. But as soon as these had been pretty thoroughly threshed out, the associa- tion conferences lost their interest, and became concerned with mere matters of business, in which my father, at all events, felt that he was not engaged in his proper work. But very many, both of his friends and of the working-men who had not joined them, had been very much interested in the more general con- ferences. A strong wish was expressed for their revival, and accordingly due notice was given that on the 10th of March, 1852, the conferences would be resumed in the cutters' room of the Tailors' Association at 34, Castle Street. A " Hall of Asso- ciation " was in course of being built, but the only conferences of which any record survives took place before it was finished. The meetings were held on alternate Wednesdays. My father presided at all of them. The first was a purely preliminary meeting. A subject was proposed for the next — " What are the relations which should exist between capital and labour ? " No such conference took place. The discussion was set aside at my father's instance because he disliked discussions on " capital," " labour " ; wishing instead for discussions on men, their duties and relationships. The first meeting was on the subject of " Trades-unions, their effects on the condition of the working classes in past times, and their probable future as connected with the co-operative movement." It had not taken place when the following letter was written, but the subject for the meeting had been announced. He had given two lectures at the Greenwich Literary and Scientific Institute on Co-operation. ' My dear Friend, * March 21, 1852. ' I thank you very heartily for your letter. I do not think I can at present make my feelings respecting Christian Socialism intelligible to you. But I am glad you have read my Greenwich lectures (there is not to be a third), because I have expressed in them, not clearly, but more clearly than else- where, what is the ground upon which I stand myself, and upon VOL. II. I 114 HUMAN BELATIONSHIPS. [1852. F. M. 4.6. which I believe we must all stand. So long as it is a question between capital and labour, I am satisfied there will be endless controversies. You will take one side, Neale another, Le Chevalier a third. You will all feel that you are supporting a principle ; you will be very apt to give that principle an exaggerated, exclusive, distorted character. For you will not be clear whether you are supporting a new and juster arrangement of things, or whether you are con- tending for the rights and relations of persons. What I have tried to say in the lectures is that the reorganisers of society and the conservators of society are at war because they start from the same vicious premisses ; because they tacitly assume land, goods, money, labour, some subjects of possession, to be the basis of society, and therefore wish to begin by changing or maintaining the conditions of that possession ; whereas, the true radical reform and radical conservation must go much deeper and say : " Human relations not only should lie, but do lie beneath all these, and when you substitute — upon one pretext or another — property relations for these, you destroy our English life and English constitution, you intro- duce hopeless anarchy." ' Of course we have all said this in a hundred ways ; but we have not, it seems to me, said it distinctly and emphatically enough. We have tampered with the foreign Socialism, saying it would be good if Christianity were at the basis of it. We have tampered with the English capitalism, saying " Lord Derby and his followers — Cobden and his followers — would be right if only they respected the working-men's interests as well as those of the upper class, of the middle class." We have not said, " The Foreign Socialism is good, just because it is a tremendous protest against an abuse of the first laws of human society, which must be stopped, and* Christianity can only set it right by striking at that foun- dation. The English capitalism is only good so far as it affirms the veritable existence of a right and true order ; it is false, utterly false, in its theory of what that order is, and so far from wishing to see it extending its lines that it may NOT « CAPITAL " OB " LABO UB " THE BASIS OF SOCIETY. 115 compreliend the ^Yorking classes on their behalf and our own we denounce any such extension. We say that the working classes exist to assert the dignity of man, and to be witnesses against that glorification of thiiujs which has destroyed the other two." Everything, it seems to me, depends upon the clearness with which we see this to be the issue to which all social struggles are tending, and upon the decision and moderation with which we assert it to be so. ' I do not wonder if the world takes less interest in us than it did a year ago. I am glad if it does. The world has never understood what we are about, because we have not under- stood it. I feared the Christian Socialist Journal because I feared it would embarrass the question more ; strongly asserting the religious principle, being very busy with the commercial details ; leaving the public in doubt whether we were pressing a commercial scheme upon religious maxims, or introducing a new religion into commerce. * The evident disagreement of the persons concerned in the work on these fundamental points embarrassed its readers more. I did prefer, as you say rightly, that it should become merely commercial, just that it might not lead anyone to fancy that Christianity or politics were commercial. * For the same reason I opposed your motion for bringing the agency under the control of the council of promoters, and was eager that it should work out its own problem in its own way. I may have been right or wrong, but I have, more or less distinctly, kept that object always before me. * To set trade and commerce right ive must find some ground, not for thenif hut for those ivho are concerned in them, for men to stand upon. That is my formula. I do not wish pedantically to obtrude it, or to make it contract other people's work, but it has more and more presented itself to me as the one to which all our failures, oppositions, feeblenesses, are driving us. * I resume the conferences solely in hopes of getting that ac- knowledged by the working-men ; I would have resumed the ' Politics for the People ' precisely for the same purpose. If i '2 116 " MY CREED OF ASSOCIATION" [1852. F. M, 4G. ■\\e are to be teaching by books and lectures, I would try to give them that shape and character. It is for this end I would support a slop-working tailors' association. I will stand by the engineers just as far as this is their end ; and just so far as I see they have mere commercial ends however respectable, I will leave them to fight their own battles as they may. * You know now my creed of association and my scheme of policy. I cannot say how earnestly I should wish you to act with me in it; or how painful it is to me to be at variance with you about anything. But from this line I mean, with God's help, not to swerve, though I will gladly work with any person who seems to me aiming at right, even if I cannot adopt his maxims, nor he mine.' The reports of the conferences which are given in the Journal of Association are so brief that it is very difficult to find in the records of the speeches in which my father summed up the discussions, any sentence which can be recognised as his own. In several instances, however, the report represents faithfully the line he took, and it is often very characteristic of him. The Conference on trades-unions took place on April 21, 1852. " The President, in summing up, recapitulated the charges which had been made by the opener and other speakers against the trades-unions, and the manner in which these charges had been met. The result which all that he had heard left upon his mind was, that this was only part of a much larger question, one which involved the relations of labourers with one another, and with capitalists as well as labourers. Trades-unions had been called aristocratic societies. He thought that that de- scription of them was true. But he thought that their ex- clusiveness, though it might be made the pretext for all sorts of selfishness, was not essentially a bad one. He admitted the equality in which men should stand to one another ; but then they must be truly men, something more than mere animals following blindly the animal instincts of their nature. You PBINCIPLES OF INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION 117 could not put the latter on an equality with thoughtful, self-denying men. He could not, therefore, agree with Mr. Hughes that because they were exclusive they were essentially had. That exclusiveness might rest on false grounds ; if so, they would be surely punished for it. He urged those who felt that they were me)i to bear in mind that others had the same capacities with themselves, and that they should endeavour all they could to make those, whom they found themselves obliged to exclude, better men, and to bring them into fellowship. Mr. Jones had asked the question, was it fair to demand of working-men that they should exhibit qualities which we did not find in any other class of society, which we did not practise ourselves ? He would say ' no.' Such a demand was monstrously unfair. But he thought there was another way of looking at the matter. They might say to working-men, and he thought it would be kind to say to them : We have been selfish, we have been exclusive, and we have sufi'ered in consequence of being so. Now do you benefit by our experience. Only in that sense could he call upon working-men to be better than other men. He would say to the members of trades-unions, if you have the principles of fellowship at heart,^ you must diffuse them as widely as possible, and thus convert the union into an association." To Mr. Mansfield on Ms leaving England for Paraguay, ' My dear Mansfield, ' May 8, 1852. * I did not know of your plan. Ludlow said something to me about it, but I understood him that you had abandoned it. May God bless you in it, and bring you back to be as useful, as I am sure He means you to be, in your own land ! ' I shall miss you very much ; more than you would easily believe, seeing I have done so little to help you, and to show that I had some interest in your troubles and in your works. May we all be drawn much more closely to each other in spirit, and be rid of all the wrong which keeps us asunder. I have much to confess, and much to repent of, before that prayer will be granted me.' II 118 ON SENDING MEN TO A DELIBERATIVE [1852. The question " Wliat should be the conduct of Co>operators in the present state of the affairs of the country " was debated in a conference on May 5, and again on May 19, on which occasion the chairman (F. D. M.), in summing up, said, he felt bound to state that he entirely disagreed with a statement put forth by more than one speaker during the two evenings that the discussion had lasted, that we are to put forward a certain set of measures to which we are to require candidates to pledge themselves. However excellent those measures might be in themselves, or however fully he might agree with them, the doctrine of ' measures, not men ' was one which he must protest against with all his might. It was one which led to great practical dishonesty. Constituents were deceived by candidates, and it was inevitable that they should be. Young men were sent into Parliament, pledged to particular measures — growing men, acquiring wisdom, gaining experience, and who, as a consequence, were often compelled to change their opinions upon the very measures to which they stood pledged. What they wanted was not men tied down to certain measures, but above all things men of principle. The impression which the discussion had left upon his mind was, that there was one principle which they were bound to maintain ; that a man was worth more than a thing. The object which he would propose to himself to find out if possible in voting for a member of Parliament would be this : — is this a man who sets up money as the supreme thing; or does he regard man as being of higher importance than any of the things by which he is surrounded? In the tests by which he might seek to find this out, he might be deceived again and again, but that would be his aim. He would rather vote for a man who agreed with him on this principle, though dissenting from every one of his measures, than for a man who agreed with all his measures, but who did not recognise that principle. And in the next place, he would wish him to be a man of common sense, who would understand the means by which the objects he sought to attain could be best carried out. He would have members go to Parliament unfettered, believing that they ASSEMBLY PLEDGED NOT TO DELIBERATE." 119 would ultimately come to the right conclusion. At all events, ( that appeared to him the safe course, and the only safe course I to pursue. This he thought would reconcile the views of f different speakers. On the one hand, it seemed reasonable that, having a definite principle, they should make all other questions subordinate to that ; and on the other hand, that they should interest themselves in the various important public questions that were brought forward. He did not shrink from any ajDplication of the doctrine he had laid down. One speaker, for instance, considered it necessary to pull down the church of which he was a minister. He would say to him. Certainly, by all means pull it down if you can ; if it has a basis in the nature of things, you will not succeed. It must have some- thing to stand on, or it will not stand. He believed that it had something to stand on, that it was here to teach men what he had just been telling them — to teach man the dignity of his nature, to raise him out of all bondage, so that things might not exercise a lordship over him." No more characteristic speech than this could have been delivered on a political subject by him. It has evidently been much spoilt in the reporting ; but I this wish to make members of Parliament " representatives, not delegates," to keep Parliament a real consultative assembly ; this sense of the moral iniquity of the attempt to bind members by pledges ; and of the moral wrong done by members who make their way into Parliament by swallowing pledges, was one of the strongest faiths of his life. He was never tired of referring to Burke's speeches at Bristol on the 3rd of November, 1774, and that previous to the election in 1780 as the grandest of political deliverances. He believed the moral ground taken in them to be impregnable. Soon after Mr. Slaney's Committee had reported in 1850, Mr. Labouchere, the Home Secretary of Lord Eussell's Govern- ment, had requested Mr. Ludlow to draft a Bill which should legalise the co-operative associations. On seeing the draft Mr. Labouchere seems to have been alarmed by finding that the change in the law would be more serious than he had expected, and whilst expressing friendliness had postponed action. 120 THE HISTOBY OF MB, SLANETS BILL. [1852. On February 20, 1851, Mr. Slaney obtained a new Committee " to consider the law of Partnership, and the expediency of facilitating the limitation of liability, with a view to encourage useful enterprise, and the additional employment of labour." On February 17, 1852, Mr. Slaney again brought forward the question, expressly referring to the co-operative societies, and to the evidence which his Committee had received on the subject. In reply, Mr. Labouchere promised a Commission to inquire into the law of partnership. A few days afterwards the Conservatives replaced the Liberals in office. The delay had been largely due to the fact that the working- men had been trained for years by agitators to distrust all government ; * the living generation of them had only within the few years since 1848 been brought into actual contact with men, who, not for the purpose of party political ends, were seeking to remedy their practical difficulties ; every effort had been strained by the press to induce them to distrust these men : moreover, a certain shyness of what to them was new and strange prevented them from following the advice of the promoters to join in orderly petitions through the several members for their towns and counties. The only form of petition to which they had been trained by the agitators was a mass petition, intended to terrorise by an exhibition of physical force. Petitions depending for their effect on the honest setting forth of a practical grievance on a specific subject, and assuming the honest desire of the House to put them right, * I am only recording, almost entirely from contemporary evidence, the influences which actually affected the conduct of the men at this time, and that conduct as it actually was. I am most anxious not to discredit many other efforts, with which this history is not concerned. But the shortness of men's memory as to past services is sometimes startling. In the Inter- national Trade Conference in Paris on October 29, 1883, an English represen- tative, Mr. Burnett, "pointed to the example of England as conclusive" against anything being ever done, by any but working-men, to regulate the employment of women and children. " There all had been done hy the organisation of the men themselves." Such is the remembrance of all Lord Shaftesbury's services ! It is not therefore surprising, that, at this time, the promoters had practically to deal with men who acted as if all outside their own ranks had till then been enemies. TEE NEW LAW. CEARTER OF QUEEN'S COLLEGE. 121 were an altogether new and untried thing. Hence the most earnest appeals of the promoters to the men, to adopt the only course that would ensure the early passing of a bill, met with no response at all corresponding to the actual strength of the feeling among the body of working-men. The Liberal Govern- ment had been afraid of many of their supporters, and had been glad enough to shirk the question. Nevertheless, thanks to the nature of the evidence produced before Mr. Slaney's committees, and the vigorous pressure brought to bear by the promoters on individual members,, from whom amidst the storm of newspaper misrepresenta- tion, tJieij never met with a single rebuff when the rights of the case had been fairly set forth, the question was silently making way. When in February 1852, Lord Derby's govern- ment came into power, the Bill was promised the support of the Ministry, and being brought in as a private measure, under the title of the Industrial and Provident Partnerships Bill," by Messrs. Slaney, Tufnell and Sotheron, two of them I Liberals, the latter a Conservative, it was by the 11th June read a third time in the House of Lords and passed. Mr. Ludlow had been engaged in drafting the charter I for Queen's College, and in doing so, protested to my father \ against the self-denying ordinance by which the professors were transferrino; the ijovernment of the collesre, till then vested in their hands, to an independent council. I ' My dear Friend, ' Summer, 1852. ' I did not write to you till I had seen the bill and got the charter. I heartily agree with all you say on the first point, and am rejoiced that you should say and feel it. If God puts it into our hands, let us rejoice with all thankfulness, and ask to be taught how we may work in it with all zeal and union. I hope not to shirk any task which He lays upon me, though I believe I have scattered the few hints which I had to scatter, and that silence would often be most fitting for me on that and most other subjects. * There is much in what you say about Queen's College ; but the 122 BECONCILIATION DESTBOYS COMPBOMISE. [1852. exceeding awkwardness and difficulty of judging eacli other has decided the professors to desire that all jurisdiction should be vested in the council ; they retaining the really practical power of teaching, and whatever appertains to it. I think, indeed I know, there are possible and probable evils in such a self-denying ordinance, but on the whole they seem to me less than those from which we are suffering at present. The bishop would be very glad to have a principal, and that would perhaps be the best course, but the committee of educa- tion have a kind delicacy about suspending me in my office of chairman, and, with the present feeling about me in various quarters, I would never consent to be anything else.' 'Ely Cottage, Lee Eoad, Blackheatli, ' My dear Kingsley, ' J uly 12, 1852. ' I have thought often of your ' Perseus,' and shall delight to see it in full glory. I want to talk with you some time or other about a way in which it seems to me possible to gratify safely Ludlow's and Louis' desire for a periodical. The present state of parties seems to me to demand, some way or other, a work which shall honestly and deliberately set itself to do what you have declared in your letter on Order to be the function of the Christian Socialist. Hitherto we have been mere Ishmaelites, not only by position but too much in spirit. We shall be much stronger, and be much more terrible to the oppressors and dividers of the world, if we resolutely undertake the office of reconcilers : reconciliation being, as I believe, the destruction of compromise. Our kindest love to Mrs. Kingsley and the three children ; the youngest may receive it in some concrete shape ; it is in the blessed state of not comprehending abstractions.' The " dialogue " which the following letters discuss was that afterwards published as ' Phaetlion ; or Loose Thoughts for Loose Thinkers.' No others of the intended series ap- peared. F. M. 46.] BUSINESS NEGOCIATIONS FOB 'PHAETEON: 123 ' Blackallefs Lodgings, Littleliampton, ' My dear Kingsley, ' August 6, 1852. ■ I only got your " dialogue " last niglit. I am on my way to Hurstmonceaux, and I hope by scribbling these lines in a little pot-house by the station, I may save the Brighton post. Georgina has tried to say what she felt to Mrs. Kingsley. I must stick to business. ' I think Macmillan, when he has read your " dialogue," which I will take care shall be packed — if it needed such commendations — with all high words from Hare and me, would publish the dialogue with or without your name, and would give you at once all that a magazine editor would give for it, in hopes that it might be the beginning — though you need not pledge your- self to this, and must not think of it till ' Hypatia ' is done — of a series of blows to Chapman and Co., which you might deal out by yourself, and in which I might be bottle-holder. I know you have dark designs of the kind, and Cambridge is just the place for such a fight, certainly the place where a Platonic dialogue would be best understood. May I manage the ne- gociations ? ' To Mr. Daniel Macmillan. ' Blackaller's Lodgings, Littleliampton, Sussex, * My dear Macmillan, ' August 9, 1852. * I propose to send by the train from this place to-day another batch of my sermons from the 6th to the 20th.* You will find with them another MS., of which I must speak at greater length, as I believe its value is much greater. Before last Easter, Kingsley received a letter from a young man who had been much perplexed by the Chapman doctrines about truth being merely subjective. He wrote off this dialogue, which he read to me about three months ago. I was exceed- ingly delighted with it. He sent it to me one day last week. The next day I was going over to Hurstmonceaux and I took it with me. Though Hare is in a sadly broken state, hardly able to take an interest in anything, he read it with exceeding delight, and spoke of its great beauty and .* On the "Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament." 124 VALUE OF 'PHAETHON: [F. M. 47. excellence, both as an imitation of Plato and for its direct purpose. He is the best judge I know on such a subject, and my opinion entirely coincides with his, I think it may be and ought to be one of a series. If the rest were written with anything like the same power and spirit, they would be most valuable agents in the restoration of belief," and in striking deadly blows at what Kingsley and I agree in feeling to be the plague of this time. I feel this so strongly, and that Cambridge is the place to bring out such a series, and that you would be carrying out all your noblest plans if you commenced it, that I wrote to Kingsley saying I should propose it to you. I send you his answer which came by return of post to-day, which is himself all over ' ' My dear Kingsley, ' August 13, 1852. * I spent a few hours in London to-day, and saw Macmillan, who is there. His brother has read the dialogue, and is much delighted with it. He only objects for business reasons to its shortness, and as to whether it could not be somehow introduced by or into a story — I suppose in the kind of setting which Tennyson has devised for some of his gems, and which is often as perfect as the gem itself, or like Christopher Sly and the ' Taming of the Shrew.' * A modern envelopment might explain the transition from Athens to Cambridge or Edinburgh, which you contemplate." To Miss Priscilla Maurice. ' Frees, Salop, September 1, 1852. waited till I got into these friendly quarters to thank you for your very kind letter, and for the present you design for me. ' Your letter was very welcome indeed. It told me at least what I ought to have been and to be ; very little what I have been and am. I am afraid I have watched very little as one who is to give account. I have a very strong feeling of the duty of testifying for the name and kingdom of God ; a very OHAP. III.] A WEDDING-DAY LETTER. 125 deep conviction that Protestants and Komanists alike are setting up a religion in place of God, and are often shame- fully maligning Him. I feel that if ever I do the work which I am sent into the world to do, I must more earnestly call upon the Church to believe in God the Father, the Son and the Spirit, and not to confound Him with the Evil Spirit. If I did this faithfully and heartily, I should think that I was labouring for the salvation of individual souls, and of the whole Church and of mankind. But the feebleness and insincerity of my witness in words and life often appal me, and would make me despair if I were not thoroughly con- vinced that God is His own witness, and He wall use us when His good time comes, and that we are to wait for it, and believe that in spite of all that one is and is not.' To Rev. M. and Mrs. Maurice. ' Frees, Shrewsbury, September 2, 1852. * My dearest Father and Mother, * I rejoice that God permits me once more to write to you on this day, and to desire that it may yet return with the same mercies and pledge of blessings to us all. I am sure that the repetition of such days is an ever renewed token that He is with us seeking our good, and desiring to bind us in closer bonds to Himself and to each other. All union is, I am certain, of Him ; everything that breaks it, and mars it, of ourselves. I have need every day to confess how much I have set at naught and trifled with the blessed ties by which He has knit me to dear friends and relations ; sometimes the thought is appalling. But above all, and beneath all, is the sense of a reconciling love which is stronger than all one's selfishness, and which will overcome it at last ' The circumstances to which the next letters to Mr. Ludlow refer will best be told in the words of a letter from Mr. Hughes. It is necessary to explain that the pamphlet by the then Lord Goderich, which probably differed somewhat in its printed form from that which it had taken in manuscript, is in its 126 F. B. M. SUPPBESSES A PAMPHLET [1852. F. 31. 47. printed form a strong assertion of democracy as the great /ac^ of the age, and of " the duty of the age " to recognise this, to help it forward and to bring the democracy into accord with the government of Christ. The writer expressly calls himself a " democrat" and urges the working-men, whom he more ex- pressly addresses, to strive by all honest means for universal suffrage and to make themselves worthy of it. It will perhaps be well also to premise that my father at all times considered it to be the duty of statesmen to look forward with hope to the time when all men should be Jit to take their own place in the Commonwealth, and a further duty to do their utmost to help forward such a time, but he looked upon it as equally their duty to endeavour not to admit men to the franchise before they ^were fit for it. It is not, however, to suffrage questions that the letters directly refer. Letter from Mr. T. Hughes. ' As you know, the "Tracts by Christian Socialists " were coming out, under the care of a publishing committee on which were Ludlow, I, and Kingsley — I forget whether any one else, but with your father as supreme authority, no tract being published without his sanction. ' Well, this being so, Goderich (as he then was) sent me the j\IS. of his ' Duty of the Age.' I was the only one in town, and, unless L am much mistaken, your father was out of England. At any rate I didn't know where to get at him. So I sent the tract down to Kingsley and received it back with a perfect song of triumph, that a young lord should at last have taken his place frankly in the front line of the people's army, &c., &c. Without waiting for your father's sanction, I sent the MS. to be printed by Bezer, the one- eyed Chartist costermonger whom we — Heaven save the mark ! — had set up as our publisher ! Goderich consented to bear the extra expense, so I ordered it to be printed on good paper, with ample margin (see copy by this book post), and put upon the title-page my two favourite quotations, and we all thought millennium was a coming with a wet sail ! CHAP. III.] ON " THE DUTY OF THE AGE.'' 127 ' When lo ! and belioid your father turns up, and I, in gayness of heart, wrote to obtain his sanction to publication, just as a matter of form ! I got in reply a precious wigging (the only one I ever had) with orders to suppress the whole edition, and it was consequently carried ignominiously up to my chambers in Old Square by Movoyjr (as we used to call the one-eyed Chartist), and there remained for years until, on moving, I sent it to Lord Kipon's (some dozen huge square brown-paper packages), where it remains, I take it, to this day. I kept, however, some few copies, one of which I send you by book post, as it is a sort of literary curiosity ; never having been entered at Stationers' Hall. ' But what I want to impress on you is that this is the most crucial test of your father's j^Z^tcA-, more so a great deal than the central agency business,/or every man of us was against him. It was a perfect thunderbolt when your father came down with his peremptory veto. On every other occasion, as on the agency business, he had a strong minority, at any rate, on his side ; but in this not a man, so far as I re- member. However, he had his way, as you see — and on the whole I think a very good job too.' Mr. Ludlow doubts if so many of the council read the pamphlet as Mr. Hughes supposes to have seen it. He did not himself know who the author was till after he had read and approved it. To Mr, Ludlow, * My dear Friend, ' September, 1852. 'I submit thankfully, or, at least, I wish to do so, to any reproof you may administer. I have perhaps too quickly forgotten the letter and all about it, for I at once explained to Lord Goderich why I had written it, and how certainly I should not have written it, if I had not had the fullest confidence in his honesty and manliness. I have never received so many proofs of kindness and trust from him as since he saw it ; if any annoyance remains in his mind, I am much grieved. 128 ON BEMOCBACY. \F. M. 47. ^ But I do not think there can be. I did not recollect that I had mentioned you in the letter. I might have said — I daresay I did — that I wished you to see it, because though I have no hope of being understood by people generally, I am anxious not to be misunderstood by those with whom I am acting, and especially not to get credit with them for agreement when I see things dijfferently. It is quite un- necessary to enter into the general question. I have often explained to you that monarchy with me is a starting-point, and that I look upon Socialism as historically developed out •of it, not absorbing it into itself. You, as far as I see, begin with democracy, and develop something like a monarchy out of it. The difference is one of method ; and differences of method are to me very practical and important. But I do not want to convert you ; I only want you to see whereabouts I am standing. I did speak vehemently to Lord Goderich, as I should not speak to Walter Cooper, because I hold it a primary article of faith that every Christian man should hold the ground Grod has given him. How intensely that is my conviction I cannot easily explain.' ' Rodington Picctory, Shrewsbury. September 8, 1852. * My dear Friend, ^ Anent democracy — I did not mean, and T certainly expressed myself very blunderingly if I left the impression on your mind that I meant, to denounce that which bears that name in your mind or even in Lord Goderich's. *I said expressly in my letter to him that Socialism — or the acknowledgment of brotherhood in heart and fellowship in work, seemed to me the thing which you were aiming at, the special craving of this time ; the necessary fulfilment of the principle of the Gospel. What I complained of was that you had given this truth a bad name, which bad name is much better restricted to a bad thing which certainly does i9xist, and of which Christian Socialism is I believe the legiti- mate and appointed cure. I cannot get rid of the feeling CHAP. III.] 129 that whenever you use the word democracy you fall into an equivoque. Those to whom you speak believe that you wish the people to govern themselves. " Yes," you say, " we do. That is, we wish them to restrain themselves ; that is, we wish them to submit to Christ and have Him for their king." Well, but what I wish to know is, do they mahe Christ their king ? Might they choose another if they liked ? If not, your demo- cracy is not what other people intend by it, and what they have a right to intend by it. Twist the word as you w^ill, it must imply a right on", the part of the people to choose, cashier and depose their rulers. It must imply that power proceeds from them, that it does not find them. Lord Goderich adopts Carlyle as his voucher for democracy ; though Carlyle is always raving about the king and hero whom people must obey. You do not swear by him at all. But how can you escape from the endless contradictions and cross purposes in which he is involved — from his recognition of two great truths, that the king is given, and the people is given, and his inability to reconcile them because he does not confess the giver — unless you frankly cast away the phrase which is the plea for all inversion. I do not want to rob you of a single conviction ; I want you only to dismiss what sets all your convictions, it seems to me, ajar, and prevents them from bearing, as they ought to do, upoQ the conscience and heart of the English people. A king given, an aristocracy given, and I can see my way clearly to call upon them to do the work which God has laid upon them ; to repent of their sins, to labour that the whole manhood of the country may have a voice, that every member of Christ's body may be indeed a free man. But reconstitute society upon the democratic basis — treat the sovereign and the aristocracy as not intended to rule and guide the land, as only holding their commissions from us — and I anticipate nothing but a most accursed sacerdotal rule or a military despotism, with the great body of the population in either case morally, politically, physically serfs, more than they are at present or ever have been. VOL. n. K 130 ROYALTY, ARISTOCRACY, HUMANITY, [1852. F.MAY. ' I admit all yon say of my unfitness to govern. But it certainly does not arise from my unbelief in democracy, and would not be corrected if I embraced it. I am naturally by birth, education, everything, a democrat. I have arrived at my convictions about monarchy and aristocracy by sheer force of evidence, reflection on history, belief in God's re- velation. I can prove, as you do, one process by the opposite. But I must begin from the Father if I am to acknowledge the Son ; from the head if I am to acknowledge a body, from the one Spirit if I am to see life in the many members. History is to me the most beautiful unfolding of Grod's purpose for mankind, amidst all contradictions of human self-will, when I take it as I find it, and do not slip in a theory at the back of the facts ; it is a most horrible dissonance, when I look upon all the past as only existing to destroy itself, and to bring forth the many-headed monster in our day. ' What displeases me most in Lord Goderich's pamphlet, if it isln print what it was in manuscript, is what offended me years ago in an anti-slavery speech of O'Connell's. I mean the indignation expressed at the Americans, not because they violate Christ's Gospel, but because they outrage the prin- ciple of democracy, by keeping slaves. What can be so unfair as this mode of speaking ? Prove if you like, and if you can, that democracy may exist without slavery. Confute the evidence which leads superficial people like me to doubt if it can ; but to take for granted their repugnance, with so many facts in the old world against it, and with the startling phenomenon which the Northern States just as much as the Southern present in modern days (see on that point ' Uncle Tom's Cabin,' passim) does seem to me flagrantly unjust to the people of the United States, and a flagrant outrage upon all fair reasoning. The triumph which the liberated negro, according to Mrs. Stowe, who is evidently an honest and hearty republican, feels when he sets foot on the free soil of Canada, is only an echo of my own deepest convictions that the voice of the deliverer must come as the voice of the king ; JSfECESSABY TO AN OBGANIC CHBISTIAN SOCIETY. 131 and that, where yon have what is called self-government, and much better and more truly democracy, there you must have a subject race through which the citizen may realise his own stature, and by which he may be admonished — most ineffectually no doubt — of the peril of sinking into mere animalism. Let the true idea of aristocracy as the witness of the lordship of the spirit over the flesh express itself legitimately ; let it have its recognised place in the common- wealth, or it must and will come in illegitimately as a Plu- tocracy or a Chromatocracy. I stand upon my old English ground. I don't want a Blackstonian balance of powers, a negation of results, any absurd via media in State or Church. But I must have Monarchy, Aristocracy and Socialism, or rather Humanity, recognised as necessary elements and conditions of an organic Christian, society. If you keep any one out it will avenge itself fearfully, as Aristotle says the women did in Sparta for the neglect of them by Lycurgus. ' ^ I know how hard you will find it to stomach these propositions, chiefly because you have so much more political learning than I have, and are so much more up with the times that you cannot go back as I do to what strike you as antiquated constitutional dogmas which we have outgrown. I am in my second babyhood, and am still in my alphabet and primer. I think you will have to begin your elements again, and ; when you have got them well by heart, all your higher know- ledge will be of unspeakable worth to you. I envy it now more than I like to confess ; then I shall not envy it, but shall be most delighted to profit by it, and fill up in some little degree the immense chasms in my information and experience. I do hope that I may be of some little use, not , in my own person but in giving a foundation to the minds of some who have materials for building, and a knowledge of order which I am utterly wanting in. That is my vocation. You will find more and more that I can do something when I remember it, and nothing at all when I lose sight of it and try my hand at some work which you, and much less wise men than you, will perform when the time comes, as T hope K 2 132 [F. M. 47. and believe, famously well. I fear I shall always seem to you only an obstructive, though in my heart and conscience I do not believe that I am one. I would not willingly burn up any of your wood, hay or stubble ; but for my task neither that nor your gold and precious stones are of much avail. I am only a digger. God bless you.' ' Eodington Eectory, ' My dear KixgSLEY, 'Saturday, September 11, 1852. ' I cannot easily explain to you how much I am cheered and delighted with the prospect which your series of dialogues opens to me. My sympathies are naturally most strong with the epilogue : it expresses so much of what I have felt and have wished to say. But for that very reason I am more suspicious of my own judgment and have determined to be more watchful and exacting. ' I almost fear that you will be thought not to have bridged over with sufficient care, for ordinary readers, the passage between dialectics and Catholic faith, which looks to the majority such a hopeless chasm. You have also very naturally, considering the cause you were engaged in, thrown, which is not your usual temptation, an overweight into the High Church scale, and have perhaps made the Evangelical a little too light, at least so it will appear to many over whom you might have a healthful influence. Thirdly, you have scarcely allowed sufficiently for the kind of reaction to which Emer- sonianism (though it may as you say be descended on the father's side from Calvinism) is owing, against the broad money-getting materialist tendencies of the United States. I should have been disposed, but I leave the hint for your consideration as it may not be so easy to work out, to start from this point ; to try to make, perhaps through Templeton,. an acknowledgment that he and his school had been dazzled by the vision of a spiritual world suddenly bursting upon them in the midst of the cotton plantations and in the cotton markets, that the discovery of such a spiritual world as having to do with them was likely enough to turn their CHAP. III.J LITEBABY CBITICISM. 133 brains, seeing that all tlieir religious teachers had led them to think that it was intended only for a certain elect class the most alien from them. ' In this way you might, I think, less offensively connect the new and the old, and it might enable you to develope the two sides of Puritanism, viz. the strong assurance of a divine calling and of God as a personal ruler to which America owes the felling of her trees and the building up of her society : an assurance, it should in all honesty be added, which enabled them to assert a real divine government of the world in opposition to the Laudian government by rope and cope, but w^hich led them to the tyrannical confusion of outward law and inward morality — this first, then secondly the exclusive arrogation to themselves of a property in all invisible and divine treasures. Justice should be done here also to the reality of their convictions, to their actual perception of that which eye hath not seen, though it ended in their mistaking this perception for the thing seen, and so denying it to exist except for them. I am only expanding your own thoughts, but I believe you may expand them with advantage, some- thing in this way. * And then it seems to me the transition would be easier both to Templeton's pathetic and most true statement of his own experience, which I would not alter at all, and to the de- velopement of your own doctrine, both respecting the creeds and dialectics. The creeds assert truths for mankind, truths in themselves, which the Calvinists assert for those who discover them. Templeton and Lady Jane cannot understand one another because she has keener spiritual perceptions and affections than he has, and because her pastors and masters tell her that these perceptions and affections are divinity and that she belongs to a world from which her husband is excluded. * She cannot doubt the veracity of her spiritual organs. He some- times fancies that they belong only to women ; sometimes he is tempted to claim his rights in the Emersonian fashion by talk- ing of a great comprehensive humanity, and the like ; but 134 LITEBABY AND OTHEB SUGGESTIONS. \F. 31. 47. his English sense revolts, and he betakes himself to venison and claret. You tell him that what he wants is the truth for humanity, of which these are the counterfeits ; that if he finds that, he and his wife will understand each other — she will defer to his guidance and will quicken his sloth. The occu- pation of dear Mr. Hunt-the-Slipper in teaching a special female Christianity, and preparing ladies for the Eomish priest whom he at the same time denounces as the child of the Devil, will be gone, though he may pursue honester and nobler occupations, may assert, against the mere High Church and old English formalist, the reality of spiritual apprehensions and communications, and call Scribes and Pharisees to re- pentance, without pretending to decry earthly realities of which in practice he makes only too decided an acknowledg- ment, or actually decrying spiritual realities, the Catholic truths, the truths for every one, which alone prevent the apprehensions and experiences from being mere hysterical emotions. If he will not do that, the Gulf of Emersonianism and Eomanism is before him ; he must choose one or the other for himself and his disciples. But those who, instead of adopting Proclus and the Neo-Platonists as their guides with Emerson, will take the old Plato and his master to help them in sifting their own words and thoughts, will find in the old Catholic creeds the substitute for all mere decrees of fathers, councils, popes, as well as for all the froth of modern hu- manitarians. That is my general notion, the object being to make the connection more obvious and felt between the difi'erent "subjects which are touched in your dialogue, and to make the purpose of dialectics, in the Platonic sense of the word, more intelligible. I should like also that great tenderness both to the old Calvinists and the Lady Janes of the time should accompany the necessary denunciation of their exclusiveness. I almost think I should hold out the subject of baptism, rather as one to be considered hereafter^ than give so much prominence to it here.' CHAP. iii.J " DIGGING " VERSUS " B UILDING." 135 ' IJodington, Sunday, September 19, 1852. * My dear Kingsley, ' .... I was delighted and surprised beyond measure to find your epilogue in proof, and altered more entirely to my mind than I could have imagined possible To me it was a great satis- faction, for I had many misgivings about my criticisms. I read your MS. to Mrs. Maurice after I had written them, and she was so exceedingly delighted with it, that I began to fancy all female inspiration, for which I have a German reverence, was against me. But I believe she admired the whole for the sake of the part which she was best able to appreciate, and that I desired to see unaltered. 'About the dialectics I w^as, perhaps, the best judge, and you have done all, and more than all, I wished, in reference to them. In fact, I can see nothing to amend except certain printers' blunders, which I have not meddled with. I am rather glad you do not commit yourself, as much as you had, to a panegyric on the American Episcopalians. I have a great respect for them, but without more accurate informa- tion I would rather express hopes of what they may do, and assurance of what they can do, than confidence as to the actual We had two charming days for Beddgelert and Snowdon, which Mrs. Maurice was not well enough to mount. *A letter from Ludlow — very interesting, learned, and full of kindness — convinces me how much his constructive and well- furnished mind needs the dialectics you are recommending, but also how much it will be disposed to nauseate them. He comj)lains of me sadly for professing to be merely a digger. He says a Christian ought to build and not to be always looking after foundations, which I doubt. * I wish Socrates would explain to some Lacedaemonian how he should think about Brasidas and his death, and that Lady Jane Templeton might be taught that the Bible has not a double standard for judging of departed men — one a secular (the honest belief), one a religious (a conventional) — but would speak of Gideon, or Samson, or Wellington, though 136 WHAT FOUNDATION THE DIGGER SEEKS. 'F. M. 47. none of them immaculate, as having done that which is right in the sight of the Lord, so far as they did anything worthy of our praise.' To Mr. J. M. Ludlow. ' The Keble Beau, Slirewsbiiiy, ' My DEAR FrJEXD, ' iSeptember 24, 1852. ' Yon treated my anti-democratical heresies with great tender- ness, of which I should not have been worthy, if I had really given myself credit for any antiquarian knowledge which I suspected you of wanting. I have little enough of that, as well as of that acquaintance with the present condition of legal, political, and economical science, which I have always envied you for. And that was nearly what I meant by calling myself a digger merely. If I had not been afraid of your mistaking me, I should have given myself the grand title of a theologian, and said that, leaving other spheres of thought and activity to those who were destined for them, and had been furnished with the gifts appropriate to them, I had taken my ground on that one study in which most people would say that I had a professional interest, but which most regard as hopelessly barren. But such a statement would have been misleading, unless I had impressed you with my own deep conviction that theology is not (as the schoolmen have represented it) the climax of all studies, the Corinthian capital of a magnificent edifice, composed of physics, politics, economics, and connecting them as parts of a great system with each other — but is the foundation upon which they all stand. And even that language would have left my meaning open to a very great, almost an entire, misunderstanding, unless I could exchange the name theology for the name God, and say that He Himself is the root from which all human life, and human society, and ultimately, through man, nature itself, are derived. I tried to express all in that one 2)hrase that I was a digger, intending distinctly this, that I fear all economics, politics, physics, are in danger of be- coming Atheistic : not when they are worst, but even when CHAP. III.] THE KINGDOM AN EXISTING BEALITY. 137 they are best; that Mill, Fourier, Humboldt, are more in danger of making a system which shall absolutely exclude God, and sujfice without Him, than any less faithful and con- sistent thinkers — that, just so far as we are chiefly construc- tive, this danger becomes more imminent and tremendous, that the destructive analysis of the last century is not so alarming as the synthesis of our own. ^ Therefore let people call me merely a ^philosopher, or merely anything else, or what they will, or what they will not ; my business, because I am a theologian, and have no vocation except for theology, is not to build, but to dig, to show that economy and politics (I leave physics to dear Kingsley, vrho will in that region, and in every other, carry out my hints in a way I could never dream of, and which I admire with trembling, hope, and joy) must have a ground beneath them- selves, that society is not to be made anew by arrangements of ours, but is to be regenerated by finding the law and ground of its order and harmony the only secret of its : existence in God. This must seem to you an unpractical and unchristian method ; to me it is the only one which makes action possible, and Christianity anything more than :an artificial religion for the use of believers. I wish very •earnestly to be understood on this point, because all m}- future course must be regulated on this principle, or on no principle at all. The Kingdom of Heaven is to me the great practical existing reality which is to renew the earth and make it a habitation for blessed spirits instead of for demons. " To preach the Gospel of that Kingdom, the fact that it is among us, and is not to be set up at all, is my calling and business. Because I have preached it so uncertainly — like one beating the air — I have had an easy, quiet life ; far too much of the good opinion of my friends ; merely a few lumps of not hard mud from those who, now and then, suspect that I have hold of something which might make me their mischievous enemy. But if ever I do any good work, and €arn any of the hatred, which the godly in Christ Jesus 138 THE FOUNDATION OF TEE UNIVEBSE. [1852. F. Tli. 47. receive, and have a right to, it must be in the way I have indicated, by proclaiming society and humanity to be divine realities, as they stand, not as they may become, and by calling upon the priests, kings, prophets of the world to answer for their sin in having made them unreal by separating them from the living and eternal God who has established them in Christ for His glory. * This is what I call digging, this is what I oppose to building. And the more I read the Epistle to the Corinthians, the more I am convinced that this was St. Paul's work, the one by which he hoped to undermine and to unite the members of the ApoUos, Cephas, Pauline, and Christian (for those who said " we are of Christ " were the worst canters and dividers of all) schools. Christ the actual foundation of the universe ; not Christ a Messiah to those who received Him and shaped Him according to some notion of theirs ; the head of a body, not the teacher of a religion, was the Christ of St. Paul. And such a Christ I desire to preach, and to live in, and die in. Only let us each work in the calling whereto God has called us, and ask Him to teach us what it is, and we shall understand one another and work together.' riTAP. lY.] DEATE-BED S TOBIES. 189 CHAPTEE lY. "0, 'tis writ large, the thing I have to dnl'^—Sj^misJi Gi/2->fiy. HYPATIA AND AUGUSTIXE — THE DANGER TO UNITARIANS OF A VIOLENT REACTION THE SABBATH QUESTION AT THE CRYSTAL PALACE — THE ATHANASIAN CREED — THE ' PROPHETS AND KINGS ' LETTER INDICATING INTENTION TO GIVE SOON A FULLER EXPRESSION TO HIS THOUGHTS PRESENT YIEW OF ' SUBSCRIP- TION NO BONDAGE ' — MENTIONS TO HIS SISTER A FORTHCOMING i^OOK ADDRESSED TO UNITARIANS THE RECONSTITUTION OF THE RIENDS OF CO-OPERATORS UNDER THE NEW ACT — HOSTILITY OF i'OPULAR AGITATORS — CONFLICTING YIEWS. ' My dear Kingsley, ' Eodington, September 29, 1852. * As a general rule I distrust cleatli-bed stories, and I believe clergymen and medical men, whose experience is more exten- sive than mine, distrust them more. I do not see any a priori impossibility or even improbability that a man should have felt what the tract writer says the dying father described ; the sin is in deducing a doctrine from a morbid and miserable state of mind into which a man could not have come, or at least could not have warned his children of, if the Spirit had deserted him : for who else could put into his heart any concern for their welfare, or could preserve him from wishing that they should share his ruin ? A grave and fear- ful moral might be extracted from such a narrative as to the blindness and darkness into which a man may bring himself respecting God's will towards him ; but, anyhow, it is blind- ness to a truth which the teacher should have declared to him, instead of accepting and indorsing his falsehood. The 140 LITEBABY SUGGESTIONS FOB HYFATIA. [1852. wretched attempt to found an argument on the text from Genesis requires no comment, except as it illustrates the common method of first deducing a law from a code of disease and then pretending to discover it in the Bihle. ' Now as to Kaphael and Augustine, I am always afraid of injur- ing your story by my hints, but such as I have I give them. Suppose Victoria or her father got him in the first place to hear one of Augustine's sermons ; the subject is a Psalm. He refines and allegorises without mercy. Nearly all the common sense of David evaporates in mysticism ; now and then there is a sentence of pure gold. He puns upon the Latin version ; extracts the meaning of a Hebrew from Latin etymologies. This statement, which I purposely exaggerate a little, or rather understate the amount of wheat amidst the chaff to show the impression which this sermon would make on a J ew, you may verify in its general outline by turning to the " Enarratio in Psalmos " almost anywhere. Eaphael of course is disgusted ; he thinks David is treated by Christian preachers much as Homer was treated by Hypatia ; however, it all serves to draw forth a good deal of sound Hebrew feeling which his Neo-Platonism and his subsequent despair had crushed. Next by way of experiment (I suppose it would be possible without any direct profession of a design to be converted ; but this you must ascertain from Bingham or Augustine), he goes among the Catechumens to hear a lecture which some young deacon of Hippo is giving. The poor fellow is bungling sadly ; he talks about the Creed, quotes texts, produces authorities from this and that father ; Eaphael thinks the poor swarthy people had better have been left to their old gods. Augustine comes in, listens for a while to this deacon, who becomes rather frightened, bites his lips ; he proposes to take the class. The change is magical ; in a few moments all eyes are fixed upon the catechist. Out of those same words which had seemed to contain a scheme of religion as hard and exclusive as those which were falling to pieces, he draws the revelation of a God of absolute love, of a Son jnanifesting this Being and fulfilling His purposes, of a Spirit CHAP. IV. J AUGUSTINE AS A 3IAK 141 carrying illumination into the heart, peace into the world. And it is the natural sense of the words ! And the Africans confess it and drink it in, clods and brutes as they are, with an intelligence which transfigures their countenances, and raises them into human beings ! AVhat did Kaphael ever see like it or feel like it at an Alexandrian lecture ? It is very difierent, too, from any old Jewish discourse — different, but, he thinks, not in kind. There is no violent contrast here, such as he felt in the sermon. The God of the Creed might be the God of Abraham. He might be the Lord who was to gather all nations under His yoke. Eead " De catechizandis rudibus." It will justify this part of the picture, I think. The next step is a personal interview ; the means of bringing it about, whether it is to be accidental or sought for, I leave to you. Eaphael soon finds that he is in the presence of a real man. There may be niaiseries in the opening of their conversation which annoy him ; but when they come to close quarters he finds that Augustine knows what evil is, not by the hearing of the ear ; that he has had it in him and has wrestled with it to the death. He knows it too in its palpable outward forms. He is altogether practical, and all the controversies of the schools about evil have been trans- lated into facts and realities by his experience. Moreover, Eaphael perceives, to his wonder, that he knows God, not by the hearing of the ear. Xo Xeo-Platonist ever could speak of God near him, within him, more than he does, but not as a fine conception, a beautiful dream, into which he is some day to be absorbed. This God, in whom he is living and moving, is as personal and substantial as any Hebrew could believe Him to be, the Warrior with Evil, the Con- queror of it, the Being in whom the Spirit of Lies wishes men not to believe and trust. ' This is enough, I think, for the Jew's conversion so far as Augustine has a share in it. He on his side is not discom- fited by finding that his new-born son is not the counterpart of himself. He is thankful to have begotten him in God's 142 DBAMA AND PBOPHECY. [1852. F. M. 47. image, not in his own. There is a freedom and toleration in Augustine, quite equal to bear with his heresies on marriage, and with many other great practical differences. The effect of these differences on their subsequent intercourse, I take it, is this : Augustine believes that the City of God, a body wholly separate from the plague city — the ungodly world, which is hastening to destruction — will somehow triumph and establish itself. He knows in whom he has believed ; ho can commit himself and perhaps the Church of Africa to God, though Boniface has deserted, and the Yandals are approaching. But it is an utterly dark prospect as far as the earth is concerned. The only hope is in keeping oneself as much from meddling with it as possible. One cannot altogether. The Donatists are all wrong that the Church here is to be spotless. Only the true elect members of it are that, and they not altogether ; there must be a sift- ing of the net, and a casting away of the bad fish — then, in some other state of things, all will be right. This does not satisfy Kaphael : the City of God, he affirms with Jewish pertinacity, is to subdue this world. He admits that it is a Kingdom of Heaven ; that the Jews expected such a kingdom, and that it was not revealed till the Son of God took flesh and overcame death ; that the Neo-Platonists are dreaming, and not falsely, of such a kingdom as existing. It is as pure as the Donatists say. it is ; men are impure for not living as members of it. The earth does not make it impure. Everything on earth is good and is to be claimed by it as good potentially, and to be made actually good. All these coming Gothic and Vandalic triumphs are steps to its triumph. The old tyranny of Kome is to pass away ; but oh ! beware, Augustine, that a new tyranny, more detestable and accursed, does not spring out of its ruins ; a tyranny built upon the attempt to set up a kingdom of Heaven on the earth in the name of Christ, on the denial that Christ has set it up already and that He is the foundation of it. — There is one of the most impertinent interferences with a man's hero on record. But I am not guilty, like Steele, of thrusting in a CHAP. IV.] TENDENCY TO BEACTION IN UNITABIANS. Id3 bit of Sir Eoger de Coveiiey when Addison was away. You Lave drawn it upon yourself. * I hope to be in London on Tuesday. Alfred Tennyson has done me the high honour of asking me to be godfather to his child, who is to be baptized on that day. I accept the ofl&ce with real thankfulness and fear. It was to please his wife he asked me.' To Bev. J. ComiJton, at this time a Unitarian, subsequently in English Orders. ' 21 Queen's Square, Bloomsbury, ' My dear Sir, ' October 7, 1852. * I hope you have attributed my silence to the right cause. I only returned home from Shropshire on Tuesday, and I only found your pamphlet and letter at my father's last night. If I had got it sooner, you would have received my grateful thanks at once. ' I read the two sermons hastily before I went to bed, and found very much indeed to interest me in them most deeply. You will easily suppose that anything relating to Unitarians or their movements touches me very nearly, even if there were not so much in your present experience with which I can sympathise. I should very much like to talk with you, and correspond with you if you had leisure, on many of the topics you have introduced into your discourses. Perhaps I may be wrong — it is always dangerous to comment on the course which any minds are taking, since the Spirit is no doubt leading them in ways we know not — but I cannot helj) feeling • sometimes as if you and others of those brought up in Unitarianism were striking rather vehemently into the opposite direction to that point from which you started ; that, experiencing the deficiency of your former creed in its assertion of a divine Spirit, you have overlooked what I believe I learnt from it and have heartily to thank it for — an acknowledgment of a God whom I was taught to call the Father distinct from ourselves, and very far indeed too distant from us. There was an infinite peril, it seems to me, of 144 TBUTH ALWAYS LIVING; KNOWN OB NOT. making this God a mere God of nature, removed from human sympathies, merely beneficent, not in the highest sense benevolent; but there was also the great truth which de- veloped itself in my mind, through many struggles, and a deep sense of evil, into that which we call — you must forgive me a phrase which you do not like — the Catholic Creed. I felt and feel that, precious and invaluable as the truth is, that the Spirit guides us into truth, the truth exists whether we are guided into it or no, and the Bible seems to me to bring it out from the opposite side ; to start from a Kevelation of God, and to exhibit Him coming into fellowship with His creatures. I have come strongly to think that the subjective faith of F. Newman and others will never be Catholic though they wish it [to] be, that it will be only a refined individualism, and must terminate in various individual superstitions ; that Truth must come to us, not of course visibly or verbally, in order that we may embrace it ; that it must come to mankind in order that each man may be the better for it. ^ This is the text of a very long discourse, upon which I must not enter. But your kindness and frankness encouraged me to open it when I ought perhaps only to have thanked you for the suggestions and hopes your note and sermons have supplied me with.' To Mr. Daniel Macmillan. '21 Queen's Square, October 25,'1852. * My dear Macmillan, ' Just now this Sabbath question is much disturbing me. My dear and excellent friend Grove is the secretary of the New Crystal Palace, and is greatly agitated by the violent de- nunciations of the Evangelical clergy against him and it. ' They are trimming the pulpits for a regular assault. They command us all to preach against the Palace on peril of our souls. I feel the crisis is a very serious one. My own re- verence for the Sabbath would seem to many extreme. I believe England and Scotland would perish if they lost it, or began to regard it as Protestants and Komanists abroad SABBATH QUESTION. EFFECTS OF BEEP SOBBO^V. 145 do. But I also see that there is an infinite danger of those very views becoming accepted as orthodox and Scriptural which our Lord struggled with, which drew from Him the ansrer at their Pharisaic hardness of heart of which St. Mark speaks, and His opposition to which caused the conspiracy as^ainst His life. The modern fanaticism will drive hundreds of literary men far from ill-afi"ected to Christianity (such as Thackeray) into positive hatred of Christianity. They will see that we are setting up the new moons and Sabbaths above righteousness and mercy, yet it requires the greatest caution not to trample upon the earnest and truthful feelings to which the pulpit agitators are addressing themselves. The attempt must, I think, be made ; and I sometimes have a glimpse of the way in which it ought to be done.' To Bev. F. Garden on the Death of his Wife. ' My deak Gakdex, ' Xovember 22, 1852. ' There is no measuring the sorrow which God has called you to bear. I know that it will not be less deep or terrible because you may have long been expecting it, because God may have sent you merciful warnings and preparations. We do not, cannot, receive them as warnings ; it is impossible to believe really that the nearest and dearest part of our own being is sroinor to be severed from it. But it is the unfathomableness of the grief which drives us ofi" from all expedients for allay- ing it, and sends us to the one source of consolation and sympathy. The belief of a Man who sufiers with us becomes then not a theory but a fact ; one which we may recognise, though we may feel very little of the joy or satisfaction which it might seem to be full of. For all deep truths must be found out, I think, slowly. They lie beneath all experiences of pleasure or pain. We are to grow with them, and in due time they will work upon us and mould us after their own likeness. May God be with you, and make you know more of Himself than any words can tell ; then by degrees we may I hope know also more and more of those VOL. n. L 146 BEASONS FOB FEABING TO PBOSELYTISE. we have lost — esjDecially while we are trying to work as thev would have had us work ' 0)1 the Atlianasian Greed ; to one hesitating to take orders. ' 21 Queen's Square, Bloom.sbury, Xovember 23, 1852. ' My dear Sir, * i began a letter to you long ago, but I was hindered in writing it, and I was very anxious not to reward your kind confidence in me, which I greatly value, by a hasty answer which might have done you harm. I shall do you great harm if anything I say is accepted by you merely as a lull of your scruples. Much as I should wish to see you, and ail earnest men who feel they have a vocation for the priesthood, entering into it, I would not for the world be accessory to your taking that step without the clearest, simplest conviction, not that I have said something j)lausible about your doubts, but that you can, either because they are removed, or because they do not affect you as they did, ask God who sees the heart to send you forth to His work. * I have seen so much of the misery of tampering with the conscience, of accepting mere arguments as solutions of difficulties (which often entangle parts of our being far out of the reach of arguments), that I would rather be silent for ever than lead any one I care for to adopt my explanations, as if they were good for anything but as hints which he must meditate on himself. 'You remember probably a saying of Dr. Arnold's that the early Church was utterly wrong and foolish in making the nature of God, which is so far out of our reach, the ground of its belief and confession ; whereas some doctrine directly concerning our own human life ought to be the uniting bond. A more plausible statement was never made, nor I think one more directly at variance with experience, reason, and Scripture. * Experience shows us that confused and partial notions about God have been the root of all the divisions, supersti- .CHAP. IV.] ATHANASIUS AS A MAN. 147 tions, plagues of the world. Our highest human reason asks for the knowledge of God as the ground of itself — as that which is to deliver us from the notions, conceits and imperfect apprehensions which helong to us as individuals. Scripture is either the gradual unveiling of God, or it is nothing. ' On the other hand all experience testifies that what Dr. Arnold would call the religious truths that concern our souls are apprehended hy us as indivicluah (e.g. our personal evil, our need of a justifier, the fact of justification), and that when- ever they are made the grounds of fellowsliip they lose their meaning and acquire a new and even false character. Keason says that what refers to each man (as each) cannot be the foundation for humanity to. rest upon ; Scripture is addressed to nations, to Churches, to man. * Here then is my justification of the old Church, or rather of that which the history of the Church shows not to have been its work at all, but the necessity of its existence. Because it was for man, and had a Gospel coming from God to man, its creeds were declarations of His nature ; they could be nothing else. 'Now the key to the life of Athanasius (I am not of course speaking now of the creed which is attributed to him but of the man) is this. He clearly saw that all idolatry lurked in Arianism ; that it was a distinct return to creature- worship ; that it was the substitution of a pseudo-philoso- phical dogma for a living God ; that it destroyed all basis for union among men. Therefore it was worth while to incur all the misery of seeming to fight for a name and a letter ; it was worth while to be banished from his see, to be hated by five-sixths of the Church, to be the enemy of emperors, to be an outcast among men. He was, I do believe, in the truest, simplest sense of the words, one of the most Catholic of men, who would have quarrelled with you about nothing but that which he believed would rob mankind of its greatest treasure. *I am not sure that he would have written the creed ; perhaps not. Nor in this day ought any one to write such a creed, L 2 148 THE TEXT " JUDGE NOT" AND THE CREED. [F. M. 47. because he would be conveying a false impression of wbat he meant. But need that creed convey a false impression to us ? Should we not have a more false impression if we were without it ? Is it not a false impression which makes us wish to be rid of it ? What it teaches me is this : to know God is eternal life ; not to know Him is eternal death. That belief thoroughly and heartily entertained, instead of making us uncharitable, would be the very ground and root of our charity. Grod is the perfect charity. The Father dwelling with the Son in one Spirit is that absolute and eternal love which is the ground of all things, that upon which we may repose our hopes for ourselves and the universe. Take away any part of this full idea ; throw me upon some meagre conception of a God — and I fall into idolatry, first into the worship of an evil spirit — a mere selfish being at last. This is what I regard with such infinite horror ; this is the abyss which I see, not at the feet of some Arian or Unitarian, but at my own ; this is what I warn myself and my country and the whole Church of. It is a real, not an imaginary danger. ' The language of the creed often startles me. If I could use it to condemn any single human being, it would outrage myi| conscience and my faith. I dare not repeat it because I should feel how monstrous [it was] to be using Christ's name with my lips while I was outraging His express command : " Judge not that ye be not judged." But I take that command with me to the recital of the creed. I am never more impressed with the awfulness of it and the duty of recollecting it than when I am saying the creed. I do not ask whether the person who wrote it reconciled it with his obedience to Christ. I hope he did, but I cannot tell. If I can, and if I can lead others my contemporaries to do it, that is all my concern. I see frequently persons who object to this creed, yet who do not object to judge their brethren for some words and some acts. It is only this kind of condem- nation which is so shocking to them. But He who would not condemn the woman taken in adultery does not authorise us CHAP. IV.] DIFFEBENCES FBOM ABNOLD'S THOUGHTS. 149 to condemn, that is to determine the state of mind of any person taken in any act whatsoever ; only to condemn the evil, only to consider what the effect of it would be upon us, and how it would affect the community. When I speak of our being more false without that creed, I mean this, that I think we should be attaching a less serious, a more carnal, sense to the words eternal life and eternal death than that creed would lead us to ; that we should feel ourselves more free to judge erring individuals a little, because we had thrown off what sounds like a very harsh judgment upon them — so harsh that we must regard it as not meant for any individual offenders at all except ourselves. I must plainly say that there are passages in Arnold's sermons respecting future punishment, and the way we are to think of our friends and those around us, which I could not have uttered for the world. I believe if he had had more sympathy with the idea of the creed he would not have uttered them, they would have shocked his heart and conscience and reverence for God's word. But looking at the future merely in the light of a visitation for transgressions, not as interpreted by the words " This is life eternal," &c., such words were to him natural, almost inevitable. ' If anything I have said confuses your mind throw it into the fire, and pray to God that He will teach you without me. If there is anything on which you would like further infor- mation, I shall be heartily glad to write to you, or to talk it over with you.' To Mr. Daniel Macmillan. ' My dear Macmillan, ' November 30, 1852. * . . . You would, I know, have faced the obloquy of printing my ' Sabbath Sermons ' ; but I thought, on the whole, it was better not to put your friendship to that proof. Parker had been very good-natured about the Duke's funeral, and if his father was not afraid, I thought he would be pleased if I asked him. It is more a London than a country or university question, so it is perhaps better, and Mr. , I am afraid, would 150 A DEDICATION TO MB. EBSKINE. [F. M. 47. never have forgiven you. I have however taken a stronger view of the obligations and blessings of the Sabbath day, than I think any denouncer of the Crystal Palace ; but I have spoken some hard words about our inability to hold our flocks together because we have not a Gospel for them, which will not be gratifying in some quarters. A sermon on the Duke is added, because, having not enemies enough, I thought it worth while to fly at Cobden and Co., and one on the interpretation of history which will be denounced as subverting the true meaning of the Apocalypse : I believe it was right to publish them just at this time — but I would rather have let them sleep.' To Mr. T.Ershine. ' My dear Friend, ' 21 Queen's Square, December 21, 1852. ' You will see by a book * which will reach you by this post that I have taken a great liberty with your name. I was afraid you would refuse me if I asked you beforehand, or that I should make you responsible for what I said. I have longed to do what I Lave done for many years, when an occasion should ofl'er. I wished to tell others how much I believe they, as well as I, owe to your books ; how they seem to me to mark a crisis in the theological movements of this time. I would rather take another less public way of saying what I owe to your personal kindness and your conversation ; but you will, I hope, forgive me and believe that I did think it a duty to express what I feel towards you, in connection with the task which God has shown me that I am to perform for His Church, that of testifying that the grace of God has appeared to all men. ' Accept our best and most cordial Christian greetings to you and all your circle. I was much delighted by seeing news of the marriage of your nephew to Miss McNab. Pray express to Captain and Mrs. Paterson how heartily we desire all blessings upon their union, and that she may be well enough in health to participate in them.' * ' The Tropliets and Kings of the Old Testament.* LETTEB OF BEPLY TO HABITUAL ASSAILANT. 151 To M7\ Daniel Macmillcm, ' My dear Macmillan, ' December 31, 1852. * I enclose a letter wliicli you can, if you see fit, forward to Mr. . But just as you please. It expresses my most inward convictions, and somehow or other they must come out next year, if they have not this ; that is if God preserves to me faith and reason. I do not say " life," for wherever one is, in one world or another, that, it seems to me, must be one's work, performed I trust hereafter freely and bravely, not as it has been here, timidly and inconsistently. * I am out of town, and only got your letters yesterday. Many thanks for them. I should like to write your name and your brother's and Hort's in copies of my ' Sabbath Sermons.' Pray tell me what your judgment of them is, looking at them with vigilant, Scotch eyes. I feel nearly sure I am right, but I should like your criticism. The more confident one is about principles the more one trembles at rash applications. But to resist the clamour was a duty which I could not shrink from. '*! am staying near Kingsley with my wife and children, who love him almost as much as I do. He showed me your kind letter. It will not do — I must be a fighter^ not a builder. I hope my boys will have a better time of it. Only think of worthy old Canon Townsend writing me a most kind letter to ask that I would write a book on the metaphysics of St. Paul ! Talk of putting down the Chapters after that ! ' To Mr. Daniel Macmillan. ' My dear Macmillan, ' December 31, 1852. * I thank you for sending me Mr. 's letter. Whatever he may think of me, it expresses a conviction in which I most cordially sympathise. If I have said in any passage of my books that a man is the author of his own salvation, if I ever had such a thought in my heart, if every word I have spoken with my lips or set down with my pen has not been for the assertion of the doctrine that God is the only source of man's , xighteousness, holiness, redemption, he has a right to call 152 « THE MAXIM OF ALL 3IY BOOKS:' [F. M. 47. me heretic, soul-destroyer, anything he pleases, and I will join him in doing so. Instead of regarding Calvinists, so far as they are the assertors of this truth, as monsters, I have always believed them to be the greatest w^itnesses for the di- vinest of all principles, and have honoured them accordingly. Those lectures on the prophets and kings are from first to last an attempt to ground human life and human acts on that principle. The maxim of them is, " Nothing good in man but what was first in God," and this, "All men are righteous so far as they confess a calling from the righteous God and yield to it." From which I deduce, or rather find in Scripture this further doctrine deduced for me, " That all false religion proceeds from the notion that man is to make his way up to God by certain acts or by a certain faith of his, instead of receiving God's witness of Himself and yielding to His government." * It is just because I find the teaching and the practice of religious men — not Calvinists only, but Calvinists more formally, theo- retically, consistently than others — in deadly contradiction with these principles, that I fight against them, and by God's grace will fight against them, for His honour, for the sake of the morality of my country, for the sake of multitudes of young men whom they are driving to Atheism, as well as young women whom they are driving to Eome. Mr. asks w^hat right he or I have to know why God does this or that ? I have no right, that is to say, I have no power to penetrate the depth of His idsdom ; moreover I have no wish to do it ; I am content to be lost in it. But that is because He has been pleased to reveal to me in His Son the bright- ness of His glory. His absolute love ; because He has shown me that in Him there is no darkness at all. On that point I have a right to be certain ; he who says I have not, rejects the Bible, and disbelieves the incarnation of our Lord. I wall not give up an inch of this ground ; it is a matter of life and death. I find as many puzzles in the world as Mr. does ; if I thought I could explain them by my experience or my reason, I might be a Calvinist or any other theorist ; I WHOSE IS THE GBEATEST LOVE FOB MAN? 153 cannot ; I am baffled, and therefore my heart and reason accept the sohition ^hich the incarnation, death, resurrec- tion of Christ offer me. They tell me that whatever else is not certain, God's absolute love is certain. They tell me that if any man pretends to have more love than God, to care more for His fellow-men than God cares for them, he lies. For that there can be no love which does not come forth from God's love and is not the image of it. If then there are any persons caring for the shopmen of London, for the working-men of London, for the prostitutes of London, I say it is absolutely certain that God cares for them, and that I am setting man above God if I think otherwise or fear to say this. And I must proclaim that all protests against slavery or any other abomination have an utterly false and godless ground if they don't proceed from this Gospel of God's love to mankind set forth in the only begotten Son. And again that if we do not accept St. John's explanation of those melancholy facts, which Mr. dwells upon, — " This is the condemnation that light is come into the world and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil : " in other wordS; that though men do not save themselves they do destroy them- selves, by yielding to the devil and rejecting their Father in heaven — we deny the Bible, however much we may talk about it. Will you worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, or the Devil? Will you acknowledge that Christ is the express image of God's substance? or, will you say that the Father and the Son are utterly unlike in nature and mind ? These are the awful questions which are set before us now, and every one must answer them. Those who take the answer from the religious newspapers, and those who take it from the Bible, will, I believe, preach on opposite sides in this great controversy.' To Her. M. Mairn'ce. ' My deaeest Father, ' Wiudifield, Jammry 1, 1S53. I write a few lines this first morning of the year, which I hope will reach you in the course of the day, to wish 154 NEW YEAR'S DAY LETTEB. [F. M. 47. you all possible new year's blessings. You have seen a number of new years and a number of changes in each, but I am sure the real witness which they bear as they pass on, is of One who is the same yesterday and to-day and for ever. I do not think anything in the world or in ourselves preaches to us of alteration, without preaching still more of that which abides and cannot alter. May we all learn that lesson and rest with all our hearts in the love which is with us at all times and in all places ! And we, who have had so much of abiding affection from our own parents, should desire more earnestly that we and they should always remember from whence it has come forth.' To Mr. Daniel Macmillan. ' January 27, 1853. *Your brother told me that you had some thought of re- publishing my ' Subscription no Bondage.' I have been led to ^ reconsider — though without re-reading — what I said in it, and I believe that it ought not to go forth without a statement to this effect. 1. That I am more convinced than ever that the Articles are not terms of communion, and that their use for academical education is what I represented it to be in my pamphlet. 2. That I am more convinced than ever that any Articles which are to bear upon general education should be theological. 3. That I am more con- vinced than ever that the Articles are more comprehensive (being also less loose and capricious) than the dogmas of our different parties, and that we should be far more at the mercy of the most intolerant private judgments and public opinion if we lost them. But, ' 1. That I think I was wrong in deducing from these premises the opinion that subscription ought to be enforced at the universities. ' 2. That I do not think they arc accepted practically or by any great number in the sense in which I urged that they ought to be accepted, but in a different sense, which is dangerous to honesty. €HAP. IV.] PBESENT VIEW OF SUBSCBIPTION. 155 * 3. That the experience of the last few years has convinced me that the Articles are not likely to be accepted and under- stood and applied to the purposes for which I believe they are meant, when subscription to them is demanded at the outset of the university course or previous to taking any degree. ' 4. That on other grounds I object to the Cambridge test of being a bona fide member of the Church of England. * 5. That though the change of opinion is partly in my own case the result of experiences which I have passed through since I wrote the pamphlet, I believe I ought not to have de- duced the conclusion I did from any premises which I then acknowledged, and that I was warned by several friends that I had not proved the doctrine which my title affirmed. ' I will make this partial recantation in any form you think best, provided the pamphlet were to appear again. Shall I return Mr. 's letter ? I do not like any more controversy, though perhaps he will conclude as he did in Kingsley's case, that I am afraid to answer the charge of not believing what I profess to believe. The notion of accusing Kingsley of innuendo ! or of any language, or acts but the most straightforward. He certainly, and I hope I, come forth in a new character, with Mr. as our manager.' To Miss Friscilla Maurice. (Then almost dying at Hastings.) ' February 12, 1853. * Lucilla says that you will like to have letters, though I hope you will never try to answer them. I did not think when we parted that you would have been called to pass another Lent on earth, though I did and do hope to see you and speak with you. I should have been at Hastings last week, but Lucilla thought I had better not, and that a short visit might only excite you. You know how gladly I will come at any minute, and I could easily get excused from a lecture if it were necessary. On Friday afternoons I am always free till Sunday, and when St. Matthew's day comes I shall have a holiday from Wednesday at one, to Friday. But let it be just as you wish. I know God will be with you during 156 WBITING THE ' THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS: [F. M. 47. this time and will help you to do good work for all sufferers, confessing for them, if it be in silence, and giving thanks for them too. If you should be able to think of the prayers, I am sure there will be a great blessing on them ; but God will teach you what you can do. I have been much grieved, among other neglects which press heavily on me, by re- flecting that I have never really performed Miss Harker's dying wish about a book for Unitarians, though I have tried to make my sermons bear upon them. I have felt I must do it, however much else I may have to do ; and I am trying this Lent, though I would not mention it to any one except you and Georgina till I have accomplished something. I hope you will recollect sometimes what I am striving to do, and how many errors I am likely to commit, and how little I have of the true spirit for such a work. But I do wish that it should not be my book at all. My plan is to preach sermons, which I can with a little alteration make into essays, on the questions in which they are most interested. I have written the first, and am to preach it, if God will, to-morrow.'* The passing of the new Act made it necessary to modify the constitution of the Society for Promoting Working-men's Associations. Virtually, now the associations of working-men would be legally recognised. The " Society " which em- braced them all, and of which the council was the head, was not a body contemplated by the Act, nor could it easily be brought under legal definition. Practically the work of the promoters had been already accomplished more completely than they themselves recognised at the time. When they took up the cause of co-operation, co-operation was not merely outside the law, unable to obtain legislative protection, but it was regarded both by public opinion and by the working men as inextricably connected with anti- Christian and revolutionary ideas. When, by the process of letting in the light of day upon the whole facts of the case,. * The sermon referred to "was tlie first of tlie scries afterwards converted into the ' Theological Essays.' TiAP. iv.J THE SHIFTING OF TEE BBEEZE. 157 |l and receiving the whole battery of the newspaper press upon their devoted heads, they had succeeded in obtaining calm in- vestigation by House of Commons Committees, the Bishop of London, and the King's College clerical committee, the fight was virtually won. It had taken three years to get the Act passed, which gave legislative sanction to what the newspapers had denounced as revolutionary nonsense." It was not till eleven years later, that the exponents of public opinion came so completely round that within the same twelvemonth both the great quarterlies proclaimed the essentially " Con- servative tendency " of the " movement " (' Quarterly Keview,' No. 228, October, 1863, p. 448, 'Edinburgh Keview,' No. 246, p. 407, (note), October, 1864) which each had done its utmost io denounce and oppose.* But whilst the Act was passing both Houses without any opposition, the force of the resistance to the movement came from a new quarter. The stock agitators felt that they were losing their hold on the working-men. Mr. Ernest Jones had en from the first much more clearly than the ordinary news- i^aper writers what the efi'ect of such a body of men honestlj^ throwing themselves into the work they were engaged on, must be. He and Mr. Holyoake, the editor of the Beasoner, had been fighting hard for a long time to warn I off the working-men from all sympathy with the Christian [ Socialists. Whilst the Act was passing through the Houses, ' Mr. Jones j entered on a regular crusade against co-operation. Telling the men that if they had only adhered to the points * The final recognition of society has perhaps been reserved for this year I (1883), when both the Queen and the Prince of Wales formally expressed their pleasure in the progress of the great society now working under rules I originally submitted to my father for his approval. The secretary is now Mr. Vansittart Neale, and one of the chairmen at the conference was this year Mr. i Hughes. Both Mr. Hughes and Mr. JSTeale have continued working on in the same cause since they first joined my father and his friends. I ought, however, to say that I believe that, during the worst fury of the newspaper and social i storm, valuable orders were received from members of the Royal Famil}' ! for execution by some of the men's co-operative societies. t Mr. Ernest Jones had at this moment his influence increased by the fact that he had been, according to the evidence supplied by an almost 158 SUCCESSES AND FAILUBES [F. 31. 47. of the Charter, a Universal Suffrage Parliament would have extracted 100 millions from the pockets of the rich to present to them, he asked them to compare such a prospect with that which co-operation held out, and after this brilliant offer, on a show of hands being called for, no single hand among the men, at a great final meeting at Padiham, was held up for co-operation. At the same time the men who throughout the country had formed themselves into co-operative bodies without monetary help from the promoters, were, generally speaking, thriving, and slowly extending their business. Those that had been assisted by the promoters, chiefly in London, were, one by one, failing. The reasons for this were various. In the first place the former class were in most cases, at all events in the first instance, associations for distribution and not for manufacture, while those in London were mostly attempts at manufacturing societies. It is not difficult to realise the far greater difficulty which the latter class of bodies would present to effective work- ing under the co-operative system. In the next place the men in London knew much less of one another than was the case in the smaller towns ; mutual jealousy and suspicion was much more rampant, and the selection of the best men for important posts much less easy. Above all, the very fact of having to struggle through the early difficulties of scraping together enough capital to start a store, gave to the independent co- operative societies an advantage over those that were nursed by outsiders; the members became known to one another; those men who could not be depended on at a pinch were not tempted to join ; mutual respect and esprit cle corps were developed; the different office-holders were trained little by little for larger work. Everything therefore tended to lead the promoters to the conclusion that their most useful function for the future lay in supplying the best advice they could to the men, in combating the false assumptions both of the Ernest Jones and Holyoake unanimous debate in the House of Commons, very badly treated. He had been imprisoned for two years after 1848, and had been exposed to unfair treatment in prison. *' CHRISTIAN'' AS A UNITING BOND OR AS A BAN 159 type of men, and of the more fashionable public opinion of the (lay, and above all in combating the ignorance and suspicion Avliicb on both sides interfered with a healthy relation between different classes. The promoters' work in fighting for a fair trial for co-operation was done. Its future success depended on tlic workmen themselves and on their intellectual and moral fitness for the work. For the moment, however, all the promoters' attention was ken up by the questions which arose in the reconstitution : the society. It was inevitable that the divergency of view, tlie existence of which has been apparent throughout, should come out into full prominence in this work. A series of resolutions had been agreed upon by the council as indicating the principles on which a committee should draw up the new constitution. Mr. Ludlow was very anxious that the name " Christian " should be in some form so retained as to imply a conviction that the work on which they were engaged was the carrying out of Christian principles. My father, in addition to the determination which is expressed ill the next letter, not to go beyond the resolutions of the council, was, as usual, afraid lest any act of his should tend to constitute a new sect. The more he believed in the soundness of any principle, the more anxious he was to prevent its being made a shibboleth for other men. He was determined not to exclude any men, who were willing to co-operate with him in what he believed to be Christian work, because they would not give that name to it. To. Mr. LucUoiv. * My dear Feiend, ' Wednesday Morning, March 9, 1853. * You are most fully entitled to know the course which I mean to take this evening. If I did not volunteer the information, • it was because I did not think we should either of us be the better for another argument on the subject, and I hoped that what I should say might not be quite as offensive to you as you seem to expect that it will. I shall tell the council that I am solely responsible for the delay in the presentation of 160 WHAT KIND OF OBEDIENCE IS DUE TO CHBISTf the report ; that I intruded myself into the committee, and took part in its deliberations, claiming that right as president, and Yv^ishing to exercise it, because certain resolutions which I had proposed were to be the foundation of the new con- stitution. I shall say that you proposed a scheme which in many respects I approved, and part of which we have, by your kind permission, adopted ; that part of the scheme was framed in conformity with an idea which was not the idea of my resolutions ; that part of it gave me — as president — powers which I did not believe that I could rightly or safely exercise. That one of those powers was that of pronouncing on doubtful moral questions. I seized that right beforehand which you would have given me in all cases, and applying it in your particular case, I pronounced solemnly, as in the ^ight of God, that we had no moral right, as a committee, to go beyond the powers with which we had been intrusted, and to frame a constitution which was not in accordance with the maxim on which we were directed to frame it. To such an act I could be no party, because in my conscience I believe it to be wrong. I could not have looked the council in the face if I had, in the name of Jesus Christ the righteous, practised a fraud upon them. The case is perfectly different, I shall tell them, if they choose to accept the amendment you have now proposed. That is brought fairly and manfully before them as a body. If they can accept it honestly and heartily, I shall be very glad, for I most heartily subscribe to it myself. But I will not make their acceptance or non- acceptance of it any test of what they actually believe, or of the principles upon which they act. However, there are many reasons, besides disbelieving, which may make them unwilling to adopt a particular formula. And I would rather cut off my hand than tempt them to do anything which they do not feel they can do ex animo in God's sight. Whatever the decision is on this point, which I do not mean to influence, I shall equally persist in the course we have followed, fully believing it to be in accordance with the gospel of Christ, and that I am fulfilling my duty as minister of His CHAP. IV.] HE MUST INCREASE : I DECREASE. 161 Cliurch. This is wliat I am going in substance to say. For all you tell me about your fears for me, I am heartily thank- ful. I am sure it is one of the many most awful perils which beset us round. I hope to profit by your warnings, though I hope also by God's grace that no fear of offending my best and dearest friends will keep me from proclaiming that truth of Christ as the actual Head of Man, which I was sent into the world to proclaim, and which it seems to me that you have never yet taken in — or at least, which is a much smaller matter, have not apprehended my language on the subject.' To Mr. Luclloic. *My dear Friexd, 'Friday, March (?) 1853. ' You must forgive me ; I am quite sure you will. I know I have said hard words to you which have given you pain. It i;ives me very great pain to recollect them, and to think that I have in any way alienated you. I want to say this before to-morrow, that you may know that whatever course you take, or however wrong you may think me, it cannot make the least difference in my affection to you. ' If I have done anything inconsistent with that, do attribute it to myself, or the evil that is in me, and not to want of thankfulness for your warnings and your faithfulness, or to the least distrust of you. I shall esteem it a good if any weakness or wrong which you see or suspect in me, prevents you from holding that exaggerated opinion of what I am, and what I am to do, which I am sure has been hurtful to you, and has caused you such bitter disappointment. Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils. Believe on the Son of God — this is the lesson for us all.' ' 21 Queen's Square, April 21, 1853. 'My dear Mansfield, " I heard with great wonder of your return the day before I received your note. I do most heartily welcome you home, though I fear it is to deep and unexpected sorrow. But our friends are not really separated from us, either by VOL. II. M 162 PBESENT STATE OF CO-OPEBATIVE M0VE3IENT, seas, or by wliat some call tlie dark river. The bond is stronger and closer whicli unites us than they have power to break. God give us more of His spirit of love, that we may feel it and know it. God bless you, my dear friend. I hope we shall soon meet.' It will be well to record here the enormous success which now (1883) attends the co-operative movement among work- ing-men. There are now 660,000 heads of families, represent- ing it is said a twelfth of the whole population of the kingdom, members of working-men's co-operative societies. The whole movement is avowedly Christian, orderly, loyal. It is steadily growing. As an illustration of its beneficial effects it has been noticed that in those towns in which it is established distraining for small debts hardly exists. Strangely enough, our modern English historians, with all their interest in social movements, have devoted no word to this one. Abroad a wider interest in it is shown in many ways, notably by the appearance a few weeks ago of Herr Brentano's admirable historical sketch. There are still men like Mr. Hodgson Pratt and others, work- ing with devoted enthusiasm in the cause. Its avowed enemies are the enemies of order, who, in some instances, that they may the better attack it, have adopted the name which my father bestowed on the co-operative movement, a name claimed for it amidst applause at the late great conference at Edinburgh. ] ,^53.] THE TWO WOBSHIPS AT DIBECT ISSUE. 163 CHAPTER Y. " The ' Charge' was made out against him somewhat after tliis fashion : " 1st Comit. — Socrates does not reverence the real spiritual powers, whom men reverence on Change, but introduces other quite inferior spiritual powers. "2nd Count. — He corrupts the youth." — Memorahilia. " It will be with sin, as it is with so many other things in this day, a question of profit and loss." — Dr. Jelf (Final Letter). "I believe that it is the Gal of Salvation who pleads His cause in the heart of every one of His creatures, and so pleads the cause of that creature against the enemies which are assailing him." " It is not a safe thing, -what- ever we may be told, to tempt men into thinking of God as their enemy ; it is a safe thing at all times, in all places, among all people, to say, 'He is for you, whoever may be against you.' " — F. D. M. PUBLICATION OF THE ' THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS ' — CORRESPONDENCE WITH DR. JELF — ACTION OF KING's COLLEGE COUNCIL — LONG CONTINUED 'record' ATTACK MIXING CO-OPERATION AND THEOLOGY AS CONCURRENT OFFENCES — EXPULSION FROM KING's COLLEGE. In many forms and for many years there had reached my father the cry for help of men in moral and mental confusion. Miss Fox has well described one series of the letters which reached him, as exhibiting " most touchingly, most vividly, most truly, the struggle of doubt, the turbulence of despair, the apathy of exhausted effort so frightfully general among the mechanics of large towns, a something which tells that the present attempts at teaching do not meet the wants of the time, and which shrieks inarticulately enough, but with agony, for guidance, and for a God-inspired lesson on Belief and Duty." But the sources of his knowledge, partly shown from time to time in these volumes, were many and various, and extended to all classes. M 2 164 A WHITSUN BIBTHDAY. [R 31. 47. At length he had made up his mind to speak to these and to endeavour to supply the need. The Unitarians had a special claim on him. To them he addressed his hook. Long hefore it was published he had quite made up his mind that, with the feeling already existing against him at King's College, the result of its publication would be his dismissal from his professorship. Dr. Jelf had been much alarmed by the attacks of the party religious organs. The Becorcl played upon his fears. Dr. Jelf wrote to them soon after the book appeared to apologise to them and to conciliate them, fearing that the popularity of the college would suffer. He explained that he was examining into the character of the book. To Miss Priscilla Maurice, * Kichmond, Whit-Tuesda.y, 1853. * I can write to you with some comfort to-day, whatever sad thoughts, mixed with thoughts of thanksgiving, your birth- day may cause to you and to all of us. For "Whitsuntide brings with it such pledges of the continual presence of the Comforter, of a life rising out of death, of fellowship with all in Heaven and all in earth, as must needs make every birthday a beautiful witness and symbol of the new birth of ourselves and of all creation, of the ultimate deliverance from everything that has in it decay or death. ***** *My mind has been more filled with the Essays, by day and sometimes by night, than has been quite good for me. I should like very much if you were able to look at them some day, as they are in fact my letters which express the deepest thoughts that are in me and have been in me, working for a long time. I have hardly felt able to write any others ; not for want of time, but from a kind of preoccupation, which has made me afraid I should not write of what interested those I was writing to, and especially that I should trouble you on your sick-bed with a multitude of things that might worry and wear you. But I hope now to throw them off, and to be less shut up in my own modes of thinking. I do long to get CHAP, v.] SENDS COPY OF 'ESSAYS: 165 out of them and to sympathise with every one, especially with my own relations, and with those who are in suffering. But they must pray for me, that I may not be possessed and crushed by my own thoughts. I believe I was to write this book, and could not honestly have put it off. Indeed I have been surprised at the way in which it has grown up under my hands, and have felt it less and yet more my own than any I ever wrote. God will do with it what He sees fit, but I sometimes feel as if the publication of it would be a great crisis in my own life, if it affects no other people. There is more solemnity to me about it than about anything else I have done. Perhaps I have said most of what I have to say in it. * We saw Mrs. Augustus yesterday at Sheen. She is certainly very much better than I ever expected to see her ; far better than when I was at Hastings. Once more, many many blessed returns in this world or some other, of your birth- day, my dearest Priscilla.' Also to Miss Priscilla Maurice. 'June 21, 1853. ' I did not write when I sent you my book * through Hurst- monceaux, for I did not want to speak of that, and I had not courage to speak of your voyage, knowing what it must be to you both in the anticipation and retrospect. I never know how to encourage you in such undertakings, tnough I am sure you were doing right, whatever you have had to suffer. But unless I could suffer also, it seems like mere emptiness to seem as if one understood it. The fear of being a mere utterer of empty phrases which jar upon the ear and heart, grows, I think, upon me. It makes me silent when my wishes as well as my duty would lead me to speak. I wonder how I dared to minister so long in a hospital ; still more do I wonder that I learnt so little there. Some day I hope really to understand visiting Christ in those sick and * The ' Theological Essays.' 166 AUGUSTINE. [F. M. 47. in prison, and to do it; at present I seem to myself the hardest and least sympathising of all people. I have, how- ever, been enabled to speak some words which may, I hope, teach some of my brethren how they may do what I have not done, and be what I have not been. And God is glorified, I believe, sometimes in its being seen how paltry and helpless we are.' * My dear KinGSLEY, * J"ne 27, J 853. * A dishonest clergyman, eight years ago, abstracted the volume of my set of Augustine which contains the " De Civitate." I had a separate copy of the treatise, but where it is I know not. That contains the passage (I tliink about the 13th or 14th book) to which I refer. It is not a statement about original sin or the fall. But it distinctly lays down the proposition that man is not in his normal condition unless he is looking out of himself, walking secundum Deum. Suppose that to be true, and that the prolapsarian state was a normal state, which all assume, it cannot have been a state in which the man had some goodness of his own (as our doctors teach). It must have been a state in which he neither had nor pretended to any. And his fall must have been when he began to set up some, and not to walk secundum Deum. Justification by faith (to use the speech of these doctors) must be a provision against the fall, a contrivance invented because man could not stand by himself any longer ; it must be the only law for men in paradise or anywhere else. * As for Augustine, I am wont to distinguish his post-baptismal life into three parts (they exist chronologically, but the distinction is essential, not chronological. He teas all three parts always, though each may have come into greater light in its own time). First, the wrestler with Manichseanism. He sees that God must be absolutely good, that all goodness in man must proceed from Him, and is realised in proportion as the man does not try to be good in himself. This is his highest condition. Second, the opposer of Donatism. He CHAP, v.] TO MB. KINGSLEY ON THE 'ESSAYS: 167 never apprehends tlie true ground of the opposition ; never sees that the Church is holy in Christ, not in its individual members ; contradicts the Donatists only by maintaining that certain people in the Church are holy, certain unholy, and that the last must be borne with. Third, anti-Pelagian. He is terribly right and terribly wrong. He is inclined at first to sympathise with Pelagius because he asserts God's good- ness and free-will as he had done against the Manichaeans. He is startled by discovering that he supposes some good to be in the man himself, which is in opposition to his own fundamental conviction about the Kara 6e6v, He is bo- thered with his own anti-Donatist, individualising, doctrines, and can see no way out of the scrape but by asserting God's absolute calling and decrees. And this, instead of being what it was in his anti-Manichsean fervour, becomes little more than a wilful call and decree ; not the will of a perfectly good Being carrying out one blessed purpose. So he was obliged to make all sorts of theories about original sin ; hard enough I dare say. But the root of the matter, an essential acknowledgment of God's absolute goodwill and nearness to us, was in him, and justifies all you have said in " Hypatia." Never mind his dogmatism.* Also to Eev. C. Kingsley, (In answer to the letter on p. 372, vol. i., of Mr. Kingsley's * Life." Dr. Jelfs letter, referred to in each of the next two, had been written on July 8.) ' Clyro, South Wales, July 19, 1853. * Your letter came to greet us on my first Sunday here, and right welcome it was. It went ill with me to be obliged to leave London without seeing you, and I longed much to hear how you were all going on. I will not conceal it that I also wanted to know your judgment of my Essays, which you have given me so faithfully. I suppose I should generally demur to any such sentence as that the book might make an era in our ecclesiastical history. But on this occasion I don't, though it would not surprise me if it fell flat on its back, and did not rise again. I also should not be surprised if ''I GIVE AND DEMAND CHANGE FOB PHRASES: it did reveal the thoughts of many hearts, if it were for the falling and rising again of many in Israel. If it should lead to a schism, woe to me, should I he the cause of the offence ! But I do not know how we are to rise out of schism, unless some one proclaims Christ as the centre of unity to each man and all men ; and voices of the living and of the dead ringing continually in my ears, with, I think, a diviner voice of One that liveth and was dead, tell me that I ought to do that, whether men hear or are deaf. Many thanks for what you say of the style. I am ashamed of myself for not having spoken more intelligihly ; if I did helieve what I feign to believe, that Christ is in every man, I am sure I could hold communion by words or signs with every man. So the fault is a moral one. But, indeed, I have tried to overcome it. I have deliberately given up the long sentences which, misled by Coleridge's judgment, I used to approve. And in direct defiance of him, I never talk of objective and subjective, and always give and demand change for technical phrases instead of seeking out a new terminology. Still I have not done what I ought. You shall write notes for me living or dead, if you have not something much better to do with your time ; but God has other work for you, I know. Don't speak of it to any one ^but Mrs. Kingsley, if you please, for I have not said a word about it to any of my relations or to Hare, but your praise of " wariness " is very ill bestowed. I knew when I wrote the sentences about eternal death, that I was writing my own sentence at King's College. And so it will be. Jelf is behaving very fairly, even kindly ; but the issue is quite certain. I hope to be shown how I may act, so that my tumble may involve no loss of liberty to any English clergyman, but rather a growth of boldness and conviction. But this must be as God sees it best for us. I know I have done a very serious thing, but I am more than ever convinced that it was necessary. Never mind whether there are passages in the Prayer Book that you find difficult or not, I would never strain any conscience a hair's breadth to bring them into consent with a conclusion of mine. I am CHAP, v.] 169 convinced that, on the whole, that Book raises me above my private judgment, and the private judgment of the religious and the irreligious world. I am convinced that my allegiance to it saves me from superstitions into which I must fall if I obey Mr. Chapman or myself. I am convinced it preaches a Grospel to mankind which no Dissenters and no infidels preach. I am convinced that God will take it from us, if He sees it does not help us but harms us. Till then, I turn to it for protection against Beco7xl, Guardian^ King's College councils. His Grace the Archbishop, Mr. Emerson, the brothers Newman, Dr. Cumming and Pius IX. And, as I have told Dr. Jelf, Scotch Kirk (State and Free) men and orthodox Dissenters and Unitarians are looking with much doubt and misgiving, yet wistfully, towards us, and will find a home w^ith us if we do not make the English Church into an Evangelical Alliance, and call upon the world to fraternise in the belief of everlasting punishment, but in the belief of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Hard fighting is in store for us, dearest friend ; but those that are with us are stronger than those who are against us, though we ourselves may be often among the latter. Let us hope mightily for the future. There will be a gathering of Christ's host, as well as the Devil's, out of the ranks of Pharisees and Sadducees, of publicans and harlots. We shall not have to choose our own ground, it will be fixed for us ; all we shall have to do is to keep it. Meantime the present with me is agreeable enough. We are in a comfortable parsonage, a beautiful country, and I hope among a friendly, open-hearted people. Mr. Yenables has left us all w^e can wish in the way of carriages, so that Georgina is able to get about, without fatigue, in the country round, and she trusts she shall be able to make friends in the cottages near. She sends her kind love and hopes to write soon to Mrs. Kingsley. Love to all of you.' The " letter to Hort," referred to in the next letter is that given on p. 15, etc. It represents exactly my father's standpoint, 170 " THE ABTICLESr " THE GOSPELS [F. M. 47. from which he never varied throughout the correspondence with Dr. Jelf, which had now begun. ' Clyro, South Wales, August 2, 1853. *My dear Kingsley, * I am sure that you are right as to the line which I ought to take. I have always purposed to stand on the Articles, and to assert my privilege to reject all popular notions while I adhere to them. But it has seemed to me that the battle is not yet begun. I do not think Jelf feels himself competent to engage in it. He merely states his own fears and asks for my explanations, which I have given him. My letter to Hort was more definite than anything you have read, and that he has. It says distinctly, in Istly, 2ndly, 3rdly, in this and that : I will not bind myself, and no one can make me, unless he is able to change our forms ! My reason for arguing the point to the extent I have argued it is this : I feel that if it is to be an open question, we must take a higher ground than merely saying it is one. It ought to be open because neither I nor anybody else has a right to force a definition of the word eternal or a theory of punishment on any man, the Articles being silent. * But I must plainly declare that I cannot preach the Gospel at all if I am tied to the popular notions on the subject ; that I cannot use the prayers, that I cannot call the Bible God's book. The Unitarians and Spiritualists may say what they like ; but those who compel me to use the language of the Beeord and Guardian on this or any of the topics I have discussed in my essays, compel me to renounce the formularies I have subscribed. *I appeal to Caesar against the Jews, and the Felixes and Festuses if they decide for the Jews. I do not merely claim a right to interpret Caesar's decrees in a certain way. Your own belief that it must be an ofi'ensive war will lead you, I think, to the same conclusion. I feel the tremendous re- sponsibility of maintaining this position ; it must appear to be the condemnation of other men. But I cannot help it. " THE DELIVEREB " NOT " THE BESTROYEBr 171 God must see to His own cause. He knows "svell enough that I cannot defend it, hut if He chooses that I shoukl just at this moment maintain the truth that He is the deliverer of men and not their destroyer, I suppose He knows hest. The question becomes more serious and awful to me the more I think of it. I feel more astonished at the crisis to which we have come. I can only ask that the Church may be brought through it, and that I may not do mischief by doing anything out of my own head. We do indeed require to pray that we may do the right thing. The religious people, High Church and Evangelical, will be as much blessed ultimately if they get their minds cleared on this subject (very many after a long process will) as the infidels. Of course one looks to be trodden down by the hoofs of both, but that cannot signify much ; nor even if they should agree to be indifferent ; for the truth will worry them, if they are ever so careless about my way of stating it. I send 3^ou the two last missives on the subject ; 23lease return the former. My last note is written with a knowledge that Jelf is particularly sensitive about his Orthodoxy on the Arian Controversy, and will be somewhat perplexed by finding how nearly he has brought himself into the grips of the Arian formulae. Yet who can escape it, w^ho will confuse time with eternity ? Possibly the Bishop of London will come into the field before very long — he is chairman of our King's College council — and this will be the time for availing myself of your advice. I trust I shall be preserved from shirking out at any back door. I think I shall call upon him to see whether he objects to my preaching in his diocese, telling him that, if he does, I shall not stand on my position as a chaplain of Lincoln's Inn, which is nominally out of his jurisdiction, but will resign at once. That will bring the question to an issue; but till I see how he acts, it would be rash to resolve upon my course. ' Have you seen the Morning Advertizsr? S. (our old friend), I suppose, from the line he takes.' 172 ATTACK OFF. B. M:S " CHOLERA OF BESIGNATION:' Life is not of the simple character that it would be repre- sented to be if I gave the history of this correspondence without a break. Inextricably interwoven with it were other troubles, which came on him at the same time. In the new constitution of the Society for Promoting Working-Men's Associations it fell to my father to appoint two " assessors " to occupy the chair when he was absent. He appointed Mr. Ludlow and another. Mr. Ludlow objected to the appointments, on the ground that he himself, having objected to the actual constitution, would not carry the confidence of the society with him. He suggested Mr. Hughes and Mr. Walter Cooper, the tailor, instead. My father was, as his friends com- plained, afflicted with " a cholera of resignations," being always excessively shy of the prominent position in which he found himself, and equally determined not to maintain his position an hour longer than it was of service to the cause he was engaged in, or to retire from it whilst it meant only that it was his duty to receive the hardest knocks. His conviction, however, that he had already provoked so much hostility from many quarters that his name was only an injury to any cause he aided, was so strong, that the smallest indication that any of his friends thought they could dispense with him, induced him to propose to resign his position ; so that, as Mr. Hughes puts it, " it was awful work having to fix him up again against his will every three or four months in one post or another which he thought he might slip out of." On this occasion, con- vinced as he was that the result as to King's College was a foregone conclusion, he had no hesitation as to his course about the promoters. He believed that a dismissed professor would not be a protection to them ; the worst of the obloquy had been fought through and a legal triumph had been won; he could have no fear, therefore, that he was yielding to any temptation to desert, from any fear of consequences to himself. 173 To Mr. J. M. Ludloiv. ' My deab Fkiend, * 1853. ' No one who knows my feelings towards either Cooper or Hughes would suspect me of omitting either of these from any other cause than the fear of doing them an injury. There are no men I should have liked better for assessors, but I did not venture to introduce one working-man, w^hen I knew not how many I might pain by omitting them. I chose the assessors not to please myself at all. Your letter leaves me but one alternative. With a pain greater than you can easily know, unless you knew exactly how I am feeling for other reasons at this time, but with far less fear of doing injury to the cause than I ever had before, I resign the presidentship. To retain it w^hen I have lost the confidence of the society, and w^lien they have so little confidence in each other as your letter proves that they have, would be a contradiction of all our professions. I quite submit to the justice of your charges against me personally. I have neglected work, which I doubt not I ought to have performed. I cannot, for the mere sake of self-accusation, say that I have neglected the working classes. I believe I have thought of them and striven for them, not as I ought, but more this year than in any previous one. But I have not done the things that you had a right to expect from me. Added to many humiliations which God has seen that I need and has sent, I accept this as perhaps the most needful of all. I do not know that I need write more- -I might fall into self-justification, if I did, which I am anxious to avoid. Thank you for your kindness in getting Huber what he wanted.' ' Clyro, Hay, South Wales, August 10, 1853. * My dear Friend, ***** * I have cancelled your two appointments and named Cooper and Hughes assessors. I have signified, at the same time, to Shorter * that as soon as the council is appointed I hope they * The Secretary of the Council of Promoters. 174 CO-OPEBATIVE CONFERENCE. DB. JELF'S LETTERS. will depose me. I could not of course resign when I found I should embarrass all the movements of the society, but I have lost the confidence of you, and, no doubt, of others, and I am sure I am better out of the way.' Also to Mr. Ludlow. ' Clyro, Hay, South Wales, August 19, 1853. ' My dear Friend, ' I found your letter on my return from Manchester,* and was greatly cheered by it. I should have written to thank you for it yesterday, but I had several rather long letters which I was forced to send off, and our post does not leave us much time for answering. The conference went off, I think, remarkably well. There was some fighting about the profits of workers not associates, but the feeling on the whole was good and friendly, though there were signs enough that a more stringent moral code to put down, or at least denounce, positive breaches of honesty in trade, is needful, as well as a higher and more inspiring principle. Neale's lecture was very good, and he came out with a quick- ness and cleverness in his answers to the questions which were asked by different persons in the room, when it was over, that surprised me. I think perhaps Newton took rather too prominent a share in all the discussions. Do you think his land scheme is one that can safely be recommended ? I am a little afraid about it, and was exceedingly anxious that the conference should not be in the least committed by it. Ultimately it was only presented for consideration.' To Archdeacon Hare. ' Clyro, August 20, 1853. ' My correspondence with Dr. Jelf is swelling into a volume ; and is to be concluded, he tells me, with something almost amounting to a theological essay from him. I have told him that I do not see how argument can now make much difference, as far as my position is concerned. If he, as * ^Yhe^e he had been presiding at a great " Co-oxierative Conference." THE POINT AS TO LEAVING THE COLLEGE, 175 Principal, disapproves of a professor, and says that he can- not work with him, said professor must be dismissed — the discij)line of the college could not otherwise be maintained, and the council have no choice. But I have said also that I shall not anticipate their decision by resigning, first because I do not want to evade any censure they may see fit to pass upon me ; secondly, because I must have it clearly understood that I do not leave the college because I object to any single Article, doctrine, phrase, to which I have subscribed, but solely because I object to a certain popular construction of a certain theological term, which construction I hold to be not the simple, natural, and orthodox one ; thirdly, because I demand it as an act of justice from the authorities of the college who have used the Beeord as their organ of communication with the public, that they should say whether they agree with the Becorcl in regarding me as a scoundrel, or whether, after their experience of thirteen years, they esteem me an honest man. This I have the same right to ask as any footman has who is turned by his master, certain persons having said that he was dismissed for a habit of drunkenness and robbing the pantry. More I do not wish. So I hope to make it clear that an English clergyman has full liberty to maintain every position which I have maintained in my essays, and that a set of new Articles must be framed before he can be deprived of that liberty.' To Archdeacon Hare. ' My dear Julius, * Clyro, August 22, 1853. 1 wrote my last letter before I received your very kind one. I told you the substance of my communication to Jelf ; the en- closed has just come to me in answer. I wish very much for your judgment upon it ; of course if Stanley is kind enough to give me his also, I shall be grateful. The question as to me is settled, but the steps I take may seriously afi'ect other men and the Church. I do not wish to embarrass the council or tbe bishops, who have always been kind to me ; I 176 IF IT BE PUT, JELF OBJECTS TO YOU^ IGO GLADLY. am very anxious not to injure the position of Trench or of Edward,* whom I have purposely abstained from consulting or writing to in any part of the business ; and I may save anything approaching to, or having the appearance of, an ecclesiastical censure upon the principle I have maintained by giving in. But, on the other hand, it is very important that it should be understood I do not admit the force of a single argument of Jelf's, and that I leave the college simply because he cannot w^ork with me. His present letter is polite enough, and stronger than he often is ; but I do not want that he should put into the mouth of the council words about my unhappy publication," &c.' To 3Ir, J. M. Ludlow. ' Clyro, Hay, South Wales, August 24, 1853. S . . . The King's College business is nearly concluded. The only question is now whether I shall resign or wait for dismissal. Jelf, of course, urges the first course as most convenient to him and to the college, and I am well inclined for my own sake to adopt it. But the question is, which is the right thing to do for the sake of the Church and of the great principle which I am certain is at stake. I cannot and would not teach under a principal who objects to my teaching, but I must bear what testimony I can for the right of English divines to preach the gospel of God's love to mankind, and to maintain that Lord Shaftesbury and the Bishop of London do not care more for the outcasts of the race than He does. If Humanity and Theology are not to be for ever apart, the regeneration of the working classes is not to be given up by Christians to infidels. This point must be settled somehow. That which stirred the heart of Europe in the 16th century is not more vital. I think I may be in town next week to talk over the subject with Hare, and, if we can meet, with Kingsley, and I should like very much to have your advice.' * Kev. E. H. rhuinptre, his brother-in-law. CHAP, v.] JELF'S PHBASES FOBCE 3TE TO FIGET. 177 ' My dear Julius, ' August 20, 1853. ' Many thanks for your kind advice, wliicli I am sure is also wise, and which I intend to follow. I had, as you saw, decided not to resign. I was shaken for a very short time in that resolution by considering the inconvenience to which I should put the college, if they had no lectures in two de^^artments at the beginning of their session ; and also by the hope that their language might be explicit and satisfactory in taking leave of me even then. But when I further reflected on Jelf s letter, and saw that he spoke of himself as the person who would probably express the mind of the council, and that he held it out as a kind of boon that my theology should not be inquired into, I saw the necessity of taking the course you recommend. Before I got your letter, I had written to him saying that I should reserve my answer to the substantial part of his till I had received his final communication, but that in the meantime I protested against the phrases " un- happy publication," " fallen into error," " entangled in subleties " — that if the publication (of which at present he had noticed only two or three sentences) was unhappy, all I had ever written was so, and all my teaching in the college had been so ; that if I was in error I had not fallen into it since I came into the college ; that there was nothing in this book which was not implied in books I had written before he asked me to be theological professor, and of which he had due notice ; finally that the subtlety of distinguishing eternity from time was one which I have learnt from St. Paul, Athanasius and Augustine, and (this I had told him before) that I did not see any escape from Arianism if I abandoned it. But though I am clear that you are right so far, I should wish it clearly to be understood by all my friends, that I would not, if I could, avert the final decree of the college that I ought to resign. I should hold them to be very wrong if they decided otherwise. I do not desire to continue in the college. I cannot continue after my superior has declared my theology to be unsound. It could only be a question whether they should banish him or me, and I should VOL. II. N 178 OUGHT PBIVATE OPINIONS TO BULE THE CHUBCH? be a madman to try that issue. The safe course and the right one is to show that I am not fighting for the privilege of maintaining a false position or of driving out another person, but for my right as an English clergyman to hold and to teach what I have held and taught. The immense importance of the object makes every other seem to me utterly insignificant. It is well enough to say that King's College is a post of usefulness. To me it would be a post of useful- ness no longer, but of exceeding mischief, after I had found myself at war with the Principal. So that I give up the battle as to the college, and wish every one to give it up on my behalf, that I may fight it at better advantage as to the Church. I want a direct declaration from the council to this eff'ect — We request you to resign because you are at variance with the Principal, in whom we have confidence, not because we hold you to hold or to teach that which a clergyman subscribing to the Articles and the Prayer Book has no right to teach. They may have their own private opinions how far I am right or wrong ; but I think they will under- stand that if we have Articles, and I profess my adherence to them, I am as little bound by their private opinions, or Jelf s, as they are by mine. And that I wish to have plainly declared.' To Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Maurice. ' September 2, 1853. ' My dearest Father and Mother, ' I hope this will reach you on the fifty-ninth anniversary of your wedding-day, and may find you both as well as we can dare to hope for those who have lived so long and been permitted to difi'use so many blessings around them. May God bless you both abundantly in all the years to come, whether they are spent in this world or in some better one. ' I cannot tell you, my dearest mother, how much your good and brave words about King's College cheered me. I am quite sure that I shall be dismissed from it, and I do not wish to remain in it, because I believe my giving up will do more to promote the principles I have maintained than my stay in it CHAP, v.] THE LIMITS OF THE COVNCWS BIGHTS. 179 could do. Therefore I shall go, when the time comes, with hearty good will and, I hope, in charity towards all men.' ' My dear Julius, ' Clyi-o, September 2, 1853. Thank you very much for your letter, and the Bishop's [St. Davids], which I return. I am very thankful for his kind judgment, but he will be in a small minority among the bishops. I was surprised and gratified exceedingly that there was some hope the Bishop of Oxford might not greatly object. I dare not expect his sympathy, but I am sure he will be very kind under the circumstances. I believe my stay at King's College would weaken my position in the Church, and would make the protest I have borne for some principles that seem to me all-important, nearly ineffectual. Jelf will accept some of them, " in a sense," others he will repudiate as dangerous. I must show that I am pleading for a simple natural sense — not for one that I would impose upon any, for I think the formularies are better than my explanations, or any others that are likely to be offered of them — but a sense which I have not only a right to hold but to publish. I have been free at King's College, hitherto ; henceforth I should be " cabined, cribbed, confined," every moment subject to the hint of some " high authority," or liable to be canvassed on the charge of some newspaper. It would be a false position altogether for any one who has to teach teachers. And therefore the sooner the council rid me of it — provided they recognise my rights as a clergyman, and the rights of all who think as I do, to speak what we say in the church though not in their college — the better for us all.' On September 6, Dr. Jelf, in order that as little time as possible might be lost before the question was brought to an issue, sent my father the beginning, in printed slips, of his final letter. These slips disclosed in the clearest manner possible the fact that Dr. Jelf looked upon that view of " eternal life " which makes it synonymous with an endless future state, as the only true one to the exclusion of all others, and that Dr. Jelf N 2 180 THE BEAL ISSUE. [F. 3L 48. did so because nothing seemed to him so important for the interpretation of Scripture and for the establishment of a sound theology, as that the notion of rewards and punishments, and not the revelation of God, should be felt to be the end of the Divine dispensation. I have, in the above statement of Dr. Jelf s position, which is, I believe, a perfectly fair one, chosen the wording, so that it is in express terms the exact inversion, as will be seen by reference to p. 398, Yol. I., of my father's words in 1845 as to what seemed to him to be more important than anything else in these matters. This was for my father the crux of the whole matter. As long as it had been a question whether he had or had not clearly conveyed to Dr. Jelf the conviction that he had himself no wish to dogmatise on the question of the " endless duration of future punish- ments," and that he only protested against all dogmatism on the subject, he was anxious to continue the discussion ; he was diffident as to his own expressions ; he was anxious for the suggestions of friends. From the moment that it became clear that Dr. Jelf believed that the one business of a preacher was not to proclaim a good news of God to mankind, but to trust for the efficiency of his preaching to the terrors of future punishment and the hopes of future reward he was able to awaken, he wrote as follows : * My dear Julius, ' September 8, 1853. ' Could you kindly look over these,* sending them back by Sunday's post. I have drawn the sword and thrown away the scabbard, telling Jelf plainly in a note to-day that I see the differences between us are wider and deeper than even he supposes ; that they affect the essence of the Gospel and the whole interpretation of the Bible ; that I shall say to the council : ''Do you hold your professors to the Principal's interpretation of our formularies ? If you do, on that ground our connection is dissolved ; " — to the bishop : "Do you hold me bound to accept the Principal's interpretation, if I officiate in your diocese ? if you do, you silence me. Will * 7. e. Dr. Jelf s slips. CHAP, v.] THE SWOBD AND THE SCABBABD. 181 you turn to the passages in St. John's Epistle about eternal life, which Jelf affirms — simply as a thing to be taken for granted — concern the future state of the blessed. I will send you my answer as soon as it is written. A great deal is at stake, and I feel the responsibility very much. ' I hope you will notice the defence of the translators of Matt. XXV. — " The rhythm of the passage, and the love of Saxon." This is the morality and reverence for God's word we are to teach our pupils ! ' ' My dear Julius, ' Clyro, September 15, 1853. * I expressed myself very ill if I led you to suppose that I meant to insist upon my interpretation of the Bible or the Articles, and to call upon the council to repudiate Dr. Jelf's. I wish most strongly to protest against the claim on his part or mine, or anybody's, to impose new Articles upon the Charch. I am content with what are given us. I adhere to them. I say it is enough that he and I should make this profession ; if the world or the Church thinks we, either of us, do not make it honestly, the world or the Church is not our judge, and it is a great fool if it contracts its own liberty by seeking to forge chains for us. But I must draw the sword (it may be more correct to say he has drawn it first, but I do not quarrel about that) and throw away the scabbard in this sense : that I will not submit to his construction of Scripture, and of our forms ; that I will show why submission to it would " throw an atmosphere of doubt " upon the plainest passages of Scripture ; upon the Gospel we have to preach ; upon the nature and eternity of God. That is no reason why he should not adhere to it, and be a Principal, and be made a bishop. I shall not stand up to oppose at Bow Church when his Si quis, or whatever the form of the farce may be, is read. But it is a reason why I should tell the council that they silence me, and numbers besides me as preachers of the Gospel, if they will insist upon our denying that God wills all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 182 . THE COMING CJRISIS. [F. M, 48. ' A crisis, I am convinced, is at hand "^liich will bring the question to an issue, whether we are believing in what Dr. Jelf calls a religion of mercy (proved to be such because phrases about salvation are to phrases about damnation as 57 : 8 — the Bible being a great betting book, where the odds on the favourites are marked as at Doncaster or Newmarket), or whether we believe in a Gospel of deliverance from sin and perdition. We cannot avert this crisis. I did not willingly do anything to hasten it, God knows. But I saw from the multitudes that are throwing off belief — all belief, on this ground — and the multitudes that are pretending to believe in God, while they mean the Devil, that it must come and that it was safer to meet it. Having this conviction, I feel all gratitude to the Bishop of Oxford for his kind and generous efforts to save me or to avoid scandal But it cannot be. The scandal is there ; the old scandal or rock of offence which cannot be removed, and over which I fear numbers among us, as among the Jews, will stumble and fall, and be broken in pieces. I dread that calamity for myself as much as for any, but I am sure that I shall not escape it by trying to maintain a position in the college which is untenable. Dr. Jelf and the Record must have their paean over some man, that they may not have to boast of a victory over the whole Church and over God's truth. It is a very small Jonah to throw to the whale.' I give next the following letter, because a statement of the case, from another pen than my father's, will, perhaps, show the broad issues more clearly than any single one of his own. From Archdeacon Hare to a Layman. ' October 4, 1853. ' Of course I cannot but feel a strong personal interest in the question. For it is impossible to know Maurice, as I have done intimately for thirty years, without admiring and loving him ; indeed, taking him altogether, his head and his heart, he HAP. v.] HABE'S STATEMENT OF THE CASE. 183 is incomparably the grandest example of human nature that it has ever been my happiness to know. Still I have not the slightest wish that the decision in this matter should be influenced by any motive but a strict regard to truth and justice, and to the good of the Church ; nay, if the laws of our Church require that Maurice should be expelled from his professorship, let him be so, although I can anticipate nothing but the most disastrous consequences from his condemnation. The one point in the ' Essays * on which Dr. Jelf grounds his denunciation, is the passage about eternal death, pp. 432- 442 ; which, however, cannot be understood except when taken along with the dozen pages just before, nor fully except in connection with the whole volume. From taking them solely by themselves Dr. Jelf has fallen into such an utter misunderstanding, as to charge Maurice with teaching that impenitent, unbelieving sinners will ultimately be saved, whereas the doctrine which runs through the whole book is, that this itself is damnation — impenitence and unbelief, and that the only possible salvation is that communion with God to which we are raised throuali penitence and faith. Nor will Dr. Jelf s metaphysical capacity allow him to frame any other conception of eternity than as an indefinitely long time, so that he deems Maurice a heretic for deriving his conception of " eternal life " from our Lord's words in John xvii. 2, 3, the only conception which will enable us to understand all the other passages where St. John uses the expression. With regard to the legal question, it seems to me pretty nearly decided by the omission of the 42nd Article of the series of 1552 — which condemns all such as teach the doctrine of universal salvation— at the revision of the Articles in 15G2. How this omission was brought about I know not ; it seems to be one of those providential interpositions of a higher wisdom, which were so often granted to the Eeformers of our Church. But by the omission, the Church seems to have declared that she does not condemn the doctrine of universal 184 HARE'S EXPERIENCES OF F. D. M.'S INFLUENCE. salvation. Now what Maurice teaches is far short of this. He merely says that the opposite doctrine is a human tradition, resting on no adequate scriptural authority. As to what will be, he does not presume to pronounce any dogma, but winds up with that beautiful conclusion in p. 442. ' An additional reason which makes me look with dread on anything having the character of an ecclesiastical condemna- tion of this book, is the terrible shock which such a condem- nation would give to that large portion of the intelligent minds in all classes whom he has powerfully influenced by his teaching and his writings. I do not believe that there is any other living man who has done anything at all approaching to what Maurice has efi'ected, in reconciling the reason and conscience of the thoughtful men of our age to the faith of our Church. I am continually meeting with instances of persons whom he has brought to a lively reception of the truth, whose reason and conscience would otherwise have driven them into infidelity ; and I believe it is in great measure owing to him that the intellect of the rising generation is with us rather than against us. This arises not merely from his intellectual powers, but from the moral grandeur which goes along with it and sanctifies it. Now it will grievously disturb all these men if they find that the Church rejects him whom they revere as her wisest teacher. Many of them will probably fall away from her, some, it is to be feared, into some of the forms of rationali- sing or sentimentalising unbelief. Meanwhile the Fiecord and the slaves of the Record will set up a shout of triumph which will be taken up and prolonged by all the Unitarians and other contemners of our faith, who will exclaim, Here is a man who has been labouring with all his heart and soul, and mind, to show that the doctrines of your Church are not repugnant to the reason and conscience of mankind ; and you have immediately cast him out." ' At this moment Dr. Colenso was Bishop-designate of Natal. CHAP, v.] A BRAVE MAN'S SYMPATHY. 185 He at this time differed from my father's view that the words " eternal punishment " did not necessarily involve the idea that the subjects of it are in endless torture. He had been accepted as a divine in all respects concurring in the " popular " views on theological subjects. But, in bringing out a series of sermons, just before his consecration, he prefaced them with a warm dedication to my father, avowedly doing so as a protest against the attacks at this time made by the Record upon my father. * My dear Colenso, ' 21, Queen's Square, October 7, 1853. ' When I returned here two days ago my eyes were greeted by the sight of your volume and of the dedication to me. I really do not know what to say to you about that. If I told you that it delighted me beyond any praise I almost ever received, I should express but half the truth. I should convey a very inadequate impression of my ow^n feelings of the generosity and courage w^hich your words manifest, and of the strength and hope which they imparted to me. But I should also not let you see the real fear and distress which your kindness occasioned me. When I consider the great work to which you are called, and the troubles which must, at all events, await you in it, I could not but tremble lest I had been the means of causing you a new and unnecessary hindrance. I am afraid the English bishops — to say nothing of the religious press — will visit upon you the offences which a large portion of them is willing to charge upon me. And I could have wished that you had stifled all your regard for me rather than run this risk. Nevertheless, I do so thoroughly and inwardly believe that courage is the quality most needed in a bishop, and especially a missionary bishop, that I did at the same time give hearty thanks to God that He had bestowed such a measure of it upon you. * You see I am very contradictory in my thoughts about your letter. But I am most harmonious in my thoughts and wishes about you. I am sure God is sending you forth to a mighty work, in which you will be able w^onderfully to help those who are toiling in poor old England ; and I do, from my 186 MANNEB OF THE COBBESPONDENCE. [F. 31. 48. heart, desire for you and your dear wife, and your children, all earthly and heavenly gifts. May God bless you abundantly ; so prays one upon whom you have conferred a greater kindness than you can estimate — for it has come to me when I wanted it most.' * My DEAE Julius, '21, Queen's Square, October S, 1853. ' I have only Dr. Jelf's letter in scraps, and the last scraps only reached me two days ago ; such as they are I send them to you. I wish I could send you also my defence, which has been written under some disadvantages, and has had to undergo additions and alterations as the charges took a more definite shape. ' Nevertheless, I am quite content that it should go in as it is, and I have begged that there may be no further delay. To expedite matters, I have taken the MS. to a printer to-day. I hope for 2:)roofs on Tuesday, which you shall have at once. I shall, I hope, have a copy for each member of the council ready on Friday. They will meet, but I should suppose can decide nothing at present. They will probably adjourn to consider, for I trust they will not be satisfied with the secretary's reading of the documents which will be submitted to them. I have followed your advice — not resigning, striking out anything which seemed harsh or merely personal to any who heard the letter, asserting Jelf's full right to hold his opinion, and only maintaining mine to be equally strong, according to the Articles. I have, how- ever, stated so distinctly the radical difierence between his theology and mine, that it is impossible we can work longer together. Trench, who thought difi'erently the day before yesterday, has, I believe, come round to that opinion since he read the indictment and the re2)lication. Then the battle will have to be fought over again by the publication of the letters, which I demand. The importance of the subject and of the crisis has become so manifest to me since I have talked more with other persons on the subject, that I am more than ever desirous to avoid anything of sharpness or THAP. v.] BECKLESS PHBASES. 187 recriminatiou. Dr. Jelfs last note, you will perceive, is amicable, though he has thrown out a rather curious in- sinuation about the probability of other Anabaptist tenets (promiscuous marriages and confiscations) growing out of my doctrine about eternity. That will tell upon Sir Eobert Inglis and Lord Eadstock. I long to see you, but I do not know when it is to be. All here, especially my colleagues, are very kind, and the work at King's College is much less trying than I expected. Colenso, yet unconsecrated, has had the kindness and courage, I am afraid the rashness, to dedicate a volume of sermons to me. I hope it will not set him at war with the English bishops.' * My deak Julius, ' October 11, 1853. ' I should like very much to go to Hurstmonceaux this week, but as the council meets on Friday, I fear I cannot go down that night. I have no doubt they will adjourn, but still I may have to answer inquiries on Saturday ; possibly the bishop may wish to see me. I think, therefore, I must put it off. I shall be free enough soon, and then I shall hope to see you. I did not tell you what a pleasant visit, though only of one night we had at Abergwille. The bishop was full of kindness. ***** ' He wanted to take me to see a sunset from the hill ; his servant was bent upon counteracting the plan, partly from fear we should be too late for dinner, and proposed by way of sub- stitute that we should go to see the pigs, which edified the bishop exceedingly. I was very sorry we could not stay.' To Mr. Ludloic. ' Queeifs Square, October 13, 1853. * . . . . The essays, and the one to which you allude especially, have, I am told, relieved the minds of some of a heavy load, and for that I must be thankful. I am sorry that they have given you pain. I have no doubt they have themselves, or rather me, to blame for the greater part of it, though I cannot help thinking that the persons you say you have 188 MINUTES OF K. C. COUNCIL. \F. M. 48. chiefly associated with may partly be the cause. I do not think you could look favourably on any book which you heard praised. If you had been with those who called me a heretic and a devil, I have no doubt I should have had you for a far too partial and zealous champion.'* I have been kindly furnished by the present council of King's College with the following extracts from their minutes. A few sentences are included here and there which are irrelevant to the purpose of this book. This is done because the council very naturally furnished the papers on the understanding that, if published, they should be given entire. Extract from the Minutes of a Meeting of the Council, held Friday, Octoher, 14, 1853. The following letter from the principal, a copy of which had been sent by the secretary to every member of the council, was read and ordered to be entered on the minutes. * King's College, London, October 8, 1853. * My Lords and Gentlemen, ' It is my painful duty to call your attention to a book lately published, which bears upon its title-page ' Theological Essays,' by Frederick Denison Maurice, M.A., Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn, and Professor of Divinity in King's College, London. The part which I would especially bring under your notice, as in my opinion very dangerous and unsound is the conclusion of the last essay, from p. 432 to p. 449. ' The nature and ground of the objections which I entertain to the statements therein contained, will be learnt by a perusal of the enclosed Correspondence " [printed privately ; confidential]. To my last letter I have received no other reply than that Mr. Maurice wishes the cause to pass into other hands. He had previously informed me that I was not * Mr. Ludlow's objections were by no means the conniion ones. The letter, I think, helps to set forth the relationship between the two friends; but, like most of my father's letters, it exaggerates the amount of disapproval of him- self expressed in the letter, to which it is an answer. CHAr. v.] MINUTES OF K. C. COUNCIL. 189 to expect any explanation or retractation. He has, liowever, intimated to me his intention to hiy before the council a printed reply. * It is, I hope, superfluous in me to express a hope that the professor may be allowed ample time for his defence.* A copy of the correspondence alluded to by Dr. Jelf was laid upon the table. The following letter dated October 12, 1853, from Professor Maurice to the Principal, enclosing his reply to the final letter of the Principal, dated September 1853, was received. *21, Queen's Square, Bloomsburj% Wednesday evening, October 12, 1853. ' Dear Mr. Principal, * I enclose the answer to your last letter, which reached me in its complete and official form between six and seven o'clock this evening. You are aware that the important passage in it respecting the Articles, together with all the concluding part of it, which most afi'ects my character, was not sent to me till the middle of last week. Had I received the frag- ments of your letter sooner, I conceive I should not have acted respectfully if I had forwarded my reply, which has been in the printer's hands for two days, before I had seen your charges in the shape in which you desire that they should be considered by the council. * I would respectfully request that this note may be laid before that body, as it explains a statement in your printed address, of which you have desired the secretary to send me a copy. That statement must, I think, lead the members of the council to suppose that I have refused or delayed to answer the charges which you have brought against me, or that I have not chosen to address my answer to you. * I wish certainly that the whole cause should pass into the hands of the council, who I am satisfied will deal fairly with it ; but I think our correspondence will show that I have not declined to aftbrd you any explanations which may MINUTES OF K. C, COUNCIL. \F. M, 48. enable you to understand my meaning, however you may dissent from it. ' Copies of my letter will be sent to tlie secretary's office, for the use of the council on Friday. Other copies will be sent by post to the members who may not be present on that day. ' After deliberation it was ordered that copies of all these documents should be sent to every member of the council, and that the council should be specially summoned for two o'clock on Thursday, October 27, to take the same into consi- deration ; no other business to be brought forward. The Prin- cipal requested that should the council think fit to require from him any explanation beyond that contained in the pamphlet, they would kindly permit Professor Maurice to be present at the time of his making such statement.' J. W. Cunningham, Sec. Extract from the Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Council held Thursday, October 27, 1853. The letter from Dr. Jelf to the council dated October 8, enclosing his correspondence with Professor Maurice was read. The letter from Professor Maurice to the Principal dated October 12, enclosing his answer to the Principal's final letter, was read. The secretary stated that in a letter to Professor Maurice he had requested him to be in attendance in case the council should wish to see him, and had also asked whether, in the event of the council not wishing to see him, he would desire to have an interview with them. Professor Maurice's reply was read promising to be in attendance, and stating that, although he did not wash to make any formal application to the council for permission to be heard before them, there was one point on which he should perhaps be glad to make a very short explanation. Professor Maurice being called in explained that having CHAr. v.] 191 heard complaints made of the tone* in which he as a professor had addressed the Principal, in his " Answer to the Principal's final letter/' he had written that letter as an answer to an indictment, and not as a letter to Dr. Jelf ; and that if it was thought that there was anything wrong in the tone of that communication, he sincerely apologised for the same and asked the Principal to state what had always been his conduct at King's College. Dr. Jelf cordially accepted Professor Maurice's explanation and bore high testimony to the uniform courteousness of his conduct towards himself, as well as to his unvarying attention to his classes, and zeal for the college. After long and anxious deliberation the following resolutions were moved and seconded : The council having taken into consideration an essay lately published by the Eeverend Frederick Maurice, Professor of Divinity in King's College, and also a correspondence between the Principal and the professor on the subject of the said essay, and having been informed by Professor Maurice that he does not wish to make any statement in addition to his " x\nswer to the Principal's final letter," resolve 1. That in their judgment the opinions set forth and the doubts expressed in the said essay, and re-stated in the said answer as to certain points of belief regarding the future punishment of the wicked and the final issues of the day of judgment, are of dangerous tendency, and calculated to unsettle the minds of the theological students of King's College. 2. That the council feel it to be their painful duty to declare that the continuance of Professor Maurice's connection with the college as one of its professors would be seriously detrimental to its usefulness. 3. That the council, while it laments the necessity which con- * It will be seen that the secretary has made nonsense of this. A letter of my father's, to be given immediately, will explain what he did say. The secretary's report of both Dr. Jelf's speeches and my father's is incorrect. 192 MINUTES AND OTHER MATTER. [F. M. 48. strains them to adopt this resolution, are bound in justice to Professor Maurice to express the sense which they entertain of the zealous and able manner in which he has discharged the duties of the two offices which he has held, and the attachment which he has at all times manifested to the college. Whereupon the following amendment w^as moved and seconded : That the Lord Bishop of London be requested to appoint competent theologians to institute an examination into the question how far the writings of Professor Maurice, or any propositions contained in them, which have been brought under the [notice of the] * council, are conformable to or at variance with the three creeds and the formularies of the Church of England, and to make a report thereupon, and that the Lord Bishop be requested to communicate the results of this examination to the council. The amendment being put from the Chair, was lost upon a division. The original propositions were then put and carried. ' My dear Julius, ' 21, Queen's Square, October 28, 1853. Your kindness in sending me the letter which I return prepared me for the decision of the council yesterday. Georgina has kindly written it out for me. You will see that it contains not only my dismissal, but a direct censure on the book. The last resolution is merely taken (I presume) from the common forms in the secretary's office, which are used on such occasions. ' As the resolutions left me in doubt whether I should continue my lectures to the end of the term or suspend them at once, I was obliged to ask the Principal's decision on that point. He determined at once that I was not to appear again before * Wlietlier these words are in the original or not I do not know. They are not in the copy sent nie. By a curious accident the secretary has made nonsense of every passage which he had to reduce to writing, spoken in a sense friendly to my father. CHAP, v.] F. D. M:S BEPOBT of the meeting. 193 either of my classes. It was very foolish, but I confess I felt this sentence much more than the previous one. I went before the council to make an explanation, which I had wished to make, respecting the alleged rudeness of my last letter to the Principal. I stated, that I had told the Principal beforehand, that I must regard that letter, though addressed to me, as an indictment against me ; that when I answered it I should consider the characters of principal and professor as merged in those of accuser and accused. I said that if I had seemed to write a theological treatise instead of merely replying to a charge, I did so because the Principal had given that form to his letter. I said that if I had, under these circumstances, used any language which could seem disrespectful to the Principal or to them, I was heartily sorry for it, and I asked the Principal to tell the council whether he had any reason to complain of me for want of respect or subordination during the eight years I had served under him. He therefore made a very flattering and hand- some speech respecting me, and said that if he had used any expressions in his letter not involving some great truth which caused me pain, he regretted it (I had referred to some personal allusions which I had carefully passed over in my reply, that I might not give so great a subject a personal character). I then spoke of his allusion to the other tenets of the Anabaptists — which he introduced, after the letter had gone to the press, as a special correction, and sent me notice of it. I said that I certainly believed he did mean by those words to revive the charges which had been brought against me two years ago in the ' Quarterly Eeview,' of which the council had I thought acquitted me, and that I felt such an insinuation or such an accusation to be un- generous and unfair. He solemnly disclaimed any intention of the kind, regretted that his words would bear that con- struction, and defended himself about the Record nearly in the terms he had used in his letter to me. Then I with- drew. The bishop, who was in the chair, looked more cold and stern than usual, Harrison more like marble. The VOL. II. 0 194 SOME MISTAKEN ASSUMPTIONS OF HIS. [F. M. 48. others I scarcely saw, except Dr. Watson, who covered his face with his hands, and who, I felt, was sympathising with me. Greene was there. I will not say that his letter did not, at first, cause me much pain ; afterwards I was thankful for it. I see it is not to philosophers, however intelligent or accomplished, that I must appeal. He may sit in his study, drink his claret, edit the ' Logosophie,' and talk of a " one probation " for the multitudes who have never been taught the diflference between right and wrong. The humble preacher of the Gospel who sees men perishing cannot talk so; nor the medical man who is actually living among men, not speculating about men. Coleridge would not ; for, besides being a philosopher, he was a penitent, who knew that, though his crimes might be less than those of open reprobates, his sins were greater, and prayed, God be merciful to me ! To these I confidently turn, and I know that they will understand me sooner or later. 'I wish I could show you a statement which the Bishop of Oxford, objecting to many points in my letter, and not pledging himself to agreement with me, drew up, of what he conceived to be my doctrine ; it was as lucid and beautiful as anything I ever read. I accepted it unreservedly, but, at his request, I returned him his letter that he might make use of it. I hope I shall recover it.' ***** * Captain Sterling has proposed to me to give up the guardian- ship of his nieces into our hands. I have accepted the trust. It has been a very rapid business, only settled finally on Wednesday night. The responsibility is very serious, though it will not last many years, except in H.'s case ; still I am i most thankful that it is to be so.' Mr. W, E. Gladstone to Lord Lyttelton, ^ My dear Lyttelton, ' October 29, 1853. * The subject of your letter is not new to me. I remained in town last Thursday in order to attend the council of K, C. ' and, as far as I could, to see fair play. I was afraid of a OHAP. v.] OTHEE LIGHT ON WHAT HAPPENED. 195 very precipitate proceeding, and I regret to say my fears have been verified. The motion carried was the Bishop of London's, but I am bound to say he was quite willing to have waived it for another course, and the proceeding is due to a body of laymen, chiefly lords. The motion carried is to the effect that the statements on certain points contained in Maurice's last essay are of a dangerous character, and that his connection with the theology of the college ought not to continue. I moved as an amendment that the bishop be requested to appoint competent theologians, who should personally examine how far the statements of Mr. Maurice were conformable to, or at variance with, the three creeds and the formularies of the Church of England, and should make a report upon them, and that the bishop should be requested to communicate with the council. * For myself, I find in different parts of what Maurice has written things that I cannot, and that I am quite certain the council had not, been able to reconcile. This consideration alone seemed to me to show that they were not in a condition to proceed with a definitive judgment. I do not feel suf- ficiently certain what his view as a whole may be, even if I were otherwise competent to judge whether it is within or beyond the latitude allowed by the Church in this matter. And independently of all this, I thought that even decency demanded of the council, acting perforce in a judicial capacity, that they should let the accused person know in the most distinct terms for what he was dismissed, and should show that they had dismissed him, if at all, only after using much greater pains to ascertain that his opinions were in real contrariety to some Article of the faith. I also cherished the hope, founded on certain parts of what he has said, that his friends might be able in the mean time to arrange some formula concordise which might avert the scandal and mischief of the dismissal. Sir J. Patteson, Sir B. Brodie, and Mr. Greene supported the amendment, but the majority went the other way, and much am I grieved at it. I am not inclined to abate the dogmatic profession of 0 2 196 WHY THE BISHOP OF LICHFIELD WAS ABSENT, the Church — on the contrary, nothing would induce me to surrender the smallest fraction of it ; but while jealous of its infraction in any particular, I am not less jealous of the obtrusion of any private or local opinion into the region of dogma ; and, above all, I hold that there should be as much rigour in a trial of this kind, irrespective of the high character and distinguished powers of the person charged in this particular case, as if he were indicted for murder.' Mr, E. B. Denison, to F. D. M. ' The Castle, Eccleshall, 31 October, 1853. *My dear Maurice, * By the bishop's leave I write to tell you that he was not at the meeting of the K. C. council last Thursday, solely in consequence of the secretary's neglect in not sending him the notice ; and that having read your book, and the corres- pondence between you and the principal, he has great doubts whether he should have concurred in the decision of the council. He is unwilling to speak more strongly without having heard what other members of the council might have to say : but that, of course, could only have affected his judgment on the question of the expediency of getting rid of you in deference to external clamour, and not his opinion on your theology. * He wrote to Cunningham last Wednesday to ask when the meeting would be, in order that he might make his arrange- ments to be able to attend ; and he was surprised to receive an answer saying that the meeting had taken place the day it was written (Thursday), and that the clerks assured the secretary the notice had been sent to the bishop. The next day Cunningham wrote again, certainly a very remarkable letter : for he says, by way of excuse for the letter not having arrived here, that, the bishop having some time ago desired that his K. C. letters might be sent to 39, Harley Street, where, as you know, he lived until this year during the time when bishops are in London, the notice was sent there ; but he adds — " Knowing that your Lordship was at CHAP. V.J SIB B. BBODIE'S BEPOBT. 197 Eccleshall, I gave special orders that the two pamphlets should not be sent to Harley Street, because I feared they miojht not be forwarded." ' The said secretary also expresses his opinion that the very existence of the college was at stake in the decision. * You may make known in any way you like, that I have told you all this. And seeing that the Bishop of Lichfield * is the yery man who above all others ought to have been specially invited to be present at such a meeting, I think these facts will not be without weight in the opinion of impartial people.' Sir Benjamin Brodie to Archdeacon Rare. ' Briscome, Betchworth, Surrey, November 2, 1853. * My dear Archdeacon, ' There was a pretty full meeting of the council on Thursday, but the only clerical members present were the Bishop of London and Ai'chdeacon Harrison. * One member of the council proposed the dismissal of Professor Maurice. The Bishop of London gave it as his opinion that this could not be done without giving reasons for doing so, and read a paper which he had prepared, having previously stated his opinion that Mr. Maurice was preaching dangerous doctrines, contrary to those of the Church of England. Mr. Gladstone stated that this was a dangerous mode of pro- ceeding, and suggested that the first thing to be done was io appoint a committee of competent persons to consider whether the doctrines taught by Professor Maurice were improper or not (I forget the words, but this was the substance). Mr. Gladstone's suggestion was supported by Patteson, Greene, and myself, and by no one else ; and I took the opportunity of stating that the matter was much more important than it seemed to be in the eyes of the council ; that the clergy themselves were by no means unanimous in their opinion on the subject, and that the ,great mass of the laity would be found to agree with * He had been the former Principal of King's College, 198 SIE B. BBOBIWS ACCOUNT. [F. M. 48. Professor Maurice. A long discussion followed, not on Mr. Gladstone's motion (for really the other members of the council did not seem to think that it was worthy of con- sideration at all), but about the wording of the Bishop of • London's resolution. I stayed two hours, and then finding that there was not the smallest chance of my doing any good, and it being really a matter of necessity that I should leave London by a particular train, there being none after- wards until a late hour, I went away. I understand that after my departure the Bishop of London's proposition was carried as a matter of course, and that it was somewhat to this effect, — [as already given.] ' I own that this seems to be the most unwise and impotent conclusion at which the council could have arrived : and I greatly wonder that so clever a person as the Bishop of London is, should not have sheltered himself, as he first proposed to do, by assuming (as Dr. Jelf has done) that Professor Maurice's doctrine was contrary to that of the Church of England, instead of taking on himself to determine what that doctrine ought to be. By the first mode of pro- ceeding he would have confined the discussion very much to the clergy and professed theologians, but as it is he has thrown it open to the whole world. If he loves discussion he will have enough of it ; for I am much mistaken if this affair does not produce more controversy, and more heart- burning, and more unchristian feelings than either that of Hampden or that of Gorham. I must also say that I am not a little vexed with Professor Maurice that he should have brought us into this difficulty. He must have felt that in his situation at King's College he was doing a very great deal of good; he knew the kind of person with whom he had to deal, and it would have been very much better if he had avoided connecting himself with the Christian Socialists, and discussing questions on which it was plain that persons having great influence in the college would be at variance with him. This may be called worldly tvisdom, but the fact is that a little worldly wisdom] is necessary to enable any of CHAP, v.] MB. GLADSTONE'S ACCOUNT. 199 lis to do good in this world. I attribute to liim no other blame than this, at the same time that I most fully appreciate his abilities/ &c. Mr. W. E. Gladstone to Sir B. Brodie. ' My dear Sie, ' Hawarden, Xortli Wales, Xovember 3, 1853. When I saw you quit the room at King's College on Thursday last, I not only assumed, as I now know, that you had a sufficient cause, but I was also aware that my amendment could not be carried, and that it had received at your hands what, under the circumstances, was alone of importance, namely, your express approval and support. Had the matter been one of secondary consequence, and had the objections to the course taken by the majority been of a lower order, I should not have pressed my opinion. But as the case actually stood, I felt and feel that the proper course was clear, alike in policy and justice. For even assuming that Mr. Maurice might rightly be dismissed for some of his statements if they stood alone, yet they in point of fact stand in connection with others, by which they are either practically overthrown, or at the least essentially modified. It was not just that the council should carry the matter to a final issue upon this conflicting evidence, without having made every efi'ort to bring it into a state of congruity with itself. Justice also demanded, as I think, that the issue should be brought to a form much more pointed than that of a bare reference to the statements contained in a certain essay. I have no doubt many of the majority (but not all) would say, in laying down conditions of teaching, we did not lay down conditions of communion : but this hand-over- hand mode of dealing with such questions will never do, and I sorrowfully agree with you in anticipating much and prolonged mischief from the measure of last Thursday. It was matter of the greatest satisfaction to me to find myself in agreement with you, and with other persons of so much weight.' 200 A FEW OTHER FACTS. [chap. v. The letter to the secretary from the Bishop of Lichfield had been in the secretary's hands on October 27, the day of the meeting. It icas not read to the council, though in it he, the former Principal of the college, stated that he had been carefully studying the whole subject, and that he was very anxious to be present at the meeting of the council, which he presumed would be held on the subject. A letter from Mr. Anderson, the Preacher of Lincoln's Inn, to the Principal, was in the hands of the latter at the time of the meeting. In that letter Mr. Anderson stated that, to his great regret, he was prevented by private trouble from being present at the meeting of October 27, but that he was convinced that it was impossible for the council to arrive at a definite conclusion on that day with respect to the difficult subject submitted to them. The Dean of St. Paul's, Milman, had misapprehended the summons, having taken for granted that the council could not proceed with such haste as they exhibited. These facts are the more important because Mr. Gladstone now expresses his absolute conviction that had it been known to the council that the letters from the Bishop of Lichfield and Mr. Anderson had been received, the majority would have accepted his proposal for further consideration. It must, however, be stated that though Mr. Anderson's letter had not been made known to the council, it certainly and probably the Bishop of Lichfield's had been mentioned to some members of the majority. The question of Christian Socialism had been carefully connected with the one before the council, by the Record throughout an attack, which had been continued almost without intermission for nine months. The leading members of the majority. Lord Kadstock and Sir E. Inglis, were the same men who had in the previous year been bitterly annoyed by the result which had followed a reference of my father's w^ritings to a clerical committee. That committee, called together to anathematise, had blessed instead. It is of course possible that the Bishop of London, whom Mr. Gladstone in his letter of October 29, represents as THE FATE OF THE FOBMULA CONCOBBIJ^r 201 wavering, might have been unable to resist the argument in behalf of delay which these letters, if publicly known, would have put into Mr. Gladstone's hands, and as the members present were in all fifteen, it is possible that the evidence that seven members of the council took Mr. Gladstone's view of the proper course to be pursued, might have induced others to think it unavoidable to delay arriving at a final decision. But it is practically certain that the motive for securing a vote at once whilst they were sure of a majority, which chiefly actuated the more strenuous of the theological lay lords, was the fear of that very thing which made delay seem the only righteous course to Mr. Gladstone — the possibility of a favour- able verdict as the result of a judicial inquiry by a body of clergy ; nor, considering that the Bishop of London could hardly have avoided appointing the clerical members of the council, €an their fears be considered to have been groundless. The ''formula concordiae," which Mr. Gladstone desired, had, as it has been seen, been actually drawn up by the Bishop of Oxford. My father had unreservedly accepted it. It will be found on pp. 210-213, Vol. II., of Bishop Wilberforce's life. Bishop Wilberforce, a former member of the council of King's College, had, partly in that capacity, partly as a brother Bishop, forwarded both his own letter and my father's to Bishop Blomfield with an expression of his belief that they had an important bearing " on the question which is to come before the council of King's College to-morrow." Bishop Blomfield made no mention whatever to the council of his having received the " formula concordiae " or my father's acceptance of it. Neither did he state that he had received a letter from Bishop Wilberforce expressing his own belief " that Professor Maurice is entirely orthodox," and urging that precisely the proposal of Mr. Gladstone should be adopted, viz. that the council of King's College should appoint a committee of divines. That these various suppressions helped to secure Bishop Blomfield's object at the moment is beyond question. How lar they will redound to his honour hereafter is a question not for me to determine. He had, as a stranger to my father 202 DIFFICULTIES AS TO BESIGNATION, [F. M. 48. put it at the time, already established a reputation for " build- ing churches by public subscription, and sacrificing his clergy to popular clamour." ' My DEAB Julius, ' 21, Queen's Square, November 5, 1853. ' Your letter is altogether in accordance with my feelings. If I followed them I should at once send in my resignation as you recommend. The Bishop of Oxford and Baron Alderson were so strong against this course that I have with some hesita- tion drawn up a letter, in what I suppose to be their sense. ' I send you a copy of it. Could you let me have it back by return of post ? A letter must go in before the next meeting of council (on Friday), and I think perhaps I had better print some copies and send one to each member a day or two before the meeting. If you do not like it, and still think an unqualified resignation best, I shall be greatly disposed to adopt your plan. Of course I shall resign instantly, if the council will declare that they do not meddle with the theology of the matter, but merely think my con- tinuance in the college generally inexpedient. They will then put themselves in the right position, from which the unhappy feebleness and temerity (qualities wonderfully com- bined in him) of the Bishop of London has drawn them.* * It must of course be remembered that this is a private letter to a brotber- in-law. I believe this is the only expression of irritation in any letter I have, and I give it because I am not trying to paint my father other than he was, but just as he was. Tlie feeling, however, which prompts the expression is simply this : that the Bishop, whilst really yielding only to popular clamour, w^ould not frankly acknowledge this. Had he done so my father would not only have been quite content to leave the college, but would never have attempted to resist that result, which he had anticipated from the first. But the Bishop — not liking simply to put the ipatter on the footing, on which, as a perusal of Dr. Jelf's previous letters from the time of his appointment as Princi- pal, will show that it really stood always, namely one of pounds, shillings and pence, to the college — brought in the question of orthodoxy, whilst he evaded every means of arriving at a trial which would have satisfied a Court of Petty Larceny. The irritation, therefore, was not personal ; but was felt against an effort at the suppression of truth ; against a means by which popular or rather noisy clamour was treated as if it was in itself a righteous court of judgment. HAP. v.] OB ASKING FOB STATEMENT OF GROUNDS. 203 I feel so deeply and unceasingly the importance of the question at issue, that I long to see the present accidents of it altogether ignored, and it gives me exceeding pain when the kindness of my friends gives even a tinge of personality to so great a controversy. How much interest it is exciting you may learn from the enclosed note, which is curious and interesting. I have a most interesting letter from Langley, and some most touching and gratifying from the students. I am going out to see if I can catch the Bishop of Oxford, but I am afraid he is fled. If not, I will tell you before post. I promised to send my letter to him before I sent it in. I think the course he recommends is likely to offend the Bishop of London and the Archbishop, and probably to bring me within their clutches ; but if it is the right one, I must not mind that.' The " curious and interesting " inclosure was as follows. From Mr. F. J. Furnivall. * Dear Mr. Maurice, ' Thursday night. I was at J. H. Parker's at eight o'clock this evening, and the head shopman said the correspondence was not out, and they did not expect it before the end of the week ; it was being printed at Oxford. I said, " Do you hear much about the matter ? " the man said, " I've heard of nothing else the last day or two, either in the shop or out of it. You may depend upon it, sir, there are thousands taking the deepest interest in it. "We don't know what other points the dispute is on, but if it's only about everlasting punishment, I've had it from all the clergy I've seen, from the archdeacon to the curate this day, that it isn't a Church doctrine, and if they dismiss Mr. Maurice for this only, it is most unjust ; but, almost all think there must be something more, a general charge of Socinianism or something of that sort ; if it's only the eternal punishment, there'll be thousands sympathising with Mr. Maurice. The people we serve are all High, not bound up with Mr. Maurice, as J. W. Parker's people are, and nine out of ten 204 THREE PROTESTS. TCHAP. V. are clergymen, but they'll all be with Mr. Maurice : they all say it isn't a Church doctrine ; and if you take the Bible and common sense to judge by, why sir, it's the most abominable and horrible doctrine ever preached." ' The man volunteered all this, and a good deal more, to my occasional, " ah, indeed ! " before he asked where he was to send the pamphlet. * Coming from Jelf's publishing place, I was glad to hear this report.' Sir B. Brodie to Archdeacon Hare. ' 14, Savile Eow, Friday. ' I have just time to say that there has been a meeting of the council, at which the Bishop of Lichfield, Dean of St. Paul's, and Mr. Anderson were present, and expressed their great regret at the late proceedings of the council as to Mr. Maurice ; at the same time they seemed to be of opinion that the resolution having been once passed could not now be re- scinded. They were all three quite in earnest on the subject. An unfortunate combination had led to their being all absent on the former occasion.' It may be well to notice that Mr. Gladstone, and others of those who had voted with him, were unable to be present on this second occasion. The decision of a body such as the council of King's College is, of necessity, usually determined by the men of least occupation, who can best afford the time to attend. Extract from the Minutes of the Council, held November 11, 1853.* The following letter from the Principal, on the subject of the discontinuance of Mr. Maurice's lectures, was received and ordered to be entered on the minutes. ' My Lords and Gentlemen, ' King's College, November 11, 1853. * It is niy duty to inform you that on the evening of the day on which the special council was held, I received a letter from Professor Maurice asking * There is much in these minutes which is irrelevant to my purpose ; but I am bound by the resolution of the council, already referred to, not to pick and choose, and there are in them some points of considerable importance. I print in small type the unimportant parts. CHAP, v.] UNINTERESTING BUT OBLIGATOBY. 205 me whether, in compliance with the minute of the council (which declares that the continuance of Professor Maurice's connection with the college as one of its professors would be seriously detrimental to its usefulness), " it was my wish that he should absent himself from his lectures on the following day, or whether he should continue them till a successor was appointed." * I inclose the original letter dated 21, Queen Square, Bloomsbury, October 27, 1853, with a request that it may be placed upon your minutes of this day. ' Considering that the act of the council of that day was final : knowing that it was considered final by the members present ; believing that it would neither be conducive to the interests of the college, nor consistent with what is due to the feelings of Mr. Maurice, that a gentleman on whom so severe a censure has been pronounced, should continue to deliver his lectures as usual ; I thought it better to decline the implied offer of lecturing till the appointment of a successor, and (to use Mr. Maurice's own words), in compliance with the minutes of the council, to desire that he should discontinue his lectures at once. ' By the kindness of Dr. McCaul, and of Professor Hall and Professor Browne, who volunteered in their respective departments to give their aid to the college in this emergency, I have been enabled to make completely satis- factory arrangements for the instruction of the classes, both in ecclesiastical history and in English literature and history. And I beg leave to call the special attention of the council to the kindness of the three professors and their loyal devotedness to the welfare and the efficiency of the college, of which they have so long been distinguished ornaments.* The following is the letter from Mr. Maurice referred to in the preceding : * My dear Sir, * - Queen's Square, Bloomsbury. *The secretary has communicated to me the minute of the council held this day, which declares that the continuance of my connection with the college as one of its professors would be seriously detrimental to its usefulness. * I merely write to ask you whether, in compliance with this minute, it is your wish that I should absent myself from my lectures to-morrow or whether I should continue them till a successor is appointed. I send this note by a I special messenger. May I request the kindness of an answer by him ? ' After reading these letters the council resolved that they entirely approved of the Principal's conduct with reference to tlie suspension of Mr. IMaurice's lectures, and they ordered that their cordial thanks should be conveyed to each of the three professors, Pev. Dr. McCaul, Rev. T. G. Hall, and Rev. R. W. Browne, for the kindness with which they had placed their services at the disposal of the Principal in the emergency which had occurred, and for the loyal devotedness to the welfiire and efiicicncy of the college which they had manifested. The secretary laid before the council the three following letters from the 206 UNINTERESTING BUT OBLIGATORY. [F. M. 48. Kev. F. D. Maurice, those dated October 28 (A), and November 10 (B), addressed to himself, the latter enclosing that dated (C) November 7 addressed to the council.' < (A) Dear Sir, * ^1, Queen's Square, October 28,' 853. < I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, dated yesterday, which contains a copy of some resolutions passed at the last meeting of the council. As these resolutions did not state at what time the council wished me to suspend my work as professor in the college, I was obliged to request the decision of the Principal on the question whether I should continue the lectures which I had commenced and which were to prepare the students for the examination at Christmas, or should not appear again before either of my classes. * The Principal desired me to discontinue my courses at once. I request that this fact may be notified to the council, since without such authority I should have conceived that I was violating an engagement to the students by absenting myself from the college. * The council do not refer in their minutes, which you have communicated to me, to any arrangements which they have made respecting the publication of my correspondence with the Principal. I presume I may leave the publication of that portion of it which was printed under his direction to himself. I will publish my own final letter ; but in case of any consider- able delay, I shall feel myself authorised to publish the whole.' i (B) Sir, * Queen's Square, Bloomsbmy, November 10, 1853. * I enclose a letter addressed to the council of King's College, which I request you to lay before them at their meeting to-morrow. ' That there may be no mistake from handwriting, and that each member of the council may have a copy of the letter, I have directed that it should be printed. Fifty copies shall be sent to the office early to-morrow morning. I have referred in the accompanying letter to a note which I have added to the letter I addressed some weeks ago to the Principal ; copies of that letter as it is now published shall be sent to the office with those of the letter to the council. I will request that they also may be laid before the council.' To the Council of King's College, * 21, Queen's Square, Bloomsbury, November 7, 1853. ' (C) My Lords and Gentlemen, * I have received from the secretary of King's College a copy of certain resolutions respecting me which were adopted at the last meeting of the council. * Under ordinary circumstances it would be my duty at once to resign offices which the legislative body of the college has CHAP, v.] FINAL LETTEB TO COUNCIL. 207 declared that I cannot hold without serious detriment to its usefulness. ' But the council is aware, and the public is now also aware, hat certain definite charges have been brought against me uy the Principal, upon the strength of which he asked that I should be excluded from my professorship. These charges amounted to a declaration that I had departed from the orthodox faith. He alleged, as his reasons for this grave charge, that I did not accept a meaning of the word " eternal " which he considered to be the only right one, and that I refused to draw certain consequences from that meaning, or to pronounce an opinion upon a subject on which the Articles of the Church of England have not pronounced one. * The decision of the council, as it avowedly takes cognizance of the opinions which I expressed on this subject in my 'Theological Essays,' and in my correspondence with the Principal, can be understood to amount to nothing less than a condemnation of me upon the grounds which are expressed in the Principal's letter. The council must be deemed to have accepted the propositions in that letter, and to require that all its professors should accept them likewise. * The Principal evidently shares this opinion. When I wrote to inquire whether my lectures were to be continued till my successors were appointed, he answered that I had better discontinue them from the day on which the resolutions of the council were passed. He pronounced this decision though he had officially commanded me to be present at the opening of the term and to commence my usual courses, retracting an unofficial letter in which he had recommended me to ask for leave of absence. I submit that a person ordinarily so courteous to the professors of the college, and so tender of the interests of the students, would not have thus summarily suspended a teacher whom, with a full knowledge of his opinions, he had invited to be a lecturer in the theological department, and who had served the college in the other department for thirteen years — that he would not have 208 FINAL LETTER TO COUNCIL. [F. M. 48, interrupted the studies of the term and forced me to break an implicit engagement with those who are taking part in them — if he had not believed that he was executing an ecclesiastical sentence upon a convicted heretic. ' I cannot, my lords and gentlemen, believe that, great as are the privileges which the right reverend bench has conceded to the Principal of King's College, their lordships, the bishops, ever intended to give him an authority superior to their own, superior to that of the Articles by which they are bound ; I can- not think that they wished to constitute him and the council arbiters of the theology of the English Church. Such a claim would be as alarming, I apprehend, to the public as to our ecclesiastical rulers. If some parents have been suspicious of the influence which I might exercise over their sons, I believe that there are few parents in England who will not complain that the college has departed from its original principle when it gives such a scope to the private judgment of its chief officer, or even to the judgment of the body which manages its affairs. * I think it due, then, to my own character as a clergyman, to the interests of the college, and to the liberties of the English Church, that I should call upon the council, if they pronounce a theological sentence upon me at all, to declare what Article of our faith condemns my teaching. I conjure them not to use any phrases in condemning me which they would reject as loose and vague if the property or the life of a fellow-citizen were in question. Whether I have un- settled the faith of my pupils by giving an interpretation of the word " eternal," which I had maintained to be true — and especially important for students in divinity — before I was asked to join the theological department, the after lives of those pupils must determine. But if I have violated any law of the Church, that law can be at once pointed out — the nature of the transgression can be defined without any reference to possible tendencies and results. It is this justice, and not any personal favour, my lords and gentle- men, which I now request at your hands. •HAP. v.] THE FINALE. 209 ^ P.S. — I have requested the secretary to lay before the council some copies of my letter to the Princijoal, to which I have added some notes. I would respectfully call the attention of the council to the Note B., page 31, of the pamphlet.' After reading this letter the council decided that they did not think it necessary to enter further into the subject, and declared the two chairs held by Mr. Maurice in the college to be vacant. VOL. u. p 210 TEE LIGET OF DAY ON TEE LATE TBANSACTIONS. CHAPTEE YI. "Now that whicli especially distinguishes a high order of raan from a low order of man, that which constitutes human goodness, human greatness, human nobleness, is surely not the degree of enlightenment with which men pursue their own advantage ; but it is self-forgetfulness — it is self-sacrifice — it is the disregard of personal pleasure, personal indulgence, personal advan- tages remote or present, because some other line of conduct is more right." — Fronde, The Science of Hi story. 1853-1854 — PUBLIC opinion declares itself against its WORSHIPPERS — F. D. M. RESIGNS HIS POSITION AT QUEEN's COLLEGE, AND OFFERS TO RESIGN LINCOLN'S INN CAUSES LEADING TO THE FOUNDING OF THE "WORKING-MEn's COLLEGE DR. CANDLISh's attack SERMONS ON SACRIFICE LONG LETTER ON THE OCCUPATIONS OF THE FUTURE STATE — VIEW OF RELATION OF BUNSEn's LINE OF THOUGHT TO HIS OWN. Between the first and the second meeting of the Council public attention had been attracted to these proceedings. It was the time immediately preceding the Crimean War. Yet, despite the absorbing nature of public events, the newspapers not only in London but throughout the country teemed with articles on the subject of " King's College and Mr. Maurice." Mr. Sharp, whose father had been a friend of my father's, in- forms me that, meeting my father soon after October 27, the date of the first Council, he (Mr. Sharp) told him that an article warmly espousing his cause had appeared in the Baili/ Neics. ^' Indeed ! " replied my father, as his eyes filled with tears. " I did not think there was a newspaper in London that would have said a word in my favour." Both he and the majority of the Council had utterly miscalculated the efi"ect of their action upon public opinion. The forecast of Archdeacon Hare's letter CHAP. VI. J THE ANSWER OF PUBLIC OPINION. 211 on p. 184 -was accurately verified. The Council were as little likely to be pleased with their admirers as with their de- nouncers. The Beasoner, Mr. Holyoake's paper, put forth a warm eulogy upon Dr. Jelf ; the Inquirer, the organ of the Unitarians, in less savage terms, but also from avowed hostility to the Church of England, took the same line. The most powerful attack on the Council appeared in a letter in the Guardian, by a man who had never seen or spoken to my father.* Several other newspapers, notably, the Spectator , * Dr. Jelf s mind apparently "belonged to that rather numerous class which take puhUc opinion as a kind of conscience. Ho did not so much yield to puhlic opinion as change his own actual view of right and wrong according as the wind set at the time. He evidently had had no doubt at all that puhlic opinion would approve without hesitation when he advertised in the Record what he was doing. He very soon became aware that, at least as to 1 his action in regard to the Record, men's feelings were pretty much what were expressed after the first meeting of the Council in this letter in the Guardian j (signed 0. P.) : " It ought to be known that the accusation which has ' procured this condemnation from the Council, was first made by that \ newspaper, gathering many vulgar and scurrilous accidents from such a I vehicle of communication. And the readers of that print must have been I much struck, as your readers no doubt also were, to know that Dr. Jelf, a I dignitary of the Church and Principal of King's College, thought it consistent i with his position and his dignity to insert an advertisement in that journal, I reassuring it by the statement that Mr. Maurice's orthodoxy was under i consideration, and affording room for the hope that the utmost requirements of the Record would ere long be satisfied." From the time that Dr. Jelf became aware of this feeling, he was most . anxious to apologise for this part of his conduct. His letters to my father on the subject are almost pathetic. " I despise the Record" he wrote to Bishop Wilberforce. Especially he took it almost as a wrong that my father should ! have said in one of his letters that if Dr. Jelf should think proper to carry on the controversy in the columns of the Record, my father must decline to reply. But Dr. Jelf took no step more public than his apology before the Council, to deprive himself of such advantages as he had thought it his duty to seek for the College by his submission to the Record. ! One of the points most insisted on in much of the private correspondence \ of this time is the degraded position in which a college places itself by entering ; into a commercial calculation as to whether or no it can afford to resist a :' wave of unpopularity. This feeling was most strongly expressed in some of • the letters from public school-masters. It was inevitable that the contrast I with Arnold's bold facing of a somewhat similar, though, no doubt, not so fierce, a storm should strike many men. p 2 212 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SYMPATHY WITH HIM. the Daily Neivs, and the Globe, all of which had been till then in strong opposition to him as the leader of Christian Socialism, indignantly denounced the action of the Council. Mr. Ludlow, with his usual devotion to my father when in trouble, prepared and published a careful statement of " the facts " of the whole case. This was largely read throughout the country. On my father's writing to offer to resign his position as Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn, he received a most cordial reply from the Benchers, expressing their wish that he should remain. As he also received an informal intimation from Bishop Blomfield that the Bishop did not wish to take any further step, he had no occasion to carry out his intention of refusing to claim the protection afforded him by his position at Lincoln's Inn. The manifestation of public feeling in the press was as no- thing to that which was made to my father personally. Letters poured in from all parts of the country, many of them from people he had never heard of before. Almost every one of these letters represents a whole circle of friends. Almost all his correspondents write of letters received by them from others, expressing a sense of personal love and indebtedness, gratitude for light where darkness had been before. There came also more public demonstrations. The post, one morning, brought a letter containing the Poet Laureate's lines of sympathy, and the invitation, to visit his young godson, which Whewell declared to be the most perfect specimen of its kind in the language. There came also in succession an address from the co-operating working-men of London to their President, an address from forty Dissenters of all denominations,* an address and separate and enthusiastic letters from his old pupils at King's College, an address from Queen's College, part of a correspondence published at the time, which records the facts as to his action in relation to that body ; and finally an address from the members of the congregation of Lincoln's Inn. I give some of these in the order of their dates, not for * I am only prevented from publishing his answer to this address hy its length. In itself the letter is among the most valuable of his answers. GOOD-BYE. AN ACT OF PBIVATE JUDGMENT. 213 the sake of the merely complimentary portions, but because each of them has a special characteristic of its own, and contains matter that will be found valuable in itself. For similar reasons I give his answers. To Ms late Fusils at King's College. '21 Queen Square, Bloomsbury, November 3, 1853. ' My dear Friends, ' I thank you very heartily for your affectionate parting words, which have given me very great pleasure. If I thought they implied the least disrespect to the authorities of the college, I could not have acknowledged them, however personally grateful they might have been. But I know that you have no such feelings, and that you will be as earnest and faithful in all your college duties as you have been in my lecture- room. May God bless you each and all and every one with whom I have been connected in this work which is now ended.' To Bev. J. Com]oton. ' 21 Queen Square, Bloomsbury, November c, 1853. ' I did not write to you before, because I really was afraid I should confuse you by my tidings. The decree has now gone forth against me ; but it is not a decree of the English Church, not even of the Bishops. It is an act of private judgment ; my appeal throughout has been to the formularies of the Church. I am condemned by those especially who wish the religious newspapers to be the great court of ecclesiastical appeal. * But do not, I beseech you, think of such a trifle as this. The loss of pupils who have been throughout attentive and affectionate, and never showed their affection more than now, is of course a trying one ; but if it leads other men to think more earnestly, deeply, and devoutly, the compensation is enormous. I can say confidently that I counted the cost. I said when I finished that particular essay, " This will end my work at King's College." I have therefore had no surprise 214 FENDING THE BLOW FBOM TOVCHING THE CHURCH. "svortliY to complain of. But I haye liad rewards that I did not dream of ; tokens of sympatliy, proofs that words spoken in weakness haye had a power not their own, which haye surprised me more than I can telL Your own letters haye been a yery great help and encouragement to me. And I am sure that nothing which happens to me, if it be a thousand times worse than this, ought to shake you in any one hope you haye cherished, or to giye you a moment's doubt that the Church is standing upon a rock, eyen if the sand which has drifted oyer it sometimes looks as if it were the only foundation.' ' 21 Queen Sq^iare, Xovember 11, 1853. 'My dear Laxgley, ' . . . . My censure has a quasi-ecclesiastical character from the connection of the Bishop of London with the Council of King's College, and from the fact that he proposed the resolution against me ; but it is not a decree of the Church ; it will not be if he should follow it up, as he may or may not do, by suspending me from my ministerial duties. I appeal to the Articles against their glorification of priyate judgment. They cannot driye me out of the Church of England ; for it is not to driye any one out to make him incapable of re- ceiving the reyenues which are accidentally attached to it. Those reyenues may be turned to sectarian uses, wholly turned, perhaps, some day ; but the Church will remain. That has been my reason for insisting so yehemently on the Articles and the Prayer Book as a protection against the religious newspapers. I haye not changed my ground in the least, and I belieye this eyent will lead numbers to under- stand it who haye been perplexed hitherto. Although, therefore, I would by no means urge you to take any sudden step which might be more like a renunciation of the position you haye, than the acquisition of a safer ground, I do belieye that ultimately all that has happened and may happen to me will show you more clearly that there is a Church of England, and that you may claim your place in it.' AP yl] good-bye to QUEEN'S COLLEGE. 215 F. D. M. to the Committee of Education {consisting of the Professors) of Queen's College. '21 Queen Square, November 15, 1853. 'My dear Friends, * You will allow me, I am sure, to dispense witli ordinary formalities in bidding farewell to the Committee of Educa- tion, with which I have worked so happily for nearly six years. ' When I was dismissed from King's College I felt that I might subject you to serious misrepresentations from the public, and, perhaps, to a rebuke from the Visitor, if I remained among you. I did not, however, feel that I should be justi- fied in resigning altogether, and I understood it to be the wish of many, perhaps most of you, that I should not. I took this course : I announced to the deputy-chairman, that if I was elected unanimously by the Council, I would con- tinue to lecture in the college on moral philosophy and English literature, but if there was any dissentient voice I should act as if I were rejected. I said, at the same time, that under no circumstances could I retain the office of chairman of your committee. It seemed to me a very different thing to be a teacher in the college, and to repre- sent the body of its teachers before the Council and the Visitor. ' It has been announced to me that a majority of the Council, at their meeting yesterday, decided that I should continue to hold my lectureships, but that there were dissentients who stated their reasons for thinking that I ought to be dismissed. I am, therefore, bound in honour to fulfil the promise I gave in my letter to Mr. Nicolay, which, at my own request, he communicated to the Council. * But were I free from that obligation I should still feel that I could not be the one teacher in the college upon whom a stigma has been fixed, the single person who could be presented to the Visitor under a protest from members of the Council, to whose opinion he would probably attach great weight. I should be putting myself in a dishonourable position : 216 LETTER ON LEAVING QUEENS COLLEGE. [F. M. 48. what is of much more importance, I should be bringing you, who have kindly given my name a prominence to which it was not entitled, into unfair suspicion. ' There is, therefore, but one course open to me. I am thankful that the sharp pain which it costs me to sever a connection so affectionate and cordial as ours has been, will not be increased by the reflection that the college will be a sufferer. Previously to the appointment of a council, even a single withdrawal might have shaken you ; now, I trust you will become stronger every day. My moral philosophy class, though it has increased this term, is still the smallest in the college. In literature, I was merely acting as Strettell's substitute. The office of chairman you will be able to supply admirably, even if the zeal and efficiency of the excellent deputy did not make it now, as it has always been, a very easy office. What a pleasant one your confidence has made it I do not trust myself to say even in a letter ; I had not courage to tell you in person this evening. * I wish I could leave behind me some token of my affection to an institution which I have had the great honour and privilege of watching from its birth. I fear I must be con- tent with asking you to consider my share of the fund raised for paying for the charter, and for discharging our obligations to the Governesses' Society, as the property of the college. ' Ever, my dear friends, affectionately yours.' Ansiver of the Committee hy their Chairman, Professor Trench, ' Queen's College, November 29, 1853. *Dear Mr. Maurice, * The circumstances detailed in your letter sufficiently convince us that you did not leave us while it was possible for you, consistently with your own high sense of delicacy and honour, to remain ; and we are grateful for the self-denial which retained you with us so long. If in one respect it increases, in another it diminishes our regret at this your separation from us, that your resignation, both of the chair FBOM THE QUEEN'S COLLEGE PROFESSOBS, 217 at our committee and your professorships, was voluntary. And now there is nothing which need hinder us from saying freely, and without reserve, how great the reverence and affection are with which we as a body, and each one in parti- cular, regard you. Kecent experience has shown us that in saying this, we express not our own feelings only, but those of the pupils, and of all connected with the college, wherein you have exercised an influence deep and lasting, which they only can rightly measure who have had the opportunity of witnessing its operations, and observing how many were the subjects of it, besides those who had the happiness of being your immediate pupils. It is indeed a grievous blending of sorrow with joy, when amid the congratulations natural on the completion of a long and tedious work, on the fulfilment, after four vexatious years, of a hope, which it was you who first bid us to entertain, this very fulfilment is the signal for your loss. At such a moment that which we would more willingly have said to others, we must say to yourself — namely, that you were our guide during all that period of doubt and uncertainty ; it was your foresight and moderation which prevented difficulties from arising ; by your firmness, difficulties, when unavoidable, were met and overcome ; your wisdom has been throughout the best bond of our counsels. Nor does it fail to be some satisfaction to us, as your letter assures us it is also to you, that you have, before withdrawing from the work, set the key-stone to the arch, that you have left this college, the infancy of which you nurtured, with matured government and legalised authority, and may reflect hereafter that you have been the main instrument in secur- ing for it the first charter which the Crown of Great Britain has ever granted solely for the furtherance of female educa- tion ; with which event for the future your name must be in- dissolubly connected. We accept ^with gratitude the generous donation which you have madejto our funds. We trust that in some way or other your name may be permanently bound up with it, though it 218 FBOM TEE QUEEN'S COLLEGE PBOFESSOBS. is not for us at present to say in what manner this result may be most effectually accomplished. ' And having received so many and so great favours from you, we yet cannot conclude without asking one favour more ; this namely, that, lest the circumstances which have compelled you now to leave us should continue to act, and make the separation final, you would allow us to perpetuate, not your memory only, but, so far as may be, your presence among us. Your portrait placed in our hall of meeting, if you will permit it to be taken, will there constantly remind us of one, the freest that we have ever known from every sordid aim ; the readiest that we have ever known to spend himself in all self-denying labours for others ; the most forgetful of himself, and who therefore may least of all be forgotten of us. Nor will this be our only gain ; we shall thus, as we would fain hope, be also reminded that only as we carry on our work in the spirit which you would have imparted, which we trust you have bequeathed to us, only while we regard it first and chiefly as a labour of faith and love, can we look for any true success, any lasting blessing upon it. — Signed on behalf of the committee, ' KiCHARD C. Trench, Chairman.' Mr. Maurices Letter to the Pitpils of Queens College on their presenting him with a Silver Inkstand. ' 21 Queen Square, December 15, 1853. ' My dear Friends, ^ The beautiful inkstand which you have given me, in recollection of the many happy hours I have passed in Queen's College, will be always very precious to me. I only hope that I may have been able to teach any of you as much, or half as much, as you have taught me. The blessing of this mutual in- struction is one that I looked for even more in a college of ladies than in any other ; and I can truly say that, so far from being disappointed, I have felt it in a way I had not dreamed of. It is, I am sure, the experience of my dear and excellent friends who are still working in the college, of whose affection " GOOD-BYE'' TO QUEEN'S COLLEGE PUPLLS. 219 to the pupils I can testify, and who, I know, will receive their affection as richly as I have done, for they deserve it better. I believe that we are all acting as the feeble and erring witnesses of a Higher Teacher, who is always with you, of whose guidance no circumstances can deprive you. To make you, each and all, aware that you have such a friend, and that He deserves an infinite confidence and love, has, I think, been the object of us all. To effect it would be a higher reward than to obtain any sympathy for ourselves ; though I can answer for one, how great a cordial that sympathy is. * And so, dear friends, good-bye — a simpler and better phrase of parting than farewell, because it means God be with you. ' Very sincerely and affectionately yours.' To Rev. D. J. Vaughan, ' December 2, 1853. ' . . . . You are quite right in your interpretation of my words. I never dreamed of merging time in eternity. The phrases which suggest such a thought belong to the popular theology and seem to me most unsatisfactory. * I maintain that time and eternity co-exist here. The difficulty is to recognise the eternal state under our temporal conditions ; not to lose eternity in time. This difficulty which we all feel and confess, and to which preachers so continually allude, has been illustrated I think in my recent controversy with Dr. Jelf. I cannot perceive that he has ever, even for a moment, contemplated eternity as anything but the future state contrasted with the present. This mighty denial, I suppose, death will put an end to. We must some day know that we are living and moving and having our being in God ; we cannot always act upon the strange lie that the things which we see are those that determine what we are. But though I may speak of death as bringing us acquainted with eternity, face to face with it, I have no business, as far as I see at present, to speak of death as ending time. I do not exactly understand what that means. 220 WOJRKIXG MEN'S COLLEGE. nSoS. F. 48. The eternal state I apprehend is the state of a spiritual being, out of time, living in spiritual relations, enjoying or suffer- ing a spiritual inheritance. Its actual conditions will be determined by these, so at least I gather from Scripture, not the inward by the outward, as they seem to be (though they are not really) here. ' Do I express myself intelligibly ? Pray tell me if I do not ; for there is nothing I desire more than to be understood by others, except to understand myself, and to be understood by my Creator and Judge.' The difficulties which had been met with in setting up Associations had brought home to the promoters the need for raisins: the standard of education amoncr the workin^j-men of London. Throughout the year 1S53 a series of lectures had been criven and classes had been tau^rht at the " Hall of Association." in Castle Street, under the superintendence of '"'a Committee of Teaching and Publication." The AssociatioE movement from various causes was no longer pursued with the same vigour and unity of action by the promoters as it had been at first. Several of the London Associations had been robbed by their treasurers and ruined. To a great extent the centre of gravity of the movement had been shifted from the promoters, as the advisers of the men and the aj)Ostles of a principle, to ^Ir. Xeale and the Central Agency " as pro- viders of the needed capital. Mr. Xeale remained one of the Council of Promoters, but his chief influence was altogether independent of them and due to his readiness to lend to any Association that wanted money. My father's great motive throughout the movement had been always the wish for national unity, the desire to bring together classes that had been alienated from one another. Now as always he was acted on by the dread lest a sect of Christian Socialists should arise which should become separated from other men by the very effort to proclaim, as its distinctive creed, the fellow- ship of all men under the Head of Man. The name " college " attracted him greatly. It seemed to CHAP, VI.] WOBKING MEN'S ADDBESS. 221 him to imply an association of men as men — an association not formed for some commercial purpose and not limited by coincidence of opinion, and to represent, therefore, that union which he was always striving to bring about. The very difficulties which the associations had met with in London as well as the success which had attended some associations in the provinces, suggested the need in London of bringing men into more intimate relations with one another, if the evils which had in the first instance provoked the setting up of associations were to be successfully met. All these different influences were pressing on him just at the time when his connection with King's College was, as during many months of 1853 he well knew, coming to an end. It is not very clear at what date the name " \Yorking Men's College " was first presented to his mind. On December 27, 1853, a large body of working-men met at the Hall of Association to present him with a testimonial, and in one of the speeches then made, a hope was expressed that he might not find it a fall to cease to be a professor at King's College and to become the " Principal of a Working Man's College." The address from the working-men of London was as follows : — ' Dear and respected Sir, ' The undersigned members of the working class of this metro- polis desire to express to you those feelings of admiration and regard with which your conduct has inspired them. ' To the greater number you are known chiefly from the service, you have rendered to the class to which they belong by your efforts to improve their condition and introduce a higher and purer tone into their daily life, and from the sacrifices you have made for the maintenance of what you conceive to be vital and essential truths. Those only among them who have enjoyed the pleasure and the privilege of personal communi- cation with you, can fully understand the extent to which those services have been enhanced by the urbanity of 222 WOBKIXG MEN'S ADDBESS. [1853. F. 31. 48. manner and kindliness of heart wliicli your intercourse with them has uniformly exhihited. ' It is with pain and hitter regret that they have hecome ac- quainted with recent events connected with your position as a public teacher in one of the chief educational establishments of this country ; and while they desire to avoid any expression of opinion as to the theological aspects of the dispute which has unfortunately arisen, they are convinced that that establish- ment will be less favourably regarded in consequence of its results ; and the authorities in connection with it having looked upon you as unfit to rank among its most honoured teachers, working-men will come to the conclusion that those authorities are not entitled to their respect. ' As working-men living among working-men, knowing their views and feelings, they assert with confidence that the affectionate regard for you which they have attempted to express, may be accepted as a faithful reflex of the feeling entertained by many thousands of their fellows ; and they believe that if anything tends to bring the many into real communion with the Church, it is that it numbers among its members men like yourself. ' That you may long continue to pursue your useful and honour- able career ; that the eminent services you have confessedly rendered to the Church and to the cause of education, may meet with a more generous and grateful appreciation ; that those who at present misunderstand and misrepresent you may learn by your example and that they may at least emulate you in the wisdom and zeal with which you have advocated the cause of the working-man, is the sincere and earnest desire of those whose names are hereunto appended. 'THE COMMITTEE. ' Mr. ChafxLES Allen, Pianoforte-maker. Mr. "Willlym Allan, Engineer. Mr. Charles Bowen, Tailor. Mr. William Burgess, Lithographer. Mr. Walter Cooper, Tailor. WORKING MEN'S AND LINCOLN'S INN ADDRESS. 223 Mr. Egbert Curtis, Pianoforte-maker. Mr. Daniel Harris, Compositor. Mr. Frederick Kent, Shoemaker. Mr. Henry Jeffries, Shoemaker. Mr. William Newton, Engineer. Mr. Joseph Piokard, Carpenter. Mr. Thomas Shorter, Watch-case Joint finisher. Mr. William Livesy, Smith. Mr. W. Turley, Tailor.' Then follow in addition to the committee 953 names of working-men of every variety of employment, ninety-five different occupations being represented. To the Reverend F. D. Maurice, M.A., Chaplain of Lincoln s Inn. ' Reverend Sir, ' Lincoln's Inn, December, 1853. * We, the undersigned Members of the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn, and members of the congregation of Lincoln's Inn Chapel, beg leave to express to you our sentiments of deep sympathy under the circumstances connected with your dismissal from the Professorships of Divinity, and of English Literature and Modern History, at King's College, London. • It would be out of place for us, we consider, to enter into the theological questions at issue between you and the Eeverend Principal of King's College, even though we might cover our presumption by the example of the very mixed body of laity and clergy composing the Council of that college, by which sentence has virtually been pronounced in the matter. But we cannot forbear observing that the materials for a charge against you had to be sought for in your clerical ministrations amongst ourselves, and in the contents of a volume of essays, delivered originally as sermons in Lincoln's Inn Chapel ; thus showing demonstrably that no such materials were to be found in your teachings as professor at the college, which has lost the benefit of your services. ' Still less would it become us to animadvert on the forms of 224 ADDBESS FROM MEMBEBS OF LINCOLN'S INN proceeding adopted in this matter. But it has been im- possible for us to notice without surprise, amongst other things, that in a matter of such moment to the accused and to others, a single discussion should have been held sufficient by men, all of whom could scarcely be familiar with the sub- ject in debate, for the disposal of the many abstruse points of theology involved in the controversy ; and that a priest of the English Church, a Professor of Divinity, a theologian of acknowledged eminence, after a decision (which appeared to him to declare " that he had departed from the Orthodox Faith ") that the opinions expressed and doubts indicated in his Essays and correspondence respecting future punishments and the final issues of the Day of Judgment were of a dangerous tendency, and likely to unsettle the minds of the theological students — should, upon asking his judges to declare what Article of our faith condemned his teaching, have been met by the reply, that the Council did not consider it necessary to enter further into the subject. * For ourselves, Keverend Sir, who are united to you by the ties of your religious ministrations, we feel bound to testify to you on this occasion our gratitude for the spiritual benefits which, by God's grace, you have conferred upon us, by awakening in us a new sense of the living truth of Holy Scripture, and of the Book of Common Prayer, especially in their application to the events and dealings of our social and common life — whilst many of us have further to express their sense of that uniform courtesy and kindness of manner, that manly frankness and simplicity of character, which have endeared you as a Christian gentleman, and Christianity itself by your example, to all who have the privilege of knowing you. ' Sincerely trusting that this may be but a passing cloud in your useful and honoured life, and that (whilst continuing to exercise your ministry amongst us) you may soon be restored to some sphere of activity elsewhere, equivalent at least to the one from which you have lately been removed. * We are, etc' CHAP. VI.] ANSWER TO MEMBEES OF LINCOLN'S INN. 225 Mr, Maurice's Bejphj. ' 4 Grand Parade, St. Leonards, ' December 30, 1853. *Dear Friends, ' I received a cordial letter, signed by your names, two days be- fore I left London. I did not like to answer hastily a docu- ment whicli was so gratifying to me, and wbicb touched upon questions that are so interesting to us all. I thought I should show my sense of your kindness better if I entered into some explanation of the principles upon which I have endeavoured to act, as the Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn, and in whatever other sphere I have been permitted to work. ' You speak of some who have charged me with departing from the " Orthodox Faith." So long as I continue a minister of the Church of England, such an imputation affects not only my theology, but my moral character ; it is a direct im- peachment of my honesty. Had it been supported by any evidence that I have denied one of the Articles of Faith to which I have subscribed, I should have been bound to treat it with the greatest seriousness, and to demand an examination of its truth before some competent tribunal. But I am bound to pass by with indifference the mere dicta of in- !, dividuals, however respectable, on such a subject. The Church of England has not made us subject to their judgments. By giving us fixed standards of doctrine, she has done what in her lies to protect us against them. j The other charge, that my teaching is dangerous, and likely to unsettle the minds of those who are brought under my influence, especially of young men, is of a different character. It evades the test of formularies ; it must be confirmed or refuted by experience. I can quite understand how much I justification good and intelligent men may see for it, in the course which I have followed in my teaching ever since I I have taught at all. I merely protest against the assertion, that I have, in any, even the slightest, degree, departed from that course recently, or have spoken or written any words which make me more liable to the imputation than I was seven years ago. VOL. TI. Q 226 TO LINCOLN'S INN ON HIS PBINCIPLES [F. M. 48. ' I have tlie best reason to know that the minds of numbers in all classes of society — of young men especially — are unsettled, not on some trifling or secondary questions, but on those which afi'ect their inmost faith and their practical conduct, on those which concern the character of God and their relations to Him. I know that it is counted wisdom by many, not to recognise these difficulties at all, or, if they cannot help acknowledging them, to treat them as sinful doubts which must be suppressed, because they interfere with the authority of the Scriptures and of the Church. The ecclesiastical position of those who hold this opinion and act upon it, entitles them to my respect. I should have followed their maxim implicitly, if I had not been thoroughly convinced, that by doing so, I should foster the infidelity which they desire to check — causing it to break out openly in the more honest, because they feel that that cannot be true which shrinks from the light — tempting the cowardly and self-indulgent to a feigned acquiescence, which involves, it seems to me, the most real and deadly Atheism. ^ I have maintained, therefore, long before I ministered among you — and in every sermon which I have preached to you — that there is no safety but in looking fairly in the face all the difficulties which beset ourselves ; but in frankly meeting all the difficulties which torment our brethren ; that God encourages us to do this ; that by doing it we show that we trust Him to give us the help which He has promised us, a help which can deliver us from falsehood and guide us into all truth. ^ So far as I have been enabled steadily to pursue this method with myself, with you, with all who have in any way been brought under my teaching ; so far I have found that the Scriptures and the forms of the Church have unfolded their meaning to me, have shown me a way out of my perplexities, and out of the perplexities of the age ; have ofl'ered me a deeper theology and a wider humanity than I had ever imagined for myself, or than the age, with its splendid professions, — I will not say has ever realised, — but has ever ( HAP. Yi.] OF TEACHING, PBEACHING, LEABNING. 227 dreamed of. So far as I have faltered in this course, and I have often done so, the Bible has become to me a sealed book, the Prayers of the Church have become dull form- alities, not the worship of spiritual beings to Him who is a Spirit. ' I have, you know, been more anxious that you should learn from the Bible and from the Church than from me. I have endeavoured to set them forth as instruments by which God would raise you above your conceits and mine. But I have been as earnest that you should not worship the instruments instead of Him who uses them ; that you should receive God's Word as the witness of His love, and what it has effected for us and for mankind, God's Church as the living and continuous witness that that Love is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, and that it will put down evil and establish righteousness throughout the universe. * I do not repent of any words in which I have spoken to you of this Love as mightier than all which is opposed to it, or of the triumphs which it is yet to achieve. I believe that, if I had spoken more broadly, strongly, freely on this subject, I should have done more to make you righteous and true. My fear is not of expanding, but of contracting, the Gospel which we are sent to preach ; not of seeing too strong a testimony in the Bible to the will of Him in whom is light and no darkness at all, but of limiting its testimonies to meet my narrow conceptions ; not of exaggerating the duty of the Church to be a witness against all hard and cruel conceptions of our Father in Heaven, which lead to a confusion between Him and the Spirit of Evil, but of not perceiving how manifold are the ways in which that duty should be fulfilled. I am sure that if the Gospel is not regarded as a message to all mankind of the redemption which God has effected in His Son ; if the Bible is thought to be speaking only of a world to come, and not of a Kingdom of Eighteousness and Peace and Truth with which we may be in conformity or in enmity now ; if the Church is not felt to be the hallower of all professions and occupations, 228 VIEW OF ABTICLES AT THIS 3I03IENT. ^F. 31 48. the bond of all classes, the iustriimeiit of reforming abuses, the admonisher of the rich, the friend of the poor, the asserter of the glory of that humanity which Christ bears, — We are to blame, and God will call ns to account as unfaithful stewards of His treasures. * I am sure, dear friends, that you will desire for me and for those with whom I work — (more kind and cordial fellow- labourers no one ever had) — at Lincoln's Inn, that we may be more truly the ministers of our fellow-men, by being more faithfully the ministers of God. I can answer for them and for myself, that we desire for the Society which has appointed us, and for all who hear us regularly or occasion- ally, all the blessings which Christmas speaks of, and a New Year of greater zeal, unity, and therefore in the best sense, happiness, than any which has been given to them hitherto.* To Mr, Fi. K Eutton. * My dear Sir, ' Hurstmonceux, January S, 1854. * If I found any fault with your paper in the Inquirer it would be this ; that you have represented me as resting my case on my own personal experience in King's College, and on the advantage which subscription to Articles gave me in my quarrel with Dr. Jelf. I do not think if you read the preface again you will find that my vanity was quite so egregious, or my conclusions, however false, based on quite such a pin-point as this. I had spoken of a conviction formed years ago — deliberately formed — opposing the bias of my education — that Articles are not unfriendly to progress, but are favourable to it ; that we are likely to revolve in endless circles, not to advance at all, if we assume that nothing has been done or proved yet in the world concerning moral and spiritual principles. As I had put forward these assertions with some earnestness, and had repeated them often, I was anxious to show why I had not been led to recant them by that which had befallen me. That was my excuse for alluding to the subject. I think still that it was a valid excuse. Whether I liked Ai'ticles in REVELATION IN THE WOBLD AND IN THE BIBLE. 229 my own particular case, because they lielpecl Dr. Jelf and me to clieat eacli other in the dark, or — as I affirmed— because they saved us from that necessity, is not the principal question. I merely referred to the particular case at all to show how it bore upon an opinion which I had adopted and professed years before I ever heard Dr. Jelf's name or was the least likely to be a teacher in any college with Articles or without them. ' Perhaps I cannot better introduce what I should wish to say about your remarks on Christ and the Holy Spirit in the Inqidrer, than by correcting a mistake — a serious one — into which you have fallen respecting my view of the Scriptures. I never supposed that they were to be to the moral student what the outward world is to the physical. I always maintained and have tried to act out the conviction that the wdiole field of human experience and history lies open to us and requires to be searched and dug into. I have not affirmed d p-iori that the Bible did not merely exhibit one set of phenomena and explanations of phenomena a few of which were to be accepted, the majority rejected like the stories and explanations of stories in the religious books of the Hindoos. But I have said a iJosteriori that I believed the Bible did serve as a key book which enabled us to understand the histories and legends of various nations, to justify the true beliefs which were in them, to show what false beliefs or unbeliefs had mingled with these, to explain how they had become confounded. I have called for the application of this most severe test to its records; I have said that they ought to bear it if the book is what it assumes * to be, and that Christians have wronged and degraded it by severing it from all other books instead of manfully evincing their own confidence in its veracity and its strength by trying whether it will not throw light upon all. * You seem to treat the question whether there may not be just as well twenty, or thirty, or a hundred, or thirty thousand mediators between God and man as merely a question between you and me turning upon philosophical experience. 230 VIEW OF HINBOOISM, BUDDHISM, ETC, [E. M. 48. * Now I — holding as you do that the whole experience of the world is intended for the moralist and theologian, not a particular portion of it which has been gone through in Judea or England in the first century or the nineteenth — find all religions of the world so many attempts to produce these twenty or thirty or a hundred or thirty thousand mediators. I find them bearing the most harmonious unanimous testimony to the necessity of some uniting point between the absolute Godhead and the voluntary worshipping creature. I find them broken, divided, superstitious schemes for propitiating an unwilling and ungracious Being, because they have not been able to perceive the uniting point, because they have been obliged to create it, somewhere in the material or the spiritual world. And I accept the Bible explanation of this difficulty — the Bible proclamation of the One Person in whom God is at one with His creatures, in whom He can meet them and they can meet Him — as perfectly satisfying to my own individual conscience, and also to that reason of mankind which I trace in all these diverse and warring experiences. ' I have attempted to explain in my Boyle Lectures* why I think the experiences of mankind respecting a Divine Spirit who awakens the thoughts, faculties, faith, hope, love in us, and directs them to an object above themselves, to a common object, in Avhom they find that which satisfies them, and which they are created to behold and enjoy, are altogether distinct from those respecting a Mediator — why, when they are separated from them or substituted for them, the result is either a priestcraft such as we see in Hindooism, or a self-worship such as we see in Buddhism, the two never being able to coalesce, each continually becoming more degraded, more superstitious, more exclusive. I will not go over the evidence here. I merely refer to it that you may see I have not been so heedless of the difficulty you have started as you suppose. I do not attach any extravagant value to any arguments of mine or to any course of thought * ' The ricligioiis of the AVorkl and their llelations to Christianity.' CHAP. VI.] " THE OBJECT OF 3IY LIFEr 231 through which I have been led. Valeat quantum valebit. As it has been useful to me, I have no right to conceal it ; on many it may fall quite dead. I do hope and trust that I should be glad to see every notion of mine exposed and annihilated if it blocks up the way to truth. To exhibit that truth, not in notions but in a Person, has been and is the object of my life. I believe that so it will unite us all to each other, that while we behold it split into opinions, it must separate us more and more from each other. But I rejoice to think that you believe in a Spirit of Truth who can guide us into all truth. If you cherish that faith and act upon it, I am sure it will signify very little to you whether or not you regard me as a truth-seeker and truth- lover. I believe it is the idlest of all tasks to assert or to argue for one's own sincerity. It is not good for much if it wants to be defended ; nor can any man accept our defence of ourselves except so far as we help to make them more sincere. So far as God enables me to do that for any one, I shall lead one more person to glorify Him ; one's own name may be left in His hands to justify it or extinguish it as seems to Him best.' In a correspondence with Mr. Kingsley and Mr. D. Macmillan, he had again recurred to his favourite scheme of a set of ' Cambridge Tracts.' The first was to be one on the Oxford movement. He had sent Mr. Kingsley a sketch of it in a letter dated January 6, 1854. To this sketch he refers in the following letter as " my Oxford tract." * My dear Kingsley, ' January 10, 1854. *A11 your hints are most valuable and have determined my thoughts. The one on Ash Wednesday is invaluable. Whether it is adopted or not in fact, it expresses that which should be the character of the whole course, viz. confessional for the clergy first, not first for those to whom they preach, Macmillan demurs to my title. He says they will say at Cambridge, "What right have you to assume that "you 232 EOW IS THE CHASM TO BE FILLED f [1854. F, M. 48. represent us ? " He maintains that the objection will be a most valid one, because the actual faith of Cambridge is as low as possible. I do not assent altogether to his arguments ; but they are worth something, and on the whole I believe ' Tracts for Priests and People ' will do better. I should propose to begin with a tract affirming that there is a separation, as all admit, between priests and people, that it is increasing and that it must increase till the priests look for * the causes of it in themselves and in their unbelief, till they know what Gospel they have to preach, and preach it. Then I would enter into the causes which hinder each class of Churchmen from fulfilling its own professions, and into the demands of the people. This I think is more to the purpose than my Oxford tract, from which however there is a hint that may be afterwards developed. "^jt ^ ^ * What I should like is to get up a meeting of young London clergy to consider that special question, " How is the chasm between Priests and People to be filled up ? " From that might come my college as a practical carrying out * of the idea of the tracts. The proposal has been kindly received in many quarters, but it requires careful con- sideration and the exclusion of all big-wigs.' A little earlier the " Promoters " had heard of a " People's College," which had been established at Sheffield, in 1842, by an Independent minister, Mr. Bayley. On the day following that of the above letter, i.e. on January 11, 1854, at one of the Promoters' meetings at Queen Square, Mr. Y. Neale read a letter from the Secretary of the People's College at Sheffield, giving an [account of its origin and history. In its later form this college " had been due to a spontaneous movement on the part of the Sheffield working-men in 1848. After the Secretary's letter had been read to the " Promoters," a motion was made by Mr. Hughes, and seconded by Mr. Lloyd Jones, that " It be referred to the Committee of Teaching and Publication to frame, and so far as they think fit to carry out, a plan for the establish- 233 ment of a People's College in connection with tlie Metropolitan Associations." After several meetings of this committee, my father undertook to prepare a scheme for the college. By February 7, 1854, he had drawn up, and had printed a scheme set forth in twelve pages, which, after some modifications and much debate, became the basis of the organisation of the Working Men's College. A circular was also drawn up by him to give an account of the proposal and its purposes. One of the Associations which had failed, had formerly occupied a house, No. 31, Ked Lion Square. As my father had made himself responsible for the rent of this house, it was immediately available for the purposes of the college. Sub- scriptions were obtained from a few friends, and it was agreed that he should give a set of lectures, both to obtain funds and to make the subject better known. Though for the moment the nucleus of the teachers would naturally consist of his old friends, he believed that it would be always possible to recruit the teaching portion of the college from the number of men who yearly come up to London from the older Universities, who have sufficient leisure and knowledge, and who would gain in teaching as much as their pupils in learning. He had great hopes that in this way, if the movement extended to the University towns and the great commercial centres, a connecting bond between the Universities and the mass of the people might be found ; that the " Church " would show that it could " educate the nation ; " that sectarian difficulties would be overcome ; that an- other motive than the money one would be furnished for national education, viz. the effort of each portion of the nation to turn to account the powers it possessed to supply what others lacked, to the common good of all. The meetings of the " Executive Committee " of the Promo- ters were still continued, and were still occupied with Co-opera- tive business, but his name appears less often than hitherto in the list of those present at them, and the larger meetings of the Promo- ters were almost wholly occupied with the college scheme. Meantime the ' Theological Essays ' were provoking dis- cussion in all parts of the country, and letters were continually 234 ACKNOWLEDGES A DEBT TO THE 'BECOBD: reaching liim from those who wished to clear up points that had been raised in these discussions. It would be impossible within the compass of such a work as this to give more than an occasional specimen of his answers. To Rev. D. J. Vaiiglian, 'January 18, 1854. ' I hope I said nothing in the Essay on Atonement which could hinder any one from drawing the divinest life and comfort from the wwds, " The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin ; " they are to me some of the most wonderful and practically necessary in the Bible. The force of them and of the whole doctrine of sacrifice seems to me hidden from multitudes by the heathenish mode in which we invert the Gospel of God's reconciliation, losing I think quite as much the true sense of God's wrath as of His mercy. * I have felt so indignant at the perversions of this truth, which are turning, as I almost know, thousands into infidels and hundreds into Eomanists, that I fear I may not be always meek and gentle with the butchers of God's words and Church. But I have never intended to say a harsh syllable against the Evangelicals as such, whom I honour and reverence for what they have done, and whom I would never complain of for denying other men's convictions, if they would maintain those which they have inherited from their fathers. When I see them defacing and distorting them, and yet trying to live upon the reputation of the truths which they do not hold, I cannot be silent, especially now that they are the most influential of all parties, and have the greatest power of bestowing patronage or inflicting injury. I have no per- sonal complaint against even the most outrageous of the school. On the contrary, I owe a great debt of gratitude to the Becord for driving me out of subjection to. a school towards which such kindly people as Mr. Bickersteth and others might have held me bound, and for doing the like service to many whose freedom may be of more worth to the world. In my new edition, I have struck out several passages, CHAP. VI.] MOTIVES OF BIS 3I0DE OF WHITING. 235 especially one about dowagers in the Essay on the Atone- ment, which had distressed some of my friends, and ^Yhich there could be no motive for retaining, as I cannot now be suspected of wishing to conciliate any respectable people.' One of the most curious misunderstandings of the whole purport and purpose of his writings, is suggested by the phrase in the last letter, " turning, as I almost know, thousands into infidels." The manner in which in the * Theological Essays ' and in all his other writings he deals with doubts and difficul- ties, is pretty clearly explained in his answer, given on p. 225, to the members of Lincoln's Inn. He endeavours, in all his writings, to the utmost of his ability, to set the doubts forth in their fullest manner, before he attempts to answer them. He tries, that is to say, to do the utmost justice to those from whom he differs. He acknowledges their difficulties as his own. He does not attack the doubters ; but endeavours to help them to overcome their doubts. He makes it evident that he does not consider himself an advocate bound to maintain, at all cost, a position once taken up, irrespective of fact and evidence, but that he looks upon it as his bounden duty to acknowledge all truth that is presented to him, from what- ever quarter it comes. Furthermore, he does this not only, not so much, as part of the duty of every upright English- man, though he acknowledges that obligation : but hecause he is a clergyman, and as such bound to acknowledge the essentially " personal " and divine nature of truth and fact. He believed that Truth makes his own choice of the agents by which he will be made known, and may suddenly come to his temple, through the mouth of a working-man or a young girl, so that though the agents themselves may not know the true force of their words, the words themselves may yet give light to those that are seeking it. His patience therefore and his reverence for all men were essentially a part of his worship of the Christ in all men. There can, I think, be no question that this manner of his led, to an extent of which he was himself wholly unaware, to the 236 MISUNDEBSTANDINGS OF BIS PUBPOSE. [F. 31. 48. notion being quite honestly held by some who read his books, that he was stating his own belief, or at least the most vigorous joart of it, when he was frankly stating the case of the objector. One secret undoubtedly of his accurate knowledge of what men were thinking, and half afraid to express, lay in those " Bible-classes," Mr. Mansfield's description of which has been given on p. 488, Yol. 1. But though a body of mixed laymen, the nucleus of which was a knot of Lincoln's Inn barristers, thus furnished my father with materials for a diagnosis of the troubled minds of his time such as scarcely any other man had, there were also many other sources from which knowledge of what men were thinking continually reached him. He had Bible-classes also of working-men, containing some of those who had been the leading spirits in 1848, and others who became some of the best, most active, and most self-sacrificing members of the Working Men's College. Of the class so formed, just before the college was opened, he has said : " The course which I pursued was simply this : I read a portion of the Scriptures, I explained what I thought was the meaning of it, then I invited all possible questioning from those about me. I wished them to ask anything that came into their minds, anything that was pressing upon their minds. They met my wish, and I have never had one cause to complain of want of reverence, nor yet of failure of boldness and freedom to state frankly what they were thinking and feeling. And in this way, I afiirm that I have learned more than I have imparted. Again and again, the wish has come into my mind, when I have left those classes, ' Would to God that anything I have said to them may have been as useful to them as what they have said to me has been to me ! ' " He had Bible-classes of ladies, and later in life he had some Bible-classes, which specially interested him, of London trades- men. It was his habitual practice Sunday after Sunday to bring out the thoughts which had been suggested by the actual difficulties that had been presented to him during the week, CHAP. VI.] DB. CANDLISE'S ATTACK. 237 and to endeavour to clear them away. This lie had done more fully and more completely in the ' Theological Essays ' than elsewhere. Now considering for a moment the way in which such a treatment of difficulties must strike a man hred up in the Scotch " Free Church," where difficulties were then at least never met hut always silenced hy a vote of puhlic opinion, it is not very surprising that their leading minister taking up the ' Theological Essays/ should suppose that the difficulties were introduced in order to make much of them, not in order to acknowledge and sift the truth that was in them and to con- firm the faith of those who felt them. To Mr. D. Macmillan. ' February 23, 1854. * Have you heard that Dr. Candlish came up from Scotland to lecture against me at Exeter Hall, and cut up the Essays in presence of a vast assembly (Miss Stanley says four or five thousand people ; but I think that can hardly be) on Tuesday night ? He was much applauded ; I suppose not one in a hundred of the audience had heard of the book, and not one in fifty of the author, till this Champion of the Free Church proclaimed my crimes. He is certainly not a judicious man, though I cannot but be thankful that attention should be called to the subjects I have treated of, even amidst clappings and " hears." Hort wishes me to answer Mr. Mansel's letter. I would gladly, if I had time, write a letter to him which might be published, " On the Oxford Logic and its Eelation to Theology." But I have these lectures * and the best part of my ' Moral Philosophy ' on hand ; and I am busy concocting the plan of the People's College, and settling how the * He was engaged at the time in preparing for press his ' Lectures on Ecclesiastical History.' Nominally he was doing it from some notes taken by his class; practically he rewrote them entirel}'. His answer to Dr. Candlish appeared as " The Doctrine of Sacrifice deduced from the Scrip- tures, with a Dedicatory Letter to the Members of the Young Men's Christian Association." "Mr. Mansel's Letter " was the prelude to the longest and most important discussion of my father's life, but it will bo convenient to defer for the present any notice of it. 238 DEATH OF 3IBS. 31. 31AUBICE. [R 31. 48. departments of it are to be arranged and it is to be brougbt before tlie public. So I have enough to do at present, and perhaps I shall have to answer Candlish.' All his undertakings were suddenly interrupted by the final illness of his mother and the more sudden death of his sister Priscilla. He writes from his mother's bed-side — " I think I have learnt some lessons which explain the Bible and the Church to me, and the history of both, more than books can." Ansiver to an Address accomi)anijing a Present of the Worhs of Origen, Athanasius, Ghrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzum, Luther, and Calvin. From some of the late and present Students of King's College''' ' 21 Queen Square, Bloomsbury, May 11, 1854. * My dear Friends, ' You have given me the most splendid collection of books in my library, and you have made each volume ten times as valuable as it would be in itself, by inscribing your names in it. I had meant to thank . you individually for the present, since I am sure that the kindness which it expresses has been felt by each of you. But when I received your united letter, I thought that I should do better if I claimed my old privilege of addressing you as a class. I can tell you better in that way how delightful it is to me that you should remember me, and that I should remember you, in the relation in which we once stood to each other. ' I do not only owe these books of Fathers and Eeformers to you ; I owe to you, in a great measure, the power of reading them, or at least of reading them with any advantage. By trying to tell you the very little I knew of literature and history, civil and ecclesiastical, I acquired a sense of their meaning and value which I am sure I should never have had if I had merely devoted years to them in my own study. Your faces, and my intercourse with you, translated dead words and facts into life. Whenever I look into these volumes, the names which are written in them will, CHAP. Yi.] TO HIS OLD KING'S COLLEGE PUPILS. 239 therefore, be the record of obligations which no words can utter, which no separation can diminish. ' The truth which you have enabled me to realise is one which I trust you will learn more and more thoroughly every day. Thank God ! neither your education nor mine is completed ; it is but just beginning. All our lives through we must learn by teaching; we must gain stores by distributing what we have. May God enable you to give abundantly, that you may receive abundantly ! ' You will find the education of troubles, also, no unmeaning or unnecessary addition to this. May that discipline be spared you, one and all, as far as you are able to spare it. May you have the portion of it which is needful to make you brave and free men, true servants of God and of your coun- try. And may thousands of your fellow-men have as much cause to bless you, and to be grateful to you, as I have. * Ever your affectionate Friend.' His lectures, afterwards published, " On Learning and Working" were delivered at Willis's Eooms in June and July. They brought in £87 for the College. His wife's health obliged him to leave London as soon as they were over. To Bev, C. Kingsley. ' Norwood, July 19, 185-i. ' I was greatly delighted with the ^ Alexandria ' — more than I expected to be. The two first I like best, though I think you have managed the Later Philosophy exceedingly well, and Mahomet excellently. There must be more said about him still. The middle ages turn more upon him, and were more saved from perdition through him than I had at all imagined till I came to think more of them. There would have been no belief in Christ if there had not been that broad fierce assertion of an absolute God — let Newman say what he likes, and it is his business, considering the line he has taken^ to say a good deal. What he calls the Anti- Christ was the divine means of saving the Catholic Church from Atheism. And oh ! how fast is she rushing into it — 240 MAHOMET. ATHEISM. THE CBIMEAN WAB. not Kome only, but Grermany and England into it — now. I do hope something from the war in spite of all the feebleness with which it is prosecuted and with which we feel about it ; but chiefly as a sign of what God is doing. It is more like the commencement of a battle between God in His absolute- ness and the Czar in his than 1848 was, though that might take a more agreeable and popular form. I begin to under- stand a little better why our sympathies with Greece and even Italy were so violently stifled and generalised. Some- thing better is to come for both than the pirates and brigands could get for them. The National Sermons are a very blessed and opportune help to this result. The reading of them — I have not read all yet — has been a great joy to me and has taught me much that I did not know before, as well as revived much that I w^as forgetting. I am very glad of the Elizabethan novel, but you must not give over the preaching and writing of sermons, to which you are called by God, and by which you will do the greatest good to mankind. I feel miserably the want of a burning fire to consume my stubble and to make me hotter for Truth and Good than the Devil can make me, or any one in his hell, where, so far as my experience goes — and I know that place — it is generally very cold.' * To Mr, Daniel Macmillan. ' July 27, 1854. ^ . . . What I have written I have written — and like Pilate's writing, I am afraid of altering it lest I should substitute to please the Jews, " He said I am king," for " He is king." In plain words, my books, such as they are, must stand. If the public does not like to buy them, it may be wise ; but I cannot alter or remodel them any further.' * In his own way Dante says so too. It is in tlie deepest part of the Inferno, xxxii. : " I thereon turned and saw l)eforc me spread, And at my feet, a lake exceeding cold, Which seemed with glass not water to he fed." Unpublished translation hy the Dean of Wells. CHAP. VI.] THE SHEEP AND THE GOATS. 241 ' 3 Albion Terrace, Redcar, Yorkshire, August 15, 1854. 'My dear Macmillan, *. . . . Perhaps if all goes well and I am alive, I shall be able to see you as I go southwards. I write these words with some solemnity, not merely because in this cholera season one feels as if one's turn might be next, but because the sermons on sacrifice which I have just completed, and still more the dedicatory letter which I have just written to the Young Men's Christian Instruction Society, have seemed to me sometimes like a last speech. However, I have no reason to say so, for anything that I am aware of, and such thoughts come and go, doubtless for some purpose, without having any outward result.' To Miss Gourlau. ' 1854. ^ . . I, too, recognise this freemasonry among those who really confess Christ, which Mr. C. speaks of. I think there will be a sense of fellowship among those who renounce them- selves, and refer all their life to Christ, which would be wanting among persons who merely profess a faith in Him. I should be afraid to build upon this, to make it the ground of a distinction, lest I should destroy its truth in the very act of doing so. ^ The fault of our Evangelical school is, it seems to me, that they have defined the notes of sincerity and fellowship so carefully that they have produced insincerity and separation. I have felt myself warned solemnly by their example never to attempt to distinguish from the human point of view. It is not enough to say : " Oh ! of course human judgments are fallible ; we cannot be sure who is right and who is wrong." I want certainty. I will have no distinctions which I am forced to annihilate by exceptions and confessions of igno- rance as soon as I have made them. Begin from God. Own His distinctions, Who can divide soul and spirit, joints and marrow. Let Him part the sheep in each of us from the goat in each of us, and we obtain that which is most needful for our personal life. YOL. n. B 242 ON THE FUTUBE STATE. [F. M. 4:^. * And by an outward rite, such as baptism, I obtain the distinction I want between the family and the race to which the family is to be a witness, by that I assert the universality of God's redemption in Christ, by that I assert also that redemption to be of the sheep in each of us, not of the goat which is given over to everlasting perdition. Baptism tells me that I am God's child, and may live as if I were ; and that I have that within me which will not be subject to the law of God, which will not own Him as a Father, which will not have fellowship with any of my human brethren. This does not confound the evil with the good. It is a perpetual sign to me that God will not confound them, but will put all the width of heaven and hell between them.' To Ms Sister, Mrs. Julius Hare. ' My dearest Esther, ' September, 185.L. * I am much more desirous to learn than to teach upon the subject of the future state and its occupations. I feel that I have been driven by the necessities of my own being to seek so much more for a present deliverance from cruel and pressing enemies, than for any future bliss, that the vision of the latter has often been almost entirely obscure to me. I am sure that this has been a grievous loss to myself, and has put me at a distance from many with whom I should wish to be in sympathy. But I am sure, also, that there is a deep reason why to particular persons, particular portions of truth should be, for a while, in shadow. They may miss great comfort, but they are thereby shown what they especially are appointed to understand and proclaim. The blindness and ignorance is their own, but the illumination in the other direction is God's. The necessity of confessing a kingdom of Heaven within — a kingdom of Heaven ever present with us now ; different in kind from the visible world, but affecting it, and swaying its movements con- tinually— has been with me an overwhelming one. At times I have seen clearly, and even felt how little it could avail to talk of such a kingdom in a corrupt and evil world, to men CHAP. VI. J ITS OCCUPATIONS. 243 oppressed with plagues, and tormented with devils, unless one could give them a much fuller and brighter prospect of that which is to come, than I have ever done. I have per- ceived that sometime or other I must either hold my tongue, or that it must be unloosed to speak of the better things which shall one day be manifested. But tho hindrance has been great, partly from the feeling that the future state, as we are wont to hear it described, is so vague, so selfish, so much a denial of that truth concerning the redeemed state of man, which I have been sent to bear witness of; partly from the dreariness and coldness of my own heart and imagination, and from the hollow in nay" head where the organ of hope should be. Since we are saved hj hope, the consciousness of being without any natural tendency to it, or capacity for it, has been more crushing to me than any one knows. But how deeply does one learn by this very misery, that it is hope which purifies, hope which delivers ! How is one obliged to feel the force of the words. The God of Hope! How thoroughly one knows that the Devil is the spirit of despair ! * But the result is, that the words of the Apostle, " Looking for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ," have seemed to me the only words that gave me any glimpse into the future state, or into the use which we are to make of it, in urging ourselves and others to fight. I think the Millenarians are altogether right, and have done an infinite service to the Church, in fixing our minds upon these w^ords, and so turning them away from the expectations of mere personal felicity apart from the establishment of Christ's kingdom ; from the notion of Heaven which makes us indifferent to the future condition of the earth. I think they have done good, also, in urging the hope of Christ's coming, as a duty upon the Church, and in denouncing the want of it as a sin. But it seems to me that a preparation was needed for these state- ments and exhortations, which they have not given us. Their preaching, I fear has been false and mischievous, because they have not begun with_ acknowledging Christ as rv 2 244 THE BEDEEMER OF MANKIND. [1854. F. M. 49. the King over men's spirits, as their Kedeemer from the evil spirit, as the Knler over the universe now, and therefore have substituted for the revelation or unveiling of Him, which the Apostles speak of, the notion of an external advent or descent, which instead of carrying out the work which He came upon earth to do — instead of being the fulfilment of His spiritual redemption, instead of affirming that triumph of mankind over all its oppressors which was implied in His cross and resurrection and ascension — reverses the order of His government and redemption, sets the visible again above the invisible, lays the world at the feet of the same selfish tyrants, who under religious pretexts — boasting the name of saints — have trampled it down already and obstructed its intercourse with its just and lawful Kuler. If this is their truth and their error, then it must be our duty and privilege to believe constantly that Christ the Eedeemer of Mankind, who has been manifesting Himself in all ages for the deliverance of the earth from its tyrants, and for the assertion of right and truth against wrong and falsehood, will be manifested completely for that end, that every eye shall see Him, that every thing shall be brought to light by Him, that every creature shall be unveiled in its true character and condition by the revelation of Him, who is the firstborn of every creature ; that all who have exercised any dominion or influence under Him, and for Him, shall give account of that dominion and influence, and shall confess all that was right in it to have been His; all that was oppressive and blighting and hurtful, to have been from their resistance to His will; all that was feeble and in- efi'ectual in it, to have been from distrust of His power. * I think, as I have said already, that the Millenarians are right, and practical, and in harmony with scripture when they bid us think more of Christ's victory over the earth and redemption of it to its true purposes, than of any new condition into w^hich we may be brought when we go out of the earth. By doing so, they make all our feelings and interests social, they connect everything we do and feel and CHAP. VI.] BEHIND THE VEIL. 245 suffer, with our kind ; they give us Christ as the object of our thoughts, and not ourselves. The danger which people have apprehended in listening to them, that they should lose the sense of personal immortality, and should feel the depar- ture out of the present condition of things rather a cause of lamentation than of thanksgiving, is a real danger, if the belief of Christ in us, Christ the present King, is not associated continually with that expectation of good for the earth, and does not give it all its shape and colour. If it does, I conceive we may confidently look forward to death as a step in the revelation of Christ, as the rending asunder of a veil which has obstructed our vision of Him who died and rose again, as a removal of shadows and falsehoods ; as a means of bringing us out of the confusions which have made God's ways unintelligible to us ; as the accomplishment of a long series of discipline and processes which we have under- stood very little, and repined at very much ; as the explana- tion of our fellow-men whom we have misjudged and refused to work with; as the emancipation of powers which have been enfeebled, crushed and turned to ignominious uses; as the preparation for newer and freer and more effectual services, in which Christ will employ us for the same ends which we ought to aim at here, the manifestation of His character and kingdom, the putting down of His enemies. If we are now the sons of God, we may leave Him to settle what we shall be, in what exercises we shall be engaged, what special tasks shall be assigned us. The comfort is, to think that He will be the orderer of us and our ways, and not any one else ; that we may look forward to do His commandments, hearkening unto the voice of His words ; that it is His will to break all fetters which hinder us from this free service. ' The great thing, I suspect, is to assure ourselves, not that these things may he, but that they shall he ; that Christ's appearing is as certain as the sun's rising, or as our deaths ; that we do not make it certain by our faith, but that its certainty is the warrant of our faith, and that which is to 246 COMMON HOPE, BECOGNITION OF FBIENDS. cure ns of its sluggishness. And if this is so, we may encourage all persons always to expect Christ's manifesta- tion ; the more they do expect it, the better they will be, the more they will rise out of their sloth, their scorn, their confusions, their selfishness ; the more they will work on manfully in their own appointed tasks, whatever they be, the more they will work with each other ; the more they will fight against the temptations which will recur in a thousand diff'erent shapes, and will come again and again, as angels of light, to separate themselves from others under any pretence whatever, in faith, in hope, in worship ; the more they will prize common thanksgivings, common prayers, and will rejoice to meet in using them, that they may pray against the devil, who is leading them, and all the people about them, to set up themselves, that they may not trust Christ, and glorify God ; the more they will endure all stupid preaching as one of God's appointed trials of our faith and patience, and as a strong reason for asking Him to send true pastors, or else to stop all our mouths, and speak Himself, which I take it He is doing, and that in very wonderful and terrible thunders, as well as in very soft whispers. And this has much to do with the recognition of friends in a future state. I have always said, with what sorrow and sincerity God is my witness : Have we ever yet recognised our friends in this state ? Is it not just the poorest beginning of recognition, the occasional exchange of a smile or signal of freemasonry, followed by hours and days of misconception and estrangement ? Is not this the thing of all others to strive for, and therefore to expect ? Is not the want of it that which most makes us ashamed, and therefore which we are sure God reproves in us, and desires to correct in us ? If in spite of all reluctance, we determine not to go out in search of Christ into the deserts, not to shut ourselves in the secret chambers that we may have Him to ourselves there, if we will expect Him among the knaves and blackguards and hypocrites of the world, and will act as if we believed they had the same right in Him as we have, HOW MUCH DO WE KNOW OF EACH OTHEB NOW? 247 seeing ^Ye are knaves, blackguards and hypocrites without Him, and they will be delivered from their stupidity, knavery and hypocrisy, if they acknowledge Him as the Truth and the Life — we shall be acquiring by degrees the power of recognition, the human sympathies which He is seeking to cultivate in us ; we shall be winning a victory over the vanity and conceit which shut us up in our own little circles and lesser selves ; we shall be preparing for the gathering together of all in Christ. Which gathering- together, cannot, as I think, the least interfere with the development of all the special, individual faculties with Avhich it has pleased God to endow us, but must be the means of educating them to their highest point, and of directing them to their highest purposes. Here the great hindrance to all work is, that it is not fellow-work. The philologer cannot understand for what the chemist spends nights and days in his laboratory ; the painter and the musician scarcely know what the other is about ; how little does either care for the jurist or the moralist ! Each is seeking after some precious stone, some elixir, some uniting law which would explain contradictory facts, or other laws which he cannot doubt, yet which seem at variance. Each pursues long trains of thought, often finds them ending where they began, weeps in secret, and dies disappointed, and the preacher gets up and declares that he has spent his years in vanity. It has not been so ! it is not true ! There has been vanity in all his work, for there has been selfish- ness in all. There has been disappointment, for God has been leading him, in a way he knew not, to find that truth is deeper than all his trowings about it. But nothing has been in vain, no threads have been begun to be unwound which shall not be altogether unwound. We want but the discovery of tJie centre that all men and all thoughts should fall into their proper orbits and accomplish their complete revolutions. The revelation^of Christ must be the revelation, however gradually, of all these hidden principles and secret powers, and directing laws, which men in all directions have 248 THE VINDICATION OF THE CABFENTEWS SON. been seeking after ; must be the revelation of all tlie relations in which they stand to each other and to God's universe. But the majority of the world are not seeking for these, but are engaged in hard physical toils. And shall not the purpose and meaning of all these be revealed also ? Shall not the benefits which they have been procuring to those who have been engaged in them, while they have seemed only to be ministering to the luxury and corrup- tion of other men ; the victories which they have won over the curse of the earth ; the powers which they have awakened and cultivated, be all made manifest before men and angels ; the principalities and powers, which have tried to make men's labours the means of crushing and enslaving them, being made a show of openly, and the Son of God vindicating the name of the carpenter's son which He bore upon earth by asserting every energy of man's bodily frame, every natural machine as His ? * To speak of the revelation of all the blessings which have been wrought out in the hearts of men and women through sickness and sufferings ; to say how all the powers and energies which disease has cramped, will attain the freedom which Christ's word gave to the palsied man and leper ; to say how the whole creation, which has groaned and travailed, shall enter into the liberty of the Son of God, is not for me. The Gospels and the 8th Chapter of the Eomans have said it all, and I only throw out this hint to show how much more we are actually told of the effects of the manifestation of Christ in Scripture, than we commonly fancy, how much the history of His Incarnation is the foretaste and prophecy of them. * So far, then, as I have at present been taught — and I must repeat again how little I feel I have been taught — respecting the future state, I would try (1st) always to connect it with the unveiling or manifestation of Jesus Christ, as St. Paul and St. John do ; (2nd) to connect it, as they do, with the restoration of the earth, and its deliverance from whatever hinders it from being the kingdom of God, and of His Christ ; (3rd) to connect CHAP. VI.] THE BEDEMPTION. 249 it with tlie manifestation of Christ in the flesh as the Lord of Man, as his deliverer from all that degrades him from being the image of God, and the member of a kind, into the slave of the world he is set to rule, and a self-seeker ; (4th) to connect it with all our actual and present pursuits, occupations, duties, enjoyments, sufferings, so that the full fruit and result and consummation of these shall be what we look forward to, as the effect of their being restored to their obedience to Christ, and saved from all that is base or merely accidental; (5th) to connect it with continuous, though free and joyful labour, so that no redeemed spirit shall ever be imagined to be the possessor of a certain felicity, and not the warrior with Christ's enemies, so long as there are any to be put down ; the ruler and judge of some province of His empire, the seeker and discoverer of the secrets of God's truth and glory, which He has hidden, that His children may search them out.' ' My dear Kingsley, ' Matlock, October 19, 1854. * So long as Thomas Cooper believes in the 7th Chapter of the Epistle to the Komans, and really acknowledges a battle between the flesh and the spirit in himself, it does not signify two straws what he thinks of you and me, how much he mistakes our meaning and imputes to us the meaning which of all that exist we most abhor. He will be obliged to ask God to tell him whether He is or not, and whether He is a destroyer or deliverer, and God will give him the answer. So there we may leave him, wishing earnestly that we ourselves, and all may be brought to the same dire necessity if ever we manufacture a God of soft paste or of iron, instead of trusting one who is, and who lives, to break in pieces our bars of iron, to give solidity to our paste, to lift us out of the hell — the eternal torment which I not only believe, but know that we must be saved from, because I have been in it. What a weary task it is to be explaining and justifying ourselves. God will explain and justify us, if it is necessary, in His good time ; let us ask Him first of all to explain and 250 OPENING THE WOBKING 3IEN'S COLLEGE. [F. 3L 49. justify Himself. I say this because I liave been bothering myself about these explanations of my own intentions (anent Dr. Candlish), and I am sick of the business. However, I believe it was to be done. Will you read over the prospectus * and give me your criticism ? I know you will make some complaints, but we have done what we could, and I think there must be a blessing on it.' All October was occupied with correspondence about the arrangement of classes for the first term at the College. To the no small delight of all, Mr. Euskin, on a circular being sent to him, volunteered to join and to take a drawing-class. On October the 30th my father gave the inaugural address at St. Martin's Hall to a full room. By November the 9th the number of students admitted exceeded one hundred and thirty. He gave a series of lectures in Edinburgh and Glasgow during December, and wrote to his wife warm accounts of the kind reception he had met with everywhere. To Bev. C. Kingsley. ' January 3, 1855. ' I cannot see my way about the future of the war more than you can, but I think the present of it has brought us more good, with all its misery, than I could have dreamed of. I am sure there is something more like a national heart and godliness amongst us than I have had any experience of in mj^ day. The papers are doing their best to kill the good ; the Times seems to me horribly wicked. But God is stronger than they are, and I do not think they have succeeded in making the working people discontented. They cared nothing for them while they were eaten up by the Mammon worshippers, and now they affect sympathy with them when they are beginning to feel that all are working and suffering together. I do not make out that the minis- iers have blundered more than any other men with their * I.e. of the classes for the first term of the Working Men's College. CHAP. VI.] THE PART OF ENGLAND IN HISTORY. 251 inexperience would have done, and I would not throw a stone at them for the world. ^ I do not the least enter into the Kossuth notion about our duty to the " Nationalities ; " if there is any good in theDi, if they are nations, and not nationalities, they will help themselves. Our business, so far as I can gather from history, has never been to make a crusade for them, but to Tesist whatever power in Spain, France, Eussia, set itself up to break down national boundaries and establish a universal empire. It has been no choice with us, whether we would do this or not ; we have been forced to do it, when we were most reasonably and remarkably reluctant. God lias sent us upon the errand, if we were ever so inclined to escape in a ship of Tarshish and look after our commercial prosperity. 1 had a very pleasant visit to Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dear Mr. Erskine took rooms in a private hotel with his sister, and entertained me there. Eussel was very kind. The lectures went off very well. G , whom I expected to like, seemed to me a great sham as a preacher; somewhat better, but not satisfactory, as a man. ' Did you see Sir William Hamilton and James Mackenzie ? The former has the grandest head, and the other is the most beautiful old man I ever looked upon. All I met with were in great delight with your article in the North British. Hugh Miller dined with me at Eussel's. He is a simple, modest, true man. " I want very much to see the novel. Euskin is doing capitally in the drawing-class at the College. Our past term was far beyond our hopes, but we must expect a falling off.' To Miss Williams Wijnn. ' January 8, 1855. • I intended to have returned you in person the letter which you so kindly left with me ; but I must not keep it longer. It is cordial and earnest as everything which comes from the Bunsens is. I have to thank them for the most un- 252 WHAT A 3IAN OF ONE NATION CAN DO AND wearying kindness, whicli I did nothing to deserve, whilst they were in England, and which one misses greatly now they are gone. At the same time I heartily rejoice, for their sakes, at their deliverance from what I am sure must have been an oppressive burthen, and their restoration to a free and genial life in a society with which they can sympa- thise. England, I have no doubt, will look a brighter spot to them in the distance than it did when they saw closely all its terrible corruptions and abominations. And after all, that view which we get, when these blots are not the most prominent objects in a nation or an individual, is the truest. God does not look upon iniquity ; that is, I suppose, He sees the man and the nation according to their true idea, and not as they make themselves by forgetting and departing from it. What that idea is, I think, a native who feels and suffers with his land, who is conscious of its sins as his own, who is in any manner called to struggle with them and bear witness against them, must know better than any foreigner can. I feel it is the greatest mistake in an Englishman to dream that he can determine the method of thought or of action which aj^German student or reformer should follow* I do not speak merely of one who is so ignorant of German life and literature as I am. If I had the profoundest acquaintance with it which could be acquired by years of study of books, intercourse with natives, residence in the country, I think I should be more, not less, convinced that the work of correcting and elevating the tone of the nation must devolve upon its own citizens, and that much inferior and less accomplished men and women among them could do what the most wise stranger would attempt in vain. I read this autumn Niebuhr's comments upon England. They did me good for they made me smart. I acknowledged with the deepest personal consciousness all that he said of our coldness and reserve. But Avhen he boasted that he under- stood us better than we understood ourselves, and could read us lectures, not on faults of our Government or of our character, but on the way of reforming them, on the course WHAT HE CANNOT DO TO HELP 3IEN OF ANOTHER. 253 which it behoved us to adopt, my conscience rebelled. I listened to his reproofs as if God were speaking to me through him ; I felt as certainly that God was forbidding me to shape and mould myself according to his maxims. * For precisely the same reasons, no deference that I feel for Bunsen's character and knowledge, no conviction deeper than he or you would give me credit for, of my own deficiencies, no bitter and intense experience of the truth of much which he says about our dulness and blindness, could justify me to my conscience or to God, if I submitted to his decisions respecting the method which an English theologian, in our day, ought to follow. I could have saved myself from much sorrow, and have obtained much sympathy that I have longed for, if I could have attached myself to the anti-English school of thought, when I had found the impossibility of fraternising with any of the special English schools. But a higher voice said in me, " That is not the way, walk not in it ! Never mind being called Jesuitical, bigoted, half-hearted, eclectical, any name that you hate most, never mind who bestows it upon you, that does not signify a jot. You are not sent into the world to get credit for freedom of mind, liberality, manliness, sincerity, but, so far as you are shown how, to bear witness of that which you know, to testify that which you have seen." * Bunsen's book on the Church of the future taught me clearly what I had suspected before, that every earnest German must begin with the Spirit, that he may come to learn something of the Father and the Son. I am as certain as I can be of anything, that our process is the opposite one, that we must begin from the Father, in order that we may know something of the Son and the Spirit ; and that our greatest national errors, shortcomings and sins, have arisen from our forsaking that line, which God has marked out for us. *If you found anything in my book on Sacrifice which met the wants of your spirit, it is because I was led to refer the ground of sacrifice to God and not to man, to trace the 2 oi WHA T HELP ONE 3IAN CAN OFFEB ANOTHEB. meaning and origin of sacrifice to the will of tlie Father. There is nothing in this view of the subject which Bunsen will sympathise with. He contemplates sacrifice either as originating with the sense of sin or of thanksgiving, hence the idea of the completed Christian sacrifice is with him in direct contrast with the idea of the incomplete Levitical sacrifice. * You may therefore be quite sure, though I have said nothing or next to nothing about the Christian priesthood, that the whole book (if he should read it, which is very improbable) will be Levitical and abracadabra to him. He will not be able to reduce my doctrine under either of his formulas ; therefore he will simply put it aside as unmeaning. And he will be quite right to do so, for it will not meet any of the habits of his mind, and what business have I to unsettle them ? All I want is liberty to speak the word that is put into my mouth to the two or three of my own countrymen and countrywomen who may feel that that is the word they wanted to hear, and who will accept it as a message to their hearts and reason without caring whether God chooses a sage or a blockhead to send it by. ' I have run on at a terrible length, but I wanted to explain myself to you, who have comforted me so much with your cheering words and acts. * May God bless you for all the love you show to others, with the full revelation of His own.' CHAP. Tii.j AT HUBST3WNCEUX FOB LAST TIME, 255 CHAPTEE VII. " Our grasp of the truth can never be worth much ; it is the grasp of the truth upon us that men are willing to die for." — Mr. R. H. Hutton, ' The Incarnation,' in Tracts for Priests and People. 1855. DEATH OF ARCHDEACON HARE — THE CRIMEAN WAR — WORK- ING women's CLASSES — LONG CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. KINGSLEY ON DOUBTS OF VARIOUS KINDS FOREIGN TOUR THE SUNDAY QUESTION. To Mr. Daniel Macmillan. ' January 24, 1855. ' You will, I am sure, be grieved to hear tliat the battle is over with my dear brother Julius Hare. He died yesterday morning. My whole life for the last eighteen years had been closely bound up with his, and nearly every joy or sorrow I have had has been connected with his home and with him.' To Ms Wife. ' Hurstmonceux Rectory, January 29, 1855. *We have reached this desolate house — more desolate than I had even thought of. Esther is said to be rather better. George Bunsen and Arthur Stanley were in the train with us, as well as Mr. Hull. I cannot tell you the sadness which seems to rest on this place. It makes one feel that one's home must be elsewhere. All the rooms are so full of recollections and associations, but the spirit of them is gone. God bless you.' * My DEAR KiNGSLEY, ' February 2, 1855. * Hearty thanks for both your very kind letters. Hare's death is more to us, and I think more to the Church than even we 256 HABE, SACRIFICE. THE CBIMEA. [F. M. 49. thought it would be. We scarcely knew what his genial spirits and look were to us, or how much there was in his deepest heart which was receiving good and scattering good. His last months were very satisfactory witnesses of the man by the unvarying patience, cheerfulness and thankfulness which he was manifesting, without one false or affected or canting word in the midst of unusual suffering. In his last days he was so utterly wasted and prostrated that he could do no more than show tenderness and affec- tion to all about him. It is some pleasure to me that the last book he gave to the person whom he loved almost next to his wife, was my book on Sacrifice, and that he expressed a pleasure in it to which he had a good right, as it was only a flower out of a seed which he had planted himself. The clergy in the archdeaconry, from the highest Tractarian down to the strongest Evangelical, are now expressing their affection for him, and their belief that he did them a good which they could have got nowhere else. So that life has come out of death, after all. ' And so it will out of the miserable mistakes and disasters of this war. What a heart there seems to be in the poor starving soldiers, if there is ever such a feeble, to be I hope in God's good time a broken and contrite, one — in us ! * Yerily He has been educating them, whatever we have been doing. We shall find out in time that all we have to do is to work with His teaching and not against it. We shall have to give up a multitude of our fine plans, but let the good conquer, as that orthodox Christian and true Gospel preacher ^schylus said some thousand years ago.* Oh that my lips were unstopped to preach that gospel in the strength of a manifested and crucified and risen Christ which he preached in the belief of Him before His incarnation ! ' * In a chorus (^f tlie Agamemnon, which my father was fond of quoting; vide p. 548 of this vol. and the note. CHAP. VII.] TBUE AND FALSE BONDS OF UNION. 257 To Baron Bunsen. * My dear Friend, ' 21 Queen Square, February 14, 1855. * I have ventured to send you a volume I published towards the end of last year, on Sacrifice. I have some hesitation in doing so, not only when I recollect the splendid collection of volumes on philology, history, and theology which you left with me last summer, but from knowing how much thought you have devoted to this subject and how certain you are to consider my treatment of it narrow and unsatisfactory. I do not like, however, to seem as if I distrusted your toleration and kindness, which I have so largely experienced, and this volume will have some claim on your sympathy that may compensate for its own defects, as it was one of the last books, which Julius read. That gives it an interest for me which I do not feel in any other book I have written. In fact, as I have said, the idea of it is contained in his own sermon on self-sacrifice, though I am most careful also to explain that he was not responsible for the theology of it, or for any of the opinions to which you, as a philosopher, would object. ' Great as the satisfaction is of speaking of him to those who loved him and will not mistake gratitude and affection for party sympathy, I believe it is as great a duty for me to be silent, or almost silent, about him publicly. All the schools amongst us, even some of the most extreme of each, are now paying homage to his memory and mourning over him. Our men of letters will also claim him as one of themselves, some of yours will not forget that he was the translator of Niebuhr and the defender of Luther. I trust, and I am sure, that those who were united with him by very sacred ties, will not disturb this feeling by introducing their own regard, far less by claiming him as in any sense belonging to them. You and others may have had a natural fear that, as the English public absurdly mixed me up with him as if we were of the same school, I should try to bring him down to the level of my notions and put him forth as the champion and reprcsen- YOL. n. s 258 THE GOOD AND THE CUBSE OF SICKNESS. [F. M. 49. tative of them. I think I may promise you that you shall have no cause to make this complaint. In immeasurably the largest portion of his treasures of thought and knowledge I had not even the slightest share, and I should consider it a positive crime to make any plea of attachment, which so many might make equally, or any accidental advantages, an excuse for lowering him in the opinion of those whom he honoured and loved. I am sure my sister will entirely share these feelings, so that I do trust your mind will be relieved from any anxiety on this point. ^Your interest in England, which must have been greatly shaken by what you have seen of its weakness and have heard of its more recent sins, will be further diminished by the loss of one of those whose face was a cordial to every one, and was always turned to you with the greatest affection and reverence. I heartily rejoice with you that you have found a home where you can pursue all the studies that are most congenial to you. But those who have" received continual and undeserved kindness from you may be permitted to look back upon past days, and to wish, for the sake of their country as much as for their own, that you were not separated from us. Our spiritual battles are likely to be at least as serious as our material ones, and Grod knows how serious they are. . . . ' Affectionately yours.' To his Wife. , . ' March 22, 1855. * You and Elizabeth * must not think me a great heretic because I try to explain two sides of a truth and sometimes put one part of it forward and sometimes another. If you read the Gospel you must see that our Lord speaks of a woman, a child of Abraham, being fast bound by Satan for eighteen years because she had some aggravated kind of rheumatism or paralysis ; that is one part of the truth which must not be hidden, and which is quite necessary in order that we may not charge God foolishly as the author of evil, or may not * Miss Houlclswortli, afterwards wife of Hcv. S. Clark. OHAP. VII.] « THOSE THAT SLEEP IN JESUSr 259 pretend to think that pain and suffering are not evil when our hearts tell us they are ; the other is, that all these evils — the very worst — are permitted that the work of God may be manifested in us; that He allows us to suffer in order that He may call forth faith in us, and so bring us to a better health and diviner life ; that all sorrow is redeemed by the sorrow of Christ, that the devil is foiled every way, when he seemed to be strongest. My conscience bears me witness that I have been as zealous to assert one of these principles as the other ; but if I find either suppressed, I know the one that seems to be exalted will suffer, and I am Lound to bring the other prominently forward. We can never get comfort by hiding any fact. God's revelation will explain all facts if we will allow it to do so.' ' March 26, 1855, ' Yesterday I preached the sermon about dear Mansfield. There was a gathering of all his friends, and they received the Communion. We had therefore the best kind of inter- course. ***** You will not doubt that on the 25th, as I preached on " those that sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him," another form was more present to me than his of whom I was more directly preaching.' To Mrs. Augustus Hare, ' My dear Mrs. Augustus, ' May 5, 1855. * I cannot tell you wh^ a joy it was to receive your beautiful letter, or how much Georgina and I both felt the exceeding kindness of your words. They were the most soothing we could have heard, bringing back the sorrows and blessings of that time, none of which are gone by, and making us feel how the love that was then, is now, and ever shall be [was shown in both sorrows and blessings]. Your letter is a witness to us of it ; may God reward you for it, by giving you a deeper and deeper apprehension of His own. I do 260 CLASSES FOB WOBKING WOMEN. [F. M. 49^, hope you are feeling greater strength of body, and that the spring will bring to you all spring life. It should be a witness to us all of life coming out of death. We have seen even a greater miracle, life in death, which is Christ's own miracle, the fruit of His Passion and Eesurrection. May God bless you always. * Your affectionate Friend.' When once the Working-Men's College was well launched he became very eager to carry out some similar work for women. After much discussion, a series of lectures were delivered by him and by friends. These were afterwards published under the title of ' Lectures to Ladies on Practical Subjects.' Of these the first, delivered on May 21, 1855, was a lecture of his own on a " Plan of a Female College for the Help of the Kich and the Poor." Classes for women were started at the Working- Men's College, and for some years were carried on with fair success. To Bev. C. Kingsley, ' 2 Waterloo Cresceut, Dover, August 4, 1855. 'When I wrote to you the other day, I did not allude to the book on nature of which you spoke, though I had seen it, because I did not think that the book said anything which you have not heard a thousand times, and have not said to yourself tens of thousands ; and therefore I think all its influence upon your mind came from its being the echo- of something which was there before. Now of that, as I said, I am a very unfit judge ; I have to fight with the devil,, sometimes very close combats indeed. I am liable tO' a spiritual wickedness which seems to me infinitely more horrible than any submission to the world can be ; but to that in the ordinary sense of the word (in the sense which implies some powerful attraction by the world, either natural or human) I am certainly less exposed than many, and especially than you. What danger then there is in my at- tempting to talk of what I feel and know so little ! How certain you would be to detect my blunders, and without CHAP. VII.] THE WOBLD AND THE DEVIL AS ENEMIES. 261 laughing at them, to say, " All this is very well for a mystic who knows nothing of what is going on in the earth beneath and the waters under the earth — but what is it to me ? " If you have not had such thoughts yet, and you certainly have, you will have them in swarms ; and why shall I provoke the swarms to settle, not on me, but on you, and on many a good and blessed thing beside ? There are few writings I have learnt more from, than your article on Ealeigh. It is not all true, not perhaps quite half, but there are some parts of it which are very, very true, and the conception of it is right from beginning to end. It is the right way of contemplating the life of a man ; I am certain that it is. "We have a Father and He is watching over us. But let us believe that He is not, and that the world and nature are, and that we are only men when we identify ourselves with them and lose ourselves in them ; then the cup becomes dry, we taste more of the dregs than the wine, and then comes the old cry, " How many hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger." AVell ! that is for the freehand brave spirits of the earth. I have never known the sweet before the garbage, but I have tasted that in its worst form, of disappointed vanity, suspicion of others, incapacity for believing and loving, inward atheism. And so I believe somehow the Father brings all back somewhat by the same road, though our wanderings have been different, and some have known much more of inward evil, and others more of the blessings which are meant for us when we are fit for them. I am a hard Puritan, almost incapable of enjoyment, though on principle justifying enjoyment as God's gift to His creatures, and though I try to feel no grudge against those who have that which my conscience tells me it is not a virtue but a sin' to want. God has given you infinite faculties of enjoyment. But He has given you with these the higher trust of being manly and of caring for your fellow-men and their miseries and sins. What I fear (perhaps most unreasonably) for you is, that the first gift should devour the second, that your 262 ARTIST, PBEACEEB, JPBIEST, ABTIFICEB, \F. M. 49. sympathy with what is beautiful in nature and human society should make you less able to stand out against them, more tolerant of that which is eating into the hearts of in- dividuals and nations. Godliness, I am certain, is the true support of manliness. The belief that the Son of God has interfered for His creatures, and has grappled with their sin and death, is the one protection of nations and men against sloth, effeminacy, baseness, tyranny. Oh, don't think it is a vulgar thing to be a preacher or even a priest, and a fine thing to be an artist. If you do, you will not be a true artist, but an artificer to please the world. And do not think that the way of resisting devil's worship is to deny any of the great facts and laws of humanity, which have been turned to the devil's use, but to claim them from him. * A finished reconciliation and atonement is the one answer to the scheme of men for making atonement ; if you part with it, all superstitions, all Moloch cruelties, Avill reproduce themselves; and you will try your natural incantations against them in vain. If you knew what bitter repentances I have had to suffer for hard words spoken in former days, to friends whom I might have helped if I had been wiser and gentler, you would believe that I do not write these words to you without tremblings. I have well deserved ta alienate all whom I love, and with many I have succeeded rather too well. But I have such confidence in your truth- fulness, that, if I had none in your affection, I think I should still have run the risk of seeming to send you a lecture rather than a letter. I do so the more boldly because I know that I am not pleading my own cause, except as it is yours, for I repeat what I said before, that the time is come when you ought to feel yourself, and to make the people understand, that you are not tied to any maxims of mine, and that if you have received anything from me, it has been in the way of honest merchandise, the balance of trade, if accounts were fairly examined, being all on my side. ' Ever yours afiectionately.' THE PRIEST'S TBUE CONFESSION, HIS OWN 263 ' 2 Waterloo Crescent, Dover, August 7, 1855. ' My dear dear Kingsley, ' God bless you for the comfort you have given me ; for comfort unspeakable it is, though I know what pain you are suiffer- ing, and though I think I could go through something to deliver you from it. But I am sure in my inmost heart that you are true to yourself and to God, and I am sure that will guide you into all truth : all the more because you hav6 to pass through storms and darkness on the way to it. Do not be in the least disturbed because books of mine about sacrifice, or anything else, do not satisfy you, or show you the way out of your confusions. Why should they ? Is not the death of Christ, and your death and mine, a depth immeasur- ably below my soundings ? And what have I done, if I have done anything truly or honestly, but beseech people not to try and measure it, but simply cast themselves upon the love of God which is manifested in it, and trust it when there is nothing else in Heaven above or earth beneath to rest upon? It is simply in despair that I have betaken myself to any rock, and what can I say but it is there, and hold fast to it, though I and all the world should be lost out of sight, or go to the bottom ? * I have felt something of what you are feeling, though less intensely, because my nature is so much colder. But I am certain we shall be able to testify against statesmen, bishops, and all that are false to our country in her hour of need, just in proportion as we discern and feel all their sins in ourselves, and are conscious that they are destroying our own souls, as well as the soul of England. Then we shall become priests indeed and shall confess for them as well as for ourselves, and shall feel our need, as none can teach it us, of a sacrifice to present for the whole world. What an ass I should be if I were in a hurry to cram my thoughts about that down your throat, when God is teaching you His thoughts and His love about it, so far more thoroughly and inwardly. It is a burning fiery furnace we are going through in this war. I see it, and in some degree I feel it. 264 DABK DA YS AND A BBIGHT DA Y. THE TBI- UNITY, and the Son of God, I believe and trust, is with us in the midst of it. ' And I think with you of darker days to come. I speak of them sometimes to my children ; but oftener of a brighter day that I think for them will rise out of the darkness, and which we, though we may have left the earth, may share with them. The day of Christ in a better sense than all our prophets dream of, is surely at hand. And we may wait for it — would that I did — as men wait for the morning. In the meantime let us not be cast down by anything, even by our own misdoings, failures, evil. The good is mightier than that evil and all others. And it will be shown to be mightier to our nation and to all mankind. I was cast down by many things — not least by hearing that poor harlequin priest Gavazzi utter his truths and lies and exhibit his clever pantomime, and utter his blasphemous prayers, last night to an admiring audience here. But your letter came in to assure me that there is reality and earnest- ness and hope, and God at the bottom of all. So let us praise Him in the midst of the fires. ' Ever most lovingly yours.' To Miss Williams Wijnn. ' Zurich, August 23, 1855. ***** * It is the great struggle of every time to realise the union of the spiritual and eternal with the manifestations of it in time ; now the first is forgotten for the second, now the second in the first — each perishes by the loss of the other, but in one time the difficulty is greater on this side, in another on that. We must have the eternal which our fathers nearly forgot ; we are seizing it with a violence which makes us throw aside what they knew and felt to be un- speakably precious ; we shall find that we must take their bequest or give up our own purchase. But we must believe that through whatever conflicts — and terrible they must be — we are to reach a fuller and brighter discovery of Him AN END TO BE WISHED FOR. OUB AGE AND OTREBS. 265 who was from the beginning, than the ages that were before us. May God help us to hold fast what we have, and assuredly more will be given us.' ' My dear KinGSLEY, ' Zuricli, August 29, 1855. *It seems a natural thing to write to you from the place in which Zwingli fought with words, and near which he died in an actual battle with swords. He never was a chief hero of mine, yet I should be glad to be such a man and to have such an end. My wife has had just a glimpse of the real Alps, and as yet only a glimpse ; for she has had a serious attack of illness here, but she wonders at what she has seen as much as I could desire, and is silent in her wonder. To-morrow we hope to get into a higher region; our kind and sensible doctor here has recommended us a place above Zug, as he says Zurich is too relaxing. We shall then, I hope, get to the lake of the four cantons, which I saw fifteen years ago, and which I should like to be thoroughly intimate with. I saw Bunsen at Heidelberg on Sunday week. He spoke much of you and your doings. I think he is suffering from want of outward work ; ... he is a most cordial, genial man, and I trust his swarming thoughts will some day find a centre. ' I sometimes feel, as I think you do, that we are fallen on very evil days, and that it is harder to be right and do right now than in any other day. Perhaps it is; but yet I do not wish myself or you or any one back in the days of Elizabeth; I believe in my inmost heart that these of Victoria are better, because they are more difficult, because a mightier problem is to be solved now than could be solved then. That was what I meant when I said I thought your article on Raleigh was right, but not all right, thoroughly right in its view of the way in which God trains a man, and in its vindication of an age which has been disparaged ; imperfect in so far as it seemed to make that age too much a standard of what ours ought to be. No ! it did its work ; it be- queathed its treasure. Let us hold fast both, and resolve 266 NATIONAL FEELING AND HUMAN FEELING. that we will do a work, and, if God permits it, bequeath a treasure. The union of nations, the fellowship of Christen- dom, the meaning of humanity, this we cannot have if we lose the national spirit of Elizabeth's days, and also of Cromwell's days ; but neither Elizabeth nor Cromwell can help us to discern what these mean, which God certainly will teach us if we will learn. And I think He will teach us this by teaching us more than we have known of Himself, as the ground of humanity, as the Creator of the universe. AVith that lesson He will send us, I think, a revelation of the meaning of Christ's death as the bond of humanity which will justify all that our fathers were taught of it, and remove those inventions with which they overlaid their deep inward convictions. Such is the faith which grows on me with the discovery of my own sins, and of their identity with the sins of the world, and with the certainty that only the new and divine man by bearing them can take them from me. This is a long prose, but it is my fiftieth birth- day ; and I am claiming the rights of a half century of existence of blundering. Some time or other, perhaps, I shall hear from you. Poste Eestante, Lucerne, I think, will find us ; I had a half hope of a line from you at Heidelberg. But, being myself the worst correspondent in Europe, I should not be the least surprised if you find a much better use of your time and pen. I long much to hear how Mrs. Kingsley is, and that all of you ^ are thriving at Eversley, so long as you may safely stay there. I was glad to have that glimpse of you at Ludlow's wedding.* * Ever yours afi'ectionately. ' P.S. I do not think I quite go along with you in what you say of Goethe. He seems to me the most perfect specimen of a genus of which I do not desire to see the multiplication, but which in itself is very valuable. The age of mere self- culture is over; but we must not lose the lessons it taught. * father a cliaracteristic reference to a wedding of a niece of Mr. Ludlow's, at'whicli he and Mr. Kingsley had met. CHAP. Yii.] THE BIBLE AND GBEEK MYTHS. 267 And Goethe was entirely a Protestant against the bookish- ness of Germany in behalf of life.' ' My dear Kingsley, ' Lausanne, September 24, 1855. ' Thank you very much for your letter. It is exceedingly kind of you to tell me just what you are thinking about the Bible or Greek myths, or anything. May I tell you, with the like frankness, that I knew from past experience that such thoughts must come to you and must for a time get great dominion over you ? Why was it you believed in the Old Testament ? Not because you had heard theories about inspiration, or cared a farthing for them, but because the book spoke words to you about a deliverer of you and a deliverer of the people, which no Greek myths spoke. Yovl told the people that the Bible was their book, that, whether it was ante-Babylonian or post-Babylonian, it testified that this voice said out of every burning hill, out of the thunder and lightning, " I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the house of bondage." Now there come times to all of us — there has come such a one to you — when we wish the people at the devil, when we would like to forget all that we have ever said or thought about them. And there are, alas, times when we do not care much about a Deliverer for ourselves, when we like gods but we would just as soon, be without God. Don't suppose I mean you when I say ice^ I mean that I have passed months, perhaps years, in that kind of condition ; I think I owe you very much for having brought me out of it and given me a hearty interest in the Demus, if I never worshipped or wished to enthrone it. And oh ! I know well how at such times one would give the world to be a great man, to be unlike other men, especially parsons, to have a way of one's own ; but how little one cares to be a man, to claim one's place in a kind. I never had your temptations to feel this. I have nothing of the heroic in me, and I have never had the opportunity, if I had the power, to be anything but one of the people. But the Devil, though he has not come to me as an angel of light, but in. 268 EASTEB, THE BIBLE, DOUBTS SACBED AND OTHEB. his proper person with a switch tail and horns and hoofs, has come to me and has made me indifferent to freedom, ready for any chains of silk or of iron. The Old and New Testament, I can say it, have broken those chains asunder for me, have given me a right to say on some Easter morning, " ' Hier bin icli Mensch, hier darf icb seyu." '•.And then all Greek myths and Greek songs have seemed to me very wonderful, not bringing freedom, but expressing the aspiration for it ; showing a ladder set up on earth though lost in the clouds, and not reaching to heaven. How earnestly I wish to read the lesson in every one of them, and in all Art and Nature, I cannot tell you. But I am sure I shall not, — I am sure they will all become dreary and dead to me after a little while, if I give up the Bible for the sake of them, killing the hen to get the golden egg. It was needful for you, I am sure, to pass through this condition of mind ; you could not do the work you have to do without it, and God will bring you out of it. But it will be by teaching you to love the people again, to feel that the best thing for any of us is to live and die for them ; that all doubts are sacred, even the most atheistical which affect their hearts, but that the doubts of the refined, of those who want a law and a gospel for their own circle, are not sacred at all, but very contemptible, doubts which they must keep their own pet parsons and led captains and fashionable novelists to solve, but which have nothing to do with life and business and humanity, and which those who care for these had best let alone altogether. ^ P is ruining himself with making a Christianity to fit both German professors and London dandies. What good will it do to human beings who must live and die ? ' Among the teachers who had volunteered to join the Working Men's College were two French Kepublican refugees, whose views, both in political and religous matters, proved to .be of a very violent type. One of them — M. Talandier — was CHAP, vii.] STBONG MEASURES TO ASSERT PUBPOSE. 269" subsequently French teacher at the Military College at Sand- hurst, and holds now a position of some distinction in the Chamber of Deputies. The following two letters explain sufficieDtly for the purposes of this book, the circumstances under which these two men were excluded from the Council of the Working Men's College. To Bev. J. LI. Davies. ' BouIogne-sur-Mer, October 19, 1855. * An article which I read in the Times yesterday about Talandier has troubled me greatly. I do not so much fear the effect of the mad and wicked doctrines to which he seems to have given his name, in bringing our college into disrepute — for that I suppose it is in already through me — but from any influence they may have upon our pupils. I do not think we can be the least called upon to come forward for the purpose of repudiating him, which would be very unkind and un- gracious to a poor man who has given us his services freely, I will willingly bear the discredit of having accepted them, and should wish to thank him cordially for the help he has rendered us. As to the future, I do not see my way clearly — knowing nothing of the circumstances ; but perhaps the matter will be taken out of our hands, if, as the newspapers seem to say. Lord Palmerston is going to send him away. * If you wish me to deliver anything of an inaugural address, will you let me know, and tell me whether I might make it — of course without any allusion to what has passed — a statement of my own feeling about the true means of emancipating the nations, a subject which has been much pressed upon my mind during this journey ? I feel more than I ever did how entirely the loss of a belief in a living God — chiefly through the sins of the priesthood — has been ' the loss of freedom to Christendom, and how impossible it is that the freedom should return without the faith. I have much to say to you on this subject. I think we must sigh and cry for the Keformation, not of our own country only, but of all nations, much more than we have done, and that •270 LIMITS OF TOLERATION. [F. M. 50. the time of struggle and deliverance must be at hand. But I should like your advice about the possibility of bringing it — which I could do without anything which would sound very theological — before our people.' * Boulogne, Sunday Evening, October 21, 1855. ' My dear Davies, ^ Since I wrote to you I have seen extracts from Talandier's speech, as published by the refugees themselves in the Jersey paper. It seems to me clear from these, that he has dis- claimed all association with any Englishmen, except Chartists, emphatically with all Englishmen who believe in any Trinity but his. I do not see how, unless we accept these conditions, he can honestly work with us. Clearly, there- fore, the programme ought not to appear with his name. I do not know whether the Jourdain who was in the chair at the meeting is our Jourdain ; if he is, of course the same rule applies to him. I need not tell you that I should count it absurd to disclaim his statements, because, unless we are living to refute them, unless the aim of our whole education and thought is to establish what he denies, all our profes- sions and acts are a lie. This we must make our people clearly understand, without saying a hard word of him ; indeed, while w^e make the fullest allowance for the in- fluences which may have urged many such as he is, to madness, and while we thank him for the help he has given us, I should even wish, of course privately, if it were possi- ble, to make him some pecuniary return for his services, that there might be no sense of that kind of debt. Could that be done ? Of course not from the college ! But my object in writing this line is to express my decided opinion that the programme should not have his name, and that another should be published if it has appeared. I will write to him, if that is thought the best course, as soon as I come to London, explaining what has been done. The letter should be translated, that its meaning may be unmistakable. My great wish is that the transaction should be between us and CHAP. VII. I THE CHUBCE CATECHISM. 271 him, and that all explanation should be addressed to him and to our own people. The newspapers, if they take it up against us, should not, I think, be meddled with in the least, till the other steps have been taken. I liojpe to go on Wednesday ; if it is necessary, I will come even if I am obliged to leave Mrs. Maurice and my nieces.' To Bev. C. Kingsletj, ' 21 Queen Square, October 26, 1855. * You have taken my surly words, dearest Kingsley, in a spirit which makes me ashamed of having ever uttered them. And yet I am not sorry I did ; for they have called forth the very answer that I should most have desired. I did not like to hear you talking Victorious analysis " about books of scripture and Babylonian periods, not because I do not think there are persons who may busy themselves with such matters, indeed have no vocation for any other ; but because I believe that such men do not belong to this time and are not occupied with the questions of this time, which all point to the dis- covery of the grounds of unity in books and among men : and because I am satisfied that you being emphatically a man of this time, would have only the use of your left hand in dealing with such subjects, and may have the full free use of your sword arm when you are devoting yourself to the other. And therefore most heartily do I rejoice to find you again working at that old puzzle about " made "* which you rightly think we have not got to the bottom of yet. It deserves all sifting that we may be sure we are not cheating ourselves and cheating mankind of that which is most pre- cious, and that we are not making words mean what they do not mean. It is a point of infinite importance, and if the Catechism stand in the way of our acknowledging the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, concerning the state of men in the sight of God, the Catechism must go. You know, I think, how much it has been the efi'ort of my life to assert a ground for men's sonship to God, which is deeper than * " Wherein I was made a member of Christ, &c." — The Church Catechism. SPIRITS WITH AN ANIMAL NATUBE. [1855. F,M,hi), any external rite and which is grounded on the eternal relation of God to man in the Living Word. But you do not know how much all the thoughts of my mind about our own people and my relation to them have turned upon this point, and how much more I have been led to meditate upon it lately in connec- tion with the people of other lands whom I have wished to know and care for, between whom and me there has seemed to be a great gulf fixed, and whose condition appears to be even more slavish and hopeless than that of the serfs of our own soil. Thinking upon these things, and, more than all, groaning in spirit as I have seen the priests in the churches, who seem as if they were existing to bear witness that there is not a fellow- ship between earth and Heaven and that God and man are not reconciled, I have asked myself whither all things are tend- ing and what the movements of these sixty years have brought forth ? Deeper and deeper would have been my despair if I had not been led to feel assuredly that every one of these move- ments has been a step in the revelation to men that they are » not animals jpliis a soul, but that they are spirits with an animal nature ; that the bond of their union is not a commer- cial one, not submission to a common tyrant, not brutal rage against him ; but that it does rest and has always rested on a spiritual ground ; that the sin of the Church — the horrible apostasy of the Church — has consisted in denying its own function, which is to proclaim to men their spiritual condition, the eternal foundation on which it rests, the manifestation which has been made of it by the birth, death, resurrection and ascension of the Son of God, and the gift of the Spirit. * Well ! this being my most inward conviction, and feeling every day that the call is greater to bear this testimony to the people and that among them (I had almost said only among them), there is a hope of its being listened to — I have con- sidered what the position of the Church of England is and whether these formularies of hers are in the way of that which seems to me the message that the time is crying out for. And the conclusion I have come to thus far is, that they may be in the way if we from heedlessness or unmanliness in the use -€HAP. VII.] THE BIBLE AND CHUBCH FOBMULABIES. 273 of them allow them to be so ; that they may be quite infinite helps if, instead of acting as the Scotch did in the case of Campbell, we say boldly that the Bible interprets the formu- laries, not the formularies the Bible, and that God Himself is above both, though we and our thoughts which He is seeking to educate and raise may be far beneath both. How do I apply this in the particular case we are busy with ? We are made sons of God in baptism. "There," says the Puseyite, " is not that conclusive ? How dare you go farther ? You have spoken the words. Now talk about an original sonship — a sonship in Christ before all worlds if you please.'' ' " Yes, my dear friend, and I do please, and I shall talk of that, and I shall tell men, as the Apostles told them, to believe in Christ as the Son of God in whom they are called to be sons. And if you stop my doing so, I shall have to ask you what you know about this sonship, what it means except a certain construction of letters of the alphabet, except I get it inter- preted to me in this way." That is my way of meeting him, and I do not mean to say more to him at present because it is much better that he should be a little perplexed and should Ask God to help him in working out the problem, than that I should show him the solution of it. But to you I will say more : I will ask you whether, if you got rid of this word made, you must not have some other which was equally im- perfect, equally onesided ; whether you would not get a little bit more of another half of the truth and lose a great slice of what we have now ? Let me explain by a parallel instance. You call a bastard a natural child. Is not that an utterly unsatisfactory adjective ! Are not children born in wedlock born according to nature ? Is that a mere legal title ? How shockingly marriage is degraded by such a thought ! How glad you are to escape from it sometimes, so that even in legal documents one sometimes hears of children naturally begotten of a true wife ! Well then, this expression must be explained, interpreted, even at times almost contra- dicted for the sake of high and practical principles. But would it be desirable to expel that expression from the YOL. n. T 274 CORONATION NOT ACCESSION OF THE KING. language ? No ! we should lose a great deal if we did. We should lose the testimony that there is a higher bond between human beings, spiritual creatures, than the natural one ; that the natural depends upon this : that to follow nature is not to be in the true sense a man who is above nature — of this marriage testifies. The children born of the true wife are not natural, the law calls them legitimate for it cannot give them another name. We see in legitimacy the sign and pledge of that which is as much above law as above nature. Apply this. You are not satisfied with the word made children of God in baptism. You ought not to be. But you wish it away. What follows ? You lose the witness of men being above nature, above their law of the ordinary birth ; you lose a witness of their being the spiritual creatures you want to affirm that they are. The made sounds formal, sounds legal, just as legitimate does. But I do not know if we exchanged it for any other that we should not slide back into the very notion against which our whole lives are a fight, that we are in our flesh, merely as animals, sons of God, which is in fact the Kousseau, French Eevolution inversion of the Christian Universality and leads to unlimited selfishness, to every man's hand being against his brother's. ' I think it is the hardest of all struggles for you with your right and eager assertion of the worth of man's animal nature, not to confound it with the spirit and so to unsay all you mean to say. I have felt the difficulty too, but more in a logical way ; less as one in which my afi'ections and passions were interested. You do not know how much that " made,'^ though it galls you, may have helped to keep you straight and to preserve you from the naturalism into which you always fear to fall. Meantime, I am quite certain that you will be- taught to preach a Gospel to men that they are spirits and that they are born of God, and that it is their duty to believe so. If baptism were in the way of such a proclamation I could throw it ofi* as St. Paul did circumcision. And perhaps one may have to speak words which will give as much ofi'ence to those who say they are Jews but are not, and to die as CHAP. VII.] THE PAST AND " NOW-A-DAYSr 275 lie died. But I am sure baptism is the witness to men of a real spiritual fellowship which is to embrace all nations into itself when its meaning is truly declared, and therefore it is more precious to me than ever it was. ' God bless you and all yours. My best love to them.' ' My dear KinGSLEY, ' December 7, 1855. ' I have sent the preface to Clay without alterations. It seemed to me quite suitable for the purpose, so far as I can judge of it from what I hear. Macmillan speaks of the book * itself as very delightful. ' The Sermons 1 1 like exceedingly, at least all I have read. I think the style is even better than in the earlier volumes, and the Gospel more distinct. I have heard only one com- plaint, which I think has some foundation. It is said that you glorify the past, and denounce " now-a-days " too much. The temptation I know is great, for I have felt, and do feel it. But I think it must be resisted. The former days were not better than these, though we feel their strength as we cannot feel that which is latent among our contemporaries. I have been to Cambridge and preached twice there ; the last time to a quite overwhelming congregation. I have been much cheered with all I saw of the men. I think the work- ing college will do them at least as much good as the working-men. 'My wife is laid up with rheumatism, of which I have had enough lately to remind me that I am become an old man. The more should I endeavour, as you are doing, to keep up sympathy with children.' ' My dear KingsLEY, * December 20, 1855. * I began a long letter to you on the day I received yours about the history ; but it was too serious a subject to speak of hastily, and I laid my discourse by. Thank you heartily for the note of yesterday. May Christmas bring all good with * ' The Heroes.' t * Sermons for the Times.' T 2 276 THE mSTOBY OF THE CIVIL WABS. [1855. F, M. 50. it, past, present, and future, to you and your wife and your children. ' I have often longed to speak out what I think about the Civil Wars. But I can do nothing except in hints. I have none of the qualities of a historian. You, I think, have a great many, and the most important ; and if you can concentrate them upon this wonderful period, you may confer a quite inestimable blessing on your country. It is clear that there is a cry for history in our day such as there has not been in any other. Macaulay's success might not be decisive of that point, but Grote's certainly is. However little hope there may be among us, we have at least a great longing to recover our memory. I have, I suspect, a more natural affection both for Puritanism and Quakerism than you have. I take the former, without your qualification. A strong spice of Calvinism is essential to it. You must swallow that pill and make as few wry faces as you can. But to swallow Laud and Charles the First ! That, I confess, is a difficulty. As for treating them impartially, it is out of the question. Im- partiality is for such men as Hallam ; you and I do not affect it. But there is a certain amount of affection which you must cultivate for them, and a certain understanding of the causes of their infinite blunders and wrong doings, and this will be hardly possible if you fling yourself into the work with a deadly determination to slaughter the Anglicans of our day. You will slaughter them much more effectually by justifying their foes than by throwing stones at their friends, though no one feels more than I do how great the temptation is to that course, for Laud's pedantry and Charles's lying are more intolerable to me than I can well express. The reason I say this, is that I believe if you can find the centre of the movements of this great period, the Episcopalian coxcombry, the Puritanical exclusiveness, the Quaker denial of institutions will all interpret themselves to you, and will each illustrate the purpose and order of God, quite as much as the faith and unbelief, the strength- and weakness of His creatures. . . . CHAP. VII.] JUSTICE DUE TO ALL THE ACTOBS. 277 * Carlyle is tlie beginner of a restoration in history, for he believes in a God who lived till the death of Oliver Crom- well— an incredible advance, even upon the better Whig and better Tory historians, who though they worshipped God, worshipped Him only as represented in the House of Commons or the King. I agree with Carlyle that Cromwell on the whole understood his time better than all who lived in it ; that he discovered the godly idea which was under- neath the reverence for laws and charters in the Parlia- ment, and that which was underneath the monarchical idolatry in the Cavaliers ; that he swept away the pedantries of both, and brought out the truth of God's government in its nakedness. This is honour enough for any man, and all praise to Carlyle for assigning it to its rightful owner. * But you who do not think that the belief of Cromwell in God exalted Him to a throne, which was not His before, and which has not been His since ; you who think that He is, and was, and is to come, should be able to express that conviction by showing what worth there was in the legalism of Parlia- ment, what worth in the hereditary succession of kings as different testimonies of the continuance of that righteous order and authority, which Cromwell affirmed to have an existence of its own apart from all earthly symbols and re- presentations, which each of the parties was confounding with its symbol and representation. ' I don't know whether I have made my meaning clear, or whether you will be able to get it clear by any defaecating processes ; but if so, you will understand why I claim justice, not only for the chivalrous Eoyalist, not only for Strafford, whose thorough-going maxims and hatred of pedantry you will of course appreciate ; but for the formalists or at least for that which their formalism signified, if they were not aware of it. Nothing, in my judgment, can be a more horrid or a more monstrous contradiction than the notion of forcing Episcojmcy by a royal decree down the throats of the Scotch. Nothing more deserving of honour than their resistance, and the grounds on which they rested it. But Laud was right in 278 CHANGE SIDES FOB CONSISTENCY. [F. M. 60. thinking that the two countries must be united, and that there must be a spiritual basis for their union. He was right in thinking that Presbyterianism was no basis for such a union, and tended to undermine it. * Experience confirmed these opinions as much as it proved the absurdity and sinfulness of his practical measures. The moment the Scots set up Presbyterianism as the meaning and result of the covenant with God, which they had so manfully and truly asserted, that moment they became fools, and Cromwell was needed to show them up as fools to angels and men. How often will you have to change sides in this history, if you are determined to be consistent in the true sense of consistency ! ' To Sir E. Stracliey. ' 21 Queen Square, January 28, 1856. ***** 'I believe you are right that the belief of another unity than the Adamic would clear away a number of difficulties from the minds of scientific men. The one you speak of concern- ing natural immutability, and the relation of men to the other orders of creation, was well, earnestly, and courageously considered by the old schoolmen, little as they knew of modern discoveries. That doctrine of an inchoate humanity in the animals which Coleridge has expressed in a passage of the ' Aids to Keflection ' that you will remember, I find the main one in an interesting treatise of Albertus Magnus. * Does your Arabic learning extend to Avicenna, Averroes, or any of the Moslem philosophers, who exercised so much influence on the thought of the West in the thirteenth century ? ' To Mrs. Augustus Hare. ' 95 King's Road, Brighton, January 31, 185G. *My dear Friend, * I cannot tell you how grateful I felt and feel for your kindness in writing to me about the introduction to the Charges.* No * His introduction to Archdeacon Hare's Charges has several references to Mr. Augustus Hare, and a sketch of his character. INTBOBUCTION TO EABE'S CHABGES. 279 testimony could be so valuable as yours, and you will not wonder that I should often have trembled while writing it, lest I should distort, as I knew I must enfeeble, some features of the character which I was trying to sketch. I felt the presumption of speaking of one v/hom I did not know, but I was representing Georgina as well as myself ; and her exceed- ing love, and the pains she has taken to give me her im- j^ressions of the character, encouraged me to venture on the few words which could not be omitted, if I was to speak faithfully of Julius, who owed him so much more than I, or even his own pen, could express. I am particularly thankful that what I said did not strike you in any point as wrong, however inadequate it must be. Yesterday * was indeed a solemn day to us all. The bright- ness of it here recalled vividly the sudden and unsurpassed beauty of those lanes in their snow a year ago, which we had seen before in very different circumstances, but once or twice in almost the same. Life and death seem strangely blended with all one's thoughts of them, and of that churchyard ; but life, thanks be to God, is stronger than death, I was sen- tenced to come here by my doctor, and the place has done me much good. I hope it has also been of use to Georgina, who, I think, would have been seriously ill, if we had remained in London. She sends her kindest love to you.' To Bev. C. Kingsley. ' June 3, 1856. I am up to my ears in the schoolmen, and hoping earnestly for a speedy emancipation from them. The part of my * Moral Philosophy ' which belongs to the middle ages has given me a good deal of trouble, as you may fancy, and ought to have given me a great deal more. One has the feeling, in writing it, that it ought to be done, though no one will read it, and 1 have the reward of having grown into an affection for my subjects which I never expected to have. * Archdeacon Hare's funeral had taken place the year hefore on January 280 FBOUDE'S HISTOBY. THE SUNDAY. [F, M. 50. For all that, they would drive me mad if I were altogether shut up with them, and could not now and then breathe a little of our fresh London air. I have also been delivering myself of some sermons, which together make up a sort of commentary on St. John. I think he would set us all right if we did but believe that he means really what he says. * I am reading Fronde's history with great interest, and I hope some profit. After all, how nearly his view of Henry accords- with that which Shakespeare got out of the Chronicles by- mere intuition. I dare say it is in the main right. But in Froude as in all Oxford men, though far less than in most, there is that strange belief in the dislocation of the past from the present, which I would rather die than accept a tittle of. His style is generally most delightful, far the best historical style for our times that I know ; so equable and free from pretension and jauntiness.' To Rev. S. Hansard. ' June 5, 1856. * I have not seen the petition from the Lord's Day Society, whick you speak of. *I have seen other documents proceeding from the same quarter which have been unspeakably painful to me, because every quotation from Scripture which they contained — especially every quotation from the discourses of our Lord — was used, it seems to me, with reckless and profane indifference to its original meaning and application, as if the divine oracles, in- stead of being authorities to which we must bow, were mere instruments which we may compel to secure any temporary purpose that we consider holy. ^ This objection to the acts of the Lord's Day Society, and the terrible suspicion which it involves that there must be some- thing in our religious condition which is very like that of the Jews when they made the Sabbath day the main excuse for denying the Son of man, and the Son of God, and seeking to kill Him — has weighed so much upon my mind that I have not dared, nay, that I have scarcely been able to dwell upon TEE CHRISTIAN AND THE JEWISH SABBATH. 281 those arguments, often of a very opposite kind, wliicli are resorted to^by the defenders of Sunday amusements. * I do feel the [force of some of those arguments, such as those drawn from the present condition of the people, and from the possible hope of withdrawing them from the gin palace, very keenly ; but they are balanced by others of nearly equal weight, and they are mixed with statements, mischievous, I think, from the half truth which is in them, to which I am less and less able to subscribe. When it is said that the- Christian Sabbath is not a Jewish Sabbath, I admit the assertion altogether ; but that is because I think it much higher and finer than the Jewish Sabbath, not poorer or of less perfect obligation. * When it is said that it does not rest upon a formal law, I admit it, just as I hold that Baptism and the Communion of the Lord's Supper belong to the Gospel and not to the law, to the- New Testament, and not to the Old, to the spirit and not to the flesh, and consider them more precious and more binding for that reason. And just as I seek for the groundwork of baptism in circumcision, and for the Lord's Supper in the Passover, just as I could not understand the one without the other, or see what we have gained, if we had not the divine seed out of which the flower has developed itself to compare with it, so I could not understand the Christian Sabbath if I did not find the first form of it, and the statement of its permanent significance in the fourth commandment. * I look upon it as still expressing that union of rest and work which is implied in the constitution of the universe, and in the constitution of man ; as still affirming that man's rest has its foundation in God's rest, man's work in God's work as still proclaiming a common blessing to the master and the servant, and the cattle. I look upon it as still an ordinance connected with the nation and its holiness, de- claring our nation, as it did the Jewish, to be holy and chosen, and consecrated to God. I look upon it in its Christian form as declaring that the union of God and man, which was set forth in the law, has been accomplished by 282 THE SILENT WITNESS OF SUNDAY— WRATf [1856. the resurrection of our Lord, and that God can now rest in man and man in God. ' Holding this to be so, I regard the Christian Sabbath or Lord's Day as the great message to human beings — the great silent message which is mightier than words, but which words ought to interpret — concerning this reconciliation. I think the early reformers were indifferent to it, in part at least, because they did not heartily acknowledge a recon- ciliation of God with human beings, but only with believers or the elect. I think those who call themselves the succes- sors of these reformers are teaching people to regard the Sabbath as a day of penance and sackcloth, because they do not believe in this reconciliation of God with mankind, and would not have it preached either silently or by the lips of God's heralds. But I think there is a sense in our people • that the Sabbath has some profound blessing for them which is latent under all the perversions of it ; and that hence we may explain much of the passive as well as of the active opposition to what looks like an attempt to treat it as a day only or chiefly of bodily recreation. ' If you ask me what seems to me our duty as clergymen, I should say, first of all to preach continually that reconcilia- tion of God to man, and to take every opportunity of affirming that the Sabbath is a witness of it. Secondly, to vindicate by all possible ways the force of our Lord's words respecting the Sabbath day, as not proclaiming certain allowable exceptions from the severe observation of it, but as asserting the essential meaning and character of it. He chose that day for healing the sick, surely to testify that the bodies of men are dear to Him, and that this day is especially to assert how dear they are. Thirdly, to combat vehemently the doctrine which is openly proclaimed both by laymen and clergymen, that our Lord's words were suitable to His time, when Pharisaism was rampant, and are not suitable to ours, which are Latitudinarian ; an accursed doctrine, to the application of which there are no limits, and which must subject the whole of the Gospel to our caprice. CHAP. VII.] DUTIES IN BEGABD TO IT. 283 Fourthly, to combat as vehemently the doctrine that He spent so many of His precious words and acts in merely vindica- ting a special exception to law, instead of declaring its essential force and meaning. Fifthly, on the strength of His teaching and example, to consider how we may best claim the Sabbath day as a practical instrument for benefit- ing men's physical as well as their spiritual condition, always endeavouring to show how one is related to the other, making all our acts not concessions or exceptions, but parts of one Gospel, and carefully adapting ourselves to English habits and local circumstances ; neither condemning foreign practices, nor desiring the least to imitate them. * I do not say that such a protest as you speak of may not be one right means to these ends. Let us talk it over, deter- mining not to shrink from any duty, but as little as possible to wound any Christian or honest feelings. When will you come and have it out ? * Ever yours affectionately.' 284 GENERAL HABITS [general. CHAPTEE YIII. " Every higli-mimled leader who gathers followers round him for any great purpose, when he calls to self-sacrifice and has no worldly rewards to offer, ... in his degree winnows men." "He who, when goodness is impressively put before him, exhibits an instinctive loyalty to it, starts forward to take its side, trusts himself to it — such a man has faith, and the root of the matter is in such a man. — Ecce Homo. HOME LIFE — PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS, ETC. 1856 MOVES TO* RUSSELL SQUARE — RETURNS TO QUEEn's COLLEGE. In the early summer of 1856 my father moved to a much larger house, No. 5, Kussell Square. Since his three nieces had come to live with him in March 1854, the house in Queen Square had been inconveniently small. His habits had in some respects undergone a considerable change since he came up to London. By nature he was the most hospitable of men, and gradually the shyness which when he first went to Guy's had prevented him from seeing much of any but a few friends, had been so far overcome by his desire to have an open door for all mankind, that his acquaintance each year had multiplied at an ever increasing rate. From all parts of the world people who had heard of him through others were continually asking to be introduced to him. His universal habit on these occasions, was to say, " Could you come and breakfast with me to-morrow morning ? " I don't think the invitation was ever given without a certain shyness and a hesitation, as though it was something of a liberty for him to take to ask any human being to come to his house. The habit was in reality, however, itself forced on him as much by his shyness as by his hospitality and by his kindliness of feeling towards all men. He wanted something to- OHAP. VIII.] OF E03IE LIFE. 285 break the ice and put him and his new acquaintance at ease precisely because he found it so hard to enter upon subjects that would be keenly interesting to both of them. The result was that what came among his friends to be known as prophetic breakfasts " were ere long, after he had come up to Queen Square and during all the time that he lived at Eussell Square, a feature of his life. He was always an early riser. Hardly ever later than 6 A.M., often much earlier than that, the sound of the splash of the cold tub, which summer and winter, down to the end of his life, he invariably took both the first thing in the morning and the last at night, was to be heard, and a curiously pathetic almost agonised " shou-shou " followed, which seemed to tell that, for a frame that was kept so low as his by constant brain- work and a somewhat self-stinted diet, the shock was almost a penance endured rather than enjoyed. Immediately after dressing he settled down to work at whatever his special task for the time might be, though very frequently if one came into his room at all suddenly, the result was to make him rise hurriedly from his knees, his face reddened, and his eyes depressed by the intense pressure of his hands, the base of each of which had been driven and almost gouged into either eye-socket, the fingers and thumbs pressed down over fore- head and head. The Greek Testament, open at some special point which had occupied him at the moment he kneeled down, lay on the chair before him ; but as he rose the spirit seemed to have come back again into his face from the far-ofi" region to which it had been travelling, and there was just the hint in the face of an involuntary sadness and almost of reproach that the spirit should be recalled from the intercourse it had been enjoying.* About 20 minutes to 8, with a small party from home, he started for the service at Lincoln's Inn, and was back about 9 for breakfast. In the earlier days at Queen Square his breakfasts * Mrs. Maurice's note-book adds to this : " Whenever he woke in the night he was always praying. And in the very early morning I have often pretended to be asleep lest I should disturb him. whilst he was pouring out his heart to God." " He never began any work or any book without pre- paring for it by prayer." 286 HOME HABITS. [geneeal. when lie had friends with him were purely gatherings of men, his sister Priscilla having been completely confined to her bed. At all times his evening meetings, both of the promoters, of his Bible-classes, and of some others, were presided over by himself, no lady being present. His friends had many stories against him as to their sufferings in consequence of that fact. On one occasion, when there was a larger gathering than usual, at one of the evening meetings of co-operators, there was, when the tea was poured out, a cry that they were all poisoned. On investigation it appeared that he had filled up the tea-pot so completely with tea leaves that the extract was unrecognisable as tea. He was always at his best at a breakfast at which he had gathered various friends. The very variety and sometimes almost incongruity of the guests who came to them, gave scope to the unlimited sympathy and sympathetic power which enabled him to draw out the best of each. Whatever was the most interesting topic of the day in politics, literature or any other region, was sure to come uppermost, unless there was some more special subject that closely concerned his particular guest. Usually after breakfast — which often, when he was free from lectures or other day duty, ran on into long talks and discussions till a late hour in the morning — he began dictating to his wife. Often when his subject had been worked up, and on a day on which he had not some other engagement, he con- tinued dictating all day with only the interruption of luncheon till dinner at 6.30, which was his usual hour. It was a very great relief to him to compose his books by dictation and to avoid the labour of mechanical writing. His usual manner of dictation was to sit with a pillow on his knees hugged tightly in his arms, or to walk up and down the room still clutching the pillow, or suddenly sitting down or standing before the fire with the pillow still on his knees or under his left arm, to seize a poker and violently attack the fire, then to walk away from it to the furthest end of the room, return, and poke violently at the fire, not unfrequently in CHAP. Yin.] HOME HABITS. 287 complete unconsciousness of what he was doing, poking the whole of the contents of the fireplace through the bars into the fender. The habit of holding the pillow whenever he was engaged in excited talk dated from such early days, that one of his undergraduate Cambridge friends used to say that a black horse-hair pillow which he then had, always followed him about of itself. My mother in the Guy's days used to call such an one his " black wife." All the while he poured forth a con- tinuous stream of words. When, however, he took into his own hands, for looking over and correction, a passage which he had either written or dictated, the chances were very strong that half at least of it would be torn out, or erased and rewritten. All his manuscript is full of verbal corrections, erasures and rewritings on each separate page, and whole sections of each of the MSS. books are torn completely out. He never could be satisfied with the expression he had given to the thoughts he wished his words to convey. If any one called to see him, no matter who it might be, he instantly stopped his work, whatever it might be, and went in to see the caller. I believe that his articles in the ' Politics for the People' must have contained some of the earliest protests in vigorous language against the absolute mischief and wrong of promiscuous almsgiving. Nevertheless, the habitual beggars very soon discovered that there was no house at which they were more sure of successful plunder. In each case similar incidents were repeated. He heard the beggar's story. He protested against the wrong they were doing in begging. He made earnest appeals to them against their course of life, and then he went upstairs to his wife, and confessed to her that he had thought that in this particular instance it was better to give something. Not unfrequently he had to go to her for money to give them, and often returned to find that the beggar had disappeared with a coat, hat or umbrella. Though he was usually very silent about these experiences, there was one story which he was rather fond of telling. Some Frenchman who had come to him with one of the regular 288 H03IE LIFE. [general. decayed-gentleman-foreigner stories, to whom lie had finally given half-a-crown, left him disconcerted by remarking on receiving the money, " Monsieur, je snis humilie," i.e. at the smallness of the sum. I do not remember his ever, when in London, going out for pure exercise, but probably his daily walk to and from Xiincoln's Inn in the morning, and the frequent engagements he had in different parts of the town to which he usually walked, served him sufficiently for such health as he enjoyed. He so boasted of his good health, and so habitually acted as a man in strong health, that my own impression certainly had been that with the exception of a few attacks of lumbago or loss of voice, his general health was remarkably good. None of his pupils remember his missing a lecture. But Mrs. Maurice writes to me : " You are mistaken about his health. When I married he was suffering from ten- dency to a very dangerous malady which, if he had not married and had a wife to look after him, and get advice, would very probably have killed him in about two years. Mr. Headland [his doctor at the time] saved him. It was entirely for his health that we went abroad in 1850, to Eastbourne and Brighton three times, and various other places. He was subject to faintness, and four or five times was taken ill at parties. . . . Indeed, his overworked brain showed itself in many ways, amongst others by what he called lumbago." He was distinctly below the middle height, not above 5 feet 7 inches, but he had a certain dignity of carriage despite the entire absence of any self assertion of manner, which in the pulpit, where only his head and shoulders were observable, removed the impression of small stature. His father had been a very small man, with an old-fashioned and extreme courtesy ; his mother, a stately large woman of a specially venerable and dignified carriage. My father's manner was inherited almost exactly from his mother. He had a habit, however, when first starting from his house by himself, of going off at a run down the steps and for a certain distance afterwards, gradually subsiding into a walk. This habit was dropped towards the 289 latter part of liis life, but it liad for many years rather tlie character of an involuntary burst of energy of the same kind as the fire-poking, than any indication of a disposition to mere hurry. It was almost painful to walk with him in any part of the town where it was necessary for him to ask his way. In the noisiest and most crowded places he would inquire his direction in the gentlest and most apologetic tone, perhaps of some bluff old costermonger woman, w^ho, unaccustomed to hear such subdued language, would continue to shove her way along, utterly unconscious of having been addressed. He would instantly draw back as though he had been rebuffed in an in- trusion which, on reflection, he felt to have been quite un- warrantable, and would watch for a more favourable opportunity of attracting the attention of some other passer-by. Much later in life, an acquaintance, whom he did not know to be present, records how one pouring wet day, when my father was sitting in a crowded omnibus, some old apple-woman came to the door looking for a seat, and how my father, an old man at the time, instantly got out on to the roof. It is quite certain that he would have done so at any time, but he w^ould also have care- fully demonstrated, if any one had detected him in the act, that there were most excellent reasons why it was the most natural thing in the world that he should get out into the rain, rather than some much younger man, who had no notion of doing so. That of which it is hardest to give any adequate impression is the " stealth " of his " doing good " in all kinds of little ways all day long, in the small details of daily life. If anything went wrong, he was sure by some ingenious process or other to make out that he, himself, was the only person to blame for it. Always he was contriving to leave an impression favourable to one member of the household, of some act which another was disposed to resent, or he was arranging some special kindness of his own, the whole credit of which he contrived to leave to some one else. It was the continual tendency to take the heaviest load on his own shoulders, and to assign the lightest to others, all the while pretending and really persuading himself VOL. II. u 290 " THAT WAS NOT WHAT WE WANTEDS [general. that lie was not doing his fair share, that one knows not how to illustrate, because it happened always and in everything. Not a few of his letters would leave a quite false impression unless this tendency be understood. Thus his half quizzing letter to Sir E. Strachey (on p. 272, Yol. I.) on the subject of fasting, represents simply his unwillingness to prescribe rules for other men, and his equal unwillingness to break the command, not to appear to other men to fast. In practice, he carried to an extreme point his own fasting on all the days prescribed by the Church. Not unfrequently on Good Friday or other days, he palpably suffered from his almost entire abstinence from food ; and at other times during the year he used to exercise the most curious ingenuity in contriving to avoid taking food without allowing his doing so to be observed. On nearly the same principle as dictated his letter to Sir E. Strachey was his action, in another matter which arose, in the course of 1856, among those working-men who formed some of the earliest classes of the Working-Men's College. Some of them announced, in a rather aggressive manner, that they preferred taking a walk on Sunday to attending a place of worship, finding that they were the better for making that choice. Many of those at the meeting were either zealous churchmen or zealous dissenters, and the announcement was received with a shriek of indignation and horror by these. My father was appealed to by both. He made a speech at the moment, en- deavouring to draw out the kindliest and wisest aspect of the assertions on either side ; but as two of the working-men who had been most strongly engaged on the matter, said to me recently, " that was not what we wanted." Each of the two sides wanted a definite decision from their leader, which they could throw at the heads of the other side, or with which they could salve their own consciences. Now this was precisely the thing which he was thoroughly determined neither in this, nor in any other instance, to give. Looking upon it as his special function to awaken conscience, not to stifle it or to kill it by prescribing rules, he looked upon a cut-and-dried decision given ex-cathedra by himself as an absolute wrong and mischief, no matter how 291 good the decision might be, as interfering with the divine discipline and education which the King, whom it was his business to proclaim and that of conscience to acknowledge, was giving to each of His subjects. Nothing is more remarkable in the experiences of his life than the consistency with which he adhered to this principle, or the difficulty which others had in seeing at the moment the central motive which gave con- sistency to his action. He told the walkers that if they would go for a walk between the services he would accompany them, and as they now say, when afterwards some of them took to walking according to their proposal, no blame came to them from his mouth. They probably did not understand how bitterly, for all that, he blamed himself, believing that if the message he had to deliver could come forth from him, men would come to hear it ; and that it was all his fault that they should choose rather the fields than the church. It seemed to those who saw this habit of rigid severity with himself, and the care which he took to keep secret as far as lay in his power any act that would draw the approbation and admiration of others, that palpably it met with its reward in the wonderful personal influence which he, quite unconsciously to himself, exercised upon almost every human being who so crossed his path in life as really to see anything of him. It was the case with servants, with little children, with country villagers, wherever he went. As a country parson, when he took duty during the vacation, he had none of the qualities of the busy, active, hail-fellow-well-met parish clergyman. He would look shyly in at a cottage with a " Beautiful day, my friend," to a washer- woman, busy among the suds, and be met by, "Aye, mighty fine if ye h'aint nothing to do." From which he would generally retire dis- comfited, with a sad sense of the tendency to feed on discontent he so met with. His intense dread of being the parson in a sense which cut him ofi" from men, not in a sense which bound him to speak as man to men, often made him very diffident in formal clerical visits. It needed usually a u 2 292 F. D. ill. AT TIMES OF SICKNESS AND SOBBOW. little time for his influence to make itself felt, or sickness or trouble to make him wanted. Nothing is more striking than the way in which those who had him with them in sorrow, generally the people of all others to whom any kind of intrusion is most intolerable at the time, and painful to recall afterwards, now press on me their remembrance of the comfort that he was to them ; far more, as they say, by his presence and the sense of his real sympathy than by any words he used. In a measure too, he, as the author of the ' Ecce Homo ' would say, carried in his hand, in this matter of recognition, " his winnowing fan." It was usually, altogether irrespective of opinions, those who were the best of their class that most quickly caught an enthusiasm for him. At one country-house at which he was staying the confidential upper servant was found by her mistress, the morning after he had arrived, brushing a pair of boots. Her mistress inquired in surprise what she was doing. Oh, ma'am, I can't let any one else brush Mr. Maurice's boots whilst he's here. I never saw any one like him before, and I can't do anything else for him." A lady who had been among the earliest shareholders in the Record (in the days when some of the best of people really wished for an organ that should speak forth for truth, charity, and goodness, and never dreamed of the travestie of those sacred names which they were starting) heard my father once do what people call " read prayers." She had known him till then only in the pages of the Record. If the mere statements of simple fact to which that most religious organ had pledged itself, in every way that anonymous writers, assumed to be gentlemen, can pledge themselves, were true, it was not possible for her to think too badly of my father. That once hearing him pray settled the question in her mind. From that time forth the Record slandered in vain. Such incidents were not unfrequent. It was not uncommon for people who went occasionally to hear him when he was afterwards at Yere Street, to be rather pleased than not if he had undertaken the service instead of preaching. The effect of the prayers as he CHAP. VIII.] WHEX FIBED WITH A SEXSE OF JVBOXG. 293 gave them forth was a thiug recalled again and again by nianv who knew little else of him. ^lany have said that for the first time they understood the force of a prayer after hearing him. I shall have occasion to speak more fully hereafter of one unfortunate result which sometimes followed from this personal impression ; but here, where I am recording its nature, it will be more easily realised how naturally confusion would be pro- duced in a mind which felt this kind of hallowed charm about him and yet at the time knew him, not as he appears here in his own letters and acts, but as he appeared in the Becord, or other similar organs. It had in some cases the fatal effect of attracting men to the opinions, views, thoughts, life which the Becord had attributed to him ; to opinions, views, life against which his whole life was a struggle. This happened so frequently, such constant evidence of it has come before me. that I cannot too often insist upon the fact of this terrible penalty which follows in the track of religious slander. There were exceptions to the influence which he exercised :. and many who never altogether lost a kindly feeling for him. altogether repudiated his lead after having worked with him for some time. There were times when he could make his words sting like a lash and burn like a hot iron. The very nature of his appeal alwavs to a man's own conscience, to his sense of ris^ht within the scope in which the man himself clearly discerned what was right and what was wrong, the full recognition of ability when he complained that it was being abused, the utter absence of any desire to dictate in details or to require any conformity to his own opinions — seemed as it were, when he spoke indignantly, to carry the man addressed, then and there, unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd," before the tribunal with which rests " the ultimate and highest decision upon men's deeds, to which all the unjustly condemned at human tribunals appeal, and which weighs not the deed only, but motives, temptations and ignorances, and all the complex conditions of the deed." There were some to whom he so spoke, who never forgave him. The marvellous thing, considering the depth to "which he sometimes cut, is that there were so few. 294 A DANGEB OF CONFLAGBATION. [chap. viii. Whenever something that he looked upon as morally wrong or mean excited his wrath, he began in a most violent manner to rub together the palms of his two hands. The fits of doing so would often come on quite suddenly as a result of his reflections on some action, as frequently as not of the religious world, or of so-called religious people. He appeared at such moments to be entirely absorbed in his own reflections, and utterly unconscious of the terrible efl'ect which the fierce look of his face and the wild rubbing of his hands produced upon an innocent bystander. A lady who often saw him thus, says that she always expected sparks to fly from his hands, and to see him bodily on fire. Certainly the efl'ect was very tremendous and by no means pleasant. In the evenings at home, when he was not either at the Working Men's College, or on one of his other numerous employments, he usually read aloud whatever was the most generally interesting book of the time. He was fond of chess, and played a good, not a highly scientific, game. He seldom, however, found time for playing unless it was for the sake of giving pleasure to some one else. The next letter to Mr. Kingsley refers to a pamphlet " On the Sabbath Day," which was the result of the dispute among the working-men on that subject. ' My dear Kingsley, ' 5 Russell Square, July 29, 1856. ^ I send you by this post a tract of mine, which you will entirely disapprove, and which, therefore, I wished that you should receive from me, and not at second hand. I did not write it to j)lease myself; the working-men and many of my friends will suppose that I wrote it to please the religious world, which I hope will hate me more and more, and which I hope to hate more and more. But the conviction has been growing on me that the reformation which must deliver us from its yoke, and which is needed for the whole land, must be of a very deep and radical kind, and that it will not be efi'ected through that kind of lore which is (as you have said, and as I freely confess) far purer and happier CHAP. \1II.] WORK IX A COLONY. 295 in itself than that which ^Ye have to seek, who delve in the dark flowerless caverns and coal mines of our own souls. ' As my sole vocation is metaphysical and theological grub- bing, as the treasures of earth and sky and air are not for me, I feel that the friends on whom they are bestowed, and who understand that they are richly to enjoy, will become less and less able to tolerate me. ' Nevertheless, one's work must be done whatever it is, in the dark or in the sunshine does not much signify. I hope I am not envious — God knows how inclined I am often to be so — of those who can rejoice in nature and art and science. I do not, in any right mood, impute my incapacity to God, but to my own sin, and wish to confess it, and to ask that those who have the use of their senses may use them rightly and for the noblest ends.'* To Mrs. Colenso. ' Ivircnlleii, Moycullen, Galwa}-, Ireland, August 19, 1856. * ]\Iy deae Feiexd, ' I wish I could make you understand how often I have deter- mined to answer your interesting and welcome letters, and how often I have been deterred, not wholly by indolence but by the thought that I could not write you some cold, hard, London letter, but must wait till some words were put into me which might cheer you in your distant work. I am sure that such words would be given to us continually, and in abundance, if we were more willing: and earnest to receive them ; but there is a weight upon one's own spirits, and upon the spirit of the whole Church, which seems to stifle one's utterances and often to make the lieart within very frozen. Perhaps it may do you good even to tell you that, because it will prove to you that there is good — an almost infinite good — in what must often be overwhelming, and seem dreary labour ; in that it leads you to trust less in outward circum- stances and advantages, and throws you more upon the * The answer to this letter is on p. iJG, Vol. II., of :Mr. Kiugsley's Life, smaller edition. 296 DIFFICULTIES AT HOME [F, 3L 51. absolute love of God. And there is also tlie very great comfort, which I am sure you may feel, that you are doing a work for England as well as Katal, and that you will be some day sending us missionaries to tell us truths that we have well-nigh forgotten. Do tell the bishoj^, with my kindest love, that the battle he is fighting is ours also; nothing less than the battle whether the devil or the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the God. Everything is coming in England and joerhaps quicker still in this country, in which we are staying for a few weeks, to that issue. Eomanists and Protestants will have to ask themselves, not whether they believe in a pope or no pope, but whether they believe in a God of Truth or a God of Lies. Each must be tried by the answer ; and each must have his own tree cut down, because it cumbers the ground, if it is not found to have the good root and not the accursed one. ' I am running on at a great rate, having once started, and am telling you the things that are pressing on my mind instead of talking of the thousand more interesting and more hope- ful topics that are occupying you ; not because they do not interest me deeply, but because I am certain that there is this common interest which binds Europe and Africa together, and which we must strive always to keej) in mind. But all you are doing for the Caffre children and for the Zulus' and for your own, is really fulfilling, in the best and simplest way, that duty which comes upon us with so many complications — the deliverance from the yoke of a tyrant, by telling them of their true King. It seems to me as if all civilization and all Christianity had that same foundation, as if devil worship was the common enemy which both in their difi'erent ways have to struggle with. The earlier you can begin the strife the better, the more steadily you can keep it in sight to the end the better. Every day I have to reproach myself with being such a lazy, cowardly, despondent fighter, and to ask how it is that in the family, in the nation, in the Church, I am not always bearing witness to that which is true, against that which is debasing. CHAP. VIII.] AND IN AFRICA, 297 ' That the bishop is right in his view of polygamy, I can have little doubt. And if so, it must be a great and useful duty to state his conviction. It brings new thought and experience to bear on the great subject of family life ; and the moral effect of every courageous and well-considered announcement of difficulty, and a purpose, can scarcely be estimated. I am sorry that he has had any purely ecclesiasti- cal conflicts, though it cannot be hoped that any one should avoid them in our days ; and though it is needful in all ways to assert the authority of a Church and the grounds of it, these questions have become so embarrassed in England with trivialities, that one trembles lest the real issue of the strife in which we are engaged should be hidden from the eyes of any by means of them. I feel more and more that every- thing is involved in our defending the principles which are asserted in the Catechism, but that they are, if they could be fairly presented, so grand and comprehensive that we should strain every nerve, and ask all help, that they may not be mixed with anything which contracts or enfeebles them. What I say, however, applies chiefly to what is passing every day among ourselves ; I am quite incompetent to pronounce about your difficulties, which I am sure the bishop will have grace to meet in a wise way. * * * « « . *Ever your very affectionate friend.' 'Kircullen, Moycullen, Galway, Ireland, September 8, 185G. * My deak j\Ik. Campbell, * I do not feel sure that I ever sent to you a letter which I wrote many months ago. I think that for some reason or other I laid it aside ; if so, you cannot have known, except at second hand, how greatly I prized your kindness in sending me your book, or what interest I have taken in the book itself. *I was especially delighted with the manner in which you addressed yourself to what you know to be the feelings of the people of Scotland, how earnestly you sympathised 298 MB. CAMPBELL, EDWABDS AND KNOX. [F. M. 51. with them, how gently and honestly and affectionately you dealt with the books which you felt to be wrong. ' I entirely agree with your preference of the strong statements of Edwards to the more diluted Calvinism of later days. If you had gone back to Knox, as I almost Avish you had done, I think your expressions of inward fellowship would have been even more cordial ; at least, when I read what would be called a very vehement treatise of his on predestination, I felt as if my heart responded to the spirit of it, and often to the letter of it ; that I went along with him in all his positive statements, and only was at issue with him when he made those statements less full and deep than they might have been, lest he should yield a point to the Arminians. No one could speak more earnestly and passionately than he does of God's righteousness in contradistinction to His sovereignty. It seemed to me that if you could have seen him, as no doubt you will some day, he must have under- stood you. * I think I entirely accept your idea of the atonement so far as it bears on the relations of God with each individual soul. Perhaps I hold more strongly than you do a reconciliation of the whole of humanity with God in Christ, which would enable me to use some of the expressions which you would reject ; though I should be very careful of using them, lest I should convey a dishonest impression, and be suspected of differing with your great axiom. ... I feel as if this were rather presumptuous language. In all spiritual truth I feel that you are so much the teacher, and I the learner, that I am afraid of putting myself in a wrong position. But I know you will understand me and will believe what hearty joy it gave me to meet with such full and free statements of God's love to men, as you poured forth from the depth of your own experience. ' May I ask you to remember me very kindly to Mrs. Campbell. * Ever very affectionately yours,' CHAr. Yiii.] " THE 3I0ST HORRIBLE CRIMEA 299 ' Welsliampton Parsonage, EUesmere, September 20, 185G. ' My dear Mr. Solly, ' I have just received your two kind letters, for which I beg you to accept my best thanks. I had thoughts of writing to you when I had that dispute with the Inquirer ; partly because you had spoken to me of a connection which you supposed me to have with the Saturday Bevieiv, and I wished to assure you that I have never written a line in it, that I do not know the editor, that I have very seldom seen it, and that I have no expectation of being understood by that or any journal whatsoever. I have grown more and more to desire the friendship of all schools and sects, and more and more to feel myself in deadly and hopeless hostility with the anonymous newspapers which represent them. I did not want your assurance that my good and valued friend Mr. Hutton was not the editor of the Inquirer. He himself wrote to me in the kindest manner three years ago to acknowledge the authorship of the article in the Frosjjective Bevieiv and of some that he had written about me in the Inquirer at that time. To me it is the pleasantest thing possible to have intercourse with men. But for shadows I have no respect at all. I am ashamed of myself when I meddle with them. I certainly should not have troubled the Inquirer if he had spoken any bitter words of me ; I am pretty well used to them. But he flattered me and at the same time said that I was in the habit of committing what I regard as the most horrible crime that a man can commit, viz., that I played with words as with counters. He says I want to teach him and Unitarians theology. No such thing. I want to teach him the ABC of morality. He has no business to praise a man whom he describes as an habitual cheat. That is most immoral. I do not say behind his back in a mask what I would not say to his face, if I knew that he had one. You are quite welcome to show him what I have written. ' I suppose it is very difficult to make any one understand any other's position. I do not think we ought to take much 300 CONFESSION FOB ITSELF THE NOTE OF A CHUBCH. pains for that purpose, but to leave God to justify our cause if it is a right one, and to pray Him to show us if it is wrong. What the Inquirer said about his desire to form a church, however, did very much to strengthen my conviction that I should be committing a sin by deserting the place which I occupy. I think the Church of England is the witness in our land against the sect principle of " forming churches " which is destroying us and the Americans too (see on the latter point Mrs. Stowe's testimony in ' Dred '). As long as we think we can form churches we cannot be witnesses for a Humanity and for a Son of man. We cannot believe that we do not choose Him, but that He chooses us and sends us to bear witness of His Father and of Him. Everything seems to me involved in this difference. I admit that the English Church is in a very corrupt, very evil condition. I am not afraid to own that, because I believe it is a Church and not a sect. The sect feeling, the sect habit is under- mining it. The business of us who belong to it is to repent of our sectarianism and to call our brothers to repent, to show that we have a ground on which all may stand with us. If we do that business well we shall have as many kicks, I fancy, as we shall get anywhere, kicks from all sides. Of all temptations, that of putting oneself at the head of any- thing, that of getting up a mere sect which must be worse and more devilish than the old — and that is saying a good deal — is the one which I would strive against most. I know only God can enable me wholly to overcome it. ' I have to thank you very much for the pleasure and instruction your poem has given me.' ' My dear Trench, ' Pi-ees, October 10, 1856. ' I have just heard from Plumptre that I may really praise God that He has put into the hearts of our rulers to choose well for Westminster. I do not know what may be intended for you hereafter, but I am sure that work which will be good for you and for the whole Church will be found for you in the Deanery. We to whom London is and ought to be QUEEN'S COLLEGE AGAIN. PBINTING OF SERMONS. 301 dearer than the rest of the land, though for the sake of the rest, cannot but rejoice apart from all j)rivate reasons that you should be there rather than elsewhere, and, for the present, in a position which will not interfere with your writing on theology or any other subject.' On October 25, 1856, he answers a letter in which Dean Trench, then recently appointed to Westminster, writes to tell him that the member of the Council of Queen's College who had opposed his re-election (see p. 215) as professor at Queen's College, had either withdrawn all opposition or left the Council, and that that body now unanimously wished for his return. He therefore from the beginning of the next term resumed his lectures on moral philosophy and English literature. In November 1856 a number of those who occasionally attended Lincoln's Inn expressed a wish to have an opportunity of reading regularly the sermons he preached. Mr. Ludlow, who had been the prime mover in the matter, undertook all the trouble connected with it, arranged for the sermons to be printed by subscription, for their distribution, and carried out all the necessary correspondence. The arrangement continued for three years. * My dear Kingsley, ' February 5, 1857. ' I was grieved to miss you yesterday, and was almost as much grieved to see your card, because I fear you put yourself out, when you were hard pushed and not well, to come here, in consequence of some notion that I should take it amiss if you did not. Now, if you knew how many outrages I commit upon the laws of propriety and upon the law of kindness too, you would not suppose that I could throw stones at any one for such trifles as these. I am sometimes cross enough, revenging my own evil doings upon those about me ; but in my sober senses I am thoroughly convinced that every one shows me just a thousand times as much kindness as I deserve or as I ever exhibit to them. Thank you for all your good and encouraging words about my two books. 302 " TEE BABBEST THING EVEB SAID OF ME." [F. M. 51. What you said about tlie Philosophy helped me to bear the hardest thing which was ever said of me, by a writer in the Westminster — that I had written as fast as my pen would go about men whom I had taken no pains to get acquainted with. I did give three years,* and did take honest pains to learn what they were like. If you knew what a thin-skinned animal I am, and how these things make me smart, you would understand better how much I value your soothing plaisters, which I hope one is not too ready to apply ; for I suppose the irritation is useful also. ' I cared still more for your judgment of the St. John f ; there are many things in that book which I should wish to under- stand better myself, and which I wish all I care for to understand. But, after all, I trust I care a good deal more that the thing should be understood than that I should be. The longing for personal sympathy has something right in it, but I suppose it is akin to disease, and whenever I am able to reflect wisely and earnestly, I desire that those who have ever got any good out of me should grow much too old and wise for my teaching, and should not feel themselves cramped and chained by it. I had some terrible experiences many years ago from not learning that lesson, and wishing (secretly) that a dear friend who once regarded me as a sort of guide should go on doing so when he was fitter to guide me. Ever since his death I have mourned over that vanity, and desired that I should never fall into it again.' Perhaps it will be as well to say here that, whatever may be the value of the history of * Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy,' at least, as a matter of fact, there is not a line of it that was not the product of enormous thought and labour. He was living, during most of the time that he was writing it, close to the British Museum, and he constantly and freely worked in the library there. From the Bodleian Library, * I.e. to this one section of the ' Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy/ " The Middle Ages." t His book on the Gospel of St. John, which had just been published. * MORAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY: 303 which is especially generous as a lending library, he always took clown into the country the volumes that were necessary for the part of the work he was engaged upon. Not many men worked within the twenty-four hours for a longer period than he usually did. He was engaged upon the book for the greater part of his life. Most of the other literary and professorial works of his life tended to aid this one. He had among his personal friends or acquaintances most of those from whom on all subjects of the kind most men would be glad to receive suggestions, and when any point required the suggestion of others he freely consulted them. From the time that he went into Hare's class-room an unknown under- graduate, to the time of his appointment to the Knightsbridge professorship in Cambridge, his metaphysical power and his rapid grasp of a subject were the special admiration of those from whom the world has since then learnt to judge of men and books. The whole bent and tendency of his mind, as he says himself, from a child was dramatic, that is, he was always anxious to assert for each man his own' position, not anxious to merge it in some other. This, by the witness of all those who worked with him, was his characteristic at all times. Those who have used the 'Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy ' with classes for teaching, speak of this as the characteristic also of this book. They tell me that they find the interest of their classes greatly increased because of the human reality and the individual life which pervades it throughout ; because it is a story of the lives of men who lived and thought and blundered and struggled, of men of more than ordinary mental power and more than ordinary character, who have much helped to shape the life and thought of the world. It is not I who say this. It is pressed on me, not by my father's imme- diate friends, but by others who only knew him at a distance. But unfortunately those who know most of these subjects are for the most part shy of criticising a book which covers such an enormous field of thought. Those who are never shy of talking have spoken freely enough about it. Not even pro- fessing to have studied it, or checked it by independent study, 304 W0BKING-3IEN\S COLLEGE. [1857. F. 31. 51. not professing to say of it that in any matter in which they do know they find it careless or inaccurate, but deciding a loriori that a book implying so much work must have been done hastily ; quoting as quite decisive of a book that repre- sents decades of the labour of a man they profess to reverence, the obiter dicta of those who have " glanced " at it, and have therefore shown their own peculiar quality as historians by deciding off-hand that the book must possess characteristics which are exactly the reverse of those of the author in every other walk of life. Such weighty utterances have their currency ; how long they live except as warnings for the future may possibly be another question. Time will determine. The Working-Men's College was making, on the whole, steady progress, but all kinds of difficult questions had arisen and had needed no small amount of tact and judgment for their solution. The very nature of the undertaking precluded any kind of religious test. Had there been no other motive, all test as to the religious views of teachers or students would have been forbidden by the central principle on which my father's faith was based — that Christ was the head of every man, not only of those who believed in Him — and by his special desire to bridge the gulph between the working-men and the " clerisy," as, following Coleridge, he habitually called the body of university men, artists, scientific men, and others who are capable of teaching. Nevertheless, at a very early stage in the history of the college, he had carefully avoided an express declaration that its founders were indifi'erent to the religious position of those who came to them, a declaration urged upon them by one of those who had been working with them from the first. The Talandier incident had also, to a certain extent, cleared the air in that respect. Much of the most valuable assistance that was given to the teaching of the college was given by men who could have accepted no common religious formula, and many of whom would have accepted none at all. Very much of the practical success of the experiment depended on the fact that a large body of the workers forming a nucleus within it, consisted of those men who had been long gathered CHAP. VIII.] WOBKING-MEN'S COLLEGE. 305 round my father, tlie great majority of whom looked up to him with the greatest confidence as a spiritual guide. But they had welcomed all help that had heen offered, considering that the sacrifice of time and labour without payment in behalf of an entirely unselfish object was, better than any form of words, a guarantee of the spirit that would make common work possible. The teaching had been of a kind that many an older well- endowed educational body would have been lucky to secure. Messrs. Euskin, Alexander Munro, Woolner, Lowes Dickinson, and D. G. Kossetti, had given up evening after evening to teaching art to the students. Not to mention the lawyer-friends, whose names recur so frequently, English literature and history and other subjects had been taught by Messrs. Fitz- James Stephen, Godfrey and Yernon Lushington, Westlake, J. S. Brewer, Frederic Harrison, "W. J. Brodribb, M. E. Grant-Duff, C. H. Dasent, and C. H. Pearson. The more general subjects of university education, Latin, Greek, logic, general history, had been taught by some ten clergymen, by almost as many men subsequently best known as members of Parliament, by university men of almost every profession. But, on the whole, the most promising fact connected with it had been one which has, with some occasional interruptions, continued up to the present time. A continual fresh stream of young men from the universities had gradually succeeded to those who were from various reasons no longer able to take part in the work of the college. The art teachers mentioned above were succeeded at later dates by Messrs. Burne Jones, Yalentine Prinsep, Cave Thomas, Arthur Hughes, Madox Brown, and Stacey Marks, all of whom gave in different degrees help in the studios. Teaching in science had been given at first by Messrs. Maskelyne and E. Bo well, and later by Messrs. Huxley, Spottiswoode, and Flower, some of whom only gave single lectures, but others took classes. Mr. Litchfield became in a few years the most active and de- voted of the members of the council in all the practical work of VOL. II. X 306 PRACTICAL DIFFICULTIES [chap. viii. the college, and in the editing of the college magazine, which was a feature of importance as long as the provincial colleges re- mained in existence, in supplying a means of mutual intercourse. My father was very fond of using the illustration of a London hospital and the unpaid work given to it by medical men, as a proof that there was real advantage gained by the teachers in the time they gave, as well as by the working-men. But despite the, in many respects, remarkable success which had attended and continued to attend the college, the daily routine and many circumstances connected with it often caused my father great distress and continually led to states of depression, in which he attributed, as his manner was, everything that was defective to himself and his own mistakes. It is manifest that, from the nature of the body carrying out the undertaking, the smooth- ness with which the work was likely to proceed depended on the discretion with which all those who were engaged in it avoided forcing inconvenient questions into prominence, and that such discretion could scarcely be universal and unbroken. The following four letters will, perhaps, be sufficient specimens of the kind of difficulties that occurred from time to time, and of his mode qf meeting them. To ilfr. /. i¥. Ludlow, * March 20, 1857. ' I blame myself very much for my want of presence of mind in not saying something to take off the edge of the unkind omission of any allusion to Dickinson and Woolner in Z.'s otherwise very able speech last night. It was not that I did not feel it, perhaps more than either of them, or that I did not think seriously whether I could not throw in some special com- mendation of them, or rather some expression of my own strong feeling of the honour of being connected with them, and of my sense of the good they are doing us. But nothing occurred to me which would not have made the matter worse, so I held my tongue. I thought, when it was too late, of a way, as one generally does. Do you think Dickin- son would at all care to have any of my books from me ? I CHAP. viii.J AT THE WOBKING-MEN'S COLLEGE. 307 am always ashamed of the self-conceit of sending them to any one. But if it would be a pleasure to him I will swallow down that feeling and write him a note with them. I would do the like to Woolner ; he has most kindly given me his medallion of Tennyson. I could say truly to both of them that the bust of Tennyson, and Dickinson's picture [of Charles Mansfield] at your house, help me more in the litera- ture and politics of the nineteenth century than any books.' A legal sub-committee of the college council had about this time recommended as a matter of practical convenience in point of form that the college should be constituted as a joint stock company. Many of those who had been working with them heartily up to this point disapproved of this arrangement, and threatened to have no more to do with the college under these circumstances. The deed had been drawn, so that to change what had been done involved expense. Mr. Ludlow had recently sent to my father the balance from the subscriptions of the first half year of the sermons, which had now for six months been printed by subscription. This sum is the "donation" referred to in the next letter, the second, which I give as a specimen of the college events, and his relation to them. The third, which relates to the same matter, may follow it without explanation. The fourth is on .quite another subject, but does not need comment. To Mr, J. 31. Ludlow. ' My dear Feiexd, ' May 22, 1857. '•I cannot tell you how much your donation yesterday surprised me, or how little right I felt that I had to it. Nevertheless I shall not refuse it, because there is a way of making use of it which I trust you will approve, which I believe you will approve all the more because it will involve a sacrifice on your part, as well as on mine, of an opinion which we agreed in, and for which I am at least as responsible as you. I see ihat this business of the company is producing an efi'ect on X 2 308 W0BKING-3IEN'S COLLEGE. [1857. F. M. 52.. some of our fellow-labourers which will not be stopped by any arguments. I fear that the devices by which we might hope to make peace will involve us in difficulties, and will put us in a wrong position with the public. However great the advantage might have been if we could have done the thing quietly, now that it has been talked about, and objections raised, it must be hurtful, and perhaps it might damage us with the London University, where there is only too much prejudice against us already. It seems to me therefore that the shortest and best method is to cut the knot instead of seeking to untie it. The expenses of altering the deed besides the £5 for enrolling, must I know exceed what I can give ; but this contribution of yours (not mine) will go some way. Therefore let us take that course. I think other . arrangements for making the government of the college more efficient may be grafted upon it, and that good, instead of evil, may come out of this little stir.' ' 5 Russell Square, May 30, 1857. * I think you are not just to the dissidents. A priori, it is inexpedient that a college should be a company. You think that there is a possibility under a certain Act of a college becoming a company without placing itself in a position which would be inconsistent with its proper work, and which would involve its members in a trading speculation. They doubt whether there is this possibility. They say we have decided this question hastily and without their knowledge, and that if we think this step so slight a one, which seems to them a very serious one, we may take other steps which would bring them, and the whole college, into a false position. It will not do to meet their objections by accu- sing them of shrinking from a fair share of moral or pecuniary responsibility. We must not bring such charges. There will be no working together if we do. We ought to be ready to give up our own notions for the sake of a greater end, even if they are ever so reasonable. I am therefore CHAP. VIII.] WOBKING-MEN'S COLLEGE. 309 quite unshaken in my first opinion, and wisli earnestly to break up the company in the way I proposed.' Ultimately a scheme was devised for establishing a company in connection with and subordinate to the college. In this form the work was carried on for many years, till the college became independent of the company. The secession of several members took place nevertheless. To Mr. J. ill. Ludlow. * My dear Friend,' ' July 8, 1857. * What you say of our prayers at the college and of our general failure to give it a heart is painfully true. The prayers I read with real suffering whenever I lecture. Two or three listen, probably with reluctance. The teachers and students generally are out in the garden or talking in the library. I have no hold upon either. Still I think it is better not to give them up. As to renewing the Bible-class, nothing would b)e more satisfactory to me, if it is possible. My Bible-classes give me more pleasure than any other work I engage in, and I learn more from them. But they have lost their interest for all or almost all the teachers and most of the students. Give an account of thy stewardship, for thou mayst be no longer steward," is often sounding in my ears ; I wish the sound led to more digging or begging. I believe I have more to accuse myself of than them. However, if there is any way of reformation, I hope it will be shown us during the vacation and that we may be able to enter into it.' 310 '^EEBEBY WE KNOW TEAT WE KNOW HIM: CHAPTEE IX. " Icli bin ein icli." *' I am an I." — Jean Paul. END OF 1857. — LECTURES ON THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN — LETTER TO MR. LANGLEY OmNG AN ACCOUNT OF THESE AND OF A LONG CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. MANSEL INDIAN MUTINIES DIFFI- CULTIES AS TO SUNDAY AT WORKING-MEn's COLLEGE — ANONYMOUS WRITING AND SIGNED ARTICLES " I." My father had been delivering a course of lectures at eight o'clock on Sunday mornings to a class at the Working-Men's College, on the Epistles of St. John. They are in fact his clearest and simplest setting forth of thought on the subject of morals. They are full of the question which was already occupying his mind as to the nature of the knowledge of Grod which is possible to man. The next letter will explain how his attention had just at this time been forcibly drawn to the matter. The letter in fact records the preliminary skirmish of the greatest contest of his life. Not a few of his readers prefer the statement of his views contained in the ' Lectures ' to the more elaborate one to be referred to in the next chapter^ Somerville Cottage, Tunbridge Wells, * My dear Langley, ' September 18, 1857. * I am delighted to see that you have made such progress towards the establishment of a college. Wolverhampton is quite the place for it, and you have begun rightly by treat- ing all patronage with indifference. Let it come if it will come, but do not go a step out of your way to seek for it. * I am just about to publish a set of lectures on Christian Ethics delivered at our Working College on Sunday morn- CHAP. IX.] OF A COBBESPONDENCE WITH MANSEL. 311 ings. It is somewhat bold to start with such a subject, especially as the manual on which I lecture is the Epistles of St. John. But I think it is safer to declare what we mean in that way. I make none of my colleagues responsible for my sentiments. None of the pupils, of course, are compelled to listen to them. And by putting this forth I explain what I think is the true foundation of social and of individual life. These lectures will put me in more direct antagonism with Mr. Mansel and his school than anything I have published yet ; seeing that I maintain on St. John's authority — taking his words to mean what they say — not only that the knowledge of God is possible for men, but that it is the foundation of all knowledge of men and of things ; that science is impossible altogether if He is excluded from the sphere of it. ' To meet the positivism of Comte in any other way than this seems to me idle and vain. 'Atheism is the only alternative for an age which demands science, if we cannot "know that we know^ " God, and if to know Him is not eternal life. ' I am sorry if I have done anything which seemed rude to Mr. Mansel. Nothing was further from my intention. At a time when people were attacking me on other grounds, he wrote a quiet and gentlemanlike pamphlet exposing my ignorance of all true philosophy. I wrote at once to thank him for the tone of his letter, and (because it was so important) deferred an answer to it till I had time to exhibit my belief on this subject in connection with the rest of my teaching. I took advantage of the republication of my Old Testament sermons a year and a half after, to reply gravely and respectfully to a pamphlet which I might have assumed that my readers did not remember if they had heard of it. I sent my book to Mr. Mansel, of course, and received from him in due time an elaborate reply. I judged from the allusions in it to his University occupations and to the hopelessness of our ever understanding each other, that he wished me not to trouble him any more ; each of us had 312 ''THE TEOUGHT UPPEBMOST IN MY MINDr [1857. said his say ; an accomplished Oxford logician of high reputation had surely done as much as could he expected from him (more than I expected) in stooping to notice a half fanatical mystic such as he takes me to he. Was I to persevere after his kindness and toleration, hy inflicting on him several pages of illegible MS. ? You are quite welcome to show this defence to Mr. Campbell, and he can show it to any Oxford friend of his who has accused me of being disrespectful to so eminent a man as Mr. Mansel. I am not so used to recognition, of one sort or another, from men like him, that I could aflford to trifle with any instance of it. ' I am sorry to have spent so much time in talking of myself ; but the subject of my difi'erence with those who think that revelation does not reveal is now the uppermost in my mind. 'I think I have a sermon by me on the text of which you speak.* I will look it over if I can find it, and will revise it if it is worth anything, or write another, as you wish, if it is not. I have no wish to evade the force of the words. Must not we teach young men that the choice of Hercules was the true one ; that the hard life is better than the easy one ? Must we not tell them that the path of self-indulgence, self- eeeking, self-glorification, under irreligious or religious pretences, is a broad one leading to death; and that the confession, " In me dwelleth no good thing ; Christ's life, which is for all, is the only life for me ; in Him only I can be righteous and true," is one to which our nature is little disposed, and which all the habits of the religious, fashion- able, intellectual worlds dispose us to contradict ? Is it not a straight and narrow path to life ? ' The news of the Indian mutinies was now daily reaching England. He was at the time staying at Tunbridge Wells in consequence of a serious illness of his wife's. * " Straight is tlic gate, and narrow is tlie way. . . and few there be that find it." CHAP. IX.] THOUGHTS ON INDIAN MUTINIES. 313 To Mr. J. M. Ludlow. * Somerville Cottage, Tiinbridge Wells, September 21, 1857. * . . . The Indian news brings back all the questions to this age which the Lisbon earthquake forced upon the last. We shall have our letters on optimism and also our Candides. And if we do not take the Cross as the solution of the world's puzzles, I think the Voltaire doctrine will triumph over the Eousseau. But in the meantime I do feel that these unspeakable horrors are more a message to Englishmen than even to Anglo-Indians. We, who send out our young men and young women, have immeasurably more to answer for than they have for any failures they may commit. They are suffering for us. I cannot see my way an inch about caste, and the other questions which your knowledge enables you to speak of. But I see that our morality and our Christianity are of a very low order ; that we cannot impart more than we have; that we have imparted just what we have and w^hat we were — some sense of law, justice, truth, with a considerable amount of atheism. It is clear that w-e have converted the people to tJiat, and the atheistical j^ei'iod being impregnated with all the elements of the devil worship which it has supplanted, is, as the first French Eevolution proved, the time for ferocities ; though these ferocities belong, I suppose, only to Asiatics. The call to us is very loud. I have been asking myself in hours of solitude what it is. I am sure the priests of the land, the educated classes of the land, fathers and mothers of families, teachers, can do much more (and are therefore more guilty than all Downing Street and Leadenhall Street) to reform India by reforming England. I think there should be no accusations except of ourselves ; and that these should appear chiefly in acts meet for repentance. I have thought that perhaps the Bible readings, of which you spoke before I left town, might in some way be connected with our Lincoln's Inn Communion, all who had partaken with us at our annual gathering * or * Tlie friends of Charles Mansfield on the anniversary of his death met each year at Lincoln's Inn and received the Communion. 314 COLD AND FOBMAL PBAYEBS. [F. M. 52. any other time, being invited to attend them, expressly that we might consider what obligations this service has laid upon us. But my thoughts are not mature ; only I feel we mu^t begin a new life 'in the college and altogether. I hope my ethical lectures, which are nearly ready, may at least express my thoughts of the groundwork of a college. I should like to be in the neighbourhood you describe, though this is very beautiful. Lord Goderich is here ; very earnest, and, so far as I can judge, desirous to learn what is right about India. Kind regards to Mrs. Ludlow.' To Mr, Ludlow {on the Frayers for tlie Bay of Humiliation for the Indian Mutinies). * 10 Grand Parade, St. Leonard's-on-Sea, October 6, 1857. * I propose going up to London to-morrow to read those cold and formal prayers which the Archbishop has composed for a day of burning sorrow and humiliation. They will stick in my throat ; but I shall ask to be able to speak words which are not in harmony with them.' * 10 Grand Parade, St. Leonard's-on-Sea, October 14, 1857. *I thought over what you said, and read my sermon with severity. But I could not make up my mind to leave out the passage on the Archbishop's prayers. I did not write it down without much consideration and many alterations. I was thoroughly convinced that something ought to be said on the subject from the pulpit, because the murmurs deep and even loud which I heard from all quarters, wanted some expression, and that is the safest.' To his Wife {after a visit to Winchester, of ivhieh Dr. Moherly ivas at the time Head-Master j and ivhere one of his sons ivas at school). ' October 27, 1857. found Dr. Moberly as kind and judicious in his conver- sation as he was in his letter. was delighted with Dr. Moberly. His countenance CHAP. IX.] PUBSUES HIS CHOSEN PATH. 315 really glowed with pleasure at the sight of Edmund's face when he first recognised me. " That is a joy," he said, when the hoy had gone out, " which w^e never have in later life ; there is nothing like it." I have a strong conviction that he has the intuition respecting the character of those who , are under him, which God gives to the humble and faithful who are aware of their responsibility. Edmund was much touched and surprised when I told him of the know- ledge Dr. Moberly had of him, and compared it with what is said in ' Tom Brown ' of Dr. Arnold. *' The bells were ringing, as I came into Winchester, for the fall of Delhi ; but they sounded sad in my ears — so many killed. No news from Lucknow.' In February, 1858, the preachership of Lincoln's Inn fell vacant, and my father's friends were again anxious to persuade him to stand for it. He again declined to allow his name to be submitted. He put forward reasons very similar to those which he had alleged to Hare in the letters on p. 356, Yol. L, in 1843, and on p. 410, YoL I., in 1845. In fact his belief that he could best perform the work he had to do in the world by avoiding all high preferment, was the determining motive. He used as in the correspondence with Hare (Yol. I., pp. 356, etc.) whatever excuses would best enable him to avoid assuming an air of self-sacrifice. Dr. Thomson was appointed preacher. In the beginning of May, 1858, my father broke down in health and was ordered to Eastbourne. The letter to Miss Williams Wynn which follows is in answer to the letter given on p. 246 of Miss W. Wynn's 'Memorials.' Miss Wynn's answer to it is given on p. 245 of that book. Miss Wynn's two letters may almost be said to be parts of my father's biography. The earlier tells of the effect of his personal presence upon one in deep trouble, and represents the response which he almost always, from those so suffering,, evoked. The later letter (on p. 245) shows the effect of such a letter as that, which I am about to give, upon the highly .-^cultivated mind to which it was addressed. 316 THE NEED OF BEFOBMATION [F, M. 52. To Miss Williams Wynn, ' Eastbourne, May 11, 1858. * I have given you poor proof liow much your very kind letter cheered and refreshed me. No news coukl have heen so gratifying to me as your assurance that my words had besn of some comfort to Y . I think it must have been what I did 7iot say that was the true comfort. She has evidently heard too many words, and thought too many thoughts. To find that it is not wrong to be still and to let God speak, without mixing much of our speech, is indeed a great thing for her and for us all. I have been trying to spell out the lesson for myself during the last three weeks, and have broken down often in it, and made terrible blunders. What you say about our religious teaching and the change that must take place in it, as well as about the restless intellectual cravings of such men as Dr. Z , has been occupying me much. I think we clergy are bitterly estranged from all classes of our people, high and low, wise and unwise. I think we have ourselves to blame for this estrangement. But I do not believe it would be removed or materially lessened if we were able to talk ever so glibly in a philosophical dialect, and to translate the New Testament into phrases about the subject-object. It seems to me that » the heart and flesh of the intellectual man, as much as of the clodhoppers, are crying out for the living God ; and that it is just this cry we have not understood, and have been unable to answer. The God we have preached has not been the God who was manifested in His Son Jesus Christ ; but another altogether different Being in whom we mingle strangely the Siva and the Yishnu — the first being the ground of the character, the other its ornamental and graceful vesture. It is fearful to say so ; if I spoke of what good people actually and in their heart of hearts believe, I should use no such language, but the very opposite. When I am describing what we have made of the Gospel of God's redemption of the world, I cannot soften my expression ; I CHAP. IX.] AND ANTICIPATION OF IT. 317 do therefore anticipate a very deep and searching re- formation, one which cannot be attended with less trials, one which I trust is to issue in greater blessings than the Eeformation of the sixteenth century. How or when it is to begin, what Tetzel is to evoke what Luther, I know not, I dare not conjecture. I feel very strongly that the ascension of our Lord into the heavens, and the glorification of our nature in Him with the corresponding truth that the Church exists to witness of Him, not only as her Head, but as the Head of every man, will be the battle-cry that will rally Protestants and Komanists, hungry seekers after wisdom, lonely tatterdemalions without bread, about the one standard; and that opposition to this proclamation, a resolute clinging to the Fall as determining man's condition, a practical acknowledging of the Devil as the arbiter of it, will be the characteristic of the opposing host, gathered also from all sects, schools, churches. *It is easy to talk of such things; what I want is to prepare myself, and, so far as in me lies, all whom I know, for their actual coming. We shall all have to take our places in the conflict, all will have some service to perform. I tremble at my own indifference. *I have run on with what I fear you will think wild and strange thoughts. My doctor told me I was to keep my mind at rest. I can only say that if a clergyman's mind in these times is to have the kind of rest he supposes, the Devil must consent to let him alone, which I do not fancy he will to please any physician. But it is also true that God will not let him alone, and he may find the true rest in Him.' To Mr. J. X. Langley. * 6 Sea Side l\oad, Eastbourne, ]\Iay 11, 1858. *Any Arminian protest against modern Calvinism must fail anywhere, but especially in Scotland. The Scotch are too logical, yes, and with all their faults, too godJij for that poor feeble mixture. The strength of Calvinism lay of old in the 318 EVEBY GOOD GIFT C03IES FBOM HIM. [F. M. 52. proclamation of God as the originator of all faith and righteousness in man. The reformation of Calvinism must come from the steadfast grasp of that truth. Eesolve not to let it go or dilute it with any philosophical explanations or theories, and you must come to a gospel that God is seeking after men to bring them back to His fold, that He has redeemed the race, that there is no good of any kind in any creature which must not be referred to Him, which it is not a sin to claim for the creature, under any miserable subterfuges, such as that "this only means the natural conscience " or " only means some beautiful relic of the fall" — as if these phrases meant anything at all ! I believe fully that Scotch godliness and Scotch logic may both conspire to these results. And then the idea of the Episcopal constitution of the Church as a fatherly constitution, as a universal constitution, will come all in good time. If it comes too soon before the other belief, it will be an unhealthy exotic which must be kept alive by hot airs and regulated houses ; if it follows that free and manly develop- ment of the old Calvinism, it may strike its roots into the national soil and bear worthy fruits hereafter.' The Sunday question at the Working Men's College was still causing him trouble. He had written a letter to the students explaining his views. As usual, he was afraid of giving a clear-cut decision lest he should merely impose his own opinions ; yet he reproached himself bitterly with any evil that resulted from his self-restraint. Other difficulties, the nature of which will be sufficiently indicated by parts of the following letter, had arisen. Mr. Ludlow, always anxious that he should assert himself and assume more authority, had been pressing him to take decided action. As usual, the one decided action that he was ready to take was to give up that which was dearest to himself — his own part of the work. He had at the time of writing left London for the summer. CHAP. IX.] DIFFICULTIES AS TO THE SUNDAY. 319 To Mr. J. M. Ludlow. * Augusta Villas, Southborougli, Tunbridge Wells, ' August 9, 1858. * I have thouglit much of your faithful reproofs. I believe them to be wise as well as faithful. And now, if ever, is the time for acting on them, if only I can see how to do it rightly and not so as to produce a direct schism in the College. In the last number of the People, the organ I presume of the Sunday League, is a report of the students' tea-meetings. It is written in a very vulgar tone. It con- cludes with an account of the Sunday geological expeditions, and a direct intimation that the students, as such, are joining the Sunday League. The passage alluding to my letter is so contemptuous, and as an account of the letter so unfair, that I am afraid of seeming to be actuated by some personal motive if I notice the report in a letter to the Editor of the Feople. But I must take some method of declaring that I disapprove of the tone of the whole document, and that I am no party to these expeditions — or resign. It reads to me like a declaration of war ; I accept it, so far as I am myself concerned, as a righteous punish- ment for the unmanliness and want of purpose with which you justly reproach me. But I feel that without reference to the past something must be done for the future, unless our College is to be an example to all that are established elsewhere, of what they should not be. Let me say one word in explanation — not in defence — of my conduct hitherto, because it will make you understand better my present difficulties. I have felt that a Working College, if it is to do anything, must be in direct hostility to the Secularists — that is to say, must assert that as its foun- dation principle which they are denying. But to do this effectually it must also be in direct hostility to the Ee- ligionists — that is to say, it must assert the principle that God is to be sought and honoured in every pursuit, not merely in something technically called religion. To my 320 SELF-BEPBOACHES [F. M. 52. own mind the position is a clear and j&rm one. But how to express it so that others should perceive it in our acts as well as our words — how to hinder all our students from thinking that geology means theology, if we say that the earth is God's — is a difficult and a harder work. I only wish you to appreciate the difficulty — not that it should he an excuse for leaving this thing undone. I have failed grievously, perhaps utterly, to make my meaning understood. I do not suppose I ever shall make it understood. But if it is what God means, He will make it manifest some day. As for heing misrepresented or scorned hy Secularists and Keligionists, one ought to think nothing of it; but to welcome it and even desire it. But the thought of leaving confusion worse confounded in the minds of those whom we undertake to illuminate is very sad and overwhelming. I am afraid I have done this both for the students and most of the Council. You wish me to try and guide the latter. How few of them are there now — whatever may have been the case formerly, whatever might have been the case, if I had been honester and wiser — who would not kick at my guidance ? * P.S. — I send the paper lest you should not have seen it.' ' 1 Augusta Villas, Southborough, August 17, 1858. * I have thought much of your reproofs and Hughes' encourage- ments. I value them both exceedingly as proofs of friend- ship. I would fain persuade myself that what Hughes says is true, that some words of mine have done some people good some time or other. I will give God thanks for that. But this is no reason for continuing in a work which has ceased to be of benefit, in w^hich I think I can henceforth only be mischievous. Whatever Q may pretend, the College is committed by his articles in the Peop/e. The tone of them commits us. He makes us all parties to that vulgar habit of thinking and speaking which he believes to be the best for the men, which I think is making them far less of gentlemen than they were before. He cannot be driven from the College. You say so yourself, and if he were, the impression £5HAP. IX.] THE PASSION FOB BESIGNATIOK 321 of wliat lie has done would be left, and would be stronger from their feeling of anger and pity for him. My resigna- tion will have the opposite effect. That will be a witness that some of us have arrived at something else. That will be a just punishment on me for not having done anything to reach the men. It will be a lesson to other colleges. And you may then, with Hansard's help, restore it and them to a better footing. Therefore in deference to you and Hughes, I defer everything till October. I see no cause to change my resolution, but everything to confirm it. There is no other way out of the difficulty. The pain of it will be great to me, but that is salutary. I should accept, I think, the offer of almost any curacy in the country to be rid of London.' His friends at length persuaded him to change his purpose ■of resigning. He became, for the reasons which the following letters will set forth, intensely interested in a scheme for a magazine with Mr. Hughes as editor, in which the articles should all be signed. The period is a somewhat noteworthy one in the history of English periodical literature. Dickens' quarrel with his publishers had led by a legal decision to the suppression of ' Household Words ' and to the starting of * All the Year Eound' and of 'Once a Week.' Several publishers thought the moment a favourable one for new ventures ; so that the great body of the modern magazines date from about the time of the incident in Dickens's life. My father was anxious that the opportunity should be seized to try the effect of signed articles as against anonymous writing. For the moment his 2)roposal was rejected. That his conviction of the superior power of signed articles is in 1883 much less exceptional than it was in 1858 is perhaps not open to question. To Rev, C. Kingsley. ' May 27, 1858. \ . . About the general maxim that it is desirable, nay, absolutely necessary to begin, and to begin speedily, some journal VOL. II. Y 322 ADVANTAGE OF NAMES [F, M. 52. whicli shall' discard anonymous writing, I have no doubt whatever. Your argumentum ad verecundiam would do well enough if there was any verecundia in our existing journals. But you know in your conscience that there is none ; you know that the We covers the most insolent pretension^ the most offhand dogmatism, the most haughty scorn of individuals and of mankind. Look at the Saturday Review, the latest and most triumphant incarnation of the " We " spirit — and then talk of the time not being come in which men may venture to express themselves on great topics ! It seems to me that if the time is come, as you tell us it is, in which nuisances that pollute the air are to be abated — if, as you say, every one is guilty of a sin who is not labouring that cesspools should be drained, and disinfecting fluids of all kinds be sought for — the time is come when those whose circumstances or whose ignorance disqualify them for those higher tasks, but who feel that there is a foul stench sent forth by our anonymous periodical literature and that they in times past if not now have contributed, as I have, to the increase of it, may think that they are bound before they die to do something, be it ever so little, for the purpose of purifying the moral atmosphere of the vanity, cruelty, falsehood with which it is impreg- nated. I will give you an instance of the way in which the use of simple names will work. If I do anything for this journal, it would probably be a review of Froude's History. Suppose I wrote an article as a We, what would be my course ? To bestow a few patronising praises and malicious censures upon a man who knows just a thousand times as much of all the facts as I do, and has brought to his task an amount of earnest manly thought and wisdom which has really made the reign he has treated of a new one. Supposing I wrote in my own person, what should I do ? I should confess how much he had taught me, how many mistakes and prejudices of mine he had corrected. I should say when, accepting his own statements and discoveries, I did not see my way to go along with him. I should re- cognise his view of the sixteenth-century reformation as CHAP. IX.] IN PUBIFYING THE MOB AL ATMOSPHEBE. 32 3 on the whole the most helpful and luminous that I had found anywhere, and should try to indicate how I thought it might prepare us for the very different reformation which God is evidently intending for this generation, and in which we must be involved whether we are prepared for it or not. Now here is my answer to your dread that the " I " journal will especially be a cloak first for presumption, then for the moderatism or eclecticism which I think is as hateful to me as it can be to you. I believe a journal with names must be undertaken by men who feel that they dare not be braggarts and dare not be cowards ; that they are arming themselves, and so far as they can are assisting others to arm, for a real battle, in which impertinence and frivolity cannot serve except to expose those who indulge in them. * I have said already that I should protest against Hughes being exposed to any risk or liability. I protest as strongly against the notion that he is not fit for this undertaking because he is not a professionally literary man. I say boldly, we must have done with professional litterateurs if we want to have any honest, manly literature. And I answer those who demand their help, by an appeal to an experience which they can understand. ' What has been the most successful periodical of the nine- teenth century ; the one which gave the new tone to periodical literature ? Certainly the * Edinburgh Keview.' And its strength lay in this, that it was begun by a set of young men, chiefly barristers, who were not litterateurs, who looked upon literature as subordinate to life and action. Therefore it had an influence which it has lost since it fell so much into the hands of literary hacks. * If it is proved that Hughes must lose his reputation at the ' Bar by taking the course which helped to win Jeffrey and Brougham much of theirs, do not let him enter upon it. If the Eeview interferes in the least with his practice, he must hold to his first vows and break the later. But I think, and shall continue to think, that he is almost an ideal editor, because he is an honest free man, tied to no notions and theories about books, able to judge what is worthy to go Y 2 324 THE "I" AND THE "TFJE;." [F. M. 52. forth whether he agrees with it or not ; one who will fearlessly admonish a contributor, and never dictate or be squeamish. He will of course not review the current literature. Many can be got to do that. He will speak what he knows and nothing else. He says he wishes to preach, and he ought to have a pulpit if one can be found for him. Dixi. * P.S. Surely a less humble man than Hughes would believe he was wholly unfit for editing a Keview, or pleading at the Bar, or teaching pugilism, if you and Taylor told him so.* To Mr. Button, ' 1 Augusta Villas, Soutliboroiigli, Tunbridge Wells, August 23, 1858. *I do not wonder that you should have been struck by an apparent contradiction in my doctrine respecting men as members of a body, and my eagerness that in their writings they should throw off the symbol of a corporation and each present himself as an J. To me the one position seems a consequence of the other. Because I desire that all men should regard themselves as forming one fellowship in a real and living Head, the formation of sects and corporations, grounded upon mere similarity of opinions, is that which I most dread. Believing our union to be as much a law of moral science as gravitation is a law of physical science, I must, indeed, see in all these formations and combinations the illustration of an eternal principle ; I must desire that every sect, be it the narrowest and most exclusive in the world, should yet not disperse into its elements till it has realised the meaning of its union, and till its members are thus prepared to understand what place they have to occupy, what special duties they have to fulfil in the human common- wealth. With respect to the English Church I have felt and do feel bitterly how it is always on the point of drifting into mere sectarianism ; and I know that it may make itself the most proud and self-exalting of sects. I rejoice that the parties within it do not suffer it to become a mere huge negation of Eomanism and Calvinism. I rejoice that they AS SYMBOLS OF UNITY AND SECTABIANISM. 325 compel us by their narrowness and savagery to feel after some ground in which Romanists and Calvinists may meet with the preservation of all that is distinctive (distinction being opposed to separation as life to death) and positive in each, not after a ground which both are forbidden to approach. To make Churchmen feel therefore that they are not members of a corporation bound together by certain professions of opinion, but that they exist to testify of a body to which men as men belong, has been the aim which I have tried to keep before me and which I have, with shameful feebleness, pursued. * Now it seems to me that journalism, with its symbol We, has more than anything else tended to keep alive the notion of sect fellowship, by which I mean fellowship in a certain more or less accurately defined set of opinions. I quite admit that there are journals — the National is far the most remarkable — which are trying honestly and faithfully to bear witness against the sectarian spirit. I do not even question that many which you and I should agree in calling intensely party journals, have dreamed of this object and have never consciously abandoned it. But in most cases I think they have been the great instruments of bringing out that which was most contentious and negative in the persons whom they represented, in getting rid of their nobler aspira- tions. This was eminently the case with the review which John Henry Newman edited, the * British Critic' I believe that he and his friends, standing on a feeble and rotten ground of Anglican tradition, were nevertheless striving earnestly in their own hearts, and in the 'Tracts for the Times,' to fight with sectarianism and to escape from it. The moment they started this review . . . the contradiction to their professions became too manifest and ridiculous. The more earnest sought for the complete traditional Church in Rome . . . Now had these men each spoken his own words in his own name he Avould have known whereabouts he was standing. There would not have been the miserable fiction of a union where no union was. So far as they did agree this agreement would make itself more felt for their 326 ''MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE KING:' [F. M. 52. differences. Each miglit have done his own part towards the discovery of the deeper ground of union which all had need of. ' I can understand, I think, what you say of the sensitiveness of the literary conscience where there is the sense of being responsible for others as well as yourself. Certainly I should wish that consciousness of mutual responsibility — of our words not being our own — to be developed more and more in each of us. I feel it sadly little, but I certainly feel it most when I write with my name. Then I have a sense, however weak, of personal obligation for what I say, to those who agree with me and those who differ from me. I feel bound to weigh my thoughts and my words, not so much because they may give offence to this or that man who belongs to my Church or to my acquaintance, but because they may hinder or help him, and therefore me also, in the way to truth. I think we have most of corporate sensibility when we most take all the burden of our position as actual men. *The deeper subject of which you speak at the end of your letter is never far separated in my mind from this. Your honest statement to your own conscience and to others of the difficulty you feel is to me the best pledge and security that it will be removed. The sense of our substantial union as men with Christ, and of His union with the Father, some- times come to me with overpowering conviction, not of delight such as a Santa Theresa or Fenelon may have felt, but of its stern, hard, scientific reality, which makes me long that I had the fervour and earnestness in making my belief known, which I admire, and ought not to envy, in other men. But at other times I can thank God for having granted me a cold, uncordial temperament and constitution on purpose that I may refer all love and all power of acting upon the reason and the conscience and the heart to Him. Some day I hope our tongues may be loosed, and that we may, as earnestly, speak of what we feel to be deep and universal, as we drop what we find to be only transitory and for a few.* CHAP. X.] OLD FOES WITH NEW FACES. 327 CHAPTEK X. " When it pleases God to send a reformer to His Churcli, upon his brow there is written ' Not peace, hut the sword.' " — J. C. Hare. " The punishment followed, and Tertullian remains as the standing example, the pillar of salt in the desert, to show how rage against heresy may terminate in heresy ; hoAv ... if we tolerate in ourselves a confusion be- tween opinion . . . and truth, we must end by exalting our own opinions •against the Truth."— F. D. M., The Epistle to the Hebreivs, p. xciii. THE BATTLE WITH ORTHODOX AGNOSTICISM — MR. MANSEl's BAMPTON LECTURES, 1858 — * WHAT IS REVELATION ? ' " MR. MANSEL's EXAMINATION OP MR. MAURICe's STRICTURES " ' SEQUEL TO WHAT IS REVELATION ? ' In our day some of those who call themselves " Agnostics " do not know whether they ought to go into a church at all. Some of them do not know whether they ought to take part in any ordinances of the Church ; others repudiate every semblance of Christianity. The starting-point of sects is often curiously unlike what might have been expected from the position they !have ultimately taken up. The name " Agnostic " was first assumed about 1869 by Mr. Huxley, but the leading Agnostics have never hesitated to affirm that for the origin of the modern form of the sect it is necessary to refer to an earlier date.* In 1858 Mr. Mansel, afterwards the Dean of St. Paul's, preached the Bampton Lectures of the year. " The whole substance of his argument," as Mr. Leslie Stephen, an avowed and brilliant * The attitude of mind is no doubt ac least as old as the days of " Zophar the Naamathite," so that the philosophic dispute may boast an antiquity at least equal to the Book of Job, the decision at the end of that book having by no means finally settled the matter for Job and against Zophar in the Judgment of mankind. 328 "A BEVELATION WHICH DOES NOT BEVEAir Agnostic, has put it, " was simply and solely the assertion of the first principles of Agnosticism. Mr. Herbert Spencer, the prophet of the unknowable, the foremost representative of Agnos- ticism, professes in his programme to be carrying a step further the doctrine put into shape by Hamilton and Mansel." " Nobody I suspect would now deny, nobody except Dean Mansel himself ever denied very seriously, that the ' further step thus taken was the logical step.' " There are some historical inaccuracies- in the above statement which it will be necessary to correct ; but as evidence of the view taken at the present moment by one great body of those who agreed with Mr. Mansel, it is un- exceptionable, seeing that Mr, Leslie Stephen has taken several public opportunities to manifest a strong repugnance to all my father's thought and works. Mr. Mansel's lectures were put forth at the time as the great bulwarks of orthodoxy against all assailants. They were intended to show that as men can know nothing of the infinite or eternal nature of God, they can only submit to " Kevelation," as supplying rules of conduct and religious formulae for belief. Now in a book, ostensibly depending for its argument upon the careful treatment of words, according to their definitions as laid down in it, there is throughout no explanation of the meaning of " Eevelation." The Bible treated as a text-book which supplies certain dogmas, interpreted so as to confirm various currently received views of religion, appears to be virtually the equivalent of the word. More often than not it is practically used to affirm as indisput- able the particular tenets of the writer and his friends, or of those whom he decides to be orthodox. For my father, all that he held dear depended on his assert- ing for " Eevelation " an altogether other meaning, as irt accordance with the scriptural use of the word. His rejection of Unitarianism originally started from his belief in the existence of all those difficulties in the intellectual and spiritual conception of the absolute Being which Mr. Mansel skilfully set forth ; from his belief in the Incarnation as having brought home to men in a man that very knowledge of God which Mr. Mansel declared to be impossible, which my father AN ASSAULT ON THE HEABT OF F. B. M'S. FAITH. 329 believed it to be the object of all Kevelation to communicate to man. Whetber in his earliest letters, after he had accepted the teaching of the Church of England as setting forth truth, or in his latest words, the central thought is always that he believes the " Infinite to be goodness and wisdom — to be at the ground of all finite goodness and wisdom — and to be guiding men by various processes, in various regions and ages, into the apprehension of that which by their constitution they were created to apprehend." * As he says in a letter to his father (Yol. I. p. 133) at the time of his formal announcement of his faith — * If I can honestly say of any doctrines, ' these teach me how I may converse with the holy and invisible Grod as a real living person,' for as such the Bible holds Him forth to me at every line ; how I may overcome the difficulties to this intercourse which arise from His being unseen, from the evident im- possibility of my forming a notion of Him by my own understanding, and from the unlikeness and dissimilarity of our characters : if they show me how my character may be- conformed to His, not how His may be brought down to* mine ; if they inspire me with a desire for this intercourse, a delight in it and a conviction of its reality ; just so far as- I can, after strict examination, say this of any doctrines, just so far have I a test that they are the doctrines of the Bible, the true doctrines, the doctrines according to godliness.' And again in the next letter, Vol. I. p. 134 — * The whole of history shows me that just so far as the true- God has made Himself manifest, just so far has there been light, truth, and honesty in the world ; and that in those nations to which He is not revealed, there is darkness, falsehood, and fraud. I know that it is out of the heart these proceed, from each separate human heart. I believe, therefore, that all the honesty and truth in the world has come from God, being manifested in the hearts of some men * Preface, June 1871, to new edition of ' Moral and Metaphysical Pliilosophy/ 330 TEE HISTORY OF A [1858. F. M. 52. and from thence affecting the general course of society. Hence I feel sure that just so far as I can hold intercourse with Him I can be true and honest to myself. ^ I know I was formed in the image of God. I believe if I could behold God I should reflect His image. But I cannot behold Him. God, I am told, is a Spirit, and I am of the earth — earthy. I cannot, and would not if I could, abandon my belief that He is a lofty Spiritual Being ; I cannot throw aside my own earthliness. Now this seems to me the most important practical question in the world. I cannot put up with a dream in place of God. He is a Spirit, but He is a reality ; a True Being in the highest sense. As such I must behold Him or not at all. To behold Him, therefore, in that way in which they could alone understand Him, in which they could converse with Him, namely as a man, was, I see more and more clearly, the longing desire of every patriarch, prophet, and priest from Adam downward. It was the desire of Moses, of Job, of David, of Solomon, of Isaiah ; they were practical men, and they wanted a practical Kevelation ; a Kevelation which they could understand and grapple. God, they knew, must be for ever the unsearchable, the mys- terious. They would not for worlds He should be anything else ; for it was the glory of Judaism that their God was not a visible intelligible idol, but an incomprehensible spirit. Yet they longed to behold Him, and to behold Him so that they could understand Him.' His whole conception of preaching was the setting forth of Christ as the manifestation of the Divine character ; as the Kevelation, unveiling or making known to man the actual righteousness and love of God. This was the Gospel or good news which he believed that he had to preach. He believed ■that in proportion as men in private life or in history came to liave a higher ideal of any kind, that ideal was in itself a more perfect knowledge of the nature of God arrived at through the manifestation of the Son the Word, in life or history. In this sense he always read the first verses of the first chapter of CHAP. X.] LIFE OF SINGLE FAITH. 331 St. John. He believed that in the Divine perfection of the Son all things were made ; that that perfection was one with the eternal nature of the Father and found its perfect expression or incarnation in the man Christ Jesus. To the verses of St. John he invariably turned when he proposed, say, to read the Greek Testament with one of his sons after a certain absence from home. If he at any time chose for reading one of the epistles, it was certain that he would first select those verses of the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which turn on the words, " Who being the efi'ulgence of His glory, and the very image of His substance, and upholding all things by the word of His power." These sentences had, I am certain, never presented them- selves to him as bearing any possible interpretation other than this : that the eternal had so manifested itself in the flesh, that utterly inconceivable as the Divine nature would have been without such a manifestation, yet that since it has been made we may be sure that, search where we may through all that eternity may contain, there can be in the infinite nature no variableness or shadow of turning from the character which Christ revealed in a man. This is the central point of the theology which he sets forth in his answers at his ordination examination. Any one who will look at the sentences marked 4, 5, 6, on p. 160, Vol. I, will see that Manselism, long before it assumed that name, was in his conception to be reckoned among " those erroneous and strange doctrines " which he believed that on his admission to the priesthood he promised to " banish and put away." His letter to Mr. Kingsley, pp. 371-376, Yol. I., in answer to Mr. Kingsley's inquiry as to the right mode of reading the Bible, turns wholly upon his own conviction of the truth that the Bible, as a means of attaining to the knowledge of the Living God, is precious beyond all expression or conception ; but when made a substitute for that knowledge, may become a greater deadener to the human spirit than all other books." Mr. Mansel's tone of absolute contempt for the utter 332 IS GOD GOOD? [1858. F. M. 52. absurdity of any such knowledge of God, as a vain conceit on the part of man, was for my father a blow at the very centre of all faith. There was nothing new for him in the- position taken up by Mr. Mansel. Mr. Mansel's doctrine was, in its express terminology, the very one against which all through his life he had been struggling. If God wa* not " good " in the same sense in which Jesus of Nazareth went about doing good, his faith was vain. Nor had previous experience left him in any doubt as to the mode in which Mr. Mansel intended to employ his principle in relation to those questions which were much dearer to my father than life or reputation. Nothing was more curious throughout the whole of the controversy with Dr. Jelf in 1854, than the complete misunderstanding on Dr. Jelfs part of the real issue which my father had raised ; but if Dr. J elf had not clearly seen what the issue was, Mr. Mansel had seen it with perfect clear- ness. In a short pamphlet which he published at the time, Mr. Mansel showed that he saw that the attempt to defend the then currently received view in regard to Elysium and Tartarus was hopeless, if God's character was really shadowed forth in such sentences as " Can a mother forget her sucking child ? Yea, she may forget, yet will I not forget thee," or if the character which Christ displayed on earth was a manifestation of the actual spirit of the eternal Godhead. Mr. Mansel had no wish to force the fiercest features of the Tartarean doctrine into any unpleasant prominence, but he had every wish to assume that what he called the Kevealed Doctrine of the Atonement " was, as a matter of fact and beyond question^ what Archbishop Magee had, some years before, declared that it was. The privilege of " the elect " was clearly in his mind to be saved from a certain place of future torture and to enter into an elysium of personal enjoyment. It was by no means so clear to Mr. Mansel as it was to Dr. Jelf^ that it was by the doom of God that men were consigned to the place of endless torment. But my father's proclama- tion of God as the friend and father of man, the deliverer out of sin and bondage ; the habitual use of the words OR IS " GOOD " A COUBTESY TITLE OF HIS THBONE. 333 the Lamb of God which taketh away tlw sin of the world " in contrast with the Calvinistic or current view of God's remitting the penalty which His justice had adjudged for sin ; * the habitual assumption that all God's punishments were blessings not curses ; that the great evil was not the punish- ment but the sin ; that the direst hell conceivable (as he put it in one of his earliest Bubbenhall sermons, and in the 'Theological Essays ') was the place where God left off punishing and left a man to his sin : all these conceptions from first to last \vere contemptible in Mr. Hansel's eyes, and in all his notes to his lectures he took care to leave no doubt of his intention to strike not only at the centre of my father's faith but at every thought which formed part to him of the good news which he believed that he had learned and was to deliver. It was whilst Mr. Mansel's lectures were in course of delivery at Oxford that my father's attention was first directed to them. Dr. Thomson, the present Archbishop of York, at that time Preacher of Lincoln's Inn, came up from Oxford at the beginning of each term to preach at the morning service. In those days he sometimes w^alked back to luncheon at Kussell Square between the services. At the beginning of one of the terms of 1858 he came, full of the subject of the Bampton Lectures, of which two or three had been already delivered. He described the crowded audiences eagerly listen- ing to discourses of which it was certain that at least large portions were wholly unintelligible to the great majority of the hearers. He spoke of the matter as in its essence the most unalloyed Atheism that had been heard in England for generations. He described the immense popularity which the lectures were nevertheless acquiring, because they served as such an admirable excuse for laughing at all troublesome German and English thinkers, enabling all those, who never * I am far from meaning that Mr. Mansel was a Calvinist ; my statement no more involves that than the fact that my father objected to Mr. Mansel's mode of executing Mr. Frank Newman or Mr. Jowett involved his agreement with their opinions. It is my father's position as above to which Mansel objected. 33i CAUSES TENDING SO TO EXCITE F. D. M. [1858. thought at all, to feel their own superiority to the fools who searched after wisdom. The suhject, touched on in the vestry^ was discussed throughout the walk home, and was begun anew at the luncheon-table. My father's attention having thus been drawn to the matter, he heard much of it from other friends at Oxford. Mr. Mansel was described to him as best known in Oxford as a common-room wit and joker ; the lectures, one of them in particular, were spoken of as scarcely serious despite the tremendous nature of the subjects they handled. There can be no doubt that all these 'circumstances affected considerably the attitude and tempera- ment with which my father entered upon what he himself regarded as the most important controversy of his life, the one which from this time forth was to colour all his subsequent work. Here, as it seemed to him, was that definite setting up of religion " against God, which he had always been ex- pecting as the clear manifestation of the evil tendencies of the time. If the words had been put forth by some solitary thinker, the object of popular hostility, as the expression of conclusions to which in bitter pain he had been led, my father would have treated them according to the principles set forth in his letter to the Lincoln's Inn congregation (Yol. II., p. 225), or in the extract from the published letter to Hare (Yol. I., p. 505) — principles which have been illustrated by his whole life. But the effect of the Lectures was to deal with all men troubled with doubts or difficulties on exactly the opposite principle to that ; to give to the many the satisfac- tion of laughing at the earnest few who did not see their way. It was in fact, under the name of Orthodoxy, setting up the absolute domination of public opinion, the very power which my father looked upon as, in so far as it was the object of worship, the anti-Christ of the day. It represented that of which he had had in his youthful days so great a horror — the warning men " against feeling too strongly, thinking too deeply, lest they should find too much of the Almighty wisdom, lest they should be too conscious of the Almighty goodness." It was certain that these lectures would become the staple of CHAP. X.] AS TO AID MUCH HIS CALM OPPONENT. 335 the instruction of large bodies of the clergy, and would set the mode in which they were to meet all new facts as they were discovered by science, all evidence of Assyrian inscriptions, all appeals by earnest men against the rules of conduct and principles of action fixed by the current opinion of religious coteries. For my father all these were part of the education into His truth which God was giving to the age. For the lecturer the current so-called " Orthodoxy " of the time, in fact the religious public opinion of the day, was the " Kevealed Doctrine " on every subject.* To my father it therefore seemed all important to set before- the rising generation of young clergy another principle than that of the lecturer. He knew that no man could attempt a more unpopular task or one more likely to injure him in the estimation of all those who would concern themselves about it. Therefore he held it to be his duty to undertake it. He entered into the controversy under disadvantages which he had encountered in no other case. Mr. Mansel had treated his subject with the calmness and coolness of one who dissects an anatomical specimen. My father felt every cut of the lecturer's knife as though it had been employed upon his heart-strings^ He did not realise, and indeed did not till long afterwards become fully aware, that the lecturer, bred up in the school of * Both of course in their different ways appealed to the " teaching of the Church ; " but while my father's appeal was always to the " Orthodox" faith, " provided the Creeds, the Liturgy, the Articles, are taken as the tests of Orthodoxy, and if it be a part of Orthodoxy to make the Bible a key to all other studies," it is difficult to convey an idea of the way in which in the Lectures, and still more in his ' Examination,' Mr. Mansel always assumed, that, just what he and his audience accepted as the correct tenet on every subject, was that which had been everywhere, by all, always held, or cf the care with which he avoided explaining precisely what that was, lest he should scatter his unanimous following. It was not a little noteworthy that he, the champion of " orthodoxy," should find himself obliged to appeal against my father to Dr. Candlish, the Calvinist Presbyterian, and Mr. Kigg, the Wcsleyao,. (the only two assailants of my father whom he quotes in his ' Examination ') seeing that both of these men had made their attacks expressly because of my father's influence in behalf of the Church of England, which they found to be too powerful among their sects. 336 TWO STAGES OF THE CONTROVERSY. [1858-1859. philosophy whose tenets he was expounding, and looking upon all outside it as mere folly, was pouring forth what were to him beliefs as genuine as my father's were to himself ; that Mr. Mansel was not merely for a controversial purpose choosing argu- ments which he knew would carry with him his audience, but was urging what was for him the result of much study and much thought. In the first stage therefore of the controversy, that which is represented by the * Bampton Lectures ' and * What is Eevelation ? ' I do not think that any of my father's friends have ever read the discussion with entire satisfaction. He does not limit the points of his difference with Mr. Mansel ; does not enter upon a methodic argument, does not, in a way that would attract the attention of a careless reader, acknowledge the points that are not in dispute and define those that are. AVhat he does is to prophesy against the book, to declare what its inevitable tendency must be, how the weapon forged in behalf of ortho- doxy will become a deadly one in quite other hands. In that sense it is curious how rapidly his assertions have vindicated themselves already. The Agnostics have become the very people by whom the Orthodoxy of the day finds itself most troubled. But the discussion rapidly passed into another stage. Mr. Mansel, attributing to personal hostility the wrath which my father had shown against principles, and offended by what he considered a personal attack upon himself, became passionately angry, turned his counter-attack into one not easy to be sustained — on my father's character : accused him of deliberately writing down that which he knew to be untrue, and of having been guilty of " a tissue of continuous misrepresenta- tion, which," Mr. Mansel believed, " had no parallel in recent literature." As a matter of fact, my father had transferred from the lectures bodily to his own columns about 40 out of 187 pages in all, giving in full, in the author's own words, all the passages which he discussed. He had earnestly entreated his readers to study the lectures for themselves, and to compare them with his comments. The very words in regard to which Mr. Mansel was not ashamed to accuse him of deliberately SEEKING THE TRIUMPH OF TRUTH, NOT SELF. 337 lying stood on the same page with the discussion on them which was thus characterised. But there can be no doubt that my father's mode of controversy left upon Mr. Mansel and others an impression of sarcasm when that was furthest from his thought. Virtu- ally, though doubtless not consciously, the assumption with which Mr. Mansel, like most men, entered into a controversy was that it was his one business to prove himself and those whose brief he held right and his opponent wrong. He there- fore assumed his opponent to be meeting him on similar grounds. That my father never did. As he says of himself — *I am a very bad proselytiser. If I could persuade all dis- senters to become members of my Church to-morrow I should be very sorry to do it ; I believe the chances are that they might leave it the next day. I do not wish to make them think as I think. But I want that they and I should be what we pretend to be, and then I doubt not we should find that there is a common ground for us all far beneath our thinkings. For truth I hold not to be that which every man troweth, but to be that which lies at the bottom of all men's trowings, that in which those trowings have their only meeting-point.' * It is that ^' and 1" (not italicised by him) which makes the whole difi'erence. Always in the very midst of every contro- versy, the mistakes he had made himself in past times, the lessons he had learned from them, would rise before him and be referred to by him, in a way most disturbing to an antagonist. That a man should hit himself and not leave his opponent to perform his own work in that way, seemed preposterous. Such expressions were therefore nearly always misunderstood ; it is to them that Mr. Mansel refers in bringing some of his fiercest charges against the book. A single specimen will throw a good deal of light upon this sort of misunderstanding. Nothing in the Bampton Lectures had caused my father more distress * * Theological Essays/ p. 315. TOL. n. Z 338 IN THE CONTEST THE WEAPON [1858-1859. than tlie mode in whicli the men to whose conclusions he was most opposed had been dealt with in it. The remembrance of Sterling and of what he considered had been his own mistakes in dealing with him, always rose up before him on these occasions. Under this feeling he wrote — * He who holds that the Bible testifies from its first page to its last that God has created men for the knowledge of Himself, and is kindling in them a thirst for that knowledge, a discontent with anything which comes short of it — cannot by possibility listen without the profoundest interest to every cry of men after it in one age or another. He must not ask first what they have failed to attain, but what they have been permitted to attain. He must be glad to learn from their blunders as well as their successes ; per- ceiving in the first the likeness of his own; in the second, the guidance of God. He may not expect their opinions or conclusions to do much for him ; their struggles and questionings, and glimpses of light he will cherish, and be thankful for. All will appear to him to be pointing to a full-orbed Truth which is not in them but in God, and which He has manifested in the Eternal Word, the only-begotten Son. The remembracce of hard and proud words spoken against those who were crying out for Truth will be always the bitterest in his life, that which recurs to him with the keenest sense of having grieved the Holy Spirit of God, of having brought upon him the curse of a brother's blood.' Mr. Mansel's mode of referring to this passage is : " The rest of Mr. Maurice's first letter is devoted to vituperation instead of argument, and may safely be left to stand or fall by its own merits. He considers the Bampton Lectures to be full of hard and proud words, spoken against those who were crying out for Truth." Seeing that Mr. Mansel was not one of those who held anything which the " He " of this passage is said to hold," it is difficult to understand his supposition <3HAP. X.J OF COOL MODERATION CHANGES HANDS. 339 that the " remembrance of hard and proud words " could be his. Enough has, however, perhaps been said to show that in his reply Mr. Mansel had lost the enormous advantage of that philosophic calm which appeared in the Bampton Lectures. An exactly opposite change in my father's manner appears in his ' Sequel to What is Kevelation ? ' which he wrote in answer to Mr. Mansel's ' Examination.' The moment a personal attack was made on himself, his wonted anxiety to defend principles by the method of doing justice to his opponent, of meeting discourtesy with courtesy, of acknow- ledgment of any slips of his own, reappeared. As far as I have been able to ascertain, the general feeling of those who followed the controversy through to this later stage, was that he had, independently of the merits of the question, at least as much advantage in point of manner and method over his opponent in the latter part of the discussion as Mr. Mansel, no doubt, from his philosophic coolness had during the earlier part. As regards the change which has taken place in men's views of the merits of the question, I do not know whether it is true, as Mr. Leslie Stephen says, that now-a-days " most be- lievers repudiate Dean Mansel's arguments." I should have thought the statement one completely beyond the region of ihe " known and the knowable." What is historically the direct reverse of the fact is the statement that " nobody except Dean Mansel himself ever denied very seriously " that the further step into modern Agnosticism — old " Atheism " writ respectable — was the logical step." The religious " newspaper press as a body welcomed Mansel as the great champion of orthodoxy. If the grounds on which a quarter of a century ago my father had to run the gauntlet of party religious animosity for his vehement resistance to Agnosticism, when it appeared as the representative of "orthodoxy," crushing under its foot all opponents, were not " serious," one hardly knows what vehement expressions of religious feeling are to be considered serious. 2 2 340 THE BIOGBAPHICAL IMPOBTANCE [1858-1859, In no case did he stand at the moment more nearly alone. As time went on Mr. Goldwin Smith and Arthur Stanley spoke out vigorously in Oxford against Mr. Mansel. A few years later, Mill, on the philosophic side, fiercely assailed Mansel. Moreover, the course of the controversy itself in a very remarkable way added one to the number of my father's more immediate friends. The Ti7nes review of Mr. Mansel's lectures was written by Mr. Chretien. The review had been a very complimentary and admiring one, but had pointed out consequences which might be feared by some readers if the lecturer's positions were established. One of those repeated accusations of personal want of " conscientious- ness " with which Mr. Mansel's retort teemed, had turned on the mode in which my father had referred to this review. Mr. Chretien on the appearance of * What is Eevelation ? ' first of all addressed my father, as a troubled but convinced admirer of Mr. Mansel's, in a letter describing " What is Eevelation '" in terms the exact reverse of those in which Mr. Mansel spoke of it in his almost simultaneously published reply. When Mr. Chretien had had time to read the reply as well as the * Sequel to What is Eevelation ? ' and to spend the summer of 1860 in their study, he came completely over to my father's views, and his name appeared among a series of writings which were at that time being published by my father and his friends. Though there was much that had been bitter and therefore unsatisfactory in the discussion itself, it had as a result this great advantage — that, for any one who chose to consider the matter at all, it lifted one of the most important of my father's contentions out of the mere stage of misconception, in which it had been left by the hasty impressions, formed at second-hand, about his purpose, in the Jelf discussion. It could not of course prevent such a dinner-table discussion as this : I think Mr. Maurice's great glory was that he stood out against the doctrine of eternal punishment." But he never did ! '* " Why, you take away from him his great distinction ! " " You mean that he denied that the word ' eternal ' was used by CHAP. X.J OF THE CONTROVERSY. 341 Christ as the equivalent of ^ endless ' ? " " Oh, well, that's all the same." It could not prevent the fashionable lady novelist from talking about Mr. Maurice*s easy-going belief." It could not prevent any one who rejoiced in second-hand gossip, or those clergy, who, content to take their knowledge from second-hand mis-statements of Mr. Kigg, or of the religious newspapers, were not, in speaking to younger men, ashamed on such evidence to talk as though they knew all about him — from propagating falsehoods in all directions, from saying that he " denied the atonement," and the like. But the discussion itself was upon the true issue, not upon the secondary. " Is not your Gospel a message concerning the Infinite, the Abso- lute, the Eternal ? Is not your Bible a book of facts by which men are led gradually on to know what the ground is at their feet ; to feel, through the actual finite, for the Infinite — through the actual temporal for the Eternal ? " * " Is it or is it not true that in the revelation of God in Christ the right- eousness, truth, love, which cannot be measured by time, which do not belong to time, are brought within the faith and apprehension of the meek and lowly ; that these constitute that eternal inheritance which God has prepared for them that love Him ? " f It was scarcely possible for any who had touched upon this controversy to suppose as many had done, chiefly at second-hand, during the Jelf controversy, that he had some special " easy-going " sympathy with those who supposed that, " at the end of a certain term, say thirty or forty thousand years, we may believe that God's punishment of wicked men may be over, and they may be restored to favour," despite his vehement assertion, " I have an utter want of sympathy with statements of this kind : they clash with all my convictions." I believe wickedness, impenitence, and un- belief, to be the worst tortures to which men can be subjected ; that as the possession of righteousness, love, truth, constitute .eternal blessedness, these constitute eternal damnation and * ' What is Revelation ? ' p. 280. t Page 8, final answer to Dr. Jelf. 342 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD, [1858-1859. F.M. 52-53^ misery ; " * or that some wish to soften off the idea of the actual nature of sin, and some wish to make its conse- quences seem less terrible, had induced him to devise a subtle interpretation which should take the sting out of the word " eternal " in the Athanasian Creed. It is difficult enough to- understand how men could have read the ' Theological Essays ' or the letter to Dr. Jelf, and so interpreted them. Thus, in speaking of the effects of " the love of God " he goes on : " In each case I have thought and spoken of that love as only removing punishment by removing sin ; I have desired, and hope always to desire, for myself and all men, that we may never cease to be punished by God till we cease to punish our- selves by rebelling against Him." It is difficult enough to understand how it could have been supposed that his concep- tion of the meaning of the word was derived from a single text,, when throughout the Jelf controversy he had appealed to its actual use in every place where it occurs in the New Testa- ment, and had actually worked out his own way to its meaning by years of thought upon that use. But at least the con- troversy with Mansel had brought out the force of his appeal to the Bible to show that the " knowledge of God " is the actual eternal life of which St. John, St. Paul, and Christ- Himself, are everywhere speaking. It was difficult for those who had followed Mr. Mansel's Lectures and his subsequent argument not at least to realise how much was involved in the question, or to fail to see that my father's belief in the meaning of the word eternal was actually based on his belief that if instead of coming to the Kevelation of God in Christ to instruct me in the nature of God and eternity, I go back to my own notion of endlessness, and attribute that to God, I must fall into heathenism." t The following passage gives in his own words the motives which determined him to undertake this and much other work, and shows just how and why his mode of controversy was liable to misinterpretation. I doubt if his most bitter * Final letter to Dr. Jelf. t Final letter to Dr. Jelf. " I FIGHT THE ENEMIES OF 31 AN IN ME AND OTHEBSr 343 antagonist reading the passage by the light of his life can now fail to understand it.* * Since my desire is to get all the help I can, and to give all the help I can, in resisting evils which I feel to be threaten- ing the life of each one of us, of our country, of the whole Church, and in sustaining the good which I believe God is keeping alive in each of us, in our land, in the whole Church — I will, God aiding me, incur all risks of offending the leaders of scholastical thought and popular feeling amongst us, by pointing out what I hold to be the great religious and moral corruptions of the age, and will not run the risk of offending any simple Christian by fixing upon him, or upon some teacher whom he loves, as an example of these corruptions. I will tell my countrymen, and tell myself, that we are men of like tempers and passions with the worshippers of Moloch and of Mammon and of Siva. I will tell them that there is no security against our falling into that worship in the fact of our being surrounded with a Christian atmosphere, in our having been brought up to acknowledge all the mysteries of the Christian faith. I will tell them that God Himself is our only deliverer from false and dark notions of Him, and that if we do not trust in Him to save us from them and to give us the true knowledge of Himself, they will creep in upon us, and overcome us, and mould all our orthodoxy into their likeness. And if A, B, and C, being in conspicuous places from which they are in- fluencing others, should seem to me to be abetting directly or indirectly this evil, I will do what in me lies to counteract their lessons. But if I have any occasion to speak against them, I will add that I do not hold them to be worse men than I am, and that I am satisfied they have a better and nobler spirit in them which is confessing the true God and rendering probably a more acceptable homage to Him than I render. I will say this because I hold it to be true and because I ought to say it, though I know perfectly well that * 'Sequel to What is Revelation?" pp. 156-158. 344 "50 HAVE FOUGHT ALL TBUE PBOPHETSr [1859. such language will lead Mr. Mansel to suspect me of hypocrisy, and though it is sure to draw forth such pungent remarks as the one which he has quoted against me from Dr. Candlish. *'It would really seem as if the author's notion of candour and charity were this : blacken your opponent to the utmost pitch of blackness, by making his belief thoroughly odious, and then generously whitewash him with the insinuation that after all his belief is a sham." If this description is a true one, as I am sure Dr. Candlish and Mr. Mansel consider it to be, it cannot do me much harm ; the inward insincerity and wickedness in the sight of God of such a character as Dr. Candlish has portrayed, must make all the appearances it may present to men of little moment. If it is not exactly a faithful portrait, I may still have much to answer for, having led eminent »men, through my violence or stupidity, to suppose that it is impossible to denounce with intense earnestness what one feels to be the mischievous acts or teachings of others, without exalting oneself or denying them to be capable of all excellence. I am certain that this cannot be impossible, otherwise there can be no reformation wrought in the earth ; since the evils that prevail in an age have always hitherto been opposed by those who were bitterly conscious of those evils in themselves, and therefore sought to extirpate them.' It is necessary to quote this passage in full, because this personal humility towards those with whom he was at issue at the time that he fought most earnestly for the principles he was maintaining against them, is so unlike the tone of most men that it has led to very curious misconception in more than one instance. Notably Lord Carnarvon, a disciple of Mr. Mansel's, and editor of one of his posthumous works, has assumed that certain expressions of personal courtesy towards Mr. Mansel and of my father's wonted personal humility which appear in the preface to a new edition of the ' Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy ' which was published a year before my father's death, implied more than I think such words from my <3HAP. X.] A VEBY NATUBAL ^TISUNDERSTANDING. 345 father do at all imply. As it happened that he heard of Dean Mansel's death whilst he was publishing a vehement protest against Manselism, he inserted a note expressing his regret for any language he might have used in the controversy that had given pain to Dean Mansel's friends. He ends up with the words, "His immeasurable superiority to me as a disputant deepens my conviction that the principle which I maintained against him was sound and true — one which even his ability and learning could not shake ; " but that is something very different from admitting that in the particular dispute between them he was worsted in argument by his opponent. On the contrary, it is the assertion of a man who believes that he gained a dialectical advantage over his opponent because of the strength of his case; despite, what he assumes to be, his relative inferiority. In fact, to his latest breath it was that Tery " knowledge of the love of God," the possibility of which Mr. Mansel denied, which was for my father the Gospel, the good news that he was to deliver to the city and the world. The controversy occupied him throughout great part of 1858 and nearly the whole of 1859, and was not finished till 1860. The letters of the year 1859 which follow give some of the thoughts which were occupying him during the year. To Mr. T. Erskine, of Linlathen, on the death of Miss Jane Stirling, * 5 Russell Square, W. C, February 10, 1859. ^ Yery many thanks for your kindness in letting me hear of the departure of your friend to her home. No one who has ever seen her fine and expressive face can forget it. Her clearness of thought and power of expression must have given her a great power as a servant of the truth, and I have heard through many of the work she did at Paris, especially among English ladies. It seems as if there was a gathering in of many whom we fancy we want grievously, but I have such a sense of an approaching crisis as near at hand that I cannot but thank God for all who have been permitted to 346 DENIAL IN FOBM OF ACQUIESCENCE. [F. M. 53. pass out of the world before it comes, to help, I cannot doubt, in unknown ways those who are passing through it. The sermon which you speak of with so much kindness and sympathy — giving me a greater strength by doing so than I can well express — was written very much under the im- pression of this feeling. That the Bible should be defended expressly on the ground that the knowledge of God m impossible, and that this defence should be hailed in so many quarters as triumphant, gives me a kind of staggering sensation as if everything was turned upside down, and as if we were approaching a day in which the most utter denial would take the shape of unquestioning acquiescence. I feel as if one must lift up a voice against this, if it was only for the sake of the young men in Oxford, who must be tre- mendously shaken by such words coming from high quarters. But I tremble while I undertake the task, so many bad feelings mingle themselves with every controversy.' To Miss Williams Wynn, ' 5 llussell Square, February 12, 1859. ' I have been thinking much of your note, and of the very serious question which it raises. One's impulse is, no doubt, to dismiss Spurgeon's teaching as Tartarean, and to set down as a mere evil sign of the times that crowds should listen to it. But this, I am sure, is not right. It is right to say, if he or an angel from heaven preach any gospel besides that which St. Paul, St. John, preached — the Gospel of God's reconciliation with men — it is an accursed gospel, or no gospel at all. But when one considers what a wonderful thing it is for men to be recognised as spirits at all, and to hear that God recognises them as such, even if He only treats them as spirits that He may give them a destination which animals cannot have ; when one thinks what a witness there is in the gathering of crowds to hear such a man, that they all have a common life and a common Father and com- mon sins ; when one feels how much more terrible sin and exclusion from love are than any terrors which a vulgar CHAr. X.] " TEE BOOK OF THE WABS OF THE LOBB." 347 fancy can conjure up, I do believe that he may be doing a necessary work for this age, and that rich and poor wha hear him may be actually receiving a truth from his lips which they had never known before : namely, the truth that a Living Being is looking after them and taking cognizance of what they think and do, and that all their talk about religion, philosophy, humanity, is just so much wind and nonsense. Any one who will scatter those abstract ghosts does them a service, yes, if he gives them little but hell and the devil in exchange. I hope Spurgeon gives them some- thing else. His own future of course one has no right to speculate about. If he should waken up to the perception of a God of absolute love, his popularity will probably vanish^ and he will have a terrible conflict with himself, perhaps a period of unutterable darkness and unbelief. But in the meantime he may help to save us from that, and to remind us clergymen what miserable witnesses we are for what we pretend to believe. May he drive me to a more earnest faith in a Gospel which I am certain neither he nor any man can set aside.' To Jlr. /. 3/. Ludloio. ' July 3, 1859. * I do not differ from you about the existence of evil being the great crux of all. I learnt many years ago, from Augustine, that it must, by its very nature, be the unintelligible thing, that to attempt to reduce it to a law or principle is to commit a contradiction. The question is not that at all. It is whether the unintelligibility of evil or the omnipotence of God is a reason for not regarding Him as carrying on a war against evil and for not expecting that in that war evil will be vanquished. I know that there are some who think so. For God to make war instead of crushing evil, if it can be crushed at all, by a simple fiat, is for them a simple absurdity. What I say is, that if it be, the Bible is from beginning to end an absurdity. For it is the book of the wars of the Lord. It does not define evil, but it assumes evil ; it assumes evil to be in a will ; it assumes evil not to 348 IS EVIL A NOTION OB A BEALITYf [F. M. 54. be vanquishable by an Omnipotent fiat ; it sets forth a process by which it has been overcome in a number of wills ; it teaches us to pray, " TJuj will he done on earth as it is in, Heaven/' where it is done perfectly ; it says that if we pray according to God's will He hears us and we shall have the petition which we ask of Him. Whether these assertions accord with Mr. Mansel's Carlton Club and Oxford common- room yawn, " Ton my soul, I can't see why evil should not last for ever if it exists now," I leave simple people to judge. I do not see why he should think otherwise, for evil to him is like everything else — a notion. But it is not a notion for you; you feel that you must fight with it to the death. And if you do not frankly confess what in your heart you believe, that God is fighting against it, you will be obliged to feel that you are fighting against Him. Your attempt to ■escape from this doctrine which goes through the whole of the Bible — that being nothing else than the book of the wars of the Lord— convinces me that I was right in the strong language I used, and that there is a scepticism in all our hearts — I am sure there is a deep scepticism in mine — on the subject which can only be removed by earnestly thinking what the agony and bloody sweat of Christ must mean, whether that was not the battle of God with that which is resisting His nature. I think I am also right in speaking of eternal death. I know no other language which will bring as strongly before our minds the principle which Scripture assumes, that death is not the departure of the breath out of the body, but the loss of the life which must be the eternal life of God. At all events, what is done is done. If I had taken advice, I should have let Mr. Mansel alone altogether ; but there are monitors within which must be obeyed whatever voices without contradict them.' To Mr, Alexander Macmillan, ' Ockham, September 1, 1859. I have had a bundle of reviews [of 'What is Eevelation?'] forwarded me, all except the Inquirer exceedingly unfavour- CHAP. X.] CONTBA MUNDUM. able. My flesh of course revolts ; but in my heart of hearts I welcome this treatment. If the religious world had not declared almost en masse in favour of Mansel I would not have written against him. I spoke because he was its- spokesman. So it has happened exactly as I ought to have- expected. I am only sorry on your account.' To Bev. D. J. Vanghan. (In ansicer to a letter as to the several ])ersons of the Trinity^ and their action on the spirit of man.) * September 3, 1859. * There cannot, I think, be any subject so important for us at one time or other, but especially at this time, as that with which your mind has been exercised. I am well convinced that it is God and not man who sets such problems before us, and that it is He who shows us the way of solving- them. ' No passage, perhaps, on the whole is so helpful for this purpose as that in the third chapter of the Epistle to the- Ephesians, '* For this cause I bow my knees," etc., chiefly because it does not give us a formal result, but explains the process, the continual process, by which the apostle himself arrived at a living result. He bowed his knees to a Father^ not of himself but of a whole family in Heaven and earth.- He asked not for himself apart from the Ephesians, but with them, that they might be strengthened with might by the Spirit in the inner man. But this involved the next step : Christ would dwell in their hearts by faith. And that would lead to the next. They would find the ground on which they and all creation stood : " Being rooted and grounded in love." And so they would know the height and length and breadth of the love of God which passeth know- ledge. * Here, I conceive, is the doctrine of the Trinity in its most practical form, yet with all its most delicate distinctions ; no confounding of the Persons, no division of the substance. And thus^is it received and has it been received in all ages- 350 A LIVING PBINCIPLE IN THE [1859. R M. 54. by thousands of men and women in weakness and suffering, who were as utterly unable to enter into scholastic subtleties as they were to fly over the moon. They arrived, in the act and exercise of prayer, at the root of all these distinctions. The habit of looking up to a Father hindered them from ever thinking that the Spirit who drew their hearts to Him was their own spirit. He must be a universal Spirit, a Spirit working in others as well as themselves ; working to unite them. He must have proceeded from the Father, but He leads them not directly to the Father, but to One who bias come from Him to redeem them, in whom only they are redeemed or righteous or sanctified, to whom they refer themselves, in whom they find themselves, through whom only they can see what the Father is. And perceiving in Christ that He is the infinite and eternal Love, they are certain that the Spirit who worketh in them, the Spirit of Love, is the eternal bond of unity between the Father and the Son, as He is between them on earth. As He is their guide and comforter, and the guide and comforter of myriads besides them, as they have resisted Him and He has over- come them, they cannot regard Him otherwise than as a person. All the acts and qualities which they attribute to any present friend dwell supremely in Him. Yet because He is in them, speaking to them, they must distinguish, though they can never separate, Him from that Lord whom they must always think of as the common Lord of all, as the Mediator between man and God, as standing at the right hand of God, as their way to the Father. Just as likewise they must always distinguish the Son from the Father, whom He trusts and loves and obeys, whose will He does, whose perfect image He is. ^ I should not have dwelt so much upon this text if I had not known, in my own small experience, that it is one which is very dear to simple people, and one upon which some of them meditate day and night. It seems to me to contain the resolution of that difficulty which you feel so strongly — and not more strongly than a multitude of laymen and . X.] VERY NATURE OF THINGS AND MEN. 351 clergymen — about the Christ in us and the Spirit in us. We should never forget that Christ is the Anointed of the Spirit ; that St. Paul, the great witness for Christ as made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, says, " If we have not the spirit of Christ we are none of His." Those chapters in the Epistle to the Eomans contain, it seems to me, the most skilful and profound exposition of that relation between the subject and the object which our formal schoolmen make into such a hard crust for the understand- ing to bite through. It is not a school formula, it is a living principle in the very nature of things and of man. And it is in the nature of man because its prototype is in the nature of God. We realise it in that distinction and union of the Spirit in us, with Christ in and over all, which St. Paul sets forth. That distinction and union imply a Father from whom the Son comes, of whom the Spirit testifies. That unity of the -Father and the Son and the Spirit, one God of Love blessed for ever, is beneath all. *It seems to me that we may in this way ascend from the Pauline Theology, which is that of the Preformation, that of our Evangelicals, to the truth which, as you hint, modern Evangelicals, and in some, though not in the same, degree, their fathers, have converted into a mere explanation of our justification and sanctification, and so have grievously im- perilled. They will, I trust, be led through their own wonderful teacher to look at the Gospel less selfishly, to regard it as a Gospel for mankind ; then the full meaning of the old Creeds will come out of them. If not, they will be distanced by the Unitarians, many of whom are rising, through their old confession of a Father, and their new apprehension of a Spirit working in them — not without many plunges down into a Pantheistic abyss — to that real ' and profound belief in the " Divine Unity," which they were groping after through what Coleridge called their " Worship ! of Unity." Having been bred amongst them, I must needs sympathise much in struggles to which I owe everything. Nor have I any greater cause for thankfulness than this, 352 TEE AGE OF TEE SPIBIT. [1859. F. M. 54. that God did not suffer me, in the fierce reaction against their denials, and what appeared to me their feebleness, to lose sight of the truth which is implied in their name ; although in the pursuit of it I have been led to the very opposite point of the compass from theirs. With respect to your remarks that the Old Testament was the preparation for the Son, as the New may be the preparation for the Spirit, I would observe : — * (1.) That the New Testament opens with the announcement, " He shall baptize with the Spirit ; " that the baptism of Jesus Himself with the Spirit is inseparable from the account of Him as the Son ; that He goes by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the evil spirit ; that the whole battle of His life on earth as described in the Gospels is with evil spirits ; that the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost opens the New Kingdom of which the declaration, He whom you crucified is both Lord and Christ," was the formal pro- clamation ; that the distinction between the Old and New is always expressed in the words, " That which was hidden before, God has now revealed to His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit." I think, then, that the old opinion is right. We are in the age of the Spirit ; not looking forward to it. * (2.) The Old Testament revealed neither the Father nor the Son as such. What strikes me most in opening the Gospels, — say, at the Sermon on the Mount — is this new name of Father. One has had the hint of it in the heathen world, in the old " mythologies ; " at first one is inclined to say, Scarcely a hint in the Law and the Prophets." Look again, and you see not hints, but an orderly preparation for this revelation; or, to speak more correctly, the commencement of it. The revelation of an unseen guide and protector is the foundation of the Abrahamic family. The Eevelation of the guide as the I am, the absolute Lord and Law-giver, is the foundation of the Jewish commonwealth and code. The revelation of the King sitting on the holy hill of Sion, of mi/ Lord, to whom the Lord says, Sit at my right hand," is the THE COURSE OF THE BEVELATION OF THE UNITY. 353 foundation of the Jewish royalty. The Eevelation of the Word speaking to and in the holy men is the foundation of the Jewish prophecy. Everywhere is the proclamation of a One God ; in the law the formal curse and denunciation of the worship of any god but the One. Yet all the wonderful defence against idolatry and the experiences of the slavery to which it leads, are not discoveries of the Divine Unity. The impulse to human and to animal worship is tremendous ; the best men are most agitated with the question, " How can He whose glory is above the heavens care for us worms upon earth ? " The Israelite felt the deep necessity of believing in the Protector, Friend, Lawgiver, King, Inspirer. That neces- sity drew him to prayer. In prayer he attained a sense of unity which in the world he could never find. That one should stand forth and say, " I am that King of whom David spoke, the King who has been reigning over you so long : — I was with Abraham ; I know the innermost meaning of the Law that was given on Sinai ; I am the Word who spoke to the prophets," would not have satisfied the wants and cravings that had been awakened in Israelites, unless He could have said also, " I came from a Father ; I will baptize you with the Holy Ghost." He was expected ; He was the desire of that nation and of all nations. But He would not have accomplished the expectation and desire, they must still have looked for another, if He had not been able to say thiS; and to do what He said. * (3.) And so, I think, we arrive at the explanation of St. John's words, " The Spirit was not yet, because that Jesus was not yet glorified." The Baptism with the Spirit is the recog- nition of men, of men of every nation, and kindred, and tribe, as the sons of God in the only-begotten Son ; the acknow- ledgment of men as spirits capable of holding communion with the Divine Spirit, capable of falling under the dominion of evil spirits, redeemed from that dominion by God Himself, consecrated to be His ministers. The Baptism of the Spirit was thus the formation, out of a particular nation, of a universal society capable of adopting all nations into VOL. n. 2 a 354 " THE EVEBLASTING GOSPEL TO THE NATIONS: itself, a society having its home hoth in earth and Heaven; witnessing of God's love and gracious purposes to all the kindreds of earth ; witnessing that they are, as spiritual heings, under the direct government of God Himself. Nothing like this had heen or could he in the former days. Till Christ was glorified, till it was fully declared that the Son of Man is the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead, till it was shown that the barrier of death does not separate the two worlds, there could not be this manifestation of a personal Spirit dwelling in a Universal Church. But though I differ from you in thinking that we are to wait in any sense for the Spirit as the gift of a future dispen- sation, I fully agree with what I take to be the meaning of the observation, that we have much to learn, perhaps a tremendous crisis to pass through before we learn, respecting our own position as baptized with the Spirit and so made children of God. I foresee a terrible breaking down of notions, opinions, even of most precious beliefs, an overthrow of what we call our religion — a convulsion far greater than that of the sixteenth century — in our way to reformation and unity. Still I believe they will come, and that they will come through an unveiling to our hearts of the old mystery of the Trinity, in which our fathers believed, but which they made an excuse for exclusion and persecution, not a bond of fellowship, a message of peace and deliverance to mankind. The preaching of the Trinity in its fullness will, I conceive be the everlasting Gospel to the nations, which will involve the overthrow of the Babel polity, and the brutal tyrannies as well as the foul superstitions of the earth. So long as we substitute for it the preaching of God as the destroyer, not the righteous Judge of men, so long as we deny that He has revealed Himself in the Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world ; so long I believe the inhabitants of the world will not fall before us, and that it is not good for them that they should. These last hints belong to another part of the Bible than the CHAP. X.] THE HONEY MOUTH 355 Pauline epistles. I believe the Apocalypse to be tbe book wliich will at last be found to remove most veils from this mystery, as well as from the meaning of all the previous Bible history, and from the course of God's government of the world from the beginning to the end. But on that subject I must not enter now.' ' Ockham, Ripley, September 26, 1859. * My dear Strachey, have been taking the duty of this village (William of Ockham's) all this vacation. The squire is Dr. Lushington, the freshest and heartiest as well as kindest of old gentle- men. His family has been all that we could desire for friendliness and for parish activity.' To Bev. J. LI. Davies on his marriage. * My dear Davies, ' Bi-oadstairs, October 11, 1859. ■* I thought it would be useless to write to you sooner ; for I hoped you had had the wisdom to desire that no letters should be forwarded to you. But I must send you a line to say how great a delight it was to Mrs. Maurice and to me to see your cards ; and how heartily we hope that the joy which I am sure has been given you is to increase more and more year by year. I do believe that the beginning of months is not the honey month ; that those which follow are much brighter and sweeter, and that even when the clouds gather. However, there is something very wonderful in the opening of a new life to those who can appreciate it, and whatever it contains of records and promises I hope you and Mrs. Davies have had abundantly.' 2 A 2 356 ON THE BEVISION OF TEE LITUBGY. [F. M. 54. CHAPTEK XI. ' *' Never a brave reformer tries to break down a popular sin or to build u]> some new and needed progress, taking on himself the responsibility which a true man ought to take, but these self-satisfied critics gather around him to criticise his methods and to ridicule his blunders, but never lift a hand to show how they too would blunder if they let themselves step outside of their safe and limited and petty life." — Philips Brooks. LORD EBURy's scheme FOR THE REVISION OF THE PRAYER-BOOK ' the liturgy and the dissenters ' appointment to st. Peter's, vere street — furious attack on him — apologia pro VITA SUA in letter TO A FRIEND — A STRANGER's PROTEST AGAINST MISSTATEMENTS ABOUT HIM COUNTER MOVEMENT AROUSED BY THE ATTACK — FINAL BLOW TO THE TYRANNY OP THE ' RECORD ' ' ESSAYS AND REVIEWS ' THE PANIC ' TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE ' WOLFf's TRAVELS. In the April number of ' Macmillan's Magazine ' for 1860, an article of my father's, " On the Kevision of the Prayer-Book, and the Act of Uniformity," appeared. It discussed the changes then proposed by Lord Ebury, and was in substance a review of a pamphlet by Mr. Isaac Taylor on ' The Liturgy and the Dissenters.' It is to this article that the next letter refers. To tlie Rev. Isaac Taylor. * My dear Sir, ' April 10, 18G0. * Your kind and friendly treatment of an article which might easily and excusably have annoyed you, deserves my warm thanks. That you should remember any former instructions CHAP. XI.] WATERING PLACE DIVINITY AND OTHER. 357 of mine with pleasure and should still regard me as a fellow- labourer, is a sincere satisfaction to me. But it is a much greater satisfaction that you should accept so cordially the doctrine that God has claimed us all in Christ as His sons, which seems to me the articulus stantis ant cadentis ecclesiee; where I use article not in its vulgar sense as importing that which is formal and dogmatic, but that which is necessary to the vitality and coherency of the body of Christ. Lidividucds may hold fast the faith of their own adoption while they rather rejoice to think that mankind are accursed ; but the Church must either fulfil its witness of a redemption for mankind, or be cut off. And I cannot help thinking that a time is at hand when we shall awaken to this conviction, and when we shall perceive that what we call our individual salvation means nothing, and that our faith in it becomes untenable when w^e separate it from the salvation which Christ wrought out for the world by His incarnation and sacrifice, resurrection and ascension. ' When you add to the assurance of your own belief the state- ment that the Dissenters embody the idea of the Divine Fatherhood in all the forms of prayer which they approve (though I should like more specific illustrations of it that I might know what exactly it amounts to), I yet take it with all thankfulness and joy. But it strengthens me in my conviction that such changes as the Evangelical clergy of our own communion are likely to desire and recommend cannot meet the wants of the Dissenters. For certainly they assent with manifest reluctance to the broad language of the Catechism and of our prayers ; and when that language is transferred from the Liturgy into any unauthorised forms, they pronounce it heretical. A friend and old pupil of mine sent me, only a fortnight ago, some family prayers of his, which he said his friends and neighbours among the clergy had declared to be very objectionable solely on this ground. I have been listening during the last week to sermons in this place, which are, I apprehend, good average specimens of watering-place divinity. The tone in them is uniform. 358 BEASONS FOB BESISTING [F. M. 54. In a certain 'sense all men being created by God are His children ; in a somewhat more enlarged sense that name may be given to the baptized, in the only true and important sense it is restricted to the true believers ; to those who are conscious of having Christ as their personal Saviour. In this way the Gospel of God to man is emptied of its power ; faith, not God, is made the source of every good and perfect gift. * Now, can one, who regards this inversion as one which is as much undermining the faith and morality of this generation as the glorification of works undermined the faith and morality of the sixteenth century, patiently consent that the Liturgy should be remodelled by the hands of those who are sanctioning it ? I am convinced that they are sanction- ing it against their higher and diviner instincts ; that the opposition to it comes from the striving of the Spirit of God in them ; that when they adopt the words of the Liturgy as it is, they are not affronting their consciences but only the opinions of their school. The distinction, I own, is a perilous one. I do not wish that they should be forced to make it. I would abolish the Act of Uniformity that they may not be forced to make it. I would do this with my eyes open ; knowing their power ; knowing the influence- they possess with the bench of bishops ; knowing that I and others who think with me are far safer under the protection of an Act of Parliament than we should be if left to the mercy of an ecclesiastical public opinion, dictated by the journals, executed by the episcopate. But such considera- tions ought not, I conceive, to move us in the least. Let us have an honest clergy at all hazards, or as honest a one as- we can get. But do not let us surrender the one great witness which we possess, that a nation consists of redeemed, men, sons of God, that mankind stands not in Adam but in Christ. Give up the Prayer-Book to an Evangelical or semi- Evangelical commission, and this witness will be elimi- nated from it by a thousand little alterations, which will be counted insignificant ; but which will in fact render the English Church another Church altogether. CHAP. XI.] THE BEVISION OF TEE LITUBGY. 359 ' But tlie Broad Church -^ill have its representatives in such a commission I " I do not know well what the Broad Church is. I always took it to be a fiction of Conybeare's. If it means anything, I suppose it is a representation, under different modifications, of that creed which is contained in "Whately's books, or of that which has arisen at Oxford out of the reaction against Tractarianism. Xow I must say that I would rather trust a living Book to the lowest churchman who had imbibed any of his lore from Xewton or Eomaine, than to these accomplished and tolerant persons. Personally I have the greatest respect for them ; so far as they protest against any cowardice and deceit in handling the Word of God, against any misrepresentations of sceptics,' [i.e., by orthodox men of sceptics] ' against traditional hardness or formality, so far I am willing to bear any disgrace with them. But that which seems to me the great disease of our time, that we talk about God and about our religion, and do not confess Him as a living God ; Himself the redeemer of men in His Son ; Himself the inspirer of all right thoughts, the guide into all truth by His Spirit, is characteristic of no school so much as of this (I mean when it resolves to be a school). The Liturgy has been to me a great theological teacher; a perpetual testimony that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, the one God blessed for ever, is the author of all life, freedom, unity to men ; that our prayers are nothing but responses to His voice speaking to us and in us. Why do I hear nothing of this from those who profess to reform it ? Why do they appear only to treat it as an old praying machine, which in the course of centuries gets out of order like other machines, and which should be altered according to the improved mechanical notions of our time ? Since I wrote my article Mr. Hildyard has done me the honour to send me his Ingoldsby Letters, which I had not seen before. I have read them with much respect for his ingenuity, and not protesting at all against his use of ridi- cule. VaJeat quantum vahlit ; if he has the gift of wit, by all means let him use it with the same sense of responsibility as 360 ON APPEALS TO HIGH AND TO BASE MOTIVES. any other gift. But I cannot say that I rise from his letters with the impression that he is likely to be the Luther or even the Erasmus of a new reformation. The inconvenience of a sixteenth century praying machine for the use of the nineteenth century, is continually present to his mind. I should have liked just one word to explain what he thinks praying in the Spirit is ; at least I should have wished that one who stands forth as a tribune of the inferior clergy against the bishops should speak to the nobler instincts in the inferior clergy, and should not take it for granted that they must be actuated by the very low motives which he attributes to those of the diocese of Lincoln. ' Your own method of handling the subject was, I am quite sure, distasteful to you. You would much rather have appealed to our spiritual instinct than to our material Interests, to our consciences than to our fears. You adopted the latter course because you thought it would be most elffectual for the object you were aiming at, though least agreeable to yourself. But must not this judgment, which I am sure you did not form without deliberation, make us a little suspicious of that object ? It is very well to say that, if we listen to the lower argument, you will afterwards meet us on the other ground. My dear sir, how can you ? We are debased and demoralised by that desire to promote our material interests, by that policy of over-reaching the more hostile Dissenters. We are not in condition to attend to those better lessons which you have kept back. Oh, surely the deeper we are sunk the more we want to have that strengthened in us which is ready to die ; the less we can bear any cultivation in us of that which is sordid or cowardly. ' I am sorry you thought I did not deal fairly with you about justice to the Dissenters. I knew that the part of your' pamphlet which referred to the fears of the clergy, was meant to be distinct from that which pleaded for compen- sation to the Nonconformists of this day, on the ground of the wrong that was done to their forefathers at the Eestora- tion. But you will see why, from my point of view, it was CHAP. XI.] EXTENSION MAY MEAN EXCLUSIVENESS. 361 impossible to recognise this distinction. I thought the argument you addressed to the fears of the clergy, involved an injustice to that which you yourself represented as the most increasing, if not the largest sect of the Dissenters, im- plicitly to the whole body of them. I thought that injustice w^as precisely the one which would have been committed at the Eestoration, if Baxter and the (so-called) moderate Presbyterians had been admitted as ministers of the National Church and so had acquired the power of putting down the Independents, Anabaptists, Eanters, Millenarians, Arians, Socinians. The justice which would remove certain passages 'Of the Liturgy now, because Baxter and his friends were cheated of their fair demands in 1661, could not, so I judged, have any other effect than to make the Church jiilus its recruits from the Dissenters a more exclusive body towards all the rest than it is at present. ^ I must apologise for this long letter. You may be right in thinking that the old Act of Uniformity is less likely to be repealed than a revision of the Liturgy to be sanctioned by a new Act of Uniformity. But as I regard the first measure as reasonable and justified by experience ; the second as unreasonable, and as refuted by experience ; the first as having many strong moral recommendations ; the second as deriving all its force from those appeals to fear and to material interests which you have pressed with so much ability, I surely am not bound to treat the two as only differing in strength and in degree. They are, I think, essentially and directly contrary propositions.' To his Wife. * July 7, 1860. * P. has asked me to breakfast on Thursday, to meet a Mr. Best, who, she quietly observes, is very useful to idiots ; so of course I must go.' In July 1860, he was appointed to the Chapel of St. Peter's, Vere Street. The incumbency was in the gift of the Crown 362 THE BECOBD OF A BY-GONE POWEB [1860. F. M. 54. through the Board of Works, of which Mr. William Cowper was Chief Commissioner. The Record was the more aghast that its arch-enemy should have had any appointment offered him by the Crown, because that appointment was made under the administration of Lord Palmerston, its favourite Minister, and by his own step-son. It sent forth a shriek of horror; called upon the clergy to protest, upon the Bishop of London to resist the appointment. It is difficult, in 1883, to convey an impression of the kind of influence which this newspaper had once exercised. Eighteen years before the date of which I am now writing, the Bishop of London had endeavoured by explicit directions to his clergy to solve the question of the hour. The Record thereupon issued its counter-mandate to London. It was gradually obeyed by the majority of the clergy and of their flocks. The Bishop, to escape the storm, judged himself compelled to abandon all those clergy who had obeyed him, and to approve the action of those who had refused to follow his advice. Its words were looked upon as a kind of oracle for all those who wished to be called " religious," and under the cover of the desire of the clergy to be so esteemed, it employed itself in the habitual practice of holding up to obloquy all who did not submit to its dictation. It maintained its own power, its own circulation, its own influence, by denouncing all who did not subscribe to its formulae. At one time when one of its accusing articles was published, the Standard, the Morning Advertiser, the Morning Herald, and the Jolin Bidl — not unfrequently the Morning Post — copied them verbatim, and the article was assumed to throw quite a halo round the page on which it was written. Moreover the practice in many Evangelical families in those days was very much like that of the Church of Kome in regard to an Index Expurgatorius. The formulas of the sect in their narrowest, in their least spiritual sense, were assumed to be so absolutely " the Truth," that there was something a little wicked, in even glancing at any books, which did anything more than formally repeat the received commandments of the men who assumed to themselves infallibility. CHAP. XL] AND A WBONGFUL TYBANNY, 363 An " Evangelical " clergyman who had my father's books upon his table required some courage, and was likely to suffer the next time he wanted to get help for parochial work from any established fund. Under cover of this security that no reply would reach their readers, the Record habitually repre- sented to them that my father's opposition to the paper was due to a hatred of Evangelicals as such. Seeing that for my father the body was represented by his sister Emma, the false- ness of this charge may be measured by those who have read his letters about her. Habitually also their mode of fighting him was to represent him as believing what he did not believe, often the exact contrary of that which he in the plainest terms declared that he did believe. No very clear evidence of the shrinking of the power of the Becord up to 1860 had appeared. The more submissive of its clients immediately proceeded therefore to obey its dictation, and an address signed by a small number of London clergymen was presented to the Bishop of London praying him not to institute my father to the ministry of the Yere Street Chapel. Such things were by no means matters of indifference to him. The fingers that were on every occasion stretched out to pull from the fire the chestnuts that many men felt ought to be withdrawn hj some one, were almost skinless in their exquisite sensitiveness. Much as he felt the difficulty that he had in reaching strangers, keenly as he was pained by the consciousness that to many good men he was presented in a light that would make him wish them to hate all that he was supposed to teach, there was one subject on which he was even more sensitive. His own practice of standing out instantly for justice in behalf of a man from whom he differed, who was for the moment unpopular and therefore the object of the attacks of all popularity hunters, made him dread to involve any one else in the obloquy he so drew upon himself He was therefore for ever putting in practice the story told of the eider-nest hunter, who cut the rope above his own basket, fearing that if he did not thus send himself to the bottom of the precipice the weight 364 LETTEB TO AN OLD FBIEND [1860. F, M. 54. would be too great to be drawn up safely to the top. With the greatest wish to keep up his connection with old friends, and with a great delight in any successes that attended their career, he yet as soon as any of his friends began to arrive at positions of importance in the world, more and more tended to throw on them the whole task of keeping up the friendship, and on very slender provocation was ready to sever the link lest his unpopularity should drag them down. It was there- fore very shyly that at this moment he asked one of his oldest friends, who had become a dignitary of the Church, to put his signature to the paper which is required by law to be signed by three clergymen on an incumbent being inducted into a living. The other facts are explained in the letter itself. , ^ ' Lillesliall, Ne\v])ort Salop, Aus^ust 23, 18G0. ' My dear Q., ' 1 r> o » ' AVhen I left my letter at the Athenaeum I had great doubts whether it would come into your hands before the time in which I must go to the Bishop. As I was bound to ask for testimonials from those who knew me, I could not quite make up my mind not to apply to you, as you had known me longer than any clergyman in the diocese. At the same time, I had great misgivings lest I should be putting you into an uncomfortable position. I therefore directed my note to the club, leaving the result to the accident of your calling there. It has turned out just as I should have wished. You have been saved from an embarrassment ; and my request has procured me the frank and friendly letter which I received yesterday. My only regret is that you should have waited for such an occasion to admonish me respecting any statement of mine about sacrifice, or any other subject which seemed to you erroneous. I think I should have been most grateful for any hints you could give me ; that I should have defended myself if I thought your objections were untenable, and have confessed that I was wrong if you showed me that I was. As I do not know to ,, what particular passages in my books you object, I must CHAP. XI.] TO EXPLAIN HIS COUBSE IN LIFE. 365 speak somewhat at random. But I may be explicit even if I do not refer to specific points ; there is no subject upon which I desire more to be explicit. ' Every year and day convinces me more that our preaching will be good for nothing if the main subject of it is not the atonement of God with man in Christ — if we may not pro- claim His sacrifice as a finished work ; if we may not ground all our sacrifices upon it ; if we stop short of the Eucharistic proclamation that God of His tender mercy hath given us His Son to be a full, perfect, and sufiicient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. Any notions, theories, practices, which interfere with the fulness of this Gospel deprive men, it seems to me, of a blessing which has been bestowed upon them and to which they have a right— deprive them of the only effectual foundation for social and individual reformation. * What I say of preaching, I say also of prayers. If they are separated from the confession and presentation of the perfect Sacrifice, once made — if they are not petitions that the will which is expressed in that sacrifice may be done on earth as it is in Heaven, if they are not presented through the High Priest and Mediator within the veil — they are, in my judg- ment, not Christian prayers. I say not that they are inefi'ectual ; for it is He who makes prayers efi'ectual which are very dark and ignorant (otherwise what would become of us ?) ; but I say that they are anticipations of a Gospel- attempts to reach an unknown, unrevealed God — not derived from the Gospel of God, from the revelation of the perfectly righteous and loving Being in the perfect Mediator. * Starting from these premises, I am bound to say that I do look upon many of the most popular statements respecting the Atonement, as interfering with the fulness of this Gospel, as interfering with the finished work of Christ, as robbing an immense portion of mankind of the blessing which the Bible declares to be theirs, as having the effect of inverting prayers, of divorcing them from Christ's sacrifice, of changing them into petitions that God's will should not be done, but 366 ''NOTIONS I REJECT:' AND WEY. [1860. F. M. 54. should be changed. I look upon these popular notions as exceedingly natural, as embodying thoughts and feelings which every man ought to be acquainted with in himself, and to deal most tenderly with in others, as containing elements of old pre-Evangelical philosophy which all students and divines ought to be familiar with ; but as forming no part of the message from God to man, except so far as that message meets all the confused speculations and anticipations of the human heart, and satisfies its inner craving after God, and its secret testimonies respecting Him, by sweeping away the dark imaginations which it must form of Him when it creates Him after its own likeness. All notions respecting a conflict in the Divine mind between the claims of justice and mercy; all notions of the Son winning from the Father that which did not proceed from His own free, gracious will ; all notions which substitute the deliverance from punishment for the deliverance from sin ; all notions which weaken the force of the words, or make them anything less than the classical words on this matter, ^' Lo, I come to do thy will, oh God," are, it seems to me, of this kind, subversive of the Divine lievelation, Eationalistic in the worst sense of that word, not to be countenanced or tolerated ; to be avoided even at the risk of parting with words in themselves innocent and useful (provided they are not Scriptural words, which will always be found safe and sufficient) ; not to be played with or tampered with from any worldly calculation that the humble and meek cannot afford to dispense with them, seeing that the humble and meek crave for the pure milk of God's word that they may grow thereby, and are cruelly treated when those whom they reverence introduce any adulterations into it ; or from any equally worldly calculations that those who doubt or deny the Atonement will take courage from the effort to separate the Gospel and the Church message concerning it from the elements which have defiled it, seeing that these elements are the great justification of their unbelief to the consciences of the sincere, seeing that those who merely cultivate unbelief as a profession, hate nothing WHENCE COMES THE DANGEB OF THE AGE. 367 so much as these efforts to distinguish, and as those who make them. These are my convictions, which have grown stronger and stronger in me in every day, so far as the grandeur and necessity of the divine Atonement has been more manifested to me ; weaker and weaker so far as I have lost sight of it, or have not given thanks for it. They have been accompanied by an ever deepening feeling that the danger of this age as of all previous ages — of the age in which our Lord dwelt on earth in human flesh most conspicuously — is not chiefly from those who consciously or unconsciously depart from orthodoxy ; but from those who make orthodoxy an excuse for denying the Union of the Father with the Son, the perfect Manifestation of the Father in the Son ; the desire of the Father and the Son by the Spirit to bring all men into the obedience of the Truth. I have therefore been found, and by God's grace I hope still to be found (when I am obliged to fight), fighting always against the popular not the unpopular men of the day. I may differ almost as widely from Mr. Jowett as from Mr. Mansel ; but I join issue with Mr. Mansel, and not with Mr. Jowett, (1) because I believe he is doing a thousand times as much mischief as Mr. Jowett ; (2) because the latter has won his way to the hearts of his disciples by real labours in their behalf and sympathy with them, and any attacks on him are felt as personal injuries by these, and confirm them in allegiance to what is wrong in his creed ; and because the latter wins Ms disciples by making them content at once with their belief and with their un- belief, with their orthodox opinions and their inward Atheism. These are examples of the course which I have followed and mean to follow. Nor shall I ever take any pains not to be confounded with Mr. Jowett or any unpopular man from whom I strongly dissent. In general, they will disclaim me as a " muddy mystic." But I shall not separate myself from them except by preaching very earnestly the truths which they appear now to keep in abeyance, by always appealing to Scripture as the authority for my statements ; by clinging more tenaciously than ever to the words of our 3G8 A STBANGEB'S EXPLANATION [F. M. 54. creeds and prayers. I shall adopt no other method of distinguishing myself from them, lest I should lead any to suppose that I am less at war with the popular notions to which I have alluded than they are. Whereas I helieve that I am more at war with these notions, just because I wish nothing omitted in the Scriptural statements of the principles to which they are attached, nothing changed in our Liturgical statements of them ; because I appeal to them and no other against the distinctions and contradictions of the time. Your frankness entitled you to this frankness from me. I will gladly explain at any time any expressions of mine which you think require explanation.' At this time other clerical journals took their cue from the Record. During the course of the controversy a stranger to my father, struck by the absence of any effort on the part of " religious " newspapers to state truthfully the actual nature of the views they were opposing, sent the following letter to my father to ask if he might, with his authority, put it forward as a correct statement. To the Editor of the ' Clerical JournaV ' Sir, * August 4, I860. * Will you allow me to say in the ' Clerical Journal ' that Mr, Maurice's teaching on the subject of eternal punishment has been utterly misunderstood by most of those whom I have ever heard speak on the subject from hearsay, and by many whose words I have read in newspapers and reviews ? * Mr. Maurice may be right in what he teaches, or he may be wrong ; with the question of the truth of his doctrine I shall not here meddle at all. I presume not to be either his advocate or his opponent. I do not profess to be his disciple, but merely a careful reader of his works ; and I desire now only to state what it is which Mr. Maurice does not say, which yet he is generally accused of saying ; and also to state what he really does say. ' So far is Mr. Maurice from denying the doctrine of eternal CHAP. XI.] OF F, B, M'S. POSITION. 369 punisliment, that I have no hesitation in affirming that no man has ever more emphatically asserted the eternal and everlasting punishment and damnation of the wicked. He is continually declaring that the Lord God, merciful and gracious, will by no means clear the guilty, either in this world or in that which is to come, — that there is no possibility of escape for the wicked out of the everlasting and unquenchable fire which God has kindled and prepared for the devil and his angels. He asserts with all vehemence that if a man continues everlastingly wicked he will most certainly be everlastingly tormented. What he denies is that we are plainly told in Holy Scripture, or that the English Church requires us to hold, that a wicked man must remain everlastingly a wicked man, or that death must be regarded as placing an impassable barrier against a sinner's return from sin to righteousness, or that the victory of Eternal Love over sin is impossible unless it be gained during this mortal life. Any one who has attentively read Mr. Maurice's writings will, I think, acknowledge that the real question at issue is not whether punishment of the iviehed is everlasting, but whether we have Scriptural warrant for saying that the wickedness of any man is everlasting, and after a certain time absolutely invincible by the good God, — whether deliverance from sin, and the gift of righteousness, is onit/ possible in this world, — whether Holy Scripture anywhere lays down limits of space and time for the operation of God's grace and redemption. ' The first step in any controversy ought to be to know the exact question controverted. This step certainly has not been taken by very many of the loudest protestors against the doctrine supposed to be taught by Mr. Maurice. ' I am, sir, your obedient servant, *E. G/ My father's answer was as follows : — TOL. II. 370 ANSWEB TO STBANGEB'S EXPLANATION. [F. M. 54. * My dear Sir, ' Russell Square, W.C., August 9, 1860. * You have stated my convictions on the subject of punishment most accurately. I do, as you say, desire to assert the inseparable union of sin with misery, and the impossibility of any blessing to man till he is delivered from sin. I desire also to assert that the pure and holy will of God is always in conflict with that which is evil and rebellious in the will of the creature, and that when we pray " Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven," we do not pray a vain prayer, but one which our Lord taught us, and which He presents with His own sacrifice to His Father. * I desire also to use the word eternal or everlasting in that sense in which I find it used in Scripture, in the creeds, and in the prayers of the Church, and in the devotions of good men, viz., as appertaining primarily and expressly to God, and therefore as distinct from and opposed to temiJoral. ' The goodness, justice, love, truth which cannot be measured by days, months, years, centuries, I think are the eternal things ; to have these is to have eternal life, to be without these is to be in death. God's grace does raise us out of this death here ; I cannot confine it by any bounds of space or time.' *P.S. I have expressed, very imperfectly, how much I am indebted to you for your kindness in trying to clear me personally of an unjust imputation, because I value so much more, and I am sure you do, any zeal for the interests of truth, than even the most gratifying tokens of individual regard. Not that I underrate them; I find them most cheering.* Many things had changed since the Becord had won its great victory over the Bishop of London in 1842-1846. In the first place, the bishop was changed. Tait had succeeded to Blomfield in 1856. In the second place, my father's battle against. what he believed to be the immoral and godless domination of anonymous religious journalism, for long an all but solitary fight, was solitary no longer. Though in scarcely a single CHAP. XI.] THE FALL OF A TYRANNY. 871 instance those whom he had defended when in a minority and the object of attacks, had shown any disposition to be grateful to a man whose opposition to their opinions was not the less efiective because it aimed at doing them justice, others who by no means shared in all his views, had keenly appreciated the moral grandeur of his position, and there was now no lack of warm personal friends to arrange for the expression of a widely extended feeling. The Record, therefore, and all its works met with a defeat so crushing that virtually from this moment it ceased to be a serious power for harm. Up to 1860 it needed some courage for a clergyman, at least one not belonging to the High Church party, to do what his conscience bade him, if the Record said one thing and his conscience another. After 1860 a man was a manifest poltroon who feared to try a fall with the defeated thing.* It is not too much to say that the address to be now given thus served as a letter of emancipation for the clergy, for it was the direct result of the effort of the Record to exercise its old tyranny in the case of all others in which it was most anxious to exercise it. The address issued in obedience to the Record had secured in all about twenty signatures of the London clergy, no name of importance having been published among them. The counter address to my father was signed by men of every position in life, receiving 332 clerical and 487 lay signatures. The clerical included those of the Bishops of St. David's, Limerick and Labuan, seven deans, numerous canons and prebendaries, four archdeacons, other Church dignitaries, Begins professors, masters and fellows of colleges, by far the greater number of the head masters of the chief public schools, and other educational bodies of the country, with a large number of signatures from other men engaged in education, and 125 * It is a quaint indication of the change that has come over the spirit of the times that, whereas the one argument that was used to a young clergy- man a few years ago was, " If you dare to say what you believe to be right and true where it differs from us, we will take care that your prospects are ruined " ; now the single doubt that occurs to any one is whether it is worth while to follow to its end the history of the fall of what was once a most cruel and wrongful tyranny. I think it is. 2 B 2 872 THE ADDBESS, [F. M. 54. incumbents of parishes. The lay signatures contained many- representative names — Mr. Gladstone's, Mr. Alfred Tennyson's, those of men of mark in almost every position of life ; peers, members of the House of Commons, barristers, physicians, men in public offices of every kind, officers in the army, people in the country, and in various provincial towns. That no effort had been made merely to collect as many names as j)0ssible, in fact that the attempt had been to restrict the list to those who personally meant what was said in it, was some- what quaintly shown by the appearance of three ladies' names, and three only, and by the number, which might then easily have been increased, of working-men, of whom a little over a hundred in all had signed in various places. The names had of course been collected without any existing machinery. Mr. Ludlow, Mr. Davies, and Dean Hook had been throughout the prime movers. My father had, to his no small surprise, become aware of the movement whilst it was being carried on, by seeing the advertisement announcing it in the Times. The address ran thus : — ' Friday, August, 24, 1860. * Keverend and dear Sir, ' We, the undersigned members of the Church of England, clerical and lay, beg to tender to you our respectful con- gratulations on your recent nomination by the Crown to the Incumbency of Oxford Chapel, St. Marylebone, as a slight and tardy recognition of your eminent services, not only as one of the most learned theologians of the day, but more particularly as a wise and benevolent co-operator with the working classes of the community, upon whose minds you have been eminently successful in bringing to bear the practical truths of the Gospel, and in leading them to regard the Church of our common Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, as the great instrument designed by Providence for the re- generation of mankind and the elevation of society. ' Some of us know from experience the mighty influence for good which you have exercised and continue to exercise on AND BE PLY. the intelligent but not always rightly directed masses of our brethren in the humbler walks of life, to w^hose service you have devoted the great powers of a cultivated mind and a disinterested heart. ' What will render this address the more gratifying to you is that upon many important questions of theology we differ among ourselves, and some of us stand opposed to certain peculiarities of your own teaching ; but as we trust Ave are all united in our several vocations in the one object of promoting glory to God in the highest, peace upon earth and good-will towards men, we hail with satisfaction the honour done to a fellow-labourer in the great cause.' Bejohj (cifter tlie presentation of the address some months later). ' 5, Iiussell Square, November 27, 1860. ' My Lords and Gentlemen, * I could not thank you as heartily as I do thank you, for the cheering words you have addressed to me, if I possessed the merits for wdiich you have given me credit. * I have no right to be considered a learned theologian. I am too jealous of the honour of the body to which I belong, the learning of which is so faithfully represented in the persons who have affixed their names to the address, not to shrink from such a title. I have felt the close connection between the learning of the schools and the life of the world. I have tried to save those over whom I had an influence from separating them. But I have made them aware of my deficiencies, and have urged them to seek a culture which I could not impart. * Neither can I assume to myself any special zeal on behalf of the labouring classes. I have endeavoured to show the few of them with whom I have been brought in contact that my office as a clergyman obliges me to care for them ; that the Bible contains a message to them which no other book contains; that, if they receive that message, their work will become honourable, that every study in which they can engage will throw light upon their work. But I never 371 BEPLY TO ADDBESS. BONDS [1860. F. 31. 55. witness the labours to which my brethren either in town or country are devoting themselves, without a feeling of shame, without perceiving that they are making sacrifices for the poor which I have not made, and are finding their way to hearts which I have not reached. ' Least of all can I complain of the neglect from which you seem to think that I have suffered. Few persons, I believe, have been equally fortunate, even in the most ordinary sense of that word. Since I have been in Orders, I have never failed of obtaining any office which I have sought. Many favours have been bestowed uj)on me — that recent one which has given occasion to your kind address among them — without any solicitation at all. ' But I accept your words with profound thankfulness to you, and to a Higher than you, as an English Churchman and as a fellow-worker. That you have thought it right as well as generous, a duty to yourselves as well as to me, publicly to acknowledge me in that character — so linking distinguished names with one which has been only rescued from insignifi- cance by becoming specially unpopular with the organs of all the religious schools in the land — I regard as a sign, perhaps the most remarkable which our time has furnished, that the most steadfast members of the English Church prize, and are willing to seize, all occasions, even those which appear at first most unpromising, for declaring that they regard the bond of Churchmanship as an altogether different bond from that which holds the disciples of a school together, and that, with God's help, they will not suffer one to be substituted for the other. If a few hundreds could feel it important to assert this distinction by claiming fellowship with a person like me, what tens of thousands must be awakening to the sense of it! What a divine power must be at work among us, to resist the powers which are striving to tear us asunder ! * I am certain, my Lords and Gentlemen, that this feeling is not, as some pretend, the result of indifference to positive truths ; that it does not indicate the least disloyalty in any €HAP. XI.] OF UNION TBUE AND FALSE. 375 of you to the traditions you have received from brave and godly fathers, the least carelessness about the conclusions to I which you have been led by your own struggles. You want all the most earnest belief of all the schools for the service of Christ ; you are sure that He can harmonise them and use them for His ends ; you are sure that to lose any of them is to lose some aspect of truth, some power that may help to quicken and renovate the age. You know, from the records of history, what has happened when any sect or school has become dominant ; that it has been changed from a witness for Christ into a witness for itself; that the vital convictions which were dear to its founders pass into dead I notions and an unmeaning phraseology ; that opposition to other schools becomes the chief token that it retains any energy of its own. Therefore you are proving your reverence for the memories of pious ancestors, your gratitude for the lessons which they have bequeathed to you, your determina- tion that their legacies shall not be perishing heirlooms, but trusts for the generations to come, when you do what in you lies that the school, whatever it be, to which they were attached, may not lose all its power as an instrument of blessing to the Church, through a suicidal ambition to absorb the Church into itself. ' I thank you for saying, in plain terms, that you have not signed this address because you sympathise with any opinions which I hold, or am supposed to hold, which are different from those of the majority of my countrymen. Such an assurance could not be necessary in the case of my fathers and elder brothers in the Church, whose minds have been formed under a discipline altogether different from mine, who are fit, by their wisdom and experience, to be my teachers. But it may be desirable, for the sake of younger men who have, at some risk of misinterpretation, put their names to this document, precisely because they wished to declare that they did not exclude from Christian brotherhood one with whose sentiments they greatly disagreed. There are a few, I know, among you, who have learned, or fancy 376 A MAN HAS NO LESS BIGHT TO CLAIM [I860. they have learned, something from words which they have heard or read of mine. I am not afraid that thei/ should suspect me of wishing any to fraternise with me on the ground of similarity in opinions. They well know that I took refuge in the Church of England, in which I had not been educated, because, as I thought, it offered me an altogether different bond of fraternity from that. A society merely united in opinion had, it seemed to me, no real cohesion ; it must exalt that which a man or a multitude troweth, above the truth, or must suppose them to be identical. It will be very positive, yet it will have no permanent resting-place. It will be always changing ; never growing. It will be alternately persecuting and Latitudinarian ; it will be equally far from steady belief and genuine tolerance. The Church of England confesses a Father, who has revealed Himself in a Son; a Son, who took our nature and became Man, and has redeemed men to be His children ; a Spirit who raises men to be spirits. She invites all to stand on that ground. She tells all — so I read her formularies — that they have no less right to claim their places in her as members of Christ than they have to claim their places in the nation as subjects of the Queen, and in their families as children of an earthly father and mother. This was a rock upon which I felt that I could rest. It was a foundation for a universal human society. If no such society existed, history seemed to me a hopeless riddle, human life very intolerable. If it did exist, it could not crush national life or family life, but must cherish and sustain both. It could stifle no thought; it must thrive when it suffered persecution, grow weak when- ever it inflicted persecution. It must be ready to embrace all persons. It could never seek to comprehend any sect. It must be the great instrument of healing the strife of classes within a nation. It must proclaim Christ as the Deliverer and Head of all nations. * Those few friends to whom I have alluded will know that these principles are the stafl" of my own life, and that they ELS PLACE LN TEE CEUBCE TEAN LN TEE NATION. 377 are those which I have set forth in different ways for the last twenty-five years to all who have been brought in any wise under my influence. They will know that I should account them traitors to the lessons we have learnt together if they became members of a party ; or used my name as the- badge of one ; or repeated my phrases ; or made use of my hints, for any other purpose than as helps to a higher knowledge and a better practice than mine. They therefore will understand me and believe me when I say, that nothing can be so satisfactory to me as to be recognised by those who care nothing for my formulas or my interpretations, but who care, more than words can express, that the Church should not lose its freedom or catholicity, should not become one of those sects which aim at its destruction, and which, as we trust, God intends it to destroy. * I have thought it a duty to you, my Lords and Gentlemen, not to let my gratitude mar the good which this address of yours may do to a cause which is more important to the world than all of us together. You will believe that it has cost me some effort to restrain a more enthusiastic expression of the personal delight which your words have given me. And I may say in conclusion, that, trying to look upon them as impartially as I can, I do feel that your kindness to an individual man has not enfeebled your testimony to a great principle. The less important that individual man is, the more strikingly does your consideration for him illustrate your feeling of the nature and the width of our Church fellowship. It gives him a right to wish you, in you? diflferent spheres of labour, and in your own hearts, all the blessings which that fellowship implies.' On Sunday September 9, 1860, he " read himself in " at St. Peter's, and preached two sermons published immediately afterwards on ' The Faith of the Liturgy,' and ' The Doctrina of the Thirty-nine Articles.' " I think," he writes to Mr. Macmillan, " it is fair to the Bishop, to the congregation, and to those who have so kindly 378 WOBKING-COLLEGES. BUSINESS PBINCIPLES. joined in the address to me, that I should publish them. They contain a statement of the grounds on which I accept the Prayer-book and the Articles." At this time he was frequently engaged in going about the country to different towns where an effort was being made to set up working-men's colleges. They had been started at Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, Salford, Ancoats, Sheffield, Halifax, Wolverhampton, Glasgow, Birkenhead, and Ayr. To Mr. J. J/. Ludlow. ' Trees, September 11, 1860. ' I have just returned from Wolverhampton, where we had an excellent meeting at the Working Men's College, and after- wards one of the Society of Arts, for which many of the men here got certificates. Langley and the new rector are working the thing admirably. ' And now what am I to say about the address, in which I can almost see you were a principal mover? I can only say that it was just like you to think of it ; and that the words, exaggerated as they are, have been a greater comfort and encouragement to me, than I can express. I thank you for it from my heart. I only hope I may be more what you have always wished me to be, and tried to make me. I have a world of things to repent of at Lincoln's Inn. May God enable me to begin a new life.' A short time before the breaking out of the civil war in America, the State of Maryland, fired by the passionate pro- slavery spirit which the excitement connected with the approaching struggle engendered in some of the southern states, passed a law, the practical effect of which was to enslave the whole free black population of the state. It happened that at the moment a considerable portion of my father's property was invested in the State funds. He was so horrified at the iniquity of the decree that he immediately had the money sold out, thereby, as it turned out, on very unbusiness- like principles, saving tlie whole of it from absolute loss. IS THE ''NEWS " OF THE ATONEMENT " GOOD NEWS? " 379 To Rev. D. J. Vaughan. ' Lilleshall, Newport, September 18, 1860. * The sermons I liked very much indeed. I am sure they are what was wanted, and that you have spoken the truth to some ears which will hear it ; of course, to many which will be scandalised by it. There may be aspects of the Atone- ment, there must be, which you and I have not perceived ; but that it is a duty to set it forth as a gospel to mankind, and not in a form which is not and cannot be a gospel, seems to me more certain every day. I have lately been preaching (at my reading in) on the Prayer-book and on the Articles. It has been a great comfort to me to feel how entirely one is speaking in the spirit of both when one is setting forth the full, perfect, sufficient sacrifice made for the sins of the whole world, and when one is not trying to reduce that sacrifice to earthly rules and measures. * I was delighted to hear that you were making way among the Unitarians at Leicester. I am well convinced that what they require is a more complete statement of the full truth of the Trinity and the Atonement ; that they want no di- lution of either, that it is the popular dilution of both which has outraged their consciences. The entire union of the Father with the Son is what we have to assert if we would overcome the notion of a Son who changes the Father's will. * I have been taking duty for Henry de Bunsen. His father, I fear, is dying. He will be a loss to the world and a greater to his friends. His gifts never seemed to me so remarkable as his heart, which is a most wide and tender one.' In December, 1860, difficulties arose which caused the closing of the Women's classes at the Working Men's College." Another subject was causing trouble. The effect of the mis-statements about him made by the religious newspapers — in leading men to join him simply on the ground of his supposed tendency to criticise or to modify the Christian faith — had made it a serious danger lest the College should 380 PBACTICAL DIFFICULTIES. [F. M. 55, be used for a purpose the exact opposite of that which he and his friends desired. His resolute determination not to excom- municate, his unwillingness to judge, his belief in the recog- nition of the voice of conscience by any man as a recognition of the presence and personal government of Christ, his sense that it was not for him to dictate the mode in which expression should be given in words to that recognition, and his dread of forming a party, if he once began to draw a line and to refuse those who were willing to follow the example of the great Sacrifice by making sacrifices themselves — all these feelings made such a situation peculiarly difficult for him, and continually led him to look upon resignation as the only resource open to him. The letter to Mr. Hughes which follows, will set forth his views. It is necessary, however, to remember always that which he never points out — that the difficulties in the way of this kind of Christian influence were in no way the result of the failure of the principles he advocated, but always the direct result of the misrepresentations and of the readiness of mankind to greedily devour second-hand gossip. He himself does not point this out in this letter or elsewhere, because he always looked upon it as his first duty to judge himself and to accuse himself of whatever went wrong. To Mr. Hughes. ' 5 Paisscll Square, W.C., January 3, 1861. * I see with much satisfaction that Harrison's name does not appear in the new programme. Is that in consequence of any representations of yours ? Still this omission does by no means meet the evil of which we were speaking the other day. I feel that I ought to make some frank and full statement of the principles which at all events govern my own mind in all thoughts and plans for education, and for the working-men. I wish it to be clearly understood that I do not plead for a modified Christianity, for one less strong and definite than that which is held by the extremest section of the Kecordite School that I find fault with their Christianity only because TEE FACTS OF THE CREEDS AGAINST THE WORLD. 381 it seems to me to have nothing to do with Christ, to be a mere religious system constructed by human speculation, made up of crude philosophical notions and popular superstitions, and alien from that revelation of the living and true God which I find set forth in Scripture. I hold that for the reformation of the age, most especially for the elevation of the working classes, we want a firmer, fuller, more loving theology, such a theology as I find in the creeds of the Church. If that is vigorously set forth, I care not how many Records, Guardians, Essays and Revieics, Saturday Revieivs, Westminster Reviews, set forth their theories, with how much scorn and bitterness any of them are mingled. All are necessary for the development and mani- festation of the truth. Come one, come all, the truth if it can be spoken out will be too strong for them. It is only that which is not truth that trembles, at one statement or another, at one contradiction or another. But if we speak, as I have done, only in muttered accents, in cowardly whispers, our position must be mistaken. It must be sup- joosed that we do not mean what we profess to mean, but are uttering lies in church, and modifying them as much as we can in the world. That Records and Westminster Revieivs should hold one to be a mixture of rascal and fool selling one's soul for a bit of bread, is a thing of course ; one ought not to be the least disturbed about that. But that the people, especially the people of our own College, should be in doubt about our sincerity is more serious, for their own sake, not ours. This, therefore, I think we should earnestly labour to prevent.' The next letter is in answer to one published in Miss Wynn's 'Memorials,' p. 279, referring to a sermon on the collect for the fourth Sunday in Advent. 382 TEE CUBE OF FALSE CONCEPTIONS. [F. M. 55. To Miss Williams Wynn, * January 4, 1861. * I am much delighted that the sermon met your difficulties. I find more and more how much we lose, either by taking up with the merely scholastical idea of satisfaction, or by simply throwing that aside as hard and ungenial, without seeking for the truth which is involved in it. The violence with which some are casting off all belief in mediation and intercession, because the popular representations of them are so bewildered, and often so inconsistent with the righteousness and truth of God, shocks, though it does not surprise me. I should suppose that every false conception is corrected and cured only by the principle which it contrasts and caricatures, never by a denial.' During the year 1860 had been published the volume of ' Essays and Eeviews.' It had attracted very little attention till an article appeared in the ^ Westminster Eeview ' in October 1860 entitled " Neo-Christianity," claiming the book as evi- dence of the adhesion to the " Westminster's " views of a body of clergy. The greatest excitement was immediately produced. Scenes followed, which had at all events the unfortunate ap- pearance of being more due, to the anxiety of individual clergy- men not to be associated with men for the moment unpopular, than to any very earnest faith. The " Episcopal movements about the * Essays and Eeviews'" have been recently very fully described in Bishop Wilberforce's 'Life.' The article in the * Quarterly Eeview' of January 1861 was written by Bishop Wilberforce. To the Bev. A. P. Stanley. ' 5 Eussell Square, W.C., February 12, 1861. * My dear Stanley, * I am greatly distressed at the Episcopal movement about the * Essays and Eeviews.' As my only hope of resisting the devil CHAP. XI.' OBTHODOXT AS A COVEB FOB ATHEmi. 383 "worsliip of the religious world lies in preaching the full revelation of God in Christ set forth in the Bible, I cannot have much sympathy v^ith the book generally. But I look upon the efforts to suppress it as mere struggles to keep off the question, " What dost thou believe ? dost thou believe in anything ? " which must be forced upon each of us, the bishops included. The orthodoxy which covers our Atheism must be broken through, and whether it is done by the ' Essays and Eeviews ' or in any other way, seems to me a matter of indifference, though it is not a matter of indiffer- ence whether the Church shall be committed to a new persecution which must make the new reformation, when it comes, more complicated and terrible. I never have any conversation with Trench on any serious topic, and do not the least know what he thinks about things in heaven or earth. He seems to me an alarmist like the rest. K the Bishop of Oxford did wi'ite the article in the ' Quarterly ' it seems to me very shocking, first, that he should attack his own clergy anonymously ; and second, that he should utter vulgar jokes about Bunsen, whom he knew, and for whom he professed esteem.' To the Bishop of ArgyU (Dr. Eurinq). ' 5 Eussell Square, February 28, 1861. * The Charge which you were so very kind as to send me delighted me more than I can express. I did not know at first where to send you my thanks for it, afterwards I was ashamed at having delayed to do so for so long. It seemed to me just what one longed to hear for the sake of Scotland and of England too. ' I shall feel very much honoured indeed if you would occupy my pulpit any time during your stay in London, and plead in it the cause of your diocese. I have as yet had no collections. I suppose I ought to begin with our dispensary and one or two local charities. After that if you will kindly appear in the morning (for the congregation is very much larger then). 584 [F. M. 55. you will be Avelcomed, I am sure, by tlie people as well as tlie minister. ' Thank you very mucli for allowing me to see dear Mr. Erskine's letters. They are like everything he writes and speaks — full of life, love and instruction. All that he says of sacrifice as the antagonist principle and power to selfishness I inwardly recognise as true and most Scriptural. But I think the only begotten Son, the Head of the race, has by His sacrifice redeemed us out of the power of the devil, the spirit of selfishness, and that this redemption is the necessary groundwork for that operation of the Spirit of love and sacrifice on our hearts to raise us above the power of that enemy. It is in this way that the old doctrine of the Church of a baptism into the name of the Father, the Son, the Spirit, the one God blessed for ever, appears to me to comprehend what he and Mr. Campbell say, and to be a gospel to mankind, which their teaching, though most purifying and elevating to the individual, scarcely can be. But I am not the less grateful to them for bringing forth a side of truth which is so set at nought, and the neglect of which involves the dark and terrible notion that Christ's sacrifice redeems us from the power of His Father, not from the power of the enemy and destroyer. I feel, as Mr. Erskine does, how hopeless it is to extract any theology or humanity from the ' Essays and Eeviews.' But I cannot think that the fears which are expressed of them betoken much confidence in the Bible or in God. One can only hope that the discussion may lead us to seek a deeper foundation than the essayists or their opponents appear to deem necessary. * With many thanks for your remembrance of me.' To Mr. Hughes, ' 3 Queen Square, Bath, March 9, 18G1. I send you a note of Clark's which I think you should consider and show to Davies, Ludlow and Stanley. What I think might be desirable would be a statement of reasons for not TOLERATION BASED ON CERTAINTY OF TRUTH. 385 joining in the address to the Archbishop,* which I see was to be presented some day this week, or is to be presented some day next week. I do not say that these reasons need appear at once or that they need be unanimous. Different persons may see different objections to that proceeding, and may state them differently. It might be considered whether they could or could not be put forward together. My own reasons would involve a statement of this kind : (1) Accepting the Trinity in Unity as the foundation of a Universal Church, I find from ecclesiastical history that every attempt to put down some heresy which interferes with the full acknow- ledgment of that truth has begotten some other heresy which equally interferes with the full acknowledgment of it. (2) That I therefore discern in this history a clear and direct sentence of God upon all attempts to restrain the expression of thought and belief, even if that expression takes ever so negative and contradictory form, because by restraining it, I only introduce another negative and contradiction. (3) That I therefore base toleration not upon the uncertainty of truth, but upon its certainty ; not upon the absence of a revelation of it, but upon the existence of revelation, and upon the promise that the Spirit of Truth shall guide us into the perception of it. (4) That the English Church from various circumstances of its position, from its possession of creeds, from its repudiation of any infallible mortal guides, from its national unsectarian character, is specially bound to assert this ground, and that the conscience of the nation, in spite of the prejudices of Statesmen and Churchmen, has asserted it and does assert it. (5) That the full recognition of diversity of opinion in this sense is necessary to the safety of the truth and of the Church, and that all supposed necessity of vindicating our formularies from the attacks of those who have subscribed to them (or as the Saturday Review puts it, of vindicating the property of a corporation to those who accept the terms on which it is established) must in the minds of devout and earnest • Against * Essays and Reviews/ VOL. II. 2 c 386 UNBELIEF THE CAUSE OF PEBSECUTION. [F. M. 55. people be subordinate to this. (6) That if ^Ye take this course we shall acknowledge the Bible, in a more full sense than we have ever done, as a message from God to human beings; not being embarrassed by the various in- terpretations of it, each of which is in itself narrow and partial, each of which may contribute something in God's hands to the elucidation of its full purpose. (7) That the great fault of the ' Essays and Eeviews ' is, in the judgment of most men, their heretical tendency ; that is to say, their inclination to set up some special individual opinion against the faith of mankind. Supposing the charge is true, to what- ever extent it is true, those who oppose them must vindicate their own faith, by showing that they do not wish to set up separate opinions ; that they do confess a faith for mankind, and that this cannot be done by trying to suppress or crush any special opinion. (8) That the unbelief of the time — which is more deep, more widely spread, than those who complain of the ' Essays and Reviews \ have any notion, but which is not hopeless, because God lives and is mightier than man or devil — has its roots in the notion that there is not a common faith for mankind, and that all that Churchmen and believers in the Bible can do is, if they have power, to silence each other.' Soon afterwards it was agreed that the friends should publish a series of pamphlets under the old title of ' Tracts for Priests and People,' a title which he had had in his mind, almost from the date of 3Ir. Daniel ^lacmillan's first ac- quaintance with him. 3Ir. Ludlow sent him the following paper as a proposed statement of the design of the tracts. " It is proposed that a set of papers be issued bearing on the religious questions treated of in ^Essays and Eeviews,* but considered from a strictly positive point of view. Apart from any particular errors the teaching of that volume is essentiaUy negative. If it is to be met at all it must be by a distinct and steadfast assertion of the truths which are there, to some extent, ignored. Till now the volume has been met only by CHAP. XI.] ' TBACTS FOB PRIESTS AND PEOPLE: 387 denials and denunciations. Upon a mere denial of a negation nothing ^Yhatever can be built. The writers of the proposed series will be all members of the Church of England, not mere attendants at her services, but men who, from very diflferent starting-points, have been led to feel that her ritual is the truest embodiment of our national worship. They hold the •doctrine of the Trinity in Unity to express profound relations existing in the Divine nature and manifested in creation, and the fact of the incarnation of the second person of that Trinity in our Lord Jesus Christ to be at once the key to human history, the great support of personal religion, and the foundation of national life. Looking at the Bible as the authoritative and inspired exponent of that fact, they wish to assert strongly its Tight to be treated, not in the bondage of the letter, but in the freedom of the spirit, with that perfect love which casteth out all fear. United on these grounds, which they believe to be deeper than all opinions, the writers wish distinctly to state that they differ from each other on many points, nor will they seek to conceal their differences, each being so far responsible for the others, that they believe the cause of truth will best be served by the hearing of all. For they are one and all convinced that nothing is so likely to check the spread of a hearty Christian spirit amongst the educated, and still more the half-educated classes of English society, as any semblance of a disposition to shrink from free inquiry into