z-^- J ^ ^l^S' ^2i£«:--'^t_J^JLi.X_Zii3^- J^£s ^^V ^i^ 9a*x E^£, "4^ iu ttee ©Itij of S^^tu l^orfe. GIVEN BY -c^-^ >r^:!^T;f^ ZMi^J^' s^ '■«? ^f iw fN» ) ■ >^ '^1 .^^.: "\\\ .i*s^-^*>- ' ■'-^N.H-i* ^^ m^ my':C:^:iU m^y. . ;^^^#¥J-^i ^^J ^^' - -^^v^S^ LEADERS UPWARD AND ONWARD r<;kit 17, LEADERS UPWARD AND ONWARD BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES OF NOBLE WORKERS EDITED BY HENRY C. E W A R T WITH EIGHTY ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK THOMAS WHITTAKER 2 & 3 BIBLE HOUSE 1889 'Jl a- V 01 rO CONTENTS. I. INTRODUCTION. By Henry C. Ewart ..,,•. 13 II. CHARLES KINGSLEY. By Alexander H. Japp, LL.D 17 III. DEAN STANLEY. By Professor R. H. Story, D.D. . , . . 63 IV. FREDERICK DENISON ^LAURICE. By Henry C. Ewart , ^^ V. ARCHBISHOP TAIT. -:- By the Bishop of Dover ^ VI. BISHOP ERASER. By Mary Harrison • > I • • I • I • 95 123 157 VII. Dr. ARNOLD. By Henry C. Ewart , • I • • 10488 5 177 CONTENTS. FAGS VIII. EDWARD IRVING. By Norman J. Ross i93 IX. NORMAN MACLEOD. By Walter C. Smith, D.D. . . , . 221 X. THOMAS GUTHRIE. By Professor W. G. Blaikie, D.D , LL.D. . . 267 XI. PRINCIPAL TULLOCH. By Donald Macleod, D.D. ' Editor of "Good Words" . • . • 3^5 XIL JOHN CURWEN. By Norman J. Ross 335 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. CHARLES KINGSLEY. PORTRAIT .... 5 » DARTMOOR WINTER IN THE FENS THE QUAY, CLOVELLY THE BEACH, CLOVELLY . EVERSLEY CHURCH . .... EVERSLEY RECTORY .... CLOISTER COURT, CHESTER CATHEDRAL HEREWARD'S FUNERAL KINGSLEY'S GRAVE AT EVERSLEY . PAGE Frontispiece 21 23 24 25 33 39 44 53 6i DEAN STANLEY. DEAN STANLEY'S FATHER . . HALL, CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD TOM TOWER, CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD CLOISTERS, CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD PORTRAIT WESTMINSTER ABBEY, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST OLD TOM AT OXFORD 67 69 71 73 81 89 94 FREDERICK DENISON l^LAURICE. PORTRAITS . , . . . LINCOLN'S INN GATEWAY . 99. "9 • 122 10 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. ARCHBISHOP TAIT. ADDINGTON CHURCH . THE OLD COLLEGE, GLASGOW BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD PORTRAIT .... CHOIR, CARLISLE CATHEDRAL IN THE GROUNDS AT FULHAM CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL LAMBETH PALACE FROM THE RIVER CANTERBURY FROM THE NORTH-EAST BISHOP FRASER. PORTRAIT .... A MANCHESTER WAREHOUSE DR. ARNOLD. TRINITY CHAPEL, OXFORD RUGBY CHAPEL . INTERIOR OF RUGBY CHAPEL PORTRAIT .... EDWARD IRVING. A GLASGOW SLUM . . • PORTRAIT THE GARE-LOCH . . CRYPT OF GLASGOW CATHEDRAL NORMAN MACLEOD. HIGHLAND COTTAGE •> * HIGHLAND BOAT "A BUT AND A BEN " LOOKING WESTWARD FROM MORVEN PORTRAIT EXTERIOR OF GLASGOW CATHEDRAL INTERIOR OF GLASGOW CATHEDRAL .... HIGH STREET, GLASGOW, NEAR THE BARONY CHURCH BALMORAL CASTLE CRATHIE CHURCH THE BACK STUDY , THE MASTER OF THE HORSE IN PALESTINE . NORMAN MACLEOD'S GRAVE AT CAMPSTE . TANTALLON CASTLE 126 128 130 133 137 140 143 147 167 183 185 187 189 202 209 213 218 229 230 231 233 239 241 243 247 249 257 261 265 266 LIST OF ILL USTRA TIONS. 1 1 PAGE THOMAS GUTHRIE. BRECHIN CATHEDRAL . . . . t . . 27I ARBIRLOT CHURCH 273 ARBIRLOT MANSE 277 THE COWGATE, FROM GEORGE IV. BRIDGE . . . 2S1 THE CANONGATE 285 THE GRASSMARKET 287 OLD HOUSES IN THE CANONGATE 289 THE TOLBOOTH 29O JAMES'S COURT 293 THE OLD TOWN, FROM PRINCES STREET .... 295 A BIT OF THE HIGH STREET 296 A WYND 297 JOHN KNOX'S HOUSE 301 LADY stair's CLOSE 303 PORTRAIT 309 PRINCIPAL TULLOCH. PORTRAIT ......'.•.# 319 WEST FRONT OF ST. ANDREWS CATHEDRAL . . . 325 THE PORT, ST. ANDREWS 334 JOHN CURWEN. ANDERSON'S COLLEGE, GLASGOW 350 PORTRAIT 357 Etc. Etc, " New occasions teach new duties ; Time makes ancient good uncouth They must upward still and onward ; Who would keep abreast of Truth." J. R. Lowell. INTRODUCTION. HEN a large party of excursionists set out too-ether to ascend some commanding heio-ht, from which an extensive view can be obtained, there are always some whoso energy urges them on at a quicker i:)ace than that of their companions. Along the lower land, and on the solid highway, all may keep to- gether in a tolerably compact group. But when they get up on the open mountain side, and have to breast the steep slopes where no certain track is marked, courage, muscle and wind begin to tell ; and while some press forward, others linger and dally with the difficulties of the way. Thus the march, instead of being in a compact group, is extended into a straggling column, and this becomes broken up into small detachments. The few who may be marked out as leaders by their strength 14 INTRODUCTION, and spirit, are soon separated from the rest and push on as pioneers. These pioneers may not keep together. Though they all have one aim — to get to tlie summit as fast as possible — they form independent judgments as to the best route. One will follow up a projecting spur, another will think that a neighbouring hollow affords the best path, a third may strike a diagonal course, and a fourth make a zigzag route for himself. But they all keep ahead of the main body, and each one will have imitators at a distance behind, who leave their companions to follow him. Such, too, is the pilgrimage of man from the lower to the higher life. God has inspired our race with a passion for making progress and mounting higher. By making progress we mean increase of knowledge and power ; by mounting higher we mean growth in virtue. What is to be the ultimate end of our progress and climbing we do not know. The words used by the great Apostle concerning the bright mysteries of a better world may also be used concerning this present world, for " Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man " the glorious things which human progress will yet achieve. Still, though we do not know the end, we do know the direction that is meant by " upward and onward ; " and, on the whole, mankind have been taking that direction for many thousands of years. But as it INTRODUCTION. 15 is in any party of excursionists ascending a height, so is it with the progress of mankind. Some pro- ceed onward and upward faster than others. These become the pioneers of the race. Amongst them there are many minor differences of opinion about the best path to be taken ; and eacli leader will have his own disciples and followers. But every one may admire and respect them all ; they are all seeking the same ultimate goal ; and they are all of them leaders upward and onward. We desire to introduce a few of such leaders to the attention and the loving study of the young. The men whom we have selected are not indeed characterized by transcendent greatness ; but, on that very account, they may be the better models for ourselves. The supremely great amongst men, such, for instance, as Shakespeare or King Alfred, are objects rather of admiring reverence than of imitation. But men of our own day, living in our own circumstances, and not elevated above us by any miraculous gifts, may teach us lessons in practical conduct, such as we should not presume to expect from those who have risen into the very heavens of fame. Our youngest readers, indeed, will hardly recognize as men of their own time several, of whom we present sketches in this volume. But the fathers, and even the elder brothers of the youngest, may remember most of them as living men whose i6 INTRODUCTION, conduct was clironicled and whose spoken language was criticized in the newspapers of years not long gone by. AVe call them leaders because they w^ere, in their respective paths, amongst the men farthest to the front in the progress of their own day. We call them leaders also because nearly all of them won their triumphs by suffering, and forced public opinion to adopt more just conclusions in reaction against the WTongs tliat these men endured. "For Humanity sweeps onward: wl:ere to-claj the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands ; Far in front ihc cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn, Wliile the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return To glean np the scattered ashes into History's golden urn." Such men have differed amongst themselves as to the precise path that human progress should take ; but they all acknowledged one goal — the glory of God in the supreme good of mankind. Therefore it is that their records are worth studying ; and we trust that while they, being dead, yet speak in these pages, they may prove to be the leaders upward and onward of many into whose hands this book will fall. Hkxry C. Ewart, CHARLES KINGSLEY. "Be good, sweet maid, and let wlio will be clever ; Do noble things, not dream them, all day long : And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever One grand, sweet song." C. KiNGSLEY. CHARLES KINGSLEY, .HERE is a class of men wliom everybody clearly loves, who do great things, but never so much as they might do, who disclose pos- sibilities, yet hardly fulfil them ; and who, by way of compensation for this, impart such impulses and wield such influence as they could never have done if tliey had been more com- pletely successful in any one thing. They are always among the noblest and most influential, if not the most prominent, leaders of their time. As we read their books, or study their characters in any special phase, we feci that they might have been almost anything — sailors, soldiers, travellers, bold discoverers, leaders in any heroic or perilous enterprise. They are of the stuff of which the old Crusaders were made, or the Puritans of the New World, or the followers of Oliver Cromwell at Naseby or Marston Moor. 20 CHARLES KINGSLEV. Charles Kingsley, whom we take first, was one of these, and a very notable one. He was a hard- working parish clergyman, with very lofty ideas of a clergyman's duty ; but he was also scholar, poet, novelist, dramatist, historian, traveller, man of science, social and political reformer, and, above all, a manly man and true gentleman. That element lies deepest and gives colour and bias to all the rest. A straight- forward frankness, a chivalrous concern for others, a tender sympathy for the weak and helpless, and readiness to strike a blow in their defence, make them- selves felt like a fresh Spring wind in everything that he said and wrote, as well as in all that he did. He was a true patriot, intent always on the welfare and honour of his country ; a true philanthropist, whose enery-and-by his father got the living of Clovelly, where Charles delighted to rove about and study the scenes and the people. THE BEACH, CLOVELLY. The two boys — for Charles had a brother Herbert — had a ]3rivate tutor at home till 1 8 3 1 , when they were sent to the Eev. John Knight's preparatory school at Bristol. This gentleman describes our subject as " affectionate, gentle, and fond of quiet .... a pas- 26 CHARLES KINGSLEY. sionate lover of natural history ; and only excited to vehement anger when the housemaid swept away as rubbish some of his treasures collected in liis walks on the Downs." The famous Bristol Eiots took place whilst he was there, and made such an impression on his mind as was never afterwards forgotten. When lectur- ing at Bristol in 1858, he thus made reference to it : " It was in this very city of Bristol, twenty-seven years ago, tliat I received my first lesson in wliat is now called ' Social Science,' and yet, alas ! ten years elapsed ere I could even spell out that lesson, though it had been written for me (as well as for all England) in letters of flame from one end of the country to tlie other." In 1832, instead of going to Eton or Eugby, as was at one time proposed, the two brothers went to the school kept by the Eev. Derwent Coleridge, at Helston. Probably the slight impediment in Charles's speech may have had something to do with this decision ; but, at all events, Charles enjoyed Helston, found some life-long friei Is there, and made marked pro- gress. " Truly a remarkable boy," wrote Mr. Coleridge to Mrs. Kingsley, "original to the verge of eccentricity, and yet a thorough boy, fond of sport, and up to any enterprise — a genuine out-of-doors English boy." Little incidents and striking scenes witnessed, now inspired him to more ambitious efforts in prose and verse ; and some of the specimens preserved by Mr. Powles, and given in liis Memoir, distinctly show promise of the future poet and ballad-writer. CHARLES KINGS LEY. 27 His father held the living of Clovelly till he \yas preferred to the Eectory of St. Luke's, Chelsea, in 1836, where Charles rejoined liis parents, in order that he might attend King's College. The change to Chelsea Charles felt deeply — the loss of sympathetic companionship and of much-loved scenery nothing in London made up for ; and the narrowness and con- ventionality of tone in the society of the district were every way oppressive to the lad. His parents were busy from morning till night — the house full of district visitors and parish committees. In short, says the Memoir, Chelsea was a prison from which he thankfully escaped two years later to the freer life at Cambridge. In the meantime he had had a turn of what he called "hard grinding" at King's College, walking up there every day from Chelsea, reading all the way, and walking back again late to study all the evening:. His heart was in his work, and the influences wliich at first he had felt to be uncongenial were in some degree beneficial ; for he was thrown more in upon himself, and made to realize at this early age the resources that lie in reflection, meditation, and study. "He turned his necessity to glorious gain," in the language of the poet Wordsworth's " Happy Warrior." Already he had begun to interest himself in subjects lying quite outside the sphere of the schoolboy. The sights he saw in London suggested problems, which in after days he did all that in him lay to solve by active effort. He was struck by the wide gulf between rich 28 CHARLES KINGSLEV, and poor, and by the isolation and wretchedness in which muititndes must live in a city like London, doomed to drudgery and dreary struggle for mere existence without hope of any improvement or relief. In after years, one of his m\ich desired minor reforms was abundant seats placed in spare spaces of the public thoroughfares, on which the poor might sit down and rest themselves in summer, and covered shelters into which they could escape in the rain or storms of winter. We may well guess that such want had often been felt by him as he trudged daily, tired and sometimes even wet, to and fro between Chelsea and King's College. Any one can see that, to a certain extent, his ideas on this matter have been realized on the Thames Embankment and sundry other places in London. He soon gained a scholarship at Cambridge, being first both in classics and mathematics, which had not happened in Magdalen College for several years. He was not long at Cambridge before he had to pay the penalty of his free inquiring spirit, and the divided state of thought and religious opinion at that time bred doubts and difficulties which he frankly faced but did not so readily master. German rationalism then was invading England, reinforced by some of the great names of Germany ; materialism was begin- ning to infect English science and philosophy. The German rationalists were very learned men who tried to explain away the supernatural in Christianity — to account for all that is sot down as miraculous in the CHARLES KING SLEW 29 Sacred Eecord by natural causes, or to prove tliat it was the pious work of well-meaning but self-deluded men, or tlie result of a process of legend-making, precisely in the same way as the fabulous elements in the early stories of Greece and Eome came into existence and gained currency. Their ideas were powerful, not only in Germany, but in Holland and France. It soon became apparent, however, that wherever these ideas prevailed the moral level of the people also declined, and the philanthropic and evan- sjelistic work of the churches slackened. The reaction against this kind of thinking came in a return to excessive reverence for tradition in many forms ; and in England it had one powerful expression in what is called the Oxford Movement, in which the now familiar names of Newman, Pusey, and Keble were prominent. With all his English prudence, Kingsley had a strain of mysticism in him, as his Introduction to the sermons of the old German mystic Tauler suffices to show. The Oxford Tracts, which were the authoritative utterance of this Oxford school, had lately appeared, making appeal to that side of human nature; the ascetic view of Hfe had had all its claims put forth with the nervous energy and fascinating purity of Xewman and Hurrell Froude. Kingsley had to wrestle with that phase of things too, and he did it once for all. "He was then," says the Memoir, "just like his own Lancelot in ' Yeast,' in that summer, 1839 — a bold thinker, a bold rider, a most chivalrous gentleman, sad, shy and serious habitually ; in conversation at one 30 CHARLES KING SLEW moment brilliant and impassioned, tlie next reserved and unapproachable ; by turns attracting and repelling, but pouring forth to the friend whom he could trust, stores of thought and feeling and information on every sort of unexpected subject which seemed boundless. It was a feast to the imaf^ination and intellect to hold communion with Charles Kingsley, even at the age of twenty; the originality with which he treated a sub- ject was startling, and his genius illuminated every subject it approached, whether he sj)oke of ' the delicious shiver of those aspen leaves ' on the nearest tree, or of the deepest laws of humanity and the controversies of tlie day." Thus he speaks of himself at this time : — " I am swimming against a mighty stream, and I feel every moment I must drop my arms and float in apathy over the hurrying cataract, whicli I see and hear but have not time to avoid. Man does want something more than his reason ! Socrates confessed tliat he owed all to his diemon, and that without his super- natural intimations, right and wrong, the useful and the hurtful, were shrouded in mist, and that he alone smoothed to him the unapproachable heights which conducted to -the beautiful and the good." But soon he came to clearness — an undei standing with himself and defniite ideas as to his calling ; and before long we find him exclaiming : — " Saved ! — saved from the wild pride and darkling tempests of scej)ticism, and from the sensuality and dissipation into which my own rashness and vanity had hurried me 1 Saved CHARLES KINGSLE Y, 3 1 from a liuuter's life on the prairies, from becoming a savage, and ^Dcrhaps worse ! Saved from all this, and restored to my country and my God, and able to believe ! And I do believe firmly and practically as a subject of prayer, and a rule of every action of my life." It is sometimes said in philosophical books that no one can thorouglily oppose a side or system logically who has not once belonged to it — seen it from the inside, so to speak; and it may be that Kingsley's struggles with himself then did not a little to make him understand and sympathize with the discontent and disbelief of poor working-men, as brought out in " Alton Locke " (which is a vivid picture of the con- dition of the struggling and discontented classes in London groaning under dear bread, the horrible " sweating " system, and their associated evils forty years ago), and also in many of his papers written afterwards under the name of "Parson Lot." We are not surprised that he was " popular " at the University, that he had a wide circle of admiring friends, and that he was, when occasion offered, quite equal to a good bout of boating, fishiug, coachiug, or any other sport ; but, unlike some of his companions, he had also found time to pursue his studies thoroughly and systematically. Some of the passages in " Chalk Stream Studies " and later volumes, are due to ex- periences of these days at Cambridge. But now, as he began to realize more clearly day by day that the life of a clergyman was the one for which both his physical and moral nature were intended; rather than 32 CHARLES KINGSLEY, for the law, of whicli he had previously had thoughts so definite as to enter his name at Lincoln's Inn, he abandoned these loved sports, and he took himself closely to the study of philosophy and divinity. He took his degree in November 1841, and after a short rest in Devonshire among its much-loved scenery, he began seriously to read for Holy Orders. He was ordained in July 1842 to the curacy of Eversley in Hampshire, henceforth to be associated with his name throughout his whole life. He was only twenty- three years of age. Eversley is on the borders of Old Windsor Forest, and certain relics of the old forest life lingered still among the people: "the old men could remember the time when many a royal deer used to stray into Eversley parish. Every man in those days could snare his hare, and catch a good dinner of fish in waters not strictly preserved; and the old women could tell of the handsomest muffs and tippets, made of pheasant's feathers not bought with silver, which they wore in their young days." Kingsley liked and understood, far better than most persons, these "descendants of many generations of broom-squires and deer-stealers," in whom the in- stinct of sport still was strong. "They have their faults, as I have mine," he says ; " but they are thorough good fellows nevertheless. Civil, contented industrious, and often very handsome; a far slirewdcr fellow, too — owins to his dash of wikl forest blood from gipsy, highwayman, and what not — than liis bullet-headed and flaxen-polled cousin, the pure CHARLES KINGSLEY. 35 South Saxon of the chalk clowns. Dark-hah-ed he is, ruddy and tall of bone, swaggering in his youth ; but when he grows old, a thorough gentleman, reserved, stately and courteous as a prince." Before Kiugsley's coming to Eversley the Church services had been utterly neglected, the parishioners in various ways but ill attended to. It sometimes happened that the Eector had a cold or other trifling ailment, and then he would send the clerk to the church door at eleven, to inform the few who had attended that there would be no service. Any one who knows rural districts knows what the effect of this would be on people who had perhaps v/alked a con- siderable distance. The public-houses, which had al- ready been well-filled, at once received a reinforcement. It was hard work to gjet a con2;reo'ation together ; but the new curate set to work in the right way. He soon made it felt that he had something to say to men and women like them ; and his long-held maxim — ncA^er to depreciate, according to the foolish way of sentimen- talists, the brotherly love of men — stood him in r^ood stead, after he had in a measure succeeded. The people soon began to weary for the Church services which they had neglected ; and Kingsley took care to mould his thousjhts into forms suited to them. And he did not neglect his studies. He was eager to sjet light from whatever quarter it might come, read the Puseyite Tracts, and mourned over them, seeing clearly where they ought logically to lead, studied the works of the more thoughtful dissenters, and 36 CHARLES KINGSLEY. came to respect them. We find him about this time writing, for example, to a friend : "Do not reject Wardlaw because he is a Dis- senter. The poor man was born so, you know. It is very different from a man dissenting personally. Besides, your business is with the book, not with the author. Give up that habit of identifying books and men. Only our ideas of such people as Homer, Shakespeare, and Dante, ought to be allowed to influence our ideas of what they wrote." He extended his field carefully, read history, went botauizing, geologizing, and welcomed the works of Buckland and such writers ; in a word, in his quiet rectory, he let pass little of powerful interest in the intellectual and scientific world. He strenuously practised music, merely, as he writes, " to be able to look after my singers ; " adding significantly, " music is such a vent for the feelings." He studied medicine, too, that he might the more effectually look after his sick and ailing ones. He makes a note : "Make yourself thoroughly acquainted with the ways, wants, habits, and prevalent diseases of the poor wherever you go." This young curate was, at all events, intent on laying a foundation, at once broad and solid, for future usefulness. We shall soon see how he came successfully to build upon it. He liad little of what is called " Society," during his first experience of curate life; but he found it well supplied by his books and studies, and the increasing respect CHARLES KINGS LE Y. 2,7 of his people. Early in 1 844, he was married to the lady, Miss Grenfell, who proved so fit a help- meet to him, and entered on the curacy of Pimperne in Dorsetshire. But changes made it possible, unexpectedly for him, to return to Eversley as its Eector in the course of a few months. The neglect of former incumbents made it hard work there ; but now a great reformation was accomplished, with no end of agencies for the improvement of the people, when once he was completely master, and had it all his own way. Shoe-club, coal-club, maternal society, a loan fund and lending library were established one after another. An adult school was held in the Eectory three nights a week for all the winter months ; a music-class was soon established and met there too ; and a Sunday- school met also every Sunday morning and afternoon, and weekly cottage lectures were established in the outlying districts for the old and feeble. Disadvantages were even viewed as sources of benefit. There was no school-house ; but the frequent visits of the people to the Eectory, which was always open to them, was viewed as havino^ a gooJ humanizinsj influence. His house-to-house weekly Aisiting was most rigidly attended to with the best results. Few recreations he now allowed himself, beyond an occasional hour's fish- ing. At this time he did not have a horse, as some years afterwards he had, to take him for a scamper over the downs. He never took a gun in liis liand, lest it might have the force of a bad example on the people 38 CHA RLES KINGSLE Y. already too prone to poaching raids. He had studied so thoroughly the style of preaching fitted to reach the people, that, when some of his sermons were sub- mitted to Bishop Sumner on Kingsley's application for priest's orders, the only fault his lordship found with them was that they were too colloquial ! He wrote to men like Mr. Maurice for advice and help, and received it gratefully ; and his confession shortly put was this : " My whole heart is set, not on retrogression outward or inward, but on progression — not on going back in the least matter to any ideal age or system, but on fairly taking the present as it is, not as I should like it to be ; and believing that Jesus Christ is still work- ing in all honest and well-meaning men — see what are the elements of spiritual good in the present age, and try as an artist to embody them, not in old forms, but in new ones The new element is democracy in Church and State. Waiving the question of its evil and its good, we cannot stop it. Let us Christianize it instead ; and if you fear that you are therein doing evil that good may come, oh, consider, consider, whether democracy (I do not mean foul licence or pedantic constitution-mongering, but the ri^^hts of man as man — his individual and direct responsibility to God and to the State, on the score of mere manhood and Christian grace), be not the very pith and marrow of the New Testament — whether tlie noble structures of mediaeval hierarchy and monarchy were not merely * schoolmasters to bring Europe to Christ — tutors and governors/ till mankind be of aij-e and fit for a theo- CHARLES KINGSLEY. 4I Cracy, in wliicli men might live by faith in an unseen yet spiritually and sacranientally present King, and have no King but Him." This may be regarded as the platform on which he stood. When, some time after, the Chartist Riots broke out, he acted in consistency with it. He tried all he could to Christianize the motives of the leaders and the led, and thus to enable them to lift their eyes, and to see more widely. With tliis end he spoke and wrote and worked, entering on correspond- ence widely. He was much misunderstood by many ; but at this day, his position is very much that of most influential Christian men. And he was no theorist, rushing off from the sphere of nearest duties to excite vague ideas in others. Every winter's evening of 1848 was occupied witli either night-school at the Eectory, about thirty men attending, or with little services in the outlying cottages for the infirm and labouring men after their day's work. In the spring and summer a writing-class was held for girls in the empty coach-house ; a cottage school for infants was also beG;un on the common. Tlie number of com- municants largely increased, and we read that " the daily services and evening sermons in Passion week seemed to borrow an intenser fervour and interest from the stranf]je events of the gjreat world outside the small quiet parish, and though poorly attended, still gathered together a few labouring folk." At this period, too, he became Professor of English Literature and Composition at Queen's College, Ilarlcy 42 CHA RLES KINGSLE V. Street, of which Mr. Maurice was Principal, and his frequent visits to the Metropolis in this capacity made it easy for him to see something of the working- men of London at this exciting and dangerous time. He was not content with looking on — and it was by these sights that he was urged to address them by letters, which are full of vigorous sympathy and prac- tical advice. The refrain of all these letters was this ; " To be what you want — to be free, you must free yourselves. Will tlie Charter by itself cure you ? Friends, you want more than Acts of Parliament can give." He never failed to assure them that they had more friends than they knew of ; but, if they did not wish to drive them from doinor their utmost to aid them, they must be wise, be cool, be patient. It was in this spirit that Charles Kingsley sought to moderate the evils that then threatened society, and no doubt his words had influence in not a few minds, both among: the workinsj-men and in other circles. He made the acquaintance of Thomas Cooper, the Chartist — who, for many years an infidel, has done much to atone by able books and lectures in defence of Christianity — at this time, and a mutual respect and liking sprang up between them, which endured to the end. " Alton Locke" w^as taking form in his mind now ; but his hard work and the anxiety he had felt brought ill-health, and for a time he had to take rest. "When he returned to Eversley from his beloved Devon, he resolved to take pupils, and this opened up to him many new and pleasant sources of interest, and began CM A RLES KINGSLE Y. 43 new and fragrant friendships. Not an evil fell upon the nation, but he felt it ; not a noble aspiration or enterprise, but he was in sympathy with it. His respect for the poor increased, the more intimately that he knew them. But in most questions he saw both sides, or tried to see them ; and when he was pressed on the question of teetotalism, he had to remind his friends of the distinction between the use and the abuse. " The substitute with the teetotalers of 1900 A.D. will be, I fear, laudanum. I expect, and hereby warn all my friends, that the sale of laudanum will increase rapidly. There will be always, as in monkery, some who will keep up to the present pure and sincere standard of the original school ; but the mass will, as usual, be contented with tlie form of the theory without its reality ; they will either break out now and then, on the sly, into excesses, all the more beastly from previous restraint, or fly to opium." The outward incidents of Charles Kingsley's life after this time are not very marked or varied. He was involved in some controversies ; he became Pro- fessor of Modern History at Cambridge ; in course of time he was promoted to a Canonry at Chester, where his short " residences " were much enjoyed. His intercourse with Dean Howson and others there was that of sympathetic and helpful friendship. He held this Canonry from 1869 to 1 873, when he accepted a Canonry at Westminster, which was the more grateful to him, as it brought him into closer relationship with his beloved friend of many years 44 CHARLES KLXGSLEY. standing, Dean Stanley, who knew well how to appreciate his character and genius. But the pastoral CLOISTER COURT, CHIOS IKR CATIlIiDRAL. work at Eversley remained to the end the essential element in his life ; and there lie continued to work CHARLES KINGSLE V. 45 with the same freshness of enthusiasm and the same breadth of sympathy as when he began. That a man whose whole life was so absorbed in practical work of this kind should have contributed so largely and with such success to the literature of his country is only another illustration of the truth that one's power of doing increases with doing. A very wise man has said, if you want any help in a charitable or philanthropic matter do not go to the idle or luxurious, but go to the man whose hands seem already overfull — he only will help you. Sir Arthur Helps, himself a shrewd observer and active philanthropist, never wrote with more insight than in the sentence we have just quoted. Ivingsley was full of energy, ceaseless in efibrt — his brain was a fountain of fine impulses, which never ceased to play. His rest was only another kind of work. His writinf^s would have been enough to secure him a high posi- tion in the temple of fame. And yet the complete retirement and quietude without which it is often said the highest literary work cannot be produced were never his. He wrote, like Norman Macleod, only in stolen snatches of time; and what he did write are all works more or less with a purpose. "Hypatia," which is perhaps his greatest work of fiction, as it is the most learned, shows a very remark- able power of imagination, able to fuse in its glow the shifting miscellany of life and thought in a time of fevered crisis or transition. It represents Alex- andria at the time when Greek culture came most 46 CHARLES KINGSLE Y. directly in contact with Christian thought and life ; and in his heroine Hypatia he has exhibited one of the most touching ideals. She is a Greek philosopher in female garb, full of enthusiasm for the ancient faith, which she reconciles in her own mind with much of the best in Egyptian or Eastern ideas, which then had come to intermix with and to modify classical conceptions. She is a famous lecturer and teacher of philosophy, with crowds of pupils. Philammon is a monk of the desert, who hears of her and becomes possessed with the idea of con- verting her. But he is such a monk as a writer like Kingsley only could conceive or create. He has little or none of the weakness of the monkish cha- racter : he is frank, courageous, manly, yet a Christian hermit, devout and true. He is even fond of bathing. He goes to Alexandria, where already is a sister of his, named Pelagia, who, alas ! has fallen amid the gaiety and vice of that ancient capital, then so luxu- rious and extravagant. A Jewess, Miriam, has not been innocent of tempting her to her downfall. Philammon, when he appears before Hypatia, is sud- denly seized with tliat passion of admiration which is nioh to love, and is thus so far disarmed in the moment of attack. His appeal to her loses effect ' from his grand impression of her sincerity and noble- ness of mind and character. The metamorphosis in Hypatia's lecture-room is indicated with delicacy and art. Nevertheless, he emboldens himself to deliver his soul and to carry out what he had resolved upon. CHA RLES KINGSLE V, 47 He states his case and denounces the idolatry of the old religion. " Idolatry ! " answered she with a smile. " My pupil must not repeat to me that worn-out Christian calumny. Into whatsoever low superstitions the pious vulgar may have fallen, it is the Christians now, and not the heathens, who are idolators. They who ascribe miraculous power to dead men's bones, who make temples of charnel houses, and bow before the images of the meanest of mankind, have surely no right to accuse of idolatry the Greek or the Egyptian, who embodies in a form of symbolic beauty ideas beyond the reach of words." * * * H: It " Then," asked Philammon with a faltering voice, yet unable to restrain his curiosity, "then you do reverence the heathen gods ? " And in reply, she upholds her religion as that of a worship of the divine incarnated in many forms, and declines to accept Christianity because it arrogates to itself the exclusive revelation of the divine. His intellect is open, and her arguments do not leave him untouched : he dwells on the ideas she has expressed with such precision, elevation, and poetical sensibility, and for a time it might seem as though Hypatia "had taken away from him the living God and given him instead only the four elements." But his love for his sister Pelagia, in midst of vice and indulgence, saves him. He appeals to Hypatia for help to redeem her. Instead^ Hypatia offers him fine distinctions, 48 CHARLES KINGSLEY. justifying indifference : liis sister is not of kin with him in any but the lower links of fleshly relationship. Let her alone, Hypatia argues, to go her own way : she is not worth the concern of a philosopher. There his heart rebels, and this is enough. His course then becomes clear to him ; Hypatia incurs the hostility of the Christians and is killed ; '• the Egyptian Church, in thus seeking to extend or justify itself by carnal weapons, planted a sword in its own breast ; " Philam- mon saves his sister, and the close finds them in the desert, where they live to repent of past errors and to prepare for noble w^orks. Goths, Jews, Greeks, Egyptians, move across the pages, and all are por- trayed with the distinctness and individuality of the master hand. The slight basis of history is enough — on that foundation rises a lofty structure, harmonious, complete, and full of moral significance in every part. The doubts, the struggles, the difficulties of to-day, the temptations, the vague aspirations after loftier ideals and purer life of our time and every time are delineated there though under the conditions of the fifth century. It is, as he calls it, a revelation of New Foes under an Old Face. These are the last words in the book : — " And now, readers, farewell. I have shown you New Foes under an Old Face, your own likenesses in too-a and tunic, instead of coat and bonnet. One word before we part. The same devil who tempted these old Egyptians tempts you. The same God who would have saved these old Egyptians, if they had willed, CHARLES KINGSLEY, 49 will save you, if you will. Their sins are yours, their errors yours, their doom yours, their deliverance yours. There is nothinof new under the sun. The thing which has been, it is that which shall be. Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone, whether at Hypatia or Pelagia, Miriam or Eaphael, Cyril or Philammon." And these are the first words in the book — the dedication to his father and mother, who, at the date of its publication, were still alive — words as charac- teristic of Charles Kingsley in his noble thought as in his devotion to duty and all the ordinary calls of his life ;— "To MY Father and Mother. "My dear Parents, — " When you shall have read this book, and considered the view of human relationships which is set forth in it, you will be at no loss to discover why I have dedicated it to you as one paltry witness of an union and of a debt which, though they may seem to have begun with birth, and to have grown with your most loving education, yet cannot die with death, but are spiritual, indefeasible, eternal in the heavens with that God from Whom every fatherhood in heaven and earth is named. " C. K." " Westward Ho ! " on the other hand, is a glowing record of action and adventure. It records the doings of Oxenham and Yeo and their gallant bands who went forth to fight for England at the time of the Spanish D 50 CHARLES KIXGSLEY. domination. Sir Walter lialeigh also \AiVph liis part. The pictures of the West Indian Islands, Barbadoes and the rest, are just as vivid and realistic as are the wonderful landscapes we have of Devon and Cornwall ; and the descriptions of the domestic life in the West of England in those days are in every respect happy reproductions, as pure and beautiful and true as they are unique. Kingsley's genius shines through all, elevating, transfiguring. And the Armada is not for- srotten. It is a book which will lonq- live — for it is history in its most alluring aspect, in its essence and spirit, brightened by imagination and creative sym- pathy, without which history is dead, a mere tomb- stone record of facts and dates. " Westward Ho ! " is living, and if the old will read and admire, the young must be moved and inspired to manlier and loftier purpose as they read of England's heroes in these fruitful times, " The spacious times of great Elizabeth," as Lord Tennyson calls them in his "Dream of Fair Women." These two fictions show Kingsley at work in con* trasted spheres : in the one he deals with lofty specu*- lation, subtle conflicts of thought and belief, spiritual aspiration, refined ideals ; in the other, with action^ with incident of the most exciting and picturesque kind. To read these two books, and to realize tho reach that lay between them, is only to comprehend at once the fineness and the force of Kingsley's genius. en A RLES ICIJVGSLE Y. 5t Both powerfully restore the life of the past, but in each how different the life delineated ! Kingsley indeed, was one of the most vigorous painters of action England can boast of ; and what was most striking, was his power of realizing and re- producing it in strong historical setting, and by effective historic contrasts. Like Sir AYalter Scott, he deliLihted in the dash of contest, the ring of steel ; but he never, as Sir Walter sometimes did, indulged the passion merely for its own sake. He always had some ulterior end in his fictions — either purposely to illustrate the ways of God to men, or to show how, under all change of forms, the heart of man and the great problems that torment him really remain the same in all ages, " Old foes under new faces," as in " Hypatia ; " or to exhibit the peculiar, invariable, we had almost said inevitable, bent of race ; or the workings of remorse and long-deferred penitence. Carlyle could never have objected to Kingsley, as he did to Sir Walter Scott, that he had no sense of the mysteries of life, and did nothing to stimulate questioning and brooding over the problems of the universe. Kingsley never ceases to feel them, and to force their consideration on the reader; but he is too great an artist to do this asser- tively or didactically. To exhibit the inevitable bent of race, is really the end or purpose of " Hereward the Wake ; or, the Last of the English ; " and, though some have deemed the colours in tliis work too strong, and the lights too liigh, the passion for realistic effect in deadly combat too openly indulged, it is nevertheless a ^2 CHARLES KINGS LEY. powerful and, in certain respects, a grand work, such as could only have been written by one who had prepared himself for this kind of portraiture and description l)y works like " Westward Ho ! " Some, indeed, may doubt if such a subject, in some of its phases, ought thus frankly to be treated imaginatively at all ; but admit the artist's unrestricted right of choice in such a held, and Kingsley justifies himself by his vigour and style and his animating moral purpose ; for Hereward's remorse at last is as well painted as his action. The Lightfoots and the Ironhooks are as real and living as the Leofrics and Herewards ; and the old fen-landscape, muddy, reedy, wild, and wan-coloured, is painted in words as a Millais, had he lived then, would have painted it in colours. And never surely has combat been made so animated on the printed page. The armour glows in the red glare of sunset, as the waters below burn with golden fire, while the heroes move and sway and smite each other, dark against the bright palpitating sky ; the swords ring and glance and rattle, we see the dents made by mighty blows on plate and shield ; the very breasts are seen to move and swell even under that heavy armour, the lips curve and then set themselves together grandly firm, the eyes dilate and sparkle in the fierce heat of fight. And how exquisitely Kingsley can relieve all this by tender, vmexpected touches of true love and sweet regret, of quiet pathos and sober colouring, of which there are many specimens, but none perhaps more so than the picture of Hereward's funeral. CHARLES KINGSLEY. 55 " Then the monks silently took up the bier, and all went forth, and down tlie Eoman Road toward the fen. They laid the corpse within the barge, and slowly rowed away. Aud past the Deeping, down the Welland streatn, By winding reaches on, and shining meres, Between grey reed-ronds and green alder-beds, And the brown horror of the homeless fen, A dirge of monks and wail of women rose In vain to Heaven for the last Englishman ; Then died far off within the boundless mist, And left the ^N'orman master of the land." In the light of this passage, perhaps the reader will look on Mr. Panl Gray's fine picture of the funeral with all the deeper interest. When v/e read such lectures as those on " The Roman and the Teuton" and "Alexandria and her Schools," we see Charles Kingsley in the process of pre- paring himself for his greater stories — stories of passion and sentiment, or of action and adventure. His deep love of the English character, in spite of all its faults, of which he is not unconscious, arises from his inborn admiration of true manliness, of loyal courage, of bull- dog tenacity to purposes long formed, and power to endure sustained and severe privation with cheerfulness, all engrafted on a fitful tenderness and seriousness of mood, wdiich is hidden by naive unselfconscious reserves. And Kingsley does not show this power only in his books, his strength lay in its consistency with his wliole character and conduct. Even his very lenient judgment of the Eversley 56 CHARLES KINGSLEY, men may be traced to the same source, and lio succeeded with them as he did simply because lie could so judge them. Whatever else in Kingsley's idea went to the making of " gentlemen " — which, it will be remembered, he says these old poachers and deer-stealers were — chivalrous manliness, fearlessness, and unhesitating devotion to something nobler than self were with him essential. These three stories named — each characteristic of the author — are pre-eminently good books for younger people, though they are certainly not of the kind in which there is any condescension to juvenile capacity. But some of Kingsley's books, written specially for younger readers, may well claim a word or two in these pages. Foremost we may place the " Greek Heroes," in which some of the myths of ancient Greece are retold with rare simplicity, dignity, and power of unfolding the wide human meanings that informed them and give them universal significance. Then comes " Glaucus ; or, the Wonders of the Sea- shore," in which we have a series of lessons in a most attractive department of natural history made as light and informing as a story-book. '' Madam How and Lady Why ; or. First Lessons in Earth-lore for tlie Young," does the same for geology as " Glaucus " does for its special subJL'ct ; and the same may be said of " The Water-babies ; or, a Fairy Tale for a Land Baby," which for knowledge, fancy, and lightsome tact of style and illustration, is one of tlie most delightful books in the English language. CHA RL ES KINGSLE V. 57 There is much, too, that young readers will fully understand, enjoy and profit by in such volumes as those entitled " Health and Education," " Scientific Lectures and Essays " (for even wlien Kingsley has a strictly scientific subject he never fails to write popularly), and " Sanitary and Social Lectures," in which he conveys many wise, practical hints in phy- siology and the laws of health, with sensible directions occasionally even in matters of clothing, dress, and exercise. He was not one of those clergymen who forget the physical frame in their concern for the spiritual ; he always desired to have a sound mind in a sound body to deal with. A volume of selec- tions from his writings has been compiled, which may be found very acceptable to many v/ho may not be able to obtain access to the separate volumes, and this will suffice to communicate some sense of his power and many-sidedness, his concern for others, and his desire to promote the general welfare, though, of course, it can oive little or no idea of his imaginative and creative genius. As a preacher, Cliarles Kingsley was very simple, direct, practical. He had mastered the most subtle points in theology, and had been very careful to connect the developments of theology with their historical outcome (in this he had a close resemblance to Dean Stanley), but this did not much appear in his preaching. In the pulpit he was always more the man than the scholar or the divine. He affected no deep learning, though every sentence told of thought 58 CHA RLES KINGSL E Y. and hard study. But he realized hir, audience as he composed his discourse. His sermons were uniformly colloquial in style, charged with fine common-sense, with sympathy, and the conviction that men were united by sentiments and needs far more radical and permanent than anything that could temporarily divide them and set them in opposition to eacli other. He saw in Christianity the grandest lever to raise all classes to one level in the perception of a common destiny and a common fatherhood, and his social labours were the practical illustrations of his preach- ing. The slight hesitancy or impediment in his speech, which was so noticeable in private conversa- tion—especially if he were in any way moved — strangely enough, disappeared whenever he mounted the pulpit ; and to listen to his clear tones, his quiet earnest persuasive sentences, rising now and then into a subdued white-heat of fervid appeal, was indeed wortli going a long way to hear, as the writer remembers to have heard it at Westminster Abbey even in his later years, and when symptoms of weak- ness had begun to appear. Some of his special discourses are worthy of atten- tion for their frank and inspiring character. Among these we may name, " True Words for Brave Men : a Book for Soldiers' and Sailors' Libraries." He never wearied in his efforts for the people, to introduce them to new sources of knowledge and of enjoyment. What he said in one of his earlier "Parson Lot" letters remained the faithful utterance of his senti- CHARLES KINGS LEY, 59 ments on this subject to the close. In it he urges the refining and elevating influence of beautiful objects, and points out how picture-galleries and other collec- tions micjht be turned to fuller account : — ''Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything heauti- ful. Beauty is God's handwriting — a wayside sacra- ment ; welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower ; and thank for it Hira, the fountain of all loveliness, and drink it in, simply and reverently, with all your eyes : it is a charmed draught, a cup of blessing. " Therefore I said that picture-galleries should be the townsman's paradise of refreshment. Of course, if he can get the real air, the real trees, even for an hour, let him take it in God's name ; but how many a man who cannot spare time for a daily country walk, may well slip into the National Gallery, or any other collection of pictures, for ten minutes. That garden, at least, flowers as gaily in winter as in summer. Those noble faces on the wall are never disfigured by grief or passion God made you love beautiful things only because He intends hereafter to give you your fill of them." Charles Ivingsley is one of the few whose spirit was contagious, whose influence was strictly personal. Even in the most dramatic of his books, in the most theo- logical of his sermons, this is powerfully felt. His grace was to communicate of himself, of his life, his knowledge, his heart and affection, with the force peculiar to him. The inspiring motive of his life he 6o CHARLES KINGS LE V. lias unconsciously summed up in one verse of the sweet little poem he wrote to one of his daughters : — " Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever. Do noble things, not dream them, all day long: And so make life, death, and that vast for-evcr One grand, sweet song." In this lay at once the secret of his success with the peasants ab Eversley as with the cultured and learned throughout the world. There was nothing of the cold student or remote speculative observer in him. His heart beat warm and true. Whatever faults he may have had, that of cold critical reserve and bloodlessness could not be included among them. He was an artist in his power of representation, of sympathy, and of patient observation, but he had as few of the faults of the artistic temperament as of the scientific one. He could never find satisfaction in any mere beauty of form. He demanded common human interest, action, to feel the beatings of the heart. His own works of fiction declare this. As Carlyle said, some- times they show restlessness, and promise more than they perform ; but, however clearly we may perceive all this, Kingsley's victory is that we are only the more keenly interested in him, drawn to him the more as a man, and are the more willing to surrender to him our affectionate regards. When he passed away on the 23rd of January, i 875, it was felt by all who stood highest in English life — in literature, in art, in science, and in social improvement — that a great man had passed, whose heart and intellect kept tune ; so that CHARLES KINGS LEY. 6i tlioiidi "his life was one of restless and most varied effort, a sweet unity pervaded it and made it fragrant, full of lessons and upliftings alike for mind and heart. And to feel this afresh, or to realize it for the first time, the older people have only to renew acquaintance with his writings, and the younger folks to begin the studious perusal of them. Tliey will certainly not miss their reward. Alexander H. Japp. KINCSLEX S GRAVE AT EVERSLEV, DEAN STANLEY. / '• So should we live, that every honr May die as dies the natural flower, — A Sell-reviving thing of power ; That every thought and every deed May hold within itself the seed Of future good and future meed." Lord Houghton. DEAN STANLEY. HE romance of the Episcopate is gone " said some one, when the fatal stumble of Bishop Wilberforce's horse arrested his bright and versatile career. In the death of Dean Stanley of Westminster much more than the romance of any one order, or function' in the Church of which he was the glory and strength, was extinguished. The Bishop of Winchester was a great prelate of the Anglican communion. The Dean of Westminster was a great churchman in that wider and higher sense which overlooks the barriers that divide one communion from another. We should hardly exaggerate if we said tliat when he died, Dean Stanley stood higher in the respect and affection of a larger and more varied circle of members of many churches than any other ecclesiastic in the world. E 66 DEA N S TA NL E K By all in liis own Church, at home and abroad, except a few standing at two opposite extremes of fanatical intolerance, he w^as held in esteem and honour. The English Nonconformists recomized in him a friend, who understood their position and sympathized with their best traditions. In Scotland his name was a household word ; and even tlie ultra-Calvinists, who could not find the " root of the matter " in him, and the ultra-Presbyterians, who hold tliat " the deil and the dean Ijcgin wi' ae letter," forgot their rigidities in his genial presence. On the Continent, in all societies, from that of the Papal Court to the modest home of the Protestant " pasteur " — from the palaces of St. Petersburg or Berlin to the quiet library of DolliDger — among Eoman Catholics, Old Catholics, Lutherans, and Eeformed, his great position, his many-sided affinities, his social charm and grace, his intellectual eminence, won for him a universal welcome. In America, all cliurches and classes received him with open arms. They seemed to see in him the repre- sentative, and, as it were, the custodian, of all that old- world culture which so controls their republican imagi- nation, and wdiich is so seldom united — as it was in him — with an open-hearted sympathy with the beauty and the hopefulness of all that is young and new. " The Dean of Society " he vras sometimes called by people whose outlook does not range beyond the smoke of London; but on many societies which liad scarce any other link to that great Babel, and on many churches whose names no one in London but himself DEAN STANLEY. 67 knew or cared for, the tidings that he too had " gone over to the majority " fell like a cold eclipse. In Dean Stanley we see the best principles of liberal thought, of advanced culture, of personal religion, with- out those excesses and limitations by which they are too often impaired and hampered. LiberaUsm without DEAN STANLEY S FATHER. destructiveness ; culture without moral indifference ; piety without fanaticism, are not so common that, when we see them in one just combination, we can afford to be indifferent to their beauty. He liad seen the possibility of this co?nbination realized in his own father. In the preface to the 63 DEAN STANLEY, " Memoirs of Edward and Catherine Stanley," he says, in reference to the Bishop of ISTorwich's work as a parish priest and as a prelate : "There existed" (apart from all connection with the Oxford movement of i 834) " a sound form of moral and religious life, not the less admirable because it sprang from a zeal tempered by common sense, and because it aimed — not so much at the interest of a party, or even of a church, as at the good of the whole community. ISTor is it without interest to follow the career of one who, both politically and ecclesiastically, belonged to the liberal movement of the day, in whom the passion for reform and improve- ment, which characterized that movement, had not yet been superseded by the passion for destruction." " Such a type of liberal " — adds the Dean, with a touch of that quiet scorn which he could apply so gently, but effectively — " would not, perhaps, altogether fulfil some modern exactions, but it was not thought unworthy of the kindness and friendship of such ecclesiastics as Eeginald Heber, i\ mold, and Milman, or such statesmen as Lord Melbourne, Lord Piussell, and Lord Lansdowne." The influence of this father was prolonged and strengthened when his son became Arnold's pupil at Eugby. Few men have left behind them so little written, in proportion to the much imparted, as Arnold. His pupils were his "living epistles." They carried out of Rugby not only an inspiring reverence for their master, and devotion to the good to which they saw DEAN STANLEY. 69 he was devoted, but the living influence of principles that are at the root of all useful social, political, or religious progress. To perpetuate these principles of rational godliness, to translate Arnold into English HALL, CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD. life and character, thought and action, Stanley re- garded as his first duty in tlie worhl when, as Fellow of University College, Oxford, he entered on his pro- fessional career. One part of that duty was discharged in writiuG^ his master's life. 70 DEAN STANLEY. That house at Eugby, said Carlyle, was " one of the rarest sights in the world — a temple of industrious peace." The " Life " which depicted that noble in- dustry was Stanley's first literary work ; and nothing he wrote afterwards outweighed it in real value and interest. It preserved and concentrated, in a literary form of rare excellence, the impressions produced, by Arnold's strong opinions and emphatic personality, on the most sympathetic and capable of the minds that he had trained. The book was published in 1 844. Next year its author became " Select Preacher " to the University, and six years later a Canon of Canterbury; in 1853, Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford and Canon of Christ Church ; and finally, in 1863, Dean of Westminster. These are the several steps of his ecclesiastical preferment, the last of which admitted him to the very place in the Church which, one would say, he had been born to fill. Throughout these grades of professional advance- ment he rapidly acquired literary fame. He never was much of a theologian, in the scientific sense ; and no one would think of adding his name to the illustrious roll which records the names of the Barrows, the Souths, the Taylors of the past, and of the Maurices, and others, of the present, who have swayed the whole religious thought of their generation. His bent was towards the characters, scenes, associa- tions of the past, in tlieir relation to the wants and interests of the living present; and he gave it full DEAN STANLEY, 71 scope in that series of brilliant works which he de- voted to the illustration of the liistory of the Jewish and the Eastern Churches ; the scenes and traditions of Sniai TUM TOWER, CHKIST CHURCH, OXFORD. and Palestine ; and the memorials of the great cathedral and the great abbey at whose altars he had served. Exact dogmatists might mark here and there a vague- ness of definition ; keen critics might detect a histori- cal inaccuracy at this or that minor point ; but no one 72 DEAN STANLE V, in reading any of Lis books could misunderstand the firm faith in a Divine righteousness and love, the generous width of human sympathy, the lofty scorn of moral baseness, the just and clear view of the real principles involved in any question, the love of truth, tliat slione over e\'ery page; and the dullest eye could not but kindle as it traced the splendid panoramas in which he unrolled the history of the Jewish or the Oriental Church, the traditions of the Desert and the Promised Land, or the records of his own Westminster. His faculty of vivid reproduction of the past, of picturesque illustration, of adaptation of every collateral aid and association in producing the one perfect im- pression he wished to fix in the memory, was un- equalled by any literary craft we have ever known. This faculty, and the wonderful tact and skill with which he wielded it, never showed to greater advantage than in one of his lesser, but most exquisite and characteristic performances — his first Eectorial address at St. Andrews. We remember well two passages in point, and the affectionate enthusiasm which they stirred in his youthful hearers. We quote but one. Eeferring to the young Alexander Stuart, the pupil of Erasmus, the boy Archbishop of St. Andrews, who, when but eighteen years of age, fell by the side of his father, James IV., at Flodden, he said : — " Of all ' the flowers of the forest ' that were there ' wede away,' surely none was more lovely than this young Marcellus of the Scottish Church. If he fell under the memorable charge of my namesake on that CLOISTERS, CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD. DEAN STANLEY. ys fatal day, may lie accept, thus late, the lament which a kinsman of his foe would fain pour over his untimely bier." To recount his literary works, so manifold were they, would occupy pages. In addition to the " Life of Arnold," tlie " Sinai and Palestine," the " Lectures on the Jewish and Eastern Churches," and the " Historical Memorials " of Canterbury and of Westminster, already referred to, he published three or four volumes of sermons, and one or two of lectures and addresses, two volumes of commentary on the Epistles to the Corin- thians, " Essays on Church and State," " Lectures on the Church of Scotland," and several minor works — to say nothing of constant contributions to reviews, magazines, and leading journals. A word may fitly be said of his connection with Good Words, under tlie editorship of Norman Macleod ; for some incidents to which it gave rise are strikingly illustrative of the kind of hostility his influence sometimes aroused. He cordially recognized in Good Words an attempt to fulfil one of the ideas of his master, Arnold — the circulation of a popular litera- ture, cheaply supplied, and dealing with as wide a range of subjects as possible, in a Christian tone, but without sectarian or dogmatic bias — a fusion of the religious and the secular. The innnense success of the experiment roused opposition in some quarters ; and the Eecord newspaper felt it necessary to make a series of attacks on Good Words and its chief con- tributors. 76 DEAN STANLEY. " Foremost amidst this motley group," said the Eccorcl (and we quote the passage, only because of what it evoked, in reply, from Norman Macleod ; and because it is a specimen of the kind of language freely applied to Stanley, throughout his life, by the Evangelical organs), " we discern the Eev. A. P. Stanley, the friend of Professor Jowett, the advocate of ' Essays and Eeviews,' * the historical traducer of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, and others of the Hebrew worthies," &c. &c. " I was threatened in London " — wrote the editor of Good Words in May, 1862 — "that unless I gave up Stanley and Kingsley, I should ' be crushed.' .... Strahan and I agreed to let Good Words perish a hundred times, before we would play such a false part as this. Good Words may perish, but I will never save it by such sacrifices of principle." Stanley deserved such loyalty from his friends and coadjutors, for no man was ever more loyal to them, and to all who needed the help of his sympathy and support. Amid the uproar raised about the " Essays and Pteviews," he held out his friendly hand to the authors. When Dr. Colenso was under the ban of Convocation he asked him to preach in the Abbey. When Pere Hyacinthe broke with the Eoman hier- archy, and encountered the ecclesiastical and social * A volume of essays, published in i860. The authors were clergymen ; and at that time public opinion did not favour so much freedom of opinion among clergymen as it does at present. VEAN STANLE Y. 77 ostracism which visited his marriage, he found refuge and countenance for himself and his "vvife in the Deanery. The vilified name, the lost cause, the unfriended struggler, never appealed in vain to Stanley's generous chivalry. It was this sentiment, more than any other, that urged him to withstand for a time the popular objection to giving to the last Xapoleon a niche in our Walhalla. His thoughtful kindness, the personal trouble he would take to do one a service, were remarkable in a man so engrossed in society and affairs. His unselfish consideration for the interests of those who were but privates in the ranks of literature, in which he was a renowned chief, was a form of brotherly kindness of wliich few of us have had much experience. He would go out of his way to introduce in an article, or even in a note at a page- foot, a commendatory notice of a work in w^hich he took an interest, especially if the author were young, or appeared specially in need of it. And he liked one to be av/are that he took pains to do this. " I do not know whether you detected the track of a friend in two recent Scottish biographies in the Timcsl^ he wrote to us after one of these kindly feats. Again referrin;:: to an article in which a critic had straved from his text — as he thought — in order to vent a personal grudge : " I forget whether I ever expressed to you my annoyance at the gratuitous attack upon you in the Edhihuvfjli Bcxiciv, by I know not whom. I did what little I could by going also beyond my 73 DEAN STANLEY, tetlier iu making a short counter-blast, in an article wliicli I wrote in the Times shortly after." During these years of growing literary activity and fame, the principal incidents of his outward life were the Eastern journey in 1852—3, which suggested his " Sinai and Palestine ; " his second expedition to the East, with the Prince of Wales, just before his appointment to Westminster; his marriage, in 1863, to Lady Augusta Bruce ; his mission to Eussia to solemnize the EnGjlish marriagje of the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh in 1874; and a visit to the United States in 1878. Throughout this period, and especially after his coming to the Abbey, he identified himself more and more with the maintenance of tho principles that go by the name of Broad Churchism, but which are, in fact, simply the principles of com- mon sense and Christian freedom applied to theological and ecclesiastical questions. He was the natural leader of the Broad Church party, although he was in no sense a partisan, and never aimed at party successes, or desired any triumphs except those of tolerance and charity. Alike from the pulpit, through the press, and in Convocation, he fouglit a good fight (and in Convocation always against a hostile majority) for the principle that the National Church should be comprehensive and not exclusive — should tolerate and not persecute. Alike in the old Gorham * controversy * Mr. Gorham, a clergyman, was subjected to legal proceed- ings because his views concerning the effect of baptism were legarded by the then Archbishop of Canterbury as unsound. DEAN STANLE V. 79 and in the latest ritualistic squabbles, he pleaded for liberty and forbearance. He refused to let the Pan- Anglican Synod identify its ineffective council with the august name of the Abbey. He admitted the revisers of the Bible to the Communion in Henry YII.'s chapel, though one of them was a Unitarian. As the law excluded all non-Anoiican divines from Andican pulpits, he devised those services in the nave of Westminster, at which, without violation of the statute, he could gratify his catholicity of feeling, and give expression to his idea of the relation of the Abbey to the religion of the country at large, by selecting the preacher either from the ranks of the Church of Scotland or of Englisli iSTonconformity. Although a clergyman, Stanley never held a cure of souls. His flock, pent in no single fold, embraced the many, of various classes and characters, who found in him a helpful and intelligent symimthy they found in no other. That word recurs as often as we speak of him — for no other describes his idiosyncrasy — that human- hearted brotherliness, into which no trace of self- consciousness or of officialism ever intruded. His congregation was that great eclectic multitude that, Sunday after Sunday, thronged the Abbey, and listened to the tremulous yet penetrating voice, with its rhythmic cadences, which always uttered a message of high religious purpose, of peace and reconciliation ; and at any public crisis, or after any national loss, enforced, with perfect grace and wise moderation, the proper lesson,, or paid the fitting tribute, or pointed the essen- 8o DBA IV S TA NLE Y, tial moral. In listening to Stanley men felt that here was one, occupying a place which socially, ecclesiasti- cally, intellectually, was a coign of vantage unequalled in England, if not in Christendom, who had an open mind, and an unbiassed judgment for every new specu- lation, project, or interest that affected the thoughts of his countrymen, and whose great desire was to bring all these into harmony not with an ecclesiastical or dogmatic system^ but with the essentials of the Christian faith. With this faith his conviction was that all scientific and historic truth could be, and would yet be, reconciled. His marriage, which followed his preferment to Westminster, wrought a great change in Stanley's life. Hitherto he had not entered much into society, and had been but a visitor in London. Under Lady Augusta's sway the Deanery, which was now his home, became one of the most distinguished salons of the metropolis. iVll that was best, freshest, brightest in society, found a centre of cordial reunion there. His wife's intimacy witli the Queen, acquired through her former position in the household, drew him into closer relations with the Court. The Quardian of the Jeru- salem Chamber felt the pleasurable obligation of ex- tending a brotherly hospitality to the clergy. Men of science and of letters found at once encouragement and relaxation in his wife's cordial and gracious kindness, and in his keen sympathy with all progress and dis- covery, and the varied flow of his charming conversa- tion. Pilgrims to the Abbey, with any intelligent ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY. From a Photograph hy Abel Leivis, Do/cg/as, Isle of Man. 1' DEAN STANLEY. 83 knowledge of its history and love of its character, were always welcome at the Deanery. No one who ever entered that door, or sat at that table, can forget how the old house was brightened with the winning sunshine of the presence of his wife. Until his marriage, he used to say, he had never really lived. After her death, it w^as plain to his friends that he felt the glory and joy of life for him were over. To one who had written expressing his sense of her unfailing kindness, and recalling a trait in which it had manifested its tender and minute thou'Tht for others, he replied after a while, " I never wrote to thank you for your kind letter to me in the first days of my great affliction. I valued it especially, because it added one more to the many memorials of herself, even in small details, which my dear wife left — and has I trust left for ever — on all who have known her for ever so short a time. To keep up the recollection of her in the remembrance of those who did so know her, and in trying to fulfil what she desired to be done, is my chief consolation." To her aid and sympathy in all his work he bore touching testimony in the dedica- tion of the volume of Lectures on the Jewish Church, published in 1876, the year of her death: ''To the beloved memory of the inseparable partner in every joy and every struggle of twelve eventful years, this volume, the solicitude and solace of her latest days, is dedicated, with the humble prayer that its aim »^iay not be altogether unworthy of her sustaining love, ner inspiring courage, and her never-failing faith in the 84 DEAN ST A NLE V. enlargement of the Church and the triumph of all truth." Her death, while it desolated the Deanery, removed one of the hrightest and purest elements of the life of London society. The Dean was no visionary who should think that anything he could do or say would prevail to change " the gum-flowers of Almack's into living roses in the garden of God ; " but, knowing the religious formalism and social cor- ruption of the society in which he moved, he trusted to the wholesome influence that such a presence as his wife's must exercise, and which might reach and touch some of those whom the conventionaHties of life render almost inaccessible to direct religious appeal. Her rank, her talents, her purity and piety, joined to his own great position, were forces on the side of the social good which was his ideal, the withdrawal of which from his side left him with a melancholy sense of weakness and solitude. Probably no Englishman — certainly no English ecclesiastic — ever appreciated Scottish life and character as the Dean did. There is a complacent Anglican ignorance which wraps everything north of the Tweed in its contented folds, and to which Scottish afl'airs — especially Scottish Church aflairs — are as blank as the Australian desert. He had none of this. He knew Scottish history — particularly Scottish Church history — better than most Scotsmen. He had the keenest sense of the humour, the shrewdness, the kindliness, of Scottish character. " You know well," writes one who DEAN S TA NLE V. 85 was much with him, " how he enjoyed Scotland, appre- ciated the Scotch clergy and the people; ar.d Sir Walter Scott amused and delighted him to the last." " Find ' Guy Mannering/ and let me take the taste out of my mouth," he said not long before his death, after looking rapidly through the three volumes of a dreary modern novel, which some one had strongly commended to him. During the last weeks of Lady Augusta's illness he beguiled some of the heavy hours by reading " Old Mortality " aloud. Sometimes, overcome A\'ith the thought of the approaching calamity, he would burst into tears, and then take up the book and o-q on a^^ain. He rather scandalized the Scottish Pharisees by emphasizing, in his Edinburgh lectures, the services rendered to religion by Walter Scott, and by Eobert Burns, " the prodigal son of the Church of Scotland." He delighted in any tale of Scotch superstition, any scrap of folk-lore, any anecdote illustrating the national peculiarities, social or theological. Such an aspiration as tliat of the old Free Kirk minister, " Oh ! that we were all baptized into the Spirit of the Disruption," was to him as a chord of quaint music to the ear of a master — disclosing a new harmony, and to be stored in memory for future use. A ghost story told him '' in the dreary autumn of 1877, in the dark woods of liosneath," emerged, in the October Fraser of 1880, as the text of the narrative of as original and exhaustive an historical quest and discovery, as an explorer of legend and relic ever undertook. The General Assembly always was an object of great 86 DEAN STANLE Y. interest to him ; he studied its " overtures," and read its debates, and one year he attended its meetings. He was impressed with the fairness with which the Assembly listened to a long and aggressive speech, altogether out of accord with the oj^inions of the majority. " I should not have been listened to half as patiently in Convocation," he remarked. From the Established he went to the Free Assembly, when some wild man from the north was fulminating. " I saw Habakkuk Mucklewrath," \\as one of his comments thereafter — delivered with the bright smile and quick confidential intonation that pointed his humorous sentences. "The honorary member of all religions" — " the chief Nonconformist in the Church of England " ■ — as aggrieved Sacerdotalists would sneeringly describe him, liked nothing better than to show his catholicity by preaching in Scottish pulpits. He once even attended a United Presbyterian "soiree" somewhere near Broom- hall ; and, in fact, exhibited a light-hearted disregard of priestly conventionalities and pomposities which made the Scotch prelatists, with whom he never allied himself, wrini>- their hands in horror. Stanley was a loyal son of the Church of England, but to him her reformation was as dear as her catholicity ; nor did he regard her catholic character as determined by her form of government. A bishop was, in his eyes, a useful church functionary and nothing more. He used to congratulate himself that, as the successor of the Abbots of Westminster, he was independent of the whole bench of bishops. It was, DEAN STANLEY. 87 perhaps, this personal independence, as well as his love of liberty, of free discussion, and of popular rather than priestly government in the Church, that led him to cultivate such close relations to the Church of Scot- land, and especially to those of its clergy who might be called Broad Churchmen. His sympathy with that party, combined with his wish to do justice to the principles which he believed the Presbyterian Church had represented in the past, and with his desire to bear his testimony, at a critical time, to the worth of the national establishment, prompted the delivery of his lectures on the Church of Scotland, in Edinburgh, in 1872. The lectures are not without faults; but no more impartial and comprehensive sketch of Scotch Church history was ever limned ; and the necessity and success of his vindication of unpopular " Moderatism " was attested by the noisy violence of the resentment which greeted it. " I hope to publish the lectures immediately " — he wrote — " that is to say, as soon as the printers can get through the mass of illegible MS. that I have sent." The sentence recalls one of liis characteristics — a most deplorable handwriting. Worse penman- ship — more scraggy and inscrutable — could not be imagined. He used to admit, pathetically, his failures in this department, although never willing to acknow- ledsfe blame if it could be laid on some one else. I once received a letter from him a week old, and that had travelled far and wide ere reaching me at 69 Inverness Terrace, W., to which he had addressed it. 88 DEAN STANLEY. " Try Hollo way Eoad " had been added by some in- genious official. I sent the Dean the envelope as a curiosity, and he wrote back — quite ignoring the illegibility of his " Inverness Terrace " — " I see that my address was right, as far as it went ; ' Holloway Eoad ' was added by the postmasters." I remember his telling us, at the Sons of the Clergy dinner in Glasgow, how the " Halo of the Burning Bush " had come back from the printers transmuted into the " Horn of the Burnino- Beast." How full and varied was his fund of anecdote, narrative, reminiscence ! One recalls the vivacious rapid utterance — the eye now beaming with sympathy, now tw^inkling with humour — the mobile mouth, with its patrician curves — the delicately sensitive and eager face, that in graver hours or in earnest talk grew so solemn — so impressive, with the dignity of lofty thought and feeling. Some men, in anecdote and narrative, always suggest quorum pars magna fui, and obtrude their own personality. The Dean knew better ; and especially in relating incidents of his unique experience, of which few, if any except ]iim- self, had any cognizance, he showed a happy knack in imparting what was of interest without involving names or secrets. His reticence was as remarkable as his memory. As one looks back on him, the " study of imagiua- tion " gets thronged with pictures, that i)ass gently before " the eye and prospect of the soul," recalling that slender hgure, " that good grey head," that beau- DEAN STANLEY. 89 tiful countenance, amidst the old familiar scenes that shall know him no more for ever — in the pulpit of WLSTMINSTEK ABBEY, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST. the choir, or at the reading-desk in the nave, as in the summer twilight he pronounced, in his tone of 90 DEAN STANLEY. trembling earnestness, his benediction of that "peace of God which passeth all understanding ; " among the chapels and the monuments, the tiny centre of a listeninGj ring of visitors — often of working-men — to whom he is imparting the lore of the mighty Abbey ; in the Deanery, in quiet talk in his study, or in rich and versatile colloquy at his table, in those bright days when the gracious presence, that he was so proud of, shed its charm on all ; at St. Andrews, in the old library, on the evening of his installation, searching out each of the students for a word of talk, and at last resting by the table, in the centre of the room, and saying, with an air of satisfaction and relief, " Now, I think I have spoken to every one ; " — all now but a vision and a memory. It is good to have known so beautiful a character. In speaking of Thomas Erskine, of Linlathen, the Dean once said, " There are not a few to whom that attenuated form and farrowed visage seemed a more direct link with the unseen world than any other that had crossed their path in life." There must be many wlio feel how truly this might be repeated of himself. He was one of the few men whose transparent moral goodness, purity, simplicity, united to intellectual strength, seemed to others to be a guarantee of the reality of that better world of serener air, in whose high regions the pure forms dwell, " above the smoke and stir of this dim spot which men call Earth." The end of the noble life came sooner than we DEAN STANLEY. 91 had hoped ; but the frame wanted vital force to repel the sharp attack of disease, and when Bishop Fraser made that pathetic appeal to the congre- gation in the Abbey — "Pray for him, good people, while prayers may yet avail " — he was abeady passing gently under the shadow of death. "The doctors had desired him not to speak, and with his usual wonderful patience he obeyed them," we are told ; so there w^ere but few last words. Among the broken sen- tences that the watchers by his side caught up were these : " As far as I understood what the duties of my office were supposed to be, in spite of every in- competence, I am yet humbly trustful that I have sustained before the mind of the nation the extra- ordinary value of the Abbey as a religious, national, and liberal institution." " The end has come in the way I most desired it should come. I am perfectly satisfied — perfectly happy — I have not the slightest misgiving." "I always wished to die at West- minster." The friends beside him desired to join in the Holy Communion with him, ere he went, and Canon Farrar administered it. When he was about to give the blessing, the Dean took hold of his hand, and signified that he should wait ; then slowly, but quite distinctly, he himself pronounced the Benediction. Before mid- night of the same day — Monday, July 18 — he had passed away. On the following Monday, in the afternoon, he was carried to his grave in Henry VII.'s Chapel. The 92 DEAN STANLEY. Queen, to whom, and to whose family, he had long been a faithful friend and adviser, had ordered that he should be laid in that royal precinct, beside his wife. The only directions he had himself given about his funeral were, that among his pall-bearers should be a clergyman of the Scottish Church and an English Non- conformist, and that the Abbey should be open to the people, whose interests he had served so well, and whom he had taught to reverence that venerable sanctuary, as the symbol and the guardian of the religion and the greatness of the nation. Dense crowds surrounded the church and filled the nave — numbers of them, evidently, poor and humble people who came there to mourn a true friend. In the choir and the chapel were other's, to many of whom his sympathy and brotherhood had been a staff in their pilgrimage ; some whose highest aspirations and en- deavours after human good had found their sanction in his approval ; some to whom, in days of trouble and unfriendly solitude, tlie Deanery had been a home — the sacred point of their horizon ; others who, amid doubts and unrest, had found in his life and words a stimulating example and a " ministry of reconcilia- tion.'"' Princes, nobles, statesmen, prelates, ambassadors, men of letters, of science, of art — men of many phases of opinion and belief, of many ranks and classes — united in one reverence and sorrow, followed his bier. The coffin was lowered into the same grave as his wife's, and the flowers that covered it almost hid the plain DEAN STANLEY. 93 inscription : " The Very Eeverend Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster ; second son of the Right Eev. Edward Stanley, Bishop of Norwich. Born Dec. 13, 18 15 ; died July 18, 1881." Those who have known him can never forget the "man greatly beloved." His guardian spirit will always seem to haunt those aisles and cloisters ; his voice to echo among those arches. The place he filled will remain a blank, whose void can never be supplied. The high ideal of a free and noble and pious life will always be linked in tender affection with his memory. In no one else can we hope again to see, as in him, the consummate flower of the Christian culture of this age. E. H. Stoky. OLD TOM AT OXFORD. FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE. "The wish, that of the living whole No life may fail beyond the grave. Derives it not from what we have The likest God within the soul?" In Memoriam. FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, N the year 1810, Mrs. Michael Maurice, the wife of the Unitarian minister at Norman- stone, near Lowestoft, was sitting with a friend who had casually called on her, when through the open door of the room there entered a little boy of fiv.e years of age. He betra^^ed no shyness, such as children often do, at the presence of a stranger, but neither was there a toucli of forwardness. It was a natural thing for him to go where his mother was ; and the sweetness of temper suggested by his bright and artless face showed neither fear of intrusion nor desire of obtrusion. He carried in one hand a flower brought in from the garden, and in the otlier a biscuit just given him as he j)assed through the kitchen. The lady visitor was of a some- what quizzical turn ; and seeing the child approach G 9S FREDERICK DEN ISO N MA URICE. the open door witli a treasure in either hand, she whispered to his mother, '' Children always give up what they least care for : now we shall see which he likes best." Then she said aloud, " Frederick 1 which will you .aive me, the flower or the biscuit ? " But without an instant's hesitation, he eagerly held out both hands, saying, " Choose whichever you like." This was Frederick Denison Maurice, the future teacher of religion and morality. The incident was characteristic. It showed the child as " father of the man." For the man who grew out of this child was far more distinguished by goodness than by genius. He had an eager mind as well as a loving heart ; but the activity of his intellect was always directed much more by his affections than by cold judgment. He made few, if any, distinct additions to the range of human thought or knowledge; and the phrases he occasionally imposed upon himself and mankind as substitutes for thought were only a passing fashion. But the temper with which he inspired theological study and controversy is a permanent blessing to the universal church. His insistance on the sacredness of national life, and on the need for its inspiration by religion, was a much needed protest against the too secular temper of modern politics. His noble service to the working-classes must always be remembered with gratitude. But he did not pretend to have solved any perplexing questions, either of trade, or wages, or the relations of capital and labour. "What he did was to brinsr hio-h ideals of life within the reach FREDERICK D E N I S O N MAURICE. From a Photograph by Messrs, Elhoit &^ Fry. FREDERICK DEN ISO N MA URICE. lol of the humblest, and to organize means of popular culture in the shape of workmen's colleges. He was a conspicuous illustration of Neander's words : " Pectus est quod facit theologum," " It is the heart that makes the theologian." All his interpretations of creeds, all his expositions of doctrine, all his readings of church history, were dictated, not by his intellect, but by his profound sympathy with the patriarchal appeal, " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do rioht ? " This predominant moral impulse of life is capable of taking many forms. It may make a man dogmatic, as in the case of Calvin, or domineering like Cromwell, or scornful like Carlyle. But in the case of ]\Iaurice this moral impulse took the form of a meek subordina- tion of self to a divine right and divine truth greater than he could define. Through very reverence he was smitten with stammering in thought, even when his speech was most flowing and fervent. His humility made him grateful for ancient creeds and authoritative formulas of the Church, because such documents put into words what he would not have dared to define. But his unspeakable ideals of goodness and truth led him to force into these documents many strange and even startling interpretations, such as they had never been supposed capable of bearing. Yet in doing this he was conscious of nothing but a devout desire to subordinate his own understanding to the transcen- dent majesty of the divine will and the di-^dne law. In particular he was most anxious not to judge others 102 FREDERICK: DENIS ON MA URICE, or to judge for them. When in the fulness of mature life he was almost embarrassed by the burden of spiritual treasures for the dispensation of which he was responsible, he had no notion of prescribing the order or mode in which they should be received. Like the child out of whom he grew, he held out full hands to his friends and said, "Choose which you like." The incident mentioned above is not the only one worth recalling from the story of an interesting and beautiful childhood. The family life into which he was born on August 29, 1805, was peculiar, and in some respects uninviting. His father had entered the Unitarian ministry before its Presbyterian tradi- tions had quite died out. His grandfather had been a dissenting preacher and farmer of evangelical opinions, but of so broad a charity, that he declared his hatred of " toleration," on the ground that when we affect to tolerate opponents we assume an air of superiority to them. Michael Maurice, the father, was educated at Hackney College as an aspirant to the orthodox ministry. But at twenty-six years of age, in 1792, he became assistant to the celebrated Dr. Priestley, who, after his shameful persecution by the mob in Birmingham, removed to the old " Gravel Pit Chapel " in Hackney. On Priestley's departure to America Michael Maurice went to Yarmouth, where he married Priscilla Hurry, the daughter of a merchant in that town, and after- wards, in 1801, settled at Normanstone. Here he FREDERICK: DENISON MA VRICE. 103 aclclsd considerably to his income by taking pupils. There were three daughters born before Frederick. Two of them, the first and third, must have been very remarkable children ; for they first converted their governess from orthodoxy to Unitarianism, and then, on changing their own opinions, they re-converted her from Unitarianism to Calvinism. At the same time the mother was passing through phases of faith which culminated in a painful resolve not to listen any more to the preaching of the man she most dearly loved. The decision did not stop here ; for the dogmatic sisters differed among themselves, the eldest girl joining the Established Church, while the two younger joined the Baptist denomination, and for a while attended the ministry of Jolin Foster. Thus during Frederick's boyhood he had much opportmiity for studying the significance of a " house divided against itself." And yet it was only theo- logically divided, not in affection or moral sympathy. The father indeed at one time made a greater trouble of these differences than might have been expected from his own easy indifference to creeds. But he appears to have got over it ; and though the son has himself written ■ that, " those years were to him years of moral confusion and contradiction," the loyal attachment he always showed to his home could only have been nourished in an atmosphere of domestic affection. Meanwhile Michael Maurice had removed his family in 18 13 to Frenchay, near Bristol. Here the boy's io I FREDERICK DEN ISO M MA URICE. education was begun by his sisters' governess and pro- selyte, and carried on by his father. He is described by a surviving cousin as at that time " a bright iutelh- gent boy, at times grave, and often sitting on a shelf in the book-closet, taking down first one book and then another." But the buds of character put out in that early spring-time were far more those of moral beauty than of mental brilliance. The singleness of eye described in the Gospel was so manifest in him that his father met all little complaints about him with the words, " I am sure Frederick has the best inten- tions." A nurse, commonly called Betsy, once offered him a plum from a tree in the garden, but she never forgot the consequences. Wide-eyed and erect he looked at her, half in amazement, half in i^ity, and, solemnly addressing her by her Christian and surname at full length, " Elizabeth ISTorgrove ! " he exclaimed, " I did think you would have known better than to do that, and would have remembered that mamma wishes us never to have fruit except she gives it us herself." This incident by itself would perhaps have an unpleasant suggestiveness of childish sanctimony. But the impression is corrected by other incidents redolent of boyish playfulness and courage. His cousiu. Dr. Goodeve, of Clifton, used to recall with pleasure a raid across fields made by himself in com- pany with Frederick Maurice and another companion, when they were all under fifteen years old. Presently they were confronted by an angry bull, from which FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE. 105 they found a precarious refuge on an enbankment in the middle of a large meadow. " There we were safe enough, hut completely besieged; the savage beast continuing to pace round us, apparently ready to rush upon any one who came within his reach. Time wore on ; and night approaching, we began to feel that Frederick's mother would grow uneasy at our absence — a matter about which he was always exceedingly sensitive. It was resolved therefore that one of us should make an attempt to procure assistance, whilst the others endeavoured to divert the bull's attention. Drawing lots was talked of, but Frederick insisted on his right as the oldest to lead the forlorn hope. The scheme was successful ; but the quiet undaunted way in which he retired, facing the bull (who followed him all the while), and slowly bowing to it with his hat at intervals — according to a theory he had on the subject — till he could make a final rush for the gate, was worthy of all admiration."* The idea of touching the heart of a bull by bows of solemn courtesy suggests a boy of quaint and old- fashioned character. And this suggestion is amply borne out by a very extraordinary letter written at the still earlier aG;e of ten, and addressed to his eldest sister. If we call the letter extraordinary, it is not because of any precocious talent it shows ; for it dis- plays nothing of the kind, unless some signs of keen attention and retentive memory. But it is so long * "' Life of Frederick Denison Maurice," edited by his son, vol. i. p. 40. 1 06 FREDERICK DENISON MA URICE. that few boys of ten would have the perseverance to stick to it through the repeated sittings it required. The subject also, a kind of ])recis of the proceedings at a Bristol meetinsj of the British and Forei<]fn School Society, is one on which not many boys would care to expend much labour, while the style is that of a newspaper reporting hack at the age of sixty. " At first Mr. Protheroe took the chair and opened the meeting with a very appropriate speech, stating the reasons why the meeting was called, his own opinion in considering both institutions* as connected with the same important end, the temporal and eternal welfare of all." It is interestiusj to note that Eobert Hall addressed the meeting, but his weak voice failed to reach the young reporter, for all said about the speech is that, " though good judges say it was one of the best they ever heard, we could not hear ; I will not therefore pretend to delineate it." The more Boanergean oratory of the Eev. William Thorpe left a sentence vibrating in the memory of the boy, who retails with evident pleasure a rhetorical platitude about " that cause for which a Hampden and a Ptussell bled, that which inspires the breast of a true-born Englishman, and without which man is placed on a level with the beasts of the field."! It is clear from wliat has already been said, that the influences under which Maurice's earlier years were passed were not favourable to the Established Church, * J.e., the Lancasteriau and National Societies. t " Life," vol. i. pp. 35-37- FREDERICK DEN ISO N MA URICE, 107 nor indeed to any cheerful views of religion. His mother, after adopting strict Calvinistic views, believed herself predestined to everlasting misery, but patheti- cally hoped that her son might be one of the elect. He, however, was oppressed by the same cloud of superstition. At the age of sixteen or seventeen he speaks of himself as " a being destined to a few short years of misery here, as an earnest of and preparation for a more enduring state of wretchedness and woe." But about tliis time he found access to a laroer circle than that of his earliest days. As he seemed excluded from a clerical career he beG;an to think of the law : and the new friends to whom he was introduced for the furtherance of this purpose opened up to him a world of religious thought, the very existence of which seems to have been unknown to him before. " Where is your authority," asks a lady correspondent of this date, " for regarding any individual of the human race as clcstiiiecl to misery either here or hei-eafter ? " It is very strange, but it appears to be true, that he now, for the first time, becjan to realize what a ^ross contradiction there was betw^een his mother's oloomv superstition and the belief that " God is Love." But when once he fastened on this and tlie divine rigjht- eousness as the base line for all farther thouglit, the course of his religious development was decided. All the rest was natural growth, though affected of course to a certain extent by the peculiar circumstances of his childhood and youth. The wider world, opened to him by the new friend- lo8 FREDERICK DENISON MA URICE. sliips of this period, led him to desire to find his way to the bar through one of the great Universities. No difficulty was interposed, and at the end of 1823 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge. He afterwards migrated to Trinity Hall, as the latter was considered to offer the more appropriate avenue to the bar. But he never gained any great University distinction, though he made a deep impression on friends such as John Sterling, and on tutors such as Mr. Ebden, of Trinity Hall, and Julius Hare. At the end of 1826 he left Cambridge, intending to pursue his legal studies in London. He left without a degree ; and the reason why he did so was tliat though he much preferred the Anglican Church to any of the various sects whose conflicting claims distracted his early years, yet he did not see his way to adopt entirely the formularies of that Church. But at this period the Universities had not been thrown open, and it was absolutely necessary to sign the articles in order to obtain a degree either in mathematics or in law. ISTo passage in Maurice's life illustrates better than the records of this year the anxious conscientiousness with v/hich he regarded all professions of religious belief. As his desire to join the Anglican communion grevv^ stronger, he wrote from London to Mr. Ebden " to ascertain what degree of consent and adherence to the doctrines and formularies of the Church he would have to profess in order to admission to the degree"* — i.e., * From a letter of Mr. Ebden quoted in the " Life," &c., vol. i. p. 72. FREDERICK DEN I SON MA URICE. 109 of LL.P). The explanation sent in reply did not remove his difficulties. His name was still on the Looks of Trinity Hall, and its retention for a time might prove of considerable advantage, as lie was considered a very likely candidate for a Fellowship. But when he received Mr. Ebden's answer as to the meaning of subscription, he wrote at once to have his name taken off the books, on the ground that there was no probability of his being able, conscientiously, to fulfil the required conditions. But Mr. Ebden felt it a duty to expostulate. " I sug- gested," he says, " that as he was still eighteen months under the five years' standing necessary to the degree, it might be well for him to pause in his determination ; that further search and thought might lead him to different conclusions ; and that without any mean or sordid motive, he might well hesitate before renouncing the advantages of a complete University course. His answer was prompt, and in that high, pure, and noble spirit which ruled his whole life, whatever might be tlie intellectual phases of his mind. He directed tliat the step of cancelling his name on the College books should be taken instantly; for whatever his opinions might eventually be, he would not hazard their being intluenced by any considerations of worldly interest." This correspondence is most important for a just estimate of Maurice's character, and of the nature of his ultimate attachment to the Anglican Church. Church- men indeed for the most part need no such evidence. Believing as they do that their position is the true one, 1 10 FREDERICK DEN ISO N MA URICE. tliey cannot wonder that a young man brought up on a mixture of Unitarianism, Calvinism, and Methodism should have been attracted by the truth just in pro- portion to his candour and sincerity. But outsiders who are equally convinced that their position is the true one, have sometimes had a difficulty in believing that Maurice was drawn over solely by conviction from the Eationalism of his father to a hearty accep- tance of the Prayer Book, Articles, and Athanasian Creed. They have even suspected that a youth who between seventeen and twenty was made suddenly to realize the enormous social disadvantages he was suf- fering through the nonconformity of his parents, might naturally have a wish to be convinced of the apostolic authority of a Church which threw open to him a wider and brighter world. But this correspondence shows that the young man was keenly alive to the danger of such a temptation, and manfully on his guard against it. The truth would seem to be that his reception into the Church was delayed rather than facilitated by the obvious advantages it offered. Notwithstanding this caution and watchfulness over his own motives, Maurice's scruples were entirely removed within two years from the date of his cor- respondence with Mr. Ebden, and he began to turn his thoughts distinctly towards a clerical career. The interval was but little occupied by legal studies. He wrote for the Westminster Eeview. He edited the London Literary Chronicle, and afterwards the Athenceum. He also wrote a novel, " Eustace Conway," FREDERICK DEN ISO N MA URICE. 1 1 1 which attracted some attention. But, on the whole, it was apparent that his gifts did not ht him for a purely literary career. Perhaps he made a little more way as a writer than as a student of law ; but this is not saying very much. The truth is, his powers were moral and spiritual rather than intellectual ; and lie had not discovered his true vocation. During this brief period of literary journeymanship he went little into society, but his company and con- versation were eagerly desired by a few choice friends, such as the Sterlings, father and son, John Stuart Mill, Mr. Eoebuck, James Silk Buckingham, and others of similar mental enterprise. He joined a debating society frequented by some of these friends, and the first speech of his to which we have any reference was made at one of the meetinc^s. His mention of it in a letter to his mother is curious, as anticipating one of the great troubles of his life — the accusation of un- intelligibility. " The subject," he whites, '•' was one on which I have thought a great deal : the disadvantages of competition between the two new Universities ; * but I did not succeed in making myself intelligible, and was accused of being very metaphysical, which was far from being the case." The metaphysical tendency here repudiated w^as greatly stimulated by his devotion to Coleridoe. Indeed, thou oh Maurice himself emphatically disclaimed the title of " Broad Churchman," there can be no doubt that it was the * I.e., London University and King's College ; the latter of "which, however, did not become a "University." 1 1 2 FREDERICK DENTS ON MA URICE, pliilosopliy of Coleridge distilled througli the mind of the former that chiefly inspired what is called the " Broad Chnrch " school of religious thought. About this time his father lost a good deal of money, and this circumstance threatened to interfere with the son's ultimate aspirations. As a matter of course, young Maurice was anxious, not merely to spare his father any unnecessary expense, but also to obtain some immediately lucrative employment, such as miglit enable him, in case of necessity, to assist his parents. The latter had removed to Southampton, in the neighbourhood of which town they remained for the rest of their days. Fortunately the n3ed did not become as acute as was at first apprehended ; and partly by his own exertions, partly by favourable arrangements secured through Dr. Jacob- son and others, he was able to fulfil the project he was now forming. He desired to renew his University career, with the purpose of fitting himself to become a clergyman. He was urged to return to Cambridge, and to become at once a graduate ; but he preferred to become an undergraduate at Oxford. Accordingly, he went to Exeter College, and thus obtained the advantage of a double University education. At Oxford he formed the acquaintance of some distinguished men, inclu- dinf*- iVrthur Hallam and Mr. Gladstone. What is called the Oxford Movement was then commencing ; but it does not seem to have had much effect upon Frederick Maurice. The only aspect of it witli which FREDERICK DENIS ON MA URICE. 1 1 3 he was likely much to sympathize was its earnest devoutness. Its insistance on external forms could hardly have much attraction for a man whose one aim in life was to lay hold of some innermost mystical reality which always eluded, if not his grasp, at any rate his power of exposition. In 1 8 3 1 he resolved to be baptized as a member of the Church of England. This is somewhat strange, if, as we presume, he had been in infancy baptized by his father. For Michael Maurice, we are informed, had never abandoned the ortliodox formula of baptism : '' in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." Of course the father was, in the view of ecclesiastical authority, merely a layman; but we have always understood that lay-baptism, if adminis- tered in due form, is recognized by ecclesiastical authority as sufficient in case of necessity. But, be that as it may, Frederick was baptized again, and thereby signified his anxious desire to be lacking in no condition of communion with the Church. Soon afterwards he took his degree with a second class, and proposed to continue at Oxford for a time as a private tutor. But in 1832 he received an invitation from Mr. Stephenson, of Lympsham, to go and reside with him, in order to see something of practical parochial work, while he prepared for orders. Of this suggestion he took advantage, and not long afterwards received an offer of a curacy at Bubbenhall which gave him a title to orders. He was ordained January 26, 1834, and his answers H 1 14 FREDERICK DENIS ON MA URICE. in the previous examination were very characteristic. For instance, in response to a question requiring him to specify " some of those erroneous and strange doctrines which on his admission to the priesthood he promised to banish and put away," he mentioned amongst others the followincj : " The doctrine that men are more anxious to attain the knowledge of God than He is anxious to briuo- tliem to that knowledge : " "The doc- trine tliat it is possiljle for the perfect God to behold any one except in the perfect man Christ Jesus ; or, that it is possible for man to behold God except as revealed and manifested in Him." It is clear from the latter answer that the young candidate for orders had already definitely formed within his own mind the doctrine that all men are rooted and grounded in the eternal Son. Soon after takinGj orders he entered for the first time into the arena of theological controversy, with his well- known pamphlet entitled " Subscription no Bondage." The views he enunciated showed that love of spiritual paradox which characterized him all through his life. He argued that so far from subscription being a limita- tion to freedom of thought it was the only condition on which real freedom could be enjoyed. Some critics have regarded this as an instance of sheer perversity. Eut it was not so. He thought he had observed in his early experience that teachers and preachers, who are professedly unbound by any creeds or articles, are inclined to be much more rigid in insisting on their own standard of orthodoxy than I FREDERICK DEN ISO N MA URICE. 1 1 5 lire the defenders of an authoritative creed. This is probably the case; but Maurice himself afterwards came to feel that it affords no sufficient justification for the imposition of creeds on students entering at a university. Another instance of his fondness for spiritual paradox is seen in his treatment of the feelings proper to the reception of orders. To an inquir- ing friend, he wrote that so far from regarding a painful sense of utter heartlessness and lovelessness as a discouragement, he came to feel this particular trial as " a more sure witness to him of an inward call .... than the most pleasant feeling, the most affecting sense of Christ's love could have been." His explanation is tliat Ciod does not depend upon our feelings, that He is distinct from all the emotions, energies, affections, sympathies in our minds, the only source and inspirer of them all. A grasp of this truth was in tlie view of the writer the peculiar necessity of this age. The experience of personal defect in feeling might stimulate a grasp of this truth, and hence his justification of the paradox. But after all is said the reader can hardly help feeling that the truth might well have been put in a less para- doxical shape. We have now traced the somewhat devious and certainly unusual course of outward infiuence and inward reflection by which the child of a Unitarian father and Calvinistic mother w^as formed into a devout clergyman of the Established Church. It is not h by Messrs. Elliott cp' Fry. BISHOP ERASER., 169 matter, were in the possession of the well-dressed and well-to-do part of the community. He deplored, too, the rigid bonds in which the clergy had to work. " What we want," he said, " is the Prayer-Book and the Bible, and freedom to use them as may seem best." Although Protestant, he was indignant with cavillers about Eubrics. Men were differently constituted, by the one God of them all, and must be allowed diversity of operation. He recognized in the disciples of science fellow-workers in the discovery of the great truth of God. Nature and revelation, he held, could not be con- tradictory, and had nothing to fear from one another. On one occasion, Professor Huxley said, " I shall not soon forget the spirit-stirring speech of the noble prelate, a speech I welcome, and shall remember as long as I live, as imbued with a spirit which, if it had always been exhibited, would have prevented the difficulties and misunderstandings which I myself deprecate." But what he gained in influence over the religious notions of the students of science, he lost over the reli- gious bigotry and Pharisaism of those whose joy was to have them all called infidel. What he gained, too, by his robust Protestantism, over masculine-minded men and women he lost over the weak school of sentimental prostration. His power, too, over the masses, won by their love of his frankness and fair-play, was purchased at the price of the friendship of the rich. And as he feared no newspaper, his love of honest truth lost him some of their scribblers' praise. Of censure they got tired. He treated it all with the same high-spirited I70 BISHOP FRASER, indifference with which he treated the scoffs of the undergraduates of Oxford, when for his mother's sake he would not follow the extravagant traditions of the place. In his weary moments he cried out to a friend, " Oh, Sale, I would give half I possess to be back again in my quiet country parsonage ! " His frank, manly nature, as all such natures must do, longed for the personal element which was so constant in little Ufton. " I preached twice yesterday at Ufton," he says, writing to his friend Mr. Mozley, " to crowded congregations. I should think I spoke to and shook hands with every man, woman, and child in Ufton." Though he greatly scandalized aristocrats by his ways and orthodox Churchmen by his sayings, he went straight into the hearts of the common people, who both heard and saw him gladly. But a proper bishop could not be made out of him ; he was a proper man, with all the play of feelings which knew no law but love of his race : he was James Eraser. On one occasion, when walking in the streets of Manchester, he saw a horse and cart coming at a rattling pace without a driver. Forgetting the commandments of apron and knee- breeches, he obeyed the commandment of Christ, and did to the unknown driver what he would have liked to be done to him if his vehicle were running away — he ran after it, and he could run con amore, caught it, and restored it to the baker's boy who came up, too amazed at his bishop's doing to even thank his friend. Ko bishop that could do a thing like that, who could BISHOP FRASER, 171 not help doing it, ouglit to expect the esteem of the conventional world. But mechanics like it, and it can bring them into fellowship of the Gospel. " Don't put his statue in a church ; put it out of doors, where we can see it," said the Manchester people, when it was being discussed whether his statue should be of bronze or marble, they cared little which. " Put it where we can seo it," they said. It would do them good to see it. For a bronze Fraser is better than a living priest. So many great ecclesiastics have ridden in their car- riages through the world, criticizing, complimenting, and recomplimenting each other, yet how few of them have furnished to the masses of the people any living example of that Jesus by whose Gospel they live! A MANCUliSTER WAREHOUSE. 172 BISHOP FRASER, Such examples have been furnished quite as freely by the humblest of the laity. But no longer is this wholly true among the manufacturing towns of Lanca- shire. Their inhabitants have felt the fellowship of the strong heart of a man and a brother beating against a bishop's bosom. A "lord" of the Church has been a true lord of their hearts. " Eight reverend " was a o-enuine name, and sprang spontaneously from their deepest soul. By a law as natural as that which made them call forests beautiful and sunsets grand, they called him grand and good. In common daily lan- guage they spoke of him as " our bishop," with a sense of possession somewhat as they spoke of " our Mary " and " our George," whom they loved. He kept on his strong, cheery, brotherly way to the end, faithfully following his ideal of a man through all the years to his grave. He could do little for the masses he so greatly loved ; but he was full of sorrow for the wrongs they had to endure, and the cruel temptations and vices and miseries into which they fell. Of his feelings as to the way in which they were too often treated in churches and chapels he once gave a striking illustration when he was opening a church. As soon as the bells began he marched to a seat in the chancel from which he could watch the congregation come in. When he stood up in the pulpit to preach he said : " I have been grieved and ashamed to see how finely dressed people have been shown to the best seats this morning, and the poor have been put behind. I do not like this ; it ought not to be." To put people BISHOP FRASER. 173 into the background because they lived beneath grimy roofs, up attic stairs, was no way of his. They stood forward in his heart, and were the main end of all his ways. "When he officiated in the Cathedral, he desired that brethren might join and genuinely say, " Our Father." He did not stand in his pulpit for an exhibition, but to set right things that were wrong. If he was glad that his titles attracted the rich, it was that he might reprove what selfishness and arrogance they might be fostering. If merchants were proud of his friendship, this was the opportunity to urge on them consideration for working people. He left the footprints of one of the people on the floors of their marble halls. Simple souls he led as by a thread to the ideal of Him who was rich yet for our sakes became poor ; but with men who loved riches more than their neighbours his thread snapped, and they resented its slight twitch. " He is not orthodox," they said : " why is he not satisfied with faith in the Articles as the old bishop was ? " From such people's palatial villas he turned himself to grimy Manchester, and could not be " satisfied." Xow and again he uttered a low cry of disappointment, and sank down to his desk to write to somebody he could trust, with a weary heart. He loved his church, his city, his country : no wonder he was weary. Again and again, he wished he had never left the country; yet he did not go back to it, but died among the mill- hands and the little town children he so much loved. That they might all eat an honest crust, live sober 174 BISHOP FRASER. pure, and kindly lives — that v/ould be reward enough for him. A generation of such bishops would renew the face of the land. Because church-doors were by some men counted barred to them, he went outside those doors, and was with them at their clubs, social meetings, thrift societies — anywhere, indeed, where Christ's ideal of life and conduct might be set up for men to see and attain. They would not come to him, so he went to them. So some men counted wise said he spoilt the " dignity " of a bishop ! The different kinds of impression produced by Dr. Fraser on his hearers is well marked by the following typical cases. One, being asked her im- pression of his sermons, replied, " The Bishop's sleeves want washing." " Ah ! he'd mak' a rare Methody ! " was the impression expressed by another. The former was a lady ; the latter a working man. Till within a few years of the close of his life he remained a single man, and consequently lacked that subtle grace of manhood which loyal love of a wife alone can give. He was not without womanl}^ com- panionship, nor did he lack love. His mother was his fond charge to the close of her life. But mothers cannot transform manliness in the way wives do. His straightforwardness would have been less harsh, had he been under that influence which nothing but marriage can give. A few years before the end he set this right, so far as late marriages can set things right. The wife of youth alone has BISHOP ERASER. 175 fair-play. How much the little air of infallibility which his enemies made so much of, and which his friends could not but regret, was due to the lack of God's first provision for man, it is not possible to say. But Lord Shaftesbury is reported to have said that the dogma of papal infallibility would never have been propounded had it not been for papal celibacy. jSTo married man ever dreamed that he was infallible. Nor did the late Bishop of Manchester dream that he was ; but for all that there was just a little air of it about him. The bishop's body lies in his little Ufton church- yard ; and, for tliis generation at least, his memory is enshrined in half a million hearts, standing at looms, riveting boilers, and driving cabs and drays in the great manufacturing towns and villages of Lancashire. For the sake of justice to his enemies, we will say that Dr. Fraser had his faults, which, in virtue of his strong nature and his ever being before the public, were both pronounced and much in view. A feebler man, one less intent on using every opportunity which offered to serve the temporal interests and advance the religious life of the masses around him, might have had ten times more faults and not a tithe of the reproach that came to him. Dumb and selfish, James Fraser would have been almost beyond censure. One big funda- mental fault covers a multitude of sins. Mary Harpjson". DR. ARNOLD. M " Scouts upon the mountain's peak— Ye that see the Promised Land, Hearten us ! for ye can speak Of the country ye have scann'd Far away ! ' ' Dora Greenwell. DR. ARNOLD. HE generation educated by Dr. Arnold is al- ready growing old and ready to depart. His most illustrious pupil and biographer, whose life is told in a previous chapter, sleeps be- neath the venerable pile which his scholar- ship and geniality did so much to endear even to the new democracy. But the memory of the great schoolmaster is still green and flourishing. To the sons and grandsons of those whom he taught his name still breathes a living inspiration. Even among the millions outside the charmed circle of his immediate influence, his name has become a household word, suggesting the highest aims and methods of Christian education. A man whose character made such a mark upon the century, although he himself rested from his labours at the comparatively early age of forty- seven, i3 i8o DR. ARNOLD. not likely to be forgotten. But as in the increasingly divergent interests of this busy age there are many, especially among the young, to whom he is but a name, it may be well to devote a page or two to a summary of the reasons for which his memory is held so fragrant. If fortune consists in lasting usefulness, together with contemporary honour and posthumous fame, then Thomas Arnold, Head Master of Eugby School, was one of the most fortunate men who ever lived. Eichly endowed with special gifts pre-eminently adapting him for one particular work, he found that work very early in life, and laid it down before the slightest touch of weariness could diminish his manly vigour. His father died when Arnold was quite a boy, and it would be difficult to point to any relative or teacher to whom he was specially indebted for the insight and skill that enabled him to re-inspire with new life the public school system of England. He was himself a pupil, first at Warminster, and afterwards at Winchester ; but it cannot be for a moment suggested that anything in the management of these schools explains the origin of his own methods. His career at Oxford was credit- able, though it can scarcely be called brilliant. But the esteem in which he was held was shown by his election to a Tellowship at Oriel in 1815, mainly on account of the promise and power of growth con- sidered to be apparent in his papers. This Fellowship he did not hold for long. Four years afterwards he removed to Laleham, where he began to take pupils to prepare for the University. In 1 8 1 8 he had taken DR. ARNOLD. i8i deacon's orders, but it is noticeable that he was not ordained priest until ten years afterwards, on his appointment to Eugby. In the year after his removal to Laleham he was married, at the age of twenty-five, to Mary Penrose, daughter of the Eev. John Penrose, Eector of Fledborough, in Nottinghamshire, and sister of his own intimate friend and fellow-student, Trevenen Penrose. Arnold in early life did not afiect to be witliout ambition, though he afterwards found himself placed in a career such as ambition usually shuns. To a Eugljy pupil he once said, " I believe that naturally I am one of the most ambitious men alive ; " and in explaining his notion of ambition he said the three great objects alone worthy to be ambition's goal were, " to be the prime minister of a great king- dom, the governor of a great empire, or the writer of works which should live in every age and in every country." Writing in 1823 he said, " I have always thouQ-ht with recjard to ambition I should like to be cmt Cwsar ant nullns, and as it is pretty well settled for me that T shall not be Caesar, I am quite content to live in peace as nulhis." Happy the man in whom mere selfish ambition is thus early quenched without any paralysis of activity or devotion. In the congenial worlv of education, upon which he had now entered, Arnold found amply sufficient daily incentives to exertio^_ without any tJiought of a dis- tant future, or uli^rior aims. In directing and dis- ciplining the minds and hearts of the youths who Qame to him before they passed on to the University, i82 DR, ARNOLD. he found resources in his own nature such as neither himself nor his friends had hitherto suspected. His sympathies were drawn out, his power of putting himself in the place of struggling beginners had not been effaced by his own mastery of the subjects that he taught. But his aims went far beyond the com- munication of instruction. He regarded it as his mission to fit the whole constitution of his young charges in body, soul, and spirit for the career upon which they were entering ; and all students who left him went away with the impression that they had been privileged to be under the care of one who had a genius for teaching. " The most remarkable thing," says one of these pupils, " which struck me at once on joining the Laleham circle, was the wonderful healthi- ness of tone and feeling which prevailed in it. Every- thing about me I immediately found to be most real. It was a place where a new-comer at once felt that a oreat and earnest work was gjoing forward. Dr. Arnold's great power as a private tutor resided in this, that he gave such an intense earnestness to life. Every pupil was made to feel that there was a work for him to do, that his happiness as well as his duty lay in doing that work well. Hence an . indescribable zest was communicated to a young man's feeling about life ; a strange joy came over him on discovering that he had the means of being useful, and thus of being happy ; and a deep respect and ardent attachment sprang up towards him who had taught him thus to value life, and his own self, and his work and jnission DR, ARNOLD. in the world." Yet this work involved a good of drudgery to the mas- ter, drudgery such as illus- trates the low condition of even secon- dary educa- tion at that time in Eng- land. " You can scarcely conceive," he writes, " the rare instances of igQorance that I have met with a- mongstthem. One had no notion of what was meant by an angel ; an- other could not tell how many Gos- pels there are, nor could trinity chapel, oxford. 183 deal i84 DR. ARNOLD. he, after due deliberation, recollect any other names than Matthew, Mark, and Luke." That the ii'ksomeness of such labom^s did not in the least discourage or weary xVrnold only showed that he had found his true vocation. Even in deal- ing with such ignorance he rarely betrayed impatience, and never contempt ; and the rare instances of im- patience were more instructive to himself than to liis pupils. '*' Why do you speak to me angiily, sir ? " said a dull lad, looking up with surprise into his face ; " I am doing the very best I can." Arnold afterwards declared that he never felt so much liumili- ated in his life as by this rebuke, and that he never fori^ot it. But his inherent reverence for vouth was so great that it was rare indeed for liim thus to betray irritation. He loved to stimulate self-respect by his own attitude of truthfulness, considerate delicacy, and even humility. He felt no shame in avowing ignorance when he did not know ; and it gave him manifest pleasure if his own ignorance could be supplemented by some accidental knowledge arising out of Jiis pnpil's special experience. The writer already quote 1 says : "A strange feeling passed over the pupil's mind when he found gi^eat and often undue credit given him for knowledge of which liis tutor was iij^norant. But this f^enerated no conceit. The example before his eyes daily reminded him that it was only as a means of usefulness, as an improve- ment of talent for his own good and tliat of others, that knowledi^e was valued. He could not find com- DR. ARNOLD. 1S5 fort, in the presence of such reality, in any shallow knowledge." During these ten years the world at large had no means of knowing anything about Arnold except what leaked out fi-om the small but rapidly extending circle of his pupils and admirers. This, however, was quite sufficient to fix attention upon him as a man specially fit- prominent work of pub- In 1827 the tership of vacant, and strong pres- friends, sented to candidate a- last who sent plications, testimonials Dr. Hawk- of Oriel, in writer pre- RL'Gin- ciiAr; l. ted for some pjst in the lie education, head-mas- Eugby was under the sure of Arnold con- become a mongst the in their ap- One of his was from ins. Provost which the dieted that if Arnold were elected to the head-mastership of Eu^bv, he would chanire the face of education all through the public schools of England. It is said that this testimonial was decisive. Considering the generally conservative character of the trustees of public schools, it is somewhat remarkable that this shoidd be so: for chan!_'e of anv kind was at that i86 DR, ARNOLD, time abhorrent to them ; but be that as it may, Arnold was appointed. Within the short space of a sketch of this kind, it is impossible to do anything like justice to the work achieved at Rugby. "We can only indicate a few points which suggest at once the secret of his success, and also the shortcomings inevitable in any attempt to put new wine into old bottles. For the Gospel parable undoubtedly touches a weak point in this great career. Thoroughly conservative in sentiment, Arnold was yet intellectually on the side of progress, and he struggled hard to combine the two tendencies by infusing the spirit of modern Christian civilization into the certainly barbaric forms of our old public school system. In one respect only could it be said that his conservatism and his progressive spirit were at one. He stood in the old paths of religious edu- cation ; but he felt that those paths led onward and that the methods of religious education must be adapted to the times. The growth of children into men and women is by the inspiration of the Mmighty, just as the expansion of the seed into flower and fruit comes by the energy of an omnipresent life. But because amongst rational creatures growth is accom- panied and marked by various stages of consciousness, and because consciousness is keenly affected by in- numerable external influences, it is essential to the healthiness and sanity of growth that these influences should be good, and wholly harmonious with the power of expanding life. With this conviction Dr. Arnold DR. ARNOLD. 187 was most profoundly imbued. It was more than a conviction, it was an instinct inherent in his very being. Yet while his idea of education was wholly religious. INTERIOR OF RUGBY CHAPEL. his conception of the spiritual cultivation possible to boys would probably not pass unchallenged even now, when all sections of Christians unite in honouring him. In a letter written after his appointment, but before his induction, he said, " My object will be, if i88 ■ DR, ARNOLD. possible, to form Christian men ; for Christian Loys I can scarcely hope to make. I mean that from the natural imperfect state of boyhood, they are not suscep- tible of Christian principles in their full development npon their practice, and I suspect that a low standard of morality in many respects must be tolerated amongst them, as it was on a larger scale in what I consider the boyliood of the race." His opinions on this subject were afterwards modified, and, as most would think, happily modified by experience. He encouraged even the younger boys to become communicants, and was never more gratified tlian wlien tliere were a larcje number of them, Considerino- the sio-nificance of the Communion as the highest ritual expression of Christian life, this would seem to show that in the course of his work he came to tliink more higlily of the possibilities of boyish religion. With his strong sense of a religious inspiration, Dr. Arnold naturally found the arrangement incon- gruous which separated the chaplaincy of the school from the head-mastership. As soon as a vacancy in in the former occurred, he united the two offices in himself, making it a condition, as a matter of course, that there should be no addition to his salary. The sermons he preached as pastor of his young flock are amongst the most interesting and beautiful of the records of his work. Simple, direct, practical, and real, they searcli out the temptations of a boy's life, and unveil with impressiveness and lucidity the means of deliverance. DR. ARNOLD. 189 Br. Arnold's persistence in maintaining and defend- ing the system of " fagging " was surely an instance in which his sentimental conservatism got the better of his reason. His argument for giving the Sixth Form a monitorial jurisdiction was indeed excellent. By such means English masters are enabled the better to dispense with the slavish surveillance and detestable espionage too common in continental schools. But monitorial jurisdiction need not include the right to menial services from younger boys still less need it 190 tfR, ARNOLD, include an authorization to thrash them with a stick. Not even Arnold's genius could always preserve such a system from ahuse; and had he not found it amongst the old institutions of the country, we are persuaded that any proposal to introduce it would have filled him with horror. His maintenance of corporal punishment, at the hands of the master, for the younger boys, has more ground in nature as well as in Scripture ; and this is a point on which his sentimental conservatism was perhaps wiser than the sentimental liberalism of the age. In his treatment of assistant-masters Arnold showed, as might be expected, all the fine feeling, and tact, and consideration characteristic of his nature. He was enabled to do so all the more readily because his strong individuality overmastered all around him, and penetrated every one with his own spirit. But he never assumed dictatorial airs. He was always ready to ask advice of any one who could give it. And it was his habit to meet his assistants in a council held once in three weeks when all the business of school administration was freely discussed. The reign of this king among schoolmasters was all too short, extending only to fourteen years. On Sunday morning, June 12, 1842, he awoke with a pain too suggestive of heart-disease. Alarmed at his symptoms, Mrs. Ai^nold sent for their medical atten- dant. During the interval her husband was in con- siderable suffering; and when she offered to read to him, he asked for the fifty-first psalm. The words DR. ARNOLD, 191 that seemed specially to touch him were the twelfth verse : " O give me the comfort of Thy help again, and stablish me with Thy free spirit." He soon learned from the physician that the attack would in all probability be fatal ; and the strength of his faith was proved by the untroubled calm with which he heard the sentence. He made no affectation of in- difference to pain; but while acknowledging that it was acute, he said to his son, " My son, thank God for me." That was his feeling. All was well, and he had only to give thanks. Within two hours from his first seizure he was dead. But he left hundreds of the living who still " thank God for him." Henky C. Ewart. EDWARD IRVING. ' Tlie good man suffers but to gain, And every virtue springs from pain, As aromatic plants bestow No spicy fragrance while they grow. But crush'd or trodden to the ground, Diffuse their balmy sweets around." Goldsmith. EDWARD IRVING. [XTY, or so, years ago, Edward Irving was the popular preacher of London. Crowds of all ranks flocked to his little church in Hatton Garden, and everywhere the wonderful force of his passionate eloquence was greatly admired. But time had almost effaced the memory of his work until Mr. Carlyle's " Eeminiscences " once more reawakened interest in the story of his life. Fragmentary and desultory although the Eeminiscences necessarily are, they vividly recall one of the warmest- and biggest-hearted men the century has seen. As youthful companion and self-denying friend, no one shines more conspicuously in Carlyle's pages. Strange and sad was the close of his career, but the whole impulse of his earlier years, and the disinterested devotion that marked his life to the end, well deserved 196 EDWARD IRVING. the noble eulogium pronounced upon him, when Carlyle wrote, " His was the freest, brotherliest, bravest human soul mine ever came in contact with." In some respects he came before his time. Fifty years later his warm-hearted eagerness would have been better appreciated, his eccentricities would have been understood and allowed for, and he would not have been pushed into positions which ultimately in- volved such painful issues. Much of his work, there- fore, may seem to have missed its mark, and the inconsistencies or eccentricities of his career may be easier to perpetuate than the nobler qualities of his head and heart. ISTevertheless, he well deserves a place among the leaders of our time. He was a great individual. His splendid figure at once commanded notice ; and beneath it his big heart was ever overflowing with human tenderness and sympathy. Wherever he went men felt the spell of his genius. The radical weavers of the Glasgow Gallowgate, as he moved among their squalid homes, with a solemn " Peace be to this house," and the eminent London statesman, who heard of him casting the orphans on the "great Fatherhood of God," all felt that he was no common man, but one who, for all, had a message to their hearts. To his own times he spoke with peculiar aptness and power. For just when men's minds were awaken- ing to an impatient distrust of forms and dogmas, and when political changes were filling so large a space in public attention, with great power and persistency he EDWARD IRVING, 197 called them back to the great trath that underlies all human effort and progress. With us the Fatherhood of God has become so ever present a conviction that we are apt to forget or undervalue the vast revolution wrought in religious opinion from the time when church systems and teaching all tended to obscure this great truth : — to keep the divine more remote and terrible ; to dwell on God's power and His justice, the fixedness of His decrees, and the majesty of His sovereignty, rather than the tenderness of his Fatherhood. Equally great was the service Irving rendered in unfolding the doctrine of Christ's humanity, and in stripping off it the incrusta- tions of theological system and metaphysical refinement. Eemembering how large a place in our later literature is filled by works on the human life of our Lord, we readily see what a notable imjjulse to progress was thus given by the popular preacher. When, on the other hand, in his zeal for greater insight into the workings of God's spirit, and his ardent desire for the more immediate displays of its power in the modern church, we find his openness to conviction degenerating into mere credulity, and see him carried away with the frenzied excitement that a special chain of circumstances had gathered around him, we can but deplore his misguided simplicity, and bewail the sad period of suffering and disappointment that clouded the close of his noble career, the integrity of which no one now ventures to question. It was in the autumn of the ever memorable your, 1792, that Edward Irving \vas born, in the 198 EDWARD TRYING, quiet little town of Amian in Dumfriesshire, His father was but a humble tanner, his mother the handsome and high-spirited daughter of a small landed proprietor in a neighbouring parish. Like most Scotch children, he was laid in a wooden cradle, thence to make his first survey of the outer world ; but, unlike most, he was allowed to concentrate all his baby powers of vision into one eye, while the powers of the other were hopelessly obscured by the side of the cradle. So, said ingenious friends, was our hero forced to bear through life the vulgar obliquity of a squint. Soon he was stammering over his syllables in the humble school of "Peggy Paine." Annan Academy came next, where his friend and companion Carlyle soon afterwards followed him, and then he was ready for his college studies. Love of outdoor exercise was an early passion. Already he was distinguished for feats of walking, swimming, rowing, and climbing. But religious matters were not wholly repugnant to the young athlete ; for at this early period of his life, it was his occasional habit to walk five or six miles to the little village of Ecclefechan, in company with a pilgrim band of the religious patriarchs of Annan, to attend a church established there by one of the earlier bodies of seceders from the Church of Scotland. Entering Edinburgh University at the age of thirteen, his college career was like that of most Scotch students ; winters of hard study, homely fare and scanty accommodation, summers back at home with pedestrian tours and desultory reading. After taking his degree, EDWARD IRVING. 199 and one session at the Divinity Hall, he became teacher of the Mathematical School at Haddington. A buoyant and handsome youth, he won the hearts as well as quickened the intellects of liis pupils, and moved through the town a w^elcome guest in its happy homes. What could form a brigliter picture than to see, on a summer evening, the tall and nimble teacher, accom- panied by some of his pupils, start off for St. George's, Edinburgh, and after hearing Chalmers, then rising into fame, cheerfully w^alk back again, a distance in all of thirty-five miles. A favourite pupil of his here was Jane Welsh, afterwards famous as the wife of his friend Thomas Carlyle. After two years at Haddington, Irving was promoted to teach a newly established Academy in "the lang toon 0' Kirkcaldy." Here he taught with a will (sometimes thrashed rather vigorously) and always won the affection of his pupils. While here he completed his studies at the Divinity Hall and was licensed to preach by tlie presbytery of Kirkcaldy; but his first efforts as a preacher were not very successful. " He had ow^er muckle granner" (too much grandeur), said the people of the " lang toon," and for three years after his license "he lingered in his schoolmaster's desk silently listening to other preachers, not always with much edification, noting how the people, to whom his own ' unacceptableness ' was apparent, relished the platitudes of meaner men."* * " The Life of Edwcavd Irving." By Mrs. Oliphant. London : Hurst & Blackett. p. 37. 200 EDWARD IRVING. In 1 8 1 8; when lie had been seven years in Kirkcaldy, he finally left school and gave up teaching ; and, re- solving henceforward to devote himself to his own profession, he came to Edinburgh and took lodgings there. "It is not a brilliant period in The young man's life. He presents himself to us in the aspect of an unsuccessful probationer, a figure never rare in Scot- land ; a man upon whom no sunshine or patronage shone, and whom just as little had the popular eye found out or fixed upon, whose services were unsolicited either by friendly ministers or vacant congregations — a man fully licensed and qualified to preach, whom nobody cared to hear. With the con\'iction strong in his mind that this was his appointed function in the world, and with a consciousness of having pondered the whole matter much more deeply than is usual with young preachers, there rose before Irving the unmovable barrier of unsuccess ; not failure ; he had never found means to try his powers sufficiently for failure — even that might have been less hard to bear than the blank of indifference and ' unacceptability ' which he had now to endure. His services were not required in the world ; the profession for which by the labours of so many years he had slowly qualified himself hung on his hands, an idle capability of which nothing came." ^ As if determined to have done with the past he * " The Life of Edward Irving." By Mrs. Oliphant, London : Hurst & Blackett. p. 42 EDWARD IRVING. 201 remorselessly burned all his existing sermons. " No doubt," says Mrs. Olipliant, " it was a fit and wise holocaust, sacrificing all his youthful conventionalities and speculations. Irving at twenty-six began to com- pose what he was to address to such imaginary hearers as he himself had been in Kirkcaldy Church." Another session was passed at the University, and he put forth all his powers of mind and lessons of experience upon his sermons, but in vain. He was still the same unemployed probationer that had left Kirkcaldy. In his despondency a youthful dream returned to him — he would become a missionary after the Apostolic model, a man without scrip or purse entering into whomsoever would receive him and passing on when he had spoken his message. It was while in this condition that he received a sudden invitation from Dr. Andrew Thomson to preach in his pulpit, with an intimation that Dr. Chalmers was to be present, and was then in search of an assistant in the splendid labours he was beginning in Glasgow. Irving w^ent to St. George's, Edinburgh, with a new impulse of expectation and preached, there can be no doubt, one of his sermons which he thought most satisfactory ; but the important day passed, and the young man returned unsatisfied to his lonely lodgings. This last failure seems to have given the last touch to all his previous discouragements, and at once he pro- ceeds with his preparations for leaving this country. An accidental chain of circumstances carried him into Ireland, when on his way to bid farewell to Annan and 202 EDWARD IRVING. Ills friends there. On his return, he found an invitation awaiting him from Dr. Chalmers, and in 1 8 1 9 lie began his work as assistant in St. John's, Glasgow, but tliis he did not do until he found that his services were not dis- tasteful to the people. He would not be thrust upon A GLASGOW SLUM. them by the mere will of the incumbent. "I will preach to them if you think lit," he is 'reported to have said, " but if they bear with my preaching, they will be the first people who have borne with it." For two years the young enthusiast laboured earnestly in his new sphere. Chalmers was now carrying out the great scheme of social reform which made his name so universally famous. But in the scheme Irving took no originating part. He was no EDWARD IRVING. 203 statesman, and seemed to feel the power of no schemes other than his own untiring labours. Diligently did he visit from house to liousc in those squalid slums, winning his way to the hearts of their occupants and leavingp fragrant memories behind. But fame in the pulpit had still failed to find him. AVitliin the great assembly who venerated Chalmers was a little circle that learned to look on Irving with enthusiastic ad- miration ; but to the great mass he w^as simply the Doctor's assistant. Just as he was beginning again to despond, and fear that in another land he must seek a sphere for his great capacities, the clouds broke and he received an invitation to the Caledonian Chapel in Cross Street, Platton Garden, London. Twice in succession did the minister of the little chapel there succumb to the allurements of a country parish and wend his way back to Scotland ; and now, in its almost hopeless straits, the congregation rejoiced in the prospect of securing the assistant of Dr. Chalmers. Equally eager was the young man to find for liimself an independent sphere, even in this obscure little chapel with its mere handful of people. Eeady was lie to learn Gaelic in six months, had the need for this not been removed ; and determined to come without any presbytery covenant, when the little flock almost failed to secure the small pecuniary engagements of a pastor's settlement. Tlie future seemed now to glow before him with all the brightness of early youth. In a farewell sermon, he at last seemed to impress his hitherto impassive 204 EDWARD IRVING, Glasgow hearers ; and, with a rashness thoroughly con- sistent with his whole career, he proclaimed himself the friend of all. " His house, his services, all that he could do were freely pledged to whomsoever of tho33 parishoners might come to London and stand in need of him ; " a pledge that did not fail to bear fruit in the future. To London he came, desiring to make " a demonstration for a higher style of Christianity — some- thing more magnanimous, more heroical than this age affects ; God knows," he added, " with what success." By degrees the little chapel began to fill, when sud- denly — it was said to be after a reference in one of Canning's speeches — the tide of fashion and nobility poured into the chapel, to the great agitation of its office-bearers, who a year before bewailed desolate pews. Judged by the imperfect record that remains of them, one finds no factitious attractions in these early sermons, either of excitement, vulgarity, or amusement. But, seeing that men were drawn by some sudden impulse to listen, one can well understand their effect when uttered with his burning earnestness and solemn power — for they are filled with the burden of the preacher's life ; heart, soul, body, and spirit, the man comes before us as we read. Though fashion thus besieged the young preacher, he was not carried away with lofty social ambitions. He was faithful to Bloomsbury, which his congregation favoured ; and when he set up his first household in London, he went further off instead of nearer to the world of fashion. EDWARD IRVING. 205 and settled in Pentonville. He ever lived in modest economy, prodigal in nothing but charity. From the old manse at Kirkcaldy he brought up her who was to be the constant companion of his joys and sorrows, and ere two years had passed he was called on to part with his first child — a stroke that filled him with a grief, the intensity of which can only be appreciated by those who peruse the outpourings of his sorrows. More than any event of his life, did this influence the tone and temper of Irving's future career. Before it occurred his wife had returned for a time to her home in Scotland, and during her absence of many weeks Irving continued to send her a simple record of his daily doings in a journal, which forms one of the most perfect cardiplionice the world has ever received. Published in Mrs. OKphant's biography, it has never failed to charm and elevate its readers, and, did it stand alone, would be sufficient evidence of what a nobly true and tender soul his was. His life in London is one long record of prodigious toils. Sermons, that in their mere delivery made un- common demands on time and strength, were but parts of the routine in his round of constant speaking, writing, visiting^, advisin^Tj. In all he seemed to make a demon- stration for a higher style of Christianity, and aimed at an ideal rather than success measurable in tangible results of men's applause or agreement. A sermon for the London Missionary Society becomes a three-and-a- half hours' oration, picturing the ideal missionary with- out scrip or purse, instead of a telling appeal for the 2o5 EDWARD IRVING. guineas of his hearers. The criticisms of tlie press are met with contempt and defiance ; and a holiday, granted from week-day pastoral work to recruit his strength, is used to perfect his special acquirement of Spanish, and to translate for Enolish readers the works of Eabbi Ben Ezra, never resting till his hands and eyes were ready to fail him. In his quiet home the straying Scotchman or drifting foreigner ever found a welcome place, or gained a ready answer to penitent appeal. To such a man honours and fame could not come unmixed. Critics were enraged, envious ones were embittered, and differences of view or opinion became intensified by the white heat in which he ever moved. Already the premonitions of coming storm were gather- ing round his head. The little chapel at Cross Street was still crowded to excess, and early in 1827 the congregation moved to the splendid church erected for their worship in Eegent Square. But the crowd that fluctuated in the tiny area of the Caledonian Chapel, and presented the preacher with a wonderful moving panorama of the great world without, which he addressed through these thronged and ever-changing faces, settled into steady identity in Eegent Square. The throng ceased in the spacious interior. " Fashion went her idle ways," says Carlyle ; " and now he taught a congregation, not an age." In 1828 he published three volumes of his collected sermons, the first setting forth the very heart and essence of his teaching, his lofty exposition of the Trinity, EDWARD IRVING. 207 ■and its combined action in the redemption of man ; the second, his sermons on the parable of the sower ; and the third, his views on national and public subjects. His sermons on the Trinity were uttered to an audience unaware of any error in them, and by special desire of his ofnce-bearers were placed first in the volumes. But there were other eyes watching his lofty career into Divine mysteries. " An idle clergy- man," says his biographer, "called Cole — of whom nobody seems to know anything, but that he suddenly appeared out of darkness to do his ignoble office, heard by the wind of rumour of what appeared to him ' a new doctrine ' — that the preacher had declared the human nature of our Saviour to be identical with all human nature, truly and in actual verity the seed of Abraham " ; and, alarmed thereby, sought to save the ark of truth and spare the Church from the spread of pestilent heresy. Eeturning rather late on a Sunday evening, he stepped into Eegent Square, and had his suspicions confirmed by the morsel of the sermon he was in time to hear. Keen in his pursuit of the new dis- temper, Mr. Cole sought and obtained immediately after a hurried interview with the wearied preacher and then went away to level at him the serious charge of heresy. With simple straightforward openness, Irving flinched not, but sought to make more plain and exact his posi- tion ; not simply to justify himself, but to preserve for the Cliurch and his fellows the sure comfort and strength-giving powers of this doctrine. "At first I 233 EDWARD IRVING. thought it better to sit quiet and bear the reproach. When, however, I perceived that this error was taking form, and that the Church was coming into peril of believing that Christ had no temptations in the flesh to contend with and overcome, I felt it my duty to intercalate in the volume on the Incarnation a sermon (ISTo. III.), showing out the truth in a more exact and argumentative form, directed specially against the error that our Lord took human nature in its creation and not in its fallen state. And another (No. VI.), show- ing the most grave and weighty conclusions flowing from the true doctrine, that He came under the condi- tions of our fallen state in order to redeem ns from the same. This is the true and faithful account of the first work which I published upon the subject." In all this Irving only expresses what is now the generally accepted belief. Not so thought the presbyters of Irving's time ; and after a long and chequered controversy, he with- drew from the authority of the Presbytery of London, and appealed to that of Annan, which had first ordained him a minister. He was finally tried in the last year but one of his life, and in the town of his birth. After a brave and true-hearted defence, one of the greatest ornaments the Scottish Church has ever had was solemnly deposed from her ministry and membership, and driven from her fold. No doubt these men acted according to their light ; but that they com- mitted a grievous blunder who will now dispute ? In thus following out to the final issue the doctrinal heresy charged against Irving, we have passed by the EDWARD IRVING. From an Engraving in the Vestrv of Regent Sqjia7-e ChiircJ:- EDWARD IRVIi\G, 211 more notorious chain of events that gathered round his closing years. To anxious presbyters the removal of unsound teaching on our Lord's humanity may have seemed of paramount importance. By the multitude it was soon forgotten, when they v/ere startled by the sudden outburst of Pentecostal wonders in the grave assembly of Presbyterian worshippers. This was a more noisy movement — bulked larger in outward show ; and even still, when the name of Edward Irving is mentioned, one thinks first of gifts of tongues and their appearance, out of their time as it were, in the nineteentli century. Somewhere about the year 1825, he met, for the first time, at the house of a friend, one Mr. Hartley Prere. Prere v^\as one of the most diligent of those students of prophecy who were beginning to make themselves known here and there over the country, and some years before had published a new scheme of interpretation, for which he had failed to secure the popular ear. Still, confident in its truth, he felt con- vinced that if he could only meet some man of open candid mind, of popularity sufficient to gain a hearing, to whom he could expound his system, its success was certain. When he met Irving, like George Eliot's Mordecai meeting Daniel Deronda, he felt at once " Here is the man." The conversion was speedy and complete. Henceforward Irving became an ardent student in the fascinating fields of prophetic interpretation. The gorgeous and cloudy vistas of the Apocalypse 212 EDWARD IRVING. becamo to his fervent eyes a legible chart of the future. Volumes from his pen, and splendid orations, wherever he found a place of utterance, were devoted to the exposition of these views. jSTaturally, this introduced him to a new circle of friends, proud to be lionoured by such a name, and aided by such an advocate. The students of prophecy drew closer round him into gatherings that, but for the lustre cast by his presence, might never have emerged from the obscurity they deserved. In 1826 was held the first of those Albury conferences, that were continued in later years, that published their views to the world in the pages of the Morning Watch, and afterwards formed the nucleus of the Catholic Apostolic Church. They were held at the residence of Mr. Henry Drummond, once described as the versatile gentleman who in his own person combined the diverse functions of country gentleman at Albury Park, banker at Charing Cross, licensed jester of the House of Commons, and apostle of the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church. About this time a period of religious excitement and fermentation sprang up on the quiet shores of Clydes- dale in Scotland. The earnest preaching of John Macleod Campbell, of Row, had quickened the spiritual life of the district. A little biography of a parishioner from the pen of Dr. Story, of Eosneath, had flashed into popularity, and thereby increased the excitement and focussed observation upon it. At the neighbouring Port Glasgow, Irving's beloved friend, Alex. J. Scott, had been preaching with a lil:c success. Particularly 'TII^|ri]iiM||i!ip^^ ' discharofed from the foreim traders. Few contrasts can be greater than that presented to the stranger, who, after gazing at the hoary magnificence of Glasgow Cathedral — the very embodiment of the spirit of reverence and worship — looks across the street at the plain square pile of the Barony Church. Yet, any one who knows the work with the recollection of which that unpretending edifice is associated, will be disposed to pardon its ugliness in consideration of a certain sacred interest clin^ino^ to its walls. When he was inducted to the Barony, Norman Macleod at once recognized his position as minister, not only of the con- gregation which worshipped there but of the enormous parish (embracing at that time 87,000 souls, and rapidly increasing) of which this was the Parish Church. There were of course many other churches in the parish ; it contained the usual proportion of dissenting congre- gations, in addition to some chapels connected with the Church of Scotland. These, nevertheless, were not only inadequate to the requirements of the population, but were unequally distributed, so that many densely in- NORMAN MACLEOD. 241 habited districts were left Unprovided with either church or school. There were also, at a depth reached by no EXTERIOR OF GLASGOW CATIIEDIIAL. agency then existing, those " lapsed classes " which form in all large cities the mighty problem of Christian 242 NORMAN MA CLEOD, philantliropy. The spirit animating him in his work is well illustrated by some passages from his Journal of this period. "Sunday Morning, Oct. 12th, 6 o'clock. — A lovely, peaceful morning, the atmosphere transparent, the land- scape clear and pure, with its white houses, and fields and trees. " Glorious day ! the .only day on earth the least like heaven. It is the day of peace which follows the day of battle and victory. ' And all this mighty heart is lying still,' the forge silent, the cotton mill asleep, the steamers moored, the carts and waggons gone to the warehouse, the shops closed, man and beast enjoying rest, and all men invited to seek rest in God! How solenm the thought of the millions who will this day think of God, and pray to God, and gaze upon eternal things ; on sea and land, in church and chapel, on sick bed and in crowded congregations ! How many thousands in Great Britain and Ireland will do this ! Clergy praying and preaching to millions. This never was the device of either man or devil. If it was the ' device of the Church,' she is indeed of God. "May the Lord anoint me this day with His Spirit!" " Sat. 6 A.M. — People talk of early morning in the country with bleating sheep, singing larks, and purling brooks. I prefer that roar which greets my ear when a thousand hammers, thundering on boilers of steam- vessels which are to b"''i.dge the Atlantic or Pacific, usher in a new day— the type of a new era. I feel men are INTERIOR OF GLASGOW CATHEDRAL. NORMAN MACLEOD. 245 awake with me, doiDg tlieir work, and that the world is rushing on to fulfil its mighty destinies, and that I must do my work, and fulfil my grand and glorious end. " Oh ! To see the Church and the world with Christ's eyes and heart ! " I must cultivate the habit of much personal com- munion with God during the day; speaking in the spirit to Him as well as (or rather in order to) living in the Spirit."* If Norman Macleod had been the happy, easy-going parson some have described him, he would have settled down in his ugly Barony kirk, satisfied with the routine of congregational work, which would not have been an idle life, either, for the membership numbered generally from eleven to twelve hundred adults. But he could not look without pity on the throng who " were as sheep without a shepherd." Neither did he regard his congregation merely as a company of people to be preached to, but rather as a body of men whom he had to lead unto every good work. From his father, and from his mother, whoin he fondly loved, and of whom the latter survived him, he had received childhood's lessons of piety and duty. Troni a younger brother, James, who died early (and the two now sleep together in Campsie cliurchyard), he had received very special religious impressions— good seed which h id fallen on " an honest and G;ood heart." From Dr. Chalmers he had caught the fire of missionary zeal, which burnt so brightly in that brave old spirit. * Quoted ia "Memoir," vol. ii. pp. 17-18. 246 NORMAN MA CLEOD. Ere long, therefore, the parish began to be pervaded by its earnest and vigorous minister. Commonly he preached thrice every Sabbath, besides conducting a large class of his own ; and his preaching was no mere stringing together of theological commonplaces, but the expression of earnest thought about the highest things, full of practical help and counsel for living men. Not what is often called ''pulpit eloquence:" not simply the old clothes of the seventeenth century, bedizened with a gold lace of nineteenth-century similes; but plain, manly, often even homely talh about those things wliich make a man's life great and earnest and hopeful ; now flaming out into indignant rebuke of our selfishness ; and by-and-by soaring, as was meet, into high, rhythmic utterance of the Divine sacrifice and love. Once a week he presided at the meeting of his Sunday-school teachers, carefully going over the ap- pointed lessons with them. Bands of earnest fellow- workers, animated by the spirit he diffused, gathered round him as their natural leader, and devoted their time and their means to mill girls, to foundry boys, to savings-banks, to every likely means for improving the condition of the poor. rive excellent schools were built in as many needy localities, at a cost of some i,'8,ooo or ^^ 9,000. Three mission churches, too, were erected, all free of debt, the congregation expending on these about £\ 1,000. There he delighted to preach to people who came, the men in their fustian jackets, the women in their cotton " mutches ; " for all the well-dressed were excluded, and NORMAN MACLEOD. 247 respectable persons who wanted to go, had to borrow some worn and torn garments, and smuggle themselves in. I am told, and can believe it, that his sermons in the highest quarters were not for a moment comparable to the great-hearted eloquence of some of those working HIGH STREET, GLASGOW, NEAR THE BARONY CHURCH. men's discourses. Penny -banks were first introduced to Glasgow by him, and witli them, refreshment-rooms for the poor, and Saturday evening social meetings. Nor did he only set up the machinery. He was its moving power, keeping it all in vigorous and persistent 248 NORMAN MACLEOD. activiuy by his presence, and also making it work smoothly by the oil of his cheery and unfailing good humour. Especially the children of his various schools called forth his warmest interest, and some of his choicest powers. He was always great among children, whether singing his own " Squirrel " or " Curler " songs at the home fireside, or scratching odd and clever caricatures, full of life and spirit, or pouring forth the funniest nonsense to the Foundry boys, but always with a " gold thread " running through it all. To the general world, he was chiefly known as a man of letters, a man of fine gifts and accomplishments : and such men are not thought to be the most efficient pastors. But in Glasgow, he was emphatically the Barony minister, dear to old and young for his good words and good works, ready to take his part, v>^hich was naturally the leading part, in every scheme for the social or spiritual amelioration of the people. Cer- tainly, never since Thomas Chalmers, was there such a pervading moral power in that city as Norman Macleod. His life of toil was not without its well deserved honours. One in particular he enjoyed, which never l)efore fell to the lot of any Scottish minister, except William Carstairs — '.e was privileged to be equally the friend of his Sjvereign and of the people. The Scottish clergy are not to be blamed that only two of them have held such a position. Their patriotism had often to contend with their loyalty : and it is to their credit that they stood by the cause of the people. But NORMAN MACLEOD. 249 in these two cases it happened fortunately that they had Sovereigns whose friendship could be enjoyed along with the confidence of the country, so that they became the happy medium of good service to both. About six months after the incidence of her great sorrow the Queen came to Balmoral, the scene of so BALMOKAL CASTLE. ' ^ ' '^ much domestic happiness in the course of her wedded life. Dr. Mac- leod entertained a w\arm admiration for the deceased Prince Consort, and his sympathy with the Queen was therefore profound. Under such cir- cumstances a summons to attend upon her was felt as a peculiarly solemn call of duty ; and his deep feeling is clearly manifest in his letters and journals. But the delicacy inspired by true feeling made him always reticent on the subject of his relations with the Court, 250 NORMAN MA CLEOD. except when his reminiscences would obviously do good as well as give pleasure. Though no one more emphatically insisted on the equality of all ranks before God, he could not but recognize a special responsibility towards this world for any influence he might exert on those in great place. *' When I think," he writes in his journal, " how the character of Princes affects the history of the world, and how that character may possibly be affected by what I say, and by the spirit in which I speak and act, I feel the work laid upon me to be very solemn." " Your Eoyal Highness knows," he said to a younger member of the family, whom he was endeavouring to comfort after the death of the Prince, " that I am here as a pastor, and that it is only as a pastor I am per- mitted to address you. But as I wish you to thank me when we meet before God, so would I address you now." " I am never tempted," he writes, " to conceal my conviction from the Queen, for I feel she sympathizes with what is true, and likes the speaker to utter the truth exactly as he believes it." Prom his Journal : — May 8, 1862. — I am commanded by the Queen to visit at Balmoral from Saturday till Tuesday. "Pew things could be more trying to me than, in present circumstances, to meet my afflicted Sovereign face to face. But God, who calls me, will aid me. My hope is in Him, and He will not put me to shame. May He guide me to speak to her fitting truth as to an NORMAN MACLEOD, 251 immortal being, a sister in humanity, a Queen with heavy trials to endure, and such duties to perform ! May I be kept in a right spirit, loving, peaceful, truth- ful, wise, and sympathizing, carrying the burthen of her who is my sister in Christ and my Sovereign ! Father ! Speak by me ! " CRATHIE CHURCH. To Mrs. Macleod : — Balmoral, Ma)j 12, 1862. " You will return thanks with me to our Father in Heaven for His mercy and goodness in having hitherto most surely guided me during this time, which I felt to be a most solemn and important era in my life. All has passed well — that is to say, God enabled me to 252 NORMAN MACLEOD, speak in private and in public to the Queen in sucli a way as seemed to me to be truth — the truth in God's sight : that which I believed she needed, though I felt it would be very trying to her spirit to receive it. And what fills me with deepest thanksgiving is, that she has received it, and written to me such a kind, tender, letter of thanks for it, which shall be treasured in my hea,rt while I live. " Prince Alfred sent for me last nioht to see him before going away. Thank God, I spoke fully and frankly to him — we were alone — of his difficulties, temptations, and of his father's example ; what the nation expected of him; how, if he did God's will, good and al)le men would rally round him ; how, if he became selfish, a selfish set of flatterers would truckle to him and ruin him, while caring only for themselves. He thanked me for all I said, and wished me to travel with him to-day to Aberdeen, but the Queen wishes to see me again. I am so thankful to have the Duke of Argyll and my dear friend Lady Augusta Bruce here. The Duchess of Athole also — a most delightful real woman."* Another extract from his Journal of this period shows how he prized the experiences he gained in that house of mourning : — " May 14. — Let me if possible recall some of the inci- dents of these few days at Balmoral, which in after years I may read with interest, when memory grows dim. " After dinner I was summoned unexpectedly to the * Journal and letter, May 1862, quoted in *' Memoir," &c., vol. ii. p. 122. NORMAN MACLEOD. 253 Queen's room. She was alone. She met me, and with an unutterably sad expression, which filled my eyes with tears, at once began to speak about the Prince. It is impossible for me to recall distinctly the sequence or substance of that long conversation. She spoke of his excellencies — his love, his cheerfulness, how he was everything to her ; how all now on earth seemed dead to her. She said she never shut her eyes to trials, but liked to look them in the face ; how she w^ould never shrink from duty, but that all was at present done mechanically ; that her highest ideas of purity and love were obtained from him, and that God could not be dis- pleased with her love. But there was nothing morbid in her grief. I spoke freely to her about all I felt re- garding him — the love of the nation and their sympathy, and took every opportunity of bringing before her the reality of God's love and sympathy, her noble calling as a Queen, the value of her life to the nation, the blessed- ness of prayer." It might seem that, with all these duties and schemes, he had his hands already full enough ; and so, in truth, they were. But the capable man, seeing that a piece of work has to be done, and that it is laid to him, finds, some way or other, the time to do it. A nine hours' day is no desire of his. Not how to shorten, but how to lengthen its working hours, is the question with sucli an one ; and I fear that Norman Macleod, in trying to do good to others, stole too many hours from the night, to be altogetlier good for himself. New work, however, came to him, and he could not put it away. In tlie 254 NORMAN MACLEOD. Disrux^tioii times, when everybody was writing pam- phlets, he too had written one, which he called "A Crack aboot the Kirk " — a racy, rattling production of humour and buoyant young life. Then for some ten years he edited the Edinburgh Christian Magazine, a periodical of the old religious type, doing some good, but not paying its own way ; heartless work sailing that sort of craft, with half one's time spent in baling out, so as to keep her afloat. At length, in i860, he found his sphere in letters. In an article in the Contemporary Review we were told how it was desired to realize Arnold's wish for a perio- dical that should not be a religious one, and yet should have a religious spirit ; how, beating about for an editor, the enterprising publisher chanced to read, in the Scotsman newspaper, the report of a chat on " Cock- Eobin " with some Ayrshire children ; and how, finally, Macleod consented to be captain of the new adventure. Ooocl Words, " worth much and costing little " — a maga- zine meant for every day, and for everybody — neither clerical, nor critical, nor scientific, but broadly human, and in spirit Christian — this exactly suited Macleod's character. He had a considerable literary acquaintance, and he could count on willing help from such men as Stanley, Kingsley and Trollope, and with his own ready pen and varied stores of humour and pathos, and solid thought, the success of the undertaking was certain in the long-run. Of course it had a period of up-hill work. It met even with some bitter and un- generous criticism. But, at length, wherever Euglish NORMAN MACLEOD. 255 speaking men and women lived, its name became an " open sesame " to the wise and genial editor. In Good Words his chief contributions to literature appeared, all except his life of John Mackintosh, " The Earnest Student," which is perhaps the most artistically finished of them all. Our readers, therefore, must be familiar with those bright sketches of nature and human nature which were among the first things the paper- cutter hurried to on the monthly appearance of the welcome brown cover. " Wee Davie," it has been said, was his own favourite, and its exquisite pathos has, perhaps, made this the general verdict, though the humour of " Billy Buttons " shows a still finer touch, and is a fit rival to Bret Harte's "Luck of Eoaring Camp." But I know that he reckoned " The Starling," of all his books, the one most likely to perpetuate his name, having cost him far more labour of thought than the others. Whether he was right in this estimate the future will tell. None of his other tales are so finished. They seem rather to have been thrown off at a heat — simple, artless, and natural ; and, indeed, tliey were most of them not even the fruits of a busy leisure, but booty snatched from the hours of sleep. They all indeed contain some gleam of rich humour, or some pathetic stroke ; or, at the very least, some ray of, kindly wisdom to cheer our way of life. On the w^hole my favourite is the " Keminiscences of a Highland Parish." It is fragmentary, but fresh, natural, and true ; just the kind of work which could be best done under such conditions as were imposed upon him. 256 NORMAN MACLEOD. But none of his books give any tiling like a full idea of the man's real greatness. There are men wlio have written remarkable books, but whose personality, when you come to know them, is extremely common- place. Their literary power is a knack, but they are quite ordinary men. It was the very reverse with Macleod. What his literary faculty might have been had he devoted himself exclusively .to its cultiva- tion, it were hard to say. As it is, no one would have been more ready than he to admit the sketchy, un- finished character of nearly all he has written. Even his preaching, great as it was, hardly gave a sufficient conception of him, though some of his platform speeches came nearer to doing so. It was in the freedom of his private and familiar intercourse with one or two friends that we felt what a power he was. For he was essentially a talker, and, without a Boswell, will be almost as much lost to the world as Johnson would have been. It was when seated with him in the queer little outhouse, which had been a laundry, I think, and which he turned into a study, that one came to know him right, and to comprehend what varied spiritual forces were in him, what insight into things which his pen seldom touched, what scorn of all baseness, what love for all that is noble and pure and true, and what boundless capacity for any- thinp- he mio'ht have to do. In those hours of nn- restraint and confidence, even amid the flow of a humour which he indulged and relished as a lark does its singing, you might hear the deep undertone of a NORMAN MACLEOD, ^Vl spirit that knew the hiirden of the mystery, and along with that, the wonder and the joy and the stirring eloquence of a faith which dwelt in the Father with " the peace that passeth understanding." He was not a man to " wear his heart on his sleeve." But those who were privileged to spend a few even- THE BACK STUDY, in^s in that little " sanctum " will not soon forget the impression they left— that this was one of the greatest and truest of men. There was always some good story of Scottish humour, and plenty of hearty laugh- ter ; for he was a great laugher, not with the mouth only, but, as it were, all over, every hit of him heaving with honest, genial mirth. But always, too, one came U 258 NORMAN MACLEOD. away with some grave and earnest thought, which rose uppermost and remained long after the good jokes had done their turn and passed away. The very last time I was there, only a few days before the illness that carried him off, after a pleasant half -hour or so, he dropped into this more serious vein ; speaking of the difhculties of a true spiritual life, and the shame and self- contempt he felt at the poverty of his spiritual character ; yet it was rich, tliough he called it " all rubbish." Then, alluding to the changing tone of religious thought, he told me how he had shrunk from it at first — how, even when the light had loosened many of his early opinions, so that they hung like an avalanche, ready to be precipitated by a touch or the sound of a voice, yet he had avoided all utterance of the thought that w^as in him until he had proven the new light by its moral influence. And then he added, " I can quiet my dear old mother's anxiety, when I show her that it is more agreeable to Scripture, and that it also makes me a humbler and a better man, helps me to hate evil more, and to live nearer God. I never feel safe on mere intellectual ground. I cannot follow logic, unless the life goes with it." That was the substance of our last conversation ; and it will be ever a pleasant memory to me. The man had not yet attained, neither was already perfect ; but he w^as reacliing forth and pressing on to the mark for the prize of his high calling. "It was not," writes one who knew him well, "in the fire and animation of his platform addresses, nor NORMAN MA CLEOD. 259 yet in the fervid outpourings of his heart from the pulpit, that one came to know how deeply grounded was his whole life and action on a childlike faith and trust in God : it was when alone with him in his study, when the heart gave utterance as it willed, and free from all restraint. To be with him then was to learn a lesson which no public teaching, whether by voice or pen, could ever have given. How naturally did all his thoughts seem to take tone and colour from that one pervading influence ! How he taught me — as he taught many, whose happiest fortune it has been to share now and again in these quiet hours — that all of the bright and beautiful in life, all that could gladden the spirit and cheer the heart, gained yet a brighter tint in the light reflected from a Father's love ; that mirth became more deej^, and so much more real ; that each good gift became more cherished from the recognition of the great Giver of all ! And here truly, it has seemed to me, did he especially prove himself a minister of the Gospel. For was it not a Gospel to many, who might else, not improbably, have turned away from thoughts of any such things, to learn — not from direct teaching, but from their own experience of an actual life — that there was a faith and trust which could imbue every sense of enjoyment with fresh keen- ness of perception and zest of participation ; that only through such a faith and trust could pleasure reach its highest realization, and all that was best, and brightest, and happiest in our nature obtain its true development. Nothing was more strange to me at first — nothing 26o NORMAN MACLEOD. came to be accepted by me as more natural afterwards — than tlie constant evidence which each opportunity of private intercourse with this great, large-hearted, noble-minded man afforded me of the deep under- current in his thoughts and life. I never knew him, in all my meetings with him, force a reference to reli2:ious thought or feelincr. I never was with him for a quarter of an hour that his confidential talk, how- ever conversational, however humorous even, had not, as it were of itself and as of necessity, disclosed the centre round which his whole life revolved." In his varied labours the years flowed happily on ; for he enjoyed life greatly, and with a thankful heart. He knew it would have its crosses without his manu- facturing them for himself. So he enjoyed his occasional visits to London literary society, and still more, his pleasant retirements to the Highlands — fishing with his boys, and singing away the summer twilights with his girls. Above all, he enjoyed travel- ling to new countries, and thus, by converse with strange forms of life, broadening his Christian charity, and intensifying his Christian piety. I remember well with what glee he prepared for his visit to Palestine, from whicli he hoped much, and, unlike most pilgrims thither, was not disappointed. I met him one day just before he started. " Come along," he said, *' I want to buy a lot of squibs and rockets and Eoman candles. They say I must take pistols and a revolver. But that's nonsense, you know. So, if these beggars of Arabs want to kill me, I mean to NORMAN MACLEOD, 261 let off my fireworks, and they'll swear I'm the biggest magic-man since Solomon." I forget what came of the fireworks ; but he was as gleesome as a boy at the idea of walking in perfect peace with a rocket for a staff, while his companion was miserably fingering a revolver. THE MASTER OF THE HORSE IN PALESTINE. (From a Sketch by Norman Macleod.) His journey to India was a different matter. By that time his health was seriously affected, and many of his friends doubted whether he was fit for the task. He him- self was quite aware of the risk he ran. But his heart was in the work. The Indian mission was very dear to him; and the love of travel, too, was still strong within him. He wanted to see the wonderful " tombs and temples, and fakirs, and cross-legged, goggle-eyed 262 NORMAN MACLEOD, gods at home ; nor would he object to the glimpse of a tiger in the jungle ; only he did not like those ugly- headed cobras — nearly as ugly as the Barony Kirk." Anyhow, a soldier, he added, " has nothing to do with the danger, but only to think of the duty." Alas ! the danger proved to be more serious than he imagined. He was never the same man after that Indian journey. He came back, indeed, with a deepened interest in the mission, and a stronger hope of its final success. He came back, to plunge into new and exliausting efforts to revive the mission zeal of the Church, and replenish the streams of its liberality. But it was with a feel- ing of disappointment and sorrow that he went up to the last Assembly to give in his final report, and to deliver the great speech which was to be his last word of counsel to the Church — a brave and a wise word, whether we heed it or not. A life so public as his could not well be without its disagreeables, though, to say the truth, they were not many. Dean Stanley seems to think that he had a kind of natural archbishopric in the Kirk of Scotland ; yet the Dean might have known that mitres do not always light on the wisest or noblest heads. He was loyal to the Church of Scotland, but knew that a still deeper loyalty was due to the Church Catholic. He was not very careful about the prim decorums of clerical manners, and this of course displeased those who but for such decorums would have been "found out." He walked in wisdom toward " them that are Y/ithout," and had a good report of them^ but to the NORMAN MACLEOD, 263 same extent he was distrusted by many of his brethren. He had great influence in the country, but many smaller men had more " say " in the councils of the Church. Indeed, but for the hold he had on the hearts of the people, I doubt whether he would not have been sharply dealt with in the matter of his famous speech about the Decalogue * The business is hardly worth remembering now, but at the time it was a source of keen pain to him. He knew that his view did not accord with that of many of his brethren, or perhaps with general Scottish sentiment at the time. He was prepared for opposition, therefore, and went to the Presbytery with the light of battle in his ejes, constrained by a sense of stern duty. But he hardly imao-ined that a mere formal abrogjation of the Deca- logue, with the view of introducing a higher principle of law, would be regarded as an opening of the flood- gates to licensed immorality. I thought at the time, and think still, that he unwisely narrowed his ground, appearing to select for abolition only the best part of a system which was all disannulled by the Gospel. But there was no calm, thoughtful discussion of the matter possible at the time. He felt keenly the alienation of old friends, and the unfair abuse and misrepresentation to which he was subjected; nor was he greatly com- forted by the approval which he won in certain * The discussion referred specially to the Fourth Command- ijient, a,nd the d.uty of Christians, ia regard to the Sa.bbatb, 264 NORMAN MA CLEOD, quarters. For tlie Lord's- day was as dear to him as to any man. He only wanted it to be shifted from a Jewish foundation, and placed on a Christian one, with the light of Christian beneficence shining on all its arrangements. The result was altogetlier good in the long-run, turning men's minds away from compulsory Sabbatism to the great principle that "the Sabbath was made for man." Happily, too, the storm was soon spent, and ere long the Church, which had been on the point of trying him for heresy, chose him to fill the chair, which is the highest honour it has to bestow. I have tried to describe Norman Macleod as I knew him ; but those who knew him as well, will best under- stand how far I have come short of the reality. Always bright and cheery, even when one knew he had his own burden to bear; always in very earnest, even when he seemed to play and trifle in the wantonness of his gay humour; always ready with a wise or witty saying, even though you only passed him hurriedly on the street in a shower of rain ; always interested in some one or other, for I think I hardly ever met him that he had not some " case " in hand — some poor human brother, about whom he had many thoughts and took no end of trouble ; always busy in some good work or " Good Word " — death came upon him while he was still in fullest sympathy with the great life that stirred around him, and full of hope for its progress, and doing his full share of its task ; and so happily he did not live an hour beyond his use- NORMAN MACLEOD. 265 fulness. On Sunday, the i6th of June, he fell asleep ; " burdened," he said, '' with a sense of God's mercy," and leaving to the heavenly Father's care a widow with eight children. He sleeps in Campsie Churchyard, near the glen where he watched as a boy the " squirrel in the old beech-tree," and learned from his brother James to " teust in God, and do the RIGHT." Walter C. Smith. NORMAN MACLEOD S GRAVE AT CAMPSIE, 'I'HOMAs c;[;'rm;ii The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, The young birds are chirping in the nest, The young fawns are playing with tlie shadows, The young flowers are blowing toward the west^ But the young, young children, O my brothers, They are weeping bitterly ! Tiiey are weeping in the playtime of the others, In the country of the free." E. B. Browning. THOMAS GUTHRIE. .HOMAS GUTHEIE, one of the most clis- tinguislied men of his time as a preacher, a philanthropist, a platform orator, a humorist, and a popular writer, was horn at Brechin, in tlie county of Forfar, on the 1 7th of July, 1803. His father and his family were in the middle rank of life, homely, 'honest, and industrious, to whom every day brought its share of hard work, and every night its tale of " something attempted, some- thing done." The blood of the martyrs was in his veins, and he was proud of it. His father, a worthy Christian citizen, was provost of the burgh, a man of business in whom all men had confidence. His mother, who was of seceder origin, and who continued to worship in a secession meeting-house, was a woman of great devoutness and decision of character, most careful 270 THOMAS GUTHRIE. in the religious training of her family, and, like many such mothers, respected and honoured by her children, especially as they came to know the world and to estimate the value of her example and in- fluence. Thomas Guthrie was the youngest but one of thirteen children : a bustling stirring house it was, in which nothing could have been more out of place than senti- mental fancies or morbid moods. The family was brought up pre-eminently in the fear of God ; the traditions of the old Scottish religion prevailed in the hearts of the parents, and in accordance with them their children were reared. Yet there was a free and healthy air in the house, very favourable to the due development of character. Thomas Guthrie was substantially a product of the old Scottish school of Christian nurture, and, though in after life his views enlarged on many points, and intercourse with men of various sorts was ever teachino; him new lessons of charity and toleration, his convictions in religion con- tinued to the last to be essentially those of his parents, and of that great evangelical school to which they so cordially adhered. It does not appear that Guthrie, at any period of his youth, passed through any such obvious spiritual change as might be termed conversion; rather he was one of those who, under the constant influence of Christian nurture and example, are drawn gently and almost imperceptibly into the way of life. Neither does he seem to have been led to think of the ministry as his THOMAS GUTHRTE, 271 life work through the sheer force of an inward call ; his parents appear to have made up their minds that he was to be a minister, and to have brought him up under that impression. But if his first inclination in that BRECHIN CATHEDRAL, direction did not spring from the highest considerations, no man ever came, when he undertook the work, to have a deeper sense of responsibility for it ; nor did any minister ever labour with deeper sincerity or more unwearied diligence to realize the highest ends of the -/^ THOMAS GUTHR1£. ministry — the bringing in and building up of souls in the Kinofdom of God. Xot much needs to be said here of Guthrie's school and college life — the latter passed at the University of Edinburgli. He was far too young to profit sufficiently by university training. At the close of his undergraduate course, he passed through the divinity curriculum, and became a licentiate of the Church of Scotland. Then he spent some time in the study of medicine, first at Edinburgh and afterwards at Paris. JSTo opening pre- senting itself into the ministry, he accepted a temporary bertli, in room of a brother, in a bank at Brechin. At last, after five years' waiting, came a presentation to the parish of Arbirlot, not far from his native town. The sphere w^as greatly to his mind. To quote his own description of it in the Sunday Magaziiu : " Arbirlot hung on a slope that gently declined to the sandy shores of the German Ocean. There was wood enough to ornament the landscape, but not to intercept the fresh breezes, that curling and cresting the waves, blew landward from the sea, or swept down seaward from heights loaded with the fragrance of mown hay, or blooming beanfields, or moors golden with the flowers of the gorse." It was a purely agricultural parish, with a population of about a thousand, so well educated that but one grown-up person could not read, so regular in religious duty that but one person did not attend church, and so free from intemperance that the one public-house depended chiefly for its customers on the neighbouring town.' "The moral aspects were much THOMAS GUTHRIE, 273 in harmony with the physical, of a scene where the fields yielded abundant harvests, and the air, loaded with the fragrant perfume of flowers, rang to the song of larks and woodland birds, and long lines of breakers gleamed and boomed upon the shore, and ships with white sails flecked the blue ocean, and the Bell Eock tower stood on its rim to shoot cheerful beams athwart the doom ARBIRLOT CHURCH. of night, a type of that church which, our guide to the desired haven, is founded on a rock, and fearless of the rage of storms." It was in the early days of the evangelical revival that Guthrie was settled in Arbirlot ; in the ardour of his evangelical zeal, he threw his whole soul into his parochial duties, giving the first place to his work in the pulpit, but striving by classes and libraries, and house- to-house visitation, and every other available means, to rouse and edify the people. Hating all formality and s 274 THOMAS GUTHRIE, routine, he sought to get into close contact with the minds and souls of his hearers ; and finding tliat the part of his sermons which seemed to impress them most was the illustration, he determined to make that a specialty, and use it abundantly in his sermons. It was a happy thought — the result of a combination of instinct and intellect, of genius and common sense. Illustration became his great weapon, and a right useful one it was. It suited liis poetical temperament, and became a ready handmaid to his ever ardent sympathy. Listen to Dr. Hanna, who for many years was his colleague, and, though cast in a very different mould, a most apprecia- tive critic. After dwelling on his intense power of sympatliy as one element of his preaching power, he thus writes of his illustrations : " Another element of power lay in the peculiar character of tlie imagery and illustrations of which he made such copious use. It has been remarked by all w^ho liave passed a critical judgment of any vahie upon his attributes as a preacher, that his chief, if not exclusiv^e, instrument of power was illustration. In listening to him scenes and images passed in almost unbroken succession before the eye, always apposite, often singularly picturesque and graphic, frequently most tenderly pathetic. But it was neither their number nor their variety which explained the fact that they were all and so universally effective. It was the common character they possessed of being perfectly plain and simple, drawn from quarters with which all were familiar ; few of them from books, none of them from ' the depths of the inner conscious- THOMAS GUTHRIE. 27^ ness/ supplied by ingenious mental analysis ; almost all of them taken from sights of Nature or incidents of human life — the sea, the storm, the shipwreck, the beacon-light, the lifeboat, the family wrapped in sleep, the midnight conflagration, the child at the window above, a parent's arms held up below, and the child told to leap and trust. There was much of true poetry in the series of images so presented ; but it was poetry of a kind that needed no interpreter, required no effort either to understand or appreciate, which appealed directly to the eye and heart of our common humanity, of which all kinds and classes of people, and that almost equally, saw the beauty and felt the power. This showed itself unmistakably in the singular — we miglit even say — the wholly unique character of the afternoon audiences of Free St. John's. Of almost all other popular preachers it has been true, if they have occu- pied the same pulpit continuously for ten or twenty years, that the crowds which they at first attracted have at last diminished, and that the fixed congrega- tion which remained took its distinct hue and form from that of the ministry which had permanently attached them to itself ; the latter indeed a thing realized in the case of every city clergyman of any con- siderable pulpit power. But neither of the two things was true of Dr. Guthrie; the crowds continued un- diminished to the last. A few years after he came to Edinburgh the prediction was a common one, that the fountain of imagery upon which he drew so largely and was so dependent, was sure, ere long, to fail, and his 276 THOMAS GUTHRIE. popularity to fade away. He lived to prove that his own peculiar vein was one too deep to be exhausted, too fertile to become barren — one that could be con- stantly replenished; and that bountifully repaid the hand of the cultivator. It was as little true that you could stop or dry up the spring of story-telliug in Dickens or in Scott as you could that of his own form and kind of illustration in Dr. Guthrie. ISTot even the icy fingers of death could do it. How touching so near the close to see him hold up the mirror to the features which those fingers were fashioning for the tomb, say- ing that he was doing as the sailor did who climbed to the masthead to try if he could see land ! How touch- ing as sight began to fail, and things look dim, confused around, to hear him compare it to the ' land birds lighting on the mast presaging to the weary mariner the nearness of his desired haven ! ' It was the ruling faculty strong in death. It was to the unfailingness of that faculty that he owed his sustained popularity as a preacher." Before the end of his seven years incumbency in Arbirlot, Guthrie had begun to be talked about as an extraordinary man. Edinburgh was then the great field to which brilliant preachers were sought to be transplanted. The history of Guthrie's removal to Edinburgh was somewhat remarkable. He himself was not very willing to go, and the vacant congregation was by no means very unanimous or very cordial in desiring him ; yet go he did, and three Sundays had not passed before the church, passages and all, was crowded to the THOMAS GUTHRIE. 277 door ; and up to the very last time when he preached his church continued to present the same remarkable appearance. It was an excellent friend of the church, Mr. Alexander Dunlop, advocate (afterwards Mr. Murray Dunlop, M.P.), that was the means of his removing to AKBIKLOT MANSE. Edinburgh. In 1837 there occurred a vacancy in tlio Old Greyfriars' Church, the patronage of which, as of the other city churches, then belonged to the Town Council, and Dunlop was bent on getting the appoint- ment for Guthrie. Of course he must first get his consent to stand. And if Mr. Dunlop had now simply asked him to be nominated for Old Greyfriars, he would have simply refused. He was a man of the people, 278 THOMAS GUTHRIE, and his heart was with the people, and he believed that his abilities were more for the masses than the classes; and Old Grey friars — had it not been the church of Principal Eobertson and Dr. Ersldne and Dr. Inglis ? Had not old AValter Scott sat in its pews, and young AValter listened to the ministrations of which he had given so vivid an account in " Guy Mannering ? " It would require a man of no ordinary calibre to stand in such a pulpit and instruct the congregation of ladies and gentlemen who sat before it. Whatever might be true of others, Arbirlot was better for him, and he was better for Arbirlot, than old Grey friars. But Mr. Dunlop, a skilful lawyer, knew how to angle. Knowing his preference for a poor parish, he unfolded a scheme, the effect of which on his friend he could calculate full well. The friends of the church were going to get Old Greyfriars uncollegiated and to build a new church in the Cowgate, or near it. There they would plant the second minister of the Greyfriars, and try wliat the parochial system, thoroughly worked under Evangelical auspices, could do for the most degraded portion of Edinburgh. On June 15, 1837, Mr. Dunlop wrote in these terms to the minister of Arbirlot. Here, as the minister himself would have said was a dainty dish to set before a king. The savour of it pleased him well. He was thinking about it when the bells of Arbroath were ringing in the new queen of England. On June 29 he wrote to his Edinburgh friend, that he had almost made up liis mind to accept if elected. Mr. Dunlop pressed the THOMAS GUTHRIE. 279 town council. The vote was in favour of Guthrie; and on September 2 1 following, he was inducted as one of the ministers of the Greyfriars. Many a man would say that only a hypocrite or a lunatic could have really preferred a charge in the Cowgate to an educated, well-to-do congregation. Guthrie was neither the one nor the other. He had a moderate estimate of his abilities, and he did not know then that the gifts of fancy and feeling, which were his special capital, were equally popular with hic^h and low. But that was not all. He had o grown up under the rising tide of the Evangelical re- vival, and with an unbounded faith in the power of the gospel to raise men from the lowest depths and turn the wilderness into a garden. The enthusiasm of Chalmers had roused a kindred enthusiasm, both as to the power of the gospel over the masses and the incomparable excellence of the aggressive method and the parochial machinery. No chill of disappointment had yet begun to abate the boundless expectations with which ardent minds were filled under the visions of Chalmers. Only let his schemes be carried fully out, and something like the millenium was at hand. Guthrie shared this glowing hope, and looked on the Cowgate as but the dark background that would bring out more clearly the glory of the coming transformation. It was, no doubt, with feelings of this sort in their minds that Chalmers and Guthrie, one dull autumn day in 183 7, had a casual meeting which was thus 28o THOMAS GUTHRIE. described by the latter in one of his papers in the Sunday Magazine — " Sketches of the Cowgate." From the bridge which spans the Cowgate (George IV. Bridge) he was looking down on the street where so much of his labour had to be carried on — " The streets were a puddle ; the heavy air, loaded with smoke, was thick and murky ; right below lay the narrow street of dingy tenements, whose toppling chimneys and patched and battered roofs were fit emblems of the fortunes of most of their tenants. Of these, some were lying over the sills of windows in- nocent of glass, or stuffed with old hats or dirty rags ; others, coarse-looking women, with squalid children in their arms or at their feet, stood in groups at the close mouths, here, with empty laughter, chaffing any passing acquaintance, there screaming each other down in a drunken brawl, or standing sullen and silent, with hunoer and ill-usacje in their saddened looks. A brewer's cart, threatening to crush beneath its pon- derous wheels the ragged urchins who had no other playground, rumbled over the causeway, drowning the quavering notes of one whose drooping head and scanty dress were ill in harmony with song, but not drowning the shrill pipe of an Irish girl, who thumped the back of an unlucky donkey, and cried her herrings at ' three a penny.' So looked the parish I had come to cultivate ; and while contrasting the scene below with the pleasant recollections of the parish I had just left — its singing larks, daisied pastures, decent peasants, and the grand blue sea rolling its lines of THE COWGATE, FROM GEORGE IV, BRIDGE. THOMAS GUTHRIE. 283 snowy breakers on the shore — my rather sad and sombre ruminations were suddenly checked. A hand was laid on my shoulder. I turned round to find Dr. Chalmers at my elbow Contemplating the scene for a little in silence, all at once, with his broad Luther-like face glowing with enthusiasm, he waved his arm to exclaim ' A beautiful field, sir ; a very fine field of operation I ' " Guthrie went hard to work to reclaim the Cowgate. Eising every morning at five, he devoted the time before breakfast to pulpit preparation ; spent several hours each day in visitation, and reserved his evenings for reading and his family. He secured the use of the Magdalene Chapel in the Cowgate for parochial services with the people who were reclaimed, a place of historical interest, dedicated of old to St. Mary Magdalene, the chapel of the French Embassy before the Eeformation, and thereafter the meeting-place, if not of the very first, certainly of some of the early Assemblies of the Ee formed Church of Scotland. The chapel still stands ; at the present time it is used in connection with the Livingstone Medical Mission — an institution aiming at the same great result by different machinery. By-and-by St. John's Church was built for Dr. Guthrie, and the greater part of its sittings were made free to the people of the district. The poor were in the area of the church, the rich in the galleries. But the experiment was not allowed to be worked out to its final results. A great ecclesiastical convulsion befell the Church of Scotland, and for a 284 THOMAS GUTHRIE. time the concentration of effort to avert the disaster, and — after it came — to reconstruct the shattered institution, absorbed the utmost efforts of Dr. Guthrie and his friends. Besides affording him a field for his great evangelistic missions, the Cowgate and other old streets of Edinburgh had other attractions for Dr. Guthrie. He delighted in all that was quaint and characteristic of the old town, and his active imagination could vividly call up the past life of the city, and people every close and wynd every tenement and " land " with its old inhabitants. For the elegant new town, with its cold regularity of square window and level roof, he cared probably as little as Mr. Euskin, though he did not like him pour out on it any vial of scorn. But the Cowgate and the Canongate, the High Street and the Grassmarket — his interest in them never flagged. Even as they stood in their decay they were marvellous sights, showing a rare architectural taste in the barons and burgesses that reared them, half savages thouo'h we have been wont to think them. It may seem an Irishism, but Edinburgh was then at least fifty years older than it is now. Half a century has made sad havoc of those marvellous old structures which James Drummond sketched, and Daniel Wilson chronicled, in their very different books, each bearincj the name " Old Edin- burejh." But when Dr. Guthrie came to Edinburgh, most of the old historical houses still survived, though not in ail their glory. You did not need to go then to the THOMAS GUTHRIE, 285 Exhibition in the Meadows to see the house of Cardinal Beaton, it stood high and mighty, with its strange THE CANONGATE. octagon turret, at the east end of the Cowgate ; and opposite to it the icsidcuve of Gawin Douglas, the 286 THOMAS GUTHRIE, poet, who would fain have been Archbishop of St. Andrews, but had to content himself with the bishopric of Dunkeld. Here it v/as, in the Dunkeld palace, in the early days of the Eeformation, that after John Knox had been summoned to appear in the neighbour- insj Blackfriars' Church, and his enemies had abandoned the prosecution, he preached for ten successive days, morning and afternoon, to greater crowds than had ever listened to him before. From the same Black- friars' Church, at an earlier period, the Hamiltons had issued to attack the Douglases in the fight that used to be known as " Cleanse the Causeway," in which good Sir Patrick Hamilton, the father of the reformer and martyr of the same name, was slain. The other or west end of the Cowgate was not less rich in memories of the past. Near its entrance to the Grassmarket stood a tall house, in the third story of which Mrs. Syme, a sister of Principal Ptobertson, kept a boarding-house, in the middle of last century. The father of the late Lord Brougham was one of Mrs. Syme's boarders, and marrying her daughter, lived liere for some time, removing afterwards to St. Andrew Square, where Lord Brougham was born. But the Grassmarket itself had infinitely more stirring associations than these. Here it was that the stake Avas erected from which so many reformers and co- venanters were borne to heaven in the chariot of fire, leaving those testimonies and memories that thrilled so many hearts, and none more than that of Dr. Guthrie himself, who was all the more susceptible to their THOMAS GUTHRIE. 267 influence that he believed himself to have inherited martyr's blood. The ''famous Guthrie " ox the Martyr's THE GRASSMARKET. Monument in the adjacent Greyfriars' Churchyard, if not a progenitor, was of the same stock of Forfarshire 288 THOMAS GUTHRIE. Guthries as himself. So was William Guthrie, of Fen- wick, one of the greatest preachers and most talented men that Scotland ever possessed, who was ejected from his charge after the restoration of Charles II., and died soon afterwards in comparative youth. That Greyfriars' Churchyard was in the highest sense hal- lowed ground. It was here the National covenant was first signed, signed by some with blood drawn from their veins, by others with the added words, "till death." Here, for a whole winter after the battle of the Pentlands, six hundred Covenanters had been con- fined, without any protection from the weather. Here was the Covenanter's grave, and the monument that commemorated the eighteen thousand that suffered death during the " kilhng time." It goes without saying that such scenes, constantly witnessed during his Greyfriars incumbency, moved Dr. Guthrie to his inmost soul. They did more. They roused in him the spirit of consecration; lifted him up above the influences of time ; nourished in him the thoughts that travel to eternity, and inspired those vivid and im- pressive appeals which gave to so many hearers a new sense of things unseen and eternal. And there was humour, too, in many of these old Edinburgh associations. It was like a grim joke to be told that in former days the inhabitants of the Horse Wynd or the College Wynd kept their carriages, and when they dined at one another's houses drove to them in state, even although the distance should be so small (as it was said of one lady) that the horses' heads were THOMAS GUTHRIE. 2B^ Opposite the door of the one house when the carriage- door was opposite the other. Large apartments had often been divided into four, each the abode of a separate family, and sometimes cries of strife and murder would come through the thin plaster partition while the minister was giving his exhortations. Eush- OLD IlOL'oES IN THE CANONGATi: ing to ascertain the cause, he would find that it was only two low Irishwomen that liad quarrelled ; but what a change of tenantry from the days when the highest of the land were the occupants, and the Sovereign himself did not deem it beneath him to accept their hosjoitality ! In its early days the Cowgate was the fashionable suburb of Edinburgh, resembling Grange or ]\Iorning- 290 ^HOMAS GUTHRIE. side at the present aristocratic. It was battle of riodden enclosed by the city all was green ; the ground of the Grey- lay in front, and a the Kirk o' Held, near to which Darnley was mur- dered, and the day, only far morfe not till after the that it was even wall. To the south garden and burial- friars Monastery little to the left THE TOLBOOTH. University stands now. The Lawn-market, the High Street, and the Canongate were the real backbone. THOMAS GUTHRIE. 291 of old Edinburgh. All tlie space between the Castle and Holyrood swarms with historical associations. True, the old Tolbooth had been removed some time before, and only the site remained to tell where " the Heart of Midlothian " stood. But St. Giles's was there, and Knox's house, and the Eegent Moray's, and Hyndford Close, and the White Horse Inn, which last has been quite demolished by the Improvement Com- mission. It was to it that Dr. Samuel Johnson came, on his visit to the city in 1774, when Boswell found him grumbling, for the place looked slovenly, and the waiter had shocked him by using his fingers to put a piece of sugar in his lemonade. From the White Horse Johnson removed to James's Court in the Castle Hill, where Boswell resided, and where also Lord Kames, David Hume, and Dr. Blair had their abodes. In Guthrie's time, all these were yet standing; looking to Princes Street, the pile, of which they were parts, presented ten or twelve stories ; it was consumed by fire in 185 7, and the Savings' Bank and Free Church offices now occupy the site. When the new ty Sir Javies D, Lintoti, THOMAS GUTHRIE. 311 Guthrie was as Scotch as Scotch could be, a Shorter Catechism man to the backbone, yet for five-and- twenty years he was the brightest of all the public men of the metropolis, and all his life went to show what a fund of tenderness and sympathy and sprightly humour might be combined with a firm creed and a faithful ministry. In 1849, 1^1'- Guthrie received the degree of D.D. from the University of Edinburgh, and in 1862 he was chosen Moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church. Soon after his settlement at Arbirlot, Dr. Guthrie married Anne, daughter of Eev. James Burns, minister of Brechin, and in the course of time a large family — six sons and four daughters — grew up around their table. Mrs. Guthrie was like-minded with her husband^ and admirably adapted to him. Seldom has there been a happier or a better household. That rare power of sympathy wliich made him so powerful as a preacher stood in good stead to him as a parent. Entering into the feelings of his children he became their companion and almost playfellow, and knew well how to sweeten tlie demands of obedience througli the influence of affection. The vivacity of his temperament, and the boundless and endless play of his humour could not fail to make his home attractive. Under the outer garb of fun and frolic, his children could not but see the profound reverence for all that was sacred, the intense shrinking from all vileness and disorder, and the longing wish for the welfare and happiness of 312 THOMAS GUTHRIE. every creature, that were at tlie bottom of his character. And so, amid all the frivolities and all the ccrruption of a large city, they grew up, by God's groat blessing, much as their father would have wished them, and in manhood and womanhood, have sustained the character of honourable and Christian men and women. Few religious authors have been more popular than Dr. Guthrie. Of his first work, "The Gospel in Ezekiel," dedicated to Dr. Hanna, which appeared in 1855, the sale in this country has exceeded 40,000 copies. " Christ and the Inheritance of the Saints," appeared in i 8 5 8. The list of his publications includes nearly twenty volumes, and of those "Out of Har- ness," and "The Parables read in the Light of the Present Day," appeared in Good Words ; and " Our Father's Business," " Studies of Cliaracter from the Old Testament" (two series), "The Angels' Song," " Sundays on the Continent," and " Saving Know- led o-e " were mainly collections of contributions to the Sunday Magazine. Dr. Guthrie's last illness lasted a considerable time. In the winter of 1872-3 he suffered severely, and, in the liope of improvement, went to St. Leonards, at which place, after a sharp renewed attack, he died. It was difficult to say whether his expressions of humble trust in his Saviour, or of affectionate regard for his family and his friends were the more beautiful Eeferrinn- to the kindness of a Highland girl who had nursed him in his sickness, he said, "Affection is very THOMAS GUTHRIE. 313 sweet; and it is all one from whatever quarter it comes — whether from this Highland lassie or from a peeress — ^jnst as to a thirsty man cold water is equally grateful from a spring on the hillside or from a richly ornamented fountain." " Death," he said on another occasion, " is mining away here, slowly hut surely, in the dark." His affection could not be suppressed, even in the lowest stage of exhaustion. To most persons when dying a child in the room would be somewhat of a trouble ; but the sight of a little grand- child of four years was to him full of interest. " Put her up," he said the moment he saw her ; and when, having been lifted up to the bed, she crept up to him and kissed him, he nodded to her and whispered, " My bonnie lamb." During liis illness he was often soothed by hymn and psalm-singiug, and of none was he more fond than children's hymns. " Give me a bairns' hymn," he would say to his children, and when they sung, " Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me," or " There is a happy land," his spirit was refreshed. He often thanked God that he had not left his preparation to a dying hour, and spoke of tlie unutterable folly of those who do so. To those absent he sent lovino- messac^es, bidding one of them " Stand up for Jesus in all cir- cumstances." The peace and confidence of his death- bed completed and crowned that testimony to the saving power of Jesus which in his words and works- alike, had been borne during; his life. His death occurred early on the morning of the 24th of Feb- ruary 1873. 3i4 THOMAS GUTHRIE. The funeral in Edinburgli, in the classic ground of tlie Grange Cemetery, amid a concourse of some thirty thousand spectators, was a marvellous testimony of the aPfectionate and reverential regard in which he was held by all. W. G. Blaikie. \ ^}vLO 'n X PRINCIPAL TULLOCH. " Live for to-day ! to-morrow's light To-morrow's cares shall bring to sight ; Go sleep like closing flowers at night, And heaven thy morn will bless." Joiix Kf.hi.r. PRINCIPAL TULLOCH. 'iST September 1885, John Shairp, the accom- plished Principal of St. Salvator's and St. Leonard's was buried near liis old, romantic home in Linlithgowshire ; and in February of the following year, the remains of the beloved Principal of St. Mary's were followed by a crowd of sorrowing mourners gathered to St. Andrews from far and near ; and as the chill snow- showers drove along the wintry sea, lie was laid to rest near the precincts of the cathedral, and almost under the shadow of the tower of St. Eeaulus. Shairp and Tulloch were typical men, alike in lofty tone and in their intense patriotism, while wholly dis- similar in many other characteristics. Shairp — poetic, contemplative, and pure as a saint — had drunk in the very soul of Wordsworth. He delighted iu Nature. 3i8 PRINCIPAL rULLOCH, Armed with liis long liazel stick, and protected by his plaid, it was his custom to wander far and wdde over Highland moors and among Border solitudes, sleeping in any shepherd's cot, and crooning as he walked some old ballad or Gaelic song. Modern " progress " had little attraction for him, and he had less liking still for the so-called "Broad" section of the Church, to wiiich so many of his earliest and dearest friends more or less belonged, such as Arnold, Stanley, Jowett, ^STorman ]\Iacleod. His sympathies seemed to be equally divided between the Evangelicalism of earnest Scotch Presby- terianism and the devotional charm of the Oxford of Newman and Keble. Tulloch, on the other hand, rejoiced in the intellectual life of the time, and was one of the chief representatives of the liberal thought which has of late years been remoulding the spirit of the Scottish Church. His influence was wholly on tlie side of " a sweet reason- ableness," and of a wide toleration. He had for many a day, in common with others who have passed aw\ay and whose memories are now universally revered, to bear the burden of suspicion, and to endure the hard names of " Latitudinarian " and " Eationalist," but these things did not shake his loyalty to conviction. Uniting rich stores of learning with a commanding eloquence, he fulfilled a leading part in enlarging, to the healthy measure of its present freedom, the once narrow limits of Scottish theology. His life was full to the brim with an ardent sympathy, which made him respond with intense keenness to the demands which the age JOHN TUTJ.OCIT. Fjoitt a Phoiop-npJi hy T. Rodccr, Sf. .4>iihv7('s. PRINCIPAL TULLOCH. 321 made on liis Christian enthusiasm. His bodily appear- ance was a true exponent of his inner nature. In any gathering of men at which he was present he at once attracted attention. His manly form carried aloft a head which might have served as a study for an Apollo, his countenance beamed with intelligence, and his splendid eye, when his feelings were roused, literally blazed with fervour. Tender as a child, and moved to tears by the slightest thrill of pathos, he would, when touched by anything he deemed intolerant, ungenerous, or dishonest, rise into bursts of the most passionate oratory. The term " Broad Churchman " does not always con- vey a complete representation of the person so desig- nated. There are some who assume the title and dis- play the narrowest bigotry regarding all dogmas but their own. There are others who with a bitter cynicism have nothing to offer but the hard stone of negation to hungry hearts crying for bread. But Tulloch was broad in the best sense, for his large tolerance of spirit was combined with a burning love to God and Christ and to his brother man. There has been no man in Scotland for several years so many-sided. He was widely read in men as well as in books, for he had travelled extensively in Europe and America, and had the power of attracting confidences. From a biographical notice in the Scotsman news- paper on the day following the announcement of his death we glean some interesting facts : — " John Tulloch was born near the Bridge of Earn, in 322 PRINCIPAL TULLOCH, Perthshire, in 1823. His early education was obtained in Perth, and at the Madras College, St. Andrews, from which, in 1837, at the early age of 14, he passed into the University of the ancient city with which his lot in life was afterwards to be so intimately associated. In Greek, moral philosophy, mathematics, and natural philosophy he particularly distinguished himself, and in passing out of the Arts classes he won the Grey prize for an essay on the 'Eoman Senate.' He was much esteemed by his fellow-students ; and in the debating society, in which he took an active interest, he was always sunny and genial. After he had taken a part of his Divinity classes at St. Mary's College he came to Edinburgh, where he finished his course and was licensed by the Perth Presbytery in 1 844 at the age of 21. His first appointment was as assistant to Dr. M'Lauchlan, Dundee, and so well did he acquit himself that in a couple of months he was presented to the Parish Church of Arbroath, which, however, he saw fit to decline. In the beginning of 1845 ^^ became minister of St. Paul's, Dundee, where he remained until 1 849, when he was transferred to the parish of Kettins, a rural living in the south-western district of Forfar- shire. Even at that early period of his career Mr. Tulloch's thoughtful style in the pulpit marked him out as a man likely to rise in the Church. A casual hearer who listened to one of his expositions of the 23rd Psalm, more than forty years ago, was struck by the peculiar grace and dignity of his language, and the elegant tone of thought which pervaded it — a style PRINCIPAL TULLOCH. 323 unusual in the somewhat dry and metaphysical pulpit utterances too current at that time. Wliile in Dundee the young minister, though possessing a vigorous physique, worked so hard in his parish, and lectured and wrote so much, that his health suffered, and he was compelled to seek rest in Germany. A long summer holiday there he spent in characteristic fashion in accjuiring a thorough knowledge of the language, and in making himself master of the speculative theology of that country — a knowledge which was of immense importance to him in after life. It was while in Dundee that he married — his wife being Miss Hindmarsh, whose father had been a teaclier of English in Perth. "His residence at Kettins, away from the noise of busy streets and the restless life of a large city, was greatly appreciated by him. A writer thus describes the village or hamlet of Kettins, lying at the foot of the Sidlaw Hills, in the pleasant valley of Strathmore : — 'Tew Scottish villages surpass it in simple rustic beauty. The dwellings of the cottagers cluster round the old-fashioned church and manse or peep out among the elms or ash trees which overshadow the roads and surround the village green. Most of them are covered with v/oodbine and other climbers, and have gardens around them bright with flowers.' Here he passed six precious years of his life — laying in a renewed stock of health, and spending the time not required in the dis- charge of the duties of rural dean of this delightful spot with his books, in the congenial society of the master minds of literature, theology, and philosophy. 324 PRINCIPAL TULLOCH. " In 1854, it was announced tliat Mr. Tulloch had been presented by the Crown to the Principalship of St. Mary's College, in succession to Dr. Eobert Haldane. The appointment seems to have come upon the Church with something like surprise, and to have caused not a little discontent among older theologians v/ho were at that time better known than this young minister of a country parish." He was little more than a youth when he was appointed to the Chair of Theology in St. Andrews. Beyond one or two reviews, notably one on the " Hip- polytus of Bunsen," he had done little in literature. But Bunsen had been charmed by his review, and wrote strongly in favour of its author to Lord Palmer- ston. The credit of Tulloch's appointment belongs, how- ever, to Lord Palmerston himself, who, it is said, was so struck by what he saw of Tulloch during an evening spent with him in a country-house, that he said to their host, " Why should we not appoint this young minister to the vacant Chair ? " It was not lono; before Tulloch abundantly vindicated his choice. Perhaps the ablest of all his works was published in the following year, and from that date till his death his literary labours were incessant. To the disgrace of Government many of the Chairs in our Universities are kept at starvation allowance. Tulloch's Chair was miserably endowed, and he was accordingly forced, as much by circum- stances as by a laudable ambition, to slave at literature. Books, reviews, magazine articles followed one another in swift succession from his versatile and always bril- PRINCIPAL TULLOCH. 325 iiaut pen. rrom its first outset he was a large con- tributor to tlie pages of Good Woi'ds. Always graceful WEST PRONT OF ST. ANDREW'S CATHEDRAL. and vigorous in diction, Lis works displayed extra- ordinary aptitude. There is a wide distance between the closely reasoned arguments of his work on " Theism " 326 PRINCIPAL TULLOCH, or on "Eational Eeligion and Christian Philosopliy," and his wise counsels to young men in "Beginning Life ; " and when we reckon how that distance was filled up by various excursions into the region of history or of spiritual experience, we can calculate the variety and richness of his accomplishments. For many years his labours, outside of the duties proper to his Chair, were almost entirely literary, and, more than once, the mental strain caused by ceaseless toil so injured his health that he had to seek rest abroad. His overwrought brain affected his nervous system with a distress which those who have suffered similarly describe as being worse than acute pain. I cannot forget the joy with which the bright-souled and good man greeted my brother, Norman Macleod, and me when we were at Athens on our way home from a tour in Palestine in 1864. He was then recovering from a "break down" which had brought with it the usual accompaniment of nervous weakness and depression. Among other happy incidents during our stay in Greece, we made an excursion together to Marathon, and never did two congenial spirits leap forth in more brilliant talk than did the two friends whose life-work is now over. It was one of those bright April days which in that climate out-rival our richest summer glory. We drove in the clear, sunny air up past Lycobettus and by the shallow valley of the Ilissus, and on between the ranges of Hymettus and Pentelicus, by a road which was of primitive structure, and escorted by soldiers who repre- PRINCIPAL TULLOCfi. 327 sented law in a State where the traveller ran the danger of meeting banditti within a mile or two of the capital. These conditions gave zest to our enjoyment of the scenery — the copses of chestnut and oak, the picturesque villages, and still more picturesque peasantry, the glimpses of blue mountains, whose very names were a romance, and the slips of bluest sea that looked like bits of sky islanded upon earth. The interchange was ceaseless of humour and pathos, of what was most ludicrous with what was most solemn. We rested for an hour or two on the Tumulus under which the warriors are buried who fell in the immortal struggle. The traditional tomb of Miltiades was but a few yards off, and we were surrounded by the mountains that " look on Marathon " and on the wide bay opening into the sea, beyond which arose the rugged hills of Euboea. Tulloch and Macleod were at their best that day, and simply revelled in their almost boyish enjoyment of every incident. In his later years Tulloch entered more than he had previously done into the arena of active public life. He was for about a quarter of a century a prominent figure in the debates of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland ; and his influence was always on the side of reasonable freedom dominated by reverence. The following passage from an article published in Sunday Talk, for April 1886, gives a good idea of the ecclesiastical situation with which he had to deal : — " The remarkable progress made of late years by the 328 Principal tULLOcn. Church — progress in order and beauty of worship, pro- gress in intellectual independence, progress in depth of religious life — is hard to realize. It is impossible for an Englishman, and it is difficult for a Scotsman, who cannot carry his memory back twenty or twenty-five years, to understand the vast change that has come over the churches and society North of the Tweed. But those who were present in the crowded General Assembly when the fierce debates took place on what were known as the ' Greyfriars' innovations,' can never forget those scenes, when every nerve was strung, every heart was eager and every party strained over the questions of the use of a liturgy and an organ in worship. One seems still to see the brief, dignified figure of Dr. Eobert Lee — the arch innovator — as he stood on the floor, his face so cool, his clear chiselled features so acute, his voice in- cisive and telling, weaving those speeches unsurpassed for dialectical skill, fertility of resource, and sarcastic point, every sentence as polished and sharp as a knife. One watches the alert Principal Pirie rise on the opposi- tion side, with arms uplifted sawing the air, his voice Aberdonian and raucous, his speech rapid in retort and nimble in argument, his face beaming with benevolent hostility as he detected a fault in his opponents' law, and concluding without the slightest perception of the importance of a principle when it clashed with a clause in an obscure Act of Assembly. Dr. John Cook would join the debate, bland and genial, the incarnation of shrewd common sense and able persuasiveness, who Principal tulloch. 329 discussed the legality of novel music in Presbyterian worship with the good-natured indifference of a man who never had been cursed with a prejudice — or blessed with an ear. One remembers so vividly the tall, stately form of Principal Tulloch in the vigour of youth and consciousness of power, who (with the voice so rich to charm the ear and so true to touch the heart) at once lifted, by his fervid oratory, the debate from the petti- ness of the legal quibbles to the serener plane of high principles of freedom and of justice, and inspired the wliole Assembly with a loftier spirit. Then after the stormy conflicts, lasting day and evening, the debate is wound up, the clock outside strikes one or two in the morning, and the tramp of many feet startles the quiet of the deserted High Street as members go home warm and wearied. These scenes that occurred yearly each May till the cause was won seem now far oif. The great combatants now are dead. " ' Dumb are those names erewhile in battle loud; Dream-footed like the shadow of a cloud They flit across the ear.' "It was not the freedom to use an or^an instead of a pitch pipe that was then disputed and decided, it was the cause of religious and theological freedom, as surely as when Hampden stirred England in the seventeenth century it was not in question whether he should pay 20s. of ship money, but whether or not the country should be free. " Towards the end of the last century Louis XVI. asked an old courtier, who had seen many changes in 330 PRINCIPAL TULLOCH. his time, what struck him as the most notable change in France. ' Sire/ he answered, ' under Louis XIV. men dared not speak ; under Louis XV. men whispered, under your Majesty they speak aloud/ Such a change has come over Scotland : opinion is open, freedom is wide, where before all was silent and narrow. To whom is due this increase of toleration, this advance at once of theological liberty and spiritual interest? Largely due to Principal Tulloch, who, possessed of high standing to give weight to his words, possessed of deep religious feeling to give earnestness to his opinions, liaving sympathy with every new light from science and reverence for all cherished belief, helped to lead the Church into broader channels of religious life and thoudit/' He was on the Commission on Education during its temporary existence, and his subsequent appointment to the Chief Clerkship of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and his elevation to the Chair of Moderator, brought him into close contact with the business of the Church. For the last few years of his life he was recognized as the chief leader, the most forcible debater, and the wisest counsellor tlie Church possessed. For, although Presbyterianism avows the principle of ministerial equality, it can never refuse to acknowledge the dominating influence which supreme talent or strength of character must always exercise. It has thus always one or two unnamed bishops, who gain an authority that is at once free and almost un- questioned. The Assembly of the Church is the nearest PRINCIPAL TULLOCH, 331 tiling to a parliament which Scotland now possesses, and he who gains the place of trusted leader must have many rare gifts. Latterly TuUoch was compelled to champion the Church in a warfare that was uncongenial to his nature. He played the most important part among Churchmen in resisting the movement for Dis- establishment. He had no taste for controversy of this nature, and in some respects his temperament did not always fit him for its conduct, but there was no man in the country who could have rendered to the Church the service that Tulloch gave. He had always been a keen politician. During the time he was editor of Frazer's Magazine he not only wrote many articles of a purely political character, but was brought into close contact with the leading men of the Liberal party of which he was a member. He proved himself an admirable editor, but the labour which fell on him when he had to conduct a magazine published in London, while he himself had so many onerous duties in St. Andrews, was more than his strength admitted, and it is believed that he never recovered the ehects of that attempt. llie article above quoted from the Scotsman news- paper thus describes his last days : — " He broke down last autumn, and was seen by his physician, Dr. George Balfour. It was hoped that his illness was merely the result of exliaustion and over- straining of the nervous energy from over-w^ork, and that with absolute rest from all exertion he mio-ht gradually recover. He went then to Harrogate, where JJ-* PRINCIPAL TULLOCH. he spent a few weeks, and returned to St. Andrews towards the end of November, with some expectation of being able to resume his College duties. Before Christ- mas he was again compelled to desist, and he came to Edinburgh, and took up his residence at the Craig- lockhart Hydropathic, where he remained until the 2nd of January, when he went to London. "When in Edin- burgh at that time he took rather a gloomy view of his own condition. He complained a good deal of dimness of vision ; but in the company of friends he became more cheerful, and, except when the feeling of weakness overpowered him, his smile was as genial and his laugh as hearty as ever. In London, he consulted Dr. Andrew Clark, and it was suggested that he should winter at Torquay, the genial climate of which had on a previous occasion done him much good. There he went and resided with his friend Dr. Hamilton Eamsay, the purse- bearer to the Lord High Commissioner, who has been assiduous in his attentions to him. Principal Tulloch had a cerebral seizure on Monday last, and was seen by Sir James Crichton Browne, who regarded his case as very critical. He rallied, however, by Wednesday, and a more hopeful view of his condition was taken. On Friday night, however, the same symptoms returned with increased force, and he died on Saturday at twenty minutes before ten o'clock. The cause of death was cerebral effusion, or what in popular phraseology is known as paralysis of the brain." I have scarcely ever known a more chivalrous soul, and his loss appears irreparable at this moment to many PRINCIPAL TULLOCH. 333 of us in Scotland. We had no man who in recent years touched the national sentiment at so many points, or who stood forth so prominently in many fields of interest. We have men of culture and men of action ; we have ecclesiastics of many types, great preachers and great leaders ; we have men of letters and men of administrative capacity ; but we have no man who so combined all these gifts, and who so elevated them all by the nobility of his character and his catching enthu- siasm. He is mourned by all classes. The news, " Tulloch is dead," came with the shock of a personal loss to thousands who had never even seen him, but who had learned to love him and feel proud of him for their country's sake. Since the death of Xorman Macleod no Scottish Churchman enjoyed so mucli of the confidence of the Queen, who has in many ways, and with characteristic graciousness, expressed her sense of his loss. He was not an old man — only sixty-three years of age — when he was struck down. Bat to all who knew him — worn in health and wearied in heart and brain — the thought that he is at rest may relieve the grief which in its selfishness would dwell more on the sadness of the bereavement to themselves, to their church and country, than on the peace that is now hi.s. PoNALD Macleod. THE PORT, ST. ANDREWS. JOHN CURWEN. " There's music in the sighing of a reed ; There's music in the gushing of a rill ; There's music in all things, if men had ears : Their earth is but an echo of the spheres." Byron. JOHN CURWEN. HETHER the oft-repeated verdict be true or not, that " the English are not a musical people," there can be no question about the progress they have made during recent years towards a more widespread use and appreciation of the art. Homes, schools, churches, all give evidence of the w^onderful expansive- ness with which music is throwino; its charm over the whole area of common life. In this advancement no one has played so important a part as John Curwen, and his career is one more example of the triumphs that are won by religious devotion and enthusiasm. A man " with no natural advantages of ear or voice," quite outside the circle and influences that might lead to such work, and utterly destitute of advantages or appliances for carrying it on, he yet conceived, 33B JOHN CURWEN. developed, and diffused a reform of musical education which every day more and more shows to be, in its way, one of the greatest reforms ever accomplished, and which opens out to music possibilities of popular usefulness hitherto unthought of. When we turn to his life and try to trace the course of influence and circumstance by which lie was led to undertake and carry out this work, we find the secret of its force in his own intense religious devotion, and the growing scope for its progress in the natural readiness with which practical religious movements accepted and applied the power that he offered them. Tender and child-like in nature, he was always a special favourite with children, and it was his love to them that first drew liis attention to musical reform. He desired to make some of them sing, " chiefly with the design of making them love the Sunday-school." Believing that " what God required from young men and maidens, old men and children," from " the people, from all the people, must be simple and easy of attain- ment if you did but understand the way," he was led to inquire and study. He soon found that the old methods of teaching had deceived him with the shell of knowledge instead of giving him its kernel. Music as he sometimes said, had become a mystery — only to be practised by the select few who were learned in its secret. He believed, and he made it his life-mission to prove, that music was an open secret, the possession of all who cared to use it, and " before his end came he had the rare privilege of knowing that through his JOHN C UR WEN. 339 musical notation the praises of God were sung in more lands and in more tongues than were represented in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost." Like many another useful and fruitful worker, John Curwen came from " the minister's home." His father, of an old Cumberland family, was an Independent minister who laboured usefully in several parts of England. John himself was born at Heckmondwike, in Yorkshire, November 14, 1 8 1 6. His mother, dying wliile he and his brother were but boys, desired that the text of her funeral sermon might be, " The God w^hich fed me all my life long unto this day, the angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads." In early life the young man devoted himself to be a preacher of the gospel. Educated at Coward College and University College, London, he became assistant minister at Basingstoke in 1838. Here it was that he began to teach the children of his Sunday- school to sing. He learnt a few tunes, and with the assistance of a friend, taught them to the children. "We had 200 children for two hours twice a week. By dint of loud singing we carried the voices of the children with us and taught theui many tunes. We endeavoured most strenuously also to give them a knowledge of crotchets and quavers, flats and sharps, and clefs, hoping thereby to give some permanence to the fruits of our labours ; but this was in vain." In 1 84 1 he was appointed co-pastor at Stowmarket, in Suffolk. About this time a friend, knowing his anxious interest in the subject, lent him a book 340 John curweM. describing the system adopted by Miss Glover, an accomplished and philanthropic lady with a thorough musical education, who had with no little success endeavoured to popularize music in the schools of Norwich. A first casual glance over it led him to exclaim, " If the old notation is puzzling, I am sure this is more puzzling far," and he laid the book aside. He, however, took it up again, and by it was led to a more serious and careful consideration of the subject. He then understood that Miss Glover's plan was to teach first the simple and beautiful thing, Music, and to delay the introduction to the ordinary antiquated mode of writing it until the pupil had obtained a mastery of the thing itself. By giving her method a fair trial on himself, and on a little child who lived in the same house, he became convinced that it was the most simple of all — the most easy to teach, and the most easy to learn. In the course of a fortnight he found himself at the height of his previous ambition — able to " make out " a psalm tune from the notes, and to pitch it himself. " It was the untying of the tongue — the opening of a new world of pleasure." He lost no time in visiting the schools patronized by Miss Glover, and during the same autumn, at a con- ference of Sunday-school teachers in Hull, where there was much discussion of the difficulties that prevented good and hearty singing, he described what he had seen. His enthusiasm seems to have roused the meet- ing, and a resolution was j)assed charging him as a young man— he was not yet twenty-five — to find out JOHN CURWEN. 341 the simplest way of teaching music, and to get it into use. He seemed very fearful of the ^vay in which such a duty might interfere with his work as a minister and pastor. So jealous was he of himself that he would not even learn to play on an instrument lest he should be tempted to waste time. He accepted, however, the charge solemnly laid upon him by his brethren. He pursued and developed his studies, and then began his work of publishing and lecturing. First came " The Little Tune Book Harmonized " (1841), the profits on which, with a conscientiousness very characteristic of him, he sent to Miss Glover. She returned them, for she never had and " could not take " any pecuniary reward for her work. So the young minister was forced to use them, and, adding some of his own bachelor savings, produced and published what no publisher would venture on, and what several printers refused to print, " Singing for Schools and Congrega- tions," the first text-book of the new method. Now he was willing to rest content. He had begun the movement, and others with more time and capacity might carry it on. In 1844 he removed to Plaistow, in Essex, where his congregation, his Sunday-schools, his day-schools, and his family — for he was no longer a bachelor— left little leisure for musical study. The little text-book had, however, been quietly doing its work. Among others, the Home and Colonial School Society had adopted the system, and every year were sending forth forty to sixty school teachers qualified to extend its use. Neither had its author forgotten it* 342 JOHN CURWEN, ' Slowly he had improved his system and expanded hig little book into a worthy manual. " By tliis time," as he himself put it at an overflowing meeting in Exeter Hall, twenty-six years afterwards : — " My brave wife had seen me lay out all our united savings (and that was a serious thing for a young Benedict with a salary of only £i6o a year) in paying for a big book slowly written and slowly stereotyped. It was the now old * Grammar of Vocal Music' When it was finished, I asked her whether I should bring it out in an expensive form, so as to be repaid early, or in a cheap form, with the hope of being repaid at some distant period. She comforted me by saying that she did not think it would ever pay, but she would like me to do all the good I could with it by making it cheap. Tor my part I hoped that my wife and little child would not be allowed to suffer for my love of music, and so made the book 2s. 6d. instead of 5s." Had he never published anything else, he would have earned the deepest gratitude of the singing world ; for this old " Grammar " did more to open the world of music and to stimulate the pursuit of its delights among the common people of the country than any work ever published. To the anxious toilers in congregational classes, chapel choirs, night and day-schools, it seemed like the opening of a window in the deep dark of fruitless effort. Hitherto they had been shouting themselves hoarse over the teaching of a few tunes, and sometimes patiently trying what Dr, Stainer so JOHN CURWEN. 343 pointedly ridicules, when he asks his readers to " imagine hira walking into an elementary school, and teaching the children the transposition of scales, that E is four sharps, a semitone higher is one flat, and so on." The Titw book reversed all this. It spoke of music in its simplicity — of the few notes that make up Nature's scale in their clear and beautiful relationship. All this it made so clear and simple that the youngest scholar could understand, and with this knowledge soon make his own way through hitherto unintelligible mazes. " The Modulator," the new simple map of Tone-land, was hung up in many a rough class-room ; and this half-crown " Grammar," with its small type, its stiff boards and paper cover, is treasured in many a teacher's home as the first bringer of the glad tidings that made choral music easy and enjoyable. It is now out of date, being superseded by improvements upon itself; but it proved the germ of a most extensive and com- prehensive literature on musical study (in both nota- tions) which its author was destined to write, and the nucleus of a library providing, for the merest trifle, all the masterpieces of choral music, all the tr.ne-books of the different denominations, and an unrivalled collection of school and part-song music. Meantime the Plaistow siQger wa^ being stirred from the restful contentment with which he had seen his work started. Soon after the publication of the "Grammar" came a letter from the "Home and Colonial," intimating that their training college was passing under Government hands, and that, while they 344 JOHN CU RIVEN, thought as highly as ever of his method, they were obliged to abandon it in order to adopt the old system, still patronized by the Government. Worse than this, another training school, from which he hoped much, first adopted the system, then set it to be taught by incompetent hands, afterwards mixed it up with another system, and finally cast it out as a thing rejected after fair trial. "Fairly tried and rejected — weighed and found wanting — was that to go forth to the world after all my labour and study — after my wife's courage in risk- ing our little all ? No. It was surely my duty to prevent that. Minister, as I was, I might and ouglit to give a little time to lecturing, and to such corre- spondence as might arise, for the promotion of my music mission. I did, and not a few lectures, conferences, and Finsbury Chapel meetings sprang out of this ' heavy blow and great discouragement.' Like Jonah, I needed this sudden plunge into the cold waters of rejection to awake me to a new sense of duty — a new acceptance of my mission. In consequence of that plunge there came ten years of steady work, and marked success." It was in a little schoolroom in Jewin Street, London, in September 1850, that the first gathering of Tonic Sol-fa friends was held. A little collection of music just published was welcomed as a wonder of cheapness, and several tunes were sung from it^ " one at first sight." Next year appeared the first number of a new periodical, which could only promise an occa- sional appearance — the Tonic Sol-fa Ee;porter. Three JOHN CURWEN, 345 numbers, containing in all thirty-two small pages, were all that could appear before the close of the year. Now the Reporter is issued regularly every month, with twenty-four large pages of music and intelligence. It is the cheapest, and, with one exception, has the largest circulation of all the musical periodicals. In 1852 the first step in one of the most excellent parts of Mr. Curwen's movement was taken in the drawing up of a certificate of proficiency. In a few weeks over 100 pupils — young and old — had taken it ; and afterwards the system of certificates taken by individual examination was so organized from the lowest to the most advanced stages of musical know- ledge, that its use was invaluable in the testing of progress, the graduating of classes, and attesting of teaching capacities. In Mr. Curwen's estimation, these certificates became the very foundation of his system, and the strictness of their requirements was enforced by him, so far as he could possibly control them, with a severity that often irritated laggard students, but insured the thoroughness of the progress made. In 1853 a London Association was formed, with possession of the certificate as its condition of membership, for promoting by the new method music in schools and congregations. Large meetings were held, aid and encouragement were given to schools, and concentration and strength to the efforts of the workers. Intense interest was excited by a Juvenile Choral Festival in Exeter Hall ; and in the autumn of 1857 the just vacated Handel orchestra of the Crystal 346 JOHN CUR WEN, Palace was filled by 3000 children, who drew to hear them an audience of 30,000. " So it was left," said one of the newspapers at the time, " for an almost unknown institution to draw a larger concourse of persons than has ever been attracted in this country to listen to a musical performance." Hereby the move- ment was raised to a national importance. Even the Times characterized it .as "the only national and popular system of teaching vocal music worthy of the name." Every voluntary religious movement in the country soon learned the value of its aid, and now Exeter Hall is never so crowded as when Mr. Proudman presides over his well-drilled orchestra of " ragged " or " refuge " children, and every institution has for its gala day a festival of song when — thanks to Mr. Curwen's " cheap and easy method " — music of the best character is worthily enjoyed. Nor were these efforts confined to children and less advanced singers. In 1858 a classical concert by adult pupils at Exeter Hall made a considerable impression; and in i860, to stimulate the work among them, Mr. Curwen planned, on his own responsibility, a great choral competition at the Crystal Palace (after the manner of those so familiar in France and Germany). Edinburgh, the West Piiding of Yorkshire, the Potteries, and Brighton, as well as London, sent their choirs. Sir John Goss and Mr. Turle were among the Judges, and, as might have been expected, the Yorkshire voices carried off the highest honours. For two years more the enterprise JOHN CUR WEN. 347 was continued, ending with a combined performance of Israel in J^gypt^ and then abandoned in favour of greater attention to the education of teachers, the promoting of psahnody classes, and work of a similarly useful character. The success of Sol-fa choirs did not, however, cease. In 1867 the "Paris" choir of the Tonic Sol-fa Association — the first to leave our island shores seeking a recognition of English musicality among continental nations — not only surprised the singers of Paris by declining to take part in a united concert on Sunday, but by the purity and delicacy of their singing excited a perfect furore of favour. The presence of ladies' voices, breaking one of the competition con- ditions, permitted them to gain only a specially provided " equality " prize, but it added a liquid delicacy and brightness to their singing that created the utmost enthusiasm wherever they went ; and on their return, Mr. (now Sir George) Macfarren was but one of the many who declared that " their singing must have satisfied everybody of English capability." At the English National Music Meetings, held some years later, when the great Welsh choir excited so much interest in London, this " Paris " choir a^ain distinguished itself by the delicacy, precision, and refinement of its singing. Mr. Macfarren, too, continued to interest himself in the movement. In the autumn of 1867, a short anthem from his pen, " Hear me when I call," specially written and printed, was distributed among the 4500 348 JOHN CURWEN, singers from London evening classes, as they stood on the Crystal Palace orchestra, and, " until then unseen by human eyes save those of the writer and printers," was read off at sight with complete success. Many times has a similar test been submitted to since then, but this was the first on so large a scale, and the composer was not slow to acknowledge himself " proud to have been concerned in so admirable a display of musical skill." This success, morever, was not confined to the concert-hall. Sol-fa students were at this time led to direct their attention to the Society of Aits Examinations in Musical Theory, and here, hampered by the necessity of presenting all papers in the " old " notation, they, during five years (i 867-1 872), carried off ten of the thirteen prizes granted, and nearly two- thirds of the certificates. Some time before, a severe calamity had fallen on Mr. Cur wen himself, one which grieved him sorely,' but which, in the end, proved another thrusting forth of his life into the mission for music. The work which he already had been almost forced to undertake, when added to his ministerial work, with a simultaneous church-building enterprise, proved too much for his strength. He was forced to accept that, perhaps, sorest trial of all to a busy life, entire cessation from work. " Bodily and mental forces failed me. For several years I felt this humiliation — I thought myself like Xebuchadnezzar sent out to eat grass with the beasts of the field. I wrote no books and could not preach JOHN CUR WEN. 349 without trial to myself and greater trial to others. What was I to do ? With the help of my wife's property, and the profits which, after twenty years, the Sol-fa publications were bringing in, I was able to live. But it was a poor life merely to live and do nothing. Well, I could not give lectures — I could not write books — for a long time I could scarcely write a letter — but I could look after machinery, look after the details of printing, stereotyping, and binding, and so in this dark season of my eclipse I took to business. I have sometimes been blamed for this by those wdio think that ' once a minister always a minister.' .... But a man must serve as he can. If he is shut out from the higher offices he must be glad to take a humbler post." The new course was pursued with the same con- scientious attention as everything else he undertook. Men of genius are too often superior to mere business precautions and responsibilities. Xot so John Ciu^wen. The business was built up with the same care and patience as the musical reform, and by-and-by became one of the greatest levers for its advancement. Many excellent and valuable works were issued from its press, and its staff formed a little band whose daily correspondence stimulated and increased the progressive zeal of the work. Having gradually recovered his strength, he was in 1S66 persuaded to accept the office of ''Euing Lecturer on Music" at Anderson's College, Glasgow, and once more entered on active work. He soon found that the Scotch students wanted some- 3SO JOHN CURWEN. tiling to do. They wanted a text-book and exercises on composition ; so he was led to adventure on further work. Eminent musicians were not slow to advise, and his own patient, persevering studies were continued. " These grew into large books, and I was obliged to take my time in getting them through the press, ANDERSON'S COLLEGE, GLASGOW. because they were costly. They have, however, proved profitable in the sense of being useful." Even those whose early prepossessions are hostile to the method admire his higher text-books, and acknowledge their success. A still more important advance was now gained. Popular education took its rise with voluntary efforts. JOHN CURWEN. 351 When these had developed it into importance, the Government acknowledgjed and aided it. So it was with popular music teaching. In 1869 music was accepted as an extra subject by the Committee of Council. A deputation immediately waited on Mr. Forster and explained what Tonic Sol-fa had done in Sunday and Eagged-schools, in Bands of Hope, re- formatories, and elsewhere. A few months afterwards the method was officially placed " upon the same terms as shall from time to time be applicable to the ordinary method and notation." Thus was the movement placed on a new vantage-ground. Fourteen thousand schools were under Government inspection, and in the preceding year but one had earned the grant for music. School Boards were just taking their rise, and although, for the time, it was difficult to gain a hearing for so trifling a matter as music, the juncture was one of no little importance. Subscriptions were soon raised, whereby a Modulator and Instruction Book were sent to every teacher, and in the year ending March 1 8 7 1 , forty - three schools obtained the grant. English methods are slow to change, and out of 14,000 schools forty-three were not many, but, compared with the om of eighteen months before, the advance was wonderful ; so now there were hopeful prospects of steady and enduring progress. On this rising success the news came like a thunder- clap that in the New Code music was withdrawn from the list of " extra subjects." The inspectors were unable to examine in the subject, and so the very 352 JOHN CURWEN. success of the Tonic Sol-fa method became its greatest obstacle. When only one school presented itself inspectors did not complain. Now that the number was being multiplied by forty-three tliey rebelled. A deputation to the Education Office was soon organized. It was music itself that was threatened, and not a mere notation. Not in vain, therefore, did a friendly M.P. appeal to Mr. Forster, that he might not hand down his name as " the man who would not give the children music." A compromise was arranged, and IS. per head of the grant to every school was made dependent on the inspector reporting that vocal music formed a part of the ordinary course of instruction. The requirement was one easily met, and did not necessarily imply any great advance in instruction, but still it secured the retaining of music in the schools, and so left the door open for further work. It certainly was not all that Mr. Curwen desired, but undoubtedly, as stated by a leading musical journal at the time, " Had he and his friends been non-existent or inactive the result would have been very different." The new provision soon proved to be rousing the schools in a remarkable way. An advertisement in the National Society s Painr brought Mr. Curwen more than five hundred letters from school teachers anxious for advice. They had learned the Hullah system, but " despaired of teaching it to children." Many a country vicar and teacher at this time repeated the experience of Dr. Stainer : — " As to his first connection with the system, he saw JOHN CUR WEN. 353 its effects upon clioir boys, and he began to say to himself, ' Why should I teach these boys a whole system of scales when all they want as singers is one scale ? ' A clergyman came to him soon after, saying, * How shall I teach my choir ? ' and he replied, ' Try the Tonic Sol-fa.' His friend laughed at the idea, but nevertheless he tried it, and came back delighted. He had learnt the system, and taught it at the same time to the village boys who formed his choir, and no"w they were singing hymn tunes at sight." Soon the School Boards were at work, and with them went the progress of Tonic Sol-fa. Every large town of England has now its School Board, in whose schools, with scarcely an exception, Mr. Curwen's system has been adopted with the most gratifying results. In Scotland School Boards are universal, and there also music in the schools has made corresponding progress. Ten years after that in which only one school had earned the music grant, a return on the subject to the Education Department (August 1879) ^^^^^ ^ ^^^Y different tale. To take Scotland first, out of over 3000 schools less than one-half teach music by ear; more than that number teach it on the Tonic Sol-fa metliod, and of the rest twelve use Mr. Hullah's system, and about 100 other methods. In England, the results are in themselves less satisfactory ; yet, remembering the one school of 1869, the progress is marvellous. Over 21,000 teach by ear only, 2,300 use Tonic Sol-fa, 600 Mr. Hullah's system, and 600 other methods. Z ^54 JOHN C'URWEI^, These figures are, perhaps, not very interesting in themselves, and one naturally turns to the inspectors' comments. During the few preceding years more than twenty of them had borne testimony to the value of the Sol-fa system, especially in its moral and social results. One of the best known (the Eev. W. J. Kennedy) " cannot adequately express how great is its success, and what a charming revolution it, and it alone, has brought about ; " while from the far North Mr. Jolly writes : " The manner in which very young children can be made to read music in a short time, with all the ease of a common reading-book, I have abundantly witnessed. It deserves the best thanks of the country for the improvement already effected." Yet all this time the Government had been pursuing the most extraordinary policy towards this expansion of popular music. In 1869 Mr. Forster acknowledged the value of Tonic Sol-fa for educational purposes. In 1 87 1, by the zeal of its friends, he was saved from a fatal blunder. Yet immediately, instead of providing means whereby its progress could be fairly encouraged and justly tested, he appointed as Inspector of Music in Training Colleges, the man conspicuous among English musicians for his inveterate hostility to the system. Mr. Hullah was a gentleman of undoubted refinement, and a musician of much ability, but he was best known as the apostle of a system of musical education which had proved a conspicuous failure. His books were first issued nearly forty years before from the Government Stationery Office. During the interval he JOHN CUR WEN. 355 had had all the prestige which official sanction and wealthy patronage could give. And now his practical command of all the Training Colleges of the country gives his system an advantage which it seems im- possible to exaggerate. Still, seven years afterwards, only twelve schools in Scotland, and 600 in England, are reported as using it. To this appointment Mr. Curwen objected with all the vigour of which he was capable. At ordinary times he was one of the gentlest of men. Wlien roused he became a veritable Boanerges. Mr. HuUah's appointment was, of course, confirmed. He was, as he himself put it, " a judge of results," not of methods, with all the responsibilities attached to that office. When, however, he made his report in the Education Blue Book of 1872—3, the vehicle for a real attack on the Tonic Sol-fa method, Mr. Curwen came forth with an answer that was unsparing in its opposition, and certainly seemed overwhelming in its details. Fears were entertained by his friends that its warmth might be mistaken for personal animus. That risk, however, he was willing to run, and how untrue the accusation would have been is conjQrmed by one of the last para- graphs from his pen, when, hearing that Mr. Hullah was ill, he wrote : — - " Although our ' movement ' has suffered seriously through his opposition, and we have several times had to reply to him, we have never been moved by any sort of personal animosity, and have never thought him moved by anything worse than a strong and rare pro- 356 JOH]^ CUkWEN. fessional prejudice. We shall gladly hear of his sjDeedy recovery, and welcome him back again to his own proper sphere of usefulness in the promotion of music among the people." It was zeal for music that moved Curwen to oppose Mr. Hullah, and not merely devotion to his own method — that he would willingly forego for a more efficient instrument. " Those," said he, " who have known me longest have found me ever ready to adopt improvements, have sometimes been a little annoyed by my doing so — well, I promise you that whenever a better method of teach- ing the people of England to sing is discovered than that which I got from Miss Glover, I \^ill adopt it. My brother-in-law, who had a cotton factory, long ago taught me that it always answered to use the best machinery. When a better loom was invented, he turned the old ones out and installed the new, I should never have won .... if the Tonic Sol-fa method merely or the sale of Tonic Sol-fa books had been my object in life. My object is to make the people of this country and their children sing, and to make them sing for noble ends." His reply failed in its immediate object, for the Training Schools of the country remained for years under the same regulations. Year after year the questions set to the Tonic Sol-fa — if not, indeed, to all — musical students were mere puzzles, tests of how well the students had been crammed, but as aids to teaching efficiency, almost valueless. The struggle JOHN CURWEN. Frovi a Photograph by J. W. Thomas, Hastings. JOHN CURWEN. 359 however, was a fresh appeal to the people, and letters from all parts of the country showed how great had been its success. Some years before, Mr. Curwen had organized a Tonic Sol-fa College, in wliich membership was obtained by a severe examination, and whose council of manage- ment was yearly elected by the members — a fixed number beinc^ chosen from different walks in life (clerks and other assistants in business, masters in business, school-teachers, professional teachers of music, ministers of religion, other holders of the advanced certificate), that no one set of men might ever get the upper-hand in the institution. Soon after the contro- versy over the Government Training Colleges, this institution was publicly incorporated, and thereby a great stimulus was given to its work. Tliis had hitherto been confined to the granting of certificates, conducting of instruction by post, and holding occasional short sessions for conference. A six weeks' term of study was nov/ arranged, and the students met for the first time at Plaistow, in the summer of 1876. Scholar- ships were provided by friends. The art of teaching, precenting, voice-training, and the like were among the subjects of study. Over thirty students came from different parts of the country, most, if not all, of them being practical teachers, who could immediately utilize the results of their labour. These classes have been continued every summer since, with occasionally special winter evening classes for London, and thus the ex- clusive policy of the Education Department was largely 300 JOHN CURWEN, counteractecl. A large number of the summer students have come from Scotland, and to their work no doubt is due much of the progress musical education has made in the common schools there. If, as Mr. ]\Iun- della believes, Scotland is educationally to-day what England will be to-morrow, this progress is still more encouraging. Having provided students, professors, and scholar- ships, Mr. Curwen next sought for a building. In this enterprise he proceeded with his customary care and wisdom. First and foremost there was to be no debt ; money must be got before it could be spent. A central position was desirable, but equally so was the nearness of cheap and comfortable lodgings. A suitable site was found at Forest Gate, within a few minutes' ride of the City. The freehold was purchased, a design for large and attractive buildings was approved, bazaars, concerts, &c., were held, and on July 5, 1879, the east wing of this " School of Music for the People " was opened by the late Earl of Kintore. There, besides commodious class-rooms, are the offices of the college, from which the whole movement is now controlled. In January 1880, Mr. Curwen was bereaved of the wife who so long had been the beloved counsellor of his life. Thereafter his health gravely declined, and all who saw him remarked that he was sensibly aged and enfeebled. His active work was done, and idle- ness sometimes made him despond. In April, he remarked to a dear friend, " It is a long time now since I have done any work, and I do not wish to JOHN CURWEN, 361 prolong my life if I cannot work." Still, his bright face and merry laugh cheered his friends. In May he was summoned to Manchester by the illness of a relative. There he was suddenly taken ill, and died on May 26. The day before he was taken ill he had mingled with a gathering of Sunday-school children, looking into their young faces with his peculiarly sweet smile, and encouraging their song by beating time with his book. This was one of his last acts ; and it was an appropriate close to a life-work whose key-note had been struck in love to children. Sorrowing friends buried him at Ilford, near London. Dr. Kennedy, of Stepney, in his funeral sermon, truly said, " If the votes of a million children could prevail, they would award him a final resting-place among the most worthy benefactors of mankind in Westminster Abbey." Yet it was meet that he should rest among his own people. He had not sought public work ; he had been thrust into it. The solemn charge laid upon him by Nonconformist brethren had been fulfilled. He had found "the simplest way of teaching music," and he had got it into use. Now that his work transcended denominational bounds, and had taken its place among great public movements, he returned to his own. Nonconformist ministers fittingly conducted the ser- vices at his grave, but around them were men of the most diverse ranks and creeds, and to them the carry- ing on of his public work belonged. Starting with a Congregational minister's earnest desire to improve the singing of his Sunday-school, 362 JOHN CURWEN, Sol-fa lias now attained a more tlian national import- ance. Its use is not confined to Nonconformists nor even Protestants. In the large schools of the Jews at Spitalfields and elsewhere, and among the Christian Brothers of Ireland, its value has long been recognized. Beyond our borders emigrant and missionary have carried it far and wide. Dr. W. H. Paissell, describing a recent visit to a Zulu mission station, tells how at dinner grace was sung by the native choir. " In perfect tune, and with the utmost precision as to time, the four-part harmony, unaccompanied by any kind of instrument, swells through the room. . . . There is a crispness in their singing, and an attention to rests and pauses which might serve as a most useful example to village choirs of far greater pretensions in England The system upon which tliey have been taught is the Tonic Sol-fa, and tlie result might most justifiably be quoted as a triumph." In response to an application for some particulars of its progress up to the Jubilee year of Queen Victoria, Mr. J. Spencer Curwen, who succeeded his father as President of the Tonic Sol-fa College, wrote thus: " It is somewhat difficult to give any precise informa- tion as to the extent to which the Tonic Sol-fa system is at present used. It should be borne in mind that the fruits of the labours of Tonic Sol-fa teachers are two-fold : they make singers who continue to sing from the letter notation, and to an enormous extent they train singers who pass into the ranks of the old notationists. This last fact is now well understood by JOHN CUR WEN, 363 the leading choir-masters of the country. Mr. Ebenezer Prout says that ' Tonic Sol-faists make the safest and surest readers of the old notation.' Mr. Stockley,- choir-master of the Birmingham Musical Festival, says : ' I get the best readers for my societies from students of the Tonic Sol-fa system.' Such expressions of opinion might be indefinitely multiplied. As to the direct work done by Tonic Sol-fa teachers the most imposing results are in the elementary schools. The latest Government returns show that between 12,000 and 13,000 schools in England, Wales, and Scotland employ Tonic Sol-fa, as against 2000 which employ the staff notation, and 17,000 which sing by ear. The system is being taught in almost every training college in Great Britain and Ireland. It is spreading rapidly in Canada, two professional teachers having been sent out there during the past year. In New South Wales it has been adopted in the schools for twenty years. Missionaries are employing it in India, China, South Africa^ Madagascar. The philanthropic agencies at home use it exclusively ; every year the orchestra at Exeter Hall is filled many times over with children from refuges, reformatories, training ships, &c., who sing by its means. Nor is Tonic Sol-fa confined to simple music. Several Sol-faists have been elected to scholarships at the Eoyal College of Music, have taken music degrees at the Universities, and are winning popular applause as concert singers. The prejudice of the musical profession is rapidly giving way. Among those who have declared themselves in 364 JOHN CUR WEN, favour of the system are ]\fr. Barnby, Dr. Stainer, Sir Eobert Stewart, Mr. Ebenezer Prout, ]\Ir. Henry Leslie, Mr. Carl Eosa, Sir George Elvey, Mr. Eandegger, the late Mr. Brinley Eichards, and musical scientists like Professor Helmholtz, of Berlin, Lord Eayleigh, IMr. A. J. Ellis, F.E.S, and Mr. Sedley Taylor. Mr. Curwen asserted no monopoly in the Tonic Sol-fa notation ; he invited all persons freely to use it ; and although for many years few ventured to do so, the annual issue of Tonic Sol-fa literature by Church publishers, music houses, and various agencies is voluminous. The leading hymn tune and chant books of all bodies from Eoman Catholics to Unitarians are issued in letters, and every music printer in the three kingdoms now possesses a fount of Tonic Sol-fa type for striking off copies to meet the demand of Sunday and day school festivals, choral societies and glee clubs. There can be no doubt the national ear for music has vastly improved during the last twenty years, and this must be largely due to the tuning process that has gone on under Tonic Sol-fa teachers." One promising department of work we must briefly refer to. It is part-singing by men. Can anything more monotonous be conceived than the usual efforts of English men, whether at church or holiday gathering, to join in choral singing ? Yet there is scarcely a town- or village of the Continent that has not its men's choir, who constantly delight themselves and all who hear them with their exquisite renderings of good choral music. Mr. Curwen's attention was long ago turned JOHN CUR WEN. 365 in this direction. Several volumes of such music have been issued, and special attention is given in his text- books to the training and classification of men's voices. Of course, until the children now being taught have grown up, progress cannot be very rapid. Still, in London and several other large towns, and notably in Wales, such choirs have been formed, and heard by friendly audiences with much delight. How great a service such a movement might render in large ware- houses, manufactories, barrack-rooms, and the like, need only be suggested. The great merit of Tonic Sol-fa is that it can make of all readers .of music. Literature only attains its great ends, and affords fair opportunities to that which is good, when all can read with ease. Music, too, can never be expected to exercise its great influences for the refinement and elevation of life until its characters can be read with ease by every one. That Sol-fa can accomplish. This has now been placed beyond dispute, and this it is which gives such importance to its progress. Everybody read music at sight ! Why, with this every religious and social worker would have a lever placed in his hands, the value of which could scarcely be over-estimated. As we said at the beginning of this sketch, it was his religious zeal that first impelled Curwen to enter the field of musical reform, and more than anything else it was the claims and co-operations of religious workers that carried forward the growth of his move- ment. This is indeed what we might expect. Eeligion 366 JOHN CURWEN. has always been the root and strength of all true artistic work. Cut off from religious inspiration, art is but a root- less flower. Soon its beauty fades and its sweetness IS gone. " The beauty and the wonder and the power, The shapes of things, their colours, light and shades, God made it all ! —For what ? " That it might minister its consolations to every heart : this conviction was the inspiration of John Cur wen's work for music. And when by his labours future generations are able to appropriate the ministry of music in their worship and daily life with an ease and fulness hitherto impossible, his name will not be for- gotten. " Poet's Corner," said Dr. Kennedy in his funeral sermon, " will be incomplete without a tablet that should tell to unborn generations whence that boon has come." Norman J. Eoss. .^^ m ^'tl '^^W^, ^». I \\:>. ,\ \ .^\ -.?i'^ '' •f. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 0068100639 .XtJ^..^^ f.Jii^ f 1 -r, rtV-J- ^ff^ 7 , -i\ -^^ ^^~«a", nr.