OCCASIONAL PAPERS

SELECTED FROMTHE GUARDIAN, THE TIMES, AND THE SATURDAY REVIEW1846-1890

By the lateR. W. CHURCH, M. A. , D. C. L. Sometime Rector of Whatley, Dean of St. Paul's, Honorary Fellow of Oriel College

In Two Vols. --VOL. II

LondonMacmillan and Co. , LimitedNew York: The Macmillan Company

1897

_First Edition February_ 1897_Reprinted April_ 1897

CONTENTS

I MR. GLADSTONE ON THE ROYAL SUPREMACY

II JOYCE ON COURTS OF SPIRITUAL APPEAL

III PRIVY COUNCIL JUDGMENTS

IV SIR JOHN COLERIDGE ON THE PURCHAS CASE

V MR. GLADSTONE'S LETTER ON THE ENGLISH CHURCH

VI DISENDOWMENT

VII THE NEW COURT

VIII MOZLEY'S BAMPTON LECTURES

IX ECCE HOMO

X THE AUTHOR OF "ROBERT ELSMERE" ON A NEW REFORMATION

XI RENAN'S "VIE DE JÉSUS"

XII RENAN'S "LES APÔTRES"

XIII RENAN'S HIBBERT LECTURES

XIV RENAN'S "SOUVENIRS D'ENFANCE"

XV LIFE OF FREDERICK ROBERTSON

XVI LIFE OF BARON BUNSEN

XVII COLERIDGE'S MEMOIR OF KEBLE

XVIII MAURICE'S THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS

XIX FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE

XX SIR RICHARD CHURCH

XXI DEATH OF BISHOP WILBERFORCE

XXII RETIREMENT OF THE PROVOST OF ORIEL

XXIII MARK PATTISON

XXIV PATTISON'S ESSAYS

XXV BISHOP FRAZER

XXVI NEWMAN'S "APOLOGIA"

XXVII DR. NEWMAN ON THE "EIRENICON"

XXVIII NEWMAN'S PAROCHIAL SERMONS

XXIX CARDINAL NEWMAN

XXX CARDINAL NEWMAN'S COURSE

XXXI CARDINAL NEWMAN'S NATURALNESS

XXXII LORD BLACHFORD

I

MR. GLADSTONE ON THE ROYAL SUPREMACY[1]

 [1] _Remarks on the Royal Supremacy, as it is Defined by Reason, History, and the Constitution_. A Letter to the Lord Bishop of London, by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M. P. For the University of Oxford. _Guardian_, 10th July 1850. 

Mr. Gladstone has not disappointed the confidence of those who havebelieved of him that when great occasions presented themselves, ofinterest to the Church, he would not be found wanting. A statesmanhas a right to reserve himself and bide his time, and in doubtfulcircumstances may fairly ask us to trust his discretion as to when ishis time. But there are critical seasons about whose seriousness therecan be no doubt. One of these is now passing over the English Church. And Mr. Gladstone has recognised it, and borne himself in it with amanliness, earnestness, and temper which justify those who have neverdespaired of his doing worthy service to the Church, with whose causehe so early identified himself. 

The pamphlet before us, to which he has put his name, is the mostimportant, perhaps, of all that have been elicited by the deep interestfelt in the matter on which it treats. Besides its importance as theexpression of the opinion, and, it must be added, the anxieties of aleading statesman, it has two intrinsic advantages. It undertakes todeal closely and strictly with those facts in the case mainly belongingto the period of the Reformation, on which the great stress has beenlaid in the arguments both against our liberty and our very being as aChurch. And, further, it gives us on these facts, and, in connectionwith them, on the events of the crisis itself, the judgment and theanticipations of a mind at once deeply imbued with religiousphilosophy, and also familiar with the consideration of constitutionalquestions, and accustomed to view them in their practical entanglementsas well as in their abstract and ideal forms. It is, indeed, thus onlythat the magnitude and the true extent of the relations of the presentcontest can be appreciated. The intrinsic greatness, indeed, ofreligious interests cannot receive addition of dignity here. But themanner of treating them may. And Mr. Gladstone has done what was bothdue to the question at issue, and in the highest degree important forits serious consideration and full elucidation, in raising it from adiscussion of abstract principles to what it is no less--a real problemof English constitutional law. 

The following passage will show briefly the ground over which thediscussion travels:--

 The questions, then, that I seek to examine will be as follow:--

 1. Did the statutes of the Reformation involve the abandonment of the duty of the Church to be the guardian of her faith?

 2. Is the present composition of the appellate tribunal conformable either to reason or to the statutes of the Reformation, and the spirit of the Constitution as expressed in them?

 3. Is the Royal Supremacy, according to the Constitution, any bar to the adjustment of the appellate jurisdiction in such a manner as that it shall convey the sense of the Church in questions of doctrine?

 All these questions I humbly propose to answer in the negative, and so to answer them in conformity with what I understand to be the principles of our history and law. My endeavour will be to show that the powers of the State so determined, in regard to the legislative office of the Church (setting aside for the moment any question as to the right of assent in the laity), are powers of restraint; that the jurisdictions united and annexed to the Crown are corrective jurisdictions; and that their exercise is subject to the general maxim, that the laws ecclesiastical are to be administered by ecclesiastical judges. 

Mr. Gladstone first goes into the question--What was done, and what wasthe understanding at the Reformation? All agree that this was a time ofgreat changes, and that in the settlement resulting from them the Statetook, and the Church yielded, a great deal. And on the strength of thisbroad general fact, the details of the settlement have been treatedwith an _a priori_ boldness, not deficient often in that kind ofprecision which can be gained by totally putting aside inconvenientor perplexing elements, and having both its intellectual and moralrecommendations to many minds; but highly undesirable where a greatissue has been raised for the religion of millions, and the politicalconstitution of a great nation. Men who are not lawyers seem to havethought that, by taking a lawyer's view, or what they considered such, of the Reformation Acts, they had disposed of the question for ever. Itwas, indeed, time for a statesman to step in, and protest, if only inthe name of constitutional and political philosophy, against so narrowand unreal an abuse of law-texts--documents of the highest importancein right hands, and in their proper place, but capable, as all mustknow, of leading to inconceivable absurdity in speculation, and notimpossibly fatal confusion in fact. 

The bulk of this pamphlet is devoted to the consideration of the languageand effect, legal and constitutional, of those famous statutes with thetitles of which recent controversy has made us so familiar. Mr. Gladstone makes it clear that it does not at all follow that because theChurch conceded a great deal, she conceded, or even was expected toconcede, indefinitely, whatever might be claimed. She conceded, but sheconceded by compact;--a compact which supposed her power to concede, andsecured to her untouched whatever was not conceded. And she did notconcede, nor was asked for, her highest power, her legislative power. She did not concede, nor was asked to concede, that any but her ownministers--by the avowal of all drawing their spiritual authority from asource which nothing human could touch--should declare her doctrine, orshould be employed in administering her laws. What she did concede was, not original powers of direction and guidance, but powers of restraintand correction;--under securities greater, both in form and in working, than those possessed at the time by any other body in England, for theirrights and liberties--greater far than might have been expected, whenthe consequences of a long foreign supremacy--not righteously maintainedand exercised, because at the moment unrighteously thrown off--increasedthe control which the Civil Government always must claim over theChurch, by the sudden abstraction of a power which, though usurping, wasspiritual; and presented to the ambition of a despotic King a number ofunwarrantable prerogatives which the separation from the Pope had leftwithout an owner. 

On the trite saying, meant at first to represent, roughly andinvidiously, the effect of the Reformation, and lately urged astechnically and literally true--"The assertion that in the time ofHenry VIII. The See of Rome was both 'the source and centre ofecclesiastical jurisdiction, ' and therefore the supreme judge ofdoctrine; and that this power of the Pope was transferred in itsentireness to the Crown"--Mr. Gladstone remarks as follows:--

 I will not ask whether the Pope was indeed at that time the supreme judge of doctrine; it is enough for me that not very long before the Council of Constance had solemnly said otherwise, in words which, though they may be forgotten, cannot be annulled. .. . 

 That the Pope was the source of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the English Church before the Reformation is an assertion of the gravest import, which ought not to have been thus taken for granted. .. . The fact really is this:--A modern opinion, which, by force of modern circumstances, has of late gained great favour in the Church of Rome, is here dated back and fastened upon ages to whose fixed principles it was unknown and alien; and the case of the Church of England is truly hard when the Papal authority of the Middle Ages is exaggerated far beyond its real and historical scope, with the effect only of fastening that visionary exaggeration, through the medium of another fictitious notion of wholesale transfer of the Papal privileges to the Crown, upon us, as the true and legal measure of the Royal Supremacy. 

 It appears to me that he who alleges in the gross that the Papal prerogatives were carried over to the Crown at the Reformation, greatly belies the laws and the people of that era. Their unvarying doctrine was, that they were restoring the ancient regal jurisdiction, and abolishing one that had been usurped. But there is no evidence to show that these were identical in themselves, or co-extensive in their range. In some respects the Crown obtained at that period more than the Pope had ever had; for I am not aware that the Convocation required his license to deliberate upon canons, or his assent to their promulgation. In other respects the Crown acquired less; for not the Crown, but the Archbishop of Canterbury was appointed to exercise the power of dispensation in things lawful, and to confirm Episcopal elections. Neither the Crown nor the Archbishop succeeded to such Papal prerogatives as were contrary to the law of the land; for neither the 26th of Henry VIII. Nor the 2nd of Elizabeth annexed to the Crown all the powers of correction and reformation which had been actually claimed by the Pope, but only such as "hath heretofore been or may lawfully be exercised or used. " . .. The "ancient jurisdiction, " and not the then recently claimed or exercised powers, was the measure and the substance of what the Crown received from the Legislature; and, with those ancient rights for his rule, no impartial man would say that the Crown was the source of ecclesiastical jurisdiction according to the statutes of the Reformation. But the statutes of the Reformation era relating to jurisdiction, having as statutes the assent of the laity, and accepted by the canons of the clergy, are the standard to which the Church has bound herself as a religious society to conform. 

The word "jurisdiction" has played an important part in the recentdiscussions; whether its meaning, with its various involved andassociated ideas, by no means free from intricacy and confusion, havebeen duly unravelled and made clear, we may be permitted to doubt. Adistinction of the canonists has been assumed by those who have usedthe word with most precision--_assumed_, though it is by no means asimple and indisputable one. Mr. Gladstone draws attention to this, when, after noticing that nowhere in the ecclesiastical legislation ofElizabeth is the claim made on behalf of the Crown to be the source ofecclesiastical jurisdiction, he admits that this _is_ the language ofthe school of English law, and offers an explanation of the fact. Thatwhich Acts of Parliament do not say, which is negatived in actualpractice by contradictory and irreconcilable facts, is yet wanted bylawyers for the theoretic completeness of their idea and system of law. The fact is important as a reminder that what is one real aspect, or, perhaps, the most complete and consistent representation of a systemon paper, may be inadequate and untrue as an exhibition of its realworking and appearance in the world. 

 To sum up the whole, then, I contend that the Crown did not claim by statute, either to be of right, or to become by convention, the _source_ of that kind of action, which was committed by the Saviour to the Apostolic Church, whether for the enactment of laws, or for the administration of its discipline; but the claim was, that all the canons of the Church, and all its judicial proceedings, inasmuch as they were to form parts respectively of the laws and of the legal administration of justice in the kingdom, should run only with the assent and sanction of the Crown. They were to carry with them a double force--a force of coercion, visible and palpable; a force addressed to conscience, neither visible nor palpable, and in its nature only capable of being inwardly appreciated. Was it then unreasonable that they should bear outwardly the tokens of that power to which they were to be indebted for their outward observance, and should work only within by that wholly different influence that governs the kingdom which is not of this world, and flows immediately from its King? . .. But while, according to the letter and spirit of the law, such appear to be the limits of the Royal Supremacy in regard to the _legislative_, which is the highest, action of the Church, I do not deny that in other branches it goes farther, and will now assume that the supremacy in all causes, which is at least a claim to control at every point the jurisdiction of the Church, may also be construed to mean as much as that the Crown is the ultimate source of jurisdiction of whatever kind. 

 Here, however, I must commence by stating that, as it appears to me, Lord Coke and others attach to the very word jurisdiction a narrower sense than it bears in popular acceptation, or in the works of canonists--a sense which excludes altogether that of the canonists; and also a sense which appears to be the genuine and legitimate sense of the word in its first intention. Now, when we are endeavouring to appreciate the force and scope of the legal doctrine concerning ecclesiastical and spiritual jurisdiction, it is plain that we must take the term employed in the sense of our own law, and not in the different and derivative sense in which it has been used by canonists and theologians. But canonists themselves bear witness to the distinction which I have now pointed out. The one kind is _Jurisdictio coactiva proprie dicta, principibus data_; the other is _Jurisdictio improprie dicta ac mere spiritualis, Ecclesiae ejusque Episcopis a Christo data_. .. . 

 Properly speaking, I submit that there is no such thing as jurisdiction in any private association of men, or anywhere else than under the authority of the State. _Jus_ is the scheme of rights subsisting between men in the relations, not of all, but of civil society; and _jurisdicto_ is the authority to determine and enunciate those rights from time to time. Church authority, therefore, so long as it stands alone, is not in strictness of speech, or according to history, jurisdiction, because it is not essentially bound up with civil law. 

 But when the State and the Church came to be united, by the conversion of nations, and the submission of the private conscience to Christianity--when the Church placed her power of self-regulation under the guardianship of the State, and the State annexed its own potent sanction to rules, which without it would have been matter of mere private contract, then _jus_ or civil right soon found its way into the Church, and the respective interests and obligations of its various orders, and of the individuals composing them, were regulated by provisions forming part of the law of the land. Matter ecclesiastical or spiritual moulded in the forms of civil law, became the proper subject of ecclesiastical or spiritual jurisdiction, properly so called. 

 Now, inasmuch as laws are abstractions until they are put into execution, through the medium of executive and judicial authority, it is evident that the cogency of the reasons for welding together, so to speak, civil and ecclesiastical authority is much more full with regard to these latter branches of power than with regard to legislation. There had been in the Church, from its first existence as a spiritual society, a right to govern, to decide, to adjudge for spiritual purposes; that was a true, self-governing authority; but it was not properly jurisdiction. It naturally came to be included, or rather enfolded, in the term, when for many centuries the secular arm had been in perpetual co-operation with the tribunals of the Church. The thing to be done, and the means by which it was done, were bound together; the authority and the power being always united in fact, were treated as an unity for the purposes of law. As the potentate possessing not the head but the mouth or issue of a river, has the right to determine what shall pass to or from the sea, so the State, standing between an injunction of the Church and its execution, had a right to refer that execution wholly to its own authority. 

 There was not contained or implied in such a doctrine any denial of the original and proper authority of the Church for its own self-government, or any assertion that it had passed to and become the property of the Crown. But that authority, though not in its source, yet in its exercise, had immersed itself in the forms of law; had invoked and obtained the aid of certain elements of external power, which belonged exclusively to the State, and for the right and just use of which the State had a separate and independent responsibility, so that it could not, without breach of duty, allow them to be parted from itself. It was, therefore, I submit, an intelligible and, under given circumstances, a warrantable scheme of action, under which the State virtually said: Church decrees, taking the form of law, and obtaining their full and certain effect only in that form, can be executed only as law, and while they are in process of being put into practice can only be regarded as law, and therefore the whole power of their execution, that is to say, all juris diction in matters ecclesiastical and spiritual, must, according to the doctrine of law, proceed from the fountain-head of law, namely, from the Crown. In the last legal resort there can be but one origin for all which is to be done in societies of men by force of legal power; nor, if so, can doubt arise what that origin must be. 

 If you allege that the Church has a spiritual authority to regulate doctrines and discipline, still, as you choose to back that authority with the force of temporal law, and as the State is exclusively responsible for the use of that force, you must be content to fold up the authority of the Church in that exterior form through which you desire it to take effect. From whatsoever source it may come originally, it comes to the subject as law; it therefore comes to him from the fountain of law. .. . The faith of Christendom has been received in England; the discipline of the Christian Church, cast into its local form, modified by statutes of the realm, and by the common law and prerogative, has from time immemorial been received in England; but we can view them only as law, although you may look further back to the divine and spiritual sanction, in virtue of which they acquired that social position, which made it expedient that they should associate with law and should therefore become law. 

But as to the doctrine itself, it is most obvious to notice that it isnot more strange, and not necessarily more literally real, than thoseother legal views of royal prerogative and perfection, which are thereceived theory of all our great jurists--accepted by them for verygood reasons, but not the less astounding when presented as naked andindependent truths. It was natural enough that they should claim forthe Crown the origination of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, consideringwhat else they claimed for it. Mr. Allen can present us with a morethan Chinese idea of royal power, when he draws it only fromBlackstone:--

 They may have heard [he says, speaking of the "unlearned in the law"] that the law of England is founded in reason and wisdom. The first lesson they are taught will inform them, that the law of England attributes to the King absolute perfection, absolute immortality, and legal ubiquity. They will be told that the King of England is not only incapable of doing wrong, but of thinking wrong. They will be informed that he never dies, that he is invisible as well as immortal, and that in the eye of the law he is present at one and the same instant in every court of justice within his dominions. .. . They may have been told that the royal prerogative in England is limited; but when they consult the sages of the law, they will be assured that the legal authority of the King of England is absolute and irresistible . .. That all are under him, while he is under none but God. .. . 

 If they have had the benefit of a liberal education, they have been taught that to obtain security for persons and property was the great end for which men submitted to the restraints of civil government; and they may have heard of the indispensable necessity of an independent magistracy for the due administration of justice; but when they direct their inquiries to the laws and constitution of England, they will find it an established maxim in that country that all jurisdiction emanates from the Crown. They will be told that the King is not ony the chief, but the sole magistrate of the nation; and that all others act by his commission, and in subordination to him. [2]

 [2] _Allen on the Royal Prerogative_, pp. 1-3. 

"In the most limited monarchy, " as he says truly the "King isrepresented in law books, as in theory an absolute sovereign. " "Evennow, " says Mr. Gladstone, "after three centuries of progress towarddemocratic sway, the Crown has prerogatives by acting upon which, within their strict and unquestioned bounds, it might at any time throwthe country into confusion. And so has each House of Parliament. " Butif the absolute supremacy of the Crown _in the legal point of mewexactly the same over temporal matters and causes as over spiritual_, is taken by no sane man to be a literal fact in temporal matters, it isviolating the analogy of the Constitution, and dealing with the mostimportant subjects in a mere spirit of narrow perverseness, to insistthat it can have none but a literal meaning in ecclesiastical matters;and that the Church _did_ mean, though the State _did not_ to accept adespotic prerogative, unbounded by custom, convention, or law, andunchecked by acknowledged and active powers in herself. Yet such is theassumption, made in bitterness and vexation of spirit by some of thosewho have lately so hastily given up her cause; made with singularassurance by others, who, Liberals in all their political doctrines, have, for want of better arguments, invoked prerogative against theChurch. 

What the securities and checks were that the Church, not less than thenation, contemplated and possessed, are not expressed in the theoryitself of the royal prerogative; and, as in the ease of the nation, wemight presume beforehand, that they would be found in practice ratherthan on paper. They were, however, real ones. "With the same theoreticallaxity and practical security, " as in the case of Parliaments andtemporal judges, "was provision made for the conduct of Churchaffairs. " Making allowance for the never absent disturbances arisingout of political trouble and of personal character, the Church had veryimportant means of making her own power felt in the administration ofher laws, as well as in the making of them. 

 The real question, I apprehend, is this:--When the Church assented to those great concessions which were embodied in our permanent law at the Reformation, had she _adequate securities_ that the powers so conveyed would be exercised, upon the whole, with a due regard to the integrity of her faith, and of her office, which was and has ever been a part of that faith? I do not ask whether these securities were all on parchment or not--whether they were written or unwritten--whether they were in statute, or in common law, or in fixed usage, or in the spirit of the Constitution and in the habits of the people--I ask the one vital question, whether, whatever they were in form, they were in substance sufficient?

 _The securities_ which the Church had were these: First, that the assembling of the Convocation was obviously necessary for the purposes of taxation; secondly and mainly, that the very solemn and fundamental laws by which the jurisdiction of the See of Rome was cut off, assigned to the spiritualty of the realm the care of matters spiritual, as distinctly and formally as to the temporalty the care of matters temporal; and that it was an understood principle, and (as long as it continued) a regular usage of the Constitution, that ecclesiastical laws should be administered by ecclesiastical judges. These were the securities on which the Church relied; on, which she had a right to rely; and on which, for a long series of years, her alliance was justified by the results. 

And further:--

 The Church had this great and special security on which to rely, that the Sovereigns of this country were, for a century after the Reformation, amongst her best instructed, and even in some instances her most devoted children: that all who made up the governing body (with an insignificant exception) owned personal allegiance to her, and that she might well rest on that personal allegiance as warranting beforehand the expectation, which after experience made good, that the office of the State towards her would be discharged in a friendly and kindly spirit, and that the principles of constitutional law and civil order would not be strained against her, but fairly and fully applied in her behalf. 

These securities she now finds herself deprived of. This is the greatchange made in her position--made insensibly, and In a great measure, undesignedly--which has altered altogether the understanding on whichshe stood towards the Crown at the Reformation. It now turns out thatthat understanding, though it might have been deemed sufficient for thetime, was not precise enough; and further, was not sufficiently lookedafter in the times which followed. And on us comes the duty of takingcare that it be not finally extinguished; thrown off by the despair ofone side, and assumed by the other as at length abandoned to theiraggression. 

Mr. Gladstone comes to the question with the feelings of a statesman, conscious of the greatness and excellence of the State, and anxiousthat the Church should not provoke its jealousy, and in urging herclaims should "take her stand, as to all matters of substance andprinciple, on the firm ground of history and law. " It makes hisjudgment on the present state of things more solemn, and his convictionof the necessity of amending it more striking, when they are those ofone so earnest for conciliation and peace. But on constitutional notless than on other grounds, he pronounces the strongest condemnation onthe present formation of the Court of Appeal, which, working in a waywhich even its framers did not contemplate, has brought so muchdistress into the Church, and which yet, in defiance of principle, ofconsistency, and of the admission of its faultiness, is so recklesslymaintained. Feeling and stating very strongly the evil sustained by theChurch, from the suspension of her legislative powers, --"that loss ofcommand over her work, and over the heart of the nation, which it hasbrought upon her, "--so strongly indeed that his words, coming from onefamiliar with the chances and hazards of a deliberative assembly, givenew weight to the argument for the resumption of those powers, --feelingall this, he is ready to acquiesce in the measure beyond which theBishops did not feel authorised to go, and which Mr. Gladstone regardsas "representing the extremest point up to which the love of peacemight properly carry the concessions of the Church":--

 That which she is entitled in the spirit of the Constitution to demand would be that the Queen's ecclesiastical laws shall be administered by the Queen's ecclesiastical judges, of whom the Bishops are the chief; and this, too, under the checks which the sitting of a body appointed for ecclesiastical legislation would impose. 

 But if it is not of vital necessity that a Church Legislature should sit at the present time--if it is not of vital necessity that all causes termed ecclesiastical should be treated under special safeguards--if it is not of vital necessity that the function of judgment should be taken out of the hands of the existing court--let the Church frankly and at once subscribe to every one of these great concessions, and reduce her demands to a _minimum_ at the outset. 

 Laws ecclesiastical by ecclesiastical judges, let this be her principle; it plants her on the ground of ancient times, of the Reformation, of our continuous history, of reason and of right. The utmost moderation, in the application of the principle, let this he her temper, and then her case will be strong in the face of God and man, and, come what may, she will conquer. .. . If, my Lord, it be felt by the rulers of the Church, that a scheme like this will meet sufficiently the necessities of her case, it must be no small additional comfort to them to feel that their demand is every way within the spirit of the Constitution, and short of the terms which the great compact of the Reformation would authorise you to seek. You, and not those who are against you, will take your stand with Coke and Blackstone; you, and not they, will wield the weapons of constitutional principle and law; you, and not they, will be entitled to claim the honour of securing the peace of the State no less than the faith of the Church; you, and not they, will justly point the admonitory finger to those remarkable words of the Institutes:--

 "And certain it is, that this Kingdom hath been best governed, and peace and quiet preserved, when both parties, that is, when the justices of the temporal courts and the ecclesiastical judges have kept themselves within their proper jurisdiction, without encroaching or usurping one upon another; and where such encroachments or usurpations have been made, they have been the seeds of great trouble and inconvenience. "

 Because none can resist the principle of your proposal, who admit that the Church has a sphere of proper jurisdiction at all, or any duty beyond that of taking the rule of her doctrine and her practice from the lips of ministers or parliaments. If it shall be deliberately refused to adopt a proposition so moderate, so guarded and restrained in the particular instance, and so sustained by history, by analogy, and by common reason, in the case of the faith of the Church, and if no preferable measure be substituted, it can only be in consequence of a latent intention that the voice of the Civil Power should be henceforward supreme in the determination of Christian doctrine. 

We trust that such an assurance, backed as it is by the solemn andearnest warnings of one who is not an enthusiast or an agitator, butone of the leading men in the Parliament of England, will not bewithout its full weight with those on whom devolves the duty of guidingand leading us in this crisis. The Bishops of England have a greatresponsibility on them. Reason, not less than Christian loyalty andChristian charity, requires the fairest interpretation of their acts, and it may be of their hesitation, --the utmost consideration of theirdifficulties. But reason, not less than Christian loyalty and charity, expects that, having accepted the responsibilities of the Episcopate, they should not withdraw from them when they arrive; and that thereshould be neither shrinking nor rest nor compromise till the creed andthe rights of the Church entrusted to their fidelity be placed, as faras depends on them, beyond danger. 

II

JOYCE ON COURTS OF SPIRITUAL APPEAL[3]

 [3] _Ecclesia Vindicata; a Treatise on Appeals in Matters Spiritual_. By James Wayland Joyce. _Saturday Review_, 22nd October 1864. 

Nothing can be more natural than the extreme dissatisfaction felt by alarge body of persons in the Church of England at the present Court ofFinal Appeal in matters of doctrine. The grievance, and its effect, mayhave been exaggerated; and the expressions of feeling about itcertainly have not always been the wisest and most becoming. But as theChurch of England is acknowledged to hold certain doctrines on mattersof the highest importance, and, in common with all other religiousbodies, claims the right of saying what are her own doctrines, it isnot surprising that an arrangement which seems likely to end in handingover to indifferent or unfriendly judges the power of saying what thosedoctrines are, or even whether she has any doctrines at all, shouldcreate irritation and impatience. There is nothing peculiar to theEnglish Church in the assumption, either that outsiders should notmeddle with and govern what she professes to believe and teach, orthat the proper and natural persons to deal with theological questionsare the class set apart to teach and maintain her characteristicbelief. Whatever may ultimately become of these assumptions, theyunquestionably represent the ideas which have been derived from theearliest and the uniform practice of the Christian Church, and are heldby most even of the sects which have separated from it. To any one whodoes not look upon the English Church as simply a legally constituteddepartment of the State, like the army or navy or the department ofrevenue, and believes it to have a basis and authority of its own, antecedent to its rights by statute, there cannot but be a greatanomaly in an arrangement which, when doctrinal questions are pushed totheir final issues, seems to deprive her of any voice or control in thematters in which she is most interested, and commits them to thedecision, not merely of a lay, but of a secular and not necessarilyeven Christian court, where the feeling about them is not unlikely tobe that represented by the story, told by Mr. Joyce, of the eminentlawyer who said of some theological debate that he could only decide it"by tossing up a coin of the realm. " The anomaly of such a court canhardly be denied, both as a matter of theory and--supposing it tomatter at all what Church doctrine really is--as illustrated in somelate results of its action. It is still more provoking to observe, asMr. Joyce brings out in his historical sketch, that simple carelessnessand blundering have conspired with the evident tendency of things tocripple and narrow the jurisdiction of the Church in what seems to beher proper sphere. The ecclesiastical appeals, before the Reformation, were to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction alone. They were given to thecivil power by the Tudor legislation, but to the civil power acting, ifnot by the obligation of law, yet by usage and in fact, throughecclesiastical organs and judges. Lastly, by a recent change, of whichits authors have admitted that they did not contemplate the effect, these appeals are now to the civil jurisdiction acting through purelycivil courts. It is an aggravation of this, when the change which seemsso formidable has become firmly established, to be told that it was, after all, the result of accident and inadvertence, and a "careless useof terms in drafting an Act of Parliament"; and that difficult andperilous theological questions have come, by "a haphazard chance, "before a court which was never meant to decide them. It cannot bedoubted that those who are most interested in the Church of Englandfeel deeply and strongly about keeping up what they believe to be thesoundness and purity of her professed doctrine; and they think that, under fair conditions, they have clear and firm ground for making goodtheir position. But it seems by no means unlikely that in the workingof the Court of Final Appeal there will be found a means of evading thesubstance of questions, and of disposing of very important issues by aside wind, to the prejudice of what have hitherto been recognised asrightful claims. An arrangement which bears hard upon the Churchtheoretically, as a controversial argument in the hands of Dr. Manningor Mr. Binney, and as an additional proof of its Erastian subjection tothe State, and which also works ill and threatens serious mischief, mayfairly be regarded by Churchmen with jealousy and dislike, and bedenounced as injurious to interests for which they have a right toclaim respect. The complaint that the State is going to force newsenses on theological terms, or to change by an unavowed process themeaning of acknowledged formularies in such a body as the EnglishChurch, is at least as deserving of attention as the reluctance ofconscientious Dissenters to pay Church-rates. 

Mr. Joyce's book shows comprehensively and succinctly the history ofthe changes which have brought matters to their present point, and thelook which they wear in the eyes of a zealous Churchman, disturbed bothby the shock given to his ideas of fitness and consistency, and by theprospect of practical evils. It is a clergyman's view of the subject, but it is not disposed of by saying that it is a clergyman's view. Itis incomplete and one-sided, and leaves out considerations of greatimportance which ought to be attended to in forming a judgment on thewhole question; but it is difficult to say that, regarded simply initself, the claim that the Church should settle her own controversies, and that Church doctrine should be judged of in Church courts, is not areasonable one. The truth is that the present arrangement, if we thinkonly of its abstract suitableness and its direct and ostensible claimsto our respect, would need Swift himself to do justice to its exquisiteunreasonableness. It is absurd to assume, as it is assumed in the wholeof our ecclesiastical legislation, that the Church is bound to watchmost jealously over doctrine, and then at the last moment to refuse herthe natural means of guarding it. It is absurd to assume that the"spiritualty" are the only proper persons to teach doctrine, and thento act as if they were unfit to judge of doctrine. It is not easy, inthe abstract, to see why articles which were trusted to clergymen todraw up may not be trusted to clergymen to explain, and why what therewas learning and wisdom enough to do in the violent party times andcomparative inexperience of the Reformation, cannot be safely left tothe learning and wisdom of our day for correction or completion. IfChurchmen and ecclesiastics may care too much for the things aboutwhich they dispute, it seems undeniable that lawyers who need not evenbe Christians, may care for them too little; and if the Churchmen makea mistake in the matter, at least it is their own affair, and they maybe more fairly made to take the consequences of their own acts than ofother people's. A strong case, if a strong case were all that waswanted, might be made out for a change in the authority which atpresent pronounces in the last resort on Church of England doctrine. 

But the difficulty is, not to see that the present state of things, which has come about almost by accident, is irregular andunsatisfactory, and that in it the civil power has stolen a march onthe privileges which even Tudors and Hanoverians left to the Church, but to suggest what would be more just and more promising. A mixedtribunal, composed of laymen and ecclesiastics, would be in effect, asMr. Joyce perceives, simply the present court with a sham colour ofChurch authority added to it; and he describes with candid force theconfusion which might arise if the lawyers and divines took differentsides, and how, in the unequal struggle, the latter might "findthemselves hopelessly prostrate in the stronger grasp of their morepowerful associates. " His own scheme of a theological andecclesiastical committee of reference, to which a purely legal tribunalmight send down questions of doctrine to be answered, as "experts" orjuries give answers about matters of science or matters of fact, ishardly more hopeful; for even he would not bind the legal court, as ofcourse it could not be bound, to accept the doctrine of theecclesiastical committee. He promises, indeed, on the authority of LordDerby, that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the lawyers wouldaccept the answer of the divines; but whatever the scandal is now, itwould be far greater if an unorthodox judgment were given in flatcontradiction to the report of the committee of reference. 

As to a purely ecclesiastical Court of Appeal, in the present state ofthe Church both in England and all over the world, it ought to consolethose who must be well aware that here at least it is hardly to belooked for, to reflect how such courts act, after all, where they havethe power to act, and how far things would have gone in a better orhappier fashion among us if, instead of the Privy Council, there hadbeen a tribunal of divines to give final judgment. The history ofappeals to Rome, from the days of the Jansenists and Fénelon to thoseof Lamennais, may be no doubt satisfactory to those who believe itnecessary to ascribe to the Pope the highest wisdom and the mostconsummate justice; but to those who venture to notice the real stepsof the process, and the collateral considerations, political and local, which influenced the decision, the review is hardly calculated to makethose who are debarred from it regret the loss of this unalloyed purityof ecclesiastical jurisdiction. And, as regards ourselves, it is truethat an ecclesiastical tribunal would hardly have been ingenious enoughto find the means of saying that Messrs. Wilson and Williams had nottaught in contradiction to the doctrines of the English Church, andthat they actually, under its present constitution, possessed theliberty which, under a different--and, as some people think, abetter--constitution, they might possess. But it ought also to be bornein mind what other judgments ecclesiastical tribunals might have given. An ecclesiastical tribunal, unless it had been packed or accidentallyone-sided, would probably have condemned Mr. Gorham. An ecclesiasticaltribunal would almost certainly have expelled Archdeacon Denison fromhis preferments. Indeed, the judgment of the Six Doctors on Dr. Pusey, arbitrary and unconstitutional as it may be considered, was by no meansa doubtful foreshadowing of what a verdict upon him would have beenfrom any court that we can imagine formed of the high ecclesiasticalauthorities of the time. It undoubtedly seems the most natural thing inthe world that a great religious body should settle, without hindrance, its own doctrines and control its own ministers; but it is also somecompensation for the perversity with which the course of things hasinterfered with ideal completeness, that our condition, if it had beentheoretically perfect, would have been perfectly intolerable. 

It would be highly unwise in those who direct the counsels of theChurch of England to accept a practical disadvantage for the gain of agreater simplicity and consistency of system. The true moral to bededuced from the anomalies of ecclesiastical appeals seems to be, tohave as little to do with them as possible. The idea of seeking aremedy for the perplexities of theology in judicial rulings, and therage for having recourse to law courts, are of recent date in ourcontroversies. They were revived among us as one of the results of theviolent panic caused by the Oxford movement, and of the inconsiderateimpatience of surprised ignorance which dictated extreme and forciblemeasures; and as this is a kind of game at which, when once started, both parties can play, the policy of setting the law in motion tosilence theological opponents has become a natural and favourite one. But it may be some excuse for the legislators who, in 1833, inconstructing a new Court of Appeal, so completely forgot or underratedthe functions which it would be called to discharge in the decision ofmomentous doctrinal questions, that at the time no one thought much ofcarrying theological controversies to legal arbitrament. The experimentis a natural one to have been made in times of strong and earnestreligious contention; but, now that it has had its course, it is notdifficult to see that it was a mistaken one. There seems somethingalmost ludicrously incongruous in bringing a theological question intothe atmosphere and within the technical handling of a law court, and insubmitting delicate and subtle attempts to grasp the mysteries of theunseen and the infinite, of God and the soul, of grace and redemption, to the hard logic and intentionally confined and limited view offorensic debate. Theological truth, in the view of all who believe init, must always remain independent of a legal decision; and, therefore, as regards any real settlement, a theological question must come out ofa legal sentence in a totally different condition from any others wherethe true and indisputable law of the case is, for the time at least, what the supreme tribunal has pronounced it to be. People chafed at notgetting what they thought the plain broad conclusions from facts anddocuments accepted; they appealed to law from the uncertainty ofcontroversy, and found law still more uncertain, and a good deal moredangerous. They thought that they were going to condemn crimes andexpel wrongdoers; they found that these prosecutions inevitably assumedthe character of the old political trials, which were but an indirectand very mischievous form of the struggle between two avowed parties, and in which, though the technical question was whether the accused hadcommitted the crime, the real one was whether the alleged crime were acrime at all. Accordingly, wider considerations than those arising outof the strict merits of the case told upon the decision; and thenegative judgment, and resolute evasion of a condemnation, in each ofthe cases which were of wide and serious importance, were proofs of thesame tendency in English opinion which has made political trials, except in the most extreme cases, almost inconceivable. They mean thatthe questions raised must be fought out and settled in a different andmore genuine way, and that law feels itself out of place when called tointerfere in them. As all parties have failed in turning the law into aweapon, and yet as all parties have really gained much more than theyhave lost by the odd anomalies of our ecclesiastical jurisprudence, thewisest course would seem to be for those who feel the deep importanceof doctrinal questions to leave the law alone, either as to employingit or attempting to change it. Controversy, argument, the display ofthe intrinsic and inherent strength of a great and varied system, arewhat all causes must in the last resort trust to. Lord Westbury willhave done the Church of England more good than perhaps he thought ofdoing, if his _dicta_ make theologians see that they can be much betterand more hopefully employed than in trying legal conclusions withunorthodox theorisers, or in busying themselves with inventingimaginary improvements for a Final Court of Appeal. 

III

PRIVY COUNCIL JUDGMENTS[4]

 [4] _A Collection of the Judgments of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Ecclesiastical Cases relating to Doctrine and Discipline; with a Preface by the Lord Bishop of London, and an Historical Introduction_. Edited by the Hon. G. Brodrick, Barrister-at-Law, and Rev. The Hon. W. H. Fremantle, Chaplain to the Bishop of London. _Guardian_, 15th February 1865. 

The Bishop of London has done a useful service in causing the variousdecisions of the present Court of Appeal to be collected into a volume. There is such an obvious convenience about the plan that it hardlyneeded the conventional reason given for it, that "the knowledgegenerally possessed on the subject of the Court is vague, and thesources from which accurate information can be obtained are littleunderstood; and that people who discuss it ought in the first place toknow what the Court is, and what it does. " This is the mere customaryformula of a preface turned into a rhetorical insinuation which wouldhave been better away; most of those who care about the subject, andhave expressed opinions about it, know pretty well the nature of theCourt and the result of its working, and whatever variations there maybe in the judgment passed upon it arise not from any seriousimperfection of knowledge but from differences of principle. It washardly suitable in a work like this to assume a mystery and obscurityabout the subject where there is really none, and to claim superiorexactness and authenticity of information about a matter which in allits substantial points is open to all the world. And we could conceivethe design, well-intentioned as it is, carried out in a way morefitting to the gravity of the occasion which has suggested it. TheBishop says truly enough that the questions involved in theconstitution of such a court are some of the most difficult with whichstatesmen have to deal. Therefore it seems to us that a collection ofthe decisions of such a court, put forth for the use of the Church andnation under the authority of the Bishop of London, ought to have hadthe dignity and the reserve of a work meant for permanence and for theuse of men of various opinions, and ought not to have had even thesemblance, as this book has, of an _ex parte_ pamphlet. The Bishop ofLondon is, of course, quite right to let the Church know what he thinksabout the Court of Final Appeal; and he is perfectly justified inrecommending us, in forming our opinion, to study carefully the factsof the existing state of things; but it seems hardly becoming to makethe facts a vehicle for indirectly forcing on us, in the shape ofcomments, a very definite and one-sided view of them, which is the verysubject of vehement contradiction and dispute. It would have beenbetter to have committed what was necessary in the way of explanationand illustration to some one of greater weight and experience than twoclever young men of strong bias and manifest indisposition to respector attend to, or even to be patient with, any aspect of the subject buttheir own in this complicated and eventful question, and who, partlyfrom overlooking great and material elements in it, and partly from animperfect apprehension of what they had to do, have failed to presenteven the matters of fact with which they deal with the necessaryexactness and even-handedness. It seems to us that in a work intendedfor the general use of the Church and addressed to men of all opinions, they only remember to be thoroughgoing advocates and justifiers of theCourt which happens to have grown into such important consequence tothe English Church. The position is a perfectly legitimate one; but wethink it had better not have been connected with a documentary worklike the present, set forth by the direction and under the sanction ofa Bishop of London. 

In looking over the cases which have been brought together into aconnected series, the first point which is suggested by the review isthe great and important change in the aspect and bearing of doctrinalcontroversies, and in the situation of the Church, as affected by them, which the creation and action of this Court have made. From making italmost a matter of principle and boast to dispense with any livingjudge of controversies, the Church has passed to having a veryenergetic one. Up to the Gorham judgment, it can hardly be said thatthe ruling of courts of law had had the slightest influence on thedoctrinal position and character of the Church. Keen and fierce as hadbeen the controversies in the Church up to that judgment, how often hada legal testing of her standards been seriously sought for or seriouslyappealed to? There had been accusations of heresy, trials, condemnations, especially in the times following the Reformation andpreceding the Civil War; there had been appeals and final judgmentsgiven in such final courts as existed; but all without making any markon the public mind or the received meaning of doctrines andformularies, and without leaving a trace except in law reports. Theyseem to have been forgotten as soon as the particular case was disposedof. The limits of supposed orthodox belief revived; but it was not theaction of judicial decisions which either narrowed or enlarged them. Bishop Marsh's Calvinists never thought of having recourse to law. Ifthe Church did not do entirely without a Court of Final Appeal, it issimply a matter of fact that the same weight and authority were notattached to the proceedings of such a court which are attached to themnow. But since the Gorham case, the work of settling authoritatively, if not the meaning of doctrines and of formularies, at any rate themethods of interpreting and applying them, has been briskly going on inthe courts, and a law laid down by judges without appeal has beeninsensibly fastening its hold upon us. The action of the courts isextolled as being all in the direction of liberty. Whatever this praisemay be worth, it is to be observed that it is, after all, a wooden sortof liberty, and shuts up quite as much as it opens. It may save, inthis case or that, individual liberty; but it does so by narrowingartificially the natural and common-sense grounds of argument inreligious controversy, and abridging as much as possible the provinceof theology. Before the Gorham case, the Formularies in general werethe standard and test, free to both sides, about baptismalregeneration. Both parties had the ground open to them, to make whatthey could of them by argument and reason. Discipline was limited bythe Articles and Formularies, and in part by the authority of greatdivines and by the prevailing opinion of the Church, and by nothingelse; these were the means which each side had to convince and persuadeand silence the other, and each side might hope that in the course oftime its sounder and better supported view might prevail. But now uponthis state of things comes from without a dry, legal, narrowstereotyping, officially and by authority, of the sense to be put uponpart of the documents in the controversy. You appeal to thePrayer-book; your opponent tells you, Oh, the Court of Appeal has ruledagainst you there: and that part of your case is withdrawn from you, and he need give himself no trouble to argue the matter with you. Against certain theological positions, perhaps of great weight, andtheological evidence, comes, not only the doctrine of theologicalopponents, but the objection that they are bad law. The interpretationwhich, it may be, we have assumed all our lives, and which we know tobe that of Fathers and divines, is suddenly pronounced not to be legal. The decision does not close the controversy, which goes on as keenlyand with perhaps a little more exasperation than before; it simplystops off, by virtue of a legal construction, a portion of the field ofargument for one party, which was, perhaps, supposed to have thestrongest claim to it. The Gorham case bred others; and now, at last, after fifteen years, we have got, as may be seen in Messrs. Brodrickand Fremantle's book, a body of judicial _dicta_, interpretations, rules of exposition, and theological propositions, which have grown upin the course of these cases, and which in various ways force a meaningand construction on the theological standards and language of theChurch, which in some instances they were never thought to have, andwhich they certainly never had authoritatively before. Besides herArticles and Prayer-hook, speaking the language of divines and open toeach party to interpret according to the strength and soundness oftheir theological ground, we are getting a supplementary set of legallimitations and glosses, claiming to regulate theological argument ifnot teaching, and imposed upon us by the authority not of the Church oreven of Parliament but of the Judges of the Privy Council. This, itstrikes us, is a new position of things in the Church, a newunderstanding and a changed set of conditions on which to carry oncontroversies of doctrine; and it seems to us to have a seriousinfluence not only on the responsibility of the Church for her owndoctrine, but on the freedom and genuineness with which questions as tothat doctrine are discussed. The Court is not to blame for this result;to do it justice, it has generally sought to decide as little as itcould; and the interference of law with the province of pure theologyis to be rather attributed to that mania for deciding, which of latehas taken possession pretty equally of all parties. But theindisputable result is seen to be, after the experience of fifteenyears, that law is taking a place in our theological disputes and ourtheological system which is new to it in our theological history; law, not laid down prospectively in general provisions, but emergingindirectly and incidentally out of constructions and judicial rulingson cases of pressing and hazardous exigency; law, applying itstechnical and deliberately narrow processes to questions which ofcourse it cannot solve, but can only throw into formal and inadequate, if not unreal, terms; and laying down the limits of belief andassertion on matters about which hearts burn and souls tremble, by themouth of judges whose consummate calmness and ability is only equalledby their profound and avowed want of sympathy for the theology of whichtheir position makes them the expounders and final arbiters. A systemhas begun with respect to English Church doctrine, analogous to that bywhich Lord Stowell made the recent law of the sea, or that by which ona larger scale the rescripts and decrees of the Popes moulded the greatsystem of the canon law. 

This is the first thing that strikes us on a comparative survey of thisset of decisions. The second point is one which at first sight seemsgreatly to diminish the importance of this new condition of things, butwhich on further consideration is seen to have a more serious bearingthan might have been thought. This is, the odd haphazard way in whichpoints have come up for decision; the sort of apparent chance which hasfinally governed the issue of the various contentions; and theinfinitesimally fine character of the few propositions of doctrine towhich the Court has given the sanction of its ruling. Knowing what weall of us cannot help knowing, and seeing things which lawyers andjudges are bound not to allow themselves to see or take account of, wefind it difficult to repress the feeling of amazement, as we travelthrough the volume, to see Mr. Gorham let off, Mr. Heath deprived, thenDr. Williams and Mr. Wilson let off, and to notice the delicatetechnical point which brought to nought the laborious and at one timehopeful efforts of the worthy persons who tried to turn out ArchdeaconDenison. And as to the matter of the decisions, though undoubtedly_dicta_ of great importance are laid down in the course of them, yet itis curious to observe the extremely minute and insignificant statementson which in the more important cases judgment is actually pronounced. The Gorham case was held to affect the position of a great party; butthe language and theory actually examined and allowed would hardly, inlegal strictness, authorise much more than the very peculiar views ofMr. Gorham himself. And in the last case, the outside lay world hashardly yet done wondering at the consummate feat of legal subtlety bywhich the issue whether the English Church teaches that the Bible isinspired was transmuted into the question whether it teaches that everysingle part of every single book is inspired. It might seem thatrulings, of which the actual product in the way of doctrinalpropositions was so small, were hardly subjects for any keen interest. But it would be shortsighted to regard the matter in this way. In thefirst place, whatever may have happened as yet, it is manifestly aserious thing for Church of England doctrine to have been thrown, on ascale which is quite new, into the domain of a court of law, to lie atthe mercy of the confessed chances and uncertainties of legalinterpretation, with nothing really effective to correct and remedywhat may possibly be, without any fault in the judges, a fatallymischievous construction of the text and letter of her authoritativedocuments. In the next place, no one can fail to see, no one in factaffects to deny, that the general result of these recent decisions, capricious as their conclusions look at first sight, has been to makethe Formularies mean much less than they were supposed to mean. Thetendency of every English court, appealed to not as a court of equitybut one of criminal jurisdiction, is naturally to be exacting and evennarrow in the interpretation of language. The general impression leftby these cases is that the lines of doctrine in the English Church areregarded by the judicial mind as very faint, and not much to bedepended upon; and that these judgments may be the first steps in thatinsensible process by which the unpretending but subtle and powerfulengine of interpretation has been applied by the courts to give acertain turn to law and policy; applied, in this instance, to underminethe definiteness and certainty of doctrine, and in the end, theunderstanding itself which has hitherto existed between the Church andthe State, and has kept alive the idea of her distinct basis, functions, and rights. 

This is the view of matters which arises from an examination of theproceedings contained in this volume. What is the argument urged in theHistorical Introduction to justify or recommend our acquiescence in it?It seems to us to consist mainly in a one-sided and exaggeratedstatement of the Supremacy claimed and brought in by Henry VIII. , andof the effect in theory and fact which it ought to have on our notionof the Church and of Church right. The complaint of the present stateof things is, that those who may be taken to represent the interests ofthe Church in such a matter as the character of her teaching arepractically excluded from having any real influence in the decision ofquestions by which the character of that teaching is affected. Theanswer is that she has no right to claim a separate interest in thematter, and that the doctrine of the Royal Supremacy was meant toextinguish, and has extinguished, any pretence to such a claim. The_animus_ which pervades the work, and which is not obscurely disclosedin such things as footnotes and abridgments of legal arguments, is thusgiven--more freely, of course, than it would be proper to introduce ina book like this--in some remarks of Mr. Brodrick, one of the editors, at a recent discussion of the question of Ecclesiastical Appeals in acommittee of the Social Science Association. He is reported to havespoken as follows:--

 The Church of England being established by law, could not be allowed any independence of action; and those who wished for it were like people who wanted to have their cake and eat it. As to the Privy Council, he had never heard its decisions charged with error. What was complained of was that it had declined to take the current opinions of theologians and make them part of the Thirty-nine Articles. There was no need whatever for the Privy Council to possess any special theological knowledge. The only case where that knowledge was necessary was when it was alleged that doctrines had been held in the Church without censure. That was a case in which considerable theological lore was required; but it was within the province of counsel to supply it. Divines had now discovered, what lawyers could have told them long ago, and what he knew some of them had been told--namely, that it would not do to treat the Thirty-nine Articles as penal statutes; because, if that were done, a coach might be easily driven through them. If they had wished to maintain the authority of the Articles, they would have done best to have kept quiet. 

The present Court of Appeal is deduced, in the Historical Introduction, as a natural and logical consequence, from Henry VIII. 's Supremacy. Undoubtedly it is scarcely possible to overstate the all-graspingdespotism of Henry VIII. , and if a precedent for anything reckless ofall separate rights and independence should be wanted, it would neverbe sought in vain if looked for in the policy and legislation of thatreign. So far the editors are right; the power over religion claimed byHenry VIII. Will carry them wherever they want to go; it will givethem, if they need it, as a still more logical and legitimatedevelopment of the Supremacy, the Court of High Commission. Only theyought to have remembered, as fair historians, that even in the days ofthe Supremacy the distinct nature and business of the Church and ofChurchmen was never denied. Laymen were given powers over the Churchand in the Church which were new; but the distinct province of theChurch, if abridged and put under new control, was not abolished. Sideby side with the facts showing the Supremacy and its exercise are a setof facts, for those who choose to see them, showing that the Church wasstill recognised, even by Henry VIII. , as a body which he had notcreated, which he was obliged to take account of, and which filled aplace utterly different from every other body in the State. Henry VIII. Played the tyrant with his Churchmen as he did with his Parliament andwith everybody else; and Churchmen, like everybody else, submitted tohim. But the "Imperialism" of Henry VIII. , though it went beyond eventhe Imperialism of Justinian and Charlemagne in its encroachments onthe spiritual power, as little denied the fact of that power as theydid. He recognised the distinct place and claims of the spiritualty;and, as we suppose that even the editors of this volume hardly feelthemselves bound to make out the consistency of Henry, they might havespared themselves the weak and not very fair attempt to get rid of theforce of the remarkable words in which this recognition is recorded inthe first Statute of Appeals (24 Henry VIII. C. 12). The words would, no doubt, be worth but little, were it not that as a matter of fact aspiritualty did act and judge and lay down doctrine, and even whileyielding to unworthy influence did keep up their corporate existence. 

But when the ecclesiastical legislation of Henry VIII. Is referred to, not merely as the historical beginning of a certain state of thingswhich has undergone great changes in the course of events, but asaffording a sort of idea and normal pattern to which our ownarrangements ought to conform, as supplying us with a theory of Churchand State which holds good at least against the Church, it seems hardthat the Church alone should not have the benefit of the entirealteration of circumstances since that theory was a reality. Those whotalk about the Supremacy ought to remember what the Supremacy pretendedto be. It was over _all_ causes and _all_ persons, civil as well asecclesiastical. It held good certainly in theory, and to a great extentin practice, against the temporalty as much as against the spiritualty. Why then are we to invoke the Supremacy as then understood, in aquestion about courts of spiritual appeals, and not in questions aboutother courts and other powers in the nation? If the Supremacy, claimedand exercised as Henry claimed and exercised it, is good against theChurch, it is good against many other things besides. If the Churchinherits bonds and obligations, not merely by virtue of distinctstatutes, but by the force of a general vague arbitrary theory of royalpower, why has that power been expelled, or transformed into a merefiction of law, in all other active branches of the national life?Unless the Church is simply, what even Henry VIII. Did not regard it, acreation and delegate of the national power, without any roots andconstitution of its own, why should the Church be denied the benefit ofthe common sense, and the change in ideas and usage, which have been solargely appealed to in civil matters? Why are we condemned to a theorywhich is not only out of date and out of harmony with all thetraditions and convictions of modern times, hut which was in its owntime tyrannous, revolutionary, and intolerable? Arguments in favour ofthe present Court, drawn from the reason of the thing, and thecomparative fitness of the judges for their office, if we do not agreewith them, at least we can understand. But precedents and argumentsfrom the Supremacy of Henry VIII. Suggest the question whether thosewho use them are ready to be taken at their word and to have back thatSupremacy as it was; and whether the examples of policy of that reignare seemly to quote as adequate measures of the liberty and rights ofany set of Englishmen. 

The question really calling for solution is--How to reconcile the justfreedom of individual teachers in the Church with the maintenance ofthe right and duty of the Church to uphold the substantial meaning ofher body of doctrine? In answering this question we can get no helpfrom this volume. It simply argues that the present is practically thebest of all possible courts; that it is a great improvement, whichprobably it is, on the Courts of Delegates; and that great confidenceought to be felt in its decisions. We are further shown how jealouslyand carefully the judges have guarded the right of the individualteacher. But it seems to us, according to the views put forward in thisbook, that as the price of all this--of great learning, weight, andability in the judges--of great care taken of liberty--the Church iscondemned to an interpretation of the Royal Supremacy which floatsbetween the old arbitrary view of it and the modern Liberal one, andwhich uses each, as it happens to be most convenient, against the claimof the Church to protect her doctrine and exert a real influence on theauthoritative declaration of it. We all need liberty, and we all oughtto be ready to give the reasonable liberty which we profess to claimfor ourselves. But it is a heavy price to pay for it, if the right andthe power is to be taken out of the hands of the Church to declare whatis the real meaning of what she supposes herself bound to teach. 

IV

SIR JOHN COLERIDGE ON THE PURCHAS CASE[5]

 [5] _Remarks on Some Parts of the Report of the Judicial Committee in the Case of "Elphinstone against Purchas. "_ A Letter to Canon Liddon, from the Right Hon. Sir J. T. Coleridge. _Guardian_, 5th April 1871. 

No one has more right to speak with authority, or more deserves to belistened to at a difficult and critical moment for the Church, than SirJ. T. Coleridge. An eminent lawyer, and a most earnest and well-informedChurchman, he combines in an unusual way claims on the attention of allwho care for the interests of religion, and for those, too, which areso deeply connected with them, the interests of England. The troublescreated by the recent judgment have induced him to come forward fromhis retirement with words of counsel and warning. 

The gist of his Letter may be shortly stated. He is inclined to thinkthe decision arrived at by the Judicial Committee a mistaken one. Buthe thinks that it would be a greater and a worse mistake to make thisdecision, wrong as it may be, a reason for looking favourably ondisestablishment as a remedy for what is complained of. We are glad tonote the judgment of so fair an observer and so distinguished a lawyer, himself a member of the Privy Council, both on the intrinsicsuitableness and appropriateness of the position[6] which has beenruled to be illegal, and on the unsatisfactoriness of theinterpretation itself, as a matter of judicial reading andconstruction. A great deal has been said, and it is plain that thetopic is inexhaustible, on the unimportance of a position. We agreeentirely--on condition that people remember the conditions andconsequences of their assertion. Every single outward accompaniment ofworship may, if you carry your assertion to its due level, be said tobe in itself utterly unimportant; place and time and form and attitudeare all things not belonging to the essence of the act itself, and areindefinitely changeable, as, in fact, the changes in them have beencountless. Kneeling is not of the essence of prayer, but imagine, firstprohibiting the posture of kneeling, and then remonstrating with thosewho complained of the prohibition, on the ground of postures beingunimportant. It is obvious that when you have admitted to the full thata position is in itself unimportant, all kinds of reasons may come inon the further question whether it is right, fitting, natural. Thereare reasons why the position which has been so largely adopted of lateis the natural and suitable one. Sir John Coleridge states themadmirably:--

 [6] The Eastward Position at the celebration of the Holy Communion. 

 As to the place of standing at the consecration, my _feeling_ is with them. It seems to me not desirable to make it essential or even important that the people should see the breaking of the bread, or the taking the cup into the hands of the priest, and positively mischievous to encourage them in gazing on him, or watching him with critical eyes while so employed. I much prefer the _spirit of_ the Rubric of 1549--First Book of Edward VI. --which says, "These words before rehearsed are to be said turning still to the Altar, without any elevation, or showing the Sacraments to the people. " The use now enforced, I think, tends to deprive the most solemn rite of our religion of one of its most solemn particulars. Surely, whatever school we belong to, and even if we consider the whole rite merely commemorative, it is a very solemn idea to conceive the priest at the head of his flock, and, as it were, a shepherd leading them on in heart and spirit, imploring for them and with them the greatest blessing which man is capable of receiving on earth; he alone uttering the prayer--they meanwhile kneeling all, and in deep silence listening, not gazing, rather with closed eyes--and with their whole undistracted attention, joining in the prayer with one heart and without sound until the united "Amen" breaks from them at the close, and seals their union and assent. 

But, of course, comes the further question, whether, an Englishclergyman is authorised to use it. He is not authorised if the PrayerBook tells him not to. Of that there is no question. But if the PrayerBook not only seems to give him the liberty, but, by the _prima facie_look of its words, seems to prescribe it, the harshness of a rulingwhich summarily and under penalties prohibits it is not to be smootheddown by saying that the matter is unimportant. Sir John Coleridge'sview of the two points will be read with interest:--

 You will understand, of course, that I write in respect of the Report recently made by the Judicial Committee in the Purchas case. I am not about to defend it. No one, however, ought to pronounce a condemnation of the solemn judgment of such a tribunal without much consideration; and this remark applies with, special force to myself, well knowing as I do those from whom it proceeded, and having withdrawn from sharing in the labours of the Committee only because age had impaired, with the strength of my body, the faculties also of my mind; and so disabled me from the proper discharge of any judicial duties. With this admission on my part, I yet venture to say that I think Mr. Purchas has not had justice done to him in two main points of the late appeal; I mean the use of the vestments complained of and the side of the communion-table which he faced when consecrating the elements for the Holy Communion. Before I state my reasons, let me premise that I am no Ritualist, in the now conventional use of the term. I do not presume to judge of the motives of those to whom that name is applied. From the information of common but undisputed report as to some of the most conspicuous, I believe them entitled to all praise for their pastoral devotedness and their laborious, self-denying lives; still, I do not shrink from saying that I think them misguided, and the cause of mischief in the Church. So much for my _feeling_ in regard to the vestments. I prefer the surplice at all times and in all ministrations. 

 This is _feeling_--and I see no word in the sober language of our rubric which interferes with it--but my _feeling_ is of no importance in the argument, and I mention it only in candour, to show in what spirit I approach the argument. 

 Now Mr. Purchas has been tried before the Committee for offences alleged to have been committed against the provisions of the "Act of Uniformity"; of this Act the Common Prayer Book is part and parcel. As to the vestments, his conduct was alleged to be in derogation of the rubric as to the ornaments of the Church and the ministers thereof, which ordains that such shall be retained and be in use as were in the Church of England by the authority of Parliament in the second year of the reign of King Edward VI. The Act of Uniformity is to be construed by the same rules exactly as any Act passed in the last session of Parliament. The clause in question (by which I mean the rubric in question) is perfectly unambiguous in language, free from all difficulty as to construction; it therefore lets in no argument as to intention otrier than that which the words themselves import. There might be a seeming difficulty in _fact_, because it might not be known what vestments were in use by authority of Parliament in the second year of the reign of King Edward VI. ; but this difficulty has been removed. It is conceded in the Report that the vestments, the use of which is now condemned, were in use by authority of Parliament in that year. Having that fact, you are bound to construe the rubric as if those vestments were specifically named in it, instead of being only referred to. If an Act should be passed to-morrow that the uniform of the Guards should henceforth be such as was ordered for them by authority and used by them in the 1st George I. , you would first ascertain what that uniform was; and, having ascertained it, you would not inquire into the changes which may have been made, many or few, with or without lawful authority, between the 1st George I. And the passing of the new Act. All these, that Act, specifying the earlier date, would have made wholly immaterial. It would have seemed strange, I suppose, if a commanding officer, disobeying the statute, had said in his defence, "There have been many changes since the reign of George I. ; and as to 'retaining, ' we put a gloss on that, and thought it might mean only retaining to the Queen's use; so we have put the uniforms safely in store. " But I think it would have seemed more strange to punish and mulct him severely if he had obeyed the law and put no gloss on plain words. 

 This case stands on the same principle. The rubric indeed seems to me to imply with some clearness that in the long interval between Edward VI. And the 14th Charles II. There had been many changes; but it does not stay to specify them, or distinguish between what was mere evasion and what was lawful; it quietly passes them all by, and goes back to the legalised usage of the second year of Edward VI. What had prevailed since, whether by an Archbishop's gloss, by Commissions, or even Statutes, whether, in short, legal or illegal, it makes quite immaterial. 

 I forbear to go through the long inquiry which these last words remind one of--not, I am sure, out of any disrespectful feeling to the learned and reverend authors of the Report, but because it seems to me wholly irrelevant to the point for decision. This alone I must add, that even were the inquiry relevant, the authorities on which they rely do not appear to me so clear or cogent, nor the analogies relied on so just, as to warrant the conclusion arrived at. For it should never be forgotten that the defendant in a criminal case, acquitted as to this charge by the learned judge below, was entitled to every presumption in his favour, and could not properly be condemned but by a judgment free from all reasonable doubt. And this remark acquires additional strength because the judgment will be final not only on him but on the whole Church for all time, unless reversed by the Legislature. 

On the second point he thus speaks, in terms which for their guardedmoderation are all the more worth notice:--

 Upon the second point I have less to say, though it is to me much the most important. The Report, I think, cannot be shown conclusively to be wrong here, as it may be on the other; still it does not seem to me to be shown conclusively to be right. You have yourself given no reason in your second letter of the 8th March for doubting at least. 

 Let me add that, in my opinion, on such a question as this, where a conclusion is to be arrived at upon the true meaning of Rubrics framed more than two centuries since, and certainly not with a view to any such minute criticism as on these occasions is and must be applied to them, and where the evidence of facts is by no means clear, none probably can be arrived at free from reasonable objection. What is the consequence? It will be asked, Is the question to receive no judicial solution? I am not afraid to answer, Better far that it should receive none than that injustice should be done. The principles of English law furnish the practical solution: dismiss the party charged, unless his conviction can be based on grounds on which reasonable and competent minds can rest satisfied and without scruple. And what mighty mischief will result to countervail the application of this rule of justice? For two centuries our Church has subsisted without an answer to the question which alone gives importance to this inquiry, and surely has not been without God's blessing for that time, in spite of all much more serious shortcomings. Let us remember that Charity, or to use perhaps a better word, Love, is the greatest of all; if that prevail there need be little fear for our Faith or our Hope. 

Having said this much, Sir John Coleridge proceeds to the second, andindeed the main object of his letter--to remonstrate againstexaggeration in complaint, both of the particular decision and of theCourt which gave it:--

 I now return to your letter. You proceed to attempt to show that the words of Keble to yourself, which you cite, are justified by remarks in this Report and some previous judgments of the same tribunal, which appear to you so inconsistent with each other as to make it difficult to believe that the Court was impartial, or "incapable of regarding the documents before it in the light of a plastic material, which might be made to support conclusions held to be advisable at the moment, and on independent grounds. " I wish these words had never been written. They will, I fear, be understood as conveying your formed opinions; and coming from you, and addressed to minds already excited and embittered, they will be readily accepted, though they import the heaviest charges against judges--some of them bishops--all of high and hitherto unimpeached character. A very long experience of judicial life makes me know that judges will often provoke and bitterly disappoint both the suitors before them and the public, when discharging their duty honestly and carefully, and a man is scarcely fit for the station unless he can sit tolerably easy under censures which even these may pass upon him. Yet, imputations of partiality or corruption are somewhat hard to bear when they are made by persons of your station and character. When the Judicial Committee sits on appeals from the Spiritual Courts, it _may_ certainly be under God's displeasure, the members _may_ be visited with judicial blindness, and deprived of the integrity which in other times and cases they manifest. Against such a supposition there is no direct argument, and I will not enter into such a disputation. I have so much confidence in your generosity and candour, on reflection, as to believe you would not desire I should. 

 In the individual case I simply protest against the insinuation. I add a word or two by way of general observation. 

 No doubt you have read the judgments in all the cases you allude to carefully; but have you read the pleadings and arguments of the counsel, so as to know accurately the points raised for the consideration of those who were to decide? To know the offence charged and the judgment pronounced may suffice in some cases for an opinion by a competent person, whether the one warranted the other; but more is required to warrant the imputation of inconsistency, partiality, or indirect motives. He who takes this on himself should know further how the pleadings and the arguments presented the case for judgment, and made this or that particular relevant in the discussion. Every one at all familiar with this matter knows that a judgment not uncommonly fails to reflect the private opinion of the judge on the whole of a great point, because the issues of law or fact actually brought before him, and which alone he was bound to decide, did not bring this before him. And this rule, always binding, is, of course, never more so than in regard to a Court of Final Appeal, which should be careful not to conclude more than is regularly before it. Let me add that a just and considerate person will wholly disregard the gossip which flies about in regard to cases exciting much interest; passing words in the course of an argument, forgotten when the judgment comes to be considered, are too often caught up, as having guided the final determination. 

Such words are a just rebuke to much of the inconsiderate talk whichfollows on any public act which touches the feelings, perhaps thehighest and purest feelings of men with deep convictions. Perhaps Mr. Liddon's words were unguarded ones. But at the same time it isnecessary to state without disguise what is the truth in this matter. It is necessary for the sake of justice and historical truth. The Courtof Final Appeal is not like other courts. It is not a pure and simplecourt of law, though it is composed of great lawyers. It is doubtless acourt where their high training and high professional honour come in, as they do elsewhere. But great lawyers are men, partisans andpoliticians, statesmen, if you like; and this is a court where they arenot precluded, in the same degree as they are in the regular courts bythe habits and prescriptions of the place, from thinking of what comesbefore them in its relation to public affairs. It is no mere inventionof disappointed partisans, it is no idle charge of wilful unfairness, to say that considerations of high policy come into theirdeliberations; it has been the usual language, ever since the Gorhamcase, of men who cared little for the subject-matter of the questionsdebated; it is the language of those who urge the advantages of theCourt. "It is a court, " as the Bishop of Manchester said the other day, speaking in its praise, "composed of men who look at things not merelywith the eyes of lawyers, but also with the eyes of statesmen. "Precisely so; and for that reason they must be considered to have theresponsibilities, not only of lawyers, but of statesmen, and their actsare proportionably open to discussion. Sir John Coleridge urges theimpossibility of any other court; and certainly till we could beinduced to trust an ecclesiastical court, composed of bishops orclergymen, in a higher degree than we could do at present, we see noalternative. But to say that a clerical court would be no improvementis not to prove that the present court is a satisfactory one. It may bedifficult under our present circumstances to reform it. But though wemay have reasons for making the best of it, we may be allowed to saythat it is a singularly ill-imagined and ill-constructed court, and onein which the great features of English law and justice are not soconspicuous as they are elsewhere. Suitors do not complain in othercourts either of the ruling, or sometimes of the language of judges, asthey complain in this. But when this is made a ground for joining withthe enemies of all that the English Church holds dear, to bring about agreat break-up of the existing state of things, we agree with Sir JohnColeridge in thinking that a great mistake is made; and if care is nottaken, it may be an irreparable one. He writes:--

 I hasten to my conclusion too long delayed, but a word must still be added on a subject of not less consequence than any I have yet touched on. You say, "Churchmen will to a very great extent indeed find relief from the dilemma in a third course, viz. _co-operation with the political forces_, which, year by year, more and more steadily are working towards disestablishment. This is not a menace; it is the statement of a simple fact. " I am bound to believe, and I do believe, you do not intend this as a menace; but such a statement of a future course to depend on a contingency cannot but read very much like one--and against your intention it may well be understood as such. You do not say that _you_ are one who will co-operate with the political party which now seeks to disestablish the Church in accomplishing its purpose, and I do not suppose you ever will. But on behalf, not so much of the clergy as of the laity--on behalf of the worshippers in our churches, of the sick to be visited at home--of the poor in their cottages, of our children in their schools--of our society in general, I entreat those of the clergy who are now feeling the most acutely in this matter, not to suffer their minds to be so absorbed by the present grievance as to take no thought of the evils of disestablishment. I am not foolishly blind to the faults of the clergy--indeed I fear I am sometimes censorious in regard to them--and some of their faults I do think may be referable to Establishment; the possession of house and land, and a sort of independence of their parishioners, in some cases seems to tend to secularity. I regret sometimes their partisanship at elections, their speeches at public dinners. But what good gift of God is not liable to abuse from men? Taken as a whole, we have owed, and we do owe, under Him, to our Established clergy more than we can ever repay, much of it rendered possible by their Establishment. I may refer, and now with special force, to Education--their services in this respect no one denies--and but for Establishment these, I think, could not have been so effectively and systematically rendered. We are now in a great crisis as to this all-important matter. Concurring, as I do heartily, in the praise which has been bestowed on Mr. Forster, and expecting that his great and arduous office will be discharged with perfect impartiality by him, and with a just sense of how much is due to the clergy in this respect, still it cannot be denied that the powers conferred by the Legislature on the holder of it are alarmingly great, even if necessary; and who shall say in what a spirit they may be exercised by his successor? For the general upholding of religious education, in emergencies not improbable, to whom can we look in general so confidently as to the parochial clergy? I speak now specially in regard to parishes such as I am most familiar with, in agricultural districts, small, not largely endowed, sometimes without resident gentry, and with the land occupied by rack-renting farmers, indifferent or hostile to education. 

In what Sir John Coleridge urges against the fatal step of welcomingdisestablishment under an impatient sense of injustice we need not saythat we concur most earnestly. But it cannot be too seriouslyconsidered by those who see the mischief of disestablishment, that asSir John Coleridge also says, the English Churrh is, in one sense, adivided one; and that to pursue a policy of humiliating and cripplingone of its great parties must at last bring mischief. The position ofthe High Church party is a remarkable one. It has had more against itthan its rivals; yet it is probably the strongest of them all. It issaid, probably with reason, to be the unpopular party. It has been thestock object of abuse and sarcasm with a large portion of the press. Ithas been equally obnoxious to Radical small shopkeepers and "true blue"farmers and their squires. It has been mobbed in churches and censuredin Parliament. Things have gone against it, almost uniformly, beforethe tribunals. And unfortunately it cannot be said that it has beenwithout its full share of folly and extravagance in some of itsmembers. And yet it is the party which has grown; which has drawn someof its antagonists to itself, and has reacted on the ideas and habitsof others; its members have gradually, as a matter of course, riseninto important post and power. And it is to be noticed that, as aparty, it has been the most tolerant. All parties are in their natureintolerant; none more so, where critical points arise, than Liberalones. But in spite of the Dean of Westminster's surprise at HighChurchmen claiming to be tolerant, we still think that, in the firstplace, they are really much less inclined to meddle with theirneighbours than others of equally strong and deep convictions; andfurther, that they have become so more and more; and they have acceptedthe lessons of their experience; they have thrown off, more than anystrong religious body, the intolerance which was natural to everybodyonce, and have learned, better than they did at one time, to bear withwhat they dislike and condemn. If a party like this comes to feelitself dealt with harshly and unfairly, sacrificed to popular clamouror the animosity of inveterate and unscrupulous opponents, it iscertain that we shall be in great danger. 

V

MR. GLADSTONE'S LETTER ON THE ENGLISH CHURCH[7]

 [7] _Guardian_, 29th October 1884. 

Mr. Gladstone's Letter, read at the St. Asaph Diocesan Conference, willnot have surprised those who have borne in mind his deep andunintermitted interest in the fortunes and prospects of the Church, andhis habit of seeking relief from the pressure of one set of thoughtsand anxieties by giving full play to his mental energies in anotherdirection. Its composition and appearance at this moment are quiteaccounted for; it is a contribution to the business of the conferenceof his own diocese, and it was promised long before an autumn sessionon a great question between the two Houses was in view. Still theappearance of such a document from a person in Mr. Gladstone's positionmust, of course, invite attention and speculation. He may put aside thequestions which the word "Disestablishment"--which was in the thesisgiven him to write upon--is likely to provoke--"Will it come? ought itto come? must it come? Is it near, or somewhat distant, or indefinitelyremote?" On these questions he has not a word to say. But, all thesame, people will naturally try to read between the lines, and to findout what was in the writer's thoughts about these questions. We cannot, however, see that there is anything to be gathered from the Letter asto the political aspect of the matter; he simply confines himself tothe obvious lesson which passing events sufficiently bring with them, that whatever may come it is our business to be prepared. 

His anxieties are characteristic. The paper shows, we think, that ithas not escaped him that disestablishment, however compensated as somesanguine people hope, would be a great disaster and ruin. It would bethe failure and waste to the country of noble and astonishing efforts;it would be the break-up and collapse of a great and cheap system, bywhich light and human kindliness and intelligence are carried to vasttracts, that without its presence must soon become as stagnant andhopeless as many of the rural _communes_ of France; the blow would atthe moment cripple and disorganise the Church for its work even in thetowns. But though "happily improbable, " it may come; and in such acontingency, what occupies Mr. Gladstone's thoughts is, not thequestion whether it would be disastrous, but whether it would bedisgraceful. That is the point which disturbs and distresses him--thepossibility that the end of our later Church history, the end of thatwonderful experiment which has been going on from the sixteenthcentury, with such great vicissitudes, but after every shock withincreasing improvement and hope, should at last be not only failure, but failure with dishonour; and this, he says, could only come in oneof two ways. It might come from the Church having sunk into sloth anddeath, without faith, without conscience, without love. This, if itever was really to be feared, is not the danger before us now. Activity, conviction, energy, self-devotion, these, and not apatheticlethargy, mark the temper of our times; and they are as conspicuous inthe Church as anywhere else. But these qualities, as we have had ampleexperience, may develop into fierce and angry conflicts. It is ourinternal quarrels, Mr. Gladstone thinks, that create the most seriousrisk of disestablishment; and it is only our quarrels, which we havenot good sense and charity enough to moderate and keep within bounds, which would make it "disgraceful. "

The main feature of the Letter is the historical retrospect which Mr. Gladstone gives of the long history, the long travail of the laterEnglish Church. Hardly in its first start, under the Tudors, but moreand more as time went on, it instinctively, as it were, tried the greatand difficult problem of Christian liberty. The Churches of theContinent, Roman and anti-Roman, were simple in their systems; only onesharply defined theology, only the disciples and representatives of oneset of religious tendencies, would they allow to dwell within theirborders; what was refractory and refused to harmonise was at once castout; and for a certain time they were unvexed with internaldissensions. This, both in the case of the Roman, the Lutheran, and theCalvinistic Churches of the Continent, requires to be somewhatqualified; still, as compared with the rival schools of the EnglishChurch, Puritan and Anglican, the contrast is a true and a sharp one. Mr. Gladstone adopts from a German writer a view which is certainly notnew to many in England, that "the Reformation, as a religious movement, took its shape in England, not in the sixteenth century but in theseventeenth. " "It seems plain, " he says, "that the great bulk of thoseburned under Mary were Puritans"; and he adds, what is not perhaps socapable of proof, that "under Elizabeth we have to look, with rareexceptions, among the Puritans and Recusants for an active andreligious life. " It was not till the Restoration, it was not tillPuritanism had shown all its intolerance, all its narrowness, and allits helplessness, that the Church was able to settle the real basis andthe chief lines of its reformed constitution. It is not, as Mr. Gladstone says, "a heroic history"; there is room enough in thelooseness of some of its arrangements, and the incompleteness ofothers, for diversity of opinion and for polemical criticism. But theresult, in fact, of this liberty and this incompleteness has been, notthat the Church has declined lower and lower into indifference andnegation, but that it has steadily mounted in successive periods to ahigher level of purpose, to a higher standard of life and thought, offaith and work. Account for it as we may, with all drawbacks, withgreat intervals of seeming torpor, with much to be regretted and to beashamed of, that is literally the history of the English Church sincethe Restoration settlement. It is not "heroic, " but there are no Churchannals of the same time more so, and there are none fuller of hope. 

But every system has its natural and specific danger, and the specificEnglish danger, as it is the condition of vigorous English life, isthat spirit of liberty which allows and attempts to combine verydivergent tendencies of opinion. "The Church of England, " Mr. Gladstonethinks, "has been peculiarly liable, on the one side and on the other, both to attack and to defection, and the probable cause is to be foundin the degree in which, whether for worldly or for religious reasons, it was attempted in her case to combine divergent elements within herborders. " She is still, as he says, "working out her system byexperience"; and the exclusion of bitterness--even, as he says, of"savagery"--from her debates and controversies is hardly yetaccomplished. There is at present, indeed, a remarkable lull, a "truceof God, " which, it may be hoped, is of good omen; but we dare not betoo sure that it is going to be permanent. In the meantime, those whotremble lest disestablishment should be the signal of a great break upand separation of her different parties cannot do better than meditateon Mr. Gladstone's very solemn words:--

 The great maxim, _in omnibus caritas_, which is so necessary to temper all religious controversy, ought to apply with a tenfold force to the conduct of the members of the Church of England. In respect to differences among themselves they ought, of course, in the first place to remember that their right to differ is limited by the laws of the system to which they belong; but within that limit should they not also, each of them, recollect that his antagonist has something to say; that the Reformation and the counter-Reformation tendencies were, in the order of Providence, placed here in a closer juxtaposition than anywhere else in the Christian world; that a course of destiny so peculiar appears to indicate on the part of the Supreme Orderer a peculiar purpose, that not only no religious but no considerate or prudent man should run the risk of interfering with such a purpose; that the great charity which is a bounden duty everywhere in these matters should here be accompanied and upheld by two ever-striving handmaidens, a great Reverence and a great Patience. 

This is true, and of deep moment to those who guide and influencethought and feeling in the Church. But further, those in whose handsthe "Supreme Orderer" has placed the springs and the restraints ofpolitical movement and of change, if they recognise at all this view ofthe English Church, ought to feel one duty paramount in regard to it. Never was the Church, they tell us, more active and more hopeful; wellthen, what politicians who care for her have to see to is that sheshall have _time_ to work out effectually the tendencies which arevisible in her now more than at any period of her history--thatcombination which Mr. Gladstone wishes for, of the deepest individualfaith and energy, with forbearance and conciliation and the desire forpeace. She has a right to claim from English rulers that she shouldhave time to let these things work and bear fruit; if she has lost timebefore, she never was so manifestly in earnest in trying to make up forit as now. It is not talking, but working together, which bringsdifferent minds and tempers to understand one another's divergences;and it is this disposition to work together which shows itself and isgrowing now. But it needs time. What the Church has a right to ask fromthe arbiters of her temporal and political position in the country, ifthat is ultimately and inevitably to be changed, is that nothingprecipitate, nothing impatient, should be done; that she should havetime adequately to develop and fulfil what she now alone amongChristian communities seems in a position to attempt. 

VI

DISENDOWMENT[8]

 [8] _Guardian_, 14th October 1885. 

This generation has seen no such momentous change as that which hassuddenly appeared to be at our very doors, and which people speak of asdisestablishment. The word was only invented a few years ago, and wassneered at as a barbarism, worthy of the unpractical folly which it wascoined to express. It has been bandied about a good deal lately, sometimes _de coeur léger_; and within the last six months it hasassumed the substance and the weight of a formidable probability. Otherchanges, more or less serious, are awaiting us in the approachingfuture; but they are encompassed with many uncertainties, and allforecasts of their working are necessarily very doubtful. About thisthere is an almost brutal clearness and simplicity, as to what itmeans, as to what is intended by those who have pushed it intoprominence, and as to what will follow from their having their way. 

Disestablishment has really come to mean, in the mouth of friends andfoes, simple disendowment. It is well that the question should be setin its true terms, without being confused with vague and less importantissues. It is not very easy to say what disestablishment by itselfwould involve, except the disappearance of Bishops from the UpperHouse, or the presence of other religious dignitaries, with equal rankand rights, alongside of them. Questions of patronage andecclesiastical law might be difficult to settle; but otherwise astatute of mere disestablishment, not easy indeed to formulate, wouldleave the Church in the eyes of the country very much what it found it. Perhaps "My lord" might be more widely dropped in addressing Bishops;but otherwise, the aspect of the Church, its daily work, itsorganisations, would remain the same, and it would depend on the Churchitself whether the consideration paid to it continues what it has been;whether it shall be diminished or increased. The privilege of beingpublicly recognised with special marks of honour by the State has beendearly paid for by the claim which the State has always, and sometimesunscrupulously, insisted on, of making the true interests of the Churchsubservient to its own passing necessities. 

But there is no haziness about the meaning of disendowment. Property isa tangible thing, and is subject to the four rules of arithmetic, andultimately to the force of the strong arm. When you talk ofdisendowment, you talk of taking from the Church, not honour orprivilege or influence, but visible things, to be measured and countedand pointed to, which now belong to it and which you want to belong tosome one else. They belong to individuals because the individualsbelong to a great body. There are, of course, many people who do notbelieve that such a body exists; or that if it does, it has been calledinto being and exists simply by the act of the State, like the army, and, like the army, liable to be disbanded by its master. But that is aview resting on a philosophical theory of a purely subjectivecharacter; it is as little the historical or legal view as it is thetheological view. We have not yet lost our right in the nineteenthcentury to think of the Church of England as a continuous, historic, religious society, bound by ties which, however strained, are stillunbroken with that vast Christendom from which as a matter of fact itsprung, and still, in spite of all differences, external and internal, and by force of its traditions and institutions, as truly one body asanything can be on earth. To this Church, this body, by right which atpresent is absolutely unquestionable, property belongs; property hasbeen given from time immemorial down to yesterday. This property, inits bulk, with whatever abatements and allowances, it is intended totake from the Church. This is disendowment, and this is what is beforeus. 

It is well to realise as well as we can what is inevitably involved inthis vast and, in modern England, unexampled change, which we aresometimes invited to view with philosophic calmness or resignation, asthe unavoidable drift of the current of modern thought, or still morecheerfully to welcome, as the beginning of a new era in the prosperityand strength of the Church as a religious institution. We are entreatedto be of good cheer. The Church will be more free; it will no longer bemixed up with sordid money matters and unpopular payments; it will nolonger have the discredit of State control; the rights of the laitywill come up and a blow will be struck at clericalism. With all ourmachinery shattered and ruined we shall be thrown more on individualenergy and spontaneous originality of effort. Our new poverty will spurus into zeal. Above all, the Church will be delivered from thetemptation, incident to wealth, of sticking to abuses for the sake ofgold; of shrinking from principle and justice and enthusiasm, out offear of worldly loss. It will no longer be a place for drones andhirelings. It is very kind of the revolutionists to wish all this goodto the Church, though if the Church is so bad as to need all these goodwishes for its improvement, it would be more consistent, and perhapsless cynical, to wish it ruined altogether. Yet even if the Church werelikely to thrive better on no bread, there are reasons of publicmorality why it should not be robbed. But these prophecies andforecasts really belong to a sphere far removed from the mentalactivity of those who so easily indulge in them. These excellentpersons are hardly fitted by habit and feeling to be judges of theprobable course of Divine Providence, or the development of newreligious energies and spiritual tendencies in a suddenly impoverishedbody. What they can foresee, and what we can foresee also is, thatthese _tabulae novae_ will be a great blow to the Church. They meanthat, and that we understand. 

It is idle to talk as if it was to be no blow to the Church. Theconfiscation of Wesleyan and Roman Catholic Church property would be areal blow to Wesleyan or Roman Catholic interests; and in proportion asthe body is greater the effects of the blow must be heavier and moresignal. It is trifling with our patience to pretend to persuade us thatsuch a confiscation scheme as is now recommended to the country wouldnot throw the whole work of the Church into confusion and disaster, notperhaps irreparable, but certainly for the time overwhelming andperilous. People speak sometimes as if such a huge transfer of propertywas to be done with the stroke of a pen and the aid of a few officeclerks; they forget what are the incidents of an institution which haslasted in England for more than a thousand years, and whose businessextends to every aspect and degree of our very complex society from thehighest to the lowest. Resources may be replaced, but for the time theymust be crippled. Life may be rearranged for the new circumstances, butin the meanwhile all the ordinary assumptions have to be changed, allthe ordinary channels of activity are stopped up or diverted. 

And why should this vast and far-reaching change be made? Is itunlawful for the Church to hold property? Other religious organisationshold it, and even the Salvation Army knows the importance of funds forits work. Is it State property which the State may resume for otheruses? If anything is certain it is that the State, except in aninconsiderable degree, did not endow the Church, but consented in themost solemn way to its being endowed by the gifts of private donors, asit now consents to the endowment in this way of other religious bodies. Does the bigness of the property entitle the State to claim it? This isa formidable doctrine for other religious bodies, as they increase ininfluence and numbers. Is it vexatious that the Church should be richerand more powerful than the sects? It is not the fault of the Churchthat it is the largest and the most ancient body in England. There isbut one real and adequate reason: it is the wish to disable andparalyse a great religious corporation, the largest and most powerfulrepresentative of Christianity in our English society, to exhibit it tothe nation after centuries of existence at length defeated and humbledby the new masters' power, to deprive it of the organisation and theresources which it is using daily with increasing effect for impressingreligious truth on the people, for winning their interest, theirconfidence, and their sympathy, for obtaining a hold on the generationswhich are coming. The Liberation Society might go on for yearsrepeating their dreary catalogue of grievances and misstatements. Doubtless there is much for which they desire to punish the Church;doubtless, too, there are men among them who are persuaded that theywould serve religion by discrediting and impoverishing the Church. Butthey are not the people with whom the Church has to reckon. TheLiberationists might have long asked in vain for their pet"emancipation" scheme. They are stronger men than the Liberationistswho are going in now for disendowment. They are men--we do them nowrong--who sincerely think Christianity mischievous, and who see in thepower and resources of the Church a bulwark and representative of allreligion which it is of the first importance to get rid of. 

This is the one adequate and consistent reason for the confiscation ofthe property of the Church. There is no other reason that will beardiscussion to be given for what, without it, is a great moral andpolitical wrong. In such a settled society as ours, where men reckon onwhat is their own, such a sweeping and wholesale transfer of propertycannot be justified, on a mere balance of probable expediency in theuse of it. Unless it is as a punishment for gross neglect and abuse, aswas alleged in the partial confiscations of the sixteenth century, orunless it is called for as a step to break down what can no longer betolerated, like slavery, there is no other name for it, in the estimateof justice, than that of a deep and irreparable wrong. This iscertainly not the time to punish the Church when it never was moreimproving and more unsparing of sacrifice and effort. But it may befull time to stop a career which may render success more difficult forschemes ahead, which make no secret of their intention to dispense withreligion. This, however, is not what most Englishmen wish, whetherLiberals or Conservatives, or even Nonconformists; and without this endthere is no more justice in disendowing a great religious corporationlike the Church, than in disendowing the Duke of Bedford or the Duke ofWestminster. Of course no one can deny the competence of Parliament todo either one or the other; but power does not necessarily carry withit justice, and justice means that while there are great and small, rich and poor, the State should equally protect all its members and allits classes, however different. Revolutions have no law; but a greatwrong, deliberately inflicted in times of settled order, is moremischievous to the nation than even to those who suffer from it. History has shown us what follows from such gratuitous and wanton wrongin the bitter feeling of defeat and humiliation lasting throughgenerations. But worse than this is the effect on the politicalmorality of the nation; the corrupting and fatal consciousness ofhaving once broken through the restraints of recognised justice, ofhaving acquiesced in a tempting but high-handed wrong. The effects ofdisendowment concern England and its morality even more deeply thanthey do the Church. 

VII

THE NEW COURT[9]

 [9] _Guardian_, 15th May 1889. 

The claim maintained by the Archbishop in his Judgment, by virtue ofhis metropolitical authority and by that alone, to cite, try, andsentence one of his suffragans, is undoubtedly what is called in slanglanguage "a large order. " Even by those who may have thought itinevitable, after the Watson case had been so distinctly accepted bythe books as a precedent, it is yet felt as a surprise, in the sense inwhich a thing is often a surprise when, after being only talked aboutit becomes a reality. We can imagine some people getting up in themorning on last Saturday with one set of feelings, and going to bedwith another. Bishops, then, who in spite of the alleged anarchy, arestill looked upon with great reverence, as almost irresponsible in whatthey say and do officially, are, it seems, as much at the mercy of thelaw as the presbyters and deacons whom they have occasionally sentbefore the Courts. They, too, at the will of chance accusers who areaccountable to no one, are liable to the humiliation, worry, andcrushing law-bills of an ecclesiastical suit. Whatever may be thoughtof this now, it would have seemed extravagant and incredible to theolder race of Bishops that their actions should be so called inquestion. They would have thought their dignity gravely assailed, ifbesides having to incur heavy expense in prosecuting offendingclergymen, they had also to incur it in protecting themselves from thecharge of being themselves offenders against Church law. 

The growth of law is always a mysterious thing; and an outsider andlayman is disposed to ask where this great jurisdiction sprung up andgrew into shape and power. In the Archbishop's elaborate and ableJudgment it is indeed treated as something which had always been; buthe was more successful in breaking down the force of allegedauthorities, and inferences from them, on the opposite side, than hewas in establishing clearly and convincingly his own contention. Considering the dignity and importance of the jurisdiction claimed, itis curious that so little is heard about it till the beginning of theeighteenth century. It is curious that in its two most conspicuousinstances it should have been called into activity by those notnaturally friendly to large ecclesiastical claims--by Low Churchmen ofthe Revolution against an offending Jacobite, and by a Puritanassociation against a High Churchman. There is no such clear and strongcase as Bishop Watson's till we come to Bishop Watson. In his argumentthe Archbishop rested his claim definitely and forcibly on theprecedent of Bishop Watson's case, and one or two cases which more orless followed it. That possibly is sufficient for his purpose; but itmay still be asked--What did the Watson case itself grow out of? whatwere the precedents--not merely the analogies and supposed legalnecessities, but the precedents--on which this exercise ofmetropolitical jurisdiction, distinct from the legatine power, rested?For it seems as if a formidable prerogative, not much heard of where wemight expect to hear of it, not used by Cranmer and Laud, thoughapproved by Cranmer in the _Reformatio Legum_, had sprung into beingand energy in the hands of the mild Archbishop Tenison. Watson's casemay be good law and bind the Archbishop. But it would have been moresatisfactory if, in reviving a long-disused power, the Archbishop hadbeen able to go behind the Watson case, and to show more certainly thatthe jurisdiction which he claimed and proposed to exercise inconformity with that case had, like the jurisdiction of other greatcourts of the Church and realm, been clearly and customarily exercisedlong before that case. 

The appearance of this great tribunal among us, a distinctly spiritualcourt of the highest dignity, cannot fail to be memorable. It is tooearly to forecast what its results may be. There may be before it anactive and eventful career, or it may fall back into disuse andquiescence. It has jealous and suspicious rivals in the civil courts, never well disposed to the claim of ecclesiastical power or purelyspiritual authority; and though its jurisdiction is not likely to bestrained at present, it is easy to conceive occasions in the futurewhich may provoke the interference of the civil court. 

But there is this interest about the present proceedings, that theyillustrate with curious closeness, amid so much that is different, theway in which great spiritual prerogatives grew up in the Church. Theymay have ended disastrously; but at their first beginnings they wereusually inevitable, innocent, blameless. Time after time the necessityarose of some arbiter among those who were themselves arbiters, rulers, judges. Time after time this necessity forced those in the first rankinto this position, as being the only persons who could be allowed totake it, and so Archbishops, Metropolitans, Primates appeared, topreside at assemblies, to be the mouthpiece of a general sentiment, todecide between high authorities, to be the centre of appeals. ThePapacy itself at its first beginning had no other origin. It interferedbecause it was asked to interfere; it judged because there was no oneelse to judge. And so necessities of a very different kind have forcedthe Archbishop of Canterbury of our day into a position which is newand strange to our experience, and which, however constitutional andreasonable it may be, must give every one who is at all affected by ita good deal to think about. 

VIII

MOZLEY'S BAMPTON LECTURES[10]

I

 [10] _Eight Lectures on Miracles: the Bampton Lectures for 1865_. By the Rev. J. B. Mozley, B. D. _The Times_, 5th and 6th June 1866. 

The way in which the subject of Miracles has been treated, and theplace which they have had in our discussions, will remain acharacteristic feature of both the religious and philosophicaltendencies of thought among us. Miracles, if they are real things, arethe most awful and august of realities. But, from various causes, oneof which, perhaps, is the very word itself, and the way in which itbinds into one vague and technical generality a number of mostheterogeneous instances, miracles have lost much of their power tointerest those who have thought most in sympathy with their generation. They have been summarily and loosely put aside, sometimes avowedly, more often still by implication. Even by those who accepted andmaintained them, they have often been touched uncertainly and formally, as if people thought that they were doing a duty, but would like muchbetter to talk about other things which really attracted and filledtheir minds. In the long course of theological war for the last twocenturies, it is hardly too much to say that miracles, as a subject fordiscussion, have been degraded and worn down from their originalsignificance; vulgarised by passing through the handling of not thehighest order of controversialists, who battered and defaced what theybandied about in argument, which was often ingenious and acute, andoften mere verbal sophistry, but which, in any case, seldom rose to thetrue height of the question. Used either as instruments of proof or asfair game for attack, they suffered in the common and popular feelingabout them. Taken in a lump, and with little realising of all that theywere and implied, they furnished a cheap and tempting material for"short and easy methods" on one side, and on the other side, as it isobvious, a mark for just as easy and tempting objections. They becametrite. People got tired of hearing of them, and shy of urging them, anddwelt in preference on other grounds of argument. The more seriousfeeling and the more profound and original thought of the last halfcentury no longer seemed to give them the value and importance whichthey had; on both sides a disposition was to be traced to turn asidefrom them. The deeper religion and the deeper and more enterprisingscience of the day combined to lower them from their old evidentialplace. The one threw the moral stress on moral grounds of belief, andseemed inclined to undervalue external proofs. The other more and moreyielded to its repugnance to admit the interruption of natural law, andbecame more and more disinclined even to discuss the supernatural; and, curiously enough, along with this there was in one remarkable school ofreligious philosophy an increased readiness to believe in miracles assuch, without apparently caring much for them as proofs. Of late, indeed, things have taken a different turn. The critical importance ofmiracles, after for a time having fallen out of prominence behind otherquestions, has once more made itself felt. Recent controversy hasforced them again on men's thoughts, and has made us see that, whetherthey are accepted or denied, it is idle to ignore them. They mean toomuch to be evaded. Like all powerful arguments they cut two ways, andof all powerful arguments they are the most clearly two-edged. Howeverwe may limit their range, some will remain which we must face; which, according to what is settled about them, either that they are true ornot true, will entirely change all that we think of religion. Writerson all sides have begun to be sensible that a decisive point requirestheir attention, and that its having suffered from an old-fashioned wayof handling is no reason why it should not on its own merits engageafresh the interest of serious men, to whom it is certainly ofconsequence. 

The renewed attention of theological writers to the subject of miraclesas an element of proof has led to some important discussions upon it, showing in their treatment of a well-worn inquiry that a change in theway of conducting it had become necessary. Of these productions we mayplace Mr. Mozley's _Bampton Lectures_ for last year among the mostoriginal and powerful. They are an example, and a very fine one, of amode of theological writing which is characteristic of the Church ofEngland, and almost peculiar to it. The distinguishing features of itare a combination of intense seriousness with a self-restrained, severecalmness, and of very vigorous and wide-ranging reasoning on therealities of the case with the least amount of care about artificialsymmetry or scholastic completeness. Admirers of the Roman style callit cold, indefinite, wanting in dogmatic coherence, comprehensiveness, and grandeur. Admirers of the German style find little to praise in acautious bit-by-bit method, content with the tests which have mostaffinity with common sense, incredulous of exhaustive theories, leavinga large margin for the unaccountable or the unexplained. But it has itsmerits, one of them being that, dealing very solidly and very acutelywith large and real matters of experience, the interest of suchwritings endures as the starting-point and foundation for future work. Butler out of England is hardly known, certainly he is not much valuedeither as a divine or a philosopher; but in England, though wecriticise him freely, it will be a long time before he is out of date. Mr. Mozley's book belongs to that class of writings of which Butler maybe taken as the type. It is strong, genuine argument about difficultmatters, fairly facing what _is_ difficult, fairly trying to grapple, not with what _appears_ the gist and strong point of a question, butwith what really and at bottom _is_ the knot of it. It is a book thereasoning of which may not satisfy every one; but it is a book in whichthere is nothing plausible, nothing put in to escape the trouble ofthinking out what really comes across the writer's path. This will notrecommend it to readers who themselves are not fond of trouble; a bookof hard thinking cannot be a book of easy reading; nor is it a book forpeople to go to who only want available arguments, or to see a questionapparently settled in a convenient way. But we think it is a book forpeople who wish to see a great subject handled on a scale which befitsit and with a perception of its real elements. It is a book which willhave attractions for those who like to see a powerful mind applyingitself without shrinking or holding back, without trick or reserve orshow of any kind, as a wrestler closes body to body with hisantagonist, to the strength of an adverse and powerful argument. Astern self-constraint excludes everything exclamatory, all glimpses anddisclosures of what merely affects the writer, all advantages from anappeal, disguised and indirect perhaps, to the opinion of his own side. But though the work is not rhetorical, it is not the less eloquent; butit is eloquence arising from a keen insight at once into what is realand what is great, and from a singular power of luminous, noble, andexpressive statement. There is no excitement about its close subtletrains of reasoning; and there is no affectation, --and therefore noaffectation of impartiality. The writer has his conclusions, and hedoes not pretend to hold a balance between them and their opposites. But in the presence of such a subject he never loses sight of itsgreatness, its difficulty, its eventfulness; and these thoughts makehim throughout his undertaking circumspect, considerate, and calm. 

The point of view from which the subject of miracles is looked at inthese Lectures is thus stated in the preface. It is plain that twogreat questions arise--first, Are miracles possible? next, If they are, can any in fact be proved? These two branches of the inquiry involvedifferent classes of considerations. The first is purely philosophical, and stops the inquiry at once if it can be settled in the negative. Theother calls in also the aid of history and criticism. Both questionshave been followed out of late with great keenness and interest, but itis the first which at present assumes an importance which it never hadbefore, with its tremendous negative answer, revolutionising not onlythe past, but the whole future of mankind; and it is to the first thatMr. Mozley's work is mainly addressed. 

 The difficulty which attaches to miracles in the period of thought through which we are now passing is one which is concerned not with their evidence, but with their intrinsic credibility. There has arisen in a certain class of minds an apparent perception of the impossibility of suspensions of physical law. This is one peculiarity of the time; another is a disposition to maintain the disbelief of miracles upon a religious basis, and in a connection with a declared belief in the Christian revelation. 

 The following Lectures, therefore, are addressed mainly to the fundamental question of the credibility of Miracles, their use and the evidences of them being only touched on subordinately and collaterally. It was thought that such an aim, though in itself a narrow and confined one, was most adapted to the particular need of the day. 

As Mr. Mozley says, various points essential to the whole argument, such as testimony, and the criterion between true and false miracles, are touched upon; but what is characteristic of the work is the way inwhich it deals with the antecedent objection to the possibility andcredibility of miracles. It is on this part of the subject that thewriter strikes out a line for himself, and puts forth his strength. Hisargument may be described generally as a plea for reason againstimagination and the broad impressions of custom. Experience, suchexperience as we have of the world and human life, has, in all ages, been really the mould of human thought, and with large exceptions, themain unconscious guide and controller of human belief; and in our owntimes it has been formally and scientifically recognised as such, andmade the exclusive foundation of all possible philosophy. A philosophyof mere experience is not tolerant of miracles; its doctrines excludethem; but, what is of even greater force than its doctrines, the subtleand penetrating atmosphere of feeling and intellectual habits whichaccompanies it is essentially uncongenial and hostile to them. It isagainst the undue influence of such results of experience--an influenceopenly acting in distinct ideas and arguments, but of which the greaterportion operates blindly, insensibly, and out of sight--that Mr. Mozleymakes a stand on behalf of reason, to which it belongs in the lastresort to judge of the lessons of experience. Reason, as it cannotcreate experience, so it cannot take its place and be its substitute;but what reason can do is to say within what limits experience isparamount as a teacher; and reason abdicates its functions if itdeclines to do so, for it was given us to work upon and turn to accountthe unmeaning and brute materials which experience gives us in therough. The antecedent objection against miracles is, he says, one ofexperience, but not one of reason. And experience, flowing over itsboundaries tyrannically and effacing its limits, is as dangerous totruth and knowledge as reason once was, when it owned no check innature, and used no test but itself. 

Mr. Mozley begins by stating clearly the necessity for coming to adecision on the question of miracles. It cannot remain one of the openquestions, at least of religion. There is, as has been said, adisposition to pass by it, and to construct a religion withoutmiracles. The thing is conceivable. We can take what are as a matter offact the moral results of Christianity, and of that singular power withwhich it has presided over the improvement of mankind, and alloying andqualifying them with other elements, not on the face of the matter itsproducts, yet in many cases indirectly connected with its working, formsomething which we may acknowledge as a rule of life, and which maysatisfy our inextinguishable longings after the unseen and eternal. Itis true that such a religion presupposes Christianity, to which it owesits best and noblest features, and that, as far as we can see, it isinconceivable if Christianity had not first been. Still, we may saythat alchemy preceded chemistry, and was not the more true for beingthe step to what is true. But what we cannot say of such a religion isthat it takes the place of Christianity, and is such a religion asChristianity has been and claims to be. There must ever be all thedifference in the world between a religion which is or professes to bea revelation, and one which cannot be called such. For a revelation isa direct work and message of God; but that which is the result of aprocess and progress of rinding out the truth by the experience ofages, or of correcting mistakes, laying aside superstitions andgradually reducing the gross mass of belief to its essential truth, issimply on a level with all other human knowledge, and, as it is aboutthe unseen, can never be verified. If there has been no revelation, there may be religious hopes and misgivings, religious ideas or dreams, religious anticipations and trust; but the truth is, there cannot be areligion in the world. Much less can there be any such thing asChristianity. It is only when we look at it vaguely in outline, withouthaving before our mind what it is in fact and in detail, that we canallow ourselves to think so. There is no transmuting its refractoryelements into something which is not itself; and it is nothing if it isnot primarily a direct message from God. Limit as we may the manner ofthis communication, still there remains what makes it different fromall other human possessions of truth, that it was a direct message. Andthat, to whatever extent, involves all that is involved in the idea ofmiracles. It is, as Mr. Mozley says, inconceivable without miracles. 

 If, then, a person of evident integrity and loftiness of character rose into notice in a particular country and community eighteen centuries ago, who made these communications about himself--that he had existed before his natural birth, from all eternity, and before the world was, in a state of glory with God; that he was the only-begotten Son of God; that the world itself had been made by him; that he had, however, come down from heaven and assumed the form and nature of man for a particular purpose--viz. To be the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world; that he thus stood in a mysterious and supernatural relation to the whole of mankind; that through him alone mankind had access to God; that he was the head of an invisible kingdom, into which he should gather all the generations of righteous men who had lived in the world; that on his departure from hence he should return to heaven to prepare mansions there for them; and, lastly, that he should descend again at the end of the world to judge the whole human race, on which occasion all that were in their graves should hear his voice and come forth, they that had done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that had done evil unto the resurrection of damnation, --if this person made these assertions about himself, and all that was done was to make the assertions, what would be the inevitable conclusion of sober reason respecting that person? The necessary conclusion of sober reason respecting that person would be that he was disordered in his understanding. What other decision could we come to when a man, looking like one of ourselves, and only exemplifying in his life and circumstances the ordinary course of nature, said this about himself, but that when reason had lost its balance a dream of extraordinary and unearthly grandeur might be the result? By no rational being could a just and benevolent life be accepted as proof of such astonishing announcements. Miracles are the necessary complement then of the truth of such announcements, which without them are purposeless and abortive, the unfinished fragments of a design which is nothing unless it is the whole. They are necessary to the justification of such announcements, which, indeed, unless they are supernatural truths, are the wildest delusions. The matter and its guarantee are the two parts of a revelation, the absence of either of which neutralises and undoes it. 

A revelation, in any sense in which it is more than merely a result ofthe natural progress of the human mind and the gradual clearing up ofmistakes, cannot in the nature of things be without miracles, becauseit is not merely a discovery of ideas and rules of life, but of factsundiscoverable without it. It involves _constituent_ miracles, to useDe Quincey's phrase, as part of its substance, and could not claim abearing without _evidential_ or _polemic_ ones. No other portion orform of proof, however it may approve itself to the ideas of particularperiods or minds, can really make up for this. The alleged sinlessnessof the Teacher, the internal evidence from adaptation to human nature, the historical argument of the development of Christendom, are, as Mr. Mozley points out, by themselves inadequate, without that furtherguarantee which is contained in miracles, to prove the Divine origin ofa religion. The tendency has been of late to fall back on theseattractive parts of the argument, which admit of such varied handlingand expression, and come home so naturally to the feelings of an age sobusy and so keen in pursuing the secrets of human character, and sofascinated with its unfolding wonders. But take any of them, theargument from results, for instance, perhaps the most powerful of themall. "We cannot, " as Mr. Mozley says, "rest too much upon it, so longas we do not charge it with more of the burden of proof than it is inits own nature equal to--viz. The whole. But that it cannot bear. " Thehard, inevitable question remains at the end, for the most attenuatedbelief in Christianity as a religion from God--what is the ultimatelink which connects it directly with God? The readiness with which wethrow ourselves on more congenial topics of proof does not show that, even to our own minds, these proofs could suffice by themselves, miracles being really taken away. The whole power of a complex argumentand the reasons why it tells do not always appear on its face. It doesnot depend merely on what it states, but also on unexpressed, unanalysed, perhaps unrealised grounds, the real force of which wouldat once start forth if they were taken away. We are told of the obscurerays of the spectrum, rays which have their proof and their effect, only not the same proof and effect as the visible ones which theyaccompany; and the background and latent suppositions of a greatargument are as essential to it as its more prominent and elaborateconstructions. And they show their importance sometimes in a remarkableand embarrassing way, when, after a long debate, their presence at thebottom of everything, unnoticed and perhaps unallowed for, is at lengthdisclosed by some obvious and decisive question, which some person hadbeen too careless to think of, and another too shy to ask. We may notcare to obtrude miracles; but take them away, and see what becomes ofthe argument for Christianity. 

 It must be remembered that when this part of Christian evidence comes so forcibly home to us, and creates that inward assurance which it does, it does this in connection with the proof of miracles in the background, which though it may not for the time be brought into actual view, is still known to be there, and to be ready for use upon being wanted. The _indirect_ proof from results has the greater force, and carries with it the deeper persuasion, because it is additional and auxiliary to the _direct_ proof behind it, upon which it leans all the time, though we may not distinctly notice and estimate this advantage. Were the evidence of moral result to be taken rigidly alone as the one single guarantee for a Divine revelation, it would then be seen that we had calculated its single strength too highly. If there is a species of evidence which is directly appropriate to the thing believed, we cannot suppose, on the strength of the indirect evidence we possess, that we can do without the direct. But miracles are the direct credentials of a revelation; the visible supernatural is the appropriate witness to the invisible supernatural--that proof which goes straight to the point, and, a token being wanted of a Divine communication, is that token. We cannot, therefore, dispense with this evidence. The position that the revelation proves the miracles, and not the miracles the revelation, admits of a good qualified meaning; but, taken literally, it is a double offence against the rule that things are properly proved by the proper proof of them; for a supernatural fact _is_ the proper proof of a supernatural doctrine, while a supernatural doctrine, on the other hand, is certainly _not_ the proper proof of a supernatural fact. 

So that, whatever comes of the inquiry, miracles and revelation must gotogether. There is no separating them. Christianity may claim in themthe one decisive proof that could be given of its Divine origin and thetruth of its creed; but, at any rate, it must ever be responsible forthem. 

 But suppose a person to say, and to say with truth, that his own individual faith does not rest upon miracles, is he, therefore, released from the defence of miracles? Is the question of their truth or falsehood an irrelevant one to him? Is his faith secure if they are disproved? By no means; if miracles were, although only at the commencement, necessary to Christianity, and were actually wrought, and therefore form part of the Gospel record and are bound up with the Gospel scheme and doctrines, this part of the structure cannot be abandoned without the sacrifice of the other too. To shake the authority of one-half of this body of statement is to shake the authority of the whole. Whether or not the individual makes _use_ of them for the support of his own faith, the miracles are there; and if they are there they must be there either as true miracles or as false ones. If he does not avail himself of their evidence, his belief is still affected by their refutation. Accepting, as he does, the supernatural truths of Christianity and its miracles upon the same report from the same witnesses, upon the authority of the same documents, he cannot help having at any rate this negative interest in them. For if those witnesses and documents deceive us with regard to the miracles, how can we trust them with regard to the doctrines? If they are wrong upon the evidences of a revelation, how can we depend upon their being right as to the nature of that revelation? If their account of visible facts is to be received with an explanation, is not their account of doctrines liable to a like explanation? Revelation, then, even if it does not need the truth of miracles for the benefit of their proof, still requires it in order not to be crushed under the weight of their falsehood. .. . Thus miracles and the supernatural contents of Christianity must stand or fall together. These two questions--the _nature_ of the revelation, and the _evidence_ of the revelation--cannot be disjoined. Christianity as a dispensation undiscoverable by human reason, and Christianity as a dispensation authenticated by miracles--these two are in necessary combination. If any do not include the supernatural character of Christianity in their definition of it, regarding the former only as one interpretation of it or one particular traditional form of it, which is separable from the essence--for Christianity as thus defined the support of miracles is not wanted, because the moral truths are their own evidence. But Christianity cannot be maintained as a revelation undiscoverable by human reason, a revelation of a supernatural scheme for man's salvation, without the evidence of miracles. 

The question of miracles, then, of the supernatural disclosed in theworld of nature, is the vital point for everything that calls itselfChristianity. It may be forgotten or disguised; but it is vain to keepit back and put it out of sight. It must be answered; and if we settleit that miracles are incredible, it is idle to waste our time aboutaccommodations with Christianity, or reconstitutions of it. Let us bethankful for what it has done for the world; but let us put it away, both name and thing. It is an attempt after what is in the nature ofthings impossible to man--a revealed religion, authenticated by God. The shape which this negative answer takes is, as Mr. Mozley pointsout, much more definite now than it ever was. Miracles were formerlyassailed and disbelieved on mixed and often confused grounds; fromalleged defect of evidence, from their strangeness, or because theywould be laughed at. Foes and defenders looked at them from the outsideand in the gross; and perhaps some of those who defended them mostkeenly had a very imperfect sense of what they really were. Thedifficulty of accepting them now arises not mainly from want ofexternal evidence, but from having more keenly realised what it is tobelieve a miracle. As Mr. Mozley says--

 How is it that sometimes when the same facts and truths have been before men all their lives, and produced but one impression, a moment comes when they look different from what they did? Some minds may abandon, while others retain, their fundamental position with respect to those facts and truths, but to both they look stranger; they excite a certain surprise which they did not once do. The reasons of this change then it is not always easy for the persons themselves to trace, but of the result they are conscious; and in some this result is a change of belief. 

 An inward process of this kind has been going on recently in many minds on the subject of miracles; and in some with the latter result. When it came to the question--which every one must sooner or later put to himself on this subject--Did these things really take place? Are they matters of fact?--they have appeared to themselves to be brought to a standstill, and to be obliged to own an inner refusal of their whole reason to admit them among the actual events of the past. This strong repugnance seemed to be the witness of its own truth, to be accompanied by a clear and vivid light, to be a law to the understanding, and to rule without appeal the question of fact. .. . But when the reality of the past is once apprehended and embraced, then the miraculous occurrences in it are realised too; being realised they excite surprise, and surprise, when it comes in, takes two directions--it either makes belief more real, or it destroys belief. There is an element of doubt in surprise; for this emotion arises _because_ an event is strange, and an event is strange because it goes counter to and jars with presumption. Shall surprise, then, give life to belief or stimulus to doubt? The road of belief and unbelief in the history of some minds thus partly lies over common ground; the two go part of their journey together; they have a common perception in the insight into the real astonishing nature of the facts with which they deal. The majority of mankind, perhaps, owe their belief rather to the outward influence of custom and education than to any strong principle of faith within; and it is to be feared that many, if they came to perceive how wonderful what they believed was, would not find their belief so easy and so matter-of-course a thing as they appear to find it. Custom throws a film over the great facts of religion, and interposes a veil between the mind and truth, which, by preventing wonder, intercepts doubt too, and at the same time excludes from deep belief and protects from disbelief. But deeper faith and disbelief throw off in common the dependence on mere custom, draw aside the interposing veil, place themselves face to face with the contents of the past, and expose themselves alike to the ordeal of wonder. 

 It is evident that the effect which the visible order of nature has upon some minds is, that as soon as they realise what a miracle is, they are stopped by what appears to them a simple sense of its impossibility. So long as they only believe by habit and education, they accept a miracle without difficulty, because they do not realise it as an event which actually took place in the world; the alteration of the face of the world, and the whole growth of intervening history, throw the miracles of the Gospel into a remote perspective in which they are rather seen as a picture than real occurrences. But as soon as they see that, if these miracles are true, they once really happened, what they feel then is the apparent sense of their impossibility. It is not a question of evidence with them: when they realise, e. G. , that our Lord's resurrection, if true, was a visible fact or occurrence, they have the seeming certain perception that it is an impossible occurrence. "I cannot, " a person says to himself in effect, "tear myself from the type of experience and join myself to another. I cannot quit order and law for what is eccentric. There is a repulsion between such facts and my belief as strong as that between physical substances. In the mere effort to conceive these amazing scenes as real ones, I fall back upon myself and upon that type of reality which the order of nature has impressed upon me. "

The antagonism to the idea of miracles has grown stronger and moredefinite with the enlarged and more widely-spread conception ofinvariable natural law, and also, as Mr. Mozley points out, with thatincreased power in our time of realising the past, which is not thepeculiarity of individual writers, but is "part of the thought of thetime. " But though it has been quickened and sharpened by theseinfluences, it rests ultimately on that sense which all men have incommon of the customary and regular in their experience of the world. The world, which we all know, stands alone, cut off from any other; anda miracle is an intrusion, "an interpolation of one order of thingsinto another, confounding two systems which are perfectly distinct. "The broad, deep resistance to it which is awakened in the mind when welook abroad on the face of nature is expressed in Emerson's phrase--"Amiracle is a monster. It is not one with the blowing clouds or thefalling rain. " Who can dispute it? Yet the rejoinder is obvious, andhas often been given--that neither is man. Man, who looks at nature andthinks and feels about its unconscious unfeeling order; man, with histemptations, his glory, and his shame, his heights of goodness, anddepths of infamy, is not one with those innocent and soulless forces sosternly immutable--"the blowing clouds and falling rain. " The two awfulphenomena which Kant said struck him dumb--the starry heavens, andright and wrong--are vainly to be reduced to the same order of things. Nothing can be stranger than the contrast between the rigid, inevitablesequences of nature, apparently so elastic only because not yetperfectly comprehended, and the consciousness of man in the midst ofit. Nothing can be stranger than the juxtaposition of physical law andman's sense of responsibility and choice. Man is an "insertion, " an"interpolation in the physical system"; he is "insulated as an anomalyin the midst of matter and material law. " Mr. Mozley's words arestriking:--

 The first appearance, then, of man in nature was the appearance of a new being in nature; and this fact was relatively to the then order of things miraculous; no more physical account can be given of it than could be given of a resurrection to life now. What more entirely new and eccentric fact, indeed, can be imagined than a human soul first rising up amidst an animal and vegetable world? Mere consciousness--was not that of itself a new world within the old one? Mere knowledge--that nature herself became known to a being within herself, was not that the same? Certainly man was not all at once the skilled interpreter of nature, and yet there is some interpretation of nature to which man as such is equal in some degree. He derives an impression from the sight of nature which an animal does not derive; for though the material spectacle is imprinted on its retina, as it is on man's, it does not see what man sees. The sun rose, then, and the sun descended, the stars looked down upon the earth, the mountains climbed to heaven, the cliffs stood upon the shore, the same as now, countless ages before a single being existed who _saw_ it. The counterpart of this whole scene was wanting--the understanding mind; that mirror in which the whole was to be reflected; and when this arose it was a new birth for creation itself, that it became _known_, --an image in the mind of a conscious being. But even consciousness and knowledge were a less strange and miraculous introduction into the world than conscience. 

 Thus wholly mysterious in his entrance into this scene, man is _now_ an insulation in it; he came in by no physical law, and his freewill is in utter contrast to that law. What can be more incomprehensible, more heterogeneous, a more ghostly resident in nature, than the sense of right and wrong? What is it? Whence is it? The obligation of man to sacrifice himself for right is a truth which springs out of an abyss, the mere attempt to look down into which confuses the reason. Such is the juxtaposition of mysterious and physical contents in the same system. Man is alone, then, in nature: he alone of all the creatures communes with a Being out of nature; and he divides himself from all other physical life by prophesying, in the face of universal visible decay, his own immortality. 

And till this anomaly has been removed--that is, till the last trace ofwhat is moral in man has disappeared under the analysis of science, andwhat ought to be is resolved into a mere aspect of what is, this deepexception to the dominion of physical law remains as prominent andundeniable as physical law itself. 

 It is, indeed, avowed by those who reduce man in nature, that upon the admission of free-will, the objection to the miraculous is over, and that it is absurd to allow exception to law in man, and reject it in nature. 

But the broad, popular sense of natural order, and the instinctive andcommon repugnance to a palpable violation of it, have been forged andrefined into the philosophical objection to miracles. Two greatthinkers of past generations, two of the keenest and clearestintellects which have appeared since the Reformation, laid thefoundations of it long ago. Spinoza urged the uselessness of miracles, and Hume their incredibility, with a guarded subtlety and longsightedrefinement of statement which made them in advance of their age exceptwith a few. But their reflections have fallen in with a more advancedstage of thought and a taste for increased precision and exactness, andthey are beginning to bear their fruit. The great and telling objectionto miracles is getting to be, not their want of evidence, but, prior toall question of evidence, the supposed impossibility of fitting them inwith a scientific view of nature. Reason, looking at nature andexperience, is said to raise an antecedent obstacle to them which noalleged proof of fact can get over. They cannot be, because they are sounlike to everything else in the world, even of the strangest kind, inthis point--in avowedly breaking the order of nature. And reason cannotbe admitted to take cognizance of their claims and to consider theircharacter, their purpose, their results, their credentials, because themere supposition of them violates the fundamental conception andcondition of science, absolute and invariable law, as well as thatcommon-sense persuasion which everybody has, whether philosopher ornot, of the uniformity of the order of the world. 

II

To make room for reason to come in and pronounce upon miracles on theirown merits--to clear the ground for the consideration of their actualclaims by disposing of the antecedent objection of impossibility, isMr. Mozley's main object. 

 Whatever difficulty there is in believing in miracles in general arises from the circumstance that they are in contradiction to or unlike the order of nature. To estimate the force of this difficulty, then, we must first understand what kind of belief it is which we have in the order of nature; for the weight of the objection to the miraculous must depend on the nature of the belief to which the miraculous is opposed. 

His examination of the alleged impossibility of miracles may bedescribed as a very subtle turning the tables on Hume and the empiricalphilosophy. For when it is said that it is contrary to reason tobelieve in a suspension of the order of nature, he asks on what grounddo we believe in the order of nature; and Hume himself supplies theanswer. There is nothing of which we have a firmer persuasion. It isthe basis of human life and knowledge. We assume at each step, withouta doubt, that the future will be like the past. But why? Hume hascarefully examined the question, and can find no answer, except thefact that we do assume it. "I apprehend, " says Mr. Mozley, acceptingHume's view of the nature of probability, "that when we examine thedifferent reasons which may be assigned for this connection, i. E. Forthe belief that the future will be like the past, they all come at lastto be mere statements of the belief itself, and not reasons to accountfor it. "

 Let us imagine the occurrence of a particular physical phenomenon for the first time. Upon that single occurrence we should have but the very faintest expectation of another. If it did occur again once or twice, so far from counting on another recurrence, a cessation would come as the more natural event to us. But let it occur a hundred times, and we should feel no hesitation in inviting persons from a distance to see it; and if it occurred every day for years, its recurrence would then be a certainty to us, its cessation a marvel. But what has taken place in the interim to produce this total change in our belief? From the mere repetition do we know anything more about its cause? No. Then what have we got besides the past repetition itself? Nothing. Why, then, are we so certain of its _future_ repetition? All we can say is that the known casts its shadow before; we project into unborn time the existing types, and the secret skill of nature intercepts the darkness of the future by ever suspending before our eyes, as it were in a mirror, a reflection of the past. We really look at a blank before us, but the mind, full of the scene behind, sees it again in front. .. . 

 What ground of reason, then, can we assign for our expectation that any part of the course of nature will the _next_ moment be like what it has been up to _this_ moment, i. E. For our belief in the uniformity of nature? None. No demonstrative reason can be given, for the contrary to the recurrence of a fact of nature is no contradiction. No probable reason can be given, for all probable reasoning respecting the course of nature is founded _upon_ this presumption of likeness, and therefore cannot be the foundation of it. No reason can be given for this belief. It is without a reason. It rests upon no rational ground and can be traced to no rational principle. Everything connected with human life depends upon this belief, every practical plan or purpose that we form implies it, every provision we make for the future, every safeguard and caution we employ against it, all calculation, all adjustment of means to ends, supposes this belief; it is this principle alone which renders our experience of the slightest use to us, and without it there would be, so far as we are concerned, no order of nature and no laws of nature; and yet this belief has no more producible reason for it than a speculation of fancy. A natural fact has been repeated; it will be repeated:--I am conscious of utter darkness when I try to see why one of these follows from the other: I not only see no reason, but I perceive that I see none, though I can no more help the expectation than I can stop the circulation of my blood. There is a premiss, and there is a conclusion, but there is a total want of connection between the two. The inference, then, from the one of these to the other rests upon no ground of the understanding; by no search or analysis, however subtle or minute, can we extract from any corner of the human mind and intelligence, however remote, the very faintest reason for it. 

Hume, who had urged with great force that miracles were contrary tothat probability which is created by experience, had also said thatthis probability had no producible ground in reason; that, universal, unfailing, indispensable as it was to the course of human life, it wasbut an instinct which defied analysis, a process of thought andinference for which he vainly sought the rational steps. There is noabsurdity, though the greatest impossibility, in supposing this orderto stop to-morrow; and, if the world ends at all, its end will be in anincreasing degree improbable up to the very last moment. But, if thiswhole ground of belief is in its own nature avowedly instinctive andindependent of reason, what right has it to raise up a bar ofintellectual necessity, and to shut out reason from entertaining thequestion of miracles? They may have grounds which appeal to reason; andan unintelligent instinct forbids reason from fairly considering whatthey are. Reason cannot get beyond the actual fact of the present stateof things for believing in the order of nature; it professes to find nonecessity for it; the interruption of that order, therefore, whetherprobable or not, is not against reason. Philosophy itself, says Mr. Mozley, cuts away the ground on which it had raised its preliminaryobjection to miracles. 

 And now the belief in the order of nature being thus, however powerful and useful, an unintelligent impulse of which we can give no rational account, in what way does this discovery affect the question of miracles? In this way, that this belief not having itself its foundation in reason, the ground is gone upon which it could be maintained that miracles as opposed to the order of nature were opposed to reason. There being no producible reason why a new event should be like the hitherto course of nature, no decision of reason is contradicted by its unlikeness. A miracle, in being opposed to our experience, is not only not opposed to necessary reasoning, but to any reasoning. Do I see by a certain perception the connection between these two--It _has_ happened so, it _will_ happen so; then may I reject a new reported fact which has _not_ happened so as an impossibility. But if I do not see the connection between these two by a certain perception, or by any perception, I cannot. For a miracle to be rejected as such, there must, at any rate, be some proposition in the mind of man which is opposed to it; and that proposition can only spring from the quarter to which we have been referring--that of elementary experimental reasoning. But if this experimental reasoning is of that nature which philosophy describes it as being of, i. E. If it is not itself a process of reason, how can there from an irrational process of the mind arise a proposition at all, --to make which is the function of the rational faculty alone? There cannot; and it is evident that the miraculous does not stand in any opposition whatever to reason. .. . 

 Thus step by step has philosophy loosened the connection of the order of nature with the ground of reason, befriending, in exact proportion as it has done this, the principle of miracles. In the argument against miracles the first objection is that they are against _law_; and this is answered by saying that we know nothing in nature of law in the sense in which it prevents miracles. Law can only prevent miracles by _compelling_ and making necessary the succession of nature, i. E. In the sense of causation; but science has itself proclaimed the truth that we see no causes in nature, that the whole chain of physical succession is to the eye of reason a rope of sand, consisting of antecedents and consequents, but without a rational link or trace of necessary connection between them. We only know of law in nature in the sense of recurrences in nature, classes of facts, _like_ facts in nature--a chain of which, the junction not being reducible to reason, the interruption is not against reason. The claim of law settled, the next objection in the argument against miracles is that they are against _experience_; because we expect facts _like_ to those of our experience, and miracles are _unlike_ ones. The weight, then, of the objection of unlikeness to experience depends on the reason which can be produced for the expectation of likeness; and to this call philosophy has replied by the summary confession that we have _no_ reason. Philosophy, then, could not have overthrown more thoroughly than it has done the order of nature as a necessary course of things, or cleared the ground more effectually for the principle of miracles. 

Nor, he argues, does this instinct change its nature, or become anecessary law of reason, when it takes the form of an inference frominduction. For the last step of the inductive process, the creation ofits supposed universal, is, when compared with the real standard ofuniversality acknowledged by reason, an incomplete and more or lessprecarious process; "it gets out of facts something more than what theyactually contain"; and it can give no reason for itself but what thecommon faith derived from experience can give, the anticipation ofuniform recurrence. "The inductive principle, " he says, "is only theunreasoning impulse applied to a scientifically ascertained fact, instead of to a vulgarly ascertained fact. .. . Science has led up to thefact, but there it stops, and for converting the fact into a law atotally unscientific principle comes in, the same as that whichgeneralises the commonest observations in nature. "

 The scientific part of induction being only the pursuit of a particular fact, miracles cannot in the nature of the case receive any blow from the scientific part of induction; because the existence of one fact does not interfere with the existence of another dissimilar fact. That which _does_ resist the miraculous is the _un_scientific part of induction, or the instinctive generalisation upon this fact. .. . It does not belong to this principle to lay down speculative positions, and to say what can or cannot take place in the world. It does not belong to it to control religious belief, or to determine that certain acts of God for the revelation of His will to man, reported to have taken place, have not taken place. Such decisions are totally out of its sphere; it can assert the universal as a _law_, but the universal as a law and the universal as a proposition are wholly distinct. The one asserts the universal as a fact, the other as a presumption; the one as an absolute certainty, the other as a practical certainty, when there is no reason to expect the contrary. The one contains and includes the particular, the other does not; from the one we argue mathematically to the falsehood of any opposite particular; from the other we do not. .. . For example, one signal miracle, pre-eminent for its grandeur, crowned the evidence of the supernatural character and office of our Lord--our Lord's ascension--His going up with His body of flesh and bones into the sky in the presence of His disciples. "He lifted up His hands, and blessed them. And while He blessed them, He was parted from them, and carried up into heaven. And they looked stedfastly toward heaven as He went up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. "

 Here is an amazing scene, which strikes even the devout believer, coming across it in the sacred page suddenly or by chance, amid the routine of life, with a fresh surprise. Did, then, this event really take place? Or is the evidence of it forestalled by the inductive principle compelling us to remove the scene _as such_ out of the category of matters of fact? The answer is, that the inductive principle is in its own nature only an _expectation_; and that the expectation, that what is unlike our experience will not happen, is quite consistent with its occurrence in fact. This principle does not pretend to decide the question of fact, which is wholly out of its province and beyond its function. It can only decide the fact by the medium of a universal; the universal proposition that no man has ascended to heaven. But this is a statement which exceeds its power; it is as radically incompetent to pronounce it as the taste or smell is to decide on matters of sight; its function is practical, not logical. No antecedent statement, then, which touches my belief in this scene, is allowed by the laws of thought. Converted indeed into a universal proposition, the inductive principle is omnipotent, and totally annihilates every particular which does not come within its range. The universal statement that no man has ascended into heaven absolutely falsifies the fact that One Man has. But, thus transmuted, the inductive principle issues out of this metamorphose, a fiction not a truth; a weapon of air, which even in the hands of a giant can inflict no blow because it is itself a shadow. The object of assault receives the unsubstantial thrust without a shock, only exposing the want of solidity in the implement of war. The battle against the supernatural has been going on long, and strong men have conducted it, and are conducting it--but what they want is a weapon. The logic of unbelief wants a universal. But no real universal is forthcoming, and it only wastes its strength in wielding a fictitious one. 

It is not in reason, which refuses to pronounce upon the possiblemerely from experience of the actual, that the antecedent objection tomiracles is rooted. Yet that the objection is a powerful one theconsciousness of every reflecting mind testifies. What, then, is thesecret of its force? In a lecture of singular power Mr. Mozley giveshis answer. What tells beforehand against miracles is not reason, butimagination. Imagination is often thought to favour especially thesupernatural and miraculous. It does do so, no doubt. But the truth is, that imagination tells both ways--as much against the miraculous as forit. The imagination, that faculty by which we give life and body andreality to our intellectual conceptions, takes its character from theintellectual conceptions with which it is habitually associated. Itaccepts the miraculous or shrinks from it and throws it off, accordingto the leaning of the mind of which it is the more vivid and, so tospeak, passionate expression. And as it may easily exaggerate on oneside, so it may just as easily do the same on the other. Every one isfamiliar with that imaginative exaggeration which fills the world withmiracles. But there is another form of imagination, not so distinctlyrecognised, which is oppressed by the presence of unchanging successionand visible uniformity, which cannot shake off the yoke of custom orallow anything different to seem to it real. The sensitiveness andimpressibility of the imagination are affected, and unhealthilyaffected, not merely by strangeness, but by sameness; to one as to theother it may "passively submit and surrender itself, give way to themere form of attraction, and, instead of grasping something else, beitself grasped and mastered by some dominant idea. " And it is then, inone case as much as in the other, "not a power, but a failing andweakness of nature. "

 The passive imagination, then, in the present case exaggerates a practical expectation of the uniformity of nature, implanted in us for practical ends, into a scientific or universal proposition; and it does this by surrendering itself to the impression produced by the constant spectacle of the regularity of visible nature. By such a course a person allows the weight and pressure of this idea to grow upon him till it reaches the point of actually restricting his sense of possibility to the mould of physical order. .. . The order of nature thus stamps upon some minds the idea of its immutability simply by its repetition. The imagination we usually indeed associate with the acceptance of the supernatural rather than with the denial of it; but the passive imagination is in truth neutral; it only increases the force and tightens the hold of any impression upon us, to whatever class the impression may belong, and surrenders itself to a superstitious or a physical idea, as it may be. Materialism itself is the result of imagination, which is so impressed by matter that it cannot realise the existence of spirit. 

The great opponent, then, of miracles, considered as possibleoccurrences, is not reason, but something which on other great subjectsis continually found on the opposite side to reason, resisting andcounteracting it; that powerful overbearing sense of the actual and thereal, which when it is opposed by reason is apt to make reason seemlike the creator of mere ideal theories; which gives to argumentsimplying a different condition of things from one which is familiar topresent experience the disadvantage of appearing like artificial andunsubstantial refinements of thought, such as, to the uncultivatedmind, appear not merely metaphysical discussions, but what are known tobe the most certain reasonings of physical and mathematical science. Itis that measure of the probable, impressed upon us by the spectacle; towhich we are accustomed all our lives long, of things as we find them, and which repels the possibility of a break or variation; that sense ofprobability which the keenest of philosophers declares to be incapableof rational analysis, and pronounces allied to irrational portions ofour constitution, like custom, and the effect of time, and which isjust as much an enemy to invention, to improvement, to a differentstate of things in the future, as it is to the belief and realising ofa different state of things in the past. The antecedent objection tothe miraculous is not reason, but an argument which limits and narrowsthe domain of reason; which excludes dry, abstract, passionlessreason--with its appeals to considerations remote from commonexperience, its demands for severe reflection, its balancing and longchains of thought--from pronouncing on what seems to belong to theflesh and blood realities of life as we know it. Against thistyrannical influence, which may be in a vulgar and popular as in ascientific form, which may be the dull result of habit or the morespecious effect of a sensitive and receptive imagination, but which inall cases is at bottom the same, Mr. Mozley claims to appeal toreason:--

 To conclude, then, let us suppose an intelligent Christian of the present day asked, not what evidence he has of miracles, but how he can antecedently to all evidence think such amazing occurrences _possible_, he would reply, "You refer me to a certain sense of impossibility which you suppose me to possess, applying not to mathematics but to facts. Now, on this head, I am conscious of a certain natural resistance in my mind to events unlike the order of nature. But I resist many things which I know to be certain: infinity of space, infinity of time, eternity past, eternity future, the very idea of a God and another world. If I take mere resistance, therefore, for denial, I am confined in every quarter of my mind; I cannot carry out the very laws of reason, I am placed under conditions which are obviously false. I conclude, therefore, that I may resist and believe at the same time. If Providence has implanted in me a certain expectation of uniformity or likeness in nature, there is implied in that very expectations resistance to an _un_like event, which resistance does not cease even when upon evidence I _believe_ the event, but goes on as a mechanical impression, though the reason counterbalances it. Resistance, therefore, is not disbelief, unless by an act of my own reason I _give_ it an absolute veto, which I do _not_ do. My reason is clear upon the point, that there is no disagreement between itself and a miracle as such. " . .. Nor is it dealing artificially with ourselves to exert a force upon our minds against the false certainty of the resisting imagination--such a force as is necessary to enable reason to stand its ground, and bend back again that spring of impression against the miraculous which has illegally tightened itself into a law to the understanding. Reason does not always prevail spontaneously and without effort even in questions of belief; so far from it, that the question of faith against reason may often be more properly termed the question of reason against imagination. It does not seldom require faith to believe reason, isolated as she may be amid vast irrational influences, the weight of custom, the power of association, the strength of passion, the _vis inertiae_ of sense, the mere force of the uniformity of nature as a spectacle--those influences which make up that power of the world which Scripture always speaks of as the antagonist of faith. 

The antecedent questions about miracles, before coming to the questionof the actual evidence of any, are questions about which reason--reasondisengaged and disembarrassed from the arbitrary veto ofexperience--has a right to give its verdict. Miracles presuppose theexistence of God, and it is from reason alone that we get the idea ofGod; and the antecedent question then is, whether they are reallycompatible with the idea of God which reason gives us. Mr. Mozleyremarks that the question of miracles is really "shut up in theenclosure of one assumption, that of the existence of God"; and that ifwe believe in a personal Deity with all power over nature, that beliefbrings along with it the possibility of His interrupting natural orderfor His own purposes. He also bids us observe that the idea of Godwhich reason gives us is exposed to resistance of the same kind, andfrom precisely the same forces, in our mental constitution, as the ideaof miracles. When reason has finished its overwhelming proof, stillthere is a step to be taken before the mind embraces the equallyoverwhelming conclusion--a step which calls for a distinct effort, which obliges the mind, satisfied as it may be, to beat back thecounteracting pressure of what is visible and customary. Afterreason--not opposed to it or independent of it, but growing out of it, yet a distinct and further movement--comes faith. This is the case, notspecially in religion, but in all subjects, where the conclusions ofreason cannot be subjected to immediate verification. How often, as heobserves, do we see persons "who, when they are in possession of thebest arguments, and what is more, understand those arguments, are stillshaken by almost any opposition, because they want the faculty to_trust_ an argument when they have got one. "

 Not, however, that the existence of a God is so clearly seen by reason as to dispense with faith; not from any want of cogency in the reasons, but from the amazing nature of the conclusion--that it is so unparalleled, transcendent, and inconceivable a truth to believe. It requires trust to commit oneself to the conclusion of any reasoning, however strong, when such as this is the conclusion: to put enough dependence and reliance upon any premisses, to accept upon the strength of them so immense a result. The issue of the argument is so astonishing that if we do not tremble for its safety, it must be on account of a practical principle in our minds which enables us to _confide_ and trust in reasons, when they are really strong and good ones. .. . Faith, when for convenience' sake we do distinguish it from reason, is not distinguished from reason by the want of premisses, but by the nature of the conclusions. Are our conclusions of the customary type? Then custom imparts the full sense of security. Are they not of the customary, but of a strange and unknown type? Then the mechanical sense of security is wanting, and a certain trust is required for reposing in them, which we call faith. But that which draws these conclusions is in either case reason. We infer, we go upon reasons, we use premisses in either case. The premisses of faith are not so palpable as those of ordinary reason, but they are as real and solid premisses all the same. Our faith in the existence of a God and a future state is founded upon reasons as much so as the belief in the commonest kind of facts. The reasons are in themselves as strong, but, because the conclusions are marvellous and are not seconded and backed by known parallels or by experience, we do not so passively acquiesce in them; there is an exertion of confidence in depending upon them and assuring ourselves of their force. The inward energy of the reason has to be evoked, when she can no longer lean upon the outward prop of custom, but is thrown back upon herself and the intrinsic force of her premisses. Which reason, not leaning upon custom, is faith; she obtains the latter name when she depends entirely upon her own insight into certain grounds, premisses, and evidences, and follows it though it leads to transcendent, unparalleled, and supernatural conclusions. .. . 

 Indeed, does not our heart bear witness to the fact that to believe in a God is an exercise of faith? That the universe was produced by the will of a personal Being, that its infinite forces are all the power of that one Being, its infinite relations the perceptions of one Mind--would not this, if any truth could, demand the application of the maxim, _Credo quia impossibile_? Look at it only as a conception, and does the wildest fiction of the imagination equal it? No premisses, no arguments therefore, can so accommodate this truth to us as not to leave the belief in it an act of mental ascent and trust, of faith as distinguished from sight. _Divest_ reason of its trust, and the universe stops at the impersonal stage--there is no God; and yet, if the first step in religion is the greatest, how is it that the freest and boldest speculator rarely declines it? How is it that the most mysterious of all truths is a universally accepted one? What is it which guards this truth? What is it which makes men shrink from denying it? Why is atheism a crime? Is it that authority still reigns upon one question, and that the voice of all ages is too potent to be withstood?

But the progress of civilisation and thought has impressed this amazingidea on the general mind. It is no matter-of-course conception. Thedifficulties attending it were long insuperable to the deepest thoughtas well as to popular belief; and the triumph of the modern andChristian idea of God is the result not merely of the eager forwardnessof faith, but of the patient and inquiring waiting of reason. And thequestion, whether we shall pronounce the miraculous to be impossible assuch, is really the question whether we shall once more let this beliefgo. 

 The conception of a limited Deity then, i. E. A Being really circumscribed in power, and not verbally only by a confinement to necessary truth, is at variance with our fundamental idea of a God; to depart from which is to retrograde from modern thought to ancient, and to go from Christianity back again to Paganism. The God of ancient religion was either not a personal Being or not an omnipotent Being; the God of modern religion is both. For, indeed, civilisation is not opposed to faith. The idea of the Supreme Being in the mind of European society now is more primitive, more childlike, more imaginative than the idea of the ancient Brahman or Alexandrian philosopher; it is an idea which both of these would have derided as the notion of a child--a _negotiosus Deus_, who interposes in human affairs and answers prayers. So far from the philosophical conception of the Deity having advanced with civilisation, and the poetical receded, the philosophical has receded and the poetical advanced. The God of whom it is said, "Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God; but even the very hairs of your head are numbered, " is the object of modern worship. Nor, again, has civilisation shown any signs of rejecting doctrine. Certain ages are, indeed, called the ages of faith; but the bulk of society in _this_ age believes that it lives under a supernatural dispensation, and accepts truths which are not less supernatural, though they have more proof, than some doctrines of the Middle Ages; and, if so, _this_ is an age of faith. It is true that most people do not live up to their faith now; neither did they in the Middle Ages. 

 Has not modern philosophy, again, shown both more strength and acuteness, and also more faith, than the ancient? I speak of the main current. Those ancient thinkers who reduced the Supreme Being to a negation, with all their subtlety, wanted strength, and settled questions by an easier test than that of modern philosophy. The merit of a modern metaphysician is, like that of a good chemist or naturalist, accurate observation in noting the facts of mind. Is there a contradiction in the idea of creation? Is there a contradiction in the idea of a personal Infinite Being? He examines his own mind, and if he does not see one, he passes the idea. But the ancient speculators decided, without examination of the true facts of mind, by a kind of philosophical fancy; and, according to this loose criterion, the creation of matter and a personal Infinite Being were impossibilities, for they mistook the inconceivable for the impossible. And thus a stringent test has admitted what a loose but capricious test discarded, and the true notion of God has issued safe out of the crucible of modern metaphysics. Reason has shown its strength, but then it has turned that strength back upon itself; it has become its own critic; and in becoming its own critic it has become its own check. 

 If the belief, then, in a personal Deity lies at the bottom of all religious and virtuous practice, and if the removal of it would be a descent for human nature, the withdrawal of its inspiration and support, and a fall in its whole standard; the failure of the very breath of moral life in the individual and in society; the decay and degeneration of the very stock of mankind;--does a theory which would withdraw miraculous action from the Deity interfere with that belief? If it would, it is but prudent to count the cost of that interference. Would a Deity deprived of miraculous action possess action at all? And would a God who cannot act be a God? If this would be the issue, such an issue is the very last which religious men can desire. The question here has been all throughout, not whether upon any ground, but whether upon a religious ground and by religious believers, the miraculous as such could be rejected. But to that there is but one answer--that it is impossible in reason to separate religion from the supernatural, and upon a religious basis to overthrow miracles. .. . 

 And so we arrive again by another route at the old turning question; for the question whether man is or is not the _vertex_ of nature, is the question whether there is or is not a God. Does free agency stop at the human stage, or is there a sphere of free-will above the human, in which, as in the human, not physical law but spirit moves matter? And does that free-will penetrate the universal frame invisibly to us, an omnipresent agent? If so, every miracle in Scripture is as natural an event in the universe as any chemical experiment in the physical world; if not, the seat of the great Presiding Will is empty, and nature has no Personal Head; man is her highest point; he finishes her ascent; though by this very supremacy he falls, for under fate he is not free himself; all nature either ascends to God, or descends to law. Is there above the level of material causes a region of Providence? If there is, nature there is moved by the Supreme Free Agent; and of such a realm a miracle is the natural production. 

 Two rationales of miracles thus present themselves to our choice; one more accommodating to the physical imagination and easy to fall in with, on a level with custom, common conceptions, and ordinary history, and requiring no ascent of the mind to embrace, viz. The solution of miracles as the growth of fancy and legend; the other requiring an ascent of the reason to embrace it, viz. The rationale of the supremacy of a Personal Will in nature. The one is the explanation to which we fall when we dare not trust our reason, but mistake its inconceivable truths for sublime but unsubstantial visions; the other is that to which we rise when we dare trust our reason, and the evidences which it lays before us of the existence of a Personal Supreme Being. 

The belief in a personal God thus bringing with it the possibility ofmiracles, what reason then has to judge is whether it can acceptmiracles as such, or any set of miracles, as worthy of a reasonableconception of the Divine Nature, and whether it can be fairly said thatsuch miracles have answered a purpose which approves itself to ourreason. Testimony will always speak at a disadvantage till we areassured on these points. Into the subject of testimony Mr. Mozleyenters only in a general way, though his remarks on the relation oftestimony to facts of so exceptional a nature as miracles, and also onthe distinct peculiarities of Christian evidence as contrasted with theevidence of all other classes of alleged miracles, are marked by acharacteristic combination of acuteness, precision, and broad practicalsobriety and moderation. He rebukes with quiet and temperate and yetresolute plainness of statement the misplaced ingenuity which, ondifferent sides, to serve very different causes, has tried to confuseand perplex the claims of the great Christian miracles by comparisonswhich it is really mere wantonness to make with later ones; for, bethey what they may, it is certain that the Gospel miracles, in nature, in evidence, and in purpose and result, are absolutely unique in theworld, and have nothing like them. And though the book mainly confinesitself to its proper subject, the antecedent question of credibility, some of the most striking remarks in it relate to the way in which thepurpose of miracles is visible in those of Christianity, and has beenserved by them. A miracle is an instrument--an instrument without whichrevelation is impossible; and Mr. Mozley meets Spinoza's objection tothe unmeaning isolation of a miracle by insisting on the distinction, which Spinoza failed to see, between a miracle simply as a wonder forits own sake, and as a means, deriving its use and its value simplyfrom the end which it was to serve. He observes that all the stupendous"marvels of nature do not speak to us in that way in which one miracledoes, because they do not tell us that we are not like themselves"; andhe remarks on the "perverse determination of Spinoza to look atmiracles in that aspect which does not belong to them, and not to lookat them in that aspect which does. "

 He compares miracles with nature, and then says how wise is the order of nature, how meaningless the violation of it; how expressive of the Almighty Mind the one, what a concealment of it the other! But no one pretends to say that a miracle competes with nature, in physical purpose and effectiveness. That is not its object. But a miracle, though it does not profess to compete with nature upon its rival's own ground, has a ghostly force and import which nature has not. If real, it is a token, more pointed and direct than physical order can be, of another world, and of Moral Being and Will in that world. 

Thus, regarding miracles as means to fulfil a purpose, Mr. Mozley showswhat has come of them. His lecture on "Miracles regarded in theirPractical Result" is excelled by some of the others as examples ofsubtle and searching thought and well-balanced and compact argument;but it is a fine example of the way in which a familiar view can havefresh colour and force thrown into it by the way in which it istreated. He shows that it is impossible in fact to separate from themiracles in which it professed to begin, the greatest and deepest moralchange which the world has ever known. This change was made not bymiracles but by certain doctrines. The Epistle to the Romans surveyedthe moral failure of the world; St. Paul looked on the chasm betweenknowledge and action, the "unbridged gulf, this incredible inability ofman to do what was right, with profound wonder"; but in the face ofthis hopeless spectacle he dared to prophesy the moral elevation whichwe have witnessed, and the power to which he looked to bring it aboutwas the Christian doctrines. St. Paul "takes what may be called thehigh view of human nature--i. E. What human nature is capable of whenthe proper motive and impulse is applied to it. " He sees in Christiandoctrine that strong force which is to break down "the _vis inertiae_of man, to set human nature going, to touch the spring of man's heart";and he compares with St. Paul's doctrines and hopefulness the doctrinalbarrenness, the despair of Mohammedanism:--

 If one had to express in a short compass the character of its remarkable founder as a teacher, it would be that that great man had no faith in human nature. There were two things which he thought man could do and would do for the glory of God--transact religious forms, and fight; and upon those two points he was severe; but within the sphere of common practical life, where man's great trial lies, his code exhibits the disdainful laxity of a legislator who accommodates his rule to the recipient, and shows his estimate of the recipient by the accommodation which he adopts. Did we search history for a contrast, we could hardly discover a deeper one than that between St. Paul's overflowing standard of the capabilities of human nature and the oracular cynicism of the great false Prophet. The writer of the Koran does, indeed, if any discerner of hearts ever did, take the measure of mankind; and his measure is the same that Satire has taken, only expressed with the majestic brevity of one who had once lived in the realm of Silence. "Man is weak, " says Mahomet. And upon that maxim he legislates. .. . The keenness of Mahomet's insight into human nature, a wide knowledge of its temptations, persuasives, influences under which it acts, a vast immense capacity of forbearance for it, half grave half genial, half sympathy half scorn, issue in a somewhat Horatian model, the character of the man of experience who despairs of any change in man, and lays down the maxim that we must take him as we find him. It was indeed his supremacy in both faculties, the largeness of the passive nature and the splendour of action, that constituted the secret of his success. The breadth and flexibility of mind that could negotiate with every motive of interest, passion, and pride in man is surprising; there is boundless sagacity; what is wanting is hope, a belief in the capabilities of human nature. There is no upward flight in the teacher's idea of man. Instead of which, the notion of the power of earth, and the impossibility of resisting it, depresses his whole aim, and the shadow of the tomb falls upon the work of the great false Prophet. 

 The idea of God is akin to the idea of man. "He knows us, " says Mahomet. God's _knowledge_, the vast _experience_, so to speak, of the Divine Being, His infinite acquaintance with man's frailties and temptations, is appealed to as the ground of confidence. "He is the Wise, the Knowing One, " "He is the Knowing, the Wise, " "He is easy to be reconciled. " Thus is raised a notion of the Supreme Being, which is rather an extension of the character of the large-minded and sagacious man of the world than an extension of man's virtue and holiness. He forgives because He knows too much to be rigid, because sin universal ceases to be sin, and must be given way to. Take a man who has had large opportunity of studying mankind, and has come into contact with every form of human weakness and corruption; such a man is indulgent as a simple consequence of his knowledge, because nothing surprises him. So the God of Mahomet forgives by reason of His vast knowledge. 

In contrast with the fruit of this he observes that "the prophecy inthe Epistle to the Romans has been fulfilled, and that doctrine hasbeen historically at the bottom of a great change of moral practice inmankind. " The key has been found to set man's moral nature in action, to check and reverse that course of universal failure manifest before;and this key is Christian doctrine. "A stimulus has been given to humannature which has extracted an amount of action from it which no Greekor Roman could have believed possible. " It is inconceivable that butfor such doctrine such results as have been seen in Christendon wouldhave followed; and were it now taken away we cannot see anything elsethat would have the faintest expectation of taking its place. "Could wecommit mankind to a moral Deism without trembling for the result?" Canthe enthusiasm for the divinity of human nature stand the test ofclear, unsparing observation? Would it not issue in such an estimate ofhuman nature as Mahomet took? "A deification of humanity upon its owngrounds, an exaltation which is all height and no depth, wants powerbecause it wants truth. It is not founded upon the facts of humannature, and therefore issues in vain and vapid aspiration, and injuresthe solidity of man's character. " As he says, "The Gospel doctrine ofthe Incarnation and its effects alone unites the sagacious view ofhuman nature with the enthusiastic. " And now what is the historicalroot and basis from which this one great moral revolution in theworld's history, so successful, so fruitful, so inexhaustible, hasstarted?

 But if, as the source and inspiration of practice, doctrine has been the foundation of a new state of the world, and of that change which distinguishes the world under Christianity from the world before it, miracles, as the proof of that doctrine, stand before us in a very remarkable and peculiar light. Far from being mere idle feats of power to gratify the love of the marvellous; far even from being mere particular and occasional rescues from the operation of general laws, --they come before us as means for accomplishing the largest and most important practical object that has ever been accomplished in the history of mankind. They lie at the bottom of the difference of the modern from the ancient world; so far, i. E. , as that difference is moral. We see as a fact a change in the moral condition of mankind, which marks ancient and modern society as two different states of mankind. What has produced this change, and elicited this new power of action? Doctrine. And what was the proof of that doctrine, or essential to the proof of it? Miracles. The greatness of the result thus throws light upon the propriety of the means, and shows the fitting object which was presented for the introduction of such means--the fitting occasion which had arisen for the use of them; for, indeed, no more weighty, grand, or solemn occasion can be conceived than the foundation of such a new order of things in the world. Extraordinary action of Divine power for such an end has the benefit of a justifying object of incalculable weight; which though not of itself, indeed, proof of the fact, comes with striking force upon the mind in connection with the proper proof. It is reasonable, it is inevitable, that we should be impressed by such a result; for it shows that the miraculous system has been a practical one; that it has been a step in the ladder of man's ascent, the means of introducing those powerful truths which have set his moral nature in action. 

Of this work, remarkable in so many ways, we will add but one thingmore. It is marked throughout with the most serious and earnestconviction, but it is without a single word, from first to last, ofasperity or insinuation against opponents; and this, not from anydeficiency of feeling as to the importance of the issue, but from adeliberate and resolutely maintained self-control, and from anoverruling ever-present sense of the duty, on themes like these, of amore than judicial calmness. 

IX

ECCE HOMO[11]

 [11] _Ecce Homo: A Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus Christ. Guardian_, 7th February 1866. 

This is a dangerous book to review. The critic of it, if he is prudent, will feel that it is more than most books a touchstone of his owncapacity, and that in giving his judgment upon it he cannot help givinghis own measure and betraying what he is himself worth. All theunconscious guiding which a name, even if hitherto unknown, gives toopinion is wanting. The first aspect of the book is perplexing; closerexamination does not clear up all the questions which presentthemselves; and many people, after they have read it through, will notfeel quite certain what it means. Much of what is on the surface andmuch of what is inherent in the nature of the work will jar painfullyon many minds; while others who begin to read it under one set ofimpressions may by the time they have got to the end complain of havingbeen taken in. There can be no doubt on which side the book is; but itmay be open to debate from which side it has come. The unknown championwho comes into the lists with barred vizor and no cognisance on hisshield leaves it not long uncertain for which of the contending partieshe appears; but his weapons and his manner of fighting are not theordinary ones of the side which he takes; and there is a force in hisarm, and a sweep in his stroke, which is not that of common men. Thebook is one which it is easy to take exception to, and perhaps stilleasier to praise at random; but the subject is put before us in sounusual a way, and one so removed from the ordinary grooves of thought, that in trying to form an adequate estimate of the work as a whole, aman feels as he does when he is in the presence of something utterlyunfamiliar and unique, when common rules and inferences fail him, andin pronouncing upon which he must make something of a venture. 

In making our own venture we will begin with what seems to usincontestable. In the first place, but that it has been questioned, weshould say that there could be no question of the surpassing abilitywhich the book displays. It is far beyond the power of the averageclever and practised writer of our days. It is the work of a man inwhom thought, sympathy, and imagination are equally powerful andwealthy, and who exercises a perfect and easy command over his ownconceptions, and over the apt and vivid language which is theirexpression. Few men have entered so deeply into the ideas and feelingsof the time, or have looked at the world, its history and itsconditions, with so large and piercing an insight. But it is idle todwell on what must strike, at first sight, any one who but opens thebook. We go on to observe, what is equally beyond dispute, the deeptone of religious seriousness which pervades the work. The writer's wayof speaking is very different from that of the ascetic or the devotee;but no ascetic or devotee could be more profoundly penetrated with thegreat contrast between holiness and evil, and show more clearly in hiswhole manner of thinking the ineffaceable impression of the powers ofthe world to come. Whatever else the book may be, this much is plain onthe face of it--it is the work of a mind of extreme originality, depth, refinement, and power; and it is also the work of a very religious man:Thomas à Kempis had not a more solemn sense of things unseen and ofwhat is meant by the Imitation of Christ. 

What the writer wishes his book to be understood to be we must gatherfrom his Preface:--

 Those who feel dissatisfied with the current conceptions of Christ, if they cannot rest content without a definite opinion, may find it necessary to do what to persons not so dissatisfied it seems audacious and perilous to do. They may be obliged to reconsider the whole subject from the beginning, and placing themselves in imagination at the time when he whom we call Christ bore no such name, but was simply, as St. Luke describes him, a young man of promise, popular with those who knew him, and appearing to enjoy the Divine favour, to trace his biography from point to point, and accept those conclusions about him, not which church doctors or even apostles have sealed with their authority, but which the facts themselves, critically weighed, appear to warrant. 

 This is what the present writer undertook to do for the satisfaction of his own mind, and because, after reading a good many books on Christ, he felt still constrained to confess that there was no historical character whose motives, objects, and feelings remained so incomprehensible to him. The inquiry which proved serviceable to himself may chance to be useful to others. 

 What is now published is a fragment. No theological questions whatever are here discussed. Christ, as the creator of modern theology and religion, will make the subject of another volume, which, however, the author does not hope to publish for some time to come. In the meanwhile he has endeavoured to furnish an answer to the question, What was Christ's object in founding the Society which is called by his name, and how is it adapted to attain that object?

Thus the book comes before us as a serious facing of difficulties. Andthat the writer lays stress on its being so viewed appears further froma letter which he wrote to the _Spectator_, repeating emphatically thatthe book is not one "written after the investigation was completed, butthe _investigation_ itself. " The letter may be taken to complete thestatement of the Preface:--

 I endeavoured in my Preface to describe the state of mind in which I undertook my book. I said that the character and objects of Christ were at that time altogether incomprehensible to me, and that I wished to try whether an independent investigation would relieve my perplexity. Perhaps I did not distinctly enough state that _Ecce Homo_ is not a book written after the investigation was completed, but the _investigation_ itself. 

 The Life of Christ is partly easy to understand and partly difficult. This being so, what would a man do who wished to study it methodically? Naturally he would take the easy part first. He would collect, arrange, and carefully consider all the facts which are simple, and until he has done this, he would carefully avoid all those parts of his subject which are obscure, and which cannot be explained without making bold hypotheses. By this course he would limit the problem, and in the meanwhile arrive at a probable opinion concerning the veracity of the documents, and concerning the characteristics, both intellectual and moral, of the person whose high pretensions he wished to investigate. 

 This is what I have done. I have postponed altogether the hardest questions connected with Christ, as questions which cannot properly be discussed until a considerable quantity of evidence has been gathered about his character and views. If this evidence, when collected, had appeared to be altogether conflicting and inconsistent, I should have been saved the trouble of proceeding any further; I should have said that Christ is a myth. If it had been consistent, and had disclosed to me a person of mean and ambitious aims, I should have said, Christ is a deceiver. Again, if it had exhibited a person of weak understanding and strong impulsive sensibility, I should have said Christ is a bewildered enthusiast. 

 In all these cases you perceive my method would have saved me a good deal of trouble. As it is, I certainly feel bound to go on, though, as I say in my Preface, my progress will necessarily be slow. But I am much engaged and have little time for theological study. But pray do not suppose that postponing questions is only another name for evading them. I think I have gained much by this postponement. I have now a very definite notion of Christ's character and that of his followers. I shall be able to judge how far he was likely to deceive himself or them. It is possible I may have put others, who can command more time than I, in a condition to take up the subject where for the present I leave it. 

 You say my picture suffers by my method. But _Ecce Homo_ is not a picture: it is the very opposite of a picture; it is an analysis. It may be, you will answer, that the title suggests a picture. This may perhaps be true, and if so, it is no doubt a fault, but a fault in the title, not in the book. For titles are put to books, not books to titles. 

Thus it appears that the writer found it his duty to investigate thoseawful questions which every thinking man feels to be full of the"incomprehensible" and unfathomable, but which many thinking men, forvarious reasons both good and bad, shrink from attempting toinvestigate, accepting on practical and very sufficient grounds thereligious conclusions which are recommended and sanctioned by theagreement of Christendom. And finding it his duty to investigate themat all, he saw that he was bound to investigate in earnest. But underwhat circumstances this happened, from what particular pressure ofneed, and after what previous belief or state of opinion, we are nottold. Whether from being originally on the doubting side--on theirreligious side we cannot suppose he ever could have been--he hasrisen through his investigation into belief; or whether, originally onthe believing side, he found the aspect so formidable, to himself or tothe world, of the difficulties and perplexities which beset belief, that he turned to bay upon the foes that dogged him--must be left toconjecture. It is impossible to question that he has been deeplyimpressed with the difficulties of believing; it is impossible toquestion that doubt has been overborne and trampled under foot. Buthere we have the record, it would not be accurate to say of thestruggle, but of that resolute and unflinching contemplation of therealities of the case which decided it. Such plunging into such aquestion must seem, as he says, to those who do not need it, "audaciousand perilous"; for if you plunge into a question in earnest, and do notunder a thin disguise take a side, you must, whatever your bias andexpectation, take your chance of the alternative answers which may comeout. It is a simple fact that there are many people who feel"dissatisfied with the current conceptions" of our Lord--whetherreasonably and justly dissatisfied is another question; but whatever wethink of it they remain dissatisfied. In such emergencies it isconceivable that a man who believes, yet keenly realises and feels whatdisturbs or destroys the belief of others, should dare to put himselfin their place; should enter the hospital and suffer the disease whichmakes such ravages; should descend into the shades and face thespectres. No one can deny the risk of dwelling on such thoughts as hemust dwell on; but if he feels warmly with his kind, he may think iteven a duty to face the risk. To any one accustomed to live on hisbelief it cannot but be a hard necessity, full of pain and difficulty, first to think and then to speak of what he believes, as if it _mightnot_ be, or _could be_ otherwise; but the changes of time bring up evernew hard necessities; and one thing is plain, that if ever such aninvestigation is undertaken, it ought to be a real one, in good earnestand not in play. If a man investigates at all, both for his own sakeand for the sake of the effect of his investigation on others, he mustaccept the fair conditions of investigation. We may not ourselves beable to conceive the possibility of taking, even provisionally, aneutral position; but looking at what is going on all round us, weought to be able to enlarge our thoughts sufficiently to take in theidea that a believing mind may feel it a duty to surrender itselfboldly to the intellectual chances and issues of the inquiry, and to"let its thoughts take their course in the confidence that they willcome home at last. " It may be we ourselves who "have not faith enoughto be patient of doubt"; there may be others who feel that if what theybelieve is real, they need not be afraid of the severest revisal andtesting of the convictions on which they rest; who feel that, in thecircumstances of the time, it is not left to their choice whether theseconvictions shall be sifted unsparingly and to the uttermost; and whothink it a venture not unworthy of a Christian, to descend even to thedepths to go through the thoughts of doubters, if so be that he mayfind the spell that shall calm them. We do not say that this book isthe production of such a state of mind; we only think that it may be. One thing is clear, wherever the writer's present lot is cast, he hasthat in him which not only enables him, but forces him, to sympathisewith what he sees in the opposite camp. If he is what is called aLiberal, his whole heart is yet pouring itself forth towards the greattruths of Christianity. If he is what is called orthodox, his wholeintellect is alive to the right and duty of freedom of thought. He willtherefore attract and repel on both sides. And he appears to feel thatthe position of double sympathy gives him a special advantage, toattract to each side what is true in its opposite, and to correct ineach what is false or inadequate. 

What, then, is this investigation, and what course does it follow? Atthe first aspect, we might take it for one of those numerous attemptson the Liberal side, partly impatient, partly careless of Christianity, to put a fresh look on the Christian history, and to see it with neweyes. The writer's language is at starting neutral; he speaks of ourLord in the language indeed of the New Testament, but not in the usuallanguage of later Christian writers. All through, the colour and toneis absolutely modern; and what would naturally be expressed in familiartheological terms is for the most part studiously put in other words. Persons acquainted with the writings of the late Mr. Robertson might beoften reminded of his favourite modes of teaching; of his maxim thattruth is made up of two opposites which seem contradictories; of thedistinction which he was so fond of insisting upon between principlesand rules; above all, of his doctrine that the true way to rise to thefaith in our Lord's Divine Nature was by first realising His HumanLife. But the resemblance is partial, if not superficial, and gives wayon closer examination before broad and characteristic features of anentirely different significance. That one which at first arrestsattention, and distinguishes this writer's line of thought from thecommon Liberal way of dealing with the subject, is that from the firstpage of the book to its last line the work of Christ is viewed, notsimply as the foundation of a religious system, the introduction ofcertain great principles, the elevation of religious ideas, thedelivery of Divine truths, the exhibition of a life and example, but asthe call and creation of a definite, concrete, organised society ofmen. The subject, of investigation is not merely the character andhistory of the Person, but the Person as connected with His work. Christ is regarded not simply in Himself or in His teaching, as theFounder of a philosophy, a morality, a theology in the abstract, but asthe Author of a Divine Society, the Body which is called by His Name, the Christian Church Universal, a real and visible company of men, which, however we may understand it, exists at this moment as it hasexisted since His time, marked by His badges, governed by His laws, andworking out His purpose. The writer finds the two joined in fact, andhe finds them also joined in the recorded history of Christ's plan. Thebook might almost be described as the beginning of a new _De CivitateDei_, written with the further experience of fourteen centuries andfrom the point of view of our own generation. This is one remarkablepeculiarity of this investigation; another is the prominence given tothe severe side of the Person and character of whom he writes, and whatis even more observable, the way in which both the severity and thegentleness are apprehended and harmonised. 

We are familiar with the attempts to resolve the Christianity of theNew Testament into philanthropy; and, on the other hand, writers likeMr. Carlyle will not let us forget that the world is as dark and evilas the Bible draws it. This writer feels both in one. No one can showmore sympathy with enlarged and varied ideas of human happiness, no onehas connected them more fearlessly with Christian principles, orclaimed from those principles more unlimited developments, even for thephysical well-being of men. No one has extended wider the limits ofChristian generosity, forbearance, and tolerance. But, on the otherhand, what is striking is, that all this is compatible, and is made toappear so, with the most profound and terrible sense of evil, withindignation and scorn which is scathing where it kindles and strikes, with a capacity and energy of deliberate religious hatred against whatis impure and false and ungodly, which mark one who has dared torealise and to sympathise with the wrath of Jesus Christ. 

The world has been called in these later days, and from oppositedirections, to revise its judgments about Jesus Christ. Christians, onthe one hand, have been called to do it by writers of whom M. ErnestRenan is the most remarkable and the most unflinching. But thesceptical and the unbelieving have likewise been obliged to changetheir ground and their tone, and no one with any self-respect or carefor his credit even as a thinker and a man would like to repeat thesuperficial and shallow flippancy and irreligion of the last century. Two things have been specially insisted on. We have been told that ifwe are to see the truth of things as it is, we must disengage our mindsfrom the deeply rooted associations and conceptions of a latertheology, and try to form our impressions first-hand and unpromptedfrom the earliest documents which we can reach. It has been furtherurged on us, in a more believing spirit, that we should follow theorder by which in fact truth was unfolded, and rise from the fullappreciation of our Lord's human nature to the acknowledgment of HisDivine nature. It seems to us that the writer of this book has felt theforce of both these appeals, and that his book is his answer to them. Here is the way in which he responds to both--to the latter indirectly, but with a significance which no one can mistake; to the formerdirectly and avowedly. He undertakes, isolating himself from currentbeliefs, and restricting himself to the documents from which, if fromany source at all, the original facts about Christ are to be learned, to examine what the genuine impression is which an attempt to realisethe statements about him leaves on the mind. This has been done byothers, with results supposed to be unfavourable to Christianity. Hehas been plainly moved by these results, though not a hint is given ofthe existence of Renan or Strauss. But the effect on his own mind hasbeen to drive him back on a closer survey of the history in its firstfountains, and to bring him from it filled more than ever with wonderat its astonishing phenomena, to protest against the poverty andshallowness of the most ambitious and confident of these attempts. Theyleave the historical Character which they pourtray still unsounded, itsmotives, objects, and feelings absolutely incomprehensible. He acceptsthe method to reverse the product. "Look at Christ historically, "people say; "see Him as He really was. " The answer here is, "Well, Iwill look at Him with whatever aid a trained historical imagination canlook at Him. I accept your challenge; I admit your difficulties. I willdare to do what you do. I will try and look at the very factsthemselves, with singleness and 'innocence of the eye, ' trying to seenothing more than I really see, and trying to see all that my eye fallson. I will try to realise indeed what is recorded of Him. And _this_ iswhat I see. This is the irresistible impression from the plainest andmost elementary part of the history, if we are to accept any history atall. A miracle could not be more unlike the order of our experiencethan the Character set before us is unique and unapproachable in allknown history. Further, all that makes the superiority of the modernworld to the ancient, and is most permanent and pregnant withimprovement in it, may be traced to the appearance of that Character, and to the work which He planned and did. You ask for a true picture ofHim, drawn with freedom, drawn with courage; here, if you dare look atit, is what those who wrote of Him showed Him to be. Renan has tried todraw this picture. Take the Gospels as they stand; treat them simply asbiographies; look, and see, and think of what they tell, and then askyourself about Renan's picture, and what it looks like when placed sideby side with the truth. "

This, as we have ventured to express it in our own words, seems to bethe writer's position. It is at any rate the effect of his book, to ourminds. The inquiry, it must always be remembered, is a preliminary one, dealing, as he says, with the easiest and obvious elements of theproblem; and much that seems inadequate and unsatisfactory may bedeveloped hereafter. He starts from what, to those who already have thefull belief, must appear a low level. He takes, as it will be seen, thedocuments as they stand. He takes little more than the first threeGospels, and these as a whole, without asking minute questions aboutthem. The mythical theory he dismisses as false to nature, in dealingwith such a Character and such results. He talks in his preface of"critically weighing" the facts; but the expression is misleading. Itis true that we may talk of criticism of character; but the wordsnaturally suggest that close cross-questioning of documents and detailswhich has produced such remarkable results in modern investigations;and of this there is none. It is a work in no sense of criticism; it isa work of what he calls the "trained historical imagination"; a work ofbroad and deep knowledge of human nature and the world it works in andcreates about it; a work of steady and large insight into character, and practical judgment on moral likelihoods. He answers Strauss as heanswers Renan, by producing the interpretation of a character, soliving, so in accordance with all before and after, that it overpowersand sweeps away objections; a picture, an analysis or outline, if hepleases, which justifies itself and is its own evidence, by itsoriginality and internal consistency. Criticism in detail does notaffect him. He assumes nothing of the Gospels, except that they arerecords; neither their inspiration in any theological sense, nor theirauthorship, nor their immunity from mistake, nor the absolute purity oftheir texts. But taking them as a whole he discerns in them a Characterwhich, if you accept them at all and on any terms, you cannot mistake. Even if the copy is ever so imperfect, ever so unskilful, ever soblurred and defaced, there is no missing the features any more than aman need miss the principle of a pattern because it is rudely orconfusedly traced. He looks at these "biographies" as a geologist mightdo at a disturbed series of strata; and he feeds his eye upon them tillhe gets such a view of the coherent whole as will stand independent ofthe right or wrong disposition of the particular fragments. To the mindwhich discerns the whole, the regulating principle, the general curvesand proportions of the strata may be just as visible after thedisturbance as before it. The Gospels bring before us the visible anddistinct outlines of a life which, after all efforts to alter the ideaof it, remains still the same; they present certain clusters of leadingideas and facts so embedded in their substance that no criticism ofdetail can possibly get rid of them, without absolutely obliteratingthe whole record. It is this leading idea, or cluster of ideas, to begained by intent gazing, which the writer disengages from all questionsof criticism in the narrow sense of the word, and sets before us asexplaining the history of Christianity, and as proving themselves bythat explanation. That the world has been moved we know. "Give me, " heseems to say, "the Character which is set forth in the Gospels, and Ican show how He moved it":--

 It is in the object of the present treatise to exhibit Christ's career in outline. No other career ever had so much unity; no other biography is so simple or can so well afford to dispense with details. Men in general take up scheme after scheme, as circumstances suggest one or another, and therefore most biographies are compelled to pass from one subject to another, and to enter into a multitude of minute questions, to divide the life carefully into periods by chronological landmarks accurately determined, to trace the gradual development of character and ripening or change of opinions. But Christ formed one plan and executed it; no important change took place in his mode of thinking, speaking, or acting; at least the evidence before us does not enable us to trace any such change. It is possible, indeed, for students of his life to find details which they may occupy themselves with discussing; they may map out the chronology of it, and devise methods of harmonising the different accounts; but such details are of little importance compared with the one grand question, what was Christ's plan, and throw scarcely any light upon that question. What was Christ's plan is the main question which will be investigated in the present treatise, and that vision of universal monarchy which we have just been considering affords an appropriate introduction to it. .. . 

 We conclude then, that Christ in describing himself as a king, and at the same time as king of the Kingdom of God--in other words as a king representing the Majesty of the Invisible King of a theocracy--claimed the character first of Founder, next of Legislator; thirdly, in a certain high and peculiar sense, of Judge, of a new divine society. 

 In defining as above the position which Christ assumed, we have not entered into controvertible matter. We have not rested upon single passages, nor drawn upon the fourth Gospel. To deny that Christ did undertake to found and to legislate for a new theocratic society, and that he did claim the office of Judge of mankind, is indeed possible, but only to those who altogether deny the credibility of the extant biographies of Christ. If those biographies be admitted to be generally trustworthy, then Christ undertook to be what we have described; if not, then of course this, but also every other account of him falls to the ground. 

We have said that he starts from a low level; and he restricts himselfso entirely at the opening to facts which do not involve dispute, thathis views of them are necessarily incomplete, and, so to say, provisional and deliberate understatements. He begins no higher thanthe beginning of the public ministry, the Baptism, and the Temptation;and his account of these leaves much to say, though it suggests much ofwhat is left unsaid. But he soon gets to the proper subject of hisbook--the absolute uniqueness of Him whose equally unique work has beenthe Christian Church. And this uniqueness he finds in the combinationof "unbounded personal pretensions, " and the possession, claimed andbelieved, of boundless power, with an absolutely unearthly use of Hispretensions and His power, and with a goodness which has proved to be, and still is, the permanent and ever-flowing source of moral elevationand improvement in the world. He early comes across the question ofmiracles, and, as he says, it is impossible to separate the claim tothem and the belief in them from the story. We find Christ, he says, "describing himself as a king, and at the same time as king of theKingdom of God"; calling forth and founding a new and divine society, and claiming to be, both now and hereafter, the Judge without appeal ofall mankind; "he considered, in short, heaven and hell to be in hishands. " And we find, on the other hand, that as such He has beenreceived. To such an astonishing chain of phenomena miracles naturallybelong:--

 When we contemplate this scheme as a whole, and glance at the execution and results of it, three things strike us with astonishment. First, its prodigious originality, if the expression may be used. What other man has had the courage or elevation of mind to say, "I will build up a state by the mere force of my will, without help from the kings of the world, without taking advantage of any of the secondary causes which unite men together--unity of interest or speech, or blood-relationship. I will make laws for my state which shall never be repealed, and I will defy all the powers of destruction that are at work in the world to destroy what I build"?

 Secondly, we are astonished at the calm confidence with which the scheme was carried out. The reason why statesmen can seldom work on this vast scale is that it commonly requires a whole lifetime to gain that ascendency over their fellow-men which such schemes presuppose. Some of the leading organisers of the world have said, "I will work my way to supreme power, and then I will execute great plans. " But Christ overleaped the first stage altogether. He did not work his way to royalty, but simply said to all men, "I am your king. " He did not struggle forward to a position in which he could found a new state, but simply founded it. 

 Thirdly, we are astonished at the prodigious success of the scheme. It is not more certain that Christ presented himself to men as the founder, legislator, and judge of a divine society than it is certain that men have accepted him in these characters, that the divine society has been founded, that it has lasted nearly two thousand years, that it has extended over a large and the most highly-civilised portion of the earth's surface, and that it continues full of vigour at the present day. 

 Between the astonishing design and its astonishing success there intervenes an astonishing instrumentality--that of miracles. It will be thought by some that in asserting miracles to have been actually wrought by Christ we go beyond what the evidence, perhaps beyond what any possible evidence, is able to sustain. Waiving, then, for the present, the question whether miracles were actually wrought, we may state a fact which is fully capable of being established by ordinary evidence, and which is actually established by evidence as ample as any historical fact whatever--the fact, namely, that Christ _professed_ to work miracles. We may go further, and assert with confidence that Christ was believed by his followers really to work miracles, and that it was mainly on this account that they conceded to Him the pre-eminent dignity and authority which he claimed. The accounts which we have of these miracles may be exaggerated; it is possible that in some special cases stories have been related which have no foundation whatever; but on the whole, miracles play so important a part in Christ's scheme, that any theory which would represent them as due entirely to the imagination of his followers or of a later age destroys the credibility of the documents not partially but wholly, and leaves Christ a personage as mythical as Hercules. Now, the present treatise aims to show that the Christ of the Gospels is not mythical, by showing that the character those biographies portray is in all its large features strikingly consistent, and at the same time so peculiar as to be altogether beyond the reach of invention both by individual genius and still more by what is called the "consciousness of an age. " Now, if the character depicted in the Gospels is in the main real and historical, they must be generally trustworthy, and if so, the responsibility of miracles is fixed on Christ. In this case the reality of the miracles themselves depends in a great degree on the opinion we form of Christ's veracity, and this opinion must arise gradually from the careful examination of his whole life. For our present purpose, which is to investigate the plan which Christ formed and the way in which he executed it, it matters nothing whether the miracles were real or imaginary; in either case, being believed to be real, they had the same effect. Provisionally, therefore, we may speak of them as real. 

Without the belief in miracles, as he says, it is impossible toconceive the history of the Church:--

 If we suppose that Christ really performed no miracles, and that those which are attributed to him were the product of self-deception mixed in some proportion or other with imposture, then no doubt the faith of St. Paul and St. John was an empty chimera, a mere misconception; but it is none the less true that those apparent miracles were essential to Christ's success, and that had he not pretended to perform them the Christian Church would never have been founded, and the name of Jesus of Nazareth would be known at this day only to the curious in Jewish antiquities. 

But he goes on to point out what was the use which Christ made ofmiracles, and how it was that they did not, as they might have done, even impede His purpose of founding His kingdom on men's consciencesand not on their terrors. In one of the most remarkable passagesperhaps ever written on the Gospel miracles as they are seen whensimply looked at as they are described, the writer says:--

 He imposed upon himself a strict restraint in the dse of his supernatural powers. He adopted the principle that he was not sent to destroy men's lives but to save them, and rigidly abstained in practice from inflicting any kind of damage or harm. In this course he persevered so steadily that it became generally understood. Every one knew that this _king_, whose royal pretensions were so prominent, had an absolutely unlimited patience, and that he would endure the keenest criticism, the bitterest and most malignant personal attacks. Men's mouths were open to discuss his claims and character with perfect freedom; so far from regarding him with that excessive fear which might have prevented them from receiving his doctrine intelligently, they learnt gradually to treat him, even while they acknowledged his extraordinary power, with a reckless animosity which they would have been afraid to show towards an ordinary enemy. With curious inconsistency they openly charged him with being leagued with the devil; in other words, they acknowledged that he was capable of boundless mischief, and yet they were so little afraid of him that they were ready to provoke him to use his whole power against themselves. The truth was that they believed him to be disarmed by his own deliberate resolution, and they judged rightly. He punished their malice only by verbal reproofs, and they gradually gathered courage to attack the life of one whose miraculous powers they did not question. 

 Meantime, while this magnanimous self-restraint saved him from false friends and mercenary or servile flatterers, and saved the kingdom which he founded from the corruption of self-interest and worldliness, it gave him a power over the good such as nothing else could have given. For the noblest and most amiable thing that can be seen is power mixed with gentleness, the reposing, self-restraining attitude of strength. These are the "fine strains of honour, " these are "the graces of the gods"--

 To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air. And yet to charge the sulphur with a bolt That shall but rive an oak. 

 And while he did no mischief under any provocation, his power flowed in acts of beneficence on every side. Men could approach near to him, could eat and drink with him, could listen to his talk and ask him questions, and they found him not accessible only, but warmhearted, and not occupied so much with his own plans that he could not attend to a case of distress or mental perplexity. They found him full of sympathy and appreciation, dropping words of praise, ejaculations of admiration, tears. He surrounded himself with those who had tasted of his bounty, sick people whom he had cured, lepers whose death-in-life, demoniacs whose hell-in-life, he had terminated with a single powerful word. Among these came loving hearts who thanked him for friends and relatives rescued for them out of the jaws of premature death, and others whom he had saved, by a power which did not seem different, from vice and degradation. 

 This temperance in the use of supernatural power is the masterpiece of Christ. It is a moral miracle superinduced upon a physical one. This repose in greatness makes him surely the most sublime image ever offered to the human imagination. And it is precisely this trait which gave him his immense and immediate ascendency over men. If the question be put--Why was Christ so successful?--Why did men gather round him at his call, form themselves into a new society according to his wish, and accept him with unbounded devotion as their legislator and judge? some will answer, Because of the miracles which attested his divine character; others, Because of the intrinsic beauty and divinity of the great law of love which he propounded. But miracles, as we have seen, have not by themselves this persuasive power. That a man possesses a strange power which I cannot understand is no reason why I should receive his words as divine oracles of truth. The powerful man is not of necessity also wise; his power may terrify and yet not convince. On the other hand, the law of love, however divine, was but a precept. Undoubtedly it deserved that men should accept it for its intrinsic worth, but men are not commonly so eager to receive the words of wise men nor so unbounded in their gratitude to them. It was neither for his miracles nor for the beauty of his doctrine that Christ was worshipped. Nor was it for his winning personal character, nor for the persecutions he endured, nor for his martyrdom. It was for the inimitable unity which all these things made when taken together. In other words, it was for this that he whose power and greatness as shown in his miracles were overwhelming denied himself the use of his power, treated it as a slight thing, walked among men as though he were one of them, relieved them in distress, taught them to love each other, bore with undisturbed patience a perpetual hailstorm of calumny; and when his enemies grew fiercer, continued still to endure their attacks in silence, until, petrified and bewildered with astonishment, men saw him arrested and put to death with torture, refusing steadfastly to use in his own behalf the power he conceived he held for the benefit of others. It was the combination of greatness and self-sacrifice which won their hearts, the mighty powers held under a mighty control, the unspeakable condescension, the _Cross_ of _Christ_. 

And he goes on to describe the effect upon the world; and what it wasthat "drew all men unto Him":--

 To sum up the results of this chapter. We began by remarking that an astonishing plan met with an astonishing success, and we raised the question to what instrumentality that success was due. Christ announced himself as the Founder and Legislator of a new Society, and as the Supreme Judge of men. Now by what means did he procure that these immense pretensions should be allowed? He might have done it by sheer power, he might have adopted persuasion, and pointed out the merits of the scheme and of the legislation he proposed to introduce. But he adopted a third plan, which had the effect not merely of securing obedience, but of exciting enthusiasm and devotion. He laid men under an immense _obligation_. He convinced them that he was a person of altogether transcendent greatness, one who needed nothing at their hands, one whom it was impossible to benefit by conferring riches, or fame, or dominion upon him, and that, being so great, he had devoted himself of mere benevolence to their good. He showed them that for their sakes he lived a hard and laborious life, and exposed himself to the utmost malice of powerful men. They saw him hungry, though they believed him able to turn the stones into bread; they saw his royal pretensions spurned, though they believed that he could in a moment take into his hand all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them; they saw his life in danger; they saw him at last expire in agonies, though they believed that, had he so willed it, no danger could harm him, and that had he thrown himself from the topmost pinnacle of the temple he would have been softly received in the arms of ministering angels. Witnessing his sufferings, and convinced by the miracles they saw him work that they were voluntarily endured, men's hearts were touched, and pity for weakness blending strangely with wondering admiration of unlimited power, an agitation of gratitude, sympathy, and astonishment, such as nothing else could ever excite, sprang up in them; and when, turning from his deeds to his words, they found this very self-denial which had guided his own life prescribed as the principle which should guide theirs, gratitude broke forth in joyful obedience, self-denial produced self-denial, and the Law and Lawgiver together were enshrined in their inmost hearts for inseparable veneration. 

It is plain that whatever there is novel in such a line of argumentmust depend upon the way in which it is handled; and it is theextraordinary and sustained power with which this is done which givesits character to the book. The writer's method consists in realisingwith a depth of feeling and thought which it would not be easy tomatch, what our Lord was in His human ministry, as that ministry is setbefore us by those who witnessed it; and next, in showing in detail theconnection of that ministry, which wrought so much by teaching, butstill more by the Divine example, "not sparing words but resting moston deeds, " with all that is highest, purest, and best in the moralityof Christendom, and with what is most fruitful and most hopeful in thedifferences between the old world and our own. We cannot think we arewrong when we say that no one could speak of our Lord as this writerspeaks, with the enthusiasm, the overwhelming sense of Hisinexpressible authority, of His unapproachable perfection, with theprofound faith which lays everything at His feet, and not also believeall that the Divine Society which Christ founded has believed aboutHim. And though for the present his subject is history, and humanmorality as it appears to have been revolutionised and finally fixed bythat history, and not the theology which subsequent in date is yet thefoundation of both, it is difficult to imagine any reader going alongwith him and not breaking out at length into the burst, "My Lord and myGod. " If it is not so, then the phenomenon is strange indeed; for abelief below the highest and truest has produced an appreciation, areverence, an adoration which the highest belief has only produced inthe choicest examples of those who have had it, and by the side ofwhich the ordinary exhibitions of the divine history are pale andfeeble. To few, indeed, as it seems to us, has it been given to feel, and to make others feel, what in all the marvellous complexity of highand low, and in all the Divine singleness of His goodness and power, the Son of Man appeared in the days of His flesh. It is not more vividor more wonderful than what the Gospels with so much detail tell us ofthat awful ministry in real flesh and blood, with a human soul and withall the reality of man's nature; but most of us, after all, read theGospels with sealed and unwondering eyes. But, dwelling on the Manhood, so as almost to overpower us with the contrast between the distinct andliving truth and the dead and dull familiarity of our thoughts ofroutine and custom, he does so in such a way that it is impossible todoubt, though the word Incarnation never occurs in the volume, that allthe while he has before his thoughts the "taking of the manhood intoGod. " What is the Gospel picture?

 And let us pause once more to consider that which remains throughout a subject of ever-recurring astonishment, the unbounded personal pretensions which Christ advances. It is common in human history to meet with those who claim some superiority over their fellows. Men assert a pre-eminence over their fellow-citizens or fellow-countrymen and become rulers of those who at first were their equals, but they dream of nothing greater than some partial control over the actions of others for the short space of a lifetime. Few indeed are those to whom it is given to influence future ages. Yet some men have appeared who have been "as levers to uplift the earth and roll it in another course. " Homer by creating literature, Socrates by creating science, Caesar by carrying civilisation inland from the shores of the Mediterranean, Newton by starting science upon a career of steady progress, may be said to have attained this eminence. But these men gave a single impact like that which is conceived to have first set the planets in motion; Christ claims to be a perpetual attractive power like the sun which determines their orbit. They contributed to men some discovery and passed away; Christ's discovery is himself. To humanity struggling with its passions and its destiny he says, Cling to me, cling ever closer to me. If we believe St. John, he represented himself as the Light of the world, as the Shepherd of the souls of men, as the Way to immortality, as the Vine or Life-tree of humanity. And if we refuse to believe that he used those words, we cannot deny, without rejecting all the evidence before us, that he used words which have substantially the same meaning. We cannot deny that he commanded men to leave everything and attach themselves to him; that he declared himself king, master, and judge of men; that he promised to give rest to all the weary and heavy-laden; that he instructed his followers to hope for life from feeding on his body and blood. 

 But it is doubly surprising to observe that these enormous pretensions were advanced by one whose special peculiarity, not only among his contemporaries but among the remarkable men that have appeared before and since, was an almost feminine tenderness and humility. This characteristic was remarked, as we have seen, by the Baptist, and Christ himself was fully conscious of it. Yet so clear to him was his own dignity and infinite importance to the human race as an objective fact with which his own opinion of himself had nothing to do, that in the same breath in which he asserts it in the most unmeasured language, he alludes, apparently with entire unconsciousness, to his _humility_. "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; _for I am meek and lowly of heart_. " And again, when speaking to his followers of the arrogance of the Pharisees, he says, "They love to be called Rabbi; but be not you called Rabbi: _for one is your master, even Christ_. "

 Who is the humble man? It is he who resists with special watchfulness and success the temptations which the conditions of his life may offer to exaggerate his own importance. .. . If he judged himself correctly, and if the Baptist described him well when he compared him to a lamb, and, we may add, if his biographers have delineated his character faithfully, Christ was one naturally contented with obscurity, wanting the restless desire for distinction and eminence which is common in great men, hating to put forward personal claims, disliking competition and "disputes who should be greatest, " finding something bombastic in the titles of royalty, fond of what is simple and homely, of children, of poor people, occupying himself so much with the concerns of others, with the relief of sickness and want, that the temptation to exaggerate the importance of his own thoughts and plans was not likely to master him; lastly, entertaining for the human race a feeling so singularly fraternal that he was likely to reject as a sort of treason the impulse to set himself in any manner above them. Christ, it appears, was this humble man. When we have fully pondered the fact we may be in a condition to estimate the force of the evidence which, submitted to his mind, could induce him, in direct opposition to all his tastes and instincts, to lay claim, persistently, with the calmness of entire conviction, in opposition to the whole religious world, in spite of the offence which his own followers conceived, to a dominion more transcendent, more universal, more complete, than the most delirious votary of glory ever aspired to in his dreams. 

And what is it that our Lord has done for man by being so truly man?

 This then it is which is wanted to raise the feeling of humanity into an enthusiasm; when the precept of love has been given, an image must be set before the eyes of those who are called upon to obey it, an ideal or type of man which may be noble and amiable enough to raise the whole race and make the meanest member of it sacred with reflected glory. 

 Did not Christ do this? Did the command to love go forth to those who had never seen a human being they could revere? Could his followers turn upon him and say, How can we love a creature so degraded, full of vile wants and contemptible passions, whose little life is most harmlessly spent when it is an empty round of eating and sleeping; a creature destined for the grave and for oblivion when his allotted term of fretfulness and folly has expired? Of this race Christ himself was a member, and to this day is it not the best answer to all blasphemers of the species, the best consolation when our sense of its degradation is keenest, that a human brain was behind his forehead, and a human heart beating in his breast, and that within the whole creation of God nothing more elevated or more attractive has yet been found than he? And if it be answered that there was in his nature something exceptional and peculiar, that humanity must not be measured by the stature of Christ, let us remember that it was precisely thus that he wished it to be measured, delighting to call himself the Son of Man, delighting to call the meanest of mankind his brothers. If some human beings are abject and contemptible, if it be incredible to us that they can have any high dignity or destiny, do we regard them from so great a height as Christ? Are we likely to be more pained by their faults and deficiencies than he was? Is our standard higher than his? And yet he associated by preference with the meanest of the race; no contempt for them did he ever express, no suspicion that they might be less dear than the best and wisest to the common Father, no doubt that they were naturally capable of rising to a moral elevation like his own. There is nothing of which a man may be prouder than of this; it is the most hopeful and redeeming fact in history; it is precisely what was wanting to raise the love of man as man to enthusiasm. An eternal glory has been shed upon the human race by the love Christ bore to it And it was because the Edict of Universal Love went forth to men whose hearts were in no cynical mood, but possessed with a spirit of devotion to a man, that words which at any other time, however grandly they might sound, would have been but words, penetrated so deeply, and along with the law of love the power of love was given. Therefore also the first Christians were enabled to dispense with philosophical phrases, and instead of saying that they loved the ideal of man in man, could simply say and feel that they loved Christ in every man. 

 We have here the very kernel of the Christian moral scheme. We have distinctly before us the end Christ proposed to himself, and the means he considered adequate to the attainment of it. .. . 

 But how to give to the meagre and narrow hearts of men such enlargement? How to make them capable of a universal sympathy? Christ believed it possible to bind men to their kind, but on one condition--that they were first bound fast to himself. He stood forth as the representative of men, he identified himself with the cause and with the interests of all human beings; he was destined, as he began before long obscurely to intimate, to lay down his life for them. Few of us sympathise originally and directly with this devotion; few of us can perceive in human nature itself any merit sufficient to evoke it. But it is not so hard to love and venerate him who felt it. So vast a passion of love, a devotion so comprehensive, elevated, deliberate, and profound, has not elsewhere been in any degree approached save by some of his imitators. And as love provokes love, many have found it possible to conceive for Christ an attachment the closeness of which no words can describe, a veneration so possessing and absorbing the man within them, that they have said, "I live no more, but Christ lives in me. "

And what, in fact, has been the result, after the utmost and freestabatement for the objections of those who criticise the philosophicaltheories or the practical effects of Christianity?

 But that Christ's method, when rightly applied, is really of mighty force may be shown by an argument which the severest censor of Christians will hardly refuse to admit. Compare the ancient with the modern world: "Look on this picture and on that. " The broad distinction in the characters of men forces itself into prominence. Among all the men of the ancient heathen world there were scarcely one or two to whom we might venture to apply the epithet "holy. " In other words, there were not more than one or two, if any, who, besides being virtuous in their actions, were possessed with an unaffected enthusiasm of goodness, and besides abstaining from vice, regarded even a vicious thought with horror. Probably no one will deny that in Christian countries this higher-toned goodness, which we call holiness, has existed. Few will maintain that it has been exceedingly rare. Perhaps the truth is that there has scarcely been a town in any Christian country since the time of Christ, where a century has passed without exhibiting a character of such elevation that his mere presence has shamed the bad and made the good better, and has been felt at times like the presence of God Himself. And if this be so, has Christ failed? or can Christianity die?

The principle of feeling and action which Christ implanted in thatDivine Society which He founded, or in other words, His morality, hadtwo peculiarities; it sprang, and it must spring still, from what thiswriter calls all through an "enthusiasm"; and this enthusiasm waskindled and maintained by the influence of a Person. There can be nogoodness without impulses to goodness, any more than these impulses areenough without being directed by truth and reason; but the impulsesmust come before the guidance, and "Christ's Theocracy" is described"as a great attempt to set all the virtues of the world on this basis, and to give it a visible centre and fountain. " He thus describes howpersonal influence is the great instrument of moral quickening andelevation:--

 How do men become for the most part "pure, generous, and humane"? By personal, not by logical influences. They have been reared by parents who had these qualities, they have lived in a society which had a high tone, they have been accustomed to see just acts done, to hear gentle words spoken, and the justness and the gentleness have passed into their hearts, and slowly moulded their habits and made their moral discernment clear; they remember commands and prohibitions which it is a pleasure to obey for the sake of those who gave them; often they think of those who may be dead and say, "How would this action appear to him? Would he approve that word or disapprove it?" To such no baseness appears a small baseness because its consequences may be small, nor does the yoke of law seem burdensome although it is ever on their necks, nor do they dream of covering a sin by an atoning act of virtue. Often in solitude they blush when some impure fancy sails across the clear heaven of their minds, because they are never alone, because the absent Examples, the Authorities they still revere, rule not their actions only but their inmost hearts; because their conscience is indeed awake and alive, representing all the nobleness with which they stand in sympathy, and reporting their most hidden indecorum before a public opinion of the absent and the dead. 

 Of these two influences--that of Reason and that of Living Example--which would a wise reformer reinforce? Christ chose the last He gathered all men into a common relation to himself, and demanded that each should set him on the pedestal of his heart, giving a lower place to all other objects of worship, to father and mother, to husband or wife. In him should the loyalty of all hearts centre; he should be their pattern, their Authority and Judge. Of him and his service should no man be ashamed, but to those who acknowledged it morality should be an easy yoke, and the law of right as spontaneous as the law of life; sufferings should be easy to bear, and the loss of worldly friends repaired by a new home in the bosom of the Christian kingdom; finally, in death itself their sleep should be sweet upon whose tombstone it could be written "Obdormivit in Christo. "

In his treatment of this part of the subject, the work of Christ as thetrue Creator, through the Christian Church, of living morality, what ispeculiar and impressive is the way in which sympathy with Christianityin its antique and original form, in its most austere, unearthly, exacting aspects, is combined with sympathy with the practicalrealities of modern life, with its boldness, its freedom, its love ofimprovement, its love of truth. It is no common grasp which can embraceboth so easily and so firmly. He is one of those writers whose stronghold on their ideas is shown by the facility with which they can affordto make large admissions, which are at first sight startling. Nowhereare more tremendous passages written than in this book about thecorruptions of that Christianity which yet the writer holds to be theone hope and safeguard of mankind. He is not afraid to pursue hisinvestigation independently of any inquiry into the peculiar claims toauthority of the documents on which it rests. He at once goes to theirsubstance and their facts, and the Person and Life and Character whichthey witness to. He is not afraid to put Faith on exactly the samefooting as Life, neither higher nor lower, as the title to membershipin the Church; a doctrine which, if it makes imperfect and rudimentaryfaith as little a disqualification as imperfect and inconsistent life, obviously does not exclude the further belief that deliberate heresy ison the same level with deliberate profligacy. But the clear sense ofwhat is substantial, the power of piercing through accidents andconditions to the real kernel of the matter, the scornful disregard ofall entanglement of apparent contradictions and inconsistencies, enablehim to bring out the lesson which he finds before him with overpoweringforce. He sees before him immense mercy, immense condescension, immenseindulgence; but there are also immense requirements--requirements notto be fulfilled by rule or exhausted by the lapse of time, and whichthe higher they raise men the more they exact--an immense seriousnessand strictness, an immense care for substance and truth, to thedisregard, if necessary, of the letter and the form. The "Dispensationof the Spirit" has seldom had an interpreter more in earnest and moredetermined to see meaning in his words. We have room but for twoillustrations. He is combating the notion that the work of Christianityand the Church nowadays is with the good, and that it is waste of hopeand strength to try to reclaim the bad and the lost:--

 Once more, however, the world may answer, Christ may be consistent in this, but is he wise? It may be true that he does demand an enthusiasm, and that such an enthusiasm may be capable of awakening the moral sense in hearts in which it seemed dead. But if, notwithstanding this demand, only a very few members of the Christian Church are capable of the enthusiasm, what use in imposing on the whole body a task which the vast majority are not qualified to perform? Would it not be well to recognise the fact which we cannot alter, and to abstain from demanding from frail human nature what human nature cannot render? Would it not be well for the Church to impose upon its ordinary members only ordinary duties? When the Bernard or the Whitefield appears let her by all means find occupation for him. Let her in such cases boldly invade the enemy's country. But in ordinary times would it not be well for her to confine herself to more modest and practicable undertakings? There is much for her to do even though she should honestly confess herself unable to reclaim the lost. She may reclaim the young, administer reproof to slight lapses, maintain a high standard of virtue, soften manners, diffuse enlightenment. Would it not be well for her to adapt her ends to her means?

 No, it would not be well; it would be fatal to do so; and Christ meant what he said, and said what was true, when he pronounced the Enthusiasm of Humanity to be everything, and the absence of it to be the absence of everything. The world understands its own routine well enough; what it does not understand is the mode of changing that routine. It has no appreciation of the nature or measure of the power of enthusiasm, and on this matter it learns nothing from experience, but after every fresh proof of that power, relapses from its brief astonishment into its old ignorance, and commits precisely the same miscalculation on the next occasion. The power of enthusiasm is, indeed, far from being unlimited; in some cases it is very small. .. . 

 But one power enthusiasm has almost without limit--the power of propagating itself; and it was for this that Christ depended on it. He contemplated a Church in which the Enthusiasm of Humanity should not be felt by two or three only, but widely. In whatever heart it might be kindled, he calculated that it would pass rapidly into other hearts, and that as it can make its heat felt outside the Church, so it would preserve the Church itself from lukewarmncss. For a lukewarm Church he would not condescend to legislate, nor did he regard it as at all inevitable that the Church should become lukewarm. He laid it as a duty upon the Church to reclaim the lost, because he did not think it utopian to suppose that the Church might be not in its best members only, but through its whole body, inspired by that ardour of humanity that can charm away the bad passions of the wildest heart, and open to the savage and the outlaw lurking in moral wildernesses an entrancing view of the holy and tranquil order that broods over the streets and palaces of the city of God. .. . 

 Christianity is an enthusiasm or it is nothing; and if there sometimes appear in the history of the Church instances of a tone which is pure and high without being enthusiastic, of a mood of Christian feeling which is calmly favourable to virtue without being victorious against vice, it will probably be found that all that is respectable in such a mood is but the slowly-subsiding movement of an earlier enthusiasm, and all that is produced by the lukewarmness of the time itself is hypocrisy and corrupt conventionalism. 

 Christianity, then, would sacrifice its divinity if it abandoned its missionary character and became a mere educational institution. Surely this Article of Conversion is the true _articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae_. When the power of reclaiming the lost dies out of the Church, it ceases to be the Church. It may remain a useful institution, though it is most likely to become an immoral and mischievous one. Where the power remains, there, whatever is wanting, it may still be said that "the tabernacle of God is with men. "

One more passage about those who in all Churches and sects think thatall that Christ meant by His call was to give them a means to do whatthe French call _faire son salut_:--

 It appears throughout the Sermon on the Mount that there was a class of persons whom Christ regarded with peculiar aversion--the persons who call themselves one thing and are another. He describes them by a word which originally meant an "actor. " Probably it may in Christ's time have already become current in the sense which we give to the word "hypocrite. " But no doubt whenever it was used the original sense of the word was distinctly remembered. And in this Sermon, whenever Christ denounces any vice, it is with the words "Be not you like the actors. " In common with all great reformers, Christ felt that honesty in word and deed was the fundamental virtue; dishonesty, including affectation, self-consciousness, love of stage effect, the one incurable vice. Our thoughts, words, and deeds are to be of a piece. For example, if we would pray to God, let us go into some inner room where none but God shall see us; to pray at the corner of the streets, where the passing crowd may admire our devotion, is to _act_ a prayer. If we would keep down the rebellious flesh by fasting, this concerns ourselves only; it is acting to parade before the world our self-mortification. And if we would put down sin let us put it down in ourselves first; it is only the actor who begins by frowning at it in others. But there are subtler forms of hypocrisy, which Christ does not denounce, probably because they have sprung since out of the corruption of a subtler creed. The hypocrite of that age wanted simply money or credit with the people. His ends were those of the vulgar, though his means were different Christ endeavoured to cure both alike of their vulgarity by telling them of other riches and another happiness laid up in heaven. Some, of course, would neither understand nor regard his words, others would understand and receive them. But a third class would receive them without understanding them, and instead of being cured of their avarice and sensuality, would simply transfer them to new objects of desire. Shrewd enough to discern Christ's greatness, instinctively believing what he said to be true, they would set out with a triumphant eagerness in pursuit of the heavenly riches, and laugh at the short-sighted and weak-minded speculator who contented himself with the easy but insignificant profits of a worldly life. They would practise assiduously the rules by which Christ said heaven was to be won. They would patiently turn the left cheek, indefatigibly walk the two miles, they would bless with effusion those who cursed them, and pray fluently for those who used them spitefully. To love their enemies, to love any one, they would certainly find impossible, but the outward signs of love might easily be learnt. And thus there would arise a new class of actors, not like those whom Christ denounced, exhibiting before an earthly audience and receiving their pay from human managers, but hoping to be paid for their performance out of the incorruptible treasures, and to impose by their dramatic talent upon their Father in heaven. 

We have said that one peculiarity of this work is the connection whichis kept in view from the first between the Founder and His work;between Christ and the Christian Church. He finds it impossible tospeak of Him without that still existing witness of His having come, which is only less wonderful and unique than Himself. This is where, for the present, he leaves the subject:--

 For the New Jerusalem, as we witness it, is no more exempt from corruption than was the Old. .. . First the rottenness of dying superstitions, their barbaric manners, their intellectualism preferring system and debate to brotherhood, strangling Christianity with theories and framing out of it a charlatan's philosophy which madly tries to stop the progress of science--all these corruptions have in the successive ages of its long life infected the Church, and many new and monstrous perversions of individual character have disgraced it. The creed which makes human nature richer and larger makes men at the same time capable of profounder sins; admitted into a holier sanctuary, they are exposed to the temptation of a greater sacrilege; awakened to the sense of new obligations, they sometimes lose their simple respect for the old ones; saints that have resisted the subtlest temptations sometimes begin again, as it were, by yielding without a struggle to the coarsest; hypocrisy has become tenfold more ingenious and better supplied with disguises; in short, human nature has inevitably developed downwards as well as upwards, and if the Christian ages be compared with those of heathenism, they are found worse as well as better, and it is possible to make it a question whether mankind has gained on the whole. .. . 

 But the triumph of the Christian Church is that it is _there_--that the most daring of all speculative dreams, instead of being found impracticable, has been carried into effect, and when carried into effect, instead of being confined to a few select spirits, has spread itself over a vast space of the earth's surface, and when thus diffused, instead of giving place after an age or two to something more adapted to a later time, has endured for two thousand years, and at the end of two thousand years, instead of lingering as a mere wreck spared by the tolerance of the lovers of the past, still displays vigour and a capacity of adjusting itself to new conditions, and lastly, in all the transformations it undergoes, remains visibly the same thing and inspired by its Founder's universal and unquenchable spirit. 

 It is in this and not in any freedom from abuses that the divine power of Christianity appears. Again, it is in this, and not in any completeness or all-sufficiency. .. . 

 But the achievement of Christ in founding by his single will and power a structure so durable and so universal, is like no other achievement which history records. The masterpieces of the men of action are coarse and common in comparison with it, and the masterpieces of speculation flimsy and insubstantial. When we speak of it the commonplaces of admiration fail us altogether. Shall we speak of the originality of the design, of the skill displayed in the execution? All such terms are inadequate. Originality and contriving skill operated indeed, but, as it were, implicitly. The creative effort which produced that against which, it is said, the gates of hell shall not prevail, cannot be analysed. No architects' designs were furnished for the New Jerusalem, no committee drew up rules for the Universal Commonwealth. If in the works of Nature we can trace the indications of calculation, of a struggle with difficulties, of precaution, of ingenuity, then in Christ's work it may be that the same indications occur. But these inferior and secondary powers were not consciously exercised; they were implicitly present in the manifold yet single creative act. The inconceivable work was done in calmness; before the eyes of men it was noiselessly accomplished, attracting little attention. Who can describe that which unites men? Who has entered into the formation of speech which is the symbol of their union? Who can describe exhaustively the origin of civil society? He who can do these things can explain the origin of the Christian Church. For others it must be enough to say, "the Holy Ghost fell on those that believed. " No man saw the building of the New Jerusalem, the workmen crowded together, the unfinished walls and unpaved streets; no man heard the chink of trowel and pickaxe; it descended _out of heaven from God_. 

And here we leave this remarkable book. It seems to us one of thosewhich permanently influence opinion, not so much by argument as such, as by opening larger views of the familiar and the long-debated, bydeepening the ordinary channels of feeling, and by bringing men back toseriousness and rekindling their admiration, their awe, their love, about what they know best. We have not dwelt on minute criticisms aboutpoints to which exception might be taken. We have not noticed evenpositions on which, without further explanation, we should more or lesswidely disagree. The general scope of it, and the seriousness as wellas the grandeur and power with which the main idea is worked out, seemto make mere secondary objections intolerable. It is a fragment, withthe disadvantages of a fragment. What is put before us is far fromcomplete, and it needs to be completed. In part at least an answer hasbeen given to the question _what_ Christ was; but the question remains, not less important, and of which the answer is only here foreshadowed, _who_ He was. But so far as it goes, what it does is this: in the faceof all attempts to turn Christianity into a sentiment or a philosophy, it asserts, in a most remarkable manner, a historical religion and ahistorical Church; but it also seeks, in a manner equally remarkable, to raise and elevate the thoughts of all, on all sides, about Christ, as He showed Himself in the world, and about what Christianity wasmeant to be; to touch new springs of feeling; to carry back the Churchto its "hidden fountains, " and pierce through the veils which hide fromus the reality of the wonders in which it began. 

The book is indeed a protest against the stiffness of all cast-ironsystems, and a warning against trusting in what is worn out. But itshows how the modern world, so complex, so refined, so wonderful, is, in all that it accounts good, but a reflection of what is described inthe Gospels, and its civilisation, but an application of the laws ofChrist, changing, it may be, indefinitely in outward form, butdepending on their spirit as its ever-living spring. If we havemisunderstood this book, and its cautious understatements are notunderstatements at all, but represent the limits beyond which thewriter does not go, we can only say again it is one-of the strangestamong books. If we have not misunderstood him, we have before us awriter who has a right to claim deference from those who think deepestand know most, when he pleads before them that not Philosophy can saveand reclaim the world, but Faith in a Divine Person who is worthy ofit, allegiance to a Divine Society which He founded, and union ofhearts in the object for which He created it. 

X

THE AUTHOR OF "ROBERT ELSMERE" ON A NEW REFORMATION[12]

 [12] _Guardian_, 6th March 1889. 

Mrs. Ward, in the _Nineteenth Century_, develops with warmth and forcethe theme and serious purpose of _Robert Elsmere_; and she does so, using the same literary method which she used, certainly with effect, in the story itself. Every age has its congenial fashion of discussingthe great questions which affect, or seem to affect, the fate ofmankind. According to the time and its circumstances, it is a _SummaTheologiae_, or a _Divina Commedia_, or a _Novum Organum_, or aCalvin's _Institutes_, or a Locke _On the Understanding_, or an_Encyclopedia_, or a _Candide_, which sets people thinking more thanusual and comparing their thoughts. Long ago in the history of humanquestioning, Plato and Cicero discovered the advantages over dryargument of character and easy debate, and so much of story as clothedabstractions and hard notions with human life and affections. It is aweighty precedent. And as the prophetess of a "New Reformation" Mrs. Ward has reverted to what is substantially the same method. She iswithin her right. We do not blame her for putting her argument into theshape of a novel, and bringing out the points of her case in the trialsand passionate utterances of imaginary persons, or in a conversationabout their mental history. But she must take the good with the bad. Such a method has its obvious advantages, in freedom, and convenience, and range of illustration. It has its disadvantages. The dealer inimagination may easily become the unconscious slave of imagination;and, living in a self-constructed world, may come to forget that thereis any other; and the temptation to unfairness becomes enormous whenall who speak, on one side or the other, only speak as you make or letthem speak. 

It is to imagination that _Robert Elsmere_ makes its main appeal, undoubtedly a powerful and pathetic one. It bids us ask ourselves what, with the phenomena before us, we can conceive possible and real. Itimplies, of course, much learning, with claims of victory in thespheres of history and science, with names great in criticism, of whomfew readers probably can estimate the value, though all may be affectedby the formidable array. But it is not in these things, as with a booklike _Supernatural Religion_, that the gist of the argument lies. Thealleged results of criticism are taken for granted; whether rightly orwrongly the great majority of readers certainly cannot tell. But thenthe effect of the book, or the view which it represents, begins. Imagine a man, pure-minded, earnest, sensitive, self-devoted, plungedinto the tremendous questions of our time. Bit by bit he finds what hethought to be the truth of truths breaking away. In the darkness andsilence with which nature covers all beyond the world of experience hethought he had found light and certainty from on high. He thought thathe had assurances and pledges which could not fail him, that God was inthe world, governed it, loved it, showed Himself in it He thought hehad a great and authentic story to fall back upon, and a Sacred Book, which was its guaranteed witness, and by which God still spoke to hissoul. He thought that, whatever he did not know, he knew this, and thiswas a hope to live and die in; with all that he saw round him, of painand sin and misery, here was truth on which he could rest secure, inhis fight with evil. Like the rest of us, he knew that terrible, far-reaching, heart-searching questions were abroad; that all that tohim was sacred and unapproachable in its sanctity was not so toall--was not so, perhaps, to men whom he felt to be stronger and moreknowing than himself--was not so, perhaps, to some who seemed to him tostand, in character and purpose, at a moral height above him. Still hethought himself in full possession of the truth which God had givenhim, till at length, in one way or another, the tide of questioningreached him. Then begins the long agony. He hears that what he neverdoubted is said to be incredible, and is absolutely given up. He findshimself bin-rounded by hostile powers of thought, by an atmospherewhich insensibly but irresistibly governs opinion, by doubt and denialin the air, by keen and relentless intellect, before which he can onlyhe silent; he sees and hears all round the disintegrating process goingon in the creeds and institutions and intellectual statements ofChristianity. He is assured, and sees some reason to believe it, thatthe intellect of the day is against him and his faith; and further, that unreality taints everything, belief and reasoning, and professionand conduct Step by step he is forced from one position and another;the process was a similar and a familiar one when the great Romansecession was going on fifty years ago. But now, in Robert Elsmere, comes the upshot. He is not landed, as some logical minds have been, which have gone through the same process, in mere unbelief orindifference. He is too good for that. Something of his oldChristianity is too deeply engrained in him. He cannot go back from themoral standard to which it accustomed him. He will serve God in aChristian spirit and after the example of Christ, though not in whatcan claim to be called a Christian way. He is the beginner of one moreof the numberless attempts to find a new mode of religion, purer thanany of the old ones could be--of what Mrs. Ward calls in her new paper"A New Reformation. "

In this paper, which is more distinctly a dialogue on the Platonicmodel, she isolates the main argument on which the story was based, butwithout any distinct reference to any of the criticisms on her book. _Robert Elsmere_ rests on the achievements of historic criticism, chiefly German criticism. From the traditional, old-fashioned Christianway of regarding and using the old records which we call the Bible, theground, we are told, is hopelessly and for ever cut away by Germanhistorical criticism. And the difference between the old and the modernway of regarding and using them is expressed by the difference between_bad translation_ and _good_; the old way of reading, quoting, andestimating ancient documents of all kinds was purblind, lifeless, narrow, mechanical, whereas the modern comparative and critical methodnot only is more sure in important questions of authenticity, but putstrue life and character and human feeling and motives into thepersonages who wrote these documents, and of whom they speak. Thesebooks were entirely misunderstood, even if people knew the meaning oftheir words; now, at last, we can enter into their real spirit andmeaning. And where such a change of method and point of view, asregards these documents, is wholesale and sweeping, it involves awholesale and sweeping change in all that is founded on them. Revisedideas about the Bible mean a revised and reconstructed Christianity--"ANew Reformation. "

Mrs. Ward lays more stress than everybody will agree to on what shelikens to the difference between _good translation_ and _bad_, indealing with the materials of history. Doubtless, in our time, thehistorical imagination, like the historical conscience, has beenawakened. In history, as in other things, the effort after the real andthe living has been very marked; it has sometimes resulted, as we know, in that parading of the real which we call the realistic. The mode oftelling a story or stating a case varies, even characteristically, fromage to age, from Macaulay to Hume, from Hume to Rapin, from Rapin toHolinshed or Hall; but after all, the story in its main featuresremains, after allowing for the differences in the mode of presentingit. German criticism, to which we are expected to defer, has its mode. It combines two elements--a diligent, searching, lawyer-like habit ofcross-examination, laborious, complete and generally honest, which, when it is not spiteful or insolent, deserves all the praise itreceives; but with it a sense of the probable, in dealing with thematerials collected, and a straining after attempts to constructtheories and to give a vivid reality to facts and relations, which arenot always so admirable; which lead, in fact, sometimes to the heightof paradox, or show mere incapacity to deal with the truth and depth oflife, or make use of a poor and mean standard--_mesquin_ would be theFrench word--in the interpretation of actions and aims. It hasimpressed on us the lesson--not to be forgotten when we read Mrs. Ward's lists of learned names--that weight and not number is the testof good evidence. German learning is decidedly imposing. But after allthere are Germans and Germans; and with all that there has been ofgreat in German work there has been also a large proportion of what isbad--conceited, arrogant, shallow, childish. German criticism has beenthe hunting-ground of an insatiable love of sport--may we not say, without irreverence, the scene of the discovery of a good many mares'nests? When the question is asked, why all this mass of criticism hasmade so little impression on English thought, the answer is, because ofits extravagant love of theorising, because of its divergences andvariations, because of its negative results. Those who have been soeager to destroy have not been so successful in construction. Clevertheories come to nothing; streams which began with much noise at lastlose themselves in the sand. Undoubtedly, it presents a very important, and, in many ways, interesting class of intellectual phenomena, amongthe many groups of such inquiries, moral, philosophical, scientific, political, social, of which the world is full, and of which no soberthinker expects to see the end. If this vaunted criticism is still leftto scholars, it is because it is still in the stage in which onlyscholars are competent to examine and judge it; it is not fit to be afactor in the practical thought and life of the mass of mankind. Answers, and not merely questions, are what we want, who have to live, and work, and die. Criticism has pulled about the Bible withoutrestraint or scruple. We are all of us steeped in its daringassumptions and shrewd objections. Have its leaders yet given us anaccount which it is reasonable to receive, clear, intelligible, self-consistent and consistent with all the facts, of what thismysterious book is?

Meanwhile, in the face of theories and conjectures and negativearguments, there is something in the world which is fact, and hardfact. The Christian Church is the most potent fact in the mostimportant ages of the world's progress. It is an institution like theworld itself, which has grown up by its own strength and according toits own principle of life, full of good and evil, having as the law ofits fate to be knocked about in the stern development of events, exposed, like human society, to all kinds of vicissitudes andalternations, giving occasion to many a scandal, and shaking the faithand loyalty of many a son, showing in ample measure the wear and tearof its existence, battered, injured, sometimes degenerate, sometimesimproved, in one way or another, since those dim and long distant dayswhen its course began; but showing in all these ways what a real thingit is, never in the extremity of storms and ruin, never in the deepestdegradation of its unfaithfulness, losing hold of its own centralunchanging faith, and never in its worst days of decay and corruptionlosing hold of the power of self-correction and hope of recovery. _Solvitur ambulando_ is an argument to which Mrs. Ward appeals, inreply to doubts about the solidity of the "New Reformation. " It couldbe urged more modestly if the march of the "New Reformation" had lastedfor even half of one of the Christian centuries. The Church is in theworld, as the family is in the world, as the State is in the world, asmorality is in the world, a fact of the same order and greatness. Likethese it has to make its account with the "all-dissolving" assaults ofhuman thought. Like these it has to prove itself by living, and it doesdo so. In all its infinite influences and ministries, in infinitedegrees and variations, it is the public source of light and good andhope. If there are select and aristocratic souls who can do without it, or owe it nothing, the multitude of us cannot. And the Christian Churchis founded on a definite historic fact, that Jesus Christ who wascrucified rose from the dead; and, coming from such an author, it comesto us, bringing with it the Bible. The fault of a book like _RobertElsmere_ is that it is written with a deliberate ignoring that thesetwo points are not merely important, but absolutely fundamental, in theproblems with which it deals. With these not faced and settled it islike looking out at a prospect through a window of which all the glassis ribbed and twisted, distorting everything. It may be that even yetwe imperfectly understand our wondrous Bible. It may be that we haveyet much to learn about it. It may be that there is much that is verydifficult about it. Let us reverently and fearlessly learn all we canabout it. Let us take care not to misuse it, as it has been terriblymisused. But coming to us from the company and with the sanction ofChrist risen, it never can be merely like other books. A so-calledChristianity, ignoring or playing with Christ's resurrection, and usingthe Bible as a sort of Homer, may satisfy a class of clever andcultivated persons. It may be to them the parent of high and noblethoughts, and readily lend itself to the service of mankind. But it iswell in so serious a matter not to confuse things. This new religionmay borrow from Christianity as it may borrow from Plato, or fromBuddhism, or Confucianism, or even Islam. But it is not Christianity. _Robert Elsmere_ may be true to life, as representing one of thosetragedies which happen in critical moments of history. But aChristianity which tells us to think of Christ doing good, but toforget and put out of sight Christ risen from the dead, is not true tolife. It is as delusive to the conscience and the soul as it isillogical to reason. 

XI

RENAN'S "VIE DE JÉSUS"[13]

 [13] _Histoire des Origines du Christianisme_. Livre I. --_Vie de Jésus_. Par Ernest Renan. _Guardian_, 9th September 1863. 

Unbelief is called upon nowadays, as well as belief, to give itsaccount of the origin of that undeniable and most important fact whichwe call the Christian religion. And if it is true that in some respectsthe circumstances under which the controversy is carried on are, as ithas been alleged, more than heretofore favourable to unbelief, it isalso true that in some other respects the case of unbelief hasdifficulties which it had not once. It has to accept and admit, if itwishes to gain a favourable hearing from the present generation, theunique and surpassing moral grandeur, depth, and attractiveness ofChristianity. The polemic method which set Christianity in broadcontrast with what was supposed to be best and highest in human nature, and therefore found no difficulty in tracing to a bad source what wasitself represented to be bad, is not a method suited to the ideas andfeelings of our time; and the sneers and sarcasms of the last century, provoked by abuses and inconsistencies which have since received theirample and memorable punishment, cease to produce any effect on readersof the present day, except to call forth a passing feeling ofrepugnance at what is shallow and profane, mixed, it may be, sometimes, with an equally passing admiration for what is witty and brilliant. Even in M. Renan's view, Voltaire has done his work, and is out ofdate. Those who now attack Christianity have to attack it under thedisadvantage of the preliminary admission that its essential anddistinguishing elements are, on the whole, in harmony and not indiscordance with the best conceptions of human duty and life, and thatits course and progress have been, at any rate, concurrent with allthat is best and most hopeful in human history. First allowing that asa fact it contains in it things than which we cannot imagine anythingbetter, and without which we should never have reached to where we are, they then have to dispute its divine claims. No man could writepersuasively on religion now, _against_ it any more than _for_ it, whodid not show that he was fully penetrated not only with its august andbeneficent aspect, but with the essential and everlasting truths which, in however imperfect shapes, or whencesoever derived, are embodied init and are ministered by it to society. 

That Christianity is, as a matter of fact, a successful and a livingreligion, in a degree absolutely without parallel in any otherreligion, is the point from which its assailants have now to start. They have also to take account of the circumstance, to the recognitionof which the whole course of modern thought and inquiry has brought us, that it has been successful, not by virtue merely of any outward andaccidental favouring circumstances, but of its intrinsic power and ofprinciples which are inseparable from its substance. This being thecondition of the question, those who deny its claim to a direct Divineorigin have to frame their theory of it so as to account, on principlessupposed to be common to it and other religions, not merely for itsrise and its conquests, but for those broad and startling differenceswhich separate it, in character and in effects, from all other knownreligions. They have to show how that which is instinct withnever-dying truth sprang out of what was false and mistaken, if notcorrupt; how that which alone has revealed God to man's conscience hadno other origin than what in other instances has led men throughenthusiasm and imposture to a barren or a mischievous superstition. 

Such an attempt is the work before us--a work destined, probably, bothfrom its ability and power and from its faults, to be for modern Francewhat the work of Strauss was for Germany, the standard expression of anunbelief which shrinks with genuine distaste from the coarse andnegative irreligion of older infidelity, and which is too refined, tooprofound and sympathetic in its views of human nature, to be insensibleto those numberless points in which as a fact Christianity has givenexpression to the best and highest thoughts that man can have. Strauss, to account for what we see, imagined an idea, or a set of ideas, gradually worked out into the shape of a history, of which scarcelyanything can be taken as real matter of fact, except the bare existenceof the person who was clothed in the process of time with theattributes created by the idealising legend. Such a view is too vagueand indistinct to satisfy French minds. A theory of this sort, to findgeneral acceptance in France, must start with concrete history, and notbe history held in solution in the cloudy shapes of myths which vanishas soon as touched. M. Renan's process is in the main the reverse ofStrauss's. He undertakes to extract the real history recorded in theGospels; and not only so, but to make it even more palpable andinteresting, if not more wonderful, than it seems at first sight in theoriginal records, by removing the crust of mistake and exaggerationwhich has concealed the true character of what the narrative records;by rewriting it according to those canons of what is probable andintelligible in human life and capacity which are recognised in thepublic whom he addresses. 

Two of these canons govern the construction of the book. One of them isthe assumption that in no part of the history of man is thesupernatural to be admitted. This, of course, is not peculiar to M. Renan, though he lays it down with such emphasis in all his works, andis so anxious to bring it into distinct notice on every occasion, thatit is manifestly one which he is desirous to impress on all who readhim, as one of the ultimate and unquestionable foundations of allhistorical inquiry. The other canon is one of moral likelihood, and itis, that it is credible and agreeable to what we gather fromexperience, that the highest moral elevation ever attained by manshould have admitted along with it, and for its ends, consciousimposture. On the first of these assumptions, all that is miraculous inthe Gospel narratives is, not argued about, or, except perhaps in oneinstance--the raising of Lazarus--attempted to be accounted for orexplained, but simply left out and ignored. On the second, the factfrom which there is no escape--that He whom M. Renan venerates with asincerity which no one can doubt as the purest and greatest of moralreformers, did claim power from God to work miracles--is harmonisedwith the assumption that the claim could not possibly have been a trueone. 

M. Renan professes to give an historical account of the way in whichthe deepest, purest, most enduring religious principles known among menwere, not merely found out and announced, but propagated and impressedupon the foremost and most improved portions of mankind, by the powerof a single character. It is impossible, without speaking of Jesus ofNazareth as Christians are used to do, to speak of His character and ofthe results of His appearance in loftier terms than this professedunbeliever in His Divine claims. But when the account is drawn out indetail, of a cause alleged to be sufficient to produce such effects, the apparent inadequacy of it is most startling. When we think of whatChristianity is and has done, and that, in M. Renan's view, Christ, theChrist whom he imagines and describes, is all in all to Christianity, and then look to what he conceives to have been the original spring andcreative impulse of its achievements, the first feeling is that noshifts that belief has sometimes been driven to, to keep within therange of the probable, are greater than those accepted by unbelief, inits most enlightened and reflecting representations. To suppose such anone as M. Renan paints, changing the whole course of history, overturning and converting the world, and founding the religion whichM. Renan thinks the lasting religion of mankind, involves a force uponour imagination and reason to which it is not easy to find a parallel. 

His view is that a Galilean peasant, in advance of his neighbours andcountrymen only in the purity, force, and singleness of purpose withwhich he realised the highest moral truths of Jewish religious wisdom, first charming a few simple provincials by the freshness and nativebeauty of his lessons, was then led on, partly by holy zeal againstfalsehood and wickedness, partly by enthusiastic delusions as to hisown mission and office, to attack the institutions of Judaism, andperished in the conflict--and that this was the cause why Christianityand Christendom came to be and exist. This is the explanation which agreat critical historian, fully acquainted with the history of otherreligions, presents, as a satisfactory one, of a phenomenon soastonishing and unique as that of a religion which has suited itselfwith undiminished vitality to the changes, moral, social, andpolitical, which have marked the eighteen centuries of Europeanhistory. There have been other enthusiasts for goodness and truth, moreor less like the character which M. Renan draws in his book, but theyhave never yet founded a universal religion, or one which had theprivilege of perpetual youth and unceasing self-renovation. There havebeen other great and imposing religions, commanding the allegiance forcentury after century of millions of men; but who will dare assert thatany of these religions, that of Sakya-Mouni, of Mahomet, or that of theVedas, could possibly be the religion, or satisfy the religious ideasand needs, of the civilised West?

When M. Renan comes to detail he is as strangely insensible to what seemat first sight the simplest demands of probability. As it were by a sortof reaction to the minute realising of particulars which has been invogue among some Roman Catholic writers, M. Renan realises too--realiseswith no less force and vividness, and, according to his point of view, with no less affectionate and tender interest. He popularises theGospels; but not for a religious set of readers--nor, we must add, forreaders of thought and sense, whether interested for or againstChristianity, but for a public who study life in the subtle and highlywrought novels of modern times. He appeals from what is probable tothose representations of human nature which aspire to pass beyond theconventional and commonplace, and especially he dwells on neglected andunnoticed examples of what is sweet and soft and winning. But it is hardto recognise the picture he has drawn in the materials out of which hehas composed it. The world is tolerably familiar with them. If there isa characteristic, consciously or unconsciously acknowledged in theGospel records, it is that of the gravity, the plain downrightseriousness, the laborious earnestness, impressed from first to last onthe story. When we turn from these to his pages it is difficult toexaggerate the astounding impression which his epithets and descriptionshave on the mind. We are told that there is a broad distinction betweenthe early Galilean days of hope in our Lord's ministry, and the laterdays of disappointment and conflict; and that if we look, we shall findin Galilee the "_fin et joyeux moraliste_, " full of a "_conversationpleine de gaieté et de charme_, " of "_douce gaieté et aimablesplaisanteries_, " with a "_prédication suave et douce, toute pleine de lanature et du parfum des champs_, " creating out of his originality ofmind his "_innocents aphorismes_, " and the "_genre d'élicieux_" ofparabolic teaching; "_le charmant docteur qui pardonnait à tous pourvuqu'on l'aimât_. " He lived in what was then an earthly paradise, in "_lajoyeuse Galilée_" in the midst of the "_nature ravissante_" which gaveto everything about the Sea of Galilee "_un tour idyllique etcharmant_. " So the history of Christianity at its birth is a"_délicieuse pastorale_" an "_idylle_, " a "_milieu enivrant_" of joy andhope. The master was surrounded by a "_bande de joyeux enfants_, " a"_troupe gaie et vagabonde_, " whose existence in the open air was a"perpetual enchantment. " The disciples were "_ces petits comités debonnes gens_, " very simple, very credulous, and like their country fullof a "_sentiment gai et tendre de la vie_, " and of an "_imaginationriante_. " Everything is spoken of as "delicious"--"_délicieusepastorale, " "délicieuse beauté, " "délicieuses sentences, " "délicieusethéologie d'amour_. " Among the "tender and delicate souls of theNorth"--it is not quite thus that Josephus describes the Galileans--wasset up an "_aimable communisme_. " Is it possible to imagine a moreextravagant distortion than the following, both in its general effectand in the audacious generalisation of a very special incident, itselfinaccurately conceived of?--

 Il parcourait ainsi la Galilée au milieu _d'une fête perpétuelle_. Il se servait d'une mule, monture en Orient si bonne et si sûre, et dont le grand oeil noir, ombragé de longs cils, a beaucoup de douceur. Ses disciples déployarent quelquefois autour de lui une pompe rustique, dont leurs vêtements, tenant lieu de tapis, faisaient les frais. Ils les mettaient sur la mule qui le portait, ou les étendaient à terre sur son passage. 

History has seen strange hypotheses; but of all extravagant notions, that one that the world has been conquered by what was originally anidyllic gipsying party is the most grotesque. That these "_petitscomités de bonnes gens_" though influenced by a great example andwakened out of their "delicious pastoral" by a heroic death, shouldhave been able to make an impression on Judaean faith, Greek intellect, and Roman civilisation, and to give an impulse to mankind which haslasted to this day, is surely one of the most incredible hypothesesever accepted, under the desperate necessity of avoiding an unwelcomealternative. 

M. Renan is willing to adopt everything in the Gospel history exceptwhat is miraculous. If he is difficult to satisfy as to the physicalpossibility or the proof of miracles, at least he is not hard tosatisfy on points of moral likelihood; and he draws on his ample powerof supposing the combination of moral opposites in order to get rid ofthe obstinate and refractory supernatural miracle. To some extent, indeed, he avails himself of that inexhaustible resource of unlimitedguessing, by means of which he reverses the whole history, and makes ittake a shape which it is hard to recognise in its original records. Thefeeding of the five thousand, the miracle described by all the fourEvangelists, is thus curtly disposed of:--"Il se retira au désert. Beaucoup de monde l'y suivit. _Grâce à une extrème frugalité_ la troupesainte y vécut; _on crut naturellement_ voir en cela un miracle. " Thisis all he has to say. But miracles are too closely interwoven with thewhole texture of the Gospel history to be, as a whole, thus disposedof. He has, of course, to admit that miracles are so mixed up with itthat mere exaggeration is not a sufficient account of them. But be bidsus remember that the time was one of great credulity, of slackness andincapacity in dealing with matters of evidence, a time when it might besaid that there was an innocent disregard of exact and literal truthwhere men's souls and affections were deeply interested. But, evensupposing that this accounted for a belief in certain miracles growingup--which it does not, for the time was not one of mere childlike anduninquiring belief, but was as perfectly familiar as we are with thenotion of false claims to miraculous power which could not standexamination--still this does not meet the great difficulty of all, towhich he is at last brought. It is undeniable that our Lord professedto work miracles. They were not merely attributed to Him by those whocame after Him. If we accept in any degree the Gospel account, He notonly wrought miracles, but claimed to do so; and M. Renan admitsit--that is, he admits that the highest, purest, most Divine personever seen on earth (for all this he declares in the most unqualifiedterms) stooped to the arts of Simon Magus or Apollonius of Tyana. Hewas a "thaumaturge"--"tard et à contre-coeur"--"avec une sorte demauvaise humeur"--"en cachette"--"malgré lui"--"sentant le vanité del'opinion"; but still a "thaumaturge. " Moreover, He was so almost ofnecessity; for M. Renan holds that without the support of an allegedsupernatural character and power, His work must have perished. Everything, to succeed and be realised, must, we are told, be fortifiedwith something of alloy. We are reminded of the "loi fatale quicondamne l'idée à déchoir dès qu'elle cherche à convertir les hommes. ""Concevoir de bien, en efifet, ne suffit pas; il faut le faire réussirparmi les hommes. Pour cela, des voies moins pures sont nécessaires. "If the Great Teacher had kept to the simplicity of His early lessons, He would have been greater, but "the truth would not have beenpromulgated. " "He had to choose between these two alternatives, eitherrenouncing his mission or becoming a 'thaumaturge. '" The miracles"were a violence done to him by his age, a concession which was wrungfrom him by a passing necessity. " And if we feel startled at such aview, we are reminded that we must not measure the sincerity ofOrientals by our own rigid and critical idea of veracity; and that"such is the weakness of the human mind, that the best causes are notusually won but by bad reasons, " and that the greatest of discoverersand founders have only triumphed over their difficulties "by dailytaking account of men's weakness and by not always giving the truereasons of the truth. "

 L'histoire est impossible si l'on n'admet hautement qu'il y a pour la sincerite plusieurs mesures. Toutes les grandes choses se font par le peuple, or on ne conduit pas le peuple qu'en se prétant à ses idées. Le philosophe, qui sachant cela, s'isole et se retranche dans sa noblesse, est hautement louable. Mais celui qui prend l'humanité avec ses illusions et cherche à agir sur elle et avec elle, ne saurait être blamé. César savait fort bien qu'il n'était pas fils de Vénus; la France ne serait pas ce qu'elle est si l'on n'avait cru mille ans à la sainte ampoule de Reims. Il nous est facile à nous autres, impuissants que nous sommes, d'appeler cela mensonge, et fiers de notre timide honnêteté, de traiter avec dédain les héros qui out accepté dans d'autres conditions la lutte de la vie. Quand nous aurons fait avec nos scrupules ce qu'ils firent avec leurs mensonges, nous aurons le droit d'être pour eux sévères. 

Now let M. Renan or any one else realise what is involved, on hissupposition, not merely, as he says, of "illusion or madness, " but ofwilful deceit and falsehood, in the history of Lazarus, even accordingto his lame and hesitating attempt to soften it down and extenuate it;and then put side by side with it the terms in which M. Renan hassummed up the moral greatness of Him of whom he writes:--

 La foi, l'enthousiasme, la constance de la première génération chrétienne ne s'expliquent qu'en supposant à l'origine de tout le mouvement un homme de proportions colossales. .. . Cette sublime personne, qui chaque jour préside encore au destin du monde, il est permis de l'appeler divine, non en ce sens que Jésus ait absorbé tout le divin, mais en ce sens que Jésus est l'individu qui a fait faire à son espèce le plus grand pas vers le divin. .. . Au milieu de cette uniforme vulgarité, des colonnes s'élèvent vers le ciel et attestent une plus noble destinée. Jésus est la plus haute de ces colonnes qui montrent à l'homme d'où il vient et où il doit tendre. En lui s'est condensé tout ce qu'il y a de bon et d'élevé dans notre nature. .. . Quels que puissent être les phénomènes inattendus de l'avenir, Jésus ne sera pas surpassé. .. . Tous les siècles proclameront qu'entre les fils des hommes il n'en est pas né de plus grand que Jésus. 

And of such an one we are told that it is a natural and reasonable viewto take, not merely that He claimed a direct communication with God, which disordered reason could alone excuse Him for claiming, but thatHe based His whole mission on a pretension to such supernatural powersas a man could not pretend to without being conscious that they weredelusions. The conscience of that age as to veracity or imposture wasquite clear on such a point. Jew and Greek and Roman would havecondemned as a deceiver one who, not having the power, took on him tosay that by the finger of God he could raise the dead. And yet to aconscience immeasurably above his age, it seems, according to M. Renan, that this might be done. It is absurd to say that we must not judgesuch a proceeding by the ideas of our more exact and truth-loving age, when it would have been abundantly condemned by the ideas recognised inthe religion and civilisation of the first century. 

M. Renan repeatedly declares that his great aim is to save religion byrelieving it of the supernatural. He does not argue; but instead of theold familiar view of the Great History, he presents an opposite theoryof his own, framed to suit that combination of the revolutionary andthe sentimental which just now happens to be in favour in the unbelievingschools. And this is the result: a representation which boldly investsits ideal with the highest perfections of moral goodness, strength, andbeauty, and yet does not shrink from associating with it also--andthat, too, as the necessary and inevitable condition of success--adeliberate and systematic willingness to delude and insensibility tountruth. This is the religion and this is the reason which appeals toChrist in order to condemn Christianity. 

XII

RENAN'S "LES APÔTRES"[14]

 [14] _Histoire des Origines du Christianisme_. Livre II. --_Les Apôtres_. Par Ernest Renan. _Saturday Review_, 14th July 1866. 

In his recent volume, _Les Apôtres_, M. Renan has undertaken two tasksof very unequal difficulty. He accounts for the origin of the Christianbelief and religion, and he writes the history of its firstpropagation. These are very different things, and to do one of them isby no means to do the other. M. Renan's historical sketch of the firststeps of the Christian movement is, whatever we may think of itscompleteness and soundness, a survey of characters and facts, based onour ordinary experience of the ways in which men act and areinfluenced. Of course it opens questions and provokes dissent at everyturn; but, after all, the history of a religion once introduced intothe world is the history of the men who give it shape and preach it, who accept or oppose it. The spread and development of all religionshave certain broad features in common, which admit of philosophicaltreatment simply as phenomena, and receive light from being comparedwith parallel examples of the same kind; and whether a man's historicalestimate is right, and his picture accurate and true, depends on hisknowledge of the facts, and his power to understand them and to makethem understood. No one can dispute M. Renan's qualifications for beingthe historian of a religious movement. The study of religion as aphenomenon of human nature and activity has paramount attractions forhim. His interest in it has furnished him with ample and variedmaterials for comparison and generalisation. He is a scholar and a manof learning, quick and wide in his sympathies, and he commandsattention by the singular charm of his graceful and lucid style. When, therefore, he undertakes to relate how, as a matter of fact, theChristian Church grew up amid the circumstances of its firstappearance, he has simply to tell the story of the progress of areligious cause; and this is a comparatively light task for him. But healso lays before us what he appears to consider an adequate account ofthe origin of the Christian belief. The Christian belief, it must beremembered, means, not merely the belief that there was such a personas he has described in his former, volume, but the belief that one whowas crucified rose again from the dead, and lives for evermore above. It is in this belief that the Christian religion had its beginning;there is no connecting Christ and Christianity, except through theResurrection. The origin, therefore, of the belief in the Resurrection, in the shape in which we have it, lies across M. Renan's path toaccount for; and neither the picture which he has drawn in his formervolume, nor the history which he follows out in this, dispense him fromthe necessity of facing this essential and paramount element in theproblem which he has to solve. He attempts to deal with this, the knotof the great question. But his attempt seems to us to disclose a moreextraordinary insensibility to the real demands of the case, and towhat we cannot help calling the pitiable inadequacy of his ownexplanation, than we could have conceived possible in so keen andpractised a mind. 

The Resurrection, we repeat, bars the way in M. Renan's scheme formaking an intelligible transition, from the life and character which hehas sought to reproduce from the Gospels, to the first beginnings andpreaching of Christianity. The Teacher, he says, is unique in wisdom, in goodness, in the height of his own moral stature and the Divineelevation of his aims. The religion is, with all abatements andimperfections, the only one known which could be the religion ofhumanity. After his portraiture of the Teacher, follows, naturallyenough, as the result of that Teacher's influence and life, a religionof corresponding elevation and promise. The passage from a teachingsuch as M. Renan supposes to a religion such as he allows Christianityto be may be reasonably understood as a natural consequence ofwell-known causes, but for one thing--the interposition between the twoof an alleged event which simply throws out all reasonings drawn fromordinary human experience. From the teaching and life of Socratesfollow, naturally enough, schools of philosophy, and an impulse whichhas affected scientific thought ever since. From the preaching and lifeof Mahomet follows, equally naturally, the religion of Islam. In eachcase the result is seen to be directly and distinctly linked on to theinfluences which gave it birth, and nothing more than these influencesis wanted, or makes any claim, to account for it. So M. Renan holdsthat all that is needed to account for Christianity is such apersonality and such a career as he has described in his last volume. But the facts will not bend to this. Christianity hangs on to Christnot merely as to a Person who lived and taught and died, but as to aPerson who rose again from death. That is of the very essence of itsalleged derivation from Christ. It knows Christ only as Christ risen;the only reason of its own existence that it recognises is theResurrection. The only claim the Apostles set forth for preaching tothe world is that their Master who was crucified was alive once more. Every one knows that this was the burden of all their words, thecorner-stone of all their work. We may believe them or not. We may takeChristianity or leave it. But we cannot derive Christianity fromChrist, without meeting, as the bond which connects the two, theResurrection. But for the Resurrection, M. Renan's scheme might beintelligible. A Teacher unequalled for singleness of aim and noblenessof purpose lives and dies, and leaves the memory and the leaven of Histeaching to disciples, who by them, even though in an ill-understoodshape, and with incomparably inferior qualities themselves, purify andelevate the religious ideas and feelings of mankind. If that were all, if there were nothing but the common halo of the miraculous which isapt to gather about great names, the interpretation might be said to becoherent. But a theory of Christianity cannot neglect the mostprominent fact connected with its beginning. It is impossible to leaveit out of the account, in judging both of the Founder and of those whomhis influence moulded and inspired. 

M. Renan has to account for the prominence given to the Resurrection inthe earliest Christian teaching, without having recourse to thesupposition of conscious imposture and a deliberate conspiracy todeceive; for such a supposition would not harmonise either with theportrait he has drawn of the Master, or with his judgment of theseriousness and moral elevation of the men who, immeasurably inferioras they were to Him, imbibed His spirit, and represented andtransmitted to us His principles. And this is something much more thancan be accounted for by the general disposition of the age to assumethe supernatural and the miraculous. The way in which the Resurrectionis circumstantially and unceasingly asserted, and made on everyoccasion and from the first the foundation of everything, is somethingvery different from the vague legends which float about of kings orsaints whom death has spared, or from a readiness to see the directagency of heaven in health or disease. It is too precise, toomatter-of-fact, too prosaic in the way in which it is told, to beresolved into ill-understood dreams and imaginations. The variousrecitals show little care to satisfy our curiosity, or to avoid theappearance of inconsistency in detail; but nothing can be more removedfrom vagueness and hesitation than their definite positive statements. It is with them that the writer on Christianity has to deal. 

M. Renan's method is--whilst of course not believing them, yet notsupposing conscious fraud--to treat these records as the description ofnatural, unsought visions on the part of people who meant no harm, butwho believed what they wished to believe. They are the story of a greatmistake, but a mistake proceeding simply, in the most natural way inthe world, from excess of "idealism" and attachment. Unaffected by thecircumstance that there never were narratives less ideal, and morestraightforwardly real--that they seem purposely framed to be acontrast to professed accounts of visions, and to exclude thepossibility of their being confounded with such accounts; and that thealleged numbers who saw, the alleged frequency and repetition andvariation of the instances, and the alleged time over which theappearances extended, and after which they absolutely ceased, make thehypothesis of involuntary and undesigned allusions of regret andpassion infinitely different from what it might be in the case of oneor two persons, or for a transitory period of excitement andcrisis--unaffected by such considerations, M. Renan proceeds to tell, in his own way, the story of what he supposes to have occurred, without, of course, admitting the smallest real foundation for what wasso positively asserted, but with very little reproach or discredit tothe ardent and undoubting assertors. He begins with a statement whichis meant to save the character of the Teacher. "Jesus, though he spokeunceasingly of resurrection, of new life, had never said quite clearlythat he should rise again in the flesh. " He says this with the textsbefore him, for he quotes them and classifies them in a note. But thisis his point of departure, laid down without qualification. Yet ifthere is anything which the existing records do say distinctly, it isthat Jesus Christ said over and over again that He should rise again, and that He fixed the time within which He should rise. M. Renan is notbound to believe them. But he must take them as he finds them; and onthis capital point either we know nothing at all, and have no evidenceto go upon, or the evidence is simply inverted by M. Renan's assertion. There may, of course, be reasons for believing one part of a man'sevidence and disbelieving another; but there is nothing in this casebut incompatibility with a theory to make this part of the evidenceeither more or less worthy of credit than any other part. What iscertain is that it is in the last degree weak and uncritical to laydown, as the foundation and first pre-requisite of an historical view, a position which the records on which the view professes to be basedemphatically and unambiguously contradict. Whatever we may think of it, the evidence undoubtedly is, if evidence there is at all, that JesusChrist did say, though He could not get His disciples at the time tounderstand and believe Him, that He should rise again on the third day. What M. Renan had to do, if he thought the contrary, was not to assume, but to prove, that in these repeated instances in which they report Hisannouncements, the Evangelists mistook or misquoted the words of theirMaster. 

He accepts, however, their statement that no one at first hoped thatthe words would be made good; and he proceeds to account for theextraordinary belief which, in spite of this original incredulity, grewup, and changed the course of things and the face of the world. Weadmire and respect many things in M. Renan; but it seems to us that histreatment of this matter is simply the _ne plus ultra_ of thedegradation of the greatest of issues by the application to it ofsentiment unworthy of a silly novel. In the first place, he lays downon general grounds that, though the disciples had confessedly given upall hope, it yet _was natural_ that they should expect to see theirmaster alive again. "Mais I'enthousiasme et l'amour ne connaissent pasles situations sans issue. " Do they not? Are death and separation suchlight things to triumph over that imagination finds it easy to cheatthem? "Ils se jouent de l'impossible et, plutôt que d'abdiquerl'espérance, ils font violence à toute réalité. " Is this an account ofthe world of fact or the world of romance? The disciples did not hope;but, says M. Renan, vague words about the future had dropped from theirmaster, and these were enough to build upon, and to suggest that theywould soon see him back. In vain it is said that in fact they did notexpect it. "Une telle croyance était d'ailleurs si naturelle, que lafoi des disciples aurait suffi pour la créer de toutes pièces. " Was itindeed--in spite of Enoch and Elias, cases of an entirely differentkind--so natural to think that the ruined leader of a crushed cause, whose hopeless followers had seen the last of him amid the lowestmiseries of torment and scorn, should burst the grave?

 Il devait arriver [he proceeds] pour Jésus ce qui arrive pour tous les hommes qui ont captivé l'attention de leurs semblables. Le monde, habitué a leur attribuer des vertus surhumaines, ne peut admettre qu'ils aient subi la loi injuste, révoltante, inique, du trépas commun. .. . La mort est chose si absurde quand elle frappe l'homme de génie ou l'homme d'un grand coeur, que le peuple ne croit pas à la possibilité d'une telle erreur de la nature. Les héros ne meurent pas. 

The history of the world presents a large range of instances to testthe singular assertion that death is so "absurd" that "the people"cannot believe that great and good men literally die. But would it beeasy to match the strangeness of a philosopher and a man of geniusgravely writing this down as a reason--not why, at the interval ofcenturies, a delusion should grow up--but why, on the very morrow of acrucifixion and burial, the disciples should have believed that all thedreadful work they had seen a day or two before was in very fact andreality reversed? We confess we do not know what human experience is ifit countenances such a supposition as this. 

From this antecedent probability he proceeds to the facts. "The Sabbathday which followed the burial was occupied with these thoughts. .. . Never was the rest of the Sabbath so fruitful. " They all, the womenespecially, thought of him all day long in his bed of spices, watchedover by angels; and the assurance grew that the wicked men who hadkilled him would not have their triumph, that he would not be left todecay, that he would be wafted on high to that Kingdom of the Father ofwhich he had spoken. "Nous le verrons encore; nous entendrons sa voixcharmante; c'est en vain qu'ils l'auront tué. " And as, with the Jews, afuture life implied a resurrection of the body, the shape which theirhope took was settled. "Reconnaître que la mort pouvait êtrevictorieuse de Jésus, de celui qui venait de supprimer son empire, c'était le comble de l'absurdité. " It is, we suppose, irrelevant toremark that we find not the faintest trace of this sense of absurdity. The disciples, he says, had no choice between hopelessness and "anheroic affirmation"; and he makes the bold surmise that "un hommepénétrant aurait pu annoncer _dès le samedi_ que Jésus revivrait. " Thismay be history, or philosophy, or criticism; what it is _not_ is theinference naturally arising from the only records we have of the timespoken of. But the force of historical imagination dispenses with thenecessity of extrinsic support. "La petite société chrétienne, cejour-là, opéra le véritable miracle: elle ressuscita Jésus en son coeurpar l'amour intense qu'elle lui porta. Elle décida que Jésus nemourrait pas. " The Christian Church has done many remarkable things;but it never did anything so strange, or which so showed its power, aswhen it took that resolution. 

How was the decision, involuntary and unconscious, and guiltless ofintentional deception, if we can conceive of such an attitude of mind, carried out? M. Renan might leave the matter in obscurity. But he seeshis way, in spite of incoherent traditions and the contradictions whichthey present, to a "sufficient degree of probability. " The belief inthe Resurrection originated in an hallucination of the disordered fancyof Mary Magdalen, whose mind was thrown off its balance by heraffection and sorrow; and, once suggested, the idea rapidly spread, andproduced, through the Christian society, a series of correspondingvisions, firmly believed to be real. But Mary Magdalen was the founderof it all:--

 Elle eut, en ce moment solennel, une part d'action tout à fait hors ligne. C'est elle qu'il faut suivre pas à pas; car elle porta, ce jour-là, pendant une heure, tout le travail de la conscience chrétienne; son témoignage décida la foi de l'avenir. .. . La vision légère s'écarte et lui dit: "Ne me touche pas!" Peu a peu l'ombre disparait. Mais le miracle de l'amour est accompli. Ce que Céphas n'a pu faire, Marie l'a faite; elle a su tirer la vie, la parole douce et pénétrante, du tombeau vide. Il ne s'agit plus de conséquences à déduire ni de conjectures à former. Marie a vu et entendu. La résurrection a son premier témoin immédiat. 

He proceeds to criticise the accounts which ascribe the first vision toothers; but in reality Mary Magdalen, he says, has done most, after thegreat Teacher, for the foundation of Christianity. "Queen and patronessof idealists, " she was able to "impose upon all the sacred vision ofher impassioned soul. " All rests upon her first burst of entbusiasm, which gave the signal and kindled the faith of others. "Sa grandeaffirmation de femme, 'il est ressuscité, ' a été la base de la foi del'humanité":--

 Paul ne parle pas de la vision de Marie et reporte tout l'honneur de la première apparition sur Pierre. Mais cette expression est très~inexacte. Pierre ne vit que le caveau vide, le suaire et le linceul. Marie seule aima assez pour dépasser la nature et faire revivre le fantome du maitre exquis. Dans ces sortes de crises merveilleuses, voir après les autres n'est rien; tout le mérite est de voir pour la première fois; car les autres modèlent ensuite leur vision sur le type reçu. C'est le propre des belles organisations de concevoir l'image promptement, avec justesse et par une sorte de sens intime du dessin. La gloire de la résurrection appartient donc à Marie de Magdala. Après Jésus, c'est Marie qui a le plus fait pour la fondation du Christianisme. L'ombre créée par les sens délicats de Madeleine plane encore sur le monde. .. . Loin d'ici, raison impuissante! Ne va pas appliquer une froide analyse à ce chef-d'oeuvre de l'idéalisme et de l'amour. Si la sagesse renonce à consoler cette pauvre race humaine, trahie par le sort, laisse la folie tenter l'aventure. Où est le sage qui a donné au monde autant de joie, que la possédée Marie de Magdala?

He proceeds to describe, on the same supposition, the other events ofthe day, which he accepts as having in a certain very important sensehappened, though, of course, only in the sense which excludes theirreality. No doubt, for a series of hallucinations, anything will do inthe way of explanation. The scene of the evening was really believed tohave taken place as described, though it was the mere product of chancenoises and breaths of air on minds intently expectant; and we arebidden to remember "that in these decisive hours a current of wind, acreaking window, an accidental rustle, settle the belief of nations forcenturies. " But at any rate it was a decisive hour:--

 Tels furent les incidents de ce jour qui a fixé le sort de l'humanité. L'opinion que Jésus était ressuscité s'y fonda d'une manière irrévocable. La secte, qu'on avait cru éteindre en tuant le maître, fut dès lors assurée d'un immense avenir. 

We are willing to admit that Christian writers have often spokenunreally and unsatisfactorily enough in their comments on this subject. But what Christian comment, hard, rigid, and narrow in its view ofpossibilities, ever equalled this in its baselessness and supremeabsence of all that makes a view look like the truth? It puts the mostextravagant strain on documents which, truly or falsely, but at anyrate in the most consistent and uniform manner, assert somethingdifferent. What they assert in every conceivable form, and withdistinct detail, are facts; it is not criticism, but mere arbitrarylicense, to say that all these stand for visions. The issue of truth orfalsehood is intelligible; the middle supposition of confusion andmistake in that which is the basis of everything, and is definitely andin such varied ways repeated, is trifling and incredible. We maydisbelieve, if we please, St. Paul's enumeration of the appearancesafter the Resurrection; but to resolve it into a series of visions isto take refuge in the most unlikely of guesses. And, when we take intoview the whole of the case--not merely the life and teaching out ofwhich everything grew, but the aim and character of the movement whichensued, and the consequences of it, long tested and still continuing, to the history and development of mankind--we find it hard to measurethe estimate of probability which is satisfied with the suppositionthat the incidents of one day of folly and delusion irrevocably decidedthe belief of ages, and the life and destiny of millions. Without thebelief in the Resurrection there would have been no Christianity; ifanything may be laid down as certain, this may. We should probablynever have even heard of the great Teacher; He would not have beenbelieved in, He would not have been preached to the world; the impulseto conversion would have been wanting; and all that was withoutparallel good and true and fruitful in His life would have perished, and have been lost in Judaea. And the belief in the Resurrection M. Renan thinks due to an hour of over-excited fancy in a woman agonizedby sorrow and affection. When we are presented with an hypothesis onthe basis of intrinsic probability, we cannot but remember that thepower of delusion and self-deception, though undoubtedly shown in veryremarkable instances, must yet be in a certain proportion to what itoriginates and produces, and that it is controlled by the numerousantagonistic influences of the world. Crazy women have foundedsuperstitions; but we cannot help thinking that it would be moredifficult than M. Renan supposes for crazy women to found a world-widereligion for ages, branching forth into infinite forms, and tested byits application to all varieties of civilisation, and to national andpersonal character. M. Renan points to La Salette. But the assumptionwould be a bold one that the La Salette people could have invented areligion for Christendom which would stand the wear of eighteencenturies, and satisfy such different minds. Pious frauds, as he says, may have built cathedrals. But you must take Christianity for what ithas proved itself to be in its hard and unexampled trial. To start anorder, a sect, an institution, even a local tradition or local set ofmiracles, on foundations already laid, is one thing; it is not the sameto be the spring of the most serious and the deepest of moral movementsfor the improvement of the world, the most unpretending and the mostcareless of all outward form and show, the most severely searching anduniversal and lasting in its effects on mankind. To trace that back tothe Teacher without the intervention of the belief in the Resurrectionis manifestly impossible. We know what He is said to have taught; weknow what has come of that teaching in the world at large; but if thelink which connects the two be not a real one, it is vain to explain itby the dreams of affection. It was not a matter of a moment or an hour, but of days and weeks continually; not the assertion of one imaginativemourner or two, but of a numerous and variously constituted body ofpeople. The story, if it was not true, was not delusion, but imposture. We certainly cannot be said to know much of what happens in the genesisof religions. But that between such a teacher and such teaching thereshould intervene such a gigantic falsehood, whether imposture ordelusion, is unquestionably one of the hardest violations ofprobability conceivable, as well as one of the most desperateconclusions as regards the capacity of mankind for truth. Few thoughtscan be less endurable than that the wisest and best of our race, men ofthe soberest and most serious tempers, and most candid and judicialminds, should have been the victims and dupes of the mad affection of acrazy Magdalen, of "ces touchantes démoniaques, ces pécheressesconverties, ces vraies fondatrices du Christianisme. " M. Renan shrinksfrom solving such a question by the hypothesis of conscious fraud. Tosolve it by sentiment is hardly more respectful either to the world orto truth. 

We have left ourselves no room to speak of the best part of M. Renan'snew volume, his historical comment on the first period of Christianity. We do not pretend to go along with him in his general principles ofjudgment, or in many of his most important historical conclusions. Buthere he is, what he is not in the early chapters, on ground where hiscritical faculty comes fairly into play. He is, we think, continuallyparadoxical and reckless in his statements; and his book is morethickly strewn than almost any we know with half-truths, broad axiomswhich require much paring down to be of any use, but which are made byhim to do duty for want of something stronger. But, from so keen and sodeeply interested a writer, it is our own fault if we do not learn agood deal. And we may study in its full development that curiouscombination, of which M. Renan is the most conspicuous example, ofprofound veneration for Christianity and sympathy with its mostcharacteristic aspects, with the scientific impulse to destroy in thepublic mind the belief in its truth. 

XIII

M. RENAN'S HIBBERT LECTURES[15]

 [15] _Guardian_, 14th April 1880. 

I

The object of M. Renan's lectures at St. George's Hall is, as weunderstand him, not merely to present a historical sketch of theinfluence of Rome on the early Church, but to reconcile the historicalimagination with the results of his own and kindred speculations on theorigin of Christianity. He has, with a good faith which we do notquestion, investigated the subject and formed his conclusions upon it. He on the present occasion assumes these investigations, and that he, at any rate, is satisfied with their result. He hardly pretends tocarry the mixed popular audience whom he addresses into any realinquiry into the grounds on which he has satisfied himself that thereceived account of Christianity is not the true one. But he is awarethat all minds are more or less consciously impressed with the broaddifficulty that, after all attempts to trace the origin of Christianityto agencies and influences of well-understood human character, thedisproportion between causes and effects still continues to appearexcessive. The great Christian tradition with its definite beliefsabout the conditions of man's existence, which has shaped the fortunesand determined the future of mankind on earth, is in possession of theworld as much as the great tradition of right and wrong, or of thefamily, or of the State. How did it get there? It is most astonishingthat it should have done so, what is the account of it? Of coursepeople may inquire into this question as they may inquire into thebasis of morality, or the origin of the family or the State. But here, as on those subjects, reason, and that imagination which is one of theforces of reason, by making the mind duly sensible of the magnitude ofideas and alternatives, are exacting. M. Renan's task is to make thepurely human origin of Christianity, its origin in the circumstances, the beliefs, the ideas, and the moral and political conditions of thefirst centuries, seem to us _natural_--as natural in the history of theworld as other great and surprising events and changes--as natural asthe growth and the fall of the Roman Empire, or as the Reformation, orthe French Revolution. He is well qualified to sound the depths of hisundertaking and to meet its heavy exigencies. With a fuller knowledgeof books, and a closer familiarity than most men with the thoughts andthe events of the early ages, with a serious value for the idea ofreligion as such, and certainly with no feeble powers of recalling thepast and investing it with colour and life, he has to show how thesethings can be--how a religion with such attributes as he freelyascribes to the Gospel, so grand, so pure, so lasting, can have sprungup not merely _in_ but _from_ a most corrupt and immoral time, and canhave its root in the most portentous and impossible of falsehoods. Itmust be said to be a bold undertaking. 

M. Renan has always aimed at doing justice to what he assailed;Christians, who realise what they believe, will say that he patronisestheir religion, and naturally they resent such patronage. Such candouradds doubtless to the literary effect of his method; but it is only dueto him to acknowledge the fairness of his admissions. He starts withthe declaration that there never was a nobler moment in human historythan the beginnings of the Christian Church. It was the "most heroicepisode in the annals of mankind. " "Never did man draw forth from hisbosom more devotion, more love of the ideal, than in the 150 yearswhich elapsed between the sweet Galilean vision and the death of MarcusAurelius. " It was not only that the saints were admirable and beautifulin their lives; they had the secret of the future, and laid down thelines on which the goodness and hope of the coming world were to move. "Never was the religious conscience more eminently creative, never didit lay down with more authority the law of future ages. "

Now, if this is not mere rhetoric, what does it come to? It means notmerely that there was here a phenomenon, not only extraordinary butunique, in the development of human character, but that here wascreated or evolved what was to guide and form the religious ideas ofmankind; here were the springs of what has reached through all the agesof expanding humanity to our own days, of what is best and truest anddeepest and holiest. M. Renan, at any rate, does not think this anillusion of Christian prepossessions, a fancy picture of a mythic ageof gold, of an unhistorical period of pure and primitive antiquity. Putthis view of things by the side of any of the records or the literatureof the time remaining to us; if not St. Paul's Epistles nor Tacitus norLucian, then Virgil and Horace and Cicero, or Seneca or Epictetus orMarcus Aurelius. Is it possible by any effort of imagination to bodyforth the links which can solidly connect the ideas which live and workand grow on one side, with the ideas which are represented by the factsand principles of the other side? Or is it any more possible to connectwhat we know of Christian ideas and convictions by a bond of naturaland intelligible, if not necessary derivation, with what we know ofJewish ideas and Jewish habits of thought at the time in question? Yetthat is the thing to be done, to be done rigorously, to be done clearlyand distinctly, by those who are satisfied to find the impulses andfaith which gave birth to Christianity amid the seething confusions ofthe time which saw its beginning; absolutely identical with those wildmovements in origin and nature, and only by a strange, fortunateaccident immeasurably superior to them. 

This question M. Renan has not answered; as far as we can see he hasnot perceived that it is the first question for him to answer, ingiving a philosophical account of the history of Christianity. Instead, he tells us, and he is going still further to tell us, how Rome and itswonderful influences acted on Christianity, and helped to assure itsvictories. But, first of all, what is that Christianity, and whence didit come, which Rome so helped? It came, he says, from Judaism; "it wasJudaism under its Christian form which Rome propagated without wishingit, yet with such mighty energy that from a certain epoch Romanism andChristianity became synonymous words"; it was Jewish monotheism, thereligion the Roman hated and despised, swallowing up by its contrastall that was local, legendary, and past belief, and presenting onereligious law to the countless nationalities of the Empire, which likeitself was one, and like itself above all nationalities. 

This may all be true, and is partially true; but how did that hated andpartial Judaism break through its trammels, and become a religion forall men, and a religion to which all men gathered? The Romanorganisation was an admirable vehicle for Christianity; but the vehicledoes not make that which it carries, or account for it. M. Renan'spicture of the Empire abounds with all those picturesque details whichhe knows so well where to find, and knows so well, too, how to place inan interesting light. There were then, of course, conditions of thetime more favourable to the Christian Church than would have been theconditions of other times. There was a certain increased liberty ofthought, though there were also some pretty strong obstacles to it. M. Renan has Imperial proclivities, and reminds us truly enough thatdespotisms are sometimes more tolerant than democracies, and thatpolitical liberty is not the same as spiritual and mental freedom, anddoes not always favour it. It may be partially true, as he says, that"Virgil and Tibullus show that Roman harshness and cruelty weresoftening down"; that "equality and the rights of men were preached bythe Stoics"; that "woman was more her own mistress, and slaves werebetter treated than in the days of Cato"; that "very humane and justlaws were enacted under the very worst emperors; that Tiberius and Nerowere able financiers"; that "after the terrible butcheries of the oldcenturies, mankind was crying with the voice of Virgil for peace andpity. " A good many qualifications and abatements start up in our mindson reading these statements, and a good many formidable doubts suggestthemselves, if we can at all believe what has come down to us of thehistory of these times. It is hard to accept quite literally the boldassertion that "love for the poor, sympathy with all men, almsgiving, were becoming virtues. " But allow this as the fair and hopeful side ofthe Empire. Yet all this is a long way from accounting for the effectson the world of Christianity, even in the dim, vaporous form in whichM. Renan imagines it, much more in the actual concrete reality inwhich, if we know anything, it appeared. "Christianity, " he says, "responded to the cry for peace and pity of all weary and tendersouls. " No doubt it did; but what was it that responded, and what wasits consolation, and whence was its power drawn? What was there in theknown thoughts or hopes or motives of men at the time to furnish such aresponse? "Christianity, " he says, "could only have been born andspread at a time when men had no longer a country"; "it was thatexplosion of social and religious ideas which became inevitable afterAugustus had put an end to political struggles, " after his policy hadkilled "patriotism. " It is true enough that the first Christians, believing themselves subjects of an Eternal King and in view of aneternal world, felt themselves strangers and pilgrims in this; yet didthe rest of the Roman world under the Caesars feel that they had nocountry, and was the idea of patriotism extinct in the age of Agricola?But surely the real question worth asking is, What was it amid theincreasing civilisation and prosperous peace of Rome under the firstEmperors which made these Christians relinquish the idea of a country?From whence did Christianity draw its power to set its followers ininflexible opposition to the intensest worship of the State that theworld has ever known?

To tell us the conditions under which all this occurred is not to tellus the cause of it. We follow with interest the sketches which M. Renangives of these conditions, though it must be said that hisgeneralisations are often extravagantly loose and misleading. We doindeed want to know more of those wonderful but hidden days whichintervene between the great Advent, with its subsequent Apostolic age, and the days when the Church appears fully constituted and recognised. German research and French intelligence and constructiveness have donesomething to help us, but not much. But at the end of all suchinquiries appears the question of questions, What was the beginning androot of it all? Christians have a reasonable answer to the question. There is none, there is not really the suggestion of one, in M. Renan'saccount of the connection of Christianity with the Roman world. 

II[16]

 [16] _Guardian_, 21st April 1880. 

M. Renan has pursued the line of thought indicated in his firstlecture, and in his succeeding lectures has developed the idea thatChristianity, as we know it, was born in Imperial Rome, and that in itsvisible form and active influence on the world it was the manifestproduct of Roman instincts and habits; it was the spirit of the Empirepassing into a new body and accepting in exchange for political power, as it slowly decayed and vanished, a spiritual supremacy as unrivalledand as astonishing. The "Legend of the Roman Church--Peter and Paul, ""Rome the Centre in which Church Authority grew up, " and "Rome theCapital of Catholicism, " are the titles of the three lectures in whichthis thesis is explained and illustrated. A lecture on Marcus Aurelius, at the Royal Institution, though not one of the series, is obviouslyconnected with it, and concludes M. Renan's work in England. 

Except the brilliant bits of writing which, judging from the fullabstracts given in translation in the _Times_, appear to have beeninterspersed, and except the undoubting self-confidence and _aplomb_with which a historical survey, reversing the common ideas of mankind, was delivered, there was little new to be learned from M. Renan'streatment of his subject. Perhaps it may be described as the RomanCatholic theory of the rise of the Church, put in an infidel point ofview. It is Roman Catholic in concentrating all interest, all thesources of influence and power in the Christian religion and ChristianChurch, from the first moment at Rome. But for Rome the ChristianChurch would not have existed. The Church is inconceivable withoutRome, and Rome as the seat and centre of its spiritual activity. Everything else is forgotten. There were Christian Churches all overthe Empire, in Syria, in Egypt, in Africa, in Asia Minor, in Gaul, inGreece. A great body of Christian literature, embodying the ideas andcharacter of Christians all over the Empire, was growing up, and thiswas not Roman and had nothing to do with Rome; it was Greek as much asLatin, and local, not metropolitan, in its characteristics. Christianity was spreading here, there, and everywhere, slowly andimperceptibly as the tide comes in, or as cells multiply in the growingtissues of organised matter; it was spreading under its many distinctguides and teachers, and taking possession of the cities and provincesof the Empire. All this great movement, the real foundation of all thatwas to be, is overlooked and forgotten in the attention which is fixedon Rome and confined to it. As in the Roman Catholic view, M. Renanbrings St. Paul and St. Peter together to Rome, to found that greatImperial Church in which the manifold and varied history of Christendomis merged and swallowed up. Only, of course, M. Renan brings them thereas "fanatics" instead of Apostles and martyrs. We know something aboutSt. Peter and St. Paul. We know them at any rate from their writings. In M. Renan's representation they stand opposed to one another asleaders of factions, to whose fierce hatreds and jealousies there isnothing comparable. "All the differences, " he is reported to say, "which divide orthodox folks, heretics, schismatics, in our own day, are as nothing compared with the dissension between Peter and Paul. " Itis, as every one knows, no new story; but there it is in M. Renan inall its crudity, as if it were the most manifest and accredited oftruths. M. Renan first brings St. Paul to Rome. "It was, " he says, "agreat event in the world's history, almost as pregnant withconsequences as his conversion. " How it was so M. Renan does notexplain; but he brings St. Peter to Rome also, "following at the heelsof St. Paul, " to counteract and neutralise his influence. And who isthis St. Peter? He represents the Jewish element; and what that elementwas at Rome M. Renan takes great pains to put before us. He draws anelaborate picture of the Jews and Jewish quarter of Rome--a "longshorepopulation" of beggars and pedlars, with a Ghetto resembling theAlsatia of _The Fortunes of Nigel_, seething with dirt and fanaticism. These were St. Peter's congeners at Rome, whose ideas and claims, "timid trimmer" though he was, he came to Rome to support against theHellenism and Protestantism of St. Paul. And at Rome they, both ofthem, probably, perished in Nero's persecution, and that is the historyof the success of Christianity. "Only fanatics can found anything. Judaism lives on because of the intense frenzy of its prophets andannalists, Christianity by means of its martyrs. "

But a certain Clement arose after their deaths, to arrange areconciliation between the fiercely antagonistic factions of St. Peterand St. Paul. How he harmonised them M. Renan leaves us to imagine; buthe did reconcile them; he gathered in his own person the authority ofthe Roman Church; he lectured the Corinthian Church on its turbulenceand insubordination; he anticipated, M. Renan remarked, almost inwords, the famous saying of the French Archbishop of Rouen, "My clergyare my regiment, and they are drilled to obey like a regiment. " On thisshowing, Clement might almost be described as the real founder ofChristianity, of which neither St. Peter nor St. Paul, with theirviolent oppositions, can claim to be the complete representative; atany rate he was the first Pope, complete in all his attributes. And inaccordance with this beginning M. Renan sees in the Roman Church, first, the centre in which Church authority grew up, and next, thecapital of Catholicism. In Rome the congregation gave up its rights toits elders, and these rights the elders surrendered to the single ruleror Bishop. The creation of the Episcopate was eminently the work ofRome; and this Bishop of Rome caught the full spirit of the Caesar, onwhose decay he became great; and troubling himself little about thedeep questions which exercised the minds and wrung the hearts ofthinkers and mystics, he made himself the foundation of order, authority, and subordination to all parts of the Imperial world. 

Such is M. Renan's explanation of the great march and triumph of theChristian Church. The Roman Empire, which we had supposed was thenatural enemy of the Church, was really the founder of all that madethe Church strong, and bequeathed to the Church its prerogatives andits spirit, and partly its machinery. We should hardly gather from thispicture that there was, besides, a widespread Catholic Church, with itsnumerous centres of life and thought and teaching, and with very slightconnection, in the early times, with the Church of the capital. And, inthe next place, we should gather from it that there was little more inthe Church than a powerful and strongly built system of centralisedorganisation and control; we should hardly suspect the existence of thereal questions which interested or disturbed it; we should hardlysuspect the existence of a living and all-engrossing theology, or thegrowth and energy in it of moral forces, or that the minds ofChristians about the world were much more busy with the discipline oflife, the teaching and meaning of the inspired words of Scripture, andthe ever-recurring conflict with perverseness and error, than withtheir dependent connection on the Imperial Primacy of Rome, and thelessons they were to learn from it. 

Disguised as it may be, M. Renan's lectures represent not history, butscepticism as to all possibility of history. Pictures of a JewishGhetto, with its ragged mendicants smelling of garlic, in places whereChristians have been wont to think of the Saints; ingeniousexplanations as to the way in which the "club" of the Christian Churchsurrendered its rights to a _bureau_ of its officers; exhortations toliberty and tolerance; side-glances at the contrasts of national giftsand destinies and futures in the first century and in the nineteenth;felicitous parallels and cunning epigrams, subtle combinations of thepathetic, the egotistical, and the cynical, all presented with calmself-reliance and in the most finished and distinguished of styles, mayveil for the moment from the audience which such things amuse, and eveninterest, the hollowness which lies beneath. But the only meaning ofthe lectures is to point out more forcibly than ever that besides theobvious riddles of man's life there is one stranger and more appallingstill--that a religion which M. Renan can never speak of withoutadmiration and enthusiasm is based on a self-contradiction and deludingfalsehood, more dreadful in its moral inconsistencies than the grave. 

We cannot help feeling that M. Renan himself is a true representativeof that highly cultivated society of the Empire which would havecrushed Christianity, and which Christianity, vanquished. He still owessomething, and owns it, to what he has abandoned--"I am often temptedto say, as Job said, in our Latin version, _Etiam si occident me, inipso sperabo_. But the next moment all is gone--all is but a symbol anda dream. " There is no possibility of solving the religious problem. Herelapses into profound disbelief of the worth and success of moralefforts after truth. His last word is an exhortation to tolerance for"fanatics, " as the best mode of extinguishing them. "If, instead ofleading _Polyeucte_ to punishment, the magistrate, with a smile andshake of the hand, had sent him home again, _Polyeucte_ would not havebeen caught offending again; perhaps, in his old age, he would evenhave laughed at his escapade, and would have become a sensible man. " Itis as obvious and natural in our days to dispose of such difficultiesin this way with a smile and a sneer as it was in the first centurywith a shout--_"Christiani ad leones. "_ But Corneille was as good ajudge of the human heart as M. Renan. He had gauged the powers of faithand conviction; he certainly would have expected to find his_Polyeucte_ more obstinate. 

XIV

RENAN'S "SOUVENIRS D'ENFANCE"[17]

 [17] _Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse_. Par Ernest Renan. _Guardian_, 18th July 1883. 

The sketches which M. Renan gives us of his early life are what weshould have looked for from the writer of the _Vie de Jésus_. The storyof the disintegration of a faith is supposed commonly to have somethingtragic about it. We expect it to be a story of heart-breakingdisenchantments, of painful struggles, of fierce recoils againstancient beliefs and the teachers who bolstered them up; of indignationat having been so long deceived; of lamentation over years wasted inthe service of falsehood. The confessions of St. Augustine, thebiography of Blanco White, the letters of Lamennais, at least agree inthe witness which they bear to the bitter pangs and anxieties amidwhich, in their case, the eventful change came about. Even CardinalNewman's _Apologia_, self-restrained and severely controlled as it is, shows no doubtful traces of the conflicts and sorrows out of which hebelieved himself to have emerged to a calmer and surer light. But M. Renan's story is an idyl, not a tragedy. It is sunny, placid, contented. He calls his life the "_charmante promenade_" which the"cause of all good, " whatever that may be, has granted him through therealities of existence. There are in it no storms of passion, nocruelties of circumstances, no deplorable mistakes, no complaints, norecriminations. His life flows on smoothly, peacefully, happily, withlittle of rapids and broken waters, gradually and in the most naturaland inevitable way enlarging itself, moving in new and wider channelsand with increased volume and force, but never detaching itself andbreaking off from its beginnings. It is a spectacle which M. Renan, whohas lived this life, takes a gentle pleasure in contemplating. He looksback on it with thankfulness, and also with amusement It makes acharming and complete picture. No part could be wanting withoutinjuring the effect of the whole. It is the very ideal of the educationof the Rousseau school--a child of nature, developing, amid thesimplest and humblest circumstances of life, the finest gifts and mostdelicate graces of faith and reverence and purity--brought up by sageswhose wisdom he could not in time help outrunning, but whose piety, sweetness, disinterestedness, and devoted labour left on his mindimpressions which nothing could wear out; and at length, when the timecame, passing naturally, and without passion or bitterness, from out oftheir faithful but too narrow discipline into a wider and ampler air, and becoming, as was fit, master and guide to himself, with light whichthey could not bear, and views of truth greater and deeper than theycould conceive. But every stage of the progress, through the virtues ofthe teachers, and the felicitous disposition of the pupil, exhibitsboth in exactly the due relations in which each ought to be with theother, with none of the friction of rebellious and refractory temper onone side, or of unintelligent harshness on the other. He has nothing toregret in the schools through which he passed, in the preparationswhich he made there for the future, in the way in which they shaped hislife. He lays down the maxim, "On ne doit jamais écrire que de ce qu'onaime. " There is a serene satisfaction diffused through the book, whichscarcely anything intervenes to break or disturb; he sees so muchpoetry in his life, so much content, so much signal and unlooked-forsuccess, that he has little to tell except what is delightful andadmirable. And then he is so certain that he is right: he can look downwith so much good-humoured superiority on past and present, alike onwhat he calls "l'effroyable aventure du moyen âge, " and on the march ofmodern society to the dead level of "Americanism. " It need not be saidthat the story is told with all M. Renan's consummate charm ofstorytelling. All that it wants is depth of real feeling andseriousness--some sense of the greatness of what he has had to give up, not merely of its poetic beauty and tender associations. It hardlyseems to occur to him that something more than his easy cheerfulnessand his vivid historical imagination is wanted to solve for him theproblems of the world, and that his gradual transition from theCatholicism of the seminary to the absolute rejection of thesupernatural in religion does not, as he describes it, throw much lighton the question of the hopes and destiny of mankind. 

The outline of his story is soon told. It is in general like that ofmany more who in France have broken away from religion. A cleverstudious boy, a true son of old Brittany--the most melancholy, the mosttender, the most ardent, the most devout, not only of all Frenchprovinces, but of all regions in Europe--is passed on from the teachingof good, simple, hard-working country priests to the centralseminaries, where the leaders of the French clergy are educated. Hecomes up a raw, eager, ignorant provincial, full of zeal for knowledge, full of reverence and faith, and first goes through the distinguishedliterary school of St. Nicolas du Chardonnet, of which Dupanloup wasthe founder and the inspiring soul. Thence he passed under the morestrictly professional discipline of St. Sulpice: first at thepreparatory philosophical school at Issy, then to study scientifictheology in the house of St. Sulpice itself at Paris. At St. Sulpice heshowed special aptitudes for the study of Hebrew, in which he wasassisted and encouraged by M. Le Hir, "the most remarkable person, " inhis opinion, "whom the French clergy has produced in our days, " a"savant and a saint, " who had mastered the results of German criticismas they were found in the works of Gesenius and Ewald. On his faith allthis knowledge had not made the faintest impression; but it was thisknowledge which broke down M. Renan's, and finally led to his retiringfrom St. Sulpice. On the one side was the Bible and Catholic theology, carefully, scientifically, and consistently taught at St. Sulpice; onthe other were the exegesis and the historical criticism of the Germanschool. He came at length to the conclusion that the two areincompatible; that there was but a choice of alternatives; and purelyon the ground of historical criticism, he says, not on any abstractobjections to the supernatural, or to miracles, or to Catholic dogma, he gave up revealed religion. He gave it up not without regrets at thedistress caused to friends, and at parting with much that was endearedto him by old associations, and by intrinsic beauty and value; but, asfar as can be judged, without any serious sense of loss. He spent sometime in obscurity, teaching, and studying laboriously, and at lengthbeginning to write. Michel Lévy, the publisher, found him out, andopened to him a literary career, and in due time he became famous. Hehas had the ambiguous honour of making the Bible an object of suchinterest to French readers as it never was before, at the cost ofteaching them to find in it a reflection of their own characteristicways of looking at life and the world. It is not an easy thing to dowith such a book as the Bible; but he has done it. 

As a mere history of a change of convictions, the _Souvenirs_ areinteresting, but hardly of much importance. They are written with akind of Epicurean serenity and dignity, avoiding all exaggeration andviolence, profuse in every page in the delicacies and also in thereticences of respect, not too serious to exclude the perpetualsuggestion of a well-behaved amused irony, not too much alive to theridiculous and the self-contradictory to forget the attitude ofcomposure due to the theme of the book. He warns his readers at theoutset that they must not look for a stupid literalness in his account. "Ce qu'on dit de soi est toujours poésie"--the reflection of states ofmind and varying humours, not the exact details of fact. "Tout est vraidans ce petit volume, mais non de ce genre de verité qui est requispour une _Biographie universelle_. Bien des choses ont été mises, afinqu'on sourie; si l'usage l'eût permis, j'aurais dû écrire plus d'unefois à la marge--_cum grano salis_". It is candid to warn us thus toread a little between the lines; but it is a curious and unconsciousdisclosure of his characteristic love of a mixture of the misty and theclear. The really pleasant part of it is his account, which takes uphalf the volume, of Breton ways and feelings half a century ago, anaccount which exactly tallies with the pictures of them in Souvestre'swritings; and the kindliness and justice with which he speaks of hisold Catholic and priestly teachers, not only in his boyish days atTréguier, but in his seminary life in Paris. His account of thisseminary life is unique in its picturesque vividness. He describes how, at St. Nicolas, under the fiery and irresistible Dupanloup, whom hespeaks of with the reserved courtesy due to a distinguished person whomhe much dislikes, his eager eyes were opened to the realities ofliterature, and to the subtle powers of form and style in writing, which have stood him in such stead, and have been the real secret ofhis own success. 

 Le monde s'ouvrit pour moi. Malgré sa prétention d'être un asile fermé aux bruits du dehors, Saint-Nicolas était a cette époque la maison la plus brillante et la plus mondaine. Paris y entrait à pleins bords par les portes et les fenêtres, Paris tout entier, moins la corruption, je me hâte de le dire, Paris avec ses petitesses et ses grandeurs, ses hardiesses et ses chiffons, sa force révolutionnaire et ses mollesses flasques. Mes vieux prêtres de Bretagne savaient bien mieux les mathématiques et le latin que mes nouveaux maîtres; mais ils vivaient dans des catacombes sans lumière et sans air. Ici, l'atmosphère du siècle circulait librement. .. . Au bout de quelque temps une chose tout à fait inconnue m'etait révélée. Les mots, talent, éclat, réputation eurent un sens pour moi. J'étais perdu pour l'idéal modeste que mes anciens maîtres m'avaient inculqué. 

And he describes how Dupanloup brought his pupils perpetually intodirect relations with himself and communicated to them something of hisown enthusiasm. He gained the power over their hearts which a greatgeneral gains over his soldiers. His approval, his interest in a man, were the all-absorbing object, the all-sufficient reward; the onepunishment feared was dismissal, always inflicted with courtesy andtact, from the honour and the joy of serving under him:--

 Adoré de ses élèves, M. Dupanloup n'était pas toujours agréable à ces collaborateurs. On m'a dit que, plus tard, dans son diocèse, les choses se passèrent de la même manière, qu'il fut toujours plus aimé de ses laïques que de ses prêtres. Il est certain qu'il écrasait tout autour de lui. Mais sa violence même nous attachait; car nous sentions que nous étions son but unique. Ce qu'il était, c'était un éveilleur incomparable; pour tirer de chacun de ses élèves la somme de ce qu'il pouvait donner, personne ne l'égalait. Chacun de ses deux cents élèves existait distinct dans sa pensée; il était pour chacun d'eux l'excitateur toujours présent, le motif de vivre et de travailler. Il croyait au talent et en faisait la base de la foi. Il répétait souvent que l'homme vaut en proportion de sa faculté d'admirer. Son admiration n'était pas toujours assez éclairée par la science; mais elle venait d'une grande chaleur d'âme et d'un coeur vraiment possédé de l'amour du beau. .. . Les défauts de l'éducation qu'il donnait étaient les défauts même de son esprit. Il était trop peu rationnel, trop peu scientifique. On eût dit que ses deux cents élèves étaient destinés à être tous poètes, écrivains, orateurs. 

St. Nicolas was literary. Issy and St. Sulpice were severelyphilosophic and scientific, places of "_fortes études_"; and the writerthinks that they were more to his own taste than the more brilliantliterary education given under Dupanloup. In one sense it may be so. They introduced him to exactness of thought and precision ofexpression, and they widened his horizon of possible and attainableknowledge. He passed, he says, from words to things. But he is a writerwho owes so much to the form into which he throws his thoughts, to thegrace and brightness and richness of his style, that he probably is agreater debtor to the master whom he admires and dislikes, Dupanloup, than to the modest, reserved, and rather dull Sulpician teachers, whomhe loves and reveres and smiles at, whose knowledge of theology wasserious, profound, and accurate, and whose characteristic temper wasone of moderation and temperate reason, joined to a hatred of display, and a suspicion of all that seemed too clever and too brilliant. Buthis witness to their excellence, to their absolute self-devotion totheir work, to their dislike of extravagance and exaggeration, to theirgood sense and cultivation, is ungrudging and warm. Of course he thinksthem utterly out of date; but on their own ground he recognises thatthey were men of strength and solidity, the best and most thorough ofteachers; the most sincere, the most humble, the most self-forgettingof priests:--

 Beaucoup de mes jugements étonnent les gens du monde parcequ'ils n'out pas vu ce que j'ai vu. J'ai vu à Saint-Sulpice, associés à des idées étroites, je l'avoue, les miracles que nos races peuvent produire en fait de bonté, de modestie, d'abnégation personelle. Ce qu'il y a de vertu à Saint-Sulpice suffirait pour gouverner un monde, et cela m'a rendu difficile pour ce que j'ai trouvé ailleurs. 

M. Renan, as we have said, is very just to his education, and to themen who gave it. He never speaks of them except with respect andgratitude. It is seldom, indeed, that he permits himself anything likeopen disparagement of the men and the cause which he forsook. Theshafts of his irony are reserved for men on his own side, for theradical violences of M. Clémenceau, and for the exaggerated reputationof Auguste Comte, "who has been set up as a man of the highest order ofgenius, for having said, in bad French, what all scientific thinkersfor two hundred years have seen as clearly as himself. " He attributesto his ecclesiastical training those excellences in his own temper andprinciples on which he dwells with much satisfaction and thankfulness. They are, he considers, the result of his Christian and "Sulpician"education, though the root on which they grew is for ever withered anddead. "La foi disparue, la morale reste. .. . C'est par le caractère queje suis resté essentiellement l'élève de mes anciens maîtres. " He isproud of these virtues, and at the same time amused at the oddcontradictions in which they have sometimes involved him:--

 Il me plairait d'expliquer par le détail et de montrer comment la gageure paradoxale de garder les vertus cléricales, sans la foi qui leur sert de base et dans un monde pour lequel elles ne sont pas faites, produisit, en ce que me concerne, les rencontres les plus divertissantes. J'aimerais à raconter toutes les aventures que mes vertus sulpiciennes m'amenèrent, et les tours singuliers qu'elles m'ont joués. Après soixante ans de vie sérieuse on a le droit de sourire; et où trouver une source de rire plus abondante, plus à portée, plus inoffensive qu'en soimême? Si jamais un auteur comique voulait amuser le public de mes ridicules, je ne lui demanderais qu'une chose; c'est de me prendre pour collaborateur; je lui conterais des choses vingt fois plus amusantes que celles qu'il pourrait inventer. 

He dwells especially on four of these virtues which were, he thinks, graven ineffaceably on his nature at St. Sulpice. They taught him therenot to care for money or success. They taught him the old-fashionedFrench politeness--that beautiful instinct of giving place to others, which is perishing in the democratic scramble for the best places, inthe omnibus and the railway as in business and society. It is morecurious to find that he thinks that they taught him to be modest. Except on the faith of his assertions, the readers of his book wouldnot naturally have supposed that he believed himself specially endowedwith this quality; it is at any rate the modesty which, if it shrinksinto retirement from the pretensions of the crowd, goes along with ahigh and pitying sense of superiority, and a self-complacency of whichthe good humour never fails. His masters also taught him to valuepurity. For this he almost makes a sort of deprecating apology. He saw, indeed, "the vanity of this virtue as of all the others"; he admitsthat it is an unnatural virtue. But he says, "L'homme ne doit jamais sepermettre deux hardiesses à la fois. Le libre penseur doit être régléen ses moeurs. " In this doctrine it may be doubted whether he will findmany followers. An unnatural virtue, where nature only is recognised asa guide, is more likely to be discredited by his theory thanrecommended by his example, particularly if the state of opinion inFrance is such as is described in the following passage--a passagewhich in England few men, whatever they might think, would have theboldness to state as an acknowledged social phenomenon:--

 Le monde, dont les jugements sont rarement tout à fait faux, voit une sorte de ridicule à être vertueux quand on n'y est pas obligé par un devoir professionnel. Le prêtre, ayant pour état d'être chaste, comme le soldat d'être brave, est, d'après ces idées, presque le seul qui puisse sans ridicule tenir à des principes sur lesquels la morale et la mode se livrent les plus étranges combats. Il est hors de doute qu'en ce point, comme en beaucoup d'autres, mes principes clericaux, conservés dans le siècle, m'ont nui aux yeux du monde. 

We have one concluding observation to make. This is a book of which themain interest, after all, depends on the way in which it touches on thequestion of questions, the truth and reality of the Christian religion. But from first to last it docs not show the faintest evidence that thewriter ever really knew, or even cared, what religion is. Religion isnot only a matter of texts, of scientific criticisms, of historicalinvestigations, of a consistent theology. It is not merely a processionof external facts and events, a spectacle to be looked at from theoutside. It is, if it is anything, the most considerable and mostuniversal interest in the complex aggregate of human interests. Itgrows out of the deepest moral roots, out of the most characteristicand most indestructible spiritual elements, out of wants and needs andaspirations and hopes, without which man, as we know him, would not beman. When a man, in asking whether Christianity is true, leaves out allthis side of the matter, when he shows that it has not come before himas a serious and importunate reality, when he shows that he isunaffected by those deep movements and misgivings and anxieties of thesoul to which religion corresponds, and treats the whole matter as aquestion only of erudition and criticism, we may acknowledge him to bean original and acute critic, a brilliant master of historicalrepresentation; but he has never yet come face to face with theproblems of religion. His love of truth may be unimpeachable, but hedocs not know what he is talking about. M. Renan speaks of giving uphis religion as a man might speak of accepting a new and unpopularphysical hypothesis like evolution, or of making up his mind to give upthe personality of Homer or the early history of Rome. Such an interiorattitude of mind towards religion as is implied, for instance, inBishop Butler's _Sermons on the Love of God_, or the _De Imitatione_ orNewman's _Parochial Sermons_ seems to him, as far as we can judge, anunknown and unattempted experience. It is easy to deal with a questionif you leave out half the factors of it, and those the most difficultand the most serious. It is easy to be clear if you do not choose totake notice of the mysterious, and if you exclude from yourconsideration as vague and confused all that vast department of humanconcerns where we at best can only "see through a glass darkly. " It iseasy to find the world a pleasant and comfortable and not at allperplexing place, if your life has been, as M. Renan describes his own, a "charming promenade" through it; if, as he says, you are blessed with"a good humour not easily disturbed "; and you "have not sufferedmuch"; and "nature has prepared cushions to soften shocks"; and youhave "had so much enjoyment in this life that you really have no rightto claim any compensation beyond it. " That is M. Renan's experience oflife--a life of which he looks forward to the perfection in theclearness and security of its possible denials of ancient beliefs, andin the immense development of its positive and experimental knowledge. How would Descartes have rejoiced, he says, if he could have seen somepoor treatise on physics or cosmography of our day, and what would wenot give to catch a glimpse of such an elementary schoolbook of ahundred years hence. 

But that is not at any rate the experience of all the world, nor doesit appear likely ever to be within the reach of all the world. There isanother aspect of life more familiar than this, an aspect which haspresented itself to the vast majority of mankind, the awful view of itwhich is made tragic by pain and sorrow and moral evil; which, in theway in which religion looks at it, if it is sterner, is also higher andnobler, and is brightened by hope and purposes of love; a view whichputs more upon men and requires more from them, but holds before them adestiny better than the perfection here of physical science. To mindswhich realise all this, it is more inconceivable than any amount ofmiracle that such a religion as Christianity should have emergednaturally out of the conditions of the first century. They refuse tosettle such a question by the short and easy method on which M. Renanrelies; they will not consent to put it on questions about the twoIsaiahs, or about alleged discrepancies between the Evangelists; theywill not think the claims of religion disposed of by M. Renan's canon, over and over again contradicted, that whether there can be or not, there _is_ no evidence of the supernatural in the world. To those whomeasure and feel the true gravity of the issues, it is almostunintelligible to find a man who has been face to face withChristianity all his life treating the deliberate condemnation of italmost gaily and with a light heart, and showing no regrets in havingto give it up as a delusion and a dream. It is a poor and meagre end ofa life of thought and study to come to the conclusion that the age inwhich he has lived is, if not one of the greatest, at least "the mostamusing of all ages. "

XV

LIFE OF FREDERICK ROBERTSON[18]

 [18] _Life and Letters of Frederick W. Robertson_. Edited by Stopford A. Brooke. _Guardian_, 15th November 1865. 

If the proof of a successful exhibition of a strongly marked andoriginal character be that it excites and sustains interest throughout, that our tastes are appealed to and our judgments called forth withgreat strength, that we pass continuously and rapidly, as we read, fromdeep and genuine admiration to equally deep and genuine dissent anddisapprobation, that it allows us to combine a general but irresistiblesense of excellence growing upon us through the book with anunder-current of real and honest dislike and blame, then this book in agreat measure satisfies the condition of success. It is undeniable thatin what it shows us of Mr. Robertson there is much to admire, much tosympathise with, much to touch us, a good deal to instruct us. He isset before us, indeed, by the editor, as the ideal of all that a greatChristian teacher and spiritual guide, all that a brave and wise andhigh-souled man, may be conceived to be. We cannot quite accept him asan example of such rare and signal achievement; and the fault of thebook is the common one of warm-hearted biographers to wind their ownfeelings and those of their readers too high about their subject; totalk as if their hero's excellences were unknown till he appeared todisplay them, and to make up for the imperfect impression resultingfrom actual facts and qualities by insisting with overstrained emphasison a particular interpretation of them. The book would be more truthfuland more pleasing if the editor's connecting comments were more simplywritten, and made less pretension to intensity and energy of language. Yet with all drawbacks of what seem to us imperfect taste, an imperfectstandard of character, and an imperfect appreciation of what there isin the world beyond a given circle of interests, the book does what abiography ought to do--it shows us a remarkable man, and it gives usthe means of forming our own judgment about him. It is not a tamepanegyric or a fancy picture. 

The main portion of the book consists of Mr. Robertson's own letters, and his own accounts of himself; and we are allowed to see him, in agreat degree at least, as he really was. The editor draws a moral, indeed, and tells us what we ought to think about what we see; but wecan use our own judgment about that. And, as so often happens in reallife, what we see both attracts and repels; it calls forth, successively and in almost equal measure, warm sympathy and admiration, and distinct and hearty disagreement. At least there is nothing ofcommonplace--of what is commonplace yet in our generation; though thereis a good deal that bids fair to become commonplace in the next. It isthe record of a genuine spontaneous character, seeking its way, itsduty, its perfection, with much sincerity and elevation of purpose, andmany anxieties and sorrows, and not, we doubt not, without much of thefruits that come with real self-devotion; a record disclosing a manwith great faults and conspicuous blanks in his nature, one with whoseprinciples, taste, or judgment we constantly find ourselves having avehement quarrel, just after having been charmed and conciliated bysome unexpectedly powerful or refined statement of an important truth. We cannot think, and few besides his own friends will think, that hehad laid his hand with so sure an accuracy and with so much promiseupon the clue which others had lost or bungled over. But there is muchto learn in his thoughts and words, and there is not less to learn fromhis life. It is the life of a man who did not spare himself infulfilling what he received as his task, who sacrificed much in orderto speak his message, as he thought, more worthily and to do his officemore effectually, and whose career touches us the more from the shadowof suffering and early death that hangs over its aspirations andactivity. A book which fairly shows us such a life is not of less valuebecause it also shows us much that we regret and condemn. 

Mr. Robertson was brought up not only in the straitest traditions ofthe Evangelical school, but in the heat of its controversial warfare. His heart, when he was a boy, was set on entering the army; and one ofhis most characteristic points through life, shown in many verydifferent forms, was his pugnacity, his keen perception of the"_certaminis gaudia_":--

 "There is something of combativeness in me, " he writes, "which prevents the whole vigour being drawn out, except when I have an antagonist to deal with, a falsehood to quell, or a wrong to avenge. Never till then does my mind feel quite alive. Could I have chosen my own period of the world to have lived in, and my own type of life, it should be the feudal ages, and the life of a Cid, the redresser of wrongs. "

 "On the other hand, " writes his biographer, "when he met men who despised Christianity, or who, like the Roman Catholics, held to doctrines which he believed untrue, this very enthusiasm and unconscious excitement swept him sometimes beyond himself. He could not moderate his indignation down to the cool level of ordinary life. Hence he was wanting at this time in the wise tolerance which formed so conspicuous a feature of his maturer manhood. He held to his own views with pertinacity. He believed them to be true; and he almost refused to allow the possibility of the views of others having truth in them also. He was more or less one-sided at this period. With the Roman Catholic religion it was war to the death, not in his later mode of warfare, by showing the truth which lay beneath the error, but by denouncing the error. He seems invariably, with the pugnacity of a young man, to have attacked their faith; and the mode in which this was done was startlingly different from that which afterwards he adopted. "

He yielded, after considerable resistance, to the wishes and advice ofhis friends, that he should prepare for orders. "With a romanticinstinct of self-sacrifice, " says his biographer, "he resolved to giveup the idea of his whole life. " This we can quite understand; but withthat propensity of biographers to credit their subject with thedesirable qualities which it may be supposed that they ought to have, besides those which they really have, the editor proceeds to observethat this would scarcely have happened had not Mr. Robertson's"_characteristic self-distrust_ disposed him to believe that he washimself the worst judge of his future profession. " This is the way inwhich the true outline of a character is blurred and confused, in orderto say something proper and becoming. Self-distrust was not among thegraces or weaknesses of Mr. Robertson's nature, unless indeed wemistake for it the anxiety which even the stoutest heart may feel at acrisis, or the dissatisfaction which the proudest may feel at theinterval between attempt and achievement. 

He was an undergraduate at Brasenose at the height of the Oxfordmovement. He was known there, so far as he was known at all, as a keenpartisan of the Evangelical school; and though no one then suspectedthe power which was really in him, his party, not rich in men ofstrength or promise, made the most of a recruit who showed ability andentered heartily into their watchwords, and, it must be said, theirrancour. He was conspicuous among the young men of his standing for theforwardness with which he took his side against "Tractarianism, " andthe vehemence of his dislike of it, and for the almost ostentatious anddefiant prominence which he gave to the convictions and social habitsof his school He expressed his scorn and disgust at the "donnishness, "the coldness, the routine, the want of heart, which was all that hecould see at Oxford out of the one small circle of his friends. Hedespised the Oxford course of work, and would have nothing more to dowith it than he could help--as he lived to regret afterwards. Yet eventhen he was in his tastes and the instinctive tendencies of his mindabove his party. He was an admiring reader of Wordsworth and Shelley;he felt the strength of Aristotle and Plato; he is said to haveappreciated Mr. Newman's preaching, and to have gallantly defended whathe admired in him and his friends. His editor, indeed, Mr. Brooke, appears to be a little divided and embarrassed, between his wish toenforce Mr. Robertson's largeness of mind and heart, and his fear ofgiving countenance to suspicions that he was ever so little inclined to"High Churchism"; between his desire to show that Mr. Robertsonestimated the High Church leaders as much as an intelligent man ought, and disliked their system as much as a sound-thinking Christian ought. We should have thought that he need not be so solicitous to "set atrest the question about Mr. Robertson's High Church tendencies. " "Ihate High Churchism, " was one of his latest declarations, whenprofessing his sympathy with individual High Churchmen. One thing, however, is quite clear--that in his early life his partisanship wasthoroughgoing and unflinching enough to satisfy the fiercest and mostfanatical of their opponents. Such a representation as this is simplymisleading:--

 The almost fierceness with which he speaks against the Tract school is proof in him of the strength of the attraction it possessed for him, just as afterwards at Brighton his attacks on Evangelicalism are proof of the strength with which he once held to that form of Christianity, and the force of the reaction with which he abandoned it for ever. Out of these two reactions--when their necessary ultra tendencies had been mellowed down by time--emerged at last the clearness and the just balance of principles with which he taught during 1848 and the following years, at Brighton. He had probed both schools of theological thought to their recesses, and had found them wanting. He spoke of what he knew when he protested against both. He spoke also of what he knew when he publicly recognised the Spirit of all good moving in the lives of those whose opinions he believed to be erroneous. 

It is absurd to say, because he sometimes spoke of the "danger" he hadbeen in from "Tractarianism, " that he had felt in equal degree the"strength of attraction" towards the one school and towards the other, and it is equally absurd to talk of his "having probed both to theirrecesses. " He read, and argued, and discussed the pamphlets of thecontroversy--the "replies, " Mr. Brooke says, with more truth probablythan he thought of in using the word--like other undergraduates whotook interest in what was going on, and thought themselves fit tochoose their side. With his tutor and friend, Mr. Churton, he readTaylor's _Ancient Christianity_, carefully looking out the passagesfrom the Fathers. "I am reading the early Church history withGolightly, " he says, "which is a very great advantage, as he has a fundof general information and is a close reader. " But we must doubtwhether this involved "probing to the recesses" the "Tractarian" sideof the question. And we distrust the depth and the judgment, and theimpartiality also of a man who is said to have read Newman's sermonscontinually with delight to the day of his death, and by whom no bookwas more carefully studied and more highly honoured than _The ChristianYear_, and who yet to the last could see nothing better in the Churchmovement as a whole than, according to the vulgar view of it, a revivalof forms partly useful, partly hurtful It seems to us the greatmisfortune of his life, and one which exercised its evil influence onhim to the end, that, thrown young into the narrowest and weakest ofreligious schools, he found it at first so congenial to his vehementtemperament, that he took so kindly to certain of its more unnaturaland ungenerous ways, and thus was cut off from the larger and healthierinfluences of the society round him. Those were days when older menthan he took their side too precipitately; but he found himselfencouraged, even as an undergraduate, to dogmatise, to be positive, tohate, to speak evil. He learnt the lesson too well. This is thelanguage of an undergraduate at the end of his university course;--

 But I seem this term to have in a measure waked out of a long trance, partly caused by my own gross inconsistencies, and partly by the paralysing effects of this Oxford-delusion heresy, for such it is I feel persuaded. And to know it a man must live here, and he will see the promising and ardent men sinking one after another in a deadly torpor, wrapped up in self-contemplation, dead to their Redeemer, and useless to His Church, under the baneful breath of this accursed upas tree. I say accursed, because I believe that St. Paul would use the same language to Oxford as he did to the Galatian Church, "I would they were even cut off which trouble you"; accursed, because I believe that the curse of God will fall on it He has denounced it on the Papal hereby, and he is no respecter of persons, to punish the name and not the reality. May He forgive me if I err, and lead me into all truth. But I do not speak as one who has been in no clanger, and therefore cannot speak very quietly. It is strange into what ramifications the disbelief of external justification will extend; _we will_ make it internal, whether it be by self-mortification, by works of evangelical obedience, or by the sacraments, and that just at the time when we suppose most that we are magnifying the work of the Lord. 

Mr. Brooke rather likes to dwell, as it seems to us, in an unreal anddisproportionate way, on Mr. Robertson's sufferings, in the latter partof his life, from the bitter and ungenerous attacks of which he was theobject. "This is the man, " he says in one place, "who was afterwards atBrighton driven into the deepest solitariness of heart, whom Godthought fit to surround with slander and misunderstanding. " He was, wedoubt not, fiercely assailed by the Evangelical party, which he hadleft, and which he denounced in no gentle language; he was, as we canwell believe, "constantly attacked, by some manfully, by others in anunderhand manner, and was the victim of innuendoes and slander. " Wecannot, however, help thinking that Mr. Brooke unconsciouslyexaggerates the solitariness and want of sympathy which went with allthis. Mr. Robertson had, and knew that he had, his ardent andenthusiastic admirers as well as his worrying and untiring opponents. But what we remark is this. It was the measure which he had meted outto others, in the fierceness of his zeal for Evangelicalism, which theEvangelicals afterwards meted out to him. They did not more talk evilof what they knew not and had taken no real pains to understand, thanhe had done of a body of men as able, as well-instructed, asdeep-thinking, as brave, as earnest as himself in their war against sinand worldliness. The stupidity, the perverse ill-nature, the resoluteignorance, the audacious and fanatical application of Scripturecondemnations, the reckless judging without a desire to do justice, which he felt and complained of so bitterly when turned againsthimself, he had sanctioned and largely shared in when the same partywhich attacked him in the end attacked the earlier revivers ofthoughtful and earnest religion. Nor do we find that he ever expressedregret for a vehemence of condemnation which his after-knowledge musthave shown him that he had no business to pass, because, even if heafterwards adhered to it, he had originally passed it on utterly falseand inadequate grounds. He only became as fierce against theEvangelicals as he had been against the followers of Mr. Newman. Henever unlearnt the habit of harsh reprobation which his Evangelicalfriends had encouraged. He only transferred its full force againstthemselves. 

He left Oxford and began his ministry, first at Winchester, and then atCheltenham, full of Evangelical _formulae_ and Evangelical narrow zeal. It does not appear that, except as an earnest hard-working clergyman, he was in any way distinguished from numbers of the same class, thoughwe are quite willing to believe that even then his preaching, in warmthand vigour, was above the average. But as he, or his biographer, says, he had not yet really begun to think. When he began to think, he did sowith the rapidity, the intensity, the impatient fervid vehemence whichlay all along at the bottom of his character. His Evangelical viewsappear to have snapped to pieces and dissolved with a violence andsudden abruptness entirely unaccounted for by anything which thesevolumes show us. He read Carlyle; but so did many other people. Hefound the religious world at Cheltenham not so pure as he had imaginedit; but this is what must have happened anywhere, and is not enough toaccount for such a complete revolution of belief. He had a frienddeeply read in German philosophy and criticism who is said to haveexercised influence on him. Still, we repeat, the steps and processesof the change from the Evangelicalism of Cheltenham to a condition, atfirst, of almost absolute doubt, are very imperfectly explained:--

 These letters were written in 1843. In the following year doubts and questionings began to stir in his mind. He could not get rid of them. They were forced upon him by his reading and his intercourse with men. They grew and tortured him. His teaching in the pulpit altered, and it became painful to him to preach. He was reckoned of the Evangelical school, and he began to feel that his position was becoming a false one. He felt the excellence and earnestness, and gladly recognised the work of the nobler portion of that party, but he felt also that he must separate from it. In his strong reaction from its extreme tendencies, he understood with a shock which upturned his whole inward life for a time, that the system on which he had founded his whole faith and work could never be received by him again. Within its pale, for him, there was henceforward neither life, peace, nor reality. It was not, however, till almost the end of his ministry at Cheltenham that this became clearly manifest to him. It had been growing slowly into a conviction. An outward blow--the sudden ruin of a friendship which he had wrought, as he imagined, for ever into his being--a blow from which he never afterwards wholly recovered--accelerated the inward crisis, and the result was a period of spiritual agony so awful that it not only shook his health to its centre, but smote his spirit down into so profound a darkness that of all his early faiths but one remained, "It must be right to do right. "

This seems to have been in 1846, and in the beginning of the next yearhe had already taken his new line. The explanation does not explainmuch. We have no right to ask for more than his friends think fit totell us of this turning-point of his life. But we observe that thisdeeply important passage is left with but little light and muchmanifest reticence. That the crisis took place we have his own touchingand eloquent words to assure us. It left him also as firm in hisaltered convictions as he had been in his old ones. What caused it, what were its circumstances and characteristics, and what affected itscourse and results, we can only guess. But it was decisive and it wasspeedy. He spent a few months in Germany in the end of 1846, and in thebeginning of 1847 the Bishop of Oxford was willing to appoint him toSt. Ebbe's. But his stay there was short. Three months afterwards heaccepted the chapel at Brighton which he held till his death in August1853. 

He was now the Robertson whom all the world knows, and the change was amost remarkable one. It seems strictly accurate to say that he startedat once into a new man--new in all his views and tastes; new in thesingular burst of power which at once shows itself in the keen, free, natural language of his letters and his other writings; new in the deepconcentrated earnestness of character with which he seemed to grasp hispeculiar calling and function. All the conventionalities of his oldschool, which hung very thick about him even to the end of hisCheltenham life, seem suddenly to drop off, and leave him, without atrace remaining on his mind, in the full use and delight of his newliberty. We cannot say that we are more inclined to agree with him inhis later stage than in his earlier. And the rapid transformation of amost dogmatic and zealous Evangelical into an equally positive andenthusiastic "Broad Churchman" does not seem a natural or healthyprocess, and suggests impatience and self-confidence more thanself-command and depth. But we get, without doubt, to a real man--a manwhose words have a meaning, and stand for real things; whose languageno longer echoes the pale dreary commonplaces of a school, but revealsthoughts which he has thought for himself, and the power of being able"to speak as he will. " His mind seems to expand, almost at a bound, toall the manifold variety of interests of which the world is full. Hisletters on his own doings, on the books and subjects of the day, on theremarks or the circumstances of his friends, his criticism, his satire, his controversial or friendly discussions, are full of energy, versatility, refinement, boldness, and strength; and his remarkablepower of clear, picturesque, expressive diction, not unworthy of ourforemost masters of English, appears all at once, as it were, fullgrown. It is difficult to believe, as we read the later portions of hislife, that we are reading about the same man who appeared, so short atime before, at the beginning, to promise at best to turn into apopular Evangelical preacher, above the average, perhaps, in taste andpower, but not above the average in freedom from cramping and sourprejudices. 

Mr. Robertson had hold of some great truths, and he applied them, bothin his own thoughts and self-development and in his popular teaching, with great force. He realised two things with a depth and intensitywhich give an awful life and power to all he said about religion. Herealised with singular and pervading keenness that which a greater manthan he speaks of as the first and the great discovery of the awakenedsoul--" the thought of two, and two only, supreme and luminouslyself-evident beings, himself and the Creator. " "Alone with God, "expresses the feeling which calmed his own anxieties and animated hisreligious appeals to others. And he realised with equal earnestness thegreat truth which is spoken of by Mr. Brooke, though in language whichto us has an unpleasant sound, in the following extract:

 Yet, notwithstanding all this--which men called while he lived, and now when he is dead will call, want of a clear and well-defined system of theology--he had a fixed basis for his teaching. It was the Divine-human Life of Christ. It is the fourth principle mentioned in his letter, "that belief in the human character of Christ must be antecedent to belief in His divine origin. " He felt that an historical Christianity was absolutely essential; that only through a visible life of the Divines in the flesh could God become intelligible to men; that Christ was God's idea of our nature realised; that only when we fall back on the glorious portrait of what has been, ran we be delivered from despair of Humanity; that in Christ "all the blood of all the nations ran, " and all the powers of man were redeemed. Therefore he grasped as the highest truth, on which to rest life and thought, the reality expressed in the words, "the Word was made Flesh. " The Incarnation was to him the centre of all history, the blossoming of Humanity. The Life which followed the Incarnation was the explanation of the Life of God, and the only solution of the problem of the Life of man. He did not speak much of loving Christ; his love was fitly mingled with that veneration which makes love perfect; his voice was solemn, and he paused before he spoke His name in common talk; for what that name meant had become the central thought of his intellect and the deepest realisation of his spirit. He had spent a world of study, of reverent meditation, of adoring contemplation, on the Gospel history. Nothing comes forward more frequently in his letters than the way in which he had entered into the human life of Christ. To that everything is referred--by that everything is explained. 

In bringing home these great truths to the feelings of those who hadlived insensible to them lay the chief value of his preaching. Heawakened men to believe that there was freshness and reality in thingswhich they had by use become dulled to. There are no doubt minds whichrise to the truth most naturally and freely without the intervention ofdogmatic expressions, and to these such expressions, as they are alimit and a warning, are also felt as a clog. Mr. Robertson's earlyexperience had made him suspicious and irritable about dogma as such;and he prided himself on being able to dispense with it, while at thesame time preserving the principle and inner truth which it wasintended to convey. But in his ostentatious contempt of dogmaticprecision and exactness, none but those who have not thought about thematter will see any proof of his strength or wisdom. Dogma, accurate, subtle, scientific, does not prevent a mind of the first order frombreathing freshness of feeling, grandeur, originality, and the sense ofreality, into the exposition of the truth which it represents. It is nofetter except to those minds which in their impulsiveness, theirself-confidence, and their want of adequate grasp and sustained force, most need its salutary restraint. And no man has a right, howevereloquent and impressive his speech may be, to talk against dogma tillhe shows that he does not confound accuracy of statement withconventional formalism. Mr. Robertson lays down the law prettyconfidently about the blunders of everybody about him--Tractarian, Evangelical, Dissenter, Romanist, and Rationalist. We must say that theimpression of every page of his letters is, that clear and "intuitive"as he was, he had not always understood what he condemned. He wasespecially satisfied with a view of Baptism which he thought rose aboveboth extremes and took in the truth of both while it avoided theirerrors. But is it too much to say that a man who, not in the heat ofrhetoric, but when preparing candidates for Confirmation, and piquinghimself on his freedom from all prejudice, deliberately describes thecommon Church view of Baptism as implying a "magical" change, andactually illustrates what he means by the stories of magical changes inthe _Arabian Nights_--who knowing, or able to read, all that has beensaid by divines on the subject from the days of Augustine, yet commitshimself to the assertion that this is in fact what they hold andteach--is it too much to say that such a man, whatever may be his othergifts, has forfeited all claim to be considered capable of writing andexpressing himself with accuracy, truth, and distinctness ontheological questions? And if theological questions are to be dealtwith, ought they not to be dealt with accurately, and not loosely?

But we have lingered too long over these volumes. They are veryinstructive, sometimes very elevating, almost always very touching. Thelife which they describe greatly wanted discipline, self-restraint, andthe wise and manly fear of overrating one's own novelties. But we seein it a life consecrated to duty, fulfilled with much pain andself-sacrifice, and adorned by warm and deep affections, by vigour andrefinement of thought, and earnest love for truth and purity. No onecan help feeling his profound and awful sense of things unseen, thoughin the philosophy by which he sought to connect things seen and thingsunseen, we cannot say that we can have much confidence. We have onlyone concluding remark to make, and that is not on him but on hisbiographer. An exaggerated tone, as we have said, seems to us topervade the book. There is what seems to us an unhealthy attempt tocreate in the reader an impression of the exceptional severity of thesufferings of Mr. Robertson's life, of his loneliness, of hispersecutions. But in this point much may fairly be pardoned to theaffection of a friend. What, however, we can less excuse is the want ofgood feeling with which Mr. Brooke, in his account of Mr. Robertson'slast days, allows himself to give an _ex parte_, account of a disputebetween Mr. Robertson and the Vicar of Brighton, about the appointmentof a curate, and not simply to insinuate, but distinctly declare thatthis dispute with its result was the fatal stroke which, in his stateof ill-health, hastened his death. We say nothing about the rights ofthe story, for we never heard anything of them but what Mr. Brooketells us. But there is an appearance of vindictiveness in putting it onrecord with this particular aspect which nothing in the story itselfseems to us to justify. In describing Mr. Robertson's departure fromCheltenham, Mr. Brooke has plainly thought right to use much reticence. He would have done well to have used the same reticence about thesequarrels at Brighton. 

XVI

LIFE OF BARON BUNSEN[19]

 [19] _A Memoir of Baron Bunsen_. By his Widow, Baroness Bunsen. _Saturday Review_, 2nd May 1868. 

Bunsen was really one of those persons, more common two centuries agothan now, who could belong as much to an adopted country as to that inwhich they were born and educated. A German of the Germans, he yetsucceeded in also making himself at home in England, in appreciatingEnglish interests, in assimilating English thought and traditions, andexercising an important influence at a critical time on one extremelyimportant side of English life and opinion. He was less felicitous inallying the German with the Englishman, perhaps from personalpeculiarities of impatience, self-assertion, and haste, than one whohas since trodden in his steps and realised more completely and moresplendidly some of the great designs which floated before his mind. Butfew foreigners have gained more fairly, by work and by sympathy, the_droit de cité_ in England than Bunsen. 

It is a great pity that books must be so long and so bulky, and thoughBunsen's life was a very full and active one in all matters ofintellectual interest, and in some of practical interest also, wecannot help thinking that his biography would have gained by greaterexercise of self-denial on the part of his biographer. It is altogethertoo prolix, and the distinction is not sufficiently observed betweenwhat is interesting simply to the Bunsen family and their friends, andwhat is interesting to the public. One of the points in whichbiographers, and the present author among the number, make mistakes, isin their use of letters. They never know when to stop in givingcorrespondence. If we had only one or two letters of a remarkable map, they would be worth printing, even if they were very much like otherpeople's letters. But when we have bundles and letter-books without endto select from, selection, in a work professedly biographical, becomesadvisable. We want types and specimens of a man's letters; and when thespecimen has been given, we want no more, unless what is given is forits own sake remarkable. A great number of Bunsen's early letters areprinted. Some of them are of much interest, showing how early the germswere formed of ideas and plans which occupied his life, and what werethe influences by which he was surrounded, and how he comported himselfin regard to them. But many more of these letters are what any youngman of thought and of an affectionate nature might have written; and wedo not want to have it shown us, over and over again, merely thatBunsen was thoughtful and affectionate. A wise and severe economy inthis matter would have produced at least the same effect, at much lesscost to the reader. 

Bunsen was born in 1791, at Corbach, in the little principality ofWaldeck, and grew up under the severe and simple training of a frugalGerman household, and with a solid and vigorous German education. Hebecame in time Heyne's pupil at Göttingen, and very early showed thequalities which distinguished him in his after life--restless eagernessafter knowledge and vast powers of labour, combined with large andambitious, and sometimes vague, ideas, and with depth and fervour ofreligious sentiment. He entered on life when the reaction against thecold rationalistic theories of the age before him was stimulated by theexcitement of the war of liberation; and in his deep and supremeinterest in the Bible he kept to the last the stamp which he thenreceived. More interesting than the recollections of a distinguishedman's youth by his friends after he has become distinguished--which areseldom quite natural and not always trustworthy--are the contemporaryrecords of the impressions made on _him_ in his youth by those who weredistinguished men when he was young. In some of Bunsen's letters wehave such impressions. Thus he writes of Heyne in 1813:--

 Poor and lonely did I arrive in this place [Göttingen]. Heyne received me, guided me, bore with me, encouraged me, showed me in himself the example of a high and noble energy, and indefatigable activity in a calling which was not that to which his merit entitled him. He might have superintended and administered and maintained an entire kingdom without more effort and with yet greater efficiency than the University for which he lived; he was too great for a mere philologer, and in general for a professor of mere learning in the age into which he was cast, and he was more distinguished in every other way than in this. .. . And what has he established or founded at the cost of this exertion of faculties? Learning annihilates itself, and the most perfect is the first submerged; for the next age scales with ease the height which cost the preceding the full vigour of life. Yet two things remain of him and will not perish--the one, the tribute left by his free spirit to the finest productions of the human mind; and what he felt, thought, and has immortalised in many men of excellence gone before. Read his explanations of Tischbein's engravings from Homer, his last preface to Virgil, and especially his oration on the death of Müller, and you will understand what I mean. I speak not of his political instinct, made evident in his survey of the public and private life of the ancients. The other memorial which will subsist of him, more warm in life than the first, is the remembrance of his generosity, to which numbers owe a deep obligation. 

And of Schelling, about the same time, whom he had just seen in Munich:--

 Schelling before all must be mentioned as having received me well, after his fashion, giving me frequent occasions of becoming acquainted with his philosophical views and judgments, in his own original and peculiar manner. His mode of disputation is rough and angular; his peremptoriness and his paradoxes terrible. Once he undertook to explain animal magnetism, and for this purpose to give an idea of Time, from which resulted that all is present and in existence--the Present as existing in the actual moment; the Future, as existing in a future moment. When I demanded the proof, he referred me to the word _is_, which applies to existence, in the sentence that "this _is_ future. " Seckendorf, who was present (with him I have become closely acquainted, to my great satisfaction), attempted to draw attention to the confounding the subjective (i. E. Him who pronounces that sentence) with the objective; or, rather, to point out a simple grammatical misunderstanding--in short, declared the position impossible. "Well, " replied Schelling drily, "you have not understood me. " Two Professors (his worshippers), who were present, had meanwhile endeavoured by their exclamations, "Only observe, all _is_, all _exists_" (to which the wife of Schelling, a clever woman, assented), to help me into conviction; and a vehement beating the air--for arguing and holding fast by any firm point were out of the question--would have arisen, if I had not contrived to escape by giving a playful turn to the conversation. I am perfectly aware that Schelling _could_ have expressed and carried through his real opinion far better--i. E. Rationally. I tell the anecdote merely to give an idea of his manner in conversation. 

At Göttingen he was one of a remarkable set, comprising Lachmann, Lücke, Brandis, and some others, thought as much of at the time astheir friends, but who failed to make their way to the front ranks ofthe world. Like others of his countrymen, Bunsen began to find "thatthe world's destinies were not without their effect on him, " and tofeel dissatisfied with the comparatively narrow sphere of even Germanlearning. The thought grew, and took possession of him, of "bringingover, into his knowledge and into his fatherland, the solemn anddistant East, " and to "draw the East into the study of the entirecourse of humanity (particularly of European, and more especially ofTeutonic humanity), " making Germany the "central point of this study. "Vast plans of philological and historical study, involving, as the onlymeans then possible of carrying them out, schemes of wide travel andlong sojourn in the East, opened on him. Indian and Persian literature, the instinctive certainty of its connection with the languages andthought of the West, and the imperfection of means of study in Europe, drew him, as many more were drawn at the time, to seek the knowledgewhich they wanted in foreign and distant lands. With Bunsen, this wideand combined study of philology, history, and philosophy, which hasformed one of the characteristic pursuits of our time, was from thefirst connected with the study of the Bible as its central point. In1815 came a decisive turning-point in his life--his acquaintance, andthe beginning of his close connection, with Niebuhr, at Berlin; andfrom this time he felt himself a Prussian. "That State in NorthernGermany, " he writes to Brandis in 1815, "which gladly receives everyGerman, from wheresoever he may come, and considers every one thusentering as a citizen born, is _the true Germany_":--

 That such a State [he proceeds, in the true Bismarckian spirit] should prove inconvenient to others of inferior importance, which persist in continuing their isolated existence, regardless of the will of Providence and of the general good, is of no consequence whatever; nor even does it matter that, in its present management, there are defects and imperfections. .. . We intend to be in Berlin in three weeks; and there (in Prussia) am I resolved to fix my destinies. 

After reading Persian for a short time in Paris with De Sacy, and afterthe failure of a plan of travel with Mr. Astor of New York, Bunsenjoined Niebuhr at Florence in the end of 1816, and went on with him toRome, where Niebuhr was Prussian envoy. There, enjoying Niebuhr'ssociety, "equally sole in his kind with Rome, " he took up his abode, and plunged into study. He gave up his plans of Oriental travel, finding he could do all that he wanted without them. Too much astudent, as he writes to a friend, to think of marrying, which he couldnot do "without impairing his whole scheme of mental development, " henevertheless found his fate in an English lady, Miss Waddington, whobecame his wife. And, finally, when the health of his friend Brandis, Niebuhr's secretary in the Prussian Legation, broke down, Bunsen tookhis place, and entered on that combined path of study and diplomacy inwhich he continued for the greater part of his life. 

It may be questioned whether Bunsen's career answered altogethersuccessfully to what he proposed to himself, or was in fact all thathis friends and he himself thought it; but it was eminently one inwhich from the first he had laid down for himself a plan of life whichhe tenaciously followed through many changes and varieties of work, without ever losing sight of the purpose with which he began. He piquedhimself on having early seen that a man ought to have an object towhich to devote his whole life--"be it a dictionary like Johnson's or ahistory like Gibbon's"--and on having discerned and chosen his ownobject. And at an early time of his life in Rome he draws an outline ofthought and inquiry, destined to break off into many different labours, in very much the same language in which he might have described it inthe last year of his life:--

 _The consciousness of God in the mind of man, and that which in and through that consciousness He has accomplished, especially in language and religion_, this was from the earliest time before my mind. After having awhile fancied to attain my point, sometimes here, sometimes there, at length (it was in the Christmas holidays of 1812, after having gained the prize in November) I made a general and comprehensive plan. I wished to go through and represent heathen antiquity, in its principal phases, in three great periods of the world's history, according to its languages, its religious conceptions, and its political institutions; first of all in the East, where the earliest expressions in each are highly remarkable, although little known; then in the second great epoch, among the Greeks and Romans; thirdly, among the Teutonic nations, who put an end to the Roman Empire. 

 At first I thought of Christianity only as something which every one, like the mother tongue, knows intuitively, and therefore not as the object of a peculiar study. But in January 1816, when I for the last time took into consideration all that belonged to my plan, and wrote it down, I arrived at this conclusion, that as God had caused the conception of Himself to be developed in the mind of man in a twofold manner, the one through revelation to the Jewish people through their patriarchs, the other through reason in the heathen; so also must the inquiry and representation of this development be twofold; and as God had kept these two ways for a length of time independent and separate, so should we, in the course of the examination, separate knowledge from man, and his development from the doctrine of revelation and faith, firmly trusting that God in the end would bring about the union of both. This is now also my firm conviction, that we must not mix them or bring them together forcibly, as many have done with well-meaning zeal but unclear views, and as many in Germany with impure designs are still doing. 

The design had its interruptions, both intellectual and practical. Theplan was an ambitious one, too ambitious for Bunsen's time and powers, or even probably for our own more advanced stage of knowledge; andBunsen ever found it hard to resist the attractions of a new object ofinterest, and did not always exhaust it, though he seldom touchedanything without throwing light on it. Thus he was drawn bycircumstances to devote a good deal of time, more than he intended, tothe mere antiquarianism of Rome. By and by he found himself succeedingNiebuhr as the diplomatic representative of Prussia at Rome. And hisattempt to meet the needs of his own strong devotional feelings bygiving more warmth and interest to the German services at the embassy, "the congregation on the Capitoline Hill, " led him, step by step, tothose wider schemes for liturgical reform which influenced soimportantly the course of his fortunes. They brought him, a young andunknown man, with little more than Niebuhr's good word, into direct andconfidential communication with the King of Prussia, who was thenintent on plans of the same kind, and who recognised in Bunsen, aftersome preliminary jealousy and misgivings, the man most fitted to assistin carrying them out. But though Bunsen, who started with the resolveof being both a student and a scholar, was driven, as he thoughtagainst his will, into paths which led him deeper and deeper intopublic life and diplomacy, his early plans were never laid aside evenunder the stress of official employment. Perhaps it may be difficult tostrike the balance of what they lost or gained by it. 

The account of his life at Rome contains much that is interesting. There is the curious mixture of sympathy and antipathy in Bunsen's mindfor the place itself; the antipathy of a German, a Protestant, and afree inquirer, for the Roman, the old Catholic, the narrow, timid, traditional spirit which pervaded everything in the great seat ofclerical and Papal government; and the sympathy, scarcely less intense, not merely, or in the first place, for the classical aspects of Rome, but for its religious character, as still the central point ofChristendom, full of the memorials and the savour of the early days ofChristianity, mingling with what its many centuries of history haveadded to them; and for all that aroused the interest and touched themind of one deeply busy with two great religious problems--the bestforms for Christian worship, and the restoration, if possible, of someorganisation and authority in Protestant Germany. For a long timeBunsen, like his master Niebuhr, was on the best terms with Cardinals, Monsignori, and Popes. The Roman services were no objects to him ofabhorrence or indifference. He saw, in the midst of accretions, theremains of the more primitive devotion; and the architecture, the art, and the music, to be found only in Rome, were to him inexhaustiblesources of delight. As may be supposed, letters like Bunsen's, and therecollections of his biographer, are full of interesting gossip;notices of famous people, and of things that happened in Rome in thedays of the Emancipation and Reform Bills, Revolutions of Naples in'20 and France in '30, during the twenty years, from 1818 to 1838, inwhich the men of the great war and the restorations were going off thescene, and the men of the modern days--Liberals, High Churchmen, Ultra-montanes--were coming on. Those twenty years, of course, were notwithout their changes in Bunsen's own views. The man who had come toRome, in position a poor and obscure student, had grown into the oracleof a highly cultivated society, whose acquaintance was eagerly soughtby every one of importance who lived at Rome or visited it, and intothe diplomatic representative of one of the great Powers. The scholarhad come to have, not merely theories, but political and ecclesiasticalaims. The disciple of Niebuhr, who at one time had seen all things verymuch as Niebuhr saw them in his sad later days of disgust at revolutionand cynical despair of liberty, had come since under the influence ofArnold, and, as his letters to Arnold show, had taken into his own mindmuch of the more generous and hopeful, though vague, teaching of thatequally fervid teacher of liberalism and of religion. These letters areof much interest. They show the dreams and the fears and antipathies ofthe time; they contain some remarkable anticipations, some equallyremarkable miscalculations, and some ideas and proposals which, withour experience, excite our wonder that any one could have imagined thempracticable. Every one knows that Bunsen's diplomatic career at Romeended unfortunately. He was mixed up with the violent proceedings ofthe Prussian Government in the dispute with the Archbishop of Cologneabout marriages between Protestants and Catholics, and he had themisfortune to offend equally both his own Court and that of Rome. It ispossible that, as is urged in the biography before us, he wassacrificed to the blunders and the enmities of powers above him. But, for whatever reason, no clear account is given of the matter by hisbiographer, though a good deal is suggested; and in the absence ofintelligible explanations the conclusion is natural that, though he mayhave been ill-used, he may also have been unequal to his position. 

But his ill-success or his ill-usage at Rome was more than compensatedby the results to which it may be said to have led. Out of itultimately came that which gave the decisive character to Bunsen'slife--his settlement in London as Prussian Minister. On leaving Rome hecame straight to England He came full of admiration and enthusiasm to"his Ithaca, his island fatherland, " and he was flattered and delightedby the welcome he received, and by the power which he perceived inhimself, beyond that of most foreigners, to appreciate and enjoyeverything English. He liked everything--people, country, andinstitutions; even, as his biographer writes, our rooks. The zest ofhis enjoyment was not diminished by his keen sense of what appear toforeigners our characteristic defects--the want of breadth of interestand boldness of speculative thought which accompanies so much energy inpublic life and so much practical success; and he seems to have felt inhimself a more than ordinary fitness to be a connecting link betweenthe two nations--that he had much to teach Englishmen, and that theywere worth teaching. He thoroughly sympathised with the earnestness andstrong convictions of English religion; but he thought it lamentablydestitute of rational grounds, of largeness of idea and of criticalinsight, enslaved to the letter, and afraid of inquiry. But, with alldrawbacks, his visit to England made it a very attractive place to him;and when he was appointed by his Government Envoy to the SwissConfederation, with strict injunctions "to do nothing, " his eyes wereoft on turned towards England. In 1840 the King of Prussia died, andBunsen's friend and patron, the Crown Prince, became Frederic WilliamIV. He resembled Bunsen in more ways than one; in his ardent religioussentiment, in his eagerness, in his undoubting and not alwaysfar-sighted self-confidence and self-assertion, and in a combination ofpractical vagueness of view and a want of understanding men, with afeverish imperiousness in carrying out a favourite plan. In 1841 hesent Bunsen to England to negotiate the ill-considered and precipitatearrangement for the Jerusalem bishopric; and on the successfulconclusion of the negotiation, Bunsen was appointed permanently to bePrussian Minister in London. The manner of appointment was remarkable. The King sent three names to Lord Aberdeen and the English Court, andthey selected Bunsen's. 

Thus Bunsen, who twenty-five years before had sat down a pennilessstudent, almost in despair at the failure of his hopes as a travellingtutor, in Orgagna's _loggia_ at Florence, had risen, in spite of realdifficulties and opposition, to a brilliant position in activepolitical life; and the remarkable point is that, whether he wasambitious or not of this kind of advancement--and it would perhapshave been as well on his part to have implied less frequently that hewas not--he was all along, above everything, the student and thetheologian. What is even more remarkable is that, plunged into thewhirl of London public life and society, he continued still to be, moreeven than the diplomatist, the student and theologian. The PrussianEmbassy during the years that he occupied it, from 1841 to 1854, wasnot an idle place, and Bunsen was not a man to leave important Statebusiness to other hands. The French Revolution, the German Revolution, the Frankfort Assembly, the question of the revival of the Empire, thebeginnings of the Danish quarrel and of the Crimean war, all fellwithin that time, and gave the Prussian Minister in such a centre asLondon plenty to think of, to do, and to write about. Yet all this timewas a time of intense and unceasing activity in that field oftheological controversy in which Bunsen took such delight. Thediplomatist entrusted with the gravest affairs of a great Power in themost critical and difficult times, and fully alive to the interest andresponsibility of his charge, also worked harder than most Professors, and was as positive and fiery in his religious theories and antipathiesas the keenest and most dogmatic of scholastic disputants, he was busyabout Egyptian chronology, about cuneiform writing, about comparativephilology; he plunged with characteristic eagerness into Englishtheological war; and such books as his _Church of the Future_, and hiswritings on Ignatius and Hippolytus, were not the least important ofthe works which marked the progress of the struggle of opinions here. But they represented only a very small part of the unceasing labourthat was going on in the early morning hours in Carlton House Terrace. All this time the foundations were being laid and the materialsgathered for books of wider scope and more permanent aim, too vast forhim to accomplish even in his later years of leisure. It is an originaland instructive picture; for though we boast statesmen who still carryon the great traditions of scholarship, and give room in their mindsfor the deeper and more solemn problems of religion and philosophy, they are not supposed to be able to carry on simultaneously theirpublic business and their classical or scientific studies, and at anyrate they do not attack the latter with the devouring zeal with whichBunsen taxed the efforts of hard-driven secretaries and readers to keeppace with his inexhaustible demands for more and more of the mostabstruse materials of knowledge. 

The end of his London diplomatic career was, like the end of his Romanone, clouded with something like disgrace; and, like the Roman one, isleft here unexplained. But it was for his happiness, probably, that hisresidence in England came to a close. He had found the poetry of hisearly notions about England, political and theological at least, gradually changing into prose. He found less and less to like, in whatat first most attracted him, in the English Church; he and it, besidesknowing one another better, were also changing. He probably increasedhis sympathies for England, and returned in a measure to his oldkindness for it, by looking at it only from a distance. The labour ofhis later days, as vast and indefatigable as that of his earlier days, was devoted to his great work, which was, as it were, to popularise theBible and revive interest in it by a change in the method of presentingit and commenting on it. To the last the Bible was the central point ofhis philosophical as well as his religious thoughts, as it had been inhis first beginnings as a student at Gottingen and Rome. After a lifeof many trials, but of unusual prosperity and enjoyment, he died in theend of 1860. The account of his last days is a very touching one. 

We do not pretend to think Bunsen the great and consummate man that, naturally enough, he appears to his friends. We doubt whether he can beclassed as a man in the first rank at all. We doubt whether he fullyunderstood his age, and yet it is certain that he was confident andpositive that he did understand it better than most men; and an undueconfidence of this kind implies considerable defects both of intellectand character. He wanted the patient, cautious, judicial self-distrustwhich his studies eminently demanded, and of which he might have seensome examples in England. No one can read these volumes without seeingthe disproportionate power which first impressions had with him; he wasalways ready to say that something, which had just happened or comebefore him, was the greatest or the most complete thing of its kind. Wonderfully active, wonderfully quick and receptive, full ofimagination and of the power of combining and constructing, and neverwearied out or dispirited, his mind took in large and grand ideas, anddeveloped them with enthusiasm and success, and with all the resourcesof wide and varied knowledge; but the affluence and ingenuity of histhoughts indisposed him, as it indisposes many other able men, to theprosaic and uninteresting work of calling these thoughts into question, and cross-examining himself upon their grounds and tenableness. Hetried too much; the multiplicity of his intellectual interests was toomuch for him, and he often thought that he was explaining when he wasbut weaving a wordy tissue, and "darkening counsel" as much as any ofthe theological sciolists whom he denounced. People, for instance, must, it seems to us, be very easily satisfied who find any fresh lightin the attempt, not unfrequent in his letters, to adapt the Lutheranwatchword of Justification by faith to modern ideas. He was very rapid, and this rapidity made him hasty and precipitate; it also made him aptto despise other men, and, what was of more consequence, thedifficulties of the subject likewise. Others did not always find iteasy to understand him; and it may fairly be questioned if he alwayssufficiently asked whether he understood himself. He was generous andlarge-spirited in intention, though not always so in fact. 

Doubtless so much knowledge, so much honest and unsparing toil, suchfreshness and quickness of thought, have not been wasted; there willalways be much to learn from Bunsen's writings. But his main servicehas been the moral one of his example; of his ardent and high-souledindustry, of his fearlessness in accepting the conclusions of hisinquiries, of his untiring faith through many changes and somedisappointments that there is a way to reconcile all the truths thatinterest men--those of religion, and those of nature and history. Thesincerity and earnestness with which he attempted this are a lesson toeverybody; his success is more difficult to recognise, and it mayperhaps be allowable to wish that he had taken more exactly the measureof the great task which he set to himself. His ambition was a high one. He aspired to be the Luther of the new 1517 which he so often dweltupon, and to construct a theology which, without breaking with thepast, should show what Christianity really is, and command the faithand fill the opening thought of the present. It can hardly be said thathe succeeded. The Church of the Future still waits its interpreter, tomake good its pretensions to throw the ignorant and mistaken Church ofthe Past into the shade. 

XVII

COLERIDGE'S MEMOIR OF KEBLE[20]

 [20] _A Memoir of the Rev. John Keble_. By the Right Hon. Sir J. T. Coleridge. _Saturday Review_, 20th March 1860. 

Mr. Keble has been fortunate in his biographer. There have been sincehis death various attempts to appreciate a character manifestly of suchdepth and interest, yet about which outsiders could find so little tosay. Professor Shairp, of St. Andrews, two or three years ago gave acharming little sketch, full of heart and insight, and full too ofnoble modesty and reverence, which deserves to be rescued from thedanger of being forgotten into which sketches are apt to fall, both onaccount of its direct subject, and also for the contemporary evidencewhich it contains of the impressions made on a perfectly impartial andintelligent observer by the early events of the Oxford movement. Thebrilliant Dean of Westminster, in _Macmillan's Magazine_, hasattempted, with his usual grace and kindliness, to do justice toKeble's character, and has shown how hard he found the task. The paperon Keble forms a pendant to a recent paper on Dean Milman. The twopapers show conspicuously the measure and range of Dr. Stanley's power;what he can comprehend and appreciate in religious earnestness andheight, and what he cannot; in what shapes, as in Dean Milman, he canthoroughly sympathise with it and grasp it, and where its phenomena, asin Mr. Keble, simply perplex and baffle him, and carry him out of hisdepth. 

Sir John Coleridge knew Keble probably as long and as intimately as anyone; and on the whole, he had the most entire sympathy with hisfriend's spirit, even where he disagreed with his opinions. Hethoroughly understood and valued the real and living unity of acharacter which mostly revealed itself to the outer world by whatseemed jerks and discordant traits. From early youth, through manhoodto old age, he had watched and tested and loved that varied play andharmony of soul and mind, which was sometimes tender, sometimes stern, sometimes playful, sometimes eager; abounding with flashes of realgenius, and yet always inclining by instinctive preference to thingshomely and humble; but which was always sound and unselfish andthorough, endeavouring to subject itself to the truth and will of God. To Sir John Coleridge all this was before him habitually as a whole; hecould take it in, not by putting piece by piece together, but becausehe saw it. And besides being an old and affectionate and intelligentfriend, he was also a discriminating one. In his circumstances he wasas opposite to Keble as any one could be; he was a lawyer and man ofthe world, whose busy life at Westminster had little in common with thestudies or pursuits of the divine and the country parson. 

Such an informant presents a picture entirely different in kind fromthe comments and criticisms of those who can judge only from Mr. Keble's writings and religious line, or from the rare occasions inwhich he took a public part. These appearances, to many who willinglyacknowledge the charm which has drawn to him the admiration andaffection of numbers externally most widely at variance with him, donot always agree together. People delight in his poetry who hate histheology. They cannot say too much of the tenderness, the depth, thetruth, the quick and delicate spirit of love and purity, which havemade his verses the best interpreters and soothers of modern religiousfeeling; yet, in the religious system from which his poetry springs, they find nothing but what seems to them dry, harsh, narrow, andantiquated. He attracts and he repels; and the attraction and repulsionare equally strong. They see one side, and he is irresistible in hissimplicity, humbleness, unworldliness, and ever considerate charity, combined with so much keenness and freshness of thought, and such sureand unfailing truth of feeling. They see another, and he seems to themfull of strange unreality, strained, exaggerated, morbid, bristlingwith a forced yet inflexible intolerance. At one moment he seems thevery ideal of a Christian teacher, made to win the sympathy of allhearts; the next moment a barrier rises in the shape of some unpopulardoctrine or some display of zealous severity, seeming to be a strangecontrast to all that was before, which utterly astonishes anddisappoints. Mr. Keble was very little known to the public in general, less so even than others whose names are associated with his; and it isevident that to the public in general he presented a strange assemblageof incoherent and seemingly irreconcilable qualities. His mind seemedto work and act in different directions; and the results at the endseemed to be with wide breaks and interruptions between them. But abook like this enables us to trace back these diverging lines to thecentre from which they spring. What seemed to be in such sharpcontradiction at the outside is seen to flow naturally from theperfectly homogeneous and consistent character within. Many people willof course except to the character. It is not the type likely to findfavour in an age of activity, doubt, and change. But, as it wasrealised in Mr. Keble, there it is in Sir John Coleridge's pages, perfectly real, perfectly natural, perfectly whole and uniform, withnothing double or incongruous in it, though it unfolded itself invarious and opposite ways. And its ideal was simply that which has beenconsecrated as the saintly character in the Christian Church since thedays of St. John--the deepest and most genuine love of all that wasgood; the deepest and most genuine hatred of all that was believed tobe evil. 

The picture which Sir John Coleridge puts before us, though deficientin what is striking and brilliant, is a sufficiently remarkable anduncommon one. It is the picture of a man of high cultivation andintellect, in whom religion was not merely something flavouring andelevating life, not merely a great element and object of spiritualactivity, but really and unaffectedly the one absorbing interest, andthe spring of every thought and purpose. Whether people like such acharacter or not, and whether or not they may think the religion wrong, or distorted and imperfect, if they would fairly understand the writerof the _Christian Year_ they must start from this point. He was a manwho, without a particle of the religious cant of any school, withoutany self-consciousness or pretension or unnatural strain, literallypassed his clays under the quick and pervading influence, for restraintand for stimulus, of the will and presence of God. With this his wholesoul was possessed; its power over him had not to be invoked andstirred up; it acted spontaneously and unnoticed in him; it wasdominant in all his activity; it quenched in him aims, and even, it maybe, faculties; it continually hampered the free play of his powers andgifts, and made him often seem, to those who had not the key, awkward, unequal, and unintelligible. But for this awful sense of truth andreality unseen, which dwarfed to him all personal thoughts and allpresent things, he might have been a more finished writer, a moreattractive preacher, a less indifferent foster-father to his own works. But it seemed to him a shame, in the presence of all that his thoughtshabitually dwelt with, to think of the ordinary objects of authorship, of studying anything of this world for its own sake, of perfectingworks of art, of cultivating the subtle forces and spells of languageto give attractiveness to his writings. Abruptness, inadequacy, andobscurity of expression were light matters, and gave him littleconcern, compared with the haunting fear of unreal words. This "seekingfirst the kingdom of God and His righteousness, " as he understood it, was the basis of all that he was; it was really and unaffectedly hisgoverning principle, the root of his affections and his antipathies, just as to other men is the passion for scientific discovery orpolitical life. 

But within these limits, and jealously restrained by these conditions, a strongly marked character, exuberant with power and life, and theplay of individual qualities, displayed itself. There were twointellectual sides to his mind--one which made him a poet, quicknessand delicacy of observation and sympathetic interpretation, therealising and anticipating power of deep feeling and penetrativeimagination; the other, at first sight, little related to poetry, ahard-headed, ingenious, prosaic shrewdness and directness of commonsense, dealing practically with things as they are and on the whole, very little curious about scientific questions and precision, argumentative in a fashion modelled on Bishop Butler, and full oflogical resource, good and, often it must be owned, bad. It was a mindwhich unfolded first under the plain, manly discipline of anold-fashioned English country parsonage, where the unshowy piety andstrong morality and modest theology of the middle age of Anglicanism, the school of Pearson, Bull, and Wilson, were supreme. And from this itcame under the new influences of bold and independent thought whichwere beginning to stir at Oxford; influences which were at firstrepresented by such men as Davison, Copleston, and, above all, Whately;influences which repelled Keble by what he saw of hardness, shallowness, and arrogance, and still more of self-sufficiency andintellectual display and conceit in the prevailing tone of speculation, but which nevertheless powerfully affected him, and of which he showedthe traces to the last Sir John Coleridge is disappointing as to theamount of light which he throws on the process which was going on inKeble's mind during the fifteen years or so between his degree and the_Christian Year_; but there is one touch which refers to this period. Speaking in 1838 of Alexander Knox, and expressing dislike of hisposition, "as on the top of a high hill, seeing which way differentschools tend, " and "exercising a royal right of eclecticism over all, "he adds:--

 I speak the more feelingly because I know I was myself inclined to eclecticism at one time; and if it had not been for my father and my brother, where I should have been now, who can say?

But he was a man who, with a very vigorous and keen intellect, capableof making him a formidable disputant if he had been so minded, may besaid not to have cared for his intellect. He used it at need, but hedistrusted and undervalued it as an instrument and help. Goodness wasto him the one object of desire and reverence; it was really his ownmeasure of what he respected and valued; and where he recognised it, and in whatever shape, grave or gay, he cared not about seemingconsistent in somehow or other paying it homage. People who knew himremember how, in this austere judge of heresy, burdened by theever-pressing conviction of the "decay" of the Church and the distressof a time of change, tenderness, playfulness, considerateness, therestraint of a modesty which could not but judge, yet mistrusted itsfitness, marked his ordinary intercourse. Overflowing with affection tohis friends, and showing it in all kinds of unconventional andunexpected instances, keeping to the last a kind of youthful freshnessas if he had never yet realised that he was not a boy, and shrunk fromthe formality and donnishness of grown-up life, he was the most refinedand thoughtful of gentlemen, and in the midst of the fierce partybattles of his day, with all his strong feeling of the tremendoussignificance of the strife, always a courteous and considerateopponent. Strong words he used, and used deliberately. But those werethe days when the weapons of sarcasm and personal attack were freelyhandled. The leaders of the High Church movement were held up todetestation as the Oxford Malignants, and they certainly showedthemselves fully able to give their assailants as good as they brought;yet Mr. Keble, involved in more than one trying personal controversy, feeling as sternly and keenly as any one about public questions, andtried by disappointment and the break up of the strongest ties, neverlost his evenness of temper, never appeared in the arena of personalrecrimination. In all the prominent part which he took, and in theresolute and sometimes wrathful tone in which he defended what seemedharsh measures, he may have dropped words which to opponents seemedsevere ones, but never any which even they could call a scornful one ora sneer. 

It was in keeping with all that he was--a mark of imperfection it maybe, yet part of the nobleness and love of reality in a man who felt sodeeply the weakness and ignorance of man--that he cared so little aboutthe appearances of consistency. Thus, bound as he was by principle toshow condemnation when he thought that a sacred cause was invaded, hewas always inclining to conciliate his wrath with his affectionateness, and his severity with his consideration of circumstances and his ownmistrust of himself. He was, of all men holding strong opinions, one ofthe most curiously and unexpectedly tolerant, wherever he couldcontrive to invent an excuse for tolerance, or where long habitualconfidence was weighed against disturbing appearances. Sir JohnColeridge touches this in the following extract, which ischaracteristic:--

 On questions of this kind especially [University Reform], his principles were uncompromising; if a measure offended against what he thought honest, or violated what he thought sacred, good motives in the framers he would not admit as palliation, nor would he be comforted by an opinion of mine that measures mischievous in their logical consequences were never in the result so mischievous, or beneficial measures so beneficial, as had been foretold. So he writes playfully to me at an earlier time:--

 "Hurrell Froude and I took into consideration your opinion that 'there are good men of all parties, ' and agreed that it is a bad doctrine for these days; the time being come in which, according to John Miller, 'scoundrels must be called scoundrels'; and, moreover, we have stigmatised the said opinion by the name of the Coleridge Heresy. So hold it any longer at your peril. "

 I think it fair to set down these which were, in truth, formed opinions, and not random sayings; but it would be most unfair if one concluded from them, written and spoken in the freedom of friendly intercourse, that there was anything sour in his spirit, or harsh and narrow in his practice; when you discussed any of these things with him, the discussion was pretty sure to end, not indeed with any insincere concession of what he thought right and true, but in consideration for individuals and depreciation of himself. 

And the same thing comes out in the interesting letter in which theSolicitor-General describes his last recollections of Keble:--

 There was, I am sure, no trace of failing then to be discerned in his apprehension, or judgment, or discourse. He was an old man who had been very ill, who was still physically weak, and who needed care; but he was the same Mr. Keble I had always known, and whom, for aught that appeared, I might hope still to know for many years to come. Little bits of his tenderness, flashes of his fun, glimpses of his austerer side, I seem to recall, but I cannot put them upon paper. .. . Once I remember walking with him just the same short walk, from his house to Sir William's, and our conversation fell upon Charles I. , with regard to whose truth and honour I had used some expressions in a review, which had, as I heard, displeased him. I referred to this, and he said it was true. I replied that I was very sorry to displease him by anything I said or thought; but that if the Naseby letters were genuine, I could not think that what I said was at all too strong, and that a man could but do his best to form an honest opinion upon historical evidence, and, if he had to speak, to express that opinion. On this he said, with a tenderness and humility not only most touching, but to me most embarrassing, that "It might be so; what was he to judge of other men; he was old, and things were now looked at very differently; that he knew he had many things to unlearn and learn afresh; and that I must not mind what he had said, for that in truth belief in the heroes of his youth had become part of him. " I am afraid these are my words, and not his; and I cannot give his way of speaking, which to any one with a heart, I think, would have been as overcoming as it was to me. 

This same carelessness about appearances seems to us to be shown inKeble's theological position in his later years. A more logical, or amore plausible, but a less thoroughly real man might easily havedrifted into Romanism. There was much in the circumstances round him, in the admissions which he had made, to lead that way; and hischivalrous readiness to take the beaten or unpopular side would helpthe tendency. But he was a man who gave great weight to his instinctiveperception of what was right and wrong; and he was also a man who, whenhe felt sure of his duty, did not care a straw about what the worldthought of appearances, or required as a satisfaction of seemingconsistency. In him was eminently illustrated the characteristicstrength and weakness of English religion, which naturally comes out inthat form of it which is called Anglicanism; that poor Anglicanism, thebutt and laughing-stock of all the clever and high-flying converts toRome, of all the clever and high-flying Liberals, and of all those poorcopyists of the first, far from clever, though very high-flying, whonow give themselves out as exclusive heirs of the great name ofCatholic; sneered at on all sides as narrow, meagre, shattered, barren;which certainly does not always go to the bottom of questions, and istoo much given to "hunting-up" passages for _catenas_ of precedents andauthorities; but which yet has a strange, obstinate, tenacious moralforce in it; which, without being successful in formulating theories orin solving fallacies, can pierce through pretences and shams; and whichin England seems the only shape in which intense religious faith canunfold itself and connect itself with morality and duty, withoutseeming to wear a peculiar dress of its own, and putting a barrier ofself-chosen watchwords and singularities between itself and the rest ofthe nation. 

It seems to us a great advantage to truth to have a character thusexhibited in its unstudied and living completeness, and exhibiteddirectly, as the impression from life was produced on those beforewhose eyes it drew itself out day by day in word and act, as theoccasion presented itself. There is, no doubt, a more vivid andeffective way; one in which the Dean of Westminster is a great master, though it is not the method which he followed in what is probably hismost perfect work, the _Life of Dr. Arnold_--the method of singling outpoints, and placing them, if possible, under a concentrated light, andin strong contrast and relief. Thus in Keble's case it is easy, anddoubtless to many observers natural and tempting, to put side by side, with a strange mixture of perplexity and repulsion, _The ChristianYear_, and the treatise _On Eucharistical Adoration_; to compare evenin Keble's poetry, his tone on nature and human life, on the ways ofchildren and the thoughts of death, with that on religious error andecclesiastical divergences from the Anglican type; and to dwell on thecontrast between Keble bearing his great gifts with such sweetness andmodesty, and touching with such tenderness and depth the most delicateand the purest of human feelings, and Keble as the editor of Fronde's_Remains_, forward against Dr. Hampden, breaking off a friendship ofyears with Dr. Arnold, stiff against Liberal change and indulgent toancient folly and error, the eulogist of patristic mysticism and BishopWilson's "discipline, " and busy in the ecclesiastical agitations andlegal wranglings of our later days, about Jerusalem Bishoprics andCourts of Final Appeal and ritual details, about Gorham judgments, _Essays and Reviews_ prosecutions, and Colenso scandals. The objectionto this method of contrast is that it does not give the whole truth. Itdoes not take notice that, in appreciating a man like Keble, the thingto start from is that his ideal and model and rule of character wasneither more nor less than the old Christian one. It was simply whatwas accepted as right and obvious and indisputable, not by Churchmenonly, but by all earnest believers up to our own days. Given certainconditions of Christian faith and duty which he took for granted asmuch as the ordinary laws of morality, then the man's own individualgifts or temper or leanings displayed themselves. But when people talkof Keble being narrow and rigid and harsh and intolerant, they oughtfirst to recollect that he had been brought up with the ideas common toall whom he ever heard of or knew as religious people. All earnestreligious conviction must seem narrow to those who do not share it. Itwas nothing individual or peculiar, either to him or his friends, tohave strong notions about defending what they believed that they hadreceived as the truth; and they were people who knew what they wereabout, too, and did not take things up at random. In this he was notdifferent from Hooker, or Jeremy Taylor, or Bishop Butler, or Baxter, or Wesley, or Dr. Chalmers; it may be added, that he was not differentfrom Dr. Arnold or Archbishop Whately. It must not be forgotten thattill of late years there was always supposed, rightly or wrongly, to besuch a thing as false doctrine, and that intolerance of it, within thelimits of common justice, was always held as much part of the Christiancharacter as devotion and charity. Men differed widely as to what wasfalse doctrine, but they did not differ much as to there being such athing, and as to what was to be thought of it. Keble, like other peopleof his time, took up his system, and really, considering that the idealwhich he honestly and earnestly aimed at was the complete system of theCatholic Church, it is an abuse of words to call it, whatever else itmay be called, a narrow system. There may be a wider system still, inthe future; but it is at least premature to say that a man is narrowbecause he accepts in good faith the great traditional ideas anddoctrines of the Christian Church; for of everything that can yet becalled a religious system, in the sense commonly understood, as anembodiment of definite historical revelation, it is not easy toconceive a less narrow one. And, accepting it as the truth, it wasdearer to him than life. That he was sensitively alive to whateverthreatened or opposed it, and was ready to start up like a soldier, ready to do battle against any odds and to risk any unpopularity ormisconstruction, was only the sure and natural result of that deep loveand loyalty and thorough soundness of heart with which he loved hisfriends, but what he believed to be truth and God's will better thanhis friends. But it is idle and shallow to confuse the real narrownesswhich springs from a harsh temper or a cramped and self-sufficientintellect, and which is quite compatible with the widest theoreticallatitude, and the inevitable appearance of narrowness and severitywhich must always be one side which a man of strong convictions andearnest purpose turns to those whose strong convictions and earnestpurpose are opposite to his. 

Mr. Keble, saintly as was his character, if ever there was such acharacter, belonged, as we all do, to his day and generation. Theaspect of things and the thoughts of men change; enlarging, we arealways apt to think, but perhaps really also contracting in somedirections where they once were larger. In Mr. Keble, the service whichhe rendered to his time consisted, not merely, as it is sometimesthought, in soothing and refining it, but in bracing it. He was thepreacher and example of manly hardness, simplicity, purpose in thereligious character. It may be that his hatred of evil--of hollowness, impurity, self-will, conceit, ostentation--was greater than was alwayshis perception of various and mingled good, or his comprehension ofthose middle things and states which are so much before us now. But theservice cannot be overrated, to all parties, of the protest which hislife and all his words were against dangers which were threatening allparties, and not least the Liberal party--the danger of shallowness andsuperficial flippancy; the danger of showy sentiment and insincerity, of worldly indifference to high duties and calls. With the one greatexception of Arnold--Keble's once sympathetic friend, though afterwardsparted from him--the religious Liberals of our time have little reasonto look back with satisfaction to the leaders, able and vigorous assome of them were, who represented their cause then. They owe to Keble, as much as do those who are more identified with his theology, theinestimable service of having interpreted religion by a genuine life, corresponding in its thoroughness and unsparing, unpretendingdevotedness, as well as in its subtle vividness of feeling, to thegreat object which religion professes to contemplate. 

XVIII

MAURICE'S THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS[21]

 [21] _Theological Essays_. By F. D. Maurice. _Guardian_, 7th September 1853. 

The purpose of this volume of essays is to consider the viewsentertained by Unitarians of what are looked upon by Christiansgenerally as fundamental truths; to examine what force there is inUnitarian objections, and what mistakes are involved in the popularnotions and representations of those fundamental truths; and so, without entering into controversy, for which Mr. Maurice declareshimself entirely indisposed, and in the utility of which he entirelydisbelieves, to open the way for a deeper and truer, and more seriousreview, by all parties, of either the differences or the misunderstandingswhich keep them asunder. It is a work, the writer considers, asimportant as any which he has undertaken: "No labour I have beenengaged in has occupied me so much, or interested me more deeply;"and with his estimate of his subject we are not disposed to disagree. 

We always rise from the perusal of one of Mr. Maurice's books with thefeeling that he has shown us one great excellence, and taught us onegreat lesson. He has shown us an example of serious love of truth, andan earnest sense of its importance, and of his own responsibility inspeaking of it. Most readers, whatever else they may think, must havetheir feeling of the wide and living interest of a theological or moralsubject quickened by Mr. Maurice's thoughts on it. This is theexcellence. The lesson is this--to look into the meaning of ourfamiliar words, and to try to use them with a real meaning. Not thatMr. Maurice always shows us how; but it is difficult for conscience toescape being continually reminded of the duty. And it is in these twothings that the value of Mr. Maurice's writings mainly consists. Theenforcing of them has been, to our mind, his chief "mission, " and hismost valuable contribution to the needs of his generation. 

In this volume they are exhibited, as in his former ones; and in thishe shows also, as he has shown before, his earnest desire to find a waywhereby, without compromising truth or surrendering sacred convictionsof the heart, serious men of very different sides might be glad to findthemselves in some points mistaken, in order that they might findthemselves at one. This philosophy, not of comprehension but ofconciliation, the craving after which has awakened in the Church, whenever mental energy has been quickened, the philosophy in whichClement of Alexandria and Origin, and, we may add, St. Augustine, mademany earnest essays, is certainly no unworthy aim for the theologian ofour days. He would, indeed, deserve largely of the Church who shouldshow us a solid and safe way to it. 

But while we are far from denouncing or suspecting the wish or thedesign, we are bound to watch jealously and criticise narrowly theexecution. For we all know what such plans have come to before now. Andit is for the interest of all serious and earnest people on all sides, that there should be no needless and additional confusion introducedinto theology--such confusion as is but too likely to follow, when adesign of conciliation, with the aim of which so many, for good reasonsor bad ones, are sure to sympathise, is carried out by hands that arenot equal to it. With the fullest sense of the serious truthfulness ofthose who differ from us, of the real force of many of their objectionsand criticisms on our proceedings, our friends, and our ideas, it isfar better to hold our peace, than from impatience at what we feel tobe the vulnerable point of our own side, to rush into explanationsbefore we are sure of our power adequately to explain. 

And to this charge it seems to us that Mr. Maurice is open. There issense and manliness in his disclaimer of proselytism; and there is ameaning in which we can agree with his account of truth. "If I couldpersuade all Dissenters, " he says, "to become members of my Churchto-morrow, I should be very sorry to do it. I believe the chances arethey might leave it the next day. I do not wish to make them think as Ithink. But I want that they and I should be what we pretend to be, andthen I doubt not we should find that there is a common ground for usall far beneath our thinkings. For truth I hold not to be that whichevery man troweth, but to be that which lies at the bottom of all men'strowings, that in which those trowings have their only meeting-point. "He would make as clear as can be that deep substructure, and leave thesight of it to work its natural effect on the honest heart. A nobleaim; but surely requiring, if anything can, the clear eye, the steadyhand, the heart as calm as earnest. Surely a work in which the greatestexactness and precision, as well as largeness of thought, would not betoo much. For if we but take away the "trowings" without coming down tothe central foundation, or lose ourselves, and mistake a new "trowing"of our own for it, it is hardly a sufficient degree of blame to saythat we have done no good. 

And in these qualities of exactness and precision it does seem to usthat Mr. Maurice is, for his purpose, fatally deficient. His criticismsare often acute, his thrusts on each side often very home ones, andbut too full of truth; his suggestions often full of thought andinstruction; his balancings and contrasts of errors and truths, ifsometimes too artificial, yet generally striking. But when we come toseek for the reconciling truth, which one side has overlaid anddistorted, and the other ignorantly shrunk back from, but which, whenplaced in its real light and fairly seen, is to attract the love andhomage of both, we seem--not to grasp a shadow--Mr. Maurice is tooearnest and real a believer for that--but to be very much where wewere, except that a cloud of words surrounds us. His positivestatements seem like a running protest against being obliged to commithimself and come to the point; like a continual assertion of thehopelessness and uselessness of a definite form of speaking about thematter in hand. Take, for instance, the following short statement:--

 "My object, " he says, speaking of the words which he has taken as the subject of his essays, "has been to examine the language with which we are most familiar, and which has been open to most objections, especially from Unitarians. Respecting the Conception I have been purposely silent; not because I have any doubt about that article, or am indifferent to it, but because I believe the word '_miraculous_, ' which we _ordinarily connect with it, suggests an untrue meaning; because I think the truth is conveyed to us most safely in the simple language of the Evangelists_; and because that language taken in connection with the rest of their story, offers itself, I suspect, to a majority of those who have taken in the idea of an Incarnation, as the _only natural and rational_ account of the method by which the eternal Son of God could have taken human flesh. "

Now, would not Mr. Maurice have done better if he had enounced thedefinite meaning, or shade of meaning, which he considers short of, ordifferent from, our _ordinary_ meaning of _miraculous_, as applied tothis subject, and yet the same as that suggested by the Gospel account?We have no doubt what Mr. Maurice does believe on this sacred subject. But we are puzzled by what he means to disavow, as an "_untruemeaning_" of the word _miraculous_, as applied to what he believes. And the Unitarians whom he addresses must, we think, be puzzled too. 

We have quoted this passage because it is a short one, and therefore aconvenient one for a short notice like this. But the same tormentingindistinctness pervades the attempts generally to get a meaning or aposition, which shall be substantially and in its living force the sameas the popular and orthodox article, yet convict it of confusion orformalism; and which shall give to the Unitarian what he aims at by hisnegation of the popular article, without leaving him any longer areason for denying it. The essay on Inspiration is an instance of this. Mr. Maurice says very truly, that it is necessary to face the fact thatimportant questions are asked on the subject, very widely, and byserious people; that popular notions are loose and vague about it; thatit is a dangerous thing to take refuge in a hard theory, if it is aninconsistent and inadequate one; that if doubts do grow up, they arehardly to be driven away by assertions. He accepts the challenge tostate his own view of Inspiration, and devotes many pages to doing so. In these page's are many true and striking things. So far as weunderstand, there is not a statement that we should contradict. But wehave searched in vain for a passage which might give, in Mr. Maurice'swords, a distinct answer to the question of friend or opponent, What doyou mean by the "Inspiration of the Bible?" Mr. Maurice tells us a mostimportant truth--that that same Great Person by whose "holyinspiration" all true Christians still hope to be taught, inspired theprophets. He protests against making it necessary to say that there isa _generic_ difference between one kind of Inspiration and the other, or "setting up the Bible as a book which encloses all that may belawfully called Inspiration. " He looks on the Bible as a link--a greatone, yet a link, joining on to what is before and what comes after--inGod's method of teaching man His truth. He cares little about phraseslike "verbal inspiration" and "plenary inspiration"--"forms of speechwhich are pretty toys for those that have leisure to play with them;and if they are not made so hard as to do mischief, the use of themshould not be checked. But they do not belong to business. " He bids us, instead, give men "the Book of Life, " and "have courage to tell themthat there is a Spirit with them who will guide them into all truth. "Great and salutary lessons. But we must say that they have been long inthe world, and, it must be said, are as liable to be misunderstood asany other "popular" notions on the subject. If there is nothing more tosay on the subject--if it is one where, though we see and are sure of atruth, yet we must confess it to be behind a veil, as yet indistinctand not to be grasped, let us manfully say so, and wait till God revealeven this unto us. But it is not a wise or a right course to raiseexpectations of being able to say something, not perhaps new, butsatisfactory, when the questions which are really being asked, whichare the professed occasion of the answer, remain, in their Intellectualdifficulty, entirely unresolved. Mr. Maurice is no trifler; when hethrows hard words about, --when at the close of this essay he paints tohimself the disappointment of some "Unitarian listener, who had hopedthat Mr. Maurice was going to join him in cursing his enemies, andfound that he had blessed them these three times, "--he ought toconsider whether the result has not been, and very naturally, to leaveboth parties more convinced than before of the hollowness of allprofessions to enter into, and give weight to, the difficulties and theclaims of opposite sides. 

Mr. Maurice has not done justice, as it seems to us, in this case, tothe difficulty of the Unitarian. In other cases he makes free with thecommon belief of Christendom, and claims sacrifices which are asneedless as they are unwarrantable. If there is a belief rooted in theminds of Christians, it is that of a future judgment. If there is anexpectation which Scripture and the Creed sanction in the plainestwords, it is that this present world is to have an end, and that then, a time now future, Christ will judge quick and dead. Say as much as canbe said of the difficulty of conceiving such a thing, it really amountsto no more than the difficulty of conceiving what will happen, and howwe shall be dealt with, when this familiar world passes away. And thisbelief in a "_final_ judgment, _unlike any other that has ever been inthe world_, " Mr. Maurice would have us regard as a misinterpretation ofBible and Creed--a "dream" which St. Paul would never "allow us" toentertain, but would "compel" us instead "to look upon everyone of whatwe rightly call 'God's judgments' as _essentially resembling it in kindand principle_. " "Our eagerness to deny this, " he continues, "to makeout an altogether peculiar and unprecedented judgment at the end of theworld, has obliged us first _to practise the most violent outrages uponthe language of Scripture_, insisting that words cannot really meanwhat, according to all ordinary rules of construction, they must mean. "It really must be said that the "outrage, " if so it is to be called, isnot on the side of the popular belief. And why does this belief seemuntenable to Mr. Maurice? Because it seems inconsistent to him with atruth which he states and enforces with no less earnestness thanreason, that Christ is every moment judging us--that His tribunal isone before which we in our inmost "being are standing now--and that thetime will come when we shall know that it is so, and when all that hasconcealed the Judge from us shall be taken away. " Doubtless Christ isalways with us--always seeing us--always judging us. Doubtless"everywhere" in Scripture the idea is kept before us of judgment in itsfullest, largest, most natural sense, as "importing" not merely passingsentence, and awarding reward or penalty, but "discrimination anddiscovery. Everywhere that discrimination or discovery is supposed tobe exercised over the man himself, over his internal character, overhis meaning and will. " Granted, also, that men have, in their attemptsto figure to themselves the "great assize, " sometimes made strangework, and shown how carnal their thoughts are, both in what theyexpected, and in the influence they allowed it to have over them. Butwhat of all this? Correct these gross ideas, but leave the words ofScripture in their literal meaning, and do not say that all those whoreceive them as the announcement of what is to be, under conditions nowinconceivable to man, _must_ understand "the substitution of a mereexternal trial or examination" for the inward and daily trial of ourhearts, as a mere display of "earthly pomp and ceremonial"--aresumption by Christ "of earthly conditions"; or that, because theybelieve that at "some distant unknown period they shall be brought intothe presence of One who is now" not "far from them, " but out ofsight--how, or in what manner they know not--therefore they _must_suppose that He "is not now fulfilling the office of a Judge, whateverelse may be committed to Him. "

Mr. Maurice is aiming at a high object. He would reconcile the old andthe new. He would disencumber what is popular of what is vulgar, confused, sectarian, and preserve and illustrate it by disencumberingit. He calls on us not to be afraid of the depths and heights, thefreedom and largeness, the "spirit and the truth, " of our own theology. It is a warning and a call which every age wants. We sympathise withhis aim, with much of his positive teaching, with some of his aversionsand some of his fears. We do not respect him the less for not beingafraid of being called hard names. But certainly such a writer hasneed, in no common degree, of conforming himself to that wise maxim, which holds in writing as well as in art--"Know what you want to do, then do it. "

XIX

FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE[22]

 [22] _Saturday Review_, 6th April 1872. 

This Easter week we have lost a man about whom opinions and feelingswere much divided, who was by many of the best and most thoughtfulamong us looked on as the noblest and greatest of recent Englishteachers, and who certainly had that rare gift of inspiring enthusiasmand trust among honest and powerful minds in search of guidance, whichbelongs to none but to men of a very high order. Professor Maurice hasended a life of the severest and most unceasing toil, still working tothe utmost that failing bodily strength allowed--still to the last inharness. The general public, though his name is familiar to them, probably little measure the deep and passionate affection with which hewas regarded by the circle of his friends and by those whose thoughtsand purposes he had moulded; or the feeling which his loss causes inthem of a blank, great and not to be filled up, not only personally forthemselves, but in the agencies which are working most hopefully inEnglish society. But even those who knew him least, and only from theoutside, and whose points of view least coincided with his, must feelthat there has been, now that we look back on his course, somethingsingularly touching and even pathetic in the combination shown in allthat he did, of high courage and spirit, and of unwearied faith andvigour, with the deepest humility and with the sincerestdisinterestedness and abnegation, which never allowed him to seekanything great for himself, and, in fact, distinguished and honoured ashe was, never found it. For the sake of his generation we may regretthat he did not receive the public recognition and honour which wereassuredly his due; but in truth his was one of those careers which, fortheir own completeness and consistency, gain rather than lose byescaping the distractions and false lights of what is calledpreferment. 

The two features which strike us at the moment as characteristic of Mr. Maurice as a writer and teacher, besides the vast range both of hisreading and thought, and the singularly personal tone and language ofall that he wrote, are, first, the combination in him of the mostprofound and intense religiousness with the most boundless claim andexercise of intellectual liberty; and next, the value which he set, exemplifying his estimate in his own long and laborious course, onprocesses and efforts, as compared with conclusions and definiteresults, in that pursuit of truth which was to him the most sacred ofduties. There is no want of earnest and fervent religion among us, intelligent, well-informed, deliberate, as well as of religion, towhich these terms can hardly be applied. And there is also no want ofthe boldest and most daring freedom of investigation and judgment. Butwhat Mr. Maurice seemed to see himself, and what he endeavoured toimpress on others, was that religion and liberty are no naturalenemies, but that the deepest and most absorbing forms of historicaland traditional religion draw strength and seriousness of meaning, andbinding obligation, from an alliance, frank and unconditional, withwhat seem to many the risks, the perilous risks and chances, offreedom. 

It was a position open to obvious and formidable criticism; but againstthis criticism is to be set the fact, that in a long and energeticlife, in which amidst great trials and changes there was a singularuniformity and consistency of character maintained, he did unite thetwo--the most devout Christianity with the most fearless andunshrinking boldness in facing the latest announcements andpossibilities of modern thought. That he always satisfactorilyexplained his point of view to others is more than can be said; but hecertainly satisfied numbers of keen and anxious thinkers, who werediscontented and disheartened both by religion as it is presented byour great schools and parties, and by science as its principles andconsequences are expounded by the leading philosophical authorities ofthe day. The other point to which we have adverted partly explains theinfluence which he had with such minds. He had no system to formulateor to teach. He was singularly ready to accept, as adequate expressionsof those truths in whose existence he so persistently believed, the oldconsecrated forms in which simpler times had attempted to express them. He believed that these truths are wider and vaster than the human mindwhich is to be made wiser and better by them. And his aim was to reachup to an ever more exact, and real, and harmonious hold of thesetruths, which in their essential greatness he felt to be above him; toreach to it in life as much as in thought. And so to the end he wasever striving, not so much to find new truths as to find the heart andcore of old ones, the truth of the truth, the inner life andsignificance of the letter, of which he was always loth to refuse thetraditional form. In these efforts at unfolding and harmonising therewas considerable uniformity; no one could mistake Mr. Maurice's mannerof presenting the meaning and bearing of an article of the Creed forthe manner of any one else; but the result of this way of working, inthe effect of the things which he said, and in his relations todifferent bodies of opinion and thought both in the Church and insociety, was to give the appearance of great and important changes inhis teaching and his general point of view, as life went on. Thisgoverning thought of his, of the immeasurably transcendent compass andheight of all truths compared with the human mind and spirit which wasto bow to them and to gain life and elevation by accepting them, explains the curious and at present almost unique combination in him, of deep reverence for the old language of dogmatic theology, and anenergetic maintenance of its fitness and value, with dissatisfaction, equally deep and impartially universal, at the interpretations put onthis dogmatic language by modern theological schools, and at the modesin which its meaning is applied by them both in directing thought andinfluencing practice. This habit of distinguishing sharply andperemptorily between dogmatic language and the popular reading of it atany given time is conspicuous in his earliest as in his latest handlingof these subjects; in the pamphlet of 1835, _Subscription no Bondage_, explaining and defending the old practice at Oxford; and in the papersand letters, which have appeared from him in periodicals, on theAthanasian Creed, and which are, we suppose, almost his last writings. 

The world at large thought Mr. Maurice obscure and misty, and was, aswas natural, impatient of such faults. The charge was, no doubt, morethan partially true; and nothing but such genuine strength andcomprehensive power as his could have prevented it from being a fatalone to his weight and authority. But it is not uninstructive toremember what was very much at the root of it. It had its origin, notaltogether, but certainly in a great degree, in two of his moralcharacteristics. One was his stubborn, conscientious determination, atany cost of awkwardness, or apparent inconsistency, or imperfection ofstatement, to say out what he had to say, neither more nor less, justas he thought it, and just as he felt it, with the most fastidious carefor truthful accuracy of meaning. He never would suffer what heconsidered either the connection or the balance and adjustment ofvaried and complementary truths to be sacrificed to force or point ofexpression; and he had to choose sometimes, as all people have, betweena blurred, clumsy, and ineffective picture and a consciously incompleteand untrue one. His choice never wavered; and as the artist's aim washigh, and his skill not always equally at his command, he preferred theimperfection which left him the consciousness of honesty. The othercause which threw a degree of haze round his writings was the personalshape into which he was so fond of throwing his views. He shrunk fromtheir enunciation as arguments and conclusions which claimed on theirown account and by their own title the deference of all who read them;and he submitted them as what he himself had found and had been grantedto see--the lessons and convictions of his own experience. Sympathy is, no doubt, a great bond among all men; but, after all, men's experienceand their points of view are not all alike, and when we are asked tosee with another's eyes, it is not always easy. Mr. Maurice's desire togive the simplest and most real form to his thoughts as they arose inhis own mind contributed more often than he supposed to prevent othersfrom entering into his meaning. He asked them to put themselves in hisplace. He did not sufficiently put himself in theirs. 

But he has taught us great lessons, of the sacredness, the largeness, and, it may be added, the difficulty of truth; lessons of sympathy withone another, of true humility and self-conquest in the busy andunceasing activity of the intellectual faculties. He has left no schooland no system, but he has left a spirit and an example. We speak of himhere only as those who knew him as all the world knew him; but thosewho were his friends are never tired of speaking of his grandsimplicity of character, of his tenderness and delicacy, of theirresistible spell of lovableness which won all within its reach. Theyremember how he spoke, and how he read; the tones of a voice ofsingularly piercing clearness, which was itself a power ofinterpretation, which revealed his own soul and went straight to thehearts of hearers. He has taken his full share in the controversies ofour days, and there must be many opinions both about the line which hetook, and even sometimes about the temper in which he carried ondebate. But it is nothing but the plainest justice to say that he was aphilosopher, a theologian, and, we may add, a prophet, of whom, for hisgreat gifts, and, still more, for his noble and pure use of them, themodern English Church may well be proud. 

XX

SIR RICHARD CHURCH[23]

 [23] _Guardian_, 26th March 1873. 

General Sir Richard Church died last week at Athens. Many Englishtravellers in the East find their way to Athens; most of them must haveheard his name repeated there as the name of one closely associatedwith the later fortunes of the Greek nation, and linking the presentwith times now distant; some of them may have seen him, and mayremember the slight wiry form which seemed to bear years so lightly, the keen eye and grisled moustache and soldierly bearing, and perhapsthe antique and ceremonious courtesy, stately yet cordial, recalling atype of manners long past, with which he welcomed those who had a claimon his attentions or friendly offices. Five and forty years ago hisname was much in men's mouths. He was prominent in a band ofdistinguished men, who represented a new enthusiasm in Europe. Less bywhat they were able to do than by their character and their unreservedself-devotion and sacrifice, they profoundly affected public opinion, and disarmed the jealousy of absolutist courts and governments infavour of a national movement, which, whether disappointment may havefollowed its success, was one of the most just and salutary ofrevolutions--the deliverance of a Christian nation from the hopelesstyranny of the Turks. 

He was one of the few remaining survivors of the generation which hadtaken part in the great French war and in the great changes resultingfrom it--changes which have in time given way to vaster alterations, and been eclipsed by them. He began his military life as a boy-ensignin one of the regiments forming part of the expedition which, under SirRalph Abercromby, drove the French out of Egypt in 1801; and on theshores of the Mediterranean, where his career began, it was for themost part continued and finished. His genius led him to the moreirregular and romantic forms of military service; he had the gift ofpersonal influence, and the power of fascinating and attaching tohimself, with extraordinary loyalty, the people of the South. Hisadventurous temper, his sympathetic nature, his chivalrous courtesy, his thorough trustworthiness and sincerity, his generosity, his highspirit of nobleness and honour, won for him, from Italians and Greeks, not only that deep respect which was no unusual tribute from them toEnglish honesty and strength and power of command, but that love, andthat affectionate and almost tender veneration, for which strong andresolute Englishmen have not always cared from races of whosecharacteristic faults they were impatient. 

His early promise in the regular service was brilliant; as a youngstaff-officer, and by a staff-officer's qualities of sagacity, activity, and decision, he did distinguished service at Maida; and hadhe followed the movement which made Spain the great battle-ground forEnglish soldiers, he had every prospect of earning a high place amongthose who fought under Wellington. But he clung to the Mediterranean. He was employed in raising and organising those foreign auxiliary corpswhich it was thought were necessary to eke out the comparatively scantynumbers of the English armies, and to keep up threateningdemonstrations on the outskirts of the French Empire. It was in thisservice that his connection with the Greek people was first formed, andhis deep and increasing interest in its welfare created. He wascommissioned to form first one, and then a second, regiment of Greekirregulars; and from the Ionian Islands, from the mainland of Albania, from the Morea, chiefs and bands, accustomed to the mountain warfare, half patriotic, half predatory, carried on by the more energetic Greekhighlanders against the Turks, flocked to the English standards. Theoperations in which they were engaged were desultory, and of no greataccount in the general result of the gigantic contest; but they madeColonel Church's name familiar to the Greek population, who werehoping, amid the general confusion, for an escape from the tyranny ofthe Turks. But his connection with Greece was for some time delayed. His peculiar qualifications pointed him out as a fit man to be a mediumof communication between the English Government and the foreign armieswhich were operating on the outside of the circle within which thedecisive struggle was carried on against Napoleon; and he was theEnglish Military Commissioner attached to the Austrian armies in Italyin 1814 and 1815. 

At the Peace, his eagerness for daring and adventurous enterprise wastempted by great offers from the Neapolitan Government. The war hadleft brigandage, allied to a fierce spirit of revolutionaryfreemasonry, all-powerful in the south of Italy; and a stern andresolute, yet perfectly honest and just hand, was needed to put itdown. He accepted the commission; he was reckless of conspiracy andthreats of assassination; he was known to be no sanguinary andmerciless lover of severity, but he was known also to be fearless andinexorable against crime; and, not without some terrible examples, yetwith complete success, he delivered the south of Italy from thescourge. But his thoughts had always been turned towards Greece; atlast the call came, and he threw himself with all his hopes and all hisfortunes into a struggle which more than any other that history canshow engaged at the time the interest of Europe. His first effortsresulted in a disastrous defeat against overwhelming odds, for which, as is natural, he has been severely criticised; his critics have shownless quickness in perceiving the qualities which he displayed afterit--his unshaken, silent fortitude, the power with which he kepttogether and saved the wrecks of his shattered and disheartenedvolunteer army, the confidence in himself with which he inspired them, the skill with which he extricated them from their dangers in the faceof a strong and formidable enemy, the humanity which he strove soearnestly by word and example to infuse into the barbarous warfarecustomary between Greeks and Turks, the tenacity with which he clung tothe fastnesses of Western Greece, obtaining by his perseverance fromthe diplomacy of Europe a more favourable line of boundary for the newnation which it at length recognised. To this cause he gave upeverything; personal risks cannot be counted; but he threw away allprospects in England; he made no bargains; he sacrificed freely to thenecessities of the struggle any pecuniary resource that he couldcommand, neither requiring nor receiving any repayment. He threw in hislot with the people for whom he had surrendered everything, in order totake part in their deliverance. Since his arrival in Greece in 1827 hehas never turned his face westwards. He took the part which is perhapsthe only becoming and justifiable one for the citizen of one State whopermits himself to take arms, even in the cause of independence, foranother; having fought for the Greeks, he lived with them, and shared, for good and for evil, their fortunes. 

For more than forty years he has resided at Athens under the shadow ofthe great rock of the Acropolis. Distinguished by all the honours theGreek nation could bestow, military or political, he has lived inmodest retirement, only on great emergencies taking any prominent partin the political questions of Greece, but always throwing his influenceon the side of right and honesty. The course of things in Greece wasnot always what an educated Englishman could wish it to be. Butwhatever his judgment, or, on occasion, his action might be, therenever could be a question, with his friends any more than with hisopponents--enemies he could scarcely be said to have--as to thestraightforwardness, the pure motives, the unsullied honour of anythingthat he did or anything that he advised. The Greeks saw among them onedeeply sympathising with all that they cared for, commanding, if he hadpleased to work for it, considerable influence out of Greece, theintimate friend of a Minister like Sir Edmund Lyons, yet keeping freefrom the temptation to make that use of influence which seems sonatural to politicians in a place like Athens; thinking much of Greeceand of the interests of his friends there, but thinking as much oftruth and justice and conscience; hating intrigue and trick, andshaming by his indignant rebuke any proposal of underhand courses thatmight be risked in his presence. 

The course of things, the change of ideas and of men, threw him moreand more out of any forward and prominent place in the affairs ofGreece. But his presence in Athens was felt everywhere. There was a manwho had given up everything for Greece and sought nothing in return. His blameless unselfishness, his noble elevation of character, were awarning and a rebuke to the faults which have done so much mischief tothe progress of the nation; and yet every Greek in Athens knew that noone among them was more jealous of the honour of the nation or moreanxious for its good. To a new political society, freshly exposed tothe temptations of party struggles for power, no greater service can berendered than a public life absolutely clear from any suspicion ofself-seeking, governed uninterruptedly and long by public spirit, public ends, and a strong sense of duty. Such a service General Churchhas rendered to his adopted country. During his residence among themfor nearly half a century they have become familiar, not in word, butin living reality, with some of the best things which the West has toimpart to the East. They have had among them an example of Englishprinciple, English truth, English high-souled disinterestedness, andthat noble English faith which, in a great cause, would rather hope invain than not hope at all. They have learned to venerate all this, and, some of them, to love it. 

XXI

DEATH OF BISHOP WILBERFORCE[24]

 [24] _Guardian_, 23rd July 1873. 

The beautiful summer weather which came on us at the beginning of thisweek gives by contrast a strange and terrible point to the calamity, the announcement of which sent such a shock through the whole countryon Monday last. Summer days in all their brilliance seemed come atlast, after a long waiting which made them the more delightful. But aspeople came down to breakfast on that morning, or as they gathered atrailway stations on their way to business, the almost incredibletidings met them that the Bishop of Winchester was dead; that he hadbeen killed by a fall from his horse. In a moment, by the most trivialof accidents, one of the foremost and most stirring men of ourgeneration had passed away from the scene in which his part was solarge a one. With everything calm and peaceful round him, in the midstof the keen but tranquil enjoyment of a summer evening ride with afriend through some of the most charming scenery in England, lookingforward to meeting another friend, and to the pleasure which a quietSunday brings to hard-worked men in fine weather, and a pleasantcountry house, the blow fell. The moment before, as Lord Granvilleremarks, he had given expression to the fulness of his enjoyment. Hewas rejoicing in the fine weather, he was keenly noticing the beauty ofthe scenery at every point of the way; with his characteristic love oftrees he was noticing the different kinds and the soils which suitedthem; especially he was greatly pleased with his horse. There comes aslight dip in the smooth turf; the horse stumbles and recovers himselfunhurt; but in that short interval of time all has vanished, all thingsearthly, from that quick eye and that sensitive and sympathetic mind. It is indeed tragic. He is said to have thought with distress of alingering end. He was spared it. He died as a soldier dies. 

A shock like this brings with it also a shock of new knowledge andappreciation of things. We are made to feel with a new force what it isthat we have lost, and to understand more exactly what is theproportion of what we have lost to what we still retain. To friends andopponents the Bishop of Winchester could not but be, under anycircumstances, a person of the greatest importance. But few of us, probably, measured fully and accurately the place which he filled amongus. We are better aware of it now when he has been taken away from us. Living among us, and acting before us from day to day, the object ofeach day's observation and criticism, under each day's varyingcircumstances and feelings, within our reach always if we wanted to seehim or to hear him, he was presented to our thoughts in that partialdisclosure, and that everyday homeliness, which as often disguise thetrue and complete significance of a character, as they give substanceand reality to our conceptions of it. As the man's course moves on, weare apt to lose in our successive judgments of the separate steps ofit--it may be stops of great immediate interest--our sense of itsconnection and tendency, of the true measure of it as a whole, of thedegree in which character is growing and rising, or, on the other hand, falling or standing still. The Bishop of Winchester had manyadmirers--many who deeply loved and trusted him--many who, in the faceof a good deal of suspicion and hostile comment, stoutly insisted onthe high estimate which they had formed of him. But even among them, and certainly in the more indifferent public, there were few who hadrightly made it clear to their own minds what he had really grown to beboth in the Church and the country. 

For it is obvious, at the first glance now that he is gone, that thereis no one who can fill the place which he filled. It seems to us beyonddispute that he has been the greatest Bishop the English Church hasseen for a century and a half. We do not say the greatest man, but thegreatest Bishop; the one among the leaders of the English Church whomost adequately understood the relations of his office, not only to theChurch, but to his times and his country, and who most adequatelyfulfilled his own conception of them. We are very far from saying thisbecause of his exuberant outfit of powers and gifts; because of hisversatility, his sympathetic nature, his eager interest in all thatinterested his fellows, his inexhaustible and ready resources ofthought and speech, of strong and practical good sense, of brilliant orpersuasive or pathetic eloquence. In all this he had equals and rivals, though perhaps he had not many in the completeness and balance of hispowers. Nor do we say anything of those gifts, partly of the intellect, but also of the soul and temper and character, by which he was able atonce to charm without tiring the most refined and fastidious society, to draw to him the hearts of hard-working and anxious clergymen, and toenchain the attention of the dullest and most ignorant of rusticcongregations. All these are, as it seems to us, the subordinate, andnot the most interesting, parts of what he was; they were on thesurface and attracted notice, and the parts were often mistaken for thewhole. Nor do we forget what often offended even equitable judges, disliking all appearance of management and mere adroitness--or what wasoften objected against his proceedings by opponents at least asunscrupulous as they wished him to be thought. We are far from thinkingthat his long career was free from either mistakes or faults; it is notlikely that a course steered amid such formidable and perplexingdifficulties, and steered with such boldness and such little attempt toevade them, should not offer repeated occasions not only forill-natured, but for grave and serious objections. 

But looking over that long course of his Episcopate, from 1845 to thepresent year, we see in him, in an eminent and unique degree, twothings. He had a distinct and statesmanlike idea of Church policy; andhe had a new idea of the functions of a Bishop, and of what a Bishopmight do and ought to do. And these two ideas he steadily kept in viewand acted upon with increasing clearness in his purpose and unflaggingenergy in action. He grasped in all its nobleness and fulness andheight the conception of the Church as a great religious society ofDivine origin, with many sides and functions, with diversified giftsand ever new relations to altering times, but essentially, and aboveall things, a religious society. To serve that society, to call forthin it the consciousness of its calling and its responsibilities, tostrengthen and put new life into its organisation, to infuse ardour andenthusiasm and unity into its efforts, to encourage and fostereverything that harmonised with its principle and purpose, to watchagainst the counteracting influences of self-willed or ignorantnarrowness, to adjust its substantial rights and its increasingactivity to the new exigencies of political changes, to elicit from theChurch all that could command the respect and win the sympathy andconfidence of Englishmen, and make its presence recognised as a supremeblessing by those whom nothing but what was great and real in itsbenefits would satisfy--this was the aim from which, however perplexedor wavering or inconsistent he may have been at times, he never reallyswerved. In the breadth and largeness of his principle, in the freedomand variety of its practical applications, in the distinctness of hispurposes and the intensity of his convictions, he was an example ofhigh statesmanship common in no age of the Church, and in no branch ofit. And all this rested on the most profound personal religion as itsfoundation, a religion which became in time one of very definitedoctrinal preferences, but of wide sympathies, and which was always ofvery exacting claims for the undivided work and efforts of a lifetime. 

When he became Bishop he very soon revolutionised the old notion of aBishop's duties. He threw himself without any regard to increasingtrouble and labour on the great power of personal influence. In everycorner of his diocese he made himself known and felt; in all thatinterested its clergy or its people he took his part more and more. Hewent forth to meet men; he made himself their guest and companion aswell as their guide and chief; he was more often to be found movingabout his diocese than he was to be found at his own home at Cuddesdon. The whole tone of communication between Bishop and people rose at oncein freedom and in spiritual elevation and earnestness; it was at onceless formal and more solemnly practical. He never spared his personalpresence; always ready to show himself, always ready to bring the rarerand more impressive rites of the Church, such as Ordination, within theview of people at a distance from his Palace or Cathedral, he was nevermore at his ease than in a crowd of new faces, and never exhausted andworn out in what he had to say to fresh listeners. Gathering men abouthim at one time; turning them to account, assigning them tasks, pressing the willing, shaming the indolent or the reluctant, atanother; travelling about with the rapidity and system of an officerinspecting his positions, he infused into the diocese a spirit and zealwhich nothing but such labour and sympathy could give, and bound ittogether by the bands of a strong and wise organisation. 

What he did was but a very obvious carrying out of the idea of theEpiscopal office; but it had not seemed necessary once, and his meritwas that he saw both that it was necessary and practicable. It is hewho set the standard of what is now expected, and is more or lessfamiliar, in all Bishops. And as he began so he went on to the last. Henever flagged, he never grew tired of the continual and variedintercourse which he kept up with his clergy and people. To the last heworked his diocese as much as possible not from a distance, but fromlocal points which brought him into closer communication with hisflock. London, with its great interests and its great attractions, social and political, never kept away one who was so keenly alive tothem, and so prominent in all that was eventful in his time, fromattending to the necessities and claims of his rural parishes. What hiswork was to the very last, how much there was in him of unabated force, of far-seeing judgment, of noble boldness and earnestness, of powerover the souls and minds of men in many ways divided, a letter from Dr. Monsell[25] in our columns shows. 

He had a great and all-important place in a very critical moment, towhich he brought a seriousness of purpose, a power and ripeness ofcounsel, and a fearlessness distinctly growing up to the last. It isdifficult to see who will bend the bow which he has dropped. 

 [25] . .. The shock that the sudden announcement of an event so solemn must ever give, was tenfold great to one who, like myself, had been, during the past week, closely associated with him in anxious deliberations as to the best means of meeting the various difficulties and dangers with which the Church is at present surrounded. 

 He had gathered round him, as was his annual wont, his Archdeacons and Rural Deans, to deliberate for the Church's interests; and in his opening address, and conduct of a most important meeting, never had he shone out more clearly in intellectual vigour, in theological soundness, in moral boldness, in Christian gentleness and love. 

 . .. He spoke upon the gravest questions of the day--questions which require more than they generally receive, delicate handling. He divided from the evil of things, which some in the spirit of party condemn wholesale, the hidden good which lies wrapt up in them, and which it would be sin as well as folly to sweep away. He made every man who heard him feel the blessing of having in the Church such a veteran leader, and drew forth from more than one there the openly expressed hope that as he had in bygone days been the bold and cautious controller of an earlier movement in the right direction, so now he would save to the Church some of her precious things which rude men would sweep away, and help her to regain what is essential to her spiritual existence without risking the sacredness of private life, the purity of private thoughts, the sense of direct responsibility between God and the soul, which are some of the most distinctive characteristics of our dear Church of England. 

 From his council chamber in Winchester House I went direct with him to the greater council chamber of St. Stephen's to hear him there vindicate the rights and privileges of his order, and beat back the assaults of those who, in high places, think that by a speech in, or a vote of, either house they can fashion the Church as they please. Never did he speak with more point and power; and never did he seem to have won more surely the entire sympathy of the house. 

 To gather in overwhelming numbers round him in the evening his London clergy and their families, to meet them all with the kind cordiality of a real father and friend, to run on far into the middle of the night in this laborious endeavour to please--was "the last effort of his toilsome day. "

XXII

RETIREMENT OF THE PROVOST OF ORIEL[26]

 [26] _Guardian_, 4th November 1874. 

Dr. Hawkins, the Provost of Oriel, has resigned the Provostship. He hasheld it from 1828, within four years of half a century. The time duringwhich he has presided over his college has been one of the mosteventful periods in the history of the University; it has been a timeof revolt against custom, of reform, of keen conflict, of deep changes;and in all connected with these he has borne a part, second to none inprominence, in importance, and we must add, in dignity. No name ofequal distinction has disappeared from the list of Heads of Housessince the venerable President of Magdalen passed away. But Dr. Routh, though he watched with the keenest intelligence, and not withoutsympathy, all that went on in the days into which his life had beenprolonged, watched it with the habits and thoughts of days longdeparted; he had survived from the days of Bishop Horne and Dr. Parrfar into our new and strange century, to which he did not belong, andhe excited its interest as a still living example of what men werebefore the French Revolution. The eminence of the Provost of Oriel isof another kind. He calls forth interest because among all recentgenerations of Oxford men, and in all their restless and excitingmovements, he has been a foremost figure. He belongs to modern Oxford, its daring attempts, its fierce struggles, its successes, and itsfailures. He was a man of whom not only every one heard, but whom everyone saw; for he was much in public, and his unsparing sense of publicduty made him regularly present in his place at Council, atConvocation, at the University Church, at College chapel. The outwardlook of Oxford will be altered by the disappearance in its ceremoniesand gatherings of his familiar form and countenance. 

He would anywhere have been a remarkable man. His active andindependent mind, with its keen, discriminating, practicalintelligence, was formed and disciplined amid that company ofdistinguished scholars and writers who, at Oxford, in the second decadeof the century were revolted by the scandalous inertness andself-indulgence of the place, with its magnificent resources squanderedand wasted, its stupid orthodoxy of routine, its insensibility to thequestions and the dangers rising all round; men such as Keble, Arnold, Davison, Copleston, Whately. These men, different as they were from oneanother, all represented the awakening but still imperfectconsciousness that a University life ought to be something higher thanone of literary idleness, given up to the frivolities of mere elegantscholarship, and to be crowned at last by comfortable preferment; thatthere was much difficult work to be seriously thought about and done, and that men were placed at Oxford under heavy responsibilities to usetheir thoughts and their leisure for the direct service of theirgeneration. Clever fops and dull pedants joined in sneering at this newactivity and inquisitiveness of mind, and this grave interest andemployment of intellect on questions and in methods outside thecustomary line of University studies and prejudices; but the men weretoo powerful, and their work too genuine and effective, and too much inharmony with the temper and tendencies of the time, to be stopped byimpertinence and obstructiveness. Dr. Hawkins was one of those who madethe Oriel Common-room a place of keen discussion and brilliantconversation, and, for those days, of bold speculation; while theCollege itself reflected something of the vigour and accomplishments ofthe Common-room. Dr. Newman, in the _Apologia_, has told us, intouching terms of acknowledgment, what Dr. Hawkins was when, fiftyyears ago, the two minds first came into close contact, and whatintellectual services he believed Dr. Hawkins had rendered him. Hetells us, too, how Dr. Hawkins had profoundly impressed him by a workin which, with characteristic independence and guarded caution equallycharacteristic, he cuts across popular prejudices and confusions ofthought, and shows himself original in discerning and stating anobvious truth which had escaped other people--his work on_Unauthoritative Tradition_. His logical acuteness, his habits ofdisciplined accuracy, abhorrent and impatient of all looseness ofthinking and expression, his conscientious efforts after substantialreality in his sharpest distinctions, his capacity for taking trouble, his serious and strong sense of the debt involved in the possession ofintellectual power--all this would have made him eminent, whatever thetimes in which he lived. 

But the times in which we live and what they bring with them mould mostof us; and the times shaped the course of the Provost of Oriel, andturned his activity into a channel of obstinate and prolongedantagonism, of resistance and protest, most conscientious but mostuncompromising, against two great successive movements, both of whichhe condemned as unbalanced and recoiled from as revolutionary--theTractarian first, and then the Liberal movement in Oxford. Of theformer, it is not perhaps too much to say that he was in Oxford, atleast, the ablest and most hurtful opponent. From his counsels, fromhis guarded and measured attacks, from the power given him by a partialagreement against popular fallacies with parts of its views, from hissevere and unflinching determination, it received its heaviest blowsand suffered its greatest losses. He detested what he held to be itsanti-Liberal temper, and its dogmatic assertions; he resented itstaking out of his hands a province of theology which he and Whately hadmade their own, that relating to the Church; he thought its tone offeeling and its imaginative and poetical side exaggerated or childish;and he could not conceive of its position except as involving palpabledishonesty. No one probably guided with such clear and self-possessedpurpose that policy of extreme measures, which contributed to bringabout, if it did not itself cause, the break-up of 1845. Then succeededthe great Liberal tide with its demands for extensive and immediatechange, its anti-ecclesiastical spirit, its scarcely disguisedscepticism, its daring philosophical and critical enterprises. Bydegrees it became clear that the impatience and intolerance which hadpurged the University of so many Churchmen had, after all, left theChurch movement itself untouched, to assume by degrees proportionsscarcely dreamed of when it began; but that what the defeat of theTractarians really had done was, to leave the University at the mercyof Liberals to whom what had been called Liberalism in the days ofWhately was mere blind and stagnant Conservatism. 

One war was no sooner over than the Provost of Oriel found another evenmore formidable on his hands. The most dauntless and most unshaken ofcombatants, he faced his new antagonists with the same determination, the same unshrinking sense of duty with which he had fought his oldones. He used the high authority and influence which his position andhis character justly gave him, to resist or to control, as far as hecould, the sweeping changes which, while bringing new life into Oxford, have done so much to break up her connection of centuries with theChurch. He boldly confronted the new spirit of denial and unbelief. Hewrote, he preached, he published, as he had done against otheradversaries, always with measured and dignified argument, but notshrinking from plain-spoken severity of condemnation. Never sparinghimself labour when he thought duty called, he did not avail himself ofthe privilege of advancing years to leave the war to be carried on byyounger champions. 

It is impossible for those who may at times have found themselves moststrongly, and perhaps most painfully, opposed to him, not to admire andrevere one who, through so long a career has, in what he held to be hisduty to the Church and to religion, fought so hard, encountered suchtroubles, given up so many friendships and so much ease, and who, whilea combatant to the last, undiscouraged by odds and sometimes byill-success, has brought to the weariness and disappointment of old agean increasing gentleness and kindliness of spirit, which is one of therarest tokens and rewards of patient and genuine self-discipline. A manwho has set himself steadily and undismayed to stem and bring to reasonthe two most powerful currents of conviction and feeling which haveagitated his times, leaves an impressive example of zeal andfearlessness, even to those against whom he has contended. What is theupshot which has come of these efforts, and whether the controversiesof the moment have not in his case, as in others, diverted and absorbedfaculties which might have been turned to calmer and more permanenttasks, we do not inquire. 

Perhaps a life of combat never does all that the combatant thinks itought to accomplish, or compensates for the sacrifices it entails. Inthe case of the Provost of Oriel, he had, with all his great and noblequalities, one remarkable want, which visibly impaired his influenceand his persuasiveness. He was out of sympathy with the risingaspirations and tendencies of the time on the two opposite sides; hewas suspicious and impatient of them. He was so sensible of their weakpoints, the logical difficulties which they brought with them, theirprecipitate and untested assumptions, the extravagance and unsoundnessof character which often seemed inseparable from them, that he seldomdid justice to them viewed in their complete aspect, or was even aliveto what was powerful and formidable in the depth, the complexity, andthe seriousness of the convictions and enthusiasm which carried themonwards. In truth, for a man of his singular activity and reach ofmind, he was curiously indifferent to much that most interested hiscontemporaries in thought and literature; he did not understand it, andhe undervalued it as if it belonged merely to the passing fashions ofthe hour. 

This long career is now over. Warfare is always a rude trade, and menon all sides who have had to engage in it must feel at the end how muchthere is to be forgiven and needing forgiveness; how much now appearsharsh, unfair, violent, which once appeared only necessary and just. Ahard hitter like the Provost of Oriel must often have left behind theremembrance of his blows. But we venture to say that, even in those whosuffered from them, he has left remembrances of another and bettersort. He has left the recollection of a pure, consistent, laboriouslife, elevated in its aim and standard, and marked by high publicspirit and a rigid and exacting sense of duty. In times when it waswanted, he set in his position in the University an example of modestand sober simplicity of living; and no one who ever knew him can doubtthe constant presence, in all his thoughts, of the greatness of thingsunseen, or his equally constant reference of all that he did to theaccount which he was one day to give at his Lord's judgment-seat. Wetrust that he may be spared to enjoy the rest which a weaker or lessconscientious man would have claimed long ago. 

XXIII

MARK PATTISON[27]

 [27] _Guardian_, 6th August 1884. 

The Rector of Lincoln, who died at Harrogate this day week, was a manabout whom judgments are more than usually likely to be biassed byprepossessions more or less unconscious, and only intelligible to themind of the judge. There are those who are in danger of dealing withhim too severely. There are also those whose temptation will be tomagnify and possibly exaggerate his gifts and acquirements--great asthey undoubtedly were, --the use that he made of them, and the placewhich he filled among his contemporaries. One set of people finds itnot easy to forget that he had been at one time closer than most youngmen of his generation to the great religious leaders whom they areaccustomed to revere; that he was of a nature fully to understand andappreciate both their intellectual greatness and their moral andspiritual height; that he had shared to the full their ideas and hopes;that they, too, had measured his depth of character, and grasp, andbreadth, and subtlety of mind; and that the keenest judge among them ofmen and of intellect had pirlud him out as one of the most original andpowerful of a number of very able contemporaries. Those who rememberthis cannot easily pardon the lengths of dislike and hitterness towhich in after life Pattison allowed himself to be carried against thecause which once had his hearty allegiance, and in which, if he haddiscovered, as he thought, its mistakes and its weakness, he had oncerecognised with all his soul the nobler side. And on the other hand, the partisans of the opposite movement, into whose interests he sodisastrously, as it seems to us, and so unreservedly threw himself, naturally welcomed and made the most of such an accession to theirstrength, and such an unquestionable addition to their literary fame. To have detached such a man from the convictions which he had soprofessedly and so earnestly embraced, and to have enlisted him astheir determined and implacable antagonist--to be able to point to himin him maturity and strength of his powers as one who, having known itsbest aspects, had deliberately despaired of religion, and had turnedagainst its representatives the scorn and hatred of a passionatenature, whose fires burned all the more fiercely under its cold crustof reserve and sarcasm--this was a triumph of no common order; and itmight conceivably blind those who could rejoice in it to thecomparative value of qualities which, at any rate, were very rare andremarkable ones. 

Pattison was a man who, in many ways, did not do himself justice. As ayoung man, his was a severe and unhopeful mind, and the tendency todespond was increased by circumstances. There was something in thequality of his unquestionable ability which kept him for long out ofthe ordinary prizes of an Oxford career; in the class list, in thehigher competition for Fellowships, he was not successful. There arethose who long remembered the earnest pleading of the Latin letterswhich it was the custom to send in when a man stood for a Fellowship, and in which Pattison set forth his ardent longing for knowledge, andhis narrow and unprosperous condition as a poor student. He always camevery near; indeed, he more than once won the vote of the best judges;but he just missed the prize. To the bitter public disappointments of1845 were added the vexations caused by private injustice andill-treatment. He turned fiercely on those who, as he thought, hadwronged him, and he began to distrust men, and to be on the watch forproofs of hollowness and selfishness in the world and in the Church. Yet at this time, when people were hearing of his bitter and unsparingsayings in Oxford, he was from time to time preaching in villagechurches, and preaching sermons which both his educated and his simplehearers thought unlike those of ordinary men in their force, reality, and earnestness. But with age and conflict the disposition to harsh andmerciless judgments strengthened and became characteristic. This, however, should be remembered: where he revered ho revered with genuineand unstinted reverence; where he saw goodness in which he believed hegave it ungrudging honour. He had real pleasure in recognising heightand purity of character, and true intellectual force, and he maintainedhis admiration when the course of things had placed wide intervalsbetween him and those to whom it had been given. His early friendships, where they could be retained, he did retain warmly and generously evento the last; he seemed almost to draw a line between them and otherthings in the world. The truth, indeed, was that beneath that icy andoften cruel irony there was at bottom a most warm and affectionatenature, yearning for sympathy, longing for high and worthy objects, which, from the misfortunes especially of his early days, never foundroom to expand and unfold itself. Let him see and feel that anythingwas real--character, purpose, cause--and at any rate it was sure of hisrespect, probably of his interest. But the doubt whether it was realwas always ready to present itself to his critical and suspicious mind;and these doubts grew with his years. 

People have often not given Pattison credit for the love that was inhim for what was good and true; it is not to be wondered at, but theobservation has to be made. On the other hand, a panegyrie, like thatwhich we reprint from the _Times_, sets too high an estimate on hisintellectual qualities, and on the position which they gave him. He wasfull of the passion for knowledge; he was very learned, very acute inhis judgment on what his learning brought before him, very versatile, very shrewd, very subtle; too full of the truth of his subject to careabout seeming to be original; but, especially in his poeticalcriticisms, often full of that best kind of originality which consistsin seeing and pointing out novelty in what is most familiar and trite. But, not merely as a practical but as a speculative writer, he was aptto be too much under the empire and pressure of the one idea which atthe moment occupied and interested his mind. He could not resist it; itcame to him with exclusive and overmastering force; he did not care toattend to what limited it or conflicted with it. And thus, with all theforce and sagacity of his University theories, they were not alwaysself-consistent, and they were often one-sided and exaggerated. He wasnot a leader whom men could follow, however much they might rejoice atthe blows which he might happen to deal, sometimes unexpectedly, atthings which they disliked. And this holds of more serious things thaneven University reform and reconstruction. 

And next, though every competent reader must do justice to Pattison'sdistinction as a man of letters, as a writer of English prose, and as acritic of what is noble and excellent and what is base and poor inliterature, there is a curious want of completeness, a frequent crudityand hardness, a want, which is sometimes a surprising want, of goodsense and good taste, which form unwelcome blemishes in his work, andjust put it down below the line of first-rate excellence which it oughtto occupy. Morally, in that love of reality, and of all that is highand noble in character, which certainly marked him, he was much betterthan many suppose, who know only the strength of his animosities andthe bitterness of his sarcasm. Intellectually, in reach, and fulness, and solidity of mental power, it may be doubted whether he was so greatas it has recently been the fashion to rate him. 

XXIV

PATTISON'S ESSAYS[28]

 [28] _Essays by the late Mark Pattison, sometime Rector of Lincoln College_. Collected and arranged by Henry Nettleship, M. A. , Corpus Professor of Latin in the University of Oxford. _Guardian_, 1st May 1889. 

This is a very interesting but a very melancholy collection of papers. They are the remains of the work of a man of first-rate intellect, whose powers, naturally of a high order, had been diligently and wiselycultivated, whose mind was furnished in a very rare degree with allthat reading, wide and critical, could give, and which embraced in thecircle of its interest all that is important to human life and society. Mr. Pattison had no vulgar standard of what knowledge is, and whatgoodness is. He was high, sincere, exacting, even austere, in hisestimates of either; and when he was satisfied he paid honour withsometimes unexpected frankness and warmth. But from some unfortunateelement in his temperament, or from the effect upon it of untoward andunkindly circumstances at those critical epochs of mental life, whencharacter is taking its bent for good and all, he was a man in whosejudgment severity--and severity expressing itself in angry scorn--wasvery apt to outrun justice. Longing for sympathy and not ill-fitted forit, capable of rare exertions in helping those whom he could help, hepassed through life with a reputation for cynicism which, while hecertainly exhibited it, he no less certainly would, if he had knownhow, have escaped from. People could easily tell what would incur hisdislike and opposition, what would provoke his slow, bitter, mercilesssarcasm; it was never easy to tell what would satisfy him, what wouldattract his approval, when he could be tempted to see the good side ofa thing. It must not be forgotten that he had gone through a trial towhich few men are equal. He had passed from the extreme ranks and thestrong convictions of the Oxford movement--convictions of which thetranslation of Aquinas's _Catena Aurea_, still printed in the list ofhis works, is a memorial--to the frankest form of Liberal thought. Ashe himself writes, we cannot give up early beliefs, much less the deepand deliberate convictions of manhood, without some shock to thecharacter. In his case the change certainly worked. It made him hatewhat he had left, and all that was like it, with the bitterness of onewho has been imposed upon, and has been led to commit himself to whathe now feels to be absurd and contemptible, and the bitterness of thisdisappointment gave an edge to all his work. There seems through allhis criticism, powerful as it is, a tone of harshness, a readiness totake the worst construction, a sad consciousness of distrust andsuspicion of all things round him, which greatly weakens the effect ofhis judgment. If a man will only look for the worst side, he will onlyfind the worst side; but we feel that we act reasonably by notaccepting such a teacher as our guide, however ably he may state hiscase. There is a want of equitableness and fairness in his stern andsometimes cruel condemnations; and yet not religion only, but thewisest wisdom of the world tells of the indispensable value of thisequitableness, this old Greek virtue of [Greek: epieikeia], in ourviews of men and things. It is not religion only, but common sensewhich says that "sweetness and light, " kindliness, indulgence, sympathy, are necessary for moral and spiritual health. Scorn, indignation, keenly stinging sarcasm, doubtless have their place in aworld in which untruth and baseness abound and flourish; but to live onthese is poison, at least to oneself. 

These fierce antipathies warped his judgment in strange and unexpectedways. Among these papers is a striking one on Calvin. If any characterin history might be expected to have little attraction for him it isCalvin. Dogmatist, persecutor, tyrant, the proud and relentlessfanatic, who more than any one consecrated harsh narrowness in religionby cruel theories about God, what was there to recommend him to a loverof liberty who had no patience for ecclesiastical pretensions of anykind, and who tells us that Calvin's "sins against human liberty are ofthe deepest dye"? For if Laud chastised his adversaries with whips, Calvin chastised his with scorpions. Perhaps it is unreasonable to besuprised, yet we are taken by surprise, when we find a thinker like Mr. Pattison drawn by strong sympathy to Calvin and setting him up amongthe heroes and liberators of humanity. Mr. Pattison is usually fair indetails, that is, he does not suppress bad deeds or qualities in thosewhom he approves, or good deeds or qualities in those whom he hates: itis in his general judgments that his failing comes out. He makes noattempt to excuse the notorious features of Calvin's rule at Geneva;but Mr. Pattison reads into his character a purpose and a grandeurwhich place him far above any other man of his day. To recommend him toour very different ways of thinking, Mr. Pattison has the courage toallege that his interest in dogmatic theology was a subordinate matter, and that the "renovation of character, " the "moral purification ofhumanity, " was the great guiding idea of him who taught that out of themass of human kind only a predestined remnant could possibly be saved. It is a singular interpretation of the mind of the author of the_Institutes_:--

 The distinction of Calvin as a Reformer is not to be sought in the doctrine which now bears his name, or in any doctrinal peculiarity. His great merit lies _in his comparative neglect of dogma. He seized the idea of reformation as a real renovation of human character_. The moral purification of humanity as the original idea of Christianity is the guiding idea of his system. .. . He swept away at once the sacramental machinery of material media of salvation which the middle-age Church had provided in such abundance, and which Luther frowned upon, but did not reject. He was not satisfied to go back only to the historical origin of Christianity, but would found human virtue on the eternal antemundane will of God. 

Again:--

 Calvin thought neither of fame or fortune. The narrowness of his views and the disinterestedness of his soul alike precluded him from regarding Geneva as a stage for the gratification of personal ambition. This abegnation of self was one great part of his success. 

And then Mr. Pattison goes on to describe in detail how, governed andpossessed by one idea, and by a theory, to oppose which was "moraldepravity, " he proceeded to establish his intolerable system ofdiscipline, based on dogmatic grounds--meddlesome, inquisitorial, petty, cruel--over the interior of every household in Geneva. What isthere fascinating, or even imposing, in such a character? It is thecommon case of political and religious bigots, whether Jacobin, orPuritan, or Jesuit, poor in thought and sympathy and strong in will, fixing their yoke on a society, till the plague becomes unbearable. Heseeks nothing for himself and, forsooth, he makes sacrifices. But hegets what he wants, his idea carried out; and self-sacrifice is of whatwe care for, and not of what we do not care for. And to keep up thissupposed character of high moral purpose, we are told of Calvin's"comparative neglect of dogma, " of his seizing the idea of a "realreformation of human character, " a "moral purification of humanity, " asthe guiding idea of his system. Can anything be more unhistorical thanto suggest that the father and source of all Western Puritan theology"neglected dogma, " and was more of a moralist than a divine? It is noteven true that he "swept away at once the sacramental machinery" ofmediaeval and Lutheran teaching; Calvin writes of the Eucharist interms which would astonish some of his later followers. But what is thereason why Mr. Pattison attributes to the historical Calvin so muchthat does not belong to him, and, in spite of so much that repels, isyet induced to credit him with such great qualities? The reason is tobe found in the intense antipathy with which Mr. Pattison regarded whathe calls "the Catholic reaction" over Europe, and in the fact thatundoubtedly Calvin's system and influence was the great force whichresisted both what was bad and false in it, and also what was good, true, generous, humane. Calvinism opposed the "Catholic reaction"point-blank, and that was enough to win sympathy for it, even from Mr. Pattison. 

The truth is that what Popery is to the average Protestant, and whatProtestant heresy is to the average Roman Catholic, the "Catholicreaction, " the "Catholic revival" in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies and in our own, is to Mr. Pattison's final judgment. It wasnot only a conspiracy against human liberty, but it brought with it thedegradation and ruin of genuine learning. It is the all-sufficing causeand explanation of the mischief and evil doings which he has to setbefore us. Yet after the violence, the ignorance, the injustice, theinconsistencies of that great ecclesiastical revolution which we callby the vague name of Reformation, a "Catholic reaction" was inevitable. It was not conceivable that common sense and certain knowledge wouldsubmit for ever to be overcrowed by the dogmas and assertions of thenew teachers. Like other powerful and wide and strongly markedmovements, like the Reformation which it combated, it was a very mixedthing. It produced some great evils and led to some great crimes. Itstarted that fatal religious militia, the Jesuit order, which, notwithstanding much heroic self-sacrifice, has formed a permanent barto all possible reunion of Christendom, has fastened its yoke on thePapacy itself, and has taught the Church, as a systematic doctrine, toput its trust in the worst expedients of human policy. The religiouswars in France and Germany, the relentless massacres of the LowCountries and the St. Bartholomew, the consecration of treason andconspiracy, were, without doubt, closely connected with the "Catholicreaction. " But if this great awakening and stimulating influence raisednew temptations to human passion and wickedness, it was not only in theservice of evil that this new zeal was displayed. The Council of Trent, whatever its faults, and it had many, was itself a real reformation. The "Catholic revival" meant the rekindling of earnest religion andcare for a good life in thousands of souls. If it produced the Jesuits, it as truly produced Port Royal and the Benedictines. Europe would beindeed greatly the poorer if it wanted some of the most conspicuousproducts of the Catholic revival. 

It is Mr. Pattison's great misfortune that through obvious faults oftemper he has missed the success which naturally might have seemedassured to him, of dealing with these subjects in a large anddispassionate way. Scholar, thinker, student as he is, conversant withall literature, familiar with books and names which many well-readpersons have never heard of, he has his bitter prejudices, like therest of us, Protestants or Catholics; and what he hates is continuallyforcing itself into his mind. He tells, with great and pathetic force, the terrible story of the judicial murder of Calas at Toulouse, and ofVoltaire's noble and successful efforts to bring the truth to light, and to repair, as far as could be repaired, its infamous injustice. Itis a story which shows to what frightful lengths fanaticism may go inleading astray even the tribunals of justice. But unhappily the storycan be paralleled in all times of the world's history; and though theToulouse mob and Judges were Catholics, their wickedness is no more aproof against the Catholic revival than Titus Oates and the GeorgeGordon riots are against Protestantism, or the Jacobin tribunalsagainst Republican justice. But Mr. Pattison cannot conclude hisaccount without an application. Here you have an example of what theCatholic revival does. It first breaks Calas on the wheel; and then, because Voltaire took up his cause, it makes modern Frenchmen, if theyare Catholics, believe that Calas deserved it:--

 It is part of that general Catholic revival which has been working for some years, and which like a fog is spreading over the face of opinion. .. . The memory of Calas had been vindicated by Voltaire and the Encyclopedists. That was quite enough for the Catholics. .. . It is the characteristic of Catholicism that it supersedes reason, and prejudges all matters by the application of fixed principles. 

 It is no use that M. Coquerel flatters himself that he has set the matter at rest. He flatters himself in vain; he ought to know his Catholic countrymen better:--

 We have little doubt that as long as the Catholic religion shall last their little manuals of falsified history will continue to repeat that Jean Calas murdered his son because he had become a convert to the Catholic faith. 

 Are little manuals of falsified history confined only to one set of people? Is not John Foxe still proof against the assaults of Dr. Maitland? The habit of _à priori_ judgments as to historical facts is, as Mr. Pattison truly says, "fatal to truth and integrity. " It is most mischievous when it assumes a philosophic gravity and warps the criticism of a distinguished scholar. 

This fixed habit of mind is the more provoking because, putting asidethe obtrusive and impertinent injustice to which it leads, Mr. Pattison's critical work is of so high a character. His extensive andaccurate reading, the sound common sense with which he uses hisreading, and the modesty and absence of affectation and display whichseem to be a law of his writing, place him very high. Perhaps hebelieves too much in books and learning, in the power which they exert, and what they can do to enable men to reach the higher conquests ofmoral and religious truth--perhaps he forgets, in the amplitude of hisliterary resources, that behind the records of thought and feelingthere are the living mind and thought themselves, still clothed withtheir own proper force and energy, and working in defiance of ourattempts to classify, to judge, or to explain: that there are the realneeds, the real destinies of mankind, and the questions on which theydepend--of which books are a measure indeed, but an imperfect one. Asan instance, we might cite his "Essay on the Theology ofGermany"--elaborate, learned, extravagant in its praise and in itsscorn, full of the satisfaction of a man in possession of a startlingand little known subject, but with the contradictions of a man who inspite of his theories believes more than his theories. But, as astudent who deals with books and what books can teach, it is a pleasureto follow him; his work is never slovenly or superficial; the readerfeels that he is in the hands of a man who thoroughly knows what he istalking about, and both from conscience and from disposition is anxiousabove all to be accurate and discriminative. If he fails, as he oftenseems to us to do, in the justice and balance of his appreciation ofthe phenomena before him, if his statements and generalisations arecrude and extravagant, it is that passion and deep aversions haveoverpowered the natural accuracy of his faculty of judgment. 

The feature which is characteristic in all his work is his profoundvalue for learning, the learning of books, of documents, of allliterature. He is a thinker, a clear and powerful one; he is aphilosopher, who has explored the problems of abstract science withintelligence and interest, and fully recognises their importance; hehas taken the measure of the political and social questions which theprogress of civilisation has done so little to solve; he is at homewith the whole range of literature, keen and true in observation andcriticism; he has strongly marked views about education, and he took aleading part in the great changes which have revolutionised Oxford. Heis all this; but beyond and more than all this he is a devotee oflearning, as other men are of science or politics, deeply penetratedwith its importance, keenly alive to the neglect of it, full of faithin the services which it can render to mankind, fiercely indignant atwhat degrades, or supplants, or enfeebles it. Learning, with the severeand bracing discipline without which it is impossible, learningembracing all efforts of human intellect--those which are warningbeacons as well those which have elevated and enlightened the humanmind--is the thing which attracts and satisfies him as nothing elsedoes; not mere soulless erudition, but a great supply and command ofvaried facts, marshalled and turned to account by an intelligence whichknows their use. The absence of learning, or the danger to learning, isthe keynote of a powerful but acrid survey of the history and prospectsof the Anglican Church, for which, in spite of its one-sidedness andunfairness, Churchmen may find not a little which it will be useful tolay to heart. Dissatisfaction with the University system, in itsprovision for the encouragement of learning and for strengthening andprotecting its higher interests, is the stimulus to his essay on Oxfordstudies, which is animated with the idea of the University as a truehome of real learning, and is full of the hopes, the animosities, and, it may be added, the disappointments of a revolutionary time. He exultsover the destruction of the old order; but his ideal is too high, he istoo shrewd an observer, too thorough and well-trained a judge of whatlearning really means, to be quite satisfied with the new. 

The same devotion to learning shows itself in a feature of his literarywork, which is almost characteristic--the delight which he takes intelling the detailed story of the life of some of the famous workingscholars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These men, whosenames are known to the modern world chiefly in notes to classicalauthors, or occasionally in some impertinent sneer, he likes tocontemplate as if they were alive. To him they are men with individualdifferences, each with a character and fortunes of his own, sharers tothe full in the struggles and vicissitudes of life. He can appreciatetheir enormous learning, their unwearied labour, their sense of honourin their profession; and the editor of texts, the collator of variousreadings and emendations, the annotator who to us perhaps seems but alearned pedant appears to him as a man of sound and philosophicthought, of enthusiasm for truth and light--perhaps of genius--a man, too, with human affections and interests, with a history not devoid ofromance. There is something touching in Mr. Pattison's affection forthose old scholars, to whom the world has done scant justice. His ownchief literary venture was the life of one of the greatest of them, Isaac Casaubon. We have in these volumes sketches, not so elaborate, ofseveral others, the younger Scaliger, Muretus, Huet, and the greatFrench printers, the Stephenses; and in these sketches we are alsointroduced to a number of their contemporaries, with characteristicobservations on them, implying an extensive and first-hand knowledge ofwhat they were, and an acquaintance with what was going on in thescholar world of the day. The most important of these sketches is theaccount of Justus Scaliger. There is first a review article, veryvigorous and animated. But Mr. Pattison had intended a companion volumeto his Casaubon; and of this, which was never completed, we have somefragments, not equal in force and compactness to the original sketch. But sketch and fragments together present a very vivid picture of thisremarkable person, whose temper and extravagant vanity his biographeradmits, but who was undoubtedly a marvel both of knowledge and of thepower to use it, and to whom we owe the beginning of order and systemin chronology. Scaliger was to Mr. Pattison the type of the realgreatness of the scholar, a greatness not the less real that the worldcould hardly understand it. He certainly leaves Scaliger before us, with his strange ways of working, his hold of the ancient languages asif they were mother tongues, his pride and slashing sarcasm, and hisabsurd claim of princely descent, with lineaments not soon forgotten;but it is amusing to meet once more, in all seriousness, Mr. Pattison's_bête noire_ of the Catholic reaction, in the quarrels between Scaligerand some shallow but clever and scurrilous Jesuits, whom he hadprovoked by exposing the False Decretals and the False Dionysius, andwho revenged themselves by wounding him in his most sensitive part, hisclaim to descent from the Princes of Verona. Doubtless the religiousdifference envenomed the dispute, but it did not need the "Catholicreaction" to account for such ignoble wrangles in those days. 

These remains show what a historian of literature we have lost in Mr. Pattison. He was certainly capable of doing much more than thespecimens of work which he has left behind; but what he has left is ofhigh value. Wherever the disturbing and embittering elements are away, it is hard to say which is the more admirable, the patient andsagacious way in which he has collected and mastered his facts, or thewise and careful judgment which he passes on them. We hear of peoplebeing spoilt by their prepossessions, their party, their prejudices, the necessities of their political and ecclesiastical position; Mr. Pattison is a warning that a man may claim the utmost independence, andyet be maimed in his power of being just and reasonable by other thingsthan party. As it is, he has left us a collection of interesting andvaluable studies, disastrously and indelibly disfigured by animplacable bitterness, in which he but too plainly found the greatestsatisfaction. 

Mr. Pattison used in his later years to give an occasional lecture to aLondon audience. One of the latest was one addressed, we believe, to aclass of working people on poetry, in which he dwelt on its healing andconsoling power. It was full of Mr. Pattison's clearness and directnessof thought, and made a considerable impression on some who only knew itfrom an abstract in the newspapers; and it was challenged by aworking-man in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, who urged against it with somepower the argument of despair. Perhaps the lecture was not written; butif it was, and our recollection of it is at all accurate, it was notunworthy of a place in this collection. 

XXV

BISHOP FRAZER[29]

 [29] _Guardian_, 28th October 1885. 

Every one must be deeply touched by the Bishop of Manchester's sudden, and, to most of us, unexpected death; those not the least who, unhappily, found themselves in opposition to him in many importantmatters. For, in spite of much that many people must wish otherwise inhis career as Bishop, it was really a very remarkable one. Its leadingmotive was high and genuine public spirit, and a generous wish to be infull and frank sympathy with all the vast masses of his diocese; to puthimself on a level with them, as man with man, in all their interests, to meet them fearlessly and heartily, to raise their standard ofjustice and large-heartedness by showing them that in their life oftoil he shared the obligation and the burden of labour, and felt boundby his place to be as unsparing and unselfish a worker as any of hisflock. Indeed, he was as original as Bishop Wilberforce, though in adifferent direction, in introducing a new type and ideal of Episcopalwork, and a great deal of his ideal he realised. It is characteristicof him that one of his first acts was to remove the Episcopal residencefrom a mansion and park in the country to a house in Manchester. Therecan be no doubt that he was thoroughly in touch with the workingclasses in Lancashire, in a degree to which no other Bishop, not evenBishop Wilberforce, had reached. There was that in the frankness andboldness of his address which disarmed their keen suspicion of aBishop's inevitable assumption of superiority, and put them at theirease with him. He was always ready to meet them, and to speak off-handand unconventionally, and as they speak, not always with a dueforesight of consequences or qualifications. If he did sometimes inthis way get into a scrape, he did not much mind it, and they liked himthe better for it. He was perfectly fearless in his dealings with them;in their disputes, in which he often was invited to take a part, hetook the part which seemed to him the right one, whether or not itmight be the unpopular one. Very decided, very confident in hisopinions and the expression of them, there yet was apparent a curiousand almost touching consciousness of a deficiency in some of thequalities--knowledge, leisure, capacity for the deeper and subtlertasks of thought--necessary to give a strong speaker the sense of beingon sure ground. But he trusted to his manly common sense; and this, with the populations with which he had to deal, served him well, atleast in the main and most characteristic part of his work. 

And for his success in this part of his work--in making the crowds inManchester feel that their Bishop was a man like themselves, quitealive to their wants and claims and feelings, and not so unlike them inhis broad and strong utterances--his Episcopate deserves fullrecognition and honour. He set an example which we may hope to seefollowed and improved upon. But unfortunately there was also a lesssuccessful side. He was a Bishop, an overseer of a flock of many waysof life and thought, a fellow-worker with them, sympathetic, laborious, warm-hearted. But he was also a Bishop of the Church of Christ, aninstitution with its own history, its great truths to keep and deliver, its characteristic differences from the world which it is sent tocorrect and to raise to higher levels than those of time and nature. There is no reason why this side of the Episcopal office should not bejoined to that in which Bishop Frazer so signally excelled. But forthis part of it he was not well qualified, and much in his performanceof it must be thought of with regret. The great features of Christiantruth had deeply impressed him; and to its lofty moral call heresponded with conviction and earnestness. But an acquaintance withwhat he has to interpret and guard which may suffice for a layman isnot enough for a Bishop; and knowledge, the knowledge belonging to hisprofession, the deeper and more varied knowledge which makes a mancompetent to speak as a theologian, Bishop Frazer did not possess. Herather disbelieved in it, and thought it useless, or, it might be, mischievous. He resented its intrusion into spheres where he could onlysee the need of the simplest and least abstruse language. But facts arenot what we may wish them, but what they are; and questions, if theyare asked, may have to be answered, with toil, it may be, anddifficulty, like the questions, assuredly not always capable of easyand transparent statement, of mathematical or physical science; andunless Christianity is a dream and its history one vast delusion, suchfacts and such questions have made what we call theology. But to theBishop's practical mind they were without interest, and he could notsee how they could touch and influence living religion. And did notcare to know about them; he was impatient, and even scornful, whenstress was laid on them; he was intolerant when he thought theycompeted with the immediate realities of religion. And this want ofknowledge and of respect for knowledge was a serious deficiency. Itgave sometimes a tone of thoughtless flippancy to his otherwise earnestlanguage. And as he was not averse to controversy, or, at any rate, found himself often involved in it, he was betrayed sometimes intoassertions and contradictions of the most astounding inaccuracy, whichseriously weakened his authority when he was called upon to accept theresponsibility of exerting it. 

Partly for this reason, partly from a certain vivacity of temper, hecertainly showed himself, in spite of his popular qualities, less equalthan many others of his brethren to the task of appeasing and assuagingreligious strife. The difficulties in Manchester were not greater thanin other dioceses; there was not anything peculiar in them; there wasnothing but what a patient and generous arbiter, with due knowledge ofthe subject, might have kept from breaking out into perilous scandals. Unhappily he failed; and though he believed that he had only done hisduty, his failure was a source of deep distress to himself and toothers. But now that he has passed away, it is but bare justice to saythat no one worked up more conscientiously to his own standard. He gavehimself, when he was consecrated, ten or twelve years of work, and thenhe hoped for retirement. He has had fifteen, and has fallen at hispost. And to the last, the qualities which gave his character such acharm in his earlier time had not disappeared. There seemed to bealways something of the boy about him, in his simplicity, his confidingcandour and frankness with his friends, his warm-hearted and kindlywelcome, his mixture of humility with a sense of power. Those who canremember him in his younger days still see, in spite of all the stormsand troubles of his later ones, the image of the undergraduate and theyoung bachelor, who years ago made a start of such brilliant promise, and who has fulfilled so much of it, if not all. These things at anyrate lasted to the end--his high and exacting sense of public duty, andhis unchanging affection for his old friends. 

XXVI

NEWMAN'S "APOLOGIA"[30]

 [30] _Apologia pro Vitâ Suâ_. By John Henry Newman, D. D. _Guardian_, 22nd June 1864. 

We have not noticed before Dr. Newman's _Apologia_, which has beencoming out lately in weekly numbers, because we wished, when we spokeof it, to speak of it as a whole. The special circumstances out ofwhich it arose may have prescribed the mode of publication. It may havebeen thought more suitable, in point of form, to answer a pamphlet by aseries of pamphlets rather than at once by a set octavo of severalhundred pages. But the real subject which Dr. Newman has been led tohandle is one which will continue to be of the deepest interest longafter the controversy which suggested it is forgotten. The real subjectis the part played in the great Church movement by him who was theleading mind in it; and it was unsatisfactory to speak of this till allwas said, and we could look on the whole course described. Such asubject might have well excused a deliberate and leisurely volume toitself; perhaps in this way we should have gained, in the laying outand concentration of the narrative, and in what helps to bring it as awhole before our thoughts. But a man's account of himself is never sofresh and natural as when it is called out by the spur and pressure ofan accidental and instant necessity, and is directed to a purpose andquickened by feelings which belong to immediate and passingcircumstances. The traces of hurried work are of light account whenthey are the guarantees that a man is not sitting down to draw apicture of himself, but stating his case in sad and deep earnest out ofthe very fulness of his heart. 

The aim of the book is to give a minute and open account of the stepsand changes by which Dr. Newman passed from the English Church to theRoman. The history of a change of opinion has often been written fromthe most opposite points of view; but in one respect this book seems tostand alone. Let it be remembered what it is, the narrative and thejustification of a great conversion; of a change involving an entirereversal of views, judgments, approvals, and condemnations; a changewhich, with all ordinary men, involves a reversal, at least as great, of their sympathies and aversions, of what they tolerate and speakkindly of. Let it be considered what changes of feeling most changes ofreligion compel and consecrate; how men, commonly and very naturally, look back on what they have left and think they have escaped from, withthe aversion of a captive to his prison; how they usually exaggerateand make absolute their divergence from what they think has betrayed, fooled, and degraded them; how easily they are tempted to visit on itand on those who still cling to it their own mistakes and faults. Letit be remembered that there was here to be told not only the history ofa change, but the history of a deep disappointment, of the failure of agreat design, of the breakdown of hopes the most promising and the mostabsorbing; and this, not in the silence of a man's study, but in thefever and contention of a great struggle wrought up to the highestpitch of passion and fierceness, bringing with it on all sides andleaving behind it, when over, the deep sense of wrong. It is no historyof a mere intellectual movement, or of a passage from strong belief toa weakened and impaired one, to uncertainty, or vagueness, orindifference; it is not the account of a change by a man who is halfsorry for his change, and speaks less hostilely of what he has leftbecause he feels less friendly towards what he has joined. There is noreserved thought to be discerned in the background of disappointment ora wish to go back again to where he once was. It is a book whichdescribes how a man, zealous and impatient for truth, thought he hadfound it in one Church, then thought that his finding was a delusion, and sought for it and believed he had gained it in another. What itshows us is no serene readjustment of abstract doctrines, but the wreckand overturning of trust and conviction and the practical grounds oflife, accompanied with everything to provoke, embitter, and exasperate. It need not be said that what Dr. Newman holds he is ready to carry outto the end, or that he can speak severely of men and systems. 

Let all this be remembered, and also that there is an oppositionbetween what he was and what he is, which is usually viewed asirreconcilable, and which, on the ordinary assumptions about it, is so;and we venture to say that there is not another instance to be quoted, of the history of a conversion, in which he who tells his conversionhas so retained his self-possession, his temper, his mastery over hisown real judgment and thoughts, his ancient and legitimate sympathies, his superiority to the natural and inevitable temptations of so altereda position; which is so generous to what he feels to be strong and goodin what he has nevertheless abandoned, so fearless about letting hiswhole case come out, so careless about putting himself in the right indetail; which is so calm, and kindly, and measured, with such a quieteffortless freedom from the stings of old conflicts, which bears so fewtraces of that bitterness and antipathy which generally--and we needhardly wonder at it--follows the decisive breaking with that on which aman's heart was stayed, and for which he would once have died. 

There is another thing to be said, and we venture to say it outplainly, because Dr. Newman himself has shown that he knows quite wellwhat he has been doing. While he has written what will command thesympathy and the reverence of every one, however irreconcilably opposedto him, to whom a great and noble aim and the trials of a desperate andself-sacrificing struggle to compass it are objects of admiration andhonour, it is undeniable that ill-nature or vindictiveness or stupiditywill find ample materials of his own providing to turn against him. Those who know Dr. Newman's powers and are acquainted with his career, and know to what it led him, and yet persist in the charge ofinsincerity and dishonesty against one who probably has made thegreatest sacrifice of our generation to his convictions of truth, willbe able to pick up from his own narrative much that they would nototherwise have known, to confirm and point the old familiar viewscherished by dislike or narrowness. This is inevitable when a man takesthe resolution of laying himself open so unreservedly, and with solittle care as to what his readers think of what he tells them, so thatthey will be persuaded that he was ever, even from his boyhood, deeplyconscious of the part which he was performing in the sight of hisMaker. Those who smile at the belief of a deep and religious mind inthe mysterious interventions and indications of Providence in theguidance of human life, will open their eyes at the feeling which leadshim to tell the story of his earliest recollections of Roman Catholicpeculiarities, and of the cross imprinted on his exercise-book. Thosewho think that everything about religion and their own view of religionis such plain sailing, so palpable and manifest, that all who are notfools or knaves must be of their own opinion, will find plenty towonder at in the confessions of awful perplexity which equally beforeand after his change Dr. Newman makes. Those who have never doubted, who can no more imagine the practical difficulties accompanying a greatchange of belief than they can imagine a change of belief itself, willmeet with much that to them will seem beyond pardon, in the actualevents of a change, involving such issues and such interests, made sodeliberately and cautiously, with such hesitation and reluctance, andin so long a time; they will be able to point to many moments in itwhen it will be easy to say that more or less ought to have been said, more or less ought to have been done. Much more will those who are onthe side of doubt, who acquiesce in, or who desire the overthrow ofexisting hopes and beliefs, rejoice in such a frank avowal of thedifficulties of religion and the perplexities of so earnest a believer, and make much of their having driven such a man to an alternative soobnoxious and so monstrous to most Englishmen. It is a book full ofminor premisses, to which many opposite majors will be fitted. Butwhatever may be thought of many details, the effect and lesson of thewhole will not be lost on minds of any generosity, on whatever sidethey may be; they will be touched with the confiding nobleness whichhas kept back nothing, which has stated its case with its weak pointsand its strong, and with full consciousness of what was weak as well asof what was strong, which has surrendered its whole course of conduct, just as it has been, to be scrutinised, canvassed, and judged. What wecarry away from following such a history is something far higher andmore solemn than any controversial inferences; and it seems almost likea desecration to make, as we say, capital out of it, to strengthen mereargument, to confirm a theory, or to damage an opponent. 

The truth, in fact, is, that the interest is personal much more thancontroversial. Those who read it as a whole, and try to grasp theeffect of all its portions compared together and gathered into one, will, it seems to us, find it hard to bend into a decisive triumph forany of the great antagonist systems which appear in collision. Therecan be no doubt of the perfect conviction with which Dr. Newman hastaken his side for good. But while he states the effect of arguments onhis own mind, he leaves the arguments in themselves as they were, andtouches on them, not for the sake of what they are worth, but toexplain the movements and events of his own course. Not from anystudied impartiality, which is foreign to his character, but from hisstrong and keen sense of what is real and his determined efforts tobring it out, he avoids the temptation--as it seems to us, who stillbelieve that he was more right once than he is now--to do injustice tohis former self and his former position. At any rate, the arguments tobe drawn from this narrative, for or against England, or for or againstRome, seem to us very evenly balanced. Of course, such a history hasits moral. But the moral is not the ordinary vulgar one of the historyof a religious change. It is not the supplement or disguise of apolemical argument. It is the deep want and necessity in our age of theChurch, even to the most intensely religious and devoted minds, of asound and secure intellectual basis for the faith which they value morethan life and all things. We hope that we are strong enough to affordto judge fairly of such a spectacle, and to lay to heart its warnings, even though the particular results seem to go against what we thinkmost right. It is a mortification and a trial to the English Church tohave seen her finest mind carried away and lost to her, but it is amortification which more confident and peremptory systems than hershave had to undergo; the parting was not without its compensations ifonly that it brought home so keenly to many the awfulness and theseriousness of truth; and surely never did any man break so utterlywith a Church, who left so many sympathies behind him and took so manywith him, who continued to feel so kindly and with such large-heartedjustice to those from whom his changed position separated him in thisworld for ever. 

The _Apologia_ is the history of a great battle against Liberalism, understanding by Liberalism the tendencies of modern thought to destroythe basis of revealed religion, and ultimately of all that can becalled religion at all. The question which he professedly addresseshimself to set at rest, that of his honesty, is comparatively of slightconcern to those who knew him, except so far that they must beinterested that others, who did not know him, should not be led to do arevolting injustice. The real interest is to see how one who felt sokeenly the claims both of what is new and what is old, who, with suchdeep and unusual love and trust for antiquity, took in with quicksympathy, and in its most subtle and most redoubtable shapes, theintellectual movement of modern times, could continue to feel the forceof both, and how he would attempt to harmonise them. Two things areprominent in the whole history. One is the fact of religion, early anddeeply implanted in the writer's mind, absorbing and governing itwithout rival throughout. He speaks of an "inward conversion" at theage of fifteen, "of which I was conscious, and of which I am still morecertain than that I have hands and feet. " It was the religion of dogmaand of a definite creed which made him "rest in the thought of two, andtwo only, supreme and luminously self-evident beings, myself and myCreator"--which completed itself with the idea of a visible Church andits sacramental system. Religion, in this aspect of it, runs unchangedfrom end to end of the scene of change:--

 I have changed in many things; in this I have not. From the age of fifteen dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion; I know no other religion. I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery. As well can there be filial love without the fact of a father, as devotion without the fact of a Supreme Being. What I held in 1816 I held in 1833, and I hold in 1864. Please God I shall hold it to the end. Even when I was under Dr. Whately's influence I had no temptation to be less zealous for the dogmas of the faith. 

The other thing is the haunting necessity, in an age of thought andinnovation, of a philosophy of religion, equally deep, equallycomprehensive and thorough, with the invading powers which it waswanted to counteract; a philosophy, not on paper or in theory, butanswering to and vouched for by the facts of real life. In the EnglishChurch he found, we think that we may venture to say, the religionwhich to him was life, but not the philosophy which he wanted. The_Apologia_ is the narrative of his search for it. Two strongly markedlines of thought are traceable all through, one modern in its scope andsphere, the other ancient. The leading subject of his modern thought isthe contest with liberal unbelief; contrasted with this was his stronginterest in Christian antiquity, his deep attachment to the creed, thehistory, and the moral temper of the early Church. The one line ofthought made him, and even now makes him, sympathise with Anglicanism, which is in the same boat with him, holds the same principle of theunity and continuity of revealed truth, and is doing the same work, though, as he came to think in the end, feebly and hopelessly. Theother, more and more, carried him away from Anglicanism; and thecontrast and opposition between it and the ancient Church, inorganisation, in usage, and in that general tone of feeling whichquickens and gives significance and expression to forms, overpoweredmore and more the sense of affinity, derived from the identity ofcreeds and sacraments and leading points of Church polity, and from thesuccess with which the best and greatest Anglican writers hadappropriated and assimilated the theology of the Fathers. But though heurges the force of ecclesiastical precedents in a startling way, as inthe account which he gives of the effect of the history of theMonophysites on his view of the tenableness of the Anglican theory, absolutely putting out of consideration the enormous difference ofcircumstances between the cases which are compared, and giving theinstance in question a force and importance which seem to be insingular contrast with the general breadth and largeness of hisreasoning, it was not the halting of an ecclesiastical theory whichdissatisfied him with the English Church. 

Anglicanism was not daring enough for him. With his ideas of the comingdangers and conflicts, he wanted something bold and thoroughgoing, wide-reaching in its aims, resolute in its language, claiming andventuring much. Anglicanism was not that. It had given up asimpracticable much that the Church had once attempted. It did notpretend to rise so high, to answer such great questions, to lay downsuch precise definitions. Wisely modest, or timidly uncertain--mindfulof the unalterable limits of our human condition, _we_ say; forgetful, _he_ thought, or doubting, or distrustful, of the gifts and promises ofa supernatural dispensation--it certainly gave no such complete anddecisive account of the condition and difficulties of religion and theworld, as had been done once, and as there were some who did still. There were problems which it did not profess to solve; there wereassertions which others boldly risked, and which it shrunk from making;there were demands which it ventured not to put forward. Again, it wasnot refined enough for him; it had little taste for the higher forms ofthe saintly ideal; it wanted the austere and high-strung-virtues; itwas contented, for the most part, with the domestic type of excellence, in which goodness merged itself in the interests and business of thecommon world, and, working in them, took no care to disengage itself ormark itself off, as something distinct from them and above them. Aboveall, Anglicanism was too limited; it was local, insular, national; itstheory was made for its special circumstances; and he describes in aremarkable passage how, in contrast with this, there rung in his earscontinually the proud self-assertion of the other side, _Securusjudicat orbis terrarum_. What he wanted, what it was the aim of hislife to find, was a great and effective engine against Liberalism; foryears he tried, with eager but failing hope, to find it in the theologyand working of the English Church; when he made up his mind thatAnglicanism was not strong enough for the task, he left it for a systemwhich had one strong power; which claimed to be able to shut updangerous thought. 

Very sorrowful, indeed, is the history, told so openly, so simply, sotouchingly, of the once promising advance, of the great breakdown. Andyet, to those who still cling to what he left, regret is not the onlyfeeling. For he has the nobleness and the generosity to say what he_did_ find in the English Church, as well as what he did not find. Hehas given her up for good, but he tells and he shows, with no grudgingfrankness, what are the fruits of her discipline. "So I went on foryears, up to 1841. It was, in a human point of view, the happiest timeof my life. .. . I did not suppose that such sunshine would last, though Iknew not what would be its termination. It was the time of plenty, andduring its seven years I tried to lay up as much as I could for thedearth which was to follow it. " He explains and defends what to us seemthe fatal marks against Rome; but he lets us see with what force, andfor how long, they kept alive his own resistance to an attraction whichto him was so overwhelming. And he is at no pains to conceal--it seemseven to console him to show--what a pang and wrench it cost him tobreak from that home under whose shadow his spiritual growth hadincreased. He has condemned us unreservedly; but there must, at anyrate, be some wonderful power and charm about that which he loved witha love which is not yet extinguished; else how could he write of thepast as he does? He has shown that he can understand, though he isunable to approve, that others should feel that power still. 

Dr. Newman has stated, with his accustomed force and philosophicalrefinement, what he considers the true idea of that infallibility, which he looks upon as the only power in the world which can make headagainst and balance Liberalism--which "can withstand and baffle thefierce energy of passion, and the all-corroding, all-dissolvingscepticism of the intellect in religious inquiries;" which he considers"as a provision, adapted by the mercy of the Creator, to preservereligion in the world, and to restrain that freedom of thought which isone of the greatest of our natural gifts, from its own suicidalexcesses. " He says, as indeed is true, that it is "a tremendous power, "though he argues that, in fact, its use is most wisely and beneficiallylimited. And doubtless, whatever the difficulty of its proof may be, and to us this proof seems simply beyond possibility, it is no merepower upon paper. It acts and leaves its mark; it binds fast andoverthrows for good. But when, put at its highest, it is confrontedwith the "giant evil" which it is supposed to be sent into the world torepel, we can only say that, to a looker-on, its failure seems asmanifest as the existence of the claim to use it. It no more does itswork, in the sense of _succeeding_ and triumphing, than the lessmagnificent "Establishments" do. It keeps _some_ check--it fails on alarge scale and against the real strain and pinch of the mischief; andthey, too, keep _some_ check, and are not more fairly beaten than itis, in "making a stand against the wild living intellect of man. "

Without infallibility, it is said, men will turn freethinkers andheretics; but don't they, _with_ it? and what is the good of the engineif it will not do its work? And if it is said that this is the fault ofhuman nature, which resists what provokes and checks it, still thatvery thing, which infallibility was intended to counteract, goes onequally, whether it comes into play or not. Meanwhile, truth does stayin the world, the truth that there has been among us a Divine Person, of whom the Church throughout Christendom is the representative, memorial, and the repeater of His message; doubtless, the means ofknowledge are really guarded; yet we seem to receive that message as wereceive the witness of moral truth; and it would not be contrary to theanalogy of things here if we had often got to it at last throughmistakes. But when it is reached, there it is, strong in its own power;and it is difficult to think that if it is not strong enough in itselfto stand, it can be protected by a claim of infallibility. A future, ofwhich infallibility is the only hope and safeguard, seems to us indeeda prospect of the deepest gloom. 

Dr. Newman, in a very remarkable passage, describes the look andattitude of invading Liberalism, and tells us why he is not forward inthe conflict. "It seemed to be a time of all others in which Christianshad a call to be patient, in which they had no other way of helpingthose who were alarmed than that of exhorting them to have a littlefaith and fortitude, and 'to beware, ' as the poet says, 'of dangeroussteps. '" And he interprets "recent acts of the highest Catholicauthority" as meaning that there is nothing to do just now but to sitstill and trust. Well; but the _Christian Year_ will do that much forus, just as well. 

People who talk glibly of the fearless pursuit of truth may here see areal example of a life given to it--an example all the more solemn andimpressive if they think that the pursuit was in vain. It is easy todeclaim about it, and to be eloquent about lies and sophistries; but itis shallow to forget that truth has its difficulties. To hear somepeople talk, it might be thought that truth was a thing to be made outand expressed at will, under any circumstances, at any time, amid anycomplexities of facts or principles, by half an hour's choosing to beattentive, candid, logical, and resolute; as if there was not a chanceof losing what perhaps you have, as well as of gaining what you thinkyou need. If they would look about them, if they would look intothemselves, they would recognise that Truth is an awful and formidablegoddess to all men and to all systems; that all have their weak pointswhere virtually, more or less consciously, more or less dexterously, they shrink from meeting her eye; that even when we make sacrifice ofeverything for her sake, we find that she still encounters us withclaims, seemingly inconsistent with all that she has forced us toembrace--with appearances which not only convict us of mistake, butseem to oblige us to be tolerant of what we cannot really assent to. 

She gives herself freely to the earnest and true-hearted inquirer; butto those who presume on the easiness of her service, she has a side ofstrong irony. You common-sense men, she seems to say, who see nodifficulties in the world, you little know on what shaky ground youstand, and how easily you might be reduced to absurdity. You criticaland logical intellects, who silence all comers and cannot be answered, and can show everybody to be in the wrong--into what monstrous andmanifest paradoxes are you not betrayed, blind to the humble factswhich upset your generalisations, not even seeing that dulness itselfcan pronounce you mistaken!

In the presence of such a narrative as this, sober men will think moreseriously than ever about charging their most extreme opponents withdishonesty and disregard to truth. 

As we said before, this history seems to us to leave the theologicalquestion just where it was. The objections to Rome, which Dr. Newmanfelt so strongly once, but which yielded to other considerations, wefeel as strongly still. The substantial points of the English theory, which broke down to his mind, seem to us as substantial and trustworthyas before. He failed, but we believe that, in spite of everything, England is the better for his having made his trial. Even Liberalismowes to the movement of which he was the soul much of what makes it nowsuch a contrast, in largeness of mind and warmth, to the dry, repulsive, narrow, material Liberalism of the Reform era. He, and hemainly, has been the source, often unrecognised and unsuspected, ofdepth and richness and beauty, and the strong passion for what isgenuine and real, in our religious teaching. Other men, otherpreachers, have taken up his thoughts and decked them out, and had thecredit of being greater than their master. 

In looking back on the various turns and vicissitudes of his Englishcourse, we, who inherit the fruits of that glorious failure, shouldspeak respectfully and considerately where we do not agree with him, and with deep gratitude--all the more that now so much lies betweenus--where we do. But the review makes us feel more than ever that theEnglish Church, whose sturdy strength he underrated, and whoseirregular theories provoked him, was fully worthy of the interest andthe labours of the leader who despaired of her. Anglicanism has so faroutlived its revolutions, early and late ones, has marched on in adistinct path, has developed a theology, has consolidated anorganisation, has formed a character and tone, has been the organ of aliving spirit. The "magnetic storms" of thought which sweep over theworld may be destructive and dangerous to it, as much as, but not morethan, to other bodies which claim to be Churches and to represent themessage of God. But there is nothing to make us think that, in thetrials which may be in store, the English Church will fail while othershold their own. 

XXVII

DR. NEWMAN ON THE "EIRENICON"[31]

 [31] _The Times_, 31st March 1866. 

Dr. Pusey's Appeal has received more than one answer. These answers, from the Roman Catholic side, are--what it was plain that they wouldbe--assurances to him that he looks at the question from an entirelymistaken point of view; that it is, of course, very right and good ofhim to wish for peace and union, but that there is only one way ofpeace and union--unconditional submission. He may have peace and unionfor himself at any moment, if he will; so may the English Church, orthe Greek Church, or any other religious body, organised orunorganised. 

The way is always open; there is no need to write long books or makeelaborate proposals about union. Union means becoming Catholic;becoming Catholic means acknowledging the exclusive claims of the Popeor the Roman Church. In the long controversy one party has never for aninstant wavered in the assertion that it could not, and never would, bein the wrong. The way to close the controversy, and the only one, is toadmit that Dr. Pusey shall have any amount of assurance and proof thatthe Roman position and Roman doctrine and practice are the right ones. 

His misapprehensions shall be corrected; his ignorance of what is Romantheology fully, and at any length, enlightened. There is no desire toshrink from the fullest and most patient argument in its favour, and hemay call it, if he likes, explanation. But there is only one practicalissue to what he has proposed--not to stand bargaining for impossibleconditions, but thankfully and humbly to join himself to the trueChurch while he may. It is only the way in which the answer is giventhat varies. Here characteristic differences appear. The authorities ofthe Roman Catholic Church swell out to increased magnificence, andnothing can exceed the suavity and the compassionate scorn with whichthey point out the transparent absurdity and the audacity of suchproposals. The Holy Office at Rome has not, it may be, yet heard of Dr. Pusey; it may regret, perhaps, that it did not wait for sodistinguished a mark for its censure; but its attention has been drawnto some smaller offenders of the same way of thinking, and it has beeninduced to open all the floodgates of its sonorous and antiquatedverbiage to sweep away and annihilate a poor little Londonperiodical--"_ephemeridem cui titulus, 'The Union Review_. '" TheArchbishop of Westminster, not deigning to name Dr. Pusey, has seizedthe opportunity to reiterate emphatically, in stately periods and witha polished sarcasm, his boundless contempt for the foolish people whodare to come "with swords wreathed in myrtle" between the CatholicChurch and "her mission to the great people of England. " On the otherhand, there have been not a few Roman Catholics who have listened withinterest and sympathy to what Dr. Pusey had to say, and, thoughobviously they had but one answer to give, have given it with a senseof the real condition and history of the Christian world, and with therespect due to a serious attempt to look evils in the face. But thereis only one person on the Roman Catholic side whose reflections on thesubject English readers in general would much care to know. Anybodycould tell beforehand what Archbishop Manning would say; but peoplecould not feel so certain what Dr. Newman might say. 

Dr. Newman has given his answer; and his answer is, of course, ineffect the same as that of the rest of his co-religionists. He offersnot the faintest encouragement to Dr. Pusey's sanguine hopes. If it ispossible to conceive that one side could move in the matter, it isabsolutely certain that the other would be inflexible. Any such dealingon equal terms with the heresy and schism of centuries is not to bethought of; no one need affect surprise at the refusal. What Dr. Puseyasks is, in fact, to pull the foundation out from under the wholestructure of Roman Catholic pretensions. Dr. Newman does not wastewords to show that the plan of the _Eirenicon_ is impossible. Heevidently assumes that it is so, and we agree with him. But there aredifferent ways of dispelling a generous dream, and telling a seriousman who is in earnest that he is mistaken. Dr. Newman does justice, ashe ought to do, to feelings and views which none can enter into betterthan he, whatever he may think of them now. He does justice to theunderstanding and honesty, as well as the high aims, of an old friend, once his comrade in difficult and trying times, though now long partedfrom him by profound differences, and to the motives which prompted soventurous an attempt as the _Eirenicon_ to provoke public discussion onthe reunion of Christendom. He is capable of measuring the real stateof the facts, and the mischiefs and evils for which a remedy is wanted, by a more living rule than the suppositions and consequences of acut-and-dried theory. Rightly or wrongly he argues--at least, he givesus something to think of. Perhaps not the least of his merit is that hewrites simply and easily in choice and varied English, instead ofpompously ringing the changes on a set of _formulae_ which beg thequestion, and dinning into our ears the most extravagant assertions offoreign ecclesiastical arrogance. We may not always think him fair, ora sound reasoner, but he is conciliatory, temperate, and oftenfearlessly candid. He addresses readers who will challenge and examinewhat he says, not those whose minds are cowed and beaten down beforeaudacity in proportion to its coolness, and whom paradox, the moreextreme the better, fascinates and drags captive. To his old friend heis courteous, respectful, sympathetic; where the occasion makes itfitting, affectionate, even playful, as men are who can afford to lettheir real feelings come out, and have not to keep up appearances. Unflinching he is in maintaining his present position as the upholderof the exclusive claims of the Roman Church to represent the CatholicChurch of the Creeds; but he has the good sense and good feeling toremember that he once shared the views of those whom he nowcontroverts, and that their present feelings about the divisions ofChristendom were once his own. Such language as the following is plain, intelligible, and manly. Of course, he has his own position, and mustsee things according to it. But he recognises the right of consciencein those who, having gone a long way with him, find that they can go nofurther, and he pays a compliment, becoming as from himself, and notwithout foundation in fact, to the singular influence which, fromwhatever cause, Dr. Pusey's position gives him, and which, we may add, imposes on him, in more ways than one, very grave responsibilities:--

 You, more than any one else alive, have been the present and untiring agent by whom a great work has been effected in it; and, far more than is usual, you have received in your lifetime, as well as merited, the confidence of your brethren. You cannot speak merely for yourself; your antecedents, your existing influence, are a pledge to us that what you may determine will be the determination of a multitude. Numbers, too, for whom you cannot properly be said to speak, will be moved by your authority or your arguments; and numbers, again, who are of a school more recent than your own, and who are only not your followers because they have outstripped you in their free speeches and demonstrative acts in our behalf, will, for the occasion, accept you as their spokesman. There is no one anywhere--among ourselves, in your own body, or, I suppose, in the Greek Church--who can affect so vast a circle of men, so virtuous, so able, so learned, so zealous, as come, more or less, under your influence; and I cannot pay them all a greater compliment than to tell them they ought all to be Catholics, nor do them a more affectionate service than to pray that they may one day become such. .. . 

 I recollect well what an outcast I seemed to myself when I took down from the shelves of my library the volumes of St. Athanasius or St. Basil, and set myself to study them; and how, on the contrary, when at length I was brought into Catholicism, I kissed them with delight, with a feeling that in them I had more than all that I had lost, and, as though I were directly addressing the glorious saints who bequeathed them to the Church, I said to the inanimate pages, "You are now mine, and I am now yours, beyond any mistake. " Such, I conceive, would be the joy of the persons I speak of if they could wake up one morning and find themselves possessed by right of Catholic traditions and hopes, without violence to their own sense of duty; and certainly I am the last man to say that such violence is in any case lawful, that the claims of conscience are not paramount, or that any one may overleap what he deliberately holds to be God's command, in order to make his path easier for him or his heart lighter. 

 I am the last man to quarrel with this jealous deference to the voice of our conscience, whatever judgment others may form of us in consequence, for this reason, because their case, as it at present stands, has as you know been my own. You recollect well what hard things were said against us twenty-five years ago which we knew in our hearts we did not deserve. Hence, I am now in the position of the fugitive Queen in the well-known passage, who, "_haud ignara mali_" herself, had learned to sympathise with those who were inheritors of her past wanderings. 

Dr. Newman's hopes, and what most of his countrymen consider the hopesof truth and religion, are not the same. His wish is, of course, thathis friend should follow him; a wish in which there is not theslightest reason to think that he will be gratified. But differently aswe must feel as to the result, we cannot help sharing the evidentamusement with which Dr. Newman recalls a few of the compliments whichwere lavished on him by some of his present co-religionists when he wastrying to do them justice, and was even on the way to join them. Hereprints with sly and mischievous exactness a string of those glibphrases of controversial dislike and suspicion which are common to allparties, and which were applied to him by "priests, good men, whosezeal outstripped their knowledge, and who in consequence spokeconfidently, when they would have been wiser had they suspended theiradverse judgment of those whom they were soon to welcome as brothers incommunion. " It is a trifle, but it strikes us as characteristic. Dr. Newman is one of the very few who have carried into his presentcommunion, to a certain degree at least, an English habit of notletting off the blunders and follies of his own side, and of daring tothink that a cause is better served by outspoken independence ofjudgment than by fulsome, unmitigated puffing. It might be well if evenin him there were a little more of this habit. But, so far as it goes, it is the difference between him and most of those who are leaders onhis side. Indirectly he warns eager controversialists that they are notalways the wisest and the most judicious and far-seeing of men; and wecannot quarrel with him, however little we may like the occasion, forthe entertainment which he feels in inflicting on his present brethrenwhat they once judged and said of him, and in reminding them that theirproficiency in polemical rhetoric did not save them from betraying theshallowness of their estimate and the shortness of their foresight. 

When he comes to discuss the _Eirenicon_, Dr. Newman begins with acomplaint which seems to us altogether unreasonable. He seems to thinkit hard that Dr. Pusey should talk of peace and reunion, and yet speakso strongly of what he considers the great corruptions of the RomanChurch. In ordinary controversy, says Dr. Newman, we know what we areabout and what to expect; "'_Caedimur, et totidem plagis consumimushostem_. ' We give you a sharp cut and you return it. .. . But we at leasthave not professed to be composing an _Eirenicon_, when we treated youas foes. " Like Archbishop Manning, Dr. Newman is reminded "of the swordwreathed in myrtle;" but Dr. Pusey, he says, has improved on theancient device, --"Excuse me, you discharge your olive-branch as if froma catapult. "

This is, no doubt, exactly what Dr. Pusey has done. Going much furtherthan the great majority of his countrymen will go with him inadmissions in favour of the Roman Catholic Church, he has pointed outwith a distinctness and force, never, perhaps, exceeded, what is theimpassable barrier which, as long as it lasts, makes every hope ofunion idle. The practical argument against Rome is stated by him in ashape which comes home to the consciences of all, whatever theirtheological training and leanings, who have been brought up in Englishways and ideas of religion. But why should he not? He is desirous ofunion--the reunion of the whole of Christendom. He gives full credit tothe Roman communion--much more credit than most of his brethren thinkhim justified in giving--for what is either defensible or excellent init. Dr. Newman must be perfectly aware that Dr. Pusey has gone to thevery outside of what our public feeling in England will bear in favourof efforts for reconciliation, and he nowhere shows any sign that he isthinking of unconditional submission. How, then, can he be expected tomince matters and speak smoothly when he comes to what he regards asthe real knot of the difficulty, the real and fatal bar to allpossibility of a mutual understanding? If his charges are untrue orexaggerated in detail or colouring, that is another matter; but thewhole of his pleading for peace presupposes that there are great andserious obstacles to it in what is practically taught and authorised inthe Roman Church; and it is rather hard to blame him for "not makingthe best of things, " and raising difficulties in the way of the veryobject which he seeks, because he states the truth about theseobstacles. We are afraid that we must be of Dr. Newman's opinion thatthe _Eirenicon_ is not calculated to lead, in our time at least, towhat it aims at--the reunion of Christendom; but this arises from thereal obstacles themselves, not from Dr. Pusey's way of stating them. There may be no way to peace, but surely if there is, though it impliesgiving full weight to your sympathies, and to the points on which youmay give way, it also involves the possibility of speaking out plainly, and also of being listened to, on the points on which you reallydisagree. Does Dr. Newman think that all Dr. Pusey felt he had to dowas to conciliate Roman Catholics? Does it follow, because objectionsare intemperately and unfairly urged on the Protestant side, thattherefore they are not felt quite as much in earnest by sober andtolerant people, and that they may not be stated in their real forcewithout giving occasion for the remark that this is reviving the oldcruel war against Rome, and rekindling a fierce style of polemics whichis now out of date? And how is Dr. Pusey to state these objections if, when he goes into them, not in a vague declamatory way, but showing hisrespect and seriousness by his guarded and full and definite manner ofproof, he is to be met by the charge that he does not show sufficientconsideration? All this may be a reason for thinking it vain to writean Eirenicon at all. But if one is to be attempted, it certainly willnot do to make it a book of compliments. Its first condition is that ifit makes light of lesser difficulties it should speak plainly aboutgreater ones. 

But this is, after all, a matter of feeling. No doubt, as Dr. Newmansays, people are not pleased or conciliated by elaborate proofs thatthey are guilty of something very wrong or foolish. What is of moreinterest is to know the effect on a man like Dr. Newman of such adisplay of the prevailing tendency of religious thought and devotion inhis communion as Dr. Pusey has given from Roman Catholic writers. Andit is plain that, whoever else is satisfied with them, these tendenciesare not entirely satisfactory to Dr. Newman. That rage for foreignideas and foreign usages which has come over a section of his friends, the loudest and perhaps the ablest section of them, has no charms forhim. He asserts resolutely and rather sternly his right to have anopinion of his own, and declines to commit himself, or to allow thathis cause is committed, to a school of teaching which happens for themoment to have the talk to itself; and he endeavours at great length topresent a view of the teaching of his Church which shall be free, ifnot from all Dr. Pusey's objections, yet from a certain number of them, which to Dr. Newman himself appear grave. After disclaiming orcorrecting certain alleged admissions of his own, on which Dr. Puseyhad placed a construction too favourable to the Anglican Church, Dr. Newman comes to a passage which seems to rouse him. A convert, says Dr. Pusey, must take things as he finds them in his new communion, and itwould be unbecoming in him to criticise. This statement gives Dr. Newman the opportunity of saying that, except with large qualifications, he does not accept it for himself. Of course, he says, there areconsiderations of modesty, of becomingness, of regard to the feelingsof others with equal or greater claims than himself, which bind aconvert as they bind any one who has just gained admission into asociety of his fellow men. He has no business "to pick and choose, " andto set himself up as a judge of everything in his new position. Butthough every man of sense who thought he had reason for so great achange would be generous and loyal in accepting his new religion as awhole, in time he comes "to have a right to speak as well as to hear;"and for this right, both generally and in his own case, he stands upvery resolutely:--

 Also, in course of time a new generation rises round him, and there is no reason why he should not know as much, and decide questions with as true an instinct, as those who perhaps number fewer years than he does Easter communions. He has mastered the fact and the nature of the differences of theologian from theologian, school from school, nation from nation, era from era. He knows that there is much of what may be called fashion in opinions and practices, according to the circumstances of time and place, according to current politics, the character of the Pope of the day, or the chief Prelates of a particular country; and that fashions change. His experience tells him that sometimes what is denounced in one place as a great offence, or preached up as a first principle, has in another nation been immemorially regarded in just a contrary sense, or has made no sensation at all, one way or the other, when brought before public opinion; and that loud talkers, in the Church as elsewhere, are apt to carry all before them, while quiet and conscientious persons commonly have to give way. He perceives that, in matters which happen to be in debate, ecclesiastical authority watches the state of opinion and the direction and course of controversy, and decides accordingly; so that in certain cases to keep back his own judgment on a point is to be disloyal to his superiors. 

 So far generally; now in particular as to myself. After twenty years of Catholic life, I feel no delicacy in giving my opinion on any point when there is a call for me, --and the only reason why I have not done so sooner or more often than I have, is that there has been no call. I have now reluctantly come to the conclusion that your Volume _is_ a call. Certainly, in many instances in which theologian differs from theologian, and country from country, I have a definite judgment of my own; I can say so without offence to any one, for the very reason that from the nature of the case it is impossible to agree with all of them. I prefer English habits of belief and devotion to foreign, from the same causes, and by the same right, which justifies foreigners in preferring their own. In following those of my people, I show less singularity, and create less disturbance than if I made a flourish with what is novel and exotic. And in this line of conduct I am but availing myself of the teaching which I fell in with on becoming a Catholic; and it is a pleasure to me to think that what I hold now, and would transmit after me if I could, is only what I received then. 

He observes that when he first joined the Roman Catholic Church theutmost delicacy was observed in giving him advice; and the only warningwhich he can recollect was from the Vicar-General of the Londondistrict, who cautioned him against books of devotion of the Italianschool, which were then just coming into England, and recommended himto get, as safe guides, the works of Bishop Hay. Bishop Hay's name isthus, probably for the first time, introduced to the general Englishpublic. It is difficult to forbear a smile at the great Oxford teacher, the master of religious thought and feeling to thousands, being gravelyset to learn his lesson of a more perfect devotion, how to meditate andhow to pray, from "the works of Bishop Hay"; it is hardly more easy toforbear a smile at his recording it. But Bishop Hay was a sort ofsymbol, and represents, he says, English as opposed to foreign habitsof thought; and to these English habits he not only gives hispreference, but he maintains that they are more truly those of thewhole Roman Catholic body in England than the more showy and extremedoctrines of a newer school. Dr. Pusey does wrong, he says, in takingthis new school as the true exponent of Roman Catholic ideas. That itis popular he admits, but its popularity is to be accounted for bypersonal qualifications in its leaders for gaining the ear of theworld, without supposing that they speak for their body. 

 Though I am a convert, then, I think I have a right to speak out; and that the more because other converts have spoken for a long time, while I have not spoken; and with still more reason may I speak without offence in the case of your present criticisms of us, considering that in the charges you bring the only two English writers you quote in evidence are both of them converts, younger in age than myself. I put aside the Archbishop of course, because of his office. These two authors are worthy of all consideration, at once from their character and from their ability. In their respective lines they are perhaps without equals at this particular time; and they deserve the influence they possess. One is still in the vigour of his powers; the other has departed amid the tears of hundreds. It is pleasant to praise them for their real qualifications; but why do you rest on them as authorities? Because the one was "a popular writer"; but is there not sufficient reason for this in the fact of his remarkable gifts, of his poetical fancy, his engaging frankness, his playful wit, his affectionateness, his sensitive piety, without supposing that the wide diffusion of his works arises out of his particular sentiments about the Blessed Virgin? And as to our other friend, do not his energy, acuteness, and theological reading, displayed on the vantage ground of the historic _Dublin Review_, fully account for the sensation he has produced, without supposing that any great number of our body go his lengths in their view of the Pope's infallibility? Our silence as regards their writings is very intelligible; it is not agreeable to protest, in the sight of the world, against the writings of men in our own communion whom we love and respect. But the plain fact is this--they came to the Church, and have thereby saved their souls; but they are in no sense spokesmen for English Catholics, and they must not stand in the place of those who have a real title to such an office. 

And he appeals from them, as authorities, to a list of much more soberand modest writers, though, it may be, the names of all of them are notfamiliar to the public. He enumerates as the "chief authors of thepassing generation, " "Cardinal Wiseman, Dr. Ullathorne, Dr. Lingard, Mr. Tierney, Dr. Oliver, Dr. Rock, Dr. Waterworth, Dr. Husenbeth, Mr. Flanagan. " If these well-practised and circumspect veterans in theancient controversy are not original and brilliant, at least they aresafe; and Dr. Newman will not allow the flighty intellectualism whichtakes more hold of modern readers to usurp their place, and for himselfhe sturdily and bluffly declines to give up his old standing-ground forany one:--

 I cannot, then, without remonstrance, allow you to identify the doctrine of our Oxford friends in question, on the two subjects I have mentioned, with the present spirit or the prospective creed of Catholics; or to assume, as you do, that because they are thoroughgoing and relentless in their statements, therefore they are the harbingers of a new age, when to show a deference for Antiquity will be thought little else than a mistake. For myself, hopeless as you consider it, I am not ashamed still to take my stand upon the Fathers, and do not mean to budge. The history of their time is not yet an old almanac to me. Of course I maintain the value and authority of the "Schola, " as one of the _loci theologici_; still I sympathise with Petavius in preferring to its "contentious and subtle theology" that "more elegant and fruitful teaching which is moulded after the image of erudite antiquity. " The Fathers made me a Catholic, and I am not going to kick down the ladder by which I ascended into the Church. It is a ladder quite as serviceable for that purpose now as it was twenty years ago. Though I hold, as you remark, a process of development in Apostolic truth as time goes on, such development does not supersede the Fathers, but explains and completes them. 

Is he right in saying that he is not responsible as a Roman Catholicfor the extravagances that Dr. Pusey dwells upon? He is, it seems tous, and he is not. No doubt the Roman Catholic system is in practice awide one, and he has a right, which we are glad to see that he isdisposed to exercise, to maintain the claims of moderation andsoberness, and to decline to submit his judgment to the fashionabletheories of the hour. A stand made for independence and good senseagainst the pressure of an exacting and overbearing dogmatism is a goodthing for everybody, though made in a camp with which we have nothingto do. He goes far enough, indeed, as it is. Still, it is somethingthat a great writer, of whose genius and religious feeling Englishmenwill one day be even prouder than they are now, should disconnecthimself from the extreme follies of his party, and attempt to representwhat is the nobler and more elevated side of the system to which he hasattached himself. But it seems to us much more difficult for him torelease his cause from complicity with the doctrines which he dislikesand fears. We have no doubt that he is not alone, and that there arenumbers of his English brethren who are provoked and ashamed at theself-complacent arrogance and childish folly shown in exaggerating andcaricaturing doctrines which are, in the eyes of most Englishmen, extravagant enough in themselves. But the question is whether he or theinnovators represent the true character and tendencies of theirreligious system. It must be remembered that with a jealous and touchyGovernment, like that of the Roman Church, which professes the duty andboasts of the power to put down all dangerous ideas and language, meretolerance means much. Dr. Newman speaks as an Englishman when he writesthus:--

 This is specially the case with great ideas. You may stifle them; or you may refuse them elbow-room; or you may torment them with your continual meddling; or you may let them have free course and range, and be content, instead of anticipating their excesses, to expose and restrain those excesses after they have occurred. But you have only this alternative; and for myself, I prefer much, wherever it is possible, to be first generous and then just; to grant full liberty of thought, and to call it to account when abused. 

But that has never been the principle of his Church. At least, theliberty which it has allowed has been a most one-sided liberty. It hasbeen the liberty to go any length in developing the favourite opinionsabout the power of the Pope, or some popular form of devotion; but asto other ideas, not so congenial, "great" ones and little ones too, thelists of the Roman Index bear witness to the sensitive vigilance whichtook alarm even at remote danger. And those whose pride it is that theyare ever ready and able to stop all going astray must be heldresponsible for the going astray which they do not stop, especiallywhen it coincides with what they wish and like. 

But these extreme writers do not dream of tolerance. They stoutly andboldly maintain that they but interpret in the only natural andconsistent manner the mind of their Church; and no public or officialcontradiction meets them. There may be a disapproving opinion in theirown body, but it does not show itself. The disclaimer of even such aman as Dr. Newman is in the highest degree guarded and qualified. Theyare the people who can excite attention and gain a hearing, though itbe an adverse one. They have the power to make themselves the mostprominent and accredited representatives of their creed, and, ifthoroughgoing boldness and ability are apt to attract the growth ofthought and conviction, they are those who are likely to mould itsfuture form. Sober prudent people may prefer the caution of Dr. Newman's "chief authors, " but to the world outside most of these willbe little more than names, and the advanced party, which talks moststrongly about the Pope's infallibility and devotion to St. Mary, hasthis to say for itself. Popular feeling everywhere in the Romancommunion appears to go with it, and authority both in Rome and inEngland shelters and sanctions it. Nothing can be more clearly andforcibly stated than the following assertions of the unimpeachableclaim of "dominant opinions" in the Roman Catholic system by thehighest Roman Catholic authority in England. "It is an ill-advisedoverture of peace, " writes Archbishop Manning, to assail the popular, prevalent, and dominant opinions, devotions, and doctrines of the Catholic Church with hostile criticism. .. . The presence and assistance of the Holy Ghost, which secures the Church within the sphere of faith and morals, invests it also with instincts and a discernment which preside over its worship and doctrines, its practices and customs. We may be sure that whatever is prevalent in the Church, under the eye of its public authority, practised by the people, and not censured by its pastors, is at least conformable to faith and innocent as to morals. Whosoever rises up to condemn such practices and opinions thereby convicts himself of the private spirit which is the root of heresy. But if it be ill-advised to assail the mind of the Church, it is still more so to oppose its visible Head. There can be no doubt that the Sovereign Pontiff has declared the same opinion as to the temporal power as that which is censured in others, and that he defined the Immaculate Conception, and that he believes in his own infallibility. If these things be our reproach, we share it with the Vicar of Jesus Christ. They are not our private opinions, nor the tenets of a school, but the mind of the Pontiff, as they were of his predecessors, as they will be of those who come after him. --Archbishop Manning's _Pastoral_, pp. 64-66, 1866. 

To maintain his liberty against extreme opinions generally is one ofDr. Newman's objects in writing his letter; the other is to statedistinctly what he holds and what he does not hold, as regards thesubject on which Dr. Pusey's appeal has naturally made so deep animpression:--

 I do so, because you say, as I myself have said in former years, that "That vast system as to the Blessed Virgin . .. To all of us has been the special _crux_ of the Roman system" (p. 101). Here, I say, as on other points, the Fathers are enough for me. I do not wish to say more than they, and will not say less. You, I know, will profess the same; and thus we can join issue on a clear and broad principle, and may hope to come to some intelligible result. We are to have a treatise on the subject of Our Lady soon from the pen of the Most Rev. Prelate; but that cannot interfere with such a mere argument from the Fathers as that to which I shall confine myself here. Nor, indeed, as regards that argument itself, do I profess to be offering you any new matter, any facts which have not been used by others, --by great divines, as Petavius, by living writers, nay, by myself on other occasions. I write afresh, nevertheless, and that for three reasons--first, because I wish to contribute to the accurate statement and the full exposition of the argument in question; next, because I may gain a more patient hearing than has sometimes been granted to better men than myself; lastly, because there just now seems a call on me, under my circumstances, to avow plainly what I do and what I do not hold about the Blessed Virgin, that others may know, did they come to stand where I stand, what they would and what they would not be bound to hold concerning her. 

If this "vast system" is a _crux_ to any one, we cannot think that evenDr. Newman's explanation will make it easier. He himself recoils, asany Englishman of sense and common feeling must, at the wildextravagances into which this devotion has run. But he accepts anddefends, on the most precarious grounds, the whole system of thoughtout of which they have sprung by no very violent process of growth. Hecannot, of course, stop short of accepting the definition of theImmaculate Conception as an article of faith, and, though heemphatically condemns, with a warmth and energy of which no one candoubt the sincerity, a number of revolting consequences drawn from thetheology of which that dogma is the expression, he is obliged to defendeverything up to that. For a professed disciple of the Fathers this isnot easy. If anything is certain, it is that the place which theBlessed Virgin occupies in the Roman Catholic system--popular orauthoritative, if it is possible fairly to urge such a distinction in asystem which boasts of all-embracing authority--is something perfectlydifferent from anything known in the first four centuries. In all thevoluminous writings on theology which remain from them we may look invain for any traces of that feeling which finds words in the commonhymn, "_Ave, marls Stella_" and which makes her fill so large a spacein the teaching and devotion of the Roman Church. Dr. Newman attemptsto meet this difficulty by a distinction. The doctrine, he says, wasthere, the same then as now; it is only the feelings, behaviour, andusages, the practical consequences naturally springing from thedoctrine, which have varied or grown:--

 I fully grant that the _devotion_ towards the Blessed Virgin has increased among Catholics with the progress of centuries. I do not allow that the _doctrine_ concerning her has undergone a growth, for I believe it has been in substance one and the same from the beginning. 

There is, doubtless, such a distinction, though whether available forDr. Newman's purpose is another matter. But when we recollect thatmodern "doctrine, " besides defining the Immaculate Conception, placesher next in glory to the Throne of God, and makes her the Queen ofHeaven, and the all-prevailing intercessor with her Son, the assertionas to "doctrine" is a bold one. It rests, as it seems to us, simply onDr. Newman identifying his own inferences from the language of theancient writers whom he quotes with the language itself. They say acertain thing--that Mary is the "second Eve. " Dr. Newman, with all thetheology and all the controversies of eighteen centuries in his mind, deduces from this statement a number of refined consequences as to hersinlessness, and greatness, and reward, which seem to him to flow fromit, and says that it means all these consequences. Mr. Ruskin somewherequotes the language of an "eminent Academician, " who remarks, in answerto some criticism on a picture, "that if you look for curves, you willsee curves; and if you look for angles, you will see angles. " So it ishere. The very dogma of the Immaculate Conception itself Dr. Newmansees indissolubly involved in the "rudimentary teaching" which insistson the parallelism between Eve and Mary:--

 Was not Mary as fully endowed as Eve?. .. If Eve was (as Bishop Bull and others maintain) raised above human nature by that indwelling moral gift which we call grace, is it rash to say that Mary had a greater grace?. .. And if Eve had this supernatural inward gift given her from the moment of her personal existence, is it possible to deny that Mary, too, had this gift from the very first moment of her personal existence? I do not know how to resist this inference:--well, this is simply and literally the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. I say the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is in its substance this, and nothing more or less than this (putting aside the question of degrees of grace), and it really does seem to me bound up in that doctrine of the Fathers, that Mary is the second Eve. 

It seems obvious to remark that the Fathers are not even alleged tohave themselves drawn this irresistible inference; and next, that evenif it be drawn, there is a long interval between it and the elevationof the Mother of Jesus Christ to the place to which modern Romandoctrine raises her. Possibly, the Fathers might have said, as manypeople will say now, that, in a matter of this kind, it is idle to drawinferences when we are, in reality, utterly without the knowledge tomake them worth anything. At any rate, if they had drawn them, weshould have found some traces of it in their writings, and we findnone. We find abundance of poetical addresses and rhetoricalamplification, which makes it all the more remarkable that the plaindogmatic view of her position, which is accepted by the Roman Church, does not appear in them. We only find a "rudimentary doctrine, " which, naturally enough, gives the Blessed Virgin a very high and sacred placein the economy of the Incarnation. But how does the doctrine, as it isfound in even their rhetorical passages, go a step beyond what would beaccepted by any sober reader of the New Testament? They speak of whatshe was; they do not presume to say what she is. What Protestant couldhave the slightest difficulty in saying not only what Justin says, andTertullian copies from him, and Irenaeus enlarges upon, but what Dr. Newman himself says of her awful and solitary dignity, always exceptingthe groundless assumption which, from her office in this world takesfor granted, first her sinlessness, and then a still higher office inthe next? We do not think that, as a matter of literary criticism, Dr. Newman is fair in his argument from the Fathers. He lays great stresson Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Irenaeus, as three independentwitnesses from different parts of the world; whereas it is obvious thatTertullian at any rate copies almost literally from Justin Martyr, andit is impossible to compare a mere incidental point of rhetorical, or, if it be so, argumentative illustration, occurring once or twice in along treatise, with a doctrine, such as that of the Incarnation itself, on which the whole treatise is built, and of which it is full. Thewonder is, indeed, that the Fathers, considering how much they wrote, said so little of her; scarcely less is it a wonder, then, that the NewTestament says so little, but from this little the only reason whichwould prevent a Protestant reader of the New Testament from acceptingthe highest statement of her historical dignity is the reaction fromthe development of them into the consequences which have been notoriousfor centuries in the unreformed Churches. Protestants, left tothemselves, are certainly not prone to undervalue the saints ofScripture; it has been the presence of the great system of popularworship confronting them which has tied their tongues in this matter. Yet Anglican theologians like Mr. Keble, popular poets like Wordsworth, broad Churchmen like Mr. Robertson, have said things which even RomanCatholics might quote as expressions of their feeling. But Dr. Newmanmust know that many things may be put, and put most truly, into theform of poetical expression which will not bear hardening into a dogma. A Protestant may accept and even amplify the ideas suggested byScripture about the Blessed Virgin; but he may feel that he cannot tellhow the Redeemer was preserved from sinful taint; what was the gracebestowed on His mother; or what was the reward and prerogative whichensued to her. But it is just these questions which the Roman doctrineundertakes to answer without a shadow of doubt, and which Dr. Newmanimplies that the theology of the Fathers answered as unambiguously. 

But from what has happened in the history of religion, we do not thinkthat Protestants in general who do not shrink from high language aboutAbraham, Moses, or David, would find anything unnatural orobjectionable in the language of the early Christian writers about theMother of our Lord, though possibly it might not be their own; but theinterval from this language to that certain knowledge of her presentoffice in the economy of grace which is implied in what Dr. Newmanconsiders the "doctrine" about her is a very long one. The step to themodern "devotion" in its most chastened form is longer still. We cannotfollow the subtle train of argument which says that because the"doctrine" of the second century called her the "second Eve, " thereforethe devotion which sets her upon the altars of Christendom in thenineteenth is a right development of the doctrine. What is wanted isnot the internal thread of the process, but the proof and confirmationfrom without that it was the right process; and this link is just whatis wanting, except on a supposition which begs the question. It isconceivable that this step from "doctrine" to "devotion" may have beena mistake. It is conceivable that the "doctrine" may have been held inthe highest form without leading to the devotion; for Dr. Newman, ofcourse, thinks that Athanasius and Augustine held "the doctrine, " yet, as he says, "we have no proof that Athanasius himself had any specialdevotion to the Blessed Virgin, " and in another place he repeats hisdoubts whether St. Chrysostom or St. Athanasius invoked her; "nay, " headds, "I should like to know whether St. Augustine, in all hisvoluminous writings, invokes her once. " What has to be shown is, thatthis step was not a mistake; that it was inevitable and legitimate. 

"This being the faith of the Fathers about the Blessed Virgin, " saysDr. Newman, "we need not wonder that it should in no long time betransmuted into devotion. " The Fathers expressed a historical factabout her in the term [Greek: Theotokos]; therefore, argues the laterview, she is the source of our present grace now. It is the _rationale_of this inference, which is not an immediate or obvious one, which iswanted. And Dr. Newman gives it us in the words of Bishop Butler:--

 Christianity is eminently an objective religion. For the most part it tells us of persons and facts in simple words, and leaves the announcement to produce its effect on such hearts as are prepared to receive it. This, at least, is its general character; and Butler recognises it as such in his _Analogy_, when speaking of the Second and Third Persons of the Holy Trinity:--"The internal worship, " he says, "to the Son and Holy Ghost is no farther matter of pure revealed command than as the relations they stand in to us are matters of pure revelation; but the relations being known, the obligations to such internal worship are _obligations of reason arising out of those relations themselves_. "

We acknowledge the pertinency of the quotation. So true is it that "therelations being known, " the obligations of worship arise of themselvesfrom these relations, that if the present relation of the BlessedVirgin to mankind has always been considered to be what modern Romantheology considers it, it is simply inconceivable that devotion to hershould not have been universal long before St. Athanasius and St. Augustine; and equally inconceivable, to take Dr. Newman's remarkableillustration, that if the real position of St. Joseph is next to her, it should have been reserved for the nineteenth century, if not, indeed, to find it out, at least to acknowledge it; but the wholequestion is about the fact of the "relations" themselves. If we believethat the Second and Third Persons are God, we do not want to be told toworship them. But such a relation as Dr. Newman supposes in the case ofthe Blessed Virgin does not flow of itself from the idea contained, forinstance, in the word [Greek: Theotokos], and even if it did, we shouldstill want to be told, in the case of a creature, and remembering theknown jealousy of religion of even the semblance of creature worship, what _are_ the "religious regards, " which, not flowing from the natureof the case, but needing to be distinctly authorised, are right andbinding. 

The question is of a dogmatic and a popular system. We most fully admitthat, with Dr. Newman or any other of the numberless well-trained andexcellent men in the Roman Church, the homage to the Mother does notinterfere with the absolutely different honour rendered to the Son. Wereadily acknowledge the elevating and refining beauty of thatcharacter, of which the Virgin Mother is the type, and the serviceswhich that ideal has rendered to mankind, though we must emphaticallysay that a man need not be a Roman Catholic to feel and to express thecharm of that moral beauty. But here we have a doctrine as definite andprecise as any doctrine can be, and a great system of popular devotion, giving a character to a great religious communion. Dr. Newman is notmerely developing and illustrating an idea: he is asserting a definiterevealed fact about the unseen world, and defending its consequences ina very concrete and practical shape. And the real point is what proofhas he given us that this is a revealed fact; that it is so, and thatwe have the means of knowing it? He has given us certain language ofthe early writers, which he says is a tradition, though it is only whatany Protestant might have been led to by reading his Bible. But betweenthat language, taken at its highest, and the belief and practice whichhis Church maintains, there is a great gap. The "Second Eve, " the[Greek: Theotokos], are names of high dignity; but enlarge upon them aswe may, there is between them and the modern "Regina Coeli" an intervalwhich nothing but direct divine revelation can possibly fill; and ofthis divine revelation the only evidence is the fact that there is thedoctrine. So awful and central an article of belief needs correspondingproof. In Dr. Newman's eloquent pages we have much collateral thoughton the subject--sometimes instinct with his delicacy of perception anddepth of feeling, sometimes strangely over-refined and irrelevant, butalways fresh and instructive, whether to teach or to warn. The onething which is missing in them is direct proof. 

He does not satisfy us, but he does greatly interest us in his way ofdealing with the practical consequences of his doctrine, in themanifold development of devotion in his communion. What he tells usreveals two things. By this devotion he is at once greatly attracted, and he is deeply shocked. No one can doubt the enthusiasm with which hehas thrown himself into that devotion, an enthusiasm which, if it wasat one time more vehement and defiant than it is now, is still a mostintense element in his religious convictions. Nor do we feel entitledto say that in him it interferes with religious ideas and feelings of ahigher order, which we are accustomed to suppose imperilled by it. Itleads him, indeed, to say things which astonish us, not so much bytheir extreme language as by the absence, as it seems to us, of anyground to say them at all. It forces him into a championship forstatements, in defending which the utmost that can be done is to frameingenious pleas, or to send back a vigorous retort. It tempts him attimes to depart from his generally broad and fair way of viewingthings, as when he meets the charge that the Son is forgotten for theMother, not merely by a denial, but by the rejoinder that when theMother is not honoured as the Roman Church honours her the honour ofthe Son fails. It would have been better not to have reprinted thefollowing extract from a former work, even though it were singled outfor approval by the late Cardinal. The italics are his own:--

 I have spoken more on this subject in my _Essay on Development_, p. 438, "Nor does it avail to object that, in this contrast of devotional exercises, the human is sure to supplant the Divine, from the infirmity of our nature; for, I repeat, the question is one of fact, whether it has done so. And next, it must be asked, _whether the character of Protestant devotion towards Our Lord has been that of worship at all_; and not rather such as we pay to an excellent human being. .. . Carnal minds will ever create a carnal worship for themselves, and to forbid them the service of the saints will have no tendency to teach them the worship of God. Moreover, . .. Great and constant as is the devotion which the Catholic pays to St. Mary, it has a special province, and _has far more connection with the public services and the festive aspect of Christianity_, and with certain extraordinary offices which she holds, _than with what is strictly personal and primary in religion_". Our late Cardinal, on my reception, singled out to me this last sentence, for the expression of his especial approbation. 

Can Dr. Newman defend the first of these two assertions, when heremembers such books of popular Protestant devotion as Wesley's Hymns, or the German hymn-books of which we have examples in the well-known_Lyra Germanica_? Can he deny the second when he remembers theexercises of the "Mois de Marie" in French churches, or if he has hearda fervid and earnest preacher at the end of them urge on a church fullof young people, fresh from Confirmation and first Communion, a specialand personal self-dedication to the great patroness for protection amidthe daily trials of life, in much the same terms as in an EnglishChurch they might be exhorted to commit themselves to the Redeemer ofmankind? Right or wrong, such devotion is not a matter of the "festiveaspect" of religion, but most eminently of what is "personal andprimary" in it; and surely of such a character is a vast proportion ofthe popular devotion here spoken of. 

But for himself, no doubt, he has accepted this _cultus_ on its mostelevated and refined side. He himself makes the distinction, and saysthat there is "a healthy" and an "artificial" form of it; a devotionwhich does not shock "solid piety and Christian good sense; I cannothelp calling this the English style. " And when other sides arepresented to him, he feels what any educated Englishman who allows hisEnglish feelings play is apt to feel about them. What is more, he hasthe boldness to say so. He makes all kinds of reserves to save thecredit of those with whom he cannot sympathise. He speaks of theprivileges of Saints; the peculiarities of national temperament; thedistinctions between popular language and that used by scholasticwriters, or otherwise marked by circumstances; the special charactersof some of the writers quoted, their "ruthless logic, " or theirobscurity; the inculpated passages are but few and scattered inproportion to their context; they are harsh, but sound worse than theymean; they are hardly interpreted and pressed. He reminds Dr. Puseythat there is not much to choose between the Oriental Churches and Romeon this point, and that of the two the language of the Eastern is themost florid; luxuriant, and unguarded. But, after all, the true feelingcomes out at last, "And now, at length, " he says, "coming to thestatements, not English, but foreign, which offend you, I will franklysay that I read some of those which you quote with grief and almostanger. " They are "perverse sayings, " which he hates. He fills a pageand a half with a number of them, and then deliberately pronounces hisrejection of them. 

 After such explanations, and with such authorities to clear my path, I put away from me as you would wish, without any hesitation, as matters in which my heart and reason have no part (when taken in their literal and absolute sense, as any Protestant would naturally take them, and as the writers doubtless did not use them), such sentences and phrases as these:--that the mercy of Mary is infinite, that God has resigned into her hands His omnipotence, that (unconditionally) it is safer to seek her than her Son, that the Blessed Virgin is superior to God, that He is (simply) subject to her command, that our Lord is now of the same disposition as His Father towards sinners--viz. A disposition to reject them, while Mary takes His place as an Advocate with the Father and Son; that the Saints are more ready to intercede with Jesus than Jesus with the Father, that Mary is the only refuge of those with whom God is angry; that Mary alone can obtain a Protestant's conversion; that it would have sufficed for the salvation of men if our Lord had died, not to obey His Father, but to defer to the decree of His Mother, that she rivals our Lord in being God's daughter, not by adoption, but by a kind of nature; that Christ fulfilled the office of Saviour by imitating her virtues; that, as the Incarnate God bore the image of His Father, so He bore the image of His Mother; that redemption derived from Christ indeed its sufficiency, but from Mary its beauty and loveliness; that as we are clothed with the merits of Christ so we are clothed with the merits of Mary; that, as He is Priest, in like manner is she Priestess; that His body and blood in the Eucharist are truly hers, and appertain to her; that as He is present and received therein, so is she present and received therein; that Priests are ministers as of Christ, so of Mary; that elect souls are, born of God and Mary; that the Holy Ghost brings into fruitfulness His action by her, producing in her and by her Jesus Christ in His members; that the kingdom of God in our souls, as our Lord speaks, is really the kingdom of Mary in the soul--and she and the Holy Ghost produce in the soul extraordinary things--and when the Holy Ghost finds Mary in a soul He flies there. 

 Sentiments such as these I never knew of till I read your book, nor, as I think, do the vast majority of English Catholics know them. They seem to me like a bad dream. I could not have conceived them to be said. I know not to what authority to go for them, to Scripture, or to the Fathers, or to the decrees of Councils, or to the consent of schools, or to the tradition of the faithful, or to the Holy See, or to Reason. They defy all the _loci theologici_. There is nothing of them in the Missal, in the Roman Catechism, in the Roman _Raccolta_, in the Imitation of Christ, in Gother, Challoner, Milner, or Wiseman, so far as I am aware. They do but scare and confuse me. I should not be holier, more spiritual, more sure of perseverance, if I twisted my moral being into the reception of them; I should but be guilty of fulsome frigid flattery towards the most upright and noble of God's creatures if I professed them--and of stupid flattery too; for it would be like the compliment of painting up a young and beautiful princess with the brow of a Plato and the muscle of an Achilles. And I should expect her to tell one of her people in waiting to turn me off her service without warning. Whether thus to feel be the _scandalum parvulorum_ in my case, or the _scandalum Pharisaeorum_, I leave others to decide; but I will say plainly that I had rather believe (which is impossible) that there is no God at all, than that Mary is greater than God. I will have nothing to do with statements, which can only be explained by being explained away. I do not, however, speak of these statements, as they are found in their authors, for I know nothing of the originals, and cannot believe that they have meant what you say; but I take them as they lie in your pages. Were any of them, the sayings of Saints in ecstasy, I should know they had a good meaning; still I should not repeat them myself; but I am looking at them, not as spoken by the tongues of Angels, but according to that literal sense which they bear in the mouths of English men and English women. And, as spoken by man to man in England in the nineteenth century, I consider them calculated to prejudice inquirers, to frighten the unlearned, to unsettle consciences, to provoke blasphemy, and to work the loss of souls. 

Of course; it is what might be expected of him. But Dr. Newman hasoften told us that we must take the consequences of our principles andtheories, and here are some of the consequences which meet him; and, ashe says, they "scare and confuse him. " He boldly disavows them with nodoubtful indignation. But what other voice but his, of equal authorityand weight, has been lifted up to speak the plain truth about them?Why, if they are wrong, extravagant, dangerous, is his protestsolitary? His communion has never been wanting in jealousy of dangerousdoctrines, and it is vain to urge that these things and things likethem have been said in a corner. The Holy Office is apt to detectmischief in small writers as well as great, even if these teachers wereas insignificant as Dr. Newman would gladly make them. Taken as awhole, and in connection with notorious facts, these statements arefair examples of manifest tendencies, which certainly are not on thedecline. And if a great and spreading popular _cultus_, encouraged andurged on beyond all former precedent, is in danger of being developedby its warmest and most confident advocates into something of whichunreason is the lightest fault, is there not ground for interfering?Doubtless Roman writers maybe quoted by Dr. Newman, who felt that therewas a danger, and we are vaguely told about some checks given to one ortwo isolated extravagances, which, however, in spite of the checks, donot seem to be yet extinct. But Allocutions and Encyclicals are not forerrors of this kind. Dr. Newman says that "it is wiser for the mostpart to leave these excesses to the gradual operation of publicopinion, --that is, to the opinion of educated and sober Catholics; andthis seems to me the healthiest way of putting them down. " We quiteagree with him; but his own Church does not think so; and we want tosee some evidence of a public opinion in it capable of putting themdown. As it is, he is reduced to say that "the line cannot be logicallydrawn between the teaching of the Fathers on the subject and our own;"an assertion which, if it were true, would be more likely to drag downone teaching than to prop up the other; he has to find reasons, anddoubtless they are to be found thick as blackberries, for accountingfor one extravagance, softening down another, declining to judge athird. But in the meantime the "devotion" in its extreme form, farbeyond what he would call the teaching of his Church, has its way; itmaintains its ground; it becomes the mark of the bold, the advanced, the refined, as well as of the submissive and the crowd; it rootsitself under the shelter of an authority which would stop it if it waswrong; it becomes "dominant"; it becomes at length part of that "mindof the living Church" which, we are told, it is heresy to impugn, treason to appeal from, and the extravagance of impertinent folly totalk of reforming. 

It is very little use, then, for Dr. Newman to tell Dr. Pusey or anyone else, "You may safely trust us English Catholics as to thisdevotion. " "English Catholics, " as such, --it is the strength and theweakness of their system, --have really the least to say in the matter. The question is not about trusting "us English Catholics, " but thePope, and the Roman Congregation, and those to whom the Romanauthorities delegate their sanction and give their countenance. If Dr. Newman is able, as we doubt not he is desirous, to elevate the tone ofhis own communion and put to shame some of its fashionable excesses, hewill do a great work, in which we wish him every success, though theresult of it might not really be to bring the body of his countrymennearer to it. But the substance of Dr. Pusey's charges remain after allunanswered, and there is no getting over them while they remain. Theyare of that broad, palpable kind against which the refinements ofargumentative apology play in vain. They can only be met by those whofeel their force, on some principle equally broad. Dr. Newman suggestssuch a ground in the following remarks, which, much as they wantqualification and precision, have a basis of reality in them:--

 It is impossible, I say, in a doctrine like this, to draw the line cleanly between truth and error, right and wrong. This is ever the case in concrete matters which have life. Life in this world is motion, and involves a continual process of change. Living things grow into their perfection, into their decline, into their death. No rule of art will suffice to stop the operation of this natural law, whether in the material world or in the human mind. .. . What has power to stir holy and refined souls is potent also with the multitude, and the religion of the multitude is ever vulgar and abnormal; it ever will be tinctured with fanaticism and superstition while men are what they are. A people's religion is ever a corrupt religion. If you are to have a Catholic Church you must put up with fish of every kind, guests good and bad, vessels of gold, vessels of earth. You may beat religion out of men, if you will, and then their excesses will take a different direction; but if you make use of religion to improve them, they will make use of religion to corrupt it. And then you will have effected that compromise of which our countrymen report so unfavourably from abroad, --a high grand faith and worship which compels their admiration, and puerile absurdities among the people which excite their contempt. 

It is like Dr. Newman to put his case in this broad way, making largeadmissions, allowing for much inevitable failure. That is, he defendshis Church as he would defend Christianity generally, taking it as agreat practical system must be in this world, working with human natureas it is. His reflection is, no doubt, one suggested by a survey of thecause of all religion. The coming short of the greatest promisee, thedebasement of the noblest ideals, are among the commonplaces ofhistory. Christianity cannot be maintained without ample admissions offailure and perversion. But it is one thing to make this admission forChristianity generally, an admission which the New Testament inforetelling its fortunes gives us abundant ground for making; and quiteanother for those who maintain the superiority of one form ofChristianity above all others, to claim that they may leave out of theaccount its characteristic faults. It is quite true that all sidesabundantly need to appeal for considerate judgment to the knowninfirmity of human nature; but amid the conflicting pretensions whichdivide Christendom no one side can ask to have for itself the exclusiveadvantage of this plea. All may claim the benefit of it, but if it isdenied to any it must be denied to all. In this confused and imperfectworld other great popular systems of religion besides the Roman may useit in behalf of shortcomings, which, though perhaps very different, areyet not worse. It is obvious that the theory of great and living ideas, working with a double edge, and working for mischief at last, holdsgood for other things besides the special instance on which Dr. Newmancomments. It is to be further observed that to claim the benefit ofthis plea is to make the admission that you come under the common lawof human nature as to mistake, perversion, and miscarriage, and this inthe matter of religious guidance the Roman theory refuses to do. Itclaims for its communion as its special privilege an exemption fromthose causes of corruption of which history is the inexorable witness, and to which others admit themselves to be liable; an immunity fromgoing wrong, a supernatural exception from the common tendency ofmankind to be led astray, from the common necessity to correct andreform themselves when they are proved wrong. How far this is realised, not on paper and in argument, but in fact, is indeed one of the mostimportant questions for the world, and it is one to which the worldwill pay more heed than to the best writing about it There are notwanting signs, among others of a very different character, of an honestand philosophical recognition of this by some of the ablest writers ofthe Roman communion. The day on which the Roman Church ceases tomaintain that what it holds must be truth because it holds it, andadmits itself subject to the common condition by which God has giventruth to men, will be the first hopeful day for the reunion ofChristendom. 

XXVIII

NEWMAN'S PAROCHIAL SERMONS[32]

 [32] _Parochial and Plain Sermons_. By John Henry Newman, B. D. , formerly Vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford. Edited by W. J. Copeland, B. D. _Saturday Review_, 5th June 1869. 

Dr. Newman's Sermons stand by themselves in modern English literature;it might be said, in English literature generally. There have beenequally great masterpieces of English writing in this form ofcomposition, and there have been preachers whose theological depth, acquaintance with the heart, earnestness, tenderness, and power havenot been inferior to his. But the great writers do not touch, pierce, and get hold of minds as he does, and those who are famous for thepower and results of their preaching do not write as he does. Hissermons have done more perhaps than any one thing to mould and quickenand brace the religious temper of our time; they have acted with equalforce on those who were nearest and on those who were farthest from himin theological opinion. They have altered the whole manner of feelingtowards religious subjects. We know now that they were the beginning, the signal and first heave, of a vast change that was to come over thesubject; of a demand from religion of a thoroughgoing reality ofmeaning and fulfilment, which is familiar to us, but was new when itwas first made. And, being this, these sermons are also among the veryfinest examples of what the English language of our day has done in thehands of a master. Sermons of such intense conviction and directness ofpurpose, combined with such originality and perfection on their purelyliterary side, are rare everywhere. Remarkable instances, of course, will occur to every one of the occasional exhibition of thiscombination, but not in so sustained and varied and unfailing a way. Between Dr. Newman and the great French school there is thisdifference--that they are orators, and he is as far as anything can bein a great preacher from an orator. Those who remember the tones andthe voice in which the sermons were heard at St. Mary's--we may referto Professor Shairp's striking account in his volume on Keble, and to arecent article in the _Dublin Review_--can remember how utterly unlikean orator in all outward ways was the speaker who so strangely movedthem. The notion of judging of Dr. Newman as an orator never crossedtheir minds. And this puts a difference between him and a remarkableperson whose name has sometimes been joined with his--Mr. F. Robertson. Mr. Robertson was a great preacher, but he was not a writer. 

It is difficult to realise at present the effect produced originally bythese sermons. The first feeling was that of their difference in mannerfrom the customary sermon. People knew what an eloquent sermon was, ora learned sermon, or a philosophical sermon, or a sermon full ofdoctrine or pious unction. Chalmers and Edward Irving and Robert Hallwere familiar names; the University pulpit and some of the Londonchurches had produced examples of forcible argument and severe andfinished composition; and of course instances were abundant everywhereof the good, sensible, commonplace discourse; of all that was heavy, dull, and dry, and of all that was ignorant, wild, fanatical, andirrational. But no one seemed to be able, or to be expected, unless heavowedly took the buffoonery line which some of the Evangelicalpreachers affected, to speak in the pulpit with the directness andstraightforward unconventionality with which men speak on the practicalbusiness of life. With all the thought and vigour and many beautieswhich were in the best sermons, there was always something forced, formal, artificial about them; something akin to that mild pomp whichusually attended their delivery, with beadles in gowns ushering thepreacher to the carpeted pulpit steps, with velvet cushions, and withthe rustle and fulness of his robes. No one seemed to think of writinga sermon as he would write an earnest letter. A preacher must approachhis subject in a kind of roundabout make-believe of preliminary andpreparatory steps, as if he was introducing his hearers to what theyhad never heard of; make-believe difficulties and objections wereoverthrown by make-believe answers; an unnatural position both inspeaker and hearers, an unreal state of feeling and view of facts, asystematic conventional exaggeration, seemed almost impossible to beavoided; and those who tried to escape being laboured and grandiloquentonly escaped it, for the most part, by being vulgar or slovenly. Thestrong severe thinkers, jealous for accuracy, and loathing clap-trap asthey loathed loose argument, addressed and influenced intelligence; butsermons are meant for heart and souls as well as minds, and to theheart, with its trials and its burdens, men like Whately never foundtheir way. Those who remember the preaching of those days, before itbegan to be influenced by the sermons at St. Mary's, will call to mindmuch that was interesting, much that was ingenious, much correction ofinaccurate and confused views, much manly encouragement to highprinciple and duty, much of refined and scholarlike writing. But forsoul and warmth, and the imaginative and poetical side of the religiouslife, you had to go where thought and good sense were not likely to besatisfied. 

The contrast of Mr. Newman's preaching was not obvious at first. Theoutside form and look was very much that of the regular best Oxfordtype--calm, clear, and lucid in expression, strong in its grasp, measured in statement, and far too serious to think of rhetoricalornament. But by degrees much more opened. The range of experience fromwhich the preacher drew his materials, and to which he appealed, wassomething wider, subtler, and more delicate than had been commonlydealt with in sermons. With his strong, easy, exact, elastic language, the instrument of a powerful and argumentative mind, he plunged intothe deep realities of the inmost spiritual life, of which cultivatedpreachers had been shy. He preached so that he made you feel withoutdoubt that it was the most real of worlds to him; he made you feel intime, in spite of yourself, that it was a real world with which you toohad concern. He made you feel that he knew what he was speaking about;that his reasonings and appeals, whether you agreed with them or not, were not the language of that heated enthusiasm with which the world isso familiar; that he was speaking words which were the result ofintellectual scrutiny, balancings, and decisions, as well as of moraltrials, of conflicts and suffering within; words of the utmostsoberness belonging to deeply gauged and earnestly formed purposes. Theeffect of his sermons, as compared with the common run at the time, wassomething like what happens when in a company you have a number ofpeople giving their views and answers about some question before them. You have opinions given of various worth and expressed with varyingpower, precision, and distinctness, some clever enough, some clumsyenough, but all more or less imperfect and unattractive in tone, andmore or less falling short of their aim; and then, after it all, comesa voice, very grave, very sweet, very sure and clear, under whose wordsthe discussion springs up at once to a higher level, and in which werecognise at once a mind, face to face with realities, and able toseize them and hold them fast. 

The first notable feature in the external form of this preaching wasits terse unceremonious directness. Putting aside the verbiage anddulled circumlocution and stiff hazy phraseology of pulpit etiquetteand dignity, it went straight to its point. There was no waste of timeabout customary formalities. The preacher had something to say, andwith a kind of austere severity he proceeded to say it. This, forinstance, is the sort of way in which a sermon would begin:--

 Hypocrisy is a serious word. We are accustomed to consider the hypocrite as a hateful, despicable character, and an uncommon one. How is it, then, that our Blessed Lord, when surrounded by an innumerable multitude, began, _first of all_, to warn His disciples against hypocrisy, as though they were in especial danger of becoming like those base deceivers the Pharisees? Thus an instructive subject is opened to our consideration, which I will now pursue. --Vol. I. Serm. X. 

The next thing was that, instead of rambling and straggling over alarge subject, each sermon seized a single thought, or definite view, or real difficulty or objection, and kept closely and distinctly to it;and at the same time treated it with a largeness and grasp and easewhich only a full command over much beyond it could give. Every sermonhad a purpose and an end which no one could misunderstand. Singularlydevoid of anything like excitement--calm, even, self-controlled--therewas something in the preacher's resolute concentrated way of gettinghold of a single defined object which reminded you of the rapid springor unerring swoop of some strong-limbed or swift-winged creature on itsquarry. Whatever you might think that he did with it, or even if itseemed to escape from him, you could have no doubt what he sought todo; there was no wavering, confused, uncertain bungling in thatpowerful and steady hand. Another feature was the character of thewriter's English. We have learned to look upon Dr. Newman as one of thehalf-dozen or so of the innumerable good writers of the time who havefairly left their mark as masters on the language. Little, assuredly, as the writer originally thought of such a result, the sermons haveproved a permanent gift to our literature, of the purest English, fullof spring, clearness, and force. A hasty reader would perhaps at firstonly notice a very light, strong, easy touch, and might think, too, that it was a negligent one. But it was not negligence; real negligencemeans at bottom bad work, and bad work will not stand the trial oftime. There are two great styles--the self-conscious, like that ofGibbon or Macaulay, where great success in expression is accompanied byan unceasing and manifest vigilance that expression shall succeed, andwhere you see at each step that there is or has been much care and workin the mind, if not on the paper; and the unconscious, like that ofPascal or Swift or Hume, where nothing suggests at the moment that thewriter is thinking of anything but his subject, and where the power ofbeing able to say just what he wants to say seems to come at thewriter's command, without effort, and without his troubling himselfmore about it than about the way in which he holds his pen. But bothare equally the fruit of hard labour and honest perseveringself-correction; and it is soon found out whether the apparentnegligence comes of loose and slovenly habits of mind, or whether itmarks the confidence of one who has mastered his instrument, and canforget himself and let himself go in using it. The free unconstrainedmovement of Dr. Newman's style tells any one who knows what writing isof a very keen and exact knowledge of the subtle and refined secrets oflanguage. With all that uncared-for play and simplicity, there was afulness, a richness, a curious delicate music, quite instinctive andunsought for; above all, a precision and sureness of expression whichpeople soon began to find were not within the power of most of thosewho tried to use language. Such English, graceful with the grace ofnerve, flexibility, and power, must always have attracted attention;but it had also an ethical element which was almost inseparable fromits literary characteristics. Two things powerfully determined thestyle of these sermons. One was the intense hold which the vastrealities of religion had gained on the writer's mind, and the perfecttruth with which his personality sank and faded away before theiroverwhelming presence; the other was the strong instinctive shrinking, which was one of the most remarkable and certain marks of the beginnersof the Oxford movement, from anything like personal display, anyconscious aiming at the ornamental and brilliant, any show of gifts orcourting of popular applause. Morbid and excessive or not, there can beno doubt of the stern self-containing severity which made them turnaway, not only with fear, but with distaste and repugnance, from allthat implied distinction or seemed to lead to honour; and the controlof this austere spirit is visible, in language as well as matter, inevery page of Dr. Newman's sermons. 

Indeed, form and matter are closely connected in the sermons, anddepend one on another, as they probably do in all work of a high order. The matter makes and shapes the form with which it clothes itself. Theobvious thing which presents itself in reading them is that, from firstto last, they are a great systematic attempt to raise the whole levelof religious thought and religious life. They carry in them theevidence of a great reaction and a scornful indignant rising up againstwhat were going about and were currently received as adequate ideas ofreligion. The dryness and primness and meagreness of the common Churchpreaching, correct as it was in its outlines of doctrine, and sober andtemperate in tone, struck cold on a mind which had caught sight, in theNew Testament, of the spirit and life of its words. The recoil was evenstronger from the shallowness and pretentiousness and self-display ofwhat was popularly accepted as earnest religion; morally the preacherwas revolted at its unctuous boasts and pitiful performance, andintellectually by its narrowness and meanness of thought and itsthinness of colour in all its pictures of the spiritual life. Fromfirst to last, in all manner of ways, the sermons are a protest, firstagainst coldness, but even still more against meanness, in religion. With coldness they have no sympathy, yet coldness may be broad andlarge and lofty in its aspects; but they have no tolerance for whatmakes religion little and poor and superficial, for what contracts itshorizon and dwarfs its infinite greatness and vulgarises its mystery. Open the sermons where we will, different readers will rise from themwith very different results; there will be among many the strongest andmost decisive disagreement; there may be impatience at dogmaticharshness, indignation at what seems overstatement and injustice, rejection of arguments and conclusions; but there will always be thesense of an unfailing nobleness in the way in which the writer thinksand speaks. It is not only that he is in earnest; it is that he hassomething which really is worth being in earnest for. He placed theheights of religion very high. If you have a religion likeChristianity--this is the pervading note--think of it, and have it, worthily. People will differ from the preacher endlessly as to how thisis to be secured. But that they will learn this lesson from thesermons, with a force with which few other writers have taught it, andthat this lesson has produced its effect in our time, there can be nodoubt. The only reason why it may not perhaps seem so striking toreaders of this day is that the sermons have done their work, and we donot feel what they had to counteract, because they have succeeded ingreat measure in counteracting it. It is not too much to say that theyhave done more than anything else to revolutionise the whole idea ofpreaching in the English Church. Mr. Robertson, in spite of himself, was as much the pupil of their school as Mr. Liddon, though both are sowidely different from their master. 

The theology of these sermons is a remarkable feature about them. It isremarkable in this way, that, coming from a teacher like Dr. Newman, itis nevertheless a theology which most religious readers, except theEvangelicals and some of the more extreme Liberal thinkers, can eitheraccept heartily or be content with, as they would be content with St. Augustine or Thomas à Kempis--content, not because they go along withit always, but because it is large and untechnical, just andwell-measured in the proportions and relative importance of its parts. People of very different opinions turn to them, as being on the wholethe fullest, deepest, most comprehensive approximation they can find torepresenting Christianity in a practical form. Their theology isnothing new; nor does it essentially change, though one may observedifferences, and some important ones, in the course of the volumes, which embrace a period from 1825 to 1842. It is curious, indeed, toobserve how early the general character of the sermons was determined, and how in the main it continues the same. Some of the first in pointof date are among the "Plain Sermons"; and though they may have beensubsequently retouched, yet there the keynote is plainly struck of thatsevere and solemn minor which reigns throughout. Their theology isthroughout the accepted English theology of the Prayer-book and thegreat Church divines--a theology fundamentally dogmatic andsacramental, but jealously keeping the balance between obedience andfaith; learned, exact, and measured, but definite and decided. Thenovelty was in the application of it, in the new life breathed into it, in the profound and intense feelings called forth by its ideas andobjects, in the air of vastness and awe thrown about it, in theunexpected connection of its creeds and mysteries with practical life, in the new meaning given to the old and familiar, in the acceptance inthorough earnest, and with keen purpose to call it into action, of whathad been guarded and laid by with dull reverence. Dr. Newman can hardlybe called in these sermons an innovator on the understood andrecognised standard of Anglican doctrine; he accepted its outlines asBishop Wilson, for instance, might have traced them. What he did wasfirst to call forth from it what it really meant, the awful heights anddepths of its current words and forms; and next, to put beside themhuman character and its trials, not as they were conventionallyrepresented and written about, but as a piercing eye and sympathisingspirit saw them in the light of our nineteenth century, and in thecontradictory and complicated movements, the efforts and failures, ofreal life. He took theology for granted, as a Christian preacher has aright to do; he does not prove it, and only occasionally meetsdifficulties, or explains; but, taking it for granted, he took it atits word, in its relation to the world of actual experience. 

Utterly dissatisfied with what he found current as religion, Dr. Newmansought, without leaving the old paths, to put before people a strongand energetic religion based, not on feeling or custom, but on reasonand conscience, and answering, in the vastness of its range, to themysteries of human nature, and in its power to man's capacities andaims. The Liberal religion of that day, with its ideas of naturaltheology or of a cold critical Unitarianism, was a very shallow one;the Evangelical, trusting to excitement, had worn out its excitementand had reached the stage when its formulas, poor ones at the best, hadbecome words without meaning. Such views might do in quiet, easy-goingtimes, if religion were an exercise at will of imagination or thought, an indulgence, an ornament, an understanding, a fashion; not if itcorresponded to such a state of things as is implied in the Bible, orto man's many-sided nature as it is shown in Shakspeare. The sermonsreflect with merciless force the popular, superficial, comfortablething called religion which the writer saw before him wherever helooked, and from which his mind recoiled. Such sermons as those on the"Self-wise Enquirer" and the "Religion of the Day, " with its famouspassage about the age not being sufficiently "gloomy and fierce in itsreligion, " have the one-sided and unmeasured exaggeration which seemsinseparable from all strong expressions of conviction, and from alldeep and vehement protests against general faults; but, qualify andlimit them as we may, their pictures were not imaginary ones, and therewas, and is, but too much to justify them. From all this trifling withreligion the sermons called on men to look into themselves. Theyappealed to conscience; and they appealed equally to reason andthought, to recognise what conscience is, and to deal honestly with it. They viewed religion as if projected on a background of natural andmoral mystery, and surrounded by it--an infinite scene, in which ourknowledge is like the Andes and Himalayas in comparison with the massof the earth, and in which conscience is our final guide and arbiter. No one ever brought out so impressively the sense of the impenetrableand tremendous vastness of that amid which man plays his part. In suchsermons as those on the "Intermediate State, " the "Invisible World, "the "Greatness and Littleness of Human Life, " the "Individuality of theSoul, " the "Mysteriousness of our Present Being, " we may seeexemplified the enormous irruption into the world of modern thought ofthe unknown and the unknowable, as much as in the writers who, with fardifferent objects, set against it the clearness and certainty of whatwe do know. But, beyond all, the sermons appealed to men to go backinto their own thoughts and feelings, and there challenged them; werenot the preacher's words the echoes and interpreting images of theirown deepest, possibly most perplexing and baffling, experience? Fromfirst to last this was his great engine and power; from first to lasthe boldly used it. He claimed to read their hearts; and people feltthat he did read them, their follies and their aspirations, the blendedand tangled web of earnestness and dishonesty, of wishes for the bestand truest, and acquiescence in makeshifts; understating what ordinarypreachers make much of, bringing into prominence what they pass bywithout being able to see or to speak of it; keeping before his hearersthe risk of mismanaging their hearts, of "all kinds of unlawfultreatment of the soul. " What a contrast to ordinary ways of speaking ona familiar theological doctrine is this way of bringing it intoimmediate relation to real feeling:--

 It is easy to speak of human nature as corrupt in the general, to admit it in the general, and then get quit of the subject; as if, the doctrine being once admitted, there was nothing more to be done with it. But, in truth, we can have no real apprehension of the doctrine of our corruption till we view the structure of our minds, part by part; and dwell upon and draw out the signs of our weakness, inconsistency, and ungodliness, which are such as can arise from nothing but some strange original defect in our original nature. .. . We are in the dark about ourselves. When we act, we are groping in the dark, and may meet with a fall any moment. Here and there, perhaps, we see a little; or in our attempts to influence and move our minds, we are making experiments (as it were) with some delicate and dangerous instrument, which works we do not know how, and may produce unexpected and disastrous effects. The management of our hearts is quite above us. Under these circumstances it becomes our comfort to look up to God. "Thou, God, seest me. " Such was the consolation of the forlorn Hagar in the wilderness. He knoweth whereof we are made, and He alone can uphold us. He sees with most appalling distinctness all our sins, all the windings and recesses of evil within us; yet it is our only comfort to know this, and to trust Him for help against ourselves. --Vol. I. Serm. XIII. 

The preacher contemplates human nature, not in the stiff formallanguage in which it had become conventional with divines to set outits shortcomings and dangers, but as a great novelist contemplates andtries to describe it; taking in all its real contradictions andanomalies, its subtle and delicate shades; fixing upon the things whichstrike us in ourselves or our neighbours as ways of acting and marks ofcharacter; following it through its wide and varying range, itsdiversified and hidden folds and subtle self-involving realities offeeling and shiftiness; touching it in all its complex sensibilities, anticipating its dim consciousnesses, half-raising veils which hidewhat it instinctively shrinks from, sending through it unexpectedthrills and shocks; large-hearted in indulgence, yet exacting; mosttender, yet most severe. And against all this real play of nature hesets in their full force and depth the great ideas of God, of sin, andof the Cross; and, appealing not to the intelligence of an aristocracyof choice natures, but to the needs and troubles and longings whichmake all men one, he claimed men's common sympathy for the heroic inpurpose and standard. He warned them against being fastidious, wherethey should be hardy. He spoke in a way that all could understand ofbrave ventures, of resolutely committing themselves to truth and duty. 

The most practical of sermons, the most real and natural in their wayof dealing with life and conduct, they are also intensely dogmatic. Thewriter's whole teaching presupposes, as we all know, a dogmaticreligion; and these sermons are perhaps the best vindication of itwhich our time, disposed to think of dogmas with suspicion, has seen. For they show, on a large scale and in actual working instances, howwhat is noblest, most elevated, most poetical, most free and searchingin a thinker's way of regarding the wonderful scene of life, falls innaturally, and without strain, with a great dogmatic system like thatof the Church. Such an example does not prove that system to be true, but it proves that a dogmatic system, as such, is not the cast-iron, arbitrary, artificial thing which it is often assumed to be. It is, indeed, the most shallow of all commonplaces, intelligible in ordinaryminds, but unaccountable in those of high power and range, whether theybelieve or not, that a dogmatic religion is of course a hard, dry, narrow, unreal religion, without any affinities to poetry or the truthof things, or to the deeper and more sacred and powerful of humanthoughts. If dogmas are not true, that is another matter; but it is thefashion to imply that dogmas are worthless, mere things of the past, without sense or substance or interest, because they are dogmas. As ifDante was not dogmatic in form and essence; as if the grandest andworthiest religious prose in the English language was not that ofHooker, nourished up amid the subtleties, but also amid the vasthorizons and solemn heights, of scholastic divinity. A dogmatic systemis hard in hard hands, and shallow in shallow minds, and barren in dullones, and unreal and empty to preoccupied and unsympathising ones; wedwarf and distort ideas that we do not like, and when we have put themin our own shapes and in our own connection, we call them unmeaning orimpossible. Dogmas are but expedients, common to all great departmentsof human thought, and felt in all to be necessary, for representingwhat are believed as truths, for exhibiting their order andconsequences, for expressing the meaning of terms, and the relations ofthought. If they are wrong, they are, like everything else in theworld, open to be proved wrong; if they are inadequate, they are opento correction; but it is idle to sneer at them for being what they mustbe, if religious facts and truths are to be followed out by thethoughts and expressed by the language of man. And what dogmas are inunfriendly and incapable hands is no proof of what they may be whenthey are approached as things instinct with truth and life; it is nomeasure of the way in which they may be inextricably interwoven withthe most unquestionably living thought and feeling, as in thesesermons. Jealous, too, as the preacher is for Church doctrines as thesprings of Christian life, no writer of our time perhaps has soemphatically and impressively recalled the narrow limits within whichhuman language can represent Divine realities. No one that we know ofshows that he has before his mind with such intense force anddistinctness the idea of God; and in proportion as a mind takes in andsubmits itself to the impression of that awful vision, the gulf widensbetween all possible human words and that which they attempt toexpress:--

 When we have deduced what we deduce by our reason from the study of visible nature, and then read what we read in His inspired word, and find the two apparently discordant, _this_ is the feeling I think we ought to have on our minds;--not an impatience to do what is beyond our powers, to weigh evidence, sum up, balance, decide, reconcile, to arbitrate between the two voices of God, --but a sense of the utter nothingness of worms such as we are; of our plain and absolute incapacity to contemplate things _as they really are_; a perception of our emptiness before the great Vision of God; of our "comeliness being turned into corruption, and our retaining no strength"; a conviction that what is put before us, whether in nature or in grace, is but an intimation, useful for particular purposes, useful for practice, useful in its department, "until the day break and the shadows flee away"; useful in such a way that both the one and the other representation may at once be used, as two languages, as two separate approximations towards the Awful Unknown Truth, such as will not mislead us in their respective provinces. --Vol. II. Serm. XVIII. 

 "I cannot persuade myself, " he says, commenting on a mysterious text of Scripture, "thus to dismiss so solemn a passage" (i. E. By saying that it is "all figurative"). "It seems a presumption to say of dim notices about the unseen world, 'they only mean this or that, ' as if one had ascended into the third heaven, or had stood before the throne of God. No; I see herein a deep mystery, a hidden truth, which I cannot handle or define, shining 'as jewels at the bottom of the great deep, ' darkly and tremulously, yet really there. And for this very reason, while it is neither pious nor thankful to explain away the words which convey it, while it is a duty to use them, not less a duty is it to use them humbly, diffidently, and teachably, with the thought of God before us, and of our own nothingness. "--Vol. III. Serm. XXV. 

There are two great requisites for treating properly the momentousquestions and issues which have been brought before our generation. Thefirst is accuracy--accuracy of facts, of terms, of reasoning; plainclose dealing with questions in their real and actual conditions;clear, simple, honest, measured statements about things as we findthem. The other is elevation, breadth, range of thought; a due sense ofwhat these questions mean and involve; a power of looking at thingsfrom a height; a sufficient taking into account of possibilities, ofour ignorance, of the real proportions of things. We have plenty of thefirst; we are for the most part lamentably deficient in the second. Andof this, these sermons are, to those who have studied them, almostunequalled examples. Many people, no doubt, would rise from theirperusal profoundly disagreeing with their teaching; but no one, itseems to us, could rise from them--with their strong effortlessfreedom, their lofty purpose, their generous standard, their deep andgoverning appreciation of divine things, their thoroughness, theirunselfishness, their purity, their austere yet piercing sympathy--andnot feel his whole ways of thinking about religion permanently enlargedand raised. He will feel that he has been with one who "told him whathe knew about himself and what he did not know; has read to him hiswants or feelings, and comforted him by the very reading; has made himfeel that there was a higher life than this life, and a brighter worldthan we can see; has encouraged him, or sobered him, or opened a way tothe inquiring, or soothed the perplexed. " They show a man who saw verydeeply into the thought of his time, and who, if he partly recoiledfrom it and put it back, at least equally shared it. Dr. Newman hasbeen accused of being out of sympathy with his age, and of disparagingit. In reality, no one has proved himself more keenly sensitive to itsgreatness and its wonders; only he believed that he saw somethinggreater still. We are not of those who can accept the solution which hehas accepted of the great problems which haunt our society; but he sawbetter than most men what those problems demand, and the variety oftheir often conflicting conditions. Other men, perhaps, have succeededbetter in what they aimed at; but no one has attempted more, withpowers and disinterestedness which justified him in attempting it. Themovement which he led, and of which these sermons are thecharacteristic monument, is said to be a failure; but there arefailures, and even mistakes, which are worth many successes of othersorts, and which are more fruitful and permanent in their effects. 

XXIX

CARDINAL NEWMAN[33]

 [33] _Guardian_, 21st May 1879. 

It is not wonderful that people should be impressed by the vicissitudesand surprises and dramatic completeness of Cardinal Newman's career. It is not wonderful that he should be impressed by this himself. Thathe who left us in despair and indignation in 1845 should have passedthrough a course of things which has made him, Roman Catholic as heis, a man of whom Englishmen are so proud in 1879, is even moreextraordinary than that the former Fellow of Oriel should now besurrounded with the pomp and state of a Cardinal. There is only oneother career in our time which, with the greatest possible contrasts inother points, suggests in its strangeness and antecedent improbabilitiessomething of a parallel. It is the train of events which has made"Disraeli the Younger" the most powerful Minister whom England has seenin recent years. But Lord Beaconsfield has aimed at what he hasattained to, and has fought his way to it through the chances andstruggles of a stirring public life. Cardinal Newman's life has beenfrom first to last the life of the student and recluse. He has lived inthe shade. He has sought nothing for himself. He has shrunk from thethought of advancement. The steps to the high places of the world havenot offered themselves to him, and he has been content to be let alone. Early in his course his rare gifts of mind, his force of character, hispower over hearts and sympathies, made him for a while a prominentperson. Then came a series of events which seemed to throw him out ofharmony with the great mass of his countrymen. He appeared to be, if notforgotten, yet not thought of, except by a small number of friends--oldfriends who had known him too well and too closely ever to forget, andnew friends gathered round him by the later circumstances of his lifeand work. People spoke of him as a man who had made a great mistake andfailed; who had thrown up influence and usefulness here, and had notfound it there; too subtle, too imaginative for England, tooindependent for Rome. He seemed to have so sunk out of interest andaccount that off-hand critics, in the easy gaiety of their heart, mighttake liberties with his name. 

Then came the first surprise. The _Apologia_ was read with the keenestinterest by those who most differed from the writer's practicalconclusions; twenty years had elapsed since he had taken the unpopularstep which seemed to condemn him to obscurity; and now he emerged fromit, challenging not in vain the sympathy of his countrymen. Theyawoke, it may be said--at least the younger generation of them--towhat he really was; the old jars and bitternesses had passed out ofremembrance; they only felt that they had one among them who couldwrite--for few of them ever heard his wonderful voice--in a way whichmade English hearts respond quickly and warmly. And the strange thingwas that the professed, the persistent denouncer of Liberalism, waswelcomed back to his rightful place among Englishmen by none morewarmly than by many Liberals. Still, though his name was growing morefamiliar year by year, the world did not see much more of him. Thehead of a religious company, of an educational institution atBirmingham, he lived in unpretending and quiet simplicity, occupiedwith the daily business of his house, with his books, with hiscorrespondence, with finishing off his many literary and theologicalundertakings. Except in some chance reference in a book or newspaperwhich implied how considerable a person the world thought him, he wasnot heard of. People asked about him, but there was nothing to tell. Then at last, neglected by Pius IX. , he was remembered by Leo XIII. The Pope offered him the Cardinalship, he said, because he thought itwould be "grateful to the Catholics of England, and to Englanditself. " And he was not mistaken. Probably there is not a single thingthat the Pope could do which would be so heartily welcomed. 

After breaking with England and all things English in wrath and sorrow, nearly thirty-five years ago, after a long life of modest retirement, unmarked by any public honours, at length before he dies Dr. Newman isrecognised by Protestant England as one of its greatest men. It watcheswith interest his journey to Rome, his proceedings at Rome. In a crowdof new Cardinals--men of eminence in their own communion--he is theonly one about whom Englishmen know or care anything. His words, whenhe speaks, pass _verbatim_ along the telegraph wires, like the words ofthe men who sway the world. We read of the quiet Oxford scholar's armsemblazoned on vestment and furniture as those of a Prince of theChurch, and of his motto--_Cor ad cor loquitur_. In that motto is thesecret of all that he is to his countrymen. For that skill of which heis such a master, in the use of his and their "sweet mother tongue, " issomething much more than literary accomplishment and power. It meansthat he has the key to what is deepest in their nature and mostcharacteristic in them of feeling and conviction--to what is deeperthan opinions and theories and party divisions; to what in their mostsolemn moments they most value and most believe in. 

His profound sympathy with the religiousness which still, with all thevariations and all the immense shortcomings of English religion, marksEngland above all cultivated Christian nations, is really the bondbetween him and his countrymen, who yet for the most part think sodifferently from him, both about the speculative grounds and many ofthe practical details of religion. But it was natural for him, on anoccasion like this, reviewing the past and connecting it with thepresent, to dwell on these differences. He repeated once more, andmade it the keynote of his address, his old protest against"Liberalism in religion, " the "doctrine that there is no positivetruth in religion, but one creed is as good as another. " He lamentedthe decay of the power of authority, the disappearance of religionfrom the sphere of political influence, from education, fromlegislation. He deplored the increasing impossibility of getting mento work together on a common religious basis. He pointed out theincreasing seriousness and earnestness of the attempts to "supersede, to block out religion, " by an imposing and high morality, claiming todispense with it. 

He dwelt on the mischief and dangers; he expressed, as any Christianwould, his fearlessness and faith in spite of them; but do we gather, even from such a speaker, and on such an occasion, anything of theremedy? The principle of authority is shaken, he tells us; what can hesuggest to restore it? He under-estimates, probably, the part whichauthority plays, implicitly yet very really, in English popularreligion, much more in English Church religion; and authority, even inRome, is not everything, and does not reach to every subject. Butauthority in our days can be nothing without real confidence in it;and where confidence in authority has been lost, it is idle to attemptto restore it by telling men that authority is a good and necessarything. It must be won back, not simply claimed. It must be regained, when forfeited, by the means by which it was originally gained. Andthe strange phenomenon was obviously present to his clear and candidmind, though he treated it as one which is disappearing, and must atlength pass away, that precisely here in England, where the onlyreligious authority he recognises has been thrown off, the hold ofreligion on public interest is most effective and most obstinatelytenacious. 

What is the history of this? What is the explanation of it? Why is itthat where "authority, " as he understands it, has been longestparamount and undisputed, the public place and public force ofreligion have most disappeared; and that a "dozen men taken at randomin the streets" of London find it easier, with all their varioussects, to work together on a religious basis than a dozen men taken atrandom from the streets of Catholic Paris or Rome? Indeed, the publicfeeling towards himself, expressed in so many ways in the last fewweeks, might suggest a question not undeserving of his thoughts. Themass of Englishmen are notoriously anti-Popish and anti-Roman. Theirantipathies on this subject are profound, and not always reasonable. They certainly do not here halt between two opinions, or think thatone creed is as good as another. What is it which has made so many ofthem, still retaining all their intense dislike to the system whichCardinal Newman has accepted, yet welcome so heartily his honours init, notwithstanding that he has passed from England to Rome, and thathe owes so much of what he is to England? Is it that they think itdoes not matter what a man believes, and whether a man turns Papist?Or is it not that, in spite of all that would repel and estrange, inspite of the oppositions of argument and the inconsistencies ofspeculation, they can afford to recognise in him, as in a highexample, what they most sincerely believe in and most deeply prize, and can pay him the tribute of their gratitude and honour, even whenunconvinced by his controversial reasonings, and unsatisfied by thetheories which he has proposed to explain the perplexing andrefractory anomalies of Church history? Is it not that with history, inexorable and unalterable behind them, condemning and justifying, supporting and warning all sides in turn, thoughtful men feel how mucheasier it is to point out and deplore our disasters than to see a waynow to set them right? Is it not also that there are in the ChristianChurch bonds of affinity, subtler, more real and more prevailing thaneven the fatal legacies of the great schisms? Is it not that thesympathies which unite the author of the _Parochial Sermons_ and theinterpreter of St. Athanasius with the disciples of Andrewes, and Ken, and Bull, of Butler and Wilson, are as strong and natural as thebarriers which outwardly keep them asunder are to human eyeshopelessly insurmountable?

XXX

CARDINAL NEWMAN'S COURSE[34]

 [34] _Guardian_, 13th August 1890. 

The long life is closed. And men, according to their knowledge andintelligence, turn to seek for some governing idea or aspect of things, by which to interpret the movements and changes of a course which, inspite of its great changes, is felt at bottom to have been a uniformand consistent one. For it seems that, at starting, he is at onceintolerant, even to harshness, to the Roman Church, and tolerant, though not sympathetic, to the English; then the parts are reversed, and he is intolerant to the English and tolerant to the Roman; and thenat last, when he finally anchored in the Roman Church, he is seenas--not tolerant, for that would involve dogmatic points on which hewas most jealous, but--sympathetic in all that was of interest toEngland, and ready to recognise what was good and high in the EnglishChurch. 

Is not the ultimate key to Newman's history his keen and profound senseof the life, society, and principles of action presented in the NewTestament? To this New Testament life he saw, opposed and in contrast, the ways and assumptions of English life, religious as well as secular. He saw that the organisation of society had been carried, and was stillbeing carried, to great and wonderful perfection; only it was theperfection of a society and way of life adapted to the present world, and having its ends here; only it was as different as anything can befrom the picture which the writers of the New Testament, consciouslyand unconsciously, give of themselves and their friends. Here was aChurch, a religion, a "Christian nation, " professing to be identical inspirit and rules of faith and conduct with the Church and religion ofthe Gospels and Epistles; and what was the identity, beyond certainphrases and conventional suppositions? He could not see a trace inEnglish society of that simple and severe hold of the unseen and thefuture which is the colour and breath, as well as the outward form, ofthe New Testament life. Nothing could be more perfect, nothing granderand nobler, than all the current arrangements for this life; itsjustice and order and increasing gentleness, its widening sympathiesbetween men; but it was all for the perfection and improvement of thislife; it would all go on, if what we experience now was our only sceneand destiny. This perpetual antithesis haunted him, when he knew it, orwhen he did not. Against it the Church ought to be the perpetualprotest, and the fearless challenge, as it was in the days of the NewTestament. But the English Church had drunk in, he held, too deeply thetemper, ideas, and laws of an ambitious and advancing civilisation; somuch so as to be unfaithful to its special charge and mission. Theprophet had ceased to rebuke, warn, and suffer; he had thrown in hislot with those who had ceased to be cruel and inhuman, but who thoughtonly of making their dwelling-place as secure and happy as they could. The Church had become respectable, comfortable, sensible, temperate, liberal; jealous about the forms of its creeds, equally jealous of itssecular rights, interested in the discussion of subordinate questions, and becoming more and more tolerant of differences; ready for works ofbenevolence and large charity, in sympathy with the agricultural poor, open-handed in its gifts; a willing fellow-worker with society inkindly deeds, and its accomplice in secularity. All this was admirable, but it was not the life of the New Testament, and it was _that_ whichfilled his thoughts. The English Church had exchanged religion forcivilisation, the first century for the nineteenth, the New Testamentas it is written, for a counterfeit of it interpreted by Paley or Mr. Simeon; and it seemed to have betrayed its trust. 

Form after form was tried by him, the Christianity of Evangelicalism, the Christianity of Whately, the Christianity of Hawkins, theChristianity of Keble and Pusey; it was all very well, but it was notthe Christianity of the New Testament and of the first ages. He wrotethe _Church of the Fathers_ to show they were not merely evidences ofreligion, but really living men; that they could and did live as theytaught, and what was there like the New Testament or even the firstages now? Alas! there was nothing completely like them; but of allunlike things, the Church of England with its "smug parsons, " andpony-carriages for their wives and daughters, seemed to him the mostunlike: more unlike than the great unreformed Roman Church, with itsstrange, unscriptural doctrines and its undeniable crimes, and itsalliance, wherever it could, with the world. But at least the RomanChurch had not only preserved, but maintained at full strength throughthe centuries to our day two things of which the New Testament wasfull, and which are characteristic of it--devotion and self-sacrifice. The crowds at a pilgrimage, a shrine, or a "pardon" were much more likethe multitudes who followed our Lord about the hills of Galilee--likethem probably in that imperfect faith which we call superstition--thananything that could be seen in the English Church, even if theSalvation Army were one of its instruments. And the spirit whichgoverned the Roman Church had prevailed on men to make the sacrifice ofcelibacy a matter of course, as a condition of ministering in a regularand systematic way not only to the souls, but to the bodies of men, notonly for the Priesthood, but for educational Brotherhoods, and Sistersof the poor and of hospitals. Devotion and sacrifice, prayer andself-denying charity, in one word sanctity, are at once on the surfaceof the New Testament and interwoven with all its substance. He recoiledfrom a representation of the religion of the New Testament which to hiseye was without them. He turned to where, in spite of every otherdisadvantage, he thought he found them. In S. Filippo Neri he couldfind a link between the New Testament and progressive civilisation. Hecould find no S. Filippo--so modern and yet so Scriptural--when hesought at home. 

His mind, naturally alive to all greatness, had early been impressedwith the greatness of the Church of Rome. But in his early days it wasthe greatness of Anti-Christ. Then came the change, and his sense ofgreatness was satisfied by the commanding and undoubting attitude ofthe Roman system, by the completeness of its theory, by the sweep ofits claims and its rule, by the even march of its vast administration. It could not and it did not escape him, that the Roman Church, with allthe good things which it had, was, as a whole, as unlike the Church ofthe New Testament and of the first ages as the English. He recognisedit frankly, and built up a great theory to account for the fact, incorporating and modernising great portions of the received Romanexplanations of the fact. But what won his heart and his enthusiasm wasone thing; what justified itself to his intellect was another. And itwas the reproduction, partial, as it might be, yet real andcharacteristic, in the Roman Church of the life and ways of the NewTestament, which was the irresistible attraction that tore him from theassociations and the affections of half a lifetime. 

The final break with the English Church was with much heat andbitterness; and both sides knew too much each of the other to warrantthe language used on each side. The English Church had received toomuch loyal and invaluable service from him in teaching and example tohave insulted him, as many of its chief authorities did, with thecharges of dishonesty and bad faith; his persecutors forgot that alittle effort on his part might, if he had been what they called him, and had really been a traitor, have formed a large and compact party, whose secession might have caused fatal damage. And he, too, knew toomuch of the better side of English religious life to justify the fierceinvective and sarcasm with which he assailed for a time the EnglishChurch as a mere system of comfortable and self-deceiving worldliness. 

But as time went over him in his new position two things madethemselves felt. One was, that though there was a New Testament life, lived in the Roman Church with conspicuous truth and reality, yet theRoman Church, like the English, was administered and governed bymen--men with passions and faults, men of mixed characters--who had, like their English contemporaries and rivals, ends and rules of actionnot exactly like those of the New Testament. The Roman Church had toaccept, as much as the English, the modern conditions of social andpolitical life, however different in outward look from those of theSermon on the Mount. The other was the increasing sense that thecivilisation of the West was as a whole, and notwithstanding grievousdrawbacks, part of God's providential government, a noble andbeneficent thing, ministering graciously to man's peace and order, which Christians ought to recognise as a blessing of their times suchas their fathers had not, for which they ought to be thankful, andwhich, if they were wise, they would put to what, in his phrase, was an"Apostolical" use. In one of the angelical hymns in the _Dream ofGerontius_, he dwells on the Divine goodness which led men to found "ahousehold and a fatherland, a city and a state" with an earnestness ofsympathy, recalling the enumeration of the achievements of humanthought and hand, and the arts of civil and social life--[Greek: kaiphthegma kai aenemoen phronaema kai astynomous orgas]--dwelt on sofondly by Aeschylus and Sophocles. 

The force with which these two things made themselves felt as age cameon--the disappointments attending his service to the Church, and thegrandeur of the physical and social order of the world and its Divinesanction in spite of all that is evil and all that is so shortlived init--produced a softening in his ways of thought and speech. Never for amoment did his loyalty and obedience to his Church, even when mosttried, waver and falter. The thing is inconceivable to any one who everknew him, and the mere suggestion would be enough to make him blazeforth in all his old fierceness and power. But perfectly satisfied ofhis position, and with his duties clearly defined, he could allow largeand increasing play, in the leisure of advancing age, to his naturalsympathies, and to the effect of the wonderful spectacle of the worldaround him. He was, after all, an Englishman; and with all hisquickness to detect and denounce what was selfish and poor in Englishideas and action, and with all the strength of his deep antipathies, his chief interests were for things English--English literature, English social life, English politics, English religion. He liked toidentify himself, as far as it was possible, with things English, evenwith things that belonged to his own first days. He republished hisOxford sermons and treatises. He prized his honorary fellowship atTrinity; he enjoyed his visit to Oxford, and the welcome which he metthere. He discerned how much the English Church counted for in thefight going on in England for the faith in Christ. There was in allthat he said and did a gentleness, a forbearance, a kindlyfriendliness, a warm recognition of the honour paid him by hiscountrymen, ever since the _Apologia_ had broken down the prejudiceswhich had prevented Englishmen from doing him justice. As with hischief antagonist at Oxford, Dr. Hawkins, advancing years brought withthem increasing gentleness, and generosity, and courtesy. But throughall this there was perceptible to those who watched a pathetic yearningfor something which was not to be had: a sense, resigned--for so it wasordered--but deep and piercing, how far, not some of us, but all of us, are from the life of the New Testament: how much there is for religionto do, and how little there seems to be to do it. 

XXXI

CARDINAL NEWMAN'S NATURALNESS[35]

 [35] _Guardian_, 20th August 1890. 

Every one feels what is meant when we speak of a person's ways being"natural, " in contrast to being artificial, or overstrained, orstudied, or affected. But it is easier to feel what is meant than toexplain and define it. We sometimes speak as if it were a mere qualityof manner; as if it belonged to the outside show of things, and denotedthe atmosphere, clear and transparent, through which they are viewed. It corresponds to what is lucid in talk and style, and what ethicallyis straightforward and unpretentious. But it is something much morethan a mere surface quality. When it is real and part of the wholecharacter, and not put on from time to time for effect, it reaches along way down to what is deepest and most significant in a man's moralnature. It is connected with the sense of truth, with honestself-judgment, with habits of self-discipline, with the repression ofvanity, pride, egotism. It has no doubt to do with good taste and goodmanners, but it has as much to do with good morals--with the resolutehabit of veracity with oneself--with the obstinate preference forreality over show, however tempting--with the wholesome power of beingable to think little about oneself. 

It is common to speak of the naturalness and ease of Cardinal Newman'sstyle in writing. It is, of course, the first thing that attractsnotice when we open one of his books; and there are people who think itbald and thin and dry. They look out for longer words, and granderphrases, and more involved constructions, and neater epigrams. Theyexpect a great theme to be treated with more pomp and majesty, and theyare disappointed. But the majority of English readers seem to be agreedin recognising the beauty and transparent flow of his language, whichmatches the best French writing in rendering with sureness and withouteffort the thought of the writer. But what is more interesting thaneven the formation of such a style--a work, we may be sure, notaccomplished without much labour--is the man behind the style. For theman and the style are one in this perfect naturalness and ease. Any onewho has watched at all carefully the Cardinal's career, whether in olddays or later, must have been struck with this feature of hischaracter, his naturalness, the freshness and freedom with which headdressed a friend or expressed an opinion, the absence of allmannerism and formality; and, where he had to keep his dignity, bothhis loyal obedience to the authority which enjoined it and thehalf-amused, half-bored impatience that he should be the person roundwhom all these grand doings centred. It made the greatest difference inhis friendships whether his friends met him on equal terms, or whetherthey brought with them too great conventional deference or solemnity ofmanner. "So and so is a very good fellow, but he is not a man to talkto in your shirt sleeves, " was his phrase about an over-logical andover-literal friend. Quite aware of what he was to his friends and tothe things with which he was connected, and ready with a certainquickness of temper which marked him in old days to resent anythingunbecoming done to his cause or those connected with it, he would notallow any homage to be paid to himself. He was by no means disposed toallow liberties to be taken or to put up with impertinence; for allthat bordered on the unreal, for all that was pompous, conceited, affected, he had little patience; but almost beyond all these was hisdisgust at being made the object of foolish admiration. He protestedwith whimsical fierceness against being made a hero or a sage; he waswhat he was, he said, and nothing more; and he was inclined to be rudewhen people tried to force him into an eminence which he refused. Withhis profound sense of the incomplete and the ridiculous in this world, and with a humour in which the grotesque and the pathetic sides of lifewere together recognised at every moment, he never hesitated to admithis own mistakes--his "floors" as he called them. All this ease andfrankness with those whom he trusted, which was one of the lessonswhich he learnt from Hurrell Froude, an intercourse which implied agood deal of give and take--all this satisfied his love of freedom, hissense of the real. It was his delight to give himself free play withthose whom he could trust; to feel that he could talk with "openheart, " understood without explaining, appealing for a response whichwould not fail, though it was not heard. He could be stiff enough withthose who he thought were acting a part, or pretending to more thanthey could perform. But he believed--what was not very easy to believebeforehand--that he could win the sympathy of his countrymen, thoughnot their agreement with him; and so, with characteristic naturalnessand freshness, he wrote the _Apologia_. 

XXXII

LORD BLACHFORD[36]

 [36] _Guardian_, 27th Nov. 1889. 

Lord Blachford, whose death was announced last week, belonged to ageneration of Oxford men of whom few now survive, and who, of verydifferent characters and with very different careers and histories, hadmore in common than any set of contemporaries at Oxford since theirtime. Speaking roughly, they were almost the last product of the oldtraining at public school and at college, before the new reforms setin; of a training confessedly imperfect and in some ways deplorablydefective, but with considerable elements in it of strength andmanliness, with keen instincts of contempt for all that savoured ofaffectation and hollowness, and with a sort of largeness and freedomabout it, both in its outlook and its discipline, which suited vigorousand self-reliant natures in an exciting time, when debate ran high andthe gravest issues seemed to be presenting themselves to Englishsociety. The reformed system which has taken its place at Oxfordcriticises, not without some justice, the limitations of the older one;the narrow range of its interests, the few books which men read, andthe minuteness with which they were "got up. " But if these men did notlearn all that a University ought to teach its students, they at leastlearned two things. They learned to work hard, and they learned to makefull use of what they knew. They framed an ideal of practical life, which was very variously acted upon, but which at any rate aimed atbreadth of grasp and generosity of purpose, and at being thorough. Thisknot of men, who lived a good deal together, were recognised at thetime as young men of much promise, and they looked forward to life witheagerness and high aspiration. They have fulfilled their promise; theirnames are mixed up with all the recent history of England; they havefilled its great places and governed its policy during a large part ofthe Queen's long reign. Their names are now for the most part things ofthe past--Sidney Herbert, Lord Canning, Lord Dalhousie, Lord Elgin, Lord Cardwell, the Wilberforces, Mr. Hope Scott, Archbishop Tait. Butthey still have their representatives among us--Mr. Gladstone, LordSelborne, Lord Sherbrooke, Sir Thomas Acland, Cardinal Manning. It isnot often that a University generation or two can produce such a listof names of statesmen and rulers; and the list might easily beenlarged. 

To this generation Frederic Rogers belonged, not the leastdistinguished among his contemporaries; and he was early brought underan influence likely to stimulate in a high degree whatever powers a manpossessed, and to impress a strong character with elevated and enduringideas of life and duty. Mr. Newman, with Mr. Hurrell Froude and Mr. Robert Wilberforce, had recently been appointed tutors of their collegeby Dr. Copleston. They were in the first eagerness of their enthusiasmto do great things with the college, and the story goes that Mr. Newman, on the look-out for promising pupils, wrote to an Eton friend, asking him to recommend some good Eton men for admission at Oriel. Frederic Rogers, so the story goes, was one of those mentioned; at anyrate, he entered at Oriel, and became acquainted with Mr. Newman as atutor, and the admiration and attachment of the undergraduate ripenedinto the most unreserved and affectionate friendship of the grownman--a friendship which has lasted through all storms and difficulties, and through strong differences of opinion, till death only has endedit. From Mr. Newman his pupil caught that earnest devotion to the causeof the Church which was supreme with him through life. He enteredheartily into Mr. Newman's purpose to lift the level of the EnglishChurch and its clergy. While Mr. Newman at Oxford was fighting thebattle of the English Church, there was no one who was a closer friendthan Rogers, no one in whom Mr. Newman had such trust, none whosejudgment he so valued, no one in whose companionship he so delighted;and the master's friendship was returned by the disciple with a nobleand tender, and yet manly honesty. There came, as we know, times whichstrained even that friendship; when the disciple, just at the momentwhen the master most needed and longed for sympathy and counsel, had tochoose between his duty to his Church and the claims and ties offriendship. He could not follow in the course which his master andfriend had found inevitable; and that deepest and most delightfulfriendship had to be given up. But it was given up, not indeed withoutgreat suffering on both sides, but without bitterness or unworthythoughts. The friend had seen too closely the greatness and purity ofhis master's character to fail in tenderness and loyalty, even when hethought his master going most wrong. He recognised that the error, deplorable as he thought it, was the mistake of a lofty and unselfishsoul; and in the height of the popular outcry against him he cameforward, with a distant and touching reverence, to take his oldfriend's part and rebuke the clamour. And at length the time came whendisagreements were left long behind and each person had finally takenhis recognised place; and then the old ties were knit up again. Itcould not be the former friendship of every day and of absolute andunreserved confidence. But it was the old friendship of affection andrespect renewed, and pleasure in the interchange of thoughts. It was afriendship of the antique type, more common, perhaps, even in the lastcentury than with us, but enriched with Christian hopes and Christianconvictions. 

Lord Blachford, in spite of his brilliant Oxford reputation, and thoughhe was a singularly vigorous writer, with wide interests and veryindependent thought, has left nothing behind him in the way ofliterature. This was partly because he very early became a man ofaffairs; partly that his health interfered with habits of study. Itused to be told at Oxford that when he was working for his Double Firsthe could scarcely use his eyes, and had to learn much of his work bybeing read to. The result was that he was not a great reader; and a manought to be a reader who is to be a writer. But, besides this, therewas a strongly marked feature in his character which told in the samedirection. There was a curious modesty about him which formed acontrast with other points; with a readiness and even eagerness to putforth and develop his thoughts on matters that interested him, with aperfect consciousness of his remarkable powers of statement andargument, with a constitutional impetuosity blended with caution whichshowed itself when anything appealed to his deeper feelings or calledfor his help; yet with all these impelling elements, his instinct wasalways to shrink from putting himself forward, except when it was amatter of duty. He accepted recognition when it came, but he neverclaimed it. And this reserve, which marked his social life, kept himback from saying in a permanent form much that he had to say, and thatwas really worth saying. Like many of the distinguished men of his day, he was occasionally a journalist. We have been reminded by the _Times_that he at one time wrote for that paper. And he was one of the men towhose confidence and hope in the English Church the _Guardian_ owes itsexistence. 

His life was the uneventful one of a diligent and laborious publicservant, and then of a landlord keenly alive to the responsibilities ofhis position. He passed through various subordinate public employments, and finally succeeded Mr. Herman Merivale as permanent Under-Secretaryfor the Colonies. It is a great post, but one of which the work is donefor the most part out of sight. Colonial Secretaries in Parliament comeand go, and have the credit, often quite justly, of this or thatpolicy. But the public know little of the permanent official who keepsthe traditions and experience of the department, whose judgment isalways an element, often a preponderating element, in eventfuldecisions, and whose pen drafts the despatches which go forth in thename of the Government. Sir Frederic Rogers, as he became in time, hadto deal with some of the most serious colonial questions which aroseand were settled while he was at the Colonial Office. He took greatpains, among other things, to remove, or at least diminish, thedifficulties which beset the _status_ of the Colonial Church andclergy, and to put its relations to the Church at home on a just andreasonable footing. There is a general agreement as to the industry andconspicuous ability with which his part of the work was done. Mr. Gladstone set an admirable example in recognising in an unexpected wayfaithful but unnoticed services, and at the same time paid a meritedhonour to the permanent staff of the public offices, when he named SirFrederic Rogers for a peerage. 

Lord Blachford, for so he became on his retirement from the ColonialOffice, cannot be said to have quitted entirely public life, as healways, while his strength lasted, acknowledged public claims on histime and industry. He took his part in two or three laboriousCommissions, doing the same kind of valuable yet unseen work which hehad done in office, guarding against blunders, or retrieving them, giving direction and purpose to inquiries, suggesting expedients. Buthis main employment was now at his own home. He came late in life tothe position of a landed proprietor, and he at once set before himselfas his object the endeavour to make his estate as perfect as it couldbe made--perfect in the way in which a naturally beautiful country andhis own good taste invited him to make it, but beyond all, as perfectas might be, viewed as the dwelling-place of his tenants and thelabouring poor. A keen and admiring student of political economy, hissympathies were always with the poor. He was always ready to challengeassumptions, such as are often loosely made for the convenience of thewell-to-do. The solicitude which always pursued him was the thought ofhis cottages, and it was not satisfied till the last had been put ingood order. The same spirit prompted him to allow labourers who couldmanage the undertaking to rent pasture for a few cows; and theexperiment, he thought, had succeeded. The idea of justice and thegeneral welfare had too strong a hold on his mind to allow him to besentimental in dealing with the difficult questions connected withland. But if his labourers found him thoughtful of their comfort hisfarmers found him a good landlord--strict where he met with dishonestyand carelessness, but open-minded and reasonable in understanding theirpoints of view, and frank, equitable, and liberal in meeting theirwishes. Disclaiming all experience of country matters, and not mindingif he fell into some mistakes, he made his care of his estate a modelof the way in which a good man should discharge his duties to the land. 

His was one of those natures which have the gift of inspiringconfidence in all who come near him; all who had to do with him feltthat they could absolutely trust him. The quality which was at thebottom of his character as a man was his unswerving truthfulness; butupon this was built up a singularly varied combination of elements notoften brought together, and seldom in such vigour and activity. Keen, rapid, penetrating, he was quick in detecting anything that rung hollowin language or feeling; and he did not care to conceal his dislike andcontempt. But no one threw himself with more genuine sympathy into thereal interests of other people. No matter what it was, ethical orpolitical theory, the course of a controversy, the arrangement of atrust-deed, the oddities of a character, the marvels of naturalscience, he was always ready to go with his companion as far as hechose to go, and to take as much trouble as if the question started hadbeen his own. Where his sense of truth was not wounded he was mostconsiderate and indulgent; he seemed to keep through life hisschoolboy's amused tolerance for mischief that was not vicious. No oneentered more heartily into the absurdities of a grotesque situation; ofno one could his friends be so sure that he would miss no point of agood story; and no one took in at once more completely or with deeperfeeling the full significance of some dangerous incident in publicaffairs, or discerned more clearly the real drift of confused andambiguous tendencies. He was conscious of the power of his intellect, and he liked to bring it to bear on what was before him; he liked toprobe things to the bottom, and see how far his companion inconversation was able to go; but ready as he was with either argumentor banter he never, unless provoked, forced the proof of his power onothers. For others, indeed, of all classes and characters, so that theywere true, he had nothing but kindness, geniality, forbearance, theready willingness to meet them on equal terms. Those who had theprivilege of his friendship remember how they were kept up in theirstandard and measure of duty by the consciousness of his opinion, hisjudgment, his eagerness to feel with them, his fearless, though itmight be reluctant, expression of disagreement It was, indeed, thatvery marked yet most harmonious combination of severity and tendernesswhich gave such interest to his character. A strong love of justice, adeep and unselfish and affectionate gentleness and patience, arehappily qualities not too rare. But to have known one at once soseverely just and so indulgently tender and affectionate makes a markin a man's life which he forgets at his peril. 

THE END

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