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THE LIFE
OF
EGBERT RODOLPH SUFFIELD.
THE LIFE
ROBERT RODOLPH SUFFIELD.
annoso famam qui derogat aevo,
Qui vates ad vera vocat.
Lucan, PJtars, 9,
LONDON:
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE,
14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN;
AND 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH.
1893.
PREFACE.
THIS life is written by one whose acquaintance
with Mr. Suffield began in 1864, when he was the
popular and much-loved Dominican missioner, and
closed for the present only within a few days of
his death as a veteran in the ranks of the Unitarian
ministry. Whatever be its imperfections, or possible
mistakes, it has at least one merit, that which the
subject of it would have valued the most it is
truthful. It is neither a panegyric nor a criticism,
but the story of a fallible man, who sought to speak
the truth as he knew it, and at the same time live
in charity with all.
" My personal history," he once wrote, " w r ill
explain the mixture of opposing feelings with which
I touch the Eoman Catholic question, viz., tender-
ness, gratitude, and love towards Eoman Catholics
I have personally known and heard of, along with
a great dislike and dread of the system." The
writer of this memoir trusts that he has carried
into effect what would have been Mr. Suffield's wish,
1063350
and that, painful as the story must prove to his former
co-religionists, there will be found in it no word
which will hurt the feelings of private friendship or
insult the religious convictions of those he left.
But the true story of his change of faith, and his
motives and troubles at the time, is best told in his
correspondence with Dr. Martineau, who in the sorest
trouble gave him invaluable help and encouragement.
For the letters which he has kindly contributed, and
for leave to publish his own in reply, the sincerest
thanks are due not only from the writer, but from all
interested in the subject of the memoir.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER.
PAGE.
I.
Family and Early Training
1
II.
Seminarist and Priest
11
III.
Friar Preacher of the Order of St. Dominic
28
IV.
The Beginnings of Doubt
43
v.
The Conflict Within
56
VI.
Help Sought from Outside
65
VII.
First Intimation to the Public
81
VIII.
Last Difficulties and Decision
95
IX.
Questions for the Present and Future
115
X.
Remonstrances and Explanations
131
XI.
Alone in the World
146
XII.
Neither Anglican nor Evangelical ...
171
XIII.
What Old Friends said of him
191
XIV.
Ministry among Unitarians
211
XV.
His last Days and Death
233
XVI.
Funeral and Obituary Notices
248
APPENDIX.
Feuianism and the English People
267
An Eclectic View of Roman Catholicism
285
Farewell Sermons Cosmic Religion
295
Spiritual Religion
304
The Duty of Thought: a Sermon
313
Last Prayers in Public Service
322
POSTSCRIPT.
Letter to the British and Foreign Unitarian
Association
326
CHAPTER I.
FAMILY AND EAKLY TEAINING.
THERE lived, about a hundred years ago, in the
neighbourhood of Norwich, two brothers of the
name of Suffield ; they came of an old Norfolk family
who had suffered for their religion, and were both
by inheritance and by conviction, members of the
Roman Catholic Church, openly and devoutly adher-
ing to it at a time when all kinds of civil and social
penalties weighed upon its professors. At their houses
many French emigrant priests found, from time to
time, refuge and hospitality.
Of the two brothers, Thomas, the younger, died a
bachelor. He was, writes his great-nephew, " a man
of singular benevolence," and his will, bearing date
1800, is a confirmation of this family tradition about
him. It is not so much the amount left in charity,
but the number of institutions and individuals to
whom he leaves small legacies, which shows the man's
kindly heart, and justifies the opinion entertained of
him to the third generation.
Robert, the elder brother, was twice married ; first
to Anna Bayley, by whom he was connected with the
well-known Roman Catholic families of Constable and
Maxwell, and after her death to Anastasia D'Arcy, of
Clifton Castle, Gal way. By the first wife he had two
sons and a daughter; by the second two daughters
and a son. The descendants of all, so far as can be
traced, are now Protestants.
George, the second son, and father of our Eobert
Eodolph Suffield, was educated at a school for the
sons of the Eoman Catholic gentry, which had been
opened at Battersea, in a house lent for the purpose
by the Earl of Shrewsbury. This is said to have been
the first school of its kind in England, it having been
hitherto the custom for all who could afford it to
send their sons abroad.
George Suffield, as a young man, ceased to be a
communicant, and adopted the liberal philosophic views
prevalent in his time in the more cultured society.
Later in life he was an avowed Protestant, and many
Eoman Catholics joined their prayers with his son,
trusting and hoping that the father of so fervent and
devoted a priest would at the last repent and be
reconciled with the Church of his fathers.
A Catholic nobleman, writing in the year 1863, when
for some reason perhaps the approach of death
special efforts were made to this intent, says, " I will
do anything in my power to assist in the conversion
of your poor aged father. Your account of him is
quite a romantic history, and I feel much interest in
him as connected with my family, and also that he
had not given up the practice of his religion when
at our place sixty years ago. I most fervently pray
that your good wishes and hopes may be realised, and
that Heaven will kindly listen to the many prayers
which will be and are poured forth in his behalf. All
3
my young ones will pray for him. Your poor father
is another instance of Catholics whose families, after
nobly suffering every persecution for their faith, no
sooner do they enjoy a little sunshine and worldly
prosperity, than they forget the struggle they have
gone through, and give up that which before they
would gladly have died for." Which means, that as
long as their religion was under a disadvantage, they
held by it as under an obligation of honour and
chivalry, an obligation from which the removal of
Catholic disabilities set them free.
While his sons were under his care he seems to
have maintained a philosophic impartiality towards
all the creeds, and naturally had special regard for
the religious traditions of his family, but, perhaps,
equal respect for the Established Church of his
country. The Savoy Vicar of Eousseau's story was
his model priest, a man who accepted the outward
forms of faith and worship which custom imposed
upon him, but made use of them only so far as
they could be made helpful to the better service of
humanity.
He married Susan TuUey Bowen, a Protestant lady,
by whom he had two sons George, born about 1816,
and Eobert, the subject of our memoir.
George, in time, went to Cambridge, where he took
his degree in 1842, having seemingly had no scruples
on the question of religion. He stood twenty-eighth
on the list of Wranglers, and on migrating to Clare,
was elected a Fellow on the foundation of Mr. Borage,
reserved to natives of Norwich. This Fellowship is
held on condition of taking Orders within seven years,
which being unable to do, he resigned in 1850, and
died of small-pox in the spring of 1871, shortly after
his younger brother's secession from the Roman
Church. He was a man of retiring disposition, a
vegetarian, fond of mathematics and music, and held
in much account in the very few homes in which he
was intimate. In 1863 he published a pamphlet on
"Synthetic Division in Arithmetic,"* "an ingenious
and independent speculation leading to great simpli-
fication of certain cases of division," as the Athenceum
remarks. It is but a few pages in length, but sufficient
to show that the wnriter was a man of some originality
of thought, and specially interested in the cause of
education. In his preface he calls attention to the
curious anomaly that " at the present moment every
student at the University is allowed to complete his
academic course and take his degree without being
required to undergo any University examination in
the ' principles ' of arithmetic, whilst the Senior
Middle Class candidates, boys under eighteen years
of age, are expressly required by a grace of the
senate to pass an examination in the principles as
well as the practise." In conclusion he commends
the example of one college where lately "a separate
and searching paper in the theory and practise of
arithmetic" had been introduced, and, "ere long,"
he adds, " the lecturers in every college of the
* Synthetic Division in Arithmetic, with some Introductory
Remarks on the Period of Circulating Decimals, by George
Suffield, M.A., Clare College, Cambridge : Macmillaii & Co., 1863.
5
University will follow an example fraught with in-
calculable advantage to the mathematical education
of the whole country."
George never professed Eomanism, and would no
doubt have called himself a lay member of the
Church of England, though looked upon as singular
in his religious views as in other respects. Evidently,
from the little we know of him, he was like his
brother, an individual, a man who went his own
way of life and thought, and had no care to conform
either his habits or opinions to the prevailing fashion.
Our Eobert Suffield was born at Vevey, on the
Lake of Geneva, on the 5th of October, 1821, in the
house now occupied as the club, "Cercle duLeman."
His father, though a younger son, was in independent
circumstances, and at this time in the habit of travel-
ling in England and abroad, taking a furnished house
for a year or six months at any place which suited
his fancy or convenience. The little son was baptised
in the house by one Sebastian Martinez, a lay
relative, who was stopping with them at the time.
The ceremony would have consisted simply of the
pouring of water on the child while repeating the
form, "I baptise thee in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Probably
neither priest nor Anglican clergyman was to be had
at Vevey, otherwise it is not clear why resort was
had to the services of a layman. Shortly afterwards
the family returned, and he was baptised again for
legal purposes in his own parish church, St. Peter's,
Mancroft, at Norwich (December 27th, 1821).
It was near to this church that the Jerninghams,
Suffields, and Bedingfields purchased a site and erected
a chapel when the Duke of Norfolk conformed, and in
consequence deprived the Norwich Koinan Catholics
of the use of his private chapel for their services.
But the mother would of course have attended hex-
own parish church when in Norwich, and have taken
her sons with her. It was their father's principle
that " young people should be quite uninfluenced as
to religious belief, and that they should select their
religion when they arrived at a ripe age." They were
consequently brought up in equal regard for the faith
of their mother and that which had been their father's,
and it was left to each to decide in after years as to
whether he would call himself Catholic, Anglican, or
Protestant.
Eobert never went to school, but accompanied his
parents in their travels in England and on the con-
tinent. His youthful experiences must have been
varied and unusual, for tourists as yet were few, and
the provision for their accommodation and progress
often of the roughest. " In 1825 a Continental tour
consisted chiefly of troublesome and costly incidents
with vetturinos, guides, and hotel keepers, road acci-
dents and brigands, real or imaginary."* Nor was his
father content that his son should be merely a witness
or passive companion of their many adventures. He
had decided and peculiar views of education, which he
adopted, it would seem, from Eousseau, and wished
to train his sons to be self-reliant, and independent
* Mozley'g Reminiscences, vol. I., p. 32.
and observant. He objected to their learning by
heart, which in after-life they often regretted, and
made it his aim to educate them as much by life as
by formal lessons. " In pursuance of this idea he
sent Eodolph alone, when about fourteen years of
age, to make a tour on the Loire, giving him letters
of introduction to families known to him living on
the route he had drawn up. The boy felt the honour
very much, but it was a fearful joy for so young a lad.
At one place he attracted the surprised attention of
the gendarmes owing to his having very little luggage
besides a pistol. In one town where he stayed a fete
was taking place, and the municipality gave a ball,
sending tickets of invitation to visitors, and great
was the pride of the English boy when one arrived
for Monsieur Suffield also." So writes one who had
the best opportunities of learning all about his early
life, and adds, " At Norwich the Suffields were inti-
mate with various well-known Unitarian families,
such as the Taylors, Eeeves, and Austins; Lucy
Austin, afterwards Lady Duff Gordon, was a play-
mate of Bodolph's, and about the same age."
"But he had a liking for books and pursuits far
beyond his age. Tom Paine 's ' Age of Reason,' for
example. When the family were on a visit to London
he interested himself in the Chartist movement, then
at its height " (he would be about sixteen at the time),
"and was present at meetings, sometimes in obscure
neighbourhoods, at which very fiery speeches were
made, and threats of violence uttered against the
upper classes. Once he was in some danger, for a
8
man got up and said he saw a little aristocrat among
those present. Some of the audience became angry,
but he was not dismayed, spoke up and said his heart
was with the people, and so reassured, and judging
by the youth of the intruder that he was not there to
spy upon them, he was left unmolested. He doubted
whether his father knew of these little excursions ; if
he had done so he would not have interfered, unless
he had judged it absolutely necessary, as his plan was
to allow his sons the greatest independence."
In 1841 he followed his brother to Cambridge,
where he was admitted a Commoner of Peterhouse.
Cambridge was preferred to Oxford because no signa-
ture of articles was required for matriculation, but he
attended regularly the College Chapel, and even when
visiting at Sawston Hall, where a Mr. Huddlestone,
an old friend of the family, resided, and had a private
chapel, he writes that he went rather to see his father's
friend than to attend mass.
There can be no doubt that at this time he was
generally regarded as a member of the Church of
England. The present Lord Kelvin, then William
Thomson, who was his class-mate at college, writes
of him :
" To the best of my knowledge none of us thought
he was a Roman Catholic. We all, I am sure, believed
him to be an earnest, religious student ; and probably
we thought him very ' High Church.' He was quite
out of the run of undergraduates, and did not mix
much in their society. He was undoubtedly, to our
young eyes, very eccentric, but he was thoroughly
9
respected by all. He had, I believe, a very friendly
feeling for myself, which I certainly reciprocated.
From all I recollect I think it is probably true that
he was a sincere and loyal member of the new High
Church party of that time, but that he had strong
inclinations towards the Eoman Catholic Church,
without, however, feeling himself to be a member
of that Church, and not of the Church of England."
In accord with these impressions of a friend and
contemporary is his own recollection. "At Cambridge
I was in constant intercourse with the Tractarians
and Ecclesiologists, sharing all tlieir sympathies, and
my kind friend, Archdeacon Thorp, of Trinity, urged
me to take Anglican Orders."
But his time at Cambridge was cut short, partly in
consequence of losses his father sustained about this
time through the failure of some South American
investments, in which he was interested through his
brother-in-law, William Gregory, a merchant in that
country ; partly, also, by reason of his own uncertainty
as to his religious position, and he left the University
after a residence of less than two years, probably
about Easter, 1843.
It was through the Dr. Thorp mentioned above
that he was recommended to a gentleman who wanted
a private tutor for his son. He soon won the affec-
tions of this pupil, as, indeed, he did of all the young
people he had to do with as teacher, priest, or minis-
ter, and they remained intimate friends to the last.
It is thus that this gentleman, now well known in the
world as a man of wealth and influence, writes of him
10
after a lapse of nearly fifty years : " I was a very
delicate boy, unable to go to school or to sbare the
games of schoolboys. How happy he made my young
life (and the life of the ailing boy is not generally a
happy one) ; how he devoted himself, not only to
such education as I could receive, but from morning
to night to make me interested, occupied, and happy.
In 1844, instead of being anxious to get rid of his
troublesome charge when he went to see his people,
he took me with him, and we stayed some time with
his father and mother in Norwich. My remembrance
of the former is of the most pleasing kind of course
they are only the impressions of a boy of thirteen
but I think of him as a high-bred gentleman of the
old school. He was certainly a Freethinker, and
never went to church or chapel in those days. The
mother was a very kind and affectionate person of
the Evangelical school, devoted to her husband in spite
of his religious vagaries, which grieved her much."
CHAPTEE II.
SEMINAKIST AND PKIEST.
It was in 1846 that, to use his own words, he
"became a communicant in the Koman Catholic
Church." How the change in his religious position
was brought about we have no information; he was
used to think of himself as having always been a
Roman Catholic, but up to that time, like many
others, not faithful either in practice or belief to
the requirements of the Church, and he repudiated
with some warmth the inclusion of his name in a
list of " converts to Rome." On the other hand,
there is no doubt that he was looked upon as a
High Churchman, both at Cambridge and when
engaged as a private tutor, and his friend, Arch-
deacon Thorp, urged him to take Anglican Orders.
Roman Catholics, too, who knew him best, seem to
have taken a similar view, and an intimate friend
and connection of the family, expostulating with him
when his letter on Papal Infallibility appeared, writes,
" Surely it must be that you have still a little remnant
of the old Protestant feeling left," words which, to a
man who had never been a Protestant, would be with-
out meaning. And another correspondent of a few
months later date, one who urges his right of appeal
as " exceptional, seeing that we are bound by early
12
ties of family and the closest friendship, ever treating
each other with the most perfect confidence," writes,
" On looking back to the early days of your conversion,
I remember you wrote to me word that your happi-
ness was perfect, save that your imagination had still
' to pay the penalty of having been polluted with every
kind of infidel thought and teaching.' " His case was
certainly peculiar, and not to be reckoned among the
' perversions ' or ' conversions ' which were at that time
just beginning, and increased so greatly during the
next ten years. Sprung of an old Eoman Catholic
family, inheriting the traditions of a persecuted faith,
and numbering among friends and relations many
zealous adherents to it, he was brought up under the
combined influence of a free-thinking father and an
evangelical mother, taught to read and think for him-
self, and sent to a University where Anglicanism was
the only religion tolerated among the students. So
when after many struggles, of which \ve have caught
but hints in letters and conversation, but which ex-
plain both the exceptional fervour of his faith as a
priest and his later transition to a free religion,
he sought rest and surety in the Old Church of
his fathers, he felt as one returning to a home
from which he should never have been separated;
and, of course, found in the novel sense of certainty
and finality the peace and happiness which is the
boast of all sincere converts, and which they accept
as assurance of the truth of their new-found faith
an assurance which every church may claim, for there
is none which does not from time to time win the
13
waverers from other folds, and make them convinced
that itself only is the true church.
He was the guest of Dr. Newsham, then President
of Ushaw College, near Durham, when he thus openly
severed himself from all connection with Anglicanism
or Freethought, and " this remarkable man," he wrote,
" continued always my kind guide and father-like
friend." Indeed, to the very last he always spoke
with affection and regard of Ushaw and its principal
and professors, and that the same feelings were fully
reciprocated on their part, at least, as long as he
remained in their communion, we have ample evidence
in the warm invitations which from time to time
urged him to come and visit them.
It would seem that immediately on his conversion
he resolved to embrace the ecclesiastical state, but
instead of staying on at Ushaw, and there entering
upon the course of theological study, as one would
have expected under the circumstances, he for some
reason resolved to enter the famous seminary of St.
Sulpice, at Paris, and there he remained until driven
out by the revolution of 1848. It may, perhaps,
have been due to the desire to free himself from the
w T ell-meant importunities of his parents and brother,
to whom his determination to enter the Roman priest-
hood was the occasion of great grief. Certainly from
this time onwards there was very little, if any, inter-
course between them, a matter of great regret to
him afterwards. " He never spoke of his honoured
parents," one writes, "in his later years, without tears
in his eyes, and regretted bitterly the system which
14
had kept them asunder." It has been the painful
experience of many a so-called " convert," who having
broken the tenderest ties of home to follow what he
believed was the call of God, has discovered his mis-
take too late, and returned when there was no more
a home to welcome him ! During his father's last
illness, in 1868, there were some who were very
anxious that the son should see him, and endeavour
to bring him back to the faith of his childhood, but
he steadfastly refused to interfere, knowing well that
argument and persuasion would be alike useless;
perhaps, too, his own convictions were not then so
strong that he could have successfully upheld the
Eoman cause against his father's philosophical faith.
At St. Sulpice he had for a fellow-student Pere
Hyacinthe Loyson, whom years afterwards he met
at Dean Stanley's, and was immediately recognised
by him. They met again in Paris in 1878, and
continued always on terms of mutual respect, not-
withstanding the wide difference of opinion which
separated them in matters of religion. Still it may
perhaps have needed a little forbearance to receive
kindly from one who was a rebel against ecclesias-
tical authority, and could speak only for his single
self, such lofty patronage as is apparent probably to
everyone but the writer, in the following sentence
from a letter written in 1876 : " Je vous sais honnete
et droit, vous avez cherche la verite a travers des
dechirements cruels, vous pouvez la servir efficace-
ment quand vous 1'aurez trouvee pleinment," that is
to say, when you have accepted just as much and no
15
more than Pere Hyacinthe does. But a large expe-
rience had made Mr. Suffield very tolerant, and he
always entertained a friendly feeling for one with
whom he could have but small intellectual sympathy.
On leaving St. Sulpice he went to Ireland, visited
the relations of his father's stepmother in Gal way,
took a pupil for some months, and mixed freely with
priests and people. He could not towards the close
of his life recall to mind the reason of this year's
stay in Ireland; probably being received with sym-
pathy and warmth such as he could not now look
for in his English home, and finding himself among
relations and co-religionists he stayed longer than
he had first purposed. It was during this year that
he made his first intimate acquaintance of the Irish,
and all his life, as well in the Eoman Church as out
of it, he never varied in his warm regard for them
and sympathy in their aspirations after self-govern-
ment. It was a common observation with him that
the English people didn't understand the Irish, and
that from their incapacity to value rightly the ways
and words of neighbours so unlike themselves, arose
almost all the bitterness and ill-feeling which cloud
our relations.
Whatever may have been the motive of this
interruption to his theological studies and one can-
not but suspect that some lingering doubt about
the faith or his vocation to the priesthood was
at the bottom of it it came to an end after a year's
hesitation, and he returned to Ushaw after the
summer vacation of 1849, and on the 21st of Septem-
16
ber following, committed himself to the ecclesias-
tical state by the reception of the tonsure and four
minor orders. On the following day he received the
Sub-Diaconate, which carries with it the irrevocable
obligations of the priesthood. On the 25th of May,
1850, he was ordained Deacon, and on the 25th of
August Bishop Hogarth made him Priest.
From this time began twenty years of unceasing
activity on behalf of the faith to which he had at
last definitely committed himself. For ten years, as
a secular priest, and another ten as a Dominican, he
gave himself soul and body to the service of the
Church, seeking nothing in return, and receiving only
the profound respect and affectionate confidence of
multitudes, high and low, who knew his work, and
profited of his holy and sensible counsels.
Eecords of this, the busiest period of his life, are
very few, for he himself kept no diary beyond notes of
sermons and services, and his subsequent "apostacy,"
as they call it, has obscured among Eoman Catholics
the memory of his services. But one who knew him
well in later years, and had often heard him speak of
his experiences, which he did only to his most in-
timate friends, writes, " He had a house at Sedgefield
and lodgings in a farm house at Thornby, and rode to
and fro to visit the scattered dwellings of his parish-
ioners. He lived a very ascetic life, his diet and
surroundings being of the plainest description ; at one
time he tried to live on foods that required no
cooking; he slept on the ground, with a wooden
pillow for his head, to which he attributed a slight
17
deafness and a delicacy of the throat which continued
all his life. I believe it must have been about this
time that his health broke down ; those around him
thought he was in consumption, and some kind friends
took him to stay with them and nursed him till he
recovered."
After a year's apprenticeship to the work of a
parish priest at Sedgefield and Thornley, he was
called by his Bishop to join a community of secular
priests at St. Ninian's, near Wooller. He was here
with Father Chadwick and Father Consitt, both of
whom became in time distinguished dignitaries of
their Church. These fathers were not confined to
parochial duty, but made it their business to give
Missions and Eetreats throughout the diocese, and after
awhile their labours extended to colleges, convents,
and parishes in every part of the United Kingdom.
It was towards the close of 1854 that during one
of their frequent absences from home their house
and library were burnt to the ground, and there
followed upon this check the complete breakdown
of the two elder fathers and their retirement to
chaplaincies, where they sought rest and health.
Mr. Suffield continued alone in the same field of
labour as ' Apostolic Missionary,' nor did he give up
his frequent journeyings even when, in 1858, he
accepted charge of a parish in Newcastle.
As his work and fame during these years was that
of a successful Missioner, it may be well to stop here
to explain to Protestant readers the peculiarly Eoman
institutions of missions and retreats.
B
18
A mission is given to a congregation or parish, and
is meant for people living in the world, and unable to
put aside their daily occupations. They are asked to
give what time they can spare each morning and
evening for a fortnight to the solemn consideration
of the doctrines of their church and the obligations
of their state, and so to bring themselves into a fit
state for the worthy reception of the sacraments of
confession and communion. Here is, e.g., the copy
of an announcement of a mission at Leicester :
"HoLY CROSS, WELLINGTON STREET. A Holy
Mission will be preached in the above Church by
Father Suffield. To be solemnly opened on Sunday
morning, June 1st, at 11 o'clock, and continue daily
for a fortnight. All persons are invited to attend
the services.
ORDER OF DAILY SERVICES.
Holy Mass and Mission Sermon - 8.30 a.m.
Catechism ----- 3.0 p.m.
Sermon and Benediction of the
Blessed Sacrament - - - 8.0 p.m.
Confessions heard daily till 10 o'clock, and from 4 to
7.30, and after Evening Service."
The two Sermons and Instruction or Catechism
daily for a fortnight might seem sufficient trial of any
man's endurance, for though the substance of discourse
would be the same everywhere, a mission to be fruitful
would need on every occasion the same earnestness
and energy, and entire devotion to the subject as if
it were fresh to the speaker. There is no carrying
about of written essays from place to place, but the
19
word must be always quick, and come from the soul
of the speaker. But it is not in the pulpit, after all,
that the great work of a mission is done and the
fatigue incui-red. It is in the confessional that the
active and successful missioner spends his time from
early morning to late at night, and there reaps his
harvest. And however legitimate be Protestant
objections to the abuses of auricular confession
abuses, it is only fair to say, most carefully guarded
against by stringent regulations, binding both on
priest and penitent there can be no doubt that
this rare and exceptional use of it does act in the
interests of peace, honesty, and morality. Many a
feud is terminated, many an illegitimate gain made
amends for, many an evil habit or connection brought
to an end, by the public exhortations of the missioner
applied to the individual conscience in this private
conference, where the one party can speak all his
life freely, trusting to the pledge of secrecy which
is practically never violated, and the other gives
advice, reproof, command, without fear or favour,
as a stranger, coming and going in brief space, and
having nothing to gain or lose from his penitents.
There are, no doubt, always dangers and temptations
about the confessional, but they are reduced to a
minimum in this case, as they are at a maximum
where a parody of the Roman system is attempted
without special training, or episcopal control, or any
but a self-imposed obligation of secrecy, or check on
abuse other than that of the individual conscience.
We may consistently apologise for the practice in
20
one case, while we have nothing but reprobation
for any weak attempts to introduce it into Protes-
tant communities.
It would probably be within the truth to say that,
during his twenty years of priesthood, Mr. Suffield
spent more time in hearing confessions than in any
other occupation, and certainly while employed in
giving a mission, the greater part of his day would
be so occupied.
"Eetreats" are for the spiritual benefit of persons
devoted by their calling to the service of religion,
and able to set apart a time more completely to
meditation and prayer. A full retreat such as is
enjoined on all religious communities, whether of
men or women lasts eight days, during which time
a rigid silence is observed, except, perhaps, for half-
an-hour after the midday meal. For the parochial
clergy the time is necessarily shortened to four or
five days. Here is a programme of a Eetreat for
the Clergy given at the College at Ushaw :
6 0. Eise.
6 30. Meditation (one hour). Mass.
8 0. Breviary. Eetirement.
9 0. Breakfast. Eecreation.
9 45. Visit to the Blessed Sacrament. Way of
the Cross.
10 30. Eetirement. Spiritual Eeading.
11 30. Instruction in Chapel.
12 0. Eetirement. Breviary. Examination of
Conscience.
1 30. Eecreation.
21
'2 0. Visit to the Blessed Sacrament. Private
Meditation.
3 5. Dinner and Eecreation.
5 0. Matins. Eetirement. Meditation.
8 0. Eosary. 8-30, 9-15, Prayers. 10-0, Eetire.
In this case "meditation" would be conducted in
the chapel, the priest chosen to conduct the Eetreat
suggesting the course of it, and, as it were, thinking
and praying aloud for all to join with him in reflec-
tion and aspiration something in the manner of
extempore prayer, as practised in the more cultured
Nonconformist communities of England.
Of the great benefit to be derived from such occa-
sional retirement from the bustle and distractions of
the world, Mr. Suffield remained convinced, long after
he had abandoned and reprobated what he consi-
dered the superstitious practices and obligations con-
nected with retreats in the Eoman communion. It
was with more candour and generosity than worldly
wisdom that he advocated the introduction of some
such system in the Protestant community he after-
wards joined, and it tended to create in some minds
a doubt of his sincerity, as if a man must needs
denounce as evil every custom of the ancient Church
which he had so long served, or himself be under
suspicion as its agent in disguise.
It was while in charge of the Eoman Catholic
parish of St. Andrew's, at Newcastle, that he intro-
duced into England the custom of "Peter's Pence."
It was begun by a great meeting in the Newcastle
Town Hall, which was the first occasion on which
22
Eoman Catholic movements attracted general atten-
tion from the public and the press, The Times, among
others, devoting an article to the subject.
About this time, or perhaps while still at St.
Ninian's, he was busy promoting among the secular
clergy the "Association of St. Charles," which met
with the warm approval of Cardinal Wiseman, the
Bishop of Southwark (Dr. Grant), Dr. Newman, and
other influential and eminent ecclesiastics. The
object of the Association was " to promote among us
the Apostolic Spirit, recollection, and prayer; thus
securing our own salvation, whilst with unwearied
zeal we labour and pray for the sanctification of the
Priesthood and for the salvation of our people." The
rules were few and simple, and did little more than
impress anew upon the members what were really
obligations, acknowledged by every pious priest, each
year to join the Clergy Retreat, to observe one day
each month as " a day of recollection or retreat, to
renew fervour, and to prepare for death," to give
daily a half -hour to meditation, and find the time
for spiritual reading and the examination of con-
science. It is not surprising that only the more fer-
vent priests were disposed to join, but it is remark-
able how in this case, as generally, the attempt to
quicken zeal and piety, met with dislike and opposi-
tion. At least, so we may infer from a letter on
the subject from one priest, who writes wishing to
become a member: "An attempt to form an asso-
ciation of a similar character was made here about
a year since, but had, for various reasons, to be
23
abandoned. One thing we discovered during the
very short time that we entertained the idea of
such an association that the greatest prudence
and caution, and even the strictest secresy, were
absolutely necessary for its successful starting. I
could never have thought it possible for priests to
speak of it as I have heard many speak to whom
the knowledge of what we were attempting had
come."
But priests, though Protestant controversialists are
apt to forget it, are simply so many men, of whom
the majority are of just average spirituality and
morals, and by no means grateful to the trouble-
some zealots who seek to stir them up to nobler
life and fatiguing efforts after perfection.
Although so much taken up with outside work,
he was very successful and popular in his own parish,
and raised considerable sums of money with an ease
which in later years astonished himself. It went
as freely as it came, and alms were always to be
had at the Presbytery by poor parishioners in distress.
He also built a church at Walker, in the suburbs, and
at the same time began a work of more durable
influence, the " Crown of Jesus," a complete manual
of Roman Catholic piety for the people. This book,
which secured the approval of English and Irish
Bishops, and later of the Pope himself, passed
through many editions, and was immensely popular
among English-speaking Eoman Catholics. Its cir-
culation went on for several years after the author's
secession, (it was published anonymously, though
24
there was no kind of secret about the authorship),
and it was only after the book had been put in
evidence by the High Church Anglican party at the
Eidsdale trial at Lambeth Palace, and its authorship
was brought into public notice, that it became dis-
credited, and when the publisher, Richardson, of
Derby, died, it ceased to be reprinted.
The book did not make its appearance till after
the compiler had joined the Dominicans, but it
belongs really to this time of his Newcastle work
as parish priest, and the authorities of the Order,
though allowing him to publish it, took upon them-
selves no responsibility for it, pecuniary or otherwise.
This will, therefore, be the most fitting place for a
short notice of it.
The volume is a small octavo of 800 pages, the
greater part closely printed in small type, about 40
lines to a page. It was intended to contain everything
which the Roman Catholic was bound by his Church
to believe and do in the way of devotion, and the
much more which the devout might find it of profit
to know in the way of doctrine, or to add to their
accustomed prayers. The first part begins with "the
Sacrament of Penance," how to prepare for, and how
to make, " a good confession," and the three essential
conditions contrition, confession, satisfaction are
explained. Of the first of these it may be well to
quote the definition, as it is important for all to
know what really is implied in the practice common
to so large a part of Christendom, and it explains,
too, how Mr. Suffield could labour so long and
25
earnestly in this particular work. " Contrition," he
writes, " is a great and sincere sorrow for having
offended God, accompanied with a firm resolution
to avoid for the future all sin and the occasions of
sin, to adopt the means necessary for perseverance,
and to repair the injury done by your sins." Cer-
tainly he will not have lived in vain, however
mistaken his creed, who has, by preaching and
prayer, brought many of his brethren to such a
state of mind. Confession may be needless and
perilous, absolution a mere superstition, but this,
the necessary disposition for them, is what all who
believe in a moral law will approve.
Then foUows the "Eule of Life" recommended
to those who, by penitence, have entered on the
right way; and the rest of this section is taken
up with what is to a Eoman Catholic the supreme
act of religion and sovereign means of grace, namely,
the Sacrifice of the Mass and Holy Communion.
The "Ordinary of the Mass" is given in Latin and
English, and then follow various methods for adults
and children to assist at it with profit.
The Second Part consists of a great variety of
" devotions " or special prayers and litanies, such
as the Stations of the Cross, the Eosary, the Little
Office of the Virgin, Litanies of St. Joseph, St.
Dominic, St. Patrick, &c., Prayers to St. Benedict,
St. Charles, St. Aloysius, and other Saints.
The Third Part contains the Services of Vespers
and Compline, Meditations for every day of the
month, a selection of passages from the Scriptures,
26
the Epistles and Gospels for all the Sundays of the
year, and a Catechism of Christian Doctrine.
There is not in our language so full and complete
a manual of Eoman piety, and as one turns its pages
the words of the greatest of modern converts come
forcibly to mind; he is speaking of one who had
had some experience of Eome and her ways and
thoughts, and was hesitating, as he himself hesitated
so long. "He was very strong on the point that
Eomanism and Anglicanism were two religions ;
that you could not amalgamate them ; that you
might be Eoman or Anglican, but could not be
Anglo-Eoman or Anglo -Catholic ; that the whole
system of worship in the Romish Church was different
from what it is in our own; nay, the very idea of
worship, the idea of prayers."* They only can know
how different who have had some experience of both
systems, but an half-hour spent in the study of the
"Crown of Jesus" should convince any Anglican,
however "High," that the difference between him-
self and the Methodist was a narrower gulf than
that which divided him from Eome.
It would be vain to search in this book for any
symptoms of doubt, or even of disposition towards
a more or less tolerated liberalism. As long as he
was in the Church's livery he was an honest and
faithful servant, and if he had as yet any difficulty,
and there is reason to suppose that he always felt
such, he kept the struggle secret within his own
breast.
* " Loss and Gain," by J. H. Newman, p. 168. Ed. 1848.
27
But how awful a view of life it is if ever a man
comes to realise the meaning of words, which these
words, just a footnote, describe :
"It is an ascertained fact, that each day about
eighty thousand persons die eighty thousand souls
are judged, and receive their sentence for eternity.
Without true contrition none of these can be saved
from hell."
And when we turn to the meditation on hell, we
read, " How great would be our horror of the shrieks
of the damned, if their groans and blasphemies could
reach us. The sentence of their condemnation is
irrevocable. Hell is the dismal and eternal tomb of
souls, the cruel kingdom of Satan." Then follows,
" Make an act of faith upon the eternal duration of
the pains of hell. We must believe on God's word
what we are not able to conceive."
Do these words convey his own difficulty of faith ?
Certainly they show that he did not find it so easy
of explanation as some deem it. " We must believe,"
that is all that he dare urge, and the shrieks and
curses of that kingdom, augmented by its thousands
a minute, went to his heart as a real and terrible
thing, till at last reason and conscience asserted their
lost supremacy, and in God's name he renounced and
denied the blasphemy.
CHAPTEE III.
FBIAR PREACHER OF THE ORDER OF ST. DOMINICK.
Meanwhile this work, on which he must have been
busily engaged during the last months of his secular
priesthood, was perhaps itself instrumental in drawing
him towards what he considered to be a higher and
safer life. Hitherto he had been employed far and
wide as a preacher, returning to his presbytery only
for the rest of somewhat different labour. Now there
had lately been revived in England an ancient Order,
designed by its founder expressly for this kind of
work and life, and so called the Order of Friar
Preachers, otherwise Dominicans, or from the black
cloak worn by them out of doors over their white
habit, the Black Friars. They had convents in all
the chief towns of England, but from the time of
the dissolution of monasteries had only survived as
solitary missionaries in charge of parishes, not
distinguished from secular priests except in owing
obedience to the General of the Order at Koine,
instead of to the bishop, and by some minor
peculiarities of ritual. But they shared in the influ-
ences of the Catholic revival of the mid-century, and
some time in the fifties a convent had been erected
for them by a wealthy convert on his estate at Wood-
chester. Novices had been attracted, and the regular
29
observance had been started in its severest form.
No meat was permitted except to the sick ; during
seven months of the year there was but one full
meal a day, the apology for breakfast consisting of
two ounces of dry bread with tea, and the supper
of eight ounces of some kind of pottage. At mid-
night all rose to matins, and the day was spent in
study, meditation, and frequent attendance at church.
The only break in this monotonous round of labour
and prayers was the hour's recreation after dinner,
and perhaps half-an-hour after supper. Moreover,
scrupulous obedience regulated every act of life, and
none even of the elders might go out or engage in
any occupation without the sanction of the Superior,
who was himself in turn bound by vow to submit
his will to those in authority over him.
It might seem that such a life would be simply
repellant to a man who was his own master, and
could take his ease if so inclined. But it would
argue ignorance of history and of human nature to
so judge. Men and women alike have always been
won upon by austerity, and convents have been
invariably crowded in their days of strictest observ-
ance, and deserted when they grew lax. So it was
that many youths and adults entered the noviciate
at Woodchester, and among others this well-known
priest and missioner, now in his forty-first year,
who, it may be well imagined, was received with
no little hope and thankfulness as a recruit to the
Order. He left Newcastle in July, 1860, and went
to reside at Woodchester, but was prevented receiving
30
immediately the habit of the Order, by the impedi-
ment of a vow made when he joined the Fathers at
St. Ninian's to serve the mission under the Bishop
of the Diocese.
It was on September 21st following that he was
"clothed," as they say, exchanging the black cas-
sock, which he had hitherto worn, for the white
habit which St. Dominick had adopted six hundred
and fifty years before from the Canons of St. Augustine.
It is usual in " entering religion " to take another
name instead of that associated with former life in
the world, and so he chose for himself the name
Eodolph, by which he became generally known hence-
forth among Eoman Catholics, and which he retained,
together with his baptismal name Eobert, to the
end of his life. Eodolph of Faenza, after whom he
desired to be called, was one of the first companions
of St. Dominick, and he was attracted to him by the
likeness of their circumstances, the one in the twelfth
century giving up his church at Bologna, the other in
the nineteenth his at Newcastle, both for the founda-
tion of a Dominican convent.
And now began a year wbich must have been a
singular and grateful contrast to the ten which he
had passed since his ordination in incessant and
exciting labour among the people. By the Consti-
tution of the Council of Trent for the remedy of
abuses which had before prevailed in monasteries,
it is ordered that no one can be admitted as a
member of any Eeligious Order, nor take the vows
which bind him to it, before he has completed his
31
sixteenth year, and has, moreover, whatever his age,
passed a complete year as a novice on trial, practising
all the rules of the Order, and humbling himself in
entire obedience to his superiors. During this year
he may not sleep one night away from his convent
on any pretext however grave, but must persevere
in an uninterrupted trial of his patience, persever-
ance, humility, and bodily capacity of endurance.
The only relaxation made in his favour was the
permission given him to continue his work on " The
Crown of Jesus," and see it through the press, which
no doubt did relieve the monotony of the very regular
and quiet life of the simple novitiate, devoted by the
rule to exercises of piety, interrupted by no studies
except of the Constitutions of the Order and the
Plain Chant used in the Offices of the Church.
On September 21st, 1861, having completed his
full year of novitiate, he made his vows into the
hands of the Prior, Father Gonin, a convert of
Lacordaire's, and afterwards Archbishop of Trinidad.
The form of vow taken by Dominicans is one of
simple obedience to the General of the Order for
the time being, and his successors (quod ero obediens
tibi tuisque successoribus usque ad mortem), but it
is fully understood that this implies and carries with
it the obligations of perpetual celibacy and poverty.
So that, according to Eoman Catholic law, a "pro-
fessed religious " cannot marry, though he may,
of course, go through the form of marriage, and
cannot possess anything as his private property,
though he may maintain immoral and sacrilegious
hold of worldly goods.
32
As long as he remained a believer in the Church
and its doctrine of the higher life, he faithfully
observed the obligations he had voluntarily taken
upon himself ; nor was any charge to the contrary
ever made against him. But when later he came
to think himself mistaken in so submitting his judg-
ment and conduct to the guidance of an external
authority, he had no hesitation in holding that he
was absolved from a vow taken under a false im-
pression. He was told, and had believed, that a
life of self-abnegation, single, poor, subjected to
another's will, was pleasing to God and the way of
perfection, and, not content with good, desirous of
better and the very best, he had chosen and bound
himself to such a life. When it had become to him
morally false and impossible, its superiority a mis-
take, and its observance a folly, then he cast away
from him the strait waistcoat which he had sworn
to wear all his days, under the delusion that it was
a royal robe, and distinctive of the favourites of God.
Indeed, the primary and only explicit vow of
obedience became in his new frame of mind almost
an absurdity. How was it possible to revolt from
the authority of the whole Church as a usurpation
of individual rights, and at the same time submit
to the orders of one of its chief servants ? A man
cannot be at the same time a Romanist and a
Rationalist, nor could he by any strain of conscience
be a Dominican and a Unitarian.
Immediately after taking the vows he was sent
back to Newcastle, which he had quitted the year
33
before as the Eev. Eobert Suffield, and to which
he now returned, in new dress and new name, as
Father Rodolph ; but presently he was summoned
to London, where Cardinal Wiseman was anxious
to have a convent of the Order, and there lodged
with two other Fathers in a private house in Fortress
Terrace, Kentish Town, while the site at present
occupied by the fine monastic buildings in Maitland
Eoad, Haver stock Hill, was being negotiated for.
Here he remained for over two years engaged in
parochial duties, when not absent, as he very often
was, giving missions and retreats throughout the
United Kingdom. His life, indeed, was much that
of a Preacher, and very little that of a Friar, and
when the General of the Order, Father Jandel, a
disciple of Lacordaire and a devotee of strict ob-
servance, came to England on a visitation of the
province in the summer of 1863, he recalled Father
Eodolph to Woodchester, the only one of the five or
six Dominican communities where there were the
means of following out in its entirety the monastic
discipline. He accordingly returned there in Sep-
tember, and was, at his own request, made Parish
Priest, Master of the Lay Brothers, and Guest Master.
Here he remained for the next four years, but
the convent must have been rather his head-quarters
than his residence, if his mission engagements were
as numerous as they were the latter half of 1866.
Here is the list, copied from a half-sheet of paper,
in which they are put down, with alterations and
corrections in his own hand :
c
34
Teignmouth ... August 26th to September 2nd.
Llanarth Sept. 8th (or 9th) to 13th (or 16th).
Peterborough ... Sept. (various dates put down and
erased) to October 4th.
Tadcaster October 7th to October 14th.
Everingham ... October 21st to November 4th.
Devizes November llth to November 18th.
Great Marlow ... November 25th to December 9th.
Manchester ... December 16th to 30th.
It was during these years at Woodchester that he
instituted "Our Lady's Guard of Honour," or "Per-
petual Eosary," and enrolled many thousands as
Associates, all of whom looked to him as their
chief. This devotion is one of many, founded on
the sentiment which has prevailed so much in recent
times among certain Protestant Churches, as well as
among Koman Catholics, that the forces of prayer
can be economised and made of greater efficacy by
skilful organisation. The idea of the " Perpetual
Eosary " is to maintain the recitation of the Eosary
uninterruptedly, day and night, all the year round.
Each Associate selects his own day and hour, and
undertakes to devote it to praying, after this ancient
form, for the Conversion of Sinners, the Salvation
of the Dying, and the Souls in Purgatory. He makes
known his choice by letter to the "Father Director"
at Woodchester, and his name is enrolled in the
register kept for that purpose.*
* It may be well to explain that the full Rosary consists of
one hundred and fifty beads strung together, and divided into tens
by fifteen larger beads. On the large beads the Lord's Prayer
is said, and the Angelic Salutation on each of the smaller ones ;
35
In 1867 he was sent to take charge of the Mission
Station at Little Hampton, but seems to have had
but little more than a nominal appointment, his
services being in continually greater request through-
out the country.
The following sketch from the pen of a well-known
Irish politician will be read with interest as a per-
sonal experience of his work at this time. The writer
was unknown to Mr. Suffield till several years later,
when they met on a political platform, the one being
the chief speaker of the evening, and the ' ' Father
Bernard " of the article taking the chair.
"FRIAR AND PARSON."
" At a school in Ireland, wherein I spent some of my
earliest and most miserable days, the year was begun
by what is called among Eoman Catholics and, I
believe, of recent times among Anglo-Catholics a
Retreat. The season of Retreat, as the word implies,
is a period during which the penitent to those who
believe in Retreats, all human beings are or ought
to be penitents retires into himself from the world
without. Accordingly he does not utter a word to
any being except his confessor. He reads no books
but those of a religious character ; he attends several
religious services during the day, and his mind is
supposed to be wholly absorbed in meditation over
while fingers and lips are thus employed, the devout reciter medi-
tates on the "Mysteries of Redemption," as they are called,
beginning with the Annunciation, and ending with the Corona-
tion of the Virgin, devoting the time occupied in repeating ten
Hail Marys to each mystery. But generally a string of fifty
beads is used for convenience sake, and does service three times
over for the entire recitation.
36
spiritual things the enormity of his sins, the cer-
tainty of death, and, after death, of judgment; the
delights of heaven, but still more the torments of
hell. At this moment the picture of our playground
during times of Eetreat is as clear as though I had
seen it but yesterday. I was once much impressed
by a photograph, seen under the stereoscope, of a
street in Paris during the siege. The shops were
open, the cab stood as usual in the thoroughfare,
and there were men and women apparently engaged
in life's ordinary occupations. But the stillness in
those streets where there had been noise, the repose
in that city of pleasure where passions had raged,
and the deathlike lethargy which had succeeded to
the hurried activity of the vivid Frenchman, threw
over the picture an air of unreality. Not unlike this
looked our playground during Eetreat. There were
the cricket-ground, and the trapeze, and the long
pole, as usual, stretched mast-like towards the sky;
but unused, untouched, they seemed the memories of
a dead past. There, too, were the eighty boys, still
full of youth's hotly-rushing blood ; but, entombed
in silence, and walking each by himself, they could
scarcely pass for the same lads who, a day or two
before, chattered and shouted, ran after the cricket-
ball and mounted the trapeze, hung in affection on
each other's arms, or waged bloody warfare on hostile
noses. There was nothing to relieve the monotony
of the sad time. The Eetreat was with us, indeed,
a time of prayer and humiliation, and we felt as
haxtpy when it was past as the released convict on
37
his first day of freedom. As a rule, too, these days
of meditation left little impression behind. Father
Chester, the Jesuit, who preached one Eetreat, we
only remembered as very thin ; Father Zerbini, the
Italian, was a blank, save that he used strange words ;
and the Abbe Lemoinne was only remembered by
his terrible story of the wicked boy whom the
yawning earth one day swallowed.
" But one year a strange change came over the
school ; and there was a Eetreat such as never
had been known before. The summons of the
church bell was no longer like the toll to a funeral ;
the visit to chapel ceased to be the hour of darkest
misery ; the close of the Eetreat brought with it
some pangs ; for this was the occasion when Father
Bernard that wasn't his name was the preacher.
The influence this man gained over the school was
wonderful. He could make us at will laugh or weep,
or rise to the height of enthusiastic belief; so that
after a short time we looked forward to the visit
to the gloomy little chapel as the bright break in
the dark day. -Then, in individual intercourse, he
spoke to each boy as though he were his only son;
he appealed not so much to dread of hell as hope
of heaven, love for an all-good Father, veneration
for a Mother that had ever been pure. Those were
stirring times, when the Garibaldians were attacking
Eome, and how our hearts throbbed as he told us
of the Irish Brigade that had gone to do battle for
the Pope !
"Father Bernard usually remained seated while he
38
preached to us, so that \ve felt as if listening to a
kind friend who wanted to chat to us. But a moment
came when he wouid rise to his feet ; his kind eyes
grew bright, his small and slight figure became
majestic, and there rushed out a torrent of pictur-
esque description by which we were swept away
until hearts throbbed and eyes grew dim. To this
day I hear in my ears his parable of the young
man who sailed on over smiling and placid water,
under a blue sky, and, in spite of the loud warnings
from shore, to the all-devouring cataract beyond.
At last came the Sunday on which the Retreat
ended; and even in that small, shabby chapel the
Church of Rome was able to solemnise a service
which could move the heart and awe the imagina-
tion. On the altar w^ere tall candelabra, reserved
for great occasions; a score of candles were alight,
and clouds of incense floated in the air. I see before
me now the diminutive figure of Father Bernard
standing out from this brilliant background. Gor-
geous vestments partly hide the plain white flannel
of his friar's habit ; his face bears the marks of
fatigue from long fasting and the lengthened service,
and tbe words that restore to us speech and freedom
and joy sound to our ears rather as the sobbing
farewell of parting friends.
" And so Father Bernard left us; but his influence
remained behind. For many a week after he had
gone there was a soberer tone in the minds of the
boys, better thoughts, more frequent confessions.
And his power was far more prolonged than this.
39
Whenever a boy of St. Mary's met another in after
years, one of his first questions was sure to be,
' Where is Father Bernard ? ' and then his stories
were retold and his sermons repreached. To many
he was the one oasis fn the desert of spiritual
advisers. Amid the long array of cruel clerical
taskmasters, or gloomy fanatics, or worldly-minded
canters, he was the single priest whose sympathy
might soothe sorrow, whose aid might help wrestling
faith.
" Some fourteen or fifteen years after Father Ber-
nard's Eetreat, one of the boys on whom he had
made the deepest impression was passing along the
Strand. It was a drear night in October, when the
slight fog that precedes the heavier affliction of a
later season had spread over the town. Beneath
that melancholy pall there are few minds that can
preserve a cheerful mood, for it is the warning that
the heat, the light, the bright mornings and the
long evenings have fled before the approach of gloom
and frost and fog. He of whom I speak had nothing
to do in shape of work, and pleasure did not attract ;
and so, listlessly and for want of any other distraction,
he sauntered into a chapel. There was little therein
to rouse or to cheer. The place was plain, as he
thought, to ugliness, and cold to chilliness. For an
altar or a pulpit there was an ordinary reading-desk.
The seats were painted in a common-place colour;
and the place generally looked rather like the lecture-
room of a medical school than a spot where men
came to worship. The congregation, too, was sparse
40
and mostly feminine, and highly uninteresting. Pre-
sently the preacher of the evening appeared, and
with a quietness of manner and of language that
suited the tranquil surroundings, declared the Bible
a myth and the Church of Borne a fraud. It was
he whom I had known as Father Bernard that thus
spoke. The Eoman Catholic friar had been trans-
formed into the Unitarian minister."*
Indeed, to those who knew Mr. Suffield only as
the quiet preacher of a rational faith, who appealed
to men just to hear and judge for themselves, whether
or not what he had to urge approved itself to their
judgment and conscience, to those who listened to
him, Sunday by Sunday, as their Unitarian minister,
it must be inconceivable how powerful and popular
and attractive he was as the Dominican missionary,
urging in the name of his infallible j Church, truths
which none might doubt of without peril of his soul.
He was everywhere sought after and everywhere
successful, if success be judged by the numbers
who were drawn to hear him and trusted to him
for their guidance in the way of salvation.
" When giving missions he led a most arduous
life ; so many people flocked to the confessional that
he had barely time for rest and food. He generally
stayed with the principal Eoman Catholic families
in the neighbourhood, and if the Church was on
their estate, as was often the case, he rarely went
outside the grounds. When travelling he always
took with him a desk and writing materials, and
C.P. In Weekly Despatch of December 21st, 1879.
41
utilised his spare moments by writing his letters in
the waiting-rooms. The appointments of his houses
were the plainest possible, yet he was never without
visitors, and good people of wealth and position
thought it a favour to be asked to spend two or
three days with him to confer on religious matters,
and never gave a thought to the bare simplicity of
his household arrangements. Presents of game and
fruit were frequent, but everything else was of the
plainest possible description. He never asked for
money, but had large sums often entrusted to him
for charitable purposes."
So writes one who often heard him speak in his
simple way, without a thought of boasting, of his
earlier life, and the witness is fully confirmed by
the numerous letters belonging mostly to this time,
which he has left behind, many stamped with the
coronets of the highest Eoman Catholic nobility of
England, and many, ill-spelt and scarcely decipher-
able, from the poorest and most ignorant. Idle
schoolboys and young ladies of high family, noble
matrons and men eminent by name and office, digni-
taries and novices, poor working men and women,
all write in the same tone of the most loving con-
fidence. Indeed, those only who have themselves
had experience of it can understand how intimate
and affectionate is the tie which in the Eoman
Church unites the "Director" and the soul which
has committed to him its guidance. The 'confessor'
has to be taken as he is found, and often there is
no choice available, but the Director is one selected
42
because believed to be the best adapted to help the
soul God-ward, and can be communicated with by
letter as if he were on the spot. Mr. Suffield had
a great dislike to the system as developed by the
Jesuits, but he must have had it forced upon him,
as a necessary consequence of preaching obedience,
submission of the will and judgment, and self-abne-
gation, as the highest virtues. It is the perfection
of the Jesuit novice to be "as a staff" in the hand
of his Superior, and even persons living in the world
might aim at some distant approach towards a like
merit. Between Jesuit and Dominican the question
could be only of degree, for both were bound to the
same standard of faith and morals.
To this time, the February of 1868, belongs the
lecture, delivered at West Hartlepool, to a mixed
audience of English and Irish Protestants and
Catholics, and published "permissu superiorum," as
is stated on the title page, a permission which does
credit to the courage of Superiors, so largely depen-
dent for the support of themselves and their subjects
on an aristocracy to many of whom its sentiments
were obnoxious. Writing of it in a letter to an
intimate correspondent, to whom he sends a copy,
he says, "This is the formidable and obnoxious
document. I am sorry your uncle and Lord L. are
so angry about it. F. got it read to the Queen by,
I think, Lady C."*
* It will be found reprinted in this volume.
CHAPTEE IV.
THE BEGINNINGS OF DOUBT.
But other and graver differences from the views
commonly accepted by those among whom he lived,
and who looked up to him as an authority in religion
and morals, were now pressing upon his mind. The
impression made by many passing hints in his corres-
pondence is that he never held the Eoman faith
with the easy assurance of those who wondered and
shuddered at his " apostacy." He had written in
"The Crown of Jesus" of "the unbounded faith
with which your utmost soul cleaves to those sacred
truths which are the heritage of the Church. Out
of the Catholic Church an act of faith is impossible ;
there can be only the glimmering light of human
reason speculating with a painful earnestness to put
together a body of truth; and when the edifice has
been reared, even amidst labour, prayer, time, and
anxiety, there is nothing in it of stable, nothing which
may not be upset by others working with equal
earnestness and sincerity."
But this "unbounded faith" is not unfrequently
supported only by "a painful earnestness," more
painful far than is the honest seeking after truth,
even with a full consciousness of the difficulty of the
quest. And during the two or three last years of
44
his priesthood, certainly if not long before he was
in this most trying position, believing still by force of
will, even while his reason revolted under the heavy
yoke.
So, perhaps, it might have gone on all his life, the sore
trial of his faith remaining unknown and unsuspected
of any but those to whom he confided the secrets of
his soul for the purpose of spiritual direction; but
about this time the question of Papal infallibility
began to be mooted throughout the Catholic world,
the Ultramontane party in the Church pressing for
its definition, so that it should be no longer a pious
belief, but a part of that accepted faith of Christen-
dom, which "except a man believe faithfully he can-
not be saved." Many there were who had, in a
general way, accepted it as long as it was not
obligatory, who now began to be anxious and fright-
ened when it was proposed to define its limits, and
make it a dogma of the Church. Mr. Suffield himself
had expressed the commonly received opinion when
he wrote,* "The Pope is 'os Ecclesiae,' the mouth
of the Church. Through him speaks the mystic
body of Christ; when the Pope, acting as the Supreme
Pontiff of the Universal Church, proclaims to the
world doctrine or decisions on faith or morals, he
is infallible. Acting in his private capacity he can
err in morals or in judgment ; but when summoning
around him his doctors, inaugurating solemn prayers,
consulting his sacred congregations, he shows that
he acts as the master and teacher of all; then his
* " Crown of Jesns," page 499. Italics are ours.
45
decisions in faith and morals are overruled by Divine
Providence to be ever faithful and true." There is
no doubt that every word here was carefully con-
sidered, and full force was intended to be given to
those which limited this claim of infallibility, as
well as to the reason given for it. The Pope is infal-
lible, he would say, because he is head and mouth-
piece of the infallible Church; but therefore only
infallible when by openly associating himself with,
and taking advice of, the acknowledged authorities
of the Church, he shows that he is acting for and
with the Church. This is certainly not identical
with the decree of the Vatican Council, in w r hich
mention of assistance sought or given is expressly
withheld, and the conclusion is added that the defi-
nitions of the Pope are " irreformabiles," incapable
of amendment, not because the Church gives assent
to them, but from their own inherent force, " ex
sese, non autem ex consensu Ecclesiae."
But it will be best to give his own account of the
origin of the struggle which ended in his taking a
step which he would have himself regarded with
horror before the controversy on infallibility arose.
" My Eoman Catholic ecclesiastical life was one
of great peace and happiness, accepting, as I did,
everything on the authority of the Church an
authority which I deemed it wrong to question I
was content. But when the seat and mode of that
authority became a moot question during the years
previous to the Vatican Council, reading both sides
of the question in Eoman Catholic works, the
46
gravest doubts arose in my mind, it becoming clear
to me that the claim to infallibility was equally false
in any of the received theories. Many minds became
anxious, some were determinsd not to investigate or
think, others were, by the circumstances of their
position, more or less reluctantly compelled to inves-
tigate and think. I was amongst the latter class ;
doubts arose, and were again earnestly banished
amidst unceasing work in missions, in preaching,
and in the confessional ; still they kept forcing them-
selves before my mind. In accordance with the sad
teaching of ecclesiastical theology, I regarded these
doubts, not as the noble utterances of the intelligence,
but as temptations to be suppressed. I tried to
remove them by reading, by occupation, and by
prayer."
And to these the private and personal remedies
always recommended, and so often, it must be con-
fessed, efficacious against doubt, he added what the
Church prescribes for all manner of temptations the
full revelation of his state of mind to a wise confessor.
Indeed, he consulted three, and, as in duty bound,
kept the matter secret from everybody else. One
of these told him that his "position was too pro-
minent, that it fostered pride, and from pride came
the temptation." His position was prominent, indeed,
more so, perhaps, than that of any priest in England,
but the temptations of such position are surely rather
to insincerity and affectation of belief, and suppres-
sion of any thought which might gender distrust,
than they are to dig about and undermine the very
47
foundations on which it all rests. So certainly he
felt, and his comment on this commonplace of religious
teachers is " It often happens that those accused of
pride are, in fact, but the victims of disappointment.
What so sad as to give your mind and energy to a
service, and to begin to suspect that the service is
an illusion ? ' '
"However," he goes on, "I asked leave to resign all
public offices. Worried, anxious, and, in consequence,
in bad health, I was glad to be allowed to withdraw
to a little mission in a country village, and here I
continued two years, only going away when the calls
of duty or of friendship rendered absence imperative ;
all the time I kept hoping that I might yet be able
conscientiously to settle down in peaceful belief.
Amidst peasants and village children and country
scenes I 'strove to forget the present, and to fortify
my faith by the theologies of the past."
" Many a long evening have I sat in my garden
at Bosworth, when a nightingale's song was the only
voice to be heard, and prayed that I might die ere
the illusion I had lived in and devoted my life to,
had utterly passed away."
Husbands Bosworth is a small village on the rail-
way between Leicester and Eugby. The Hall was
the seat of Mr. Fortescue Turville, and attached to
it was a priest's house and garden, which Mr. Suffield
christened "The Hermitage," and a small chapel in a
"very wretched" condition, according to the account
of the Bishop of the Diocese, the owner delaying the
rebuilding of it till his return from Canada, where
48
he had gone in the suite of Sir John Young, the
Governor-General. There had been great difficulty
experienced in obtaining the services of a resident
priest, and the mission had been served for some
time by the Dominican Fathers from their convent
at Leicester. But this arrangement had for some
reason come to an end, about a year and a half
before this time, and the temporary tenants of the
hall pressing for a resident priest, application was
made to Mr. Suffield, on the chance of his knowing
"some Dominican, an invalid, or requiring rest and
country air, who might be permitted to be there
for a time." This was on the 15th of August, 1868,
just at the critical time when he was feeling the
need of quiet retirement, and it must have come
to him as a special providence opening out the way
for him, when he was straitened both in mind and
health, and knew not where to turn. But he had
certain engagements to fulfil before he might take
time for his own thoughts ; and having given pro-
mised Eetreats to the nuns of Stone and Wigton,
he concluded these years of his active mission -life
with the Cistercian Monks of Mount St. Bernard,
in Leicestershire. The strict observance was main-
tained at this abbey, as near as possible, on the lines
laid down by the great saint who instituted the Order,
and a letter from the abbot about the details of the
Retreat gives, for the purpose of arranging the hours
for the three daily discourses, a table of " The Winter
Exercises of the Choir," which will be read with
interest. It is strange to reflect how, in the midst
49
of this railway-traversed England, mid the activity
and advancement and intense life of this nineteenth
century, there survives still the twelfth century, here
and there finding shelter for its faith and ways of
thought and religious observances and dress and man-
ners in secluded convent-homes, among men and women
whose earnestness and consistency all must admire,
however mistaken they deem them. And, after all,
surely it is for the good of the community that there
should be actual experiment made in our age too, of
all plans for the elevation of human life above the
material conditions which ever tend to degrade it.
If the result be failure, that, too, is so much profit,
at least as evidence that in our circumstances this
or that scheme of Saint or Socialist is unavailing,
and no time and means and energy to be wasted
in the effort to restore it. Here, then, is the order
of life observed in winter time by the brethren of
the choir in this Leicestershire monastery :
2 a.m. Eise. Little Office. Meditation.
3 ,, Matins and Lauds.
Angelus. Interval.
5 30 ,, Prime. Community meet in Chapter.
Interval.
80,, Tierce. High Mass. Work.
11 30 ,, Sext. Examination of Conscience.
Angelus. Work.
2 p.m. None. Dinner. Interval.
4 15 ,, Vespers. Meditation. Interval.
60 ,, Spiritual Eeading.
6 15 ,, Compline.
Angelus. Examination of Conscience.
70 ,, Eepose.
50
It will be observed that there is provision made
for only one meal in the course of the day; in the
summer time there would be an hour allotted for
supper ; but all the monastic orders observe a strict
fast from the 15th of September, the feast of "The
Exaltation of the Cross," till Easter, and, in addition
to the midday meal of fish and vegetables and bread,
only a mere pittance is allowed morning and evening.
It was in this austere retreat of mediaeval piety
that he closed his active life in the Church's service,
and hence passed to his secluded country home, where
he was for two years to maintain within his own
soul an unequal and unsuspected warfare, striving to
fortify old faith against modern arguments, and sub-
due reason to the service of sentiment.
"The illusion" was sublime and sweet, as those
only know who have lived under its spell and yielded
themselves soul and body to its influence, and to die
while yet it lasted seemed to him preferable far to
the cold, stern realities of common life life without
angels, without sacraments, without a Queen and
Mother in heaven to love and be loyal to, without a
Divine Church militant on earth to serve and witness
for. And he prayed for death, and lived for many
years to thank God that his prayer had been left
unheeded, and that he had been spared to learn
that the ordinary life of men is better than dream-
land, and the sendee of humanity diviner than service
of any church.
May it not be that we shall aU, in the clearer vision
of a higher life, find like reason to bless God that
51
many a longing desire of our hearts was never grati-
fied, that many a certain seeming good, earnestly
sought by us, was always denied?
It was on Saturday, the 10th of October, 1868,
that he arrived at Bosworth. He took duty on the
following day, and every Sunday in succession for
more than a year. Indeed, his diary gives no indica-
tion of absence from this quiet home, except for a
four days' Eetreat in Holy Week given at the Bir-
mingham Oratory, till September 14th, when he
preached at the laying of the foundation stone of
the new Dominican Church at Newcastle. Thence
he went to join the Annual Eetreat of the Friars at
Woodchester. His last missions were at Chelsea,
from January 9th to 25th, and Southport, January
30th to February 15th.
One would suspect that about this time he made
a last desperate effort to regain his hold upon the
Church ; as one learning to swim is frightened,
when for the first time he gets out of his depth,
and instinctively makes for the shore, and feels with
satisfaction the stones beneath him, though they be
rough and sharp, so does it often happen when we
begin to doubt about a faith we have long held for
solid certainty ; we dare first to read and think and
enquire, all the time believing still, till some day
comes the sudden discovery that faith is gone, and
frightened we grasp some friendly argument which
offers itself, and get back again, and tell ourselves
we are still safe a little while.
Such seems to have been his state of mind during
52
this little spell of mission work, and a report of the
Chelsea Mission from the Westminster Gazette con-
firms this supposition. We see in the light of after
events how he was striving with doubt while he
preached faith, and conceding the utmost to save
what was essential.
" The holy mission, held by the Dominican Fathers
at the church of St. Mary, Chelsea, was brought to
a close on Sunday last.* .... Father Suffield
is a preacher of great power, and made a great
impression on his hearers. The sight of the striking
figure of the preacher, in the black and white robes
of his Order, standing on a raised platform in the
dim twilight of a winter's afternoon, and exhorting
his hearers to listen to the voice of God, and to
return to him the joy of their youth, could not fail
to impress anyone at all amenable to religious in-
fluences. His sermon on Purgatory, on the Friday
before the close, was a very able one, and, without
being controversial, was likely to influence non-
Catholics. Addressing himself to the converts who
might be present, he said he had been asked whether
it was lawful for them to pray for their deceased
Protestant relatives, and explained to them that,
although according to the discipline of the Church,
the priest could not publicly pray for non-Catholics
in the Mass, this by no means implied that we
might not do so privately. All they, he continued,
who followed Christ in sincerity and truth, and
acted according to the lights vouchsafed to them,
* "Westminster Gazette," January 29th, 1870.
53
we might reckon as belonging to the soul of the
Church, although by the misfortune of their educa-
tion they did not belong to it visibly; many who
spoke against us, ridiculed iis, or even persecuted us,
would be saved, whom we, in our narrow way of
thinking, might be apt to condemn. The Catholic
Church was world- wide, and we must be careful
not to confound it with a sect in any way. The
royal heart of Jesus would exclude none who were
his true followers. In his experience as a priest
he had found many such, some even he felt conscious
were by far his superiors in spiritual life, though
external as yet to the visible Church. Such things
belong to the mysteries of the Kingdom of Christ.
The instructions on Spiritual Direction and Vocation
were distinguished by great prudence and wisdom,
addressed more especially to ladies, many of whom
attended the various services in all weathers, and
at great personal inconvenience, and their piety and
good example during the mission were very edifying.
"On Sunday evening last this highly successful
mission was brought to a close, Father Suffield
preaching a sermon of great eloquence ; the only
fault, if we may be allowed to say so, in his preach-
ing, is that he is apt to be a little discursive. On
this occasion his subject was ' Christ our King.'
Before entering on it he alluded shortly to a letter
of three Protestant gentlemen, sent to him during
the mission, on the ' Historic Evidences of Chris-
tianity,' and the difficulties they had on this subject.
He said the best answer they could have was the
54
sight they witnessed that evening. He reminded
them that Catholics did not profess to answer all the
difficulties men might raise. The proof of Catholic
truth, like Christianity itself, was a moral proof.
Christ did not set about proving his mission, but
he appealed to the heart and conscience of men,
leaving it to them to accept or reject them. The
Catholic Church did the same, pointing to her won-
derful history, how she had spread from small
beginnings, not like Mahommedanism, propagated
by the sword, or like Protestantism, by the support
of kings; but in spite of the dreadful persecutions
of the Eoman Empire, how she eventually triumphed,
and even set up the throne of her Pontiff in the
palace of the Csesars ; and when later corruption
of morals crept over her, and bad Popes even, and
a luxurious clergy were too often to be found, how,
in spite of all she had lived on. Then came the
Eeformation, in part a just reaction against abuses,
and carried away multitudes from the unity of faith.
But she survived it all and why? Because Christ
was with her; and he had promised that the gates
of hell should not prevail against her. Whatever
the world might say, Christ had said those words ;
and Christ was Truth itself. And so she had lived
on to our days she alone, as a Church, had suc-
ceeded. Let those who reject her try and do
likewise ! they had not yet done so after three
hundred years. In this country there was no unity,
even in the essentials of faith, among those separate
from the Church. The Catholic Church, then, pointed
to her wonderful history, and claimed the obedience
55
of all men. Men might reject her or accept her as
they did Christ himself ; only he called upon them
to examine whether there was not some secret
passion which was the cause of their doing so ;
whatever passion it might be, pride or some more
ignoble vice, which made them unwilling to submit
to the sweet yoke of Christ. As to intellectual
difficulties, he reminded them of the example of a
great man who had said that there were, no doubt,
difficulties and objections hard to answer, both as
regards the Church and Christianity itself ; but that
in spite of it all he accepted the Christian Faith
as the word of Christ, the Eternal Truth. Little
minds might say that these difficulties were easily
answered ; but it was not so the true proof of
Christianity was a moral one, after all.
"Father Suffield then asked his hearers to join
in a solemn act of the renewal of their Baptismal
vows, and made a powerful appeal to the men to
remain faithful to their allegiance to Christ their
King; he knew full weU the difficulties and tempta-
tions they had to contend against in a great city
like London ; the example of those they lived among ;
and so much on every side calculated to lead them
astray ; he fully sympathised with them, and exhorted
them to break for ever with Satan and his works;
and then concluded with reading the beautiful pas-
sage of St. Augustine, written after his last meeting
with his mother, St. Monica, on the joys of Heaven.
" The renewal of Baptismal Vows and the Papal
Blessing concluded the service. The church was
densely crowded."
CHAPTER V.
THE CONFLICT WITHIN.
Henceforth he seems to have studied rather to
keep out of active work, such as he had been so
long accustomed to, and to have sought in the peace
of " The Hermitage," as he significantly called
the priest's house at Bosworth, to regain his old
certainty of faith.
It must have been a lonely time not for want of
correspondents, who were numerous, nor of visitors,
for so many came out of their way to see him in
his solitude and profit of his spiritual counsels, that
a farmer of the neighbourhood found it worth while
to set up a conveyance to take callers to and fro
between the house and the railway station but
lonely, in the secret isolation of his soul from all
with whom he had been wont to take counsel and
share confidences, and still more so in the anticipa-
tion of a severance ever becoming more inevitable,
and which could not be long kept secret. For it
must have become increasingly clear to him, month
by month, that the peace of the country was
unavailing to restore peace to his soul ; that it was
henceforth impossible that he would ever again, as
he had fondly hoped, " settle down with quiet con-
science in peaceful belief." And all the kindness
57
shown him, the deep regard testified in so many
letters, the affectionate enquiries after his health
and welfare, added to the secret anguish of his
heart. For, spite of doubts about Eoman Catholic
claims, and scandals which were reported to him
from Kome, and disapproval of " the foreign eccle-
siastical scheming," which seemed to him in England
itself to have supplanted " the old straightforward
ways, I still," he writes, "regarded all those with
whom I had personal relationship with such tender
affection and high esteem that to be severed from
them seemed to be an agony." And no wonder, on
the one side, where he still lingered, and tried to
find firm footing, all was familiar and welcome ;
before him, life peaceful, happy, honoured, useful,
and promise more or less credible, worth the having
at any rate, of eternal reward ; on the other, all
was uncertain and strange what he should do ?
how he should live? what verities find to replace
the dogmas of the Church? what sphere in that
new world of use or honour ?
The diary, or rather the notes of his sermons
and engagements which he had roughly kept for
many years, breaks off with the 8th of April, 1870,
when he preached for four days at Devizes. There
follows in the thin quarto, which had lasted him for
all his notes since 1863, a few pages of extracts or
memoranda, in striking contrast, many of them,
with the earlier jottings of sermons and discourses,
so full of faith, and devotion to the mysteries of the
Roman Church. A few of them are here given, as
58
showing how his mind was wrought by thoughts he
had tried in vain to suppress :
" Christianity has been tried and failed; the reli-
gion of Christ remains to be tried."
"Catholicism may long remain a verbal creed to
millions, a source of spiritual consolation and refresh-
ment, a guide amidst perplexities of conduct and
morals but resting on dogmas which cannot by any
amount of compromise be incorporated with know-
ledge and with facts ; assuming as the condition of
its existence an hypothesis condemned alike by
reason, history, and science ; upheld by an organi-
sation which is the assumed enemy of enquiry, of
liberty, of the rights of others it may still delude
devout and reverend and high-souled men, but it
cannot again regenerate society."
"If we ought, simply because we ought because
the law which we find within us, but did not produce,
controls us, haunts us, and claims supremacy over us,
then we find in such a fact the revelation of One from
whom the law has emanated. As Fenelon says,
' Whence have I obtained this idea, which is so
much above me, which infinitely surpasses me, which
astonishes me, which renders the infinite present to
me? It is in me, it is more than myself; I have
not put it there, I have found it there ; it does not
depend upon me, I depend upon it.' "
" And Dr. John Smith, the Cambridge Platonist,
writes, ' God has so copied forth himself into the
whole life and energy of man's soul, as that the
character of the divinity may be most largely seen
59
and read of all within themselves, and wherever we
look upon our souls in a right manner we shall find
a Urim and Thummim there.' "
" As Home Tooke says, ' The London Tavern is
open to everyone who can afford to pay the bill,'
so the Catholic Church is open to everyone who
can recite the Creeds."
" The Bible is the history of the highest religious
experiences of the race."
" St. Paul says that five hundred persons saw Jesus
after his resurrection was it once? all together?
after a stirring appeal? "
" Arguments did not convert to Christianity at the
beginning ; people saiv a higher, a purer, a nobler
life and they arose and lived it."
" The Roman Catholic Church satisfies every desire,
if only it can induce the mind to accept its creden-
tials unproved."
" Last century what did disbelief end in? a revul-
sion to Evangelicalism and Eomanism."
" Bowed down beneath internal conflict, Dante
wandering across the mountains of Lunigiana, knocked
at the gate of the monastery of San Croce del Corvo.*
The monk who opened it read at a single glance all
the long history of misery on the face of the stranger.
' What do you seek here ' ? said he. Dante gazed
round with one of those looks in which the soul
speaks, ' Peace.' The scene leads our thoughts up
to the eternal type of all martyrs of genius and
* Situated at the extremity of Monte Caprione, which bounds
the Gulf of Spezia on the south. The story is told in a letter
purporting to be written by Fra Ilario, prior of the monastery.
60
love, praying to his Father, to the Father of all,
upon the Mount of Olives, for peace of soul and
strength for the sacrifice. Peace ! neither monk
nor any other creature can bestow it upon Dante.
The hand that sends the last* . . can alone take
away the crown of thorns."
These and a few similar extracts and memoranda,
intended for no eye but his own, and bringing to a
close the twenty-years' notes of sermons, missions,
engagements of his active life in the Church, are a
truthful and effective record of the inner struggle.
We see him striving to make safe the natural
foundations of religion and morality, while the arti-
ficial securities he had so long trusted to are giving
way. The old way is wrong, he writes, in effect,
but before quitting it, let me make sure where the
right way is, lest I wander lost on trackless moors,
and exchange what is to me but a poor substitute
for truth for what is infinite error.
What especially weighed upon his mind at this
time were the scandals in high places, which, from
the position he held as trusted friend and counsellor
of people of rank and influence, he had more than
usual opportunities of becoming acquainted with. It
was not that this or that ecclesiastic was a bad man,
or even that the church in such a country, or under
such circumstances, was corrupt that he w r ould have
accepted as the inevitable result of a ministry which
God had confided to the hands, not of angels, but
of men. No ; what troubled him was that he heard
on every side how human infirmity, personal ambi-
* Illegible.
61
tion, underhand devices, were being employed to bring
about a new definition of faith to induce the Holy
Spirit to declare His truth to the Church !
In the month of April a private letter, addressed
by Dr. Newman to Dr. Ullathorne, Bishop of Bir-
mingham, had somehow made its way into the
papers, and writing about it to Father Suffield, its
author said, " Of course I never conjectured so un-
guarded a letter would get into circulation, but now
it is done, it is done and I can't be sorry and I am
glad to hear your judgment confirming me in my
impenitence." In this letter Dr. Newman spoke of
" an aggressive insolent faction " who were forcing
on the definition. " Why cannot we be let alone,"
he wrote, " when we have pursued peace and thought
no evil? " Hitherto Eome had spoken only to inspire
the faithful with hope and confidence, "but now we
have the greatest meeting 'which has ever been seen,
and that at Eome, infusing into us, by its accredited
organs, the Civilta, the Univers, and the Tablet, little
else than fear and dismay. When we are all at rest,
and have no doubts, and at least, practically, not to
say doctrinally hold the Holy Father to be infallible,
suddenly there is thunder in the clear sky, and we
are told to prepare for something we know not
what, to try our faith we know not how. No
impending danger is to be averted, but a great diffi-
culty is to be created." Then, he added, " As to
myself, personally, please God I do not expect any
trial at all ; but I look with anxiety at the prospect
of having to defend decisions which may not be diffi-
cult to my own private judgment, but may be most
62
difficult to maintain logically in the face of historic
facts." It was here that the two failed in sympathy,
and on this that they eventually parted company for
life. The one was prepared to believe whatever the
Council might decree, no matter what might be the
means used to coerce it. The other found insuper-
able difficulty both in the substance of the proposed
definition and in the mode of bringing it about.
Did the Holy Spirit act by intrigue and threats?
Was the truth of God opposed to 'historic facts?'
And when he wrote of such things to trusted
Catholic correspondents, the greater their piety and
simplicity of faith, the more entirely did they fail
to understand the gravity of what seemed to them
so much "gossip." Thus one old friend, who had
been his adviser and companion of his labours from
the first, and from whom he might have expected
a sympathy which he could not look for within his
Order, writes under date May 7th :
"Dearest Brother, Your letter is simply most
painful to me. Why listen to all this wretched
gossip about the Holy Father and the Jesuits ?
Surely you do not fall into the mistake of Dr. N.,
who, in the words of Dalgairns, in his letter to the
Univers, 'exaggerates beyond measure the human
side, and ascribes the ever-rising and irresistible
current which is carrying the Church towards the defi-
nition of the Pope's infallibility to a few newspapers.'
Is the Church to abstain from teaching a divinely
revealed truth because of certain doubts and certain
so-called historical difficulties? She would be un-
63
faithful to her commission if she could do so. And
as to difficulties, (1) there is a sufficient answer to
all that has been stated ; (2) if there were not, they
are not so good as the difficulties, historic and other-
wise, which are brought against the truth of Holy
Scripture. What nonsense to talk of historic diffi-
culties against what is admitted to be a truth of
revelation ! All this intrigue, misrepresentation,
abuse, attack upon the Holy Father, which is on
the side of the opponents, not of the defenders of
the definition, shows the absolute necessity of a
definition. To me it is a confirmation of the truth,
for it is evidently the work of the Devil."
So wrote one whom he had for years regarded as
his nearest and dearest friend ; and another, a
priest in the Order, who loved him well :
"You speak of Galileo, &c., but astronomers are
now coming round to the Ptolemaic theory again.
A recent pamphlet by ' A Wrangler,' discusses the
merits of Copernicus and Ptolemy, and the author
told me that it may now be regarded as an open
question as to whether the sun or the earth moves.
As to historical facts, may not history be wrong?
It is certainly not infallible. I heard it said that
our English history would have to be written again
on account of new records coming to light. I believe
history is full of mistakes. It seems unreasonable
to prefer to rest our souls on such sandy grounds,
and to want more than the ' soliditas Petri.' "
It was with such arguments his doubts were met,
and the only one which really impressed him was
64
that of which he was himself only too conscious
that the difficulties were not confined to Papal infal-
libility, but were inherent in the system of a super-
natural revelation, whether through a church, a man,
or a book.
He had to go through the experience of every
convert ; his old companions could not understand
him ; it was not love, or sympathy, or respect, or
desire to help which was wanting, but the ability
to see the real force of the arguments which were
undermining his faith. To them it was all a tempta-
tion of Satan, they pitied and prayed for him who
was undergoing the assault, but to admit that such
difficulties were serious, would have seemed to
them like an act of homage to the tempter; the
utmost respect they could show would be to give
attention to discover the latent fallacy which, 'of
course,' was in them, It is so always ; if we firmly
believe, we can ill appreciate objections to our faith ;
and so we go through life, men of the same abilities
and like endowments, each marvelling how it comes
to pass that others can be of a different opinion to
himself. Those only who to themselves "may seem
to have reached a purer air," but have won it not
otherwise than " after toil and storm," can fully enter
into the difficulties of other minds.
No wonder, then, that at last he turned from
friends who all believed, nor knew what it meant
to doubt, to strangers who openly professed disbelief
of these things about which he was so troubled, ques-
tioning incessantly within himself were they true
or false?
CHAPTER VI.
HELP SOUGHT FROM OUTSIDE.
It was in May that he began a letter to the Eev.
James Martineau, then Principal of Manchester New
College, in London. How serious a step this was, and
how great a sin it would be accounted in a Catholic
Priest, to consult in matters of faith a schismatic and
heretic, those only can understand who have been
trained in the certainty that ' the Church ' is the one
divine guide and teacher of men. And that the writer
fully appreciated the gravity of his act is shewn in the
fact that though not a long letter it might be easily
and carefully written in an hour he took six days over
it. " May 19th, 1870," is the date, and below, "finished
on May 24th." " I am going to ask of you, " he wrote,
" a great favour, and perhaps a rather singular one
trusting to your honour. Will you do me the favour
of spending a fe\v days with me in my retired country
cottage? " It was assuredly a 'singular' request to
reach a Unitarian Minister from a Dominican Priest,
the one known to the world as an avowed advocate of
liberty of enquiry, the other known only hitherto as
a doughty champion of Roman domination.
" I am very anxious," he continued, "for my own
satisfaction, and as affording an additional help to
my own mind, to confer with you upon religious
66
questions, which I could not go into by letter so
as to be understood, or so as to arrive at any
conclusion. I will but make this remark, there are
men at the present time who gravely doubt all
those portions of religion which rest upon historic
(Scriptural or Church) foundations, but who yet
having felt in their own minds the terrible danger
of removing a system entirely interwoven with faith
in God, in the soul, in the conscience, in the soul's
future as influenced by the life's habits, question
whether they would not better please God by con-
tinuing to throw themselves blindfold, and therefore
heartily, into a human religion, embodying and
successfully carrying into practise those great princi-
ples, though accompanied with tremendous exaggera-
tion, rather than to help in shaking in many minds
the essentials of all religion, of all virtue, and of all
happiness, by setting the example of renouncing the
system in which these are embodied.
" Some men are so circumstanced by their ante-
cedents, their character, their position, that they
almost necessarily pass from one teaching position
into another and their entire silence would be like
teaching that they had lost all faith and perhaps
because they had lost all virtue. Such men, though
individually undeserving of anything beyond average
influence and consideration, yet from antecedent and
existing circumstances unable to get themselves
simply ignored, are bound to consider whether, in
a clwice of evils, the shaking virtue and faith in
many minds without being able to substitute other
67
grounds for faith and other supports for virtue,
may not be more evil and sinful than' the consistent
' acting of a part,' by which one would seek to
present in exaggerated popular form the hidden
truths of God, of conscience, of the soul, and its
future.
"Possibly there may be Catholic priests perhaps
I know such who may say to themselves thus :
' I have a great influence I am in a world-wide
society my Church teaches the great truths of God,
goodness, mercy, patience the influence of God on
the soul the respect for conscience prayer for
the souls' needs virtue hope. Now life is short,
my own has passed its meridian, I may destroy
in others what I can never replace I may be able
to confer but little happiness. I shall certainly cause
to very many the deepest sorrow ancient friend-
ships will be severed and I shall myself be re-
garded by thousands and tens of thousands who
have loved me, as a Judas who has betrayed his
trust, who must have had a bad motive thus, by
a single act, destroying the teaching as well as the
holy friendships and sacred confidences and beauti-
ful characters of twenty years and for what ?
Where could such a man, amidst the wildernesses
he had created for himself, covered with the ruins
of all his hopes, of all his beautiful friendships
where could he stand and say to his fellow-men,
' I still believe in God and love Him, I still hope
in Him, though for the simplicity of His truth I
have become an outcast I still believe in the soul,
68
in virtue, in conscience, in charity, and purity and
justice, though I may wander forth as an exile from
the human heart, every tongue cursing me, every
hand raised against me, and even the children and
the very poor who have delighted to call me
' Father,' and to trust me as such, turning from
me as from a thing of horror and of shame.'
"And unless such a priest were to pass from one
insincerity to another, pass over many hearts made
sad, and many souls, perchance, made bad where
could he raise his voice and speak to convince both
himself and others that truth, and zeal, and love,
had not perished in his soul? Where could he tell
others to find a home for their soul where they
need not ' act a part ?'
"Perchance, amidst the unhealed misery of the
world they doubt God's omnipotence whilst they
believe and bless His goodness. They know not
where He is or how or What. Words cannot
describe His nature, or His past, or His future, or
His mode of government. But still firmly believing
there is such a One, and that He is holy, and just,
and goodness; and that in answer to prayers He
will operate on the soul, though probably not
changing at man's behest His physical and natural
laws. And supposing such persons do not know
any reason why they should pray ' through Christ '
or ' to Him,' or practise any rites as if commanded
by Him but speak of Him reverently because His
name represents to so many millions the highest
expression of the beauty of holiness, and His teaching
69
contains so much that is the purest and the most
sublime, and yet cannot attribute to the historic form
any dogmatic position ; still, on the other hand,
not wishing ever to shock or wound the feelings or
prejudices of others in whom piety is interwoven
with some recognition of His name or office.
" There are, perhaps, some priests, who really hold-
ing such opinions as these, hardly dare to own it to
themselves, because they see nothing outside popular
Eeligion except the desert strewn with ruins, or a
few individuals striving to erect a home for the soul
and ever failing ; whilst the popular Eeligion seems
to succeed just the more that it develops its dogmatic,
exclusive of the historic side, and such a priest says
to himself : ' Perhaps God intends gross, popular
Religion to be the only exponent of his truth, if I
were not in it, I would not now embrace it, but
perhaps I shall please Him better by continuing in
it now, during the short remaining years of life,
rather than that I should go forth to seek a shadow
followed by the tears or the execrations of all who
have loved me. As I am, I am united in conscious
sympathy and intercourse with countless numbers,
I am sustained by their example, encouraged by
their affection, helped by their prayers daily I
encourage and share their holiest aspirations I
know them to be cruelly maligned, and leaving them,
I shall seem to malign them the more, and shall thus
wound and wrong old tried friends, loved and revered
in the depths of my soul I love them, and I turn
their very love into a sad and bitter regret. And if
70
I leave my pleasant village home to go forth and
literally starve as a pauper and obtain the sufferings
of a martyr, with nothing around me but unrealised
hopes, and a sad fear haunting me that whilst
seeking an ideal perfection of truth I have injured
souls I shall be powerless to serve, and destroyed
happiness I can never restore ! What then ? Surely
nothing would surround my latter years but despair.'
' ' If such a man could find a religious home for his
own soul, one to which he could point and say : ' If
you share my doubts about EVEBYTHING taught by
historic religions, here you can be received without
a misgiving; and if you are a religious teacher, so
long as you do not hurt the feelings and honest
prejudices of others, you can be here and teach
here without compromise, and without continuing
in a modified degree the assumed dogmatism of your
present position',
" The character of Unitarians and their tone of
mind, and high moral standard, and their existing
organisation seems to provide an answer satisfactory.
Will you, my dear sir, in great confidence, come and
confer with me on these matters?
"Be so kind as to be very guarded, for if ever I
am compelled to act, my first communication must
be with my Provincial," so that I consult to the
utmost the feelings of others, and protect to the
fullest all the trusts reposed in me; and by some
* The Dominican Order is governed by a ' General,' who resides
at Rome, under whom is iu each Province a ' Provincial,' to whom
are in turn subject all the Priors of convents, and all the Friars
residing within his district.
71
printed matter I send, you will perceive somewhat
what I mean. If there be no existing religious
substitute for the Catholic Church is it not God's
intention that the great religious truths of Theism
should be always exaggerated and embodied in a
gross popular form, as in ancient times we have
the esoteric and exoteric doctrine?
" Somehow, those who have abandoned the Catholic
Church, as far as I have heard about them, do not
attract me thoughtful, quiet, earnest men seem
almost more to approve those who remain than those
who leave and yet, although I have so sought soli-
tude here, and to withdraw from influence, I am
receiving persons (unsought by me) into the Catholic
Church; just lately the son of an M.P. has been
with me to be received into the Church, and the
only two persons of education and intelligence in
my village are likely to follow the same example ;
and a Protestant officer comes to me, and a Pro-
testant lady, to make a Eetreat w r ith the same object
next month. I am compelled to continue taking a
distinct side. Can you help me conscientiously to
weigh this grave matter, and to ponder this irre-
trievable and, to many, perhaps, fatal step?
" Believe me, very faithfully yours,
"EOBEBT EODOLPH SUFFIELD."
To this touching letter, in which he laid bare his
heart before one who had been hitherto an entire
stranger to him, but whose character and judgment
he seemed to have read in his published works, and
whom he found, as the event proved, fully worthy
72
of the trust he reposed in him, Mr. Martineau
replied as follows :
" LONDON, May 26th.
"KEY. AND DEAR SIR, The deep and moving
questions raised by your very interesting letter can
be freely treated only viva voce ; so I will not try to
say any of the hundred things that crowd upon
me, but will simply offer myself to you for Mon-
day evening next, the 30th hist., if you can receive
me for a day, and let me return home on Tuesday
evening. A longer time I must not allow myself,
having duties, as Principal of a College, requiring
my presence at morning prayers and lectures on
the following day.
" Notwithstanding the unqualified expressions of
faith, which are at times so startling in Dr. Newman's
writings, and which are habitual with all my Catholic
friends, Archbishop Manning, Father Dalgairns, and
Dr. Ward, I have always supposed that in the higher
minds the hidden strife must be going on between
the Divine light and mythologic shadows, which the
Church and the Bible have blended, and I have often
wondered that the traces were so few of that terrible
and pathetic struggle. But now for the first time
have I full insight into all which the conflict involves ;
still, if it is not ours to manage for God and act as
His diplomatists, but to be simply led by Him as
children, a clear path may surely be found, often,
doubtless, the path of sacrifice.
"The religious life in our set of Protestant com-
munities is not in a satisfactory condition ; and
73
the best that I can say for them is that they
offer no hindrance to either thought or conscience,
and may be receptacles and vehicles of spiritual
reformation.
"Believe me ever, yours faithfully,
"JAMES MARTINEAU."
It would seem as if a reaction followed on this
decisive step. His request was granted, yet perhaps
he would have been half pleased . had it been rudely
refused. The sympathy shown him by a stranger to
himself and to his Church, must have made him
realise more keenly than ever how fast he was
approaching the terrible ordeal from which every
nerve shrank.
So writing, under date " May 28th, 1870," after
giving particulars of trains, &c., he continued,
" I shall not mention your name to any one, thus
no curiosity is excited, visitors constantly thus come.
" Might I ask you to see the drift of the line of
thought in the ' Crown of Jesus,' which I send you,
from pages 64 to 80, and from the latter part of page
81 to the middle of page 91,* the note to page 264, f
and pages 498 to 501. J I wrote these passages ten
years ago, but they represent my entire line of
thought for above twenty years.
"The scheme of Catholic Doctrine w r hich I drew
up and placed in the ' Table of Contents ' will show
how, in my teachings, the moral life has been
* This page contains " A Rule of Life," instructions how to
live piously and well, most part of which all would approve.
f Quoted below, page 78. } See page 44.
74
intimately interwoven with the Catholic dogma and
rites.
" Now, though delighted to listen to any obser-
vation of a controversial character you might wish
to make, I could not say that such is precisely my
desideratum.
" I want you first to realise the Catholic interior
life no one out of the Catholic Church ever seems to
understand it even remotely. Thus everything said
and written against us is merely like breath upon a
mirror, and a child can wipe it away.
" I want you to realise what the system of the
Catholic Church affords to every noblest thought,
to every purest and holiest aspiration, and how it
also gets hold of the lowest and roughest and coarsest,
and saves him from being a brute. If ever God
breaks the chain of gold that binds me to His
Temple and bids me look around and see that its
magnificence is merely a stately vision and a dream
of beauty one memory will ever follow me like the
last pleading look of the victim gazing into the eyes
of the murderer, and it will be the memory of that
love of God, piety, reverence, that tender charity,
that chivalry of devotedness, that chastity which
has never known a taint, interwoven in the most
intimate communications in which every secret of
the heart and life has been revealed. I look behind
me and around me, at our Priestly and Eeligious
Homes, at our Colleges and Convents, and then at
that other large circle of devoted friends in the world
whom God's goodness also gave me, and say to
75
myself, Is there the same elswhere ? Truth is not
merely in the intellect; it is also in the heart.
Better to have moral beauty and credulity com-
bined, like the ivy eating the oak even whilst it
beautifies it, than to destroy at once the credulity
of mind and the moral beauty of the soul. So I
ask, What is to take the place?
"And I want to learn from you (for I perfectly
confide in your high-minded and unbiassed integrity),
what is the moral life, the piety, the high devoted-
ness, the unworldly generosity, the spirit of faith
and singleness of purpose, of those who are simply
Theists ? This matter comes almost entirely out of
my experience. Yet no one can read the works of
Professor Newman and of Miss Cobbe without saying
to himself, ' Here is moral beauty and truth com-
bined.'
"But as some are born princes of thought, so
there are others who seem to belong by right of
birth to a royal dynasty of virtue, and they would
have made their worship in the temple of Corinth
chastity ; and their pleasure in the garden of Epi-
curus fortitude. Are these merely exceptions ? and
exceptions merely because a high intellect has not
wished to stoop into the mire ? But amongst the
gentry, the young men, the tradespeople, the working
classes, what is the effect of the absence of all historic
dogmatic belief ? Can God and the conscience main-
tain their empire over the life ?
" That is what I want to learn. It is an unknown
world to me, but it does not come to me with a good
76
report ; but what chiefly makes me shrink from it is
this what they say continually about us ; they always
impute to us Catholics, evil ; if we even do a good
thing, it is supposed we must have had a bad motive
in doing it ; if we affect kindness, it cannot be because
we bear no evil, but because we would catch a prose-
lyte ; if we do a charity, it is to buy ourselves out of
Purgatory ; the motive must be selfish, and all of us
are supposed to be playing a game for power, for
money, or for lust. In our communities there must
be tyranny, violence, impurity ; and amongst Priests
and ' Religious ' there cannot be chastity, because
they are single so they seem to argue.
" Now, I say to myself, ' Surely they reason from
themselves ; ' and every such attack has made me
draw closer to that ancient family wherein, if there
be the credulity ef childhood, there certainly is, too,
its bright joy of heart, its purity, its tenderness, its
devotedness ; and these have something to do with
God and Truth.
"That profound habit of government of thought
produced by the Catholic system would enable me
to banish ahvays, as I do now, except at formal
periods of consideration, all the doubts which arise
in my mind ; and I should be convinced it was more
pleasing to God to do so, and blindfolding my intel-
lect to let the old Church, to which I owe so much,
lead on another pilgrim through mystic rites and
dreams of ancient beauty to the Eternal Home, than
it would be to have satisfied the intellect by a nega-
tion, and flung myself from a citadel of moral security
7?
into a battlefield of doubt, perplexity, uncertainty,
without a support, without an example, myself sus-
pected, doubted, an exile from one home, and never
obtaining another.
"You see the Catholic system. What is to take
its place ? It was once all contained in that upper
room over the beautiful Gate of the Temple. That
room contained the simplest faith, the purest hopes,
the grandest charity that had yet combined together
in the world. And as the vase of precious ointment
broke, and the fragrance unperceived spread far and
wide, so the gates of that upper room opened, and
one by one they went forth and died, the vase of
precious ointment broke, the fragrance possessed the
the world.
"Is there such a beginning now? The Unitarian
Society, with its high moral tone, its tolerance, its
gracious domestic life does it possess the mysterious
gift ? Has it the germ of a future and most glorious
career? or does it merely raise, though more charit-
ably, another protest, as if to afford another witness
to that ancient Church w r hich teaches, commands,
and is obeyed?
" If so, the heart returns to itself and says, ' God,
virtue, noble devotedness, must not be left without a
witness; that Society which presents the witness
the most perfectly must be the Truth, as far as God
yet permits it, to an evil generation.'
" I may as well add, I have read most of the
notable works against the Catholic Church and
Christianity, as well as all that I knew of a defence.
73
Thus you see I seek not the controversial, but the
moral and existing evidence of a higher and purer
truth, if such exists.
" Ever yours, very faithfully."
One passage of his " Crown of Jesus," to which he
drew special attention, is worth quoting, as showing
the high ideal he entertained of the priestly office.
If Protestants cannot admit the assumption which
runs throughout of a distinct privileged caste, with
graces all its own, yet none can fail to admire the
character portrayed.
" The good priest is always on the side of virtue,
of justice, of truth ; he is always on the side of Jesus
Christ ; he is always advancing His interests, defend-
ing His cause, tending His flock, announcing His
Gospel, administering His Sacraments. From his
lips flow w r ords of mercy, pardon, consecration, hope,
encouragement, reconciliation, blessing, justice ; his
heart not limited in its affections by the mere circle
of relationship or private interest, dilates and em-
braces in its charity every form of virtue, of weakness,
or of suffering all in whom sorrow, tears, dereliction,
poverty, youth, shame, virtue, piety, or faith renew
the image of Jesus Christ. In the midst of an unbe-
lieving age and an unbelieving country, he bears the
reproach and the honour of Christ. To how many
souls does he, as the ambassador and minister of
Christ, bring pardon, virtue, peace, and hope ; how
many tears dry up ; how many good resolutions evoke
or strengthen ; how many wounded souls heal. Loved,
honoured, hated, dreaded, or despised by those who
79
loved, honoured, hated, dreaded, or despised his
Master; by how many prayers of gratitude is he
borne up amidst his earthly trials ; from how many
temptations shielded by the sanctity and reverence
that environ his sacred office. And when at length
the gates of Heaven open to admit those who, having
turned many to justice, shine as the stars in the
firmament for ever, then he, the priest, the minister,
the ambassador, bearing radiant in his soul the august
character of the priesthood, bends before the throne
of Him who commissioned him on earth as the
representative and instrument of His mercy, His
truth, His grace, and from Him he receives the
crown, whilst the souls he has helped to redeem
leap from their thrones of light to hail his approach,
and to raise around their deliverer their sweetest
songs of love and joy."
Such was his " good priest." None knew better
than he did that some were bad, and many very
ordinary men, and that few indeed attained to be
what he pourtrayed. Yet we cannot wonder that
he was loth to abandon claim and effort to be such
a one, and belong to the company of such men to
take a step which would bring upon him the con-
tempt and dread of them all, and to substitute for
this high ideal the very prosaic type of the able
minister of a respectable congregation which he
distantly knew of as accepted by Unitarians. After
all, ideals must be tried by their working power;
what kind of men does such an ideal as this, in
fact, produce? Is the average priest, celibate, sepa-
80
rate, believing himself gifted with supernatural
powers, a man superior to the average minister,
husband, father, citizen, bound to set good
example, but claiming no superiority to his hearers
except special training for his profession and special
knowledge of his subject? That is the question
which should be determined, and not which ideal is
higher; and when he came afterwards to determine
it of his own experience, his answer was clear and
certain.
CHAPTEE VII.
FIRST INTIMATION TO THE PUBLIC.
Mr. Martineau came according to promise on the
Monday evening, and spent Tuesday with his Domi-
nican host at Bosworth. He himself gave a most
interesting account of the visit at a public meeting
held in the Hope Street School-room, in Liverpool,
on the 25th of September of the following year,
on occasion of the opening of the new Church in
Hamilton Eoad, Everton. After speaking of the visit
to England of Keshub Chunder Sen, "a kind of
second John, a soul most congenial to the soul of
Jesus," he went on, "an event has taken place
recently with which I have had in some degree the
privilege of a personal connection.
"A very eminent and remarkable man has given
up his adherence to the Catholic religion, and has
thrown himself among us as a preacher of pure and
spiritual religion. I allude to the Eev. Eobert Eodolph
Suffield. Now, before Mr. Suffield's name was heard
amongst us, at his own request I early paid him a
visit at his retreat in the country. I had intimate
intercourse with him, and learned precisely his state
of thought before he had made up his mind to the step
he has now taken, and I was especially struck with
the problem which was presented to his religious
82
sense what is the real essence and nature of
Catholicism? Now, I found that the view Mr.
Suffield took of Catholicism was this : He said, ' I
see in the Catholic religion the only example in the
world's history in which the great and fundamental
principles of all natural piety and of all natural
conscience are made the actuating principles of the
life of multitudes and of nations. The great doctrine
of the moral government of God, the great truth of
the absolute supremacy of conscience, the great hope
of a future and better life, these things have imbued
the Catholic mind, the mind even of the youngest
children of the Catholic Church that have any intel-
ligence at all. They are realities to the Catholic
people. They speak of them with the same simplicity
and openness with which they would speak of the work
of their plough, of their spade, of their shuttle ; with
which they would speak of concerns of their houses
and their homes. There is no shyness concerning
them. They are absolute realities to them, and rule
their lives. We know that they control the passions
of young people, and, if they go astray, by appealing
to these images in their hearts, we can recover them
again. They are truly a power in life. And now,'
said Mr. Suffield, ' what 1 want to know is, whether
outside the Catholic Church those truths have the
same power and reality, whether they take their
places among the facts of life \vith the same certainty
and with the same efficacy.' He looked upon the
Catholic religion simply as an instrumentality for
bringing home to men the simple natural convictions
83
of the human heart, and making them live in their
consciences and lives. Catholicism thus was to him
nothing but a great system of natural religion sup-
ported by the most artificial and unnatural of authori-
ties and supports. That is the view he took of it,
and he said, ' What I want to know is, if I dare to
throw away these artificial supports, shall I find it
possible to administer this spiritual theism to man-
kind, and get hold of the hearts of men ? Or am I
to believe that it is impossible for the weak mind of
humanity to grapple those truths, unless you have a
false mythology, and all sorts of pictures and images,
connected with them ? Does the religion enter by
means of the false imagination, or may we fling away
the false imagination, and trust to the spiritual power
of religion ? ' That was the problem he had to solve
for himself, and he said, ' I fear if I were to profess
myself a Protestant I should be propping up these
eternal truths with just as false and entangled a
machinery as if I were to remain in the Catholic
Church. For, if there is no infallibility in the Catholic
Church, neither is there in the Protestant Scriptures,
and whether I take the one or the other, I throw
away natural truths, and fling myself instead on an
artificial and unnatural support.' Well, I believe
myself that Mr. Sufneld here expressed a great truth;
and I think the changes which are now taking place
jn the Protestant Churches are all of this kind. The
tendency is to fling away the false dependence upon
artificial authority, and go back to the primitive
rights of religion in human nature and in human
84
life. I said to him, I should feel it an impiety, and
infidelity the only thing I should venture to call
infidelity at all to doubt that what God has made
true could vindicate and justify itself to the human
heart without any human lies to back it up and sup-
port it. If we once found that a thing was a lie, and
was false, or even if it was precarious, it was at the
peril of all veracity and of all fidelity that we dared
to maintain and use it as a means of underpinning,
as it were, and supporting an eternal and all impor-
tant truth. I believe myself that the Churches are
at last discovering this. This next generation will
be, it appears to me, a great time for the tumbling
down of props. Many are so timid as to believe that,
if such be the case, the things also which have been
propped up will fall. But if we have been building
the supports and constructing all this machinery
under something which is made to stand by itself,
in that case they may crumble to the dust and the
superstructure will not fall. It was once believed
that some old mythological giant was necessary to
bend his back and support the heavens. Atlas has
long ago disappeared among the ghosts of the ancient
world, and the heavens still overreach us and have
not fallen. The old aqueducts of Eome, fitting type
as it seems to me of the artificial channels of grace
which are given by the modern Eome, lie now with
their piers broken and their arches strewed upon the
plain below, but the waters of life have not been spilt
and lost."*
* " The Unitarian Herald" Oct. 6, 1871.
85
Mr. Martineau left him on Tuesday evening, and the
Friday following, he, for the first time, gave public
intimation of the difficulties in which his faith had
been so long involved ; difficulties unsuspected hither-
to by any but his most intimate friends, and even by
them looked upon as mere temptations which would
pass away after a while of trial.
But to explain the occasion of which he availed
himself to give this warning to so many devoted
friends, and prepare them for the greater shock of
his " apostacy," it will be necessary to give a short
account of a controversy in which he had been for
some time past involved.
A certain Mr. Urquhart, whose name will go down
to posterity in connection with the Turkish Bath,
which he was the first to introduce in this country,
was, in his day, well known as an able but eccentric
politician, who had specially made himself conspicu-
ous by his fanatical enmity to Russia, and his deter-
mined opposition to Lord Palmerston's policy in
China and the East. This gentleman had, in the
year 1868, when the General Council was summoned
to meet in Rome, made appeal to the Pope, to use
the opportunity so afforded to publish a solemn
declaration on the subject of unjust wars, and to
call the attention of all Christians to the guilt in
which those who took any part in them, were, accord-
ing to the ancient teaching of the Church, involved.
Mr. Urquhart was himself a Protestant, but he had
appealed in vain to the bishops and clergy of his
own Church; "on the occurrence of the first law-
86
less brigandages in Afghanistan and China," he
wrote, " I applied myself to the Church of England
to obtain a day of fast and humiliation, and I
appealed to the Archbishop of Canterbury to excom-
municate the Queen ; but though some were brought
to seriousness and sadness, no priest or bishop was
got to move in a Diocesan Assembly for a day of
Fast. ::: "
To the Canon Law, then, Mr. Urquhart turned, and
there seemed to find full support for his contention,
and indeed many right-minded and zealous Roman
Catholics both French and English, were inclined
to co-operate with him, or at least work to the same
end. So a petition to the Holy Father had appeared
in the columns of The Tablet as early as the 15th
of August, 1868, and had received numerous signa-
tures. "The undersigned," it began, "implore
the protection of the Holy See : their concern is
aroused upon questions which have to do with their
conscience as Catholics, their duties and their rights
as citizens, and the interests of all Christendom.
They ask from the Holy See and the Council a decla-
ration of the principles which make the distinction of
lawful and unlawful war, which guarantee to the
armed citizen that he shall not be called upon to
exchange his character as defender of right for that of
an aggressor and assassin. It is no vain theory that
has moved them to this petition ; it is their conscien-
tious anxiety, their apprehensions for themselves and
for their children."
* Letter of August 5th, 1869.
87
This will be sufficient to show how awfully serious
the case was for the numerous Eoman Catholics who
themselves were enlisted in the army or had soldier
sons or relations. It was a matter of heaven or hell ;
for according to the doctrine which some sought to
establish, a soldier fighting in what he knew to be an
unjust war, if slain on the field of battle, died in
mortal sin, beyond hope of salvation ; and moreover
the responsibility of determining on the moral aspect
of the war rested upon each individual engaged in it.
Now the custom had grown up, whatever may have
been the ancient usage, to consider this responsibility
incumbent only upon the governing authorities, and it
was generally held that the subordinate was excused,
in the sight of God as of man, on the plea that he was
obeying orders. Against Mr. Urquhart, who openly
reprobated this view, and some ecclesiastics who
supported him, but had not the courage to give their
names to the world, Mr. Suffield maintained that it
was the right and duty of the confessor to give absolu-
tion and admit to communion every soldier other-
wise fitly disposed who went to war when called
upon, making no enquiry as to the occasion or justifi-
cation of it.
He had written in July, 1869, " In this matter I
am not accessible to argument, but I am to authority.
All the bishops, theologians, professors, and confes-
sors, who have as yet written to me, signing their
names, entirely agree with me, and utterly repudiate
the opposite opinions "; and he refers to a passage in
a privately printed letter which he addressed to Lord
Denbigh, " We are told that each soldier should
refuse to obey till he has satisfied himself that his
government had sufficient reason for going to war,
had previously tried fruitlessly in every way to get
the grievance redressed, had consulted pious men and
ecclesiastics as to the justice of the war, and had
proclaimed the war with due formalities. If he is
not satisfied on all these points he is to be told that
he becomes ' a wholesale murderer ' if he goes to
battle. If a Confessor should attempt to pacify his
conscience by telling him that his oath of allegiance
is certain, and his doubt uncertain ; that with the
slight information at his command he cannot arrive
at a conclusion sufficiently certain to justify him in
violating his oath ; that he may suppose his govern-
ment to be in possession of information, which if
communicated to him, would alter his own judg-
ment ; that in the meanwhile his duty is to obey all
those commands which are according to the present
laws of war, conscientiously abstaining from brigand-
age, or violence,, or crime, to which his passions
might prompt him ; that he is to dispel his doubts,
to form his conscience, and go to battle, a confessor
giving such advice, we are told, becomes ' a partici-
pator in murder.' " It was against such teaching
that Mr. Suffield felt called upon to protest, and
though supported by every authority to whom he
appealed, he yet had to endure much abuse and
misrepresentation both from Mr. Urquhart, and even
from Eoman advocates of peace, whose opposition
was all the more painful to him, that he largely
89
sympathised with their action, though judging the
extremes to which they pushed their opinions, both
false in theory and cruel in practise. Not indeed
that there were any known to him who did carry out
in practise this theory of the confessor's duties, but
they condemned the custom which they followed,
while he maintained that it was right according
to Canon Law as well as expedient.
" During the time of the Crimean War," he wrote,
" at another period, and again quite recently, I have
been personally blamed with extreme severity, not so
much because my practise was like that of other
confessors, but because I defended it as being theo-
logically correct, whereas it was imagined that some
priests regarded such practise, even though followed
by themselves, to be an abuse which ought to be
reformed."
And among other authorities he was able to pro-
duce the following letter from Cardinal Wiseman to
a father who had consulted him at the time of the
Chinese war, which seemed to him unjust, as to
whether he was right in letting his son join the
army.
Talacre, Ehyl, Aug. 7, 1857.
Dear Sir, I do not see that you have anything to
do with your private opinions about the justice of a
particular war in deciding your son's going into the
army. You may freely let him obtain his commission
as soon as possible.
Yours very sincerely in Christ,
N. CARDINAL WISEMAN.
90
But in spite of the universal practise and the sup-
port of the highest dignitaries of the Church, in spite
too of the manifest exaggeration by which his oppo-
nents gave their cause away, it is still clear that his
own mind was not at ease on the question. " I am
not accessible to argument," he wrote; and again, "I
shall be really glad if you will get the matter formally
and publicly settled by authority. Should the bishops
declare me to be in error, I shall be the first to
submit, and they will remove the obstacle to my
co-operating with you," and " should the Holy See
decree as you hope, the whole subject will to every
Catholic pass out of the range of argument or uncer-
tainty." And in a letter to The Tablet of Aug. 28,
1869, "There are those who, like myself, go far along
with Mr. Urquhart in his great, noble, and Christian
objects, and should the opinions which I have ex-
pressed prove to be in any way inaccurate, I can only
repeat now what I have said to individual Catholics,
that my advice and my practice will be instantly
changed at the bidding of ecclesiastical authority, and
of course my opinions too at any intimation from the
Holy See."
It sounds intensely loyal all this, and yet if any
Catholic could have then suspected one so universally
esteemed as Father Suffield, the thought might have
occurred that, like the Queen in Hamlet, he " does
protest too much." The fact is that he was in a
false position, defending on authority what he could
not, or dared not argue in support of, and appealing
to authority to decide against him. Mr. Urquhart
91
had attacked him with considerable asperity, and
concluded his published reply with the words, " a
Catholic priest, who has seen your printed letter,
wrote these words, ' Father Suffield, whether he
wills it or not, is enrolled in the army of evil, and
never will you gain him.' " For a whole year he
made no answer, and allowed criticism and calumny
to have their way, but now at last he was em-
boldened to speak openly, and reveal in the following
letter what had all along been in his mind.
To THE EDITOR OF THE DIPLOMATIC EEVIEW.
The Hermitage, H. Bosworth, Leicestershire,
June 8, 1870.
SIR, Many of your readers and of my friends
have expressed surprise that, excepting the occa-
sional correction of an error, I have made no reply
to the strictures on my letter to Lord Denbigh.
Will you permit me to explain ? Some of the
strictures were personal ; others regarded the public
question of the degree of moral responsibility resting
on subjects in the event of a war. The personal
strictures were quite sufficiently answered by the
kind letter Lord Denbigh addressed to me as a public
reply, in which he signified not only his hearty
concurrence with the opinions I had expressed, but
also with the mode in which I had endeavoured to
help on the inquiry. This letter he sent round
rather extensively. The public question, so far as it
regarded Protestants, I did not enter into, beyond a
general expression of sincere admiration of those
engaged in the pursuit of higher views and practice
92
of justice. As Catholics had sought my opinion, I
addressed my observations to them. To them and to
myself it was simply a question of the authoritative
application of admitted principles. The question re-
solved itself to us into whether, under certain speci-
fied circumstances, we could approach the Sacraments,
as that is the clearest test of whether the intended act
or state of mind is mortal sin. I pointed out to Catho-
lics the inconsistent position we should place our-
selves in if we denounced as sinful what, under the
authority of the Church, we were under those very
circumstances permitted and even ordered to do.
When Protestants objected that my statements on
this Catholic matter were erroneous and contrary to
episcopal judgments, I printed my statements, and
sent them round to all the bishops for their approval,
approval was given, and in no instance censure.
When it was stated that Cardinal Wiseman had
taught differently, I obtained an autograph letter of
the Cardinal's going far beyond anything that I had
stated.
But why did not I support these authorities and
the universal practice of the Church with proofs ? I
will frankly say why. Because, as a matter of argu-
ment, and in my individual conscience, I did not
thoroughly see my way to agreement with the
universal Catholic approved practice and doctrine.
I submitted to it because I knew it to be binding
on us. There are several other subjects on which, if
I followed my own judgment and conscience, I should
arrive at a conclusion very remote from, and tome-
93
times quite opposed to, the teaching of the Church
and of our moral theology. On such subjects I am
not disposed to be an enthusiastic defender, but I
quietly point out to Catholics, " You cannot take
that line -without opposing the Church." Or "if
you admit such a position, you must necessarily
admit such a conclusion, which you know, as Catho-
lics, we are bound to reject." I did not wish Mr.
Urquhart to be deceived by the supposition that, on
account of strong general sympathies, we, as Catho-
lics, could carry out what he clearly thought we
could and ought. The Pope was gratified at Mr.
Urquhart's homage ; Catholics were gratified at his
recognising a power in our Church and in the Papacy ;
but in a very few years he will be the most vehement
in his declarations that I was right, and he was
deceived by the utterance of generalities and un-
realised hopes ; and then he, perhaps, will in his
passionate devotion to justice, reverse the title of the
memoir he published against myself. *
Yours faithfully,
KOBEKT EUDOLPH SUFFIELD, O.S.D.
It does not appear that any immediate notice was
taken of this letter by his superiors in the Order. It
was perhaps judged useless to expostulate, and more
prudent to wait in silence for further developments.
But we have evidence how seriously it was regarded
in a subsequent remonstrance addressed to him by his
Provincial, Father Aylward, one of the many who
* The Effect on the World of the Eestoration of Canon Law ;
being A Vindication of The Catholic Church against a Priest, by
David Urquhart, London, 1869.
94
loved and revered him. "In that letter," he wrote
on the 10th of August following, " which you lately in-
serted in the Dip. Bcv., there were expressions (quite
apart from the theological question of War) which
were strangely disturbing to me, and ominously enig-
matical. That no man would arrive by the following
of his own judgment and conscience at the conclusions
which the Church teaches as of divine revelation this
every believer in what is generally called 'revealed
religion,' is ready to confess. The saying of St.
Augustine, 'Evangelic non crederem nisi me Catho-
UCCR Ecclesia commoveret auctoritas,'* 'I would not
accept the gospel if it did not come guaranteed to me
by the authority of the Catholic Church,' is a favourite
text with Eoman controversialists. But the very
foundation of a science of supernatural theology is in
the belief that truths which reason cannot discover,
it will, wiien rightly exercised, support; and that con-
science will approve rules of life it could not itself
formulate and sanction. Therefore to write 'If I
followed my own judgment and conscience I should
arrive at a conclusion quite opposed to the teaching of
the Church,' was little short of an avowal of heresy.
It was like saying, 'I submit but do not agree.' "
Contra Ep. Fundamenti, cap.
CHAPTER VIII.
LAST DIFFICULTIES AND DECISION.
A few days later he wrote the following letter to
Mr. Martineau :
" June 7th.
"REV. AND DEAK SIB, Your very kind visit helped
me in three ways, (1) to realise more my own position
and its grounds, by imparting it to another ; (2) by
perceiving that you deem it, at least, not the most
conscientious ; (3) by giving me the practical informa-
tion and hope that piety, virtue, charity, and devoted-
ness are really nourishing amongst those who reject
authoritative religious teaching.
"I have now determined distinctly to submit my
position to Dr. Newman, in the letter which I enclose,
and which you might please return to me with any
suggestion.
"I shall not send that letter to him for several days
- for I cannot help prognosticating that whatever may
be the full result, at least, I shall withdraw from any
teaching position in the Catholic Church, and there-
fore I think I must pave the way so as to save peculiar
embarrassments to some who would be very intimately
affected, and for whom I must provide that they
should be as little as possible affected, by my abandon-
ment of a spiritual trust. Also I must give a private
96
intimation to my Provincial, so that he may be
prepared to supply my place without causing any
unnecessary injury, or inconvenience, or harm. I have
already made an application to Eome to get myself
superceded as Head and Director of the Association
of the Perpetual Eosary, but without assigning any
reason; they knew I never desired office, and will
attribute my resignation (which I do not make till
my place can be quite filled) to love of quiet and
perhaps indolence. Also some other parties, such as
my bishop, and some special friends, I must communi-
cate with, so that the position I have occupied in
trust from the Church may not be abandoned in a
way calculated to injure the Church or them ; all this
will take about four weeks anyhow.
" Then a great practical difficulty of conscience
always arises to my mind, whether I ought to say
to the Provincial, or to the General of my Order,
1 1 will adopt any course you desire which does not
imply belief.' The General would in all probability
request me to go to Eome ; now without the over-
strained fears of many Protestants, I must acknow-
ledge not to desiderate Eome.
" Moreover, as the Catholic theory, the Catholic
conviction, is that to ' lose the faith ' is a grave and
the gravest of sins, the General would say, ' you need
not do anything against your conscience, but with-
draw to a Eeligious House in France, and make
retreat, and pray and remain in seclusion ; you will
be maintained there, and can read and pray and
think; you will thus bring no scandal on religion,
and not wound friends, or betray a trust.'
97
" This is a subject I had also wished to have gone
into with you. Everything seems such a maze to
me in contemplating this vast change of the whole
habit of my mind, and life, and line of action, that
I do not see with even a proximate guess what is the
highest, most conscientious, and honourable line of
action.
" On the whole I incline to this, after I have done
all in my power to be just, and kind, and considerate
to those I leave, to seek some kind of occupation near-
est akin to that of my last twenty years, and there-
fore connected with some institution of a charitable
or educational character. I have no desire to be the
founder of a sect, or to push myself to the front as
a religious teacher, but if proprio motu, and heartily
a Congregation of ' Free Christians ' understanding
me to hold the convictions of Theodore Parker,
really confided in me, so as to request me to become
their pastor, it would be according to the habits
of my mind and life.
" Four years in a Catholic Ecclesiastical College,
and twenty years in missionary, pastoral, and con-
fessional duties, and now the peaceful meditative
seclusion of nearly two years, combine with the
pressure of these spiritual anxieties to disqualify me
for the ordinary business of life.
" These are the practical questions which arise
before me, but still there continues a conflict between
my intellect and my conscience. The true religion
should not be opposed to intellect, but it should be
chiefly approved by the conscience. My conscience
G
seems continually saying to me, ' dispel all doubts
whichever is the best and most complete religion
must be the true one if you were as humble, pious,
good a man as such a one, or as learned as such other,
you would not be thinking of striking off into an
eccentric course.'
" I never perform any of my priestly duties with-
out my conscience saying to me, ' that is right in
its mystic signification it is the most complete pre-
sentation of the truth.'
" My dear sir, pardon my wearying you with the
details of my mental and spiritual agony.
" Accustomed to legislate for others, and authori-
tatively to teach others and guide them, as an indi-
vidual (in accord with Catholic theory) I never guided
myself : every action, movement, the very horarium of
the day, every minutest detail has been prescribed to
me, and the perfection set before me was to try to
carry it out as the expression of God's will ; belief on
authority, practise on authority, have been my law of
mind and life. Therefore the mere taking the whole
of this gravest matter into my own hands seems,
feels, like a grievous imperfection as well as difficulty ;
and the harbouring of a doubt is like the dallying
with a sin.
" Even as an Anglican I took all on the authority,
as it were, of a branch representing the One Church.
" Then I think if two years ago I had hastily acted
on a doubt, before I had accustomed my mind to accept
some great principles not on authority, it would have
been the shattering of my whole moral nature, and
99
been more calamitous than the most degraded super-
stition would be if united with religious and moral
life.
" With great gratitude for your kind sympathy,
and for certain salient thoughts you suggested in our
too brief interview,
" Believe me,
" Yours faithfully,
" EOBEET EODOLPH SUFFIELD."
It will be hard for those who have never had to go
through a like trial, to understand this conscientious
scruple about an act which would seem to be one of
utter abnegation of self for truth's sake. Men may,
and do leave the Koman Church, and every Church
from motives of self-interest, or pride, or passion, or
from mere wantonness and love of change, but his
worst enemies could hardly assign such motives as
the cause of Mr. Suffield's ' apostacy ' ; he had every-
thing to lose in leaving the Church, position, liveli-
hood, friends, honour ; his temptation, as has been
many a man's, was not against the faith, but towards
it, to interpret, explain, accommodate it so as to be
able to profess it and not lie ; this was what every
selfish motive prompted. And how are we then to
explain this contrariness of conscience, whose office
it was to approve and support, not reproach and
disquiet him? Is it not simply that conscience
acquires habits just as do all other faculties of the
man, and when it has long been used to condemn
a course of action as wrong, it cannot all at once
conform to a changed judgment of the intellect,
100
and reverse at its bidding the habits formed by the
painful discipline of many years. An instance of the
kind, true, though imaginary, occurs in Bret Harte's
poem of ' St. Abe and his Seven "Wives.' Abe Clew-
son, a Yankee convert to Mormonism, became an
' apostate ' to the faith, and left his wives to sort
themselves, as they quickly did, with other partners,
while he fled with the one woman of them all whom
he loved, married her, and lived faithfully with her far
away. But telling his experiences to an old friend
whom he meets for the first time since the night of
his flight, five years ago, he says :
And I did the best I could
When I ran away for good.
Yet for many a night, you know,
(Annie too, would tell you so),
Couldn't sleep a single wink,
Could n't eat and could n't drink,
Being kind of conscience-cleft
For those poor creatures I had left.
Not that they would be deserted, or destitute, or
unhappy, that he knew well, but that the old Utah
habit of conscience still survived, and he felt that to
be wrong which he kneio to be right. Much more
must it be the case when the cause which has been
rejected, and as it were betrayed, is neither immoral
nor absurd, but one which men, at least as wise and
good as ourselves, still stand by.
It is this one of the sorest trials of every serious
and upright convert, that there is within his own self
that which sides with his old friends to reproach
and condemn his action ; and so his first experiences
101
are of a constant appeal to the judgment of reason to
uphold and approve his action.
To this letter Mr. Martineau replied as follows :
" 10, GORDON STREET,
" LONDON, June 17th.
" REV. AND DEAR SIR, The closing days of an
Academical Session have brought me occupation too
incessant and imperative to allow of my writing
sooner. Yet almost hour by hour my thoughts have
been with you, since the last kindly grasp of your
hand at the railway station. As far as the different
habits of my mind permit, I try to think myself into
your position, and though I dare not even fancy my
sympathy with its difficulties complete, I see too
clearly the loneliness, the wounds of affection, the
tremblings of conscience which it involves, not to long
and pray for the power and privilege of rendering such
help in the crisis as brotherly appreciation may make
possible. The one difference between the Catholic
and the Protestant estimate of duty which your
letters bring home to me, and which I find it most
difficult to conciliate, has reference to the supposed
conflict of claims between the intellect and the
conscience. The proposition "The best and most
complete Eeligion must be the true," I can only read
conversely "The true Religion must be the best and
most complete"; nor, apart from its truth, could I
venture to measure the goodness of a faith. So little
can I escape from my Protestant reverence for
veracity as the primary and paramount condition
of any possible personal religion, and for any reality
102
inwardly given to me as against the fairest fictions
recommended to me from without, that I cannot
understand the possiblity of invoking the Will against
honest doubt and dawning light, without the keenest
remorse as for heinous sin. I can enter into any
degree of self-distrust : personally, I feel it pro-
foundly, in the face of the collective judgment
against me of the Church, or even of any one or two
men whom I love and venerate. But this would
only drive me to a sorrowful silence in following the
little light I have ; and could never justify me in
pretending to have theirs. I say this, not in order
to argue the question, but simply to indicate my chief
difficulty in assuming your point of view and to
account for what I fear must seem to you the too
great rigour of my judgment on the problem which
we discussed.
" The wise and tender consideration with which
you are providing for all the interests affected by
your mental change, ought to protect you from the
reproaches and lamentations of your ecclesiastical
superiors and friends, and to secure you reverence
as a confessor, instead of reprobations as an infidel.
The perversion of the Moral Sense which prevents
this is itself enough to condemn the system respon-
sible for it. With regard to any ulterior mode of life,
it is difficult to see the possibilities till your decision
is so far taken as to render enquiry and consultation
practicable. No position, worthy of your antecedents
and gifts, is at present visible to me. But I think it
probable that some congenial sphere of duty, such as
103
you indicate, would open to you, and on receiving
your permission, I would do my best to find the way
to it. But your appeal to Dr. Newman can hardly
fail at least to keep the problem in suspense for
awhile; and the marvellous subtlety and power with
which he knows how to speak to just the state of
mind on which you have consulted him, must be
expected to retard, perhaps to arrest, a change which
every influence resists, except the Divine simplicity of
truth.
" I mean still to fulfil my threat of burdening your
shelves with some printed matter that bears my
name. But I have not yet found time to put my
hand on what I want. On Wednesday week I go to
Scotland for three months, and before that day I
hope to send my address and something by book
post."
To this letter Mr. Suffield made no reply for three
weeks, having been, as he writes on July 7th, " in-
extricably involved by friends and others coming on
grave matters from a distance." And all this busi-
ness made it harder to take the step which yet
seemed inevitable, as he went on to explain ;
"Perhaps this very confidence, so unbounded, makes
it still more difficult to me to face the terrible alter-
native. Moreover, there arc three or four families
in which I am so interwoven as to be practically a
sort of guardian, where it might gravely embarrass
the carrying out of certain trusts, supposing my name
appeared as no longer a Catholic."
He then proposes a visit to Mr. Martineau in
104
London, and in case he should be away, "I thought,"
he wrote, " I might sustain my hopes of there being
a real religious resting place, and a tried successful
spiritual foundation outside the Catholic Church, by
intercourse with someone earnest, reticent, truthful,
and knowing the spiritual life in its other forms. I
have thought of Keshub Chunder Sen, and also of
Miss Frances Power Cobbe. Will you kindly give
me your opinion as to the prudence and benefit of
consulting these, and if you think it well, write me a
letter of introduction to inspire confidence."
" I thank you for your very kind promise of some
of your works, which will be greatly valued by me."
Mr. Martineau had left town for Scotland, and
replied to this letter as follows :
" TALLADH-A-BHEITHE,'
" KlNLOCH, PlTLOCHRIE,
"July 7.
" I am full of regret at missing your visit to town,
because I find it difficult to refer you by letter to any
friend who would avail for confidential conference.
Keshub Chunder Sen is travelling in the provinces,
and I do not know how to reach him ; Miss Cobbe has
left town, and will not be back for some months ; mean-
while I cannot help dwelling on the possible future,
and wondering whether I can in any way smooth its
difficulties. I am occasionally consulted about the
suitable filling of vacant positions of religious duty,
and just now have been asked whether I know of
anyone fitted to minister to a Free Christian Church
about to organise itself at Croydon. They have
105
already bought a small Church ; the leading persons
in the Society are cultivated and liberal people, very
much in sympathy with Theodore Parker's theology ;
the constitution of the society will be perfectly open ;
and, as the organisation is now indeed unformed,
there are no habits or usages that may not be
moulded to the exigencies of a minister's conscience
and reasonable preference. I remember you saying
that if such a body of persons were to offer to
place themselves under your spiritual guidance the
duty would not be uncongenial to you ; and, as an
opportunity so nearly agreeing with this description
is of rare occurrence, I report it to you at once. Of
course I have no power in such cases, beyond that
of simple advice ; and the matter could not be de-
cided without a personal visit and public preaching.
If you could throw yourself in faith upon this post
of possible duty, I do believe you would find your
deliverance in it, and would help to a better spiritual
life those who are greatly in need of it."
This communication brought him face to face with
the dreaded necessity of a speedy decision. When it
seems to one that such a step ought to be taken,
often he thinks, and asks, and fears so much before-
hand, that this very state of uncertainty comes insen-
sibly to be accepted as if it could continue; and
when some suggestion which implies action is made,
he is frightened and shrinks back before it. So there
are in religion many life-long Hamlets, who are
always thinking of doing what tbey never do, and
whose ' conscience,' i.e. self-consciousness, ' makes
cowards ' of them.
106
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn away,
And lose the name of action.
And thus they abide, Anglicans always leaning to the
Roman Church; Eoman Catholics always doubting
whether they should not be Unitarians ; Churchmen
who are half sceptics, and so on ; never quite sure
that they are what they profess to be, hesitating to
act till the power of action is lost. Thanks to Mr.
Martineau's kind intervention, Mr. Suffield found
himself at length at the pass that he must needs
decide, and he wrote immediately,
" July 9, 1870.
"MY DEAK ME. MARTINEAU,
" I have just returned from town and found your
kind letter. You cannot but deem me at least partially
unworthy of your frank sympathy when you see me
still finding excuses (as they must appear to you) to
enable me to delay the act by which I am to make
myself an outcast from so many pure, and noble, and
loving hearts. If ever one had wronged me or irri-
tated me, it would have been easier to have acted,
for in the impetuosity of anger I might have forgotten
a thousand charities.
"However, there is no alternative. My chief
immediate difficulty is as to the right course to pursue
in regard to Catholics : probably very few would in
any case follow my example, but several would be
partially affected in their position, and that in dif-
107
ferent degrees, according to the extent to which I
communicated my motives to them. As to my line
of action I should therefore be glad to help out my
conscience by conferring with Dr. Newman and with
yourself.
" For instance Lady simply waits to see
what I do ; she has told me so, and to prevent com-
plications, is freeing herself from a Catholic governess,
and has implored me still to ' guide her children.'
It is these kind of questions which I do not as yet
see through. I suppose I may make many mistakes,
but I must pray God not to make them wilfully.
" And now as to your very kind proposal. I had
noticed Croydon in the Unitarian papers, and the
very idea you suggest had passed through my own
mind, but I determined not to breathe it to anyone.
If they felt confidence and sympathy, it would quite
meet my ideas and wishes.
" After leaving Bosworth and conferring with Dr.
Newman, I suppose the best course would be for me
to go to London, to take lodgings, then, quietly and
unobserved, to frequent the places of worship with
which my future career would be most in sympathy
at least a couple of months should be thus occupied
I could then form my ideas on some practical points,
particularly on those which seem to me the least
satisfactory, the mode of public worship, and the
form of prayer. I cannot but feel that a printed
form is needed, which should combine real piety,
with absence of historic and ecclesiastical dogmas.
There are also some minor points, quite immaterial
108
in themselves, but such as must be determined one
way or another in a chapel e.g. whether the voung
should be attracted by their innate love of the pic-
turesque, surpliced choirs, &c. Eegarding these
matters I am personally indifferent, but I want to
know, ' should anything of the kind be permitted or
encouraged ? '
" I need not say how I should loathe making a
show of myself, or appearing under any circum-
stances which might seem antagonistic or hostile,
but I presume I might after two or three months be
asked to take occasional duty under circumstances
which would manifest my real intentions, opinions,
and feelings.
" In this delay there would be, I think, benefit to
myself and delicacy towards the feelings of others ;
moreover, experience of forms of religious life not
known to me except by books, would enable me more
effectually to serve others and win their confidence.
" If then your friends at Croydon thought it likely
we should enjoy mutual sympathy and confidence,
and if you thought the same, I do not know anything
or any neighbourhood I should like so well. It is
sufficiently near London to meet those few friends
who might dare to meet me ; and it is not a locality
where my residence would look hostile to Catholics,
and it is sufficiently unobtrusive.
"As to my religious convictions, in doctrine I agree
with Theodore Parker, but in mode I prefer a more
scriptural tone ; for instance, there is no prayer I like
so much as the Psalms, dropping out national aspira-
109
tions and Oriental craving for revenge. As you said,
' A Theist after the type of Christ,' but not fettered
by verbal statements attributed to him. I should
like that persons believing in the Atonement (in a
sort of way) could attend my Chapel without being
shocked, and so families need not be divided ; if the
husband held ' very advanced ' views, and the wife
were a sort of half ' Evangelical,' I would rather seek
to find the ground on which they could unite, than
use the sword to sever.
" I do not think we gain by shocking and wounding
the feelings or prejudices of those who have not
had time, or have not wished or dared to, think. I
should have no objection to perform a ceremony con-
sidered pious, if not deemed an obligation or a grace,
or to imply on my side belief in its efficacy. I could
not use the form ' through Jesus Christ our Lord,'
unless incidentally and in a figurative way.
" Ever yours, sincerely and gratefully,
" EGBERT RODOLPH SUFFIELD."
To this Mr. Martineau replied,
" PITLOCHEIE, July 13, 1870.
" MY DEAR FATHER SUFFIELD,
" I have availed myself of your permission to men-
tion, without name, the circumstances of your personal
struggle of conscience to my friends at Croydon ; and
I have stated that if they wish me to become the
medium of an ulterior introduction, it will be neces-
sary for them to arrange meanwhile for temporary
services during the next few months. There will be
110
no occasion therefore for any greater haste than your
own proposal contemplates. Indeed I was not at all
anxious to press you into action faster than your con-
victions would spontaneously move you. But this
Croydon position appeared to me so special, that I
should have reproached myself if I had permitted it
to lapse by default.
" Your plan of looking around you in London, and
gaining insight into the religious life and worship of
your probable future associates, seems to me the best
possible. Only it is unfortunate that during the
autumn months, till October at all events, most of
the regular ministers are liable to be absent, and the
people so dispersed that the usual services are very
inadequately represented, and everything is at its
very lowest point.
" Your preference for a printed Form of Prayer is
now largely shared by our liberal Nonconformist
congregations. In my own Chapel, a book is used
containing Ten Services ; the first two adapted from
the morning and evening prayer of the English
Church : the last two written by myself : and the
intermediate services compiled (by my friend Dr.
Sadler) from old Liturgies or other books of devotion.
I will send you one of our sets of services ; but before
doing so I wish to have certain alterations made
with the pen, which, for ease of conscience, I have
found it necessary to introduce. They all of them, or
nearly all, have reference to such phrases as ' through
Christ our Lord," which, with yourself, I have a
scruple about using. Even with the alterations
Ill
which I have introduced, there remain expressions
in the book which I should not myself have left
standing. But our congregations comprise persons of
many shades of theological belief, and expressions
which speak tenderly to some are almost silent to
others; and, on the whole, the volume fairly repre-
sents, when corrected, the average tone of religious
feeling ; more so, perhaps, than if I were to push my
own inward wish for alteration further.
" I do not think you would find any desire for enrich-
ments of the service addressed to the eye, such as
surpliced choirs, or symbolical acts. The tendency
amongst us is to a simplicity too bald and rationalistic,
and it is only in the direction of Music and Archi-
tecture that this tendency has at all given way.
I am often hurt and vexed by the prosaic coldness of
our people in these things. But it is connected with
one of their highest virtues, a profound veracity and
reality of religion, which will never profess anything
but what is rather within than beyond the truth
distinctly apprehended.
"What you say about Lady is quite
wonderful to me, as showing the extent to which
religion may become a matter of personal confidence.
"Where it is so, I do not see the duty of refusing the
guidance which is sought, and leaving the dependent
minds standing where they are. On the contrary, I
should frankly confide to them the grounds of my
own change, and leave the result to God. I could
not say to another ' I am going whither the light
leads; you had better stay where you are'; unless
112
that other found upon the spot an adequate and
satisfying light. It is one thing to proselytise ; ano-
ther to help minds spontaneously feeling their way
along lines of experience already traced by us.
" I have asked Longmans to send you two vols. of
mine : and Triibner to send two, unless they are out
of print. And I forward a pamphlet or two which
may possibly be readable, though embarrassed with
allusions to others which you will not appreciate.
" Believe me ever,
" Yours very faithfully,
" JAMES MARTINEAU."
Mr. Suffield replied the same day on which he
received this letter.
" Thank you very much for the books and pamph-
lets just received, which I shall read with great
interest. Could you not publish a small public
prayer book, which should contain no expression of
doctrine beyond Theism, but which might contain
allusions to and expressions about our Lord in such
a way as not to imply any dogmatic belief, yet (1)
might meet the susceptibilities of those who regard
the omission of the name of Jesus to signify the
Deism of Eevolutionary France, and (2) might
awaken those pious associations belonging to all
who like ourselves have received religion through the
Christian medium?
" When in London last week, a Member of Par-
liament, nominally Anglican, really nothing, spoke
to me of your Chapel; he had been there, was
delighted with the sermon, but on account of the
113
prayers determined not to go any more. He said, 'I
would rather explain away our beautiful Church of
England liturgy than join in a mutilated imitation,
implying almost as much which I disbelieve.' This
was six years ago before the changes you made.
"Your remarks rather shook me regarding the
benefit of a delay after I have taken my position.
I am now delayed simply by the delay and embarrass-
ment of my Provincial, to whom I have written con-
fidentially. I wish to comply with his desires and
requests as far as practicable. He has evidently kept
my application made to him a secret, for to-day's
post brought a letter from Lord a novice,
at Woodchester, about the most embarrassing I could
get. I send it to you that you may realise the diffi-
culties when I want to act honestly without taking
advantage of my position.
" As soon as I am free, I see my position and
course so clearly, that probably a delay might not be
very beneficial. I was influenced in suggesting it by a
desire not to give pain to others, and by an almost
painful diffidence that I should not be liked or
trusted. I am so accustomed to Catholics, and their
feelings regarding a priest ' falling away,' (as we
always say), that I cannot help attributing the same
thought to others.
"I would rather starve and die than be taken
through compassion by those who could not trust
me.
"The only real difficulty I had, regarded the
prayers. I dreaded the idea of initiating a novelty,
H
114
and I did not hear of any existing forms of worship
which I could honestly use, and which those who
agreed with me could honestly sympathise with.
"If there be such, or if you would publish one,
and thus enable a Christian minister, unfettered by
historic dogmas, to conduct a service and have
prayers which he could use without inventing some-
thing new, my difficulty would be removed.
"My mind has turned upon these matters so much,
and is of rather a practical character, that two or
three weeks intercourse with others would enable me
to catch the great difference of modus operandi
between priest and minister.
" If, therefore, they had confidence in me, not
regarding me merely as a witness against Borne, but
as one who has fought a battle and wished to help
others before he died and if they felt honestly able
and wishful to receive me as a friend and helper
personally I would rather begin with them their new
work, and be thus bound with them in that first bond
of sympathy and charity."
CHAPTEE IX.
QUESTIONS FOR THE PBESENT AND FUTURE.
It was a most difficult position in which he now
found himself, and which he himself would only have
excused on the ground of its essentially temporary
character. He was regarded by the world as a priest
of the Roman Church and a member of one of its
strictest religious Orders, .and as such he was per-
forming the daily duties of the priesthood, and his
advice was sought by all manner of faithful and
doubting Catholics : he was at heart a Unitarian, and
only waiting the opportunity to declare himself. But
a position of trust once accepted cannot be quitted in
a day, there must be some deference shown to those
from whom it has been received, and some precau-
tions adopted not to use it to their detriment. No
one held more strongly than Mr. Suffield that a
man's outward profession should be true to his
inward conviction, yet he found himself forced for a
few weeks to appear, what he had been in all sincerity
but was no longer; so he continued to wear the
habit of a Dominican, while in heart and allegiance
he had quitted the Order. The moral embarrassment
was painful enough, but it was greatly aggravated by
the necessity he was under of giving counsel and
direction to others.
116
Eeturning the letter which he had enclosed, Mr.
Martineau wrote :
" PlTLOCHBIE,
" July 17th, 1870.
" MY DEAR FATHER SUFFIELD,
"I return you the affecting letter of your young
friend. It deeply moves my compassion and respect.
It is a Divine light of duty which he sees afar, and
to which he is drawn by pure and sweet affections ;
while he is chained down out of reach of it by invisi-
ble but irrefragable bonds of a religion which can no
longer be a true and peaceful piety to him. I do
hope you will be able to get him dispensed. Surely,
at his age, a mistake of his real call, a misinterpre-
tation of the Will of God respecting him, must be
recognised as possible by a Church so cognisant of
every mood of the spiritual life as the Catholic.
" I am sorry that you have had so unfavourable an
impression given to you of the Prayer Book used at
my Chapel. If it be well-founded, I fear the slight
changes since introduced will not modify it much.
But I must say the judgment expressed by your
friend appears to me hasty and one-sided : and I
shall be surprised if, on examining the book, you
find it dwell more than you approve on the historical
relations of religion. I think your Member of Parlia-
ment must have come in for the first service, and
been offended by the altered sound of what he was
accustomed to at the Parish Church. That is the
service which I myself like least : but for perhaps the
opposite reason, namely, that I never could enter
117
into the admiration constantly expressed for the
Church of England Liturgy. The whole structure
of the Morning Prayer appears to me framed upon
a low type of worship, involving abject conceptions
both of human nature and of the Father of spirits.
Having joined in the production of this book, by
contributing the ninth and tenth services, I could
not well desert it to frame another. Indeed the
multiplication of such books is an evil which I have
always regretted : and I would rather employ an
imperfect form which was in general use among
those Churches with which I am in fellowship, than
the best which was special to one or two places. It
is possible for any congregation which prefers it to
have from the publisher two, or four, or six of
our ten services without the rest. A friend in Lon-
don will shortly send you the book. I am sorry to
find that one of the volumes which I directed to be
forwarded to you is out of print, the more so, as it
contains the papers which alone, it is probable, would
have much interest for you. I meant also to send
a volume of miscellanies, containing a paper or two
on Catholicism, in particular one, ("The Battle of
the Churches,") on the so-called " Papal Aggression,"
which might at least have amused you with its here-
sies and perhaps its blunders : but the volume is out
of print.
" I have heard from my Croydon correspondent
that the Committee of the Society was about to meet,
and that the substance of my letter would come
before them, evidently with favourable predisposi-
118
tions. I feel sure that if anything comes of this,
you will have no distrust to fear. No doubt, in the
first approaches to one another of minds drawing
together from such distant points, there must be a
temporary awkwardness, and something tentative in
method till the communion of spiritual life is ma-
tured. But the tact of natural sympathy, and devo-
tion to common objects of human good, will soon
wear the first stiffness away. You will have to
forgive, I fear, something frigid, some want of gra-
ciousness, some prominence of the critical temper in
our manners and character. But, believe me, there
is a deeper and a tenderer soul behind than this
repulsive exterior would lead you to expect.
" Will this vote of the Council and the French
War, occurring together, hand over Eome to the
Italians?"
With this letter came " The Ten Services " as it is
commonly called, the Book of Prayer in most frequent
use in Unitarian congregations, and the perusal of it
seems to have set Mr. Suffield's mind at rest as to
the difficulty he anticipated in conducting public
worship after the Nonconformist type. It was not,
however, adopted by either of the congregations to
which he afterwards ministered, and he did not feel
free to use any of the services, except the ninth and
tenth, when asked to preach in Chapels where this
book was used.
His reply, dated July 21st, is as follows :
"The 'Common Prayer for Christian Worship,'
which you so very kindly sent me has been a great
119
relief and consolation to me. How strange that
writing to three marked places for the best Prayer
Book for Unitarian and Free Christian Churches,
this was not sent ! but instead, books full of orthodoxy
and water with very little unction or manly piety.
This little book I greatly admire, and if my Member
of Parliament friend alluded to this, I do not agree
with him. I should feel disposed to use the pen in
perhaps ten or a dozen more places, e.g., several of
the benedictions at end of service are quite truthful
and beautiful, others I do not like.
"This book quite encourages me, for I now see my
way to the adoption of a pure and beautiful form of
prayer, ready to hand. I have been so accustomed
to rest upon authority, that the idea of having to
invent something new for myself fills me with addi-
tional dread and almost horror.
" I am gradually and one by one cutting the cables,
but pardon my weakness when I say it each time I
have to pierce through my own heart. I understand
now that there is an agony in life greater than the
agony of death.
" My place will be supplied here by the Provincial
on the 12th of August, and a day or two before that
I leave for Birmingham. I asked leave from the
Provincial to take my books. He wrote very kindly
and did not seem surprised, but hoped that the cloud
might pass away : he was sure I must have had
many mental struggles, and he arranged exactly
what I asked.
"He is a good natured and ordinary young man,
120
without any very deep feelings or thoughts, and takes
things easily, thus I am saved the distress of witness-
ing what would have been the agony of mind of our
last Provincial. But letters from dear and intimate
friends who partly guess, breathe a tone of pathetic
sorrow, so that each post makes me feel what I lose,
and what I inflict.
" The Secretary of the Committee of the English
Clergy for petitioning the Pope wrote to me for my
signature. My reply was sent by some one to the
Westminster Gazette last Saturday, and this has
served to prepare everyone for what they now feel
to be likely. It has caused a formal complaint from
York Place and other authorities ; perhaps it is just
as well.
" On receiving Father Newman's reply kindly
inviting me, and the Provincial's leave, I announced
in Chapel last Sunday that after August 7th I should
be going for several weeks to Birmingham, to confer
with Dr. Newman on literary matters in which I was
" Many now anticipate and fear my intentions,
but no one knows anything. Here there is not a
suspicion.
" Commending myself to your prayers,
" Believe me, &c.
Mr. Martineau's answer was as follows :
"TALLADH-A-BHEITHE, PITLOCHEIE, July 28.
" MY DEAR FATHER, SUFFIELD,
" Your narrative of the gradual loosening of the
old ties is truly pathetic, and enables me to realise
121
the inner as well as the outer history of this great
crisis. I suppose all grand transitions take us into
the desert, and have their forty days of anguish.
But, through faith and patience, they are the begin-
ning of a diviner life, and their very sadness turns in
retrospect to something of a tender glory.
" I am glad you are going to Birmingham, to
confer with Dr. Newman, of all living religious
writers the man I perhaps love and honour most,
though the more I study him, the more do I wonder
at the submission of such a mind to the Eoman
Catholic theology. Your intercourse with him will
have its painful elements mixed with the benefits of
his wise and loving counsels. But his large expe-
rience will secure a sympathy and appreciation
of your recent history which few Catholics could
manifest, and which will qualify the estimate of it
required by the rule and habit of his Church.
" My Croydon friends having been induced to
break off the negotiation for the purchase of a small
iron Church, and being obliged to begin worship in
a large room, have determined to postpone their
services till October, when the summer dispersion is
over. They express thankful interest in what they
have heard from me, and will beg me, when all is
ready with you and with them, to go over and be
the medium of a personal introduction. Everything
at present is anonymous. I fear the postponement
may be rather longer than you would desire. But
till October everything is in a state of suspended life
with us.
122
"It is a relief to me to find that you can give so
much approval to the Common Prayer. I quite
agree with you about the benedictions and some
other similar sentences. But in cases where there
was an alternative given, and one of the sentences
was such as I could use, I left the other untouched,
even though it was objectionable to me. The altera-
tions are not a measure of my personal wish and
feeling, but are the least that I could do with. I
do not yet despair of getting the book revised in
accordance with them."
Before him, Mr. Sum eld had written acknowledg-
ing the receipt of the books, and expressing the satis-
faction their perusal gave him. There was true devo-
tion, he was now convinced, outside the Catholic
Church, and independent of all so-called 'super-
natural ' revelation.
" I must now tell you how greatly your own works
have interested me. I have not read yet (at least not
to say read) those of a more philosophical character.
I never doubted the existence of thought outside the
Catholic Church, but if I might give praise, which
must seem to you very arrogant and absurd, the tone
of the moral and spiritual works entirely concurs
with whatever is highest in Catholic literature ;
yours is so evidently not a mere protest, or like
some publications I obtained, a mere attempt to
make sermons without any religion. I was not sur-
prised that such work had emanated from you, but it
encouraged me to think that it could command
the sympathy of others. It seems to me a singular
123
providence that I should, apparently without a motive,
certainly without a suggestion, have opened com-
munications with you for everything you write or
say harmonises with my own mind and heart, and I
can perceive in it a tone of faith and reverence which
would elevate, and also amidst trials and death,
sustain. Nor can I tell you what a relief it is to me
to find a mind thoroughly honest and independent,
and reared in that independence, still holding with a
tender reverence the Christian spirit and tone without
the verbal dogmas.
"What amongst other considerations has kept me
back so long has been the fear of simply throwing
myself into a protest, and amidst people speaking
tall-talk about "free thought," &c. It is easy enough
for our thoughts to be free w r e want them trained by
the holiness and fatherly liberty of God.
" The Prayer Book I admire more and more it, to
my mind, only needs the gentle emendations of a
second edition from your hands now to make it quite
perfect. I like also a little Tract Prayer Book put
out by the Hindoo but he has not caught the pure
graphic English, which give additional help to the
English mind.
" Some practical details as to myself I really do
not see my way through. I, as a Dominican, took
a vow of obedience to our General to my own con-
conscience and feeling (so to speak) this does not
seem to me to bind, but the whole is so new a field
of conscientious difficulty to me that I really do not
see the right, or the reason to give. I see and feel
124
how delicately and thoughtfully I ought to act and
indeed I have given them every advantage over me
if they choose to be ungenerous but I do not see
my way clearly ; for instance, they have written to
the General ; now suppose the General desires me to
go to some House in France or Eome and to remain
in seclusion, what he would call in Ketreat ?
" Before God in conscience and in honour what
strikes you should be my reply ?
"Probably these difficulties seem to you almost
weak and frivolous, but you can hardly realise the
minute obedience we have been accustomed to render
as of conscientious obligation.
" I feel in my own mind that as they consider that
the Pope can dispense the vow if the conscience of
one man can do so, so can the conscience of another.
As a matter before God, I really do not feel anxious,
but I do not see what would be the best line to take
whether to obey and leave the rest.
"In ordinary matters I trust them as good men;
when it touches this kind of matter I do not, for the
theory obliges them to treat doubt as a crime, and
thought as a rebellion. Thus, men ordinarily kind
and good, would be quite disposed to order me to an
unhealthy foreign Priory, where sickness and the
climate would enfeeble mind and body, it would be
done ' to serve the souls of others, and to give me
thus a better chance of saving my own, by having
less to answer for.'
" I should not like an ordinary Protestant to know
this quite so bluntly, for it would encourage the
125
vulgar prejudices which are true only in a certain
sense, and under peculiar circumstances.
" How does this strike your own conscience ?
" Sincerely and faithfully yours,
" KOBEET EODOLPH SUFFIELD."
"P.S. I am ashamed to have forgotten to thank
you about Croydon. I am not at all sorry for the
delay. I think to others it will at least feel better,
and with a prospect before me, I could easily borrow
a few pounds to help me in the interim without being
thrown on help which would be meant to com-
promise me and my independence.
" Besides having made the greater sacrifice of all
friendships I can bear the rest."
So as the way of truth became more and more
clear did the difficulties increase, interest, affection,
conscience seemed all allied to stop the path. To
become a martyr, yet doubt whether you are not
wrong in your very sacrifice, whether the better
course would not be to submit is cruel suffering, and
through this was he now passing. Happy for him
that he had chosen as counsellor one who had the
rare gift of sympathy with creeds he had never
believed, and states of mind he had never himself
experienced.
" KlLTGBIE, KlLLIN, GRIEF,
''August 5th.
" MY DEAR FATHER SUFFIELD,
"I feel already that I owe you a great deal for
introducing me to new problems of duty which lie
beyond the usual casuistry of our Protestant life. It
126
is only too clear to me how difficult it is to escape
from this network of early vows without needless
hurt to the conscience of others. The mischief,
however, which is inseparable from the collapse of an
illusory system has to be encountered ; and it is best
minimised, as it seems to me, by the simplest and
directest action, based upon the true grounds which
satisfy the agent's own conscience. You justly feel
that a vow or engagement of unconditional obedience
for all time to the will of any human being is ultra
vires for a responsible conscience ; being a formal
conveyance to another of an accountability which is
intrinsically inalienable ; and undergoing repeal ipso
facto the moment the will of the official superior
clashes with the immediate inward voice of the Holy
and Truth-loving God. This repeal having plainly
occurred in your case, I see no legitimate course
remaining but to refuse an obedience which has lost
its obligation in the presence of higher and incom-
patible claims. This is only to act on a principle
recognised (is it not?) by all Catholic casuists, viz.,
that there can be no binding engagement to commit
a crime ; and that it is less offensive in the sight of
God to break a promise or a vow, than, on the
strength of it, to commit more heinous or continuous
sin. Whoever asks me to play the hypocrite, in order
to keep my word, makes a demand which, in being
uttered, is self -condemned.
"It may indeed be urged that, in being ordered
into retreat, you are not asked to commit any sin,
the act being one of mere abstinence and silence.
127
The proper answer seems to be : ' This negative
suspense is no complete act of itself, to be judged as
an insulated thing. It is an instrumental discipline,
with a view to an end, and assumes that that end yet
remains to be determined. If that assumption were
true, the discipline might be obediently accepted.
But I know it to be false. The end in view is
already out of reach : the discipline of retreat and
devotion has been honestly tried, and to try it again
would be a fruitless waste of life, and dallying with
the call and appointed term of duty. There must
sometime be a moment for decision. I have ex-
hausted the allowable preliminaries. It may be
proper for my superior to gain time ; if possible my
care must now be not to lose it.'
"In short, to take from the General of the Order
a medicine on which he rests hopes, but which is
foreknown by you to be ineffectual, is to mislead him
under the guise of obedience. The ultimate dis-
obedience is not escaped, but only postponed: and
the date at which it must come cannot be rightly
determined, except by the self-knowledge of the
personal conscience.
" No doubt, we must always come with a spirit
humbled and apologetic into the presence of one to
whom we have made promises we cannot keep : and
when he charges us with wrong, we cannot deny the
fault, only we transpose it, and in answer to his, 'you
should not have broken your word,' must reply, ' we
should not have given it.' I must confess, however,
that towards a superior who would adopt the sort of
128
policy of banishment at which you hint, I should
find it difficult to feel due penitence.
" Your admirable reply to the Papal Committee*
delighted me beyond measure ; and I see it has
elicited Mr. Oxenham's good word in the Saturday
Review. I cannot help looking for some large and
conspicuous results of the Council, if not in this
country, in Austria and South Germany ; except that
this dreadful war suspends the working of all ideal
interests."
Meanwhile he had been busy severing as firmly and
gently as he could the ties which bound him to the
Eoman Church.
On July 14th he wrote to the editors of The Rosary
Magazine, with which he had been identified from the
beginning, that his connection with it must cease. " It
has so happened that correspondents abroad and at
home have of late been sending questions which I could
not reply to, with w y hat I deemed truth and historic
accuracy, without going counter to your feelings and
opinions, and to those of a large portion of your
readers. Now you will be able to obtain the services
of a learned priest, whose ecclesiastical tendencies
tally with your own, and I am convinced that the
Magazine will gain by my withdrawal."
This letter would have been generally interpreted
only as the consequence of his opposition to the
proposed definition of Papal Infallibility, which was
generally popular amongst English Catholics. He
signed himself as of old "Prefect of the Guard of
* The letter referred to will be found on pages 129, 130.
129
Honour and Apostolic Missioner." But the postscript
was more ominous, in which he expressed his anxiety
' to resign the Directorship of the Perpetual Eosary
as soon as the place can be supplied.' The last of
the ' Answers to Correspondents,' which responsible
work he had always taken upon himself, and with
this August issue was giving up, is also significant of
his state of mind : it runs as follows :
"M.S. We will pray for you as you desire, but
we need your prayers as much."
But before this was in print a much moreiimpor-
tant and public declaration of his state of mind had
appeared in the columns of the Westminster Gazette.
At this time signatures were being sought to an
address to the Pope from English Catholics, praying
for the definition in dispute. Not content with a
mere refusal to sign, which indeed he was free to do
or not, he gave his reasons and sent them to the
press. It would be with pain and dismay that many
who had been wont to revere him as a teacher, read
in their weekly paper on July 16 ;
" We have been requested to publish the following
reply sent to the Secretary for the petition to the
Holy Father, which we do without comment :
"Dear Eev. Sir, It would not be respectful to
your zeal and toil simply to ignore the reception of
the proposed address, in which petitioners request
the Pope to define his infallibility.
"Knowing with what earnest desire the enemies
of our religion, with taunting speech, at once urge
us and defy us to proclaim, after 1800 years, the
130
foundation of Christianity ; knowing the deep repug-
nance with which, under the pressure of ecclesiastical
opinion and ecclesiastical prospects, canons, priests,
and bishops have signed declarations pleasing to
ecclesiastical superiors and repugnant to their private
opinions ; knowing with an intimate and sad know-
ledge, that the mooting of this question has led to
investigations, and then to inquiries, which have
paralysed the faith in the minds of numbers of the
clergy and of the intellectual laity, and with not a
few destroyed it, I must respectfully decline to sign
a document in which petitioners ask for a definition,
the animus and consequence of which few can be so
thoughtless as not to perceive.
" If we get a Pope, vain, obstinate, and in his
dotage, shall we ask him to be confirmed in his
powers of mischief?
" Do we wish, by exalting the lessons of the
encyclical, to render political life impossible to every
honest and consistent Catholic, and to render the
possession of political and religious equality impos-
sible to any except those sort of Catholics who would
use the language of liberty when they beg, and the
precepts of the Pope when they refuse ?
" Your faithful and obedient servant in Christ,
" ROBEET R. SUFFIELD, O.S.D.
" The Hermitage, H. Bosworth, Leicestershire,
"July llth, 1870."
CHAPTEE X.
EEMONSTEANCES AND EXPLANATIONS.
On the Monday following the publication of this
letter, the doctrine it impugned was solemnly declared
by Pius IX. to be "a dogma divinely revealed," and
anathema pronounced upon any who should presume
to question it. This made the position he was main-
taining all the more impossible, and remonstrances
soon began to pour in on him.
On the 19th, a relation and attached friend who
held a high position in society, wrote :
" My Dear Father Suffield, We were all so dis-
tressed and horrified to see your letter in the
Westminster. I could hardly believe it could be the
same Father whom I used to suppose to be so full
of devotion to the Church and its head, as one of
such an old Order ought to be. What can have
changed you so much? Surely you are not going
the way of Dollinger and the anti-Catholic Liberals.
I do hope sincerely that few will read your letter.
I really could not help letting you know how aston-
ished and distressed everyone is who has seen it.
There must now be an end of these discussions for
ever, and, whether people like it or not, they must
believe what the Council has decreed; and how
delighted Catholics ought to be, and good ones are,
132
to have an opportunity of proving their love for the
the successors of St. Peter. Do write soon, some-
thing to remove the bad impression your letter has
made. I trust you will pray that you may not have
caused scandal against your intention."
So some wrote on whose minds had never dawned
the idea of " truth," as distinct, or possibly distinct,
from the Eoman faith; but even more sad were the
letters of those who themselves were tried by doubts,
and felt the shock of his words as loosening their
hard hold on faith. One, unknown to him personally,
wrote: "I am but a young Catholic, having only
been three years in the Church, but they have not
been happy ones. I have been troubled, almost with-
out cessation, with temptations against the faith, and
have been unable to cast away a terrible fear that
all may be a mistake and delusion. But I have been
more distressed and frightened by a letter of yours,
which I read yesterday in The Westminster Gazette,
than by anything else. If we are to believe that the
Holy Ghost is inspiring the Council, how can he
dictate that which has ' paralysed the faith in the
minds of clergy and laity,' or must I doubt whether
he has presided there, and then where is the infallible
teaching of the Church, which is to most Catholics
the anchor of their faith? And then, Father, that
terrible sentence about the Popes ! Can it really
mean what it seems to express ? If you only knew
the misery your words have made me suffer, you
would forgive me writing this way. Your own
' Crown of Jesus ' seems to speak such different
133
language. . . If it looks like disrespect to write
this, I entreat you to impute it to ignorance alone,
for I am, reverend father, your respectful, but very
sad-hearted, servant in our Lord, . . ."
To this letter he seems to have given an answer
which revealed his whole position, for a few days
after there followed another communication from the
same writer, which it must have given him even
greater pain to read. " I dearly prize the confidence
you place in me, but the pain your letter gives me
is very sharp. My own troubles seem lost in thinking
of what you must suffer. Oh, I have prayed with
all my might that these clouds may be cleared away
from your soul. I would be content to go on my
own clouded path to the end, if only the Light of
Faith might again shine upon you; for I may keep
my trouble to myself ; no one depends on me for help
and direction but for you, dear Father, I see and
know what your sufferings must be. I have read
your letter over and over again, and it makes my
heart fail with fear, lest I hardly dare write the
words lest Faith is gone. Can it be that you believe
less than the Protestants ? . . . The first day or
two after I got your letter the shock almost made me
lose all sense of security. I wish I knew what you
mean by writing, ' Beware of resting the Eternal
Truths of all Eeligion upon any ecclesiastical founda-
tion.' But I must not presume to argue with you."
Then follows, as in many another letter, pages of
pious advice, constantly checked and apologised for ;
S3 unnatural to his correspondents seemed the posi-
134
tion of advising one who had bean the counsellor of
them all. It was such a strange reversal of their
respective positions, a duty they deemed it, and yet
it had an air of presumption and impertinence which
they could not forget.
It was not for three weeks that any public notice
was taken of the protest, a delay due perhaps to
the hope that the efforts made to induce him to
withdraw and apologise, in view of the Decree of the
Council, might yet prevail ; but on the 6th of August
there appeared the two following letters in The
Westminster Gazette, the one from the head of the
English Province of Dominicans, the other from the
Prior of their house in London.
" To the Editor of ' The Westminster Gazette,'
July 30th, 1870.
" Dear Sir, I cannot express the grief and surprise
that I felt on my attention being called to Father
Suffield's letter, which by some means became inserted
in your issue of the 16th inst. In my own name, as
Provincial of the Dominican Order in England, and
in the name of all my confreres, I utterly repudiate
that letter both as to sentiment and expression. I
wish to be all the more energetic in this disclaimer,
as I had already been but too glad to accede to a
suggestion made by Father Aylward, my predecessor,
to the very opposite effect
Furthermore, I rejoice to say that the pain Father
Suffield's letter has occasioned me is very sensibly
mitigated by the many communications which have
135
duly reached me from Fathers of the Province since
the publication of that deplorable letter, each one
for himself protesting against its being supposed to
express the views and feelings of our Province ; and
I am, moreover, happy to state that this is also con-
firmed by Father Suffield himself, who, in a letter
lately received from him by Father Aylward, says,
' Your letter made me recognise one great duty,
namely, that of my signifying in a very marked way
that such a letter represents in no degree the feelings
of the English Fathers.'
" I remain, yours sincerely,
"F. GEO. VINCENT KING."
The Prior wrote : "I am in no way Father
Suffield's Superior, and therefore have no right offi-
cially to publish anything condemnatory of his
opinions or language as expressed in his letter of
July 16th ; moreover, it is a great pain to me to
be thus at conflict with one whom I not only love
as a Brother of the same Order, but whose personal
friendship I enjoyed before either of us became
Dominicans, and whose zeal and apostolic spirit I
have ever held in the greatest admiration. But,
lest it might be supposed that the opinions of so
prominent a member of our Order are held by other
Dominicans, I feel bound [and he goes on to repu-
diate all sympathy with the opinions expressed].
"F. AUSTIN M. EOOKE, O.P."
His reply was written immediately, and appeared
in the next week's issue, August 6th, 1870 :
" Sir, Our Provincial and the Prior of London
136
last week wrote to disclaim for themselves and the
English Fathers the statements of a letter of mine,
which had been elicited by an accidental circum-
stance. That disclaimer was doubtless a duty on
their part, and the duty was discharged with that
frankness, delicacy, and tenderness which has always
impressed me as the gracious prerogative of the
Superiors of our Order.
" The writer of the striking and accurate articles
which forms a complete history of the Council,
observes, in the Saturday Review of July 30th, that
' Father Suffield would not have ventured on so
bold and remarkable a letter unless assured of the
moral support of his Order,' and strengthens the
inference by the example of Cardinal Guidi.
" Will you permit me to give an explanation which
is not needed for the protection of those within the
Order who must be revered, loved, and trusted by
all who have intimately known them but which
will be a satisfaction to others, as also to relatives
of our novices and friends of our Order.
" If it be a consolation to confide to the sympathy
of intimate friendship the struggles of the mind and
the sorrows of the heart, it is at once a pain and
humiliation to reveal to the curious and indifferent
the sorrow with which a stranger meddleth not.
That sorrow is now mine.
" An incident, not regretted by me, has revealed,
almost by accident, the hidden struggle of years ;
and now, this, that, and the other will be said
against me ; it will be said that I am proud, and
137
self-willed, and cannot bear restraint. I know not
what might have been the case if I had been fated
to bear the trial of others' faults, but it did not need
much virtue to obey those whom I revered, to carry
out the wishes of those I loved. During the twenty
years of my priestly life I have never been otherwise
circumstanced.
" But first, permit me to defend friends outside the
Order who have been deeply pained by recognising the
position of my own mind ; if they were less generous,
they would reproach me and say, ' We leaned upon
you, and you were a reed, and you broke, and you
pierced the hand that trusted you.' I can only reply,
' A heart that loved you was pierced first, but it was
not done by you ; if you suffer, I suffer more : and
your goodness, tenderness, and forbearance have been
the unceasing arguments, making my heart contend
with my intellect.'
" Many known to be intimate and attached friends
will be pained because they will be supposed to sym-
pathise with my views. Their friendships have been
very profound, and cast about my life a joy like the
charity and purity of Heaven ; but it so happens that
very few of these but are intensely loyal to the
Pope, and enthusiastic about everything Catholic
and Koman. Therefore my praise of others must
never imply a censure upon their Catholicity. Those
friendships, interwoven with the honest sympathies
of years, presenting to me in the midst of mental
struggles the gracious influence of the highest virtues,
are in no ways compromised to my opinions.
138
" Regarding my Order it will be said that the
tendencies and influences were un-Catholic, or that
laxity permitted such to exist or to assert themselves.
Anything more false it would be impossible to utter.
At this moment, when I might be supposed most
tempted to say the opposite, and to reply to the
pathetic appeals of many by throwing the blame
elsewhere, the members of other Orders will more
than pardon the filial devotion which makes me
praise above others an illustrious Order with which
they have entered upon a noble rivalry.
" I did not learn my theology in the Dominican
school. I have received from the Dominicans no
influence except those which inevitably arise from
the witnessing of lives utterly blameless, of charac-
ters of noble truthfulness and trust, of hearts at
once tender and strong, of an authority at once
vigilant, considerate, and just ; of an obedience
rendered the more cheerfully, for it was rendered
to those who deserved it.
" Amongst our English and French Fathers and
Brothers, I question whether there is one who does
not repudiate utterly opinions they understand me to
hold. They do not like to speak, for many amongst
them have been to me as sons before they were
brothers, and w r hilst censuring me in their conscience
and in their mind, they remain silent, lest words
uttered should seem like a treason against memories
too beautiful to perish. Lest their silence should be
imputed to them as a fault, let me still perform for
them the familiar office of a friend, and declare that
139
nothing existing in our noviciate, nothing existing
in our teaching, nothing existing in our discipline,
nothing encouraged amongst us or allowed, would
tend in the direction of my opinions.
" Even in the matter of politics, now somewhat
interwoven with religion, they mostly have taken a
line the reverse of my own ; all our Superiors, I
think, entirely so.
" Attention has been drawn to one expression in
my letter, an expression, I think, comparatively un-
important, wherein, speaking before the definition,
I suppose the case of a weak Pope invested with
the additional influence that would be conferred on
his ordinary acts by a definition which would enable
him at any moment to support such acts by an
infallible approval.
"As in late years we have not had bad Popes
the endeavour in the election has been to select
good men, but not remarkable for sanctity, learning,
or strength I thought it more decorous not to
imagine the re-creation of the moral deformities of
the days of old ; but and unless failure of reason be
impossible to an aged Pope, it becomes essential
that there should be some means at least of recog-
nising when his decrees are to be regarded as the
acts of the man as well as of God. A man who
centralises all ecclesiastical, political, and scientific
authority in himself, and who by an irresistible
sentence can destroy the prospects and character
of any member of his gr3o,t religious organisation,
must necessarily obtain a vast increase of power
140
when it is defined, that whenever he chooses he
can issue a decree more binding than the gospel,
because he can overrule by his explanation the very
words of the Christ.
" But the passage of my letter, which really was
gravest, has elicited the attention only of minds
suffering like my own ; and, if such thoughts from
many anxious minds had been more adverted to,
perhaps even those in the highest authority might
have awoke from their dreams of power, and asked
themselves whether they would rather rule, like the
Christ, mildly over the multitude of many minds,
and guide the troubled and the weary to the two-
fold charity, or, as one lately said, rule over a
lessened Church, and almost hail as a deliverance
the exodus of minds that desired to believe, and
hearts disposed to love and to obey.
" Thus, partly, I unveil the depths of my doubts
and of my sorrows, and doing so, I, at least, clear
those whom I love. It is not the Dominican Fathers
who have created for me this mental struggle, which
has been the hidden agony of years. Do not blame
them, they had nothing to gain and nothing to lose.
With the charity of pure and noble hearts, blindfold
they have gone forward, and they have obeyed.
"It is not the aping of humility when I say,
perhaps they may have chosen the highest. The
great and holy God knows ; I do not ; but I know
this, that they are not compromised by me. No
word of theirs has stung me ; no impatience of theirs
has hurried me ; no fault of theirs has scandalised
me; no distrust of theirs has aggravated me.
141
"It is almost my only happiness in the midst of
that 'paralysing of the faith,' which the 'mooting
of these questions has produced,' to render the
homage of my affectionate reverence at the feet of
those I love ; and I love them not so much because
they have been kind to me, as because they have
ever been true to what they believed the highest.
" When life advances nothing is sadder than to
have to touch the monument of hope, which, day by
day, through years of toil, of sadness and of joy, we
have been building with painful labour.
" If a passing incident wrings from the mind the
expression of difficulties concealed, or in every other
act disowned, do not suppose it to be the daring of
one who broke to play a part. He only sought first
solitude in the cloister, then solitude greater in a
country village, amidst simple people and the children
of his flock, that he might dispel difficulties and
doubts.
"If these difficulties and doubts have been wrong,
none but the highest rulers of the Church have been
responsible for them ; they have not been a pleasure,
but an agony ; not a pride, but a humiliation.
" And if ever to any readers of these words, one has
given joy in the midst of sorrows ; hope when all was
dark ; perchance in the hour of need, you can return
the same to him. [sic.]
"Yours faithfully,
" EOBEKT EUDOLPH SuFFIELD, O.S.D."
" P.S. Might I add some remarks which, after
posting the above letter, occurred to my mind as
142
omitted. At St. Sulpice my chief guide was a strong
Ultramontane ; as to Ushaw, and most dear, revered,
ecclesiastical friends in the north, amongst whom all
my Catholic thoughts were framed, it is needless for
me to say how deeply they deplore opinions I have
expressed with which they have no sympathy, and
which represent almost the exact opposite to their
own. If loyalty to the reputation of my Order com-
pels me (unknown to them and unasked) to clear
Dominicans from blame, loyalty to the most tender,
intimate, and ancient friendships makes me wish
to render this tribute to those so unbounded in their
devotion to the Pope, and so in harmony with the
highest Catholic tone of thought, and who have left
on my own heart the example of every virtue, and
the memory of a confiding love that never changes.
They know how, impelled not by curiosity, but by
the questionings of others evoked by the events of
later years, I was driven by my very position and
circumstances into those enquiries which have at
length wrung from me thoughts which trouble com-
pelled me in some way to make known ; not giving
reasons, to shake others, but simply stating the facts.
They know the anguish I experience in grieving those
I love so intimately and whom I had hoped never to
have pained, and often I prayed to God I might
die before the day should come."
His former Provincial, a man revered by all for
his piety and wisdom, and tenderly attached to Mr.
Suffield, wrote to him under date August 10th, en-
closing a translation of his first letter into French,
143
which he had made by desire of the General of the
Order, " that you may bear witness that nothing is
extenuated, and nothing is set down in malice." He
goes on to say, " I have also sent you a rough copy
of my translation of your second letter of August 6th,
which I have just finished (with how heavy a heart
I will not attempt to say for pardon me, if I write
it it looks like a farewell to the Church. I am so
sad to be obliged to say so). Others also of your best
and dearest friends (for you had many) in the north,
seem possessed of the same horrible thought. In the
meantime we are all praying for you, both at the altar
and in private. God give you grace and humility
to make what reparation you can for the scandalising
of your Brethren. Truth and love for Christ's
Church extort such words from me, for you have
brought scandal on the Church, and dreadful ruin
on your own soul. The little children have only to
take up the ' Crown ' and condemn you out of your
own mouth.
" Yours, dear Father Eudolph,
" Truly and affectionately,
" J. D. AYLWAKD."
And another wrote in the strain of the last sen-
tence of the above letter :
" To the Editor of the ' Westminster Gazette.'
" SIR, Father Suffield says, in the letter which
appeared in your columns last Saturday, that ' his
intimate and attached friends,' with very few excep-
tions, are ' intensely loyal to the Pope, and enthusiastic
about everything Catholic and Koman.' Were it
144
otherwise, it would be nothing short of a marvel !
Many years of the closest and most valued friendship
with Father Suffield have assured me that few indeed
could have been much under his influence, whether
public or private, without becoming so. I appeal to
his public exertions for the Holy Father to his
having been the first to establish the revival of
Peter's Pence in this country to his magnificent
open-air meeting of sympathy for the Pope, at New-
castle; also to his exertions, as I believe, the first
in England, in encouraging the enlistment of Papal
Zouaves, among a host of other public instances.
Who, indeed, that has heard him give the Papal
Benediction at the close of his missions, can forget
the burning words of love and reverence, which
seemed to carry his hearer straight to the feet of
the Holy Father ! But were that all, the Prayer
Book connected with his name has probably been
more instrumental than any other popular manual
in spreading faith in the dogmas of infallibility
wherever English-speaking Catholics are to be found.
" Faithfully yours,
"T.O.S.D."
The reproach was fully justified, and arose out
of the very nature of the case. Converts, such as
are thoroughly sincere and compelled by conviction
too strong for them, those who go over heart and
soul to an alien faith are men who have, heart
and soul, believed what they before professed; and
as they have believed they have spoken. They have
said strong things against the cause which they felt
145
inwardly to be strongest against their own position ;
have striven to fortify themselves against ' temptation',
and have imparted of their own devotion to all who
came under their influence. If the lukewarm and
indifferent change their faith, they will do so from
some light motion of gain or vanity, or on account
of arguments which have come to them with the
attraction of novelty. They can never be reproached
for past zeal, nor their former protests be adduced
to counterbalance their after-denials. But such
reproaches are in reality testimonials of character ;
they should be taken as assurance that he against
whom they are directed is truthful and zealous ;
that his fault is that only to which he himself
pleads guilty that he was mistaken that he is
but a man.
CHAPTEE XI.
ALONE IN THE WORLD.
In a letter of June the 7th, which will be found in
Chapter VIII., Mr. Suffield tells Mr. Martineau of
the determination at which he had arrived as one
result of their recent conference, to submit his posi-
tion to Dr. Newman ; and he enclosed the letter
which he purposed sending after a delay " of several
days." He seems to have looked upon it as a decisive
step, after which the position of a priest and preacher
might be no longer tenable, and he did not care to
ask advice until he felt prepared to follow it, what-
ever might be the consequences. Meanwhile he
was trying to do all that was kind and just towards
his Superiors to whom he had vowed obedience, and
yet more towards the many who looked up to him as
the guide of their souls. A sudden rupture would
have been cruel to them, and would certainly have
been generally attributed to moral or mental indis-
position. "The several days" of which he had
spoken were lengthened out to several weeks. The
first page of the letter is wanting in the copy of it
in his own handwriting which has been preserved,
but judging from the date of Dr. Newman's reply,
it'cannot have been sent before the middle of July.
For six weeks he had kept it by him, probably
rewritten and corrected it, and it represents, as we
147
give it, at least no hasty or angry judgment on a
cause so intimately known to him. It is not the
outcome of an hour of despondency or a mood of
bitterness, but the conclusions of years of trial set
down in all calmness of spirit. He begins his story
ten years back, at the time when he had given him-
self more entirely than ever to the Church's service.
"During my noviciate at Woodehester, doubts on
the foundations of Catholicity took form in my mind,
but I enjoyed it nevertheless. Finding myself in the
company of simple-hearted and virtuous young men,
I could have gone on with it for years, but at the
desire of the Cardinal I was moved to London. I
then came across the system of ' Direction,' as pursued
by the Jesuits and imitated by others ; it filled me
with disgust to find pretences of higher spirituality
used as means for worldly power, and money, and
influence. ^It was the first great shock. I saw it
as a regular system, not like a sin such as a weak
or bad Priest might be betrayed into, or abandon
himself to irrevocably, but it was the life and system
of those specially commended as the spiritual-minded
Fathers. Here and there an honest and indignant
Jesuit revealed to me his disgust at what he saw.
I then looked into books and history and contem-
poraneous events, and found that, as it seemed to
me, all the popular impression regarding the Jesuits
was true ; I began to find that Bishops and Priests,
tJwse who had experience, tuhen they dared, said the
same. I remembered that the Pope had said to a
friend of mine in former years what tended in the
148
same direction ; and then I saw the Pope beginning
in later times to use the Jesuits as the tools of his
power. Having obtained a moral disgust at the
entire system of the Jesuits, and the entire system
of ' Direction,' I felt myself becoming critical. Then
all I had heard for years from holy Priests and
Bishops regarding the want of all justice and honesty
at Home among all the officials, began to be revived
and confirmed by obtaining greater insight into the
working of things. It was not a question of gross
sins : I began to discover that testimony after testi-
mony of the holiest and noblest men bore witness
that all the more subtle sins were dominant there in
their fulness. The habitual spiritual pride of those
considered good came to me as more loathsome than
a gross sin into which a man might have fallen and
repented. The most clear and certain information
shewed me that the Pope and his entourage were
using all influence for power. Holy Bishops and
Priests assured me that we were governed by some
weak-minded and some sharp ambitious flatterers,
who, by flattery, governed the flattered. I saw the
noblest minds cooling in their enthusiasm towards
ecclesiastical authority the more they learned of it,
and presently they began to resent it. Never, I
think, did I see such minds after long intimacy with
it impressed with the opposite. I saw it was very
.human, the tactics of diplomacy, or of an ordinary
club, composed of rather selfish, narrow-minded, and
^ordinary men, not over scrupulous about faults, and
not at all so about honour. I began to find the same
149
vice more or less pervading all the ecclesiastical
organisations. They showed themselves quite as
human as anything in the world, but all done in
the name of God, so that the managers of these
schemes probably deceived themselves into an idea
of their own spirituality, as much as they deceived
our ordinary lay visitors at Eome.
"Then Ward advanced the fullest claims for this
authority, and I read his articles, I might almost say,
intending to agree with them all.
" I considered we all held Papal Infallibility in a
sort of way, though like many truths left somewhat
vague. I had always considered myself at liberty to
follow the testimony of our Vicars Apostolic and con-
troversialists in denying practically the extravagant
claims of Eome. I always believed that the fullest
toleration to all sects was consistent with the most
faithful and courageous Catholicity. I should have
scorned to have petitioned for any favour for our-
selves which I was not prepared loyally and honestly
to have conceded to every sect if we had been in
power.
" The Pope's Encyclical shocked me, it seemed to
me that all our line of political and social defence of
ourselves was, in spirit, at least, condemned. Sorrow-
fully I resolved to obey it. A line of action and thought
which my conscience disapproved, my conscience also
told me to adopt because it came from Eome. Such
probably would have continued my state of mind, as I
never permitted doubts touching faith to remain at all
in my mind. But the investigation started by Ward,'
150
when flung as an open question among Catholics, I
determined to go into, and the numerous enquiries
of others addressed to me, compelled me even the
more. Oppressive doubts as to the entire Catholic
theory began to possess my mind, but then inter-
woven with a sort of hopeless scepticism ; these
made me feel sad, hopeless, desolate. I believed,
but without heart and doubtfully; I recognised the
same working in other minds ; I began to wish that
I had never been a Priest ; I wished that I had in
former years retained my money, so that I could
have retired unobserved, and said Mass without doing
any other priestly duty, and without being under-
stood to believe the Papal claims ; for I saw that if
the claims now made mean anything, they mean a
great deal more, as soon as the power of enforcing
the more arrives.
" A general breaking down of health, influenced
chiefly by these mental anxieties, gave me an excuse
to ask of my Superiors that I might get into some
retired place; just then Bosworth was offered, and
I came. For a short time I seemed like one still
believing in the Catholic Church, and yet hardly
believing in God or a future; this cloud passed,
your brother's work* helped me in dispelling that
dark cloud of utter scepticism. Then I began, as
now, to rejoice again in God, in prayer to God for
my own soul's needs, and for the needs of the souls
of the living and of the departed, to bless God, to
seek God's pardon and guidance, to look forward
* " The Soul, its Sorrows and its Aspirations," by F. W. Newman.
151
again with an almost more realised happy hope than
ever to a future life, dependent at least for a long
time on the habits formed here, but where there
would be a state of being probably not so very unlike
our present.
" Throughout I always was happy in saying Mass,
especially when the cloud of scepticism passed off
from my soul; I looked on it as a great and holy
sacrifice ; God is in all things, I said, God is in the
Holy Host. Even on my saddest, darkest days as to
belief, the holy mass has always been offered by me
under a mystical explanation, but truly and worthily.
" I am not aware of having ever neglected a single
duty which, as a Priest, I owed to others, but in the
minutest matters I have, I think, acted, and when
so acting, thought just as any fervent Priest would.
" But as to the Catholic doctrines, I became quite
convinced that the Papal claims were merely a human
development. I had never any particular belief in
the veracity of many narratives in the Scriptures ; I
believed the Scriptures because the Church told me
to do so, but each question I looked into brought me
to the intellectual conviction that it was a human
development of something never contemplated by
Jesus Christ. Then I began to notice that every
doctrine has had the same history that our Lord
flung out a few grand truths about God the Father
of all, the beauty of goodness and the excellence of
charity, and that God so blessed his words and his
devotedness, that belief in the unity of God, in his
goodness, and a high and pure morality, more or less,
152
was diffused in the world owning Jesus Christ as its
founder. Beyond this, everything seemed uncertain.
Intellectually, this seemed to me the only conclusion
I could come to. I waited until your last work
appeared,* to see if you presented any other ground
intellectually. For anything beyond the great truths
about God, the soul, virtue it seemed to me that
you could only appeal to what had been always my
own reply the conscience and the argument of success.
" The latter has been my chief argument for Catho-
licity ; the miracles of the Gospel never struck me to
be an evidence at all ; the manner in which they were
wrought, and the manner in which they were recorded,
always seemed to me to deprive them of any weight.
But men have tried to establish sects and schools of
thought, and failed, while the Catholic Church has
succeeded to a very large extent. It is a great
argument ; it would be greater if its members could
enquire logically into its claims and continue its
subjects, and if we saw more men of intellect
joining it, not merely as the compliment of a pre-
vious position reposing on a fallacy.
" The adaptation to the conscience is also a great
argument ; but there are some doctrines of authorised
practice which do not really approve themselves to
my conscience, but of which I say ' somehow it must
be all right, but I do not know how;' ex. gr., the
precise line of sin, whereby a single mortal sin, such
as missing Mass, sends the soul to Hell ; whereas the
entire moral character, lowered by habitual selfishness,
* " The Grammar of Assent," dated February 21st, 1870.
153
petty vanity and caprice, lesser sensualities, habitual
but none enough to be a mortal sin, would terminate
in Heaven the broad line, so to speak, between the
two states of soul (contrary to our experience and
our conscience) the making disbelief a sin and the
greatest sin, so that we have continually to explain
away our doctrine when our conscience points out
thousands outside better than ourselves the theo-
cratic position of the Pope, and indulgences, and the
contradictory decrees of Popes and the evasion by
which we conceal these. The Pope professing to be
practically inspired, and yet using every precaution
not to make a mistake. Spiritual direction, the
frequent practice of confession, the protection attri-
buted to certain things such as Brown Scapulars, the
Agnus Dei, &c. These are amongst matters which
I have received thoroughly, and still carry out, and
act on thoroughly, and yet which have never com-
mended themselves to my conscience any more than
many convent regulations.
" Thus, if I were not now a Priest and religious,
but with no previous obligations fettering my con-
science, and supposing I were as a teacher in a
position like that of the Eev. James Martineau, in
London, or else holding a wordly position joining in
worship with those who hold the truths revealed to
our conscience, and brought home specially to our
conscience by Jesus Christ, but without any dogmas
resting on an historic ground (persons who I believe
go now under the general name of "Free Christians "
or Unitarians),' and supposing that the Catholic.
154
system was presented to me as it now seems to me, I
should certainly not embrace it.
"Thus I show that the argument to my mind is
narrowed to this considering the obligations which
I have willingly taken on my own conscience that I
have with my free will embraced a religion and its
obligations that this religion contains all needed
for the spiritual life, and rests on the foundation of
all religion that it commands me to banish from my
mind thoughts against its claims, and tJiat I can do
so if it be right to do so, and practically I only pre-
sent to myself the consideration of these under a sort
of mental reservation and guard that in itself the
life and duties of a Priest are to me of the sweetest
happiness, (and my only apprehension is whether I
can morally continue such when I know what would
be my decision if I had to begin again), that to aban-
don my priestly life would be the source to me of the
most intense misery this misery intensified by the
knowledge not only of the deep pain it would inflict
on all I love, but also of moral and religious injury
to so many religious, because it would make many
lose all heart ; it would be the betrayal of a trust ; it
presents itself to my mind like a treason, like the
act of Judas, but as if I should do for the intellect
what he did for money. Then my conscience says,
1 and if you, in a dream of romantic integrity, aban-
doned your priestly and religious obligations and
went forth into the world, repudiated, hated, des-
pised, doubted, dreaded, supposed perhaps to have
joined yourself to the brutal deriders of all you love
155
and worship with the heart's fondest memories and
gratitude have you moral strength to bear all this ?
and then those might offer in your abject and abso-
lute poverty, destitution, desolation, to serve and
help you, whose very help would be an indignity,
almost a crime to accept ; because you would know
it was meant to make you seem to blacken those
whom you revere. What complications ! what moral
difficulties ! and who else does this ? The two wisest
of the ancient philosophers were sceptical about the
religious exaggerations and excrescences which formed
the popular religion, but they practised these, and
advised the same to others. Is it conscientious for
you to fancy yourself so very wise that you see
through all this, and, by an eccentric act, destroy
more than ever you repair ; when men like Dr. New-
man remain do you see clearer than he ? is it not
pride ? You are blinded by self-confidence. Do not
rush into moral dangers you know not of; consider
the obligations you have taken on yourself ; carry
them out as well as you can ; do not take an irre-
parable step. Beware, form your conscience, remain,
dismiss all enquiry, be at peace.'
" Such language I often address to myself, and it is
supported by the intense affection I have for so many
Catholics and by my almost utter ignorance of every-
one outside the Catholic Church ; while everyone and
everything in the Catholic Church are to me as
part of home. Then the sort of people who have left
the Church, and those who attack it, all fill me with
loathing. Then the piety, goodness, purity, charity,
156
gentleness of those almost countless whom I know
and love. Then the desert as it seems to me without ;
it is like looking out of a happy home on to a wild
moor, or into a street of bustling men of business.
Then the thought that in the midst of the agony of
such a state of mind, and such a desolation, I must
begin life again, and at once think how to live, and a
fear lest then I should in a sort of despair accept
something which would be a compromise.
" I have not gone into any arguments or reason,
for all these are familiar enough to you, and one of
the strongest arguments affecting my conscience on
the Catholic side is your individual example, and my
reverence for your great knowledge and lofty con-
scientiousness. I simply try and describe the results
so sad to my own happiness, so sad for the happiness
of those who love me.
" Perhaps I might add that, in asking to come here,
I anticipated not only a time for calm and continuous
thought, study, prayer, consideration unaffected by
every influence except the gracious influence of the
country and of a few simple poor, but also I expected
to have escaped doing anything beyond helping to
piety and virtue a little flock of old Catholics ; but
my difficulty of action has been increased by this,
that without leaving my cottage-garden, except for
the Chapel, the Protestants have come quite unasked
to me, and I have received several into the Church ;
at the present moment the two most intelligent of
the higher class are anxious and enquiring; also
Protestants come from distant places. Not a month
157
passes without Catholics coining from different parts
to confer with me. Then an immense correspon-
dence, in consequence of my being still the Director
of the Perpetual Eosary Association, which I founded
six years ago, and which numbers now thirty-six
thousand, and going out occasionally to give Missions
and Eetreats, and as Extraordinary to Convents.
Thus I am still continually compelled to take a
distinct position in the whole of the Catholic move-
ment, and anything I do must grieve and wound
innumerable souls. I have often wished that God
would mercifully, by death, free me from this dreadful
alternative, and I wonder whether others have suf-
fered this. And did not they do not they resolve
that they can continue till the end of this short life,
surrounded by this stately dream of the days of old,
inducing themselves to believe that it is true, because
it environs all that exists to them of happiness, of
friendship, of peace.
" My own dear Father, before God, what do you
say ? Tell me.
" Your loving son in Christ,
" EOBEBT EUDOLPH SuFPIELD."
It was of this letter Mr. Martineau, to whom he
had sent a copy, wrote, after expressing "heartfelt
thanks" for the perusal of it: "Your confidence
could not be given to anyone more worthy to receive
it, and more skilful to help in moral difficulties than
the venerable and noble-souled Newman. Only there
are crises in life when one has to rise into a truth
higher than the human. But you have laid the
158
problem with faithful explicitness before one of the
most experienced of spiritual counsellors."
Dr. Newman's reply was as follows :
"THE ORATORY,
11 July 17th, 1870
" MY DEAR FATHER SUFFIELD,
" I expect to be here next month, and shall be
rejoiced to see you, as you propose. Write me word
beforehand.
" Yours most sincerely,
" JOHN HENRY NEWMAN."
Next month they met as proposed, and for the last
time. There was never any ill-feeling between them
or a harsh word said on either side, but it was not
possible that they could continue on terms of inti-
macy, and henceforth friendship was transferred from
the illustrious convert to Komanism to his scarcely
less illustrious brother, the convert to Theism. Of
their interview on this occasion Mr. Suffield gave
the following account in a letter to Mr. Martineau,
under date August 17.
" Dr. Newman fully concurs in what was your own
opinion and mine that in conscience I had no alter-
native but to act as I am doing, and that my vow
does not bind in conscience, and that if the General
would desire me to leave the country for a foreign
Priory I should refuse. But he also agrees with me
that it will be more graceful and considerate toward
the Order and towards Catholic feeling to apply for
a dispensation." It must, of course, be remembered,
in justice to Dr. Newman, that these are not his own
159
words, and that the advice was sought of him by one
whose resolve to leave the Church had already been
carried out. The question presented to him was not,
am I under any obligation still to believe and to
obey ? but this only. Having ceased to believe, how
far am I bound to an obedience which has to a great
extent become impossible ?
To a faithful Catholic the question scarcely admits
of an answer. It is to him as if a man should confess
'I have committed a great sin, and purpose standing
by it ; how far am I warranted in a lesser transgres-
sion which more or less follows on it?' Faith, entire
and steadfast, in all the teachings of the Church, is
the fundamental obligation of every Catholic ; that
broken, it would seem impossible to maintain any
which depend upon it. There can remain no recog-
nised obligation but those of the natural law of justice
and kindness. So if an English subject were to deny
the authority of Parliament to levy taxes of him, or
make laws for him, it would be useless to question
how far he were bound in conscience by this or that
particular law. For good or evil he would be free of
any and every obligation consequent upon the Acts of
Parliament, and be bound only to the moral law. No
doubt he would be constrained by force to obey, and
so would the Church constrain or punish if it had
power, which it happily has everywhere ceased to
possess ; but the offence would be, not the special
acts of disobedience, but the apostacy which was the
quasi- justification of them.
At last the day came on which he had to take the
160
fatal step which was to cut his life in twain. On
Wednesday, the 10th of August, he turned his back
upon the faith and friendships, the habits and asso-
ciations of twenty years, and became of his own
deliberate choice an object of pity and horror in the
eyes of all who had hitherto loved and revered him
as a champion of their faith. Recalling the occasion
long after, and when now under the sentence of a
fatal disease, he wrote, "as I walked through the
quiet straggling village on foot, I passed the old
church and the little Roman Catholic school, and
listened for a moment to the children's Morning
Hymn to our Lady and left the past for ever
behind the stately, not unpoetic past ! and it
ranged itself among the grand mythologies of the
days of old ; like the statue of a goddess in a
niche of a colonnade. You admire it, and you
leave it behind. The road leads through the images
of gods and heroes to the temple of the Universal.
" Roman Catholics naturally regarded my secession
as an error, but if they knew the facts they would be
obliged to admit that it was a profoundly conscien-
tious act. Every motive, affection, temporal comfort,
self-interest, urged me to remain. My personal means
had long since been sunk in the Roman Catholic
Church. At the age of forty-eight I had to go forth
as a pauper among strangers, with no apparent means
of livelihood. I had literally no inducement to leave
the Church ; nothing but sincerity. I again and again
considered whether I might not, like the old philo-
sophers, hold an exoteric and an esoteric faith
161
publicly conforming to the popular mythology, pri-
vately holding a philosophic negation. But I dared
not face death in such a state."
On the day after his arrival in Birmingham he
wrote the following interesting letter :
"32, ANN STBEET, BIRMINGHAM,
"August llth, 1870.
" MY DEAR MR, MARTINEAU,
" Thank you so very much for your most kind
letter. The die is cast. Last Sunday I closed my
duties with those dear people. It was a day that
I had dreaded, and well I might. I quietly told them
that I had some religious difficulties which did not
concern any one there ; that they had better avoid
controversy, and go on as good Catholics. English
country people are not very susceptible; but after
Benediction in the evening, they, of their own accord,
assembled under the trees. I could see them from
the Sacristy window. They were all in great sorrow.
I believe nothing was said, but they raised a little
offering for me, to which even the children gave their
mite. I told them I had not courage to wish
them singly good-bye, and begged them to look on
it as an absence of a short time, and that they
must meet me in some excursion; but they felt it
was more than that, and outside the Chapel door,
young E , a Christ Church man and convert, threw
his arms round my neck, and burst into tears ; and
dear J , a young Grenadier Guardsman, whom I
had tried to get away on some visit, would not be
E
162
persuaded, and lost all his spirits ; he never left my
side during the next two days, and then accompanied
me to Eugby, and when he took leave of me, his
grief was so great that one of the men asked whether
' the gentleman was going to emigrate.' The poor
fellow said, ' Oh, it is worse my own dear Father.'
All this is very sad for to the young and to the good
it seems like a fall like a treason. There is now no
longer need for secrecy, every friend is saddened, and
nothing more can be any matter to them, except that
they should see that in no way is anything unneces-
sary done to wound them. Heretofore all communi-
cations addressed to me have been in language of
deepest love and sympathy, with a delicacy of feeling
almost wonderful. No doubt many will attack me
afterwards, and many, no doubt, have done so pri-
vately; but as yet the Catholic papers have, I believe,
spoken kindly, and, thank God, ' religious black-
guards ' have saved me the indignity of their praise.
I hear one of their organs has attacked me, which I
am glad of, and said that my letter in the Westminster
Gazette would do more harm than my example could
do good.
" Two Catholics whom I had formerly served, very
good people, wrote apparently without concurrence,
in a very nice way, hoping that I would retire into
obscurity, and offering to provide the means of my
so doing. But though it was done in a thoroughly
honourable and beautiful spirit, I felt it implied what
I could not certainly always observe, and I gratefully
and kindly declined.
163
"The intensity with which these matters are re-
garded by Catholics must seem to you quite strange.
" Some letters have, however, amazed me greatly,
revealing doubts in quarters I had hardly anticipated,
but these persons generally dream of Anglicanism
or such like, and when they realise my own opinions
they will be shocked.
" I find it better to express my opinions as in
sympathy with the Unitarians. ' Christian Theism,'
they would suppose, implies ' Deism ' in its former
irreligious sense, and ' Free Christians ' they do not
understand, and the name does not suggest religious
ideas to those who are unfamiliar with it; whereas
they understand Unitarianism to express a rational-
istic but religious and moral form of Christianity.
" I have not yet seen Dr. Newman, indeed no one
in Birmingham knows that I am here. I feel that
I have practically decided all that I had contem-
plated conferring on with Dr. Newman, excepting what
passed with him on former occasions, and now my
object would be only the consideration of such ques-
tions as those you so kindly and wisely touched in
your last letter ; also I meant it partly as a con-
ciliatory act towards Catholics, that I might not seem
to be throwing myself at once into another camp.
" I have taken lodgings here, close by the Free
Library, Library of Eeference and Free News Eoom,
and being remote from the Oratory and Catholic
Cathedral, my position will not be obnoxious to any-
one, and unless some unexpected reason should arise,
I shall remain on here until something casts up : I
164
shall remain here quite quiet, but just step in on the
Sundays to one or other of the Unitarian Chapels in
a quiet unobserved way, as this will be a help for
the future, and, except private interviews with Dr.
Newman, I shall keep aloof from Catholics, as I know
such would really be their preference, especially as
regarding their Colleges at Edgbaston and Oscot,
where I am so well known.
" By the way, the most venerable priest in England
wrote to me to congratulate and thank me, to my
surprise and went on to tell me that at the recent
gathering of the Bishops, Dr. Manning had revoked
the question of my being formally censured, and that
the matter was referred to Eome. Considering that
I have resigned every office, and am not saying Mass
or exercising any ecclesiastical faculties, I think they
might save themselves that trouble.
" Believe me, &c.
"P.S. Two other proposals from Catholics, appa-
rently without concurrence, have come to me. They
are from men of high honour of feeling, and offered,
without any expressed or implied condition, but I
thought it best to decline them as being hardly
fair upon them, and hereafter more fettering to
myself than perhaps at present I quite realise."
It must indeed have been a very tempting offer to
him every way, for he was all but friendless and
nearly penniless. Mr. Martineau was the only per-
son in the world who knew of and sympathised
with his position, and precious and faithful as
was his friendship in this hour of trial, it was but
165
of very recent date, and only on one occasion
as yet, had they met face to face. Bound as a
Dominican by the vow of poverty, he possessed
nothing as his own by right, but had a mere use
granted to him of the property which belonged to the
community. Of such moneys as were in his hand he
ventured to carry away with him, the sum of 4,
which he might indeed have regarded as a small
acknowledgment for ten years of devoted service, but
preferred to consider as a loan, which, as soon as he
was able, he returned. Of the unsolicited generosity
which enabled him to meet the necessary expenses of
the first few weeks of his strange life, till he made
friends and found work, it is not permitted here to.
speak. That, too, he was desirous to repay when
in a position to do so, but it was not allowed him,
and he was obliged to content himself with appro-
priating a like sum to certain purposes which would
he deemed helpful to enquirers after truth.
In reply to the above letter, Mr. Martineau wrote
on August 15th, from Scotland, where he was spend-
ing his summer vacation.
" KlLTGKIE, KlLLIN, GRIEF,
" August 15.
" MY DEAR FATHER SUFFIELD,
" My heart bleeds for you in this rending of pre-
cious and sacred ties, the modern counterpart of
martyrdom. Soon, I trust, the anguish will be suc-
ceeded by the blessed crown of a lightened and
joyous conscience, clear of human complications, and
bright beneath the approving eye of God.
166
"H. W.'s letter would be very touching, were
not its weakness too obtrusive. Indeed, the insight
which I have gained through your recent experience
into the working of the Catholic system, deepens
my impression of the essential childishness of mind,
and untrustful narrowness of piety, which deform the
highest graces nurtured by it. To believe that the
All -holy God will treat a soul as lost, which, in
obedience to Him (or at all events what means to be
such) performs an act of heroic self-sacrifice, what is
this but a debasing superstition, applying the power
of religion to the corruption of the moral sense ? It
is in the highest degree considerate and delicate in
you to speak so tenderly as you do (e.g. in the West-
minster Gazette) of the spirit of the associates you
leave. But I must confess that with my view of
their narrowness of mind, compared with your own
large comprehension of things, I cannot but feel your
tone of humility excessive. It would not be self-
assertion, but only homage to the Divine truth which
has alighted on you as its organ, to hold your head
a little higher. The Westminster Gazette letter
seemed to me almost to imply a penitential feeling,
as if you not only desired to release others from
responsibility of participation in your acts, but almost
looked upon yourself with their eyes. I know you
will forgive me for saying this : it is perhaps due to
my own defective meekness."
With this gentle criticism of the exaggerated meek-
ness of the letter referred to'' :: , non-Catholic readers
*See above, page 140.
167
will all incline to agree. And indeed at a later date,
when he had freed himself from the ties of old asso-
ciations, and learnt to stand on his feet as a man,
instead of making it a virtue to let himself be car-
ried as a child, he would have joined in condemning
this excessive humility and self-disparagement. But
it is hard to take a step which all whom you reverence,
or who have reverenced you, are unanimous in their
emphatic condemnation of nay, which your own self
so short a while ago would have been horrified to
contemplate the very possibility of and not feel as
if it were somehow matter for humbleness and
apology ; right, perhaps, and inevitable from the
purely intellectual standpoint, and yet on the human
and social side, wrong and unkind.
His own view he expressed in this reply :
"BIRMINGHAM, August 17.
"My DEAR MR. MARTINEAU,
" I thank you for your remarks regarding my letter
to the Westminster Gazette. If a Catholic renounces
the Catholic Church and has neither conscience or
gratitude, his course is very clear for he is embar-
rassed by no responsibilities. But if he be compelled
to the act not, as ' converts ' would say, ' to secure
his salvation,' but in obedience to a higher law of the
conscience, his position, I mean his spiritual and
mental position, is more difficult than even you with
your lofty conscientiousness and high intellectual
gifts and knowledge of life can fully comprehend.
I believe that only by degrees could you realise it.
"The transition is a moral and spiritual state,
168
in which there are no landmarks, or such as attract
one's attention only to be avoided.
"To have obtained a certain amount of influence
over the consciences and over the happiness of
others to have obtained it by the carrying out of a
well-meant mistake to cause by withdrawing injury
and unhappiness to those who gave to me the means
of influencing them, does make me feel more penitent
than exulting, and I have withdrawn from the
Catholic Church like a son from the home of a father
who has never wronged him.
" All those entitled to know, are now fully aware
that I am no longer acting as a Priest or as a
Catholic they know also my religious opinions and
my probable future.
" My letter in the Westminster Gazette fulfilled
one intention which I had it has saved me from the
ignominy of vulgar and bigoted praise, and made
persons understand that I had no protest to offer,
excepting the protest of my disbelief.
" On Sunday I went to Mr. Dawson's Chapel. He
follows no sect. I was struck by the quiet recpl-
lection of the great congregation, and the evident
earnestness of a large number of young men of the
class of merchants' clerks.
" I have remained quite quiet, and in reality have
spoken with none but those few Catholics who, living
in the neighbourhood of Birmingham, happened to
hear of my being in their neighbourhood, and who,
with the delicacy of an unobtrusive reserve, seemed
only to wish to shew to me their affection.
169
" Amongst your many acts of kindness let me
thank you for your communications with Croydon. If
it takes a little time to prepare itself, so much the
better."
To this Mr. Martineau replied :
" KILTGKIE, August 21st.
" MY DEAR FATHER SUFFIELD,
" Without time to write much at length, I return
these interesting letters. It is a great relief to me
that Dr. Newman's judgment offers no resistance
to the course on which your own conscience has
decided. I have so great a veneration for his feelings
on such matters, that his opposing verdict* would
have seriously disturbed me. Yet the assumptions
from which he starts so often seem to me precarious
and misleading, that I felt no security about his
judgment on the case.
" Into your sorrowful, almost penitential, feeling
in tearing yourself away from so many sacred and
tender ties, I believe I can enter. But then, is not
the question this : What is it that justly stirs
compunction and regret? Is it the present act of
conscience ? or is it the mistaken guidance given in
the past? given in good faith, but now found to be
illusory. The position you now take no more calls
for apology that Paul's repudiation of the Mosaic
Law. And I feel jealous of any concession, out of
self-accusing humility, to the false Catholic treatment
of your present state of mind as criminal. I did not
see why you should justify your late associates so
much at your own expense, as if releasing them from
imputed participation in some real offence. I say
this, not from any desire to revert to my criticism,
but because I doubt whether I made my meaning
clear.
"It is curious that you went at once to George
Dawson's Chapel. I had been doubting whether to
write to him and ask him to call. But though he has
noble qualities and much religious power, I did not
feel sure that his rough and bold ways might not
repel you : so I refrained. But I am glad that you
have heard him preach. He is very unequal, some-
times verging on the coarse and irreverent, but at
others, really great. He was originally a Baptist.
I do not think anyone knows his present theology :
not perhaps even G. D. himself. He is not a thinker
or a student ; but he has wonderful skill as an
eclectic, in appropriating and distributing the best
thoughts of others, with sufficient colouring caught
in passing through his own."
By the time this letter reached him he had already
had some experience of Unitarian manners and forms
of worship, and he expressed himself respecting them
in the following reply :
" BlBMINGHAM,
"August 26th.
" MY DEAB MB. MAETINEAU,
"It is too bad to write to you still egotistically,
but I know your kindness would make you desire it.
" As soon as the conscientious questions as to
Catholicity and my Order were fully decided and
acted on, and the matter closed, I could then
171
distinctly throw my thoughts and spiritual life into
my altered position. You will be glad to hear that
this causes me no difficulty, no void, no pain, but
quite the reverse. Of course I am grieved, as I ought to
be, at the honest grief caused to friends, but no longer
with the sense of self-reproach which I experienced
in considering the matter before acting (as in that
letter written from Bosworth, to which you allude,
and which was copied into other papers a fortnight
after its appearance in a Catholic paper.)
"Those who oppose through mere anger or spirit
of party I am quite indifferent to. But I now dis-
tinctly recognise my position, and the genuine pain
of others does not in the least degree cause my
conscience apprehension, and therefore I sympathise
with their sorrow without being sad.
" Also I can already perceive that the etJws of the
persons and systems (if it can be called so) which
will surround me, instead of revolting and offending,
and grating something in my mind, exactly conforms
with what I have really always preferred. The sub-
mission of manner and word to the Priest has never
pleased me, and I have always rather tried to adopt
a manner calculated to lessen such in others, and
the honest kindly independence and equality which
I recognise with those whom your kindness has
brought me in contact with, makes me feel quite at
home ; nor does the system I perceive pursued in the
management of Chapel affairs offend me, though
doubtless in the hands of vulgar and self-sufficient
minds, it might occasionally make me wince.
172
" Also the witnessing the behaviour, the tone dis-
played in the public worship, removes from me the
sense of shame-facedness and apprehension I had
that all would hang on the Minister I perceive that
in reality the instinct of religious reverence keeps
things straight.
" On the whole I do not regret the appearance of
my letter, as it has, I find, entirely silenced the praise
of Protestants, who are very angry at my praise of
Catholics. They now see that I cease to be a
Catholic because I disbelieve, and not because I can
gratify them by joining in a factious or controversial
opposition.
" This will not gratify the spite of those who
specially employ themselves in abusing Catholics,
but perhaps to thoughtful minds it makes my act
the more significant when it is clear that it has
resulted solely from the experience of conscience.
" The only point now not quite clear to my mind
is my right line towards those who are rather un-
settled and write to me ; from the dread of helping
to destroy spiritual props in minds in which I might
not be hopeful of such being replaced, I probably
take too much the ' Catholic side,' and ' do not be
rash,' ' and you do not feel obliged in conscience to
investigate, so you must not, &c.' I do deeply feel
the danger if I am hasty or rash in this matter,
though I may push this perhaps too far?
" Yours sincerely and gratefully,
" EOBEKT EODOLPH SuFFIELD."
CHAPTEE XII.
NEITHER ANGLICAN NOB EVANGELICAL.
In Dr. Newman's religious novel, " Loss and
Gain," the Story of a Convert from High Anglicanism
to Eomanism, there is a scene which would be more
amusing were it less exaggerated, in which the young
man whose dissatisfaction with the Church of his
fathers has somehow become known, but who has not
yet publicly and definitely declared himself, is visited
by representatives of various sects and opinions, who
one after another seek to win him to their particular,
and to them infallible, form of faith. Mr. Suffield
had a somewhat similar experience when making the
far journey in an opposite direction, and before yet
he had clearly declared himself a Unitarian. One,
an Anglican " abbot," wrote, congratulating him
" that the true and really infallible head of the
Church is leading you to embrace true Catholicity,
by which alone we can hope for the reunion of the
visible Church. How gratefully and humbly would
countless numbers of English Catholics welcome such
as you among them. How more than pleased I
should be if you would give to me such a visit. The
few of us who are here do most earnestly desire to
be true Monks, and have learnt to love trials and
sufferings in order that we may grow in our Blessed
Lord's likeness under our Holy Eule. A visit from
174
you would help us on our road." Nor was this cor-
respondent discouraged by Mr. Suffield's reply : " My
dear reverend brother in Christ," he wrote, " thank
you very much for your kind note. I am pained by
what I hear of your most terrible trial. It is the
most intensely agonising one that a Christian soul
can know. I myself have endured something of your
agony, but I think and trust these fearful failings of
the understanding have quickened in me the faith
of my heart, and now my understanding is growing
stronger also. But all through my struggle I would
not have shaken the faith of another for worlds, or
given to the enemies of our Lord a triumph in my
case. Very dear brother, may not this battle-field
even yet see you come off ' more than conqueror.' "
It must have seemed strange to him, this fervent
appeal in language he was so used to, but coming
from one outside of his Catholic Church, and setting
up the particular faith of his own choosing as some-
thing for which to sacrifice reason and life.
Another well-known Evangelical Nonconformist
wrote, " I have gone over the position you occupy in
repeated mental conflicts, and therefore am perhaps
qualified better than many to offer a word in season.
I earnestly hope and pray that you may not take up
your abode in the tents of the Unitarians. I have
been a zealous Protestant from my youth, yet of the
two I would rather have the Creed of Archbishop
Dupanloup than that of Dr. Channing. May I recom-
mend to your notice one of the most interesting
books I ever read, " Teachings of Experience," by
175
Joseph Barker. He passed through Unitarianism
on his downward course. I am not anxious to gain
you for the Church of England, but for Evangelical
Christianity, rightly so called, as I believe I have
seen its blessed fruits in living and dying."
Many such well-meant affectionate entreaties
reached him, of which one more may be given in
full, as a striking illustration of that delusion which
is common to men of every religion, making the
individual confident that the particular opinions he
at present holds are the final truth of God, to which it
should be his prayer and effort to lead all his fellows.
" Keverend Sir, It was with the greatest delight
that I read your manly protest against Papal Infal-
libility. Subsequently, you left, I understand, the
Eoman Church for the Protestant. Believe me, I am
fully able to appreciate this your step, as I too, about
thirteen years ago, left Eomanism for Protestantism.
I was Priest and Professor of Divinity at the Univer-
sity of After I left the Church I went to
the British Museum, and devoted myself to Syriac
studies. Meanwhile my religious experience had
shown to my mind the utter untenableness of Pro-
testantism, which represents not liberty but licence.
Among Protestants the most vital points are contro-
verted, so that, to a great many, Christianity is but a
loose system of morality. There are, indeed, Evan-
gelicals, Ritualists, Baptists, &c., of a high confessional
colour, but is their belief anything else but inconsis-
tency ? They cling desperately to certain tenets of
their sect, because they feel the cravings of a believing
176
soul. But such stubborn, self-made belief, cannot save.
Where is the Church of Christ and His Apostles ?
Our Saviour promised us that the gates of hell
should not prevail against her. Thus she, visible,
like every other historical institution, must exist
somewhere, and, if we open our eyes, we must be
able to find her. Where is, then, this One Holy
Catholic and Apostolic Church ? Up to the Great
Schism there was but One Catholic Church, com-
prising the whole world, east and west. Then Eome
and the west separated from the common Catholic
ground, which the east preserves unaltered (neither
adding nor subtracting anything) up to this hour;
while Eomanism, rushing from innovation to innova-
tion, introduced Papism and its tail of new doctrines,
shifted the basis of Apostolical Church institution,
and led its sectaries to hypocrisy or unbelief.
" After having passed through the Koman domain
of false doctrine and papal tyranny, after having wan-
dered through the dreary desert of Protestant indi-
vidualism, I have reached (some years ago) the safe
port of the Holy Orthodox Catholic Church, and I
have found perfect rest for my soul, and a safe prospect
in the hour of death ! I cannot tell you how happy I
am now, and how much I am satisfied with the
impregnable fastness of truth and heavenly comfort,
which is the Orthodox Church. I know you will not
and cannot take amiss, that I, a perfect stranger to
you, beseech you to turn your eyes towards the Holy
Orthodox Church. As we were once "confratres"
in the same Church, as we passed the same way
177
through Protestantism, so I hope we shall one day
meet again in the Orthodox Catholic Church. Tet,
though I am a stranger to you, you are not a stranger
to me, for many a beautiful song of your " Crown of
Jesus " we sing in our household devotions. May the
God of Truth lead your steps in the right direction.
"Yours, &c."
It was time for him to speak out and define for the
benefit of the religious world his settled position. All
these alternatives to Eomanism seemed to him at
once less reasonable and less attractive, and he had
not thrown off the yoke of a world-wide faith to bow
his understanding with pain and difficulty under some
denominational or local or party dogmatism. He left
a Catholic Church for what he believed to be a still
more catholic one, w r hose faith was that common to
all religions of civilised men, and one which imposed
no sort of penalty on free inquiry ; accordingly there
appeared in Church Opinion, of August 27th, the
following :
"Through the kindness of a friend we are enabled
to publish the following interesting letter from Father
Suffield to a clergyman of the Church of England.
It will be seen that Father Suffield's ecclesiastical
position is not at all what had been anticipated, and
will be as little satisfactory to the Anglicans as to
" Evangelical and orthodox" Dissenters. It seems to
us a sort of Christian Theism with the minimum of
dogmatic belief, like what is ably described in the
little book of F. Pecant, " Avenir du Theisme
Chretien." A religion edified by Christian experiences,
178
but in reality reposing not on revelation, as such, in
the ordinary sense of the term, but on the conscience,
and the manifestations of God. Whilst thus entirely
differing from him in his conclusions, our readers will
be interested in learning what they are :
" BIRMINGHAM, Aiujiist 22nd, 1870.
" MY DEAR SIB,
" Private communications are so very numerous at
present, that I cannot conveniently add to my occu-
pations by contributing the literary help you do me
the favour of offering. Moreover, your able periodical
partakes somewhat of a controversial character, and
is regarded as anti-Catholic in its position. I am
peculiarly circumstanced, having resigned all offices in
the Catholic Church, and ceased the exercise of
priestly and Catholic rites : from the intimate manner
in which I have been interwoven in the Catholic body
in England, this act causes great pain to those whom
the least 1 should like to wound ; and I am anxious
to do nothing but what is demanded by the exigences
of circumstances or the requirements of conscience,
which could in the slightest degree grieve those who
have so many claims upon my affection, gratitude,
and reverence.
" After long and deep thought, study, prayer, and
counsel, I decided that it would be impossible for me
honestly to continue to act as a priest. The infalli-
bility of the Pope and of the Scriptures alike, I question,
and the dogmas resting solely on either of those
authorities, I am not able on that account to admit.
179
"It is my desire to unite with others, and to assist
them in the worship of God and in the practice of the
two-fold precepts of charity, unfettered by adhesion
on either side to anything beyond those great funda-
mental principles as presented to us by Jesus Christ.
"Though relieved from all the obligations of my
Order, I do not wish to consider myself as alienated
from the Catholic Church, or from other Christian
communities, by any personal act. I leave none, and
join none: I assume a position hostile to none; if
one man hurls an anathema, another man is not com-
pelled either to accept it or to retaliate it.
" Having understood that those who are commonly
called Unitarians, Free Christians, or Christian
Theists, thus agree in the liberty inspired by self-
diffidence, humility, and charity, to carry on the
worship of God, without sectarian requirements or
sectarian opposition ; that they possess a simple, but
not vulgar, worship, and a high standard of virtue,
intelligence, and integrity, and these after the
Christian type, moulded by the Christian traditions,
and edified by the sacred Scriptures ; holding the
spirit taught by Jesus Christ, and the great thoughts
by virtue of which he built up the ruins of the moral
world ; and yet not enforcing the reception of com-
plicated dogmas as a necessity, or accounting their
rejection a crime ; a communion of Christian wor-
shippers, bound loosely together, and yet by the force
of great principles enabled quietly to maintain their
position to exercise an influence elevating and not
unimportant, and to present religion under an aspect
180
which thoughtful men can accept without latent
scepticism, and earnest men without the aberrations
of superstition, or the abjectness of mental servitude
to another such approved itself to my judgment, and
commended itself to my sympathy.
" I intend adhering to the pursuits of the clergyman
and of the Christian teacher, and communications are
in progress in another part of England which may
.terminate in my accepting .thus a duty conformable
to the habits of my life, and which will not throw me
into a position of hostility, or embarrassment as to
those honoured and loved Catholic friends, with
whom so greatly I should prize to maintain kindly
intercourse, inasmuch as I am only externally severed
from them by my being unable to believe certain
dogmas which a Catholic is bound to regard as
essential. Thus I hope I have not only thanked you
for your obliging offer, but adequately explained my
position, and shewed that the future you were com-
missioned to hold out to me in the Established
Church, would not be deemed possible by the
authorities who have done me the honour and kind-
ness to communicate in my regard, as soon as they
are made aware, that the Articles and the Athanasian
Creed would be amongst the insuperable barriers to
my entertaining such a proposal.
" Many write to me evidently under a grievous
misapprehension. They anticipate from me the
denunciations of that vision of beauty, which I have
left simply because, like a vision, it had everything
but reality. Allied as I am by relationship with
181
several of our ancient Catholic families, allied by the
ties of friendship with nearly all of them, I feel it is a
shame to myself that any stranger could suppose one
word of my lips, one thought of my mind, could cast
a reproach on those beautiful and honoured homes
where old traditions received a lustre greater even
than antiquity and suffering can bestow crowned
with the aureola of charity, nobleness, purity, and
devotedness. Such memories print on my heart their
everlasting record. To cease to believe and to
worship with them was a martyrdom, which none but
the Catholic can understand.
"I have ascended now to another stage of my life,
to rise to it needed sufferings of the mind and of the
heart, the sacrifice of everything in the world I cared
for ; but I perceive a work to do, and by the blessing
of God, I shall strive to perform it. Youth, strength,
vigour, and hope return to me with the expectation.
Truth obtained by suffering is doubly dear to the
possessor.
" Very sincerely yours,
" EOBEET EODOLPH SuFFIELD."
In accordance with the advice of Dr. Newman he
made application to the General of the Order for a
dispensation from his vow of obedience ; it had
become impossible for him to be faithful to it any
longer, but it seemed "more gracious and con-
siderate " to seek remission of it through the
recognised channels. On the other hand it was
impossible for his Eoman Superiors to enter into his
view of the case ; to ask dispensation on the ground
182
of loss of faith appeared to them as if a wife were to
seek the annulment of her marriage on the ground
that she had been unfaithful to her husband. The
answers he received from his English Superior and
from the General of the Order were as follows :--
"THE MONASTERY, WOODCHESTEE,
" August 15th, 1870.
" MY VERY DEAR FATHER SUFFIELD,
" My heart is too full of sorrow to say much,
although what you confided to me from time to time
in past years invariably made me fear some such
denouement as the present. Your mind always
seemed to me to be struggling with difficulties which
were an enigma to me, and several times that you
said you would like to die suddenly convinced me
that you were in a state of mind few would be able to
understand. Still I always hoped that a time of
peace and calm would come. For it is anguish itself,
my dear Father, to think of you severed from us and
from the Church, and that too in the very eventide of
your life, and with a future before you which at
present, I am sure, cannot look anything but gloomy
and dark. The prayers, however, of many fervent
hearts will follow you, and I trust support you in what
I must call your lonely wanderings. I feel, however,
what you say in your letter, 'there is no alternative,'
and I will therefore not delay in putting your case
before our General, and asking for the dispensation
from your vows. Believe me, yours, with all sym-
pathy and affection.
"FR. GEO. VINCENT KING."
183
To a Eomau Catholic sudden death is dreaded,
because it implies death without the last sacraments,
without absolution, or extreme unction, or the viati-
cum which sinners trust to for salvation and saints
long for as last preparation to meet their Lord. To
desire sudden death means, therefore, to have no
regard for these solemn rites, and the fact was, as he
long after avowed, that he did shrink from a dying
avowal of faith when his mind was full of doubt.
The General wrote :
" EOME, 28th August, 1870.
"It is under the auspices of St. Augustine, whose
rule we prof ess, * that I write you this letter, inspired
alike by my fatherly affection and my profound grief.
Your Provincial has written to me that you have
commissioned him to apply for a dispensation from
your vow of obedience, but you cannot be ignorant
that the Sovereign Pontiff alone is able to dispense
you from it ; and you ought to know too that he does
not grant such dispensations even to those who
are allowed to become secular priests.
" And wiiat legitimate motive can you have more-
over to justify such a demand ? You say you have
lost the faith ; it is beyond doubt a tremendous
calamity, but not without remedy, and is by remaining
in the Order that you will discover that remedy and
apply it. Your fall, it seems to me, has been your
* The 28tb of August is the feast of St. Augustine, whose brief
rnle>f Clerical life is the foundation of " The Constitutions of the
Order of St. Dominic."
184
own fault. You speak in your letter to the papers, of
years of strife and anguish and doubt that you have
had to go through, and yet not one of your brethren
had ever a suspicion of it ; you exhausted yourself in
your lonely struggles, in which you counted too much
upon yourself and your individual reason, passing by
the means of assistance which Providence had put at
your door, and which you would have found in the
counsel of your brethren and the direction of your
Superiors. Then when this inner struggle has ex-
hausted your strength and the moment of weakness
has come, it is the public of whom you have made a
confidant, and by a newspaper that we have the pain
to learn it.
" Yours has been a great fault, and at the same
time a great misfortune. May your own eyes be
at least opened to see it. Think of the great number
of souls whom God has given you the grace to lead into
the truth and establish in the ways of justice, and do
not force upon them the cruel spectacle of the blind-
ness of the guide who had led them into the light.
Near to the threshold of eternity do not belie, do not
dishonour a life consecrated to the Apostolate by the
shame of an apostacy.
" Follow the counsel that my affection for you and
my desire for your salvation inspires. Withdraw to
one of our convents, or if you prefer it, to one of the
Passionists', or of any other Order, and there make a
serious retreat, closing the door upon all the noises of
the world, and occupying yourself exclusively on the
great business of your salvation.
185
"For the present I ask no more of you, and I
beseech it of you rather than command it.
"Adieu, my son, I will unite my prayers to yours
to implore our Lord to enlighten and bless you.
" FK. A. V. JANDEL,
" Mag. Ord." (Master of the Order).
It is a type of thousands of like letters written by
those who stay to those who go. They mingle
reproach, and prayer, and entreaty, and insist upon
infallible but impossible means of recovery. " Come
back, put yourselves under the old influence, banish
the new ones, and if you are earnest and persevering
in your efforts, you may yet be as we are." So they
cry to us from out the narrow room which they
imagine the vault of heaven, but we cannot return till
we grow blind ; we have seen the real sun and the
stars, and cannot again be persuaded that the painted
ceiling is the sky. " Why didn't you seek advice?"
they say. Because, dear friends, we knew so well all
you could and would say to us ; why pain you, why
expose our trouble and your shame before the time ?
It is singular how both of these letters speak of him
as an old man drawing near his end, while he was
really in mid life. The fact probably was that
austerity and anxiety had so worn his frame that he
did impress people as aged beyond his years.
Certainly many years after those who knew him best
would not have thought of him as on "the verge of
eternity." Save for one long and serious illness, he
enjoyed good health and spirits for twenty years from
the time these letters were written.
186
A short notice of his " fall," which appeared in The
Tablet, the leading Eoman Catholic journal, seemed
to many to insinuate that there had been some moral
delinquency on his part antecedent to his change of
faith, and so had given to many of his old friends,
who were in mourning for his loss, just cause of
offence. In consequence, his English Superior, who
from his official position would be of all others most
intimately acquainted with his life, and the first to
hear of any breath of scandal against one of his
subjects, wrote to the Editor of The Tablet :
" My attention has been called to a short notice in
The Tablet of the 3rd instant, in which the writer
says that F. Suffield ' had for some time been a cause
of anxiety to his Superiors.' At the end of the same
paragraph it is said, ' We take leave of this unhappy
Priest without dwelling on the sad causes which have
led to his apostacy, instructive though they might be.'
What the writer of that notice really meant to
insinuate it is not for me to decide ; but I am sorry
to say that those words have been interpreted in a
sense highly injurious to F. Suffield's character, and
as casting blame upon his late Superiors. In letters
sent to me within the last ten days, that notice has
been called ' a disgraceful, vulgar, and lying para-
graph.' It is said ' that none but one himself
infamous could impute to F. Suffield any moral blame ;
that the writer in The Tablet insinuates what he dares
not say, and doesn't perceive that he throws much
deeper blame on F. Suffield's Superiors than on
F* Suffield himself.' I may add that many and
187
severe remonstrances have been made to me by
F. Suffield's numerous friends about the ' ambiguous
meaning of the notice in The Tablet.' I feel, there-
fore, that F. Suffield's own request to me that I
should say something on the subject is only just and
fair. However, as I have been Provincial only about
three months, my testimony in this matter may
probably be considered of little weight ; I have there-
fore written to Father Aylward, my predecessor, on
the subject, and, I think I cannot do better than
reproduce his words. Father Aylward, writing to me
in reference to F. Suffield, says : ' Whilst I was his
Provincial, I felt no uneasiness in reference either to
his moral character or to the orthodoxy of his doc-
trine. His sad defection from the faith came upon us
all, as you know, with the suddenness of a thunder-
clap. None of his confreres in the Order knew
anything, nor suspected anything, of those distressing
doubts which he now says harassed his mind for
years (even before he joined our Order). Almost up
to the last his sentiments were most loyal to the
Holy Father; and if ever I had to withhold my
sympathies from his views, it was chiefly on matters
purely political, and on which he never professed to
speak the mind of his brethren. Deplorable as his
fall from the faith is, truth and justice demand that
the charges alluded to which would convey any
impeachment of his moral character, or of the
sincerity of his faith (however much he may have
been tempted to doubt), should be met by his Superiors
(and I am one) with a frank and peremptory contra-
188
diction. The affliction which his sad case causes us
would not be alleviated by hearing things said of him
which would simply be against the truth.' I need
hardly add how fully I concur in those sentiments
thus expressed by my predecessor, Father Aylward.
Asking you to insert this letter in your next issue,
believe me, yours sincerely,
" F. GEO. VINCENT KING,
" Dominican Priory, Haverstock-hill,
" September 14th."
To this the Editor subjoined this note :
" Our short notice, referred to in somewhat extreme
language by our correspondent, was as follows:
' Mr. Suffield had been for some time a cause of
anxiety to his Superiors. He has written a letter to
say that he repudiates the Scriptures, the Pope, and
even Christianity, as understood, whether by Catholics
or Protestants, and that he joins the Unitarians, or
free Christians, or Christian Theists. We take leave
of this unhappy Priest without dwelling on the sad
causes which have gradually led up to his apostacy,
instructive though they might be. We simply com-
mend him to the pity and prayers of all.' We did
not feel justified in mentioning in this notice the
causes which, we had been assured, had led to this
miserable apostacy. They seemed to touch more
closely than a journalist is warranted in doing in the
details of personal and private life. We have now,
189
however, no alternative but to mention, under reserve,
what was actually told us, viz., ' that F. Suffield had
been so engrossed in external and active works for
many years, that he had become lamentably neglect-
ful of his own spiritual life of prayer, and that this
and his want of observance and docility to the
directions of his Superiors, had for some time been
naturally a cause of anxiety.' A letter from a Priest
whose position gave him a means of knowing, con-
firms this statement from another source, though it
does not coincide with the impression conveyed by the
F. Provincial, who, of course, speaks with authority.
But, granting the correctness of our information,
what more instructive or practical lesson could there
be for those among us who are tempted to act as
though a life of activity in external good works could
secure final perseverance without a life of prayer !
No apostacy from the Catholic Faith and we
presume our Very Eev. correspondent would not
maintain the contrary can possibly take place
without grave moral fault, except, indeed, in case of
insanity, and then we should not call it apostacy.
For Catholics it can only be a question of in what
did the fault consist? Again, there is no axiom
more undoubtedly certain, or more salutary to remem-
ber than ' Nemo repente,' d'C. If we have unwittingly
injured one whom we would rather pray for than
uselessly annoy, we regret having done so. And we
particularly regret that any words of ours should
have given pain to our correspondent, or to any of
his confreres, in a matter itself so full of sadness."
190
The next week appeared this rejoinder :
" SIB, In your last number I see a letter from the
present Provincial of the Dominican Order in Eng-
land, stating that the late Father Suffield and some
of his numerous friends are complaining of the
manner in which this fallen man has been spoken of
in your columns. Allow me to assure you that very
many Catholics are justly shocked at the maudlin
sensitiveness about his character ! displayed by one
who is an apostate from his Order and his Faith.
"It is a public secret that many Fathers of the
Order had been long anxious concerning the fate of
a Eeligious, who, to other delusions, had added the
not uncommon one, that the spiritual life can last to
the end, if a Priest allow himself to be absorbed in
external work. As to the doubts which the late
F. Suffield now entertains or more properly speaking,
has thrown off concerning the Catholic Faith, he
himself has published to the world that they have
been of very long standing. The thoroughness of the
Catholic tone which has been conspicuous in The
Tablet, will, I trust, not evaporate like the Eev. Mr.
Suffield's spirituality.
"I enclose my name because, though I have good
reason not to appear prominently in this sad business,
' I want you to see that I have a right to speak
about it.
" I am, Sir, yours faithfully,
" September 20th, 1870." " VERITAS.
CHAPTER XIII.
WHAT OLD FKIENDS SAID OP HIM.
He was quite right, the editor of The Tablet, in his
statement that according to the generally received
belief of Roman Catholics, "no apostacy from the
Faith can possibly take place without grave moral
fault, except, indeed, in case of insanity." But the
hearts of Roman Catholics are as tender and true as
are those of Protestants, and the transition from love
and reverence to censure and abhorrence is no easy
one. It is interesting to note this struggle in the
many private letters written to him at this time
some boldly defying the accepted maxim and
acquitting him of fault, and others preferring the
alternative of believing him insane.
Here are a few extracts from the private corres-
pondence of a family, all the members of which were
on very intimate terms with him, and deeply attached
to him. They are from letters of August and Sep-
tember, 1870.
"Tell Father Suffield, with our united kind love,
that we read with much interest the article on the
" Infallibility," in the Saturday Review, which he was
good enough to send us. Tell him how frightful have
been the consequences of its proclamation to numbers
who were anxious to believe in our Faith and enter
our Church."
192
" I have received several very triste letters from
Father Suffield, and I am quite sure you have, like
me, been most distressed. Would that all men could
be satisfied with the pure and simple Catholic Faith,
without diving into works written by heretics and
infidels. Father Suffield has been in weak health for
years, so deep study and great reading have been too
much for him."
"As to Father Suffield, I don't like to think about,
much less to talk about it. I don't know anything
that has shocked me so much. . . . Good-bye,
say your prayers as hard as you can, or the Devil is
sure to have you. By Jove ! I don't know who is
safe. Count no man happy till he 's dead. ' The
grey-haired saint may fail at last.' Father Suffield
has taken my breath away."
" I was so glad to get your letter and find you had
taken poor Father Suffield's part. I thought, two
years ago, that the bad state of his health with the
strict duties of his Order would tell upon his brain.
I was right it seems. The poor man has a terrible
bee in his bonnet, which, however, I am glad has
taken the ultra form it has, in leaving the true Church
for such utter trash as that which he has embraced.
He was so well known and so much respected that
he might have done serious harm to our dear Faith.
But now people will understand that the mind is
weak as well as the body. But you have too many
reasons to be grateful to the dear Father to think of
anything but his goodness, and pray hard for his
return to faith and salvation."
193
"Never go to stay with Father Suffield, the poor
man is gone all wrong. He read and fasted till he
hurt his health. Pray God he may be made right
again. E. had a nice letter from him."
"26th October, 1870.
" Do not be induced to stay with poor Fr. Suffield,
nor be with him on the same intimate footing as of
yore, not because he has seceded from the true faith
so much, as because he must have a screw loose,
which may become looser and looser. I have read a
letter of his which I think anything but reassuring,
and I fear the future for him more than the harm
he can do now, which is the reason why I wish you
to be prudent."
" September 12th, 1870.
"I was so delighted with your dear little paragraph
written in defence of so valued a friend as Fr. Suffield,
who must be going through a martyrdom of suffering,
for no Catholic can feel affection for him now that he
has deserted the faith, and no other sect can feel
gratified, as he positively declined to belong to any,
so he will stay, as he justly says, much alone."
Another, a priest, who, with all his family, had
been till now among his most attached friends,
writes :
" MY DEAEEST FRIEND,
" We have been talking of writing to you, but two
things prevented me (1) The difficulty of knowing
how to begin to you. (2) The fear of getting a pain-
ful letter back touching on subjects we loved to talk
194
of in happier days, but which now, to hear anything
of from you is like a knife to the heart.
"You may fancy the agony we all suffered when
you left Bosworth. It has been as yet the trial and
pain of my life. I think of you constantly, but it is
the priestly form of years ago which used to be my
support, my comfort, my instruction. How I re-
member the joys of my meeting with you ! Now I
would do anything that was right to help you in any
way, for soul or body ; but what can I do but pray
that before your departure into Eternity you may
again hear the voice of our Lord and return to him ?
" Poor Martineau never knew the truth, and I trust
even he may see it.
" To argue with you is a thing I will never do. It
would do no good and perhaps engender bitter feelings,
or at least give rise to bitter words. But it is an
awful thing, and a terrible trial and suffering. For
myself I shall never, never forget you and all the love
and kindness you have ever shewn me. I would offer
myself to pains and death if I could bring you back,
and I shall never give up hope. How often I think
of words you have uttered and that have borne fruit in
me ; never to be forgotten words, though now bring-
ing pain. I appeal against your present self, to your
old self, to the priest who ever led me on, till your fall
came. For myself, by the help of the Infinite God, I
will be faithful, and never pry into his mysteries, lest I
should be dazzled by their splendour. I submit my
poor little intellect to His, and am glad to believe
mysteries I cannot understand. Pride may lead me
195
to believe myself rather than the voice of Christ,
unless I fear and pray and watch, and may God
grant that I may die, if by living I should be un-
faithful to Him. This is my determination to live
and die in the Communion of God's Holy Church.
Your loving friend of days gone by."
This letter is from the same hand which had
written to him a while before : " I think you speak
rather strongly about persecution, as I suppose we
cannot deny that punishment in this world for wilful
and obstinate heresy is right and most just. When, or
how much it is expedient, is another thing." But
love is stronger than all dogmas and conviction, and
"many waters cannot quench love, neither can the
floods drown it"; and so the same sad wail of won-
der and pity and obstinate affection and abiding gra-
titude is repeated in letter after letter, from priests
and laymen, ladies and nuns. Holding fast to the
assumption that it was " God's Holy Church" they
were members of, that not to be for a moment
questioned under pain of grievous sin, all the rest
followed ; of course what his Church teaches is
true, and to question it on the ground of difficulties
of understanding is absurd. What those who so
argue always fail to see is, that what they assume is
the very point in dispute. The pride must border on
insanity which leads a man to doubt God's Word or
God's Church, and prefer to their testimony his own
feeble reason ; but his own reason, however feeble,
is the light by which he must determine, if indeed
the book or the Church be divine ; no amount of
196
confident assertion avails in place of proof. So all
these remonstrances, numerous and affectionate as
they were, were of necessity unavailing.
His successor at Bosworth wrote, telling him all
about the parish, and then went on: "And now, dear
Father, permit me to refer to a subject at once pain-
ful 'and distressing, since it brings before the mind
one whom I have loved and revered and admired for
goodness and holiness and unbounded zeal, who gave
joy and consolation to all who crossed his path, but is
himself now sunk in a sea of desolation and bitter-
ness. You understand that I mean yourself. And
may it not all be a temptation, may not those doubts
you spoke to me about in your letter be a trial of your
faith ? You say in your letter to-day that you have
used means for many years, yet the difficulties remain.
Does that imply that because you have resisted temp-
tation for years, you must now yield ? I am sure you
know the Christian's rule of faith, the Christian's
guide submission to the Church too well to oppose
it ; now without making shipwreck of your soul's
salvation.
"You know, and I am sure have often taught, that
temptations against faith are not to be met by argu-
ment and subtle reasoning, but by a speedy flight and
turning away of the mind, and they who argue upon
matters supernatural, will, in all probability, reject
what they cannot comprehend. I am speaking to
one immeasurably my superior in every way, and
amongst other things, in intellectual power, and
therefore I will not argue, and if I did I could not
197
succeed in proving to you what my own reason can
never comprehend. But, I believe because the Church
teaches and, dearest Father and brother, excuse the
freedom I take, when in the name of God I implore
you to use the same words, notwithstanding all your
doubtings and fears and difficulties, and I am: sure
your reward will be immeasurably greater than that
of many who have not had the same trials to contend
with. It would seem I were speaking as a child
when I give advice so simple to one who is much
more capable of advising me than I him; but my
heart is full, and I express my feelings in the simplest
way. I have said several masses for you, and have
to-day offered up the Holy sacrifice, beseeching the
Blessed Virgin, for whose honour you have done so
much, to help, comfort, and save you. That, pur
prayers may be heard is the earnest wish of your
ever affectionate brother."
There were but few exceptions to this manner of
loving entreaty, and those from correspondents whose
previous acquaintance with him had been less
intimate. Two instances may be given as illustrating
the feeling commonly entertained by Eoman Catholics
towards those whom they call " apostate priests,"
and making the more striking the exceptional regard
shown for this one. These extracts are from letters
written some months after this, when he had settled
down in the Unitarian ministry, but the same remark
applies to some of the extracts given above.
It is a Priest, an Oxford convert, who came by
chance into his neighbourhood, who writes :
198
" I cannot but be overpowered with grief and
anxiety on your account. It is as yet impossible for
me to believe that you can have lost the faith which
you once had, and which carried you through so many
glorious works as a Catholic Missioner. I should not
write to you now except that, like many others, I
sincerely loved you. Of course, love to one who denies
our Blessed Lord cannot be ; and by one who does so
heinous a sin against God, cannot be desired. As I know
nothing and wish to know* nothing of the grounds
upon which you have renounced the Catholic faith,
I don't desire to enter into the matter with you. I
only wish you to know that I shall pray for you ; my
affection for you will oblige me to do this. Many are
doing the same. They and I consider you are labour-
ing under a mental delusion, which you have been for
mysterious purposes permitted to fall into. With
much sorrow and regard I remain," &c.
But indeed this letter is but a weak attempt at
being righteously bigoted. Our other extract is from
one who represents more correctly what others ought
to have felt and some tried to feel :
" Edified as we were at . . . by your zeal and
devotion, we were pained and shocked at your leaving
the Church, and are quite aware how intensely
miserable you must be and how difficult it must be
to retrace your steps. But time is short, &c. How
then can you hesitate to throw off the mask you
have assumed? only those who have been brought
* All these words are underlined in the original.
199
up as Catholics can feel how impossible, utterly im-
possible, it is to believe in any other than their own
Church ; and were you to declare the contrary, you
know we would not and could not believe it. When
I remember your discourses and devotion in the past,
and contrast with it your present life, it is so fearful
and appalling that I cannot help sending these few
lines to implore of you to stop even now. Think of
the numberless souls you will be contributing to lose,
think how they will torment you for eternity for
causing them to be lost. What are you now but a
subject of pity to those you have left, and an object
of pity to those you have joined. Forgive me for
writing thus plainly. I know my words will reach
your heart sincere and true as they leave mine." He
could forgive most things, but what always angered
him was any doubt thrown upon his sincerity. To
give up everything in mid-life, to leave friends, posi-
tion, provision, and come out into the world friendless,
penniless, unknown, had been a bitter trial ; to accuse
him of having done it all in pretence and hypocrisy
was absurd ; but it was nevertheless atrocious. But
such letters were rare. The following is more typical
of the feeling generally entertained towards him, and
especially by those whom he had himself won to the
Koman Church. How pitiful the struggle it reveals
between the assumed duty of abhorring heresy as
mortal sin on the one hand, and gratitude and respect
and affection towards a spiritual benefactor on the
other. It is from a lady who has since won distinc*
tion as an authoress.
200
" 20th August, 1870.
" DEAE BEVEREND FATHER,
" Your letter gave me great pain and has made me
very sad, but still what could I have you do more
than you have done. If your conscience cannot
submit to believe what the Church teaches, why I
know you cannot force it. Dear Father, how can I
say you have done right in leaving the Church and
not believing what it teaches, and yet I could never
bring myself to say that the Father and friend I have
loved and respected so long could have done what you
have done. I never knew that you had been so
tormented and agonised about the very questions I
so often used to write to you about : I never dreamed
I was causing you pain in so doing : not to save my
life would I give you pain if I could help it. But
now I am coming to the purpose for which I write,
namely, that as you said in your letter you had
dropped all priestly functions and ceased to be a
Catholic, I cannot, much as it costs me, aid myself
by writing to you for advice when I want it, and must
of necessity choose another director. Do not think
I have done this without a stern and resolute struggle,
but my sense of duty has gained over the love which
I have for you and will ever have. Yet never, never
shall anyone be permitted in my hearing to say one
word of disrespect against you, and I hope you will
continue to look upon me as a friend who never
forgets one who was her father, and who continues to
pray for happier times. I am often troubled with
doubts, and I am continually being told different
201
things by different persons, and it sends me almost
wild."
The following, dated August 16th, 1870, is inter-
esting, as a revelation of the sore straits to which at
this time many learned Catholics were reduced :
" The last month I have had to endure the greatest
trial of my life, now happily ended. From the un-
expected opposition in the Council, I felt sure that
there would be no definition, and the vote of a
month ago struck me with such a sense of impossi-
bility that I did not know what to do, and for some
time I did not feel able to approach the Sacraments.
It was not only the Infallibility ; in the Bull I saw
the formal enactment of that system which I always
dreaded. Five years ago I said to a Jesuit Father,
if there were a General Council, the majority being
all Papal nominees, would, of course, vote for the
extrernest Roman views ; would it then be a free
Council ? He got angry, though a most amiable man,
and told me I should end by being a Protestant. I
never could see how the Pope can appoint and de-
pose all Bishops at will, though I have always held
the indefectibility of the Eoman diocese. But there
is a wide difference between the belief that the Pope
can never, acting freely, deny the Faith, and holding
that he is correct in every moot point of faith and
morals. And the apparent cases in which the Pope
has ruled wrong, seemed to me insuperable difficul-
ties. Then the number of Latin bishops, as against
Teutonic, and of bishops without sees; the tacit
compact that none shall be Pope but an Italian,
202
no matter whom God has chosen ; the trammels im-
posed on the Fathers; most of all the epilepsy of the
Pope which never leaves the blood, and almost always
destroys the mind at last ; those considerations quite
shook my respect for the authority which proposes
the new constitution to my faith. Then I saw your
first letter in the Westminster Gazette (the others I
have not seen). I admired its bold, certain tone,
though I was unable to think the word ',vain ' rightly
suggested of Pius IX. I have found all the harm in
the world done by want of intellect, far more than by
vanity or pride. I do not believe that the Pope or
Archbishop care a straw for worldly motives ; they
think they are doing God service.
" I never suffered so much mental distress, aggra-
vated by the brainless crowing of the Faithful, who
know nothing of the difficulties, which are so terrible
to those who have read history without bias. When
I read that we're already bound to believe, I was
unable to feel myself still a Catholic. I had a long
talk with one of the best Oratorians, which hardly
gave me any light. My usual Confessor, a hot
Infallibilist (and not very wise), knowing my mind
and hearing all my great difficulties, said he would
still give me absolution, which I did not expect ; but
I seemed to be unable to attempt confession.
"I had, while expecting to be refused absolution,
considered what would become of me. I could not
dream for a moment of wilfully leaving the Com-
munion of Eome, no matter what the Centre of Unity
does. But, I said, suppose I can't believe and can't
be shriven, am I to live as a heathen, without sacra-
ments ? And I had thoughts about the Greek schism,
for I never could think for a moment of being an
Anglican, or of any other sect.
"After I left my confessor's room, though I had
been offered absolution, I began to feel that I was
wrong in spite of all difficulties. True, the system I
don't like has been authorised as the correct one.
True, it has been done by means not pleasant to see.
But it may be right in spite of my sense and my fear ;
and as to the means, there are ways of God as to
our own private lives which are as unintelligible as
anything of this kind. And, in spite of all that may
be said against the freedom of the Council, God can-
not have so deserted the Church as to let a clear
majority of all the bishops in the world betray their
trust and vote a lie. It is impossible, this dogma ; be
it so : but so is the Kesurrection, for which I see not
one shred of evidence in Scripture, or anything else.
Without the authority of the Church, I should cer-
tainly not believe that St. Paul teaches the same
belief that we have about it. I should, treating the
matter as a Deist, conclude that he had invented a
theory to reconcile an old superstition with common
sense, without quite breaking with the former. Nay,
my whole nature protests (or would protest) against,
not Christianity absolutely, but against its being
imposed upon me as an essential thing. So if I
refuse what the Church now proposes, can I logically
stop there?
" All this occurred to me for the hundredth time at
204
least; but in a moment I was freed from further
difficulties. I saw, and still see, all the contradictory
things which trouble so many. I knew that I was
not threatened, as yet, with deprivation of the Sacra-
ments, and also that some of our bishops say no one
is bound to believe till the end of the Council ; yet I
felt that God gave me a word, exactly as when I
became certain, in a moment of time fifteen years ago,
that I must join the Roman Communion to be within
the pale of salvation. And since this I have been not
only at peace, but in fulness of joy, as if I had
received the faith for the first time. I have, I believe,
been in great danger. I am not sure of having
grievously sinned ; but I neither thought of wilfully
jumping out of Peter's barque, nor of staying on
board (as some are doing) while in secret mutiny. I
asked for more faith, and have got it. It may be
possible indeed that they are excused by their good
faith, or their implicit belief in anything proposed by
the Church ; but, while I feel I have no right to judge
others, I am clear that I have no business to set
myself up to judge either Council or Pope. As I said
to my mother when I left the Establishment, ' If I
am deceived, God has deceived me.' You will smile,
I fear, when I say that I have more trust in Rome
now than I have had for years. It is rather like
' amantium irse.' But Talleyrand was right in saying
' Les affaires de Rome ont porte malheur a tous ceux
qui y ont touche.'
"I have just received a letter from F. B. which
may interest you. I cannot agree with him. He is
205
quite mistaken in attributing any errors of mine to
any desire to think for myself. I have never wished
anything so much as the dominion of just authority.
I feel with the crushed opposition, but, I am certain,
I believe with the majority.
" P.S. August 17th. I have now read your letter
in the W. G. of August 6th. At that time I could
have expressed, and certainly felt, all that you say.
I am deeply pained to see how far your difficulties
have gone. I have heard you a good deal abused
lately, and have snubbed diverse who talked sneer-
ingly about 'the verge of apostacy, &c.,' and having
been tempted so much myself, I am very anxious to
see what you will do.
" One thing I should like to say, because it may be,
perchance, of some little use. I have heard you
preach and speak, and read your writing, and I have
always admired the clearness, calm, and purity of
your style, ' qu' on y voit.' Well, in your letter of
August 6th I see faults which can hardly be all
misprints, and a general excitement which makes me
feel sure your mind has been exercised past its power
of thinking calmly. In that case I can only pray
that you may not feel bound to take any further step
towards widening the gulf already existing between
yourself and orthodox thought."
This last remark will have been made by other
readers of the letters of Mr. Suffield's here reprinted,
and it has been a constant temptation to the editor to
amend the solecisms and make the meaning clear.
It has been thought best, however, to leave them
206
untouched ; their defects bear witness, which cannot
be gainsaid, to the sincerity of the writer. He did
not, as a sophist, sit down to justify by the best
arguments he could discover conclusions to which he
had been led by self-interest, or worldliness, or pride.
He wrote as out of the fulness of a soul in which
reason and affection were contending for the mastery,
so that he w r as being forced to a course he inwardly
revolted from. He knew that every word he wrote
went as a knife into the hearts of those whom, alone
in all the world, he called friends, loved, and was
loved by ; and he could not stay to correct the gram-
mar of his utterances and mould the sentences.
After all, there is no fault in these letters which
the grammarian will not find equalled and exceeded
in some which are, nevertheless, accounted to be
inspired.
For the rest, this correspondent reveals in his letter
the secret which so much puzzles Protestants ; how
can Eoman Catholics believe such impossible things ?
they ask ; and often they assert that educated men
only pretend to believe in them, forgetting, indeed,
that they themselves believe in much which seems
to the outsider quite as impossible.
Habit, indeed, is for the most part the reason of
faith to one and the other, they believe because they
always have done so. But the Eoman Catholic who
is instructed and thoughtful, believes because he
ought, because it is his duty and salvation, because he
firmly makes up his mind to it, and resists any sug-
gestion against the faith as a temptation of the Devil.
207
Hence the difficulty for any good man to free himself
from the system ; he must begin by what he believes
to be the grave sin of doubting; and probably Mr.
Suffield would all his life have remained in the
Church, forcing down his doubts, but for the quasi
authorisation to doubt and to inquire which was
afforded by the vexed question of Papal Infallibility.
Two other letters he received at this time from
men both eminent in the Eoman Communion. The
one, an ecclesiastic, whose orthodoxy has never been
called in question, " wrote to the effect that, as he
believed it possible for a person to leave the Church
without incurring guilt in the sight of Almighty God,
so he gave him credit for sincerity, and for following
his conscientious convictions in the step he had
taken."" The other, a layman, well known in the
Church and outside, wrote on the 8th of August :
" The slight knowledge that I have of you, per-
sonally, hardly justifies my thus intruding upon you.
Nevertheless, having read your letter in the West
minster Gazette, I cannot refrain from offering you
the respectful assurance of my sincere and deep
sympathy. These are times of trial indeed to the
best and noblest among us, as well as to some
whose imperfect faith is supplemented by still more
imperfect; works; and the trial is increased by the
utter inability of many good men to enter into, or
understand the difficulties of some who are but sin-
cere seekers after truth."
On the 30th of August he wrote again :
* The writer's own words.
208
"Your kind letter has been forwarded tome. I
earnestly hope and pray that time may assuage the
bitter pain you are now enduring. How often what
seems to us the greatest of misfortunes turns out to
have been our very salvation. Confiding in the good
providence of God, I feel sure that the recent defini-
tion will be ultimately a blessing to the world in one
way or another, and not only to the world but to the
Christian Church also. My occupations, however,
and my line of thought are so remote from theology,
that it is comparatively easy for me to be silent and
wait. This does not, however, prevent me from
having the keenest sympathy with anxious loving
souls, whose position and feelings do not allow them
to assume a similarly passive attitude. With every
best wish for your happiness, and with sincerest sym-
pathy and esteem, believe me, yours very truly."
It was a few months later, when he had settled down
at Croydon as a Unitarian minister, that he received
a gratifying proof of the kindly remembrance in which
he was held by his late parishioners, in the shape of
a handsome silver-plated inkstand, with the inscrip-
tion, "To the Eev. Father Suffield, from his friends at
Bosworth." He sent the following letter in acknow-
ledgment :-
"93, TAMWORTH ROAD, WEST CROYDON,
"February 2nd, 1871.
"MY VERY DEAR FRIENDS,
" I thank you sincerely for the beautiful token of
your affectionate remembrance. I quite understand
that you do not thereby signify agreement with me in
209
my religious position, but simply wish to testify that
you love me as a friend who loved and will always
love you.
" Unable to believe certain opinions fundamental to
all Catholics, I shall never cease to love tenderly all
of those who, like yourself, like the Fathers and
and Brothers of my late Order, like my many dear
devoted friends, were my chief argument inducing
me to consider myself enabled conscientiously to
banish the intellectual difficulties I felt.
" What you used to hear from me last year, is
what I now address to my little flock here what
previously I addressed to you, was the full teaching
of the Catholic Church ; in late times I spoke to you
chiefly of God, His providence, virtue, charity. Then
I had begun to think it possible that the counsels I
was taking with three holy and learned ecclesiastics of
the Catholic Church might result in my being compel-
led to resolve to sever so many precious and beautiful
ties of sympathy, communication, and affection.
"Always shall I recommend to God those at Bos-
worth and elsewhere, who so numerously have been
my kind and sympathising friends.
"May every blessing attend you and your children
whom I have loved so well, and w 7 hen this short life
is closed may a unity be obtained hereafter which
here seems to be attainable.
"I beg a perpetual share in your prayers, and to
remain always
" Your loving, grateful, and devoted friend,
" ROBERT EODOLPH SUFFIELD,"
N
210
And so he took leave of his Catholic friends ; how-
ever kindly the feelings they cherished towards
him, it was impossible that any degree of intimacy
could be maintained between them. A close friend-
ship may, and often does, exist between persons of
different religions, but it must be on the terms that
neither party regards the other's faith or unfaith as a
sin and outrage on his own. Old love may survive,
and pity keep back blame, but it must be at a
distance. So he had little or nothing to say to
Catholics till the approach of death renewed their
vain but loving importunities. He had arrived now
into a new world, and soon found himself surrounded
by new friends less demonstrative and less rever-
ential, but as many and as genuine.
CHAPTER XIV.
MINISTRY AMONG UNITABIANS.
It was indeed a new world into which he had
entered, and he set to work at once to make himself
at home in it. On August 14th, his first free Sunday
for 20 years past, he attended morning and evening
at George Dawson's Chapel, the next Sunday found
him a worshipper at the " Church of the Messiah,"
and the next at the " Old Meeting House." He made
friends rapidly among Birmingham Unitarians, and
at the beginning of the next month accepted invita*
tions to Manchester and Liverpool. His stay, how-
ever, was very short, for on the 7th instant he returned
to Birmingham, where, on the morning of the llth,
he conducted service and preached at the Church of
the Messiah. It was but six weeks before that he
had celebrated Mass in the morning, and given "The
Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament " in the even-
ing to his little flock at Bosworth : but great as the
outward change was, he had been so long preparing
for it, and was, moreover, so naturally inclined to
simplicity of ritual, that he took readily to the Puri-
tan bareness which then, even more than now, was
characteristic of Unitarian services. Indeed, so far
as can be ascertained from his diary and correspon-
dence of the time, he does not seem to have given
attention to the contrast, but to have been absorbed
212
rather in the thought of the great truths common to
all systems of religion, and anxious, above all, to say
nothing which would wound his old friends, or
gratify what he knew to be unreasonable prejudice.
So his first two sermons were a candid examination
of what had long been his great argument for Catho-
licism its success. And he asked, the first time he
spoke in a Unitarian pulpit, the success of Jesus
Christ, to what was it due ? He showed that it was
not due to belief in his Divinity, for that was slowly
apprehended nor to his miracles, for he was at pains
to conceal them nor to a Church system organised
by him nor to prestige or success while living " it
arose out of failure, spread like fragrance of the broken
vase, and silently possessed the world."
On the Sunday following, he preached at Upper
Brook Street Free Church, in Manchester, where
then the pulpit was vacant, and they were anxious
to obtain his services as their minister. He repeated
in the morning his sermon of the previous Sunday,
and in the evening returned to the same subject, but
regarding it from a more positive aspect. His brief
notes of this discourse are as follows :
" Cause of his success his personal character,
human, and therefore mutable, and our encourage-
ment chiefly his simplicity (he aimed at no effect),
neither all hero nor all gentleness tender and
strong severe and considerate unostentatious
attractiveness of simplicity, repulsiveness of preten-
tiousness his devotedness self-sacrifice . ' '
He left Birmingham on . the 22nd, and went to
213
Croydon as the guest of Mr. Mallison, who at that
time was actively interested in the proposal to com-
mence free religious services in the town. On the
Sunday following he preached at the Stamford
Street Chapel, in Blackfriars. It was the time
when day by day news was coming of siege and
battle and slaughter in France, and he took his
text from the Book of Lamentations, i, 20. "I am in
distress ; my heart is turned within me : abroad the
sword bereaveth, at home there is death." He spoke
of the compassion which the English people should
feel for the dead and wounded on either side, and
how death was the lot, not of soldiers only, but of
mankind. " May our compassion go beyond death,
and follow the pilgrims as they travel forward?"
Yes, he answered, all religions recognise the kinship
of living and dead, and the yearning of the bereaved
is the sanction of the doctrine of the Churches. The
sermon was probably disappointing to those who had
gone to hear a distinguished convert from Eomanism,
and was not wise from a worldly point of view;
militant Protestants, and good and useful men some
of them are, are suspicious and intolerant of anything
which smacks of Roman doctrine, and ask of a
convert, not that he should palliate, but protest, and
from his own experience, furnish matter to make
their protest the more effective. His own comment
in his reminiscences, dictated to a shorthand writer
shortly before his death, is, " my first Unitarian
sermon was on quite a neutral subject. I adopted a
similar course for a long time when asked to preach
214
on special occasions, causing disappointment to Unita-
rians, who naturally looked for some expression of
my motives and reasons for renouncing Romanism
and embracing the Unitarian position. This was
owing to a morbid dread I had of wounding the feel-
ings of my old friends, who had always been very
kind and good to me. But it was a mistake ; espe-
cially when on an early occasion I preached in favour
of a Roman Catholic religious belief, which I hold
on broad grounds, but which is identified with the
Roman system. To this, perhaps, was due the absurd
impression which arose in some quarters that I was
still a Roman Catholic under a Unitarian garb."
But, indeed, he never had the art to hold back the
expression of convictions which were likely to be
unwelcome to his hearers or injurious to his own
prospects. While yet a Roman Catholic, and under
the obligation to entertain no thoughts on matters of
religion but such as his Church approved, he was
far too outspoken on political subjects to suit his
Superiors. Now, that at a great price he had ob-
tained freedom, he was not minded to adopt any
kind of compromise, but spoke publicly his beliefs
and disbeliefs without regard to what might be said
of him. There were some who accused him of insin-
cerity had they known him better, imprudence and
want of reticence would have been their changes.
He had never to reproach himself with having said
what he did not believe ; there were times when
perhaps he might have repented of having spoken too
frankly and to no good purpose.
215
He seems by this to have made up his mind to
settle for a time at least at Croydon, where it seemed
as if a Church had been gathering for his ministry,
while he was being prepared at Bosworth for their
service. So our lives fit into one another, and men
and women far apart, in place, and thought, and way
of life, are adjusted, themselves all unconscious of it,
each for the other, for,
There 's a Divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.
It was on the 2nd of October that he conducted
the first free religious service held at Croydon. The
temporary place of meeting was a Nonconformist
Chapel in London Eoad, which had been hired for a
couple of months. They began together, congrega-
tion and minister ; it was an experiment on either
side, and the success must have appeared doubtful
to both. Could he accommodate himself to the ways
and faith of such a congregation ? Could they, few as
they were, succeed in establishing a Church ?
It was the day observed among Eoman Catholics,
and more especially by the Dominicans, as " Kosary
Sunday " ; and the new Unitarian minister had been
long distinguished among English Eoman Catholics
by his ardent propagation of the devotion of the
Eosary. Year after year he had preached on it and
explained it this first Sunday of October, and had
always attracted crowds to hear him. Now, to a
mere handful of liberal religious thinkers, he ex-
pounded his own views of "Free Christian Worship."
What they were will best be told in his own state-
216
ment, written to the Norwood News, in reply to an
assertion made in that paper, " that the members
of the Free Christian Church repudiate nearly all the
doctrines most dear to Christians."
" We believe profoundly in the Great and Good
God our Father, the universal and all present Spirit ;
that His providence, His power, and His mercy
never fail; that He should be adored both in public
and private worship ; that we should earnestly pray
and strive to keep those laws of piety and virtue
planted in the human heart, recognised by the ex-
perience of mankind, and presented with singular
majesty in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures
these Scriptures we continually use and reverently
read. We believe that our immortal soul is for good
or for evil, day by day building up here the monu-
ment of its own eternity. We believe that God has
the will and the power to pardon our sins. We be-
lieve that no single soul has been created for eternal
wretchedness. We believe the words in which Jesus
and St. James describe the end and essence of religion.
Eegarding all men as the sons of God, we believe
Jesus to be the Son of God, and amongst his brethren
the greatest in the wonderful influence of his life, his
teaching, and his death. We pray in the mode and
with the very words he taught. We believe that
every man must truthfully act according to his con-
science, and, therefore, if unfortunately he hold a
superstition, he must practice it. W T e would rather
for his sake that he could be freed from such spiritual
bondage, and, with holy and virtuous joy, advance
217
into the liberty of the children of God : depending
not on priests, sacraments, ministers, churches, sects,
bibles, atonements, expiations, rites, but on the living
God. Him we find sufficient. I have been accus-
tomed for years to have intercourse with characters
beautiful, and pure, and kind, who conscientiously
held a superstition. I now enjoy intimate inter-
course with those whose faith, and hope, and virtue
rest on what is universal to all religion God and the
conscience. They do not deem my ministrations or
those of any other man necessary for salvation. They
place their confidence and their hope in Him, to
whom alone Jesus directed the aspirations of his dis-
ciples ; I find them as devoted, as holy, as spiritual,
as earnest, as noble, as truthful, as Christian in their
tone of thought and life, as the best of those I have
left. They differ from many Christians on points of
Jewish history and Biblical criticism, and they do
not feel enabled to believe in the everlasting torture
of millions of souls ; but surely they hold the greatest
of the truths, which are dear to all Christians."
So far as to what he retained of the doctrines
usually associated with the Christian name, but
among his own few fellow-believers who desired his
ministry, his anxiety was that there should be no
misunderstanding, and no subsequent trouble because
he believed perhaps less, perhaps more than some of
them. He was the free minister of a free congrega-
tion, and on neither side was any obligation imposed or
accepted, yet he felt it desirable to have a quite clear
understanding. He had to decide at this time between
218
remaining at Croydon, which he had only bound
himself to till Christmas, and accepting the tempting
invitation which came to him from the ancient and
influential congregation at Upper Brook Street,
Manchester.
On November 6th he laid the matter plainly before
the congregation, and read to them the communi-
cation he had received from Manchester, where, at a
meeting of the congregation, held on October 9th,
it was resolved unanimously, "That the Eev. E.
Eodolph Suffield be earnestly invited to become the
minister of this congregation from Christmas next,
and that Dr. Marcus and Mr. Aspden do wait upon
Mr. Suffield, in London, to induce him to accept the
office."
His own notes of what he said from the pulpit ran,
" ask for prayer express my opinion on the two
places interest, edification, gratitude in connection
with present work remarkable agreement of opinion
and sympathy." Then written, apparently as spoken,
" When your kindly confidence induced you to ask
me to become the minister of this congregation, I was
advised by many men of experience in the Unitarian
body not to mention my opinions on religious mat-
ters. This advice did not commend itself to my
judgment, and therefore I took means of making
known my line of thought without committing my-
self to any pledge. If your numbers were as large
as at the Chapel at Manchester I should consider
that I had sufficiently manifested my opinions, be-
cause in a large town those who disagree can easily
219
separate and go elsewhere, and their absence leaves
no gap. Our numbers here are so small that it is
specially desirable that the minister should be in-
harmony with the pervading tone of thought in the
congregation as to the object, and character, and
method of his ministry. On all these matters my
opinions are quite formed. Compelled entirely to
disbelieve in the supernatural powers claimed by the
Catholic Church, the truths not exclusively Catholic
that remain to me I believe as distinctly as hereto-
fore, but upon a wider and stronger evidence, evi-
dence which my Catholic training weakened but did
not destroy. It will be satisfactory to my own sense
of justice and respect for yourselves, to let you under-
stand such part of the history of my own mind as will
explain to you the spirit in which I should embrace
any ministerial duty, and the objects which I should
propose to myself. Heretofore I have in no way
alluded to my antecedents ; I wished to speak to those
who had a right to hear what I believed, but I did
not wish to indulge a vulgar curiosity, or even to
appear to pander to vulgar prejudices and hostilities
with which I have no sympathy.
" I should regret declining a position of influence
and importance at Manchester if it should appear
that my idea as to our objects differs from that of
any considerable section of yourselves. Therefore,
next Sunday and the following, I shall endeavour to
unfold to you briefly the prolonged process of investi-
gation which, from a Catholic priest, has made me a
Unitarian minister."
220
This was probably the only occasion that he spoke
from the pulpit, except by way of allusion, of his past
life. It is the kind of subject which attracts but does
not edify, or even if it may do so, only at the cost of
the modesty which a true gentleman will not sacrifice
without certain call of duty.
Controversy too he avoided from the first. Thus,
on November 20th, we find in his handwriting,
" Notice. Three or four persons, strangers to me,
have written to request that I would treat publicly
and controversially certain questions at issue be-
tween Catholics, Anglicans, and Dissenters. They
must pardon my not obliging them. I do not
contemplate introducing allusions to the different
Churches, except just so far as is necessary to ex-
plain certain conclusions bearing on and elucidating
what I believe to be fundamental, moral, and reli-
gious truths. I shall be very glad indeed to arrange
with any persons to go into such questions privately,
and any one of any class in society, or any religious
position or any age, will be equally welcome."
On December 4th he held his last service under a
hired roof, the congregation having purchased for
their use an iron Chapel in Wellesley Eoad, which
has since been superseded by a handsome stone
building, but is still retained by the congregation,
and used as a hall for social meetings and lectures.
When giving notice at evening service that they were
meeting on that spot for the last time, and passing as
it were out of their brief nursery period as a congre-
gation, he said, " the Sundays we have met here
221
together have proved the most marked epoch of my
life. Mr. Martineau, who will preach next Sunday,
is the friend who came to see me at Bosworth, when
I wanted to learn whether in the ranks of free
thought and of intellectual faith I should find the
same earnestness, zeal, and virtue which I had
witnessed elsewhere. The united interest I have
witnessed among yourselves in inaugurating this reli-
gious work forms a striking reply to my inquiry."
On the 29th of December the congregation unani-
mously agreed to a resolution inviting him to become
their permanent minister, an invitation which he
had already resolved to accept in preference to that
from Manchester. Mr. Maurice Grant, the Honorary
Secretary of the congregation, in conveying to him
the message, wrote, " I may indeed congratulate you
on the warm interest you have been able to create on
your behalf in so short a time, and hail it as a happy
augury for the future of our little community. I
heartily hope you may be with us for many years,
and direct our efforts to establishing a really ' free '
Christian brotherhood, devoted to the one true God,
and earnest and zealous for him." It is significant
of the tone prevailing among its members, and much
encouraged by himself, that there was added to the
formal invitation, " And the congregation are pre-
pared to co-operate heartily with him in carrying out
such objects as may tend to promote the prosperity of
the Church and benefit the neighbourhood generally."
This active interest in the world's welfare is charac-
teristic of a denomination which makes no claim to
222
be " The Church," as distinguished from the world,
and does not, therefore, set itself with a single eye to
seek its own good as if it were God's cause. While
yet a priest Mr. Suffield had been inclined to take a
wider survey than was considered good for ' a reli-
gious' devoted to the Church ; now that he was free
he busied himself not only as a citizen but pro-
fessionally, and esteeming it part of his duty as a
minister of religion in everything which was for the
good of his neighbours.
It was in response to a letter announcing to Mr.
Martineau his final decision in favour of the Croydon
congregation that he received the following reply :
" LONDON, January 6th, 1871.
" MY DEAR MB. SUFFIELD,
"Your letter touches me deeply. I thank God if
I have been in any way associated, even by an illu-
sion of your kindly thought, with your emergence
into higher light.
" I am convinced that your decision is the right
one; and I look with great hope to the enlarging
life of the Croydon Society under your spiritual care.
I like the idea of your ' conference ' of young people.
Only, I should think it important that you should
keep firmly the lead and direction of it, so that it
should be essentially an occasion of instruction ema-
nating from you, and not incur the risk of passing
into a debating class on terms of democratic equality.
Under the latter conditions the boldest and most
voluble work their way to the front, and suppress
the more reverent and spiritual minded. You will
223
gradually discover how great a power is impudence in
our Protestant culture : and you must help us to gain
more of the Catholic reverence and tenderness."
He took an immediate active part in all the philan-
thropic and educational movements of the town to
which he was admitted as a worker. Yet amid it all,
he writes, " I felt like a boy beginning amongst men,"
for the first time for so many years allowed to
think and act for himself, " everything around me
seemed strange and new " ; and again, he repeats
" the seven years at Croydon were full of interest,
and interest of a permanent kind, moreover securing
to me many and dear friends. But everything
seemed strange and new to me, and I have felt more
calmly in later years."
He had great need of someone who should be a
constant companion and partner of his new life, its
cares, and joys, and varied moods, and such a one he
found in the elder daughter of Mr. Edward Bramley,
the first Town Clerk of Sheffield, who was able also to
bring to him that which he lacked, experience of
Unitarians and their ways.
" Some persons suppose," he wrote, when now in
view of death, " that such a momentous step as
secession from the Eoman Catholic Church is .in-
fluenced by a desire of marriage. It may be with
some. In my case it most certainly was not. I do
not think I had adverted to marriage. The lady who
became my wife, and the joy and companion of
twenty happy years was not known to me until I was
established in a position of independence at Croydon."
224
He was married on the 7th of December, 1871, by
the Eev. John Lettis Short, at the Upper Chapel, in
Sheffield, of which his wife's father was an influential
supporter, and for a long time honorary secretary,
an office since held by his son, and now by his
grandson.
The marriage of a priest is looked upon with horror
by Catholics, who deny indeed that it is a real mar-
riage, any more than going through the form makes
a couple wife and husband, one or other of whom
has a partner still living. And there are not a few
Protestants even to be found who regard the step
with disfavour, and would at least honour more
highly the priest who, breaking his other vows, still
remains celibate. But the feeling is unreasonable on
any ground, except that which Protestants reject, the
superiority, namely, of celibacy to the married state.
A vow, according to the definition accepted among
theologians, is a promise made to God respecting
something which is not only good, but more than
ordinary and obligatory good, " promissio Deo facta
de bono meliore."
Now if a person, believing that it is pleasing to God
that he should remain single all his life, and that by
so doing he will serve God better and live nearer to
Him, makes on this account a vow of perpetual chas-
tity, it would seem clear that he is bound by it only
so long as he sincerely believes in the hypothesis on
which he acted. To conclude that he was mistaken,
that God has no pleasure in witnessing those whom
He has made male and female, living apart, and as
225
if wedded love took from love of Him, this may be,
Catholics think it is a dreadful heresy, but it cer-
tainly looses the bond of the vow taken upon the
opposite belief. So if one should, out of gratitude to
a benefactor, solemnly promise to do certain things
for him, and should subsequently discover that these
things were not desired by him or were indifferent, it
would be weak and foolish, out of mere scruple, to
keep the promise. So thought Mr. Suffield ; and
when once he had given up his faith in the Church's
teaching about this and greater matters than this, he
never doubted that it was lawful and right, and for
him in his position the better thing to marry, nor did
he ever in after years express a moment's hesitation
or regret about the step he had taken.
During the few years he spent at Croydon he was
very actively employed both there and in London in
all manner of work ; for his own congregation for
the British and Foreign Unitarian Association, of
the Council of which he was a member, for the
liberal party in general, and in every movement,
social, political, and religious, which he could assist.
There is no need to enumerate the many societies
in whose work he was so associated, but it may be
well to give some particulars of " The Liberal Social
Union " which he was the means of starting in London,
and which long after he ceased to be able to take an
active part in it, continued to bring together thinkers
and enquirers of many schools. His own idea, which
was mainly carried out, is thus expressed in a letter,
printed for circulation among persons likely to join :
226
"CROYDON, October 9th, 1873.
" DEAR MR. HUTTON,
" I quite concur with you that it would be very
desirable for London Theists and Unitarians to be
brought into closer cohesion. We need a society in
which, moreover, could be combined some of those
Liberal Churchmen, Liberal Nonconformists, Jews,
Hindoos, Mahomedans, Buddhists, Parsees, Con-
fucians, Comtists, Inquirers, and Sceptics, who,
conscious of the difficulty of theoretic abstract theo-
logical speculations, yet earnestly desire the promotion
of the spiritual and moral life, as well as the duty of
thought and reverent inquiry brought to bear upon
such. There are many now who believe in the
religious life without feeling able to assert any
religious dogma. Others who consider they can
rationally affirm certain dogmas, but deem such
subordinate to life and subject to inquiry. We desire
from amongst some of such persons to form a ' Circle '
of friends who could pleasantly co-operate and who
would like to unite at Conversaziones, Discussions,
Lectures, and even perhaps at Excursions. As
Socrates maintained the duty of a practical religious
moral life, refused to dogmatise, questioned every-
thing, and encouraged the friendly gatherings of those
who sympathised, we might call such a society the
' London Socratic Circle.' The following suggestions
might arise for our consideration.
"It should meet on neutral ground. Perhaps the
Trustees would permit Dr. Williams' Library to be
used. It should have no President or Vice-Presidents,
227
so that no influence should seem to predominate. It
must have a spirit, but no creed. The Committee
ought of necessity to embrace men and women,
foreigners and natives, students and professional men ;
also various schools of religious thought. The Com-
mittee would appoint Secretaries and Treasurer ; a
Monthly Chairman for public occasions ; also
Stewards and Stewardesses.
' ' Those who are being invited to form the Pro-
visional Committee summoned to secure one Conver-
sazione, are persons likely to desire the formation of
some such society. Should we find that an adequate
number of ladies and gentlemen of various schools of
thought and various nationalities can agree thus to
combine, we should ourselves form a ' Circle,' and
then give a Conversazione to friends, for the sake of
making known what we had accomplished, and asking
the adhesion of those present as being already known
to us and trusted. After that evening, no new
member could be received without due notice to the
Committee and vote by ballot.
" Such a ' Circle' would in reality be an extension
of the Student's Union, from which it is now
emanating. When we had set the example, ' Socratic
Circles ' might get formed in all the provincial towns.
"The publication of this letter, according to your
request, will afford in a crude form the sort of object
which will, I suppose, engage the consideration of the
Provisional Committee."
"P.S. For three years I have had an 'Alfred
Circle ' for friendly intercourse at my house, alternate
228
Tuesdays, 7.30 to 11. I hope those who receive this
invitation will, when possible, come."
In March, 1877, after more than six years of
incessant activity, his health broke down, and he left
Croydon for some months' holiday, which, by the
kind consideration of the congregation, was prolonged
to February of the next year, when he resigned the
pulpit, and was succeeded by the Eev. E. M. Geldart,
of Balliol, a convert from the Anglican Church. In
giving to the secretary notice of his resignation, he
wrote: "Whilst expressing my great regret at
parting with friends from whom both myself and my
wife have invariably experienced the greatest kindness,
I have the satisfaction of feeling that the period of my
ministry among you has been marked by the greatest
harmony, and that in all my efforts for the spread of
our religious cause, I have ever met with hearty,
thoughtful, and zealous co-operation . ' ' That this kindly
feeling was reciprocated was proved by the testimonial,
accompanied by the sum of 340, subscribed by the
members of a congregation which was neither
numerous nor wealthy. Writing in acknowledgment
of the generous gift, he used the significant words,
" I thank you, one and all, for the delicate, I
would almost say the compassionate, consideration
wherewith you encouraged me during those first years
of my emancipated life, succeeding by an almost
too rapid transition the specialities of my past."
Indeed, neither he nor they realised at the time how
difficult and trying his position was, and how
admirably he succeeded, on the whole, in the task he
229
had undertaken. An old established congregation
with traditions and organisation would have been able
to guide and support a minister coming to them new
to the work ; but there was no such thing at Croydon,
there were only individuals who had to be made into
a Church, and all his natural talents for organisation
were called into full exercise. He did all that was
required of him and more ; what was wanting, and
caused him to look back upon his Croydon ministry
with mixed feelings, was experience of the free
ministry. He had been a priest all the years of his
active life, and more a priest than others, inasmuch
as he had given himself heart and soul to his office ;
now he knew as well as any one the difference
between the functions of priest and minister, was
scrupulous beyond others in insisting on the inde-
pendence of each member of his flock, but it was
impossible that he could rid himself at once and
completely of the habits of a lifetime; and if, in
trying circumstances, he may have once or again
forgotten that he was no longer a "confessor" or
" director of souls," it surely was what was almost
inevitable to one in his position in the first years of
his changed life. To others who had exercised
priestly functions for but a short time, or who had
never been in positions of authority and trust in their
Church, the transition would be- comparatively easy ;
to him it was the more difficult, just because he had
been so eminent in the esteem of his co-religionists,
so habituated to share all their confidences, and
be consulted in their most intimate affairs.
230
He was long prostrated both in mind and body, but
kept looking forward, to use his own words, to a time
when he might, "in restored health and renewed
strength, serve again those causes, religious, political,
social, dear to all " with whom he had been working.
At length, in February, 1879, he felt capable of
undertaing temporary charge of the " Unitarian
Free Church " at Eeading, and observing the intei*est
taken in the cause, was prevailed upon to accept the
pulpit. Here he remained till his death, though in
June, 1888, he resigned the pulpit, wishing to be free
for the future from permanent engagements.
As minister of Eeading he had the great advantage
of the experience gained at Croydon, and looking
back upon it from his death-bed, he wrote, "My life
has not been an unhappy one anywhere, but I regard
the last twelve years as the happiest period." He
was actively interested, as at Croydon, in all the
unsectarian work for the welfare of the town, but
had not the additional distraction of London affairs to
contend with. "In Eeading," he writes, "it has
been my privilege to have been a working member on
committees of the Junior Liberal Club, of the Liberal
Association, the Temperance and General Philan-
thropic Society, the Charity Organisation Society,
the Dispensary, and the University Extension Move-
ment, as well having been chiefly instrumental in
founding the Literary and Scientific Society. "
He was anxious that it should be known that his
resignation in 1888 was due neither to dissatisfaction
nor doubts. "My ministerial office amongst you,"
231
he wrote in a circular addressed to the congregation,
" has been one of quite special happiness ; no word,
no act has ever marred our unbroken harmony. To
the last moment of life, nay wife and I shall retain in
grateful memory your affection, your thoughtful zeal,
and your loving earnestness for the great principles of
which our Church stands as the local representative.
May our holy cause still, as ever, prosper in your
hands." The congregation in response to this com-
munication presented him with an address, in which
they wrote, "It would be impossible for us to
acknowledge in adequate terms the services which
you have rendered to the Church at Beading during
your ministry here. We have all learned to esteem
you as a friend, and to value the thought, earnestness,
culture, and thoroughness which have characterised
your teaching, and we owe it in a special manner to
you that so much success has attended the effort to
promote the extension of our cause in this town."
They accompanied this address with a substantial
testimonial, a witness to the unbroken friendship
and esteem in which they held him till death.
He continued to show the reality of his interest in
that cause by frequent services in all parts of the
country where he was invited for special occasions, or
could help in the absence of a minister. At North-
ampton he preached regularly for three months in
the autumn of 1888, and won the enthusiastic praise
of the congregation, who, in their annual report, speak
of his services in terms which his modesty would not
have consented to put in print.
232
He had adopted the office of a Unitarian Minister
after long deliberation and at great cost. He never
repented of his choice. The last words he dictated to
the reporter who took from his lips a brief account of
his life, were these :
" With unceasing joy and gratitude I have always
adverted to my secession from the Koman Catholic
Church, and my having found so happy a religious
home in our Liberal and Unitarian Churches."
An ideal life it certainly is not, that of a Unitarian
Minister, nor did he pretend to find it such. It has
its seamy side, its discouragements, its worries, its
humiliations, and he had his experience of all. But
these things are incidents of human life in every
position, and the man who in spite of them finds
work, and help, and thanks, and appreciation, and
friendship, and freedom, has made himself indeed 'a
happy home' on earth.
CHAPTEK XV.
His LAST DAYS AND DEATH.
Mr. Suffield was leading a very peaceful and, at the
same time, active life for more than eighteen months
after his retirement from the regular ministry. The
following account of the last few weeks before he was
laid aside with the disease which ended his life, will
be read with interest :
" March 29th, 1891, which was Easter Sunday, he
preached in the evening at Wood Green.
" April 5th he preached at Cardiff, and lectured the
next evening on Savonarola.
" April 21st, 22nd, 23rd, and 24th, he attended the
Triennial Conference in London. He was the guest
of Mr. Mackenzie, at Croydon, so had an opportunity
of seeing many old friends. He was not present at all
the meetings, as he was suffering very much, and
found difficulty in walking. At the Conversazione he
remained seated nearly all the time.
" April 30th he went to Oxford to meet Count
Gobelet d'Alviella, who was delivering the Hibbert
Lectures that year. They had corresponded for
several years, but never met. He lunched at Dr.
Drummond's, attended the lecture, and dined with
the Count and Countess at the Eandolph.
234
" May 3rd he preached for the last time. It was
at Sale, near Manchester, and he delivered his
lecture on Savonarola the next day. One of the
sermons was his farewell sermon at Beading. He
was very unwell, and I have sometimes wondered
whether he chose it purposely, thinking it might be
the last time he should ever preach. He stayed at
Leamington two days on his way home ; he was
really ill there, and awoke to the fact that he could
not be suffering from rheumatism merely, so decided
to see a doctor on his return to Beading.
" He got home Friday, May 8th, was at a committee
of the Literary Society that evening, at Church the
following Sunday morning, at a committee of the
University Extension on the Monday evening, and at
a meeting of the executive of the Liberal Association on
Tuesday evening, May 12th. That was the last time
he was out to walk. It took him more than an hour
to get to the office, and it is not a mile. He was to
have taken the Chair, but he had to go into a shop and
send on to say they were to begin without him."
On May the 14th he called in his own doctor, Mr.
May, who attended him with great care and kindness
to the end. By his advice he went to London,
accompanied by his wife and her sister, to consult
Dr. Allingham, but by that time was so much worse
that he had difficulty in walking the few steps across
the station platform. He returned home at once, and
was presently informed, by Mr. May, of the character
of the illness from which he was suffering a
malignant tumour of the bowels. He doubtless must
235
have feared something serious, but expressed no
apprehension before, and the communication came
upon him as a terrible surprise. Writing shortly
after to his oldest friend, who had been a Dominican
with him, and was now, like him, a Unitarian
minister, he said :
" My journeyings from home are at an end. My
local doctor and the London specialist have pro-
nounced my death warrant incurable cancer in the
bowels. This came as a great surprise to me, and a
terrible shock to my dear good wife. I do only hope
that she may not have the trial of witnessing very
excruciating sufferings, which I really should dread
more on her account than my own though I don't
profess indifference to pain! We have had a very
happy twenty years (next December), of married life,
and I wish that our last months together should be
such as to leave a tranquil and even happy memory."
It was to the same friend that he wrote, in pencil,
when now too weak to use pen and ink, signing him-
self "your ever loving friend, E. E. S. ;'' and then
recalling his correspondent's last letter, with its
conclusion "yours for ever," he added, as a post-
script, "as you to my mind truly say, ' Ahvays in
God.' " They were almost the last words he wrote.
He received from friends of all Churches numerous
kind letters which consoled him in his trial with
the assurance of wide and deep sympathy. He was
in the habit of keeping such letters in a small bag,
which he took backwards and forwards with him as
long as he was able to change from room to room,
236
and had continually by his side from the time he was
confined to bed.
Pere Hyacinthe Loyson wrote, recalling how long
ago he had " served Mass " for him at Issy, and how,
later, they had met at Neuilly, the one a Unitarian, the
other a " reformed Catholic." He went on to express
regret that in giving up "the false divinity of the
Pope you have ceased to believe in the true divinity of
Christ," and concluded with the touching words :
" Nous reverrons nous sur cette terre? Je 1'ignore
en tout cas, j'espere vous revoir de 1'autre cote de la
mort, la ou Dieu saura bien reunir les ames droit es qui
1'ont cherche sincerement, meme par des sentiers tres
differents.
" Tuus in Christo,
"HYACINTHE LOYSON."
Anglican clergymen, Quakers, Congregational min-
isters, members of Parliament, as well, of course,
as those of his own faith, all wrote in the same tone
of respect and affection and sorrow, even if tempered,
in some cases, by expressions of regret for his opinions.
One letter may be quoted as a sample of what many
are like. The writer, a clergyman, said;
"To myself the news of your illness has caused a
profound and personal sorrow. I could fain that we
were more at one in accepting the faith of the Divine
Incarnation and Atonement of the Son of God ; but
since I have known you, I have ahvays recognised in
you not only o.ne of pre-eminent gifts and culture,
but one who had the purest and noblest aims, and
was indeed a seeker after God. I have learnt much
237
from you, and wish I had known you longer and seen
you more."
From Dr. Martineau, the first friend of his new life,
he received the following :
"THE POLCHAB, EOTHIEMUBCHUS,
" June 28th, 1891.
" DEAR MR. SUFFIELD,
" Deeply as the tidings in your letter of the 25th
inst. grieve me, I thank you from my heart for
allowing me to receive them from your own report ;
and still more for the generous spirit in which you
review our relations to each other since.. the first
memorable interview in 1870. If we are about to be
parted, and that by my too obstinate survivorship,
I pray that it may be in mutual benediction. It is
consolatory to know that the great transition to which
you were led by the call of conscience in 1870, has, on
the whole, not failed to bring the promised peace of
mind and heart. Our ministry is far from offering an
ideal life ; but, measured by the present standards of
attainable spiritual value, it may well content a
humble and dutiful soul.
If indeed you have to expect the graver sufferings
of your fatal disease, may God uphold you in the faith
and patience which have sustained so many through
the via dolorosa ! But I do not despair of hearing
that, by aid of modern alleviations, the path from
world to world may prove less formidable than
shrinking nature is apt to imagine. In any case, it is
not a lonely path to one who remembers the words,
' I am not alone, but my Father is with me.'
238
" With kindest and warmest sympathy with Mrs.
Suffield, from my daughter and myself,
"Believe me, always,
" Yours with faithful affection,
" JAMES MAETINEAU."
He had for some years been honoured with the
friendship of Mr. Gladstone, who had sought acquaint-
ance with him in 1874, and continued it ever since.
From him, too, he received a very kind letter of
sympathy, written the same day as that of Dr.
Martineau. " All that I have seen and known of
you," he wrote, " has tended to cause interest, respect,
and regard. Most earnestly do I wish that we could
stand on the altar steps together." The letter was
in reply to Mr. Suffield's, in which, telling of his
approaching death, he had declared his persistence in
"rejection of miraculous Christianity, and satisfaction
in pure natural Theism." Mr. Gladstone, in reply,
expressed his inability to understand " how a man of
upright mind, and I am better convinced of your
uprightness than my own," he added, "could make
his halt in spiritual Theism a thin and pale reflection
of the Gospel of Christ." He went on to speak of the
inability of man to maintain " the great and glorious
dogma, the truth of one God," without the aid of
revelation, and concluded: "But God lays His own
foundations in His own way, shapes and seals His
children as He will. You are, I think, essentially a
man of peace. In writing, as I have written, I do
not desire to forego that character ; and my hearty
239
desire is, that by whatever path into the heart of the
Eternal Peace you may be led.
" Believe me, with unimpaired regard,
" Most faithfully yours,
" W. E. GLADSTONE."
It was their parting, as at the grave side, for Mr.
Gladstone had not the opportunity he hoped for, of
calling to see him. The difference between them was
wide and deep, and each had felt impelled even to the
last to insist upon it, but immense as it was, it had
not impaired their friendship and regard for one
another. Would to God that the example of this
eminent Statesman and Churchman were followed by
some who share his sturdy orthodoxy, but have none
of his Christian charity!
But probably more gratifying than even these let-
ters, were such as the following from a young lady, a
chance acquaintance made at the sea-side :
" Although it is four years since we met, the memory
of your kindness to me is very distinct, and when I
look at my album I stop at your photograph and think
over things you said to me about the duty of being
kind, and making those around me happy, and I feel
stronger to meet the little daily trials and worries, and
more anxious not to put my own interests first.
"When I think that even in so short a time your
character left its mark on mine, I see what a great
influence you must have had over so many people,
always for good, and the knowledge that it is so must
be good for you to have, and I know that I am only
one of many who would thank you from their hearts.
240
You will not care to be troubled with any letters, but
I must write to tell you how sorry I am for your
illness, and also express a little of the gratitude I shall
always feel towards you."
His old friends in the Eoman Church were also
much moved when they came to hear of his approach-
ing death. Many had continued all through the
years of his alienation to love and pray and hope for
his return, and now their efforts were intensified, and
pressing appeals were made to him to consider his
position and repent before it was too late. Nothing
could be more touching and tender than these appeals,
but they were marred, all of them, by the curious pre-
sumption that he must really know himself to be in
the wrong, and that it was only courage he needed to
enable him to abjure what for twenty years he had
professed. He couldn't be sincere, they argued, he
must be convinced that in the Eoman Church only
was salvation for his soul ; to them it was so evident,
how could it be less so to a man who had so long
believed and taught as they did still? And rather
than give him credit for uprightness and honesty in
leaving their Church, they professed to believe that he
was now deliberately choosing eternal damnation as a
preferable alternative to provoking the censures of his
Protestant friends censures which could not reach
the chamber where now he lay dying, and which
would have amounted to no more than expressions of
pity that he should have been prevailed upon in the
hour of bodily and mental prostration to recant the
convictions of long years of intellectual vigour.
241
On the 18th of September he received a visit, of
which he dictated an account and sent it the next day
to a near friend, with a few words in pencil, " I am
in extreme pain," he wrote, "but I must gather up
power to send you enclosed interesting overture. It
is not private, but it would not be in good taste for
me to publish it as yet. In course of time it will be
another matter, and I place it in your hands there-
fore." The memorandum is as follows :
" OVEETUEES FEOM CAEDINAL MANNING.
" Friday, September 18th. To-day the Eev. Kenelm
Vaughan (head of the South American Missions), now
staying with Cardinal Manning, called on me, and in
the most gentlemanly, considerate, and graceful way
communicated verbally the following messages from
the Cardinal :
" 1st. Affectionate and sympathetic interest and
greeting.
" 2nd. Earnest entreaty to rejoice people all over
the world by my return to the Church.
"3rd. That the Holy See is prepared to concede
the fullest powers of absolution and dispensation to
the Bishop of Portsmouth, so that the conditions
required would be adapted to render any reconcilia-
tion to the Church as easy to myself and as little
trying as possible.
" 4th. The Bishop wishes me to know that he will
gladly come to me on any day I may propose.
"The whole conversation was conducted with the
finest courtesy. Of course I begged His Eminence to
242
accept my sincere appreciation of his kindness, his
motives, and his communications, but at the same
time I expressed in the most emphatic language
possible that return to the Eoman Catholic Church is
to me an utter impossibility."
Father Vaughan wrote the day following from the
Archbishop's House, Westminster:
" It was a real consolation to have seen and had so
full and friendly a talk with you. I have been
thinking of you ever since, and affectionate sympathy
moves me irresistibly to pray much for you, and
positively to believe that you will, in the end, have
grace and courage to do what the Cardinal and your
Catholic friends so ardently desire and pray for.
With this strong hope in me, ' for nothing is im-
possible with God,' believe me, dear Father Suffield,
"Your old friend,
" KENELM VAUGHAN."
From his old Dominican friends, friars, and nuns
too, he received messages of sympathy and entreaty.
" You are nearing that eternity," wrote the Prior of
their London home, " about which, in the good old
days, you used to preach so earnestly and so elo-
quently. Most of us owe something of our spiritual
life to you, under God, and some of us owe much,
and I hope that we are not unmindful of it. If we
can be of any service to you, you have only to com-
mand us. We all unite in praying that you may
have grace and light before ' the night ' comes."
On the 21st a Father was sent from London to seek
an interview with him. He received him, but evi-
243
dently the result was discouraging, for no further
effort of the kind was made, if we except a visit paid
to the house on the 27th of October by a Roman
Catholic lady of rank, who was exceedingly impor-
tunate to see him, but he was then far too feeble to
carry on even ordinary conversation, and her desire
could not be complied with.
Special prayers were meantime offered up for him
far and wide ; and from the Dominican Convent at
Lourdes, a letter was sent to him, expressing the
interest taken in his soul by the French Sisters there,
and telling of their efforts on his behalf, and their
confidence that the Blessed Virgin, who in that
neighbourhood was working so many miracles, would
assuredly exercise her power over this dead soul, and
bring to new life " this poor Father, who has made
her known and loved as a mother by thousands."
Another sent him a morsel of cloth, cut from the
cassock of the Venerable Cure d'Ars, and wrote :
" I wish I could get you to promise to invoke the
great Cure. The great amount of good which you
were instrumental in, by spreading devotion to the
Blessed Virgin, must plead grace for you at the last
hour. Oh that you would only make use of it ! The
reconciliation would soon be over. Perhaps you
naturally feel a certain fear at such a step; but
remember how easily this can be overcome."
On the other hand, he had letters from unknown
correspondents, earnest Evangelical Protestants,
anxious that he should save his soul their way.
One sent him a large type " Gospel of John," and
244
emphasised for him its application to himself by
inserting the initials (E.E.S.), wherever it seemed as
if personal appeal could be made, e.g. : Chap. xiv. 7,
-"If ye (K.R.S.) had known me," &c. Good soul,
doubtless the donor, but how did she know that this
book, written so long ago, had special application or
special authority for any one now living or dying?
It was God's word to him or her, not necessarily so,
however, to Mr. Suffield or another.
Besides these marks of the esteem and interest
.with which he was everywhere regarded, he received
daily substantial proofs of regard from persons who,
differing from him in religion, were admirers of his
private character and public work. A carriage was
;put at his disposal as long as he was able to go out,
and fruit and flowers always supplied in abundance.
One who saw him for the last time, on the 21st of
October, wrote : " He was very weak and suffering,
but bright and humorous as ever : he told of the
visits he had from the two priests named above
made little jokes after his wont, and asked pardon
for seeming dull, but said his mouth was so parched
and sore that it hurt him to smile. He specially
begged that no undue lamentation should be made
over him. "When I rose to go, fearful of having tired
him, he rose up and threw his arms round, and after
the old Dominican form of brotherly embrace, we
kissed and parted, till we meet again in God we
and so many dear and good men and women whom
. we still love and admire, much as they condemn
us."
245
His constant companions during his last illness
were the little volumes of Epictetus, Seneca, and
Marcus Aurelius, published in the Camelot Series;
The Book of Prayers, compiled by the Eev. Crompton
Jones, formerly an Unitarian minister, and the Ke-
vised Version of the Bible. These remained by his
side to the last, when he had ceased to be able to
give continued attention to anything else.
On Sunday, Nov. 8th, he had a severe attack of
vomiting, afterwards he fell into a state of lethargy,
from which he was rarely aroused, and died at 9.50
a.m., on Friday, the 13th inst.
" We are often told that ours is not a religion to die
in. He proved that the contrary is the case. His
doom was to die by a disease which is incurable,
painful, and lingering. For five months he was face
to face with death, the only doubt how acute would
his sufferings be, and how long they would last.
" He had the most touching letters addressed to
him by those who believed that he could not be saved
unless he would exchange his opinions for theirs.
Kindest messages and loving warnings were sent him
by friends anxious to win him back, but he never gave
sign of regret, or doubt, or fear. He was brave,
patient, hopeful ; above all, grateful to the last.
"Not weary of life far from yearning after a
better, for which he trusted God, but professed no
knowledge of he would have rejoiced to be restored,
and live and love and work and interest himself again
in this dear world : he went the way of death
without complaint or repining."
246
They are the concluding words of an address given
at a memorial service, held by his former congre-
gation, at Croydon, on the 25th of November.
"He was to me a very interesting person," writes
Mr. Gladstone, and all intelligent people who became
intimate with him found him such. It was not
merely the singular and varied experiences of his
religious life which distinguished him from others ;
he was, in the true sense of the word, ' an individual,'
a man apart ; unlike anybody else in mind, manners,
features, and dress ; it was not that he was odd or
eccentric, he was simply himself ; and yet he was
possessed of a remarkable capacity for understanding
the thoughts of others, and he won their confidence
even against his will. His personality acted as a
spell on those who came under his influence, and it
was this very power which made some fear and even
suspect him.
He was, perhaps to excess, sensitive to the opinions
of others, and cherished expressions of commendation
or gratitude with an almost childlike regard. Yet he
would never withhold the full statement of his own
opinions to gratify a friend or appease an opponent.
He spoke what he believed, never seeming to contem-
plate any other course as possible. If he gave
offence by his sincerity, and he did so frequently,
both as a Catholic and an Unitarian, he took it as
inevitable. A little more policy would have obtained
him wider regard, but he united, in a singular degree,
the innocence of the dove with the wisdom of the
serpent ; he was innocent to a fault wherever his
247
own reputation or prospects were concerned; wise
enough, when it was a question of the cause he had at
heart ; a man who understood men, a skilful organiser,
a patient and far-seeing contriver.
Throughout all the changes of his life he retained
the same simple faith in God and prayer. From the
time that he made rubbings of monumental brasses
as a young man, to his last days of comparative
leisure at Beading, religion was always uppermost
in his thoughts, and he regarded everything else from
the standpoint it afforded. If "priest" signifies one
who represents to the world, in his person and by his
calling, the presence and energy of God in the affairs
of men, then he remained a priest all his life. The
change which came over him was, that he ceased to
believe in that Presence as supernaturally revealed in
one body of men, and saw and declared it henceforth
as truly natural, perpetual, and universal.
CHAPTER XVI.
FUNEBAL AND OBITUAKY NOTICES.
The following account is abridged from The Beading
Observer of Nov. 2lst, 1891 :
" The remains of the Eev. E. Kodolph Suffield
were, in accordance with his own desire, cremated at
the Woking Crematorium on Tuesday, previously to
which, at mid -day, a memorial service was held at
the Unitarian Free Church, Beading, of which he was
for several years the minister. There was a numerous
and representative congregation. Besides the rela-
tives, there were present Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice,
Mr. Geo. May, Mr. G. W. Palmer (representing
the Eeading Liberal Association), Mr. Walter Palmer
(representing the University Extension Association),
Mr. Benjamin Batt ("representing the South Eeading
Liberal Club), Mr. C. Smith and Dr. Hurry (repre-
senting the Eeading Literary and Scientific Society),
Mrs. C. Smith, Mr. E. Worsley, (representing the
Charity Organisation Society), Mr. Owen Eidley
(representing the Eedlands Liberal Club), Mr. Gleave,
Mr. Theodore White (representing the Students' Asso-
ciation), Mr. Colvin, Mr. J. Egginton (representing
the Savings' Bank), Bishop- Ackerman (representing
the Esading Temperance and General Philanthropic
Society, in the unavoidable absence of Mr. W. I.
Palmer). Many gentlemen wrote expressing regret
249
that they were unable to be present, including Mr.
George Palmer, Mr. W. I. Palmer, the Eev. C. E.
Honey, and many friends connected with London
Associations.
"At about 11.30 the cortege, comprising an open
hearse, and several coaches containing the mourners,
with the carriage of Mr. F. P. Barnard, Head Master
of Beading School, who was a personal friend, bring-
ing up the rear, left Malvern Villa, Craven-Eoad, the
residence of the deceased, and on reaching the church
the coffin was borne in and placed in front of the
rostrum. It was literally covered with wreaths of
white flowers and other beautiful floral tributes,
baskets and vases of flowers being also arranged on
and about the rostrum. Wreaths or baskets of flowers
were sent by the Literary and Scientific Society,
South Eeading Liberal Club, Women's Liberal Asso-
ciation, and from numerous friends at Eeading and
from a distance.
"The service was conducted, in accordance with
the deceased's own wish, by the Eev. C. Hargrove,
M.A., Minister of the Mill Hill Chapel, of Leeds,
an old friend, both as a Dominican Friar and as
an Unitarian Minister. The service lasted about an
hour, and was simple but impressive, consisting of
brief prayer, singing of beautiful and appropriate
hymns, reading of selections from the Scriptures,
and an address as follows :
" Friends and fellow mourners, It has fallen to me
to-day to speak the last words over the body of our
friend deceased, to bid, in your name and mine, farewell
250
to the form which presently will be restored to the
elements of which it is compounded, and the place
thereof know him no more for ever. It is my duty,
because he asked it of me ; it is my privilege, because
he was a true man and noble ; and it is an honour to
be allowed to speak for such; and yet I could have
wished it otherwise, that I might take my place
among those who in silence mourn him, and pay to
his dear memory the tribute of tears and not of
words.
" For I have known him long, when he was another
man to what you have seen him, and pleading for
another faith, and in him I lose more than you do;
I lose more than a brother, one who formed the
single link between my own present life and my past,
and in whom I found the sole partner of cherished
memories, now my own alone. For his, too, was, as
you all know, a broken life, a life whose years were
divided against themselves. For twenty of them he
was a Eoman Catholic Priest, devoted, zealous, entire
in the absoluteness of his submission to that Church
and her teaching, full of zeal to win those outside to
acknowledge her claims, and those within to conform
mind and soul to them. During another and the last
twenty, he was an Unitarian Minister, asserting for
himself independence of judgment, and exercising
his reason in despite of all authority, while the
liberty he claimed for himself and used, he sedulously
vindicated for others, preaching to all men, ' Think
for yourselves ! Seek the truth and fear not ! Let
neither church, nor sect, nor priest, nor minister
compel your faith, believe that only of which you are
inwardly convinced.' Yes, it was contradictory.
Eome cannot and will not reconcile itself with reason,
and who advocates one disparages the claims of the "
other. And yet he was not two men, but one ; the
Dominican Friar and ascetic was the married minister
of free religious thought, and we shall miss the true
lesson of a noble life if we leave one or another out of
account and think of him only as what he was long
ago, or as what he was known by you, his later friends.
Yes, it was the same man, he with whom I first
became acquainted some thirty years ago as a
renowned preacher of saintly life, and he who has
been my dearest friend and comrade these many
years in the ministry of that Church which all the
Churches condemn. And these, if I read him aright,
were the distinguishing traits of his character,
whether he appeared under the Friar's white robe or
in the plain black coat which scarcely distinguished
him from men of secular calling : Truthfulness and
Earnestness ; truthfulness, to profess openly what
appeared to him true ; earnestness, to bear witness
to the same among men, indifferent whether it was to
his own profit or his hurt, whether they would think
worse of him for it or the better.
" He was brought up in a curious indifference to the
divergent forms of religious belief ; not as if all were
equally false and useless, as some lightly say, but
rather as if all were good and each had its proper
merits. He was Catholic and Protestant at the same
time, attending daily prayer or Mass as occasion served,
252
and apparently equally at home at either. But for
such a nature it was impossible that this comfortable
indecision should long continue. While yet a young
man at Cambridge, the question presented itself, ' Do I
believe or do I not? To what Church do I belong?'
And deciding for the faith of his fathers, he straight-
way resolved to devote himself to the priesthood.
It was a resolve he never went back upon. He
ceased indeed to be a Eoman Catholic priest ; he
never ceased from the service of religion as it ap-
peared to him the service of truth and God. While
he admitted and realised the supreme claims of his
Church, he consecrated to her use all his faculties
and substance. If it was indeed, as he believed and
as she taught, the one Church of the living God, the
one ark of salvation for dying men, no devotion could
be excessive, no zeal on her behalf misplaced. Early
in his career he abandoned all he was possessed of,
giving it up to the purposes of missionary effort in
his diocese, and with unwearied pains gave himself to
the work. He had already won distinction far and
wide as an effective preacher and as a skilful director
of souls, when what seemed a higher and more
perfect way opened itself before him. It was self-
denial more complete, sacrifice more entire and
irrevocable than he had hitherto practised ; he joined
himself to the Dominicans, who combined the aus-
terities of the monastic life with the active labours of
the missionary priesthood. He bowed himself down
and entered the noviciate to learn as a novice among
boy novices the ways of obedience and humility. He
253
came back to the world in a new garb, but with the
same or greater fervour, only to win more upon the
hearts of Catholics high and low, who looked up to
him as one who combined in his person practical
wisdom and heavenly sanctity, whose word won the
multitude, and whose counsel was sought by all.
But doubts darkened his path. Was the Pope
indeed infallible? The question must needs be
faced, for it was being everywhere discussed among
Catholics, nor as yet decided. And if the Pope was
not, was the Church ? the Bible? These questions
followed one upon another, and in vain he sought to
silence them by prayer, by fasting, by work, by retire-
ment. The answer came clearer and more decisive
as the studies which he began in order to satisfy
himself and confirm his faith progressed. No ! there
was no infallibility ; neither in pontiff, nor council,
nor in book. And all that he had accepted hitherto
with such implicit faith, because the Church taught
it, all vanished from before his eyes as the fabric of a
vision, beautiful, solemn, unreal. It was a very
earthquake, and his life seemed ruined by it. To
men on whom religious beliefs sit lightly, it will seem
a small matter to change one form for another, but
to one to whom his faith had been his life, the
experience was awful. His dismay was complete as
had been his devotion, and what must he do ? One
course was easy and tempting to stay in outward
communion with the old Church, interpreting its
doctrines and its rites to suit his new beliefs, in daily
Mass offering to the Creator of all, sacrifice under
254
the symbols of bread and wine, acknowledging that
all being and life were His ; absolving penitent
sinners by way of assuring them of God's pity and
pardon ; and so by a little ingenuity finding true
spiritual significance in every old ceremony and
superstition. Could he bring himself to this, he
might keep yet all that was dear to him, friends and
their love and esteem, position and reputation, and
what to a good man is worth all opportunities of
doing good. It was but a little while he dallied with
the temptation ; it could not be. Impossible to live
a lie and think by a He to serve God. He came out
leaving all he valued on earth, came a stranger,
almost a pauper among strangers, who yet would
have gladly welcomed the priest could he have
brought himself to conform to their views. The
Church Established had promise of place, influence,
honour ; but he passed by her invitation, and went to
ally himself with the smallest of all the Protestant
denominations. It was but a half welcome he could
expect, for he knew that many of them had no
sympathy with, what seemed to them, his extreme
views, and others no trust of a priest, even if he came
as a convert. There was within the narrow bounds
of the free Churches no scope for distinction, no room
for attaining popularity, no positions of power or
emolument to hope for ; but he found what was more
precious than these, that which he seemed to miss
in all the other Churches, liberty and religion, full
recognition of the right of free thought and reverent
acknowledgment of the natural instinct of worship.
255
So with them he cast in his lot ; and among them he
died, to the last thanking God that he had found a
home where he might continue his old ministry of
religion, under conditions which bound him no wise,
but to be true to himself and to those who had chosen
him pastor.
" He had his troubles there too, for it is impossible
to be truthful and please all the world, to be earnest
and not displease those whose own honest convictions
are different. Had he been given to self-seeking, or
envy, or discontent, he might have been a disappointed
man, might have complained of want of appreciation
among new friends such as he had been wont to
receive of old ; but, intimate as I was with him, I
never heard him utter a word of regret or disappoint-
ment. Freedom has its drawbacks, and one is, that
in the use of it men will disagree one with another,
and hinder one the other and the common cause of
all ; but you must take the advantages and the
difficulties together; and he bore what might have
seemed to others humiliations and contradictions,
with the most kindly and philosophic spirit. He
made his choice and never repented ; consecrated
himself anew to the service of God and humanity and
freedom, and gave himself to serving on committees
with the same zeal he had before shown for guilds,
confraternities, and sodalities.
" There were those who accused and suspected him
of insincerity Catholics who thought it impossible
that he could in his heart have abandoned a faith
once so precious to him Protestants who doubted
256
whether he was whole-hearted in his opposition to a
Church of which he would never allow himself to
speak with bitterness or contempt. There were
worldly men who called him a fool to give up such
good prospects of distinction and advancement; "He
might have been a bishop," they said, and so
saying, gave effective answer to his accusers. For
what was there but inmost conviction and sincerest
loyalty to it, which could have led him to choose the
Unitarian ministry for his calling. As a paper of last
week, which advocates a form of Unitarian Christianity
more conservative than his, rightly says, speaking of
Notable Converts :
' No position, office, or emolument could have
biassed them, for such did not exist along the line of
an unorthodox faith. It was more likely that harsh
treatment and ostracism and loss faced them in their
conclusions. And even now, in this more liberal age,
we have nothing to offer but a free field for inves-
tigation, instruction, and spiritual worship to those
who are willing to join our ranks. The only and
best recompense any one can have is the conscious-
ness of having sought for the truth of God, which
is the pearl of great price. For, after all, a man's
life and happiness consist, not in what he has of
wealth and honour, but in what he is.'
" No ! Truth and Truth only was his mistress.
He sought her, he served her with equal devotion as
priest and minister ; for her sake he gave up what all
men value, and what good men count most valuable,
and repented not, nor even murmured. And in his
257
new found faith he lived, and in it he died, fully
persuaded, and peaceful and satisfied to the last.
There were dear kind souls who prayed for him and
wrote to him, beseeching of heaven, pleading with
him, that he might give up his own convictions and
adopt theirs. He heard all they had to say, and
appreciated the loving anxiety which old friends
showed for his salvation ; he was never moved to
anger, except when some word hinted a doubt of his
sincerity, but was disturbed in his faiiih not an
instant. He was for months face to face with a
painful death, and never quailed. ' Don't think I am
unhappy,' he said to those who watched in pain his
agony. And he was not unhappy, for faith in God sus-
tained him. " Yours for ever," I wrote to him. His
answer was, " Yours for ever in God." Yes, in God,
he is ours still, for He is God of the living, and " all
live unto him." In God are we and they, in God
nothing is lost ; what has been is and shall be for ever.
" One last look back upon the life ended on earth
marred in its strength, and happiness, and repute by
its double-alliance, as of a soldier who has fought well
and bravely, only now on this and afterwards on iliai
side of the war of Churches. Alas for the phrase, yet
it is but fact, and we differ one from another, and are
equally confident of being in the right on whatever
side we are. Nay more, we differ from our own
selves, and now are as assured that this is true as
before we were that it was false.
" And what shall we say then ? What did he say?
Truth is not to be found, and it is folly to seek it,
Q
258
and delusion to think you know it ? Not so he ; who
always condemned the easy attitude of indifference
as clearing a free course for error, and superstition,
and fanaticism. But, on the contrary, though the
mind of man cannot hold truth in its entirety, be
true to yourself, and you will be nearer the truth.
Be earnest, and you will find what will be sufficient
for your need ; and recognising your own insuffi-
ciency, be tolerant of those who differ the most
widely from you reverently, not scornfully tolerant.
Dear friends, his and mine, who condemned him so
hotly, who mourned for his fall so bitterly, who
prayed for him so earnestly, who now despair of
God's mercy to him, because he died believing other-
wise than once he did, and now you do may the
good God repay into your own bosoms of your zeal
and love, and lead us all at last through devious ways
to know the true Church, which he never left, which
he always served, the Church which is not yours nor
ours, but God's, the company of all who love truth
and righteousness, and do God service such as He
only asks and accepts of us, in serving as best they
know how their brother man.
" And now, a last time, farewell, friend and brother.
It is over, the sure faith, the painful doubt, the new
hope, dim, but not less firm than that which went
before. It is over the uncertain twilight in which
we still live and are so bold. It is past the pitiful
conflict, the sundering of dearest ties, the wild judg-
ments of men who knew not past the months of
pain and shadow of death.
259
" We still argue, and assert, and doubt. We must
still look forward to death which is over for thee.
We still only, 'as in a mirror darkly,' can see whether
the present or the future.
"God knoivs ! and now passed into His Light, it is
well with thee. ' Let him do as seemeth him good.'
Fare thee well, for ever, 'in God.'"
" At the close of the service the coffin was replaced
in the hearse, and, followed by the mourners above-
named, in carriages, was taken to theS.W.E. Station,
and thence conveyed by train to Woking, where,
previously to the cremation, the Eev. D. Amos con-
ducted a brief service in the pretty chapel set apart
for the purpose."
The urn containing his ashes was brought back to
Beading the same day, and deposited in ground of
the little chapel which had been his latest charge.
" Feeling and kindly references were made to the
late Eev. E. E. Suffield at St. Lawrence's Church,
by the Eev. J. M. Guilding (Vicar), and at several
other places of worship of various denominations in
the town ; as also at the Liberal meeting in the New
Town Hall, on Monday evening.
"At the University Extension Lecture, held on
Monday last, the president, Mr. Walter Palmer,
before calling upon the lecturer, alluded to the loss
the University Extension Movement had sustained
in Eeading by the death of the Eev. E. E. Suffield.
He was one of the vice-presidents of the Eeading
University Extension Association, and his last public
act was on the occasion of the Annual Meeting in the
260
Abbey Hall, in May last, when he took part in the
formation of the Extension Movement in Beading, on
a more permanent basis."
So far the Reading Observer.
A Koman Catholic gentleman, who had been his
pupil as a boy and remained all his life warmly
attached to him, wrote in the pages of Truth: "It
is with deep regret I record the death of the Eev.
Eodolph Suffield, who, previous to his secession from
the Catholic faith, was celebrated throughout the
length and breadth of the land as the most brilliant
preacher, and most influential ecclesiastic of his time.
His 'perversion' or 'conversion' in the year 1870,
caused a sensation in religious circles only second to
that which attended the late Cardinal Newman,
when he some years before transferred his allegiance
to the Church of Eome. Well do I remember serving
Father Suffield's last Mass in the chapel of Bosworth
Hall, and accompanying him on that memorable
August journey, when, turning his back on the little
Hermitage at Husband Bosworth, and laying aside
the robes of his Order, he re-entered the ever-restless
world of theological doubt and dispute. As I write
there lies before me a massive bundle of letters in
which he recounts his subsequent struggles and
temptations, and I cannot but indite a few sympa-
thetic lines to the memory of a distinguished,
affectionate, and much-loved friend and a most
experienced master, to whom I owe the deepest
debt of gratitude."
The following notice from The Catholic [Times of
261
November 27th, is here added, for two reasons.
First, as evidence of the friendly spirit in which
numerous Eoman Catholics continued to regard him,
notwithstanding their reprobation of his ' apostacy.'
Secondly, and principally, to repel the insinuation con-
tained in it that he was contemplating or inclining
towards a return to their Church. He was particu-
larly sensitive on this point during his life-time, and
on one occasion, when rumours were in circulation
to the effect that his conversion might be shortly
expected, he wrote to the British and Foreign Unita-
rian Association a formal protest against what he
regarded as a calumny, and took pains to have it
publicly contradicted in the papers, omitting the
words, "and other former colleagues," for he was
seen only by the two mentioned; the paragraph is
verbally accurate, but the well-meant wish of the
writer has led him to make too much of Mr. Suffield's
gratitude for the kindly sentiments of his visitors,
and to exaggerate his regard for the honesty and
goodness of those with whom he had been so long
associated. That regard was indeed genuine, but the
more intimate became his acquaintance with the
larger life of the liberal Protestant Churches, the less
was he disposed to exalt the Eoman system in any of
its forms. Indeed he more than once called down
upon himself the severe animadversions of the Eoman
Catholic press by his strictures on Eoman ways and
morals.
" Mr. Eobert Eodolph Suffield died on the 13th inst.,
at Malvern Villa, Eeading. During his last illness
262
he was visited by Father Kenelm Vaughan, Father
Ambrose Smith, O.P., and other former colleagues,
and he expressed great gratification at their kindness
in desiring to reconcile him to the Church. Unfortu-
nately the end came before this was accomplished,
but it is gratifying to know that he who was the
chief human instrument in bringing about the seces-
sion of several priests, notably that of Mr. Addis,
Mr. Whitehead, and Mr. Matthews, should have been
consoled in his dying hours by several priests who
had not lost their faith. In spite of his own unbelief,
Mr. Sumeld always kept the Dominican picture of
Our Lady of the Eosary in his room, and in his
public utterances he usually spoke with deference of
the Catholic Church, and frequently alluded to the
pure and stainless lives of the men with whom he
became associated at Ushaw, when he first thought
of joining the ranks of the priesthood, and to the
happiness of his sacerdotal career previously to his
apostacy in 1870. He had some great qualities, but
he had also great weaknesses, and it would have been
better for the tone and spirit of Ushaw if he had
been kept in a humble position during his collegiate
career. E.I.P."
His 'great weakness,' from this point of view, was
undoubtedly his marked individuality. He could not,
spite of best intentions, bring himself to conformity
with the accepted type of Catholic sanctity. His
faith, his piety, his devotions, were too much his own,
and if this gave him influence and distinction, at the
same time it constituted a difficulty and a danger.
263
Requiescat in Pace. It was the last kindly word
of his earlier friends, whose faith he had championed
and abandoned, and whose dearest convictions he
had learned to regard as, at the best, beautiful
delusions. Another, who came to know him in his
last years, and owed to his counsel and teaching
a higher faith in Him, " who is able to do exceeding
abundantly above all we ask or think" in our kindest
moods in whose Divine Day the 'little systems'
which divide us so painfully here are merged and
lost, wrote, expressing what many thought, this
Sonnet to his memory.
SONNET TO THE REV. E. BODOLPH SUFFIELD.
DIED NOVEMBER 13TH, 1891.
" God's finger touched him and he slept." Tennyson.
He's gone from us ; the gentlest, sweetest soul,
That dwelt in human clay. We knew his worth,
His mind of noblest touch. He trod the earth
Among us. Now he's gained a higher goal,
And breathes an ampler air, beyond earth's strife.
Gracious and gentle, he, tender, refined,
Rare scholarship was his, a cultured mind,
A sympathetic soul, a blameless life.
We mourn for him. Earth's noblest ones are rare
Amid the noises of this dreary earth.
Thou, true of heart, for Truth's sake all didst dare.
He suffered for his conscience ; yet no dearth
Of pity had his tender soul ; his care
Was helping others. Well we knew his worth.
READING. K. D.
Happy the man, whatever his lot, who could win
such loving disinterested tribute from his fellows left
behind !
FINIS.
APPENDIX,
FENIANISM,
AND THE ENGLISH PEOPLE.
GENTLEMEN,
I would claim your indulgence, as the subject on which I
have to speak is surrounded with many difficulties, difficulties
caused at once by prejudice and virtue ; by patriotism and by
animosity ; by fear and by suspicion. The statements I would
make this evening are not volunteered by me, but rather forced
from me reluctantly by circumstances, and by the urgent
request of others. Several Irish working men of intelligence
and respectability have, during the last fortnight, requested me
to call a public meeting in which they might express their
indignant repudiation of the fearful and damnable outrage at
Clerkenwell, and of other similar outrages supposed to be in
contemplation. They felt at once indignant, wronged, and
humbled, under so horrible an imputation ; they felt that the
English would begin to look upon them, not as the kindly
inheritors of the virtues and the sufferings of an ancient people ;
not as a nation admired even by its enemies for generosity,
courage, tenderness, poetry, purity, and chivalry ; but as abet-
tors of acts of insane brutality, rendered even more detestable
by the coward secrecy of the perpetrator. Their whole nature
blushed with indignant shame, that they should be supposed
to sympathise with secret assassination, with outrages directed
against the feeble, with destruction of private property, with
desire to injure edifices of public charity and public utility in
a word, to become the enemies of society, the destroyers of their
country, the betrayers of that honour and faith that remained
to it, when all else had perished ! Gentlemen, I profoundly
appreciated the spirit which could make them thus desire to
clear themselves from such unjust and cruel aspersions ; I
An Address, delivered at a Public Meeting ot English and Irish, Protestants
and Catholics, in the North of England, [West Hartlepool, Jan.,] 1868.
268
appreciated the kindly good will testified by the chief employers
of labour in this town, who, disbelieving such accusations, still
desired to have them publicly denied. But I could not bring
myself to permit them to take upon themselves the humiliation
of even an indignant denial. They may have their faults and
their weaknesses, perhaps love may have made me blind to
them, but they are not a nation of cowards and assassins, that
a handful of them need assemble and throw a dishonour upon
their nation by a denial which would impute a certain amount
of guilt. Anyhow, it would have been but the expression of the
voice of a few men, unknown except by the families they sup-
port, the employers they faithfully serve, and the neighbours
of all creeds with whom they live at peace. But if there is to
be a denial, let it come from one who pledges his public name
and public position from one long and intimately interwoven
with so many hundreds of the Irish people in England, in
Ireland, in America, in Scotland, who for eighteen years of
priestly life has shared with them hopes and fears, joys and
sorrows, who has known all their feelings, and heard the most
unguarded expressions, and received the most fearless informa-
tion, both by word of mouth and by letter, from, all parts. Let
one be heard as the representative of so large a multitude whom
he intimately knows, and let me give to those calumnies the
most indignant denial. Never have I known an Irish Catholic
but what would execrate such acts as in attempt have been
imputed to them during the last few weeks. But, gentlemen,
you will say " that such may be true of the great mass of the
Irish people, but there is a foul dastardly society called the
Fenians, and it forms throughout the country a secret league
for the committal of organised acts of brutal destruction and
dastardly assassination. From its secret council issue decrees
of hidden wrongs to be inflicted, and reckless destruction to be
produced." That society, you will say, is in itself numerous
enough to need the suspension of all our liberties, and the
surrounding with armed bands almost every public and private
building of costliness and special importance.
269
You will say that it is clear that the enormous preponder-
ance of the Irish people approve such foul designs ; for, until
the law interfered, they accompanied, in imposing numbers,
those symbolic funerals which you say were to mark their
approval of murder. You say that the Catholic Church herself
is compromised in such actions, because she absolved, at Man-
chester, three men whom the law condemned, and followed
into eternity with her benediction murderers condemned by
justice to the gallows. Ah! gentlemen, by justice. It is a great
word ; it has been abused as often as the name of liberty. Now,
at first aspect, there is great force in such an argument, espe-
cially when it addresses itself either to passion or to fear. For
a moment, I will not say whether I think the Irish people
mistaken or not as to the facts ; but they do not believe that
such an organisation, with such foul designs, does exist at all.
They believe that there is a secret society condemned by the
Catholic Church just as the Freemason society ; that a person
could not save his soul unless he withdrew from it inasmuch
as the sacraments are forbidden to its members. They believe
that this is the application of the old law of the Church, which
invariably condemns rash oaths, and forbids its children from
entering any society in which they are bound to follow -as it
were in the dark into doubtful actions, unknown or irrespon-
sible leaders. They believe that the Fenian Society would
organise risings, invasion, war, the seizure of Government
stores, but they do not believe that it would plan or encourage
assassination or wanton destruction of private property. As
the O'Donoghue said last week, " It is not proved whether the
three men executed at Manchester were Fenians at all. If
they were, they will have withdrawn from the secret society
before receiving the Sacraments." The Irish followed in the
papers the details of these trials, and they do not believe that
the men liberated were either justly or even legally in custody ;
they do not believe that those who, in a rapidly-formed com-
bination, resolved to free them, intended to shoot any one.
They believe that poor Brett was shot accidently by a man
270
firing through the lock to open it, and that he had no more
intention of shooting Brett than the two men along with him
whom they came to save. They believe that the evidence given
was bought and perjured ; that the man who so unfortunately
shot Brett is now in America. They no more believe the wit-
nesses who declared that Allen shot Brett, than the larger
number of witnesses who swore to the complicity of Maguire,
who was not there at all. They therefore regard the three men
who were hung as only guilty of the forcible liberation of two
men who were not in legal custody, and they lament the un-
timely death of Brett. They consider the trials to have been
a parody of justice. The funeral processions were meant as
symbols of love for any who had suffered, even by an error, for
them ; and perhaps the funeral march seemed to them to befit
a people who had watched around the tomb of their country
for eight hundred years, and wearied in hope because to them
there was never a resurrection. The dreadful affair at Clerken-
well they regard as an execrable crime, created by an ignorant
and base informer, that he might obtain money for exposing
an outrage he invented and prompted. Say, if you like, that
the Irish are very foolish, and ill-informed, and perverse, to
imagine such absurdities as I have just stated. I simply de-
clare that I know it to be in that light that they regard these
events ; and, therefore, if they are perverse in their judgment,
they are, at least, not brutal or base in their intentions. If
you had arrived at the same opinion as to the events, your
feelings would accord with theirs. Suppose their judgment be
warped by national prejudice, perhaps others' judgment is
also warped by another national prejudice. And now let me
mention stern facts, not regarding the views and opinions of
the Irish, but regarding events. On this also I have a right to
speak ; for I not only know the Irish heart as only a priest and
a friend can know it, but I have had a singular access to the
knowledge of fads about Feniauism from its earliest introduc-
tion into these countries. It is said, and very likely with truth,
that two or three persons in founding the Fenian society made
271
themselves acquainted with the working of the Carbonari and
Freemason societies abroad, and tried to carry ou the infamous
principles of the former. A secret society is always essentially
liable to be dragged into any evil. But as far as I am aware,
after considerable and lengthened knowledge of the Fenian
society and workings, I should say that Carbonarism has not
impregnated it, and that at present the Fenian organisation
has been simply political, but accompanied with circumstances
bringing it under the censure of the Church. In these coun-
tries, their number is really very small. The enormous majo-
rity of the Irish people, whilst sympathising in the object, do
not approve the means. Even Mitchell himself, though san-
guine of the future, " does not approve the calling on the Irish
people to contribute at present to secret funds, not feeling
assured that at present it would be properly and effectively
used, and not thinking it right at present to incur the responsi-
bility of calling on the Irish race at home and abroad to pour
into their hands the savings of years." The English Govern-
ment has reason to fear a nation discontented, and backed by
millions in America ; but I do not believe there is any Fenian
council plotting outrages against life and property. The
Fenians (proper), in this country, are a secret society. I do not
know what is the teaching of the American Bishops as to the
American organisation. I do not know whether or not they
have dropped what would bring it under the censures of the
Church. In these countries, certainly, no person who has
taken the secret oath can approach the sacraments without
renouncing its obligations. Some people fancy themselves to
be Fenians and are not. A stranger suspecting the sympathies
of another proposes to him the Fenian oath, which is given,
and something a week paid, and there is the beginning and end
of the affair. It was a mortal sin to take a rash oath. But the
man who has taken it will never hurt any one except himself.
Then again, vast numbers are called Fenians merely because
they desire Irish Independence. Whenever I use that expres-
sion, I mean to be understood to characterise what is within
272
the law a National Government like Hungary, or even like
our own colonies all are governed according to their own ideas
and not ours. The national sympathy is intense, and under
certain circumstances would be at once united and powerful,
but Fenianism hangs together very loosely, not to be compared
to the Freemason society, except that nationalism is the root
of the former, revolution and infidelity of the latter. To return.
What other outrages have been traced to Fenianism, or
to any person representing in any degree Irish sympathies ?
Literally none. There have been rumours circulated from
almost every town in England. We have been at the command
of every joker, or of every one influenced by malignant inten-
tions against the Irish, or in any way interested in inventing an
accusation and creating a panic. Such an attempt was made
last week in this town. Fortunately, one of the Liberal papers
treated it as a hoax ; but newspapers published at a distance
described it with an imposing heading as an "Attempted
Fenian outrage at W T est Hartlepool." An English Protestant
gentleman who would have spoken this evening, unless business
had taken him away, could have told us how, a few months ago,
a comical collection of incidents were worked up into Seaton
being in the possession of the Fenians, and how there were all
the accompaniments giving a colour to the absurdity, every-
thing except the substratum of truth. Every anonymous scrib-
bler who wished to bring odium on the Irish, has had merely to
drop in the street or into a letter-box, some outrageous letter
threatening vengeance and violence ; and the military are
called out, and the police armed, and the special constables
are sworn in. Some people ask : " Why do not the Irish offer
themselves more numerously as special constables?" Because
they would think it as rational to be sworn in against the
fairies. Whenever outrage is really threatened, depend upon
it, they will as ever be loyal to their employer, and brotherly to
their English fellow workmen. But what cause has been
gained by all these rumours of imaginary outrages ? Under a
timid and suspicious Government we have been pushed back a
273
thousand degrees towards despotism. lu Ireland liberty has
entirely ceased; and in England the liberal measures are
almost check-mated by panic. The Irish are a clever and
intelligent people. You cannot travel through Ireland and
visit the humblest cabins without discovering a discernment
far superior to anything existing amongst a similar class in
our own country. Do they not easily see that every outrage
committed in their name, or threatened in their name is not
only a crime but a treason against their country '? It is not
only wicked but insane. There is not a single act proved which
justifies us in ever suspecting that they would thus act with
the wanton recklessness of escaped lunatics. When Stephens
was liberated ; when the Manchester prisoners were liberated,
there was cleverness, secrecy, fidelity, reticence, and success.
There was an object, though criminally rash. There was the
exercise of a clemency which has been betrayed. We gain
nothing by ignoring these facts. The calm declaration of what
is wrong will influence an intelligent, and Catholic, and high-
minded people. But if we treat them as at once ruffians and
insane, we are powerless to serve them ; we cannot persuade
them, we can only manacle them ; and for every one we
manacle on a false pretence, we create ten thousand sympathis-
ers, who will begin to think such fetters more honourable than
a liberty that degrades itself to calumny. No, gentlemen, the
real danger is not Fenianism. The danger is a nation at once
oppressed and insulted a nation at the mercy of the most
degraded informers until at length, their character ruined, they
are driven to desperation by the insidious calumnies of enemies
whom they can never meet. My own suspicion is that the
Clerkenwell outrage is the work of some informer who has
bribed or prompted some stupid wretch to do the deed, that he
might get a greater bribe by his information. The Star, to its
honour, has had the courage to point this out. An informer
told the plan, the hour, the mode ; why did he not name more ?
His information is believed, the prisoners are removed ; if they
had remained in the usual yard of exercise they would doubt-
274
less have been slain. So that a Frenchman who knew some-
thing of our politics, naively remarked to me, that it was
clearly an Orange scheme for putting to death the Fenian
prisoners ! At the hour signified, a barrel of gunpowder is
wheeled up against the walls, which they were told were to be
blown up with gunpowder, police are looking on, detectives are
looking on, by order of the authorities persons are actually
stationed within the prison walls with firearms, on account of
what is going to take place. Of course we are bound to suppose
no complicity on the part of either the government or the
police : but if an equal apparent amount of complicity could
have been adduced against some Irish secret Fenian tribunal,
we might have been justified perhaps in speaking of the horri-
ble Fenian outrage at Clerkenwell. As it is, we perceive the
authorities all prepared, but the Fenians, literally unprepared,
no arrangement made for receiving the prisoners if they had
escaped death amidst the explosion. Though the witnesses
seem to have wonderful powers of observation, and to have
seen everything, and be able to swear to everything ; yet there
is nothing which compromises any discoverable organisation.
One way to produce crime is continually to suggest it, unceas-
ingly to impute it, and to make those accused unjustly, suffer
as if they had perpetrated it. If an event could have occurred
calculated to injure the Irish cause, it was this Clerkenwell
affair it was instantly telegraphed over Europe. It was in-
stantly laid at the door of the Irish and of Fenians. Since the
Manchester executions a current of European and American
sympathy was surging up on every side. On all sides the
impression was arising that the Government had made a mis-
take. But now fix the calumny on any party, however re-
motely interwoven with Irish Nationality, and everything was
changed. And then every idle rumour was again fixed on the
same, and telegraphed over Europe. The disastrous explosion
at Newcastle was described by telegrams to America as a
horrible Irish Fenian outrage. Truly, two or three base charac-
ters can effect an infinity of mischief. We have had experience
275
of this ourselves as English Catholics. Let any one read in
Macaulay the narrative of Titus Gates, a degraded loathsome
wretch, telling lies at once for lucre and for pleasure ; and yet
the English people, generous, intelligent, and kind, were dragged
on, infatuated, and the noblest and purest characters perished
as criminals on the scaffold, almost without a pitying tear.
When we find an informer declared on oath as unworthy of all
credit, and yet instantly ready to swear to the man prosecuted
as a Fenian ; when we find the terrific ease with which the
witness keeps " remembering " and multiplying we see the
force of the example recently adduced of the witnesses multi-
plying, the instant that one link of the chain of evidence was
needed in the trial of Madeline Smith, till the very multitude
and assurance of the witnesses invalidated their testimony.
They had seen too much, and thus had remembered too well.
We call to mind how, many years since in Dublin, a wretched
informer named Delahunt, murdered a boy, that he might lay
the charge on an innocent man, and receive the bribe for the
information. By the mercy of God the wretch was discovered,
and ho was hung in the place of his innocent victim. These
bribes for information are terrible engines of fraud and oppres-
sion. In 1820, the Times, then at the head of the Liberal
Press (how changed now, when it desires to make of Ireland a
Jamaica) attributed the Thistlewood conspiracy to a gentleman
informer named Edwards, and as got up by him to letard
Reform, and such has been since the Whig tradition. I have
myself had a sad example of this system of spies forming con-
spiracies, suggesting and instigating crime, and then, like the
hyena, pouncing upon the prey. Not for one single moment
can any sane man attribute the knowledge or encouragement
of such villainy to any official of the Government to insinu-
ate this would be a calumny as detestable as the calumny
we repudiate. Again, no man who knows the Irish con-
stabulary and those functionaries who preside over it, those
men of high integrity, unblemished reputation, and self-
sacrificing charity, can ever for a moment insinuate against
276
them the knowledge of such turpitude. But what can they
do? If an information is given, and insisted on, they can
only hand it on. Perhaps they might almost say it is more
the nation that must investigate it than the courts. For
we presume that when the nation is calm, the courts are
just. When the nation is panic struck, the hall of justice
descends to the popular passions. The nation should be
guarded against the true danger and some at least must have
the courage to speak, though the malignant may impute sym-
pathy with the had. On a certain occasion, a man who had
been proved always to have spoken the truth on these matters,
who was a Fenian, and had refused renouncing the society
according to my advice, came to me afterwards, and said he
should withdraw, and then stated that a person had invited
him to join in a kind of assassination club, whose members
should draw lots to assassinate the Lord-Lieutenant and the
judges on the day of passing sentence in Dublin on the State
prisoners. Horrified at such a terrific proposal, this man
declined, and implored me instantly to communicate the design
to the authorities, so that no great crime could be possible. Of
course I did so ; just giving the information which he enabled
me. Afterwards he sought me again, and told me that he was
convinced by circumstances which had come to his knowledge,
that the man who suggested the horrid crime was himself an
informer. He authorised me to mention this, but feared to
give any details lest he himself and some others should be
compromised. I laid it before the proper authority under the
Government, but though every kind and honourable considera-
tion was given, and the statement was believed, it was not
sufficiently tangible to act upon.
For the sake of mercy, of justice, of peace, do not let us blind
ourselves to this source of danger and of crime. The more we
offer rewards, the more we encourage rumours, the more we
excite national animosities on either side, and play up to the
vulgar cowardice of a panic, the more are we placing our
lives and our properties in the power not of Fenians who
277
want war and separation but of wretches who want to excite
to dastard crimes, to arson and to murder, that amidst the
desolation they may inform, may plunder and may destroy.
The Irish clear themselves and apologise ? In the name of the
Great God of Justice what have they done ? The apology
should come from those who without evidence, beyond the
purchased evidence of spies, have cast on them the foulest
imputations. It is the English who having, through fear,
encouraged a panic created on purpose, should arise, and with
generous indignation defend the honour of an outraged nation.
Have we come to such a pass as this ; that whereas the Eng-
lish law heretofore accounted every man innocent till proved
before his countrymen to be guilty ; that now every Irishman
is to be accounted guilty till proved by overwhelming testi-
mony to be innocent ? If generosity does not prompt us to
this, let prudence at least compel us. The measures we invoke
on the Irish will speedily fall upon ourselves, and destroy our
liberty and independence. We are rushing from imaginary'
conflagrations and imaginary assassinations into the real appli-
ances of what we shall end by finding to be a galling despotism.
We are getting an armed police, a fettered press, a system of
universal suspicion, spies and informers of the basest charac-
ter, prompting the government first to folly and then to
injustice. Surely even revolution itself is better than despot-
ism ; amidst the crimes and horrors of a revolution, grand
characters arise and overtop the rest by the force of genius or
of virtue, like the mountain summit soaring above the clouds
and the storm. In the raging of a revolution, the Church may
press to her wounded breast, her children returned to her as
mart3Ts : but at least she is not tempted to become the spiritual
police salaried by a power that at once patronises, despises, and
crushes her. Beneath despotism nothing flourishes except the
theatre, the army, the police, and the favourites of the Court.
Do not let us permit the Government to expiate the party
crime of giving us a Reform, by frightening us back into the
era of the Tudors and the Stuarts. Besides, will the experi-
278
ment succeed ; suppose we establish amongst us permanently
the state of things existing now destroy the liberty of the
press imprison every one an enemy may choose to suspect
telegraph over Europe and America that the Irish are assassins
and insane pursue by social persecution the very Irish servant
girl, and drive her as wicked from the home in which we have
ridiculed her go on packing juries purchasing witnesses
trying in chains men supposed by the law to be innocent
making Irish homes the residence of detectives, who, (it has been
more than said) have informed against the families, the virtue
of whose daughters they failed to seduce. If we pay people to
write letters to Catholic Bishops and Priests, threatening them
with vengeance; so that amidst the general panic, even they
begin half to suspect a people who for 1300 years have sur-
rounded them like a wall of fire If by the appliances of so
many artifices we succeed in poisoning the educated mind of
the country, till it comes to be a question whether a prison cell
is not too good a place for an untried Irishman; where is
it all to end ? Will such means as these conciliate ? You may
flatter and coax the priesthood, when, because in obedience to
the laws of the Church, they condemn what the Church con-
demns, and you may seem partly to succeed in making it look
as if because some are deceived by repeated assertions, that
therefore most would palliate the injustice and calumnies
directed against their people. But where, I say, is it all to end?
What is to be done with a nation united in a sullen hopeless-
ness of your rule ? Can you imprison a nation ? Send them
afar into penal servitude ? They will remember ; and they will
return : but how ? You have seen and know. Let us at length
try and enter into the feelings of others. Let us remember
that the love of country has been planted in the breast by God,
just as much as the love of the family. Domestic fidelity and
patriotism go side by side, and kneel before God's altar for His
blessing. Do not, because it is not our case, let us adopt the
aggravating tone of an affected spirituality, and pretend that it
would be more holy for them to be indifferent to their country :
279
we do not say to a son, Never mind the cottage of your child-
hood and your family ; there is a stranger who will come and
keep it neater than you, and has got the latest plan, and will
manage your home better for you, for you have odd, random,
dreamy ways; but the stranger can do things properly. Be-
sides, there are too many of you ; and the stranger will, all for
your good, tear away half your family, and people with cattle
the plot you so foolishly love. For the stranger can fleece your
cattle ; but you, your sentimental feelings, are not worth con-
sidering ; you shall have more to eat, but you who are at once
poor and perverse, what have you to do with sentiments ?
Leave the sentiments of patriotism and of honour to us who
will manage your affairs for you, and you shall be allowed to
live as a helot more comfortably on a land which, if you were a
better Christian, and had more sense, you would not retain as
your own.
It is asked, Are the Irish loyal ? Gentlemen, at least they
have not insulted her, as the Orange Lodges agreed to insult
the Prince of Wales, when he went to Canada, as the represen-
tative of his Royal Mother. I think they are even more loyal
than the English would be, were the Queen to become a
Catholic, to marry the O'Conor Don, to live in Ireland, and
recreate in Killarney and Connemara, to hold her Parliament
in Dublin, to establish the Catholic Church in England and in
Scotland, to deprive the Protestant Bishops of their seats in
the Peers, of their palaces and cathedrals, and to make their
titles penal; to abolish the English customs, to govern Eng-
land after Irish ideas, and to make a flying visit to England
about once in a dozen years. Remember James II. and
William III. But visits and graceful courtesies will not suffice
now. The wound has widened like the gulf at once dividing
and uniting Ireland and the West. You cannot heal the gaping
wound by playing with it, or denying its existence. Unless
something be done, the result can only be the existence of a
nation maddened with the first possession of independence ; or
a massacre such as the world has never seen. That something
280
to be done, may the great mercy of God create the genius
to inspire, the courage to accomplish. May the statesman
speedily arise who shall dare to say of Irish independence, what
the Iron Duke said of Catholic Emancipation. Let some
statesman full of loyalty to the Crown, and loyalty to the
people, demand Ireland for the Irish ; and frankly act upon
the admission that they would be rather badly governed by
themselves than well by us. Let such a statesman, in a spirit
of courageous generosity, grant everything which it is not high
treason to ask. If we are to lose Ireland let us rather lose it by
generosity than by oppression. But if such a grand legislation
should succeed, and many reasons concur to make it probable
then Ireland, prosperous, loyal, and united, might become
the truest guardian of the British monarchy against the up-
heaving of the English democracy. The feeling that pervades
now every grade of Irish society, is one of intense yearning
after national government. But it is not a feeling of personal
hatred to the English, or of rancour towards the English Queen :
though doubtless they would love her better if she seemed to
love them more. They would honour her more if she seemed
to honour Ireland more. I will not venture to say what their
political sentiments may be ; but I am sure of this, that the
first Lady of the Land, personally, need not guard herself
against the Irish. They will do her no wrong, nor her chil-
dren ; she may walk through the length and breadth of Ireland
alone, and no hand will be lifted against her, no voice will be
raised to insult her. They are a people full of tenderness and
of ancient chivalry and the woman, the widow, the mother,
will not be insulted because she is the daughter of Kings. They
compassionate her in her sorrows. They are moved by simple
details of her domestic joys. They remember sorrowfully her
royal grandfather, who, though opposed to us Catholics, was
kind, and honest, and pious, according to his ideas ; and they
remember the sorrows of that royal race of tLat old man who,
when deprived of reason and deprived of sight, with his grey
beard and wan look, and the star of his ancient order on his
281
breast, would be found wandering through the long stately
galleries of Windsor, speaking to imaginary Parliaments and
holding imaginary councils, and then singing one of Handel's
hymns, accompanying it on his violin, and then, bursting
into tears, would pray aloud for his wife, his children, his
country, and then for himself, that if it were God's will he
might be restored to reason. Depend upon it, the Irish feel
kindly towards that royal line, though it has not done much
for them. But they are a people to whom love is easier
than hate ; and who, when wronged, speedily relent in the
presence of kindness or of suffering. And whatever may be
their political and national aspirations as regarding the English
Government, depend upon it that to the people in the different
localities, the English employer has never men more grateful,
honest, industrious and true, than the Irish ; and the English
working-man never will find a neighbour more kindly, more
genial, more trusting, and more generous. Then be generous
towards a generous race. You have done noble deeds, you
have freed the very African slave, defended him, and made
him your equal. Shield your Irish brethren from cruel calumny,
and from the merciless designs of the informer, and then be
noble, and make the Irish your equals, restore to them their
country, for with the loss of their country they lost everything
but their faith and their honour.
As an Appendix to this Address may be added the
following letter written to the Secretary of the Amnesty
Committee for the release of Political Prisoners, and
published in the "THE IRISHMAN" of January 30th,
1869:
I admit that the prisoners have violated the laws of the
English Government in the same manner as the Sicilians were
even advised to violate the laws of the Imperial Government by
Pope Innocent IV., in the Brief which, in the name of the
Holy Apostles, he addressed to the Sicilians, wherein he says,
282
" People are astonished that weighed down, as you are, by the
opprobrium of servitude, and oppressed in your persons and
goods, you should yet have failed to seek, as have other nations,
a means of making sure to yourselves the sweets of liberty.
Seek then, on your part, with hearts that are watchful, how
to make your community flourish in the enjoyment of liberty
and peace. May it be soon spread abroad amongst the nations
that, as your kingdom is distinguished for its nobleness and
for its great fertility, so, by the aid of Divine Providence, it
may join again to its other prerogatives the glory of a well-
grounded liberty."
I admit that the Irish prisoners, beholding their country
disarmed and prostrate, and her children wandering to the
West, pilgrims at once of despair and of hope, did imitate
actions encouraged by the English Government in the Ponti-
fical States, in Tuscany, in Venice, in Sicily, in Naples, in
Spain, in Belgium, in America that, emulating the ancient
example of the Swiss, or the recent example of the Belgians,
they deserve whatever censure and whatever punishment at-
taches to those who, in a time of peace, against a powerful
ruler, enter upon an enterprise at once perilous and hopeless
that some of them united with this, circumstances which,
unfortunately, brought them under the ban of our ecclesiastical
law.
I admit that they, perhaps, hardly foresaw that, whilst
failiig in their real object, they would become instrumental
in obtaining for their countrymen at least promises of a
national and conciliatory policy, and that their audacity and
their sufferings would reunite the Liberal party under, at least,
the profession of justice to Ireland.
I admit that their actions in America and elsewhere have
proved to the English Government the impossibility of govern-
ing in a tune of war a hostile population, and thereby stimu-
lated great minds to try and solve the problem how those who
have wronged can conciliate those whom they have oppressed.
I admit the humiliating fact that the greatest of English
283
statesmen, representatives of the intelligence and of the indus-
try of Britain, owe their present high position to men who in
a felon's dress are working along with thieves and garrotters
within the gloomy walls of our prisons ; amongst whom are some
of the gentlest character, of the tenderest susceptibility, of
the purest domestic affection. One of these (now it is feared
beginning to show the first symptoms of loss of intellect,)
I remember seeing standing at the dock in Green Street,
amongst men whose very countenances belied that base, cruel,
and utterly unfounded calumny which imputed to them pro-
jects of assassination, robbery, and brutality. I do not envy
the spectator, of whatever party, nation, or creed, who could
have so divested himself of whatever is generous in human
nature, as to have been able without tears of respectful
sympathy to have looked on those men and heard them make
replies testifying that all, more or less, resemble that one in
whom three strong thoughts seemed supreme the love of his
religion, the love of his country, and the love of his aged
mother. Their efforts, impetuous and foiled, have by Glad-
stone's public declaration created at once necessity and the
desire to relieve a country for which they rashly dared.
I can never picture to myself their present forlorn and cruel
fate, without a shudder of shame and a thrill of horror.
I was formerly asked to sign a petition that two of them
might be saved from execution if they had been bad men I
would have signed it, that they might have had time both to
repent and expiate. But even in life, there is a punishment
more terrible than death and to save my country from a more
public and notorious dishonour, I could not petition that the
blood which they freely proffered should be spared, and thus on
the tedious years of an unnoticed life there might be heaped all
the degradations and privations of the felon. But I would gladly
sign with my heart's blood, if it would avail them, a petition
containing everything in their behalf except an insult, a lie,
a repudiation, a dishonour, or a treason if it could only free
them from the company of the base and of the wicked, and if.
284
even without generously restoring them to the sweets of liberty
and the homes they love, they were hut to be put in possession
of those immunities which every civilised nation should accord
to political prisoners unstained with crime and suffering for a
cause which even their enemies agree demands amelioration.
I beg you to appropriate this additional little offering of 1
toward the expenses being incurred for them, and to believe
me, sir, your faithful servant in Christ,
FB. ROBERT RODOLPH SUFFIELD, O.S.D.
AN ECLECTIC VIEW
OF
ROMAN CATHOLICISM.*
I shall not, I think, be mistaken if I surmise that amongst
the members and guests of the Liberal Social Union a very
large number are Rationalists, who regard all the prevailing
Religious systems as mythological, and who earnestly desire the
promotion of a Religious worship and Religious life, in har-
mony with the experiences of man, in harmony with advancing
knowledge, in harmony with the facts of Nature's mysterious
growth and unity. Such a Religion as this must of necessity
recognise the immanence of God in Nature ; the religious
nature in man ; the universality of law ; the essential elements
of worship, adoration, trust, aspiration, not entreaty, urgency,
supplication ; and a moral code based on the experiences of
human nature as representing the Will of God. This I venture
to call Cosmic Religion or Cosmic Theism.
There are many who, utterly disbelieving mythological faiths
and worship, earnestly desire to show to those similarly circum-
stanced the beauty, completeness and spirituality of a Natural
and Progressive Religion. This might be done widely and
effectually by the dissemination of tracts boldly and distinctly
stating what is denied and why denied, and what are the guid-
ing principles proposed, and the results as yet attainable. I
would submit that there is in this Society talent to compose
such cosmic tractates, and that persons interested in the matter
could, at these monthly gatherings of Liberal Thinkers, discover
coadjutors, and arrange preliminaries to be worked out at other
times and places. Such a movement of religious thought,
whilst advancing with the universal growth, would be also
* A paper read before the Liberal Social Union, on the evening of Thurs-
day, May 29, 1884, and published in The Inquirer of May 31.
286
eclectic. Each great teacher becomes incorporated in the ages
which follow him. His truths and his errors alike grow ; it is
the office of eclectic thought to eliminate the errors, to em-
phasise the truths. How marvellously are the theories of
Plato living amongst us now in the creeds of Orthodoxy in the
higher illuminations of Eationalism. Each one in this room
could thus point to bye-gone but most real influences, influences
of a very mixed character. I can trace throughout my own life
the distinct influence of three authors read in boyhood, Thomas
A'Kempis, Shelley, Rousseau. As also influences derived from
the Gospels, from Emerson and St. Theresa. The names will
vary, but each one would be able to point to ancestors of his
mental and moral being ; saying, I owe to such what I chiefly
prize, and what I chiefly regret. And if this be so true as to
single books, how important must be the influence of systems ;
and of all systems of spiritual thought, there present themselves to
my mind as supreme in suggestive power, the Buddhist and the
Eoman Catholic. As my object is practical, and connected with
convictions and results in which I am intensely interested, will
you kindly permit me to forget the great divergence of belief
existing in this room, and to speak from my own standpoint,
viz., that of utter disbelief of all supernatural claims, whether
sacred books, sacred human personages, sacred traditions or
authoritative churches ; of profound belief in. a Supreme Divine
Thought immanent in the Universe, one with the Universe,
eternal with the Universe. A Supreme Thought with whom
each human soul can commune, and in that communion find
sympathy, rest, peace, joy, support, and spiritual illumination.
I am not proving, I am confessing to you my intellectual con-
viction a conviction which philosophers like Plato treasured
among the Greeks, and which formed the central thought of the
Vedic, Buddhist, Hebrew, and Christian Religions in the vary-
ing and opposing forms thereof.
Then, speaking from the standpoint of Religious Rationalism,
of Cosmic Theism, I ask why should not we, like the Roman
Catholic (1), encourage one another to the regular practice of
287
meditation and contemplation. Rejecting as we do the notion
that asking can change God, we should drop entirely what
amongst Roman Catholics is deemed the most important part
of devotion, viz., supplication. But there remain Adoration,
Contrition, Thanksgiving, Aspiration.
Roman Catholics teach Meditation often too formal and
artificial in mode often directing all to Christ, nay, to the
very body of Christ, instead of to God; giving prominence to
the getting temporal and spiritual benefits out of God by
petition, by supplication, unwearied entreaty. All such we
should drop as disbelieved by us ; but I have often heard Dr.
Newsham, the late venerable President of Ushaw College, urge
on the students that petition is selfish, that the highest union
with God is obtained by adoration and love. At Roman
Catholic Colleges the older boys meditate daily for half an hour
in the morning; and in the evening, like the disciples of
Pythagoras, examine their conscience. This examination is
often injurious, because it dwells so unceasingly on sins, which
though perhaps avoided, become too familiar to the imagina-
tion, losing all look of shame and disgust; but surely the
principle is good and imitable. The Brahminical and Buddhist
hermits practise religious contemplation, though often in a
prejudicial way. It flourishes among the Brahmo Somaj it
is the essential feature of all Roman Catholic institutions,
whether Monastic, Conventual or Collegiate it is kept up by
very many men and women in the midst of active life in the
world, and I am convinced that it tends in many ways bene-
ficially. The Rosary, when said by those who use it spiritually,
is a mode of contemplation full of consolation to the unlettered,
the aged, the blind, the sick; it is unfortunately entirely a
contemplation of the bodily presence and actions of Jesus and
of Mary, but the idea is capable of ttansfer to the most philo-
sophic Theism.
(2) Roman Catholics, like the old philosophers of classical
tunes, like the Branmans and the Buddhists, have buildings
and institutions adapted for longer or shorter periods of retreat.
In such, confession to a Priest and submission to a Superior are
the prominent features and necessary conditions. But along
with these there is much of spiritual beauty, repose, and help-
fulness, in these homes of holy thought and gardens of serene
contemplation. In the midst of the worry and flurry of life it
is soothing and elevating sometimes to escape from its noise
and .turmoil to the peaceful cloister and the tranquil walk
beneath the garden trees where those who are seen, speak not.
At St. Laurent Sur Sevres in La Vendee, I have seen farmers,
lawyers, tradesmen, students, and nobles driving up in their
various rustic vehicles to spend a fortnight in silence. Silence
at meals, silence in the large formal avenues of trees, silence
everywhere. And then they dispersed to their homes. Not
unfrequently women or men seek a lengthened or even per-
manent home as in the guest department of conventual institu-
tions. Why should not houses arise, not in servile imitation
of these, but embodying just what we need?
Roman Catholics draw an infinite distinction between reli-
gious and secular pursuits, plans, and objects. We do not.
We consider the pursuits of a young lady teaching in a High
school quite as religious as those of a Benedictine Nun. We
consider that to seek retirement to pursue a special study is
quite as holy as to seek retirement to prepare for a general
confession or to kneel for hours before the Blessed Sacrament.
Now supposing a young lady does not wish to be singular, to be
talked about as eccentric, or exposed perhaps to inconvenient
circumstances and annoying observation. She is needing rest
of spirit, or she is needing a short time for special quiet study.
Her father's home is either not attainable or not adapted. She
has not unlimited means. What would suit her is not attain-
able in an hotel, a boarding-house, or a lodging-house. There
might be a suitable place, or a companion whose presence
might make an otherwise unsuitable place desirable ; but she
does not at the moment know of such, and has not time to seek
it. Or again a decision has to be made it is the turning
point of life : Roman Catholics can at once find a peaceful
289
home, where without any oddness, without cares of house-
keeping, without exciting speculations that something extra-
ordinary is looming, such considerations can be pursued
quietly and without observation. Or, one has got morally
unhinged : he wishes to break off from bad ways and bad
companions, to remould his life. Shall I add, he wishes to
place himself out of the way of temptation. We have no aid
to give to such a person ; the Roman Catholic Church has.
Thus I might point to numerous cases wherein brief periods of
quiet retirement would be invaluable for study, for mental rest,
for reflection, for contrition, for forming plans for the future,
for breaking through disastrous surroundings, for spiritual con-
templation and holy communion with God.
But occasionally there will be cases where some one desires
such peaceful home of retirement for long periods, even for life,
in which cases the social element would have to be provided
for, and a tone of cheerfulness introduced, which would not be
needed or even desired during brief periods for special objects.
All this may be ridiculed, criticised, declared not to be needed.
Such persons and by that I mean most persons would not go to
such houses if they existed ; but there are some to whom homes of
studious, quiet, uneccentric retirement would be an unspeakable
boon. These retreats for study and thought would vary in their
characteristics. Some might perhaps assume one or other of
two forms, which I will call "College Solitudes" or "College
Homes;" the word "college," signifying the collective and studi-
ous characteristic ; the word "solitude," the college adapted for
a brief period of retirement for a special object ; the word "home,"
the college adapted for lengthened periods. I should propose
the institution of a few rules to protect the objects of the
inmates. There should be a warden, or lady warden, and power
to request, nay to enforce, the withdrawal of any unsuitable
inmate. Some of these college homes might be adapted for
married people. As I have remarked, these colleges would vary
in characteristics, though I am assuming the total avoidance of
anything opposed to the healthy tone of the Protestant and the
290
Rationalist ; but speaking as a Liberal Protestant and a pro-
nounced Eationalist, it would delight and aid me if at such a
college solitude or college home I found a solemn and beautiful
church always open for the silent devotion of those sharing my
retirement. That church might contain paintings of the great
benefactors of mankind, the heroes of goodness and of thought.
It might be radiant with flowers, and at certain periods inspired
with the solemn strains of the organ ; or even chanted Psalms
of praise and trust and hope might cheer the silent worshipper.
Do not deride and dismiss this as the dream of enthusiasm.
Religion in the human heart is as much a fact of science as is
the sun in the heavens. As the eternal children of Nature and
of God, we hold eternal verities, and of them we are component
parts. There is nothing in philosophy opposed to the divinest
instincts of the soul. When amongst Roman Catholics any
good work is proposed, which is in harmony with the Church,
they do not shiver it up with criticism ; those who are attracted
try it, the rest are silent. There are men and women, there are
young people who are Rationalists truth forbids them to be
aught else but they are as full of reverence as any Roman
Catholic saint, and walk in awe through the mystery of human
life. It is surely an error ever to damp their higher hopes, to
embarrass with that cynical censure
" Which drowns in sneers
Youth's starlight smile, and makes its tears
First like hot gall, then dry for ever."
(3) Amongst Roman Catholics there is nothing vague as to
their teaching ; they teach what they believe, they teach what
they deny. When the Church alters anything, such change is
distinctly named in books, tracts, and sermons. The Cosmic
Theist, the Religious Rationalist holds a Religion which pro-
gresses, which grows with the Universe, which, whilst retaining
all the treasures of the past, keeps adding the knowledge and
experience of the present. We cannot, therefore, have a petri-
fied creed, but each thoughtful man knows what he believes
now, what he rejects now. As in each country there is much
291
of simultaneous in progress ; so we find a singular agreement
amongst independent religious thinkers in each epoch ; an
agreement which enables co-operation in the publication of
tracts, and books for young and old, adapted to unfold and
support our present convictions, and to show why other state-
ments are rejected. If we care for our discovered truth, let us
distinctly proclaim it, and each exposed error is a discovered
truth.
(4) Amongst Roman Catholics there is a consistency of
action, the worship they deem false they refuse to join in ;
they explain distinctly to their young people under what cir-
cumstances they can be permitted by courtesy, duty, or neces-
sity to be occasionally present at religious services opposed
to their belief. Amongst Rationalists, professing to prize truth
as an essential part of righteousness, surely there ought to be
clear explanations on this subject to young people, supported
by unwavering example. Is it so ? Ex. gr. if a person believes
that Jesus Christ is God, believes that Heresy is a crime to be
placed along with murder and adultery, and that God can by
entreaty be induced to confer His favours ; let him say the
Litany of the Church of England ; but if these statements are
opposed to his convictions, how can an honest man take part
in them ? A Roman Catholic would not invoke the interces-
sion of Luther ; why are the children of Rationalists to be so
frequently the only ones reared in insincere conformity, to
get conscience clauses for others, seldom to use such for
themselves.
(5) Roman Catholics continually and successfully encourage
the feeling of satisfaction in belonging to a world-wide corpora-
tion. Non-Catholics probably cannot realise the fact that such
a thought is the source of great joy even to the humblest and
most ignorant. The joy consists not in any result obtained,
but in the sentiment.
Evangelicals experience the same as to all those who by faith
are united to Christ as their head. These sentiments have a
great and abiding power, and whatever lifts us along with our
292
surroundings on to the platform of a wider sympathy, must
be delightful as well as elevating. But surely the Religious
Eationalist has a supreme right to this comprehensive and
elevating sentiment. Those who speak of " our common
Master, Christ," or of "the world- wide society of the Catholic
Church " are sectional, and appeal to sectional leaders and sec-
tional results. There is only One Being in whom all live and
move, and exist, in whom all Humanity centres, hy whom all
Humanity is inspired, to whom all Humanity and all Nature is
united. The Universe palpitating with the diversified unity
of the Universal Life. All forms of existence in communion
with Nature's Eternal Mind. All men everywhere, and always
sons of God. The Unity of all Humanity in God. Cosmic
Theism, whilst requiring each man to be truthful in acting out
the convictions he has arrived at, whilst encouraging men to
unite in little groups and societies to testify to their convictions
and to promote them ; yet, declares that Humanity is the true
Catholic Church, and the only Master of Humanity is God.
In that truth there is surely sentiment full of consolation to
the world's most solitary exile, full of beauty to the poet, full
of joy to the young. Why do not Rationalists teach this with
distinctness and enthusiasm, instead of pining after flimsy
imitations of services in which they do not believe ?
" Leave your dry discarded dogmas,
Faith unreasoning, credence blind,
All the little narrow circles
Where you wander self confined ;
Plashing in the mire and puddle
Of your small sectarian pond,
Heedless of the mighty ocean
And the boundless Heaven beyond.
Nobler themes than these invite you
If you'd throb as throbs the time,
And would speak to hearts responsive
Words more human, more sublime !
' God is love and love Eternal ;
293
All things change but nothing dies,'
Find this gospel and expound it,
In the Bible of the Skies."
(6) But the Roman Catholic system possesses an attraction
greater even than its vision of universality, in the supposed
presence of Christ as the incarnate God in the Tabernacle over
the altar of the humblest chapel ; that doctrine is the real
centre of the entire existing system. May I be permitted to
express it by quoting a stanza from a hymn which I wrote in
Roman Catholic days ?
" I rise from dreams of time
And an angel guides my feet,
To the sacred altar throne
Where Jesu's heart doth beat.
The lone lamp softly burns
And a wondrous silence reigns,
Only with a low still voice
The Holy One complains.
Ever pleading, day and night,
Thou canst not from us part ;
veiled and wondrous Son,
love of the Sacred Heart."
It is obvious that such a doctrine must when truly believed
inspire emotions fuU of tenderness and of consolation. Still
more obvious is it, that a belief so profoundly false, so utterly
superstitious, could not be simulated without crime. Has, then,
Eclecticism any thing to observe regarding it? Assuredly:
the Cosmic Theist adores the Real Presence, presence not of a
man's body, but of Nature's soul. The expression of such
adoration can be found in Wordsworth and in all our best
poets, as can be seen by those who use Crompton Jones's
selected poems of the inner life, Martineau's selected hymns of
praise, Francis Newman's epilogue " We Praise Thee in thy
Power, O God," as found in his " Hebrew Theism," and
embodied in Charles Voysey's " Service of Praise and Thanks-
giving."
294
(7) My last eclectic suggestion regards the Eoman Catholic
treatment of the dead. Protestantism has failed in this matter,
has separated us from the traditions of mankind. The Greek
and the Boman poured out lihations in honor of the departed,
and in many ways made memory of them. The 300 millions in
China, from the Emperor to the humblest, on the great anni-
versary of the dead, visit, each one the tomb of his father and
his mother. " Alone there," says Carlyle, " in silence, with
what of worship or of other thought there may be, pauses
solemnly each man ; the divine skies all silent over him ; the
divine graves, and this divinest grave all silent under him ;
pulsings of his own heart alone audible. Truly, it is a kind of
worship! Truly, if a man cannot get some glimpse into the
eternities looking through this portal through what other need
he try it?" Eoman Catholicism in this as in other matters
adopted, with modifications, some of the pagan modes of com-
memorating the dead. Hence prayers for the dead, monthly
and annual commemorations of the dead, a keeping up of the
memory of the dead mingled with religious solemnities. Unfor-
tunately, more conspicuous than these were the superstitions
regarding getting souls out of Purgatory by Masses and Indul-
gences. In revolt from these injurious superstitions, Protes-
tantism severed the dead from all the lines of religious expression.
Hence the solemnities of grief find no utterance which seems to
unite us with the departed. Yet surely those aspirations which
we deem not unreasonable when offered up for one loved and
living, must be as admissable when offered for the soul of the
loved one departed. If we believe in the communion of all
souls in God, in the Eternity of all forms of Mind and Life, it
must surely be well to keep up human love consecrated by
reposeful trust in a Divine and Eternal hope and, as it seems
to me, this truthful and beneficent thought is beautifully pre-
served and sanctified by uniting with piety
" Gracious service to the living,
Tranquil memory to the dead."
FAEEWELL SERMONS
AT THE
UNITAEIAN FEEE CHUECH, EEADING,
SUNDAY, JUNE 17, 1888.
MOBNING.
Reserving until the evening a few remarks of a personal
character, let me attempt to summarise to-day what I believe
to be the truest, noblest, and most beneficent form of religion.
True religion I take to be at once Cosmic and Spiritual.
The "Cosmic" regards the universal, the "Spiritual" regards
the individual soul in its relationship to God. Cosmic religion
is revealed to us through nature, Spiritual religion is revealed
to us through the soul.
The entire object of my ministry has been to secure practical
religion to those in whose minds the popular faiths have ceased
to be credible. I have not endeavoured to shake the belief of
others in the legendary or mythological. If a person has
caught the spirit of the age and thus questioned the reliability
of an inherited faith, I have been anxious to show to such an
one that religion remains after the mythology has disappeared.
That, as to morals, natural religion presents warnings and sanc-
tions more clear, uniform and emphatic than what can be
derived from opposing texts in imperfect translations of docu-
ments of uncertain origin and questionable authority. When
this unveracity has been recognised, we offer to the seeker
after truth a religious home. If he considers that he has
courage to persevere in a course needing thoughtfulness and
independence, he will derive moral benefit by joining us. Most
frequently, however, persons who derive aid by occasional
attendance at our services, continue in a mental position some-
what between "Orthodoxy" and Rationalism. A large and
increasing number of persons in the Trinitarian Churches have
296
arrived at the rejection of some of the dogmas most injurious
to individual spiritual happiness and to public well-being.
These form the liberalising element daily, happily, on the
increase within all the Protestant Churches. Then the grave
question arises if the authority of the popular mythology is
either weakened or destroyed if the sacred books of the great
religions of the world have been proved to be human, though
beautiful, liable to error, though often radiant with truth if
it has been discovered that the Prophet of Nazareth, with his
luminous soul, spoke divinely because he spoke so humanly,
appealing, not to sacred books or traditions inherited, but to
the conscience and the heart of man the question, I say,
arises, what is the foundation of the religion of those who have
ceased to acknowledge miraculous books and miraculous men ?
To solve and illustrate this question has been the object of
my ministry ever since my secession from the Roman Catholic
Church, in July, 1870. The Roman Catholic Church is an
imposing organisation, the inheritor of great traditions. I
left the Roman Church in order to join, not what is less
universal, but what is more really universal. I left a sect
in order to join what embraces that sect and all the sects
the Cosmic whole. The word " Cosmos " means order,
arrangement, regularity, discipline, method ; but it also means
the world, the whole frame of the universe the totality.
Thus "Cosmos" denotes the orderly and providential develop-
ment and growth of the moral, mental, and physical existences
constituting the world we know, and what can be seen around
the world.
We find ourselves the inheritors of many lines of thought, of
many venerable traditions, of various teachings, aspirations,
strivings, of great religions, of great philosophies all these
have combined in forming us, in moulding our tone of thought,
and our principles of action. We find ourselves with certain
mental and moral faculties, blaming in human conduct some
things, approving other things.
Practically no one is moulding his conduct entirely and
297
exclusively on the Levitical precepts or on the Sermon on the
Mount on the Old Testament or the New. Those who sup-
pose themselves to rest on such authority will find as a matter
of fact, that they are in reality only illustrating out of scrip-
ture what they have learned from the developed conscience of
mankind. We express boldly and openly what so many gentle
souls think timidly. They, under the influence of good sense
and right feeling, interpret scriptural statements and ecclesias-
tical formularies, so as to meet the requirements of a conscience
better instructed and more enlightened. It is not that each
man begins afresh, it is that each man begins as the heir of all
the past. And not only from one past ; the converging lines
come from Palestine, from Chaldaea, from ancient India,
ancient Egypt, from Athens and from Home. These all
converge in each English soul sometimes knowingly to the
individual most frequently not known by him. But however
unknown to him, each Christian Englishman is, in his moral
and religious life, the possessor of what can be traced to the
Schools of Stoics and Platonists, to the saints of Palestine,
and to the contemplatives of a remoter East. The most
ardent Protestant has within him influences derived from the
"Imitation of Christ." The most submissive Roman Catholic
is the unconscious possessor of a tone of religious and moral
thought derived from the German prophet so gentle by his
fireside, so terrible to his foes who drank the wine of indepen-
dence in his Saxon cup and, bending his head, not in humility,
but in opposition, dashed on into the battle of ideas. Rome had
been resting on her golden couch for 600 years ; the clarion
voice that roused her is now an unacknowledged inspiration to
Rome as well as to Geneva. Luther beheld with unquailing
spirit the two authorities wherewith the past was clothed with
majesty the Pope and the Empire. To them he opposed his
heart in itself an indestructible power. To Luther even the
Bible was subordinated to the individual conscience the Bible
might perish : the eternal gospel is in the soul and in
humanity.
298
Such is the Cosmic Faith, the universal foundation, the
universal religion. We find it in Abraham, in the Patriarchs,
in the Psalms, in Job, in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, Micah,
in the discourses and parables of Christ, in the Epistles of
St. Paul, and of St. James the brother of Jesus. Even when
the ecclesiastical deluge covered the Paradise of God, the
Cosmic spirit passed over the waters and the billows sparkled
here and there with unexpected light. That sentence of
Abelard Priest and Monk was a ray of light. " Reason is
an interior and permanent revelation, the light enlightening
every man who cometh into this world. Reason has guided to
God all the sages of antiquity. Of their salvation we need not
doubt."
To us now, in our stage of moral growth, with our antece-
dents and surroundings, could a thousand miracles make us
more certain than we are, that we must win excellence by
noble efforts, must subordinate instinct and passion to reason,
to conscience, to the purest sentiments of the heart and soul ?
That we must bend selfish personal ends before the majesty of
justice, goodness, mercy ? That what we gain now we gain for
ever, that what we lose we lose for ever ?
" I slept and dreamed that life was beauty ?
" I woke and found that life was duty,
" Was the dream, then, a shadowy lie ?
" Toil on, sad heart, courageously,
" And thou shalt find thy dream to be
" A noonday light and truth to Thee."
Ecclesiastical practices rest on ecclesiastical authority, but
the truths which profoundedly move the soul and the life are
the truths of natural religion, natural morals, the experi-
ences of man, and the facts of nature. We have from science
learnt the vastness of the universe, the antiquity of the world,
and the gradual growth of its inhabitants; that instead of a
fall of man there has been a raising up of man ; that Paradise
has not been lost but has to be won ; that God's mode has
been by gradual evolution, not by sudden creation. By the
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recent science of comparative religion we have learnt that
sublime truths are scattered here and there amidst the religions
and philosophies of the world. That if the Jews had sacred -
books, so had the Hindoos, and the Parsees, and the Chinese.
That if medieval Christianity presented to us a dramatic judg-
ment day, so did Egypt and Chaldea. That Incarnations,
and the Trinity, and the Cross are not of Christian origin.
That legends and truths are scattered here and there amongst
various religions. That some of the sublimest of the moral
precepts of Christianity are to be found in the writings of
philosophers and in the sacred books of the Buddhists, of the
Brahmins, and of Confucius, ages before the Christian Era.
That Baptism and the Lord's Supper owe their origin to the
Essenes; and that most ecclesiastical rites can be traced to
Paganism. These discoveries distress some, who have been
resting their spiritual All on one line of authority. Happy for
those dear, gentle souls, when they can perceive that what they
really prize rests upon a Cosmic and not a narrow basis. I
wish not to unsettle another's faith, for some have not strength
to brave the mental conflict ; but if the faith is unsettled, and
at the present time such unsettlement is widely spread,
then it is our joyful privilege to invite the ^timid soul out
of the narrow groove into the wide temple of the universe
there to learn the best things, known not merely to the
clergy of one Church, but to the competent within and
without all the Churches. In all the most earnest matters
we appeal to human nature to the consensus of the competent
to the moral sentiment of the thoughtful, the disinterested,
and the good. Thus, if we are in doubt about a course of
action, an appeal to scriptural texts would be of doubtful
benefit. But let a man ask himself, (1) What should I advise
to a loved friend who trusted me ? (2) What should I wish to
have done when life is ebbing away and I look back ? (3) If
my action regards another, what should I wish, if, sorrowing,
I were to go and stand by his tomb ? (4) What have I thought
as to this in my best and highest moments ? When,
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" At twilight's holy, heartfelt hour,
" Man in his better soul has power."
One of our novelists describes a young man who has led
another unto sin, and the next morning he awakes and sees
the sun rising, and hears the birds chirping on the honey-suckle
clustering over his window, and he sees the picture of his
mother on the wall, and the memento of a dear friend who had
loved him in the days of his innocence. He is overwhelmed
with shame and remorse, and would give worlds to undo what
he has done, lamenting those happy mornings when he could
look back on his actions and say " In the integrity of my heart
and the innocency of my hand, I have done this." " My righte-
ousness I hold fast and will not let it go ; My heart shall not
reproach me so long as I live." That is Cosmic religion, for it
belongs to the whole of the human race. All the best utter-
ances of the Old and New Testament belong to Cosmic religion,
" He hath showed thee, man, what is good ; and what doth
the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and
to walk humbly with thy God." Such sentiments inspire Psalm
after Psalm: if we omit some expressions of barbaric vengeance,
the Psalter is the Prayer Book of the Cosmic faith ; the Book
of Job is its Poem; Christ is its Prophet; St. Paul and St.
James its Apostles. Often have I invited young people joyfully
to raise their hearts to God by an almost daily use of the
Psalms, and then they would become inspired with the Cosmic
faith, God in All. Wordsworth has carried on the same idea in
the melody of his song. How Cosmic was the Ideal of Christ !
He did not even exclude the corrupt the dews of heaven
falling on the gardens of the just and the unjust. He presented
to his disciples no creed but love the love of the sinner, the
love of the fallen, the love of the outcast, the love of nature, the
love of God. Love was to be the only mark of his discipleship.
The disinterested, unselfish, self-sacrificing love, which is the
gift and heritage of the pure in heart, who, through the
medium of human love, gaze trustfully into the love of the
AH Holy lover of souls. St. Paul, writing to the Koreans,
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proclaims distinctly the sufficiency of natural religion for the
religious and moral guidance of man. Persons reared in any
narrow sectarian training try to judge others by the limitations
of their creed ; hut how few are so bigoted as to be able to do
so. The Athanasian creed may have been recited in church,
but its anathemas are displaced by the Spirit of Christ as soon
as the utterer comes across his ' neighbour ' ; and we know how
wide an interpretation Christ gave to that word. It may be
that the neighbour says he believes in One God, but knows
nothing about His Trinity ; reveres the teaching of Christ, but
without declaring him to be the Deity, applying to him the
saying of his mother, when she said " Your father (Joseph) and
I have sought you sorrowing." All your kindly social inter-
course is based on the Cosmic idea the brotherhood of all
men, the universal fatherhood of God. Often have I invited
our young people to practice acts of Adoration, Contrition,
Thanksgiving, Supplication A.C.T.S. to God as the all pre-
sent, all pervading Soul of the universe, with Whom we unite
our soul in spiritual communion. That is the great Cosmic
sacrament, limited to no sect, needing no priest.
Cosmic religion is in harmony with science, with progress,
with liberty, with human sympathy ; it includes all men, nay,
all worlds and all forms of future life. I am not to day
attempting to prove to you the sublime realities of the Cosmic
Theism. Again and again during the years of our gracious
intercommunion, have I attempted to illustrate the wonders
of the Divine mind, and the grounds we have for loving trust
in His Paternal Providence. On what trembling balances of
powers, on what delicate and almost imperceptible chemistries
does man's tenure of earth and life rest, but behind these
gauze-like veils we see the sympathetic compassion of our
Heavenly Father, with His adaptations and compensations.
Cosmic Theism can never, if honestly and consistently held,
be a persecuting, an arrogant, or a contemptuous faith, for it,
by its very nature, embraces all. It rejoices in the beauties
and excellencies of all religions all belong to humanity, and
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all are under God. Buf the Cosmic Theist gladly beholds a
progress in religious ideas. The gods of the Pagan Mythology
entered the Elysian fields amidst the Jubilee of Warriors. The
god of the Catholic Mythology entered Jerusalem (which means
the City of Peace) amidst the waving of the green branches of
the early palm and amidst the joyous chaunt of children. The
Cosmic Theist has profound trust in knowledge, for knowledge
is the revelation of God. Man has to be emancipated from the
bondage of error, to be enlightened so as to stand outside its
obscurities. Man has to learn to know himself, to know the
world surrounding him, to cast the anchor of Knowledge into
the rock of Truth, to emerge from fantasies into realities.
The Spirit of Truth does not make its temple into a sepulchre
of thoughts which once breathed, and lived, and moved, but
now are dead. Her temple is the dwelling place of thoughts
that live. The Spirit of Truth admits of no finality. The
Spirit of Dogma formularises a proposition, and says it must
endure for ever. The Spirit of Truth reverently and gratefully
looks backward ; She sees the Eternal One in the past, but also
in the present and in the future. The lover of truth never
stops ; he is like the Arab, who, when the morning comes, folds
up his tent and advances. To us the Universe is a vast cathe-
dral, and the choral chaunts from souls diverse and countless
swell upwards in confused but harmonious symphony, tumbling
and blending and rolling overhead among the vast arches and
around the clustered pillars whilst the ground of existence
trembles joyfully beneath the footsteps of the invisible God.
If in a few earnest hearts we can infuse such thoughts,
" We feed the high traditions of the world,"
" And leave our spirits in our brethren's breasts."
Let us strive to follow the Christ of Nazareth, whose im-
mortal utterance will inspire us " For this end was I born,
and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear
witness unto the Truth."
Cosmic religion is a religion not only of duty and of love and
of progress, but it is a religion of beauty. The All-Beautiful
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God is its centre, its inspiration, its joy. Let no man impove-
rish the world of one particle of grace or beauty. True religion
will cultivate the beauty and grandeur of the Arts ; Painting
will blend with Poetry, and Music chaunt immortal harmonies.
Let our Cosmic faith be an over-mastering reality. There
is only one great vice, namely Selfishness. There is only one
great virtue, namely Thoughtful Sympathy Thoughtful Love.
Knowledge is precious, but its preciousness consists in this,
that true Knowledge is Mercy. We believe in Immortality;
we believe in the Eternity of all life and all actions. But our
object now is this present life. Whatever may be the future
life, when it arrives we must do our best then. But now our
duty is to make to others this present life more excellent,
more holy, more happy, more wise, more beautiful. If men
are at enmity with God, it is because they are at enmity
one with the other. Let us strive to unite men class to
class nation to nation family to family in the holy en-
thusiasm of Humanity. You, much loved and loving friends,
acted on that idea when, eleven years ago, you laid the founda-
tion of this Church. You thought You " would put your creed
into your deed, nor speak with double tongue." Believing in
God, in nature, in human life and in the 'human soul, you
desired to remind yourselves and to remind your friends in
Reading, that whatever is best and noblest in the creeds of the
Churches is what human life has inspired, and human hearts
loved, and human sympathy blessed. You perceive that all
nature is, through God's presence, supernatural; that Christ
was the offspring of humanity, not its Lord ; and that his is the
greatness of humanity, not the abasement of God ; that prayer
is not a petition for interference, but an aspiration of Adoration,
Contrition, Thanksgiving and Supplicating aspiration ; that
immortality is of the nature of things, not by some portent ;
that the infinite grandeur of God cannot be measured by man's
littleness ; that Christianity is a grand human fact, not a pre-
ternatural exception.
You. have been attending these services wherein so imperfectly
304
I have striven to share your thoughts. You have taught the
children on Sunday. You have borne witness to the truth as
to your souls it seemed. This little Church is a monument of
self-sacrificing zeal. You have realised that God and duty
belong to the present at present God to us is only here ; to us
the New Jerusalem is not in the clouds, it covers the world, and
its limit is our furthest horizon. You embarked in an arduous
enterprise. Universal Truths are, at first, only held by a few.
You resolved to bear witness to the truth ; to remind all our
dear and honoured friends around us, that universal religion
embraces all of them. At first they resented the erection of
this Church. I am not surprised ; they supposed we were going
to cast scorn on the traditions they loved. They found it was
not so, and to day I gratefully return my ministry to your
hands with the happy conviction that a bond of holy sympathy
combines us together, and combines us together with them.
EVENING.
My very dear friends and fellow workers, to day I resign the
ministerial charge which you intrusted to me nine years and a
half ago. It has always been my opinion that amongst us a
pulpit should not be occupied more than ten years. After
allowing for absences and occasional repetitions of a sermon,
a ministry of that duration implies 864 discourses, which is
equivalent to the composition of 36 printed volumes. A man
might, by keeping himself up to the level of the times, publish
three volumes and a half each year, on topics of mere general
interest, but you do not, by considerable sacrifice, erect a
church for the worship of God, and the promotion of Spiritual
Religion and holiness of life, in order to obtain on the Sunday,
a repetition of the ideas which have occupied our minds in
political meetings, or in gatherings for literary, artistic, musical
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or social objects. If, for the sake of exciting wider interest and
receiving larger attendances, this pulpit should be used on
Sunday for political or other secular purposes, I should cease to
be an attendant, and that would be the case with a considerable
proportion of those who have hitherto attended our services
with regularity.
But, after composing 35 vols. on religious, spiritual and
moral truths, or on topics directly leading up to such, one
becomes diffident as to one's power of being able to impart
continued interest to the treatment of subjects limited in their
range, unless recourse be had to mere sensationalism.
This thought was in my mind when, in my circular of last
October, I signified my intention of withdrawing from any per-
manent ministerial functions, so as to devote myself more fully
to private literary pursuits. I said, " short ministries are
injurious to congregations, and therefore I had declined attrac-
tive offers which might have taken me away at earlier dates.
But a change of ministry, kindly and thoughtfully made, after
nearly ten years is not without advantage," therefore with less
reluctance, yielding to personal considerations and objects, I
resolved to terminate the ministerial responsibilities which
commenced amongst you on February 9th, 1879. After an
absence of three months I propose to return to Reading as a
continued resident, always, as heretofore, glad to co-operate in
local interests in a town endeared to me by many ties; and
as a worshipper in our Church, though without any official
connection therewith, supplementing my modest pecuniary
resources by literary work and occasional pulpit duties, else-
where, or in Reading, when for a brief period such might be
desired, in consequence of gaps arising between more perma-
nent arrangements. But I should like my name to be removed
from the Church Board, so that in the event of future tempo-
rary engagements arising between us, it should be clear that I
act as supplying your pulpit, and not as the responsible minis-
ter. It is my earnest hope that you may speedily obtain a
resident minister. A succession of ministers, if regarded as
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candidates for the pulpit, is apt to produce a critical spirit, and
preferences arise of a party character. Whilst always glad to
render friendly information, I shall not embarrass my successor
or yourselves hy advice and criticism. But, in the absence of
any regular minister, you will know that whenever I am in
Reading I shall be glad, when requested, to render those minis-
terial services needed sometimes in the course of the week, and
which cause expense and inconvenience if sought from London.
I allude to baptisms, marriages, and funerals. I have nothing
else of a personal kind to say, beyond what I expressed to you
in my circular ; my grateful sense of your affection, your har-
mony, your zeal and loving earnestness for the great principles
of which our Church stands as the local representative. My
thanks too are due, not only to yourselves, for much sympathy
and much forbearance, but also to many kind friends, here and
elsewhere, outside our regular congregation.
On these matters of personal feeling I will say no more, for
I do not wish to impart to the joyful occasion of your anniver-
sary any of those painful emotions which belong to parting.
Nine years and a half cannot pass without weaving many
bonds of pleasant kindly goodwill. It is not always the
case that, as now between ourselves, such a period of time
elapses without, as far as I know, a single word or feeling
having tarnished our perfect harmony. To the Officers of this
Church and to our Honorary Organist I offer my sincere
thanks.
Turning now from these more private considerations, let me
continue a summary of the Truths I have endeavoured to
enforce and illustrate from this tribune.
I have taught Revelation as revealed through Nature and
through Man. Therefore I have taught Cosmic religion,
namely, that religion is not the possession of any one Church
or Sect, but is co-extensive with mind; all minds existing in
the Supreme Mind. That an Eternal Universe is inspired by
an Eternal Mind. That the universe is an eternal growth, an
eternal evolution, and might be an eternal progress. That all
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intelligences have the power of helping on or retarding that
growth. Hence, through the ignorance of some, the faultiness
of others, the universal growth is but too frequently retarded.
That the moral law is the ever enduring manifestation of the
Mind of God, to be discovered by the exercise of thought and
experience. That each man has within him a faculty, itself
the product of ages, whereby he approves goodness and con-
demns vice. That what is good and what is vicious, he learns
chiefly by its effects on human happiness and human character.
Rejecting the Hell and the Heaven of the Pagan, Chaldean
and Christian mythologies, I have continually dwelt on the
indubitable verity, that each act produces its effect and that
effect endures. Hence the absolute certainty of retribution.
Each good action, each good word, each good thought, each
bad action, each bad word, each bad thought, endures alike
and always. I have constantly illustrated that great truth from
the sacred books of the Buddhists, from the writings of the
Philosophers, from the results of modern investigations, aided
by the great thinkers of ancient and modern times ; we have
together desired goodness, heroism, love, devotedness, purity,
self-sacrifice. We have read from the sacred books of the
various Faiths of mankind, from the pages of ancient philoso-
phy, from the mystical writings of Christian fathers and
medieval saints, as also the luminous thoughts of the moderns.
We have recognised all as component parts of the universal
temple of religion and of virtue. We have forgotten our little
sanctuary, with its eighty or ninety worshippers, in remem-
brance of the universal family of humanity wherein we take
our humble place. Under the Unitarian name we gratefully
acknowledge our historic origin and the enlightening influences
of the Unitarian Theology. But we also prize the name be-
cause it has broadened its significance, and now implies the
unity of divine operations, and the spiritual unity of mankind.
If, as Unitarians or Religious Rationalists, we thus call our-
selves " Liberal " Religionists, it is not because we deem
illiberal those friends in the Trinitarian Churches to whom
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our heart goes forth in the fulness of brotherly love; but
because we desire to emphasise what the dictionaries tell us
the word " Liberal " signifies : " free by birth " "gentle in
manners" "befitting a man free and refined" "generous"
"open-hearted" "not narrow or contracted" "enlarged
inspirit" "Catholic." If, amidst the many imperfections of
my ministry, any word has escaped my lips opposed to such
sentiments of reverent love to all, I lament it and wish such
word blotted out by the tear of the Eecording Angel. These
sublime, universal truths I have not rested on any Bible,
Church, miraculous man, or miraculous statement I do not
deny miracles, but I say they are unproved. I dare not found
religious and moral life on what may turn out to be merely a
beautiful legend. I have never scoffed at those legends. They
are held as realistic by some unspeakably dear to us. But I
must speak the truth, even though I step reverently over the
grave of my mother These universal truths I have found in
the universal heart of mankind. Eeligion is Cosmic and
Spiritual ; Universal and Individual. The Cosmic Faith arises
out of the Cosmic whole. In its spiritual aspects, as affecting
the relationship between God and each individual heart, it
comes to us specially from the chosen souls of humanity.
Amongst these, one name stands supreme. Like music over
the waters the name of Christ comes to us, bearing the spiritual
memories of the eighteen hundred years. In spiritual religion
the name of Christ is pre-eminent. He was not God. I know
not that He possessed any miraculous office, or any miraculous
gifts, but as St. Bernard says, " He drank of the torrent and
was inebriated with the waters of Divine Life." He did not
reveal anything actually new ; but he emphasised great truths,
and he caused veiled truths to step forth visibly. The Truths
of Spiritual Eeligion What are some of these Truths ?
1. Fatherhood of God. That the Divine Soul of the Universe
is a paternal Spirit, a loving Spirit, fostering, cherishing all
with the breathings of a divine sympathy. Philosophy revealed
the Cosmic soul. Sanctity revealed the consoling Spirit of
Divine Love.
2. Hence the sense of filial relationship arose ; and St. Paul,
the pupil of Hebrew psalmists and Stoic philosophers, was able,
with a realisation deeper than he obtained from them, to say
with Jesus of Nazareth, " Our Father who art in Heaven."
Man in his often sorrowful pilgrimage needs sympathy. He
has thus created to himself human Gods. But Christ presented
to them the Supreme Beneficence, circling all with the Ever-
lasting Arms.
3. Hence the conscious communion between our soul and
God in Adoration, Contrition, Thanksgiving, Supplication.
Often have I invited you and our young people to practice those
spiritual acts, recalling them by the word " A.C.T.S." Such
would be our Eucharist, our spiritual communion.
4. Hence a consciousness of sin, more spiritual, more deep,
more contrite than when regarded solely as a violation of the
Cosmic laws which connect goodness with happiness, vice with
misery.
Spiritual Religion causes us to realise that sin separates us
from union with God, clouds that sanctity of soul whereby
once we beheld the Divine Vision. It has been my effort to
prove that the Religious Rationalist, holding a Cosmic Theism
in harmony with progress, with liberty, with science, history,
and thought, has not thereby separated himself from the
traditions of sanctity, and the lineage of the holy ones who
have walked with God. That to us, as to them, Spiritual
Religion is a reality, and contrition something deeper than the
fears of prudence and the remorse of kindness. It injures us,
injures others, injures the Cosmic order but also, it distances
the soul from God. We reject the Hell of eternal torment, we
admit only as a dramatic type, the legend of the general
judgment. We find a judgment nearer and more certain.
Cosmic Religion would not be a complete religion, would
not be a spiritual religion, would not be a happy religion,
unless it could pour the balm of consolation over the heart
bruised by sin. Christ is the ideal hero of the sinner ; deprive
him of that glory, and you shear him of his locks of beauty,
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and tear from his shoulders the blood-stained garment of his
pacific royalty. Christ, like all holy men, realised the idea of
sin, and therefore to raise from sin, to bring back to God, was
one of the sacred passions of his soul. He enlists in the science
of such ideas, all the pathos of Oriental imagery. The philo-
sophers of India, China, Egypt, Greece, and Rome had not
exhausted human possibilities. A voice was heard in the East
in that land of poetic dreams, where the very glory of the
night is an unceasing miracle, and where the wrapt soul more
easily loses itself in God, and exalts itself in sense of conscious
union with Him. The voice said " Ego sum Pastor Bonus,"
and the walls of the Christian Catacombs have made us familiar
with the gracious form of the Good Shepherd, a pilgrim on the
desolate moor to gather unto his bosom the lamb wandering
and wounded.
And again the voice said " Come unto me, all ye that labour
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." And how
would he give them rest ? By leading them on to God, to the
paternal God, to his Father and their Father. And so the
Prodigal Son is made by Christ to utter his cry of Spiritual
Religion. Crushed, destroyed, desolated by sin, he does not
remain in the isolation of remorse, but he says, " I will arise
and go unto my Father and I will say to him Father, I am
not worthy to be called Thy son." Christ makes it clear who
is his Father, to whom the parable points.
The exaggerations and errors of the popular mythology must
not cause us to forget our indebtedness to Christ. We cannot
spare the heroes of sanctity from the Cosmic Temple of hu-
manity. It is not folly, but gratitude, which has printed the
name of the Nazarene on so many sorrowful hearts. Other
teachers either compromised with the sinner or rejected him.
Christ took him up and bore him on his shoulders as a trophy
of spiritual victory, borne into his gracious pathetic school of
thought. Plato bore the olive branch into the groves of the
Academy. Christ led into his school little children, suffering
men, -fallen women ; and in Oriental imagery he would be their
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Shepherd. In the East, the shepherd goes before the sheep,
and they follow him, because they love him. Christ was a poet,
and he appealed to the poetic element seldom quite absent from
the human heart. Dry precepts would never have moved to
penitence ; but who has ever been insensible to the story of the
Prodigal, or of Lazarus and his sisters, or the dramatic pathos
of Mary Magdalene's history.
Let us not destroy the poetic beauty of ancient legend by
lowering it into a dogma. Let us remember the language and
the manners of the East, and we shall understand the symbolic
legend of Lazarus how Christ spoke to the youth not physi-
cally dead, but dead in sin, and how, when Christ spoke, the
dead arose and answered him. We shall understand how and
why the sorrowful and the forsaken cast themselves at his feet,
a homage which in our colder habits is replaced by the saluta-
tion of respect, the kiss of affection, or the hand of friendship.
Cosmic Religion has to come to us in its spiritual form, if it
is to heal the sorrows of the soul. The Prodigal Son and Mary
Magdalene belong to us as well as to the days gone by. It is
our duty and our privilege to show to the sinner crushed and
forsaken, that there is an alternative without having recourse
to legends which the reason can no longer maintain. The story
of Mary Magdalene embodies Eternal Truths the sadness of
sin the heroism of the return the trust wherewith the good
love the wanderer restored to noble endeavours. The dramatic
characteristics of the narrative have proved an infinite benefit,
as serving to show how trust in a good man can redeem the
forlorn. Mary Magdalene was described as the woman who
was a sinner notorious throughout the city. We can picture
her career, we know it all ; we see her in her early youth, her
air of liberty, her vanity, and her worldliness. We see her
face, her hair, her dress, her attitude. We see her flaunting in
the pride of her majestic beauty. Then we behold her, the grace
of virtue perished. The heart hardened, first corrupted, then
corrupting. Then she, somehow, comes across the Nazarean
Teacher. The voice of Jesus moved her that voice which had
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so often spoken to God, spoke benignly to Man. The grace of
virtue gave it eloquence sadness gave it pathos simplicity
gave it power. He was to her such a contrast. She, all for
effect, he aiming at nothing. She all propriety before others,
all license with the criminal, he careless before others, all
tenderness to the criminal. She thinks, I have been loved
by the wicked, I should desire to be loved by the good, if
anything could save me, his love might save me. He has said
" The bruised reed I would not break," and often when he saw
the peasants in the field blowing up their fire, he said, as a
child might speak in his dreams, " The spark in the smoulder-
ing fire I would not quench." Perchance the breath of his
pure lips might fan the spark in my heart into a flame of holy
purpose shall I go to him ? and she goes ; and as she goes
her feet print on the sands of time one of the grandest pages of
the Gospel. And she goes more valiant than Judith and
Deborah her heart beats, not with fear, but with love and
victory. Her cheek is flushed, not with shame, but with
spiritual power. According to the Eastern customs, she pros-
trates herself before the Teacher, she kisses his feet and bathes
them with her golden tresses. She takes from her breast the
only ornament she has retained, the vase of costly ointment
she pours out upon him the fragrant oil, and then breaks the,
vase she breaks it, that it may never be used for another. She
becomes the disciple nay more than disciple the friend of
Christ. He becomes the frequent guest at her house. She is
found at his feet when he is speaking at his cross when he is
dying at his grave when he is buried. She even fancies she
sees him appear, tries to touch him, but cannot. She seems to
hear his voice that voice of pathetic tenderness ; she at least
could never forget that voice that had restored her to hope,
had brought her back to God. Such is Spiritual Religion.
Not to stay with Christ, but to go on to God. Not to rest on
Christ, or on any Saint, or Church, or Sacrament, or Holy
Book, but to go to God, and on Him rest, and in Him hope,
and in Hun eternally rejoice as may you ever, sweet friends,
now and evermore.
THE DUTY OF THOUGHT/
" In the multitude of my thoughts within me,
Thy consolations delight my soul." Psalm 94.
WE are accustomed to speak of liberty of thought and of
free thought, but we advocate more than liberty of thought, we
inculcate the religious duty of thought.
The duty of thought ! Thought exercised as the highest
gift of God, directed towards the highest objects.
Ecclesiastical rulers would rather we did not think : such a
one thought 1800 years ago, or 300 years ago, you need not
think, he did it for you. Just as well say such a one was good
1800 years ago, you need not be good, he did it for you.
The duty of thought the duty of free thought is falsely
supposed by some to mean the right of thinking whatever we
like, true or false, right or wrong, according to our passions
or caprice the goal is truth, not license. It is our duty to
strive loyally after all truth within the range of our intelligence.
If we desire the end, we use the means, therefore we think.
If Clergymen say to us, "you will find all truth in such a
book," we reply, "it is only by thought, by examination, by
consequent proof, that we can be satisfied whether such a book
is all true." Thought can alone decide whether it be the
word of God or the word of man. If any one should say,
"such is decided by interior inspiration," we reply, " it is only
by the exercise of thought that we can decide whether or not
the supposed inspiration is only a self-confident illusion."
Such satisfying illusions console the holders of opposing
beliefs.
* This Sermon was not intended lor publication, and written to be spoken,
not to be read, but it was a favourite with the preacher, one of those he
preached in his first year of ministry (Croydon, March 23rd, 1873), and the
last he delivered (Sale, May 3rd, 1891). Between these dates he preached
it 21 times up and down the country, from Edinburgh to Exeter, from
Whitby to Swansea.
314
By judgment, by thought, by inquiry, we can only discover
whether what claims to be revelation is so or not. We have
inherited intuitions, moral and mental instincts, these have to
be tested by thoughtful examination.
The Priest says, "submit to my Infallible Church, accept
the Pope as your Infallible Guide." By thought we must
investigate and test the Infallible claim. If the exercise of
thought causes a man to arrive at the opinion that such a
Church is Infallible, the infallible claim only rests upon his
private judgment, and can not reasonably be regarded as more
certain than the conclusion of his individual thought.
A balance of probability has made him decide that such a
book, or church, or man, is infallible, therefore all the state-
ments made by such book, church, or man, have to him a
balance of probability in their favour nothing more a proba-
bility rather less conclusive than the authority of his own
previous conclusion, because it is a step further off. A weak,
or an imaginative mind, may, after that opinion has been
arrived at, feel convinced that it is infallibly true. But be
convinced that your next door neighbour may, after his investi-
gations, feel quite as certain that you are infallibly wrong.
The Roman Catholic Church, and those opposing sects which
imitate it, say, "when once your researches have persuaded
you that our sect is the only true one, you must never again
doubt, or question your conclusion." Such a course for the
most part secures permanence, but at the cost of the higher
morality, seeing it is not lawful to abrogate the Divine gift of
thought.
If, however, it is truly urged that English people ought not
to examine the grounds of their belief, but only to read what-
ever can be said in its defence, the same principle must be
true for Hindoos, Buddhists, Mahomedans, and Pagans. In
that case Christian Missionaries are guilty of a great sin in
trying to make such people renounce the doctrines of their
respective systems. Nay, Christianity commenced its career
by the perpetrations of such a sin on a colossal scale. If free
315
thought be wrong, the Apostles were the greatest malefactors,
for they encouraged free thought to shake the faith alike of
Jew and Gentile.
The Christian Missionary reproaches the Brahmin for not
inquiring enough, and reproaches the Christian for inquiring at
all. He uses the two-fold weapon of inquiry and authority:
inquiry is represented as the duty of the Brahmin if he would
escape damnation ; inquiry is forbidden to the Christian lest
he should incur damnation. The Christian foreigner, with his
newer Ecclesiastical Religion, urges authority upon the Brah-
min whose religion was flourishing in India before Moses fled
from Egypt.
Either all men should inquire into their respective creeds
and sacred books, or all submit without inquiry to the sacred
books and dogmas of the sect in which they have been reared.
Whatever is the right mode must be alike right for Hindoo,
Jew, Parsee, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Evangelical.
The moral and religious duty of thought does not signify
that sceptical indifference is to take the place of orthodoxy,
but that thought is to take the place of unreasoning credulity.
It is most important to establish this principle. We must
remember that each moral, social, scientific, and religious pro-
gress has been a heresy ; in other words it has been thought
struggling against authority. Moses was a heretic to the
Egyptians ; Jesus Christ was a heretic to those who sat in the
chair of Moses ; Luther was a heretic to the Christianity he
scandalised ; the science of this age is heretical to those who
sit in the chair of Luther. All the abuses condemned by
thought have appealed to authority. The Divine right of kings
the abject submission of the oppressed intolerance the
judicial murder of witches, of heretics, and of all independent
thinkers slavery the subjection of women persecution
ecclesiastical despotism all such inhuman errors have rested
on the authority of a Bible, or a Church, falsely deemed
infallible.
What we want is reverent thought, not license at once
316
captious and dishonest. License without thought destroys, but
does not build up. License may succeed in uprooting religious
beliefs, in insulting religious sentiments, in desecrating the
venerable rites of superstition, but without reverent and con-
scientious thought nothing arises out of the desolated ruins.
A foolish worship, half comforting, half terrifying the souls of
the credulous, ought not to be replaced by a license loosening
moral bonds, encouraging ignoble instincts, and destroying
human hope ; such hideous alternative need not be, and
heretofore has not been.
What untold blessings do we owe to thought ! Thought has
displayed to our reverent vision, or nobler ideal of religion, a
sublimer conception of God, a truer and more beneficent view
of nature and of man. How much has thought added to the
grace and beauty of life.
History so useful when combined with thought : experience,
which is thought guided by the accumulation of events:
science, which is the result of thought, investigating, along
such road how wonderfully has the human race advanced.
Unless thought had conquered ecclesiasticism, and triumphed
over ecclesiastical dogmas, the decree forbidding interest for
money, would be rendering commercial life either impossible
or criminal, or as in former times solely in the hands of Jews
and non-Christians. The drama would still be accursed a free
literature anathematised (as it would be again if ecclesiastics became
absolute) . Investigations would be stifled ; men treated as
children or mental slaves ; persecution renewed, and ecclesias-
ticism instead of striving for a pacific victory in controversy,
would be struggling in unholy warfare to possess the faggots of
Smithfield ; to enkindle them in the name of Christ for the
torture of their adversaries.
Dogmatic Churches like the men who obey, but dread the
men who think. Thought must ever be in advance of dogmatic
Churches, therefore thought must ever be a heresy. Each
thought which has emancipated and blessed has first been
accursed or prayed against the thinker prayed for as a heretic
317
" from everlasting damnation, good Lord deliver him ; from
murder, adultery, heresy, and schism, good Lord deliver him,"
and there has been expressed against him that
union of contempt and condemnation which ought next to
drag him to the prison or the stake ; but thought comes in,
and combining with human sentiments the terrible dogma
retreats into the regions of the unreal. The gentle Curate
mildly entones the anathema over pews filled with benevolent
people, wherein he is gladly conscious that thought has
destroyed at once the venom and the meaning of each denun-
ciation he utters. Whilst in an adjacent Nonconformist
Chapel the fervent Minister describes to a sympathising, but
(technically speaking) unconverted congregation, the exclusive
blessings of the converted, and the intelligent deacon listens with
approving complacency, not because he delights in the message
of damnation, but because thought has instructed him bow to
explain it away, so that it shall include no one at all for whom
Thought has already attained so much in religion, morality,
social life, and human progress, that we must be hopeful for
the future, so long as it is encouraged, not stifled. But it is of
supreme importance that the errors detected by thought should
be removed from the creeds of the Churches by the agency of
those Liberal Churchmen who have detected the gravity of
such errors without their utter removal, no secure progress in
a dogmatic Church is possible. Great spiritual leaders like
Dean Stanley, Bishop Colenso, Frederic Robertson, Dr. Jowett,
and others, may influence and elevate numerous souls, may
remove superstitious fears, and the immoral spirit of persecu-
tion and dogmatic ill-will ; but unless the false dogma is
removed from the Creed and the Liturgy, it will remain as a
loathsome seed, capable of being reared into a pestiferous
growth by the consistent zeal of any ignorant popular Curate.
How noble, how beneficent, would at this moment, be the
great historic Church of England, if it had cherished the spirit
of internal reform with which it commenced its Protestant-
318
career if in each age, guided by its most thoughtful, indepen-
dent, and human men, it had kept remoulding Liturgy, Creeds,
and Articles or, better still, dropping all Creeds and com-
pulsory Articles remoulded its Liturgy into a less dogmatic
form, so that all reverent liberal members could have found
therein a religious home, without any dishonest compromise.
We are driven into reluctant dissent, because we do not deem
it conscientious to prevaricate in religious utterances, to re-
spond or to act as if we believed statements which we have
proved to be untrue. But those statements are now under
the influence of thought, refuted by so many of the laity of the
Church of England, nay, even by an appreciable number of its
Clergy, that we marvel why they do not urge on reform as in
the early years of our National Protestant Church. Surely this
would be better than to keep on attending High Church Clergy-
men, who are acting out the formularies imposed upon them.
Thought distinguishes God from the material universe.
Thought distinguishes man from matter and from the brute.
If the entire universe without God were by an innate blind
force to crush one individual man, " that man," says Pascal,
" would be superior to the universe, and more noble than the
universe, for he would,. by thought, know what crushed him."
There is the grandeur of extent, and the grandeur of nobility
as to extent, man is nothing compared to the universe as to
nobility, a universe without thought would be as nothing com-
pared with man.
Place Socrates, or Plato, or Christ in presence of a senseless
giant. Do you believe that the spiritual philosopher would
incline before the giant, and render him homage? Magnify
the giant until he reaches the skies and contains space, nay,
until he becomes the universe, will these accumulations of
matter bridge over the abyss which separates bulk from
thought ?
The grandeur of thought is seen by the sacrifices it inspires.
For the results of thought, the spiritual of heroes mankind have
renounced ease, wealth, comfort, applause, renown.
319
The truly thoughtful man does not suppose himself to have
attained to all truth, or to have escaped all error. We revere
the men who think honestly, whatever may be the results of
their thought ; thus, we revere honest thinkers who arrive at
conclusions which seem to us incomplete, nay, partly erroneous.
Privileged souls princes in the aristocracy of mind we incline
our heads as they pass before historic memory we see them
braving power and persecution, walking with joy to the stake,
or exulting mounting the steps of the scaffold. There is a
man, whose name, like music over the waters, still vibrates
round the world martyr of spiritual thought, his outstretched
wounded hands still bless whatever is purest and noblest in the
world.
We esteem not much the man who prizes wealth, position,
power, glory ; but we revere the man, who, for the results of
thought, has sacrificed wealth, position, power, and repose.
If a man survives the criminations through which the integrity
of thought passes on to independence ; and, if in later years,
success and honour crown the toils of his mind, and in the
repose of life's decline, he seeks within his memories whatever
he deems the most glorious ; he will unhesitatingly crown with
the homage of his heart, and the approval of his conscience,
those hours when in solitude and in sadness, his mind painfully
worked out the great problems .of thought when he began to
live in the world of great souls and great intelligences, and to
wander like a king's son in the Elysian fields of great ideas,
amidst the solemn shades of mysteries unsolved.
When men have seen much, have lived much, have done
much, they feel incomplete unless they refresh themselves with
the sweet toils of thought, and elevate themselves with the
labours of the mind. This is the charm of books having
treated with men in social intercourse, they treat with men in
the tranquil intercourse of books. The mind finds there a
society calm, dignified, elevating. The study of the man of
thought is a temple peopled with ideas, like the Pantheon filled
with the Gods of the nations. There his mind is free, surrounded
320
by the reminders and the weapons of his liberation, there for-
getting the ills of life, he obtains courage to surmount them.
Some only esteem thought by its results, forgetting that it
is a divine act to exercise a divine gift. Thought elevates
humanity ; it also elevates the individual thinker. Thought
has a beauty peculiar to itself ; there is a beauty in the out-
ward world of colour, motion, life ; there is another beauty in
the silent world of thought, and in its relationship with the
Eternal.
To the thoughtless materialist this world is dead, mechanical,
and cold ; beneath the inspirations of thought, it lives, it is beau-
tiful, it is ideal, it is luminous with ever unfolding splendour.
Our interest in others is our interest in their thoughts. He
who concerns himself with men, as he would with minerals
and forest trees, knows nothing of man. In order to lay deep
foundations, and to build up nobler edifices of conviction,
thought stoops down, digs up the rotten basement, and clears
away the mouldering fabric.
The honest thinker is a reverent but strong reformer ; there-
fore like Christ, he has to bear his cross. One of the greatest
trials of life is experienced when discussing inherited credulities,
and investigating the truths which have to replace them The
heritage of thought is at once a glory and a martyrdom. When
men submit to authority without thought the expression of the
result is a Creed, and Sunday by Sunday they dangle their
manacles. When men are guided by thought, the opinions
formed are worthy of honour ; animated with enthusiasm
opinions become convictions, and incorporate themselves into
the life. Our ambition should be, by virtue of our convictions,
to rival the credulities of the men of faith ; it is a noble but
a difficult enterprise. Often opinions remain in the head,
without penetrating the soul and possessing the heart. A man
without convictions is the sport of every levity ; he is frivolous
and unhappy unless he has realised that great word of Plato,
" the only thing which gives value to life, is the love of wisdom,
the eternal beauty."
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Noble souls judge by the principles of right ; the skilful by
the lesson of experience. Each needs thought ; the union of
both solves the problem of life. Then the true Ark of God, which
has taken so much thought to build, is launched on the
troubled ocean of progress and of hope.
" The waters are flashing,
The white hail is dashing,
The lightnings are glancing,
The hoar spray is dancing.
" The whirlwind is rolling,
The thunder is tolling,
The forest is swinging,
The minster bells ringing.
" The earth is like ocean,
Wreck strewn and in motion ;
Bird, beast, man, and worm
Have crept out of the storm.
" And fear'st thou? and fear'st thou?
And see'st thou ? and hear'st thou ?
And drive we not free
O'er the terrible sea,
I and thou."
LAST PRAYERS.*
MORNING.
God, Sovereign and mysterious Spirit, Soul of all things
that have life, we -would raise our thoughts and aspirations
by the contemplation of Thy perfection and Thy goodness.
Blessed be Thy name, O God; blessed upon the lips of all
mankind ; for Thou carest for all, and lovest all. Thou art a
Father ever unto those who stray from the home of Thy laws.
In Thee the prodigal son finds love that fails not, a love bound-
less as the universe. Thou keepest watch over men in their
darkest moments, when they think themselves abandoned to
despair. Thou carest for us from the moment of our birth to
that which witnesseth our dying breath. Thou art ever encirc-
ling us with the arms of Thy benign laws, Thy wonderful
presence. Blessed it is to think of Thee, to lean on Thee ; in
Thee to seek repose for the wearied spirit ; to mourn before
Thee over the selfishness of evil desires, and to meditate holy
purposes in the light of Thy divine solicitude. May we never
pollute our conscience with the cowardice of an unprincipled
compromise or the turpitude of a falsehood. May we never
yield for applause the integrity of our soul, or for convenience
the integrity of our life. In health, prosperity, and strength
may we be modest, considerate, charitable, and earnest. When
health, and strength, and power alike fail us, may we be prayer-
ful, trustful, hopeful, gentle, and resigned. When the shadows
of life's last day close in around us ; when the battle is over,
because the energy is gone, let not our souls set in darkness,
may we be cheered by the memory of faults opposed, of virtues
exercised, of charities done, of goodness and happiness to others
* These two Prayers are here inserted as being the last used by him in
conducting public worship. Composed or selected as they were for use in
the service of God, they reveal to us better than any other utterance, the
sincerest and deepest thoughts and desires of his heart.
323
produced. May we then have confidence in Thee, God, our
Father ; may we place our hearts in Thy hands.
0, eternal God, we have often sought Thee in Thy holy places,
in the silence of the forest, or by the ocean's ceaseless roar:
we have listened to Thy voice in the storm, and felt Thy spirit
breathing on us in the twilight of the day's repose. We have
heard the still small voice of our conscience, inspired by Thee,
whispering its solemn warnings ; let us now, in the social
union of our charity and our prayer, raise to Thee our united
aspiration for goodness, wisdom, courage, tenderness, sincerity,
charity.
Thy glorious presence here and everywhere surrounds us;
breathe into us Thy peace, Thy repose, Thy heavenly calm.
Raise us from illusions and vanities into the temple of holier
thoughts.
Be merciful to us, Father. Judge us not as sons of wisdom
and of strength, but as wanderers fallible and frail. The judg-
ment we ask, grant that we, O Father, may extend to others.
We wander with our brothers and our sisters over the deserts
and gardens of the earth, beset with difficulties, oppressed with
toil. We began our journey in weakness, we continue it in
inconstancy, we accomplish it in weariness. But Thou, O
Father, art our strength, our hope, our joy; in Thee, on Thee,
we repose. Amidst the crowd of friends we often feel alone,
deserted, solitary. May we remember there is no solitude for
the mind in sympathy with Thee, God. The soul is often
darkened and the spirit saddened ; may we be cheered in
thought of Thy strength and Thy joy. From that strength
and joy may we gather the inspiration of trust and of gladness.
All things in Thy universe are doubtless in mysterious sympa-
thy with Thee. The stars, the seas, the winds, the mountains,
look on Thee, and love Thee, and are by Thee inspired. Thy
streams of beautiful light flow gently through all souls. Our
minds and hearts are bathed in Thee. May we be borne
upwards into the region of purest and holiest aspiration
through the starry regions of many reverent thoughts. May
our spirit ascend to Thee, and 011 Thee repose.
324
May our desires and wishes be purified. May goodness and
wisdom fill us and unite us in Thee, whether we meditate alone
or now in this house of holy thought ; or when we walk through
the noise of the busy town ; or hide ourselves amidst the green
hills; or saunter by the ocean's musical shore.
Thou art the fountain of beauty, of wisdom, of goodness, of
thought, of power. To thee all holiness and purity must tend.
We thank Thee, universal Father, all-pervading spirit, and in
Thee we desire to live, to work, to repose, to die. Amen.
EVENING.
O God, the giver of good, we thank Thee in health and
joy, our Maker, and our heavenly Father, We thank Thee,
heavenly Father.
For all the glory of the heavens, for the light of day, for the
beauty of the earth and sky, for the rain and for the sun-
shine, We thank Thee, heavenly Father.
For the blessed hours of silence, when night follows day ;
for the sleep of weary eyes and Thy providence around us,
We thank Thee, heavenly Father.
For our neighbours, kindred, and friends ; for all the good
they have done us, and for a tenfold blessing upon them,
We thank Thee, heavenly Father.
For the benefits of liberty and peace, for books of wisdom and
genius, and power to read them, We thank Thee, heavenly
Father.
God, we thank Thee for all the gifts we have welcomed,
for all we have forgotten, and for those which by our unwor-
thiness we have lost.
Give us patience, heavenly Father, when Thou breakest the
staff which upholds us, and Thy wisdom takes away what Thy
goodness gave ; when Thou makest the wife a widow and the
child fatherless, Thy will be done, heavenly Father.
When Thou showest man the evil of his ways and briugest
325
sorrow upon his soul for others, though the wrong word is not
yet unspoken, nor the deed of guilt yet undone, Have mercy
onus, heavenly Father; bring us back to Thee, heavenly
Father.
In all time of sorrow, and in the hour of remorse ; when we
learn the virtue which we believed not, and when our wicked-
ness finds us out, Be merciful unto us, most merciful Father.
By Thy knowledge of our weakness and Thy love to man
make our repentance healthful, and our shame wholesome ;
and bring us back to Thy holy will, Bring us back, we pray
Thee, heavenly Father.
When we turn from evil and do good ; when we forgive those
who have wronged us as we ask Thy forgiveness; when we
offer ourselves before Thee as guilty, but pray to be made fit for
Thy service, Take us again for Thy children, heavenly Father.
Lead us from our youth upward, and order all our lives;
when we are of full age, guide ; and in the time of drooping,
sustain us, These things we ask, heavenly Father.
Thou that knowest whence we came, we trust to Thee
whither we shall go ; teach us only Thy will on earth, and
Thy will be done with us hereafter. In Thy hands we leave
ourselves, heavenly Father. Thy will be done for ever,
merciful Father. Amen.
POSTSCEIPT.
Copy of a letter addressed to the Executive Committee
of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association.
" BEADING, June 24th, 1891.
" DEAE MB. IEBSON,
" Having occasion to write to the Committee, I
feel impelled to write also something personal.
" I learn from my local doctor, Mr. May, and the
London Specialist, Mr. Allingharn, that my life is in
all probability merely a question of months, as I am
dying of cancer in the bowels.
" Roman Catholics are already, as I was informed
yesterday, again starting reports of my return to the
Eoman Catholic Faith.
" I do not want the testimony of the last 21 years
of my life to be thus destroyed.
" I left the Eoman Catholic Church in July, 1870,
sorrowfully, because, to my regret, I could no longer
believe it.
" Never once for one minute have I regretted that
step. I now, as heretofore, look upon that act of
secession as the most virtuous act of my life.
" I found amongst Unitarians the religious home
and religious sympathies I anticipated. I am grateful
to them for countless acts of kindness, of friend-
ship, of confidence let me also add of forbearance.
During my earlier years amongst Unitarians, I did
not realise that very many deemed it right and true
to render to Christ a supremacy of authority to which
I did not see my way, and therefore I often pained
327
many by the marked omission of liturgical expressions
dear to their inherited sympathies.
" I do not think I was sufficiently alive to that fact"
during the events accompanying the Theodore Parker
controversy.
" If I gave pain, I am sorry, but I was not in-
fluenced by any unkind motives.
" I look back to these 21 years as the happiest of
my life. Indeed I approach death able to say that
each year has been happier than the last. This is
doubtless partly due to the fact that 20 of those years
have been of married life, not marred by one single
incident of disagreement or of pain one unbroken
harmony of a perfect and increasing affection.
" But my wife was and is a thorough Unitarian,
and I attribute to her Unitarian tone of mind what
has tended to modify the over-strained sentimentalism
and romance of my Roman Catholic training.
" I am more than ever convinced that no blessing
more precious can be bestowed on the young than to
train them in the Christian Theism of the most
independent and most reverent tone of Unitarian
thought.
" I will ask you to convey this to our valued friends,
so that after my death the members of the Com-
mittee will be able to say that I lived and died happy
in my Unitarian convictions.
" With much gratitude to so many kind friends,
" Always very truly,
" B. EODOLPH SUFFIELD."