ARCHDEACON HARE'S 
 
 LETTER TO THE 
 
 EDITOR OF THE ENGLISH REVIEW.
 
 1IOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS 
 AGAINST THY NEIGHBOUR: 
 
 A LETTER 
 
 TO THE EDITOR 
 
 JULIUS CHARLES HARE, M.A, 
 
 AKCHDEACON OF LEWES : 
 
 WITH A LETTER 
 
 FROM PROFESSOR MAURICE 
 TO THE AUTHOR, 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 JOHN W. PARKER, WEST STRAND 
 
 SOLD BY MACMILLAN, CAMBRIDGE. 
 1849.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 Printed by S. & J. DBNTLET and HKNBY KLKY, 
 nangor House, Shoe Lane.
 
 StacK 
 Annex 
 
 5 
 
 110 
 
 TO 
 
 THE EDITOR OF THE ENGLISH REVIEW. 
 
 SIR, 
 
 In the last number of your Review, you have inserted 
 an article entitled, On Tendencies towards the Subversion 
 of Faith. There are many such tendencies in these days, 
 and very mischievous ones, proceeding from divers quar- 
 ters, not seldom from those who deem themselves the sole 
 champions of the Faith.., Nor can there be any subject of 
 deeper interest to the Ck^rch, "or' calling for more Christian 
 
 wisdom to consider it.f-^1 was soijiewhat puzzled however 
 
 : >' 
 
 at seeing- that, amonefHhe six^sorks enumerated at the 
 
 . <>':t i <r>-- 
 
 head of the article, two "bore my' name, one as Editor, the 
 
 Collection of Sterling's Essays, the other, the Mission of 
 the Comforter. Of the former I shall speak anon. But 
 what could the latter, I askt myself, have to do with ten- 
 dencies subversive of Faith ? How could it be dragged 
 under such a category ? On reading the article I 
 found that I had been selected by the writer, as the chief 
 offender. At least I am the main object of his reprobation, 
 and not unmeritedly so, if there are any grounds what- 
 ever for it. But what is the fact ? I have little relish 
 for the practice of answering literary criticisms. Let the 
 critic confine himself to his proper field, however unfair 
 and abusive he may be, the most judicious course 
 
 1 117169
 
 is to be silent. But when he steps out of his peculiar 
 sphere, and vehemently impugns the moral and reli- 
 gious character of the author he is reviewing, it may become 
 expedient to rebut his accusations, if one can. This is 
 especially necessary when that author holds a responsible 
 official situation in the Church, in which his power of ful- 
 filling its duties depends wholly on the character thus 
 assailed ; at least if the attack proceeds from quarters 
 to which any credit is paid. Therefore, as the charges 
 brought against me, if there is the slightest particle of 
 truth in them, if they are not wholly false, if I cannot 
 prove them to be so, would brand me as a traitor to God, 
 as a perjured minister of our Church, as a wretch who 
 ought to be cast out of all honorable society, I feel it 
 incumbent on me to declare thus publicly and solemnly, 
 that they are utterly false and malignantly slanderous ; and 
 this I will prove them to be, so help me God ! For 
 the Review in which they stand, has a certain weight 
 with a considerable party in our Church. Several men, 
 highly and deservedly esteemed, are credibly reported to 
 have written in it : and its tone hitherto, so far as I have 
 observed, has not been much tainted with that virulence, by 
 which many of our so-called Religious Journals are dis- 
 graced. Hence there is reason to apprehend, notwith- 
 standing the total groundlessness of the charges, the mass 
 of readers, who are apt to assume that, if a charge is 
 not contradicted, it is admitted, might fancy, as they 
 come from such a quarter, there must be some degree of 
 truth in them. For few take pains to investigate the 
 grounds, or even the logical sequence, of what they read : 
 and when a person is denounced as an infidel, the unbelief, 
 which lurks in almost every heart, will straightway cry out,
 
 Crucify Mm ! a cry which will only be repeated more 
 vehemently and fiercely, if any one asks, Why ? what evil 
 has he done ? 
 
 The grounds alledged for the accusations against me 
 may be ranged under two heads ; first, the publication of 
 the prose-writings of my dear friend, Sterling, with the 
 sketch of his life prefixt to them ; and secondly, the part I 
 am said to have taken in encouraging the study of German 
 Theology, with the purpose, as the Reviewer repeatedly 
 insinuates, if he does not positively assert it, of 
 undermining the faith of the English Church. 
 
 With regard to the first work, I did not undertake it 
 without counting the cost, nor without much hesitation and 
 reluctance. No other work I ever engaged in caused me a 
 hundredth part of the painful anxiety. Not that I antici- 
 pated any evil consequences to the faith of any one from it. 
 On the contrary I thought that Sterling's life might be so 
 represented, with all faithfulness, and with all tenderness, 
 as to be a useful lesson and warning to the many young 
 men of our age, whose minds are in a state of perplexity 
 more or less resembling his. Every one acquainted with 
 the intellectual condition of the young men of the present 
 day must be aware that the number of those who are 
 entangled in similar difficulties is very large ; and I have 
 reason to know that my anticipations were not erroneous. 
 But I did greatly fear lest I should be the instrument of 
 holding up my dear friend to severe reproach and condem- 
 nation, which if I did, I should violate the duties of friend- 
 ship, as well as the first duty of a biographer ; whose work, 
 when it is not a work of love, should in most cases be left 
 undone. I did fear lest some of the vultures or other 
 obscene birds that infest our Religious Journals, should try 
 
 B 2
 
 to gratify their appetites by tearing and mangling the 
 remains of my friend. Besides I could not but foresee the 
 likelihood that I myself should incur blame, and might give 
 offense to many pious persons, which my office rendered 
 it a special obligation to avoid. Why then did I under- 
 take the work ? For a long time I shrank from it, until 
 at length it seemed that the power of choice was scarcely 
 left to me. For the alternative presented to me was, that 
 I should execute the work, or else that it would be 
 executed by another. Now I felt a deep conviction 
 that, if such a monument was to be erected to Sterling, I 
 was the person whom he would have wisht to erect it ; 
 and this conviction was shared by most of his friends, if not 
 by all. Nor was any other qualified to speak of the most 
 interesting, most energetic, happiest, and best period of his 
 life, that which he spent in the active labours of the 
 ministry. Nor was there any one who knew so much of 
 his subsequent perplexities, or had such means of tracing 
 their progress. Had the picture of his ministerial life been 
 left out, the whole would have been sadly distorted, and 
 would have assumed a much greater similarity to that 
 of Blanco White, with which the Reviewer compares it. 
 Under these convictions, and in the belief that the work, if 
 executed by me, would do more justice to my friend, and 
 be more profitable to others, than if it came from any 
 other pen, I determined to encounter the obloquy which it 
 might bring on me ; although my reluctance to defy that 
 was aggravated by the fear that some might be cast upon 
 my friend, with the view of injuring me. For divers causes 
 had compelled me to take part in some of our ecclesiastical 
 and religious controversies, whereby I must almost inevitably 
 have displeased the vehement partisans, it might even be, of
 
 both the opposite parties ; and I knew how unscrupulous 
 many of the writers in our Religious Journals are, if they can 
 but wound an adversary. I knew that the odium theologicum 
 has not forfeited its ancient character. This probability 
 seemed increast, when it so happened that the publication 
 of the work took place in the midst of the painful disputes 
 on the appointment of the Bishop of Hereford ; so that I 
 was quite thankful when I saw an article in the Guardian, 
 written during the heat of that controversy, in the gentle- 
 manly spirit which mostly distinguishes that newspaper, 
 speaking kindly of Sterling, and even of his Biographer. 
 The evil day however was only postponed. That from 
 which the Guardian was withheld by its gentlemanly 
 spirit, has now been done by the writer in your 
 Review. 
 
 One of hTs main charges against me, which he repeats 
 again and again, is, that I have held up Sterling to admira- 
 tion. Having undertaken to write his life, how could I 
 do otherwise than exhibit the beautiful and noble features 
 of his character ? Its nobleness shines through his letters, 
 and has been felt by numbers who have read them. It was 
 felt in like manner by all who came near him while he was 
 on earth, in proportion to their knowledge of him. Was I 
 then to suppress it, or to veil it over ? Is this your Re- 
 viewer's conception of the duty of a biographer ? Often, 
 alas ! there have been those who have deemed that to speak 
 the truth is a tendency subversive of faith, that the God 
 of Truth is to be worshipt and defended by lies ; and this 
 article proves that the race of such persons is not extinct. 
 In this spirit the writer of it tries to make his readers 
 believe that I have held up Sterling's errours to admira- 
 tion. He does not expressly assert this : he just keeps
 
 clear of the downright falsehood : but he insinuates it 
 repeatedly, in the shuffling manner which characterizes the 
 whole article, complaining of my eulogizing a sceptic and 
 an infidel, while he omits all mention of my having said 
 anything shewing how I deplored and mourned over his 
 errours, while I tried to explain their origin and pro- 
 gress. To me it seemed that such a course would be far 
 more profitable to persons in a like state of mind, than if I 
 had denounced and railed at them. Many will be softened 
 and won by sympathy, and by an earnest attempt to enter 
 into their difficulties, who would only be repelled and 
 irritated by a summary condemnation, the injustice and 
 harshness of which they would deeply feel and resent. 
 I am well aware that a practice very different from this has 
 in all ages been adopted by the bravoes of Orthodoxy, one 
 of whose favorite employments has ever been to traduce and 
 blacken the character of all such as, on whatsoever grounds, 
 had incurred the imputation of heresy. Afraid of meeting 
 their adversaries in honorable battle, they have shot at 
 them with poisoned arrows. I am aware too that many 
 good men have betrayed the weakness of their faith, and 
 the slipperiness of their honesty, by their readiness in 
 giving ear to and propagating the grossest calumnies with 
 such a purpose. But surely their conduct is a most power- 
 ful warning to seek truth and pursue it with singleness of 
 aim, in the smallest things as well as in the greatest. 
 The course which I have taken seemed to me moreover to 
 be that set before us in the example of Him, who had 
 compassion on our infirmities, and came to bear our sins 
 in this way also, and who did not refuse to be called 
 the Friend of publicans and sinners. In the Reviewer's 
 copy of the New Testament, one might suppose, all this
 
 portion must be left out : for he has no more notion of 
 such a duty than if he had lived in the ages anterior to 
 the Gospel. He sneers at me more than once (pp. 402, 439) 
 by means of his favorite flower of speech, italics, for 
 having spoken of the deep sympathy with the errours and 
 faults, and even with the sins of mankind, manifested in 
 Sterling^ early writings, as a peculiar excellence, which is 
 also found in some others among the great writers of our 
 age. To those who have ever thought of comparing 
 the manner in which the lower orders, their vices, their 
 sins, their temptations, their errours, are spoken of now, 
 with the tone adopted toward them in former centuries, the 
 contrast must be very striking: and though this spirit 
 may be perverted, as every good spirit may be, and may 
 be turned into maudlin sentimentalism, or into a pantheistic 
 obliteration of the differences between right and wrong, 
 still in itself it is a good spirit, and, when properly directed 
 and controlled, is so far a sign that our age in this respect 
 is endeavouring to fashion itself more according to the pat- 
 tern of Christ. Good too are the fruits which this spirit is 
 bearing more and more every year, in the manifold schemes 
 and institutions for improving the moral condition of the 
 lower orders, in all that is done to humanize and to 
 Christianize them. The Reviewer however rejects all sym- 
 pathy with such a spirit. He refers two or three times to 
 the passage, where I say, with plain reference to the story 
 of the woman taken in adultery, that he who is conscious 
 of no sin in like matters, may cast a stone at Sterling, but 
 that I cannot. He seems to think this very strange, very 
 reprehensible. Doubtless he would readily have cast a 
 stone at Sterling, or at the adultress, had he been present, 
 nay, even at Him who did not condemn the adultress. A
 
 thoroughgoing Pharisee has no consciousness of any sin or 
 fault, moral or intellectual. 
 
 On one point, where a grave censure is deduced from a 
 misapprehension of the facts, I must stop to correct that 
 misapprehension. The Reviewer says (p. 400), that "it 
 appears from the narrative that Archdeacon Hare had 
 urged Sterling to take holy orders at a period when he 
 must have been conscious that the tendency of his early 
 education was negative. When a person holding Arch- 
 deacon Hare's situation tells us that he has strongly urged 
 a man of sceptical and unsound views to take holy orders, 
 a man with whose opinions he was fully acquainted, 
 we must say that an encouragement is at once held out 
 to any amount of indifference, however criminal, in the 
 choice and recommendation of candidates for holy orders. 
 What condition can be more essential to the due exercise 
 of the Christian Ministry, than a firm belief in the doctrines 
 of Christianity ? Such was not a qualification at any time 
 possest by Mr Sterling." In this passage there are two 
 false statements, which at all events betoken a deter- 
 mination to make out as heinous a case as possible. 
 It is utterly false that Sterling at no time possest a 
 firm belief in the doctrines of Christianity. The Memoir 
 of his life shews that for a long time he did receive 
 those doctrines fully. So did he for a long time receive 
 the Scriptures as inspired, although his view of the mode 
 of inspiration differed from the common one. Again, it 
 is not true that I was acquainted with Sterling's " sceptical 
 and unsound views," and with the negative tendency of 
 his early education, at the time when I recommended him 
 to take orders. Of course, in the narrative of his life, I 
 have spoken of his early education, before I speak of his
 
 taking orders ; whence the Reviewer jumps to the con- 
 clusion that I must have known of the former before the 
 latter. In a person so deficient in clearness of thought, this 
 blunder might have been excusable ; although, as in so many 
 cases the beginning is one of the last things we come to, thus 
 it mostly happens that the last part of a friend^s life, of which 
 one hears much, is the beginning. But I have expressly 
 said in p. viii. that the information concerning his early 
 education was communicated to me " in later years ;" which 
 the Reviewer would have attended to, if he had not been 
 so absorbed in imagining mischief against me. The inter- 
 course between a tutor and pupil at our large colleges in 
 Cambridge is very seldom close enough for the tutor to 
 become acquainted with the intellectual and spiritual state 
 of his pupils, except so far as it may be disclosed in 
 connexion with the studies of the place. From the year dur- 
 ing which Sterling attended my classical lectures, I knew 
 him to be highly gifted : I knew that he was an ardent 
 lover of truth, upright and conscientious, generous and 
 affectionate, careless about himself, when he heard the call 
 of Duty. Was I wrong in inferring that such a man, 
 if he took orders, if he felt that he could do so conscien- 
 tiously, and I was sure he would not do it, unless the 
 act approved itself to his conscience, would be a good 
 servant in the ministry of the Church? Was it very 
 reprehensible, on occasion of some allusion to his future 
 profession, to place the ministry before him as the noblest 
 of all fields of action ? The result confirmed my judgement. 
 So long as he was allowed to act in the ministry, he de- 
 voted himself zealously to his work ; and the beautiful 
 paper inserted in pp. xlix liv. must convince every one of 
 this, except a man who fancies that the whole of religion
 
 10 
 
 consists in telling the beads of an orthodox rosary. Would 
 that thousands of our Clergy were animated by the spirit 
 which breathes through that paper? We .should not 
 need the bead-tellers then ; nor would they harm us. 
 
 The next short paragraph of a dozen lines contains two 
 falsehoods at the least. The Reviewer states that Sterling 
 pursued the study of German Theology with " a zeal not 
 inferior to that of his friends " (Mr Hare and Mr Maurice). 
 Here is a falsehood by implication ; inasmuch as the sen- 
 tence implies that Mr Maurice was a diligent student of 
 German Theology, to which he has never given much time, 
 and which at that period he could hardly read : and 
 this falsehood is brought in to prepare the way for a series 
 of others, with the view of making out that Mr Maurice 
 is a patron of German Theology. In Sterling's latter 
 years, the Reviewer next says, "his anxiety for the 
 overthrow of existing beliefs and Churches was over- 
 whelming." It would have been nearer the truth to say 
 that his dread of that overthrow was overwhelming. What 
 but this is implied, for instance, in the passage which the 
 Reviewer quotes ? " If I saw any hope that Maurice and 
 Samuel Wilberforce and their fellows could reorganize and 
 reanimate the Church and nation, I think I could willingly 
 wrap my head in my cloak, or lay it in the grave, without 
 a word of protest against aught that is. But I am well 
 assured that this cannot be." However he may have mis- 
 judged the actual state of things, or the right mode of im- 
 proving it, his most earnest, intensest desire was that the 
 Church should fulfill her mission, that she should be a 
 living power in the nation, leavening and ennobling the 
 whole mass of the people. Every symptom, every promise 
 of this he hailed with delight, such as I have stated in
 
 p. ccxii. he felt on reading Archdeacon Manning's Charge 
 in 1843, such as he was inspired with about the same 
 time by his intercourse with Mr Charles Marriott, whom 
 he met in the Isle of Wight. 
 
 The next paragraph exemplifies the danger of coining facts 
 out of incidental expressions, especially when the coiner is 
 not very scrupulous. " It was, doubtless (the Reviewer 
 says, in p. 401), the boldness and speculativeness of 
 Sterling's views, which gathered around him the friendship 
 of a host of congenial minds, sympathizing in the general 
 complexion of their theological and philosophical tenden- 
 cies, though separated by strongly markt differences in 
 points of detail. We only miss one name from the circle, 
 who ought to have held a conspicuous place there ; we mean 
 Blanco White. But the names of Hare, Bunsen, Carlyle, 
 Coleridge, Emerson, Thirlwall, Maurice, Francis New- 
 man, John Mill, Samuel Wilberforce, Arnold, and Trench, 
 are familiar to all the readers of this work as the friends 
 and associates of Mr Sterling, the subjects of his warmest 
 admiration and deepest sympathies." The purpose of this 
 statement, as of the whole article, is to make out that 
 there has been, and is, a kind of confederacy and conspi- 
 racy against the Faith, in which all the persons here named 
 are more or less implicated, and to render each one of them 
 in great measure responsible for whatever of errour the Re- 
 viewer can detect, or fancy he detects, in all the rest. 
 Sterling's life, he says, " reveals a link between writings 
 and doctrines, which we mentally class together almost invo- 
 luntarily, notwithstanding their differences in many points, 
 but which we could hitherto only connect by their tenden- 
 cies. In Sterling's life however these various systems are 
 brought together as parts and off-shoots of one great
 
 12 
 
 movement, each playing its part, and allied by secret ties 
 of sympathy with the rest. v I will not stop to talk about 
 such rank nonsense as mentally classing writings and doc- 
 trines together almost involuntarily. The Reviewer indeed 
 does so ; and therefore his whole article is a mass of con- 
 fusion. An " almost involuntary" classification, with re- 
 gard to such things, is a mere medley. The only one of 
 any value must be intelligent, must proceed on distinct 
 grounds, carefully examined and ascertained. But his 
 whole fabric is imaginary. Several of the persons mentioned 
 were not even among Sterling's friends. What was more 
 natural than that he should occasionally see persons who were 
 intimate friends of mine, and should mention them in writ-- 
 ing to me ? Thus he twice met the Chevalier Bunsen, 
 once, I believe, officially, when applying for a passport. 
 With Bishop Thirlwall he had a very slight acquaintance, 
 though a warm admirer of his writings. Arnold, with all 
 his admiration for that great man's heroic energy, if I am 
 not mistaken, he never saw. Bishop Wilberforce, I be- 
 lieve, was only known to him by a few casual meetings in 
 general London society. The only ground for the intro- 
 duction of his name into the list is the mention of him in 
 the letter just quoted. Sterling, in writing to Mr Trench, 
 who at the time was Curate of Alverstoke under Archdeacon 
 Samuel Wilberforce, having doubtless heard some account 
 from him of the good his Rector was doing in his Parish, 
 gave utterance to the thankfulness he always felt, when- 
 ever he saw earnestness and conscientious activity ; 
 and therefore Bishop Wilberforce is brought in to figure 
 in this antichristian conspiracy. The motive for the 
 insinuation is, that the Reviewer may afterward fabri- 
 cate a connexion between him and the persons who took
 
 13 
 
 part in resisting the agitation excited by the appointment 
 of the Bishop of Hereford. He has a singular faculty of 
 seeing what is not, a faculty which seldom goes along with 
 the more valuable one of seeing what is. 
 
 It is true, he acknowledges more than once, that there 
 are wide differences of view " in details, and even on 
 points of the highest importance"" (p. 436), among the va- 
 rious members of this School, as he calls it. " But still (he 
 says) there was a profound sympathy between them, a 
 consciousness of general oneness of tendency amidst all 
 their contradictions in detail." The characteristic of this 
 School he conceives " to consist simply in the striving after 
 intellectual liberty, a tendency to reject all which does not 
 commend itself to the individual reason as right and true, 
 a tendency to resist authority^ of whatever nature it may 
 be, which interposes any restraint on the freedom of specu- 
 lation." Now if there is any meaning in these words, as 
 expressing a quality common to the various persons, whom, 
 in spite of many great diversities and oppositions, the 
 Reviewer has ranged together as members of the same 
 School, it must be that we all seek, or desire, according to 
 our ability, to seek, Truth and Justice in all things, and 
 above all things, that we cannot sacrifice our reason and 
 our conscience to empty forms and lifeless conventions, 
 that we cannot bow down to any Baal whom public 
 opinion may set up, even though his house should be full 
 from one end to the other, that we cannot recognise any 
 great value in a belief, unless it be a living faith, and that 
 the desire of our hearts is, that men should live, as. alone 
 they can truly live, by faith. Of some of the writers 
 mentioned I know very little : but those I am most familiar 
 with have this spirit in common ; and, to judge from what
 
 14 
 
 I have heard, and from the little I know of the others, the 
 chief of them seem to he animated by a like spirit ; not- 
 withstanding the enormous difference, that to some has 
 been vouchsafed a far clearer insight than to others into 
 that living Truth, which came down from heaven to satisfy 
 all the cravings and yearnings of the human mind, and 
 without which those cravings can never be stilled, without 
 which man must ever be preyed upon by unappeasable 
 desires. If this be our School, of which we shall all readily 
 acknowledge ourselves to be the most unworthy members, 
 members by desires and longings and feeble aspirations, 
 not by actual attainment, then is it the same School to 
 which all the great and the wise have belonged in all 
 ages, from Solon and Aristides and Socrates down to 
 Clarkson and Wordsworth, and the chief masters of which 
 are the Apostle Paul, and the other chief divines in Chrises 
 Church. too that any of us, yea, that all of us, may 
 mount to higher steps in that School ! that we may 
 all be enabled to discern more and more of that living 
 Truth, which came into the world to be the Light of the 
 world in the midst of its natural darkness ! O that 
 we might be enabled to gather multitudes into our School, 
 and to transmit it unimpaired in power and glory to 
 after generations ! To that end, among other things, may 
 we never cease to strive, with inextinguishable hatred, 
 against that evil spirit, which upholds the interests of its 
 own party, without regard, and often in opposition to 
 Truth and Justice : and when we are waging battle against 
 errour, may we do so, not with anathemas or legal penal- 
 ties, but with the arms of Reason and of Love. To the 
 Reviewer it seems strange that I should have " stept forth 
 as the apologist of Dr Hampden, who is of a different
 
 15 
 
 school in some respects ; " as though that were to cost me a 
 single moment's consideration, when it became my duty to 
 act in a matter of simple justice. " Thus again (he adds), 
 Mr Maurice steps forth to remonstrate against any censure 
 on Mr Ward's doctrines, the very opposite of his own. 11 
 To this sentence he subjoins a mark of admiration at such 
 portentous impartiality. His mind is so cribbed and 
 cabined by party-spirit, that he cannot conceive how a per- 
 son should be animated with a desire of justice toward any 
 one who diifers from him in opinion, nay, should watch 
 over his conduct with severer jealousy when there are such 
 temptations to lead him astray, how he should deprecate 
 the trial of any culprit by a tribunal, over which, he knew, 
 this party-spirit would exercise such sway. He cannot 
 understand how you may be indignant against detraction 
 and slander, from whatever side it may proceed, and 
 whoever may be its object. Of course he cannot under- 
 stand this. If he did, he would have thrown his article 
 into the fire, or rather could never have written it. 
 
 A curious instance of the manner in which he tries to 
 implicate a man's friends in his errours, occurs in p. 402. 
 He there quotes the passage in which, after speaking of 
 Sterling's college friendships, especially with Mr Trench 
 and Mr Maurice, I state that, " with the help of the latter, 
 he gradually emancipated himself from that corrupt and 
 cramping system of opinions in philosophy and taste, which 
 he had brought with him to college :" and immediately 
 after these words he asks, " Are we to understand that the 
 negative views, of which Mr Hare speaks, were shared by 
 Mr Sterling's friends?" What can well exceed the 
 malignity of this insinuation ? for which there is not the 
 shadow of a ground, and which flies in the teeth of my
 
 16 
 
 statement that Mr Maurice was Sterling's chief helper in 
 his emancipation from those negative views. Has the 
 Reviewer no friends, except those who hold the selfsame 
 bundle of dry chips by way of opinions? Can he not 
 conceive friendship existing without such an agreement ? 
 
 Throughout the article he shews an especial desire to 
 involve Mr Maurice in the offensive opinions which he 
 ascribes to the other members of the supposed School, by 
 lugging in quotations which may seem in any way, however 
 remotely, to express a somewhat similar train of thought. 
 Why he has done this, may be divined, when, on coming 
 to the end of the article, we find a retractation of a 
 charge which had been made against Mr Maurice in the 
 preceding number of the Review, with the same levity and 
 disregard of truth so conspicuous in this, a retractation 
 however unaccompanied by a single word of regret or 
 apology for having given vent to a groundless calumny. 
 The necessity of making this meagre, unmanly retractation, 
 which will be found further on to have been compulsory, 
 has not unnaturally provoked an ungenerous mind to con- 
 sole itself by trying to attach other stigmas to Mr Maurice ; 
 though the imputations are entirely at variance with the 
 whole body of principles openly and boldly and continually 
 inculcated in his numerous works. 
 
 In fact this is the purpose which led the Reviewer to 
 string together the list of names quoted above, as it is 
 of the whole article. He wanted to make a violent attack 
 upon certain persons, among whom Mr Maurice and I 
 are the chief objects of his animosity. He wanted to 
 accuse me of infidelity, to hold me up to public abhorrence 
 as a teacher whose covert purpose is to "propagate infi- 
 delity ; and he also wanted to bring in Mr Maurice as in
 
 17 
 
 some way or other an accessory in this crime. Doubtless 
 too, if he could drag us to the stake, he would seize the 
 torch and kindle it. This is the light in which he would 
 have people see truth, a light supplying the warmth which 
 his doctrines have not in themselves. In this spirit he 
 says in p. 409, " We feel perfectly satisfied that, if 
 such writers, for instance, as Sterling or Hare were to 
 throw their whole strength into the cause of infidelity, 
 backt by the Rationalistic theology of Germany, the result 
 of the struggle would be only fatal to themselves and 
 their theories. Let them only speak out distinctly enough 
 at once ; and the matter will, we believe, be soon brought 
 to a close in the discomfiture of the antagonists of faith. 
 There is much to lament in the condition of England ; 
 but it is not yet prepared to part with Christianity, or to 
 hold it only as a better species of Heathenism, a philo- 
 sophy, a mere fabrication of the human mind." As my 
 dear friend is removed far away from the region of these 
 controversies, this malignant blustering must be aimed at 
 me : and so it must needs be understood by every reader, 
 even by those who, knowing something of my writings, 
 must be aware how shamelessly false it is. What does the 
 Reviewer mean by talking of my throwing my whole 
 strength into the cause of infidelity ? How dares he apply 
 such language to me? Has he quoted a single sentence 
 from any of my writings which can afford the shadow of a 
 plea for such an allegation ? Not one. It is true, he does 
 not charge me with having done so. He only puts the 
 case hypothetically, with a malice worthy of an lago, If I 
 should do so. Of whom does he say this ? Of a clergy- 
 man, can he be a brother clergyman? of one who 
 holds a high office in the Church, of one who has been
 
 18 
 
 publishing a considerable number of works on religious 
 and ecclesiastical subjects in the last ten years ? Are the 
 contents of those works, is their tone, is their spirit, 
 such as to afford any ground for a suspicion that the writer 
 is likely to throw his whole strength, or rather his whole 
 weakness, into the cause of infidelity ? The two chief of 
 my writings are the Victory of Faith, and the Mission of 
 the Comforter. Do not the very titles of those two works 
 repell the Reviewer's insinuations ? Or does he mean that 
 the whole of these works from the title to the colophon is 
 a mere tissue of lies, a mask put on by one whose real 
 secret desire and design are to subvert the faith which he 
 preaches ? Or has he no meaning at all ? and did he merely 
 wish to throw dirt, knowing that, when it is pelted at a 
 person by a ragamuffin in the street, some of it is sure to 
 stick, if it be but foul enough ? 
 
 Nor does this insinuation stand alone. Others follow it 
 in subsequent parts of the article, no way inferior in ma- 
 lignity. Thus he says in p. 419, " We gather from some 
 parts of Mr Hare's book, that Mr Hare himself, at least, 
 does not embrace Mr Carlyle's positive creed on the sub- 
 ject of Pantheism, though he speaks strangely enough of 
 the FASCINATION of Pantheistic tendencies." Here again 
 lago shews his hoof. I am a minister of Christ's Church 
 in this land. Every Sunday, in the presence of the as- 
 sembled congregation, and in the sight of God, I pronounce 
 the Apostles Creed and the Nicene, and offer up prayers 
 to the Father through the Son : yet the Reviewer tells 
 the world that he gathers from some parts of my Memoir 
 of Sterling, that I do not embrace a positive belief in 
 Pantheism. Again I ask, does not the very title of the 
 work which he has set at the head of his article, the
 
 19 
 
 Mission of the Comforter, refute this calumnious insinua- 
 tion ? I will not stoop to cite any passages in disproof 
 of it : else the first paragraph of the Preface would 
 suffice. 
 
 But I have spoken of the fascination of Pantheism : and 
 the Eeviewer, to denote his horrour, prints this word in 
 capitals, which, along with italics, form his strongest argu- 
 ments, and the most pungent ingredients in his style. Of 
 course, according to his conception of Pantheism, as "a 
 theory which recognises the Deity in every brute, in all 
 matter, however loathsome or offensive to the senses, or 
 even in men polluted with crimes and impurities" (p. 410), 
 one cannot wonder that he is unable to understand how it 
 should exercise any fascination, or that he should ex- 
 claim, " Surely fatuity never appeared in a more repulsive 
 and ridiculous form than this !" Yet the fact unquestion- 
 ably is, as the whole history of speculation has proved, that 
 Pantheism has exercised a wonderful fascination on the 
 profoundest and subtilest intellects that have devoted them- 
 selves to philosophy, from the earliest schools of Greece to 
 the most recent of Germany. Nay, even among great 
 Christian divines, as we see especially among the mystics, 
 many have only been able to resist the intellectual fascina- 
 tion of Pantheism through the living faith which animated 
 them. Many have been perpetually hovering on the brink 
 of it ; not a few have fallen lower. When we have taken 
 the measure of the Reviewer's ignorance on speculative 
 subjects, we shall not wonder that he should be ignorant of 
 all this. Rather should one wonder that he should deem 
 himself entitled to talk about Pantheism, unless one re- 
 membered that knowledge is always requisite, in order 
 
 to know one's own ignorance, and that ignorance, in 
 
 c2
 
 20 
 
 proportion as it is ignorant of other things, is above all 
 ignorant of itself. 
 
 A like recklessness is manifested in p. 414, where he 
 says, " Mr Hare remarks very correctly, that the criticism 
 of this writer (Strauss), which eats away all the facts of 
 Christianity, must undermine all its essential doctrines ; 
 and this sufficiently accounts for the repugnance which he 
 manifests to receive the doctrines of this remarkable work. 11 
 Hereby he plainly insinuates that, were it not for this 
 objection, I should not be unwilling to give up the facts of 
 Christianity ; and this he does, without alledging a single 
 word I have ever written, to support his malignant insinu- 
 ation, without ever thinking of looking into any of my 
 writings on such subjects, which, from first to last, give the 
 lie to his impudent calumny; the temper of my mind having 
 always led me to dwell with peculiar fondness on the facts 
 of the Sacred History. He is not aware of this, it is 
 plain : he merely flings about his slanderous insinuations at 
 random : but this hardly lessens his guilt. 
 
 The same purpose dictated the title placed at the 
 head of the article. By every paltry trick, no matter 
 how fraudulent, the Reviewer has set himself to excite 
 the suspicion, the jealousy, the fear, the abhorrence of his 
 readers against me, and, though in a less measure, against 
 Mr Maurice also. 4 For that we are the chief culprits 
 arraigned, no reader of the article can well doubt. Several 
 other writers are indeed brought in by the way, but mainly 
 in order that the criminality of the errours imputed to 
 them may fall upon us. We on the other hand are the 
 objects of continual attacks : we are kept before the 
 reader throughout : and the concluding denunciation is ma- 
 nifestly aimed at us, more especially at me. " It is time
 
 21 
 
 (the Reviewer there says) for all whose faith remains firm 
 and deeply rooted, to look with distrust on any man who 
 recommends the study of a Theology tainted by incurable 
 scepticism. It is time to resist, and to denounce, those 
 who would thus, in vanity or in treason, undermine our 
 faith. As it is, all such men are under the influence of 
 public opinion ; they fear it. They know that the national 
 mind of England is strongly adverse to their views. They 
 know the principles of the clergy as a body ; and they are 
 fearful of provoking a strong reaction. The advocates of 
 the Christian faith, as we have received it from the be- 
 ginning, have therefore only to unmask, and to hold up to 
 the public condemnation, the sentiments of all who are 
 directly or indirectly promoting the subversion of religion." 
 Now, ludicrously, monstrously, wickedly false and slander- 
 ous as such words are in reference to my beloved friend and 
 brother, Frederic Maurice, and, I call God to witness, 
 to me also, there is no other person spoken of in the article, 
 to whom the Reviewer can be conceived to have meant to 
 apply them. He cannot be speaking of Sterling, or Cole- 
 ridge, or Arnold, or Blanco White ; for he is evidently 
 speaking of the living. He cannot be speaking of the Che- 
 valier Bunsen ; for he is speaking of Englishmen. Nor can 
 he be speaking of Mr Carlyle ; for he is speaking of writers 
 on theology. He may have other unnamed persons in his 
 eye ; but we are manifestly selected as the representatives 
 and leaders of the noxious School ; and on us the wrath 
 of our countrymen is invoked. We are the persons whom 
 he charges with the guilt of undermining the faith of the 
 English Church, " in vanity or in treason." What he 
 means by the word vanity here, and he repeats it in a 
 like position in two or three other places, it is hard to
 
 22 
 
 guess ; unless it be a proof of vanity to have entered upon 
 a field of study, on which the Reviewer, it is plain, has 
 never set foot. The meaning of treason is clear enough ; 
 and, unless the whole passage has been instigated by the 
 Father of lies, it is no more than we should deserve. 
 
 Now, when a man who has any sense of honour, or even 
 of honesty, utters such words, he will also bring forward 
 proofs to establish them, to shew that there is a warrant 
 for suspecting us of such diabolical wickedness. Seeing 
 that we are writers, and are denounced as such, he will 
 seek the proofs in our writings. This however the Re- 
 viewer does not ; and he does it not, because he cannot. 
 Every man shall bear his own burthen, is the rule of Divine 
 Justice, and that to which human Justice endeavours to 
 approach. This rule however the Reviewer defies; and 
 his whole article is a gross violation of it. He charges us, 
 not with our own sins, but with a mass of evil which he 
 conjures up from the writings of our friends ; and in 
 framing the list of these he proceeds, in some cases on very 
 slight grounds, in others on none. Of the persons enume- 
 tated as Sterling^ friends, several are among those whom I 
 most love and revere, and whose friendship I count among 
 the chief blessings of my life. With some of them I have 
 only a slight acquaintance, with some none at all. In 
 opinion I concur more or less with some of them : to that 
 which is peculiar in the views of others I have rarely 
 exprest anything but repugnance, either directly, or im- 
 plicitly, by contending for truths which they seem to me 
 to disparage or to overlook. But, whether I concur with 
 them, or differ from them, I must protest from the outset 
 against the practice of holding a person responsible for any 
 opinions, except such as he has distinctly avowed, not even
 
 23 
 
 for what may appear to be their legitimate consequences* 
 Logically indeed these consequences may fairly be urged 
 against him, to shew the fallaciousness of his premisses, but 
 not morally ; for who can tell whether, if he had been 
 distinctly aware of these consequences, he might not have 
 been led thereby to reconsider, and perhaps to reject, the 
 premisses ? This protest I make the more confidently, 
 because more than once, in my Charges, I have earnestly 
 exhorted my brother Clergy to keep watch over themselves, 
 lest they should be tempted to follow the habit, which has 
 been so sadly prevalent of late years, of imputing the 
 guilt of all the extravagances, into which any person con- 
 nected with what is called the Tractarian party might be 
 led, to the whole body, even to those who deplored, and 
 were striving to repress these errours. 
 
 But there is a further step in the art of detraction, 
 which the Reviewer may boast of as his special invention. 
 The mixture he had been able to extract from those whom 
 he called Sterling's friends and associates, was not deadly 
 enough : so he drags in Blanco White, for the sake of 
 pouring the damning drops of poison into the caldron. He 
 had remarkt significantly in p. 401, that " we miss one name 
 from the circle, who ought to have held a conspicuous place 
 there ; we mean Blanco White." He would not however 
 let it continue missing : Blanco White, as well as Sterling, 
 had written in the London Review : he had received some 
 letters from Coleridge : ergo, the weight of Blanco White's 
 errours, though he was a total stranger to Sterling, is 
 chargeable on all Sterling's friends. This procedure how- 
 ever after all is borrowed from the Inquisition. If you 
 have not exprest such an opinion, some friend of yours has, 
 or some acquaintance, or some friend or acquaintance of
 
 24 
 
 one of your friends or acquaintances, or some one of whom 
 you have spoken kindly, or some one whom you have 
 quoted ; and you have not informed against him and 
 denounced him : therefore you are guilty of it yourself. 
 In the name of Truth and Righteousness, let all honest 
 men combine to cast this spirit out of the Church. 
 
 In mixing up his potion for the public, the Reviewer's 
 ignorance throws some ingredients into the caldron, his ob- 
 tuseness of apprehension others, while the main part are 
 mere falsehoods. Thus, in p. 411, he quotes a passage in 
 which Sterling speaks of Schleiermacher's Discourse at the 
 grave of his son, and remarks, that it is richer in imagery 
 than his usual style, adding, " You see Schleiermacher opens 
 with images ; and the style then runs smoother and more 
 equably ; and such, I think, is the natural course of passion. 
 I cannot but connect this with the bursts of fact-imagery 
 and phenomenal wonders at the first crash of each of the 
 great epochs of Revelation. If this makes you laugh, I 
 do not know that it will have done any harm.'" Hereupon 
 the Reviewer exclaims, " We own ourselves to be in no 
 small degree surprised at the estimate which Sterling had 
 evidently formed of hia correspondent, whom he supposed 
 capable of treating as a matter of levity, a sentiment which 
 distinctly resolves the facts and miracles of the Bible into 
 imagery supplied by an excited imagination. We are 
 equally surprised at the publication of this correspondence 
 by Mr Hare. We might at first sight almost infer that 
 Sterling understood the temperament and the views of his 
 tutor, when he supposed that such speculations would make 
 him laugh; but we believe that the real object of the 
 editor was simply to extenuate the faults of the subject of 
 his memoir." How my publishing this letter was to do
 
 25 
 
 this, if the Reviewer's interpretation be correct, it requires 
 his illogicalness to explain. So too, in that case, would 
 it have been an almost inconceivable act of folly in me 
 to have printed this letter, thus " unmasking" myself as a 
 mocker and scoffer. Strangely moreover has he mis- 
 apprehended the exceeding delicacy and refinement of 
 Sterling's mind, in supposing that he would have insulted a 
 friend and a clergyman with such a jest. But the whole 
 accusation is grounded solely on a gross blunder, which 
 might have been excusable, if the Reviewer had not just 
 before quoted the following passage from the same letter : 
 " I am far from denying the possibility that, in the earliest 
 times, and especially at the great epoch of the constitution 
 of a Monotheistic nation, all things may have been in a 
 more outward state, and connected themselves necessarily 
 with more visible manifestations of the spiritual system 
 around us and within us." What great mischief is 
 implied, if Sterling supposed that I might laugh at the 
 somewhat extravagant analogy, which he had drawn be- 
 tween imagery, as the language of passion, and miraculous 
 acts, as the expression of the power of Faith at the critical 
 epochs in the history of Religion ? 
 
 In p. 406 the Reviewer adopts the practice, so com- 
 mon among those who take pleasure in hunting down 
 heretics, of perverting the meaning of extracts, by garbling 
 them. He transcribes the following words from the 
 conclusion of my Memoir : " We cannot arrest the winds 
 or the waves; nor can we arrest the blasts and tides 
 of thought. These too blow and roll where they list. 
 We may indeed employ them both ; but to turn them to 
 account we must suffer ourselves to be impelled and borne 
 along by them." Here he stops, omitting the concluding
 
 26 
 
 words of the sentence, " without fainting at the thought 
 of the perils we may have to encounter, and in the hope 
 that, with the help of our heavenly compass, we may ren- 
 der those tumultuous elements subservient to the good of 
 mankind/ 1 Why he omitted these words, becomes plain a 
 few lines after ; for he could not otherwise have said, as he 
 does, that I " deem it expedient to be impelled and borne 
 along by the blasts and tides of thought, even if they are 
 infidel in their character" The words extracted are inde- 
 finite, and might be written by a Christian, or by a mere 
 worshiper of humanity and of human progress. The words 
 omitted determine the meaning of the others in a sense 
 directly contrary to the slander he wishes to cast upon 
 me; and therefore honest lago omits them. 
 
 Of course I shall not be tempted by the Reviewer's 
 defiance to enter into a discussion on the inspiration of the 
 Scriptures. He fancies that the only reason why those 
 who cannot adopt the popular view on the subject, do not 
 straightway promulgate another view, is personal fear. 
 Having his own opinions ready cut and dried, as he re- 
 ceived them from his teachers, he cannot conceive why 
 others should find any difficulty in the formation and 
 exposition of theirs on this mysterious and delicate subject. 
 He does not understand how they should hesitate to bring 
 forward what they feel to be immature and imperfect, nor 
 how they should shrink from the shock it would be to 
 many pious persons, if they were led to doubt the correct- 
 ness of their notions concerning the plenary inspiration of 
 every word in the Bible. I heard, not long ago, of a 
 person who declared that, if a single date in the Scriptures 
 were proved to be inaccurate, his whole faith in Christianity 
 would fall to the ground. Poor man ! what must be the
 
 27 
 
 worth of such faith ? How much less must it be than a 
 grain of mustard-seed ! It will never remove mountains, nor 
 even mole-hills. But, though this is an extreme case, it has 
 been seen again and again, for instance, at the establish- 
 ment of the Copernican system, and recently on occasion of 
 the modern discoveries in Geology, that many persons are 
 sorely troubled, when the conviction is forced upon them, 
 that the Bible was never meant to be an infallible encyclo- 
 pedia of all science. Through our deplorable want of a 
 theological education, such views are very common, not 
 merely with the unlearned, but even among our clergy ; 
 and no right-minded man will speak on this matter, without 
 a deep feeling of the responsibility, which, as Dr Pusey 
 truly says, " ought to accompany every syllable spoken or 
 written on a subject so important." The very judicious 
 argument on this topic in the fifth Chapter of the second 
 Part of Dr Pusey ""s Reply to Mr Rose sufficiently proves 
 that different views concerning the nature and extent of 
 inspiration have been held in divers ages of the Church, 
 even by the most orthodox divines, and that such differences 
 are no way subversive of the faith, or even injurious to it. 
 Nay, far more serious danger is to be apprehended from the 
 attempt to uphold an erroneous view, when a general con- 
 viction of its untenableness is gaining ground. In such 
 cases distrust is apt to extend from the erroneous adjunct 
 to the truth with which it is connected. Though Dr 
 Pusey has since retracted his work, his arguments, and the 
 authorities he cites, are as strong as ever. 
 
 On another point, with regard to which the Reviewer 
 might be expected to be more at home, his views are 
 strangely confused. One might have supposed that he 
 would at all events have known something about the great
 
 28 
 
 ecclesiastical controversies of our times, and of the age of 
 the Reformation : yet he seems to have no conception of 
 the difference between the idea of the Christian Ministry 
 and that of the Priesthood. Hence he deems it a " co- 
 mical inconsistency " in the Chevalier Bunsen, that, while 
 on the strength of St Peter's declaration, and of that in 
 the Revelation, he follows Luther in asserting the Universal 
 Priesthood of all Christians, he should yet be desirous of 
 establishing a Ministry of Bishops and Presbyters in the 
 Prussian Church. With a similar confusion he accuses me, 
 in p. 441, of having indulged in " attacks (we cannot call 
 them anything else) upon Episcopacy"; a somewhat strange 
 accusation against a person, who, in his Charges year after 
 year, has been strenuously urging the desirableness of a 
 large increase in our Episcopate. If the Reviewer had 
 attended to what he read, he would have perceived that 
 the object of my repeated attacks is not Episcopacy, 
 which I have always held to be the best form of Church- 
 government, but the hateful antichristian notion, which 
 has been broacht so often of late years, but which was dis- 
 claimed by our best divines in former ages, that Episcopacy 
 is an indispensable condition to the existence of a Christian 
 Church, nay, even to the power of the Word and of the 
 Sacraments, so that they who are not living in an episcopal 
 Church, have no portion in Christ, and are left, like the 
 Heathens, to the uncovenauted mercies of God. The Re- 
 viewer complains immediately after of what he calls my 
 " pernicious hint that Episcopal ordination in England was 
 not required by law till long after the Reformation. 11 Per- 
 nicious might seem a strange epithet, as applied to the mere 
 statement of a fact on the authority of Clarendon, which 
 might be supported by many others. If the statement is
 
 29 
 
 incorrect, let it be corrected ; if not, how can it be perni- 
 cious ? The epithet however has a meaning : for history 
 is pernicious, truth is pernicious, to all narrow, arbitrary, 
 exclusive systems in religion, as in every other province of 
 human thought or action. 
 
 The only remaining topic, which seems to require notice, 
 is the accusation urged against me on account of what I 
 have done, or rather what the Reviewer asserts that I have 
 done, to promote the study of German Theology. This 
 accusation is brought forward over and over again, with 
 continually increasing fierceness, until all faithful Christians 
 are called upon, in the passage already quoted from the 
 conclusion, to resist and to denounce those who would thus 
 " in vanity or in treason undermine our/aM." 
 
 Here let us begin by considering what the fact actually 
 is, a consideration of some importance in determining 
 whether a person is innocent or guilty, but which the 
 Reviewer wholly disregards. Finding that actual facts 
 are pernicious, he fabricates such as he thinks will suit 
 his purpose. After speaking of what he calls my " attacks 
 upon Episcopacy," he proceeds : " These, though impor- 
 tant matters in themselves, are infinitely less so than the 
 deliberate and persevering efforts of this writer to promote 
 the study of theological systems which are deeply tainted 
 with heresy and infidelity. The danger and the criminality 
 of such a course is in no degree dimiuisht by the fact, that 
 Mr Hare is himself careful to avow his belief in the divinity 
 of the Son and the Holy Ghost, and other cardinal doctrines 
 of Christianity. (Here again lago's hoof comes out. The 
 reader is led to infer that I just take care to guard myself 
 from the suspicion of not holding the doctrines, which I am 
 deliberately and perseveriugly undermining.) On such
 
 30 
 
 men as Mr Hare rests the responsibility of having assi- 
 duously fostered that taste, which is now being gratified by 
 the publication of English translations of Strausses Leben 
 Jesu, Jean Paul, Fichte, Neauder's Life of Christ, and other 
 mischievous publications of the same kind." Now one thing 
 at all events is plain : the cause must be prior to the effect. 
 If it is through my act and deed that the taste for German 
 Theology, which is now seeking food in translations of 
 infidel works, has been produced, my deliberate and perse- 
 vering efforts to promote the study of German Theology 
 must have preceded these translations, and the taste 
 which they fostered. But did they ? The Reviewer never 
 thought of asking himself this question. The first work 
 in which I have spoken concerning the merits of German 
 theology, in which I have done anything to promote its 
 study, is the Volume of Notes to the Mission of the Com- 
 forter ; and that was publisht in June, 1 846. There may 
 be some half a dozen incidental allusions to German 
 divines, and quotations from them, in some of my earlier 
 writings ; but that is all. When I call to mind how 
 much I owe to some of the great divines of Germany, I 
 feel almost surprised, and half ashamed, that I should have 
 allowed so long a period of my life to pass away without 
 attempting to correct the erroneous and ignorant notions on 
 German Theology, so prevalent in England, the disgraceful 
 confusion of that which is good in it, with that which is 
 really evil. The Reviewer will doubtless ascribe this delay 
 to that fear of public opinion, and of the Oxford movement, 
 which he imputes to me in pp. 443 and 437. The simple 
 reason is, that the notes on the Mission of the Comforter are 
 the first work in which I have laid anything like a theolo- 
 gical disquisition before the world ; at least with the
 
 exception of an anonymous Pamphlet, which my brother 
 publisht five and twenty years ago, in answer to an attack 
 on the Resurrection of our Lord, and in which he inserted 
 a little essay of mine defending the authenticity of the 
 Gospels against the vulgar infidel objections. Such being 
 the state of the case, the power of my writings must be 
 almost miraculous, if all this taste for German Theology has 
 sprung up, and fructified so abundantly, from the publication 
 of my Notes two years and a half ago. Many however of 
 the English translations were prior. When that of Strauss 
 was publisht I know not. I heard rumours of it several 
 years ago ; and I happen to have a letter from the late 
 Mr Rose, written in April 1836, telling me, " T. says that 
 from two forein booksellers he finds that they have sold a 
 large number of copies of Strauss ; and Black and Arm- 
 strong said that they had had five several offers of transla- 
 tions." Doubtless the Reviewer will reply that this zeal 
 to translate such an infidel work sprang from the taste for 
 German Theology, which was to be fostered by the Notes 
 to the Mission of the Comforter. Though these were not 
 publisht till ten years after, why should not coming books 
 also " cast their shadows before ? " 
 
 Hence whatever of demerit, or of merit, is connected 
 with the introduction of German Theology into England, 
 is due to others, and not to me. Perhaps I ought to 
 have taken part in the controversies on the subject earlier ; 
 but the unwillingness to obtrude my notions on public 
 observation, until I had acquired a fuller acquaintance 
 with that Theology, prevented me. Mr Hugh Rose and 
 Dr Pusey did infinitely more to draw men's minds in that 
 direction than I did, the former, by a somewhat incon- 
 siderate attack, founded on a hasty, superficial glance
 
 82 
 
 over in immense field of literature, the tendency of 
 prohibitions and invectives having mostly been to whet 
 the very appetite they would repress, ever since man ate 
 the forbidden fruit, and Dr Pusey, by his very judicious, 
 calm, and learned apology. To Mr Henry Rose too be- 
 longs the merit of having rendered the name of Neander 
 honoured in England ; of whose Life of Jesus I know 
 little, having merely consulted it occasionally to look at 
 his interpretation of particular passages ; but whose History 
 of the Christian Religion, though of course not faultless, as 
 no work on such a subject can be, is among the most precious 
 books of modern times, bringing out the manifold expres- 
 sions of Christian faith and life, in all ages and under all 
 forms of the Church, in the spirit of truth and of love. 
 In such matters however individuals only act under an im- 
 pulse which cannot be resisted or evaded. If Dr Pusey 
 and the two Roses had not done their work, it would 
 have been done by others ; and the five proposals for a 
 translation of Strauss, so soon after the publication of 
 the original, shew how little good is to be done by the most 
 vehement denunciations. 
 
 Another count of the same indictment occurs in p. 423. 
 " The German philosophers and writers on religious subjects 
 (we cannot bear to call them theologians) such as Kant, 
 Fichte, Schleiermacher, Strauss, Nitzsch, Neander, Paulus, 
 &c., were especial objects of admiration to Blanco White, 
 just as they were to Coleridge, and to his disciples, Mr 
 Hare and Mr Sterling." This strange jumble of names, 
 while it demonstrates the Reviewer's chaotic ignorance of 
 German philosophy and theology, and the proneness so often 
 found in connexion with ignorance to bark at every stranger, 
 bears witness also of still worse faults, of which we have
 
 33 
 
 already seen too many proofs. Among the seven writers here 
 named, five stand in the high places of literature, and in 
 various ways have deserved and received a crown. But, 
 along with these five, the Reviewer, by his " almost invo- 
 luntary," that is, random process of classification, ranks 
 Strauss and Paulus, and asserts that these also are " especial 
 objects of my admiration." Now not only is this utterly 
 false, but the Reviewer himself well knew that it was so. 
 For a few pages back, in p. 407, he writes thus : '* Does 
 not the warning which Mr Hare gives in condemning the 
 perusal of Strausses Life of Jesus apply equally to the 
 German Theology in general ? < If we walk through mire, 
 some of it will stick to us, even when we have no other 
 aim than to make our way through it, much more 
 when we dabble about in it, and -sift it.' Such too 
 must be the case with those who pass through any 
 sort of moral mire." The Reviewer first quotes these 
 words for the sake of condemning a literature, of which, 
 it is manifest from the whole article, he knows nothing ; 
 and then, a few pages after thus perverting their meaning, 
 he has the audacity to assert that Strauss is an " especial 
 object of my admiration." So too, as we saw in p. 20, 
 had he spoken of my " repugnance to receive the doc- 
 trines of this remarkable work," when he thought he could 
 turn this repugnance into a matter of accusation against 
 me. To see the name of Paulus among my favorites 
 surprised me even more. For he is a writer toward whom 
 I have always entertained an intense, intolerant disgust, 
 having been revolted by his shallowness, vanity, and pre- 
 sumption, whenever I have lookt into his writings. Even 
 in my Brother's Pamphlet mentioned above, I gave utter- 
 ance to this disgust five and twenty years ago ; and, having
 
 34 
 
 been led to mention him in two places, I have no recol- 
 lection of any others, in the Notes to the Mission of the 
 Comforter, in one (p. 481) I say, speaking of his expo- 
 sition of John vii. 38, as compared with that of Noesselt, 
 Rosenmiiller, and Kuinoel, that " there is small choice 
 of rotten apples." In the other passage, p. 922, having 
 referred to the Life of Jesus by Paulus, I add, " if in- 
 deed it be allowable to cite books which belong to the 
 reptile order of literature.' 1 The former of these passages 
 at least must, I think, have fallen under the Reviewer's 
 eye ; for he has made several references to the remarks on 
 German Theology in the next three or four pages. Yet 
 he asserts that Paulus also is one of the " especial objects 
 of my admiration." Have I not much reason to fear that 
 this Letter will induce him to rank himself also amongst 
 them ? 
 
 From the whole article it is evident, as I have said 
 already, that the writer knows nothing of the theo- 
 logians and the theology he is reviling. There is no 
 indication of his being able to read their language ; and 
 even with the translations which have been publisht, his 
 acquaintance is very scanty. Hence it is natural that 
 he should be exceedingly angry at my presumption in 
 reprehending the practice, so disgracefully prevalent, of un- 
 scrupulously condemning and railing at German Theology, 
 with little, if any, knowledge of it. To me, I confess, it 
 has always seemed that a careful examination of the 
 subject matter is an indispensable preliminary to pro- 
 nouncing judgement upon it : but this notion gives such 
 offense in England, and is so abhorrent to the procedure of 
 our writers on theology, that one might almost suspect it 
 must be a German heresy. At all events the Reviewer, it
 
 35 
 
 is plain, feels that to trench upon the privileges of Ignorance 
 is a personal injury and insult. 
 
 Such being the value of his criticisms, I will not say 
 anything further about the various writers whom he carps 
 and sneers and growls at, some of whom he rebukes me 
 for praising, while with regard to others my sin consists in 
 mixing censure with my praise, or praise with my censure, 
 and not condemning them summarily and sweepingly on 
 the mere score of their being Germans. But I must make 
 an exception in behalf of Olshausen, whose Commentary on 
 the New Testament is a truly precious work, fitted to be of 
 the greatest use to our English students of divinity ; as has 
 been acknowledged to me by a number of pious clergymen, 
 with affectionate gratitude for having been led to his rich 
 spiritual banquet, after being half starved on the meagre- 
 ness and dryness of our common English exegetical 
 Theology. That this excellent work should be reprobated 
 by your Reviewer, will not disturb any one, as he manifestly 
 knows nothing about it, and merely abuses it in order 
 that his abuse may glance off upon me. But in this in- 
 stance he follows the authority of a writer in the Irish 
 Ecclesiastical Journal for last December, though exagge- 
 rating and distorting the observations which he repeats ; 
 whereby that which was already incorrect and unfair, 
 becomes utterly false and unjust. 
 
 When one examines the censures, which, even in these 
 days, are scattered about in our religious literature con- 
 cerning German Theology, one might almost fancy that 
 our writers must be visited with a judicial blindness, 
 whenever they touch upon that theme. Nor would such a 
 suspicion be far from the mark. For what is judicial blind- 
 ness, except that which we bring upon ourselves by our own 
 
 D 2
 
 36 
 
 sin? If we choose to walk in the dark through an unknown 
 region, we are sure to stray and to stumble ; and if we 
 strike out our arms and kick out at every step against 
 imaginary monsters, we shall soon slip and lie sprawling 
 on the ground. If we persist presumptuously in pro- 
 nouncing judgement on a province of literature, with which 
 we have no acquaintance, or a very slender one, our 
 ignorance will revenge itself upon us by leading us into all 
 manner of blunders. But would not the same thing hap- 
 pen to a sciolist who took up a book in any department 
 of physical science ? Would he not be startled perpetually 
 by something strange, by something which to his precon- 
 ceived notions seemed absurd ? Would not a person fare 
 likewise, if, without any preparation, he were to pick up a 
 treatise on logic, and to conceive that he was entitled to 
 condemn as nonsense, whatever he could not immediately 
 understand ? Such ebullitions of presumptuous folly would 
 be frequent, were it not that in physical science, and in logic, 
 there is a more palpable line of demarcation between 
 ignorance and knowledge, and that he who has not 
 mastered the elements, is precluded from advancing further. 
 But in theology it is otherwise. There is such an intimate 
 connexion between theology and religion, that, all persons 
 being bound to have a certain amount of religious know- 
 ledge, people easily slide into the assumption that they are 
 also possest of theological knowledge, and that they are 
 qualified to pronounce upon the profoundest and most 
 intricate theological questions, without previous discipline 
 or study. It is true, the profoundest problems of theology 
 are involved in the simplest religious acts : Theology exists 
 implicitly in Religion. But so are the laws of the universe 
 involved in our simplest physical acts: yet we do not
 
 37 
 
 conceive that everybody is therefore to have a voice in 
 questions of physical science. Science repudiates universal 
 suffrage ; and so does Theology. I am not hereby exalting 
 Theology above Religion : far from it. The true worth 
 and dignity of man, as well as his true happiness, consist, 
 not in what he knows, but in what he does, or rather, in 
 what he is. His knowledge is only precious, so far as it 
 feeds and ministers to his Christian life; even as his actions 
 themselves are only precious, so far as they are the expres- 
 sions of that life, which, like all life, is strengthened by its 
 appropriate activity. Still does the Son give thanks to 
 the Father, that the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven 
 are revealed to babes, and that the wise and prudent can 
 only receive them by becoming like babes. If to the 
 natural eye the wise and prudent may seem to have 
 advantages, these are far more than counterbalanced by 
 the difficulties and perplexities which increase of knowledge 
 brings with it, as well as by the perilous temptation to 
 count knowledge the highest of all things, and to substi- 
 tute it for the realities of Christian life and action. On 
 the other hand, while the fulness of a Christian life may 
 exist with a very small amount of knowledge, and though, 
 when it does exist, its constant tendency is to purify and 
 refine the intellectual, as well as the moral part of our 
 nature, yet it will not of itself fit us for passing judgement 
 on theological questions. Rather will it refrain from med- 
 dling with that in which it knows itself to be incompetent ; 
 and, in the assurance that it has everything in its faith, it 
 will not be troubled by questions lying beyond the bounds 
 of that faith. But where the Christian life is imperfect, it 
 is unable to subdue the self-sufficiency of our nature. 
 Where Faith is weak, it clings to all manner of artificial
 
 38 
 
 supports, and is disturbed and irritated when any of its 
 props are removed, when any of its easy cushions are taken 
 from under it. Hence, this being the ordinary state of 
 the religious, there is ever a proneness among them to step 
 beyond their proper limits, and to pronounce a condem- 
 nation hastily and angrily, from wanting the calmness 
 which a well-grounded assurance alone can give, against 
 everything that seems at variance with their narrow, and 
 often arbitrary notions. 
 
 I have made these remarks, because it has so often fallen 
 to my lot of late years to have to expose a series of gross 
 misrepresentations in matters pertaining to theology. The 
 multitude of such misrepresentations in these days is quite 
 perplexing and distressing, and almost compells one to look 
 with distrust on every quotation one meets with, while it 
 tempts one to fear that the faculty, either of perceiving 
 truth, or of speaking it, must be passing away from England, 
 at least from our theological writers. Doubtless too there 
 is a great moral, as well as intellectual obliquity involved 
 in this defect. There is a want of candour toward those 
 M r ho differ from us, a rash haste in snatching at anything 
 that seems to flatter our prejudices, a carelessness and 
 sluggishness in the pursuit of truth, an indifference about 
 truth, except so far as it is subservient to our preconceived 
 notions, or to the interests of our party : all these and the 
 other modes of party-spirit have eaten wofully into the 
 heart of the English people, and have drawn it away from 
 the pure contemplation and love of truth. But on the 
 other hand there is also the want of a severe intellectual 
 discipline, of a logical and dialectical and critical training 
 to qualify us for separating truth from errour, and for dis- 
 cerning truth under its manifold forms, and in the midst of
 
 all its accidental accompaniments, the habit of confounding 
 and identifying the form with the essence, which leads us 
 to assert the indispensableness of our own forms, and to 
 deny the essence, when it manifests itself under other 
 forms. All these habits, whether moral or intellectual, 
 help to explain the exceeding frequency of misrepresenta- 
 tions among our writers on theological and ecclesiastical 
 subjects ; more especially when we take into account, that 
 our Religious Journals hold out an inducement to every 
 ignoramus to become a writer, and to bray his ignorance 
 in the ears of a credulous, and weak, and therefore easily 
 terrified public. Thus a writer in the Irish Journal for 
 this month, though confessing that he knows nothing of 
 Olshausen, beyond the extracts in the previous number of 
 that Journal, insists, even in spite of a protest by the 
 collector of those extracts, that he has a right to class 
 Olshausen with Strauss, whom he supposes to have attained 
 " the climax of anti-christian literature." Of course, 
 knowing nothing of either, he can see no difference between 
 them. But is it not marvellous that a person, who may 
 possibly be an honest, and even a religious man, after a 
 fashion, should think he can serve the cause of Christian 
 truth, by uttering such a heinous accusation against a di- 
 vine, of whom he avowedly knows nothing, except that he 
 is held in very high esteem by those who are acquainted 
 with him ? Yet, alas ! even such a rude bray may awaken 
 an echo, yea, many. 
 
 A considerable part of the objections to Olshausen 
 urged in the Irish Journal, and taken from thence by 
 your Reviewer, relate to an Essay on the Canon of the 
 New Testament, which the Translator has prefixt to 
 the Commentary. This Essay, with which I was not
 
 40 
 
 previously acquainted, seems to be written in the same ex- 
 cellent spirit which distinguishes the work it precedes. Still 
 there are divers things in it which may easily offend such 
 as have never paid any attention to the history of the 
 Canon. Such persons, that is, the great body of Chris- 
 tians, including the main part of those who adorn 
 their faith by the sanctity of their lives, are apt to sup- 
 pose that the Books of the New Testament came out much 
 like other books, and were combined into a whole soon 
 after their appearance. Hence they must needs be startled, 
 if they look into any treatise on the Canon, and find how 
 many controversies arose in the early centuries about some 
 of the books in it, and how long a period elapst before 
 it was finally settled. This is a natural, and an inno- 
 cent feeling. Yet on the other hand, when theologians 
 have to treat on the Canon, as it behoves them to 
 do in their vocation, and to consider the reasons which 
 induced the Church to receive the various books in it, 
 they are compelled and bound to seek the truth, the ex- 
 act truth, diligently, laboriously, perseveringly, with the 
 utmost severity of criticism, holding no compromise with 
 any kind of falsehood, suppressing nothing, colouring no- 
 thing. They are bound to do this by their responsibility 
 to the God of Truth, who will not be served by lies. Now, 
 when these two forms of thought meet, there cannot but 
 be a shock. The theologian should not hasten this, should 
 not aggravate it ; but he must not shun it. So long as 
 such discussions are confined to treatises written for the 
 learned, these shocks will be less frequent. It is one of 
 the mischievous effects of our periodical literature, that 
 such questions are now brought forward as matters of talk, 
 in every family, at every breakfast-table. But who is to
 
 41 
 
 be blamed for this ? Surely not the theologian, who ful- 
 fills his appointed task of seeking and declaring what ap- 
 proves itself to his understanding, exercised under the 
 sacred controll of his conscience, as truth ; but the jour- 
 nalist, who drags such matters before the vulgar eye, often 
 for no other purpose than the gratification of some personal 
 or party spite. Had there been a literature of the same 
 kind of yore, what sheets full of offensive matter might 
 have been extracted from the greatest theological works, 
 from the Summa of Aquinas, or from Taylor's Ductor Dubi- 
 tantium ! Separate a few sentences from the context ; 
 state that as positive, which is only put hypothetically or 
 problematically in the course of an argument ; you may 
 easily wrest treason or atheism out of the most loyal and 
 pious writers. Thus, for instance, St Paul's words, Then 
 they also who are fallen asleep in Christ are perisht, might 
 be twisted into a denial of the Resurrection. 
 
 In like manner, if we look at the sentences which are 
 pickt out from Olshausen's Essay by the writer in the 
 Irish Journal as peculiarly offensive, in the places where 
 they originally stand, as links in the chain of argument, 
 and if we are at all familiar with such discussions, much 
 of the offense, if not all, will vanish. For example, when 
 we see the following words printed in italics, " Now in 
 the whole Second Epistle of St Peter we do not find the 
 slightest thing which can be regarded as erroneous, or as 
 morally bad" -we are naturally puzzled and startled. 
 But, when we turn to the original passage, we find that 
 this sentence is merely a link in a chain of argument. 
 After speaking, as he was bound to speak, of the disputes 
 which have existed from very early times concerning the 
 genuineness of this Epistle, and giving all the weight he
 
 42 
 
 can to the positive evidence in its favour, Olshausen puts 
 this dilemma : " Either the Epistle is genuine and apostoli- 
 cal ; or it is not only spurious and forged, but was forged 
 by a bold, shameless impostor ; and such a person must 
 have had an evil design in executing a forgery of the kind 
 supposed. Now in the whole Epistle we do not find the 
 slightest thing which can be regarded as erroneous, or as 
 morally bad. Its contents are entirely Biblical and truly 
 evangelical. An elevated religious spirit animates the 
 Epistle throughout. Is it conceivable that a man actuated 
 by this spirit can be chargeable with such a deception ?" 
 Thus the sentence objected to is nothing more than a repe- 
 tition of the argument perpetually urged by the Apologists 
 for the Bible, that, the only alternative being to believe 
 the writers, or to assume that they are shameless impostors, 
 the pure morality of their lives and writings must determine 
 the scale in their favour. 
 
 Another objection urged against Olshausen is, that he 
 " considers the history of the Gergesene demoniac to offer 
 difficulties peculiar to itself, such as one of the Evangelists 
 speaking of two such persons, and another of one" But 
 is not this the fact ? and is a commentator on Scripture to 
 conceal this fact, or to slur it over ! is he to do that which 
 would be universally reprobated as dishonesty in a com- 
 mentator on any heathen author ? is he to take a lesson 
 from your Reviewer in distorting and falsifying what does 
 not suit his purpose ? Is there not a difficulty in this dis- 
 crepancy ? a discrepancy and difficulty which have been 
 continually noticed by critics from the time of Augustin 
 downward, as they could not but be by whosoever at- 
 tempted to draw up a harmony of the Gospels, and for 
 which a variety of explanations have been suggested. This
 
 43 
 
 difficulty may indeed perplex those who cling to the vulgar 
 notion of literal inspiration, but, when we take a corrector 
 view, is wholly immaterial. For, as we may always feel 
 sure that truth coheres far better than errour, the cor- 
 rection of our views on inspiration would remove a number 
 of stumblingblocks, which now beset our students of theo- 
 logy, and which they cannot get over except by wilfully 
 closing their eyes to them. Is our criticism to be brought 
 under such bondage to an arbitrary hypothesis, that a pious 
 commentator is to be held up to reprobation because he 
 takes notice of the discrepancies in the Gospels 2 In the 
 Church of Rome a person subjects himself to condemnation, 
 if he dares to notice any errour in the Vulgate. This 
 practice we reprobate as Romish : but the selfsame spirit 
 is perpetually found even in those who are loudest in 
 railing at the Church of Rome ; and they will be no less eager 
 in condemning a person who points out any mistake, not 
 in the Bible, but in our vulgar conception of it, in our 
 Vulgate. This however assuredly is, as it ever has been, 
 a tendency subversive of faith. Faith may easily coexist 
 with much latent, unconscious errour : but when we be- 
 come conscious of it, we must cut it out ; or the mortifica- 
 tion will spread through the whole body. Every honest 
 heart revolts from trickery in the service of Religion. 
 
 As to the Reviewer's assertion, that Olshausen " con- 
 siders that the rationalist Paulus was probably right in 
 considering that our Lord's directions to Peter about the 
 tribute-money meant that he was to find the money, not in 
 the fishes mouth, but by selling it !" after which he asks, 
 " Is this the kind of theology which Mr Hare wishes to 
 recommend ? " it is a mere falsehood. Olshausen admits 
 indeed that the explanation suggested by Paulus in this
 
 44 
 
 instance is more plausible than in others : but he then pro- 
 ceeds at considerable length to refute it, though he con- 
 cludes by admitting, as has often been felt, that there are 
 difficulties of a peculiar kind connected with this miracle. 
 Such a refutation is at all events likely to have more 
 weight with an intelligent reader, than the Reviewer's 
 marks of admiration and italics, even though strengthened 
 by his customary seasoning of falsehood. That falsehood 
 here is his own addition to what he read in the Irish 
 Journal^ where it is said that " Olshausen states that the 
 explanation of Paulus 'deserves consideration; 11 ' where 
 however, as in the instance before quoted, a most incorrect 
 impression of Olshausen's note is given by the severing 
 of what he says by way of admission in the course of 
 argument, from the answer subjoined to it. 
 
 Still, even if the Reviewer's statement about Olshausen 
 were not as false as it is, what right would he have to 
 exclaim at the end of it, " Is this the kind of theology 
 which Mr Hare wishes to recommend ? " at least unless 
 he was prepared to shew that what he had given was a 
 fair sample of Olshausen's Commentary? This is a 
 favorite trick with our theological slanderers, when they 
 cannot find enough fuel for their malignity in the writings 
 of a person whom they desire to injure, to charge him with 
 all the evil they can detect in any book he may happen to 
 have commended. Yet what would be said, if some 
 French critic were to pick out half a dozen ribald speeches 
 from Shakspeare, and then to cry out, Is this the poetry 
 which all the poets and moralists of England exalt above 
 all other works of the human mind ? Would not such a 
 man be an impudent slanderer ? Nor would his slander be 
 less false, if his extracts from Shakspeare were correctly
 
 45 
 
 transcribed, than if they were fictitious. In the Notes to 
 the Mission of the Comforter I have given a multitude of 
 examples of the kind of exegetical theology which " I wish 
 to recommend." Is there anything among these in the 
 slightest degree resembling the opinions which the Reviewer 
 would impute to me? If their whole tone and spirit is 
 totally different, and he will not dare to assert that it is 
 not, his insinuation is again a gross calumny. 
 
 I trust I have sufficiently shewn the futility of the accu- 
 sation of my having been a main agent in introducing and 
 promoting the study of the infidel theology of Germany. 
 But I am said to have had an accomplice in this work, the 
 imputation against whom would be ludicrously absurd, if 
 it were not revoltingly malignant. Just after the passage 
 quoted above, in p. 30, in which I am charged with this 
 criminal course, the Reviewer adds, " Mr Maurice must 
 be included in the same category as Mr Hare in this 
 respect. He also anticipates benefits from the study of 
 German Theology." Now what is the evidence to shew 
 that he is a partaker in my criminality in this matter ? I 
 have often heard complaints of his having spoken too 
 severely of German Theology ; but, in his Letters to Mr 
 Palmer on the Jerusalem Bishopric, he has said : " It is 
 not this Jerusalem bishopric which will bring us into con- 
 tact, either with that which is most feeble in the Pietistic, 
 or that which is most dangerous in the Rationalizing side 
 of German life. That contact exists already ; the com- 
 merce is establisht ; the sea has failed to be an effectual 
 cordon sanitaire : all our devices will assuredly fail also : 
 the question is, how the intercourse may be turned to 
 profit and not to evil. My own conviction is, that if any- 
 thing will put an end to what is most vicious in the tone of
 
 46 
 
 our modern fashionable chapel and bazaar Christianity, 
 and at the same time will call out that which is strong and 
 healthful in the feelings of those who have given their sanc- 
 tion to it, a more extended and less suspicious communion 
 with German thoughts and feelings is likely to produce that 
 effect. The moment our divines begin to know what their 
 brethren abroad have been really thinking and working at for 
 the last eighty or a hundred years, they must begin to perceive 
 t/tat a merely sentimental religion of comforts and experiences, 
 a merely social religion of coteries and circles, a merely 
 outward religion of excitements, cannot avail in this our 
 day. They must lengthen their cords and strengthen their 
 stages. They must dare to encounter those awful thoughts 
 respecting God Himself, tchich occupied the Church in the 
 first ages ; they must dare to ask themselves how He has 
 constituted us in ourselves, and in relation to our fellow- men." 
 These latter sentences, printed in italics, are quoted by the 
 Reviewer. The sentence preceding them he omits; because 
 it shews that Mr Maurice is not speaking of the introduction 
 of German Theology as desirable in itself, but as having 
 already been accomplisht, and as inevitable ; and that his 
 desire therefore is to shew how this intercourse, which can- 
 not be averted, " may be turned to profit, and not to evil." 
 Yet, on the strength of this one passage, the Reviewer has 
 the audacity to accuse Mr Maurice of conspiring with me 
 to undermine the faith of England by labouring to intro- 
 duce the infidel Theology of Germany. On the strength of 
 this one passage he denounces Mr Maurice, and calls upon 
 all faithful Christians to resist and denounce him, as one 
 " who would, in vanity or in treason, undermine our faith." 
 This is the manner, Sir, in which you make amends to a 
 person for having uttered a false charge against him, which
 
 47 
 
 you have been compelled to retract. It is an old observa- 
 tion, Proprium est huinani generis odisse quern laeseris; and 
 the sagacity of the remark is receiving continual verifica- 
 tion, even from those who call themselves Christian divines, 
 from those who thrust themselves forward as champions, 
 but in fact are subverters, of the Christian faith. 
 
 The rationalizing and infidel Theology of Germany has 
 made its way into England, without Mr Maurice's aid, 
 and without mine. The question is, how is it to be re- 
 sisted ? how are we to draw good out of this evil ? as Faith, 
 we know, through God's help, can out of all evil. We 
 cannot build a Chinese wall, and shut it out. We could 
 not even keep out the Picts by such means, much less the 
 legions in the great army of Thought. The very act of 
 building such a wall is a proof of weakness and degeneracy. 
 When a nation places its strength in outward bulwarks, 
 that strength is verging on its decay. The only true 
 strength is in ourselves, and in God. They who attempt 
 to fence themselves round with penalties and with anathe- 
 mas, they who go forth with clamour and clatter, like the 
 barbarians against the monster who was devouring the sun, 
 are sure to find before long that their vain confidence itself, 
 their clamour and clatter, become an aggravation of their 
 weakness. The living faith of the nation wanes away, 
 when it is debarred from intercourse with all that has life 
 in it, when it is told that, if it ventures to meet its ene- 
 mies, it will be as grasshoppers before them. If such a 
 fear comes over our faith, what shall we say ? except Let 
 us go back into Egypt : for there at all events we shall have 
 something substantial. This has often been seen in Eomish 
 countries. Everything connected with religion, in such a 
 state of things, becomes hollow, nominal, unreal. Instead
 
 48 
 
 of a living object of faith, they who celebrate their formal 
 rites in the place where their fathers worshipt, find out 
 after a while that they are dancing round a dry mummy 
 of Orthodoxy. Or, if they do not find it out themselves, 
 the younger generation are sure to do so, and will be scared 
 away by the sightless eyes, and the dark, shriveled fea- 
 tures. Hereby many of them will be driven into hostile 
 excesses. In order to combat the spirit of unbelief, which 
 is rushing upon us impetuously from within, as well as 
 from without, we must have a living spirit of faith. Our 
 soldiers must be trained to fight against it with its own 
 weapons, not with the armour and the arms " of the in- 
 vincible knights of old." Those knights fought with the 
 armour and the arms of their own age ; or they would not 
 have been invincible. The spear and the crossbow and the 
 breastplate will not avail against modern artillery. If we 
 are to be victorious in the conflict, as, provided we do 
 our duty, with God's help we assuredly shall be, we 
 must use the armour and the arms of our own times. The 
 powers of nature may be marshaled against us ; the powers 
 of art may be marshaled against us. But we may make 
 
 them our allies. 
 
 Winds blow, and Waters roll, 
 Strength to the brave, and Power, and Liberty, 
 Yet in themselves are nothing. One decree 
 Spake laws to them, and said that by the soul 
 Only the Nations shall be great and free. 
 
 So may all the powers of the human mind, all the subtilty 
 of the intellect, all the aspirations of the imagination, be 
 marshaled in opposition to Faith, if our Faith is faithless ; 
 and so will they be. But, if our Faith is strong and faith- 
 ful, it will wield them as weapons of light to conquer and 
 convince the gainsayers.
 
 49 
 
 It is under this deep and firm conviction, that I have 
 ever maintained, and, so far as power is granted to me, 
 shall continue to maintain and to urge, that we are 
 not to shrink and skulk from the difficulties and the 
 conflicts, which the course of the world, and the aggres- 
 sions and revolutions of Thought may cast in the way 
 of the Church, but to grapple with them, to surmount 
 them, to overcome them. We shall never fulfill God's 
 purposes by shutting ourselves up in fortresses, and letting 
 the great host of the human mind sweep by. Fortresses 
 in modern warfare have lost their protective power : the 
 hosts march onward ; and the garrisons, if they did not 
 surrender, would die out. But let us do our part ; let 
 us go onward with the foremost ; let us outreason the 
 subtilest ; let us outsoar the boldest : for we know that all 
 things shall be subdued under the Son of God, all the 
 powers of the intellectual, and of the moral, as well as of the 
 physical world, Reason, and Imagination, and Conscience, 
 and Will, as well as Life and Death. German heresy, 
 German infidelity are rushing into the land. English 
 heresy, English infidelity are rising up to meet them. 
 Art thou also become like us ? each of them cries exultingly 
 to the other. How are we to overcome this confederacy ? 
 We shall not do so by putting on the old, rusty and bat- 
 tered armour of the Fathers, or of the Schoolmen. They 
 did their work in their days ; and by studying their ex- 
 ample we may gain some lessons, how we are to do ours. 
 But our work is in many respects different from theirs. 
 The forms of thought we have to contend with are dif- 
 ferent ; the doubts and perplexities which are bewildering 
 us, are different, the same indeed essentially, bu with 
 great differences in their modes of uttering themselves.
 
 50 
 
 Surely then, in preparing for the battle against this unholy 
 alliance, Wisdom does not bid us reject the aid which 
 German Faith and German Thought may yield us. The 
 Saxons came in of yore as our helpers, and became our 
 masters ; but now they are our brethren. Their battle is 
 ours; ours is theirs. We are fighting against the same 
 enemies, for the same Lord. Many of the intellectual 
 combats have already been waged and won by them ; and 
 from them we too may learn how we are to wage and to 
 win them. 
 
 That there is such a thing as German Faith, that there 
 are precious masses of German Thought, I know from an 
 experience of more than thirty years, for which I shall ever 
 be thankful. In the Notes to the Mission of the Comforter, 
 I have endeavoured to prove this, and to offer some hints 
 by the help of which our students may be led to the 
 better sources of German divinity, without going through 
 as long a pilgrimage as has fallen to my lot. This is 
 the amount of my offense. Of course I do not mean to 
 say that any German divine of our age is to be taken as 
 an infallible guide, any more than any divine of any other 
 country or age, since that of the Apostles. But for the 
 wants which are felt by the most thoughtful enquirers of 
 our times, for the difficulties which disturb them, more 
 help can be obtained from the German Theology of our 
 days than from that of all former ages. This is almost 
 implied indeed in the fact of their being our contempora- 
 ries. For contemporary, living teachers have ever been 
 those who have exercised the most powerful immediate 
 influence upon mankind ; as arises necessarily from the 
 fact, that they are best able to understand the modes of 
 thought, and to sympathize with the modes of feeling,
 
 51 
 
 which prevail in their days. This my conviction of the 
 great value of what is good in German Theology is shared, 
 so far as I have had the means of judging, by all who are 
 really acquainted with it, in proportion to the familiarity 
 of their acquaintance. They who are ignorant of it, deny 
 its value. But what is the worth of a witness, whom one 
 can prove to be non-cognisant of the facts ? 
 
 Doubtless there is much that is evil in German Theo- 
 logy : there are temptations and snares that may lure the 
 student astray. I have never denied this. The Reviewei. 
 himself admits that I have " condemned Rationalism in 
 the gross, and in language the vigour of which is fully 
 equal to that of any writer he is acquainted with : " and 
 for this very reason, because there is so much folly and 
 perversity in it, have I tried to help pur students in dis- 
 tinguishing between the good and the bad, so that they 
 may choose out the former, and eschew the latter. But 
 does not the same complication and perplexity beset us in 
 every mode of life ? Can any one go through life, without 
 having to make the choice of Hercules ? And can this 
 choice be made once for all ? Have we not to renew it 
 continually under one form or other ? We cannot train 
 up our divines in a hothouse, any more than the other 
 classes of men who are to bear part in the manifold war- 
 fare of the world. A hothouse plant, when it is brought 
 out of its shelter, is unable to buffet with the storms : the 
 first frost kills it. This is the order of the world : and 
 they who have any practical knowledge of education, are 
 well aware that to screen a boy from all perception of the 
 evil that is in the world, is not the way to prepare him for 
 encountering that evil in after years ; not to mention that 
 the spring of evil is within us, and that this evil will 
 
 E2
 
 52 
 
 assuredly spring up under one form or other, whatever pains 
 we may take to keep boys always under a glass. Hence 
 they who are educated thus, while they gain no strength 
 to resist temptation, mostly become insufferable coxcombs, 
 who fancy themselves pure, and that they are defiled 
 whenever they come into contact with the world. One 
 can hardly conceive an education less fitted to prepare a 
 man for the ministry of the Gospel. In truth the whole 
 scheme of the world and all experience shew that the 
 right system of education is not negative, but positive, 
 that the best way of keeping down weeds is by sowing 
 good seed, and that our work is to strengthen the heart, 
 the mind, and all its faculties, the will, the conscience, the 
 moral affections, in the faith and fear of God, even as we 
 endeavour to strengthen and perfect all the members of the 
 body, so that the whole man may be fitted for whatsoever 
 work he may be called to. Nor may we indulge the hope 
 of training up our divines in ignorance of the heresies 
 by which the Church is infested. It was not thus that 
 Augustin was trained to fight against heresies. Train 
 them to be strong, strong in faith, strong in the knowledge 
 of the enemies they will have to contend against, strong 
 in the power of wielding all their faculties against those 
 enemies. This will be a far wholesomer diet, than if we fed 
 them with the crambe recocta of our own peculiar system. 
 
 That German Theology may render us valuable service 
 in the training of our divines, we may in some measure 
 infer from what has already been effected in England 
 by the influence of German Philology. He who compares 
 Bishop Thirlwall's History of Greece, or Mr Grote's, with 
 Mitford's, will be disposed to marvel at the immeasurable 
 .superiority of the two former, a superiority arising, not
 
 53 
 
 merely or mainly from their superior talents, but far more 
 from their better method of exercising those talents, and using 
 their materials, from their having had their sight purged, 
 as it were, to see ancient history in a new light : and I am 
 sure that Bishop Thirl wall and Mr Grote would be the first 
 persons to acknowledge that their chief advantage over 
 Mitford has been what they have learnt from Niebuhr, and 
 from other masters of German Philology. They have 
 not, it is true, merely imported their learning. It would 
 have been of little worth in that case. They have assimi- 
 lated it, and made it their own. They have assimilated 
 the elements and products of German speculation and 
 research with the peculiar spirit of the English mind, with 
 our practical, statesmanly judgement. A somewhat similar 
 contrast may be discerned, if we compare Arnold's History 
 of Rome with his earlier Essays on Roman History pub- 
 lisht in the Encyclopedia Metropolitana. In him too it 
 seems as if a scale had been withdrawn from his eyes. Of 
 a similar kind, I feel confident, will be the result in Theo- 
 logy, and that here too our peculiar English gift of 
 choosing out and adopting what is practically good and 
 useful, and rejecting what is excessive and extravagant 
 and merely notional, will manifest itself very beneficially. 
 Nay, we have already seen proofs of this. The great 
 superiority of Mr Trenches works to our common English 
 exegetical writings is evidently owing in great measure to 
 his familiarity with the best German divines. So again 
 Mr Stanley's Sermons on the Apostolical Age shew by what 
 discipline he has been trained, and by what learning his 
 mind has been fed, and, excellent as they are in them- 
 selves, hold out a promise of greater things to come, both 
 from himself, and from others nurtured in the same school.
 
 54- 
 
 Already in the age of the Reformation did our Church 
 derive infinite benefit from the great religious teachers 
 of Germany : and although during the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries the dominant party in our Church 
 leant too much in an opposite direction, yet, when, amid 
 the torpour of the first half of the last century, a new 
 spiritual life was awakened in England, many of the 
 sparks which kindled it came over from Germany; and 
 Zinzendorf a main agent in rousing Wesley. Unhappily our 
 Church did not cherish these sparks, but cast out him on 
 whom they had lit. Then came a long period during 
 which the star of France was in the ascendent through- 
 out Europe ; and nothing flourisht beneath it. Its 
 influence was checking and repressing as to all the higher 
 exercises of thought, until the insurrection of Europe 
 against her political usurpation threw off the intellectual 
 yoke of France along with the political, and revived the 
 consciousness of our Teutonic brotherhood. Since the 
 beginning of the present century, the power of this con- 
 sciousness has been becoming more and more manifest 
 in the various branches of our literature. Its first organs 
 were Walter Scott and Coleridge. At present one can 
 hardly take up a journal without seeing marks of it. 
 
 I do not mean that England has been solely recipient, 
 without communicating anything in return. The intercourse 
 would have been of doubtful benefit, had such been the 
 case ; but even the blessings which came to us from the 
 German Reformation, were only a return for those which 
 we had sent to Germany centuries before in the mission 
 of Boniface. The influence exercised by Shakspeare, at 
 least over literature, has been far greater in Germany than 
 in England : and the best German political writers of the
 
 55 
 
 last and the present generation have recognised their master 
 in Burke. Even in ancient philology, the Germans are 
 now importing our Histories of Greece, which were first 
 inspired by them, but which they declare to be far superior 
 to any of native growth, in consequence of the habit of 
 practical, political thought generated by our free constitu- 
 tion. All these things point to the original brotherhood 
 between the English mind and the German. The thoughts 
 which stir the one awaken a response in the other, and are 
 propagated onward : and these influences are totally dif- 
 ferent from any that either of us has ever received from 
 the other nations of Europe. They belong to another 
 family ; we are brethren. 
 
 In like manner, while we have been deriving some 
 good at least, as well as evil, from their Theology, one 
 of the first divines now living in Germany, I have been 
 informed, acknowledges that, though he was trained 
 to be speculatively and in doctrine a Christian in the 
 theological schools of his own country, it was only when 
 he came over to England, and saw some examples of 
 Christian life amongst us, and still more in Scotland, that 
 he was awakened to a knowledge of practical Christianity. 
 Many, I believe, would join in a like declaration : and this 
 would indeed be a precious return for us to make for what- 
 ever we may learn from their Theology. It is the very 
 thing they want, to keep their Theology from excesses, to 
 give it a Christian substance, as well as form. Not that 
 this is wholly wanting in Germany : numbers of beautiful 
 examples of it are to be found. But still, through God's 
 mercy, the inestimable blessing of practical Christianity, 
 of Christianity as forming the ruling, vital principle of our 
 domestic, and of our personal life, is much more frequent in
 
 56 
 
 England. May it become more and more frequent in both 
 countries ! and may this blessed communion of giving and 
 receiving spread more and more widely, and bind us to- 
 gether in closer bonds of union ! At a time when we are 
 abolishing all commercial restrictions, it would indeed be 
 a wild paradox, if we were to enact a Bill of Exclusion 
 against the products of German Thought. The worthy 
 dame who tried to resist the incursions of the Atlantic with 
 her broom, would have to hide her diminisht head before 
 the superior wisdom of such an enterprise. As our Mis- 
 sionary Societies, from the days of Schwartz to the present, 
 have found so many of their best, most pious, wisest, and 
 most efficient labourers among our Teutonic brethren, so, I 
 trust and pray, notwithstanding all obstacles, however 
 formidable, may our Church and the Protestant Church 
 of Germany be drawn more and more closely together; and 
 may we thus be enabled to fight the good fight of faith side 
 by side victoriously against the enemies of God and man ! 
 Even if we had to avenge ourselves upon Germany for the 
 evil her Theology has done us, this would be the only 
 Christian revenge. But her cause, as I have said, is also 
 ours ; and ours is hers : and unwise and base as was the 
 policy recommended during the wars at the beginning of 
 this century by those who would have had us separate our 
 cause from that of Europe, and husband our resources 
 against the day when we should be attackt at home, still 
 more unwise and mean would it be, to shrink from the 
 great religious conflicts of our age, and to wrap ourselves 
 up in the comfortable consciousness of our Anglican ortho- 
 doxy, and to go on repeating, We believe, We believe, till 
 the words died away with our expiring faith. 
 
 I have now done with this vindication of myself. The
 
 various accusations and insinuations, which the Reviewer 
 has brought against me, have, I conceive, been fully 
 refuted ; at least all that are of any moment. If there 
 are some slighter ones which I have omitted to notice, it is 
 from the wearisomeness and loathsomeness of the task of 
 exposing one slander after another, one misrepresentation 
 after another. A charge may be stated in a line, which 
 it may take pages to rebut. I have said little about 
 what the Reviewer urges against my friends, Dr Arnold 
 and the Chevalier Bunsen, because they are merely brought 
 in for the sake of implicating me and Mr Maurice in the 
 errours imputed to them ; and I have already had opportu- 
 nities of expressing my thoughts and feelings concerning 
 them. On divers former occasions it has been my duty to 
 vindicate one or other of my friends ; on one, a person with 
 whom I had no acquaintance, but who laid claim to my 
 sense of justice, when I was called upon to take part in 
 the proceedings against him. These controversies were not 
 without pain ; but there was something satisfactory and 
 cheering in their purpose. This has been almost wholly 
 painful and humiliating, to have to vindicate oneself, against 
 such accusations, and such an adversary. I may seem to 
 have spoken of him severely : but let it be remembered 
 what is the heinousness of the charges brought against me, 
 that I have been denounced as a propagater of infidelity, 
 as desiring covertly, " in vanity or treason, to undermine 
 the faith of the Church," of that Church to whose service 
 my whole life is professedly devoted, and consequently 
 that my whole life is one huge, base, foul lie : let it be 
 remembered that these heinous charges are brought 
 against me without a single particle of evidence in proof of 
 them, without the citation of a single sentence from my
 
 58 
 
 writings that can warrant them, and that they are sup- 
 ported by a string of slanderous falsehoods, and by insinua- 
 tions which are almost worse than downright falsehoods. 
 How is such an adversary to be treated ? Does it not 
 become a duty to call his offenses by their right name, 
 offenses which acquire a deeper dye from being committed 
 under the name of religion ? It may be thought that of 
 such charges one's life ought to be the only refutation, and 
 that it was needless to undertake any other. Nor should 
 I, if they had stood alone : I should have left them to that 
 refutation, or to other defenders. But there was a good 
 deal of censure on my conduct in publishing the life of my 
 friend, Sterling ; and being aware that divers good persons, 
 not knowing the circumstances which led me to undertake 
 that work, have been grieved by my having done so, I 
 deemed it right to make the foregoing statement, which I 
 alone could make, with regard to it : and, when I had gone 
 thus far, it seemed impossible to decline taking notice of 
 the rest of the article. For recent experience has con- 
 firmed, what had often been seen before, that, when accu- 
 sations of this kind are left uncontradicted, very many are 
 apt to fancy that no satisfactory reply can be made to 
 them. 
 
 Who the Reviewer may be, I have no means of know- 
 ing ; nor do I desire to know. Let him continue screened 
 by his anonymousness from the shame, which would else fall 
 on such a calumniator. But your duty, sir, plainly is to 
 expell him from the body of your contributors. An officer 
 who had committed such offenses, as I have proved him 
 to have committed, would be expelled from his regiment : 
 a member of a club would be expelled from his club. 
 Shall men who profess to unite as champions of Christian
 
 59 
 
 truth, and of the Church of England, be less studious to 
 preserve their honour unsullied ? 
 
 To yourself, sir, belongs the guilt of having inserted 
 such an article. This is a different kind of copartner- 
 ship from that which your Reviewer has tried to establish 
 between me and my friends. Though the Editor of a 
 Review cannot fairly be held responsible for every state- 
 ment in it, yet assuredly, when he inserts an article 
 denouncing certain ministers in the Church as desiring to 
 undermine its faith, he ought at the least to ascertain care- 
 fully that there are good prima facie grounds for such an 
 accusation. Therefore from you, sir, I demand a full, 
 frank, manly retractation and apology for the offense which 
 you have committed against me. If you make this, and if 
 the exposure of this delinquency renders you more watch- 
 ful as to the articles you insert hereafter, your Review may 
 become better fitted for fulfilling the high office it has 
 assumed. If not, if you shrink from such a retractation 
 and apologyj-^-if, on the contrary, you uphold and persist 
 in the course on which you have entered, then, seeing 
 that in all ages the chief hindrances and injuries to the 
 Faith have accrued from the vices of its professors, and 
 that nothing can be more revolting to an honest, truth- 
 loving heart, than falsehood and slander under the guise of 
 Religion, your Review will have to take an ignominious 
 place among the Tendencies subversive of Faith. 
 
 J. C. HARE. 
 
 HERSTMONCEUX, 
 
 February 5th, 1849.
 
 60 
 
 Mr Maurice, hearing of my intention to answer the attack 
 on us in your Review, sent me the following letter, which 
 I gladly insert. 
 
 MY DEAR HARE, 
 
 There is a long story connected with the mysterious 
 paragraph respecting me, which winds up the last number 
 of the English Review. I will tell it as briefly as I can. 
 In the number for October there was a notice, about 
 half a page long, of my Sermons on the Lord's Prayer. 
 The Reviewer charged me," this professor of Divinity," 
 as he called me, with aversion to the name and idea of a 
 priesthood, with counting it a misfortune that I had been 
 ordained a priest, with being in opposition to the whole 
 Prayerbook. As these charges were professedly deduced 
 from a book consisting of less than one hundred and fifty 
 duodecimo pages, I conceived that the writer of the article 
 could have no difficulty in pointing out the passages on which 
 he had grounded them. I askt him to do so, requesting 
 further that he would lay them before the Bishop of London, 
 my diocesan, and the chairman of the council of the College 
 in which I am a Divinity Professor. The editor replied that 
 he would pay due attention to my note ; but that he could 
 not lay complaints before bishops, and he was not a public 
 prosecutor. I rejoined that I thought he was, only that 
 he liked better to bring his accusations before readers who 
 would not examine into the truth of them, than before the; 
 bishop, who would : and I concluded my note with saying 
 that the accusations themselves were as false as any which 
 were ever spoken or written. Hereupon the editor wrote 
 to an acquaintance of his, who was much interested -in
 
 61 
 
 King's College, urging him to recommend me to be pru- 
 dent : if I askt more than some salve to my wounded 
 feelings, which perhaps he might be willing to give, he 
 would make an attack upon the divinity teaching of the 
 College generally, and my colleagues would have no cause 
 to thank me for my interference. I knew that my col- 
 leagues would have great cause to thank me, if I were the 
 instrument of causing a thorough enquiry into the character 
 of their teaching ; and the editor's referee thought so too ; 
 however little we might either of us expect from such an 
 enquiry carried on under the auspices of the English 
 Revieic. The editor's friend told him, with Christian 
 manliness and courtesy, that my ' wounded feelings ' and 
 his threats had nothing to do with the question. Either 
 the writer of the article respecting me had said that which 
 was true, or that which was not true. If he had said that 
 which was true, he should produce the evidence ; if that 
 which was not true, he should make a retractation. It was 
 agreed at length that a paragraph should be sent to the 
 editor's referee and to me, which, if we approved of it, 
 should be inserted in the next number. Six weeks after 
 this correspondence, within a week or two of the appear- 
 ance of the January number, the editor sent a paragraph, 
 in which he said that, after comparing the book reviewed 
 at a certain page of the former number with other books of 
 mine, he found I did not agree with the other members of 
 my school in their opinions respecting the priesthood. He 
 found I did not hold the opinions which are so rife among 
 the followers of Arnold and Bunsen ; therefore he hastened 
 to say so. I answered at once, that I was not a fol- 
 lower of Arnold and Bunsen, and that I could not accept 
 such a retractation. I afterwards explained, in a letter to
 
 62 
 
 the gentleman to whom the editor had referred (begging 
 him to forward the statement), that, if by a follower of 
 Arnold and Bunsen, was meant one who agreed with 
 them, or either of them, respecting the Priesthood, the 
 Sacraments, the relation of the Church to the State, not 
 one but all of my books would disprove the assertion. 
 If he meant follower in any other sense, I disclaimed so 
 extravagant a compliment ; for, excepting for those opinions, 
 I did not know that they were remarkable for anything but 
 their high intellectual gifts and moral virtues. The result 
 was, that the editor inserted four lines at the end of the 
 long article, in which he attacks me, in connexion with Ar- 
 nold, Bunsen, you, and some six or eight more, which four 
 lines he was tolerably sure no reader would connect with 
 the previous notice of the Sermons on the Lord's Prayer ; 
 and which have left the impression upon at least one intelli- 
 gent person I have met with in the last two days, that fur- 
 ther enquiry had convinced the editor that I did hold the 
 notions upon the priesthood, of which he had partly acquit- 
 ted me in his previous tirade. A more ingenious method of 
 retracting a charge, which the writer solemnly made, and 
 for which he confest there was no foundation in the book 
 which he had reviewed, or in any other of mine he had ever 
 seen, I do not remember to have met with. 
 
 If you should wish to insert this statement in your 
 forthcoming letter, for the purpose of illustrating the 
 morality of your assailant, and of the English religious press 
 generally, do so by all means. But let me beseech you 
 not to use it for the purpose of shewing that my case 
 stands upon a different ground from that of some of the 
 other persons attackt by the Reviewer, and that I am 
 entitled to a separate trial. As far as the English Review
 
 and the class it represents are concerned, we all stand 
 precisely on the same ground. Their verdict against any 
 one in the list is a verdict against me. I wish to say so 
 distinctly, expecting fully that the Reviewer will quote 
 the words I have just written, without their explanation, 
 in italics or capitals, and being perfectly indifferent whether 
 he does so or not. All those persons whom he seems to 
 have associated by no law but one of malice or caprice in his 
 article, have, or had, as I think, one characteristic in common. 
 They did, or do, feel, more or less strongly, that the popu- 
 lar English religious systems cannot last, that the time is 
 gone by when a man may choose which of these systems 
 he will stand upon, that he cannot stand upon any, 
 that, unless there be some foundation deeper than these, 
 the pit of Pantheism (I should say, of Atheism) must 
 swallow us up, whether we call ourselves High Church- 
 men or Low Churchmen, Romanists, Anglicans, Liberals, 
 Evangelicals, or Rationalists. 
 
 Of this fact, I say, we all, great or little, learned 
 or simple, orthodox or heretical, known or unknown to 
 each other, were made aware by one kind of discipline or 
 another. And it is this fact which the English Reviewers, 
 and the organs of all our religious parties wish to keep out 
 of sight. By railing at each other, by imputing all exist- 
 ing evils to the people who do not read and admire them, 
 by persuading their countrymen that infidelity can only 
 come to them from Germany, and that ignorant railings 
 against the literature and theology of that country will 
 keep off the infection of it, by identifying their own 
 schemes with the principles for which Fathers, Schoolmen, 
 Mystics, Reformers, English divines were witnesses, above 
 all, and this applies especially to your adversary, by
 
 64 
 
 boasting that they represent the genius of our Church as it 
 is set forth in her formularies, by these means they hope 
 still to keep their own plank floating when every other has 
 sunk. Those who tell them it is impossible, must deserve 
 their hatred, their impartial hatred. What can it signify, 
 whether we trust our own wisdom to guide us to the 
 eternal foundations which lie beneath these fragmentary 
 and crumbling systems, or whether we seek the help of Ger- 
 man philosophers or divines in the search, whether we 
 desire to profit by the wisdom of the Church in all ages, 
 or whether we turn with especial love and reverence and 
 hope to our own Formularies ? What can it signify, 
 whether we cast the Bible aside in despair, because other 
 men have made it an idol, or whether we turn to it with 
 ever fresh zeal and ardour, and find day by day more 
 light in it to guide our own lives, and to teach us the 
 sense of history ? What can it signify, whether we reject 
 the Creeds, taking them to be mere words, or whether 
 we find in the Creeds the deepest of all realities, realities 
 which satisfy all our wants, upon which we can rest 
 our whole being? What signifies it whether we occupy 
 ourselves chiefly in demolishing systems, or chiefly in 
 seeking for the principles in them which cannot be de- 
 molisht, whether we regard these as a new and refined 
 Christianity (perhaps as some substitute for Christianity), or 
 as the oldest Christianity, asserting its might against 
 all that has narrowed and cmsht it, proving itself to 
 be meant for all times, for none more than this ? Such 
 differences may seem to you and me very important : 
 hut let us understand it well : they must seem the 
 merest trifles in the eyes of our religious parties. This is 
 their shibboleth : ' Will you support our system ? ' ' No,
 
 65 
 
 never ! * ' Which will you support ? the semi-Romish, the 
 Evangelical, the Liberal ? Each of these is lad ; for it is 
 not ours ; but it is a religio licita. The journalists will 
 allow you to profess it." 1 * So help me God ! I will not pro- 
 fess any one of these schemes ! ' ' Then, sir, your place 
 is there, in that limbo. You will find strange companions. 
 And mark ! you think ice in our different parties can agree 
 about nothing. We can. We can suspend our battles with 
 each other for a while, and join heart and hand in casting 
 stones at you? 
 
 This is a tolerably accurate translation, I believe, of 
 the words in the English Review, in which we are told that 
 public opinion shall be appealed to against us, that this is 
 a tribunal which, we know, and they know, we are afraid of. 
 O, my dear friend, that this charge at least may be a libel ! 
 Or rather let us assume it to be too true ; let us feel and 
 confess that we are tempted, tempted continually, to 
 worship the great goddess, whom all the world, the religious 
 world more perhaps than any other, worship ; and let us 
 pray the Lord God to deliver us from this idolatry, and 
 to give us grace that we may sanctify Him in our hearts, 
 and make Him our fear, and Him our dread. The English 
 Reviewers have not miscalculated : they are wise in their 
 generation. They can and will appeal to all the bitter- 
 ness, hardness, cruelty, which are in the English religious 
 mind ; above all, to the sense which there is in that mind, 
 of utter insecurity, of the necessity of cleaving to some 
 sect or system of opinions, because it has so feeble a hold 
 on the eternal truths which the Bible and the Creeds set 
 forth. The appeal will be made and answered. You 
 may wonder, since the English Review regards your opinions 
 as so dangerous, and invokes the wrath of clergy and laity
 
 66 
 
 upon them, that it has never exposed your Mission of the 
 Comforter, or any of your more elaborate works, but should 
 have reserved its attacks for the memoir of a friend, which 
 it cost you days and nights of sorrow to write. Of course 
 upon ordinary maxims such conduct would be monstrous. 
 But it is clever and judicious for its objects. The lower 
 portion of the religious public in England scorns principles, 
 delights in proper names. It is essentially suspicious, as 
 all people, uncertain of their own ground, and conscious 
 that some convulsion is approaching, necessarily are. To 
 pander to this appetite and this fear is the function of the 
 religious journalist. By these arts he has his wealth. The 
 dullest writer on moral and spiritual subjects finds he is 
 listened to when he begins to deal with personalities. / 
 can't speak as loud as I used to speak, said an aged wit to 
 a lady who complained that his discourse had become much 
 more bitter and malevolent than it was in earlier days ; and 
 therefore I am obliged to say things that I am sure the 
 people I mix with will take all pains to hear. 
 
 But there is something surely which is more terrible 
 than the frowns of this public opinion, sweeter than its 
 smiles. It is more terrible to see the sons and daughters 
 of religious families growing daily more discontented 
 with the traditions of their fathers, more convinced that 
 everything they have heard is hollow and insincere, and 
 that the foundations of earth and heaven are rottenness. 
 It would be a higher reward, if we could lead even one to 
 believe that these traditions have an everlasting ground, 
 that the outside crust of sects and systems covers over, not 
 a deep void, but truths upon which one may rest when 
 they have all crumbled into atoms. It is a more terrible 
 thing that young men should go forth to preach truths to
 
 67 
 
 the people which they do not believe, passing all the while 
 for respectable Anglicans, Evangelicals, Semi-Romanists, 
 afraid to ask themselves what they mean, lest they should 
 find that they mean nothing, talking loudly and noisily 
 against some one else, that they may drown the awful 
 voice which speaks to them from within. It would be a 
 blessing beyond all blessings, and worth encountering all the 
 indignation of all the reviews in Europe for, if we could 
 send forth a few priests, feeling that the word and Sacra- 
 ments are really committed to them, and that the trust is 
 a most real and awful one, and that they have nothing 
 to do with the catchwords of this party or that, and that 
 they may be messengers of truth and peace to high and 
 low, and that God has indeed founded Zion, and that the 
 poor of his people may trust in it. It is terrible to see 
 the noblest, bravest spirits driven to despair by coldness 
 and heartlessness, led to think the Church the cruelest of 
 taskmasters, instead of the most loving of mothers, led to 
 spurn the very truths which in their inmost hearts they are 
 confessing and longing for, led to suppose that unity 
 means exclusiveness, to confound Christ with Belial, the 
 Father of Lights with the spirit of lies. ! surely we 
 might bear the reputation of being at one with infidels, of 
 being infidels, a whole life long, not only among the dark 
 and base, but among the good and gentle, if, by our sym- 
 pathizing with but one such spirit, we could persuade him 
 that God is true, though men be liars, that the Gospel is as 
 true and large and free as ever it was, that it can satisfy 
 all the special longings and ci'avings of this time, which 
 are so absolutely incapable of satisfying themselves. 
 
 The English Review has fixt with admirable sagacity 
 upon the crime with which I am chiefly chargeable. It
 
 68 
 
 complains that I agree with those who in this day, and in 
 former days, have declared liberty, liberty of conscience, 
 heart, reason, spirit, to be the great blessing of man. 
 I plead guilty to the charge. I believe that the history 
 of the Bible is the history of a Redemption, that we do 
 not know God till we regard Him as a Deliverer, that we 
 do not understand our own work in the world, least of 
 all the priest's work, till we believe that we are sent 
 into it to carry out His designs for the deliverance of our- 
 selves and of our race. On this ground I have always 
 placed my defense of our Liturgy and Articles. Other 
 people speak of them as a bondage too heavy to be borne : 
 I know I have found them blessed instruments of emanci- 
 pation. They have broken innumerable yokes from off my 
 neck. I am sure they will do the same good work for all 
 my countrymen who will use them faithfully. I wrote a 
 pamphlet thirteen years ago to maintain that the Articles 
 would set the student of Theology and Humanity free from 
 a number of narrow and tyrannical systems. I am preaching 
 a set of sermons now to shew how the Prayerbook may 
 serve still more effectually to free both clergy and laymen 
 from moral and spiritual thraldom. My teaching must 
 therefore be most offensive to the English Reviewer. I 
 would gladly challenge him to take all means, fair and foul, 
 for finding out heterodoxy in my sermons from the pulpit, 
 or in my lectures to students, provided the Creeds, the 
 Liturgy, the Articles are taken as the tests of orthodoxy, and 
 if it be a part of orthodoxy to make the Bible a key to all 
 other studies. But I am quite certain that this is not the 
 orthodoxy he looks for. On the contrary he would insist 
 upon a kind of orthodoxy which I hold to be utterly in- 
 compatible with it. So long as I hold by the Prayerbook,
 
 69 
 
 I cannot hold by Mr Palmer's book. The Church 
 which the one brings before me is living, free, divine. 
 The other is a fleshless skeleton, a ghastly apparition, 
 which has driven many, I am convinced, who saw it 
 rising at the call of an Anglican enchanter, to seek a 
 refuge in Romish Materialism, or in the formless void of 
 Pantheism. 
 
 The last words remind me of a solemn subject, upon 
 which I have not yet ventured to speak. The Reviewer 
 will no doubt appeal to your Memoir in proof that his view 
 of the way in which doubters should be treated is right, 
 and mine wrong, that the exclusive theory of the Church is 
 the safe one, any other perilous. You have tried your 
 plan, he will say triumphantly ; behold the result ! I 
 answer, the more boldly, because with bitter shame : ex- 
 perience in this particular instance, as much as Reason, 
 as much as Scripture, convinces me that your method is a 
 fatal one ; that- the one furthest removed from it is the 
 right and godly one. It is easy to lay down rules : it is 
 another thing to act upon them. I believed many years 
 ago that I ought to sympathize with those who differed 
 from me most widely. I did not follow out my own faith. 
 I engaged in arguments, when I should have sought for the 
 truth which was in the heart of him who was disputing 
 with me. I did not enter into his difficulties, often excused 
 the scandals in our practice, which his conscience rightly 
 condemned, often (having a very slight acquaintance with 
 German Theological literature myself) shewed impatience 
 of his devotion to it, endeavoured to force upon him my 
 own vehement nationality. I can testify, and, though I 
 have no wish to make a confession, for the sake of others I 
 must, to the evil effects of this treatment. Just so far as 
 I followed the maxims of the English Review, and I did
 
 70 
 
 follow them to a sad extent, just so far I am certain 
 that I did him a moral injury, which it is bitter suffer- 
 ing to reflect upon. And I can testify as strongly to the 
 entirely opposite, and gentle, and altogether Christianizing 
 influence, which was produced on his mind by the frank, 
 genial, cordial spirit in which he was met by two men, 
 whom even the Reviewer will scarcely suspect of any tolerance 
 for his opinions, Archdeacon Manning, and a dear friend of 
 my college days, Mr Marriott, of Oriel. They shewed him 
 more sympathy than I did, precisely because their moral 
 and spiritual tone was more elevated ; and so I believe the 
 case will be always. To them, and to Trench, and to 
 you belong the honour and the blessed recollection of 
 having cheered and soothed his spirit, and given h'~n the 
 hope that the Church might still become a reality : to me 
 belongs the deserved shame of finding that a Reviewer has 
 to prove by a collation of paragraphs, that I was ac- 
 quainted with a man whom I knew intimately for twenty 
 years, to whom I owe more than one human being almost 
 ever owed to another. 
 
 Upon the other and more general question I can speak 
 as confidently. I am certain that he was more alienated 
 from us by what seemed to him the meanness and dis- 
 honesty of our different religious schools, than by all the 
 Strausses and Bauers. If I had wanted evidence, his case 
 would be sufficient to convince me, that we have nothing to 
 fear from them, provided only we resolve to reform ourselves. 
 May we be enabled, my dear friend, to engage heartily in 
 that work ! We must encounter the hostility of all re- 
 ligious parties and journals ; but we may look humbly and 
 trustingly for the help and blessing of God. 
 
 Your very affectionate brother, 
 
 F. D. MAUJUCE.
 
 71 
 
 You will say a word, no doubt, about the Reviewer's 
 insinuation, that you and others urged Sterling not to 
 produce his opinions too hastily, but to bring them out by 
 degrees, hoping that the world would in time be ripe for 
 them. This charge, which, on account of its meanness, 
 will be most agreeable to many of the readers of the English 
 Review, and will sound most plausible to them, will, you 
 well know, seem utterly ridiculous to any one who ever 
 spent an hour with Sterling. Any friend who gave him 
 such advice, must have made up his mind deliberately 
 to a hopeless quarrel with him. His temptation was not to 
 compromise and economize, but to bring out his opinions 
 precisely before the people who were most likely, and who 
 were best able, to confute them. He had no pleasure in 
 startling women or boys ; but he spoke of his doubts 
 to men with more than frankness, with exaggeration, con- 
 cealing the opposite feelings which were in his heart, and 
 resolutely shewing himself in the most disadvantageous 
 light. Though no one was more sensitive about inflicting 
 pain upon others, he seemed to feel that honesty demanded 
 this sacrifice of him. I call it a sacrifice ; for I am certain 
 it was one. He did feel isolation and the alienation of 
 friends very bitterly. He thought their feelings were more 
 estranged from him than they were ; and I am certain, any 
 pecuniary sacrifice (which the Reviewer very naturally and 
 characteristically takes to be the only possible one, and 
 which it was not in Sterling's power to make, as he had no 
 preferment), would have seemed to him a very cheap 
 compensation for this loss.
 
 LONDON I 
 
 Printed by S. & J. BKNTLEY and HF.NRY FLEY, 
 Bangor House, Slice Lane.
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 THE publication of this Letter having been accidentally 
 delayed, I am enabled to subjoin a positive contradiction of 
 the Reviewer's assertion in p. 400, that Sterling " com- 
 menced life as a follower of that negative system in reference 
 to religion, which distinguisht the Edinburgh Reviewers 
 thirty years ago, i. e. in fact as a sceptic." This state- 
 ment is concocted according to the process, of which we 
 have already seen several instances, by throwing a poisonous 
 ingredient into that which had previously been innocent. I 
 have spoken in the Memoir (p. viii.), of " the crude opinions 
 on morals and politics and taste, which Sterling held when 
 he first went to College," and which, he told me in later 
 years were in great measure ascribable to his having read 
 through the whole series of the Edinburgh Review in his 
 boyhood. In p. xiv. I again allude to " the crampt and 
 cramping opinions in philosophy and taste, which he brought 
 with him to College." Subsequently, in p. cxxviii. where 
 I have to introduce some remarks on the change in his 
 religious views, I say, with reference to the foregoing state- 
 ment, that " the tendency of his early education had been 
 negative, after that mode of negativeness which we may 
 remember as characteristic of such as drew their opinions 
 from the oracles of the Edinburgh Review thirty years ago." 
 I have said nothing about his early religious opinions, for
 
 74 
 
 the simple reason that I knew nothing about them. I speak 
 
 merely of his opinions " on morals and politics and taste," 
 
 " in philosophy and taste" with regard to which, when he 
 
 came to College, he held Mr James Mill and Lord Jeffrey 
 
 to be the first, or at least among the first living authorities. 
 
 In asserting that he " commenced life as a follower of that 
 
 negative system in reference to religion, which distinguish^ 
 
 the Edinburgh Reviewers thirty years ago, i. e. in fact as 
 
 a sceptic," our assailant quietly slips in the words in 
 
 reference to religion out of his mischief-breeding brain, and 
 
 then draws an inference after his own fashion, that Sterling 
 
 commenced life " as a sceptic," without any ground for it. 
 
 Possibly he may have been unable to understand how I 
 
 could speak of his early intellectual training as exercising 
 
 an influence in regard to the religious opinions which he 
 
 adopted in after-life. In those days the religious and 
 
 ecclesiastical controversies, which have so lamentably 
 
 distracted the students at our universities of late years, 
 
 were unknown. At Cambridge, with the exception of a 
 
 considerable body who attacht themselves to Mr Simeon, 
 
 hardly any of the young men took interest in doctrinal 
 
 Theology, unless such as were preparing for the ministry, 
 
 of which Sterling at that time had no thoughts. The bulk 
 
 of them were content to hold the opinions which they had 
 
 imbibed from their parents and teachers : some of the more 
 
 thoughtful ventured now and then into speculations on the 
 
 primary questions of Natural Theology. To these the 
 
 appearance of the aids to Reflexion was almost like a new 
 
 birth, opening their way into higher regions of thought, 
 
 after they had long been disgusted with the course which 
 
 the University appointed for them through the dead level 
 
 of Paley. So barren had our Church been for nearly a
 
 75 
 
 century, that they who hungered after some more substan- 
 tial and generous fare than was to be met with at the 
 meagre tables of the ordinary evangelical writers, were 
 forced to go beyond its limits, to Robert Hall, to Chalmers, 
 to Irving : for the writings of Horsley and Davison were 
 not of a kind to satisfy their wants. Hence, as religious 
 discussions were not prevalent among the students of Ster- 
 ling's age, I had no definite information concerning the 
 religious opinions which he held when he was at College ; 
 and, being more scrupulous than the Reviewer about the 
 correctness of my statements, I took no notice of this 
 assertion of his, when I was speaking about the context in 
 p. 8. But it is with great satisfaction that I can now state, 
 on the authority of Mr Maurice, that Sterling was a strong 
 believer in Christianity all the time he was at College. 
 Even the Reviewer will hardly argue that this statement 
 is contradicted by Sterling's saying in a letter some years 
 after, " I seem to myself of late to have entered decidedly, 
 and for the first time, into possession of those /blessings 
 which are offered to all in Christ's redemption"" (p. xlv.). 
 Under divers wholesome influences Sterling's belief ripened 
 into an earnest practical faith, which manifested itself in 
 his ministerial labours, so long as he was allowed to carry 
 them on, and much of which abode with him till the end of 
 his life, even when his mind was most perplext by specu- 
 lative difficulties and entanglements. 
 
 I will merely add, that, after having thus asserted, 
 without any authority, and in opposition to the truth, that 
 Sterling was a sceptic in his youth, the Reviewer proceeds 
 to assert that I knew this fact, which, we see, was not a 
 fact, and then that, knowing it, I strongly urged him to 
 take orders, thus committing a crime for which there is no
 
 76 
 
 conceivable motive, unless I was plotting to degrade his 
 moral being, and to blast the happiness of his whole life. 
 Thus he goes on piling falsehood upon falsehood, some, 
 knowing them to be such, others, from not taking the 
 trouble to ask himself whether-he has any ground for what 
 he has been saying, in his eagerness to say all the evil he 
 can until the whole rotten fabric falls and crushes him. 
 
 J. C. H. 
 
 February 17th. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 Printed by S. c J. BBNTLET and HENRY FLKY, 
 Jiangor House, Shoe Lane.
 
 Lately Publisht : 
 
 THE UNITY OF MANKIND IN GOD : a Sermon preacht on 
 occasion of the Jubilee of the Church Missionary Society. 
 
 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH IN TIMES OF TRIAL: a 
 
 Charge delivered at the Visitation in 1848, with Notes, especially on 
 the Controversy touching the Management of Schools, and on the 
 Jewish Question. 
 
 THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER, and other Sermons, with 
 Notes. 
 
 THE VICTORY OF FAITH : Second Edition. ' 
 SERMONS PREACHT IN HERSTMONCEUX CHURCH. 
 
 THE BETTER PROSPECTS OF THE CHURCH: a Charge 
 delivered at the Visitation in 1840, with Notes. 
 
 PRIVILEGES IMPLY DUTIES: a Charge delivered at the 
 Visitation in 1841, with Notes. 
 
 THE MEANS OF UNITY : a Charge delivered at the Visitation in 
 1842, with Notes, especially on the Anglican Bishopric at Jerusalem, 
 and on the Need of an Ecclesiastical Synod. 
 
 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH: a Sermon, with Introductory 
 Remarks on Uniformity. 
 
 LETTER TO THE DEAN OF CHICHESTER, on the appointment 
 of Dr Hampden to the See of Hereford : Second Edition, with a 
 Postscript. 
 
 PORTIONS OF THE PSALMS IN ENGLISH VERSE, selected 
 for Public Worship. 
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH, by Two Brothers : First Series, Third Edition, 
 revised ; Second Series, Second Edition, with Large Additions.
 
 Preparing for Publication. 
 
 SERMONS PREACHT IN HERSTMONCEUX CHURCH : Second 
 Volume. 
 
 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH : ROMANIZING FALLA- 
 CIES: THE ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE: 
 THREE CHARGES delivered at the Visitations in 1843, 1845, 1846, 
 
 with Notes. 
 
 NOTES TO THE VICTORY OF FAITH. 
 
 SERMONS PREACHT ON PARTICULAR OCCASIONS : Second 
 Edition, with Notes. 
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH, by Two Brothers : Third Series, enlarged.
 
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