^ iiirtiiiin )J0^ A^IO' tym 0% ER5/A '•TJ130NVS01 !VV 4s< ^/sum ^UIBRAfi' SBRARY^ ^OJIIVJJO^ ^OJIIVDJO^ >nr _; ^■OFCALIF(%, ,^FCALIF0/?4 y tfAavHan-#- ^Aavaan-#- slOSAM n^ %a3AiNn-3\\v ojo^ = Ifll-. £ ^^C/j iinfisiin IIW3J0' V ^.OF-CAllFOfy* ^UIBF OJIIVJJO"^ & o THE LIFE FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE. VOLUME I. =S- THE LIFE FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE CHIEFLY TOLD IN HIS OWN LETTERS EDITED BY HIS SON FBEDEEICK MAURICE WITH PORTRAITS IN TWO VOLUMES Vol. I. % oilman MACMILLAN AND CO. 1884 v, \ PREFACE. " No man's Life ought to be published till twenty years after p his death." These, my father's, words startled me one day in his drawing-room at Brunswick Place. They were not expressly said to me, but as I had been, for some years before that time, urging him to put together his reminiscences of life, the speech came as a severe shock to me. " Not till twenty years ? " I asked in a tone which left no doubt of my meaning, even if I had doubted beforehand that he was expressly thinking of his own life when he thus spoke. " No, not till twenty years," he j answered, turning to me and speaking so emphatically, that at ' the moment he almost seemed to me severe. This conversation took place, I believe, about the year 1863 x or 1864. It was impossible to ignore it when in 1872, after •^ my father's death, I undertook the editing of this book. Every year that has passed since then has tended to convince me of the soundness of my father's judgment so far as it concerned his own life. Those who think otherwise say, and say truly, that the Present soon overbears the Past ; but when the characteristic feature of the life to be recorded is this — that the man is one who has habitually, throughout his life, appealed, from what appeared to him to be the passing accidents of the hour, to that which appeared to him to be in its nature perennial — this conquest of the Past by the Present is not unmixed loss. No doubt, if his judgment was right, as to what iv PREFACE. was fleeting, what permanent, it may yet happen that the new time, twenty years after, will have accidents peculiar to itself as little ready to harmonise with that to which he appealed as were the passing accidents of the period in which he lived. But, in the interval, changes will have at least become unmistakable. Neither that which has gone, nor that which has taken its place, can by the very condition of things seem so authoritative against him as did the self-decreed infallibility of the time in which he lived. If his appeal was a false one, that, too, will have become tolerably clear. I should not trouble any one with these reflections of my own, but that I have found, in some instances, that, when I have mentioned my father's wishes, the reply has been that they were due to mere modesty on his part, and that I ought to have disregarded them. In that case I can only reply that, having had to consider the whole question carefully, I believe my father in his own case to have been absolutely right. Watching with some care, I am unable to see that any of the matter I have here to give is likely to be less interesting now than it would have been ten years ago. I publish now, only because, from circumstances with which I need trouble no one, the question is beyond my control. I ought to add that, despite the very dogmatic and general form of the sentence with which this preface begins, I am quite sure that my father did not wish to dogmatise for others ; and that the last tiling he would have wished would be to say anything to give pain to, or to reproach, those who have judged differently as to what was best for their friends. He was very apt to put into the form of a statement of general principle a thought which, in his own mind, he applied to certain cases in which ho had been specially interested. I have to thank all my father's old friends, and numbers who hardly knew him, for the most kind help of all kinds. I think that they would on the whole prefer that I should not occupy this preface in detailed thanks for kindness, which has been P BE FACE. rendered in so personal a sense to him that I hardly venture to intrude myself between him and them, great as is my own sense of gratitude. To Mr. Llewellyn Davies, however, my own personal and special thanks are owing as for many other kindnesses, so for the particular one of the care with which he has gone through the proofs of the book, and for the many valuable suggestions which I have received from him. Perhaps I ought to point out one matter of method in the form of the Life. I have habitually used the letters as the substantive part of the biography. It is not a "Life and Letters." No single letter is here given, except for the purpose of adding something to the story of the Life, either as to facts, or as to the development of thought and character. Wherever any information was necessary to complete the biography, it has been given. Nothing whatever has been kept back or concealed as to my father. My sole object has been to present him as he was. But, as I believe that this is best done by allowing his eonduet, as it shows itself in the action he took, and the decisions at which he arrived, to speak for itself, I have tried, without rejecting other sources of information, to give as nearly as possible an autobiography. F. Maukice. London, November 17, 1883. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. TAGS BIRTH — PARENTAGE — THE STORY OF THE PASSAGE OF THE OLD PURITANS INTO THE MODERN UNITARIANS POSITION IN THE UNITARIAN BODY OF MR. MICHAEL MAURICE — HIS MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE — TWO AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL LETTERS BY F. D. M. 1-21 CHAPTER II. FURTHER FACTS ABOUT EARLY HOME — FATHER, THREE ELDER SISTERS, AND MOTHER — YOUNGER SISTERS . . . 22-31 CHAPTER III. THE BOY HIMSELF UP TO SIXTEEN YEARS OF AGE . . 32-41 CHAPTER IV. SEPT. 1821 TO OCT. 1823 — FINAL YEARS BEFORE COLLEGE . 42-44 CHAPTER V. oct. 1823 to nov. 1825 — Cambridge — first year, trinity — early impressions hare's class-room college friends second year — the apostles' club — migrates at end of year to trinity hall 45-60 CHAPTER VI. nov. 1825 to oct. 1827 — Cambridge third year— the 'me tropolitan quarterly magazine' — end of college life and commencement of work in london . . . 61-73 CONTENTS. CHAPTEE VII. I'AGE OCT. 1827 TO AUTUMN 1828 LONDON 'WESTMINSTER REVIEW ' ACQUAINTANCE WITH J. S. MILL — DEBATING SOCIETY BEGINS WRITING FOR ' ATHENAEUM ' THE ' LONDON LITERARY CHRONICLE ' — EDITORSHIP OF ' ATHEN.EUM ' 74-88 CHAPTER VIII. AUTUMN 1828 TO NOV. 1829 — CHANGES AT HOME — DEPRESSION — CHANGES OF VIEW — INFLUENCE OF HIS SISTER EMMA — GIVES UP EDITORSHIP 89-101 CHAPTEE IX. END OF 1829 — OXFORD — 'EUSTACE CONWAY ' — 1830 — MR. BRUCE, MR. GLADSTONE, NOTE BY ARTHUR HALLAM DR. JACOBSON, MR. RICHARDS WINTER OF 18"30 AND BEGINNING OF 1831 — GENERAL RIOT AND DISTRESS — THE IRVINGITE MIRACLES . 102-121 CHAPTER X. SPRING, SUMMER, AUTUMN OF 1831 BAPTISM — FINAL ILLNESS AND DEATH OF HIS SISTER EMMA — CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS FATHER AND MOTHER, AND SEQUEL TO THE STORY OF HIS ELDER SISTERS — B.A. DEGREE — FEBRUARY 1832 — CORRESPOND- ENCE WITH HIS FATHER — 1832 CONTINUED — THE INWARD LIGHT — A PROTESTANT OF THE PROTESTANTS . . . 122-144 CHAPTER XI. 1833 AND BEGINNING OF 1834 — LYMPSHAM — MR. STEPHENSON — LETTER TO MRS. MAURICE — ORDINATION — ANSWERS IN EXAMI- NATION — 1834 CONTINUED — BUBBENHALL CURACY — PUBLICA- TION OF ' EUSTACE CONWAY ' VIEWS OF OXFORD MOVEMENT — TUB WORDS "KINGDOM OF CHRIST" — SUBSCRIPTION NO BONDAGE' — ALEXANDER KNOX 145-172 CHAPTER XII. RETROSPECTIVE — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL LETTER WRITTEN IN 1870, TO EXPLAIN THE ORIGIN OF 'SUBSCRIPTION NO BONDAGE' 173-184 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIII. PAGB END OF 1835, 1836 AND EARLY PART OF 1837 BEGINS 'MORAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY' LEAVES BUBBENIIALL FOR GUY'S — LIFE AT GUY'S — IS PROPOSED AS POLITICAL ECONOMY PROFESSOR AT OXFORD — PUBLISHES 1ST AND 2ND 'LETTERS TO A QUAKER' 185-220 CHAPTER XIV. 1837 CONTINUED — OPEN BREACH WITH DR. PUSEY — MARRIAGE — 'EXPLANATORY LETTER,' WRITTEN DECEMBER, 1870, MAINLY RELATING TO THE ' KINGDOM OF CHRIST,' OR ' LETTERS TO A QUAKER' 221-240 CHAPTER XV. 1838 — IMMEDIATE EFFECT OF ' LETTERS TO A QUAKER ' IN PRO- VOKING HOSTILITY OF RELIGIOUS NEWSPAPERS COMPLETION AND PUBLICATION OF ' KINGDOM OF CHRIST ' CORRESPONDENCE OF THE YEAR CARLYLE, STERLING SHORT ABSENCE FROM LONDON AT HANNINGTON — ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE NEW TES- TAMENT—SPRING OF 1839 — ILLNESS AND DEATH OF HIS SISTER ELIZABETH BIRTH OF STILL-BORN CHILD . . . 241-267 CHAPTER XVI. 1839 SUMMER AND AUTUMN — CHARTISM EDUCATIONAL MOVE- MENT — LECTURES ON EDUCATION — HAS THE CHURCH OR THE STATE THE POWER TO EDUCATE THE NATION? — 1840 ' EDUCATIONAL MAGAZINE ' APPOINTED PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AT KING'S COLLEGE — VISITS SWITZERLAND . 268-287 CHAPTER XVII. SEPT. 1840 TO OCT. 1841 — LECTURES AT KING'S COLLEGE — 'EDUCA- TIONAL MAGAZINE' — CARLYLE — CONTEST AT CAMBRIDGE BETWEEN LORD LYTTELTON AND LORD LYNDHURST — BIRTH OF A SON — WORKING AT SECOND EDITION OF 'KINGDOM OF CHRIST' — CANON FARRAR'S REMINISCENCES OF THE HISTORY AND LITERATURE LECTURES AT KING'S COLLEGE 288-318 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XVIII. l'AGE 1841 CONTINUED JERUSALEM BISHOPRIC — 1842 — MR. SCOTT'S LECTURES — INTRODUCTION TO MR. DANIEL MACMILLAN — LETTER TO REV. A. ATWOOD ON THE CHURCH AND BIBLE AS "LIVING LESSONS OF A LIVING TEACHER," AND ON SERMONS FOR THE POOR 1843 MRS. STERLING'S DEATH LETTER ON A CRITICISM ON THE SECOND EDITION OF ' THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST ' RIGHT AND WRONG WAYS OF SUPPORTING PROTESTANTISM SEVERANCE FROM STERLING CARLYLE MANNING WILBER- FORCE MARRIOTT ....... 319-353 CHAPTER XIX. 1843 CONTINUED HARE URGES HIM TO BECOME A CANDIDATE FOR PREACHERSHIP OF LINCOLN'S INN AND PRINCIPALSHIP OF KING'S COLLEGE HIS REFUSAL FIRST STATEMENT OF OBJECTIONS AVOIDING AN ANNOUNCEMENT OF HIS REAL MOTIVES SECOND STATEMENT EXPLAINS HIS VIEWS AS TO HIS OWN LIFE DR. JELF'S APPOINTMENT 1844 INTRODUCTION TO KINGSLEY DEATH OF STERLING MANDEVILLE's BEES LETTER FOR YOUNG SCEPTIC — HARE'S MARRIAGE 354-388 CHAPTER XX. NOV. 1844 TO FEB. 1845 MR. WARD ATTACKS THE ARTICLES AND A NEW STATUTE IS PROPOSED TO MEET HIS CASE THE PAMPHLET, 'THE NEW STATUTE AND MR. WARD,' CONTAINING EXPLICIT STATEMENT AS TO THE WORDS " ETERNAL LIFE " 389-402 CHAPTER XXI. DECEMBER 1844 TO MAY 1845 — ILLNESS AND DEATH OF HIS WIFE REFUSES APPEAL FROM HARE AND MR. CAVENDISH TO ALLOW THEM TO TRY TO GET HIM APPOINTED MASTER OF THE TEMPLE — WHITSUNDAY — TRINITY SUNDAY .... 403-415 CHAPTER XXII. 1845, second half — appointment as boyle and warburton lecturer. 184g — appointment as theological professor of king's college and chaplain of lincoln's inn — leaves guy's and goes to queen square — introduction to mr. ludlow 416-431 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXIII. PAGE 18-1:7 — NEW EDUCATION SCHEME DUTIES OF A PROTESTANT IN THE OXFORD ELECTION OF 1847 — DR. HAMPDEN — 'THE SAINTS' TRAGEDY ' — ADMISSION OF JEWS INTO PARLIAMENT — HARE'S LIFE OF STERLING SCHLEIERMACHER FIRST STEPS IN THE MOVEMENT FOR THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN QUEEN'S COLLEGE 432-456 CHAPTER XXIV. 1848— THE 10TH OF APRIL ' POLITICS FOR THE PEOPLE' — COURSE OF READING FOR A STUDENT OF THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT — UNIVERSITY COLLEGE AND QUEEN'S — THE GATHERINGS OF FRIENDS — VIEWS ON EUROPEAN POLITICS — PRUSSIA AND 'THE GRACE OF GOD ' — THE BIBLE-CLASSES AT QUEEN SQUARE . 457-495 CHAPTER XXV. 1849 — HE IS ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED TO MISS HARE — ACCOUNT OF DAILY LIFE AND WORK TO HER HARE'S LETTER ' THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS' — RELIGION WITHOUT GOD — MEETINGS WITH THE WORKING MEN, CHARTISTS, ETC. NEWS- PAPER ATTACKS FROUDE'S 'NEMESIS OF FAITH ' APOLOGIA IN REPLY TO DR. JELF THE STERLING CLUB FURTHER MEETINGS WITH CHARTISTS — MARRIAGE .... 496-552 Surely it is but a poor ambition in a world where evil is called good and good evil, and where bitter is put for sweet and sweet for bitter, — where the vile man is called liberal, and the churl said to be bountiful — where love is cast out and despised, and lust, that has its dwelling hard by hate, usurps the name, — where the spirits of strife and dissension have attained such mighty power, that the Prince of Peace cannot enter but with a sword ; — surely it is a poor ambition, in such a world, to be accounted friends of freedom, or truth, or unity; but thisv?i\\ be a delight worth seeking after, if we can look up to Him who searches the heart, and call Him to witness, that to be partakers our- selves, and to make our brethren partakers, of these precious gifts, is our heartiest and most inward desire, — for the fulfil- ment of which we would sacrifice all temporary concernments ; — for the disappointment of which no blessings, which even He could vouchsafe, would compensate, — and which we are certain will not be disappointed, but will be perfectly accom- plished, because He has wrought it in us, in despite of a rebellious nature, by His own free and reconciling Spirit. (Subscription no Bondage.) The names of those whose biographies I mention below, recur very frequently in the course of these volumes. I give the title-pages ; because, wherever it has been possible to do so, I have supplied references to the letters to which my father's, here given, are answers, and it is more convenient not always to quote the title at length. Some readers may be glad to compare the corresponding letters. Letters of Thomas Erskine of Lixlathen. 2 vols. Edited by William Hanna, D.D. Edinburgh : David Douglas, 1877. Memorials of Old Friends : being extracts from the journals and letters of Caroline Fox, of Pengerrick, Cornwall. Edited by Horace N. Pvm. 2 vols. London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1882. Memorials from Journals and Letters of Samuel Clark, M.A., F.R.G.S. Edited by his Wife. London : Macmillan & Co., 1878. Memoir of Daniel Macmillan. By Thomas Hughes. London: Mac- millan & Co., 1882. Charles Kingslet, his Letters and Memories of his Life. Edited by his Wife. London: Kegan Paul & Trench, 1877. The references to Mr. Kingsley's letters in Vol. I. are to this edition. Do., do., Abridged Edition, 1882. The references to Mr. Kingsley's letters in Vol. II. are to this edition. Memorials of Charlotte Williams-Wynn. Edited by her Sister. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1878. Memorials of John McLeod Campbell, D.D. 2 vols. Edited by Rev. Donald Campbell, M.A. London : Macmillan & Co., Ib77. Memoir of Alexander Ewixg, D.C.L., Bishop of Argyll and the Isles. By Alexander J. Ross, B.D., Vicar of St. Philip's, Stepney. London : Dalby, Isbister & Co., 1877. EEBATA. YOL. I. Page 52. Footnote, for 'patriotic' read 'patristic.' Page 115. " Mr. Newman was at Oxford during this term." This conveys a wrong impression. Mr. Newman was at Oxford during all the time my father was there. It was, however, only at the time referred to that I can trace any indications of my father's having discussed anything he had heard from Mr. Newman. Page 173. Heading of Chapter XII., for "Written in 1871" read " Written in 1870." Page 471, last paragraph ; for " sixteen quarto pages " read " sixteen octavo pages." The following letter from Mr. Gladstone is so important a part of the evidence as to the connection of Bishop Blomfield with the decision of the Council of King's College, on their mode of dealing with my father in 1853, that, as an act of justice both to the Bishop and to my father, it seems right to insert it in full. Mr. Gladstone has kindly permitted this as the fulfilment of the offer he makes in the concluding sentence of his letter. My publishers authorise me to say that any one who already has a copy of the book can be supplied with this letter, without charge, as a separate page for insertion. The letter will appear in all future copies. [Copy.] ' 10 Downing Street, Whitehall, ' Good Friday, April 11, 1884. ' Dear Mr. Macmillan, ' I read through the whole of the Life of Maurice which you were so kind as to send me. ' The picture of him as a Christian soul is one of the most touching, searching, and complete that I have ever seen in print. He is indeed a spiritual splendour, to borrow the 'phrase of Dante about St. Dominic. ' His intellectual constitution had long been, and still is, to me a good deal of an enigma. When I remember what is said and thought of him, and by whom, I feel that this must be greatly my own fault. ' My main object in writing to you, however, is to say a word for Bishop Blomfield, with regard to that untoward occurrence, the dismissal from King's College. ' The Biographer treats the Bishop as virtually one of the expelling majority. And this on the seemingly reasonable LETTER FROM MR. GLADSTONE. ground that, as it appears, the Bishop was the author of, or a party to, the expelling motion. But he was an impulsive man, too rapid in his mental movements : and a man not ashamed to amend. I think I can bear testimony not only that he was satisfied with my amendment, but that he would have been well pleased if it had been carried : in a word, that if he had ever taken the ground of the Eadstock-Inglis majority, he had abandoned it. ' I should be glad if it were thought right, in any reprint, to say a word to this effect, or let it be known at any rate that such an opinion is entertained. ' Yours most faithfully, (signed) ' W. E. Gladstone.' THE LIFE FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE. LIFE FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE. CHAPTEE I. " My Puritan temperament." — (F. D. M., in many letters.) BIRTH — PARENTAGE — THE STORY OF THE PASSAGE OF THE OLD PURITANS INTO THE MODERN UNITARIANS — POSITION IN THE UNITARIAN BODY OF MR. MICHAEL MAURICE — HIS MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE — TWO AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL LETTERS BY F. D. M. John Frederick Denison Maurice, or, as in later life he habitually signed himself, Frederick Denison Maurice, was born at Normanstone, near Lowestoft, on August 29, 1805. He was the fifth child of Michael and Priscilla Maurice. A short retrospect will explain Michael Maurice's position. Without it a phrase would be deceptive. In the year 1662 the final Act of Uniformity expelled from the livings of the English Church a large number of men who were unable to submit to its conditions. Among these the most numerous body were the representatives of those "Pres- byterians" who were a potent element in English life during the earlier period of the Great Eevolution.* Most of the Presbyterian ministers had during that period become incum- bents. The name " Presbyterian " is, however, a misleading one to most of our generation, who associate it with the forms of church government which Presbyterianism has assumed in Scotland. In England the Act created a new " Pres- byterianism." Common form of creed there was none. Each man, with little opportunity for consulting with others, had * I use the term in Mr. Green's sense. VOL. I. B 2 ENGLISH PBESBYTERIAN HATRED OF CREEDS. abandoned his living, one for this reason, and another for that, and, as it soon afterwards appeared, many of them would have been almost as little willing to subscribe to the Westminster Confession, which became the symbol of Scotch Presbyterianism, as to submit to the conditions enforced by the Act of Uniformity. They were not, even as a body, positively opposed to episcopacy. As long as the persecution which followed the passing of the Act was vigorously carried on, it was impossible for any common ground of agreement to be arrived at. But when they were able to meet together, it became apparent that the strongest sentiment among them was an utter aversion to all formal expressions of creed. Creeds had become detestable, partly because of the wrangling which had been connected with them during the time of Presbyterian ascendency in England, and more recently because persecutions had been due to the enforce- ment of religious formulae. The fact therefore was, that while in Scotland adherence to a particular form of creed became the mark of Pres- byterianism, in England, on the contrary, from the time when Presbyterianism was finally ejected from the Established Church, a repudiation of all forms of creed became its distinctive mark. English Presbyterianism was confirmed in this tendency by passing under the leadership of a number of men, of whom Richard Baxter is a not unfair specimen, who converted into a philosophical principle the sentiment which had been at first adopted partly by instinct, and partly by necessity. In a short time the principle of repudiating forms was put to a severe test. What would now be called the Unitarian Controversy was raging somewhat fiercely during the last twenty-five years of the seventeenth century. Towards the beginning of the eighteenth one of the regular Presbyterian ministers declared himself a Socinian. The vast body of the Presbyterian ministers at this time were as orthodox on the question of the Trinity as any of the actual incumbents of the Church of England. The excitement therefore produced by the announcement that one of their number was an avowed Socinian may well be imagined. It led finally to a great chap, i.] SALTEBS' HALL IN 1719. 3 representative meeting of Baptists, Independents, and Pres- byterians at Salters' Hall in 1719, to advise the congregation of the offending member how to act. After three days of eager discussion, a majority resolved to bind their members by no form of creed, not even by one simply expressive of a worship of the Trinity. The Baptists were nearly evenly divided. The Independents voted as a unit in the minority. The mass of the Presbyterians voted in the majority. The votes were fifty-seven to fifty-three. The feeling of the time was expressed by the saying, " The Bible won by a majority of four." The words of the resolution adopted by the majority so exactly express the spirit of Presbyterianism at the time, and are so important for my purpose, that I venture to give three extracts. Italics, capitals, and stops, stand as in the original. ' We saw no Pieason to think, That a Declaration in other Words than those of Scripture would serve the Cause of Peace and Truth ; but rather be the Occasion of greater Confusions and Disorders : We have found it always so in History ; And in Reason, the Words of Men appear to us more liable to different Interpretations than the Words of Scripture : Since all may fairly think themselves more at Liberty, to put their own Sense upon Humane Forms, than upon the Words of the Holy Ghost. And in this Case, what Assurance could we have that all who subscribed meant precisely the. same Sense, any more than if they had made a Declaration in express Words of Scripture ? . . . . ' We take it to be an inverting the Great Piule of deciding Controversies among Protestants : Making the Explications and Words of Men determine the Sense of Scripture, instead of making the Scriptures to determine how far the Words of Men are to be regarded. We therefore, could not give our Hands to do that, which in present Circumstances, would be like to mislead others to set up Humane Explications for the Decisive Bide of Faith. We then did, and do now judge it our Duty to remonstrate against such a Precedent, as opening a Way to (what we dread) the most fatal Breaches on Gospel Liberty, ***** b 2 4 CAUSES TENDING TOWARDS CHANGE, [chap. i. ' We foresaw the Subscription insisted on would occasion Reflec- tions, and become a Mark of Distinction set on those who should not subscribe : And we knew that several, who had the same Faith and Opinions concerning the Trinity, with ourselves and our Brethren, yet could not be satisfy 'd to come into any Humane Explications.' There had always been a tendency among the old Puritans, the inheritors of whose traditions these men were, to appeal especially to the God of the Old Testament. " The sword of the Lord and of Gideon " is perhaps the phrase which is even now most familiar to us as being constantly in their mouths. These English Presbyterians, therefore, inherited a tendency to speak in an almost Mohammedan sense of a One God. At the same time a very different influence was at work which led in the same direction. The so-called Calvinistic Creed had, despite the absence of any set form of words, been at first the popular tradition among them. Its terrible aspects were leading, as was the case also somewhat later in America, towards a popular revulsion. Especially the marked separation, which in the popular mind presented itself between the temper and purposes of the Father and the Son, produced repulsion against the idea of such a divided Godhead. The ministers themselves, having no special creed to defend, to discuss, or to illustrate, £,nd . with congregations before them whose opinions were yearly becoming more and more varied, were almost compelled to restrict themselves to purely moral sermons. Again, when once it had become generally known that one particular body in the country was ready to receive members without any profession of creed, it naturally followed that all those who found themselves unable to subscribe to the formula3 required by other denominations flocked towards Presbyterian- ism. Notably those who refused to subscribe to the belief in the Trinity, and who were therefore ejected by the most tolerant of all other bodies, fled to Presbyterianism as to the one haven open to them. The indifference and scepticism of the eighteenth century chap, i.] THE FINAL STAGE. favoured the progress of all these tendencies. Towards the end of the century a rapid and startling change occurred. Mankind had awakened from its lazy lethargy. A spirit was abroad that was producing, more especially among the younger and more enthusiastic, a delight and happiness in present being and in hopes for the future that can now scarcely be realised. It was the period of which "Words- worth has said, " Joy was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven." It was almost inevitable that not a few of the leaders of the science and of the reasoning of the time should be men who had either abandoned or been ejected from other communions, and had therefore attached themselves to the Presbyterians. But their spirit was not that of the Presbyterians of 1719, but its direct antagonist. The spirit of Presbyterianism had been that of tolerance carried to its utmost limit ; the new apostles who joined it from without, and of whom two notably, Priestley and Belsham, formed and all but formulated for it a creed, were men of vehement assertion and scarcely disguised contemptuous aggression against all who differed from a pure Unitarianism. As a consequence of the changes that had been taking place a large body among the so-called Presbyterians were prepared to accept as the exponents of their faith these new leaders when they appeared ; but the society of which Priestley and Belsham were thus, towards the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, the avowed leaders, had never at any time formally repudiated the faith of their Puritan fore- fathers. Amongst many of them the old Puritan traditions remained in almost full vigour, so that living in the same body, sending their sons to the same schools, identified by the same name, were men who scarcely differed in opinion from the great body of English Evangelicals, whether within the Established Church or among " Orthodox Dissenters," and others from whom these latter would at all events nowadays recoil as from the worst of heretic. MICHAEL MAUBICE'S POSITION. [chap. i. Thus it happened that a man whose opinions were in all main points orthodox might in the same chapel succeed, or be succeeded by, one under the direct influence of dogmatic Unitarianism ; and between these extremes there was a con- siderable number who, whatever their individual opinions might be on one side or the other, yet adhered to the old Presbyterian tradition, and therefore abstained in the pulpit at least from all doctrinal discussion. During the period of transition, before the new masters had finally established their ascendency, a certain reluctance to permit the change from tolerance to dogmatism to take place needed only an opportunity for its expression. Such an occasion arose when, in 1792, Belsham was proposed as the afternoon preacher in the same chapel in which Priestley was already morning preacher. Belsham was, to his infinite annoyance, then rejected, and a young man twenty-six years of age was elected in opposition to him. That young man was Michael Maurice. The position which was thus by an accident forced upon him defines accurately the standpoint of the man. Descended, according to his own statement, from one * of those who had suffered at the time of the passing of the Act of Uniformity, the history of his family, of which he left a manuscript record of no general interest, was one exactly charac- teristic of the ordinary course of life of the English Puritans. In the days of Michael Maurice's father the family appears to have been strictly and even zealously orthodox, and almost unconscious of the spirit that was abroad in the Presbyterian body. Born on February 3, 1766, Michael Maurice was in 1782 sent by his father, himself an " orthodox " Dissenting minister and farmer, to Hoxton Academy, which was then one of the chief places of education for the children of Presbyterians. During a time when changes in men's beliefs were taking * As the names of all these men are recorded in Calamy's ' History of the Ejected Ministers,' and as one and one only hears the name of Maurice, I infer that the man referred to is a certain Henry Maurice, of whom a rather inter- esting account is there given, and who lived in the part of Wales in which my grandfather's family then were. chap, i.] HIS LIBERALISM. 7 place, which were largely connected with the progress of science and with devotion to reason, those men of science and of thought who, excluded hy tests which they could not face from most other pursuits, betook themselves to education, naturally sought congenial occupation at an important Puritan Academy at which no questions were asked as to their opinions. Hence it happened that most of the Professors at Hoxton were either avowedly or secretly under the influence of Unitarianism. But, before and beyond all things, the most powerful minds among them were political Liberals. The aspirations of the time were far more political than religious, and Michael Maurice issued from Hoxton Academy, or rather from Hackney College, which was in connection with it, and to which he removed in 1786, a Unitarian in opinion, but heart, soul, and spirit an enthusiastic political Liberal. He had been brought up with the intention of his becoming an orthodox Dissenting minister. By the time that he left Hackney in 1787 he was sufficiently zealous in his Unitarian opinions to abandon a considerable property which would have been left to him had he been content to adhere to the faith of his forefathers. But the whole tone of his mind in relation to religious questions was that of the old Salters' Hall Pres- byterians of 1719,* and not that of the later Unitarian dogmatists. His favourite saying was, throughout life, that all should believe that to which " their conscientious convictions led them." It is only a convenient inaccuracy to call him "tolerant." His son used often to recall an expression of his, used many years later at a public meeting in Bristol, " Tolera- tion ! I hate toleration ! " meaning that toleration is in some sort itself an intolerant condition of mind, since it implies a certain sense of superiority and almost of contempt towards those whom we tolerate. Bespect for the faith of others, and a conviction that if he could only get an opportunity of stating his case he could reason the whole world over into agreement with himself, are * See ante p. 3. 8 LIFE AT NORMANSTONE. [chap. i. characteristics of his mind, of the influence of which one is continually having proof in reading his letters. His reputation as an earnest preacher survived for many years his departure from some of the places where he worked. He could in writing be at times even eloquent in behalf of the purely Unitarian Creed, but he strictly followed the old Presbyterian tradition in the nature of his sermons, which were absolutely devoid of the doctrinal element, and purely moral in their teaching. In April 1794 he assisted Priestley to pack up his books and scientific instruments when it became necessary for him to fly to America, and soon afterwards he left Hackney and went to Yarmouth. On September 3, 1794, he married Priscilla Hurry, the daughter of a Yarmouth merchant, and after living for some years at Kirby Cane, near Beccles, he removed in 1801 to the manor house of Normanstone near Lowestoft, a handsome house close to the seashore, with considerable extent of ground attached to it, given to them by Mrs. Maurice's eldest brother. Three daughters had been born before the removal to Norman- stone, Elizabeth in 1795, Mary in 1797, Anne in 1799 ; then a son William was born, and died in croup. My father's birth in 1805 left thus six years between him and the youngest of the above-named sisters. Two daughters were born at Norman- stone, Emma in 1807 and Priscilla in 1810. At Normanstone my grandfather remained till 1812, taking some fifteen or twenty pupils. From about 1806 onwards a son and daughter, two of the three children of Edward Cobb Hurry, Mrs. Maurice's elder brother — both their parents having died — made their home with the Maurices. All the party — pupils, nephews, nieces, and children — lived together in one large household. Partly because of the known moderation of the man, partly because of the tolerant and indifferent temper of the times, partly because of the difficulty which then existed of obtaining good places for general education, it happened that orthodox Dissenters, members of the Church of England, and even not a few clergy, willingly sent their sons to be educated by a man who enjoyed a high reputation for both classical scholarship and mathematical knowledge. chap, i.] FRIENDS AND PERSONAL INFLUENCE. 9 Amongst others, Southey sent to him his younger brother, and kept up a friendly intercourse with him for many years. William Taylor of Norwich, Southey's intimate friend, was a connection of the Maurices, and formed another link to the general literary society of the time, in which, despite the quiet tenour of his life, Michael Maurice had many friends. The horrors of the French Revolution, though they of course in some sense modified his opinions, did not prevent him from writing to an old pupil as late as the year 1823 : " The taking of the Bastille is still one of the Dies Fasti in my calendar." The same old pupil, the late Mr. Saunders of Bristol, reported to me when himself an old man an incident which he declared to be exceedingly characteristic of Michael Maurice and of his personal influence. A " bolstering match " had been raging fiercely among some of his pupils after they had gone to their bedroom. In the middle of the combat, whilst the boys were all about the room and were levelling the bolsters at one another, Michael Maurice appeared at the door. He said nothing, but stood quietly looking on whilst the boys scampered off to their beds, and for some little time afterwards. " I could not describe his look and I do not know what effect it had upon others, but I know that I myself," said Mr. Saunders, "have never forgotten it to this day, and that during all the time I was with him I could not possibly have engaged in such a business again." William Taylor in a letter to Southey speaks of " the variety and popularity of pursuits encouraged under that roof." The two elder daughters were during these years growing up into Unitarians of a very different type from that of their father in every respect, except his intense political liberalism. All the circumstances of their life tended to cut them off from the old tolerant Presbyterian tradition, and to make them dogmatic, aggressive, intolerant Unitarians. Their father had sacrificed property for the sake of the Unitarian Creed. The "Church and King" riots at Birmingham had burst with all their fury upon the head and house of Priestley, their father's personal friend, one of the most scientific men of the day, the 10 FRENCHAY. [chap. i. lawgiver of the Unitarians. The girls seem from their earliest years to have had an interest in the discussion of abstract theological dogma which it is hard to realise. They by no means entertained their father's scruples as to pressing their creed upon his pupils ; and when, in 1806, a young orthodox governess was sent to take care of them — young as the eldest of them then was — they succeeded in a very short time in bringing her over to their own belief. The scale of expenditure at Normanstone seems to have been out of proportion to the profits from his pupils ; and partly on this account, partly from other causes, Mr. Maurice removed in 1812, to Clifton, and in rather more than a year afterwards to the little village of Frenchay, about four miles from Bristol. If the household at Normanstone was as full of life and even of noise as everything appears to indicate that it was, the change to Frenchay must have been very great. The house was much smaller. The village small as it well could be. It lies in a beautiful country of rocky streams, and park-land hill and dale, with perhaps some of the finest timber in England within a short distance of it — a little hamlet, at that time chiefly of Quaker houses, nestled together along one side of a tiny village green, across which the houses look towards a deep ravine, faced on the opposite hillsides by graceful woods. In the very middle of the village lies, as it were, as the epitome of its characteristics, a little Quaker graveyard, shut out from all the world on every side but that on which a narrow entrance running under the tiny meeting-room gives a bare approach to it, and seems to admit you to the very stillness of a Quaker- meeting of the dead. There was at that time no church. This little Quaker meeting-house, Mr. Maurice's tiny chapel, and the graveyards belonging to them, were the only spots devoted to sacred purposes within it. Mrs. Maurice's family, the Hurrys, had been definitely Unitarian at the time Michael Maurice was introduced to them, and her nephew adhered to the family type. One cannot tell what influences may have been at work among the members of a household so varied as that of Normanstone. But there is chap, i.] EASTEB SUNDAY, 1814. 11 no indication of any change having taken place in Edmund Hurry's faith until, on Easter Sunday 1814, he suddenly broke a blood-vessel. It is perhaps not very difficult to un- derstand that the argumentative, disputative form of opinions which delighted his cousins would, during the months that intervened before his death, be by no means satisfactory to a man whose life was ebbing out. His sister, who nursed him through his illness, was at this time very intimate with the well-known Moravian authoress, Mrs. Schimmelpennick. His illness and his subsequent death became the starting- point of a very remarkable change of opinions among his cousins. My father made repeated attempts during the last six years of his life to record the history of this change, but he always broke off abruptly. The effort was too great. The sense of the painful wrenches to which his father had been exposed, as the family gradually left him alone in his communion, was perhaps the chief, but was not quite the only cause that made those parts of the story which most influenced my father's career impossible for an affectionate son and brother to write. A sense that there had for a long time been a mere change in the objects of the intolerant expressions which passed his two eldest sisters' mouths, the intolerance of feeling remaining till a distinct and singular experience had softened it in each of them ; the great love and even admiration which he enter- tained for his sisters; the difficulty for a brother to give in any kind of measure which should not appear exaggerated an account of the many high qualities in them to which strangers have done such ample justice that almost each one of a large family has been spoken of by some whose judgments carry weight in terms of exceptional eulogy — these account at all events to some extent for my father's finding the task im- possible. That, under the strain of trouble and perplexity, his father became captious and irritable, no doubt did not make it more easy. And yet when my father came to reconsider the history of these years of his life I am certain that he felt that this family drama must be set forth if the nature of that 12 F. D. M.—AUTOBIOGBAPHICAL. [chap. i. " education which God had given him," * for the part he was to play in the world, was not to be concealed. Hence each attempt to write it ended at the point where he had to explain how the conduct of the several actors affected his thoughts and life. Happily, however, all the main facts and dates have been preserved, and so far as these may serve to complete the fragment I shall give them after my father's letters. TWO AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL LETTERS WRITTEN TO ONE OF HIS SONS IN 1866, BY F. D. M. Letter I. 'My Dearest F., ' You have often begged me to write down some recollections of the sixty years through which I have passed. A fear of not reporting them faithfully and of being egotistical has kept me from complying with your request. But I hope to be tolerably honest. There will be enough in what I say to mortify my vanity if I am. And what I say will possibly be of use in warning you of tendencies which you may have inherited, and in leading you to seek a more effectual way of counter- acting them than mine has commonly been. Above all it must show you, if I can but state the facts as they rise before my mind, what an education God is giving every one of us. I say every one; for you will see nothing strange or ex- ceptional in my biography. It is thoroughly commonplace, without startling incidents or peculiar conflicts, or any results which set me above the level of any of my countrymen. I have longed (how often !) in my silly vanity that I could give myself credit for something rare or great. But there has been a continual disappointment of this ambition, till at last I have learnt in some small measure to praise God for teaching me that I am one of a race, that He has been guiding me wonderfully, striving mercifully with my stupidity and * See followins letter. chap, i.] HIS FATHER. 13 obstinacy, setting an object before me when I was most turning away from it, because this is His method with all of us ; because each may be brought to know that it is His method far more perfectly than I have been brought to know it, through my experience. ' My letter to you last week on the " Ecce Homo " will have prepared you for the prominence which I give to the fact that I am the son of a Unitarian minister. I have been ashamed of that origin, sometimes from mere vulgar, brutal flunkeyism, sometimes from religious or ecclesiastical feelings. These I perceive now to have been only one degree less dis- creditable than the others; they almost cause me more shame as a greater rebellion against a divine mercy. For I now deliberately regard it as one of the greatest mercies of my life that I had this birth and the education which belonged to it. ' As I told you the other day, it has determined the course of my thoughts and purposes to a degree that I never dreamed of till lately. My ends have been shaped for me, rough hew them how I would, and shape has been given to them by my father's function and this name " Unitarian " more than by any other influences, though I have been exposed to many of the most different kind which have strangely affected and may appear to some to have entirely disturbed that primary one. ' My father's Unitarianism was not of a fiercely dogmatic kind. But it made him intolerant of what he considered intolerance in Churchmen or Dissenters ; pleased when either would work with him, sensitive to slights from them. I have inherited from him some haste of temper, and impatience of opposition to what he thought reasonable. I wish I had anything like his benevolence, generosity, and freedom from self-indulgence. As I grew up I became far too sensible of what seemed to me his narrowness, and of a certain in- coherency in his mind ; far too little sensible of his very noble qualities of heart. I have since come to the deep practical conviction that this insensibility was a sin against God, a refusal to recognise the operations of His Spirit. I U AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL.— HIS MOTHER. [chap. i. held that thought while I was with my father, but it was not a firm belief in my mind which could withstand a certain pharisaical conceit that I knew more than he did, and that I was therefore in some sense better. Now I am very sure that if I had this knowledge it made my moral in- feriority to him an additional reason for shame and repen- tance. My mother had a far clearer intellect than my father, a much more lively imagination, a capacity for interests in a number of subjects, and an intense individual sympathy. In spite of her fancy, which made her very miserable by filling her with the most unnecessary fears about all who were dear to her, she was in all her own trials, even in sudden emergencies, brave and collected, and she had an inward truthfulness and love of accuracy which I have seldom seen stronger in any one ; it gave a sort of curious definiteness to her apprehensions when they were the least reasonable. ' For many years after my birth she was entirely agreed with my father in his religious opinions. Great differences arose between them afterwards which had a serious effect upon my life ; as you will find if I should be able to continue my narrative. I had three sisters older than myself. Two years before I was born my parents lost a little boy in croup. My mother could never utter his name ; in all our intercourse I do not think she ever alluded to him ; though I always perceived a shudder when any of us or any child for whom she cared was said to have the complaint which carried him off. In her papers there are many references to the boy. I think I must owe part of the peculiar tenderness which she always showed me to my having come in a certain degree to supply his place, though she was such a mother to us all that the word peculiar is somewhat out of place. ' I have spoken of my parents before I have said anything about the place or time of my birth ; but these two are influences, though subordinate influences in our education. I had the honour of being born on tho same day (August 29) with a great Englishman whom perhaps I have not ap- chap, i.] CHILDHOOD.— CASPAR. F. M. under 7. 15 predated as much as I ought, though I trust I have always reverenced his sincerity and manliness, John Locke. The sea-coast of Suffolk (my father's house was within a mile of Lowestoft) in 1805 was exposed to reports of French invasions. These were less numerous after the battle of Trafalgar, and I have only a vague impression of once having listened to some talk about them as I lay in my crib one night. We heard more frequently of poor men in whom my father was interested as being pressed for the naval service ; shipwrecks, and experiments for the establishment of life-boats also interested him greatly, and were topics which were discussed before us. These and some recollec- tions of bathing are the only conscious impressions which I received from the neighbourhood of the sea. I cannot suppose that any boy does not derive unawares many influences from it which mingle with all the other currents of his life. About the war which was occupying all Europe during the seven years that I passed in Suffolk I cannot remember having heard anything. ' My father was a strong Whig, as well as Dissenter. He had associated with those who were persecuted by Mr. Pitt's Government and were suspected of French sympathies. I never found afterwards that he distinguished accurately between the first French war and the one which was con- nected with the freedom of Spain, Germany, Europe. He became ultimately a member of the Peace Society, and I should fancy had a dislike to all fighting at this time. He was not likely therefore to tell me much of Lord Wellesley's victories. I remember being taught Southey's lines on the Battle of Blenheim. I took it more literally than my parents could have wished, and supposed that Caspar, being an old and wise man, had disposed of his grandchild's objections to the very wicked thing. Some debate between my father and a music-master about Napoleon's expedition to Bussia is all that comes back to me about the foreign events of that memorable time. On the other hand I have vivid impressions respecting some domestic events which now are almost 16 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL.— " BUBDETT AND LIBERTY." forgotten. Sir Francis Burdett was a great hero of my elder sisters. His going to the Tower and the watchword of his supporters took hold of my fancy, and remain in a memory from which many worthier things have departed. I recollect too the evening on which we heard the news of Mr. Perceval's assassination, and how the question whether Bellingham was sane or mad was debated in our house. My father farmed some land and also had a number of pupils. He was very much interested about agriculture, and probably knew something about it as it was then pursued. ' I ought to have derived many more country tastes than I did from his example and conversation ; he might too have cultivated in me a faculty of observation which he certainly possessed, at least, in some directions. But I was singularly the " No Eyes " of the story which was read to me out of " Evenings at Home," and anything social or political took a hold of me such as no objects in nature, beautiful or useful, had. My sister Emma said to me, when we were both grown up, that the scent of some violets which we gathered together as children at Normanstone had never passed out of her soul. How I envied her the freshness and freedom of heart which that experience implied ! ' Among my father's pupils there was one who became one of my kindest friends in after years. There are few men to whom I owe more than Alfred Hardcastle. He was attached to a cousin of mine, Annie Hurry. She was the daughter of my mother's eldest brother, and after her mother's death, when she was eleven years old, she came to live in our house. My mother regarded her as a daughter ; she must have been very attractive and very clever. To me she was exceedingly kind, and took much pains both to amuse and instruct me. She had a younger brother Edmund, who also spent most of his time with us; and an elder, William, who was a man of unusual accomplishments ; you must have seen him in his latter days after his return from India. His conversation in his best days was full of variety and interest. It gave me my first sense of what would be called in our days European culture. ctiap. i.] TRUTH. 17 ' His sister, who had many of his gifts, rather influenced me in another way. Besides her liveliness and wit there was a mystery about her attachment, which was broken off and then renewed, that linked itself with my feelings and impres- sions as a boy, and has never lost its connections with my manhood. 'Thackeray says that every house has its "skeleton." If I may judge of others from ours, which had nothing the least to distinguish it, I should think every English house might have its heroines of flesh and blood, and might contain records of nobleness and constancy mixed with abundance of errors and contradictions, such as only those novelists can appreciate who believe (as I am satisfied Mr. Thackeray did) that God's creations are better than theirs, that facts are more precious than fictions. ' From fictions of all kinds, modern or romantic, I was carefully guarded. Miss Edgeworth's " Parents' Assistant " was the only story-book, I think, which ever came into my hands as a child ; afterwards I was allowed her " Moral and Popular Tales." I have never approved or imitated this discipline. I have some- times murmured against its effects upon myself, but I do not now regret it. I had the same temptations to speak falsely and act falsely as other children. I daresay I yielded to them as often. But I do think there was in me a love of truth for its own sake which has kept alive in me ever since. I do not know that the abstinence from fairy tales contributed to it. I am sure my mother's own sincerity cultivated it much more ; and if my father had any hope of making me business-like and scientific, he certainly failed. But I cannot be sure that, along with some dryness and poverty of fancy, I did not gain in this way a certain craving for realities which has been exceedingly necessary to me since I have begun to deal with abstractions of the intellect. ' In 1812 we left Suffolk. My mother suffered from asthma. My sister Emma seemed to be in an atrophy. An aunt of mine, to whom my mother was much attached, was suffering from a spinal complaint at Clifton. She urged our coming vol. i. c 18 BIRDS AND TRADES. Age 7-10. [chap. i. there for the sake of the climate, and that Emma might be under the care of a medical man in whom she had great confidence. Emma's illness increased. She was at- tacked with water on the brain. But, to the wonder of all, she recovered and lasted till twenty-three, to be a blessing to every member of her family and to many beyond it. ' In the year 1814 we removed to Frenchay, about four miles from Bristol, where I spent the next nine years of my life till I went to Cambridge. ' Ever your affectionate father.' Letter II. ' When we left Suffolk a very excellent person, Miss Parker, was residing with us as governess to me and to my sisters Emma and Priscilla ; the latter was three years old. Being very much attached to my mother she consented to go with us into Gloucestershire. She was, so far as I can judge from my early recollections, a very good teacher. That she was a wise and admirable woman I can have no doubt. My mother had taught me to read. Esther Parker, at her request and my father's, gave me very useful books to read, which I ought to have profited by much more than I did. I remember them now with a mixture of shame and amuse- ment. " Gatton's Birds " and the " Book of Trades " were conspicuous among them. The first I believe is as good a book as any on the subject till Bishop Stanley's appeared. But I never knew the note of a single bird, nor watched the habits of any one. My book information, therefore, if such it was, speedily faded away. With so little care for natural history, I ought to have sympathised with the Trades. But the records of their wonders also fell quite dead upon my mind. It was not the fault of the books or of my teachers, nor even of the selection of subjects. There are many to whom either or both of these would have been interesting, in whom they would have awakened thoughts and activities which the common teaching of schools do not awaken. I am chap, i.] DRAMA AND EISTOBY. Agk 7-10. 19 sure it was no superiority in my case, but a defect both of attention and sympathy, which has caused me much sorrow since, that made me irresponsive to such instruction. I do not recollect that I rebelled particularly against it. My passions, which were violent enough at times, were not excited by a dislike of particular studies or a preference for others. I had no great taste for reading of any kind ; that which I delighted in most was anything dramatic. I was not indulged in this preference, but one or two stories of Miss Edgeworth, her " Eton Montem " especially, had a very great charm for me. At a somewhat later time I began to care about history, but it was always such history as I could connect with the events which I heard of as passing in our time, or with some party feeling that had been awakened in me. My father being a Dissenter, I took great interest in a heavy and undoubtedly a somewhat narrow book, " Neal's History of the Puritans." I owe much to the direction which this book gave to my thoughts ; much even of the forms which my belief took when I became an Episcopalian. ' My mind had thus received an early theological complexion, and my father greatly desired that I should be a minister among the Unitarians like himself. I took it for granted that I was to be so ; he was not, of course, unwise enough to put a child upon the study of controversies. I was only recommended to read the Bible regularly, and many discus- sions about it went on in my presence. My Bible reading was a task which I performed every morning ; I did not con- sider it on the whole an unpleasant task, but was rather proud when I had completed the proper number of chapters. There was something of formality about the old Unitarian conceptions of the Bible. My father believed in it more strongly and passionately than most of his sect, and was an enthusiastic champion of the Bible Society. But he en- couraged a kind of criticism on it, which, though far short of that which has prevailed since, would shock many religious people now more than it did then. For the timidity about c 2 20 THE FAMILY CHANGE. Age 7-10. [chap. i. the contents and authority of the Bible has increased as it has become more exalted into an object of worship. To this exaltation the Bible Society on the one hand, and the Unitarian desire to separate it from the creeds on the other, have perhaps equally contributed. ' But there came a great change oyer the spirit of our house- hold. My cousin Anne Hurry had been particularly strong in Unitarian opinions ; she had pursued them, I should sup- pose, more logically and consistently than my father, and had arrived at bolder conclusions. She became intimate with a very superior woman, who had been born a Quaker, and who now was a Moravian. By this lady she was aroused to feel the need of a personal deliverer, such as her old system did not tell her of. The long illness and death of her brother Edmund, which took place in our house, deepened all her impressions. She had broken off the engagement with Mr. Hardcastle because they differed in their religious opinions. It was renewed, and they were married. My eldest sister went to visit her, and afterwards a clergyman in Sussex, whose wife was a relation of ours. She returned utterly dis- satisfied with my father's opinions. My third sister, Anne, a very earnest, solitary thinker, who had long been studying such books as Law's " Serious Call," sympathised with her, though their habits of mind were very unlike. My second sister, who was staying with her cousin when she died in her first confinement, arrived more slowly at the same impatience of Unitarianism. At first they were strongly influenced by Wesley's teaching. Gradually they all, for a while, be- came strong Calvinists ; the form of belief which was most offensive to Unitarians and to my father. It was still more grievous to him that they seemed to cut themselves off en- tirely from their childhood by undergoing a second baptism, and being connected with a Society of Baptist Dissenters. Very gradually my mother entered into their views. When her youngest child was born, many years after the others, she would not consent that there should be any baptism till it should be of age to determine for itself. chap, i.] INFLUENCE ON HIM. Age 7-10. 21 ' These events in my family influenced me powerfully ; but not in the way which either of my parents or my sisters would have desired, nor in a way to which I can look back, so far as my then temper of mind was concerned, with the least com* placency. 1 These years were to me years of moral confusion and contra- diction. I had none of the freedom. . . .' So the manuscript ends. 22 TEE RISING OF TEE STORM. F. M. 9. [chap. ii. CHAPTEE II. . " Layman. My mother's Calvinism came to me sweetened by her personal gracefulness, by her deep charity and great humility. That of her teachers repelled me by its ruggedness, its cruelty, and its arrogance. Clergyman. You would not apply those epithets to the Calvinism of Coligny, of William the Silent, even of John Bunyan ? Layman. Perhaps not. I speak of that with which I have come personally into contact ; amongst preachers especially." Dialogue III., ' On Family Worship.' FURTHER FACTS ABOUT EARLY HOME FATHER, THREE ELDER SISTERS, AND MOTHER — YOUNGER SISTERS. The death of Edmund Cobb Hurry is to be seen recorded on a stone let into the surrounding wall of the little graveyard at Frenchay. It took place on the 18th of October, 1814. The stone marks the period at which the first breath of change was clearly perceptible within the household. From this date, that is when Frederick Maurice was nine years old, the " discussions " which, as he says, " went on in " his " presence about the Bible," must have largely turned upon the question of the Divinity of Christ, and upon various kindred subjects. On these questions it may be averred with tolerable certainty that, till she left them to be married, Anne Hurry, supported by her cousin Anne Maurice, continually more and more warmly espoused, broadly speaking, the orthodox side. On the 3rd of January, 1815, Anne Hurry was married. By July the 25th, 1815, Elizabeth Maurice, the eldest girl, had returned from a long series of visits to which my father has alluded ; had been duly reported to her father by some of his Unitarian friends as sadly orthodox in her views ; and on that chap, n.] ANNE'S LETTEB. F. M. 10. 23 day Anne, in her sisters' name as well as her own, writes to her father, being then in his house,* " We do not think it con- sistent with the duty we owe to God to attend a Unitarian place of worship," and further states that she cannot any longer consent to take the Communion with him. Michael Maurice does not seem to have expected this blow. His answering letter is so short that I give it ; but of course the confusion of the latter sentences is that of the moment and not characteristic. ' My dear Anne. ' The sensation your letter has excited in my mind is beyond my powers to describe. I am totally unable to answer it. May God enable me to perform my duty ! I certainly was unprepared for such a stroke. I should have been thankful if any previous intimation had been given. I have not acted as a father to whom no confidence ought to be shown. Nor have I refused to argue or state my reasons of belief in such a way as might have apprised me somewhat of what I expect from those who are dearer to me than they can imagine. But if ever they are parents, they may then conceive the distress of 1 M. Maurice.' Two months later Mary Maurice, together with her mother, paid the visit to what proved to be the death-bed of her cousin, Mrs. Anne Hardcastle, allusion to which is made in my father's statement of the facts. The following letter, written by Mrs. Maurice to her husband to console him in his distress — written evidently because she fancied she could say what she wished more quietly and wisely on paper — is dated May 1816, that is ten months after Anne Maurice's announcement to her father of her own and Elizabeth's intentions. * A plan the whole family often adopted as easier than speaking on these trying subjects ; hence a most singular abundance of materials. 24 MBS. M. MAURICE'S LETTER [chap. it. ' I am truly unhappy, my dearest friend, to see how much you suffer. I wish it were in my power to comfort you. All I do is to remind you of what I have before said ; and your conscience will be a source of purest consolation when the first bitterness of disappointment is over. You well know that you have done much more for your children than those who have the indelicacy to reproach you and congratulate themselves, because their children have passively followed their steps to a Unitarian place of worship. I can think of only one cause by which we can in any way have been led to the present circumstances — a desire that our children should be serious. This has been the cause that books were put into their hands that, in the most pleasing and amiable form, have introduced doctrines which are usually represented to young persons of our opinions as being substituted for exertion and holiness. It can be no shame to us that we were obliged to resort to authors of different opinions from ourselves, to give our children serious impressions, to teach them the end for which existence was bestowed upon them. It is, however, a shame to Unitarians in general that they have so few books of this kind. From my own experience, I can say that I am driven to read books which continually introduce doctrines that I cannot discover in the Scriptures, because I find so few Unitarian publications that make an impression on the heart, influencing it by forcible motives to right conduct. You feel an anxiety that the younger children should not be biassed to doctrines which have separated the elder ones in religious worship from us, though I must say we were never so united in duty. At your desire the young ones have not lately had any books of the nature you wish to have kept from them. Emma has many hours for reading, and such a love of serious reading that I know not what I shall do for her. Here, then, my fears begin. Accomplishments and literature will neither enable them to discharge their duties, nor support their minds in the numerous trials they must have to endure. How anxious I am that now, whilst their minds are tender and easily im- 1816.] TO EEB ETJSBAND. F. M. 11. 25 pressed, they could have books that would give them right views of life, plain directions for duty, and the greatest supports in affliction ! I should not like to be responsible for withholding principles from them, for fear of their im- bibing doctrines different from my own. But in this I cannot judge for you, for though I lament our children's opinions on account of the sorrow you feel, I cannot bring my mind to regret them, whilst I see that they are in- fluential in producing good fruits. My only anxiety is, as it respects myself, that they may never disgrace the religious profession they make. But even if this greatest of trials should await us, we must remember that, after having dis- charged what appeared to us to be our duty, everything is in the hands of Him who overrules each event for general good ; and let us not be of those " who disobey God in the capital instance ordered for their trial." With respect to your ability as a minister being diminished by what has taken place, I cannot believe it will be so. If a minister has no motive but the good of his hearers, no persons or circumstances prevent his being useful. If, with an indiffer- ence to fame, he studies to be understood, and, regardless of offending, he speaks openly and undisguisedly against vice, his preaching must be blessed. I am sure it will not be long that you will suffer any trial " to impress you so deeply, as not to have spirit or application for what you consider a solemn trust." You will, I know, apply for strength and assistance where it is never refused to them who ask it in sincerity, and then you will receive the support which will lead you to rejoice even in affliction. That this may shortly be your case is the very earnest desire of your affectionate friend, 'Prisctlla Maurice.' 1 May, 1816.' In the following year, 1817 (F. M., twelve years old), being led, as she says, " by the prospect of death," Mrs. Maurice became " sufficiently convinced that she had before made to 26 HIS MOTHERS GBADUAL CHANGE. F. M. 12-16. herself a most false god, and that she had never worshipped the God revealed in the Scriptures." By the year 1819 she was sufficiently eager in her new faith to write, at a time when she was expecting death, a paper which was designed to bring her husband over to her views. As she recovered, he never saw it. In September 1821 she gave to her husband a paper which, in consequence of her great distress at causing him trouble, seems to have taken her nearly a year in composing, to ask him how she could, with least pain to him, attend some other public worship than his. Mr. Maurice seems to have foreseen at once that, whatever rules he might now lay down, his whole family would sooner or later follow the example which had been set. In the course of a long letter in answer to her, after expressing his regret that she should have thought it necessary to write to him and should have asked for a letter in reply while they were living together, he says : ' I may be blamed, as I have been, for not interfering with the elder branches, and when they were seeking advice from others not inquiring why I was deemed unworthy of their confidence. With regard to the younger, I will pursue a different path ; I will require their attendance on my minis- trations and their assembling at my domestic altar till they can assign a satisfactory reason for their own separation. I have the painful, the afflicting prospect, from all they see and hear, that they will follow the steps of those who may one day feel the anguish I now feel.' The only step which Mr. Maurice during these years had taken in any way to interfere with his daughters was to exact from them a promise that they would in no way influence the younger children. Nevertheless, it was in the nature of things impossible that such a change could take place in the family of a somewhat active and prominent Unitarian minister without exciting indignation among the great body of his co-religionists, who had long since, for all practical purposes, abandoned the chap, n.] THBEE SIS TEES. 27 Presbyterian tradition both as to tolerance and as to the Bible, and, by a curious inversion of principles, now bitterly reproached Mr. Maurice for having allowed to his children the unfettered study of the Bible. I cannot ascertain that there is the slightest ground for supposing that the young ladies were subjected, within the household, at all events, to anything that, fairly considered, could be called persecution. But they certainly believed themselves to be persecuted. The eldest, Elizabeth, whose imagination, perhaps whose general ability, was the most re- markable of the three, composed various allegories and tales, in which this feature of the case is very prominently brought out ; and it may well be believed that the sense of opposition would be very strong since they felt their cause to be an intensely sacred one, since they were prevented from speaking freely in its behalf, and since they knew that not a few of the most intimate of the relations and acquaintances of their parents were disposed to look upon them almost as criminals. They appear, however, to have acted as their father's almoners among the poor. Anne was allowed to relieve her mother of the charge of two of the younger children — twin sisters, Esther and Lucilla, born at Frenchay — who were brought up alto- gether in her sick-room, and towards whom she at all events desired conscientiously to observe the pledge to her father in no way to influence their religious convictions, while at the same time, as her diary shows, she was more intensely anxious on this subject than on any other. Elizabeth undertook the care of one, and Mary of the remaining sister. The trust that was reposed in them was therefore absolute. Meantime, Frederick Maurice himself, as soon as he was old enough to enter his father's pupil-room, passed for the purposes of secular education almost entirely into his father's hands. But scarcely any or no discussion on questions of religious belief ever, till many years later, took place between the father and son. In the long country walks which both father and son enjoyed, and in which others of the pupils often joined, Michael Maurice 28 STBONG INDIVIDUALITY. [chap. ii. was always inclined to throw himself with zest into the dis- cussion of public questions — political and philanthropic — and to avoid touching on distinctions of creed ; a course to which the bent of his own mind, loyalty to his pupils' parents, and the divided state of his family all disposed him. Whatever direct effort to influence the son's religious opinions was made must have come from his mother. Each of the elder sisters soon took up a position peculiar to herself. Elizabeth, the eldest, passed under the influence of a clergyman of the Church of England, Mr. Stephenson, the rector of Lympsham. Anne at first joined the chapel of Mr. Vernon, a Baptist, and on his death Mr. Foster the Essayist, who succeeded to Mr. Vernon's chapel, became the guide of Anne and Mary. Battles of the fiercest kind soon raged on the subject of the Establishment and of Dissent between Elizabeth and her sister Anne. Mary was, to some extent, permanently separated from them both by her opposi- tion to them during the early days of their revolt from Unitarianism, and seems never to have been exactly in sympathy with either of them. Her bent was entirely practical and business-like — a complete contrast to theirs ; Elizabeth was too unhandy, Anne too much of an invalid to join in her pursuits. The intense individuality of each of their characters, the dramatic distinctness of the personality of each of these three sisters, is to be noted also of every separate member of the whole family. It is the one sure mark of the race that seems to have been noticed by all who knew them. It gave to their peculiarities of religious conviction an earnestness and a certain aggressiveness which, despite their general agreement on the main point of Calvinism, showed itself in the discussions with one another, not always in an attractive form. Mrs. Maurice's position in relation to them was a very strange one. Whilst amidst all their differences and changes of opinion the daughters were eager to pour forth into any ears that were open to them their most inward feelings, or if ears failed them, to find relief upon paper — their mother was always painfully conscious of being unable to express what chap, ii.] THE MOTHER. 29 lay nearest to her heart, and was silent from that very sense of the sacredness and importance of the matter which forced them to speak. From the time that she in the main came over to their views she began to feel also a bitterness of self- reproach as to her own past influence and actions, which comes out in noteworthy contrast to the great reverence and affec- tion which every one of them had for her, and to the motherly instinct with which she kept together their family affection, soothed their differences, and noted with a keen eye their -various peculiarities, whether of strength or weakness. Her adhesion to the Calvinism which they all, despite their in- dividual differences, adopted was of a very peculiar kind. In one of her letters to her husband she announces her con- viction that " Calvinism is true." The contrast to the form in which her daughters announced their adhesion to the sect which they joined is very remarkable. For the very essence of " Calvinism " in the sense of her letter is this. That it assumes the existence in the world of a select body who are known as the " elect ;" and assumes further that every one in the world can determine in his own mind whether or no he possesses a certain testamur which is called " faith," by which he can decide whether or no he belongs to that select body. Now, on the one hand, each of the sisters quite willingly gave the accredited proofs of their possessing the testamur in question, and on the other, Mrs. Maurice never satisfied herself that she could do so, though looking at the matter from the outside she quite believed that this view of the Universe was the correct one. It is scarcely too much to say that such a position is a contradiction in terms. Calvinism requires that it shall be believed in from within, net from without. How far the fact that his mother at the same time longed that he should be one of the " elect " and was convinced that she herself was not one was present to Frederick Maurice's mind during the years that he was growing up from boy- hood to youth there is nothing very distinctly to show. But it pressed upon him afterwards and the fact itself is an important feature of this part of his life. 30 "THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL." [chap. n. One other note of her relation to him during his earlier years requires to be recorded. In one of her private papers written when Frederick Maurice was a few years old, she expresses a hope that he will become a minister " of the everlasting Gospel." Many years later at Frenchay, long after the change in her religious convictions, she expresses her belief and her satisfaction that he has determined to become a minister " of the everlasting Gospel." The repetition of the identical word when it would appear that her wishes must have undergone so great a change is certainly to be taken into account. Whether it implied that she at the latter date, when her son was about sixteen, believed that he was com- pletely one with her in faith or merely in her affection for him that he would preach what was true, whether she did or did not agree with him, it would be impossible now to guess. It would be difficult to exaggerate the influence which his sister Emma, the nearest to my father in age, exercised upon him throughout her short life. From her childhood she was an invalid and the pet of the family, but her relationship to her brother was so close and intimate as to make them the special friends from the earliest years. It is said that before she could speak plain her view of the chief business of life was expressed on some wet day in the words : " It wains, and we must amoose Master Fwedik at home." The governess, Esther Parker, who, till my father was ten years old, had the charge of him, Emma, and Priscilla, was Unitarian in belief for a not much longer time than she was entrusted with this charge. For having been carried away by the enthusiasm of the elder sisters during the days of their proselytizing Unitarianism, and having then abandoned the Orthodoxy in which she had been educated, she adopted also with them under very similar influences, and about the same time, their Calvinistic faith. At the time of Anne Hurry's marriage in 1815, a year before Anne Maurice's letter to her father, Esther Parker ceased to be governess to Frederick, Emma, and Priscilla. It was from this date that the elder sisters began to take charge of the younger, and that Frederick came under his father for education. chap, ii.] EMMA. 31 Emma, my father's almost twin, was specially attached to Anne, the " solitary thinker," the youngest of the elder group of sisters. Both were invalids, both disposed to quiet and serious reading, both inclined to influences other than Uni- tarian from a very early age. Moreover Emma was, from her weak health and her sympathetic character, in the very centre of the group of sisters which gathered more and more closely round Mrs. Maurice, as she became more and more separated from her husband in religious belief. Now let it be remembered that the elder sisters were for- bidden to speak to their brother on the subject of their own beliefs; that Mrs. Maurice was for years in a condition of anxious suspense, and always tending to find in silence the only possible solution; that, however much the mother and sisters might have endeavoured to prevent it, it was impossible that Emma should not be perfectly aware of all that was pass- ing, and all the more keenly interested in it that it was not pressed upon her ; finally, that the moment his school-hours were over, Emma and her brother were sure to be found together ; and it will be seen through what channel the family events which have been recorded exercised at the moment their most direct influence on him. Emma's own character was very unlike that of her sisters ; much gentler, much less prone to self-dissection, much more finding its satisfaction in constant thought for others and in anxiety to be of practical service to others. With the elder sisters such actions seem to have almost entirely proceeded from a sense of duty. With her they sprang from actual tendency, tempera- ment, and inclination. She was not long in embracing her sisters' side in the issue which now lay between them and her father. Indeed, there seems scarcely to have been any period of her life during which she can properly be said to have been a Unitarian. 32 THE BOY HIMSELF. [chap. hi. CHAPTEE III. " In looking back to the castles of earliest boyhood, we may see that they were not wholly built of air, — that part of the materials of which they were composed were derived from a deep quarry in ourselves, — that in the form of their architecture were shadowed out the tendencies, the professions, the schemes, of after years. Many may smile sadly when they think how little the achievements of the man have corresponded to the expectations of the child or of the youth. But they cannot help feeling that those expectations had a certain appropriateness to their characters and their powers ; that they might have been fulfilled not according to their original design, but in some other way. I do not think that such retrospects can be without interest, or need be without profit to any one." — ' Patriarchs and Lawgivers,' p. 120, March 23rd, 1851. THE BOY HIMSELF UP TO SIXTEEN YEABS OP AGE. The circumstances of my father's childhood have now been given, both as they may be gathered from contemporary papers and as they survived in his memory towards the end of his life. A few trifling stories may be here told which will perhaps supply some hints about the boy himself who lived under the conditions hitherto recorded. Mr. Compton, who occupied Michael Maurice's chapel at Frenchay many years afterwards, there made the acquaintance of my father's old nurse, one Betsy Norgrove. She was fond of telling how, whenever Frederick was missing, she was sure to find him at full length under some big gooseberry bushes or tall-grown asparagus- beds that gave a chance of privacy, always with some book, often with the Bible. She also recorded, with great gusto, how on some occasion when she had offered him, then quite a child, a plum off a tree as she had done the others, he drew himself up to his full height and — giving her surname and chap, in.] " CHOOSE /" 33 Christian name in full instead of the usual " Betsy " — " Eliza- beth , I did think you would have known better than to do that, and would have remembered mamma wishes us never to have fruit except she gives it us herself." The reproof, accord- ing to the nurse, was quite undeserved, as she knew Mrs. Maurice would have trusted her as much as herself in so simple a matter. However, she added, "I never forgot his look, nor have I ever felt a reproof deeper. I can see him now as if it was yesterday, and I only wish I could see him to tell him of it again." His father placed the most unbounded confidence in him as a child. If any complaint was made of him to Michael Maurice, the invariable answer was, " His intentions are excellent," and an explanation exculpatory of him. His mother was fond of telling of the discomfiture of a stranger, who as Frederick Maurice, then five years old, entered the room with a biscuit in one hand and a flower in the other, whispered to her, " Children always give up what they least care for : now we shall see which he likes best ! " Then aloud, " Frederick ! Which will you give me, the flower or the biscuit ? " Whereupon the child held out both hands saying, " Choose which you like ! " Every story, otherwise pointless, about him as he grew a little older suggests a boy puzzled into silence by the conflicting influences round him ; not, that is to say, into abstinence from words, but into that more profound kind of silence which covers the thoughts which are most active within by ready talk on other matters. The following extract is taken from a letter written by one of my father's cousins from Australia to her sister at Hamburg soon after the news of his death had reached her : — ' You ask me about Frederick Maurice. I always remember his bright merry laugh when quite a little fellow, when he used to sit on old Mrs. Crow's lap and she would sing to him. Then I remember my dear cousin Frederick when he was nearly six years old, when I lived at Normanstone ; such a bright VOL. i. d 34 BOOKS. [chap. in. clever little fellow, full of fun, with the sweetest temper ; quite a boy, but never mischievous like most boys. ' I do not think it ever was in his nature to play a mischievous trick ; he was kind and gentle, as I ever remember him. ' The last time I saw him as a boy was at Frenchay, near Bristol, where Esther and Lucilla were born, where I spent some time after cousin Anne Hurry's marriage to Alfred Hard- castle. Then dear Frederick was still a bright intelligent boy ; at times grave, and often sitting on a shelf in the book closet, taking down first one book and then another . . . .' From this, as from many other statements made to me, I am convinced that what my father has said in his own letter as to the very restricted nature of the books he was allowed to read, must be taken to apply only to his very early childhood. I have now before me a letter written by one of the elder sisters, Mary Maurice, who, in sending a present of tales from Shake- speare to a little boy just seven years old, says of Shakespeare, " I began to love him when I was about your age." This seems to have been the case with all the children at a very early period, and I think that the fair inference is that the restric- tion on his reading to which my father alludes was one which was imposed by Michael Maurice under the influence of his first distress at what had happened in the case of his elder daughters, and that under Mrs. Maurice's influence the restric- tion was very soon withdrawn. Long before my father went to Cambridge, he had gone over an unusually wide range of English literature. The following letter was written when he was ten years old, at the time when his sister Mary was with her mother at what proved to be the deathbed of her cousin Anne Hard- castle, and two months after Anne and Elizabeth had announced to their father their determination to separate from him. chap, in.] LETTER WEEN TEN TEARS OLD. 35 To Mary Maurice. ' Frenchay, Sept. 12, 1815. ' My dear Sister, ' As you requested me to answer your kind letter, though I am not certain that I shall have an opportunity of sending it yet, as I see all my companions around me engaged in some kind of writing I thought I might employ myself in a similar manner. In the first place you inquire for an account of the meeting of the British and Foreign School Society in this city — but, though I am very inadequate to describe it, I will try my best, hoping for a perfect account you will neither trust to this nor to Mills's " Gazetteer." At first Mr. Protheroe took the Chair, and opened the meeting with a very appropriate speech, stating the reasons why the meeting was called, his own opinion in considering both institutions as connected with the same important end, the temporal and eternal welfare of all. He then stated the causes of the non-attendance of Sir James Mackintosh, who was expected, and also the reason for the absence of Mr. "Wilberforce, who would have attended had not a prior arrangement interfered. After this, Mr. John Howe rose and read the report, which good judges said was most admir- ably drawn up • it was Dr. Stock who drew it up, I believe. Mr. Smith then answered all objections to the institution, and proved that the number of regular attendants upon Divine service in the Lancastrian School was not less than those of the Bells, and concluded with expatiating on the blessings of education in general. Then Dr. Bole, in a short speech, spoke on the benefits of education in consideration of the shortness of life and a future existence. Then Mr. Fox rose and traced the origin of the Lancastrian School, its rise, and his own personal knowledge of Joseph Lancaster, and concluded by reading a letter from a friend to the institution, and, what was still* more pleasing, a donation from the same person of 10?. Mr. William Allen then rose, and, following up what had been said by his brother Secretary, d 2 36 LETTEB WHEN TEN YEARS OLD. [chap. ra. showed how J. L. obtained the royal protection ; the bene- volence of the gentleman who had just sat down in affording assistance to J. L. when he was in such difficulty that the institution seemed on the point of ruin, that he had sup- ported it while in this sinking state and had raised it to that pre-eminence which it now enjoyed. He then lamented that while Bristol held such a distinguished rank in its benevolence and extensive usefulness, it should be disgraced by such bigotry, that a Churchman would not unite with a Dissenter because he was a Dissenter, though the end of both might be the good of all. He then related an instance he had under his own eye of a clergyman who would not so much as sit in a room with a Dissenter, but by associating with them in Bible Societies, &c, he was led to resign his narrow prejudices, finding them more harmless creatures than he had before supposed. The speeches of the Rev. B. Hall and William Thorpe, though there were many more and excellent ones, are the only ones necessary for me to mention. That of the former, though good judges say it was one of the best they ever heard, we could not hear; I therefore will not pretend to delineate it. The latter, whose voice, you know, is not in general very deficient in strength, made a short speech on liberty, of which this is a part : "By liberty, I mean not the sanguinary horrors of the French revolution ; by liberty, I mean that cause for which a Hampden and a Bussell bled, that which inspires the breast of a true-born Englishman, and without which man is placed on a level with the beasts of the field." ' I told you at the beginning that I should write this letter at my leisure, which, from my date, you will believe when I tell you I have heard the news of both your letters. I heartily congratulate you on the reception of your cousin into the world. I hope Mrs. Hardcastle will not suffer from it. I am glad to hear that Jones has written to Hannah, and though I could not quite make it out, I thought he had some reference to it in a letter he sent me. I doubt not he will continue the correspondence if his letter is answered. chap, in.] SUNDAY SCHOOL. 37 ' I have bought two volumes of Calamy, first and third ; but I want to obtain the second, and if you see it in London, as you are a good bargainer, I should be glad if you will pur- chase it for me. I am reading it. As to my studies, I construe " Horace's Odes " and " Cicero de Oratore," and learn my Greek grammar. As to history, I read " Modern Europe " as before, and shall, when I have been through " England delineated," read Priestley's "Lectures." I have now answered, I believe, the chief of the questions you asked ; but I fear you will think it stupid, and a great deal too long for a letter of such a nature, but as you requested it I have written it ; and as I shall not entertain the same opinion of yours as you will of my weak performance, I hope you will write soon, and a long letter too, to me. Love to Mrs. Hard- castle. Kobert desires his remembrance to you.' Frederick Maurice was already taken by his father with him into all his practical schemes of social improvement, whether connected with general problems of national education, with the Sunday school, which he very soon set up in the village ; with the Bible Society, with the anti-Slave-trade, and subsequently with the anti-Slavery agitation, in which mother and daughters joined as eagerly as the father ; or with the Clothing Club, Soup Kitchen, and other kindred organisations, in which Mrs. Maurice and her daughters were the chief workers. In the Sunday school, under Mr. Maurice's auspices, secular instruction almost exclusively appears to have been given to children who could not obtain it on any other day. As far as I can make out, there was no doctrinal teaching of any kind. It was not in any sectarian sense a Unitarian Sunday school, but was open to all children, without fear that any attempt would be made to bring them over to the opinions of the chief conductor of it. Frederick Maurice seems, from a pretty early age, to have been employed in this school in teaching reading, writing and kindred matters to the poor children of the neighbourhood. A boy living among a family, all the members of which . • - 38 A CONTEMPOBABTS BEMINISCENGES. [chap. hi. were so intensely interested in the questions of the day, could hardly fail to be strongly affected by the excited condition of the public mind in England during the years of his childhood. A letter of his own of the 21st of December, 1819, shows that the wide-spread distress, the violent political and social move- ments, the all but threatening of civil war, the confused surging onward of which formed the staple of English social history during the years which succeeded 1815 had not failed to cause alarm within the little Quaker-Unitarian village, despite the seclusion of the latter. A sketch of him as he was at this time from the pen of his cousin Dr. Goodeve of Clifton, the one companion of those days who survived him, will now complete the story of his boyhood. ' Cook's Folly, near Bristol ; May 6, 1872. 'My Dear F., ' As you are aware, we were brought up very much together. Sons of two dear sisters, almost in the same nursery, in the same school as boys, and continually associated as young men till I went to India in 1830, I had great opportunities of watching his early character and progress, and I rejoice to have an occasion of repeating now, what I often said then, that during that time I never knew him to commit even an ordinary fault or apparently to entertain an immoral idea. He was the gentlest, most docile and affectionate of creatures ; but he was equally earnest in what he believed to be right, and energetic in the pursuit of his views. It may be thought an extravagant assertion, a mere formal tribute to a deceased friend and companion, but, after a long and intimate experience of the world, I can say with all sincerity that he was the most saint-like individual I ever met — Christ-like, if I dare to use the word. ' As a child he was never fractious or wayward, showing, how- ever, early promise of firmness of character and intellectual ability, ever honest and truth-telling at all risk, at the same time eager to learn, and quick to apprehend his lessons in an unusual degree. chap, in] HEROES— BROUGHAM, BURDETT, HUME. 39 ' These qualities he carried with him into boyhood : he never said an unkind word, or did an unfeeling or ungenerous action to his companions ; and he was untiring in work in and out of study hours, thus readily surpassing his school- fellows, yet without any assumption of superiority over them. Truly he was not an example of what, perhaps, would be re- garded as the model schooUmj of the present day — for though naturally strong and robust in body, as he was active in mind, he took little part in games or athletic exercises, and he had a great dislike to what is called sport, more especially looking upon anything which involved the torture or death of dumb creatures as cruel and inhuman. He regarded the slaughtering of animals for food as the province of the butcher only. His recreations consisted of light reading, of which he was very fond, and of long country walks in the beautiful neighbourhood in which we then resided. In these I was his frequent companion, sharing, as I did, many of his own tastes at that period of my life. Our conversation may, perhaps, have been a little too much of the " Sandford and Merton " — the good boy — style occasionally ; but I have a lively remembrance of the great pleasure it used to afford me to hear his opinions upon the important topics of the day, and my admiration of the noble sentiments he expressed upon political and religious questions, and upon the high calling of public men, if they rightly fulfilled the duties imposed upon them. ' He was full of great aspirations as regarded his own future career. His chief ambition at that time was to become a leading barrister, and a member of Parliament for some dis- tinguished constituency. He had two or three idols in the latter class — Brougham, Sir Francis Burdett 'and Joseph Hume were amongst them. The latter may appear to have been rather strange and uncongenial to" such a mind as his, entertaining, as he did, a great dislike to what was then called utilitarianism; but the honesty of purpose and the unflinching resolution to succeed in what he believed to be right, which characterised the proceedings of the old 40 REMINISCENCES CONTINUED. [chap. in. financial reformer, won his esteem rather than the cause for which he fought so bravely in those days. ' Returning home full of enthusiasm after one of these conversa- tions, he drew up the following resolution, which we both signed, and which many years after I rejoiced to show him and to prove how nobly he had fulfilled his share of our agreement. It ran thus : — ' " "We pledge each other to endeavour to distinguish ourselves in after life, and to promote as far as lies in our power the good of mankind." ' Neither of us was fifteen years old at that time. 1 We were rambling with another friend one summer evening at a distance from home, when we found ourselves in the presence of an angry bull, who drove us to take refuge upon an embankment in the middle of a large field. There we were safe enough, but completely besieged; the savage beast continuing to pace round us, apparently ready to rush . upon any one who came within his reach. ' Time wore on, and the night approaching, we began to feel that his mother would grow uneasy at our absence — a matter about which he was always exceedingly sensitive. It was resolved, therefore, that one of us should make an at- tempt to procure assistance, whilst the others endeavoured to divert the bull's attention. Drawing lots was talked of, but Frederick insisted on his right as the eldest to lead the forlorn hope. The scheme was successful; but the quiet undaunted way in which he retired, facing the bull (who followed him all the while), and slowly bowing to it with his hat at intervals — according to a theory he had on the subject — till he could make a final rush for the gate, was worthy of all admiration. ' We were not at the same University, but we met frequently in the long vacations, and made walking tours together occasionally. On one of these tours (in the Isle of Wight) an amusing incident occurred, which caused us many a hearty laugh even in after years, and which we enjoyed greatly at chap, m.] UNITY. 41 the time. At the end of a long day's walk we unexpectedly- met a party of rather fashionable friends, who insisted upon our coming to pass the evening at their house. We ac- cordingly retired to the inn to furbish up our travel-stained garments as best we might. Upon looking for clean stockings (then a more conspicuous article of male dress than at present) we found only one pair remaining in our joint wardrobe, and these, silk ones too, were Frederick's. With his usual generosity and self-denial — even in small matters — he urged me to wear them. I could not of course hear of this, and the matter ended in a compromise. Each put one upon his right leg, and thus marched into the room — shuffled, I should rather say — for our great object was of course to conceal the disreputable leg, and always to put our best foot foremost. I believe we succeeded tolerably ; but the shifts to which we were reduced to obtain our object, by continually dodging the inferior limb behind and under us, were ludicrous enough.' The quotation which I have placed at the head of this chapter will show that there was at this time an undercurrent of thought in the boy's mind which was too definite to be ever forgotten by the man. What the nature of that thought was the following passage from one of the incomplete autobio- graphical attempts will suggest. " The desire for Unity has haunted me all my life through ; I have never been able to substitute any desire for that, or to accept any of the different schemes for satisfying it which men have devised." In other words, the great wish in the boy's heart was to reconcile those various earnest faiths which the household presented. Another sentence in the same letter runs thus : " I not only believe in the Trinity in Unity, but I find in it the centre of all my beliefs ; the rest of my spirit, when I con- template myself or mankind. But, strange as it may seem, I owe the depth of this belief in a great measure to my training in my home. The very name that was used to describe the denial of this doctrine is the one which most expresses to me the end that I have been compelled, even in spite of myself, to seek." 42 GLOOMY VIEWS OF LIFE. F. 31. 16. [chap. iv. CHAPTER IV. " Whose castle 's Doubting and whose name 's Despair." — Pilgrim's Progress. FINAL YEARS BEFORE COLLEGE. When in September 1821 Mrs. Maurice at length informed her husband that she must attend some other place of worship than his, it was inevitable that the difficulties which had hitherto beset her son should come to a crisis. It was certainly about this time, and I incline from a comparison of dates to believe that it was as a direct consequence of his mother's open separation from his father's sect, that Frederick Maurice an- nounced a preference for the Bar as a profession, an escape from many difficulties of his position. In three months from this time he went to live with his cousins, the Hardcastles, in order to take advantage of an offer that had been made to him by a Mr. Clarkson, son of the abolitionist. The latter had proposed, as a personal friend of his father's, to read with him without fee, in order to suggest to him the course he should adopt to train himself ultimately for the Bar. His mother writes to him, evidently very unhappy at his resolution, very anxious that he should take advantage not only of Mr. Clarkson's instructions, but of what she speaks of as "your present opportunities of gaining knowledge on the all-important subject," that is of his stay with his evangelical cousins. More especially she refers to Alfred Hardcastle, and to his being in the near neighbourhood of a lady, " dear Lucy," as Mrs. Maurico calls her, to whom he was glad enough to pour out chap, iv.] A LADY FRIEND. 43 troubles which he had evidently found it impossible to explain either to mother or sisters. He could not now more than later in life persuade himself that he had any right to expect to be dealt with differently from the meanest of human beings, since he did not feel able to claim superiority to any one of them, whether by virtue of superior faith or otherwise. He appears to have accepted, or to have been as against himself quite ready to accept, the rigid Calvin - istic dogmatism which his mother and sisters were all agreed, among their infinite varieties of view, in urging. Accordingly he writes to this lady speaking of himself as " a being destined to a few short years of misery here, as an earnest of and preparation for that more enduring state of wretchedness and woe," &c. The lady was a personal friend of Mr. Erskine of Lin- lathen, and at the moment very much under his influence. The earlier of his books were at this time just beginning to appear, and she had corresponded with him. In her answers to Frederick Maurice she adopts precisely the tone that Mr. Erskine would have adopted. " Where is your authority for regarding any individual of the human race as destined to misery either here or hereafter ? Such a view is not supported by the letter or the spirit of that revelation which alone can be admitted as evidence in the case." She declares to him that to represent God as capable of such a mode of dealing with His creatures as this is to make Him into a horrible tyrant, whatever adulatory epithets the subjects of His tyranny may feel themselves obliged to apply to Him. It is evidently the first time that this idea has ever been presented to his mind. In his letter in reply, he appears to have expressed utter horror at the notion of his being guilty of words that could be so construed. She at once seizes upon this point, and tells him that as he admits that God is Love, and that this is a description of His character, his present state of feelings must be due to God's love, and a step forward not downward; that his experience is common to many, not exceptional. To convince him of this, she refers him to a 44 BOOM TO BBEATHE! [chap. iv. quotation of his own which, used as it evidently has been to express the sense of isolation which was upon him, is very- characteristic of what seems to have been his prevailing feeling at the time : " The heart knoweth its own bitterness." These letters and this visit to London exercised a very important effect upon his mind. I shall venture to insert here what, though it was written of the history of a very different mind from his own, will I think be seen by any one who has considered the two auto- biographical letters already given to be in fact a genuine piece of autobiographical study, and especially applicable to this period of his life. ' Chronology in the history of mental conflicts is most uncertain ; to-day there may be sensations of vehement disgust for that which was once very dear, to-morrow a return of first love. If the decision is ultimately an honest one, we have no right to assume a cognisance of the previous struggles and revul- sions of feeling which are really known only to the Judge of all.' (Preface to the Epistle to the Hebrews, containing a review of Mr. Newman's " Theory of Development." J. W. Parker, 1846, p. 128.) There is no indication that prior to this visit he had begun to feel any craving for an atmosphere freer and wider than he had hitherto been breathing. But very soon after his return, a feeling of this kind made him express a strong desire to go to one of the Universities. No serious opposition seems to have been made to his wishes, and, in the October term of 1823, to Trinity College, Cambridge, he went. chap, v.] A HONE-BRED YOUTH. F. M. 18. 45 CHAPTER V. CAMBRIDGE — FIRST YEAR, TRINITY — EARLY IMPRESSIONS — HARE'S CLASS-ROOM — COLLEGE FRIENDS — SECOND YEAR — THE APOSTLES' CLUB — MIGRATES AT END OF YEAR TO TRINITY HALL. " The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction : not indeed For tbat which is most worthy to be blest : Delight and liberty Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise ; But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realised, High instincts before which our mortal nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised." [Quoted of his Undergraduate days by himself in 1866. — Inaugural Lecture.'] On October 3rd, 1823, Frederick Maurice reached London, to stay once more with his cousins the Hardcastles for a few days, on his way to Cambridge. A few extracts from letters of this time will give some idea of the shy youth who, with not a little of the formality and stiffness which such a home-breeding as he had received would naturally have engendered, was peering out almost for the first time into the larger world, wondering whether perchance he might find in it something which would help to clear the " confusion " which, as he has told us, the multiplicity of earnest creeds among those whom he loved had 46 SHYNESS. F. 31. 18. [chap. v. produced in his mind. At this period, and for long afterwards', the painful and intense shyness, the dread of self-assertion, the fear lest all his friends should he ashamed to recognise him, are external features that come out in every report made of him by those who then knew him, and in numerous allusions in his letters not otherwise worth repeating ; such as that he has seen Mr. So-and-So (an intimate friend of his father's, and whom he has himself known all his life), hut has not ventured to speak to him. In a letter to his father from London he says : ' I am convinced on the whole that I am going upon that plan which is most likely subsequently to be useful to me, and as great advantages often arise out of apparently the most disagreeable circumstances, I do not think that the least benefit will be my being compelled, in some measure, to act for myself. At present I am less qualified to do this than many others, but inexperience up to a certain age is perhaps rather desirable than otherwise, though I feel that it ought not to go beyond that point. If I had left home earlier, as was proposed in case I had gone to Dublin, I should have felt much more confident than I now do in some things, and much more timid in others, and if I were to stay longer, my habits would be very likely too much formed to admit of any great alteration. I trust I shall always, however, keep in view the ultimate end of all my studies, and remember that whatever benefits I may derive from them, or from my resi- dence at College in general, are of no value if they induce a selfish idea that my rise in the world is the thing of all others the most important. I hope I do go to Cambridge with the intention of studying as a duty which I owe not only to myself, but to you and mamma and my sisters. ' I find I cannot say to you what I wished about all your past incessant kindness, especially as exemplified in your allowing me to exercise so large a discretion in the choice of my plans for future life ; but when I reach Cambridge you shall hear more at large about my feelings and intentions. • I know chap, v.] MATHEMATICAL LECTURER (1823). 47 that my promises will be less valuable to you than deeds, and if they should disappoint you, the previous promises would only increase your mortification. But my greater or less sensibility to all that has been done for me by you and mamma will be the measure by which I shall judge of my willingness to act up to your wishes, and of the strength of my own resolutions.' The second letter, which is from Cambridge, to his mother, is dated October 23rd, and begins with an allusion to the most eloquent preacher of the South of England of his day, Kobert Hall the Baptist, whom he seems to have often heard before, and to have on this day gone with great pleasure to hear. He goes on, ' In the article of postage I mean to be most fearfully extrava- gant, and I hope you will not allow the Cambridge postmen to complain that Mr. Delph [the Frenchay postman] has the whole benefit of it. Indeed, letters here .are tenfold valuable, both from the want of other society, and the much greater number of particulars that I want to hear than I can by any possibility have to communicate.' Lectures had already begun two days earlier, but the under- graduates had only received general addresses on the future sub- jects of the courses, both in mathematics and classics. These addresses he elaborately describes. He rather laughs at the mathematical lecturer as having made out that to mathematical studies " we are of course all indebted for our existence and consequent power of attending to lectures at Trinity College," so that but for them " in all probability the last war would have been the destruction of England, and therefore Bonaparte- would never have been sent to St. Helena, nor Mr. O'Meara published his book." However, he is in great delight over one sentence in the speech, in which the lecturer had said " that he had generally observed that those who felt the greatest distaste for mathematics generally stood most in need of the mental discipline which they afforded." 48 JULIUS EABE (1823). [chap. v. Another paragraph, gives an account of his first view of a man, his intercourse with whom was to become more and more cordial as life advanced. Julius Hare had in the previous year, 1822, left study at the Bar in London to take up a classical lectureship at Trinity College, and was now therefore in his own first enthusiasm for the work which was perhaps always the most interesting to him. ' Our other lecturer, Hare, is a very different man from his coadjutor. He is a lively lecturer and an admirable classic, and you have no reason to complain in his rooms that you are employed an hour in hearing difficulties demolished in a most triumphant style which you really did not fancy had ever occurred to any one. I am particularly pleased with his manner, especially that of recommending books bearing upon the subject in question, but out of the regular College routine. For instance, Schlegel's celebrated work on Dramatic Literature he advised us to study attentively as illustrative of the play we are reading, though it is evidently for the purpose of imparting philosophical views of literature in general that it can possibly be useful, and as such will bear upon the general examination in May. Nothing at Cam- bridge is so earnestly recommended as the perusal of general literature, except it be, which is absolutely necessary, the study of the evidences of Christianity— Paley, Butler, &c. So false is the general opinion that the English Universities have a regular coach-road system, out of which their members are not for an instant allowed to deviate under penalty of life and limb. ^F '•K *F 9 * *V ' I found also yesterday that undergraduates may obtain books (of course chiefly of reference) from the Trinity library, merely by application to the tutor for a note, which he is always pleased to be asked for. I shall very soon give him this pleasure, as many books, such as Clarendon, are too expensive to buy, and not easily hired. I can procure these for nothing. This is a grand point in which Trinity surpasses, chap, v.l A PARTY VOTE. F. M. 18. 49 as of course she does in everything else, all her rivals — the libraries at St. John's, &c, being open only to Masters of Arts." Every member of the family is separately remembered in the letter, and he once more towards its end entreats constant supplies of " the news from Frenchay, which can never be so exhausted as not to leave a residue which I shall be glad to be favoured with." " But I am afraid your side will first cry quarter ; this, you may depend upon it, I shall never do, if I had letters every day." I am not quite sure whether it was in this or in the following term that his zeal for Trinity led him, as he considered after- wards, to follow a multitude to do evil, by voting at an election of Union Officers for the Trinity candidate against a more dis- tinguished rival from another College. The Trinity candidate for whom he voted became subsequently famous as the Mr. Beales, M.A., of the Keform League and of the Hyde Park-railing riots. The candidate against whom he voted was Benjamin Hall Kennedy, the future Master of Shrewsbury, and Cambridge Greek Professor, who soon afterwards became a College friend, and for whom he had in after-life the greatest respect. Though his father had readily consented to his going to the University, not a few of the acquaintances of the family were somewhat suspicious of a course which was so unusual among them. After he had been at the University about a month, Frederick Maurice replied to their criticism. To Ms Mother. 1 In one of your letters you mention that Mr. Foster * made some objections to the Cambridge system, on the score of its narrowing the mind, and confining all the ideas to classical and mathematical subjects. I believe he must have taken up his opinion more from experience of a few hard-headed curates, who, by dint of immense application at a University, * See ante, p. 28. VOL. I. E 50 ZEAL FOB UNIVERSITY. [chap. v. fortunately not interfered with by any hankering after objects of taste or genius, managed to acquire a good mathe- matical degree, than from acquaintance with those men who are the real boasts of the University. The regular northern plodder who, without any feeling or taste, comes up to the University perhaps from a school where he has been all his life cooking for a senior wrangler, very naturally turns out in after life a man of most odious habits, and as Mr. Foster says, not able to make an ordinarily good sermon. I presume he means by this, merely the composition, arrangement, &c, for the matter neither this nor any other system, I should think, of mere secular instruction would affect in the slightest degree. But such a man as I have described, instead of being venerated and looked up to here, as a prodigy, is a subject of constant and almost illiberal sarcasm, and the men who are held in greatest reputation, those, who like the greater number of the Trinity fellows, especially the tutors and younger part, unite a very large share of what is strictly University knowledge to an extensive acquaintance with modern languages, great facility in English composition, and a general acquaintance with books and men, including an utter absence of all pedantry and a correct and elegant taste. There are a very great number of such persons, especially at Trinity, and by them alone the Cambridge system is to be judged, for it seems to me that it is to the previous preparation of mind that the other class of men are indebted for their disagreeable peculiarities, and not to their after-discipline at Cambridge.' ****** ' My interest in newspaper reading is wonderfully evaporated, and I seldom do more than just turn over the papers in the Union, soon after Hall, when no better mode of spending time offers itself. Since the fall of Spain I have been almost utterly uninterested about anything in the public line, and the debates in the Union being confined to all time previous to the year 1800, make a member attend rather more to history than passing events.' age 18.] LONELINESS. 1824. 51 In an earlier letter he alludes to certain investments of bis father's in Spanish Bonds, and adds, ' I am afraid our ideas of Spanish good faith have had a little touch of romance in them, and that they furnish no excep- tion to the general fact of the immoral effects of revolution on a country. Have you seen the last number of the " Quarterly Keview," which contains a most affecting account of the martyrdom of some early Protestant reformers in Spain ? The article is written, I believe, by Lord Holland's chaplain, White, the author of " Doblado's letter," and it is certainly the most interesting and harrowing paper I have seen for a long time. I do see the " Quarterly Eeview " whenever I like, either from Nicholson, or reading them at Deighton's, which is the common lounging-place of idle and of studious men in their loose minutes while the bell is ringing for chapel, and which are perhaps as profitably spent in reading the papers as in lounging about the streets. ' In his second term he became anxious about his father's health. He writes, on Feb. 27th, 1824, to press his being allowed to give up Cambridge, return home, and relieve his father as much as possible of his work of tuition, unless the latter becomes better, and adds, " for it would be much better as well as pleasanter for me to desert Cambridge altogether than that he should suffer from attention to business which I ought to relieve him of." Happily his father recovered, and in any case his parents were by no means disposed to allow him to sacrifice a career on which he had set his heart. His chief companion at this period was Mr. Stqck, son of Dr. Stock of Bristol, an old friend. Dr. Stock had left Unitarianism under the influence partly of the Miss Maurices and partly of Mr. Vernon, their friend. In this second term, Frederick Maurice changed his lodgings in order to be in the same house with Stock. And he now (Feb. 27th) writes : ' Living in same house with Stock, and our being so much in one another's rooms takes off every feeling of loneliness, as I e 2 52 JOHN STEELING. [1824. certainly could not have found a person I should have liked so well as a constant associate.' He was at this time reading with a private tutor, Mr. Field.* There is nothing to show how soon the friendship which was to become the most important in all ways to both of them, that with John Sterling, sprang up. Everything shows that Sterling had the whole active part in forming the acquaintance and friendship, and must for a long time have had hard work in drawing out his sensitively shy and reserved companion. But if the shyness and the sense of frozen isolation had not thawed, it was impossible that he should not be, to some extent, aware of the kind of recognition which his powers were re- ceiving. It was not long before he and Sterling became the favourite pupils of Julius Hare. Hare wrote, soon after Maurice's arrival in Cambridge, that there was in his class- room " a pupil whose metaphysical powers were among the greatest he had ever come in contact with, but that the man was so shy that it was almost impossible to know him." Of his own experiences in Hare's class-room Frederick Maurice has himself given in later life a sketch which is so strictly autobiographical that a few extracts may be given here. ' I do recollect Hare's class-room exceedingly well. I am often surprised how clearly all the particulars of what passed in it come back to me, when so much else that I should like to preserve has faded away. ' You will suppose, perhaps, that this was owing to some novelty in his method of teaching. You will inquire whether he assumed more of a professional air than is common in a College, and gave disquisitions instead of calling on his pupils to construe a book ? Not the least. We construed just as they did elsewhere. I do not remember his indulging in a single excursus. The subject in our first term was the Antigone of Sophocles. We had Hermann's edition of the * Afterwards Fellow of Trinity, Rector of Reephani, and editor of various works in patriotic and theological literature. chap, v.] JULIUS HARE. 53 play, which had not long come out ; his entire edition of Sophocles was not then published. "We hammered at the words and at the sense. The lecturer seemed most anxious to impress us with the feeling that there was no road to the sense which did not go through the words. He took infinite pains to make us understand the force of nouns, verbs, particles, and the grammar of the sentences. We often spent an hour on the strophe or antistrophe of a chorus. If he did not see his way into it himself, he was never afraid to show us that he did not ; he would try one after another of the different solutions that were suggested, till we at least felt which were not available. ' You will think that so much philological carefulness could not have been obtained without the sacrifice of higher objects. How could we discover the divine intuitions of the poet, while we were tormenting ourselves about his tenses ? I cannot tell ; but it seems to me that I never learnt so much about this particular poem, about Greek dramatic poetry generally, about all poetry, as in that term. If there had been dis- quisitions about the Greek love of beauty, about the classical and romantic schools, and so forth, I should have been greatly delighted. I should have rushed forth to retail to my friends what I had heard, or have discussed it, and refuted it as long as they would listen to my nonsense. What we did and heard in the lecture-room c6uld not be turned to this account. One could not get the handy phrase one wished about Greek ideals and poetical unity ; but, by some means or other, 'one rose to the apprehension that the poem had a unity in it, and that the poet was pursuing an ideal, and that the unity was not created by him, but perceived by him, and that the ideal was not a phantom, but something which must have had a most real effect upon himself, his age, and his country. I cannot the least tell you how Hare imparted this conviction to me; I only know that I acquired it, and could trace it very directly to his method of teaching. I do not suppose that he had deliberately invented a method ; in form, as I have said, he 54 PLATO UNDER HARE'S TEACHING. [chap. v. was adapting himself exactly to the practice of English Colleges; in spirit, he was following the course which a cultivated man, thoroughly in earnest to give his pupils the advantage of his cultivation, and not ambitious of displaying himself, would fall into. Yet I have often thought since, that if the genius of Bacon is, as I trust it is and always will he, the tutelary one of Trinity, its influence was scarcely more felt in the scientific lecture-rooms than in this classical one; — we were, just as much as the students of natural philosophy, feeling our way from particulars to universals, from facts to principles. ' One felt this method, without exactly understanding it, in reading our Greek play. The next term it came much more distinctly before us. Then we were reading the Gorgias of Plato. But here, again, the lecturer was not tempted for an instant to spoil us of the good which Plato could do us, by talking to us about him, instead of reading him with us. There was no resume of his philosophy, no elaborate com- parison of him with Aristotle, or with any of the moderns. Our business was with a single dialogue ; we were to follow that through its windings, and to find out by degrees, if we could, what the writer was driving at, instead of being told beforehand. I cannot recollect that he ever spoke to us of Schleiermacher, whose translations were, I suppose, pub- lished at that time; if they were, he had certainly read them ; but his anxiety seemed to be that Plato should explain himself to us, and should help to explain us to ourselves. "Whatever he could do to further this end, by bringing his rending and scholarship to bear upon the illustration of the text, by throwing out hints as to the course the dialogue was t ;iking, by exhibiting his own fervent interest in Plato and his belief of the high purpose he was aiming at, he did. But to give us second-hand reports, though they were ever BO excellent — to save us the trouble of thinking — to supply u- with ;t moral, instead of showing us how we might find it, not only in the book but in our hearts, this was clearly not hie intention. chap, v.] EFFECT OF HABE ON HIM. 55 ' Our third term was spent on one of the early books of Livy. My recollections of these lectures are far fainter than those which turned on Greek subjects. I have often been surprised that they are so ; for the translator of Niebuhr must have devoted, even at that time, great attention to all questions concerning Roman history. Some of the remarks he made have since come to life in my mind ; there was the same abstinence here as elsewhere from disquisition, and from whatever was likely to hinder us from learning by making us vain of what we learnt. But he had not, or at least he did not communicate to us, that vivid sense of locality which seems to have formed the great charm of Dr. Arnold's historical teachings, and which is united with much higher qualities in Carlyle's magnificent epic of the French Revolu- tion. I should fancy, therefore, that his readings on poetry and philosophy would always have been the most interesting and valuable. ' I believe that Hare gave some lectures on the Greek Testament to the students of the second year, but I never heard any of them, nor had I ever any conversation with him on theological subjects. In fact, I had very few opportunities of conversing with him on any subject. I had no introduction to him. I had never heard his name when I entered the College, and I availed myself of the kindness which he was disposed to show me, in common with others, less than I should have done if I had been older and wiser. When we met again many years after, my theological convictions had already been formed by a discipline very different, I should imagine, from any to which he was subjected ; they were not altered in substance, nor, so far as I know, even in colour, by any intercourse I had with him. But to his lectures on Sophocles and Plato I can trace the most permanent effect on my character, and on all my modes of contemplating subjects, natural, human, and divine.' Then follows the most eloquent portion of the preface, but it is less strictly autobiographical. In it he attributes 56 TEE APOSTLE'S CLUB. [chap. v. to Hare, first, the setting before his pupils of an ideal not for a few " religious " people, but for all mankind, which can lift men out of the sin which " assumes selfishness as the basis of all actions and life," and secondly, the teaching them that " there is a way out of party opinions which is not a com- promise between them, but which is implied in both, and of which each is bearing witness." " Hare did not tell us this .... Plato himself does not say it ; he makes us feel it." Among his friends, the two most intimate of whom at this time were Whitmore and Sterling, and in a literary society, the " Apostles' Club," of which he had become a kind of second father, he was more and more being drawn out to express, both in conversation and on paper, the thoughts which were now working in his mind all the more actively because, from his affection and keen sympathy with so many who differed widely from one another in his own family, he had for many years been almost forced to be silent upon the subjects which interested them and him most. It is perhaps not surprising that so peculiar an experience as my father had had in his childhood should have aided in the development of an originality of thought which impressed all who were thrown into his society. It is not possible to ex- aggerate the tone of respect for his intellectual and moral power employed in speaking of him by all those of his contemporaries who were thrown into contact with him at Cambridge. Before he left the University he found himself the acknowledged leader of the most remarkable body of men within it. But as always afterwards throughout life it was a leadership which others were much more anxious to concede to him than he to assume, unless at a moment when there was some unpopularity or difficulty to be faced. That in pushing him into prominence Sterling played the most important part, there can be no doubt. Sterling used to speak now or a little later of spending his time " in picking up jM'bbles beside the ocean of Maurice's genius." It would bo impossible to give in exact chronology the manner in which his thoughts developed at each period of his f. m. 19.] ADVICE TO A SISTER. 1825. 57 University career. But some indications remain of their general course. The statement that he did not hear Hare's lectures on the Greek Testament does not imply that he had then left Trinity. He kept there six terms. The following letter will give a fair idea of him at the beginning of 1825, his second year at Cambridge. The sister to whom it was written was going to school for the first time, and by no means liking the prospect. His father and mother had in the meantime quitted Frenchay and were now living for a short time at Sidmouth. To a Sister. 1 Cambridge, March 1825. ' My dear Priscilla. ' You have not often favoured me with letters, so that as I am obliged in conscience to answer my regular correspondents, I have not addressed so many letters to you as I should have otherwise done. But now that you are leaving home so shortly, I cannot miss this opportunity of telling you how much interested I am that you should be happy in your new situation, and, moreover, of my hope that I shall not suffer from the arrangement (you see selfishness always comes in), or see less of you than I should have done had you remained at Sidmouth. Perhaps I shall hardly be gratified as much as I should wish in this last particular, seeing that we boys are indulged with so much longer a vacation than is advisable or proper for us, or would be for you ; I suppose because we are more incapable of such continued exertion as your stronger faculties of mind and body enable you to support. ' Now, as touching the new world into which you are going, you will learn from those far more qualified than I am all that it is worth your while to know, for a great deal will remain, after all, which experience must teach you. On one particular, perhaps, I may give you some advice which will not be altogether unworthy of a place in your memory, that is, not to be disgusted or disagreeably impressed with the place and persons among whom you will find yourself, if LETTER TO A SISTER. [chap. v. tliey should not quite answer the expectations you had formed of them previous to your going ; you may depend upon it you will always see defects in everything when you have walked close up to it, which did not strike you in the distance. But it does not follow that the picture, or school, or University, is a bad one on this account, and you would probably find the same in every other picture, school, or University you might look at or visit. You know some of our good friends have tried the experiment of going to about thirty different places of education, in hopes of finding the second better than the first, the third than the second, and so on ; but it appears that they were dissatisfied with at least twenty-nine of the thirty, and probably got nothing by these repeated changes but desultoriness of habit and a scrap-book intellect (that is not a word of my coining, it means a sort of intellect which has only little bits of here and there information, and can never fix steadily to anything). You may remember how I raved about Cambridge before I set my foot within its walls, talked about the perfection of all its places, the excellence of all its tutors, and the fine gentlemanly spirit of its resident men. You may easily suppose that I have changed my opinion on several of those points, and modified it on all ; but I do not, therefore, at all regret having become a member of this same University, because I think I have discovered advantages as well as defects that I did not expect. ' I daresay, my dear Priscilla, you will think this sad prosing, and only what you have often heard before, expressed worse ; but you must take the will for the deed, and believe that I would save you some pain which I have occasionally ex- perienced in finding my anticipations not realised, if I could. 1 Every new thing must and will please, from a new school to a new pair of shoes ; but both sometimes pinch, and you must not throw them away because they chance to do so more than you like. This is perhaps the only good advice which I can give you that would be of much use to you, for you will have ho much that is very good, good as it can be, on great principles ; and as for the minor regulations, you know 1825.] MIGRATES TO TRINITY HALL. 59 I cannot be very conversant with the characters and manners of young ladies, especially at schools, except from general report, which ascribes to them an almost equal dexterity in running up gowns and friendships, neither of which articles last very long, at least the latter — concerning the durability of the former, you know best — those which are called eternal friendships terminate, I believe, usually in a fortnight or three weeks. Nevertheless, I daresay you will find very many pleasant associates, and I believe the old and vulgar recipe of good temper is more effectual in preserving them than anything else, at least, so my small experience tells me. That is a quality which I believe desirable and undesirable acquaintances equally respect ; but none, of course, will love you for it who are not themselves gifted with the same amiable quality : it is too severe a reproach upon them who want it to see you possessed of it. I think, my dear Pris., if you make a proper use of the opportunity, you will find a school one of the best triers, and at the same time improvers, of temper possible ; in fact, you must expect a great deal of teasing, which it would be a most laborious and useless exertion to combat with, and therefore, if you had no better motive, policy, or rather necessity, would induce a prudent person to cultivate it. ' But I must positively leave off this lecture, and as I am afraid I should relapse into it if I continue my letter, that shall close too ; indeed, it was rather unconscientious to make it so long, considering how you must be occupied. ' Therefore, with best wishes for your happiness, and every confidence that the present scheme will promote it, ' Believe me, my dear Priscilla, ' Your very affectionate brother, ' Frederick Maurice.' At the beginning of his seventh term he migrated to Trinity Hall, ostensibly in order to join what in Cambridge is more especially the Law College as a natural preparation for the Bar. In fact everything indicates that he still looked upon the law 60 MIGRATES. [chap. as a profession attractive to him mainly because it enabled him to avoid decisions which he was not as yet ready to pronounce with distinct voice. Sterling followed him to Trinity Hall, but no trace is left of their intercourse beyond the record of its existence. f. if. 20.] TEE 'METROPOLITAN QUARTERLY.' Gl CHAPTEK VI. CAMBRIDGE THIRD YEAR — THE ' METROPOLITAN QUARTERLY MAGA- ZINE ' — END OF COLLEGE LIFE AND COMMENCEMENT OF WORK IN LONDON. " Is it that now my inexperienced fingers But strike the prelude of a loftier strain?" Dedication of the ' Revolt of Islam.' The ' Metropolitan Quarterly Magazine ' was published for the first time in November 1825. Frederick Maurice and his friend Whitmore acted as joint editors. Some sixteen under- graduate friends contributed articles. It lived through four quarterly numbers. It was to have been published by Longman, but he gave it up at a very early stage of the proceedings on the ground that it was altogether too abusive and hostile to established authority. Its best epitaph will perhaps be found rn the following extract from a letter of John Stuart Mill's to my brother. The letter is dated Avignon, May 19th, 1872. Mr. Mill mistakes, by three years, the date of publication. ' You are probably aware of your father's connection with a short-lived periodical of considerable literary merit, founded, I think, about 1828, and called the " Metropolitan Quarterly Magazine." It was there that he published the article on account of which a passage in the second of his Cambridge lectures shows him to have retained an abiding feeling of self-reproach. That he should have done so is proof of a tenderness of conscience which may even be called excessive, 62 AGAINST " COCKNEYISM:' Age 20. [chap. vi. for the article, which was an extremely clever quiz of the style of Bentham's "Book of Fallacies," was in substance an attack, quite legitimate from his point of view, upon what he considered as fallacious in Bentham's own modes of reasoning. I remember another article in the same periodical, which I am almost sure I understood at the time to be his ; a powerful denunciation of 'Blackwood's Magazine,' the most striking article, as I remember, which the publication contained during the short period of its existence.' The " New School for Cockneyism," the article to which Mr. Mill refers, is an attack upon ' Blackwood's Magazine ' as the representative at the time of the mere love of criticism which he in after-life declared to have its being in obedience to the maxim, " Judge that ye be not judged." After explaining that " nine-tenths of the writers and talkers against Cockneyism understand by it," " A Cottage at Hamp- stead," "lecturing at the Surrey Institution, drinking weak tea, professing Jacobinical principles and writing in the ' Examiner,' " he asserts that " a disorder identical with Cockneyism is to be met with in a quarter where it has never yet been observed," then (after defining the Cockneyism which he attacks as a certain narrow temperament of mind), ' This is the Cockneyism which we have always loathed ; the Cockneyism which no talents, no excellence can redeem ; the Cockneyism which makes Hunt disgusting and Hazlitt intolerable ; the Cockneyism which, we maintain, may exist equally, and which we detest equally, in a Tory or a Jacobin, a starveling in Grub Street or a pensioner in Grosvenor Square; in the writer who ridicules religion and morality for the " Examiner," or in him who, with cowardly and im- pious policy, employs those sacred names to screen a bad cause or libel a good one in the " Quarterly." ' Those who know of the attempts which were made some years later to confuse all the issues for which he contended, and to evoke popular prejudice against him, by the trick of chap, vi.] FOB ARTIST OB FOB CBITIC? G3 naming in conjunction with hirn men from -whom he differed as widely as the poles, will be amused to find him at twenty defending others from the same process, in the following words. It is necessary to the understanding of his whole future life to make it clear how fully he realised what he was facing when he chose the part he was to play hereafter, and that he had already chosen his part. ' Every one remembers when it was impossible to praise a French philosopher or quote from a French book without being denounced as carrying about the infection of Jacobinism ; when no one dared to translate a German play lest he should have a foul bill of health assigned him as coming from a region in which Kotzebue was supposed to be scattering the seeds of death ; lastly, when the slightest expression of admiration for the sublimities of nature involved the more honourable but unpopular and dreadful imputation of a Lake Fever. ' In vain was it argued by the sufferers under the first charge that the accusation was vague and indefinite, that French philosophers differed as much from each other as those of any other nation, that Pascal and Montesquieu could not be answerable for the faults of Diderot or Volney ; in vain did the German reader contend that Schiller and Goethe had no other guilt than that of great genius to be reproached for, and that German critics had denounced Kotzebue in severer terms than even English ones ; in vain did the worshipper of Nature attempt to prove that the whole groundwork of the charge against him was untenable, that the notion of a Lake School was a -mere fiction of Jeffrey's brain, and that no three writers ever differed more from each other than Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey : the decree of the Eeviewer and the Satirist went forth, and the public believed the statement and fled from the infection.' The same number contains another article by him on a subject of somewhat curious interest. There had just been discovered a long-lost treatise of Milton's on ' Christian 61 INDEPENDENCE OF THOUGHT. [chap. vi. Doctrine.' It had produced a great sensation by showing the Unitarian bent of the poet's mind. Certainly at this time my father had no leaning towards the Unitarian creed. His sympathies a few months later were rather with the Church of England than with any one of the Dissenting sects of the country, and his mind was working in that direction already. The sketch of his life has failed to represent the truth, if it has not made clear the fact, that the most potent influences that were acting on his mind during his early years rather tended in the direction of the Calvinistic than of the Unitarian creed, in so far as they tended to induce him to accept either as a complete expression of truth. Most certainly he was never a Calvinist. As certainly after any age at which a child's creed can be supposed to be more than a mere repetition of words put into its mouth, he was never a Unitarian. Nevertheless the chief interest in the paper lies in its showing how strongly was already formed in him the desire to battle against mere popular clamour, shouting down the thoughts of a great man because he did not conform to the accepted mode of belief. In these youthful articles thoughts continually appear which worked in him throughout his life, mingled with many others that were either completely changed or greatly modified. The thing that strikes one as most in contrast to his later writings is frequently rather the form than the thought itself. There is a greater willingness to judge self-appointed judges than he could quite bring himself to in later life, and therefore perhaps in some respects a more definite expression of what he himself believed to be right. The next article that he contributed contains the following passage : 'We have hitherto forborne any declaration of our political creed ; but our literary creed, we trust, will now be sufficiently intelligible. In literature we are aristocrats to the core. Every scheme which tends to dimmish the distance between 1826.] "IN LITERATURE AN ARISTOCRAT." Age 20. G5 the nobility of genius and the upstarts of folly — every scheme which tends to give the tiers etat a parity of influence with that ancient and venerable aristocracy — every scheme which can render the canaille of Grub Street as eligible to the honours and rewards of fame as the optimates of our literature — against every such scheme we are resolved to wage an unceasing and exterminating warfare.' Most of his contributions are, like the above, defences of those whom he considered the great men of the age against the critics, the precis-writers, the condensers, the suppliers of formula?. Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, De Quincey, Scott, Keats, Southey, and, above all, Coleridge, are always the objects of his admiration, and he will tolerate no invasion of their kingdom. Coleridge alone receives unbounded praise. The following is on the egotism of the poet whom he was disposed next to him to admire among his contemporaries. ' There is nothing surely in the principles of his poetry which could have prompted Wordsworth to treat with such ludicrous solemnity the novelty of finding a party of gipsies in precisely the same spot in the evening which they had occupied in the morning. It is simply that these gipsies were tabernacling in the poet's parish — that they fell under the poet's eye — they interrupted the poet's meditation — and therefore, as Mr. Coleridge has well remarked, he has shown considerably more indignation at their remaining stationary half a day than it would have been necessary to express if he had been commenting on the unprogressiveness of the Chinese empire during the last four thousand years.' It will interest those who know Mr. Maurice's latest books, especially his lectures at Cambridge on " The ' Conscience ' and the word ' I,' " to be told that the article from which the above is taken is especially devoted to proving that the great characteristic of the age, both in its virtues and in its defects, YOL. I. f 66 " MR. PAPSTERS DIARY." Age 20. [chap. vi. is " egotism." This assertion is defended by a study of most of the great writers of the period, and of the little ones also. The next article is the one on Benthani's ' Book of Fallacies,' to which Mr. Mill alludes. It represents, in a garb more sarcastic and less respectful to those who differed from him than would have been characteristic of him in later life, his inveterate opposition to the principle of Utilitarianism. It must have been at this time a very great relief to him to be able to speak out strongly on a subject on which his mother and his father were fully agreed, namely, that it is well to do right because conscience commands it, and not because it answers, or because it tends to the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Another article, which is called the " Diary of Mr. Papster," is very characteristic of the loathing he had throughout life for that kind of history or other form of literature which consists in publishing the most insignificant details, and omitting all that can give life, interest or character. The article is in the form of an imitation of ' Pepys' Diary.' It is supposed to relate to the years from 1790 to 1827, and to be published in London in the year 2056, by Mr. Henry Burntcoal, as a most invaluable contribution to the history of the times. The following few lines will serve as a specimen : — ' A person anxious to learn particulars respecting the conduct of Pitt at the commencement of the French war, has only to turn to the Diary for May 10, 1792, and he will find that on that clay " he came into office with a new pair of buckles in his shoes." Another, desirous of learning the thoughts that occupied the mind of Burke at the time of his rupture with the Opposition, will refer to the date of that event in the Diary, and will find that Mr. Burke informed Mr. Papster confidentially " that he had lost no less than two Newfound- land dogs and one puppy in the distemper." ' Another article is devoted to a ferocious attack upon the system of young ladies' education. He begins by declaring that the great advantage which 1826.1 WHAT ARE 'FACTS'? Age 21. 07 women have over men in the matter of education is the fact that all of them are educated to be women, and not, as men unfortunately are, for the most part, to belong to this or that trade or profession. Then he goes on to explain how this great advantage has been marred by the tendency of the teachers of young ladies to train the memory at the expense of the under- standing, and to use ' Those little books called catechisms, which, though of a very moderate size, concentrate, as the advertisements inform us, the matter of many folios. In those volumes are contained " all that is really important " in history, viz. the dates of the events which it records — in biography, viz. the time when the gentlemen and ladies whom it signalises came into the world and left it — in chemistry, viz. its nomenclature — in astronomy, viz. a list of the fixed stars. All such slight and unimportant particulars as relate to the nature of those events, whereof the period is so accurately ascertained, in what causes they originated, what was their influence at the time, and what their ultimate consequences — all trivial fond records of the lives of the persons who had the excellent fortune to be born at such a time and place and to die at such another — all knowledge of the chemical principles and processes which are indexed by those barbarous names — all study relating to the connection of those fixed stars with the other parts of the system to which they belong, and the laws by which that connection is regulated, and the wonderful discoveries by which the fact of their existence was esta- blished — all these are subjects for the intellect, and therefore in the works we have referred to they are carefully and pru- dently omitted. ' Perhaps the only particular in which women are necessarily in a worse situation than we are is this : that from our addiction to the studies connected with our respective avoca- tions we are obliged to abstract ourselves, in a great degree, from the consideration of what is outward and palpable. They, on the contrary, are almost every moment of their f 2 C8 THE IMAGINATION. [chap. vi. lives compelled to keep up a communion with forms or idols (to borrow Bacon's expressive phrase). ' The fascinations by which they are surrounded, the fascinations which they exert, the nature of their pursuits, theirp leasures, even their charities, have all this tendency : the most useful end of female education would be to counteract this tendency, accordingly the conductors have done their utmost to en- courage it. Hence the material, sensual, and uncontem- plative character of the religion of most pious women. ' Still, however, there is one faculty, which, if suffered to retain any power, would oppose a desperate resistance to this scheme of sacrificing everything to what is visible and cor- poreal ; a faculty whose peculiar province it is to carry the mind out of the sphere of everyday contemplation, to pene- trate the veil which separates what is actual from what is possible, and to bring before us unseen truth, invested with the substance, and bright with the colours of reality. While such a faculty exists in the pupil of any system of education, where is the security that she will continue to bow down to the clay images which her rulers have set up ; that she will not display a consciousness of higher powers, loftier destinies than the instructresses please that she should aspire to ; and that she will not cultivate an acquaint- ance with those truths to which her imagination has directed her, but in which she can only become thoroughly initiated through the medium of her intellect ? ' The imagination, therefore, is a terrible object of the dread, the hatred, and hostility of the mistresses of establishments and the governesses of young ladies.' He complains bitterly of the habit of tearing from their context passages of Shakespeare that are then given out to be learnt by heart as a punishment, or as even worse, the selection of mawkish poetry for the same purpose. He protests against the use of such a book as Blair's ' Lectures on Criticism.' lis character may be easily described. Whatever rules age 21.] BLAIR S LECTURES. 69 relating to the externals of composition have been amassed by the wisdom and experience of abler -writers than the Scotch divine, are transferred into his pages, and laid down with oracular precision; with this difference, that, instead of their application being limited, as originally, to the accidental and outward peculiarities of style, they are delivered as if a knowledge of them constituted the whole art and mystery of writing. These are the rules, he tells us, by means of which poets are able to write and orators to declaim ; or, if there be anything beside, it is a vague inexplicable something, called native talent or inspiration. ' All study of ourselves and our fellow men, all communings with nature, all examination of the analogies between the material and intellectual world, all that criticism which considers poetry, not as dissected into fragments, but as a united whole, not as a mass of dead, torpid matter, but as glowing with life, energy, and gladness — anything, in short, that connects the intellect with the imagination, is exiled from his system as idle, superfluous, or incomprehensible. Ad- mirably, therefore, does it accomplish the ends of female education. ' For it teaches that the track which the imagination points out is not the way to ascend even to its own heights, and there- fore that the wisest course is to cast off this bad guide and unprofitable servant, &c. . . .' One of his last articles is " On the Prose of Poets." It is curious to note that the purpose of it is to maintain the superiority of the prose which is written by great poets over that of mere prose writers. Twenty-five years later he defended Mr. Kingsley against a Quarterly Eeviewer who had denounced him for making an almost precisely similar assertion. At the beginning of the year 1826, during the course of which most of the above articles were written, the first gap had been made in his home. He had been summoned soon after Christmas 1825, in consequence of the dangerous illness of two of his sisters. 70 PARTING THOUGHTS. [chap. vi. On February 16th, 1826, Anne, the sister whom he has spoken of himself as " the solitary thinker," and who had been in fact the first of them to work her way out of the influence of Unitarianism, died. Emma, the one nearest his own age and his own especial favourite, became from this time a con- firmed invalid, and his letters are full of the anxiety which her condition occasioned him. He was now preparing for leaving the University as soon as he could pass out in Civil Law. To have taken any other course would have obliged him publicly to refuse to declare himself a member of the Church of England, and he would have been almost as little willing to do this as to declare himself a bond fide member. It enabled him to avoid for a short time longer giving words to his thoughts among his own family — words which could not be spoken without giving pain that he still dreaded to inflict. He at this time held a foundation scholarship. He had completely lost his enthusiasm for the University system of the day. His love for Cambridge he never lost, from the hour when he reached it in October 1823 to that of his death. On April 28th, 1826, he writes : To Ms Mother. ' I do not regret having been at College, and but for the expense I should have scarcely any regret at all concerning it. I have learned, if not much of the world — which I am aware is immensely different from a College — at least to feel more confident and courageous in encountering its terrors than, from my anticipations, I believe I should ever have been otherwise. ' At the same time I do hope, though this effect of a College life is not, I confess, a usual one, that, from the style of persons among whom I have been thrown, that I have become some- what less selfish, and a good deal less conceited and dogmatical. ' If you should sec and do see much of this still about me, you musi remember how very, very much I had before I left spring 1826.] ON LEAVING CAMBRIDGE. 71 home for the first time, and you perhaps will give my friends — certainly not myself — credit for having in some degree diminished it. At the same time every day renders me more averse to the system as a system, not from any experience of its personal inconveniences, but from conceiving it to be very ill calculated for the objects which it professes to answer. My father will be delighted with an article in the last number of the " Edinburgh Eeview," written by Bab- ington Macaulay, himself a fellow of Trinity, against the University. It is headed " London University," and gives a more complete view of the evils of the system than anything I ever read.' The following report of a conversation with the Civil Law Professor, taken from a letter to his father of this date, is too dramatic to be lost : — ; The only point in which IvLr. Kearsey seemed to disagree with me in the views I had formed of my subsequent life, was in thinking that I was not sufficiently willing to give up every- thing to my profession. When I said that I feared the effect of legal habits might be to unfit me for enlarged thinking upon any other subject, he seemed to admit the reasonable- ness of the alarm and yet to laugh at it. You, I think, entertain more tolerance for this apprehension, for I certainly do dread most excessively becoming a mere lawyer, unfit for any higher thought and incapable of any better feelings than the study suggests.' He seems to have gone up to London to commence working either for the Bar or as a conveyancer — it is not very clear which was finally decided on — during the long vacation of 1826. He returned to Cambridge and passed out in Civil Law, taking a first class in that subject in the following term. He went home for Christmas, and prepared some private pupils for Oxford. His father and mother were now settled at South- ampton. His father was evidently up to this time fully 72 PRESENT TENDENCIES. [chap. vi. content with any indications he had had of his views. Michael Maurice writes to a friend in the spring of 1827 : — ' Fred has left Cambridge, and has preserved his principles at the sacrifice of his interests. AVith this I am more satisfied than if he had taken a degree, and had been immediately presented with a fellowship. He was willing to state that he was a full believer in Christianity, and would conform to all the rules of the Gospel ; but subscribe he must, if he would retain his scholarships, for they had presented him with two. ' This he could not do, and therefore was not permitted to take his degree, though he had passed all his examinations with credit.' I do not think the above statement is accurate, as the foundation scholarships were only tenable during residence. It represents rather Michael Maurice's view of his son's position than any definite action at the University. Meantime his own thoughts were tending, not without hesitation, more and more towards finding in the Church of England the satisfaction he was looking for. The following letter will show one determination to which the consciousness of this tendency now led him. It is dated April 19th, 1871, and was written by the late Mr. Ebden to Mr. Kingsley : — ' I was the senior and managing tutor of Trinity Hall when Maurice and John Sterling migrated to that College from Trinity. They both stood very highly in my estimate of them, intellectually and morally. Sterling was the more publicly noticeable man, from his oratorical displays. Maurice, reserved and retired, cultivating a few select and attached friends. Of him I saw much more than the other. When lie had kept the terms and exercises for the LL.B. degree, he withdrew to go on with legal studies in London, and, after being there a few months, wrote to me to ascertain what degree of consent and adherence to the doctrines and formularies of the Church of England he would spring 1827.] CONSEQUENT ACTION. 73 Lave to profess, in order to admission to the degree. I stated to liirn the required subscription to the 36th Canon. He then requested that his name might be taken from the books, for he was convinced that he could never conscientiously fulfil this requirement. I then suggested to him that, as he was still eighteen months under the five years' standing necessary to the degree, it might be well for him to pause in his deter- mination ; that further search and thought might lead him to different conclusions ; and that, without any mean or sordid motive, he might well hesitate before renouncing the advan- tages of a complete University course. His answer was prompt, and in that high, pure, and noble spirit which ruled his whole life, whatever might be the intellectual phases of his mind. He directed that the step of cancelling his name on the College books should be taken instantly, for whatever his opinions might eventually be, he would not hazard their being influenced by any considerations of worldly interest. ' This correspondence between Maurice and myself was, as I have reason for supposing, known only to him and me, or to some few persons to whom I had mentioned it. The subject and result of it have, on what authority I cannot tell, been brought out in the way mentioned above, and for the most part correctly. The inaccuracy is in the statement that a fellowship at Trinity Hall was offered to Maurice. "What was suggested to him on that head, and it could have been only by myself, was that his character, conduct, and success in his College studies would give him fair reason for expect- ing eventually the substantial reward of a fellowship, should he make it his object.' Mr. Ebden, in conversation, quoted the words of my father's letter, as that he " would not hang a bribe round his neck to lead his conscience." "Whenever my father was questioned on the subject, he simply answered that no fellowship had ever been offered him. He never alluded to his correspondence with Mr. Ebden. WESTMINSTER BE VIEW. [1827. CHAPTER VII. " II regardait toute secte comrae nuisible." — Turgot's Life* LONDON — ' WESTMINSTER REVIEW ' — ACQUAINTANCE WITH J. S. MILL — DEBATING SOCIETY — BEGINS WRITING FOE ' ATHEKEUM ' — THE ' LONDON LITERARY CHRONICLE.' — EDITORSHIP OF ' ATHEN^UM.' In October of 1827 Frederick Maurice contributed to the ' Westminster Eeview ' an article on Montgomery's " Pelican Island," and in the following January one on Wolfe Tone. The " Pelican Island " is a purely literary article, giving very fully his thoughts on many of the great writers of the day. The article on Wolfe Tone was more strongly on the Liberal party side than any of his other contributions. John Stuart Mill to C. E. Maurice. ' You are probably aware of the striking articles which he wrote in some of the early numbers of the " Westminster Eeview." ' I particularly remember one on Montgomery's " Pelican Island," and one on Theobald Wolfe Tone's " Memoirs ;" and I mention them because, young as he then was, the powers of mind and range of thought and feeling shown in them on subjects not specially connected with theology would make them well worthy of being included in a republication of his minor writings, should such be contemplated. ' I was a member of the London Debating Society ; during about two years that your father was a member of it, he was not a very frequent speaker, but your uncle Sterling was, * 'Autobiography of John Stuart Mill,' p. 114. 1827-182!).] JOHN STUART MILL. 75 and together they formed a third intellectual party or nuance, opposed both to the Benthamite and to the Tory sections which used to fight their battles there. It was to that time that I owed the commencement of the strong and permanent friend- ship between Sterling and me, and the greatest part of the personal acquaintance I ever had with your father. He and I were never intimate, but we used to have long discussions together on philosophy, religion, and politics ; from which, though I do not think either of us often convinced the other, I always carried away, along with a most lively impression of his mental powers and resources, ideas both new and invaluable to me. Indeed, his conversation and that of Sterling were almost my first introduction to a line of thought different from any I had previously known, and which, by itself and by its effects, contributed much to whatever mental progress I subsequently made. * It was during the same period that your father and Sterling wrote frequently in the " Athenaeum," which, under their influence and that of their friends, sent forth many valuable thoughts, and maintained an elevation of character very uncommon, both then and now, in literary or any other periodicals. I had no knowledge of the authorship of the particular articles, on which you are probably much better informed. ' After those years, your father's path and my own, both in life and in speculation, were widely apart, and our direct inter- course was small and at considerable intervals ; but 1 remained an assiduous reader of his writings, and was always a sympathising as well as admiring observer of his career.' The history of the Debating Society has been so completely given by Mr. Mill in his ' Autobiography ' (pp. 123 to 131), that, as it was a very secondary incident of my father's life, it will be sufficient here to refer to those pages. One fact, however, is too closely connected with my father's later life to be passed over in silence. It was just the time when the Socialist movement under Mr. Owen's auspices was beginning to assume practical 7G EABLT CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES. [chap. vii. form. A number of Working Men's Co-operative Associations were set up, most of which failed. Now it was from debates in a society founded by the Owenites that the Debating Society to which Mr. Mill alludes originally sprang. The co-operators do not appear to have been represented in the Debating Society ; but it will be seen from Mr. Mill's statements that many of those who had gone to the earlier society to oppose the co- operators were debaters whom my father was continually meeting in the second society, so that he must have been thus early brought into acquaintance with the nature of the discus- sion between the Co-operators and those who specially called themselves political economists. It is evident that others besides those who connected Socialism with the theological revolution which Mr. Owen desired to introduce defended it against Mr. Mill and the political economists, for Mr. Mill records that the speech which was most effective against him was delivered by Thirhvall, the future historian and Bishop of St. David's. In London Maurice went little into society, shyness and dread of making himself conspicuous in any way being still recorded of him. Thus his father writes of him : ' He has too discouraging an opinion of himself and his per- formances. He will not suppose that any one forms a good opinion of him, and really desires his company. Hence he has never availed himself of the opportunities I possessed of introducing him to certain classes ; what notice he has attained arises solely from the services he has rendered others, and not from any advantage which might have been conferred upon him.' Comparing the statements of those who then knew them, I incline to think that though Sterling sometimes succeeded in inducing my father to accompany him elsewhere, it was chiefly at Mrs. Barton's, the house from which each of them afterwards received their wives, at old Mr. Sterling's, in one another's rooms, — in those of Whitmore, or some- 1827-28.] JOHN STEELING. 11 what later at the office of the ' Athenaeum ' — that they saw most of one another. Of '"'Fanny Kemble" he certainly saw something, as did most of those who had been her brother's companions at Cambridge. She is reported to have said to him, " Oh, you are so proud that you would not be seen with me in public !" To which he retorted, " If you go down Eegent Street on an elephant, I will ride beside you on a donkey." It is somewhat curious that a man of his strongly dramatic tastes only occasionally visited a London theatre or ojDera, even when, subsequently as editor of a newspaper, tickets for all of them were at his service. I believe, but only from indirect in- ference, that this was due to two reasons — one, that he never could be content with the amount of work he had done, and was therefore always unwilling to take a holiday ; the other, that, as newspaper editor, he always thought some one else would do the criticism better than himself, and would wish for the job, and that he disposed of it accordingly. A certain unwillingness to traverse the feelings of his mother and sisters, even in matters in which he did not think them reasonable, may have had something to do with it. He retained a lively impression of the few occasions on which he did see a play, and used to be rather fond of talking in later life of various points in the acting. During these years the differences in point of opinion between Sterling and himself were already sufficiently notable, though they no doubt fought under the same banner when in presence of those from whom both differed. I am told that Mr. Koebuck had one day been speaking of his regret at ■finding it impossible to get at Maurice, and draw him into expressing his thoughts ; " but," he added, " I care less than I otherwise should do about it, for I can always make Sterling talk, and knowing what he thinks, I of course know also what Maurice thinks." The speech was considered sufficiently wide of the mark to be repeated with gusto, and received with much laughter by both Maurice and Sterling. However, the blame must not be thrown on Mr. Eoebuck, for Mr. Mill MB. SILK BUCKINGHAM. 1828. [chap. records the same impression. " Sterling was," he says, the " orator, and impassioned expositor of thoughts which at this period were almost entirely formed for him hy Maurice." (' Autobiography,' p. 152.) It happened that just at the time that my father went up to London Mr. Silk Buckingham was a somewhat con- spicuous figure in England. He had started various literary ventures, was lecturing in all parts of the country about him- self and his doings, and had attracted considerable notoriety by vigorously opposing the East India Company's monopoly in India. He became a general ventilator of grievances, and as such was some years later returned as Radical member for Sheffield. In January 1828 he started the 'Athenaeum,' and, looking round for young literary men to fill his columns, lighted upon Maurice, perhaps at first through Michael Maurice, both Buckingham and the latter being members of the Peace Society, and Buckingham frequently engaged at Southampton in giving lectures. From January to July Maurice appears to have contributed only a series of Sketches of Contemporary Authors: "Mr. Jeffrey and the Edinboro' Review," " Mr. Southey," " Mr. Cobbett," " Mr. Wordsworth," "Mr. Moore." Then there appears a note of Mr. Buckingham's : i a The Sketches of Contemporary Authors " which have appeared in these pages having attracted much attention, we have received for publication from a correspondent the follow- ing character of the Ettrick Shepherd. Not being from the same pen as the sketches alluded to, it will not of course be included in that " series," but be regarded as a distinct and separate article. No. 7 of the regular series will contain a sketch of the character and labours of Mr. Brougham, and will be given in the " Athenaeum " of Friday next.' " Mr. Brougham " is followed by " Percy Bysshe Shelley," " Sir Walter Scott," " Sir James Mackintosh," " Maria Edge- worth," " Lord Byron." The latter article appeared on April 8th. After that his 1828.] MB. CABLYLE AND THE ATHENJEUM. 79 connection with the ' Athenaeum ' seems for a time to have terminated. He and some friends of his became the proprietors of the ' London Literary Chronicle,' and he editor of it from the 1st of May. On July 16th his father writes : ' Fred meets with great encouragement in his new undertaking. The work improves. I knew it would. Do not wonder if you see it united to another approved journal.' On July 30th, accordingly, the ' Literary Chronicle ' and ' Athenaeum ' were united, and he became editor of the united journals, some half-dozen friends purchasing the proprietorship from Mr. Silk Buckingham. Mr. Carlyle in his ' Life of John Sterling ' has written as if the whole idea of the circle of friends at this time was simply " Radicalism," or, as he puts it, " In all things he and they were Liberals, and, as was natural at this stage, democrats con- templating root-and-branch innovation by the aid of the hustings and ballot-box." It will be seen that both Mr. Mill's evidence, already given, and my father's, to be given hereafter, is distinctly to the contrary effect. Certainly they had no love for " old hide-bound Toryism," and looked forward to the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832. But a large proportion of what Mr. Carlyle here alludes to was, in fact, not at all the work of Maurice, Sterling, or any of their immediate friends, but of Mr. Silk Buckingham. I asked Mr. Carlyle what had given him the impression which he had conveyed on this subject, and he told me that he had had no means of dis- tinguishing between the two lines of influence on the paper. He seems to have merely given the impression which a general reading of the earlier numbers of the ' Athenaeum * would convey to a reader who did not know who had written the several papers. The assumption that the articles of Mr. Buckingham and his friends were written by Maurice and Sterling would naturally lead to the mistaken belief that Maurice and Sterling at this time belonged to the ultra-Radical camp. Mr. Mill's letter would, perhaps, alone be sufficient to 80 " WE NEEDS MUST LOVE THE HIGHEST . . ." [chap. VII. show that this was very far from "being the case. But, in fact, the whole tone of the articles of both of them completely belies it. Here, as in the days of the ' Metropolitan,' the distinctive characteristic of whatever Maurice writes is a reverence for all great men, a fierce readiness to rush in in their defence when- ever some one who has caught the popular ear is leading a mob to pillory them, a sympathy with men, and a hatred of parties and sects ; and, what perhaps is the quaintest thing in a news- paper editor, a profound distrust of reviews and periodical literature. It would of course be impossible to prove the justice of this report without much longer extracts than it is possible here to furnish. But as the character and progress of his thoughts at this time can hardly otherwise be traced, a few extracts will give some idea of the views he was taking of men and things. It would be impossible to give any fair impres- sion of the biographical studies by extracts, but it is not a little curious to note that, during the period prior to his assuming the editorship, the editing of the paper appears, if one may judge from the following amongst other notes, to have been strongly utilitarian. " As the power of producing the greatest good for the greatest number is the standard by which we judge of the value of opinions or measures in politics, so, &c," whilst at the same time he in the sketches never misses an opportunity of asserting, as he does in the article on Sir J. Mackintosh — * It would be futile to say that a different notion from that of the Utilitarians would be more useful than theirs, supposing that, as they pretend, their creed can be proved to be the true one. But on this ground we are content to place the matter, and we are just as certain as of the existence of our senses that there is in the human mind a simple and primary idea of the distinction between right and wrong, not pro- duced by experience, but developing itself in proportion to the growth of the mind.' The conflict between the two lines of thought is sufficiently marked. 1828.1 "NOT LANCELOT OB ANOTHER:' 81 When he assumes the editorship, his views come out more freely. He is however a good deal hampered by the necessity of giving space to some of those who had contributed during the former period of the paper, and bursts out into editorial notes of dissent. His inveterate aversion to systems and parties crops out perpetually. 1 At a time when some of the most enlightened men in Germany, France, and England, are acknowledging the deep obliga- tions which they have owed to Plato for having enfranchised them from systems, and sent them to seek for wisdom, not in the strife of parties, but in the quiet of their own hearts.' The following on education represents a thought that is almost in the same form pressed again in 'Eustace Conway.' A somewhat similar way of looking at the sacredness of arith- metic was very characteristic of his friend Mr. Erskine. Their views must in this case have been altogether independently formed. ' Guesses at the meaning of words which spring from known roots, original exercises, oral instruction in grammar, afford a pupil the best means of feeling his way into a language. 1 If arithmetic were taught properly to children, it would be one of the most valuable instruments for cultivating their facul- ties, for elucidating the perplexities which surround them in a strange world, and for rescuing them from the delusions of the senses. But in this shop-keeping country even to hint at such an object as this is dangerous. To force a child to learn by heart a multiplication table, of the meaning of which it is utterly ignorant, to make it in its very cradle a selfish calculator, to fit it for the sordid pursuits of the world, and to make it unintelligent even in these pursuits — this is the end and effect of modern education.' He speaks of " that first of practical philosophers, Pesta- lozzi." The following will suggest the points which meet his censure in a book. VOL. I. G 82 IS THINKING IMMORAL. 1828. [chap. vn. ' It seems to us, then, that it is not necessary, in order to constitute a book mischievous, that it should err on the side of excessive originality. We conceive it quite possible that a work may be the worse for wanting originality ; worse, we mean, . . . . in a moral and religious sense. All correct moral writers, and the inspired writers more than any of them, denounce, above all things, mental deadness — that is to say, that condition of the mind in which it is quickened by no thoughts, impulses, or feelings ; and this upon the plain principle, that morality and religion being individual con- cerns, the less individual existence, in other words, the fewer thoughts and feelings a man has, the less is he of a moral and religious being.' Again, as to contempt expressed for a great man because of weaknesses. • According to Mr. Coleridge's beautiful and self-evidencing explanation of the celebrated apparition which disturbed Luther in his " Patmos," the great Eeformer would never have seen that ghost, except he had been in a state of great mental and physical exhaustion. Restore him to health and liberty and he would not have felt less strongly ; but his feelings would not have taken any outward and sensual form. But the majority of men escape such visions, not because they are in a strong state of health, but because they are in a weak state of feeling. It is the same with Swedenborg. He would have been a greater man if his feelings had not turned into visions ; but, as he was, he was infinitely greater than those who have no feelings which can turn into visions. » * -* * * * ■ Berkeley, the strongest, the honestest thinker among our English metaphysicians — Berkeley, who loved truth with his whole heart and soul, and who, in pursuing it, was as bumble as Ik- was courageous — Berkeley, who, though he reasoned from narrow premises, and therefore never dis- 1828.] IS NOT THOUGHTLESSNESS VICIOUS. Age 23. 83 covered tlie whole breadth and universality of the principles which he sought after, yet was able, such was the spirituality of his intellect, even out of that j narrow system, which conducted every one else who reasoned from it to materialism, to bring the other and far more important side of truth — Berkeley, whose understanding, indeed, missed the " circum- ference," but who found the " centre " in his heart. ' Would to God there were a few such men in the English Church at the present day ! We should not then have flimsy books written to persuade men to the vice which they are most prone to commit — the vice of limiting their imagination, their intellect, and their affections ! We should not have people warned against feeling too strongly, thinking too deeply, lest they should find out too much of the Almighty wisdom, lest they should be too conscious of the Almighty goodness ! But we should be exhorted to cultivate to the utmost every power of the mind, every faculty of the soul ; we should be taught that religion does not consist in words, but in a deep inward power; that knowledge — the know- ledge of truth — is power, is virtue ; and, above all, we should be stirred up to that study — the least pursued, and the most valuable — the study of our own natures.' The following is surely unique in a weekly review : — ' It is very gratifying to think that the influence of reviewers upon society is every day becoming more and more limited. In nine cases out of ten it is a question of no material con- sequence to the public, or to any individual member of it, whether the verdicts which they give are carelessly uttered, or are the result of mature and conscientious deliberation. The most perseveringly impartial and earnest critic will find that he has some power of strengthening the foundations of his readers' opinions, but very little of forming those opinions, or changing them, while the most indefatigable of the scribes of darkness can scarcely flatter himself that he has done any single act of successful mischief, and must console himself with the reflection that, in the silent work g 2 84 ON " GETTING ON." [chap. vn. of lowering the tone of public feeling and morality, his labours have not been wholly in vain.' In reviewing Hare's ' Guesses at Truth ': — ' Those who .... make it their great object to set free their own minds and those of their fellow-men to feel as deeply and think as earnestly as they can, and to teach others to do so — who would bring us to truth, not by tumbling us into a stage-coach (none of which travel that road and) which would certainly take us wrong, but by lending us a staff and a lantern, and setting us forward on our way for ourselves, such persons as these, whether in Eome, London, or Cam- bridge, are very certain to meet at first with but scanty audiences, jealous reception and niggard entertainment.' He has still the same horror of a " professional " education as in the days of the ' Metropolitan.' In an article on the respective functions of King's College and the London Univer- sity he writes : — ' And will they, with notions so rigid on the subject, warp and pervert knowledge, not for the honest purpose of diffusing it more generally, but that it may be more convenient for the sordid, selfish purposes of life, — that it may enable men to " get on " in the world ? Oh, no — not here, not in London ; not here, where everything else is dragging our souls earthwards, teaching us that to buy and sell, and get gain, are the only purposes which we are destined to fulfil in our present state of existence ; not here, where it is the effort of a high spirituality to raise ourselves above the sublime contemplations that relate to falls in the Three per Cents., or the rise in hops ; not here let Knowledge utter the secret, that she too has the image of the Beast on her forehead: that she too only lives to tell the gold upon the tables of the money-changers.' The readers of Mr. Carlyle's ' Life of Sterling' are aware of the farts of the ill-starred Anglo-Spanish expedition, in which, 1882.] LOVE OF SPAIN. 85 two years later than the period I am now dealing with, not a few of Sterling's friends were directly or indirectly concerned. My father had not any share in the transaction. Any letters to or from Sterling about it have been destroyed, but he appears to have used all the influence he could to deter Sterling from it. It is, however, remarkable that during 1828 articles ap- peared in the ' Athenaeum,' pleading earnestly the cause of the Spanish patriots, and that all these were written by my father. It was a subject that had been greatly interesting him before he went up to Cambridge in 1822. His father had had Spanish pupils at Frenchay, to some of whom all the Maurices were warmly attached. The pleas of the ' Athenaeum ' articles are solely for aid to support the men who had been thrown upon our shores and to educate their children. ' There never was an error in which the grossness of the igno- rance it displayed was more suitable to the malignity of the motive which produced it than the pretence that the Spanish exiles were bloodthirsty and anarchical innovators. They are the heirs, representatives, and champions of the old liberty of Spain. Their antagonist is an anarchy compounded of despotism and democracy. Their only object was the esta- blishment of legal and constituted order. The Spanish exiles were driven from their homes because they opposed what all Englishmen, Tory and Whig alike, must consider as a tremendous evil, the license, namely, of arbitrary power; but he who has never turned a single thought to any political question may stand forward to assist these sufferers, in obedience to a loftier principle than mere sym- pathy with their public principles ; and in his breast hu- manity may — must — cry aloud : " Eescue not the defender of freedom, not the Spaniard ; but, above all, and before all, the . Man" Stretch forth your hand, not for the support of this cause or that, not for the bearer of one banner or another, not for the man of northern or the man of southern tongue, but for the being in whom our nature suffers, in whom the human soul is degraded by the desperation of hopeless misery.' 86 WOMEN'S THEOLOGY. Age 23. [chap. vn. The following extract shows in what sense he was disposed to be influenced by the ladies of his family. "When a little later he appears to fall a good deal under their influence, it will be convenient to remember the distinction which he here draws, and to notice that when later in life he speaks, as he often does, of owing more to women than to men, he always excepts the " form " which his thoughts assumed. What he at all times intended to include under " form " may, I have reason to believe from many conversations with him, be fairly gathered from this passage, though it is here expressed with a certain youthful freedom which later in life he would have avoided. In one point of phraseology the passage is also remarkable. In latter years he always looked upon " religion " as an essentially heathenish word; theology, as the study of the being and character of God, being always set by him in contrast with it. It will be noticed that here, on the contrary, he employs the word "religion" as the synonym for the highest form of character : — ' There probably does not exist a female in England who, in any proper sense of the word, can be said to possess a knowledge of theology. The greater number of the best-thinking and best-educated part of the fair population of England never trouble themselves to devise a system of doctrine at all ; and those who do make the experiment, we may say without offence, generally fail most egregiously. Pretty pieces of mosaic, indeed, are the systems of lady-theologians ! In them you may see every colour of the rainbow, from the deep blue of Augustine to the softer violet of Pelagius, mingling, as Miss Landon says, but not mixing, and either supported by no shadows at all, or, if the fair artist has a taste for strong reliefs, flung out from a terrible background of Calvinism. To see how quietly opinions, between which the existence of any logical reconciliation is impossible, walk hand in hand — dcd moiistrante viam — and are permitted to share her house and hospitality, is to us merely an edifying proof that women, unless it shall be thought ex- 1828.] AND WOMEN'S FAITH. 87 pedient to give them a scientific education, never can become theologians. ' But this would be a melancholy reflection indeed if we thought that, therefore, they could never become religious. ' And how contrary would such a gloomy suspicion be to all fact and experience ? Where is the choicest part of the religion of this country housed but in the hearts of the choicest por- tion of its inhabitants ? Where, if not among them, are we to seek for humble faith, energetic love, unshrinking self- denial? Where else for any devotion of which the first-fruits are not given to Mammon and the miserable remainder to God ? Where else for any pure and spiritual affections un- tainted by sensual pollutions ? And is this, as some half- witted scoffers might pretend, because their minds are so little cultivated that they are naturally prone to super- stition ? Oh, no ! do not let us lay such a flattering unction to our souls. Their minds (we speak of the best part of the sex) are as much cultivated as ours ; but it is another, aye, and nobler faculty of the mind that they have culti- vated. They have nourished the feelings which embrace and comprehend truth ; we the understandings which were destined to supply us with the outward and visible expres- sions of it. Our faculty is worth nothing without theirs ; but they, having that principle which forms the character and directs the practice, may in some measure dispense with ours. ' For their religion, too, has a mode of expressing itself, though it seldom resorts to the ordinary phrases of divinity. Those " nameless unremembered acts of kindness and of love " by which their influence is felt through every part of society, humanising and consoling wherever it travels, are their theology. It is thus that they express the genuine religion of their minds ; and, we trust, that if they should ever study the ordinary dialect of systematised religion, they will never, while pronouncing its harsh gutturals and stammering over its difficult shibboleths, forget this elder and simpler and richer and sweeter language.' 88 BLACKWOOD AGAIN. [chap. vii. In December 1828 he has an enthusiastic review of some recent numbers of ' Blackwood,' evidently all the warmer because of former hostility ; but the subjects of his praise are not his old foes the critics, but Charles Lamb and De Quincey. The articles he praises are, moreover, dramatic and appreciative respectively. Hare's sermon on the " Children of Light ! ' is received with eager welcome. The review of it appears in the last number of the year 1828. MICHAEL MAUBICES LOSS OF INCOME. 89 CHAPTER VIII. " Heads of families find that sacrifice is the only bond which can keep fathers and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, at one. God calls nations out of a chaos of turbulent warring elements. They find that sacrifice must keep them from relapsing into endless war. Individuals dis- cover that all right-doing has its ground in sacrifice, and they find when they have offended, it is because they have chosen to break loose from the law of sacrifice." — The Doctrine of Sacrifice, p. 112. CHANGES AT HOME — -DEPRESSION — CHANGES OF VIEW — INFLUENCE OF HIS SISTER EMMA — GIVES UP EDITORSHIP. Towards the autumn of 1828 a serious change had taken place in his father's circumstances. It has been hinted already that Michael Maurice had in- vested to a considerable extent in the bonds of the Consti- tutional party in Spain, led thereto partly by his enthusiasm for their principles — and partly by personal acquaintance with the Spanish patriots through some Spanish pupils of his own. This was by no means the only questionable security in which he had been persuaded to place money. The great commercial panic of 1825-1826 shook down not a few weak commercial en- terprises during the following years. The absolute destruction of the Constitutionalists and their expulsion from Spain made the Spanish bonds valueless. Till these failures occurred, Michael Maurice must have been in the receipt of a considerable income. Including the value from the sale of Normanstone, not less than 40,000/. of capital appears at one time or another to have passed into his hands. Till lately he had continued to take pupils ; but it was scarcely possible for him as a Unitarian minister, with all 90 BIRTH OF ' EUSTACE CONWAY: A NOVEL, [chap. viii. his family at issue with hiin, still to do so; and he was not in strong enough health for the work. Almost his whole income for the time being had disappeared. He thus describes, in a letter to a friend, the manner in which the news was received by his son and daughters : — ' I have had such a lively sense of gratitude excited by the con- duct of my children, that I am not sorry that they have been put to the test. Elizabeth, Mary, Priscilla, and Fred have seemed to vie with each — without consulting each — other how they might best assist in relieving any inconvenience we might feel from the diminution of income.' The eldest sister made up her mind to go out as a lady's companion. The second arranged for setting up a school for young ladies. Meantime the large house in a good situation in Southampton they had hitherto occupied was given up, and they arranged to go into a small house in a more out-of-the- way part of the town. If the extracts that have been given from his writings and letters, both in Cambridge and in London, have conveyed at all adequately the extent to which Frederick Maurice had repu- diated the idea of making professional advancement, or even the obtaining a living, an object of life, it will be obvious that the duty thus suddenly thrown upon him of giving such help as he could to the family necessity must have forced him into very serious reflections. It had certainly no effect whatever in modifying the strength of his belief in another object of life; but it did both now and for a considerable time to come pro- duce, with other causes, an intense mental depression. About this time three friends — Sterling, Maurice, and Whitmore — were one evening together in the rooms of the latter, and each pledged themselves to write a novel, which should express the thoughts of each upon various subjects on which they were anxious to deliver themselves, and provide means that were much needed by at least two of the party. To the progress of this novel Frederick Maurice refers in the following letter to his mother. 1828.] DEPRESSION. 91 F. D. 31. to Ms Mother. ' The history of my tale, and of the " Athenaeum," may now almost be said to be the history of my life. In addition, however, to these labours, I was obliged on Friday night, in consequence of a long-standing promise, to make a speech — which is to me the greatest of all imaginable suffering. The subject was one upon which I have thought a great deal, the disadvantages of competition between the two new Universities ; but I did not succeed in making myself intelligible, and was accused of being very metaphysical, which was far from being the case. I never more than half succeed in anything, and there are very few in which I do half succeed. My vanity is thus receiving constant checks, which hitherto have had the effect of making me indolent. But I trust that I shall now have strength to work on without caring for results, merely from a sense of duty. If your recent trials should produce this effect upon me — as I am in hopes they may — it will be a painful thought that the sacrifices which were to improve my character did not fall upon my head instead of on yours. But I am afraid of hoping even so much as this. I feel strong impulses to idleness, even now, and often sit with my paper before me, doing nothing, from sheer inactivity of mind. But if harder and heavier difficulties should be necessary for the cure of a character in which indolence is but one and perhaps the least enormity, I hope it is not sinful to wish that I may be the only person who suffers by them. Could I feel that this was the case now, it would, I think, be a great happi- ness — and yet I am so selfish that I scarcely know whether it would or no. With best love to all.' Soon after this letter had been sent, he went home for Christmas, and stayed for several weeks. It was an important visit. He for the first time spoke out at least part of his thoughts to his mother and his sister Emma. He was beginning to consider the question of returning to Cambridge. His father had now for the first time begun to realise how widely his son's 92 CONSCIOUS AND PAINFUL BETICENCE. [chap. viii. thoughts differed from his own, and wrote in great distress, as soon as Frederick Maurice had returned to town, to complain that he himself had not earlier been spoken to and given an opportunity for discussion. This is the answer : — To fiev. ill. Maurice. 'About Feb. 10, 1829. ' My deab Father, 1 1 am very much obliged to you for your kind letter. The last I wrote two or three days before your birthday, the present two or three after, but I hope that will make no difference in your receiving my best wishes that you may have many more days, and every possible blessing in them. I am sure we may have all kinds of blessings if we only seek them, little as I have seemed to believe so from the weary and complaining life which I have hitherto led. ' One reason why I have not enjoyed as much happiness as I might is that I have felt a painful inability to converse even with those who loved me best upon the workings of my mind. I am conscious of the vice, but those only who are unfortunately sharers in it can tell how deeply ingrained it is, and how hard to eradicate. Each person I have been acquainted with who has thought me worth knowing has complained of this defect, and imputed it [to] some particular want of confidence in them, and I have only been obliged to assure them, without much hope of being believed, that if they asked others, who had also a right to expect frankness from me, [they would hear from these] that my lips had been hermetically sealed to them also. I am conscious of having estranged some from me who, from having made me a depositary of their secrets, had a claim upon mine by this unfortunate disposition. All I have ever been able to say in palliation is that the crime involves its own punishment, that I am much more a sufferer by it than they can be. I am speaking now rather of my feelings than of my circum- stances ; for, to say the truth, though it is a truth very ignominious to me, I have exercised so little forethought or 1829.] POSSIBLE BETUBN TO CAMBBIDGE. 93 deliberation about them, I have been so much determined in them by events, that it was impossible to talk of plans which I had not formed ; and as the asking of advice generally implies that one has turned over the subject in one's own mind a good deal first, the consciousness of not having done that has often withheld me from taking it till the circum- stance which would decide me is at hand. In the case you mention of my returning to Cambridge, the thought was suggested to me by my mother and Emma, in their kind anxiety that I should not return to the miseries of a London life, about a fortnight before I mentioned it to you as we walked together to the philosophical rooms on Saturday evening. When they first alluded [to] it the notion absolutely startled me, it was so perfectly new. I used the interval in making inquiries whether the scheme was feasible, and as soon as I ascertained that it was, I conversed with you upon it. I am sure you will remember, my dear father, if you think, that it was from me, and not from others, that you heard of it. I would have spoken to you about it even before I knew that it could be accomplished ; but my plans had been so irregular, so disorderly, so changeable, that I was positively ashamed of hinting at another while there was any danger of its being necessarily abortive. ' On ultimate plans I am just as much undecided, though I hope I shall be regulated in them much more by conscience and much less by accident than I have been in those that are past. And there seems to me this difference — that there are several ways of getting a livelihood open to me which will not hinder me from adopting a regular profession at last, or put me out of the way of it, and yet will furnish me abun- dant occupation for thought and diligence if I should con- tinue in them. The notion you allude to of my becoming a clergyman has often occurred to me as a subject of con- sideration within the last three months, before that very seldom indeed, and never with any seriousness. As far as I can tell at present, I should have no conscientious objection to the undertaking except my own inability for it, which at 94 CONSIDERS QUESTION OF TAKING ORDERS, [chap. vin. present I feel would be as strong a motive to restrain me from the Church as the most decided dislike of its doctrine or its discipline. All, therefore, that I have ever given those who asked me to understand — though it is very pos- sible (as people are not very attentive to nice distinctions in matters which do not concern themselves personally) that they may have put a different construction upon my words — is that I might possibly adopt that course at last, if I dis- covered no new reason in an interval of six or seven years (during which time I might be holding a fellowship, taking pupils, &c.) to disapprove of the profession, and did discover many new reasons to think that I might be a worthy member of it. If I look at it in my private moments as a point which I may reach ultimately, it is merely because then [I] think it may be a motive to increased seriousness and more earnest study of the best things. But I have no wish that my friends generally should mistake so loose a speculation for a confirmed intention. With respect to my views on this and on all other subjects, my dear father, the strongest wish I have is that my self- deceptions may be laid bare, and that I may not fancy that I am acting from one motive when I am really acting from another. I think purity of intention so necessary — quite as necessary as purity of action — that I should be most grateful to any one who, with the sincerity of a friend, will detect me in any dishonesty which, from want of sufficient self-examination, I have not detected in myself. That there is such evil lurking at the root even of the conduct which seems most outwardly fair I have learnt even from the little self-knowledge I possess. And this conviction, I believe, occasions the principal difference between my opinions and yours. I believe with you that if we are sincerely devoted to God, He will not be strict to mark occasional deviations, or rather that He will give us repentance for them ; but then it is exactly here that I found I was deceiving myself. My heart was not sincerely devoted to God. I fancied so till I had searched it, but then I saw very clearly that 1829.] "JUDGE NOT." 95 self and the world had far the greatest part of it. If I could have conceived of God as anything less than perfect love, I might have found less difficulty in satisfying myself that I was conformed to the standard which He requires me to attain. But believing Him to be Love in the most abso- lute, unqualified sense, I felt the difficulty of approaching Him, or even of comprehending His nature, almost infinite, because love divided my heart with a thousand evil passions, and was itself tainted with evil and corruption like them. The perfect spirituality of God's character I found I had no idea of, though from habit I might bend my knees to Him and use all the phrases which expressed it. Hence the necessity of that perfect spirituality being embodied to me in a human form ; hence the necessity of being able to con- template Him, in whom and through whom only I could contemplate God, as the pardoner and remover of that evil in my heart which prevented any spiritual idea of God from being entertained by it ; and hence the necessity, when that obstacle, that disease, was removed, of the spirit of God dwelling in my heart to enable it to think rightly of and pray rightly to Him. "When I speak of making these dis- coveries with reference to myself, I speak literally. I cannot tell you how little, how, I fear, sinfully little I have thought of them with reference to other men. I mention this that you may not suspect me of violating the Scripture rule of " Judge not," which I think I hold in greater reverence than any other in the whole Bible. I do not believe that we can any of us know the least of the inward thoughts of another man with reference to God, and therefore all I would ever wish to do to any one is to say, These assistances I have found necessary in order to accomplish that purpose of believing and worshipping God which we both wish to keep in view as the end of our existence, and these assistances the Bible promises, as I think, to every man. I do not think it would have promised them if our nature had not wanted them. But to say whether any one individual is availing himself of these assistances or no, this is beyond the pro- 96 OBEYING THE COMMANDS OF THE ORACLE. [chai\ viii. vince of all other men ; we cannot determine whether he is or is not using them, by any words which he uses, for they may bear a different meaning to him and to us. All there- fore I think we should do is to exhort each other (and it is on this point that I said I was most axnious for exhortations and warnings) to examine ourselves whether we are seeking them and whatever subsidiary helps Grod vouchsafes to afford us or no. I hope there is no uncharitableness in this state- ment. I am sure there is much less than in the one we hear so much of nowadays, that each person ought to let his neighbour take care of himself, which if pushed to its legitimate length would put an end to all preaching, since if a man is not to care for the interests of his friends, it seems great presumption to trouble himself about those of whom he knows nothing. To stir up self-examination in myself and others, to which I know that I have a disinclina- tion, and to which I believe that all are naturally disinclined, is the only wish I have on this subject, and if they would only adopt the same opinion and endeavour to stir up self- examination in me I should be deeply grateful.' The following letter was addressed to Julius Hare about March 20th, 1829, about a month later than the foregoing : — To Rev. Julius Hare. ' 19 Lincoln's Inn Fields. ' My dear Sir, ' I avail myself of the departure of a friend for Cambridge to return you my most grateful thanks for the valuable com- munications which you have sent to the ' AthenaBum,' and for the most kind language with which you accompanied those communications, and your promise of further favours. ' None of the readers of the " Athenaeum " can feel more sensibly than do the writers in it how much the work would have been improved by the contributions of more thoughtful and mature pens. They are aware that even when their prin- ciples, having been learnt from wise men, chanced to be right, 1829.] THE EDITORSHIP NOT SUCCEEDING. 97 their weak mode of defending them, or their bad mode of stating them, must often have given pain to those for whoso good opinion they were most anxious. It would be impos- sible, therefore, to express the pleasure which they have experienced at finding that there are some kind friends who are willing to overlook the crudeness of their speculations and the presumption with which they have been too often defended, in consideration of their having shown that their conceit does not prevent them from wooing and revering the writing which must make them most ashamed of their own. How much this pleasure is heightened to my friend Sterling and myself by the kindness proceeding from yourself could only be understood if we could explain how many of all our better tastes or feelings we trace to the effect of your instructions at Cambridge.' During the following months depression was growing on him. The purchasers of the ' Athenaeum ' found on taking it over that its circulation was by no means such as they had supposed it to be. The weeks preceding their purchase had been occupied by a bitter personal squabble between Mr. Buckingham and the editor of another Keview precisely of the kind most likely to tell against the paper itself for a long time. And although all over the country men of weighty judgment were eager in its favour, the tone adopted was, as may be judged from the speci- mens given, by no means such as was likely rapidly to conciliate popular favour. Julius Hare, then at Cambridge, Mr. Carlyle, then in Edinburgh, John Stuart Mill, then in London, have each recorded their estimate of the papers that appeared in it. But a conversation is reported from the breakfast-table of another of the four Hare brothers, which perhaps states the case more completely. During the months from July 30th, 1828, onwards, Francis Hare is said to have frequently re- marked, "How very interesting the articles in the 'Athenaeum' have become ! " Mrs. Francis Hare : " How very stupid the 1 Athenaeum ' is ! " For the first year of its circulation the judg- ment of Mrs. Francis Hare was likely to afford a much better VOL. I. h 98 ILLNESS OF EMMA MAURICE. [chap. viii. test of the probable numerical sale of the paper than that of her husband. The paper was not paying its way. It was for Frederick Maurice a repetition of former experience. His abilities had been recognised in the most ample manner at Cambridge, but he had no tangible marks of success. He had taken up the law as a profession, but was not pursuing it with any definite prospect. He had commenced the 'Literary Chronicle' with great apparent promise, but it had been cut short by the union with the ' Athenaeum.' Now the ' Athenaeum ' was itself in a pecuniary sense a failure, and the failure came at a moment which made it especially depressing. Another cause was telling heavily on his spirits. His sister Emma was most dangerously and painfully ill. She had now become the centre of all the thoughts of each member of the household. All the father's letters to his correspondents at a distance, each of Mrs. Maurice's and those of the other sisters, are alike in the tone of anxiety, of enthusiastic affection, and of admiration for her unselfishness, her uncomplaining suffering, her thoughtlessness about herself and her constant thought for others. A life so entirely dependent for its features on little homely incidents of daily occurrence can only be guessed at from the impression] it made on those around. The little stories that are given by way of illustration seem, when read, not as specimens of the whole daily life but as all that can be told, out of proportion to the enthusiasm they evoked. At the time when the change to the more economical house became necessary in Christmas 1828, she was so ill that the slightest 'movement was pain. Her father had refused to allow the change of house to take place in conse- quence of her condition. She found this out, and herself con- sulted the doctor as to the possibility of her being moved alive, arranged to select the time when with precautions it was pos- sible, and insisted upon being moved. One little story after another is told in her father's letters of her attention to every household matter on which kindly thought could be occupied, at a time when the extremity of illness made it seem impossible 1829.] DECIDES TO GO TO OXFORD. 99 to those round her that she should divert her thoughts from herself. Her mother, always sitting at every spare moment at her bedside, was during the early months of 1829 engaged in copying the novel, ' Eustace Conway.' It was at present to bear the title of ' Ellen,' and was sent from London in sheets that the printer would have found too illegible. But both of them were keenly conscious of the depression of the writer's mind and his general unhappiness, and towards the end of May or beginning of June his mother persuaded him to give up the ' Athenaeum ' editorship and return home. They urged especially that they required him to become the tutor of his youngest sisters. His second sister, Mary, was about to study the Pestalozzian system prior to setting up her school, and the proposed arrangement was that he should take her place in the household during her absence. During his visit home he wrote for the 'Athenaeum,' acted as tutor to his sisters, wrote for ' Lardner's Biographies,' and worked at his novel. By the time he returned to London it had been decided that he should go to Oxford, Dr. Jacobson, the present Bishop of Chester, then a resident fellow of Exeter, having arranged for him to count his terms at Cambridge on the conditions explained in the following letter, which was written towards the autumn of 1829. To Rev. Julius Hare. ' My DEAR SlK, ' Remembering the kindness which I received from you while I was enjoying the advantages of your instruction at Trinity College, I take the liberty of applying to you upon a subject respecting which I am very anxious. ' Being desirous to fit myself for orders by a more diligent and systematic course of reading than I pursued during my residence at Cambridge, I have determined upon again en- tering at one of the Universities. As I merely passed the preparatory Law Examination at Cambridge, there is no h 2 100 LETTEB TO HABE, AND [chap. viii. objection, I believe, to my again becoming an undergraduate at either of them, and a wish to avail myself of the advan- tages which I then too much neglected, as well as to be subject to a discipline which I feel necessary to the steadi- ness of my study, induces me to prefer that course. Various circumstances make it expedient for me to enter at Oxford instead of returning to Cambridge, and the kindness of a gentleman, a fellow of Exeter College, gives me hopes that I may be admitted there immediately. My age, however, is one reason against my admission, which he informs me can be only overcome by my obtaining a testimonial to my cha- racter from persons of eminence at Cambridge, and whose names are well known at the other University. ' Under these circumstances I venture to ask that you would do me the kindness to give as favourable a statement to the authorities at Exeter of my conduct at Cambridge, during the year in which you were acquainted with it, as it may seem to deserve. I trust I am not asking a favour which it will be impossible or disagreeable for you to grant.' Hare replied at once (on November 15th, 1829), urging his going up to Cambridge rather than Oxford, and speaking of the much greater advantages which he would find in a Bache- lor's than in an Undergraduate's life. ' For myself, he says, the great and almost only benefit I derived from the University was from the friends I formed there : and in order to be a recipient for that, one must be of the same age with them, with the same freshness of thought, the same ardour to enter upon the fields of speculation then for the first time opening to our view. Of course you will keep aloof from the turbulent excitement of the intellectual contests, and for the purpose of independent meditative study the life of a bachelor appears to me far the mosl appropriate. Why should you not keep your act and get i fellowship at Trinity Hall ? I should conceive you might d( so easily.' 1829.] BEPLY. 101 In another part of the letter he expresses his hope that Sterling will make up his mind to " follow your example " and " enter the Church ;" " it were too bad that his fine talents and noble feelings should be checked in their appropriate develop- ment for the want of a determined aim." 102 FIRST STEPS AT OXFORD. [chap.'ix. CHAPTEK IX. " I held it truth, with hirn \\ _o siugs To one clear harp in divers tones, Th#t men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things." — In, Mtmoriq,m. END OF 1829 — OXFORD — ' EUSTACE CONWAY ' 1830 — MR. BRUCE, MR. GLADSTONE, NOTE BY ARTHUR HALLAM — DR. JACOBSON, MR. RICHARDS — WINTER OF 1830 AND BEGINNING OF 1831 — GENERAL RIOT AND DISTRESS — THE IRVLNGITE MIRACLES. To Rev. Julius Hare. ' Oxford, December 3, 1829. ' My dear Sir, ' I should not have so long suffered you to imagine that I was insensible of your great kindness, but that I hoped Sterling would have been the bearer of this letter, and would at the same time have told you how grateful I felt for your valuable advice, your unexpectedly nattering testimonial, and the interest you express in my future proceedings. ' I find, however, that he has given up his intention of going, at present, to Cambridge, and I cannot longer defer saying what I wished to say a fortnight ago. ' I was almost ashamed to present the letter in which you speak so favourably of my scholarship, lest I should disgrace your good opinion, and, in some degree, the University, by an ignorance which three years of vague and ill-directed thought have done much to increase. I accompanied the delivery of it with the observation that it is nearly five years since I had the advantage of your instructions, and that during all 1829.] A PENANCE. Age 21. 103 that time I have been in circumstances not at all favourable to the growth of the powers which you fancied you had observed in me ; but I added that I still hoped by steady application to prove that those instructions had not been lost, and might still bear fruit. ' The truth of your remarks upon the superiority of a bachelor's life struck me very forcibly, and if I had not cut myself off from the chance of a fellowship by removing my name from the books (a measure which I adopted in consequence of some scruples, since entirely removed, respecting the pro- fession of faith required of graduates), I should certainly have acted upon them. I am not certain, however, whether, in my particular case, the subjection of an undergraduate's life and the humiliation of returning to it after three years of fancied independence may not be a useful discipline. I can trace a great deal of mawkishness and unhappiness to a premature wish to shape out my own course, and I hope it is not a superstitious feeling which leads me to think that some penance for this self-sufficiency is needful before I can eradicate it with all its evil fruits out of my character — the same feeling makes me dread less than I should otherwise do the mere barren orthodoxy which, from all I can hear, is characteristic of Oxford. As all my tendency has been hitherto to be too loose and incoherent in my speculations, I think this habit of the place may operate rather as a useful check than a dangerous temptation to me. If I could hope to combine in myself something of that freedom and courage for which the young men whom I knew at Cambridge were remarkable, with something more of solidity and reve- rence for what is established, I should begin to fancy that I had some useful qualities for a member of the English Church. At present the difficulties which surround a clergy- man seem to me so overwhelming, that, even with a strong impression of the grandeur of the office, and of the possibility of entering it with right views, I almost shrink from the thought of encountering them. ' I took the liberty of sending your letter to Sterling, well 104 THE PENANCE AGGRAVATED. 1830. [chap. ix. knowing that your advice would have more weight with him than that of any one else. I trust it will induce him to adopt a course which will be as much for his own happiness as for the good of society, to which I am sure his talents might be very useful.' He went home for Christmas, and worked at his novel, which his sister Emma had insisted that he should complete. The beginning of February 1830 set in with a fierce cold that my father never forgot throughout his life. In its bitterest severity the term began. He returned on the outside of a coach to Oxford, and always believed that his life was saved by a glass of brandy which was then given him by a fellow- traveller. The barges bringing coals were stopped by the partial freezing of the river. He was for every reason anxious to avoid expense, had taken very inferior lodgings, and this term was therefore one of no inconsiderable physical distress. The severe weather was telling on his sister and increasing his anxiety. " Freezing by the fireside," writes Mrs. Maurice on Feb. 5, " I begin my letter to you, and I am afraid you will scarcely be able to hold it when you have received it. The precious one who is lying by my side whilst I am writing looks as blue and pinched as possible." Meantime the novel was sent each week from Oxford, and transcribed as it was written, Mrs. Maurice being copier in Emma's sick-room, and Michael Maurice undertaking the office of j)en-maker. On February 17 the following burst of enthusiasm receives the last chapter of the completed novel. From Emma Maurice to F. D. M. 1 February 17th. — I can hardly tell you what surprise I felt when your box was opened, and I saw the end chapter of the book ; but every other feeling was lost in a moment in the thrill of joy and delight at the knowledge that it was really ended. I could hardly believe that a climax so much longed for was arrived at, a point to which I had so often looked 1830.] A SISTERS ENTHUSIASM. 105 with eager expectation, and hoped for almost against hope. It was one of those occasions of which one has hut very few in one's life, and mercifully few, when past, present, and future seem to he struggling with each other to present some definite feeling to the mind ; hut the chaos was ended soon, and then came hours of blissful thought, which makes one's existence on earth assume a blessed character belong- ing to heaven. It was not a little cause, for years ago I felt convinced that one completed work, half the size of this, would do more for you than we can conceive, and all the months it has been carrying on the conviction has increased, so that the feeling has seemed to he wound up quite to the in- tenseness with which I regarded it. The hope which gave place to certainty last night that you could finish something, could become all that you ought, all that you must become, took up its lodging in another part of my mind, and caused trains of happy anticipations, which — if they were in any degree purified from earthly dross, and made as holy as they were blissful, and if heaven does hear when sinners ask for the sake of the sinless One — will be realised, I firmly believe, in your future life, to the blessing of many. There is a sacredness in everything which has given rise to, or been the means of conveying, or even caught a ray of life — and that this book does in a great degree fall under this head, we both, I trust, can thankfully testify. ' I have not had time (as I am writing on Wednesday) to read the chapters, but I have looked over all, and congratulate you upon the way in which you have wound up. I like your plans respecting Honoria exceedingly, and thank you for departing from your original intention ; I am sure it is truer, and better, as it is. The last chapter about her too I admire much — it is just enough and not too much, which would have spoiled it ; and the manner in which you end, I particularly like. Captain Marryatt's - confessions I have not yet read, but his death-scene is most striking. It is a good thing for the book that you wrote on at the last so quickly, or you would have dwelt longer than taste and point war- 106 OUB DEAD SELVES. 1830. [chap. ix. ranted on some parts which now come upon the reader with great effect. I could have pleaded for Francisca, hut it is better as it is. ' I hope that in a short time you will find some friends with whom you can pass an evening, as I am sure you will want this relaxation and strengthening. But with respect to this, as well as all your other concerns, little or great, we have the assurance that " our heavenly Father knoweth what things we have need of," and nothing which will conduce to the welfare of our minds or spirits is forgotten or unprovided by Him who " careth for us ;" surely not, then, the influence of society or friends ! I trust you will have those given you who will make true the proverb that " two are better than one, for if one fall," &c. &c.' The venture was, however, not yet launched in smooth water. Colburn decided that it was much too long, must be cut down to half its length. To Ms sister Priscilla. [From Oxford, about Feb. 1830.] ' Believe, my dearPris., what I am just beginning to learn, and you knew long ago, that the death of Christ is far, very far, more than a mere peace-making, though that view of it is the root of every other. But it is actually and literally the death of you and me, and the whole human race ; the absolute death and extinction of all our selfishness and individuality. So St. Paul describes it in the sixth of the Piomans, and in every one of his Epistles. To believe that we have any self is the devil's lie ; and when he has tempted us to believe it, and to act as if we had a life out of Christ, he then mocks us and shows us that this life was a very death. Have we not all felt it so ? — the death, the absolute death of self. Let us believe, then, what is the truth and no lie — that we are dead, actually, absolutely dead ; and let us believe further that we are risen, and that we have each a life, our only life — a life not of you nor me, but a universal life — in Him. He will 1830.] IBVING. 107 live in us, and quicken us with all life and all love ; will make us understand the possibility, and, as I am well con- vinced, experience the reality, of loving God and loving our brethren.' During May 1830, after a visit to London, to arrange for the disposal of ' Eustace Conway? To the same Sister. ' My dear Priscilla, ' I spent a pleasant time in London, though, after all, it is a hot and dangerous place; one does not know exactly whether one is getting good or evil by anything that happens to one there, and not to know, I am afraid, is a sign that it is not good. However, in that I may be wrong, and I certainly obtained some benefits which are not to be procured in Oxford, especially female society, and several striking ser- mons. How the preachers there come to be so good in spite of their innumerable temptations is a problem which nothing but a belief in a special protection afforded to them would help us to understand ; but unquestionably a sermon I heard from Mr. Baptist Noel, and one from Mr. Irving, and another, though very singular and painfully personal against the Millenarians, from Mr. Howell, were such as indicated, so far as I could judge, a very high degree of spiritual life in their minds. After all you have heard of Mr. Irving, you would have been surprised at the extreme sincerity and, as it seemed to me, simplicity of his sermon, which expounded one part of Scripture by another in a way that I never remember to have heard before. An assertion of his — that the Old Testament is the dictionary of the New — threw a light upon some things which had been puzzling me very much, and I think is quite a guiding light in all Biblical studies. The principle itself may be an old one, but the force and reality which he gave it made it have the effect of novelty to me.' 108 3IB. GLADSTONE'S [chap. ix. He had been making acquaintance with various under- graduates, among whom the most important in their relations with him at this part of his career were Mr. "W. E. Gladstone and Mr. Bruce (afterwards Lord Elgin, the Governor-General of India). The latter soon became his most intimate College friend, and through him he became acquainted with Mr. Erskine's books, notably at this moment with the ' Brazen Serpent,' which pro- duced a very important effect upon his mind. Through him, also, he became acquainted with such personal circumstances of Mr. Erskine's life as he mentions. At the time when each of Mr. Maurice's children was en- deavouring to take a share in relieving the burden at home, Elizabeth Maurice, the eldest, had for a short time become a companion to Miss Gladstone ; and my impression had been that through her Mr. Gladstone had first become aware that my father was at Oxford. Mr. Gladstone having kindly promised to supply me with any reminiscences he had of this period, I mentioned this to him. His answer was : — ' Yes, I remember Miss E. Maurice very well — a very remarkable person [this with rather marked emphasis], I should think. But as far as I can recall the facts, it was not through her, or at least not through her only, that I became acquainted with your father. In fact, the threads that drew us together were so numerous that it would be hard to say which of us introduced himself to the other. My remembrance is that I received from Cambridge letters from many friends, perhaps chiefly from Arthur Hallam, full of the most un- bounded admiration for your father. I cannot, at a distance of fifty years, recall the exact purport, but it was to the effect that a very remarkable man was coming amongst us. That naturally led me to be anxious to see much of him. I can hardly fully convey the impression the letters made on me. Of course the shortness of the time he spent at Oxford, compared with that during which he was at Cambridge, pre- vented his making so great an impression there as he had done on Hallam and others. The impression he seemed to 1830-1832.] REMINISCENCES. 109 have produced at Cambridge was of a very unusual kiud. AVe belonged to the same Essay Society. Yes, I may have founded it, and founded it somewhat on the model of the Apostles at Cambridge, but I believe the Apostles was a more general society. At all events, I remember we arrived on one occasion at his rooms : it was his turn, in due course, to read an essay, and we found him in very much of a pucker. He had been so discontented with what he had produced, that shortly before our arrival he had — if I mistake not — actually thrown into the fire all that he had previously produced, and had commenced shortly before our arrival to re-write the whole of it. So that you may imagine it was not in a very finished state for reading before the society. It was not from want of attention to the subject, for he had devoted a great deal. His dissatisfaction with what he had written arose from his extreme fastidiousness. I do not mean a mere intellectual fastidiousness as to the perfect literary form of the thing, but rather a fastidiousness of conscience — I think this represented a special phase of his mind — a profound sense of responsibility regarding anything that he might put forth in writing ; a preference for destroying any amount of work, rather than allowing any to go forth which might be mischievous. I remember also our walking out to hear a sermon at March-Baldon, six miles from Oxford, by a certain Mr. Porter — a strong Calvinist, most reverent in his manner, not at all a party man in the Church, and a very remarkable preacher — a reverent and somewhat slow Evangelical. He preached on the text " Perfect love casteth out fear," and I remember the fact of our discussing the sermon during the long walk home again.' The letter from Arthur Hallam, referred to by Mr. Glad- stone, contained the following sentences. 110 F. B. M. AT CAMBBIDGE, BY A. H. R. [chap. ix. A. H. Hallam {aged 19) to W. E. G. 'June 23, 1830. 'I have to-day seen Sogers,* who tells rne, amongst other things, that you know Maurice. I know nothing better suited to a letter of somewhat a serious kind than an exhortation to cultivate an acquaintance which, from all I have heard, must be invaluable. I do not myself know Maurice, but I know well many whom he has known, and whom he has moulded like a second nature, and those, too, men eminent for intel- lectual powers, to whom the presence of a commanding spirit would, in all other cases, be a signal rather for rivalry than reverential acknowledgment. The effect which he has pro- duced on the minds of many at Cambridge by the single creation of that Society of the Apostles (for the spirit, though not the form, was created by him) is far greater than I can dare to calculate, and will be felt, both directly and indirectly, in the age that is upon us.' He passed the long vacation at home, recasting his novel, spending most of his time in his sister's sick-room. But he had calculated upon being able to pay necessary expenses at Oxford out of the money received for the novel, and the delay had seriously hampered him. At the end of the vacation, the only solution he saw open to him was to give up his next term ; a decision to which the increasing illness of his sister also dis- posed him. The three letters which followed one another in the succession marked by their dates made him abandon the resolution. They represent the feeling towards him of those about him at the time, and are a memorial of kindness that ought not to be forgotten. The generosity which permits their publication at my discretion will I think be misunderstood by no one. * Lord I'.lacliford. chap. ix. ] KINDL Y AD VICE. 1 1 1 ' Ex. Coll. Oxon., Sept. 15, 1S30. ' My dear Maurice, ' Your letter without date did not find me here — wonders, you know, says the Wisdom of Ages, never cease — I have been absent for a parson's three weeks, i.e. very near a layman's month, on a visit to my mother, during which I bathed in the sea and enjoyed myself mightily. I came back with a very bad grace and a heavy heart on Saturday evening, having spent some hours of that morning with Sterling. He has righted wonderfully, and is shaking off his messes one after another almost as strangely as he got into them. As to your talk about not keeping next term — pshaw ! Were you not just beginning, before the long vacation, to do something like an ordinary mortal ? Is there a chance of your doing half as much at home ? Would anybody but a feelosofer the likes of you have set to work to write a new three-volume novel instead of gutting the old five-volume concern ? Have you no more knowledge of things as they are than that amounts to ? Has it not been said of that hugely popular book, " The Natural History of Enthusiasm," that you will admire it just as much if you read the alternate sentences ? Do apply this to your own case — shake off your novel at once, and see the colour of Colburn's money. If that may not be, I still think you had better sport face here on the morning of the 16th. As to money, I have no doubt that I shall be able to help you — if you are not proud or foolish, or summut of that sort. Indeed, I know that I shall without any inconvenience ; so don't go and borrow dishonestly, neither stay away rusticating and psychologizing, but come here and mind your books like a good boy, and believe me ' Ever your very sincere and attached friend, 'W. Jacobson.' ' I am not able to feel the mind of the College about your staying — coz why ? Martin has run away for a few days. In fact, I am just now the mind of the College, and I see every reason for your coming, and so did Sterling.' 112 FB03I THE SUB-BECTOB OF EXETEB. 1830. [chap. ix. ' Exeter Cull. Oct. 28. 'Dear Maurice, It was with much regret that I learnt the resolution you had adopted of not keeping the present term, and still more the cause which had led you to the determination. Though our acquaintance has not been of sufficient standing to entitle me to claim your friendship, I can say with great truth that my respect for you would lead me to value any mark of con- fidence you might exhibit towards me. At the same time I can fully appreciate the feelings which might have made you reluctant to communicate directly to me the cause of your absence ; and therefore I will say no more on this subject, except that I hope you will allow me to do for you what I have done before now for other pupils, which is, advance any money you may require for your immediate use, and that you will come up and keep the term. I think it important to you not to lose a term, and I am quite sure that any business you may have in hand you can pursue with as little interrup- tion here as anywhere else. If I were to advise you on the subject of your examination, I should be inclined to recom- mend you to get it over as soon as possible. I think, all cir- cumstances considered, it might be more for your interest to be content to aim a little lower than your merits might justly entitle you to aspire to, than to encounter the anxiety and expense which a lengthened time of preparation must entail. A degree would at once render you independent, and I think a second class, which you would probably be able to obtain at the Easter examination without difficulty, added to an essay or two which I look on as already yours, might be academical fame enough to satisfy yourself, and would be quite as much as would be necessary to promote any further views you might have in this place. Think on what I have said, and come and answer my letter in person. Jacobson wishes to fill the remainder of the sheet.' ' Yours very sincerely, 'J. L. lilCHAEDS.' 1830.] FBOM MB, JACOBSON. 113 ' My dear Maurice, ' The Sub-Eector would have said to you sooner what he has said on the other side, but for the pressure of his business at the beginning of term. Of course you will come up at once. You have plenty of time to keep the term, but I think you will agree with me that you ought not to lose a day in showing your sense of the kindness of the College. I say " of the College," because Ihaveliearcl all the other tutors express themselves with the same kind interest about you. So pray don't be perverse. 'Twas a scurvy trick of you to keep your last letter till the very day the College met, when there was no time for remonstrance. I have no argument to add to Bichards's, save that one John Sterling is to be married on Tuesday next, and will bring his glorious bride (did you ever see her ?) to Oxford for a few days. So lose no time : " haste to the wedding." You have already lost the fun of seeing here taking his M.A., with a gold chain big enough for the Lord Mayor . . . and in all the flutter of having just been author of a pamphlet in defence of Government ! ! ! I am unwell — suffering from my own folly in leaving town directly after having three teeth plugged. I have sustained bitter days and worse nights ; but I am righting, I trust. Did I tell you I am now curate to the Archdeacon at S. Mary Magdalene? — " church-by-Balliol," as you dirty undergradu- ates call it. John Sterling is out of all temper with you for your folly and waywardness — and so shall I be, if you don't soon sport face here in my rooms.' ' Ever, my dear Maurice, ' Your most sincere and attached friend,' 'W. Jacobson.' What solution was arrived at at the moment about the money I cannot quite ascertain. Very soon afterwards a small legacy came in somewhat unexpectedly to his father, and he was able to escape the immediate embarrassment. In any case, to Sterling's wedding on Nov. 2nd, and thence to Oxford, he VOL. i. I 114 BIOTS IN THE COUNTBY. 1830. [chap. ix. went. In little more than a fortnight the novel was again off his hands, and soon afterwards it was entrusted to Sterling that he might negotiate with Colhurn. The time when he now returned to Oxford was a strange one. The following extract will show how some parts of it were being brought home to him : — Mrs. Maurice to F. D. M. ' December 2, 1S30. Since I last wrote to you our town has been in great con- fusion and trouble, expecting every day the arrival of the mob which has been so threatening all around us. Dr. Jones, in resisting them, was very roughly handled, and lost several teeth. General Gubbins also was visited, and there was a very sharp engagement near Hythe. I suppose the energy of the Southampton people has prevented them from visiting us, for the Mayor instantly called a meeting, and plans were adopted for the defence of the town and neigh- bourhood : all the gentlemen and tradesmen were enrolled as special constables, and a night patrol of them organised. The same at Thill. Your father was up all Monday night, and our patrol was to meet various others from the town, Millbrook, &c. Twenty-five men are up every night at the ironworks near us, as they are threatened to be pulled down on account of their being concerned in machinery. We have not felt the least alarmed, but I understand some have been in the extremest terror, and have packed up all their property, to run away at the shortest notice. Our late neighbour, Mrs. , and other persons, could not even sleep, but kept up all night in perturbation. I think for several nights there were not less than seventy-five gentlemen walking the streets all night, and others on horseback scouring the country for a few miles round, stopping every person they met to know his business ; but as your father, I have just heard, is writing, I need not say any more on this subject, as I dare say he will tell you all about the meeting to which he is just chap, ix.] MRS. MAURICES VIEW OF THEM. 115 gone. I cannot but think that this rising of the people, these midnight fires, have been very necessary to awaken us to a sense of the dreadful sin of poor labourers having been for many years obliged to work hard for scarcely wages enough to buy them potatoes. It was proved at one meeting that a noble lord's workmen were employed in hedging and ditching for two shillings a tveelc, and the parish paid them three more ! Five shillings a week to support himself, wife, and children. Every demand that the poor creatures have made has been most reasonable. I have not heard of one that has demanded for the labourers more than 2s. or 2s. 3d. a day, and how they can do with that is wonderful. Our men at Normanstone always had that, and their wheat at 5s. a bushel, and they often earned more by piece-work. ' High time for something dreadful to rouse persons from such wickedness. We have had sermons here for the times. Mr. Betheridge advertised one here on Sunday morning, in which he endeavoured to prove that Sabbath-breaking was the sin that occasioned these awful visitations. Surely there was little wisdom in speaking only of this sin. Though we have many crying and dreadful national sins, yet the obvious one pointed out at this moment is that the hire of the labourer is withheld ; but the farmers say they cannot pay more unless rent and tithes are reduced. I trust this will be the case, and that it will soon be a fixed and established rule that the poor shall be well paid.' A young lady who had been staying with them arrived in London "just as the mob were pelting Lord Wellington." Mrs. Maurice is clear that the business of the new Ministry is first to pass the Anti-Slavery Bill, though she is greatly afraid lest they should fancy they have too much to do at home, " and so leave undone the very measure that would make us prosper. If our people see that justice is done to others, they will calmly wait." Mr. Newman was at Oxford during this term, and some echo of the thoughts that were working in his mind seems to i 2 116 THE IRVINGITE MIRACLES. [chap. ix. have reached my father. How they impressed him at this moment there is nothing to indicate. The Oxford " move- ment " was amid the throes which preceded its birth. Another great religious excitement was in these days attract- ing men's attention much more prominently. It was the year of the Irvingite " miracles " — " miracles " the actual phenomena of which, as attested by strong evidence, have never yet been accounted for. It was inevitable therefore that during these days the letters from home should be full of the subject. Each member of. the family, taking a different view of the question, poured their thoughts forth in letters to him. Michael Maurice went himself to London, and was simply shocked by what he saw and heard at Mr. Irving's church — the wild voices and the artificial excitement. Mrs. Maurice accepted as fact whatever appeared to her proven. A letter from Miss Fanshaw herself, one of the subjects of the miracles, had been lent them, — ' Giving an account [as Mrs. Maurice reports] of her restoration, in answer to Mr. Grove's prayers. She says she could not stand the morning of the day she was restored. Mr. Eddis has also seen Miss F. since, and conversed with her, and there cannot be a single doubt of the fact. Mary Hort wrote an account of another circumstance of the same kind. A young lady she knows was dying of consumption — her cough as bad as possible ; she was quite given up when Mr. Irving arrived at her house and spent a week there. He was very earnest in prayer for her, and she directly began to amend, and is now able to go about, and Mary Hort sees her every week, blooming and recovered in health and appetite ; not all at once, but in a short time.' My father sends to Emma Mr. Erskine's earlier impressions on the matter, which he has heard of, no doubt, through Mr. Bruce ; and she replies in words which are, I think, necessary to convey the strength of the influence which on this side acted on him as against Mr. Erskine, not in the matter of the miracles, but on his general views. 1830.] EMMA'S VIEWS OF THEM. 117 Emma M. to F. D. M. 4 There seems no room for doubting respecting the reality of some of the wonders now performed. One cannot, if one would, disprove such facts ; but the question is, how are they performed ? The extract which you gave me from a letter of Mr. Erskine in which he speaks of such gifts taking the recipients from the theory of religion, and bring- ing them into contact with the living God, has suggested a train of thought to my mind since which has been painful, yet, I trust — I hope — salutary. By whom do the Scriptures declare that we have access to God ? Who is always by them made the agent of communion with the Father, and on what ground alone do they say we can approach Him ? A fresh application of what do they affirm can bring us nigh to Him ? These and many similar questions will, without doubt, admit of but one answer — Christ. Then must not any other means employed for this end come under the appellation of a false Christ? and do we not know that such a form would be far more able to deceive us than if one were to arise, saying, " I am He " ? Let us, dearest Frederick, not go either into the secret chamber or the desert after such an one ; let us not be tempted by any assertions that our silent, secret life will be increased by giving heed to such an one. The idea is more than plausible ; it is proved — I had almost said to be true ; but not so. The recipient seems now to enjoy more life, more light and feeling, than others ; but is not there the truth underneath all ? — ■" Seek the Lord, and ye shall live : but seek not Bethel nor Gilgal (no, not even the place where the ladder was set to make the way easy from earth to heaven), for these shall go into captivity," &c. ' The more I believe in the authenticity of these miracles, the more I tremble and desire to be held up — to have my faith much increased, but to have that faith only a scriptural one, resting on nothing but God himself, believing nothing but His word, and hoping nothing but as His promises afford me 118 HIS OWN THOUGHTS. [chap. kx. reason to hope. Let us keep close to the Bible, praying to love it and understand it more, to dig deeper into its mean- ing, and not to let it go for anything else, even though it may seem to us that some exercises have more life in them than the perusal of its pages often appears to awaken in our souls.' Mr. Keble paid at this time a flying visit to the University and preached. My father sends his sister an account of the sermon, which she criticises severely. It would be impossible to give a fair idea of the nature of her letters without too loner extracts, bnt the fact and extent of her influence on him at this time must be remembered by anyone who would in the least understand his life. His sister Priscilla simply scolded him for not at once de- nouncing everyone who had anything to do with such imposture as the miracles. The following two letters, in reply to her, will show his actual position in regard to them. The first is addressed to her during a visit to Bristol, the second immediately after her return : — To his sister Priscilla. 'January 4, 1831. ' Perhaps you give me credit for a more lively belief in these miracles than I have ever entertained. I have never approached conviction, but I have been held in a balance by two feelings — a great internal unwillingness to believe, from old habits of scepticism, and that which you attribute to me of not liking to let those habits ever recover their ascendency. Unless I saw more clearly than I do here a boundary-line where the gifts of the Spirit must be taken to have ceased, I do not like to deny, much less to laugh. At the same time, I know from what I experienced to-day, in reading a letter of Mr. Travers respecting Miss Fanshaw's case, that I do not in my heart wish to find them true. I am not certain whether this is right or wrong, but I fear there is a mixture of wrong in it. 1831.] ON THE "MIRACLES" AND ON LIGHT. 119 Of this, however, I am sure, that I have not at present a suffi- ciently strong hold of the principle which must determine an assent or rejection to take either course ; and till I have, I trust that I shall not be carried about, as I feel that I have been too much, by winds and waves of doctrine. At present I am very glad not to have any call to give a decision, yet I do not on that account feel quite comfortable, for I do not know certainly that on that point I am seeking for light. You will ask, " Why not ?" I can only answer, because I do not think that I can investigate it without having first asked for light on many much more elementary points which require no casuistry but a great deal of faith. I do not wish you to understand that I have been assaulted with doubts respecting any of the great doctrines, but only that I feel it most neces- sary to gain a more thorough and vigorous grasp of them as the only protection against the lusts of my own heart and the thousand, ten thousand enfeebling, perverting influences that are continually trying with too much success to twist it aside. I think I am beginning to feel something of the in- tense pride and atheism of my own heart, of its hatred to truth, of its utter lovelessness ; and something I do hope that I have seen very dimly of the way in which Christ, by being the Light and Truth manifested, shines into the heart and puts light there, even while we feel that the Light and Truth is still all in Him, and that in ourselves there is nothing but thick darkness. I do not know whether you have been led to think as much as I have lately about all those texts which represent Him as Light, as shining into the heart, and, in connection therewith, as wrestling with the powers of darkness. " There was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour." " Grod is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all." He that " caused the Light to shine out of darkness shine into your heart." They afforded me very great delight some time ago when nothing else would ; an intense thick darkness, darkness that might be felt, brooding over my mind, till the thought that had been brought to me as if from Heaven — " the light of the Sun is not in you but 120 WHEBE IS THE LIGHT? Age 25. [chap. ix. out of you, and yet you can see everything by it if you will open your eyes " — gave me more satisfaction than any other could. Since then another train of feeling led me to expe- rience the intense misery of pride and self, as if that were the seal of the darkness, and that I could find no relief but in joining the two thoughts together : it was pride, it was self, it was sin, which separated between me and God, which produced the darkness. Christ had taken that away, and therefore the true Light shineth. But yet I want the power to feel, the power to seek earnestly enough, and the power to wait if I do not find at once, through my very impotence, all I seek. One text has been very pleasant to me lately, though it laid bare a long series of deception I have prac- tised upon myself. It is that in the Eomans about ascend- ing to heaven to bring Christ down, or descending into the depth to bring Christ from the dead ; whereas it is merely the word, simply the word, which we have to believe, to feed upon, and the results will follow. Am I wrong in this inter- pretation ? It seems to me so very comfortable — after a long- period of striving and straining with a violent, rebellious flesh to make it do what it never can do — simply to drift along in the assurance that what a text says it means, and that we may draw the comfort from it which it contains. I trust this will never lead me not to dwell upon those texts which probe the evil of one's heart, only it seems to impart a kind of meaning and reality to the word which I never experienced in it before. Oh, my dear Pris., in my inmost heart I have no wish for religious excitements, whether they come in the shape of miracles, prophecies, or anything else. I wish to get a million times nearer to the written word, and to abide by it. But the fear of being cold and sluggish — rather say, the certainty that I was so — has sometimes led me to swallow down doses of these stimulants, not as dainties but medicines. Perhaps they were not what my constitution wanted, and at present I will not take any more of them. ' I think of all old friends with much more pleasure than I used to do, and should like nothing better than to join you 1831.] MR. ERSKINE. 121 for a few days, especially that I might hear Mr. Hall, and see Mr. Foster if he were visible. But that is a dream.' Also to his sister Priscilla. [End of January or beginning of February 1831.] 1 1 cannot, however, give up Mr. Erskine, one of whose books has been unspeakably comfortable to me.* It is one you have not read, and I will not ask you to read it unless you like. The peculiarities of his system may be true or not, but I am cer- tain a light has fallen through him on the Scriptures, which I hope I shall never lose, and the chief tendency I feel he has awaked in my mind is to search them more and more. I hear from those who know him that he reads nothing else himself, though he has various other occupations ; since if he hears of a friend or a distant acquaintance or a stranger and an enemy within a reasonable distance of 500 or 600 miles, who is in distress and would be the better for his counsel, he starts off and spends as much time as they will let him, with them. Certainly it goes rather hard against all one's feelings to suppose that such a person would, as the s say, be given over to a strong delusion to believe a lie — which is spoken, I think, of those who as concerning the truth have become reprobates, or to think that those who describe him, Dr. Thomson for instance, as a broken-down barrister living amidst a crew of half-pay lieutenants, foolish women, and so forth, can have much more than he has of the grace which is first pure, then peaceable. However, as I am sure you have no sympathy with such notions, I will leave you to think as you please on the other subject, concerning which, as I said, I have no opinion, and at present have no data to form one. ' Pray for me that I may lose all fear of man and wish for approbation.' * " The Brazen Serpent." 122 BAPTISM. [chap. x. CHAPTER X. " So, then, it is not more reasonable to believe that tbe egg becomes the caterpillar, and tbe caterpillar tbe cbrysalis, tbe chrysalis tbe butterfly ; it is not more reasonable to confess any one of tbe most ordinary and recognised transformations of Nature, than it is to believe that every human creature formed in God's image, every one of those who have fallen asleep in Jesus, shall come forth with every beauty of soul and of form that was latent here renewed and regenerated in the likeness of Him from whom the beauty came ; whose own face was marred more than any man's ; who returned Himself to show the very hands and side which had been pierced ; who ascended to the glory of His Father."— 2£ D. M* SPRING, SUMMER, AUTUMN OF 1831 — BAPTISM — FINAL ILLNESS AND DEATH OF HIS SISTER EMMA — CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS FATHER AND MOTHER, AND SEQUEL TO THE STORY OF HIS ELDER SISTERS — B.A. DEGREE —FEBRUARY 1832 — CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS FATHER — 1832 CONTINUED — THE INWARD LIGHT — A PROTESTANT OF THE PROTESTANTS. At this time Frederick Maurice formed a resolution which was certain to be a very painful one to his father. He resolved to be baptised as a member of the Church of England. His father had always baptised " in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." The fact will perhaps not especially surprise those who have followed the story of the Puritan descent at the commencement of this volume. Before all things Michael Maurice desired to obey the prescriptions of the Bible, and a specific text was sufficient authority to him for doing what apparently conflicted most completely with his avowed tenets. It was natural enough, however, that Robert Hall, who knew * In memoriam, C. B. M. March 25, 1855. 1831.] EMMA'S SICK-BED. Age 26. 123 him well, should retort upon him, " Why, Sir, as I understand you, you must consider that you baptise in the name of an ab- straction, a man and a metaphor." My father himself always said that he was quite sure that the words conveyed to his father a very sacred meaning. His determination, apparently, was not discussed till it was announced as an intention to his sister Emma. In a letter of about March 22nd, to Priscilla, he says : — ' I have not much time for writing. Emma will tell you what I have said in a letter on a subject which is occupying my mind very much at present. I shall be glad of your par- ticular opinion on what I shall have done by the time you write, so you see I make no affectation of asking it as coun- sel. In fact, I have asked none of any human being ; but I think I was directed to do it by the Holy Spirit. I am almost afraid you will not approve.' He was baptised on March 29th, his friends Acland and Jacobson standing as sponsors. His next three months, with only one short break, were spent at his sister's death-bed. He made up his mind to sacrifice his term at Oxford rather than leave her. The following extract from a letter of Michael Maurice's to an old pupil gains, I think, an interest from the character and opinions of the writer, and shows how these months were occupied : — ' On Friday Frederick was reading a chapter to her from the Bible. She stopped him and first asked him to read that verse again ; then gave her sense of it. I was so struck with her interpretation, I begged her to repeat it again, and Fred took down her words. They gave us a new idea of the passage, one strikingly beautiful, from the words " I have a " baptism to be baptised withal." ' The 24th of April brought a joint letter from Sterling and Jacobson, sending him at last an offer from Colburn of a pro- 124 DEATH OF EMMA. [chap. x. missory note for £100, at six months' sight, for an edition of 750 copies. The offer appears to have been at once accepted. He paid towards the end of May a flying visit to Oxford, to attend a confirmation. On July 9th his sister died. To Ms sister Elizabeth. 1 Saturday Morning, July 17, 1831. ****** ' Like you, I have realised nothing yet, nor, I believe, have my mother and Priscilla. Every hour, I trust, I shall feel more, for there is something exquisitely painful in the insensibility and apathy I have experienced hitherto : but it is wicked to make a complaint. Blessings have been showered down upon me which I thought never to possess. Prayers that I had forgotten have been answered, strength, that I had despaired of, being given in a way which it is impossible for any but myself to understand. I cannot tell you how many doubts have seemed to clear away, and how many truths which I had known only by the hearing of the ear have been realised at this time. And this, though I seem to realise nothing ! Oh, the mysteries of God's providence and love ! I wish only to understand and believe, that I may adore. ' Mr. Adams had the kindness and the honour to perform the last glorious duty — glorious I call it, for the more I think of the way in which the children of Israel asserted their right to the possession of the Canaan, in which they had not one foot of other ground, merely by burying their dead in it, and consider the exactness of the type in all particulars, the more do I feel that everybody put into this earth is a new invasion of Satan's present dominion, a new declaration that Christ is coming to claim the earth for His Church. I missed the beautiful burial service, and felt even Mr. Adams rather cold.' He remained at home till the end of the LongVacation, and soon after his return made up his mind to be examined at once 1831.] WITHIN AND WITHOUT. Age 26. 125 for his degree. Virtually it was a question between distinction and an escape from difficulties that were pressing upon others as well as himself, and the decision he would take could scarcely he doubtful. To Rev. M. Maurice. ' [Oxford, Oct. 15, 1831.] ' The discipline, I believe, of those who are to live in the coming age is different from that of any previous one. I can only look at the strange providences in my own life with wonder as to what they were intended to fit me for ; some state of circumstance, as I cannot help thinking, very new and surprising, which will need us to have a thorough assurance of our own absolute littleness, and yet of the high calling. I sometimes feel a very strong and living conviction that everything which is going on in the age has been passing in the little world within, and that I have had lessons taught me of the way in which people are now-a-days trying to get out of the government of God, and establish themselves into gods, losing in the process everything which makes them better than worms, which I might have heard but should never have believed without the internal experiences to con- cur with my observations. If I could but make my brethren feel what I know — where we must stand if we would have any one feeling of our soul really right towards any one friend or relation — it would be joyful indeed. But unless something wakens them up, and tempts them to look inward and ask themselves what am I feeling, what am I thinking, and how should I act if the circumstances were favourable ? there is no hope — and this we are all resolute not to do if we can help it. ' You will think I cannot have been passing my time very dili- gently in preparation for a degree to have had all these thoughts passing through my head. But what I have found the great hindrance to all my reading has not been activity in feeling and thinking, but coldness and death. The plea- sure which I have had this week in thinking of the love of 126 EFFECT ON HIM OF TWO [chap. my friends to me, though accompanied with much contrition for my own want of love, has more kept up my spirits than almost anything.' There are indications of much suppressed thought both in this extract and in the letter which I am about to give. What the nature of that suppressed thought was may perhaps be guessed, if I recall the relationship in which he now stood towards the several members of his family. Year by year his reflections had been taking a more definite form and his con- victions had recently been confirmed by a very singular sequel to the story of his elder sisters. It will be remembered that of the three sisters who first abandoned Unitarianism, the two eldest had formerly been very vehement Unitarians, while the third had, even in those days, been always in opposition to their dogmatic assertions ; that when the two eldest abandoned their Unitarian faith, Elizabeth soon joined the English Church, while Mary remained a strong Dissenter'; further that Eliza- beth's change of creed by no means involved a change in vehe- mence of opposition or in bitterness of diction towards those who differed from her. For many years she continued to find it easiest to express in denunciations of all Dissenters the enthu- siasm natural to a new convert. But a new phase followed. "When she felt it right at the time of her father's loss of money to go out as companion or as governess, she, after a short time spent with Miss Gladstone, to whom she became very much attached, passed into a position in which some very purse-proud, vulgar Church-people made her feel all that a refined and culti- vated woman can be made to feel under such circumstances. During this time she was thrown into contact with a number of Dissenting cousins, who were excessively kind, attentive, and considerate towards her. Her mother, in successive letters, reports the progressive change these incidents produced in her mind : " They have quite cured her of her horror of Dissen- ters. Her feelings seem quite changed to that unfortunate race, and she finds now that it is possible to have a refined and delicate mind combined with such errors." 1831.] PASSAGES OF BIOGRAPHY. 127 Meantime her sister Mary Lad been going through an exactly inverse experience. She was of all the sisters the one with most accomplishments and capacity for the ordinary intercourse of life, the ready, active, business-like member of the family. She was of all the one with the strongest personal pride and sensitiveness to slight of any kind. To her fell the lot of in some sort representing them among their friends. On her, therefore, especially the blow fell when, at the time of Michael Maurice's loss of income, she found that their many Dissent- ing friends in Southampton accurately fulfilled the old pro- verb, and numerous as they were whilst the Maurices were living in a large comfortable house in the better part of the town, left them pretty nearly alone when trouble came. At the same time she was received with most marked kindness by a well-known clergyman, Dr. Mayo, to whom she went to study the Pestalozzian system preparatory to opening her school. She finally, under these and somewhat kindred influences, had joined the Church of England, and, having originally intended to form her school independent, at least, of the Church, opened it as a Church school. Now it is not difficult, looking back through the whole history, to see how my father's sympathies would naturally be, and in fact were, distributed throughout the various phases of the changing family life. How, amid all the differences the family itself, and especially Mrs. Maurice's relation to it, binding it all together, should appear to him the one thoroughly healthful and rightful element. How, with his keen affection and sympathy for each member of the family, and his reverence for their earnestness, he should be more and more attracted to all that each held sacred herself, and more and more repelled by every denunciation of what was sacred to others. How, there- fore, more and more, he came to look upon the order of God as founded on relationships, and more and more to hold that there was something to be learnt from everything " positive," as he came to call it, in each one's faith, and that the mischief lay in the " negative," that is, in the denunciations of im- perfectly understood truths held by others. Growing, with all 128 EFFECT OF HARE AND PLATO. 1831. [chap. x. this, on him was a sense that this was the discipline that was to prepare him for his work, and, that when the time came, he must speak out to all men what he had learnt. How important an effect Hare, or perhaps rather Plato under Hare's guidance, must have had in helping him to the courage of his own con- victions scarcely needs to be pointed out to any one who has read his own account of Hare's teaching ; but it seems right to refer back to that account now, because here the past experiences of his life begin to show their influence by the appearance in his letters of the thoughts whose rise I have been tracing. To that result Hare's influence had so far contributed, that it had been specially adapted to help a man in his special circumstances to see his own way. All that has been here suggested will, I think, be found to be working under the current of the letter which I now give. It will be noticed, and is characteristic, that in the former letter to his father he had spoken of " friends " when he was thinking of home relations, and that in this he remembers the thought and not the words. To Mrs. Maurice. ' [Probably Monday, October 29.] ' My dearest Mother, ' I was rather longing for the box [in which the letters went to and fro] both on Thursday and Friday, but I can scarcely say that I expected it. The letters from home, though, as you say too truly, they do not cause me the anxiety they once did, are still the greatest pleasure I have, and I cannot help anticipating them with something of my old feelings. The box is a very dear old friend, associated with all the past history, or dream I should rather call it, of my life. If any- thing fixes its periods which I, too, find it impossible to remember (for there is no memory where there is not peace of mind) with distinctness, it is that. Certainly all the strangest, some of the most painful, and some of the pleasantcst feelings I ever had have been connected with its appearance, and I think if I really endeavoured to write out my past experiences in order, as I have often thought of 1831.] "JUDGE NOT." Age 26. 129 doing, that I might be competent to recall them, I should find the box help me better than any scheme of mnemonics. I am driven, in spite of myself, to muse in this way ; for I cannot but feel myself at another crisis of life, whatever it may be that is coming. I have passed a strangely carpet existence hitherto, for a person of twenty-six, and yet I feel as if it had been nothing but constant toiling and fever. I never dreamed till this last fortnight of half the reason I had for shame and remorse at looking back, though I had never believed it to be much otherwise. But to see the whole truth as it has been now presented to me would have been impossible before ; I could not have borne it, unless something of the loving kindness that has been shown, and is still shining, though it so bitterly aggravates the sin, had come to light along with it. I seem to have traversed the same ground over and over again at different parts of life, allowed, as it were, by a mercy vouchsafed scarcely any, to try whether I should do any better if the time were given me back, and I see the self-same disorders recurring, the same vanity, the same selfishness and hardness of heart, on each repetition. Oh, how thankful I am that any course of discipline has at last driven me, though ever so feebly, to reflect ! I seem to have been driving all my life head foremost ; getting glimpses, indeed, of new lights, new truths — which sometimes I could almost believe were my own, I saw them so brightly, — but yet never practically governed by them. The very strong possession which that notion about the St. Simonians got of my fancy when I was with you, I believe has been made useful to me, for I have been driven to ask myself what I am myself, and I find that all the mischiefs I discovered in others and in the age were really rioting in myself. Of all spirits, I believe the spirit of judging is the worst, and it has had the rule of me I cannot tell you how dreadfully and how long. Looking for the faults, which I had a secret consciousness were in myself, in other people, and accusing them instead of looking for their faults in myself, where I should have been sure to find them all, this, I find, has more hindered my VOL. I. K 130 BELATIONSHIPS. [chap. x. progress in love and gentleness and sympathy than all things else. I never [knew] what the words " Judge not, that ye be not judged," meant before ; now they seem to me some of the most awful, necessary, and beautiful in the whole Word of God. ' I have been writing away to you, my dearest mother, just what has been passing in my mind, because that seems to me the pleasantest and honestest way to those who care for us ; and because, except in letters, I cannot tell my mind much when I am here. I do not remember that I said anything in my letter to my father about friends; they have been all very kind to me, but I have not seen many ; and what I alluded to was the love of relations, upon which I have been led to think much more and with more soothing feelings than ever before. Heretofore the consciousness of returning their love so ill was always preying upon my mind, and prevented me from enjoying the blessing of their affection even when it was most tenderly manifested to me. But I see that this is a miserable way of getting love, and leads to miserable conse- quences. We must learn to dwell and delight in the thought that others are infinitely better and kinder than we are, and then this delightful feeling of affection comes and breeds in the heart. Does not this apply, too, my dearest mother, to our heavenly relation ? I have been myself, I think, learning one truth in the other ; and I never should have understood so much even as I do of the necessity of taking our heavenly Father's love to us for granted, in order to be the ground and parent of love to Him in us, if I had not by a series of pain- ful, almost agonising, discoveries been led to feel that I must acquiesce in the delightful feeling of others loving me, in order to enjoy and realise the belief that I love them. I have seemed to see myself in a double mirror, one human, one divine. I could not have seen my image in one except I had seen it also in the other. The self in both was equally disgusting, but then when I could feel a reflection back, faint comparatively in the one, strong and permanent in the other, all became true and real again and I have felt a 1831.] TAKES A SECOND CLASS. 131 happiness at times which is almost new to me. I do not know whether you will understand me, but my own experience which has been, perhaps, strange on this point, has led me to see more of the meaning of the Apostle, of all things being summed up in Christ, than I had any notion of previously. It seems to me that all relations acquire a significance and become felt as actually living and real when contemplated in Him, which out of Him, even to the most intensely affectionate, they cannot have. At first each relation seems to be a step in a beautiful ladder set upon earth and reaching to Him, prefiguring that heavenly relation; and afterwards, if that top step be apprehended, a descending ladder set in heaven and reaching to earth. But I am afraid I am growing incomprehensible, though, I thank God, I have a meaning.' On November 22nd the walk took place, of which the follow- ing extract from a letter of Dr. Jacobson's speaks : — • I remember as well as if it were last week going for a walk with him in Michaelmas Term, 1831, on the day when the class list was coming out, and a tutor of a college (who did not know my companion), saying, " There will be no holding you Exeter people. You are going to have four first-classes." As one of the examiners was of the same college as our interlocutor, I was quite disposed to rely on this, and con- gratulated your father accordingly. When the class list appeared, there were two firsts and two seconds. But there was not the slightest symptom of disappointment shown. Nothing could exceed at that time, and indeed at all times as you in some measure know, his unaffectedly lowly estimate of himself.' His Christmas was spent in looking over his sister Emma's papers, which, with those of her sister Anne, were soon after- wards published under the title of ' Memorials of Two Sisters.' Soon after his return to Oxford the following correspondence took place with his father. It represents so much of the now firmly fixing basis of all his afterthought that there are few of k 2 132 SEEING HIM [chap. x. his after controversies the germ of which may not be detected in it ; notably, the ground on which he opposed Mansel will be found to be precisely that on which he parted from Unita- rianism : — To Rev. M. Maurice. [About February 0, 1832.] 'My dearest Father, ' I am obliged to you for touching upon the subject at the com- mencement of your letter, as it shows me you are not un- willing I should allude to it. Your love for every member of your family is felt and acknowledged, I am sure, by every one of them. I can answer for myself that, if I have thought of it with less pleasure than I ought, that is chiefly because it has awakened painful self-reflections on my own poor requitals of it. The more I think of it, the more your happiness is near to my heart, and the more I would labour to promote it. With respect to what you call doctrinal or speculative views, my feeling is just this : I see that every good and wise man who is held up to my admiration and imitation in the Bible, desired nothing less, and could be satisfied by nothing less, than communion with God. Every word in the Book of Psalms, in the Gospels, in the Epistles, and in the Prophecies tells me this. They wished to know God, not in a vague, loose sense, but actually to know Him as a friend. Starting with no preparatory notions of God, but ready to receive everything He told them, they welcomed each new dispensa- tion only because it told them something more of God ; because it enabled them more intelligently, more practically, more literally to converse with Him. I observe that all their sorrow arose from the loss of God's presence, all their joy from the possession of it, all their pleasure in expecting heaven from anticipation of it. I observe that they shrunk from the contemplation of no side or phase of God's cha- racter, that His holiness and His mercy were equally dear to them, and that, so far from viewing them as separate, they could not admire one without the other. They could not 1832.] WHO IS INVISIBLE. Age 26. 133 delight in His love unless they believed that He would admit no sin into His presence, for sin and love are essentially- hostile ; they could not adore His holiness unless they be- lieved that He had some way of removing their sinfulness and imparting His own character to them. The plain, obvious study of the Bible tells me this. Now, just as any system of divinity helps me to realise these feelings, just so far do I believe it true. If I can honestly say of any doctrines, these teach me how I may converse with the holy and in- visible Grod as a real living person, for as such the Bible holds Him forth to me in every line ; how I may overcome the difficulties to this intercourse which arise from His being unseen, from the evident impossibility of my forming a notion of Him by my own understanding, and from the unlikeness and dissimilarity of our characters ; if they show me how my character may be conformed to His, not how His may be brought down to mine ; if they in- spire me with a desire for this intercourse, a delight in it, and a conviction of its reality, just so far as I can, after strict examination, say this of any doctrines, just so far have I a test that they are the doctrines of the Bible, the true doctrines, the doctrines according to godliness. Call them orthodox, heterodox, or what you will ; if they answer this description, I wish to hold them fast in life and death. But if they be anything less than this, I will reject them, and, by God's grace, will tear them out of my heart, though they should have the finest and the best name in the world's books, as something essentially different from that faith which enabled the prophets and patriarchs, the martyrs and apostles, the saints of every age, to endure as " seeing Him who is in- visible." I wish and pray, my dearest father, that we may each have grace given to us to try our faiths by this real test — mere speculations you cannot hold cheaper than I do. * I have had an interesting letter from Sterling since I returned hither. He says that he thinks upon the whole the cases of cruelty towards the slaves are less numerous than we suppose, but that their barbarity when they do occur is not 134 HOW TRUTH AND HONESTY COME. [chap. x. exaggerated; and he says that if the physical condition of the negroes is something "better than he had pictured to him- self, their moral wretchedness equals or exceeds his worst, anticipations. He t very much dreads the separation of the colonies from England, considering that English feelings have been the only restraint upon the minds of the masters. ' I have now three pupils, and hope of another, for which I desire to he very thankful. "; The tutor recommended me to these two, and very kindly arranged with one that he should pay me at the end of every term.' To Rev. ill. Maurice. [About February 12, 1832.] 1 My dearest Father, ***** ' I wish to be alive to all the little low and dark motives which are continually coming into the soul, and which, I believe, if they are not marked and continually carried up to a higher Power to be purged away, are ever liable to settle there , and thence to come out in some questionable and deceitful action. Truth, real inward truth, is the rarest, I think, of all things. Some little petty subterfuge, some verbal or acted dishonesty, we are continually surprised into ; and against this neither a high code of honour nor an exact profession of religion is much preservation. Continued in- tercourse with the Father of Light, revealing our own dark- ness to us, is, I am quite sure, the one safeguard, and a Christian who should lose that is in more danger of stumbling than an infidel. ' It was to this subject I alluded in my last letter. Every day makes me more sensible of the necessity of clear views upon it. The whole of history shows mo that just as far as the True God has made Himself manifest, just so far has there been light, truth and honesty in the world ; and that in those nations to which He is not revealed, there is darkness, falsehood and fraud. I know that it is out of the heart these proceed — from each separate human heart. I believe, there- 1832.] THE SPIBIT AND THE MAN. Age 20. 135 fore, that all the honesty and truth in the world has come from God being manifested in the hearts of some men, and from thence affecting the general course of society. Hence I feel sure that just so far as I can hold intercourse with Him, I can be true and honest to myself. Outwardly so, I may, in a Christian country, and with the kind, gentle feelings which are produced by the idea of the relations of life prevailing in Christian countries; but thoroughly true and honest to myself I have no hopes of being, without this real personal knowledge of Him who is Truth. To attain to this truth, this heart truth,— not to fancy that I have it, but to have it,— is my greatest wish. I know I was formed in the image of God. I believe if I could behold God I should reflect His image. But I cannot behold Him. God, I am told, is a Spirit, and I am of the earth, earthy. I cannot, and would not if I could, abandon my belief that He is a lofty Spiritual Being ; I cannot throw aside my own earthliness. Now, this seems to me the most important practical question in the world . I cannot put up with a dream in place of God. He is a Spirit, but He is reality ; He is Truth ; a True Being in the highest sense. As such I must behold Him or not at all. To behold Him, therefore, in that way in which they could alone under- stand, in which they could converse with Him, namely, as a man, was, I see more and more clearly, the longing desire of every patriarch, prophet, and priest from Adam downward. It was the desire of Abraham, of Moses, of Job, of David, of Solomon, of Isaiah ; they were practical men, and they wanted a practical revelation ; a revelation which they could understand and grapple. God, they knew, must be for ever the Unsearchable, the Mysterious. They would not for worlds He should be anything else ; for it was the glory of Judaism that their God was not a visible, intelligible idol, but an incomprehensible Spirit. Yet they longed to behold Him, and to behold Him so as they could understand Him. I would beseech you to observe attentively whether nearly every verse in the old Testament does not exhibit these two apparently opposite and most contradictory feelings ; an acknowledgment 13G THE CRY OF HUMAN NATURE, [chap. x. of God as incomprehensible and infinite ; a desire to see, to understand, to comprehend that same God. Yes, and just so far as the heathen attained any light did they begin to make the same acknowledgment and feel this same want. Is there a difficulty, a mystery here ? Most unquestionably : but where? In the heart of man. There is a craving that will not be satisfied with anything less than the reconciliation of these two amazing contrarieties — explain the fact as you may : but is it a fact ? Was there this want ? was there this difficulty ? If you never observed it, may I ask you affec- tionately to look again with this particular view. And if it be a fact, and if this be the one great cry of human nature in all ages, just in proportion as it was enlightened, then cannot any explanation be found for it excej)t only that which will satisfy it. If the Infinite, Incomprehensible Jehovah is manifested in the person of a Man, a Man conversing with us, living among us, entering into all our infirmities and temp- tations, and passing into all our conditions, it is satisfied ; if not, it remains unsatisfied. Man is still dealing with an in- comprehensible Being, without any mode of comprehending Him. He may be revealed to him as his lawgiver, his sovereign, but he has no means of knowing Him as a friend. It was on the promise of this revelation that every one of the Old Testament good men lived ; and through these promises only did they contemplate their lawgiver, their sovereign, with satisfaction and delight. And it is surely the renun- ciation of any feeling of this kind, the being content to regard God as their lawgiver and sovereign, without believing in the fulfilment of His promises or being able thoroughly and heartily to think that they will yet be fulfilled, which has converted modern Jews into such an unspiritual, pro- fane, worldly race. I do not say that this is all. I feel that it is not. If the appearance of that Being upon earth awakened all the evil passions of man's breast, and showed him — showed even the twelve apostles — that they had no real sympathy with their God, the mere revelation of [God] in an intelligible [being] was not sufficient. To pass through that 1832.] HOW ANSWERED. Age 26. 137 state which had been proclaimed by God and always regarded by man as emphatically the punishment of that hatred and opposition to God ; to pass through it and reappear again in the world with God's own glad tidings of pardon in his hand attested by that act ; wa3 absolutely necessary [on His part] before there could be any peaceful, comfortable feeling in man towards the Maker with whom he had felt himself at such issue. [It was needful for Him] to leave the world as a real, efficient, known, intelligible human Mediator between [men and] that invisible God whom He had manifested forth ; (and to suppose any being less than God perfectly manifesting forth God is a contradiction ; and to suppose any being an efficient Mediator who did not perfectly manifest Him forth, seems to me no less a one — I mean to my reason :) and lastly, (since, with all the sense of forgiveness in man's mind, with all the knowledge that he had a mediator, though all outward impediments to intercourse were removed, there was still an inward impediment, — the same kind of impediment which exists between two men who, though they see one another and may be outward friends, are not one in heart,) to promise the Spirit, who could be no other than the Spirit of Christ, (otherwise there could be no intercourse between Christ and His disciples on earth through Him;) and, if the Spirit of Christ, (supposing what was before said to be true,) must be the Spirit of God ; and, if the Spirit of God, could not be an inferior part of God's nature, but must be His very Being, because He is a Spirit. * This, my dearest father, is my faith ; it is one [about] which I should be most able to write to you or talk with you. There may be a hundred thousand simpler faiths. It is simpler to believe in a Great Spirit with the North American Indians ; it is simpler to worship wood and stone ; but what is the worth of simplicity if it does not account for facts which we know ; if it does not satisfy wants which we feel ; if it does not lead us up to the truth which we desire ? ' I hope you will excuse the length of this letter, as well as any- thing in it that may have pained you, which you will believe 138 THE VOICE OF THE SPIRIT. [chap. x. it was far from my thoughts to have written. Praying that the Spirit of Truth may guide us into all truth, ' I remain, my dearest father, ' Your very affectionate son.' He spent some months from May to August with his mother at Eyde, taking pupils there. He was during this time more definitely than before considering the question of taking orders. The following letter, written probably about June 1st, belongs to this time. The sister to whom it is written had been long purposing to go out as a missionary, but had been prevented from doing so by various circumstances. To his sister Priscilla. [About June 1, 1832.] ' My own mind having been exercised in considerations some- thing akin to yours of late, I have seemed to feel more the nature of such difficulties, respecting which, without some personal experience, one is much in the dark. My firm conclusion, in which every day of fresh thought, reading, and prayer strengthens me, is that the voice of the Spirit must always lord it over the voice of Providence where they seem to be in contradiction ; and that in fact without the first we have no means of understanding the other, so that if our ears are too deaf for that, we are bound to wait, and not to fancy we can obey the other. This conclusion leads me to a firmer confidence in your call than in any I have ever heard. I do not say this to make you too strong in the certainty of it. We may and do mistake (and this I have learnt as much by experience as the other truth) natural desires for spiritual desires; all I mean to say is, that no discouragements of the outward kind which have led you sometimes to fancy that God discouraged your purpose, should make you despond. I think strong faith in the redemption of our evil natures by the death and resurrection of Christ, the constant keeping alive in our minds the assurance that He has purified us and means us to be His 1832.] THE VOICE OF PROVIDENCE. Age 27. 139 temples, and to live as for His glory, and constant repent- ance — the repentance of love and not fear — that we have not allowed Him to fill us with His love and strength as He is willing to do, I should humbly conceive (at least I have been much impressed lately with the importance of keeping this in mind with the prized hope of seeing Him manifested) must be a far better way of preparing for any work that may be intended for us, by keeping our ears and souls awake to know what the will of God is, than any anxious watching of accidents and circumstances with the notion that they will afford us any light. A certain reflected light they have doubtless, but it is fluctuating and insecure, if we do not ex- amine them by that light from which this is borrowed. However, my notions may be crude : I feel them so in some particulars, yet I wish that crude as they are I were acting up to them. That we must do, however, and shall be able to do, if we look less at our thoughts and more at the Author of every loving and profitable thought. How strongly have I been convinced lately that we spend half our time in think- ing of faith, hope, and love, instead of in believing, hoping, and loving ! How utterly we forget that the very meaning of the words implies that we should forget ourselves and themselves (the acts I mean) in the objects to which they refer. For are there not some persons who preach Faith instead of preaching Christ ? ' ***** He returned for the October term to Oxford, and had settled down with the intention of taking pupils and remaining for some time in the University, when he received from Mr. Stephenson of Lympsham an invitation to come and live with him, preparatory to acting as curate, in order to obtain a title to orders from him. Mr. Stephenson was not in want of a curate, but was anxious to induce him to make up his mind to take orders, knowing well that the intense self-abasement, of which some idea has been conveyed in the letters that have been given, was preventing him from taking a step towards which, in every other way, he felt he was being led, and that 140 A PROTESTANT OF THE PROTESTANTS, [chap. x. without some sympathy and encouragement there was likely to be yet very long delay, even if at all he made up his mind to become a clergyman. When this proposal arrived, his mother and sisters, knowing the condition of his mind on the subject, were anxious to make him feel it as an indication of the course marked out for him. It is difficult, without long extracts, to convey an impression of the habit of mother, sisters, and son to watch with the most perfect simplicity for indications of what it was their duty to do. A certain inward voice, a certain inward light was however acquiring an authority with him superior to the indications of circumstance. I believe it must have been just after he had left Oxford to remain at home for a short time before going to Lympsham that the following letter was written. It shows his intense Protestant faith, as well as his firm belief in a Catholicity to which the Papacy is directly inimical, and as these belong to the permanent elements of his mind, the letter appears to be important, though it refers to events the details of which can hardly be understood without dealing with them at greater length than is advisable. The time was that of the siege of Antwerp, when we, in alliance with the French, were on the ground of popular rights refusing to allow the Protestant King of Holland to suppress by force of arms the rebellion of Catholic Belgium. [Towards end of 1832, with a much longer letter on the same subject.] ' My dear Acland, ' As I scarcely expect that you will have leisure, inclination, or ability to read the long MS. I send you, I will just set down the heads of it in this note, that my purpose in writing- it may not be altogether defeated. The subject is the Dutch war. My intention is to show that an address to the King concerning it ought to be sent up from the University of Oxford without delay. The principles upon which that address should proceed are stated and defended at length. ' First. I assert the position denied by Wilberforce in your rooms on Monday last — that Protestantism means something. 1832.] PROTESTANTISM NATIONAL. Age 27. 141 ' Second. I inquire what it means. ' («.) I endeavour to prove that Protestantism is not predicahle of a Church. This is shown, first, from reason, by considering what a Church is ; secondly, from the opinions of our English reformers manifested in their combining a Popish liturgy with the formularies of doctrine received by the Lutheran and Calvinistic Churches. Their conduct in this respect is defended; Christian is shown to be the only epithet ap- plicable to a Church, and our own to be no direct antago- nist of the Papal Church. ' (b.) I endeavour to prove that Protestantism is predicahle of a nation. A nation exists in the acknowledging of the Eighteous God. A nation becomes such when it recognises a law. A law implies the recognition of a being who ougld to be obeyed because he is righteous, and not merely who must be obeyed because he is powerful. The conflict between this idea in the conscience and the self-will expressed in the worship of beings of mere power, — creations, as far as the cha- racters imputed to them, of the human fancy, — is the growth of the struggles in the pagan natures of law and freedom with absolute power. ' In Eome the former kept the ascendency longer than else- where, and the ascendency was more complete while it lasted. The recognition of the sole supremacy of the God of Law, of Eighteousness, the peculiarity of the Jewish nation. ' To protest against every disobedience to Him by the worship of other gods, created by man and not His creation, was the function necessarily appertaining to this recognition. Pro- testantism, therefore, is no negation, but the only assertion. ' Every nation when converted to Christianity became a Pro- testant nation, i.e. recognised the God of Eighteousness as Him to whom its highest officer was responsible, and the only bond by which the parts are united to Him in obedience to each other in society ; and protested against any other principle of national union than this. The Papacy was a more direct deposing of the God of Eighteousness from His throne over each nation than paganism was, because all 142 THE PAPACY ATHEISTIC. Age 27. [chap. x. . responsibility to an invisible power on tlie part of each par- ticular sovereign was set at nought by the doctrine of his responsibility to a visible Head of the Church. Horrible consequence in the disorganisation and misery of the nations. * Then it is shown how excellent men may exist under this system, because they can believe gifts to flow from an in- visible source ultimately, through his vicegerent. Thus, on the contrary, every Papal nation must be a God-denying nation, because the Pope to the nation is God. Hence Papacy became the object of national Protestantism from its com- mencement, or from as far back as there was a nation to protest down to the French Revolution. * This shown to be the opinion of all the great statesmen England has ever produced. The assertion that they were "wicked men, fomenters of disturbances," &c, proved by a bare enumeration of them to be paradoxical and con- temptible. Eeason of this assertion — because Charles I. chose to marry a Popish princess, and disturb all the old English doctrines on this head. The language of the Church respecting him shown to be no excuse for the absurd attempts to deify him. The Toryism of Hume and his disciples shown to be the mother of Liberalism. All who bring back that form of Toryism denounced as secret abettors of Eadicalism and infidelity. 4 The French Revolution should have recalled men to the true idea of English policy. Since that time Protestantism has had a new object, yet its nature is unchanged. ' It asserts the acknowledgment of a Righteous God to be the only national bond. That being set at naught by the nations whose kings reign by the grace of the people, they, as well as the Papists, became its object.' Some weeks subsequent to the last letter he writes again during a flying visit to Oxford, just before starting for Lymp- sham. 1832.] A MAN OF THE AGE. 113 ' My DEAR ACLAND, ****** Hope — hope that I, the meanest of God's creatures, for such to myself I must appear, am destined for the noblest purposes and the highest glory — is that which alone can make me humble or keep me so. I know that this paradox is true, and if I might answer your kind admonitions with the like, I would venture to say believe this truth for yourself also. Very bitter, however short, experience has assured me that humility and despondency are not loving friends, but sworn enemies. You must aspire high if you would know yourself to be nothing. If you would feel yourself to be the worm that you are you must claim your privilege of being like God. These thoughts have been in the main suggested by a recollection mixed with great shame of the exceedingly little disappointment which I felt that my high endeavours to rouse Oxford from its lethargy so signally failed. In part, however, they take their colouring from a retrospect of my whole Uni- versity course, in which I can trace at every step the sinful- ness of nursing that hopeless disposition which, aiming at nothing, is continually puffed out if by any chance and at random it now and then makes a hit. : From what I have seen of my contemporaries I greatly fear that they are infected with the same distemper ; indeed I have never discovered in myself anything so peculiar and strange that I should not be rather inclined to set down my faults as the effect of the prevailing spirit of the age. Looking at them in this way, I can feel very thankful for a providential education which has wonderfully managed my foolishness, while it has permitted it a full swing, and has enabled me to understand in some slight measure that every stone that I can ever fling at any brother must reverberate against myself. I hope I have hated the sins in myself, I hope I do hate them, I hope I shall hate them ten times more, and therefore I may without presumption denounce them in every one else. And oh ! surely this, and not the 144 LOVING MAN, HATING SIN. Age 27. [chap. x. accursed thing which bears the name in our day, is the charity which we are to seek after ; charity which loathes and abominates evil in every form, and most when attached to persons whom we respect and love. And in what does this holy charity begin ? In what can it begin but in the cheering, delightful apprehension of this part of God's character that He does not impute iniquity, that He views it as far as the East is from the West off the creatures of His love ? 1 It is our wretched, abominable love of evil which leads us to identify ourselves with it. It is the darkness, the thick dark- ness created by that love of evil, which causes us to see our brethren as nothing but a part and parcel of their sins : and it is the sign that a new love has been put into the soul, that the eye is opened to discern that God's thoughts are not as our thoughts ; that intense love for us is not incon- sistent with, but actually the cause of, intense hatred of our evil ; which discovery compels us to judge of ourselves by this same righteous rule, to regard ourselves as free from sin because loved by God ; to regard sin, not as part of us, but as our enemy ; and sin in our brethren, not as part of them, but as their bitterest enemy, ours, and God's. ' I know what a rebellion there is in the mind against these spiritual subtleties, how readily the thought creeps in, This is not practical ; we want coarser rules for action. But verily it is practical, and practice requires a most delicate dis- crimination, most exquisite refinement. It is your theories which are all coarse, your systems which are all straight and stiff and angular. And it is they which are so utterly beggarly and useless when you try to convert them into action. Love by virtue of keen discretion, and spiritual dis- tinctions, is most apt to govern and shape all the innu- merable varieties, all the sudden occasions, all the winding, entangled, labyrinthine harmonies of our daily life.' MBS. M.MAURICES LETTER ABOUT HER SON. 145 CHAPTER XI. " Wen n wir das Lebcn eines weltgeschichtlich bedeutenden Mannes darstellen wollen . . . wir werden uns gedrungen fiihlen, dem allmahligen Werden eincs solchen Lebens naclizuforschen, den in der Knospe verborgenen Keim aufzusuchen,die Umstiinde welche zur Entfaltung desselben zusammen- wiirkten." — Neander. " When we desire to set forth the life of a man who has played a part in the world's history, we find ourselves obliged to investigate the progressive growth of the life in cmestion, to seek out carefully the germ concealed in the bud, the circumstances which have conspired to unfold it." 1833 AND BEGINNING OF 1834— LYMPSHAM ME. STEPHENSON —LETTER TO MRS. MAURICE — ORDINATION — ANSWERS IN EXAMI- NATION — 1834 CONTINUED — BUBBENHALL CURACY — PUBLICATION OF ' EUSTACE CONWAY ' — VIEWS OF OXFORD MOVEMENT — THE WORDS " KINGDOM OF CHRIST." — ' SUBSCRIPTION NO BONDAGE ' ALEXANDER KNOX. It was natural, now that Frederick Maurice was about to preach as a clergyman of the Church of England, whilst his father continued from time to time to preach as a Unitarian minister, that Unitarian friends should be scandalised. In January 1833, the month in which Frederick Maurice went down to Lympsham, the Unitarian friend who had always been in most close and active relationship with the Maurices wrote to Mrs. Maurice a letter of indignant protest. Mrs. Maurice replied in a letter, part of which is here given : — That he has, for some years, been decided in his preference for the Church of England must be a complete refutation of the charge of " vacillation " ; but it was not till he had received the most solemn impression on his mind that he could best vol. i. L 146 MRS. M. MAURICE ABOUT HER SON. 1833. [chap. xi. serve the Lord by becoming a Christian minister, that he ever ventured to entertain the thought of entering that Church. I need not, my dear sir, tell him to pause. He has Jong been, and with much prayer, deeply considering the awful subject, and believes himself truly called to preach the words of life to perishing sinners. There never was a human being more free from inconsideration, either as it respects acting hastily, or from inattention to the feelings of others ; for in this respect, those who know him best know him to be only too sensitive. If ever anybody acted from pure motives, I am sure it is he ; for a more disinterested and noble disposition does not exist. There are many out of his own family who would bear the same testimony in his favour. I lament with you, my dear sir, the errors of the Church of England, and, till I knew more of other sects and parties, I felt very harshly towards them : but I have discovered so much corruption in those who professed far less temptation as much to soften my feelings in that respect. All we know is, that human corruption has not, and cannot, prevent the good seed from springing up to eternal life ; because Christ must eventually triumph over all His enemies. ' "With these views, my dear sir, I cannot say anything to my dearest Fred to keep him from labouring in his Master's vineyard, and I am quite sure our dearest friend would not wish me to use a mother's influence for such a purpose. I have so much reason to know that my dear Mr. Maurice rejoices in any good being done, whatever be the quarter from whence it proceeds, that I am persuaded he would be thank- ful if our precious child should be made the instrument of awakening sinners, even if it were not within the pale in which our own weak judgments would have wished him to act.' According to Mr. Stephenson's son, who was living at Lymp- sham at the time when Frederick Maurice went there, he produced an effect upon Mr. Stephenson which is character- istic of what is reported throughout his whole life, of his 1833.] TWO PROCESSES OF LIFE-DEVELOPMENT. 147 influence on every one he came across. That is to say, Mr. Stephenson, during all my father's visit, was absolutely at his best, coming out in a way that surprised even those nearest to him and most intimately acquainted with him. My father has left a memoir of the man with whom he then came in contact, which will perhaps give an idea of the special in- fluence on his thought which was thus exercised. But it is necessary to point out here that what can be told of my father's life is in nowise, as has been done in one of the most striking autobiographies of our time,* to say "at that hour, in that field," he was taught this or taught that. His thoughts and character were not in this way built up like rows of neatly ordered bricks. Bather, as each new thread of thought was caught by the shuttle of his ever- working mind, it was dashed in and out through all the warp and woof of what had been laid on before, and one sees it disappearing and reappearing, continually affecting all else, having its colour modified by successive juxtapositions, and taking its own place in the ever- growing pattern. Memoir of Mr. Stephenson of Lympsliam hj F. D. M., written about 1838. ' "When I became acquainted with Mr. Stephenson, or, at least, had the opportunity of observing him accurately, his powers had reached their full maturity, and his opinions had under- gone their last modification. ' If I may judge from what I saw of him, the former must have been gradually ripening for many years, and the latter could never have been subject to any great or violent changes. He seemed to have grown into the stature of a Christian man, * Cardinal Newman's ' Apologia pro vita sua.' I may note that to my amazement a friend who read this supposed it was " a fling" at the Apologia. I do not feel bound to suppress the comparison between certain characteris- tics of the two minds. The sentence is I think ' necessary ' for my purpose but certainly the last thing I intend is to speak disrespectfully of such a man as Dr. Xewman. L 2 148 MR. STEPHENSON AND HIMSELF. A CONTRAST. not, of course, without many severe conflicts, but yet without those great and terrible agonies of spirit which some are called to experience. His temper struck me as more constitutionally serene and hilarious than any with which I was ever brought into contact. Left to itself, it might have sunk into a mere habit of easy good-nature ; under the influence of the spirit of meekness and love it was exalted into that noble and delicate form of tenderness and charity which it is at once the pleasantest and most useful exercise of a Christian heart to contemplate. His devotion partook of the same character ; it was altogether cheerful, thankful, hopeful. A person of a low and desponding character might, perhaps, find something un- congenial in his clear and elevated tone of spirituality; but there was a gentleness and repose in his manner which won upon persons of this disposition, and made them feel that he was better able to sympathise with them than he could have been if he had shared in their depression. I never saw him giving way to any sudden ebullition of feeling, or betrayed into any passionate or excited language, even upon the sub- jects which were nearest his heart. He seemed to have an even glow, at all times and in all places. He seemed not so much to be carried occasionally into another and higher region as to dwell constantly in it, to be always breathing its free air and enjoying its bright scenery. This tone of character diffused itself through his conversation, his preach- ing, and even affected very materially his studies and his sentiments. There was never any wide chasm between his discourse upon earthly and heavenly topics. He liked to clothe what he said of the beauties and glories of the invisi- ble world in images taken from the things around us ; and, on the other hand, all his allusions to the daily business and cheats of the world were tinged with streaks of light from a higher sphere. He never appeared to look upon the earth, as some excellent men, whose minds are continually occupied with the contemplation of moral evil, look upon it. At times he would almost forget the deformities with which six thou- sand years of sin had loaded it, and regard it only as the soil 1833.] SUGGESTIVE OF LINKS. 149 on which the Son of God had walked, and which He had redeemed from the curse. This habit of mind was, no doubt, fostered by a quiet, contemplative life, and constant residence in an English country village. But it must not be supposed to have so influenced him as to make him unfaithful in declaring to his people the depravity of their natures and the feebleness of their wills. These subjects he brought for- ward as much as any of his brethren, and as strongly as any of them declared divine grace, bestowed without money and without price, to be the only remedy for the evils and miseries of man. He appeared to me not to differ in his positive assertions from the Calvinistic school of Churchmen, nay (when the subject was introduced by others) to assert some of their opinions more broadly than many of them ; but it struck me that the tone and spirit of his ministrations were very different from those of some with whom he ac- knowledged a general agreement in doctrine ; that he delighted more than almost any to expatiate on the absolute and essen- tial love of God, to speak of all whom he addressed as inter- ested in the redemption of Christ and the covenant that God had made in Him, and to declare that the sin which must condemn them would be that of refusing to submit to the Spirit, who was seeking to renew their hearts, and make them the holy and happy servants of God. Above all, he dwelt more earnestly upon the fact that, when Christ had overcome the sharpness of death, He opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers ; upon the free communion that is established between heaven and earth by the incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord of both ; and upon the awful privileges that consequently belong to those who are brought under the powers of the world to come, and are living in the midst of the heavenly Jerusalem. It was on this subject that his mind appears to have undergone the most change in his later years, though still a very regular and progressive change, and one, the steps of which may be easily traced and explained. ' In the year 1821 he preached a sermon upon a public occasion, 150 FOB3IING OF THE THOUGHT OF [chap. xr. in which he maintained that the hills and valleys of this earth, redeemed, purified, and regenerated, were to be the scene of the felicity of the ransomed children of God. This opinion, which he illustrated from the stores of a very rich and fertile fancy, showed in what direction his mind was moving ; that he believed our human feelings and pursuits were far too much separated from the thoughts and prospects of our heavenly inheritance, and that there is some close and intimate link between them, which it is most important for our spiritual life that we should discover and recognise. This opinion he never changed, but deeper study and medi- tation led him to alter his views respecting the character of this connection, and the manner in which the belief of it is intended to act upon us. For many years he devoted him- self intensely to the study of the prophetical books of Scrip- ture, seeking all aids of ancient and modern learning to assist him in the work. This study led him to conclusions very different from those which are adopted by modern readers of prophecy generally, and from those which he had thought reasonable in earlier life. He became convinced that the greater part of those Scriptures which are usually referred to a far distant period, were actually accomplished when the Jewish polity passed away and the universal Church rose out of its ruins. 'So far he agreed with many of the ablest commentators of former days, but he differed from them in this, that he attached a much deeper significance to those events than is generally given to them. He did not seek to explain away the prophecies by saying that they only meant the destruc- tion of Jerusalem, or the establishment of Christianity ; but he said that these events were nothing less than the actual manifestation of Christ's kingdom, the actual establishment of a communion between the two worlds, the creation of a new heaven and a new earth. These views are fully deve- loped in a work which he had been preparing for twelve years, and which he finished very shortly before his death. I only allude to them because they explain some of his views 1833.] •< THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST." 151 and are closely connected with what I have said of the cha- racter of his mind. ' The ordinances of the Christian Church were always regarded by him with the deepest reverence and love ; but from the time that he adopted this view respecting the establishment of the Christian Church, and its connection with the whole scheme of God for the redemption of mankind, he began to esteem them still more highly as the symbols of Christ's kingdom, the witnesses for the finished work of Christ, and the bonds of fellowship between Christ and all the redeemed in heaven and earth. For the same reason he attached increasing importance to the apostolic derivation of bishops, and the ordination of ministers, and whatever else concerns the constitution of the Church, as one body, existing from age to age. ' These doctrines did not make him bigotted, or exclusive ; they were in his mind the assertion of the universality of the Church — of its being a real and not an imaginary body — of its being a kingdom which is destined to rule over all. Through his life he was a striver after peace and unity. At one time he sought it by the most free and large intercourse with the members of all sects, at religious meetings, and especially in the Bible Society. Nor does he ever appear to have relinquished his endeavours to produce charity and goodwill by these means. Certainly he never ceased to ex- ercise the 'offices of courtesy, kindness, and Christian love towards persons of every shade of opinion ; but as he became convinced that God had Himself established a great and universal fellowship, from which no one, except by his own act, is excluded, he was necessarily more indifferent to human means for securing this great end, — more impatient of those who wish to divert the stream of God's mercy into canals and tanks of their own manufacture, — more anxious to persuade all not to choose these in preference to the full and all-embracing ocean of the Catholic Church. That these opinions, far from leading him to proclaim the Gospel less freely and earnestly to his flock, gave a more mellow cha- 152 WORDS OF ORDINATION SERVICE, [chap, xl racter to his preaching, led him to search deeper into the sacred volume ; and, as a good householder, to bring forth out of it things new and old, those who heard his sermons in the latter part of his life can confidently testify. That his churchmanship did not make him a less personal or prac- tical Christian, his conduct during the last year of his life, which was one of severe domestic trial, proved to all who were acquainted with him. Those who had not that privilege will surely arrive at the same conclusion when they hear with what peace and joy he saw the veil withdrawn, which concealed from him that goodly company of saints and angels, with whom his spirit had so long held communion.' To his father he wrote on March 14th, 1833, from Lymp- sham. (The " friend " — " Mr. Young " — is the person to whom Mrs. Maurice's letter, recently given, was addressed : — ) 'I have not yet settled anything respecting the time of my taking orders. . . . ' My scruples, as you know, though not of the sort which our kind friend would have me entertain, have not been few. I fully agree with him that the words of the Ordination Ser- vice are very strong and awful words ; not too strong or awful, I think, for the occasion, but such as, I trust, I shall never lightly take into my lips. He seems to think them enthusiastical. I see no refuge from enthusiasm, but in the very truth which these words speak of. It is the awful sense of the continual presence of God in the soul, which I believe can alone effectually preserve from the vagaries of our own fancies. I am sure, for myself, that in proportion as I believed the word of St. Paul strictly and substantially, that " we are the temples of the Holy Ghost," should I be afraid to yield to chance and wayward impulses, excited feelings, and winds of doctrine — should I be in a calm, peaceful, rational state, caring for nothing but truth, and ready to sacrifice every conceit and opinion that I might find it. The want of this settled persuasion I find at the bottom 1833.| BEGINS RESIDENCE IN BUBBENIIALL. 153 of all my follies and errors, and I am persuaded that it is the secret of much of the fanaticism which is attributed to just the opposite cause. I am anxious, at any rate, that Mr. Young should believe I am not going into a Church in which I look for a bed of down. That as an establishment it will be overturned, I know not how soon, I am nearly convinced ; yet I would rather be a member of it now than in the days of its greatest prosperity, even if clergymen should become as much targets to shoot at in England as they are in Ireland.' He was now in the neighbourhood of Frenchay. There, in July of this year, he went with his mother and two sisters. He gave cottage lectures from house to house, being welcomed with a kindness such as is offered to those who have come back to a home from which they have been long away. After his return to Lympsham, Mr. Harding, who was at the time Tutor of Balliol, chanced to come there on a visit. He was the incumbent of a small parish in Warwickshire, Bubben- hall by name. It is five miles from Leamington. As it was impossible for Mr. Harding to reside there, he was anxious for a curate to whom he could entrust sole charge of the parish. He offered the curacy to Frederick Maurice. In November 1833 Frederick Maurice and one of his sisters took up their quarters in Leamington, in order that he might become acquainted with the parish, prior to his taking orders. He found the people of Bubbenhall so little ready to receive him that there was no house in the village that they would get ready for him. They had never had a resident clergyman, and did not intend to have one. He announced, however, that un- less a house could be obtained he would pitch a tent in the churchyard, there being no glebe. Partly because they saw he intended to come, and partly because he had already won upon the people, a house which had not been used previously, be- longing to one of the farmers, was put in order for him. Meantime he remained in Leamington for a few weeks. Very soon after his arrival at Leamington he sent the fol- lowing letter to his mother. 154 "CHRIST IN YOU" [chap xi. It must be remembered that Mrs. Maurice, whilst looking upon it as the rare privilege of others to be able to convince themselves that they had some special sign which they could recognise of the divine favour, had always felt herself to be outside of this charmed circle ; that every circumstance of life I tended more and more to increase her son's reverence for her ; to make him feel that her daughters were at their best, and not their worst when they approached most nearly to her inca- pacity for claiming any selfish privilege for herself. Her self- depression was continually before him. He was always striving to relieve it. In each of her birthday letters she records her sense that a birthday ought to be a season of gloom, not of rejoicing. " Though I have little hope of a ray of comfort reaching my heart," she writes in 1832, after their visit to- gether to Eyde, " yet I am always looking for it." ' Leamington, December 9, 1833. ' My dearest Mother, ' Though I have felt grieved each day at reflecting on my delay in writing to you, I do not regret that I did not send my first thoughts, which I put down about a month ago ; for as often, too often, is the case with mine, they are expressed in rather a complex manner, and might not have given you comfort. I now long and pray to be able to speak as simply as I ought to speak when I know that what I say is true. ' My text is this, " Know ye not that Jesus Christ is in you? " This question is often put in such a way as to distress poor humble persons very much. But nothing was further from the Apostle's thoughts. To give a proud professor a notion that he had attained anything in having the Lord of life near to him, to give the desponding spirit a gloomy sense of his distance from such a privilege, that was no part of Paul's commission or his practice. To prove it, see what he says, not to a faithful Christian or an unfaithful one, not to a church at all, " For in Him we live and move and have our being." This is spoken to the ignorant, idolatrous 1833.] " WHETHER YOU BELIEVE IT OB NO." 155 inhabitants of Athens. What, then, do I assert ? Is there no difference between the believer and the unbeliever ? Yes, the greatest difference. But the difference is not about the fact, but precisely in the belief of the fact. God tells us, " In Him," that is in Christ," I have created all things, whether they be in heaven or on earth. Christ is the Head of every man." Some men believe this ; some men disbelieve it. Those men who disbelieve it walk " after the flesh." They do not believe they are joined to an Almighty Lord of life, — One who is mightier than the world, the flesh, the devil, — One who is nearer to them than their own flesh. They do not believe this, and therefore they do not act upon this belief. They do not think they are joined to Christ ; and therefore they do not pray, that is, ask Christ to fill, animate, and inspire and sanctify them. They believe, for this is all they see, that they are surrounded by a flesh which shuts them in, that they are surrounded by innumerable objects of sense. Their hearts are wedded in the strictest sense of the word to sense, and they do not wish to be divorced. But though tens of hundreds of thousands of men live after the flesh, yea, though every man in the world were so living, we are forbidden by Christian truth and the Ca- tholic Church to call this the real state of any man. On the contrary, the phrases which Christ and His Apostles use to describe such a condition are such as these : " They believe a lie. They make a lie. They will not believe the truth." The truth is that every man is in Christ ; the condemnation of every man is, that he will not own the truth ; he will not act as if this were true, he will not believe that which is the truth, that, except he were joined to Christ, he could not think, breathe, live a single hour. This is the monstrous lie which the devil palms upon poor sinners. " You are some- thing apart from Christ. You have a separate, independent existence." See how this works. Separate from Christ, I can bear no fruit to God. Separate from Christ, I am separate from every one of my brethren. Then at once follows disobedience to God's two commands, " Thou shalt 156 AN ACCURSED CREED AND ANOTHER, [chap. xi. love the Lord thy God ; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." God commands every man to do this ; but to command me, in myself, to love Him and love my neighbour is to command me an impossibility, to mock with a precept which experience and reason and Scripture tell me cannot be performed. ' Now, my dearest mother, you wish and long to believe yourself in Christ ; but you are afraid to do so, because you think there is some experience that you are in Him necessary to warrant that belief. Now, if any man, or an angel from heaven, preach this doctrine to you, I say, let his doctrine be accursed. You have this warrant for believing yourself in Christ, that you cannot do one living act, you cannot obey one of God's commandments, you cannot pray, you cannot hope, you cannot love, if you are not in Him. But God says, Pray, pray, hope, love ; God bids me do that. He has constituted me to do, not something else, but just that. This condition I have made for myself; this state of independence, this fleshly Adam life is no state at all ; it is a lie. In that I cannot please God. It is as impossible as that lying should please the God of Truth, as that enmity should please the God of Love. Wherefore we say to every man, " In your flesh you cannot please God." "Wherefore we say to every man, " Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved." Not, believe in a distant Christ, not, believe in a dead Christ ; but, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe in Him as the Lord of your own spirit. Believe that your spirit is as much His servant as you have believed it the servant of the flesh. Believe Him to be mightier than the world around you, than your own flesh, than the evil spirit. Believe and live. t Now, who is the Lord of your spirit ? He who agonised in Gethsemane, — He who bled on Calvary, — the Lord of all love, — the Lord who sacrificed Himself for love ; this is the Lord of your spirit, ever near to you, ever present with you, with every one. 1 Does it grieve you because I say with every one, as if I put age 28.] TO TWO EARS TWO SOUNDS. 157 you on a level, as to hope, with the most vile and unbelieving ? Oh, do not so pervert the words of comfort. The fact is, you desire earnestly that you could find one near you who loved you intensely, to whom you could tell your sorrows, your griefs, your sins ; to whom you could tell everything in the assurance that He would sympathise with you, and that they, at present, do not feel this want. Then the same words spoken to you have as different a sound — as joy from grief — to them and to you. Yet I cannot disguise it, the words are the same. Ye are children of God; ye are members of Christ. Profligates, hard-hearted sinners, yea, hypocrites, this is your condemnation, that you are. It will be your misery to find that you were so, unless you will believe. ' Now here is the warrant for prayer ; here is the possibility, here is the might of prayer. Christ is in you, submit yourself to Him. Say, " Lord, I submit." Not now, but at every moment of your life ; tell Him of whatever sins or sorrows are disturbing you ; of sins no less than sorrows, of sorrows no less than sins. Of other people's sins no less than your own, of other people's sorrows no less than your own. Believe that He loves you and them. Ask that He will do His will in you, which is your blessedness. Ask that He will separate your spirit from the flesh and from surrounding objects by His spirit, in order that you may behold His love. Do not think you will ever have any righteousness or glory except His righteousness, for in perceiving this is your life, your happiness, your virtue, your glory. Ask Him to sanctify the whole body of which you are one member, that the whole body may see and delight in Him as its Head, and may not delight in themselves. For to delight in Him is righteous- ness, to delight in ourselves is sin. Lastly, ask Him more and more to shine through you, that others may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. This He says He wishes, therefore, of course, He will do it for you. Tell me what you think of what I have said. May He bless it.' 158 THE DAY BEFOEE 0ED1 NATION. [chap. xi. To Rev. M. Maurice. ' Ecclesliall, Saturday, January 25, 1834. ' The day before Ordination. ' My dearest Father, ' I am thankful to say that my examination is over, and, on the whole, has been very satisfactory. I have much reason to be grateful for the kindness of the Bishop and Archdeacon especially as I did not reach Ecclesliall till four hours after the examination began. I was recommended at Oxford to go by way of Northampton, instead of Birmingham, as the London and Chester coaches, and I was told also the Liverpool and Manchester, which go through that town, go also through Ecclesliall. I was deceived into believing that I should meet with a coach immediately on my arrival, instead of which there was not one till three o'clock the following morning. I was, however, kindly received, and had time to do all the papers set to the other candidates. To-day we had a charge from the Bishop, and were formally desired to appear at church in the morning. ' If you ask me, my dear father, what feelings chiefly occupy me at this most important crisis of my life, I answer that they may be summed up in a desire for greater self-abasement and a more perfect and universal charity. I feel that the minister of the Gospel of peace, the minister of a Church which is called Catholic and universal, is bound to have a much lower opinion of himself than I have practically and habitually of myself, and also to feel a much more perfect and unlimited love towards all and each than has yet ever been shown forth in me. When I speak of universal love, I do not mean any- thing which is not perfectly consistent with national and family affection. I believe if we give up ourselves to God and renounce ourselves, He is sure to work these feelings in us, else why did He command us to have them ? I long to have them far more strongly, in far more practical operation than I ever had. But I feel the duty of cultivating that age 28.] CHARITY BASED ON CERTAINTY OF TRUTH. 15$ universal love more incumbent upon me as a minister than upon others, because I think I am more directly shown tin- true foundation of it than others are. It is the natural feeling of all of us that charity is founded upon the uncer- tainty of the Truth. I believe it is founded upon the cer- tainty of Truth. That Grod is Truth and Love also ; that all men may know Him, that is, know Truth, and that He willeth all men to know Him ; on this rock I build my charity. All error, all sin, in myself and in others is their misery ; therefore I wish to hate it in myself and in them, and that they should hate it in me and in themselves, and trust with perfect confidence in Grod to deliver them and me out of it. Now this I feel is my imperfection that I do not love men's persons enough, and hate that which makes them unhappy enough ; that I do not more labour to guide them into truth, and use the only means of doing so, kindness and love. This is my desire, this I am bound by my ordination vows to seek after ; and, seeking, I trust that I shall find.' By the kindness of Mr. William Allen, the Vicar of Walsall, I have now before me the answers that were given by my father at the Examination at Eccleshall, recovered under circumstances which I trust that Mr. Allen will forgive me for quoting from his letter : — " Some seven or eight years ago I became possessed of a few sets of examination papers, purchased as waste paper at an auction at Eccleshall Castle by a grocer, who gave them me, and who resided in or near Eccleshall and afterwards at Oaken- gates, in Shropshire. Amongst the papers I found those which I beg to forward you.' From these papers I select the following answer, as, on the whole, the most representative : — ' Specify some of those erroneous and strange doctrines which, on your admission to the priesthood, you promise to " banish and put away." ICO ANSWEBS AT OBDINATION. Age 28. [chap. xr. ' 1. The doctrine that there is any merit in the creature which can entitle it to God's love ; or any goodness in the creature at all disunited from God. 1 2. The doctrine that there is now any bar to the admission of a sinner into God's presence, except that which his own unbelief creates. ' 3. The doctrine that there is in God " any darkness at all," that there is in Him the least particle of selfishness, that He is merely a superior will, and not absolute righteousness and absolute love. c 4. The doctrine that men are more anxious to attain the know- ledge of God than he is anxious to bring them to that knowledge. ' 5. The doctrine that it is possible for the perfect God to behold any one except in the perfect Man, Christ Jesus, or that it is possible for man to behold God, except as revealed and mani- fested in Him. ' 6. The doctrine of Antinomianism in all its shapes ; that the end of God in bringing men to the faith of Christ is not to make them holy as He is holy ; that it is a privilege to be allowed to commit iniquity, instead of a privilege to be de- livered from iniquity ; that there is any reward so great or glorious which God can offer to His creatures as that of making them partakers of His divine character. 1 7. The doctrine that man can worship God except in the Spirit ; and ' 8. The doctrine that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not " in glory equal, in majesty co-eternal." ' The moment at which Mr. Maurice was entering upon his duties was a striking a one in the history alike of the nation and of the Church of England. The Eeform Bill had just passed, and quite new political issues lay before the nation for solution. At the Summer Assize of 1833, Keble had preached the Sermon on " National Apostasy," which, as has been told us by him who has the best authority to determine it, was the actual overt commencement of the " Oxford movement." 1834.] OCCUPATIONS AT BUBBENEALL. 1G1 ' February 13, 183-4. ' My dear Acland, ****** ' Since we parted I have taken orders, but through unavoidable delays only within the last month. I am now settled in a very small parish (of about 250 souls) in Warwickshire. I am the sole manager of it (bating the very great help which I receive from a sister who lives with me), as my rector is one of the tutors at "Wadham. I have also the charge of a young pupil, respecting whom I feel much anxiety, as he has considerable talents and is come of a stock which he ought not to disgrace. I do not know whether it will strike you as the greatest oddity and anomaly that I should be minister to a set of farmers and labourers, most of whom have not a notion beyond their teams, or that I should be appointed to form the mind of one who, if he lives, will be Lord Somers. ' Whether my theorising propensities would make me most unsuitable for the first vocation, or my ignorance of the world, and my gawkiness, for the second, may be an amusing question for you ; but so God hath ordered it. I have not gone out of my way to get into either position, but have been led by unlooked-for })rovidences into both. I feel my utter incompetency ; thanks be to Him who has sent me all other mercies for this especially, and I trust that I shall have strength according to my need. If it [is] His will to transmit blessings to His creatures they will reach their des- tination, however awkward the hands which have the honour of bearing them. I wish I had more opportunities of com- municating with Harrison, whom I regard with increasing reverence and esteem, as I feel more of the distance between my state of mind and his. Blessed may he be and all who labour with him in the task of stripping the Church of her Babylonian attire, and clothing her once more in her white and bridal robes. 1 If they err and stumble in their sincere endeavours after the recovery of old and forgotten truths, if they even are tempted VOL. I. il 1G2 THOUGHTS ON " OXFOBD MOVEMENT:' [chap, xi- to forget that the Church is Catholic while they are in the act of pleading for its Catholicity, if they do anything unwillingly to hurt that unity which they so earnestly con- tend for, may their oversights be all forgiven, all corrected, and may they daily advance more themselves and lead others further in the knowledge of all truth. ' I sometimes feel a longing desire to set them right when I think they are misapprehehending or frightening away sin- cere Dissenters ; to say " you need not weaken one of your assertions, you may make them stronger, and yet by just this or that little alteration give them a Catholic instead of an exclusive form," but I do not know how to make myself understood ; nobody sees what I mean, and I return humbled if not dejected into myself, half convinced that I have no business with any but my own little flock, who may, I hope, by (rod's grace, be taught to feel what a Catholic Church is, though they may never understand the name. ' I don't mean by this that I have ever attempted formal inter- course with the dons of the Oxford band — Keble, Newman, Harrison, &c, but that all my chance connections with any of their party had this termination. Of our Liberals I suppose we must not venture to hope good any longer, though I think there are still among them a better seed, a nobler generation, who only want to have that charity, of which Liberality is at once the counterpart and the greatest contradiction, truly presented to them in order to embrace it, and cast away the miserable idol that they have been worshipping. ' The most glaring exhibition of the evils of their own party will not, I think avail to detach them from it, without this, or if it do, it will but bring them into that last state which is worse than the first, wherein the house being empty, swept, and garnished, stripped of its brilliant hopes and fond expectations, becomes a fit residence for seven brother spirits more wicked than the original occupier. Of Bulwer and such as he, I know not what to say. I remember him at Cambridge taking the tone of a high aristocratical Whig and scoffing at the Benthamites, at the same time that Ecad, now the editor of age 28.] « EUSTACE CONWAY 1 AND CAPT. MARRY ATT. 163 the " Morning Post," was talking Radicalism. I have heard of a poor creature in St. Luke's in a lucid moment snatching a lady by the arm who was visiting the Asylum with the exclamation, " Have you thanked God for your reason to-day ?" and then relapsing into fury. Surely one of these men in a lucid interval might say to either of us, " Have you thanked God to-day for having passed through a debating society with any portion of your souls undestroyed ?" and at least to one of us, " Have you meddled with periodicals, and have you thanked God that you still think, love, go to church, and find any one to love you ?" ' Soon after he had settled at Bubbenhall, Bentley, who had succeeded to Colburn's business, at last published 'Eustace Conway.' The story mentioned in the following letter has been so often alluded to that it is perhaps as well to give it as it was first reported to my father. " Captain Marryatt " was the well-known novelist ; but when ' Eustace Conway ' was com- posed, three years before, my father had never heard his name. To Rev. — Maurice. ' New Burlington Street, April 21, 1831. ' Dear Sir, • At last you will observe by the newspapers I have published " Eustace Conway," and if I knew where to send you a few copies, I should have much pleasure in doing so. My motive however, for writing to you just now is this : a prominent character in your work, and one who is represented in no amiable colours, bears the name of Captain Marryatt. In our naval service we have an officer of that name, and this morning I have been favoured with a visit from this gentle- man, who feels excessively annoyed by his name being used, a name he assures me to be uncommon. I was not authorised to give up the name of the author, but the said gallant captain, full of ire, made me pledge my word that I would write to you to ask whether it was to him you referred, or whether it was pure accident. I have thus n 2 164 A LONDONER AND COLERIDGE ON THE NOVEL. complied with his wish, and you will greatly oblige me by replying to this question to me without delay, always relying upon me that your name shall be withheld as long as possible. I assured him that I was convinced it was purely accidental. ' I am, dear sir, yours faithfully, 'KlCHARD BENTLEY.' Michael Maurice to F. D. M. ' May, 1834. ' In the coach on Saturday, a London gentleman asked me if I had seen the new novel. I inquired, "What novel?" He said, " ' Eustace Conway.' " I replied, " I cannot say I have not seen it, but I am not a novel-reader, and wish to know what opinion is formed of it, for I have seen in a newspaper an account of it, but newspapers are no good authorities." " You are right, sir ; but this is a production that will make a great noise. Some say that it is a violent attack on the Radicals, some think it is against the Whigs ; the writer has spared neither of them." " But, pray sir, to what party does the writer belong ?" " I do not know ; I have only read the second part of the third volume, for it was taken away from me by a married daughter who thought I had finished it, and she told me she could not leave off, and I shall see it when I return to town." " What is the style of the book ?" " Very good. But my brother, who has read it, says some of the sentences want clearness, and, what is not usual in a novel, he read them twice over." ' From John Sterling to F. D. M. — 8. T. Coleridge s Thoughts on ' Eustace Conway.' 1 Hurstmonceaux, near Battle, May 27, 1834. ' My dear Maurice, ' I beg your pardon for not writing sooner to tell you about Coleridge. I saw him on Wednesday last, and found him far from well, but recovering. He had read about half " Eustace Conway," and liked it exceedingly. He spoke of it with very high and almost unmingled admiration ; but said 1834.] THE "APOSTLES'" THREE TOASTS. 1G5 that there were two or three trifling matters which he could hardly make out, but which he attributed to his ill- health. The only one he mentioned was that he could not conceive why Conway should feel himself bound by his promise to such a scoundrel as Eumbold. In which remark I think S. T. C. did not allow for the involuntary respect and sympathy of Conway with Eumbold's intellectual power and strength of character. Coleridge promised to speak of the book when he had an opportunity, and went so far as to say that if I would write a review of it he would do all in his power to have it inserted in the " Quarterly." I fear, however, the task is beyond my strength. He spoke with special admiration of Fanny Eumbold. I had talked of her to some one as your Mignon, and was interested by hearing him draw the same comparison. He told me some curious and beautiful anecdotes as illustrating the natural birth of superstition in the mind ; and said as to fairy tales, ghost stories, and so forth, that undoubtedly the images of the fancy tend to relieve instead of aggravating the terrors of the imagination. He also said that the book put him a little in mind of a very inferior one, in which, how- ever, there is (said he) a good deal of talent — " The Infidel Father," by Miss Laetitia Hawkins. On the whole, he talked of the book and of you with evident and earnest interest. Excuse my scribble, I am in great haste, and believe me, ' Yours, affectionately, ' John Sterling.' • P.S. Coleridge has given me leave to publish some of his MSS.' There is also a letter from one of his sisters, mentioning that at the annual dinner of the " Apostles' Club " they this year toasted him in his absence three times ; first, as the author of the Club itself ; second, as having taken orders since the last meeting ; third, as the author of ' Eustace Conway.' Of the novel and its reception, it may be further men- tioned that one of his friends, whose habit it was to speak in 166 THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH. [chap. xi. superlatives, declared that " if it had not had the most villainous plot that had ever been constructed, it would have been the best novel that ever had been written." Another, ""Why, Maurice, how on earth did you ever come to write such a thing as this ? why there is not a man in the whole book that I shoiildn't like to have the hanging of." ' Bubbenhall, near Coventry, July 12, 1834. ' My dear Acland, ****** 'I would wish to live and die for the assertion of this truth : that the Universal Church is just as much a reality as any particular nation is ; that the latter can only be be- lieved real as one believes in the former ; that the Church is the witness for the true constitution of man as man, a child of God, an heir of heaven, and taking up his freedom by baptism : that the world is a miserable, accursed, rebellious, order, which denies this foundation, which will create a foundation of self-will, choice, taste, opinion ; that in the world there can be no communion ; that in the Church there can be universal communion ; communion in one body by one Spirit. For this, our Church of England is now, as I think, the only firm, consistent witness. If God will raise up another in Germany or elsewhere, thanks be to Him for it, but for the sake of Germans, Dutchmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians — for the sake of Baptists, Independents, Quakers, Unitarians, for the sake of Jews, Turks, Infidels, for the sake of Men, I will hold fast by that Church which alone stands forth and upholds universal brotherhood, on the only basis on which brotherhood is possible. ' "We stand on the voluntary principle, we voluntarily come into God's order. We refuse to stand on the slavish foundation of self-will.' age 29.J THE CHURCH A KINGDOM. 1G7 To Rev. J. A. Stephenson, Lympsham. ' Leamington, July 24, 1834. ' My dear Sir, 'I have been withheld by the fear of occupying any of your valuable time from writing to you hitherto, but I have often desired to express to you how much more lively my impressions of your kindness and of the truths which I heard from you are now than when I was in the neighbourhood of Lympsham. A great depression of spirits hindered me at that time from expressing, or even from feeling, as I ought, all the pleasure of that intercourse. But since I have been engaged in preach- ing myself, I have found the advantage of your instructions in a degree that I could scarcely have believed possible ; •especially as they have led me, almost unawares, into a method of considering many subjects, and of setting them forth, which I should not have naturally fallen into. I have not hitherto, nor do I intend hereafter for many years at least, to travel much beyond the Lord's Prayer and the Creed, and the Gospel and Epistle of the day, in addressing the people ; but I have found myself in all my private medita- tions, as well as in preaching, drawn to speak of Christ as a King, and His Church as a Kingdom ; and whenever I depart from this method, I feel much less clearness and satisfaction, much less harmony between my own feelings and the Word of God. I am sure you know how much lively gratitude may be excited .in a person's mind by feeling that he has been directed into a clearer course wherein it is possible to make continual progress, and you will not refuse to accept my thanks on this behalf. * I had a letter from a friend in Germany* a few days ago, in which a passage occurs that I think will interest you. He says, " The person of whom I saw most at Koine was the Prus- sian Ministerf there. He is almost as learned as Niebuhr, whose private secretary he was for some time ; and withal a * Mr. T. Acland, the letter to which the last is an answer, f Bunsen. 168 SUBSCRIPTION A DEFENCE FOR LIBERTY, [chap. xi. most lively Christian. He is deeply concerned about the state of the Church in Germany ; indeed it occupies his whole thoughts. He is very intimate with the King, and still more with the Crown Prince — himself an excellent man — and is labouring, by their means, as the best means for the revival of the faith, to introduce a Liturgy, embodying the truths which are recognised in the forms of the Catholic Church, but utterly lost sight of by the Protestants of Germany. He has succeeded in bringing it into use in the King's own chapel, and he is now compiling a profoundly learned Corpus Liturgise, containing the Liturgies of all the ancient Churches." My friend adds, " I am now in Berlin. Neander is lecturing a few minutes' walk from me, but I could not yet understand him sufficiently to profit by him. He is an excellent man himself, but too tolerant of Neologism in others, and perhaps too much inclined to it himself. They all seem to think Wissenschaft" (is not this a fearfully literal translation of the word which I have heard you expound the meaning of so frequently — Gnosticism ?) " more important than soundness of creed." ' His friend Mr. Acland paid him a visit on his return from the Continent, and found him full of the subject of the " University Bill," a bill brought in for the purpose of abolishing the sub- scription to the Thirty-nine Articles required at the Univer- sities. His experience of the practice of Unitarian teachers of the Priestley and Belsham schools had forced upon him the conviction that a teacher who was not bound by any predeter- mined conditions always tied down his pupils much more rigidly than one whose conditions of teaching were fixed before- hand. He believed that all evidence went to show that, both historically and logically, an undergraduate's signature to the Thirty-nine Articles on matriculation at Oxford implied only that the pupil accepted the Articles as presenting the conditions under which he was to be taught. Hence he startled Mr. Acland by telling him that he looked upon subscription as a defence of liberty. HIS POSITION APPROVED BY OXFORD LEADERS. ICO In order to understand how little of a mere paradox this was in his mind, it is needful to take into account the extent to which he had meditated on the strange history of the Puritan- Unitarians, and the circumstances which had tended to fix that history in his memory. His friend returned to Oxford in December, and reported the general upshot of this conversation. The leaders of the now-gathering " Oxford " party were at the moment intent on resisting the proposed modification of the terms of sub- scription, and not unwilling to welcome an ally who could attack their opponents in flank, almost in rear, even though his base of operations was very different from theirs. They there- fore urged him through Mr. Acland to throw his thoughts into the form of a pamphlet. ' Bubbenhall, December 13, 1834. ' My dear Acland, ' I was somewhat surprised and very much gratified by your remembrance of me so soon after your arrival at Oxford, but I have experienced your kindness so often before that I wondered the less at this instance of it. But there is nothing to abate my astonishment at the favourable way in which your friends expressed themselves respecting my thoughts. So little did I expect it, that at the time I received your letter I was preparing one to you containing many solid reasons, as they seemed to me, why they never could be regarded with any other feelings than those of distrust by the High Church party. ' My want of that early educational sympathy with the services and constitution of the Church upon which their love for it seems in some measure based, and apart from which I had fancied that they could scarcely conceive the existence of a genuine attachment, was the main ground of this far from pleasant apprehension. But God orders the feelings of men,, especially of those who fear and love Him, in a way very different from our cold and desponding expectations. ' I have enough of them left to remove all surprise from my mind 170 WHITES 'SUBSCRIPTION NO BONDAGE: [chap. xi. if your friends should think much less favourahly of my views when they are stated on paper, than when communicated through a kind and charitable interpreter, who would soften down the awkwardness and asperities of the original by many ingenious turns of phrase ; but I am sufficiently freed from any fears, and embrace your proposal with very great pleasure and thankfulness. "* I cannot be indifferent about an opportunity of making known thoughts which I am confident have been intrusted to me for the good of others, and I have learnt by experience that vanity is often more gratified than humbled when you feel yourself the depositary of a truth which others may not see in the same light, than when you have exposed it to the world.' ' Bubbenhall, February 14, 1835. ' My dear Acland, ' After considering the matter attentively I am convinced that the question respecting the analogous case of subscription at ordination is very important, and that I had disposed of it most unsatisfactorily. I shall be very glad to know whether you and your friends think that I have set that point in the right light. If they do, I shall not for myself dread the appearance of a digression, for I think it is better to look at the subject on all sides when one is about it. I could not resist putting in the note about catechisms, for I do think it so shameful that clergymen should cant about our beautiful formularies, pretending to set them above all human compositions, and then in practice substitute for really the best of them any rigmarole that the Committee of the Christian Knowledge Society or Archdeacon Bather may choose to call orthodox divinity. Doubtless if they had the liberty, they would be using some Committee Litany or Committee Communion Service in the churches. I think, if you please, that the extracts you and Harrison were so kind as to make for me should be in a note at the end of the pamphlet, the reference to which you will see under the last section that I send you. 1835.] STUDY OF ALEXANDER KNOX. 171 * I will not make any fresh apologies about [the trouble I am giving you. I hope you will accept my best thanks once for all and believe that they are really thanks. If I might ask one more favour of you it is that you would fulfil a kind promise you made me when you were over here, of introduc- ing my friend Trench who is now at Havre to Mr. Bunsen. I think he would be pleased with him. I know few like- minded and fewer like-hearted. I do not know his direction, unfortunately. His Christian name is Richard and he is in orders.' ' Bubbcnhall, March 12, 1835. 'My dear Acland, ****** "*I have read some of Knox [i.e. Alexander Knox], and I need not say with great delight and admiration. To criticise a person so immeasurably above my level becomes an absurdity, and is as far from my inclination as it is above my power. The only way in which I can venture to speak of him, except in the way of humble respect, is as to the effect which he pro- duces on myself ; and which, so far as I am like others of this age, he is likely to produce on them. Contemplating him in this light merely, I should be inclined to complain of a dangerous tendency to esoterism and exclusiveness, — not indeed to secta- rian exclusiveness, from which he is quite free, but to a kind far more attractive, plausible, and snaring. I cannot meditate upon the Our Father of the Lord's Prayer, or upon the three next petitions, or upon the words, " to the poor the gospel is preached," or upon the words, " I am a debtor to Jew and Greek, Barbarian, Scythian, bond and free," or upon the connection of a feeling of universal brotherhood in St. Paul's mind and St. John with the most exalted, translucent, spirituality, or upon the idea of the Catholic Church, or upon the realisation of that idea in our own, without perceiving that there is something in his all-individualising spirituality (graceful and exquisite as I confess it to have been) which is not strictly after the mind of Christ. Not by reading but 172 LUTHER AND ALEXANDER KNOX. [chap. xi. by some bitterly painful experience, I seem to have been taught that to aim at any good to myself while I contemplate myself apart from the whole body of Christ, is a kind of contradiction ; to which belief I think we shall all by degrees be brought. You told me your German friend had arrived at a much deeper realisation of the same truth. I had a letter from Trench yesterday, who has become acquainted with him, and admires him greatly. ' You would fancy from Knox that Luther was almost a carnal man ! Can he have read his commentary on the first twenty psalms ? ' It will I think be of interest to any one who cares to make a more general study of the thought of this time to compare the above letter with one of Keble's on Alexander Knox.* * ' Memoir of Rev. J. Keble,' &c, by Sir J. T. Coleridge. Parker, 1869 (p. 241, Oct. 23, 1838). AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL RETROSPECT UP TO 1835. 173 CHAPTER XII. " Debates were going on in the minds of the youths of Athens, which he (Socrates) was able to understand from those which were going on in his own." — Inaugural Lecture, Cambridge, 1866. KETBOSPECTTVE — AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL LETTER WRITTEN IN 1871, TO EXPLAIN THE ORIGIN OF 'SUBSCRIPTION NO BONDAGE.' I am now able to give a retrospect by my father himself of his life up to this date. As he had found it impossible to write the history of the quite early years, it seemed worth while to try whether he could write with greater ease that part of his life in which he came in contact with the various movements and events of his time. Mr. Kingsley had collected a series of the pamphlets which my father had at various times written. My father undertook- to take the volume thus bound up as a text-book for a series of letters, giving account of the different circumstances which had occa- sioned their being composed. Two "Explanatory Letters" were the result. The series was only interrupted by the increasing illness which made work of the kind difficult to him during the last two years of his life. EXPLANATORY LETTERS. (Heading by himself.) "Subscription no Bondage." 'My dearest F., 'You have asked me to tell you to what crises in our country's history or my own certain tracts and pamphlets 174 MOTIVES FOB WBITING TEE BETBOSPECT. [chap. xn. refer which I have written during the last thirty-five years. I will try, as well as I can, to recall them. They will be interesting to you if they only enable you to know me a little better, and to connect together different passages in my experience. If they should also, even by means of my mistakes and imperfect apprehensions, make any of the ques- tions which concern us all as " English citizens " more intel- ligible to you, I shall think the effort to speak of them, which must be often a humiliating and painful one, well repaid. I was the curate of a small parish in Warwickshire when I wrote the tract called " Subscription no Bondage." It was published in the year 1835. I may tell you at once that no pamphlet ever made less impression upon the English public generally, or upon the smaller University public, for which it was chiefly intended. Those who accepted it at first with a certain qualified sympathy as an argument on their side, were those who confuted it most successfully by their sub- sequent acts.* The few who took any real interest in it entirely dissented from its conclusions.! It has been out of print for twenty-five years. I have myself confessed that Subscription is bondage. Nevertheless, no book which I have written expresses more strongly what then were, and what still are, my deepest convictions. ' None is a more curious commentary on my own life during the years which preceded the publication of it. None is a better prophecy of the kind of position which I was to hold in reference to all the parties within and without the English Church. And little as it has affected, or as I have affected, the thoughts and the conduct of those parties, it may explain in some slight degree to you of another generation certain of their views and movements at that time. 'You may often have wondered that I should have been a member of both our Universities. You cannot wonder more than I do. Considering the circumstances of my birth and early education, it is very strange that I went to either of them. * The High Churchmen. f Hare ohap. xii.] EABLY YEARS AT CAMBRIDGE. 175 ' My father was a Unitarian minister. He wished rne to be one also. He had a strong feeling against the English Church, and against Cambridge as well as Oxford. My elder sisters, and ultimately my mother, abandoned Unitarianism. But they continued to be Dissenters ; they were not less, but some of them at least more, averse from the English Church than he was. I was much confused between the opposite opinions in our household. What would surprise many, I felt a drawing towards the anti-Unitarian side, not from any religious bias, but because Unitarianism seemed to my boyish logic incoherent and feeble. I had an early interest in the Puritans, but that, except so far as it was embodied in a respect for Milton, had disappeared. I had a great dislike to the thought of being a dissenting minister; from conscien- tious reasons partly, but also from something of disgust from what I saw of the class, mixed, I doubt not, with a great leaven in my own mind of vanity and flunkey ism. I wished to go to the * Bar, and my father, with his usual generosity and liberality, but with a degree of pain, which I ought to have appreciated, consented. Then it was sug- gested that I had better study at one of the Universities, and Dublin was thought of as being free from tests. But as they were not required at Cambridge before taking a degree, some of my friends urged that there was no sufficient reason why I should cross the Channel. 1 1 look back with shame, and yet with much thankfulness, on my undergraduate life here.* I became nothing of a mathe- matician, little of a classic. My waste of time, considering the reasons which I had for exertion in the kindness and the poverty of my parents, now seems to me incredible. I knew none of the Seniors ; I did nothing which could give them an interest in me. Your uncle Julius,f indeed, who was Classical Lecturer in Trinity, took a kind notice of me ; but I saw him very rarely. On the other hand, I cannot find any words to explain how much my whole life has been * Written at Cambridge. f Archdeacon Hare subsequently married one of my father's sisters. 176 BETBOSPECTIVE— CAMBRIDGE. [chap. xii. influenced by intercourse with men of my own age there. They were often men whose tastes were most unlike my own. One with whom I was especially intimate was devoted to music, and abhorred both politics and metaphysics. The majority of my acquaintances, however, were mainly occupied with these subjects. I had no pretensions to be a speaker, but I mixed with those who were busy in the debates of the University. ' Among the younger and cleverer undergraduates of the day, especially in Trinity, Benthamism was the prevalent faith. I had read Coleridge before I came up, and had received a considerable influence both from him and from Madame de Stael's ' L'Allemagne.' 1 1, in a small society of which I was a member, defended Cole- ridge's metaphysics and Wordsworth's poetry against the Utilitarian teaching. I was a noisy and often angry dis- putant, though mixing much shyness with my presumption. In most parties I was reckoned a bore. But Sterling, who was a remarkable speaker, and was in those days brilliant in conversation, fancied all fine things of me because I had exactly the qualities which he wanted, and was deficient in those which he had. He talked of me as having the rudi- ments of a metaphysician ; that opinion he retained through most years of his life. When it was shaken, when he sus- pected that I had passed into a fanatical theologian, and when I was hard and cold to him, he still showed me the rarest friendship. At College I lived much with him and with others, who, with far less gifts, were far more likely to succeed in the world. Even at that time my obligations to him were more than I knew, or than I can calculate now when I am better able to judge of them. With his frankness and noble- ness, which always exaggerated his debts to others, he immensely overrated what he owed to me, and suffered the inevitable disappointment which follows when a supposed hero turns out to be what he is. 1 1 seem to be going a long way round to give you the inter- pretation of a very insignificant book, but I must travel BETIiOSPECT OF LONDON LIFE IN 1S28. 177 further still if I am to tell you what it means. I ended my career in Cambridge by entering Trinity Hall (the law Col- lege), passing through the examinations and the Act required for a student in civil law. That seemed to be a reasonable preparation for a member of the Temple, and it entitled me to leave the University without making any fuss about not professing myself a member of the Church of England. I did not want to make that profession as I had been brought up a Dissenter, though I should have been much more reluc- tant to profess myself a member of any of the Dissenting bodies. I had no inclination to infidelity. Coleridge had done much to preserve me from that. I had a real, not a conventional, though far enough from a practical or spiritual, reverence for the Scriptures, and a great dislike, which Ster- ling felt even more strongly than I did, to the tone of the Liberals with whom we consorted on religious subjects* gene- rally. In London I became a law student, but desultory habits had still possession of me ; I thought I should never make way in the study. I had a certain knack of writing ; I joined with a number of my friends in the Athenteum. I was constituted editor, and so far fulfilled the office that I always contrived to fill the paper when there was want of matter, and that my friends most generously gathered round me ; otherwise I had no particular fitness for the task, though I persuaded myself at the time that it was better for me than any other. ' You may remember how hardly I have sometimes spoken to you and E against the sacrifice of life to journal writing. The bitterness of my own experience may account for such remarks. Not that it was not in some degree useful experience. It kept my mind alive, though the life was of a restless kind. I had strong convictions which I desired to enforce ; but the sauciness of my language, and my im- pertinence in judging those who had a right to judge me produced much self-contempt in me afterwards. I wrote partly because I mixed little in general society, and hud little power of expressing myself when I did. VOL. i. N 178 RETROSPECTIVE— < EUSTACE CONWAY: [chap. xii. It was a curious time in the latter part of George IV.'s reign, when the Duke of Wellington was in office, first as the repre- sentative of Conservatism, then as the passer of the Koman Catholic Bill. The young men with whom I associated were chiefly Liberals. In a debating society of which I became a member, Mr. Mill and Mr. Boebuck were principal speakers. With the former I had the advantage of being acquainted. I believe for Sterling's sake, whom he knew well, if not for my own, he retains a feeling of kindness to me still. Every one in that day must have seen that he was de- stined to exercise great influence on his generation. I did not, however, at Cambridge or London, wear the proper Liberal livery, though on practical questions I shouted with them. I was still under the influence of Coleridge's writings — himself I never saw. His book on the ' Ideas of the State,' which appeared at this time, impressed me very much. I accepted to a great degree the principle of it, though not all the conclusions. With the Benthamites, therefore, I was still at war. The few whom I chanced to know regarded me as a very harmless and visionary anta- gonist. ' At last I became weary of my sham creed and pretentious toleration. I began to think that I was wasting time, and that if I could ultimately excel, it should be somewhere else than in a newspaper, even if it could have succeeded in my hands. I left London, and spent many months at South- ampton in my own family. It was an important time to me. The conversations of my sister Emma, who was dying, deepened any belief which I had, and made me know how shallow my belief was. She was singularly wise as well as devout. It astonishes me now to think how she bore with my incoherencies ; still more, what a method she took to cure me of them. I had begun a novel. It embodied queer conceptions of what I thought was passing around me ; with some few of my own vicissitudes of feeling. She encou- raged me to completo it. I read it to her chapter by chap- ter. Scarcely any one but one so good as she was could chap. xii. j RETROSPECTIVE— OXFORD IN 1831. 170 have discovered any good in it, but she did. She believed that I was trying to say something that it was better for me to say, and that I should see my path more clearly if I did. It was long before I did see it at all clearly. 1 Sterling suggested that if I gave up the Bar I should not return to Cambridge, but go to Oxford. The present Bishop of Chester, who was then tutor of Exeter, was a great friend of Sterling's. He entered me at his college almost before I was aware of it. My sister and my friends approved the step, and I went there. * Looking back on that step, I cannot fully justify it to myself. Just at the time it seemed to me a profitable humiliation to begin an undergraduate life again, after I had given myself such airs in a literary course. There was much, assuredly, in the position which might have humbled me; also with the discovery that I was still as irregular a student — much as I wished to be otherwise — as I had ever been. I had good friends here also. Dr. Jacobson was more than kind. I hope I shall never forget his generous help and friendship. I knew not much [more] of my seniors than I had done at Cambridge, though the Exeter tutors treated me most tole- rantly and considerately. The circumstance of belonging to a small society at Cambridge brought me into a similar one at Oxford founded by Mr. Gladstone, to which otherwise I should never have been admitted, as it consisted mainly of Christchurch men, destined to hold an eminent position in the world. I had only a very distant acquaintance with the greater number of them ; but I had just a glimpse of some of those who were to be associated with the political life of the last thirty-five years. With two Oriel men — Mr. Harding Lushington and Mr. Marriott — I had most affectionate inter- course, which did not cease when I left Oxford. * The time I spent at Oxford was, for the most part, before the passing of the Eeform Bill. The agitation about the Roman Catholic Emancipation had just subsided. Sir Robert Peel had been ejected from his seat for the University. The old Tories had evidently lost their moorings ; many of them n 2 180 BETBOSPECT1VE—BISE OF TBACTABIANISM. were inclined to join, and were actually joining, the "Whigs to punish the Duke of Wellington and Peel for their apos- tasy. The young men were evidently puzzled, like the elders whom they were to follow or avoid ; moderate Church- manship generally prevailed. There was a party which was favourable to a relaxation of subscription. In the Cambridge pulpit Mr. Hugh Eose, afterwards a kind friend of mine, denounced German Rationalism, and seemed to treat all German theology as rationalistic. : Dr. Pusey, who had just been studying at Bonn, wrote an apology for some of those whom Eose had condemned or neglected to notice. There was no decided movement, or at least none which a superficial observer could take notice of, in any direction. Yet there was a feeling, I think, in all that some movement was approaching. The three days of June 1830 were followed by the coming in of Lord Grey's Minis- try, and the agitation respecting the Reform Bill. When that Bill had been carried through, and the old party had been beaten, there began to be a great effort among Liberals to accomplish other reforms, especially such as affected the Church. Lord Stanley carried through a bill for abolishing ten Irish bishoprics ; and a measure for abolishing sub- scription to the Articles in the Universities was much dis- cussed in them and in the country. The first of these measures gave rise to the Tractarian movement, of which we have all heard so much. The other produced far less seeming effect at the time, but it gave occasion to a number of academical pamphlets on both sides. ' This last was a question which came home to me. In Cam- bridge it was demanded of every person taking a degree that he should declare himself a hond fide member of the Church of England. That, when I left Cambridge, I had declined to do. At Oxford every student at matriculation was re- quired to sign the Thirty-nine Articles. This, when I entered the University, I had deliberately done. Whilst some reformers proposed to admit Dissenters to the Uni- versity without restriction, or upon some general confession chap, xii.] USE AND ABUSE OF ARTICLES. 181 of belief, others argued that the Cambridge plan was a great advance on the Oxford, and might be reasonably substituted for it. I thought, country curate though I was, I had some call to speak on this text, as I had been obliged to give it some study. Reviewing my own experience with the two Universities, and, to some extent, with my own past life in connection with the question which was occupying the public attention, I came to this conclusion : That the Cambridge demand was much more distinctly and formally exclusive than the Oxford, inasmuch as it involved a direct renuncia- tion of Nonconformity ; that the subscription to Articles on entering Oxford was not intended as a test, but as a declara- tion of the terms on which the University proposed to teach its pupils, upon which terms they must agree to learn ; that it is fairer to express those terms than to conceal them ; that they are not terms which are to bind down the student to certain conclusions beyond which he cannot advance, but are helps to him in pursuing his studies, and warnings to him against hindrances and obstructions which past expe- rience shows that he will encounter in pursuing them ; that they are not unfit introductions to a general education in humanity and in physics because they are theological, but on that very account are valuable, because the supersti- tions which interfere with this education are associated with theology, and can only be cleared away by theology ; that the Articles if used for the purposes of study and not as terms of communion for Churchmen generally, which they are not and never can be, may contribute to the reconcilia- tion of what was positive in all Christian sects. ' I spoke of Methodists, Baptists, and even Unitarians ; only that which is negative in each and incapable of reconciliation being cast out. ' Such was the substance of my pamphlet, and you will see, I think, that what I have written since has been intended in various ways to illustrate these maxims. I had a moderately clear instinct when I wrote it that I never could be accept- able to any schools in the Church ; that if I maintained what 182 BE. PUSEY'S TBACT ON BAPTISM, [chap. xii. seemed to me the true position of a Churchman, I must be in hostility more or less marked with each of them. The newest form of parties was only then beginning to develop itself. I did not personally know either Mr. Newman or Dr. Pusey. The first I regarded as an eminent Aristotelian divine and popular tutor, who had been in great sympathy with Dr. "Whately, and who was then following Mr. Keble in his reverence for Charles I., and in devotion to Anglican Episcopacy. The latter I only knew of as a Hebrew and German scholar, who had answered a book of Mr. Hugh Rose on the subject of German Rationalism. Both were at this time strongly opposed to any relaxation of subscription; both appeared to take the Thirty-nine Articles, even more than I did, as representing the belief of the English Church. To both my pamphlet was shown — not at my request — in proof; both I was told accepted it as one contribution to the cause which they were advocating ; both, I have no doubt, disliked the tone of it. In a short time Mr. Newman was the declared antagonist of Luther, the defender of the English Church only as it presented itself in writers like Bishop Bull, who had resisted the reformers' doctrine — that simple belief in Christ is the deliverance from evil and the root of good. That doctrine was still more undermined, as I thought, by Dr. Pusey's tract on Baptism, published a short time after ; a tract which drove me more vehemently back on what I took to be the teaching of our Catechism — that by Baptism we claim the position which Christ has claimed for all mankind. At the same time this conviction put me in direct opposition to the Evangelicals. They were at this time passing into a new phase. They had been the great antagonists of the High and Dry school which had made the Establishment everything, the witness of the Spirit with the individual conscience nothing ; they had become the most vigorous supporters of an Establishment as such — whether Presbyterian or Episcopalian signified little. They had adopted the maxim of Dr. Chalmers — that as men are fallen creatures, religion must be distasteful to them ; that chap, xii.] POSITION OF EVANGELICALS. 183 there will be no natural demand for it, therefore that it must be recommended by all external aids and influences. No doctrine could be so much in harmony with a theology which was built upon the acknowledgment of sin; no doctrine could be so at variance with the notion that it is a Gospel which men have need of, and in their inmost hearts are craving for. Men who had the reverence which I felt for the old Evangelical movement were obliged to choose between these two conflicting ideas, which were now practically pre- senting themselves to every young divine. More and more I was led to ask myself what a Gospel to mankind must be ; whether it must not have some other ground than the fall of Adam and the sinful nature of man. I had [been] helped much in finding an answer to this question by your dear old friend Mr. Erskine's books — I did not then know him per- sonally — and by the sermons of Mr. Campbell. The English Church I thought was the witness for that universal redemp- tion which the Scotch Presbyterians had declared to be incompatible with their Confessions. But this position was strictly a theological one. Every hope I had for human culture, for the reconciliation of opposing schools, for bless- ings to mankind, was based on theology. What sympathy, then, could I have with the Liberal party which was empha- tically anti-theological, which was ready to tolerate all opinions in theology, only because people could know nothing about it, and because other studies were much better pur- sued without reference to it? The Liberals were clearly right in saying that the Articles did not mean to those who signed them at the Universities or on taking orders what I supposed them to mean, and I was wrong. They were right in saying that subscription did mean t to most the renunciation of a right to think, and, since none could renounce that right, it involved dishonesty. All this I have been compelled by the evidence of facts sorrowfully to con- fess. I accept the humiliation. I give the Liberals the triumph which they deserve. But they feel and I feel that we are not a step nearer to each other in 1870 than we 184 TEE BBOAD-CEURCE-MEN. [chap. xii. were in 1835. They have acquired a new name. They are called Broad Churchmen now, and delight to be called so. But their breadth seems to me to be narrowness. They include all kind of opinions. But what message have they for the people who do not live upon opinions or care for opinions ? Are they children of God, or must they now and for ever be children of the devil? The Broad Churchman gives no answer. To me life is a burden unless I can find one. All these parties, I knew when I wrote " Subscription no Bondage," and I know much more fully now, contain men at whose feet I am not worthy to sit. I have longed for sym- pathy with them all. But God has ordered it otherwise. 1 Ever your affectionate father.' 1835.] BEGINS 'MORAL PHILOSOPHY: 185 CHAPTER XIII. " Not only many a particular passage in an author's works may be powerfully illustrated by certain circumstances in his life ; but the very spirit of his style, the moods of thought and feeling to which he is found most constantly resigning himself, may be more distinctly traced and understood by the com- mentary given in the memorials of his fortunes." — Athenmim, June 4, 1828. END OF 1835, 1836 AND EARLY PART OP 1837 — BEGINS 'MORAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY'- — LEAVES BTJBBENHALL FOR GUY'S — LIFE AT GTJY's — IS PROPOSED AS POLITICAL ECONOMY PROFESSOR AT OXFORD — PUBLISHES 1ST AND 2ND ' LETTERS TO A QUAKER,' Whilst he was at Bubbenhall, towards the end of 1835, lie undertook, at the suggestion of Mr. Rose, the editor of the 'Encyclopaedia Metropolitana,' the article on "Moral and Meta- physical Philosophy." The article was to have been written "by Mr. Sewell, but the latter agreed to hand over the task to my father. From this time onwards, this article, as it gradu- ally developed in future editions into his complete treatise on the subject, occupied him with short intervals throughout almost his entire life, either in preparation, study, writing, or revision. On September 22nd, he writes to Hare to express thanks for the efforts which Hare, Sterling and Mr. Rose had made to obtain for him the chaplaincy of Guy's Hospital, at the moment occupied by an elderly man who was expected to resign. The following letter, written to a friend at the end of the year, will show how soon the reaction had come against the High Church movement. He had just paid a flying visit to look at Guy's, and I feel pretty sure that it was during this 186 A WALK TO CLAPHAM. 1835. [chap. xiii. visit to London that he took a somewhat noteworthy walk to Clapham, to attend one of the meetings of the " Clapham sect," as the "Wilberforces, Thorntons, &c, of that day were called. He often spoke of his having taken Dr. Pusey's tract with him on a walk of the kind, and how as he went along it became more and more clear to him that it represented every- thing that he did not think and did not believe, till at last he sat down on a gate, in what were then the open fields of Clapham, and made up his mind that it represented the parting point between him and the Oxford school. He always spoke of it with a kind of shudder, as it were, of an escape from a charmed dungeon. " They never have allowed any one who has once come within their meshes to escape," was often his last sentence on the subject. I am pretty sure, however, that in thus speaking he was more especially thinking of some men who, having been under the " Oxford " influence, have appa- rently altogether escaped from it, and that he meant that the effect upon their minds had never been effaced, no matter what opinions they subsequently adopted. To Bev. B. C. Trench. 1 October 6, 1835. 1 1 was delighted with the establishment,* and I think I should prefer it to a parish, because I am not skilful in suggesting improvements in the temporal condition of the poor, a serious deficiency in the country, but one that will not affect me there. If I could get any influence over the medical students, I should indeed think myself honoured; and though some who have experience think such a hope quite a dream, I still venture to entertain it. * The Hospital. It stood then upon the same ground as it docs now on the Surrey side, just beyond London Bridge, a large square laced on three sides by ugly buildings. The Hospital proper constituted the farther end of the open square, the two sides being occupied by the chapel aud the various offices and officers' houses. The chapel stood in the centre of the right side on entering from London Bridge, the chaplain's house being on the left side in the extreme corner nearest the wards. POPERY ANTI-NATIONAL AND ANTI-CATHOLIC. 187 ' I have felt very bitterly, I might at times say overpoweriugly r your observation respecting the cause of our unconcern about the sin of others. I am not crushed by it, only because I am assured more and more each day that we are, by fixed and ever- lasting institution, members of a body. We try to set up our own independent individuality — but it is a lie. I therefore say to myself, I am united to Christ and my brethren ; it may be hard to believe, but it is so. To live as if it were so is not a high attainment, an anomalous privilege, but conformity to the law of my being, as a Churchman and a man. God, there- fore, I have right to hope, will bring me into that, obedience to which is His own order, and give us to enjoy that gift which He has made mine by every title of conquest, — pardon, inheritance of communion with Him and with my race, granted upon the death of the independent self. I had some proud scruples about obeying the newspapers when preaching against Popery last Sunday ; but as a convent has just started up within two miles of me, and as I do not see why we should not serve God because the devil bids us, I gulped them down. I have felt much what you express upon the subject, though not, as I imagine, so strongly from want of acquaintance with the holier Eomanists, and from having a dry, Protestant, Hollandish temperament. I hate Popery in two ways : as anti-Protestant, that is to say, anti-national, adverse to national distinctions and life ; and, secondly, as anti-Catholic, adverse to ecclesiastical unity and universality. When Protestantism is set up as the law of the Church, when that which is and ought to be exclusively a witness against evil is set up as the very truth which it is to protect, when the useful watch-dog of the courtyard sleeps all night, but spends the day in rushing about the house and biting the legs of inmates and incomers, then I hate it for the same reason as I hate Popery. I fully think that we must assert Catholicism nowadays much more than Protestantism if we will destroy Popery, and yet supply a substitute for democracy ; but yet we must, I think, endeavour thoroughly to understand Pro- testantism, and in its own place cherish it with a fervent 188 BEGINS WORK AT GUY'S. 1836. [chap. xm. love. Oil that our High Churchmen would but be Catholics ! at present they seem to me three parts Papist and one part Protestant ; but the tertium quid, the glorious product of each element so different from both, I cannot discern even in the best of them. Pusey has just written a tract on Baptism, of which I fear this is true.' In January 1836 he took up his residence at Guy's, and began work, though he was not formally appointed till March, the former chaplain being at first in occupation of the chaj)lain's house. The following letter to a friend who had just lost in India a near relation, was written soon after he had settled down in London : — To a Friend. 'Guy's, January 20, 1836. J I have had a letter to you for some days lying on my table, but I did not feel the heart to send it, lest it should only seem to be darkening counsel by words without knowledge. That fear withheld me from expressing the sympathy which I trust I felt for Mrs. X. and yourself in your late trial, which I know must have been very grievous. It is indeed hard to believe the baptismal promise, and those which are made to faithful prayers offered on the strength of it and of the promised love of God to all mankind, when there are no direct indications, or none that we are aware of, to show that these promisej have been fulfilled. But surely there are many reasons, some not too deep even for us to penetrate, why such proofs may be kept from us. If it were only to teach us to depend on something better, or only to keep us waiting for that day which will assuredly discover so many to have been true sheep whose bleatings were only heard by the ears of Him who came so far into the wilderness to look for them, this would seem enough. But there are, undoubtedly, other and still more gracious reasons, which we know not yet, but shall know hereafter. I hope a life in India is not age 30.] THE FALL AND REDEMPTION. 189 quite so unfavourable to the spiritual being as you seem to think. A competent judge, Dr. Corrie, the new bishop of Madras, whose whole time for thirty years has been spent among the servants of the Company, is, I know, of opinion that such a change has taken place in both departments as makes the probability of meeting with men of earnest religion among them considerably greater than in any profession here. I do not wonder at your being tormented with the great question respecting the comparative extent of the Fall and the Redemption. It is just the question by which we of this age are, I suppose, to be most tempted. But the language of the catechism is to me, in general, satisfactory. The human state which the baptised man claims, is a state of salvation, and the world, the flesh, and the devil arc striving to hinder each man from knowing and believing that it is so. I know they harass others, and have harassed me with the suggestion, " It is all a vain subtlety to distinguish between the fact of redemption and the knowledge of it when " (as the redemption has reference to a knowing subject) " the fact without the knowledge is as though it were not." But the answer to the sophism is, " Yes, but the distinction is a most vital and practical one ; for it makes all the difference to the possibility of my knowing and believing whether there is something to be known and believed, or nothing." Why there should be an age in which the whole order of things is settled, but in which men are not yet brought to under- stand it and acquiesce in it, intervening between that age of the yet uncompleted kingdom which we read of and that one of perfect peace and submission which we hope for, I think the very restlessness of our own minds and our willingness to put our own apprehensions in place of the things appre- hended may teach us. Without such a witness for truth as truth, though unbelieved, I think we should not believe that all love and all wisdom are of God, and without this belief ( there could be no happiness or peace. Still there is another answer to the temptation which I have found very useful : — 190 JULIUS HARE'S ESTIMATE [chap. xiii. " I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." This has been proved to me by many experiments ; and it has been proved to the world, too, at such crises as the siege of Jerusalem, when men, God-deserted, have shown that all the so-called natural affections dwelt in them no longer. Then where they do dwell, this is grace not nature, Christ not Adam. All family life, maternal instincts, the whole order must perish unless He were bearing up the pillars of it.' As my father has given his own view of the way in which * Subscription no Bondage ' was received, it seems right to supply the following letter of Hare's to him, which will explain exactly how far that view was accurate as regards one of those to whom he has alluded. The letter was written that Tie might use it if he pleased as a testimonial for his being appointed permanent chaplain in place of acting chaplain, as he liad been hitherto. Rev. Julius Hare to F. D. M. ' Hurstmonceux, February 17, 1836. * Unfortunately my own personal acquaintance with you has never been very intimate, though I soon learnt to entertain a very high opinion of you when you were my pupil at Trinity while I was a lecturer there; and your natural timidity prevented my knowing so much of you as I otherwise might liave done. That is now fourteen or fifteen years ago, and since then we have rarely met ; so that it is by what I have heard and read rather than by what I have myself seen of you, that I have been taught to feel the highest admiration, esteem and regard for the great gifts with which it has pleased God to endow you for the enlightening and strengthen- ing of His Church. Of your intellectual qualifications the electors can hardly require any further witness than what is afforded by your pamphlet " Subscription no Bondage." At least I know no work comparable to it in reach and depth and power of philosophic thought produced by any minister «hap. xin.] OF 'SUBSCRIPTION NO BONDAGE: 11)1 of our church within the last hundred years ; and though my opinion on the immediate topic was and still is different from the one therein maintained, I never read a book which so com- pelled me to love and revere its author. As to a point of still greater importance, I cannot say anything from my own knowledge, but my sister-in-law's* accounts of her visits to your parish assure me that you will be a faithful and diligent servant of Christ in your pastoral duties, for no one can be better fitted than she is forjudging whether a minister is so or no.' On February 27 (1836), he writes to announce to Hare his being appointed, and ends characteristically : — ' I feel much rejoiced that I shall be able (except through my own fault) to keep more aloof from factions here than I could, I think, anywhere else ; for the country is, except in a few happy districts, split into them. London in all its more noisy and popular regions is still worse, and the Universities, I fear, will be worst of all. I should be exceedingly puzzled how to act if I were now in Oxford and had a sufficiently prominent position to make action necessary. Dr. Hampden, I think, was utterly unfit for the Divinity Chair, but whether newspaper controversies and denunciations of heresy may not do more harm to divinity than Lord Melbourne could ever do were he to select ten such men, must be surely a serious question. That Newman will prove him a heretic I do not doubt ; the fear I should have is that he may convict himself by the same process, for this seems generally the hard fate of men who attack a one-sided notion, that they give currency to the other half of it, which in the end proves equally mischievous.' * Mrs. Augustus Hare, the central figure of ' The Memorials of a Quiet Life.' 192 PROMISING TO BE GODFATHER, [chap. xiii. On being asked to be a Godfather. To Rev. B. C. Trench. ' Guy's, February 25, 1836. ' I was hindered from telling you yesterday how much I had been rejoiced by the news in your letter. It is indeed a comfort to hear of a child born into the world under such conditions, and God preserve us from any sinful and shameful doubts about the fulfilment of his free promises to it. Every new child given to those who know what the gift means is surely a token that our race is not deserted, and I know not whether we may not meditate with contrition and fear upon those words (referring them, of course, to the happy prospects for the world and not to our salvation, concerning which we have no right to use such doleful language) "your children whom you said should be a prey shall see the good land, though you die in the wilderness." Perhaps the sorrow and conflict may be for us, and the good things for the " genera- tion to come "; and this is a pleasant thought for a father at any rate and for us, too, so far as it is given us to sympathize in fatherly feelings. ' Your very kind proposal respecting your child is most gra- tifying to me, and I cannot refuse the honour though very conscious how unworthy I am of it, though I could wish you had found some one better able to bear the burden with you. But it is so very pleasant to have a new link to connect myself with you that I am afraid I do not give this considera- tion its proper weight. ' I think Sterling will be preaching in the Temple when you come to London, so that you will be able to judge for yourself. I have only heard him once, and that in short extempore (literally so) sermons to my own people in Warwickshire, from which I could not infer anything as to the general effect of his preaching. I have heard, however, with much regret, that the impression of him among the Templars generally is not favourable ; rhetoric is, I suppose, his snare, and I sometimes ]836.J THE QUIET LIFE OF A HOSPITAL. 193 fear that he must he knocked aho-ut much, and run his head against many posts before he will he able to walk quite steady and to lead others after him. I have much to answer for in not speaking to him as frankly as I ought, and as I think he would be quite willing that I should. But the constant discovery of graces and virtues in him which I lack, apart from all sense of intellectual inferiority, makes me simply ashamed to open my lips even in the way of reproof, and when I am induced to make any strong assertions against him in argument (which happened only last night) I am so self-con- demned for my vehemence and for having taken the wrong- method, and above all, for having yielded to that impulse of contradiction which I chiefly regret in him, that I only become more silent. ' I hope God will teach me better in this matter ; Sterling is always a most kind, often a faithful friend to me. I like Guy's increasingly.' To Mrs. 31. 3Iaurice, from Guy's. 1 1 am also quite sure that this kind of visiting suits me much better. I am not so well calculated to enter into the little concerns and businesses of the poor as a great many, and as every person in a parish ought to be ; at the same time, when I am not doing something in this way, I feel a grievous hardness and selfishness of heart coming over me. Now here everybody is withdrawn from the bustle of affairs, and is, in a measure, ready for sympathy and for spiritual discourse. I have great pleasure in collecting the patients in a ward round the bedside of one of the most ill, and reading and explaining the Scriptures to them ; and the sisters are always ready to make arrangements for this purpose. The hospital has been so long under good discipline that, as yet, I have met with no obstructions from any of them, or from any quarter.' My father wished for a pupil as soon as he was settled at Guy's. Mr. Strachey had been prevented by ill-health from VOL. I. O 194 EEPOBTS ON OWN QUALIFICATIONS [chap xm. going up to a University, for which at twenty-four years of age he was anxious to prepare, and having "been much attracted by ' Subscription no Bondage,' wrote to Sterling to ask my father to read with him. The answer was as follows : — ■ To Mr. Edivard Strachey. ' Guy's Hospital, March 10, 1836. 1 My dear Sir, ' I was prevented from answering your very kind letter im- mediately, and I fear that I cannot now give as satisfactory a statement of my position as would enable you to judge whether I should be the proper person to undertake the tem- porary superintendence of your studies. The truth is that till next Wednesday I shall not be formally appointed to the chaplaincy of this institution ; and, though I believe there is no doubt of my being then chosen to it, I understand that it would not be becoming in me to enter into any definite arrangements on the presumption of my being fixed here. Still I have not the least reason to suppose that (as far as outward circumstances are concerned) I shall not be as able as I expressed myself to Sterling willing and eager to enter upon so very pleasant an occupation. I will, however, write to you immediately after the decision of the governors, and then I shall be able to state exactly how we shall be circum- stanced as to a house. ' It might look like affectation to hint that there are much graver reasons which should, perhaps, induce me to hesitate in availing myself of your far too favourable opinion respecting my qualifications. Were a steady and laborious self-discipline, persevered in from childhood, and producing its natural fruits of quiet, orderly mental habits, the great requisite in a tutor — I should feel that no one was more entirely unfit for that office than myself. All the information I have which could serve in any degree for the guidance of another, has been derived from blunders oft repeated, from long periods of aimless search and melancholy listlessness, bringing after age 30.] AS A TUTOB. 195 them shame and despondency, but resulting, I would humbly hope, through the mercy which makes all things work together for good, in some self-acquaintance, some abhor- rence of self-will, and some desire to show my brethren how they may avoid quicksands in which I sank, and how they may attain a harbour which, if I may not say I have reached, I am at least sure that I descry. " If this experience — not of the world, of which I have no acquaintance, but of some confusions to which young men in this age are liable — is not worth so much as that simple, earnest and pure temper of mind which some, without any such miserable processes, have attained, at least it is a gift not to be despised by those who have no better, and on whom, for some wise reasons, it has been bestowed ; and I should be delighted if this, whatever be its value, might be made serviceable to you.' Also to Mr. E. Stracliey. ' March 18, 1836. ****** 'I am sure you will be grieved to hear that my dear friend Sterling is awaking the very serious apprehensions of all who care for him. The affection in his chest which forced him to go to the West Indies four years ago has returned, and his medical attendant has positively prohibited him from doing any clerical duty. TJiat, I fear, he will never be able to resume. I cannot quite bring myself to doubt of his ultimate restora- tion, but at present there seems more ground for fear than hope. The Church and the world seem to be losing some of the men of whom there was most reason to hope good ; but I am sure both are in better hands than ours.' Also to Mr. E. Stracliey. * Monday, March 28, 183G. ' I have not seen Sterling for above a week, as he yielded very wisely to the advice of his medical man that he would exclude all visitors except his father and mother. He o 2 196 JOHN STEELING. [ciiap. xiii. is in rather low spirits, not, I think, on his own account, for he has for several years looked upon death as the true end of death,* but because he has not learned to exercise quite the same faith respecting his wife and children as for himself. His apprehension of an unfavourable result is thought a good sign, as being so unlike the usual feeling of consumptive patients ; and he is, besides, free from fever, and has generally a low pulse. I cannot quite bring myself to believe but that his illness is part of a gentle discipline to make him of more use to his fellow-men ; but I know how falsely we reckon on such matters, and how strong my bias is to such an opinion. I shall be very much pleased to see you on the day you mention.' A delay, however, occurred, inconsequence of Mr. Strachey's illness, and led to the following proposition : — 'My dear Sir, ' Guy's Hospital, April- 18, 1836. ' I received the intelligence in your last letter with very sincere regret ; though I am thoroughly convinced that no i such trial can happen out of its right time and order, or can: do otherwise than minister to the best good of those who will understand its meaning. Still, I am very much grieved that you should be called back into the work of suffering — high and honourable work as it is — when you were looking forward to action. In some sinful moments, we who are, or ought to be, in that province and experiencing the troubles and tempta- tions to which it is exposed, may almost sigh for the ex- emption from discharged duties and responsibilities which sickness brings with it ; but if ever the wish has been, in ai very slight degree, granted me, I have always perceived that the duty of submission was one which I was quite as little able to fulfil, and which needed quite as much grace as the others. That you will receive this and learn many more and deeper lessons than you could in any other school. I am well assured ; the time will not be therefore lost, and ] can only hope it will bo very short. * ' Of death, called life ; which us from life doth sever.' — Milton. 1836.] PROPOSED COURSE OF LETTERS. 197 : If it should strike you that I could write you any thoughts on any subject connected with your future pursuits at the Uni- versity and elsewhere, and that it would not fatigue you to read rny letters, I shall feel much satisfaction in securing in this way at least a part of the pleasure I had promised myself from your acquaintance. But you and your medical attendant are the only fit judges whether it would be safe for you to use such exertion of mind. If writing should be thought bad for you, pray do not trouble yourself even to reply to the proposal. " I am still forbidden to see Sterling. In the last note I had from him he seemed in better spirits; but I fear his medical attendant is not encouraged about him.' On 25th of May, 1836, he writes again : — ****** ' During the summer, in which there are few courses of medical lectures delivered, I have undertaken to lecture twice a week on Moral Philosophy to the students. Possibly the method I follow in these lectures, of which I have delivered five, might give a hint as to our reading, though this is only in case that kind of study should have more attractions for you than some other. I think it is well to have some one subject to which we refer all others and which we use them to illustrate. In the case of the students here, I thought Moral Philosophy more suitable than Theology ; though I can scarcely advance a step in it without finding myself among theological questions. The subject I have divided into three parts. In the first I treat of the Affections, or attachments ; in the second of our sense of Personality, conscience, duty, law ; in the third of the Objects for which we are to act and live. Of course this is a wide and interesting field ; it may perhaps tend more di- rectly to the solution of your difficulties and to the discovery of a method for study than any other route we could take. If what you say respecting your feelings of intellectual and spiritual disability be not exaggerated by your present sense of bodily indisposition, you have given me a new point of sym- 198 BE3IINISCENCES OF HIS THEN PUPIL, [chap. xiii. patliy with you. Without your excuse, I know too well what these feelings are. Between the notions that our union to a Spiritual Being is not real and that it is natural, men's minds, if I may judge by my own, are continually liable to oscillate. The first begets feeble and desponding exertions to produce it ; the second, a vain wonder that the happy feelings which it should surest do not come of their own accord into us. When we can once assure ourselves, that it is so, for us and all men, whether we believe it or not, and yet that it is some- thing above our nature ; then I think faith and peace begin. Faith first and feeling afterwards is, I believe, the rule which we are always trying to reverse.' Notes by Sir E: Stracliey. 1 Maurice had not long entered on the duties of the chaplaincy when I arrived ; his sister Priscilla kept house for him, as she had done at Bubbenhall, and as she continued to do till his marriage. His affection for all his sisters and for his mother, who were frequently staying at Guy's, was a very noticeable feature of his character. I do not remember seeing his father at that time at Guy's ; but to him he was greatly attached. He had the same gentle, shy, depressed manner which he had through life ; the shyness and depression being, as may be supposed, far greater then than afterwards. I remember one evening his saying, half to himself, " The world is out of joint," and on his sister Priscilla replying in a lively tone, " Then you must set it right," he added, " Ah ! that is the misery, as the poet says ' " Ah ! cruel spite, That ever I was born to set it right ! " in a tone which showed how deeply and painfully he felt what he said. He seemed to me always lamenting, always re- proaching himself with his deficiencies in the powers of prac- tical life : and certainly he was very unpractical in ordinary matters. He had daily prayers in the chapel for such patients as were well enough to attend ; then he visited the 1836. j OBDINABY LIFE AT GUY'S. 199 sick wards, and afterwards he read Plato, the Greek Testa- ment, and Cousin's Tennemann's " History of Philosophy " with me. He was much interested in the medical students, and on the approval of Mr. Harrison, the treasurer and manager of the hospital, he gave them lectures on Moral Philosophy. His endeavours to improve their position found sympathy both with Mr. Harrison and Mr. Eose, then the Rector of St. Thomas's, the parish in which the Hospital of Guy's as well as that of St. Thomas was ; and I believe that whatever was done for this class of young men at King's College after Mr. Eose became principal, must be traced to Maurice's efforts at Guy's. ' I suppose it was a good deal from shyness and humility, though partly perhaps from a sense of the divergence of their paths, that Maurice did not, on now returning to live in London, see much of old friends with whom he had associated while studying the law. He one day met Wilson, the editor of the "Globe," and asked him to dinner, but I do not remember meeting him there on any other occasion, though I think they had lived together in chambers. Carlyle, Scott, Eose, and Acland, I occasionally saw at Guy's. Sterling was of course often there till he left for Madeira, I think, that autumn. There too, I began my acquaintance with Clark,* who had, I think, only just become known to Maurice himself. I remem- ber Maurice one day coming home from the Exhibition, and saying that he had seen "Wordsworth, and that in talking of Shelley, Wordsworth had said that Shelley's poem on the Lark was full of imagination, but that it did not show the same observation of nature as his (Wordsworth's) own poem on the same bird did. He (Wordsworth) also said that Chatterton was the most marvellous genius in his opinion ; that he had produced greater fruits of poetic genius than any other man at his age had done. ' Distinct as my impressions are of those days, and of Maurice himself as he then was, there seems to be little or nothing to * "The Quaker" to whom 'The Letters to a Quaker' were written, after- wards Eev. S. Clark, always one of the most valued of my father's friends. 200 BE3IINISCENCES OF GUY'S. [chap. xiii. tell of what lie said or did. Yet this makes me feel, though I may not be able to convey this feeling to others, how good and great he was, that my impression of his goodness and greatness should be so distinct as it is. All that he was in after life, and to the end of his life, he was already in that period of comparative youth. There was the same clear, bright, active intellect ; the same thirst for knowledge and power of rapidly acquiring it from books and men ; the same imagination, love of humour, and sympathy with other men's thoughts ; the same originality in thinking for himself, and expressing his own thoughts, so that he seemed from the first a teacher and master, not a learner and disciple. And then, as always afterwards, he was even greater morally and spiritually than he was in intellect. For his intellect was but the fit instrument of a will and character which were thoroughly humane, because they were kept by a saint- like personal piety in constant union with God. Then, as always afterwards, the habitual tone of his thoughts and words was that of a man singularly conscientious and just, tolerant and forbearing, humble, gentle, tender, and loving. ' He used to protest that he had strong health, and to reproach himself for not working harder : but though his brain was undoubtedly very strong, he always seemed, to me frail and delicate, and he then, as always, habitually over-worked himself, till he fancied that physical exhaustion was want of conscientious energy. It was impossible to think that he had the physical strength such as supplied a Wellington or a Palmerston with fit instruments for carrying through the determination of their mind and will. Nor could I ever think, and I have asked myself the question often again during the thirty-six years of our intimate friendship, that Maurice had a strong will in the ordinary sense in which it must be possessed by every successful soldier and statesman, and which will compel even a weak body to do its work. He was in those early days, as always, the strongest man I have ever known, if it be strength to do steadily to the end the work that is set before a man, undeterred by any doubts or 1836.] REMINISCENCES OF GUTS. 201 difficulties however great and many ; yet I am sure he would have said — and I believe that it was true — that the strength was not his own, but that of a higher will than his own working through his weakness. It was the strength, not of self-assertion but of self-surrender ; the strength of Paul, and of Christ ; it was the consciousness of the prophet and the apostle that he was called to a work which he accepted as the business of his life, but which he could only do by a strength greater than his own. It has been well said that no words can more exactly describe the mission of Maurice than those of St. John : " A man sent from God. . . . the same came for a ivitness to bear ivitness of the Light." With all his humility, with all his consciousness of his weakness for the work, he never doubted his mission, but felt and knew that he was sent from God, to bear witness of the light. Here he was strong, and the source of strength to others. To how many of us has that saintly life and presence borne witness of the light even when we have been unable to see it for ourselves. If he, so wise and good beyond other men, could live and die in the assurance of the reality of this Light, he has borne a witness of its reality of which they who knew him best, know best the power. ' When I call to mind what English theology, philosophy, and politics were in 1836, and think of what they are now, and who has wrought this change, the image of that wisest and best of men, and truest and most loving of friends, rises before me as he was in those early days when I first knew him ; but I can say no more than that he was to me then what in each successive year since that time so many others have found him to be to them : — ' " But there is more than I can see, And what I see I leave unsaid, Nor speak it, — knowing Death has made, His darkness beautiful with thee." ; My first letters to Lady Louis, after my arrival at Guy's, have not been preserved ; but from all that she did keep, and which have been returned to me, I have made the following extracts. 202 CONTEMPOBABT LETTEBS. [chap. xiii. And I cannot at this distance of time add muck to them to describe a life in which there was little external incident, though the deepest spiritual interest, during the six months I remained at Guy's.' Extracts from Letters from Mr. Straehey to Ms Aunt, Lady Louis. ' You will be amused when I tell you that if either Mill's " Analogy of the Human Mind " or Bentham's " Principles of Morals and Legislation " had been at hand, we should have taken one of them as the text-book of our reading. As all that has been said on both sides is to be considered, it is immaterial (as Mr. Maurice says) whether the book is right or wrong ; for if wrong, it will give just as much opportunity for investigating the other side, as if right. As it is, we have taken a " History of Philosophy in all Ages " (by Tenne- mann). Mr. Maurice says that the only true way of con- sidering philosophy is in its connection with the life of the world, and not as a set of merely intellectual speculations and systems.' ***** 4 August 18, 1836. ' Maurice is going to write a series of Letters on Baptism. I am to be his amanuensis. This is partly to accommodate him, as he hates writing for himself, and partly for my own advantage, as I am very desirous of understanding the sub- ject : and if I do not write the Letters myself, I must wait till they are published before I can read them ; to read them in the original hieroglyphics of his handwriting would be absolutely impossible. You, who have only seen his very good writing to me, can have no conception of what he can achieve in that department. It is very remarkable that his occupation in the Church should be that of preaching to the very poor ; first in his country parish without a single gen- tleman, and now to the patients here, who are chiefly of the lowest classes. As he endeavours most faithfully to suit his preaching to their capacity, it is extremely simple and plain.' 1S36.J CONTEMPORARY LETTERS. 203- 1 September 4, 1836. ' . . . Maurice does not appear to me to be a great reader, though he has a far greater respect for facts than Coleridge had. He appears to consider this to have been a great defect in Coleridge. Maurice said the other day, that if we ignore facts we change substances for suppositions, — that which really does stand under an appearance for something which we put under it by our imaginations. . . . Maurice has not made much progress yet in his Letters on Baptism, because he has begun them three times ; but I think he will continue the last plan. His object (and this is his method on all subjects) is to show that in each of the party views there is a great truth asserted ; that he agrees with each party in the assertion, and maintains that it cannot defend them too strongly; but he says each is wrong when it becomes the denier of the truth of the others, and when it assumes its portion of the truth to be the whole. The three parties as regards baptism, are the High Church, the Evangelical, and the Educational, or party who think with Mr. Budd that the efficacy of baptism depends on the faith of the parent. ****** ' Maurice speaks with great respect of Madame Guyon and Sterry. I don't think he likes Law. . . . He remarked about Law that he lived at a period when the importance of the national and Church principles were little felt. The denial and attempted destruction of them in the French Eevolution has since re- awakened some sense of them. . . . Coleridge used to say that he felt it his business to seek for light even at the expense of warmth ; and that, on the whole, he got more of the latter than he should otherwise have done. Maurice says he has great sympathy with him in this. Maurice says it is the most difficult thing in these days for a man to realise his connection with the nation ; that which appears to have come up naturally in the minds of men, some centuries back, can now scarcely be attained by any effort. He says he is con- vinced that the reason why we find the minor prophets so 204 INCOMPATIBLE QUALITIES IN A WIFE. [chap. xiii. obscure is because we cannot enter into the strong national life which they speak of and to. National life is and always has been necessarily connected with personal distinctness, and all the public societies of the present day are utterly opposed to this principle ; the person is lost sight of in the multitude of individual atoms which make up the mass. Every crisis of the life of a nation has brought forth poets. Whenever they have appeared, you will find that national life was in an active state, and brought them forth as one of its effects.' A letter which bears date the day following that of the above will show that his own thoughts were taking on one subject a direction not yet known to his friend and pupil. It may be read a little between the lines. (From F. D. M.) 'Guy's, September 5, 1836. 1 My deae Acland, ' There is a sadness certainly in the feeling that you have no guide or doctor upon earth to swear by, and no warm coterie to take refuge in from the night air. But there are compen- sations. If we have not a party, we must have a Church ; if we have not visible teachers, we must look out for an unseen one. I do not say this is always enough for us poor creatures of flesh and blood, and I think with you that one cannot do better than seek for sympathy by that means through which God has graciously ordained that some at least may obtain it ; but a wife is not to be had every day. Mine must possess some rather incompatible qualities ; such goodness and wisdom as would make me choose her for a companion, and such mental hallucination and perverseness as will lead her to think me a tolerable one for her. This being the case, I believe I shall perforce Newmanise, protesting, however, against his doctrine all the time, and very earnestly exhorting you with all speed to show your practical contempt of it. M cannot say from my own experience whether you are right in 183C] DB. PUSETS TRACT ON BAPTISM. 205 your opinion that the Oxford Tract doctrines are spreading. The most earnest men I know, especially those who to diligent theological study add parochial duty among the poor, have expressed to me the great distress which Dr. Pusey's Tracts on Baptism have caused them, though they were as little inclined as myself to acquiesce in the Evangelical notions on that subject. ' Mr. Eose by no means agrees in Pusey's views of repentance, and told me that they troubled him very much when he first read them. "With him — Mr. Eose — I have had very pleasant intercourse, and have found him most kind, courteous, humble and Christian-like, not to say personally more of him, the very man who should not edit a magazine. ' My pamphlet has got me a very delightful pupil about twenty- four years old, for whom, therefore, as for many other favours, I am indebted to you.' Mr. Strachey to Lady Louis. 1 September 21, 183G. — You once expressed a wish to be sure that Maurice had as much personal religion as knowledge of spiritual truth. I think you have since learnt enough to satisfy you on this point ; but you will be interested in hear- ing that Miss B., speaking of him, said, " He is a man of much prayer ; his sisters told me that when he was with them they frequently found that he had not been in bed all night, having spent the whole night in prayer." ' ' October' 14, 1836. — Maurice thinks this party (the Oxford High Church) one-sided, and says they are under the influence of the destructive spirit of the age, at times endeavouring to pull down other men's truth because it is not the same portion as their own. I heard him say that he had read Pusey's Tract with the greatest pain, and the conclusion he came to after it was that if it were true he might as well leave off preaching, for he could have no message to declare to men from God. Still, he says that Dr. Pusey sets out a most important truth with regard to baptism — a truth utterly neglected and denied •206 IS WHAT IS REVEALED TRUE IN ITSELF, by the Evangelical party. . . . Maurice says all sects are fast breaking up, and preparing to vanish away, that we may again have one Church throughout Christendom — a Church the parts of which will be nationally and universally united under their true Head, instead of being confounded under a pope or separated into sects. Thus the child will be father of the man. The world in its manly state will come out of the perplexities and errors into which its boyish efforts after self-consciousness and independence have brought it ; and it will then receive gladly and in their full development those original truths which it once accepted with implicit faith and a childlike simplicity.' Mr. Strachey to Lady Louis (continued). * October 27, 1836. — .... Maurice has had rather a temptation to leave this in a proposal to go as tutor to Downing College Cambridge, but he decided that he was more likely to be useful here. ... I have heard Maurice say more in dis- praise of the Oxford Church party since I came back than before. He regrets very much that they fancy themselves witnesses against the Evangelical (experimental) religionists and the Eationalists, thus becoming deniers instead of assertors. Maurice says that these men have not the least understanding of the use of the Eeformation ; they have no idea that it was a good thing, a stage in the scheme of the Divine education. And while they uphold the authority of the Church, and require men to receive its doctrines in childlike simplicity, they dislike it to be declared that these doctrines are the truth, and therefore were revealed by God before men could apprehend them by reason, preferring rather to take them as mere authoritative dogmas. Thus they would have the world ever continue in childhood, instead of advancing through boyhood to manhood ; and they are unable to appreciate the two latter periods, or to see that in the last is the perfection of the first, which they exclusively value. Maurice seems to doubt whether Newman is a Platonist ; lie says it is the great evil of everything at Oxford that there OB ONLY TO BE ACCEBTED BECAUSE DECBEED ? 207 is nothing but Aristotelianism. And I find it was the supe- riority of Cambridge in this respect that made him think it so much better for me to go to the latter University. Maurice says all little children are Platonists, and it is their education which makes men Aristotelians. [I think I re- member that this was said on my pointing out an observa- tion of Coleridge's, that some men were lorn Platonists and some Aristotelians.] ' * November 3, 1836. — .... Maurice has been at Cambridge for a day since I wrote last, about the tutorship of Downing College ; but since his return he has resolved to keep to his former determination of not accepting it. A new master has just been appointed to Downing, who purposes establishing a new order of things, making theology and Christian philosophy the centre of all studies, and discouraging the reading for honours. Of course to be invited to assist in carrying into effect such a scheme, so exactly according to what he considers the right principle of University educa- tion, must have been very tempting. But, as far as I can judge, it is much better that he should remain here ; for a person of his desponding temperament would, I think, hardly be equal to the difficulties of reforming a college and esta- blishing a new order of things ; and there would be circum- stances of peculiar difficulty, since the appointment of the Master himself is questioned, and likely to be brought into the Court of Chancery. And from all I can hear, his influ- ence here among the medical students is increasing, and likely to be very beneficial ; and it seems a great pity that he should give up all this positive good for that which is only possible and contingent. I am sorry to say Miss Maurice continues very ill. . . . She has no idea she shall recover, not expecting to live many months. ... I asked her if she was sure it was right not to tell her brother what she thought of the probable approach of death, but she satisfied me that it would answer no good purpose, only paining him exces- sively, and quite unfitting him for the ordinary duties of 208 THE MILLENNIUM. [chap. xiii. life. ... I think she told me that they always found it best to tell him as little as possible of the dangerous state of Emma before her death. . . . ' I think I can give you something more of Maurice's views about the Millennium and second coming of Christ than when you asked me before, as I have been lately talking to him about it. He says we are in the Millennium, and that Christ's reign upon earth began after the destruction of Jerusalem. At that period, or soon after, the Man- God, the Eoman Emperor, who certainly was in the place of God throughout the world, was deprived of his real power, though his dominion was a long while breaking up. All the Book of Revelation Maurice understands to refer to the dis- pensation which then commenced, and which is still going on. He says the Church is taken into that holy, spiritual state there spoken of, though it is only after its members pass out of this world and join the Church triumphant that they realise and fully understand that state. . . . ' Maurice says he cannot see the doctrine of the restoration of all fallen beings, and thinks that if it be so, we need a revelation to declare it. He seems to think (if I undertand him rightly) that it may be possible for a being to exercise his own free will in resisting God till it becomes impossible for him to be influenced by any good.' F. D. M. to Rev. B. C. Trench. ' October 17, 1836. ' I have seen something lately of Scott,* Irving's former assis- tant, who wrote two very striking tracts on the will of God and acquaintance with God. I am much interested in him and with what he tells me of Erskine. ' His difficulty about Baptism is to feel what it tells more than you have a right to tell any heathen. I can sympathise much in that feeling, but I think it is a wrong one. I am deeply persuaded that a covenant presupposes an actual relation; and therefore object wholly to those phrases * Mr. A. J. Scott, afterwards Principal "of Owens College." PROFESSORSHIP OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, 0XF011I). 200 (common to High Churchmen and Evangelicals) which speak of the relation as if it were constituted by the covenant, hut I see now much more clearly than I did that every man practically denies the relationship who does not enter into the covenant (in which word I include claiming it for his children), and that he puts himself and them in quite a different position by entering into it! : Without a covenant we are not members of a Body ; the Spirit dwells in the Body, and in each of its members as such, and not as individuals. The Spirit in an individual is a fearful contradiction. The difference as to preaching seems to be — You declare forgiveness of sins as belonging to men-kind, and invite them to become (which they have not been hitherto) portions of the kind — the Church ; to the others you say — You are forgiven, you have the Spirit.' Mr Strachey to Lady Louis. ' November 23, 1836. — .... His sister (Priscilla) has told me lately that the only way to get upon the ground of real sympathy and friendship with him is to advance more than half-way, and to let him see and feel that I take that interest in him and his concerns which any one else would con- sider an intrusion, unless he had made the first advances.' The following letter to Hare will explain the fact that having just declined to be appointed to a tutorship at Cambridge, towards which all his sympathies led him, he now allowed him- self to be put forward as a candidate at Oxford : — From F. D. M. to Rev. Julius Hare. 1 Guy's Hospital, November 29, 1S30. ' My dear Sir, * I am afraid that you may hear from some other person than myself of a step which I have been very reluctantly induced to take, and which may seem to you strange after the decision to which I came, as reluctantly, in my negotiation with VOL. I. P 210 WHY HE CONSENTS TO STAND. [chap. xm. your kind friend Mr. Worsley the Master of Downing. The Professorship of Political Economy at Oxford falls vacant next February, and to rny utter astonishment some of my friends at Oxford wrote to me to beg that I would allow them to put me in nomination. I instantly declined ; told them that I was the most unfit person in the world for such an ofiice, and on writing to Sterling the same day mentioned the proposition as a joke. But Mr. Sewell, who has been in London since I declined it, has urged so strongly upon me the duty of taking any opportunity to assert principles, especially on those subjects in which the world is interested, and on which so many pseudo-principles are current, that I hesitated ; and finding there was no one else ready to come forward on this ground, that political eco- nomy is not the foundation of morals and politics, but must have them for its foundation or be worth nothing, I have consented to be proposed. My opponent is Merivale, a man of much higher reputation in the University than I am, and much more likely to succeed ; but as he wrote the article on " Coleridge's Table Talk," in the " Edinburgh Eeview," I do not feel any compunction in opposing him. I am not the least, anxious to succeed, but only that my friends should not suppose me willingly presumptuous in standing. I shall of course endeavour to master the details of the subject— with its principles, alas ! I am not acquainted, for I cannot call the notions which I find in the books about it by that august name. But I think by being careful to show what it is not, and how it is related to other sciences, one may put others on a method of discerning principles — and a method, I suppose, is valuable to whatever subject it is applied. If the uni- versity can do anything to save us from being a nation of money-getters, it should surely try, and I should feel it no dishonourable ofiice to be a hewer of wood to it while it was so engaged. The acceptance of this office will not interfere with my duties in London, which is the difference between it and the tutorship at Downing. With grateful remembrances to Mrs. Augustus Hare.' 1836.] THE EPISTLE TO TEE CORINTHIANS. 211 Mr. Stracliey to Lady Louis. ' December 13, 183G. ' I am reading the first Epistle to the Corinthians with Maurice. He says the subject of this epistle is Church Unity. St. Paul first speaks of the various sects into which the church at Corinth was divided : those who said they were of Cephas, the High-churchmen who put their trust in the covenant, the law, &c, the followers of Paul, the Experimentalists and Doctrinalists, and the Rationalists, who set up Apollos the Alexandrian Jew (for it was the Jews of Alexandria who carried Greek philosophy to its perfection by uniting their own religion with it). Paul condemns all these sects, and while he does not deny that each has a side of truth, good in its proper place, he shows what is the right way of looking at their several ministers, and declares that Christ crucified is the only bond of union, just as he preaches Christ ascended the principle of righteousness in the Eomans. The apostle proceeds in the fifth and sixth chapters to show that these divisions have rendered them so blind to the very idea of a Church, that they cannot perceive that the pollution of the member is the pollution of the whole body, and that the whole must be injured by every sin of its members. In the seventh, eighth, and ninth chapters he treats of Christian expediency and prudential morality, and puts it on its right ground, having its proper relation to the highest principles. In the tenth and eleventh chapters he treats of the Sacraments ; in the twelfth, of spiritual gifts, and explains the true idea of a Church ; in the thirteenth and fourteenth, he shows how the right side of spiritual gifts depends wholly on charity. Lastly, he enters into the question of the Piesurrection, in order to correct the erroneous views which always spring up in churches where Antinomian heresies prevail.' ' December 16, 1836. — .... Maurice says, that just as Gibbon's great desire was to be considered a fine gentleman, while the supposition that he was a scholar, instead of being received as p 2 212 FIRST LETTER 'TO QUAKERS FOR CHURCHMEN: a compliment, was the greatest annoyance, so he feels when his friends deny him all claim to being a practical man, and lavish their approbation on his philosophical speculations ; that he would gladly renounce the latter for the sake of the former ; nay, that the way in which he is always looked on as an unpractical man is the heaviest mortification of his life. ' He has given up his Letters on Baptism, and is writing others on Quakerism at the urgent request of Mr. Clark, whom I have mentioned to you. They are to come out on the first of every month, beginning with the first of January . . .' To Rev. R. C. Trench. ' January, 1837. * I have delayed answering your letter, partly that I might be able to convince you by proof that I have not neglected your wise admonition as to the duty of giving theology the precedence of all other subjects in my discourses to the world as well as in my secret meditations. The series of letters of which I send you the first, will, you perceive, if I am permitted to complete it, embrace most of the subjects upon which we have been used to converse, and which we have agreed that it is most necessary to this age to under- stand. What seemed to me clear and undoubted indications led me to throw them into the form of Letters to a Quaker. And I feel as I advance in them that it is in every way the most convenient form. But the thought has never forsaken me, el 7rco9 TTapatyfh,(jd crwyyeveis /u,ov . . . oiv al hiad?)Kat* * I do not wish the Quakers to understand the nature of a Church better than Churchmen, but I sometimes fancy that a few of them will, if we do not awake to the meaning of our ordi- nances and institutions. I shall be very anxious for any remarks you may be kind enough to make upon this first letter. It is not a mere compliment to ask for such, as you see they may make a great difference to those which follow. * The words arc riot an exact quotation, but partly taken from Romans xi. 14, partly adapted from Romans ix. 3, 4. Similarly adapting from the Revised Version, they would run, " It' by any means I may provoke to jealousy my brethren, whose are the covenants." chap, xiii.] AUGUSTUS H ABE'S SERMONS. 213 To Rev. Julius Hare. 'Guy's Hospital, January 20, 1837. ' I have written to Mrs. Augustus Hare to thank her for her most valuable present of your brother's sermons, but I cannot help expressing to you also how thankful I am that they have been published. They seem to me the most interesting and beautiful piece of cottage divinity that I ever met with, and I should think if they were not important for so many other reasons, the proof they give that the mysteries of the Gospel may be preached to the poor, and that accomplished scholars, if endowed with higher graces, are the very best fitted to preach it, is in these days worth anything to the Church. ... I have wished for some weeks to send you the copy of a tract I have written for the Quakers. It is the first of a series. ' I write to Quakers, but in a great measure for Churchmen, whom I think that I can reach in this manner better than in any other, expressing more that I wish to say, with less presumption.' He had not realised at this time, as he did soon afterwards, that the proposal to get him elected to the Professorship of Political Economy was part of a scheme then set on foot by the leaders of the Oxford movement to obtain possession for their party of the chief chairs in the University ; but he did per- fectly understand that he was to receive the support of most of those who had connected themselves with the movement. He had never at any time been ready to join them as a party man, but since he had given them aid at the time of the publication of ' Subscription no Bondage,' his feelings towards them, or at all events towards Dr. Pusey, had undergone a very great change. Dr. Pusey's Tracts on Baptism were in his view throughout life the true representative notes of the party as a party. He said for instance in later life that their publication and their importance in relation to the movement justified the statement made by Dr. Newman in his ' Apologia ' that 214 SECOND LETTEB TO QUAKER "ON BAPTISM." Dr. Pusey's joining Lira and bis friends bad given to wbat bad been beforeband a mere gatbering togetber of sympathisers weight and authority. What expressed to him the distinction between his view and Dr. Pusey's was the statement that Dr. Pusey regarded "Baptismal Piegeneration " as a change of nature, whilst he regarded it as the coming out of the infant under the first influence of a light that had always been shining for it and all the world. He appealed to the analogy of birth of which " Regeneration " was only the paraphrase, and asked whether at the time of birth the infant did in fact undergo a change of nature or did come for the first time under influences which were not less existing for all mankind before it was born. It is right, however, to notice that privately to him Dr. Pusey denied having used the expression " change of nature," though he did not modify the phrases which my father thought could be interpreted in no other way. But his chief anxiety was that his views on this subject should be thoroughly understood by those who wished him to be their candidate. He was therefore, after many delays, re- writings, and postponements such as have been described in previous letters, now driven to publish his thoughts by the fact of the election, and as he very well foresaw to ensure his defeat at it, though he had yielded to those who wished him to stand. His second letter to a Quaker was on Baptism. Advice as to Study. ' Early in February, 1837. ' My dear Steachey, ' That you should feel yourself at all the more qualified for your new studies in consequence of the half year you passed with me would surprise me beyond all ex- pression, if I had not been taught by proofs which have overcome all my natural unbelief and despondency that the Spirit does speak in us and through us without our co-opera- tion and almost without our cognizance. It is more marvellor.s to me than any gift of tongues, that I have in several instances been thus made a minister of God's gracious CONSIDERATIONS AS TO COURSE OF STUDY. 215 purposes, when I have been worse than merely passive, when there was in me an intolerable vis inertia? besides active doubts and struggles which mightily resisted the gracious power that wrought in me. It is another, and higher, grace to be a joyful fellow-worker with this Holy Spirit, to enter into His plans, to hasten to fulfil His commands, that is a mercy indeed, the willingness which as St Paul said in his own case had a mighty reward. But if I can keep myself at work and awake by saying to myself I have a dispensation entrusted to me, woe is me if I do not fulfil it, even this is better than being idle or quite asleep. And something better than this, even a spirit of hope and thankfulness seems vouchsafed to me when I hear that God is so graciously willing to do good to His children by my means. 'I believe, after much thinking, I am more than ever strengthened in my opinion, that in this age at least, we are not to lay down plans of study and life, which have been contrived with a view simply or principally to the apparent wants of our own minds, the peculiarities of our character, tastes etc. All the instances I know or have heard, of persons taking this course convince me that it is a wrong one. Very high intellectual acquisitions, such as De Quincey's, may result from it, but then they will be accompanied by an ungenial, unsympathising, unholy tone of mind. Very graceful and gentle moral feelings may be the result of it, such as JebbV or Knox's, but then there will be a mawkishness and want of energy and I think of the highest and noblest kind of humanity. I can myself see no course so clear and safe as that which is determined by the answer to the question — What are the most prominent evil tendencies in the age in which I live as I see them manifested in myself and those with whom I am brought into contact ? What direction do the cravings after good in myself and in them most habitually and decidedly take ? What course of thought and reading will best assist me in understanding these tendencies, and the method by which God would counteract the one, foster the other? I doubt not that your own experience will accord 21 G COUESE TO EE POLITICAL. [chap. xm. with mine as to the reply. You will not have much hesitation in deciding that all our minds have more or less a political bias, that we cannot thwart it altogether, try as hard as we will ; and that every attempt to thwart it generally does us great mischief. I have come to these conclusions gradually and reluctantly, for I do not think I was horn a politician, and there are times in my life in which I have resolved that it was better to be anything than this. But I never could succeed in overcoming the mighty impulse which seemed unceasingly to urge me forward in this direction, and I never was happier than when I discovered that God did not design me to overcome it, and that on the contrary my personal and spiritual life was deeply interested in my yielding to it. I am quite convinced that if you propose to yourself the science of politics (in its highest sense) as your business that you will compass three great ends. 1. Your social life, the ordinary conversational, after-dinner life, I mean, will acquire something of the lofty tone of the study and the oratory, without it being needful that you should deviate from common topics or that you should seem to force your companions out of their customary materialism. 2. You will acquire a feeling of the reality of the Bible, and will feel how its application to the universe and to every-day events consists with and is sus- tained by its transcendental meaning. In fact the one will reveal itself in the other. 3. You will be delivered from the fetters of party and the care about confederacies, and will find that we must sanctify the Lord God in our hearts and make Him our fear and these our dreads. I regret deeply that I have not more sedulously pursued this study and cultivated the habits which I am sure if rightly pursued it will engender. For you I have no question of the expediency of making it your prominent pursuit. If you should spend your life as a country gentleman, it will be the fitting course even in the judgment of the world, if you become a clergyman you will find that it is that which makes you the most faithful and useful servant of the Church. The course of reading I should be inclined to recommend with chap, xiii.] REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 2V a view to this object (which I am sure you will find it your interest to keep before you all the time at your College, and to a degree throughout life), is firstly and principally the Jewish law, history, and prophets. Any hints that I can supply respecting the mode of reading them will be con- tained in the Hebrew part of my ' History of Moral Philo- sophy,' which is short, and which you shall see as soon as it is fully made out. In Greek, Thucydides to be read and weighed as a history of the working of the two great prin- ciples which governed Greek society. Every part of it is important. 2nd. The Politics of Plato and Aristotle. 3rd, As much of Homer as you have time for. It may be read at intervals to explain the order of society in the heroic ages. 4th. The " Birds " and " Frogs,"" Knights," and " Acharnians ; ' of Aristophanes, all bearing upon the Athenian democracy, and illustrating Thucydides. 5th. Some of Xenophon's smaller treatises ; but of these I know little. In Latin read Cicero's " Letters," his " Political Orations," and the parts of his philo- sophical writings which bear upon politics. Piead Livy, and the " Annals " of Tacitus : in illustration of these, Machia- velli's "Discourses on Livy," and Niebuhr. In all your modern reading, I should recommend you to put ecclesi- astical history foremost. There may be no good ones ; but if you read Mosheim, Milner, and Neander, and remember that not one of the three had more than a faint dream what a Church means, you may make out something. Read Augus- tine, " De Civitate," for yourself. Study the history of great crises, especially these : — the Age of Constantine (with the Arian controversy) ; the Age of Justinian ; the Age of Char- lemagne ; the Age of Hildebrand ; the Age of the Keforma- tion ; the English period from 1603 to 1688; the French Revolution. Read a little of Sir Thomas More and Erasmus ; what you can get of Luther ; read Hooker. Burke belongs to another era ; he is the index to all modern thoughts and speculations on political subjects. But never read him or any of the moderns without keeping your mind steady and hopeful by the study of St. Paul's and St. John's .218 LETTER TO 3IRS. M. MAURICE, [chap. xin. Epistles and the Apocalypse. There we learn the sure triumph of order, unity, and love over confusion, divisions, and hatred, — learn to expect that we shall pass through all these in their most dreadful manifestations, — learn to under- stand the grounds of our safety and of the Church's safety, when all is in wreck and ruin. I have thus hastily given you my notions, on which I will enlarge more in a future letter, if these are intelligible to you, and seem to promise you any assistance. In the meantime, as I am rather fagged, I will wish you good night, and all blessings spiritual and temporal. Among the former, that you may be able to work out the hints in this letter into practical life till you quite forget where you first heard them, and yet have reason to give thanks for them to Him who can by the most unworthy hands transmit most precious gifts to us. . . . ' Yours very affectionately. •' I enclose one of my tracts.' Happily for the sake of biographical completeness, here is a letter written at this moment (undated), which connects the public utterances with the private experiences of the present and the past. The letter has almost the same motif as that of three years before to his mother : — To Mrs. Maurice. [About February, 1837.] 'My dearest Mother, •' I do so very much wish that I could pass at least a few hours with you. I feel so grieved when I hear of your extreme weakness, and when you speak of the depression which this complaint has caused you ; and I think if I were with you it might cheer you a little, and perhaps I might be permitted to say something that would comfort you. I sometimes do find that words are put into my mouth which I hardly knew the meaning of before, and which seem to be spoken through me for the sake of those to whom God would do good. And though it humbles me to perceive how little I have to do with what I have thought and said, and even that I have ENCLOSING THE TRACT ON BAPTISM. 219 clone what in me lay to cross the intention of God, yet it rejoices me to have this new proof of His graciousness and goodwill. I think that to assure every one, and especially those we most love, that He is love, and that they are simply to repose in that thought without troubling themselves about their belief, or realisation of it, or anything else, is our great business. God is seeking us, and not we Him : and it is an infinite comfort to know this, when we are feverish and rest- less with the thought of our own impotent struggles and great laziness. In quietness and confidence is our strength : but not in thinking of quietness and confidence, or grieving that we have so little of either, but in simply assuring our- selves of the ground that we have to believe that God is our friend now and ever, and that He can be nothing else, and that the forgetfulness of this and nothing else has been our sin and our shame. I wish to confess all my sins and the sins of my brethren before God, but I find they all begin and terminate in this, and that when I have said, " We have forgotten the Name of our God, and His covenant of mercy with us," I have 'said all that I can say, for this includes all pride and malice and anger and unkindness to our brethren and every sin of our own flesh. This truth presents itself to me as one in which we may rest when we cannot in anything else, when all notions and opinions are mere wind and confusion. The character of God as seen in Christ and the assurance that He cares for us, are the simplest of all remembrances ; but they are also the deepest and holiest of all, and it seems to me that all notions about sin or faith or holiness, or works, or anything else, which do not start from these and end in these are worth nothing. ' I have sent you my tract on Baptism, not wishing you to trouble yourself with it, but merely as a token of love and because I knew you would like to see it. I have written what I thought was most likely to bring people back to simple and trustful views, but in doing this, I have been forced to go into many wearisome arguments and oppose many people whom I would willingly ugree with and support. It is a hard case to •220 LABOURING FOR PEACE. [chap, xm feel one's self at war with every one when you wish to recon- cile every one, but I comfort myself with the thought that some humble persons may be eventually the better for what I have done, and may be delivered by it, if God so honour me, from some troublesome stumbling blocks, and that God's Name may be honoured ; and this is all I really and inwardly desire, though my flesh covets many things besides which God in mercy will deny me.' 1837.] BREACH WITH DR. PUSEY. 221 CHAPTER XIV. " A gentle human being does give us the hint of a higher gentleness ; a brave man makes us think of a courage far greater than he can exhibit. Friendships sadly and continually interrupted suggest the belief of an unalter- able friendship. Every brother awakens the hope of a love stronger than any affinity in nature, and disappoints it. Every father demands a love and reverence and obedience which we know is his due, and which something in him as well as in us hinders us from paying.'" — ' Uieolotjieal Essays? p. 105. 1837 continued — open breach with dr. pusey — marriage — ' EXPLANATORY LETTER,' WRITTEN DECEMBER, 1870, MAINLY RELATING TO THE ' KINGDOM OF CHRIST,' OR ' LETTERS TO A QUAKER.' Before the next letter was written, the Tract which he had published had produced its natural effect. Dr. Pusey was exceedingly angry. The whole party saw that they had mis- taken their man. And now also they, and Dr. Pusey espe- cially, were struck by what appeared to them two utterly contradictory elements in my father. No one who has followed this life thus far will be unaware how one had always existed. and how the other had been steadily growing and strengthen- ing in him. The one was his intense — to any one not in daily contact with him his apparently exaggerated — personal humility, the other was the ever-growing conviction that words were to be said through him which he would at his peril omit to say, whether Dr. Pusey or all the doctors in the world opposed them or not. For Dr. Pusey the solution was easy. Mr. Mau- rice was " self-deceived," his humility was a sham, his earnest- ness of speech an impertinence. I of course here am quoting the substance of what Dr. Pusey wrote at the time. 222 WITHDRAWS FROM CONTEST [chap. xiv. The determination to speak had expressed itself more espe- cially in the following passage : — ' But although we be avOpanrot, dirit of the present age.' chap, xiv.] ANNA BARTON. 227 younger sister was, during these months, taking care of the household, and was at all times a frequent visitor there. She had recently returned with her mother from abroad, after spending some years in Germany. My father had seen some- thing of her before she went to Germany, but it was at Orme Square that their acquaintance ripened. Sterling seems to have seen how things were tending before either of the two most interested did so. He became exceedingly anxious, for the sake of both of them, to bring them together, and took every opportunity of doing so. Her father, when she was quite a child, had died as a general officer after commanding the 2nd Life Guards for several years. She had four brothers alive, most of them in the army. The four sons were a somewhat difficult family for a mother to guide. Her sister's marriage in 1829 had brought Anna Barton, when she was herself just seventeen, under the influence of men of a different type, notably of Sterling, Trench, and Maurice. Fond of her as was each of her four brothers, she certainly had not been content or happy in her life at home, though she had a ready sympathy for every one of the members of the family. She was herself most attached to her sister Mrs. Sterling, and thought that she owed more to her than to any one else. Mrs. Barton was by no means at first pleased at the prospect of her daughter's marrying a clergyman of no wealth. Not a few difficulties therefore lay in the way of the project on which Sterling had set his heart. He himself had been obliged to go for health with his family to Bordeaux, but returned in June 1837. Soon after Sterling's return, mainly by his arrangement, Frederick Maurice and Anna Barton met once more at Hurst- monceaux, she not having been aware of his coming till he arrived. It is to this visit and to its result in their being engaged to be married that the following letter refers : — Q 2 228 "IT SEEMS THAT I AM HAPPY, THAT TO ME To Bev. Julius Hare. < My dear Mr. Hare, 'Guy's, Jul r 26 > 183T - • Sterling will tell you so much more in five minutes of his own proceedings, and perhaps of mine, than I could tell in many sheets of paper that I should hardly have troubled you with a letter if I were not too full of recollections of Hurstmonceaux and of your kindness to be able to restrain any longer the expression of them. I should have written several weeks a( y o, but for some time I had hopes of seeing you in London, and after that I had some anxieties which made me not very capable of showing as much freedom and joy of spirit as I should always wish to feel in writing to you. I have now the very exquisite pleasure of connecting most of my thoughts of present and future happiness with you and Mrs. Augustus, and of considering how greatly they would be diminished if I were not sure that I had your sympathy in them. ' It never was possible for me to contemplate Sterling with any- thing like impartiality, and I need not tell you that it is ten thousand times more difficult now ; but I am not sure that eyes of affection are the worst for examining an object, and I feel very positive that I am not mistaken in thinking that few men ever improved so much by the discipline of one twelvemonth. I know I am not appealing to a judge who would be considered much more just than myself, still I shall be delighted to find that you and Mrs. Augustus are of the same opinion. My sister, who has conversed even more with him than I have, thinks that she never saw a character of which she thought very highly before so softened and chastened. ' I have often thought, during the last week, with fear as well as admiration of the letter which you read to me from your noble-hearted friend Mr. Digby, the author of the " Broad- stone of Honour." I am, happily, in not the slightest danger from one of the temptations which he felt so appalling ;* the other of an overmeasure of earthly kindness and affection I * Superabundant wealth. A LIVELIER EMERALD TWINKLES IN THE GRASS." 22