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in this country. Whereas with us it would be no essential part of one system, but merely a branch of knowledge which any man might pursue if he liked, but which he might also, if he liked, wholly neglect, without forfeiting his claim, according to our estimate, to the title of a completely educated man.

And further, as it appeared, I think, to the majority of the Senate, that the terms of our Charter positively forbade that which in my judgment is indispensable; and as there is a painfulness in even appearing to dispute the very law under which our University exists; there seems to me an additional reason why, disapproving as I do very strongly of that which is held to be the main principle of our Charter, I should withdraw myself from the University altogether.

I trust I need not assure your Lordship or the Senate, that I am resigning my Fellowship from no factious or disappointed feeling, or from any personal motives whatever. Most sincerely shall I rejoice if the University does in practice promote the great interests to which the principle appears to me to be injurious. Most glad shall I be if those whose affection to those interests is, I well know, quite as sincere and lively as mine, shall be found to have judged of their danger more truly as well as more favourably.

CHAPTER IX.

LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE, NOVEMBER 1838 TO SEPTEMBER 1841.

It is impossible to mistake the change which once more passed over his state of mind during these last years of his life, -the return, though in a more chastened form, of the youthful energy and serenity of the earlier part of his career at Rugbythe Martinmas summer succeeding to the dreary storms with which he had been so long encompassed; and recalling the more genial season which had preceded them, yet mellowed and refined by the experience of the intervening period.

His whole constitution seemed to have received a new spring; "The interest of life," to use his own description of middle age," which had begun to fade for himself, revived with vigour in behalf of his children." The education of his own sons in the school,—his firmer hold of the reins of government, his greater familiarity with the whole machinery of the place, the increasing circle of pupils at the Universities, who looked upon him as their second father;-even the additional bodily health which he gained by resuming in 1838 his summer tours on the Continent,-removed that sense of weariness by which he had been at times oppressed amidst his heavy occupations, and bound him to his work at Rugby with a closer tie than ever.

1) ..

volumes he

1) Sermons, vol. iv. p. 115.

But it was not only in his ordinary work that a new influence seemed to act upon him in the determination which he formed to dwell on those positive truths on which he agreed with others, rather than to be always acting on the defensive or offensive.

To this various causes had contributed, the weariness of the contest of the last four years, the isolation in which he found himself placed after his failure in the London University, -the personal intercourse, now, after an interval of eleven years, renewed with his friend the Chevalier Bunsen, the recoil, which he felt, from the skeptical tone of mind which struck him as being at once the cause and effect of the new school of Oxford Theology. It was in this spirit that he struck out all the political allusions of his notes on Thucydides, which were now passing through a second edition, "not as abhorring the evils against which they were directed, less now than I did formerly, but because we have been all of us taught by the lessons of the last nine years, that, in political matters more especially, moderation and comprehensiveness of views are the greatest wisdom." So, again, in the hope of giving a safer and more sober direction to the excitement then prevailing in the country on the subject of National Education, he published a Lecture delivered in 1838 before the Mechanics' Institute at Rugby on the Divisions of Knowledge; "feeling that while it was desirable on the one hand to encourage Mechanics' Institutes on account of the good which they can do, it was no less important to call attention to their necessary imperfections, and to notice that great good which they cannot do." His "Two Sermons on Prophecy, with Notes," which were published in the same year, and which form the most complete and systematic of any of his fragments on Exegetical Theology, he regarded as a kind of peace offering, "in which it was his earnest desire to avoid as much as possible all such questions as might engender strife, -that is to say, such as are connected with the peculiar opinions of any of the various parties existing within the Church." And it must have been a pleasure to him to witness the gradual softening of public feeling towards himself, not the least perhaps to that peaceful visit of one day to Oxford, to see his friends the Chevalier Bunsen and the aged poet Wordsworth receive their degrees at the Commemoration of 1838, when he also had the opportunity of renewing friendly connections, which the late unhappy divisions had interrupted.

His wish for a closer sympathy and union of efforts amongst all good men was further increased, when, in 1839-40, his atten

1) The whole passage in which this occurs (noticing a severe attack upon him, introduced into an article in the Quarterly Review by "a writer for whom he enter tained a very sincere respect") well illustrates his feelings at this time. (Note on Thucyd. ii. 40, 2d ed.)

tion was again called to the social evils of the country, as betraying themselves in the disturbances of Chartism, and the alarm which had possessed him in 1831-32 returned, though in a more chastened form, never to leave him. "It haunts me," he said, "I may almost say night and day. It fills me with astonishment to see antislavery and missionary societies so busy with the ends of the earth and yet all the worst evils of slavery and of heathenism are existing amongst ourselves. But no man seems so gifted, or to speak more properly, so endowed by God with the spirit of wisdom, as to read this fearful riddle truly; which most Sphinx-like, if not read truly, will most surely be the destruction of us all. To awaken the higher orders to the full extent of the evil, was accordingly his chief practical aim, whether in the Letters which he addressed to the "Hertford Reformer," or in his attempts to organize a Society for that purpose, as described in the ensuing correspondence. "My fear with regard to every remedy that involves any sacrifices to the upper classes, is, that the public mind is not yet enough aware of the magnitude of the evil to submit to them. 'Knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?' was the question put to Pharaoh by his counsellors; for unless he did know it, they were aware that he would not let Israel go from serving him."

Most of all were these feelings exemplified in his desire, now more strong than ever, for the revival of what he believed to be the true idea of the Church. "I am continually vexed," he writes in 1840, "at being supposed to be a maintainer of negatives-an enemy to other systems or theories, with no positive end of my own. I have told you how it wearies me to be merely opposing Newmanism, or this thing or that thing; we want an actual truth, and an actual good. I wish to deliver myself, if I can, of my positive notions, to state that for which I long so eagerly; that glorious Church which Antichrists of all sorts hate and are destroying. If any one would join me in this, I should rejoice; many more, I feel sure, would agree with me, if they saw that the truth was not destructive nor negative, but most constructive, most positive." His desire for removing any particular grievances in the ecclesiastical system was proportionally diminished. The evil to be abated, the good to be accomplished, appeared to him beyond the reach of any single measure; and, though in 1840 he signed a Petition for alteration in the subscription to the Liturgy and Articles, yet it had so little bearing on his general views as not to be worth mention here, except for the purpose of explaining any misapprehension of his doing so. It was planned and drawn up entirely without his participation, and was only brought to his notice by the accident of two of the principal movers being personal friends of his own. Whatever scruples' he had once had on the subject, had been long since

1) In connexion with this subject, it may be as well to recur to a previous passage

set at rest; and it was merely from his unwillingness to let others bear alone what he conceived to be an unjust odium, that he joined in a measure, from which he would at this period have been naturally repelled, both by his desire to allay those suspicions against him which he was now so anxious to remove, and by his conviction that the objects which he most wished to attain lay entirely in another direction.

But in proportion to the strength of his belief that these objects, whether social or religious, lay beyond the reach of any single measure, or of any individual efforts, was the deep melancholy which possessed him, when he felt the manifold obstacles to their accomplishment. His favourite expression xlorn oder n πολλὰ φρονέοντα πὲρ μηδένας κρατέειν,— the bitterest of all griefs, to see clearly and yet to be able to do nothing,"-might stand as the motto of his whole mind, as often before in his life, so most emphatically now. The Sermon on "Christ's Three Comings," in the fifth volume, preached in 1839, truly expresses his sense of the state of public affairs;-and in looking at the general aspect of the religious world, "When I think of the

in his life, which only came to my knowledge within the last year, and which this and other accidental hindrances prevented from appearing in its proper place. The graver difficulties, which Mr. Justice Coleridge has noticed as attending his first Ordination, never returned after the year 1820, when he seems to have arrived at a complete conviction both of his conscience and understanding, that there was no real ground for entertaining them. But, during the inquiries which he prosecuted at Laleham, there arose in his mind scruples on one or two minor questions, which appeared to him for a long time to present insuperable obstacles to his taking any office which should involve a second subscription to the Articles. "I attach," he said, "no importance to my own difference, except that, however trifling be the point, and however gladly I would waive it altogether, still, when I am required to acquiesce in what I think a wrong opinion upon it, I must decline compliance." On these grounds he long hesitated to take Priest's Orders, at least unless he had the opportunity of explaining his objections to the Bishop who ordained him: and it was in fact on this condition that, after his appointment to Rugby, whilst still in Deacon's orders, he consented to be ordained by the bishop of his diocese, at that time Dr. Howley; as ap pears from the following extracts from letters, of which the first states his intention with regard to another situation in 1826, which he fulfilled in 1828, in the interval between his election at Rugby, and his entrance upon his office. 1. "As my objections turn on points which all, I believe, would consider immaterial in themselves, I would consent to be ordained, if any Bishop would ordain me on an explicit statement of my disagreement on those points. If he would not, then my course would be plain; and there would be an end of all thought of it at once." 2. "I shall, I believe, be ordained Priest on Trinity Sunday, being ordained by the Bishop of London. I wished to do this, because I wished to administer the Sacrament in the chapel at Rugby, and because, as I shall have in a manner the oversight of the chaplain, I thought it would be scarce seemly for me as a Deacon, to interfere with a Priest; and after a long conversation with the Bishop of London, I do not object to be ordained."

This was the last time that he was troubled with any similar perplexities; and in later years, as appears from more than one letter of this period, he thought that he had, in his earlier life, overrated the difficulties of subscription. The particular subject of his scruples arose from his doubt, founded chiefly on internal evidence, whether the Epistle to the Hebrews did not belong to a period subsequent to the Apostolical age. It may be worth while to mention, that this doubt was eventually removed by an increased study of the Scriptures, and of the early Christian writers. In the ten last years of his life he never hesitated to use and apply it as one of the most valuable parts of the New Testament: and his latest opinion was inclining to be the belief that it might have been written, not merely under the guidance of St. Paul, but by the Apostle himself.

Church," he wrote in 1840, "I could sit down and pine, and die." And it is remarkable to observe the contrast between the joyous tone of his sermons on Easter Day, as the birthday of Christ's Religion, and the tone of subdued and earnest regret which marks those on Whit Sunday, as the birthday of the Christian Church: "Easter Day we keep as the birthday of a living friend; Whit Sunday we keep as the birthday of a dead friend."

Of these general views, the fourth volume of Sermons, entitled "Christian Life, its Course, its Helps, and its Hindrances," published in May, 1841, is the most complete expression. It is true, indeed, that in parts of it the calmer tone of the last few years is disturbed by a revival of the more polemical spirit, which, in the close of 1840, and the beginning of 1841, was again roused against the Oxford school of Theology. That school had in the interval made a rapid progress, and in some important points totally changed its original aspect: many of those who had at first welcomed it with joy, were now receding from it in dismay; many of those who had at first looked upon it with contempt and repugnance, were now become its most active adherents. But he was not a man whose first impressions were easily worn off; and his feelings against it, though expressed in a somewhat different form, were not materially altered; he found new grounds of offence in the place of old ones that were passing away; and the Introduction to this volume,written at a time when his indignation had been recently roused by what appeared to him the sophistry of the celebrated Tract 90, and when the public excitement on this question had reached its highest pitch, contains his final and deliberate protest against what he regarded as the fundamental errors of the system.

Yet, even in this, he brought out more strongly than ever the positive grounds on which he felt himself called upon to oppose it. "It is because my whole mind and soul repose with intense satisfaction on the truths taught by St. John and St. Paul, that I abhor the Judaism of the Newmanites,-it is because I so earnestly desire the revival of the Church that I abhor the doctrine of the priesthood." And this volume, as a whole, when taken with the one which has been already noticed as preceding it a few years before, may be said to give his full view of Christianity in its action,-not on individuals, as in the first volume, or on schools, as in the second,-but on the world at large. But whereas the Sermons selected from the ordinary course of his preaching, in the third volume, speak rather of the Christian Revelation in itself,-of its truths, its evidences, and its ultimate objects, so the fourth, as its title expresses, was intended to convey the feeling so strongly impressed on his mind during this last period, that these objects would be best attained by a full development of the Church or Christian society, whether in schools, in parishes, or in States.

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