with Christ alone,-in bearing His manifest will, and waiting for His pleasure,-intervening objects being of necessity removed away.

CCXLIX. TO AN OLD PUPIL. (G.)

Rugby, November 4, 1840.

Your letter gave me such deep and lively pleasure, that I could scarcely restrain my joy within decent bounds; for to see any man whom I thoroughly value, delivered from the snare of the law as a profession, is with me a matter of the most earnest rejoicing. It can scarcely be necessary for me to say, that as I grieved to see you decided, as I supposed, in favour of the law, so I should rejoice in your escaping while it is yet time, and following the righthand path to any pure and Christian calling, which to my mind, that of an advocate, according to the common practice of the Bar, cannot be; and I think that scarcely any practice could make it such.

I think, too, that for yourself individually, you would do well to adopt another calling. I think that your highest qualities could not be exercised in the law, while, if you are at all inclined to love argument as an exercise, and therefore to practise it without regard to its only just end, truth, I cannot but think, that the law would be especially dangerous to you. For advocacy does seem to me inconsistent with a strong perception of truth, and to be absolutely intolerable, unless where the mind sits loose, as it were, from any conclusions, and merely loves the exercise of making any thing wear the semblance of truth which it chooses for the time being to patronize.

With respect to the other part of the question, while I should delight to see you in the ministry of the Church, I cannot quite think that the parochial ministry is so clearly to be preferred to the work of education. But in this men have also their calling, and I would not wish to tempt them from it. Nor would I have you think that I

mix up any personal feelings at the possibility of persuading you to join us at Rugby, with my genuine thankfulness, for your own sake and that of others, that, in so great a matter as the choice of a profession, you are disposed to turn from the evil to the good. But I do not think that our work is open to the objections which you suppose; it and the parochial ministry have each their advantages and disadvantages; but education has the. advantages, on the whole, where it can be combined with opportunities of visiting the sick and old,-the sobering needful to qualify the influences of youth and health and spirits, so constantly displayed by boys, and necessary also in a great degree to those who teach boys. Do not decide this point hastily, unless you feel yourself called as it were beyond dispute to the parochial ministry; if you are, then follow it in Christ's name, and may it be blessed to you and the Church.

I have been obliged to write hastily, but I wished to lose no time. Write again, or come over to us, if I can be of

any use in answering any questions.

CCL. TO THE SAME.

Rugby, November 16, 1840.

I am afraid that my opinion is suspected by you, because it was expressed so strongly. However, you must not suppose me to doubt that there can be most excellent men in the profession even of an advocate, two of my most valued and respected friends being, or having been, advocates; and all other parts of the law I hold in the highest honour, and think that no calling can be nobler. But I do not quite understand why you desire to make out a justification for yourself for choosing one profession rather than another. It seems to me that the point is as yet fully open. Your University residence is only just closed; your legal studies-your mere legal educationcan hardly, I suppose, have yet commenced. Certainly

it cannot have advanced as far as your theological; so that in point of preparation you are actually more fitted for the Church ministry than for the Law.

Now, with respect to being an example in a profession where example is much needed, I can hardly think that any man could choose a profession with such a view without some presumption. In such matters, safety rather than victory should be each man's object; that desire to preserve his best self, being not selfishness, but, as I imagine, the true fulfilment of the law. If one is by God's will fixed in a calling full of temptations, but where the temptations may be overcome, and the victory will be most encouraging to others, then it may be our duty to overcome rather than to fly; but no man, I think, ought to seek temptation in the hope of serving the Church brilliantly by overcoming it.

With regard to the minor question, I will not enter upon it now. Thus much, however, I may say, that, humanly speaking, I am not likely soon to leave Rugby; that it would be my greatest delight to have you here as a master; and that the field of good here opened, is, I think, not easily to be surpassed. If you decide on the parochial ministry, then I think that your calling would be to a large town rather than to a country village.

CCLI. TO AN OLD PUPIL, ENGAGED IN BUSINESS. (H.)

Rugby, November 18, 1840. I think that even your very kind and handsome gift to the library has given me less pleasure than the letter which accompanied it, and which was one of the highest gratifications that a man in my profession can ever experience. Most sincerely do I thank you for it; and be assured that I do value it very deeply. Your letter holds out to me another prospect which interests me very deeply. I have long felt a very deep concern about the state of our manufacturing population, and have seen how

enormous was the work to be done there, and how much good men, especially those who were not clergymen, were wanted to do it. And therefore I think of you, as engaged in business, with no little satisfaction, being convinced that a good man, highly educated, cannot possibly be in a more important position in this kingdom than as one of the heads of a great manufacturing establishment. I feel encouraged also by the kindness of your letter, to trouble you, perhaps, hereafter with some questions on a point where my practical knowledge is of course nothing. Yet I see the evils and dangers of the present state of things, and long that those who have the practical knowledge could be brought steadily and systematically to consider the possibility of a remedy. . We are now in the midst of the winter examination, which, as you may remember, gives us all sufficient employ

ment.

CCLII. † TO REV. W. K. HAMILTON.

Rugby, November 18 or 19, 1840.

I have very much, which I should like to say to you if I were with you, but I have not time to write it, nor would it do well in a letter. tells me that you were gratified with the improvement in the diocese of Salisbury; so one sees encouragements which cheer us, as well as disappointments enough to humble us; but, perhaps, I am already partaking of one of the characteristics of old age, according to Aristotle, and I am less inclined to hope than to fear. But it is a great comfort to know that there are many good men at work, and that their labours are not without a blessing. You will, I am sure, have been wishing and praying that we may be saved from the curse of war; an evil which would crush the seeds of more good than can be told throughout Europe, and confirm or revive mischiefs innumerable. Your godson is well, but it is becoming needful to keep

him from the boys of the school, who would soon pet and spoil him.

CCLIII. TO REV. DR. HAWKINS.

Rugby, December 4, 1840.

I wished also to thank you for your Sermon, and to say a little to you about it. I quite agree with you that you should not attack the Newmanites directly. Independently of what I might call the moral reasons for your not doing so, I think that truth is never best taught negatively; and these very men derive a great advantage from holding up something positive, although, as I think, it be but a most sorry and abominable idol, to men's faith and love; and merely to say that the idol is an idol, and that its worship is pernicious, is doing but little good, unless we show where the worship can be transferred wholesomely. But your Sermon is to me personally almost tantalizing, because it shows that we agree in so much, and makes it doubly vexatious to me that there is beyond this agreement, as I suppose there must be, a great and wide divergence. I suppose that it is the hardest thing in the world to apprehend rightly what is that μérov, which is really the great excellence to be aimed at. The Newmanites, humorously enough, call their system Via Media. You think that your views are Via Media,-I think that mine are so; that is we all see errors and dangers on the right and on the left of us, and endeavour to avoid both. But I suppose that the uérov is then only the point of excellence, when it refers, as Aristotle has referred it, to the simple tendencies of the human mind; whereas it appears to me that men are sometimes beguiled by taking the Méσov of the views of opposite parties as the true point of excellence, or still more, the μérov of the opinions held by people of our party or of our nation on any given point. You think that Newman is one extreme and I another; and so I am well aware that, in common estimation, we