whether they be those of the first four centuries, or those of the sixteenth, or those of the eighteenth or seventeenth. With regard to the Fathers, as they are called, I would advise those who have time to read them deeply, those who have less time to read at least parts of them; but in all cases preserve the proportions of your reading. Read along with the Fathers, the writings of men of other times and of different powers of mind. Keep your view of men and things extensive, and depend upon it that a mixed knowledge is not a superficial one ;-as far as it goes, the views that it gives are true, but he, who reads deeply in one class of writers only, gets views which are almost sure to be perverted, and which are not only narrow but false. Adjust your proposed amount of reading to your time and inclination-this is perfectly free to every man, but whether that amount be large or small, let it be varied in its kind and widely varied. If I have a confident opinion on any one point connected with the improvement of the human mind, it is on this. I have now given you the principles which I believe to be true with respect to a clergyman's reading.

If y f you can come to Rugby in your way to Oxford, I will add any thing in my power to the details; at any rate, I shall be delighted to see you here, and I shall have great pleasure in giving you an introduction to Hamilton, who, I am sure, would value your acquaintance much.

CLXXXVII. TO CHEVALIER BUNSEN.

Rugby, October 4, 1839.

. When I think of you as really going to leave England, it makes me think how much there still is on which I want to talk to you more fully. Particularly, I must get you some day to answer for me in writing certain questions as to the Lord's Supper. I think that you and Samuel Coleridge both agree with one another and differ from me, and this of course makes me suspect the justness

of my own views, while it makes me sure that what you and Coleridge hold can be nothing superstitious or unchristian. I see clearly the wide difference between what you hold and the opinions which I so dread and condemn. But, plainly, I cannot arrive at even your notion of the Communion, or what I believe to be your notion, from the Scriptures, without interpreting them by what is called the Consensus Ecclesiæ. Now this so called Consensus Ecclesiæ is in such a matter to me worth nothing, because such a view of the Communion was precisely in unison with the tendencies of the prevailing party in the Church whose writings are now called Consensus Ecclesiæ. And if I follow this pretended Consensus in forming my views of the Sacraments, I appear to myself to be undoing St. Paul's and our Lord's work in one great point, and to be introducing that very Judaism, to which Christianity is so directly opposed, and which consists in ascribing spiritual effects to outward and bodily actions. It seems to me historically certain that the Judaism which upheld Circumcision and insisted on the difference of meats, after having vainly endeavoured to sap the Gospel under its proper Judaic form, did, even within the first century, transfuse its spirit into a Christian form; and substituting Baptism for Circumcision, and the mystic influence of the Bread and Wine of the Communion for the doctrine of purifying and defiling meats, did thereby, as has happened many a time since, pervert Christianity to a fatal extent, and seduced those who would have resisted it to the death under its own form, because now, though its spirit was the same, its form was Christian. Now I am sure that you are not Judaic either in form or spirit, and therefore there may be a real Christian element in the doctrine which I do not perceive, or am not able to appreciate. And if so, it would be my earnest wish to be permitted to see it and to embrace it; and it would also be no light pleasure to find myself here also in complete sympathy with you. About the Christian

Sacrifice we agree, I believe, fully; but as to the Communion, as distinct from the Sacrifice, there is something in you and in Coleridge, as there is of course in Luther also, which I do not find in myself, and with which, as yet, to say the very truth, I cannot bring myself to agree.

CLXXXVIII. TO JAMES MARSHALL, ESQ.

Rugby, October 30, 1837.

-'s

You will think, I am afraid, that my zeal has cooled away to nothing, since I had last the pleasure of seeing you; but it was only last week that I received an answer, partly direct and partly indirect, with regard to some of those whose cooperation we had wished to gain. . . . . . answer is, that he thinks a Society would be impracticable, for that men will not agree as to the remedy, and unless some remedy is proposed, there will be no good, he thinks, in merely laying bare the disease. And he thinks that

will take the same view of the question with himself. So far, then, there is a rebuff for us; but I think that we must not be discouraged, and that efforts may be made in other quarters; if these also fail, then I think that publication must be tried, and the point noticed, if possible, in some of the leading reviews and newspapers; but for this details are wanted; details at once exact and lively, which I imagine it will be difficult to procure for the whole kingdom, except through the mechanism of a Society. For Manchester there is, I believe, a Statistical Society which would afford some good materials. At present people are still so scattered about, many being on the Continent, that it is difficult to get at them. But in the vacation I hope to be moving about to different parts of England, and then I may be able to find somebody who may be useful. And meantime I shall do what alone lies in my power, viz., write one or two articles on the subject in the Hertford Reformer, in which I have written more than once already. I shall be

delighted to hear from you, and to learn whether you have made any progress, and whether you have any suggestions to communicate.

CLXXXIX. TO AN OLD PUPIL. (F.)

Rugby, November 21, 1839.

With regard to the questions in your letter, I hold that to a great degree in the choice of a profession, "sua cuique Deus fit dira cupido," a man's inclination for a calling is a great presumption that he either is or will be fit for it. And in education this holds very strongly, for he who likes boys has probably a daily sympathy with them; and to be in sympathy with the mind you propose to influence is at once indispensable, and will enable you to a great degree to succeed in influencing it.

Another point to which I attach much importance is liveliness. This seems to me an essential condition of sympathy with creatures so lively as boys are naturally, and it is a great matter to make them understand that liveliness is not folly or thoughtlessness. Now I think the prevailing manner amongst many very valuable men at Oxford is the very opposite to liveliness; and I think that this is the case partly with yourself; not at all from affectation, but from natural temper, encouraged, perhaps, rather than checked, by a belief that it is right and becoming. But this appears to me to be in point of manner the great difference between a clergyman with a parish and a schoolmaster. It is an illustration of St. Paul's rule, "Rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep with them that weep." A clergyman's intercourse is very much with the sick and the poor, where liveliness would be greatly misplaced; but a schoolmaster's is with the young, the strong, and the happy, and he cannot get on with them unless in animal spirits he can sympathize with them, and show them that his thoughtfulness is not connected with selfishness and weakness. At least, this applies, I think, to a young man; for when a

teacher gets to an advanced age, gravity, I suppose, would not misbecome him, for liveliness might then seem unnatural, and his sympathy with boys must be limited, I suppose, then, to their great interests rather than their feelings. You can judge what truth may be in this notion of mine generally; and if true, how far it is applicable to your own case; but, knowing you as I do, my advice to you would be to follow that line for which you seem to have the most evident calling; and surely the sign of God's calling in such a case is to be sought in our own reasonable inclination, for the tastes and faculties which he gives us are the marks of our fitness for one thing rather than another.

CXC. TO AN OLD PUPil. (d.)

Fox How, December 20, 1839.

It is just one and twenty years ago this very day that I was ordained Deacon at Oxford, and I wish this letter to reach you on Sunday, when I suppose you will be ordained at the same place to the same office. I had enough and more than enough of scruples and difficulties, not before only, but afterwards for a long time. . . . But I have

been satisfied now for many years,—and wonder almost that I ever could have been otherwise, that Ordination was never meant to be closed against those who, having been conscientious members of the Church before, and wishing in earnest to be ministers of the Church now, holding its truths and sympathizing in its spirit, yet cannot yield an active belief to the words of every part of the Articles and Liturgy as true, without qualification or explanation. And I think so on historical as well as on à priori grounds; on historical,-from the fact that the subscriptions were made more stringent in their form to meet the case of those whose minds, or rather tempers, were so uncomplying, that they would use in the service of the Church no expressions which they did not approve of; and therefore the party in power, to secure the conformity, required a pledge of ap