CCXLIII. TO REV. LE HAWKINS.

Rugby, May 8, 1843

I believe that I look to Church Extension as the only possible means, under God's blessing, of bringing society to a better state, but I cannot press Church Extension, in the common sense of the term, as a national measure, because I think that the mass of Dissent renders it, if objected to by the Dissenters, actually unjust. The evil of Dissent and its causes are so entirely at the bottom of all our difficulties in this way, that we never can get on consistently or smoothly till something be done to try to remely this; and if this is incurable, then the nationality of the Church must always be so far false that you can never have a right to act as if it were entirely true. And the same difficulty besets the Education Question, where I neither like the Government Plan nor the Diocesan System,-and am only glad that I can avoid taking an active part on either side. One thing I see, that if attempts be made, as they seem to be, to make the power of the Bishops less nominal than it has been, there will be all the better chance of our getting a really good Church government; for irresponsible persons, irremoveable, and acting without responsible advisers, are such a solecism in government, that they can only be suffered to exist so long as they do nothing; let them begin to act, and the vices of their constitution will become flagrant. I have written even this little note at two different times, and yet it is not finished. I should be glad to get any detailed criticism on my Prophecy Sermons, but that, I am afraid, I shall not get. If you put, as you may do, Christ for abstract good, and Satan for abstract evil, I do not think that the notion is so startling that they are the main and only perfect subjects of Prophecy, and that in all other cases the language is hyperbolical in some part or other; hyperbolical, I mean, and not merely figurative. Nor can I conceive how, on any other supposition, the repeated applications of the Old Testament language to our Lord, not only by others, but by Himself, can be understood to be other than arbitrary.

CCXLIV. TO CHEVALIER BUNSEN.

Rugby, May 26, 1840.

I feel very deeply the kindness of all that you say

about my work, and rejoice with the greatest thankfulness that you

are breathing more freely. You may remember that I used to be very anxious about you, and now I rejoice to think that you are relieved from your burdens, and have only to beware of over indulgence in your own works, a more beguiling danger, probably, than that of working too much at what is mere business. For myself, if I were left to my natural taste merely, I believe I should do little but read and write and enjoy the society of my own family and dearest friends; but I believe also, most sincerely, that it is far better for me to be engaged in practical life, and therefore I am thankful for the external necessity which obliges me to go on at Rugby. In fact, the mixture of school work and of my own reading furnishes a useful, and I feel, too, a pleasant variety; and I cannot perceive that it is any strain upon my constitution, while I sleep like an infant, and daily have either a bathe or a walk in the country, where I think neither of school nor of History.

No doubt I feel very keenly the narrow compass of my reading, from the want of greater leisure; and it hinders me from trying to do some things which I should like to do; but I am pretty well reconciled to this, and as long as I feel that I can be useful practically in the work of education, I am well content to relinquish some plans which would otherwise have been very dear to me. But then my health may fail, and what am I to do then? I know the answer which you would make in my place, and I would try to share in your spirit, and to say, that then Christ, I doubt not, will provide for me as He sees best. As man wishes and schemes, I think that I should like to go on here till Matt and Tom have gone through the University, and then, if I could, retire to Fox How. But I would earnestly pray, and would ask your prayers too for me, that in this and in all things I may have a single heart and will, wishing for nothing but what Christ wishes and wills for me.

I read your accounts of your own pursuits with a pleasure more than I could describe. It is, indeed, a feeling deeper than pleasure; a solemn thankfulness that you are so blessed with the will and the power to set forth the truth in faith and love. And most earnestly do I pray that God's blessing may be upon all your works to complete them to His own glory, and to the good of His Church. I do rejoice, indeed, to see you now reaping the fruits for which you have sowed so patiently, and seizing those great truths to which, by so many years of quiet labour,—and labour which ignorant persons often thought and think to have another direction, as the parallels

of a besieger's approaches are not carried in a straight line to the ditch, you were silently and surely making your way good. But it is a sad feeling, too, when I turn to our own Church, and see the spirit which prevails here.

Now for the second volume of my History, I shall have no pleasure, or next to none, in sending it to you, for you will sadly feel its poverty. You will perceive, what I know too well, that everywhere you are in soundings, and that too often you are almost in shoal water. I mean, you will perceive the defects of my knowledge at every turn; how many books I have never read, perhaps have never heard of; how incapable I am of probing many of the questions, which I notice, to the bottom. I wished to have your Essay on the Principles of Historical Criticism, which you promised me when you were in Westmoreland; but now I must beg for it for the third volume. I think that you will like the tone of the book; in that alone I can think of your reading it with pleasure; but alas! alas! that I should have had to write such book in the face of Niebuhr's third volume, which yet I was obliged to do.

I went up to one of our levees about three weeks ago, and was presented to the Queen. I believe that one of the principal reasons which led me to go, was to enable me to be presented hereafter, if it may be, by you at Berlin. I saw several people whom I was glad to see, and was amused by the novelty of the scene. Our political world offers nothing on which I can dwell with pleasure or with hope. One or two men are stirring the question of Subscription to the Articles and Liturgy, wishing to get its terms altered. Hull prepared a petition to this effect, which Whately will present this evening in the House of Lords. signed it, as did

—, and so did I; not that I believe it will do any good, nor that my own particular wish would lead me to seek for reform there; it is in government and discipline, not in doctrine, that our Church wants mending most; but, when any good men feel it a matter of conscience to petition for what I think good and right, I do not feel it becoming to stand aloof from them, especially where the expression of their sentiments is likely to expose them to some odium. But for my own satisfaction, I drew up and sent to Whately a sketch of what I should myself wish to petition for; namely, the abolition of those political services for the 30th of January, &c., and the repeal of all acts or canons which forbid deacons from following a secular calling. Sir R. Inglis is going to propose a grant

of £400,000 a year for new clergymen; but surely his end would be better answered, and at no expense, by reviving the order of deacons, and enabling us to see that union of the Christian ministry with the common business of life which would be such a benefit both to the clergy and the laity. Whately approved entirely of the petition, but thought it too abrupt a way of proceeding, as the subject would be new to so many. Here, indeed, I do feel the want of time; for I should like to write upon the point, and go into it deeply, which now I cannot do at all.

CCXLV. TO THE SAME.

Rugby, June 13, 1840.

I know not whether this letter will find you at Berne; probably not, for I have just read the official account of the King of Prussia's death; but it may wait for you or follow you to Berlin, and I would not willingly let a day pass without expressing my deep interest in the present crisis. That extract which you wrote out for me is indeed glorious, and fills one with thankfulness that God has raised up such a King in a great Protestant country at this momentous time; when the great enemy in his two forms at once, Satan and Antichrist, the blasphemy of the Epicurean Atheist, and the idolatry of the lying and formal spirit of Priestcraft, is assailing the Church with all his might. May Christ's strength and blessing be with the King and with you, that Prussia may be as the mountain of the Lord, the city of God upon a hill, whose light cannot be hid.

I have in the last week again felt the effects of your true friendship. Bishop Stanley procured for me from Lord Melbourne the offer of the Wardenship of Manchester College, just vacant; and he told me that he had been especially induced to try to get something for me by a letter of yours, in which you expressed your great anxiety that I should be relieved from the burden of Rugby. But, indeed, dearest friend, Rugby, while it goes on well, is not a burden, but the thing of all others which I believe to be most fitted for me while I am well and in the vigour of life. The Wardenship I declined, for the income was so comparatively small, that I should. have found a difficulty in educating my children on it; but much more, I must either have made the office a sinecure, or it would have involved me in labours and responsibilities quite equal to those

which I have now, and of a kind quite new to me. And I think that the Bishop was satisfied that I did right in declining it; but I do not feel the less strongly his great kindness and yours. God Eless and prosper you always.

CCXLVI. TO AN OLD PUPIL. (B.)

Rugby, August 17, 1840.

I do not give heed to much of what I hear about men's opinions, because having had my own often misunderstood, I am prepared to find the same thing in the case of my neighbours. Yet I confess that I should like to know the position of your mind at the present moment, because some three or four years ago it had attained. I think, to an unusual degree of independence and vigour, and therefore its progress is to me a greater matter of interest. And I remember well, by my own experience, the strong tendency of an Oxford life upon any one who is justly fond of Oxford, to make him exceedingly venerate those who are at the head of Oxford swietr But then in those days the excessive admiration was less injurious, because it was merely personal; there was no set of opinions identified with Davison and Coplestone which one learnt to venerate for their sake. The influence of the place in this way can hardly be resisted during a certain time of a man's life; I got loose from it before I left Oxford, because I found, as my own mind grew, that those whom I had so reverenced were not so much above myself, and I knew well enough that I should myself have made but a sorry oracle. And this I think has hindered me from looking up to any man as a sort of general guide ever since; not that I have transferred my idolatry from other men's minds to my own,—which would have been a change greatly for the worse,—but as much as I have felt its strength comparatively with others, so also have I felt its absolute weakness and want of knowledge. I have great need of learning daily, but I am sure, that other men are in the like predicament,—in some things, though in fewer than in any other man whom I know, Bunsen himself. But all the eminent Englishmen whom I know have need of learning in a great many points; and I cannot turn my schoolfellows into my masters; οὐ πολὺ διαφέρει ἄνθρω

difpere is a very important truth, if one appreciates properly the general wisdom of mankind as well as its general unwisdom;