FOOTNOTES:

My environment in my childhood was strictly evangelical. My dear and noble mother was a woman of warm piety but broken health, and I was not directly instructed by her. But I was brought up to believe that Doyly and Mant's Bible (then a standard book of the colour ruling in the church) was heretical, and that every unitarian (I suppose also every heathen) must, as matter of course, be lost forever. This deplorable servitude of mind oppressed me in a greater or less degree for a number of years. As late as in the year (I think) 1836, one of my brothers married a beautiful and in every way charming person, who had been brought up in a family of the unitarian profession, yet under a mother very sincerely religious. I went through much mental difficulty and distress at the time, as there had been no express renunciation [by her] of the ancestral creed, and I absurdly busied myself with devising this or that religious test as what if accepted might suffice.[85]So, as will be seen, the first access of churchlike ideas to my mind by no means sufficed to expel my inherited and bigoted misconception, though in the event they did it as I hope effectively. But I long retained in my recollection an observation made to me in (I think) the year 1829, by Mrs. Benjamin Gaskell of Thornes, near Wakefield, a seed which was destined long to remain in my mind without germinating. I fell into religious conversation with this excellent woman, the mother of my Eton friend Milnes Gaskell, himself the husband of an unitarian. She said to me, Surely we cannot entertain a doubt as to the future condition of any person truly united to Christ by faith and love, whatever may be the faults of his opinions. Here she supplied me with the key to the whole question. At this hour I feel grateful to her accordingly, for the scope of her remark is very wide; and it is now my rule to remember her in prayer before the altar.There was nothing at Eton to subvert this frame of mind; for nothing was taught us either for it or against it. But in the spring and summer of 1828, I set to work on Hooker'sEcclesiastical Polity, and read it straight through. Intercourse with my elder sister Anne had increased my mental interest in religion, and she, though generally of evangelical sentiments, had an opinion thatthe standard divines of the English church were of great value. Hooker's exposition of the case of the church of England came to me as a mere abstraction; but I think that I found the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, theretofore abhorred, impossible to reject, and the way was thus opened for further changes.In like manner at Oxford, I do not doubt that in 1830 and 1831 the study of Bishop Butler laid the ground for new modes of thought in religion, but his teaching in the sermons on our moral nature was not integrated, so to speak, until several years later by larger perusal of the works of Saint Augustine. I may, however, say that I was not of a mind ill disposed to submit to authority.The Oxford Movement, properly so called, began in the year 1833, but it had no direct effect upon me. I did not see the Tracts, and to this hour I have read but few of them. Indeed, my first impressions and emotions in connection with it were those of indignation at what I thought the rash intemperate censures pronounced by Mr. Hurrell Froude upon the reformers. My chief tie with Oxford was the close friendship I had formed in 1830 with Walter Hamilton.[86]His character, always loving and loved, had, not very greatly later, become deeply devout. But I do not think he at this time sympathised with Newman and his friends; and he had the good sense, in conjunction with Mr. Denison, afterwards bishop, to oppose the censure upon Dr. Hampden, to which I foolishly and ignorantly gave in, without, however, being an active or important participator.But the blow struck by the prayer-book in 1832 set my mind in motion, and that motion was never arrested. I found food for the new ideas and tendencies in various quarters, not least in the religious writings of Alexander Knox, all of which I perused. Moreover, I had an inclination to ecclesiastical conformity, and obedience as such, which led me to concur with some zeal in the plans of Bishop Blomfield. In the course of two or three years, Manning turned from a strongly evangelical attitude to one as strongly anglican, and about the same time converted his acquaintance with me into a close friendship. In the samemanner James Hope, whom I had known but slightly at Eton or Oxford, made a carefully considered change of the same kind; which also became the occasion of a fast friendship. Both these intimacies led me forward; Hope especially had influence over me, more than I think any other person at any period of my life.[87]When I was preparing in 1837-8The State in its Relations with the Church, he took a warm interest in the work, which, during my absence on the continent, he corrected for the press. His attitude towards the work, however, included a desire that its propositions should be carried further. The temper of the times among young educated men was working in the same direction. I had no low churchmen among my near friends, except Walter Farquhar. Anstice, a great loss, died very early in his beautiful married life. While I was busy about my book, Hope made known to me Palmer's work on the Church, which had just appeared. I read it with care and great interest. It took hold upon me; and gave me at once the clear, definite, and strong conception of the church which, through all the storm and strain of a most critical period, has proved for me entirely adequate to every emergency, and saved me from all vacillation. I did not, however, love the extreme rigour of the book in its treatment of non-episcopal communions. It was not very long after this, I think in 1842, that I reduced into form my convictions of the large and important range of subjects which recent controversy had brought into prominence. I conceive that in the main Palmer completed for me the work which inspection of the prayer-book had begun.Before referring further to my 'redaction' of opinions, I desire to say that at this moment I am as closely an adherent to the doctrines of grace generally, and to the general sense of Saint Augustine, as at the date from which this narrative set out. I hope that my mind has dropped nothing affirmative. But I hope also that there has been dropped from it all the damnatory part of the opinions taught by the evangelical school; not only as regards the Roman catholic religion, but also as to heretics and heathens; nonconformists and presbyterians I think that I always let off pretty easily....

So, as will be seen, the first access of churchlike ideas to my mind by no means sufficed to expel my inherited and bigoted misconception, though in the event they did it as I hope effectively. But I long retained in my recollection an observation made to me in (I think) the year 1829, by Mrs. Benjamin Gaskell of Thornes, near Wakefield, a seed which was destined long to remain in my mind without germinating. I fell into religious conversation with this excellent woman, the mother of my Eton friend Milnes Gaskell, himself the husband of an unitarian. She said to me, Surely we cannot entertain a doubt as to the future condition of any person truly united to Christ by faith and love, whatever may be the faults of his opinions. Here she supplied me with the key to the whole question. At this hour I feel grateful to her accordingly, for the scope of her remark is very wide; and it is now my rule to remember her in prayer before the altar.

There was nothing at Eton to subvert this frame of mind; for nothing was taught us either for it or against it. But in the spring and summer of 1828, I set to work on Hooker'sEcclesiastical Polity, and read it straight through. Intercourse with my elder sister Anne had increased my mental interest in religion, and she, though generally of evangelical sentiments, had an opinion thatthe standard divines of the English church were of great value. Hooker's exposition of the case of the church of England came to me as a mere abstraction; but I think that I found the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, theretofore abhorred, impossible to reject, and the way was thus opened for further changes.

In like manner at Oxford, I do not doubt that in 1830 and 1831 the study of Bishop Butler laid the ground for new modes of thought in religion, but his teaching in the sermons on our moral nature was not integrated, so to speak, until several years later by larger perusal of the works of Saint Augustine. I may, however, say that I was not of a mind ill disposed to submit to authority.

The Oxford Movement, properly so called, began in the year 1833, but it had no direct effect upon me. I did not see the Tracts, and to this hour I have read but few of them. Indeed, my first impressions and emotions in connection with it were those of indignation at what I thought the rash intemperate censures pronounced by Mr. Hurrell Froude upon the reformers. My chief tie with Oxford was the close friendship I had formed in 1830 with Walter Hamilton.[86]His character, always loving and loved, had, not very greatly later, become deeply devout. But I do not think he at this time sympathised with Newman and his friends; and he had the good sense, in conjunction with Mr. Denison, afterwards bishop, to oppose the censure upon Dr. Hampden, to which I foolishly and ignorantly gave in, without, however, being an active or important participator.

But the blow struck by the prayer-book in 1832 set my mind in motion, and that motion was never arrested. I found food for the new ideas and tendencies in various quarters, not least in the religious writings of Alexander Knox, all of which I perused. Moreover, I had an inclination to ecclesiastical conformity, and obedience as such, which led me to concur with some zeal in the plans of Bishop Blomfield. In the course of two or three years, Manning turned from a strongly evangelical attitude to one as strongly anglican, and about the same time converted his acquaintance with me into a close friendship. In the samemanner James Hope, whom I had known but slightly at Eton or Oxford, made a carefully considered change of the same kind; which also became the occasion of a fast friendship. Both these intimacies led me forward; Hope especially had influence over me, more than I think any other person at any period of my life.[87]

When I was preparing in 1837-8The State in its Relations with the Church, he took a warm interest in the work, which, during my absence on the continent, he corrected for the press. His attitude towards the work, however, included a desire that its propositions should be carried further. The temper of the times among young educated men was working in the same direction. I had no low churchmen among my near friends, except Walter Farquhar. Anstice, a great loss, died very early in his beautiful married life. While I was busy about my book, Hope made known to me Palmer's work on the Church, which had just appeared. I read it with care and great interest. It took hold upon me; and gave me at once the clear, definite, and strong conception of the church which, through all the storm and strain of a most critical period, has proved for me entirely adequate to every emergency, and saved me from all vacillation. I did not, however, love the extreme rigour of the book in its treatment of non-episcopal communions. It was not very long after this, I think in 1842, that I reduced into form my convictions of the large and important range of subjects which recent controversy had brought into prominence. I conceive that in the main Palmer completed for me the work which inspection of the prayer-book had begun.

Before referring further to my 'redaction' of opinions, I desire to say that at this moment I am as closely an adherent to the doctrines of grace generally, and to the general sense of Saint Augustine, as at the date from which this narrative set out. I hope that my mind has dropped nothing affirmative. But I hope also that there has been dropped from it all the damnatory part of the opinions taught by the evangelical school; not only as regards the Roman catholic religion, but also as to heretics and heathens; nonconformists and presbyterians I think that I always let off pretty easily....

III

INFLUENCE OF FRIENDS AND BOOKS

The Tractarian movement is by this time one of the most familiar chapters in our history, and it has had singular good fortune in being told by three masters of the most winning, graphic, and melodious English prose of the century to which the tale belongs.[88]Whether we call it by the ill name of Oxford counter-reformation or the friendlier name of catholic revival, it remains a striking landmark in the varied motions of English religious thought and feeling for the three-quarters of a century since the still unfinished journey first began. In its early stages, the movement was exclusively theological. Philanthropic reform still remained with the evangelical school that so powerfully helped to sweep away the slave trade, cleansed the prisons, and aided in humanising the criminal law. It was they who 'helped to form a conscience, if not a heart, in the callous bosom of English politics,' while the very foremost of the Oxford divines was scouting the fine talk about black men, because they 'concentrated in themselves all the whiggery, dissent, cant, and abomination that had been ranged on their side.'[89]Nor can we forget that Shaftesbury, the leader in that beneficent crusade of human mercy and national wisdom which ended in the deliverance of women and children in mines and factories, was also a leader of the evangelical party.

The Tractarian movement, as all know, opened, among other sources, in antagonism to utilitarian liberalism. Yet J. S. Mill, the oracle of rationalistic liberalism in Oxford and other places in the following generation, had always much to say for the Tractarians. He used to tell us that the Oxford theologians had done for England something like what Guizot, Villemain, Michelet, Cousin haddone a little earlier for France; they had opened, broadened, deepened the issues and meanings of European history; they had reminded us that history is European; that it is quite unintelligible if treated as merely local. He would say, moreover, that thought should recognise thought and mind always welcome mind; and the Oxford men had at least brought argument, learning, and even philosophy of a sort, to break up the narrow and frigid conventions of reigning system in church and college, in pulpits and professorial chairs. They had made the church ashamed of the evil of her ways, they had determined that spirit of improvement from within 'which, if this sect-ridden country is ever really to be taught, must proceedpari passuwith assault from without.'[90]

One of the ablest of the Oxford writers talking of the non-jurors, remarks how very few of the movements that are attended with a certain romance, and thus bias us for a time in their favour, will stand full examination; they so often reveal some gross offence against common sense.[91]Want of common sense is not the particular impression left by the Tractarians, after we have put aside the plausible dialectic and winning periods of the leader, and proceed to look at the effect, not on their general honesty but on their intellectual integrity, of their most peculiar situation and the methods which they believed that situation to impose. Nobody will be so presumptuous or uncharitable as to deny that among the divines of the Oxford movement were men as pure in soul, as fervid lovers of truth, as this world ever possessed. On the other hand it would be nothing short of a miracle in human nature, if all that dreadful tangle of economies and reserves, so largely practised and for a long time so insidiously defended, did not familiarise a vein of subtlety, a tendency to play fast and loose with words, a perilous disposition to regard the non-natural sense of language as if it were just as good as the natural, a willingness to be satisfied with a bare and rigid logical consistency of expression, without respect to the interpretation that was sure to be put upon that expression by the hearer and thereader. The strain of their position in all these respects made Newman and his allies no exemplary school. Their example has been, perhaps rightly, held to account for something that was often under the evil name of sophistry suspected and disliked in Mr. Gladstone himself, in his speeches, his writings, and even in his public acts.

MISCHIEVOUS EFFECTS OF OXFORD ENTANGLEMENTS

It is true that to the impartial eye Newman is no worse than teachers in antagonistic sects; he is, for instance, no subtler than Maurice. The theologian who strove so hard in the name of anglican unity to develop all the catholic elements and hide out of sight all the calvinistic, was not driven to any hardier exploits of verbal legerdemain, than the theologian who strove against all reason and clear thinking to devise common formulæ that should embrace both catholic and calvinistic explanations together, or indeed anything else that anybody might choose to bring to the transfusing alchemy of his rather smoky crucible. Nor was the third, and at that moment the strongest, of the church parties at Oxford and in the country, well able to fling stones at the other two. What better right, it was asked, had low churchmen to shut their eyes to the language of rubrics, creeds, and offices, than the high churchmen had to twist the language of the articles?

The confusion was grave and it was unfathomable. Newman fought a skilful and persistent fight against liberalism, as being nothing else than the egregious doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, and that one creed is as good as another. Dr. Arnold, on the other hand, denounced Newmanism as idolatry; declared that if you let in the little finger of tradition, you would soon have in the whole monster, horns and tail and all; and even complained of the English divines in general, with the noble exceptions of Butler and Hooker, that he found in them a want of believing or disbelieving anything because it was true or false, as if that were a question that never occurred to them.[92]The plain man, who was but a poor master either of theology or of the history of the church of England, but who loved the prayer-book and hated confession, convents,priest-craft, and mariolatry, was wrought to madness by a clergyman who should describe himself, as did R. H. Froude, as a catholic without the popery, and a church of England man without the protestantism. The plain man knew that he was not himself clever enough to form any distinct idea of what such talk meant. But then his helplessness only deepened his conviction that the more distinct his idea might become, the more intense would his aversion be, both to the thing meant and to the surpliced conjurer who, as he bitterly supposed, was by sophistic tricks trying hard to take him in.

Other portents were at the same time beginning to disturb the world. The finds and the theories of geologists made men uncomfortable, and brought down sharp anathemas. Wider speculations on cosmic and creative law came soon after, and found their way into popular reading.[93]In prose literature, in subtler forms than the verse of Shelley, new dissolving elements appeared that were destined to go far. Schleiermacher, between 1820 and 1830, opened the sluices of the theological deep, whether to deluge or to irrigate. In 1830 an alarming note was sounded in the publication by a learned clergyman of a history of the Jews. We have seen (p. 56) how Mr. Gladstone was horrified by it. Milman's book was the beginning of a new rationalism within the fold. A line of thought was opened that seemed to make the history of religious ideas more interesting than their truth. The special claims of an accepted creed were shaken by disclosing an unmistakeable family likeness to creeds abhorred. A belief was deemed to be accounted for and its sanctity dissolved, by referring it historically to human origins, and showing it to be only one branch of a genealogical trunk. Historic explanation became a graver peril than direct attack.

NEW IDEAS AND TENDENCIES

The first skirmish in a dire conflict that is not even now over or near its end happened in 1836. Lord Melbourne recommended for the chair of divinity at Oxford Dr. Hampden,a divine whose clumsy handling of nice themes had brought him, much against his intention, under suspicion of unsound doctrine, and who was destined eleven years later to find himself the centre of a still louder uproar. Evangelicals and Tractarians flew to arms, and the two hosts who were soon to draw their swords upon one another, now for the first time, if not the last, swarmed forth together side by side against the heretic. What was rather an affront than a penalty was inflicted upon Hampden by a majority of some five to one of the masters of arts of the university, and in accord with that majority, as he has just told us, though he did not actually vote, was Mr. Gladstone. Twenty years after, when he had risen to be a shining light in the world's firmament, he wrote to Hampden to express regret for the injustice of which in this instance 'the forward precipitancy of youth' had made him guilty.[94]The case of Hampden gave a sharp actuality to the question of the relations of church and crown. The particular quarrel was of secondary importance, but it brought home to the high churchmen what might be expected in weightier matters than the affair of Dr. Hampden from whig ministers, and confirmed the horrible apprehension that whig ministers might possibly have to fill all the regius chairs and all the sees for a whole generation to come.

Not less important than the theology of the Oxford divines in its influence on Mr. Gladstone's line of thought upon things ecclesiastical was the speculation of Coleridge on the teaching and polity of a national church. His fertile book onChurch and Statewas given to the world in 1830, four years before his death, and this and the ideas proceeding from it were the mainspring, if not of the theology of the movement, at least of Mr. Gladstone's first marked contribution to the stirring controversies of the time. He has described the profound effect upon his mind of another book, theTreatise on the Church of Christ, by William Palmer of Worcester College (1838), and to the end of his life it held its place in his mind among the most masterly performances of the day in the twin hemispheres of theology and churchpolity.[95]Newman applauded the book for its magnificence of design, and undoubtedly it covers much ground, including a stiff rejection of Locke's theory of toleration, and the assertion of the strong doctrine that the Christian prince has a right by temporal penalties to protect the church from the gathering together of the froward and the insurrection of wicked doers. It has at least the merit, so far from universal in the polemics of that day, of clear language, definite propositions, and formal arguments capable of being met by a downright yes or no.[96]The question, however, that has often slumbered yet never dies, of the right relations between the Christian prince or state and the Christian church, was rapidly passing away from logicians of the cloister.

Note topage 167.

'Hawarden, Chester, November 9, 1856.—My Lord Bishop,—Your lordship will probably be surprised at receiving a letter from me, as a stranger. The simple purpose of it is to discharge a debt of the smallest possible importance to you, yet due I think from me, by expressing the regret with which I now look back on my concurrence in a vote of the University of Oxford in the year 1836, condemnatory of some of your lordship's publications. I did not take actual part in the vote; but upon reference to a journal kept at the time, I find that my absence was owing to an accident.'For a good many years past I have found myself ill able to master books of an abstract character, and I am far from pretending to be competent at this time to form a judgment on the merits of any propositions then at issue. I have learned, indeed, that many things which, in the forward precipitancy of my youth, I should have condemned, are either in reality sound, or lie within the just limits of such discussion as especially befits an University. But that which (after a delay, due, I think, to the cares and pressing occupations of political life) brought back to my mind the injustice of which I had unconsciously been guilty in 1836, was my being called upon, as a member of the Council of King's College in London, to concur in a measure similar in principle with respect to Mr. Maurice; that is to say, in a condemnation couched in general terms which did not really declare the point of imputed guilt, and against which perfect innocence could have no defence. I resisted to the best of my power, though ineffectually, the grievous wrong done to Mr. Maurice, and urged that the charges should be made distinct, that all the best means of investigation should be brought to bear on them, ample opportunity given for defence, and a reference then made, if needful, to the Bishop in his proper capacity. But the majority of laymen in the Council were inexorable. It was only, as I have said, after mature reflection that I came to perceive the bearing of the case on that of 1836, and to find that by my resistance I had condemned myself. I then lamented very sincerely that I had not on that occasion, now so remote, felt and acted in a different manner.'I beg your lordship to accept this expression of my cordial regret, and to allow me to subscribe myself, very respectfully, your obedient and humble servant,W. E. Gladstone.'[97]

'For a good many years past I have found myself ill able to master books of an abstract character, and I am far from pretending to be competent at this time to form a judgment on the merits of any propositions then at issue. I have learned, indeed, that many things which, in the forward precipitancy of my youth, I should have condemned, are either in reality sound, or lie within the just limits of such discussion as especially befits an University. But that which (after a delay, due, I think, to the cares and pressing occupations of political life) brought back to my mind the injustice of which I had unconsciously been guilty in 1836, was my being called upon, as a member of the Council of King's College in London, to concur in a measure similar in principle with respect to Mr. Maurice; that is to say, in a condemnation couched in general terms which did not really declare the point of imputed guilt, and against which perfect innocence could have no defence. I resisted to the best of my power, though ineffectually, the grievous wrong done to Mr. Maurice, and urged that the charges should be made distinct, that all the best means of investigation should be brought to bear on them, ample opportunity given for defence, and a reference then made, if needful, to the Bishop in his proper capacity. But the majority of laymen in the Council were inexorable. It was only, as I have said, after mature reflection that I came to perceive the bearing of the case on that of 1836, and to find that by my resistance I had condemned myself. I then lamented very sincerely that I had not on that occasion, now so remote, felt and acted in a different manner.

'I beg your lordship to accept this expression of my cordial regret, and to allow me to subscribe myself, very respectfully, your obedient and humble servant,W. E. Gladstone.'[97]

FOOTNOTES:[81]Newman,Essays. ii. p. 428.[82]See Sir Leslie Stephen'sEnglish Utilitarians, ii. p. 42.[83]'Nowhere that I know of,' the Duke of Argyll once wrote in friendly remonstrance with Mr. Gladstone, 'is the doctrine of a separate society being of divine foundation, so dogmatically expressed as in the Scotch Confession; the 39 articles are less definite on the subject.'[84]On this, see Fairbairn'sCatholicism, Roman and Anglican, pp. 114-5.[85]A little sheaf of curious letters on this family episode survives.[86]Afterwards Bishop of Salisbury.[87]Marrying Walter Scott's granddaughter (1847) he was named Hope-Scott after 1853.[88]TheApologiaof its leader; Froude,Short Studies, vol. iv.; and Dean Church'sOxford Movement, 1833-45, a truly fascinating book—called by Mr. Gladstone a great and noble book. 'It has all the delicacy,' he says, 'the insight into the human mind, heart, and character, which were Newman's great endowment; but there is a pervading sense of soundness about it which Newman, great as he was, never inspired.'[89]See Dr. Fairbairn'sCatholicism, Roman and Anglican, p. 292. Pusey speaks of our 'paying twenty millions for a theory about slavery' (Liddon,Life of Pusey, iii. p. 172).[90]Dissertations, i. p. 444.[91]J. B. Mozley'sLetters, p. 234.[92]Stanley'sLife of Arnold, ii. p. 56n.[93]TheVestiges of Creationappeared in 1844.[94]The letter will be found at the end of the chapter.[95]See his article in theNineteenth Centuryfor August, 1894, where he calls Palmer's book the most powerful and least assailable defence of the position of the anglican church from the sixteenth century downwards.[96]See Church,Oxford Movement, pp. 214-6.[97]This letter is printed in theLife of Hampden(1876), p. 199.

[81]Newman,Essays. ii. p. 428.

[82]See Sir Leslie Stephen'sEnglish Utilitarians, ii. p. 42.

[83]'Nowhere that I know of,' the Duke of Argyll once wrote in friendly remonstrance with Mr. Gladstone, 'is the doctrine of a separate society being of divine foundation, so dogmatically expressed as in the Scotch Confession; the 39 articles are less definite on the subject.'

[84]On this, see Fairbairn'sCatholicism, Roman and Anglican, pp. 114-5.

[85]A little sheaf of curious letters on this family episode survives.

[86]Afterwards Bishop of Salisbury.

[87]Marrying Walter Scott's granddaughter (1847) he was named Hope-Scott after 1853.

[88]TheApologiaof its leader; Froude,Short Studies, vol. iv.; and Dean Church'sOxford Movement, 1833-45, a truly fascinating book—called by Mr. Gladstone a great and noble book. 'It has all the delicacy,' he says, 'the insight into the human mind, heart, and character, which were Newman's great endowment; but there is a pervading sense of soundness about it which Newman, great as he was, never inspired.'

[89]See Dr. Fairbairn'sCatholicism, Roman and Anglican, p. 292. Pusey speaks of our 'paying twenty millions for a theory about slavery' (Liddon,Life of Pusey, iii. p. 172).

[90]Dissertations, i. p. 444.

[91]J. B. Mozley'sLetters, p. 234.

[92]Stanley'sLife of Arnold, ii. p. 56n.

[93]TheVestiges of Creationappeared in 1844.

[94]The letter will be found at the end of the chapter.

[95]See his article in theNineteenth Centuryfor August, 1894, where he calls Palmer's book the most powerful and least assailable defence of the position of the anglican church from the sixteenth century downwards.

[96]See Church,Oxford Movement, pp. 214-6.

[97]This letter is printed in theLife of Hampden(1876), p. 199.

ToC

HIS FIRST BOOK

(1838-1839)

The union [with the State] is to the Church of secondary though great importance.Herfoundations are on the holy hills. Her charter is legibly divine. She, if she should be excluded from the precinct of government, may still fulfil all her functions, and carry them out to perfection. Her condition would be anything rather than pitiable, should she once more occupy the position which she held before the reign of Constantine. But the State, in rejecting her, would actively violate its most solemn duty, and would, if the theory of the connection be sound, entail upon itself a curse.—Gladstone(1838).

According to Mr. Gladstone, a furore for church establishment came down upon the conservative squadrons between 1835 and 1838. He describes it as due especially to the activity of the presbyterian established church of Scotland before the disruption, and especially to the 'zealous and truly noble propagandism of Dr. Chalmers, a man with the energy of a giant and the simplicity of a child.' In 1837, Mr. Gladstone says in one of the many fragments written when in his later years he mused over the past, 'we had a movement for fresh parliamentary grants to build churches in Scotland. The leaders did not seem much to like it, but had to follow. I remember dining at Sir R. Peel's with the Scotch deputation. It included Collins, a church bookseller of note, who told me that no sermon ought ever to fall short of an hour, for in less time than that it was not possible to explain any text of the Holy Scripture.'

In the spring of 1838, the mighty Chalmers was persuaded to cross the border and deliver in London half a dozen discourses to vindicate the cause of ecclesiastical establishments. The rooms in Hanover Square were crowded to suffocation by intense audiences mainly composed of the governing class. Princes of the blood were there, high prelates of the church, great nobles, leading statesmen, and a throng of members of the House of Commons, from both sides of it. The orator was seated, but now and again in the kindling excitement of his thought, he rose unconsciously to his feet, and by ringing phrase or ardent gesture roused a whirlwind of enthusiasm such that vehement bystanders assure us it could not be exceeded in the history of human eloquence.[98]In Chalmers' fulminating energy, the mechanical polemics of an appropriation clause in a parliamentary bill assume a passionate and living air. He had warned his northern flock, 'should the disaster ever befall us, of vulgar and upstart politicians becoming lords of the ascendant, and an infidel or demi-infidel government wielding the destinies of this mighty empire, and should they be willing at the shrines of their own wretched partizanship to make sacrifice of those great and hallowed institutions which were consecrated by our ancestors to the maintenance of religious truth and religious liberty,—should in particular the monstrous proposition ever be entertained to abridge the legal funds for the support of protestantism,—let us hope that there is still enough, not of fiery zeal, but of calm, resolute, enlightened principle in the land to resent the outrage—enough of energy and reaction in the revolted sense of this great country to meet and overbear it.'

CHALMERS IN LONDON

The impression made by all this on Mr. Gladstone he has himself described in an autobiographic note of 1897:—

The primary idea of my early politics was the church. With this was connected the idea of the establishment, as being everything except essential. When therefore Dr. Chalmers came to London to lecture on the principle of church establishments, I attended as a loyal hearer. I had a profound respect for the lecturer, with whom I had had the honour of a good deal of acquaintance during winter residences in Edinburgh, and some correspondence by letter. I was in my earlier twenties, and henear his sixties [he was 58], with a high and merited fame for eloquence and character. He subscribed his letters to me 'respectfully' (or 'most respectfully') yours, and puzzled me extremely in the effort to find out what suitable mode of subscription to use in return. Unfortunately the basis of his lectures was totally unsound. Parliament as being Christian was bound to know and establish the truth. But not being made of theologians, it could not follow the truth into its minuter shadings, and must proceed upon broad lines. Fortunately these lines were ready to hand. There was a religious system which, taken in the rough, was truth. This was known as protestantism: and to its varieties it was not the business of the legislature to have regard. On the other side lay a system which, taken again in the rough, was not truth but error. This system was known as popery. Parliament therefore was bound to establish and endow some kind of protestantism, and not to establish or endow popery.

In a letter to Manning (May 14, 1838) he puts the case more bluntly:—

Such a jumble of church, un-church, and anti-church principles as that excellent and eloquent man Dr. Chalmers has given us in his recent lectures, no human being ever heard, and it can only be compared to the state of things—Ante mare et terras et quod tegit omnia cœlum.[99]He thinks that the State has not cognisance of spirituals, except upon a broad simple principle like that which separates popery from protestantism, namely that protestantism receives the word of God only, popery the word of God and the word of man alike—it is easy, he says, such being the alternatives, to judge which is preferable. He flogged the apostolic succession grievously, seven bishops sitting below him: London, Winchester, Chester, Oxford, Llandaff, Gloucester, Exeter, and the Duke of Cambridge incessantly bobbing assent; but for fear we should be annoyed he then turned round on the cathedrals plan and flogged it with at least equal vigour. He has a mind keenly susceptible of what is beautiful, great, and good; tenacious of an idea when once grasped, and with a singular power of concentrating thewhole man upon it. But unfortunately I do not believe he has ever looked in the face the real doctrine of the visible church and the apostolic succession, or has any idea what is the matter at issue.

Ante mare et terras et quod tegit omnia cœlum.[99]

He thinks that the State has not cognisance of spirituals, except upon a broad simple principle like that which separates popery from protestantism, namely that protestantism receives the word of God only, popery the word of God and the word of man alike—it is easy, he says, such being the alternatives, to judge which is preferable. He flogged the apostolic succession grievously, seven bishops sitting below him: London, Winchester, Chester, Oxford, Llandaff, Gloucester, Exeter, and the Duke of Cambridge incessantly bobbing assent; but for fear we should be annoyed he then turned round on the cathedrals plan and flogged it with at least equal vigour. He has a mind keenly susceptible of what is beautiful, great, and good; tenacious of an idea when once grasped, and with a singular power of concentrating thewhole man upon it. But unfortunately I do not believe he has ever looked in the face the real doctrine of the visible church and the apostolic succession, or has any idea what is the matter at issue.

Mr. Gladstone says he could not stand the undisputed currency in conservative circles of a theory like this, and felt that the occasion ought to be seized for further entrenching the existing institution, strong as it seemed in fact, by more systematic defences in principle and theory. He sat down to the literary task with uncommon vigour and persistency. His object was not merely to show that the state has a conscience, for not even the newest of new Machiavellians denies that a state is bound by some moral obligations, though in history and fact it is true that

Earth is sick,

And Heaven is weary, of the hollow words

Which States and Kingdoms utter when they talk

Of truth and justice.[100]

But the obligation of conscience upon a state was not Mr. Gladstone's only point. His propositions were, that the state is cognisant of the difference between religious truth and religious error: that the propagation of this truth and the discouragement of this error are among the ends for which government exists; that the English state did recognise as a fundamental duty to give an active and exclusive support to a certain religion; and finally that the condition of things resulting from the discharge of this duty was well worth preserving against encroachment, from whatever quarter encroachment might threaten.

COMPOSITION OF HIS WORK

On July 23rd, the draft of his book was at last finished, and he dispatched it to James Hope for free criticism, suggestions, and revision. The 'physical state of theMS.,' as Mr. Gladstone calls it, seems to have been rather indefensible, and his excuse for writing 'irregularly and confusedly, considering the pressure of other engagements'—an excuse somewhat too common with him—was not quite so valid as he seems to have thought it. 'The defects,' writes Hope, 'are such as must almost necessarily occur when a greatsubject is handled piecemeal and at intervals; and I should recommend, with a view to remedying them, that you procure the whole to be copied out in a good legible hand with blank pages, and that you read it through in this shape once connectedly, with a view to the whole argument, and again with a view to examining the structure of each part.'[101]Hope took as much trouble with the argument and structure of the book as if he were himself its author. For many weeks the fervid toil went on.

The strain on his eyesight that had embarrassed Mr. Gladstone for several months now made abstinence from incessant reading and writing necessary, and he was ordered to travel. He first settled with his sister at Ems (August 15th), whither the proofs of his book with Hope's annotations followed, nor did he finally get rid of the burden until the middle of September. The tedium of life in hotels was almost worse than the tedium of revising proofs, and at Milan and Florence he was strongly tempted to return home, as the benefit was problematical; it was even doubtful whether pictures were any less trying to his eyes than books. He made the acquaintance of one celebrated writer of the time. 'I went to see Manzoni,' he says, 'in his house some six or eight miles from Milan in 1838. He was a most interesting man, but was regarded, as I found, among the more fashionable priests in Milan as abacchettone[hypocrite]. In his own way he was, I think, a liberal and a nationalist, nor was the alliance of such politics with strong religious convictions uncommon among the more eminent Italians of those days.'

October found him in Sicily,[102]where he travelled with Sir Stephen Glynne and his two sisters, and here we shall soon see that with one of these sisters a momentous thing came to pass. It was at Catania that he first heard of the publication of his book. A month or more was passed in Rome in company with Manning, and together they visited Wiseman, Manning's conversion still thirteen years off. Macaulay too, now eight-and-thirty, was at Rome that winter. 'OnChristmas Eve,' he says, 'I found Gladstone in the throng, and I accosted him, as we had met, though we had never been introduced to each other. We talked and walked together in St. Peter's during the best part of an afternoon. He is both a clever and an amiable man....' At Rome, as the state of his eyesight forbade too close resort to picture galleries and museums, he listened to countless sermons, all carefully recorded in his diary. Dr. Wiseman gave him a lesson in the missal. On his birthday he went with Manning to hear mass with the pope's choir, and they were placed on the bench behind the cardinals. At St. Peter's he recalled that there his first conception of the unity of the church had come into his mind, and the desire for its attainment—'an object in every human sense hopeless, but not therefore the less to be desired, for the horizon of human hope is not that of divine power and wisdom. That idea has been upon the whole, I believe, the ruling one of my life during the period that has since elapsed.' On January 19, he bade 'a reluctant adieu to the mysterious city, whither he should repair who wishes to renew for a time the dream of life.'

A few years later Mr. Gladstone noted some differences between English and Italian preaching that are of interest:—

The fundamental distinction between English and Italian preaching is, I think, this: the mind of the English preacher, or reader of sermons, however impressive, is fixed mainly upon his composition, that of the Italian on his hearers. The Italian is a man applying himself by his rational and persuasive organs to men, in order to move them; the former is a man applying himself, with his best ability in many cases, to a fixed form of matter, in order tomake itmove those whom he addresses. The action in the one case is warm, living, direct, immediate, from heart to heart; in the other it is transfused through a medium comparatively torpid. The first is surely far superior to the second in truth and reality. The preacher bears an awful message. Such messengers, if sent with authority, are too much identified with, and possessed by, that which they carry, to view it objectively during its delivery, it absorbs their very being andall its energies, theyaretheir message, and they see nothing extrinsic to themselves except those to whose hearts they desire to bring it. In truth, what we want is the following of nature, and her genial development. (March 20, Palm Sunday, '42.)

GOES ABROAD. BOOK PUBLISHED

It was the end of January (1839) before Mr. Gladstone arrived in London, and by that time his work had been out for six or seven weeks.[103]On his return we may be sure that his book and its fortunes were the young author's most lively interest. Church authorities and the clergy generally, so far as he could learn, approved, many of them very warmly. The Bishop of London wrote this, and the Archbishop of Canterbury said it. It is easy to understand with what interest and delight the average churchman would welcome so serious a contribution to the good cause, so bold an effort by so skilled a hand, by lessons from history, by general principles of national probity and a national religion, and by well-digested materials gathered, as Hooker gathered his, 'from the characteristic circumstances of the time,' to support the case for ecclesiastical privilege. Anglicans of the better sort had their intellectual self-respect restored in Mr. Gladstone's book, by finding that they need no longer subsist on the dregs of Eldonian prejudice, but could sustain themselves in intellectual dignity and affluence by large thoughts and sonorous phrases upon the nature of human society as a grand whole.[104]Even unconvinced whigs who quarrelled with the arguments, admitted that the tories had found in the young member for Newark a well-read scholar, with extraordinary amplitude of mind, a man who knew what reasoning meant, and a man who knew how to write.

The first chapter dealing with establishment drew forth premature praise from many who condemned the succeeding chapters setting out high notions as to the church. From both universities he had favourable accounts. 'From Scotland they are mixed; those which are most definitetend to show there is considerable soreness, at which, God knows, I am not surprised; but I have not sought nor desired it.' The Germans on the whole approved. Bunsen was exuberant; there was nobody, he said, with whom he so loved συμφιλοσοφεῖν καὶ συμφιλολογεῖν; people have too much to do about themselves to have time to seek truth on its own account; the greater, therefore, the merit of the writer who forces his age to decide, whether they will serve God or Baal. Gladstone is the first man in England as to intellectual power, he cried, and he has heard higher tones than any one else in this land. The Crown Prince of Prussia sent him civil messages, and meant to have the book translated. Rogers, the poet, wrote that his mother was descended from stout nonconformists, that his father was perverted to his mother's heresies, and that therefore he himself could not be zealous in the cause; but, however that might be, of this Mr. Gladstone might be very sure, that he would love and admire the author of the book as much as ever. The Duke of Newcastle expected much satisfaction; meanwhile declared it to be a national duty to provide churches and pastors; parliament should vote even millions and millions; then dissent would uncommonly soon disappear, and a blessing would fall upon the land. Dr. Arnold told his friends how much he admired the spirit of the book throughout, how he liked the substance of half of it, how erroneous he thought the other half. Wordsworth pronounced it worthy of all attention, doubted whether the author had not gone too far about apostolical descent; but then, like the sage that he was, the poet admitted that he must know a great deal more ecclesiastical history, be better read in the Fathers, and read the book itself over again, before he could feel any right to criticise.[105]

ITS RECEPTION

His political leaders had as yet not spoken a word. On February 9th, Mr. Gladstone dined at Sir Robert Peel's. 'Not a word from him, Stanley, or Graham yet, even to acknowledge my poor book; but no change in manner, certainly none in Peel or Graham.' Monckton Milnes had been to Drayton, and told how the great man there had asked impatiently why anybody with so fine a career before him should go out of his way to write books. 'Sir Robert Peel,' says Mr. Gladstone, 'who was a religious man, was wholly anti-church and unclerical, and largely undogmatic. I feel that Sir R. Peel must have been quite perplexed in his treatment of me after the publication of the book, partly through his own fault, for by habit and education he was quite incapable of comprehending the movement in the church, the strength it would reach, and the exigencies it would entail. Lord Derby, I think, early began to escape from the erastian yoke which weighed upon Peel. Lord Aberdeen was, I should say, altogether enlightened in regard to it and had cast it off: so that he obtained from some the sobriquet (during his ministry) of "the presbyterian Puseyite."' Even Mr. Gladstone's best friends trembled for the effect of his ecclesiastical zeal upon his powers of political usefulness, and to the same effect was the general talk of the town. The common suspicion that the writer was doing the work of the hated Puseyites grew darker and spread further. Then in April came Macaulay's article in theEdinburgh, setting out with his own incomparable directness, pungency, and effect, all the arguments on the side of that popular antagonism which was rooted far less in specific reasoning than in a general anti-sacerdotal instinct that lies deep in the hearts of Englishmen. John Sterling called the famous article the assault of an equipped and practised sophist against a crude young platonist, who happens by accident to have been taught the hard and broken dialect of Aristotle rather than the deep, continuous, and musical flow of his true and ultimate master.Author and critic exchanged magnanimous letters worthy of two great and honourable men.[106]Not the least wonderful thing about Macaulay's review is that he should not have seen how many of his own most trenchant considerations told no more strongly against Mr. Gladstone's theory, than they told against that whig theory of establishment which at the end of his article he himself tried to set up in its place.

Praise indeed came, and praise that no good man could have treated with indifference, from men like Keble, and it came from other quarters whence it was perhaps not quite so welcome, and not much more dangerous. He heard (March 19) that the Duke of Sussex, at Lord Durham's, had been strongly condemning the book; and by an odd contrast just after, as he was standing in conversation with George Sinclair, O'Connell with evident purpose came up and began to thank him for a most valuable work; for the doctrine of the authority of the church and infallibility in essentials—a great approximation to the church of Rome—an excellent sign in one who if he lived, etc. etc. It did not go far enough for the Roman catholic Archbishop of Tuan; but Dr. Murray, the Archbishop of Dublin, was delighted with it; he termed it an honest book, while as to the charges against romanism Mr. Gladstone was misinformed. 'I merely said I was very glad to approximate to any one on the ground oftruth;i.e.rejoiced when truth immediately wrought out, in whatever degree, its own legitimate result of unity. O'Connell said he claimed half of me.... Count Montalembert came to me to-day (March 23rd), and sat long, for the purpose of ingenuously and kindly impugning certain statements in my book, viz. (1) That the peculiar tendency of the policy of romanism before the reformation went to limit in the mass of men intellectual exercise upon religion. (2) That the doctrine of purgatory adjourned until after death, more or less, the idea and practice of the practical work of religion. (3) That the Roman catholic church restricts the reading of the scriptures by the Christian people. Hespoke of the evils; I contended we had a balance of good, and that the idea of duty in individuals was more developed here than in pure Roman catholic countries.'

THE BOOK TOO LATE

All was of no avail. 'Scarcely had my work issued from the press,' wrote Mr. Gladstone thirty years later, 'when I became aware that there was no party, no section of a party, no individual person probably, in the House of Commons, who was prepared to act upon it. I found myself the last man on a sinking ship.' Exclusive support to the established religion of the country had been the rule; 'but when I bade it live, it was just about to die. It was really a quickened, not a deadened conscience, in the country, that insisted on enlarging the circle of state support.'[107]The result was not wholly unexpected, for in the summer of 1838 while actually writing the book, he records that he 'told Pusey for himself alone, I thought my own church and state principles within one stage of being hopeless as regards success in this generation.'

Another set of fragmentary notes, composed in 1894, and headed 'Some of my Errors,' contains a further passage that points in a significant direction:—

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