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BX 8495 .M670 M670 ] Moulton, W. Fiddian b. 18661 James Hope Moulton
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JAMES HOPE MOULTON
JAMES HOPE MOULTON
BY HIS BROTHER
Villi
With a Foreword by the RIGHT REV. BISHOP RYLE Dean of Westminster
LONDON THE EPWORTH PRESS J. ALFRED SHARP
First Edition, 1919
TO
HAROLD AND HELEN
IS DEDICATED THIS ATTEMPTED RECORD OF A SACRED LEGACY
PREFACE
There are certain obvious drawbacks attaching to Memoirs, or Appreciations, written by relatives ; and no one is more conscious of that fact than I am. The only plea I would put forward in extenua- tion is that a greater drawback would have been risked if the book had not been written by me — namely, that it might not have been written at all ! And so I risk the drawbacks rather than leave my brother's many friends without any record, however imperfect, of his life or estimate of his personality and influence.
I have not attempted anything in the way of a detailed chronicle, partly because it would have been practically impossible to do so, and partly because it would have served no particularly good purpose if it had been done. I have chosen rather
7
8 PREFACE
to attempt, with such detachment as I could achieve, an estimate of his life, work, and disposition ; and I have tried to supplement, and where necessary to correct, my own vision by that of those who saw him from other angles. When all is said and done it is a question of angles : there is no divergent evidence as to fact. A wondrous unanimity, a glowing uni- formity, pervades all the many tributes paid to him in East and West ; and when they have been poured into the common stock of memories, those of the inner circle have recognized in the tribute from the outer circle the same James Hope INIoulton that they saw in the more intimate life of the home. Indeed, to him the world was an extended home, and the race a wider brotherhood ; and he was what he was because this was so.
I would express my deep sense of in- debtedness to the Dean of Westminster lor his generous appreciation of my brother. Dr. Ryle conducted the funeral service of the father ; it is fitting that words
PREFACE 9
of his should accompany the memorial to the son — his pupil and friend. I would also tender grateful thanks to Sir J. G. Frazer for permission to quote from private letters written to his friend. Dr. Rendel Harris and Dr. A. S. Peake have, as usual, been suggestive, helpful, tender — have been, that is to say, themselves. My brother was indeed to be congratulated on the inner circle of his friends.
May, 1919.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD - - . -
I
RICHMOND
THE FAMILY STOCK -
EARLY LIFE - - . .
II
CAMBRIDGE
SCHOOLDAYS AT THE LEYS UNIVERSITY LIFE AND INFLUENCE EARLY MINISTERIAL CAREER
III
MANCHESTER
THE NEW SPHERE
PHASES OF SCHOLARSHIP -
II
12 CONTENTS
MANCHESTER— {continued.)
PAGE
THE METHODIST PREACHER - - 86 THREE CHARACTERISTICS — HUMILITY,
MORAL PASSION, RECONCILIATION 92 THE WAR ill
IV INDIA
THE CALL 133
SOME ASPECTS OF THE TOUR - - 145
FACE TO FACE WITH PARSISM - - 180
THE END 191
FOREWORD
J. Hope Moulton's death has made this life poorer through the loss of a devoted scholar and student, a fine character, and a strong and forceful influence.
My recollection of him goes back to the early days when he was a young and enthusiastic scholar at King's College, Cambridge. I made his acquaintance soon after he came into residence, and I re- member being greatly impressed by his earnestness of purpose, his splendid dili- gence, and his sympathy with different aspects of College Hfe. He was a keen athlete, a fbie runner, and an ardent lacrosse player. He was a good classical scholar, and threw himself into the special study of philology and of Sanskrit with glorious energy.
More especially, I can recall the interest 13
14 FOREWORD
which he always showed in the Sunday afternoon gatherings which used to be held in my rooms, and at which the presence and conversation of Dr. Westcott (after- wards Bishop of Durham) were an especial attraction. Moulton was always an eager and earnest debater. He was at that time deeply interested in modem social questions. He amused us sometimes by his impatience with any appeals and references to the thought or usage of earlier centuries of Christendom.
He was a diligent student of the New Testament in the Greek. Later on, he did some minute and most laborious work over the references in the Revised Version of the Bible. Wliatever he took up he threw into it intense seriousness of devotion.
I watched with deep regard and admira- tion his steady advance into the front rank of modern New Testament philologists ; and the enthusiasm of his investigations into Oriental religious thought has been the means of inspiring many a younger student,
FOREWORD 15
I may Scay I had a very great affection for him. He was always occupied in things that mattered ; always full of interested and eager inquiry about things religious. His love for his father was, moreover, one of the most attractive features in his character. I felt there was nothing he would not do to please or help that great and good man, the late Head Master of the Leys School.
H. E. Ryle.
James Hope Moulton
I
RICHMOND
The Family Stock
It was well within sight of the buildings of Richmond College that the life of James Hope Moulton took its first beginning on October 11, 1863. He came of a stock so saturated with Methodist traditions that it seemed to belong to the fitness of things that he should have been bom under the shadow of a great Methodist institution. Right back to the ministry of Wesley himself there had been a direct succession of preachers in the family, which started with John Bakewell, the writer of the justly famous hymn, ' Hail, thou once despised Jesus ! ' When Bakewell
•7 B
18 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
removed from Derbyshire to Greenwich he had as an assistant master in his school a brilliant young Irishman named James Egan ; and in that home Wesley was an honoured and frequent guest. He quickly reahzed the existence of a close attach- ment between Mr. Egan and the clever daughter of his friend ; and with all the authority which was so readily conceded to him by his devoted followers he said to Mr. Bakewell, ' Let the young people marry ; hand the school over to them, and go thou and preach the gospel.' He himself joined this gifted couple in holy matrimony. John Bakewell went forth to preach, djdng at the age of ninety- eight in full possession of his faculties ; and the Egans took on the school. It was their daughter who married the first William Moulton, who, although a Churchman by upbringing, came under strong rehgious conviction among the Methodists and ultimately entered the Methodist ministry in 1794. Three of his sons followed him into that same fellowship, of whom James
RICHMOND 19^
Egan Moulton was the eldest ; and he is the one who concerns us here, for he was the father of Dr. W. F. Moulton, of The Leys ; Dr. J. E. Moulton, of Sydney, N.S.W.; the Right Hon. Lord Moulton of Bank, K.C.B.; and Dr. R. G. Moulton, of Chicago — the father and three uncles of James Hope Moulton.
On his mother's side there was the same devotion to the cause of Methodism, al- though the connexion was not so long- standing. Samuel Hope was a member of a clan famous over the border, and of that branch of the clan which had risen to great distinction in Liverpool. But convictions are awkward things, and Samuel Hope relinquished the prospect of a fine position in the family bank in Liverpool, faced the social ostracism which was so often the Methodist's lot in those days, and took up a career which meant a life of comparative poverty to the end. He rose to an honoured place in the Church of his choice, becoming what was prac- tically the General Secretary for the Home
20 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
Missions, and ultimately retiring to Guern- sey with shattered health after leading a forlorn hope in a south country town, where he saved Methodism from collapse at the cost of his own Ufe. He died a year after he reached the peaceful island home in the sixty-third year of his age, and the fortieth of his ministry — figures destined to reappear in the epitaph of the distin- guished son-in-law whom he never knew. The fact of the Rev. James Egan Moulton being sent in 1853 as superintendent to the Guernsey Circuit, where Mrs. Hope and her family continued to reside, brought together two young people who, after an engagement of six years — a length of time necessitated by Methodist rule — entered into a hallowed union and set up that
happy home where two in heart united In holy faith and blessed hope are one, WTiom death a little while alone divideth And cannot end the union here begun.
The facts of earlier family history have
RICHMOND 21
been dwelt upon because they aeem to predestinate my brother to the course which afterwards he chose. And when on his marriage the Osborn and Keeling strains came into the family to reinforce those of the Moultons, Hopes, Fiddians, and Egans, there was formed a Methodist heritage extensive and rich in all those things which go to make up well-being.
Amid the absorbing interests, the crowd- ing cares, the multiplied distinctions which came upon him in later years, Dr. W. F. Moulton never lost the aroma of those Richmond days which constituted the first epoch of his ministerial life, and which have their intimate relation to this sketch as constituting the first sphere of my brother's life. On the first draft of the 'stations' for 1858, William F. Moulton was down for Blackburn, but Benjamin Hellier, of sainted memory, contended that one who had won such distinction at London University in classics, mathe- matics, and Hebrew, was meant by Pro-
22 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
vidence to be a tutor, and the Conference took that Aaew, sending him as assistant to Mr. HelUer at Richmond. For four years he occupied those rooms in the central tower of the college buildings which have sheltered so many men before and since who have been assistant tutors at that college before going out to careers of usefulness and distuiction in the wider spheres of Church life. In 1862 came his ordination, at which the candidate stand- ing next to him was Peter Mackenzie — a juxtaposition which speaks volumes for the true catholicity of the Methodist ministry — and then his marriage and settle- ment in a home of his own. The years that followed were years of supreme happi- ness both at home and outside. He loved his work, and those for whom he worked showed — show to this day — grateful appre- ciation of his efforts. Amid all the stress of college work he was untiring in his pulpit ministrations, and an entry in his diary during 1862 reads as follows : ' For the third time in three months I had to
RICHMOND 23
walli twont3'^-throe miles on Sunday, preach- ing three times ; but I am all the better for it.' He waa supremely happy in hia friendships, and much might be said as to the close intimacy with the families of Mr. Barrett, who was Governor for most of the time, and Mr. Hellier ; and this intimacy belongs to the life of two genera- tions, for while the tutors cherished a warm esteem for each other there was a liappy cameraderie between the children ; and in all this fellowship the students belonged to both groups — honouring their tutors and spoiling their children ! We have a sketch in our possession by Miss Hellier representing the ' Molten Images ' in a perambulator, and Mr. Hugh Price Hughes wheeling it. This cannot be his- torically true, for the interval of three years between us renders it unlikely that we should occupy that chariot at one and the same time ; but it is near enough to the fact. I once had the audacity to refer to the sketch at a public meeting during Mr. Hughes's Presidency. As soon
24 JAMES HOPE MOFLTON
as the not unnatural laughter had subsided he ejaculated, ' Well, that only shows how soon I began to push my brethren forward ! ' For an impromptu that would be hard to beat.
Another reminiscence of those years calls for special mention in this particular year (1918-9), for it was in my father's study that Dr. Stephenson in 1868 first unfolded his ideas as to what became afterwards the Children's Home, and re- ceived the encouragement, guidance, and unwavering support from his tutor which counted for much in confirming him in hia purpose.
Early Life
It was amid such surroundings and under such influences that James Hope Moulton grew up as a boy. There are current certain legends that my gifted brother lisped Greek at three, and passed from accidence to syntax before he was five ; and although no one is asked to accept these as sober statements of fact, they are
RICHMOND 25
at any rate suggestive of the truth. He was no infant prodigy ; on the contrary, he was a very human being from the first : but, nevertheless, the instinct for studious- ness and the acquisition of learning mani- fested itself unusually early, and became richly fruitful at an age when the majority of boys have found no time to be serious, save concerning sport. He had the price- less advantage of good eyesight, the lack of which had debarred his father from all games, and he took his full share in any form of recreation. Quite early he showed predilections in two directions where after- wards he manifested more or less out- standing abiUty. One was preaching ; and never in later years did he address more decorous congregations than those chairs which constituted his congregation in our Richmond dining-room on Sunday after- noons in the early seventies. The other was music ; and before he left Richmond, aged eleven, he had composed an oratorio on the subject of Jonah, which contained among other numbers a bass solo delivered
26 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
by the prophet from within the whale — an effect quite worthy of Wagner ! His scliooling in those early days was in the hands of Mr. Edward Rush, the father of Mr. C. E. 0. Rush, the tutor so dearly beloved by successive generations of Cliff College men. In his Northampton days Mr. Rush had taught our two uncles, and both of them are readj- to bear witness to his great ability as a teacher. Now at Richmond — and later, for a short period, at The Leys — the next generation were under him, and two of our school- fellows there were Sidney Rupert Hodge, who afterwards came on to The Leys, and Mr. W. Vogel Goad.
But in 1874 there came an upheaval. For several years much earnest considera- tion had been given to the question of higher education in Methodism, and the problem of how best to retain the j'oung people of our privileged families. The removal of ecclesiastical tests from the universities gave a great impetus to the movement, for it meant facing the question.
RICHMOND 27
' How can we secure for the sons of Metlioclism the advantages of the ancient universities without endangering their attachment to the Church of their fathers ? ' While all agreed that something must be done, there was considerable difference of opinion as to the line which should be taken. Some were in favour of the founda- tion of a public school, others of a Methodist hostel in connexion with the Univer- sity. Ultimatel}^ the committee reported in favour of a school, the Conference accepted its findings, and at Camborne, in 1874, Dr, W. F. Moulton was designated as the first head master of the school that was to be. He had been associated with the inquir}' from the first ; he was con- vener of the committee appointed to report upon the matter; and yety such was his innate modesty that until a few weeks before Conference he had no idea that he would ever be brought into close relationship with the school. Indeed, at the previous Conference, when presenting his report, he laid down that the post must be made
28 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
attractive enough to secure the services of a first-class man ; and all the time he was unconscious that his Church was looking to him as most likely to meet the very requirements which he himself had out- lined. We find him writing to Dr. West- cott in the autumn of 1874 : ' For myself, I shall go as a matter of obedience. I don't think I am the man for such responsibilities, and no allurement would have induced me to undertake them. Now, however, I am pledged, not indeed to succeed, but to do my best.' His brethren had desig- nated him, and he went in January, 1875.
The Richmond days were ended, and with them the preparatory period of J. H. Moulton's Hfe. Wliat follows falls naturally into three main periods, each with its own geographical centre, and each closed with a great sorrow. Firstly, Cambridge — the formative period, 1875 to 1902 ; secondly, Manchester — the citizen period, 1902 to 1915 ; thirdly, India — the missionary period, 1915 to 1917. Of course there are phases of his life and experience which do
RICHMOND
29
not belong exclusively to any one period. Such matters cannot be shut up in water- tight compartments. But for general pur- poses this differentiation will hold good.
II
CAMBRIDGE
Schooldays at The Leys
In the natural course of things, being just about twelve years of age, James Hope Moulton formed one of that little group of boys that gathered at The Leys for the opening of its first term, and there he stayed until he entered the university on his nineteenth birthday. It was at the school that he laid the foundations for his later achievements in scholarship ; it was there that he formed his friendships, which were of a very lasting character ; and it was there that he first felt and gave himself up to those spiritual drawings which afterwards became the ruling factor in his life. No one could possibly have thrown himself more heartily into the life
3°
CAMBRIDGE 31
of an institution than he did. Things literary, scholastic, athletic, musical, re- ligious, scientific, social — ^all claimed and won a place in his scheme of hfe, and all received a measure of enthusiastic atten- tion ; but it was those among them which were the most serious which attracted him the most, and it would not be too much to Bay that in the best sense he took serious views of hfe unusuallj^ early. He only accomplished what he did accomplish by dint of strenuous and unremitting apphcation, and thereby he laid the only possible foundation for the abounding service of later years. There comes to mind a striking indication of the trend of disposition, the more significant because so largely unconscious on his part. When he was fifteen he began sending contri- butions to the Leys Fortnightly, the maga- zine of his school. It is immaterial that the subject was ' IVIilton's Minor Poems,'* though that may be reckoned as an un- usual type of subject for the first printed • See p. 197 for the reappearance of the subject.
32 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
effort of a boy of fifteen. What does matter is that this, like all his contributions to that'magazine, bore the signature AT AN.* At an age when to so many the world is a playground and life a game, he intuitively dropped upon a nom-de-plume betokening strenuousness of effort ; and he remained AT AN to the end. On the football-field and on the track he ran fast, very fast ; in the sanctuary he sang lustily, very lustily ; on the cricket-field he bowled very fast, with a curious action which made things awkward on a bad wicket — and with a hostile umpire. At lacrosse, of which he was very fond, he could race round most of the ' fields,' and sometimes, per- haps, used his speed when it would have been better to pass the ball. Wlierever he was and whatever he was doing he was intense and strenuous about it all ; he played many things — very many, anything, indeed, that came his way — but he never played at anything, and this note was
* Pronounced Agan. AFAN, 'Adv., very much : strongly affirmative.' Liddell and Scott.
CAMBRIDGE 33
characteristic of him throughout his life. Indeed, one kind and discerning friend, a seasoned Anglo-Indian who entertained him several times at Bombay in 1915-7, considers that, had there been less pace and more deference to the obstacles pre- sented by the trying Indian climate, lie might have lived through the strain of one more day in that open boat, and have landed at Calvi with his dearly loved friend, so much his senior.
It was only to be expected that his religious life would manifest the same characteristic of intensity and strenuousness, but not perhaps that this would manifest itself quite as early as it did. Two entries in his diary for the winter of 1877, when he was just fourteen, reveal a degree of deep spiritual longing not often to be met with at that age ; and it is noticeable that in his voluminous diaries, crammed full of the incidents, great and small, for forty years of his life, the only field where he makes frequent pauses for reflection is that of inward religion. On Octol^er 11
34 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
he writes : * This is not only my birth- day but the third anniversary of my spiritual birth.' And on November 25 : ' I have had a great joy, in common with the angels of God above. God has granted me that inexpressible privilege of being an instrument in His hands for the salvation
of . It is the first time I have felt
the peculiar joy of being instrumental in bringing a fellow creature to the full knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus.' Even two years prior to these entries his diaries — far less full and sustained — are punctuated with heartfelt and passionate desires for the salvation of individuals mentioned by name. In this also the child was the father of the man ; and those who knew him only as a scholar, and perhaps feared him as a critical scholar, knew only part of his nature, and possibly never guessed that such a passion for evangelism coukl be united with profound leaniing in the fields of grammar and comparative religion. Already he was jooking out with wistful earnestness to-
CAMBRIDGE 35
Avards the mission field ; for on one of the many occasions when the Rev. David Hill visited the school I find an entry — June 28, 1881— in a diary : ' Talked with Mr. Hill about my missionary wishes.' In December, 1881, he preached his first sermon, one Sunday aftenioon, in the little Wesleyan Chapel at Waterbeach, the village which will always be remem- bered as the sphere of 0. H. Spurgeon's first pastorate. >Strange to say, those diaries, which are so full of details of mis- cellaneous doings, omit to mention the text taken on that interesting occasion ; but inferences from other passages would point to its havhig been Heb. ii. 1.
University Life and Influence
His academic distinctions had already begun. In the London matriculation list in June, 1881, his name appeared sixth in the Honours list ; and in January of the following year he won a £70 open scholarship in Classics at King's College, Cambridge. The double lines of academic
36 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
honour went on side by side through the B.A. and M.A. stages, but in the end the London D.Lit. stood without any con*es- ponding Cambridge degree to balance it ; for although three other universities con- ferred upon him the Doctorate of Divinity, tlie fact of his being a Nonconformist constituted a statutory bar to liis receiving a similar distinction from his own imi- versit}^ — a disability recently and reluctantly removed in the teeth of bitter clerical opposition.
It was during that period of strenuous study that another influence came into his life which counted for yet more, but about which little must be said, partly because so much might be said. In 1884 there came as Superintendent of the Cam- bridge Circuit the Rev. G. R. Osborn, the son of the famous Dr. Osborn, who had been the colleague of Dr. W. F. Moulton at Richmond. The friendship which rapidly grew up between the brilHant yoimg classic and Mr. Osborn's elder daughter ripened eventually into a union of uninterrupted
CAMBRIDGE 37
blessedness and jo_y which lasted for twenty- five j'-ears ; and although Methodist rules necessitated a somewhat lengthy engage- ment, as in his father's case, J. H, Moulton A\orkcd on under a new inspiration from 1885.
In November, 1882, Moody and Sankey conducted their memorable mission in Cambridge, and my brother's diaries con- tain warm appreciations of their meetings. He was present at that meeting when, for the only time in his career, the great evan- gelist was refused a hearing by an audience of rowd}' and reckless undergraduates ; he was also present two nights later when the evangelist had his revenge — gracious and holy — upon an audience hushed and submis- sive, scores of whom surrendered to Christ while Sankey sang ' Sowing the Seed ' in his own inimitable fashion. My brother's fellow collegian, A. C. Benson, has described the impression left by those missioners on iiis own mind and heart in a remarkable passage in TJie House of Quiet; and the description is of lasting value, as revealing
38 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
the nature of the impact of such preaching upon one brought up in so different a rehgibus environment. The son of the Wcsleyan Manse naturally felt himself more at home in such services than the Anglican Etonian. He always looked back to that mission as to an occasion of singular spiritual power and awakening, and while he would have given a cordial assent to Benson's striking analysis of Moody's method of appeal, he would not have stopped short where he did, for to him the man who could thus ' probe the secrets of the inner- most heart ' was the man who could best bring him ' out into a place of liberty with the tenderness of a true father in God.'
To man} it mav have been a foregone conclusion that he would enter that ministry where so many ol' his relatives had found their vocation, but no one who knew him could imagine his being in- fluenced by sucli considerations if an ' effectual calling ' had been absent. He entered lhat ministry not because they hatl done so, but because the same spirit
CAMBRIDGE 39
which had made them preachers of the gospel filled him ; and for that reason, and for no other, he had no choice but to go. During the spring and early summer of 1886 he went through the ordinary tests demanded of all aspirants to the Methodist ministry, whether gifted and privileged or not. The Circuit, the Dis- trict, the Connexion, all have their par- ticular organs for testing candidates ; and through all the tests he emerged as might be expected, conspicuously successful. The London Conference of 1886 designated him as assistant to his father at The Leys, in succession to the Rev. Edward Brentnall, who had occupied the position for three years, and in this post he remained until he went to Manchester in 1902, although after Dr. Moult on' s death in 1898 the nature of his appointment somewhat altered.
This composite post — ministerial, educa- tional, and quasi-academic-— was a mag- nificent opening for him ; and, it may lie added, for others as well, for James Hope Moulton always gave what he got, and
40 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
only got in order that he might give, of the riches of learning. It is doubtful whether he realized the advantageousness of the situation at the time. He would some- times look out wistfully at wider fields, wondering whether he was doing the best Avith his life by staying at The Leys. ' Here I am,' I remember his once saying to me, ' nearly fort}-, and have not done a thing ! Wliy, father -was on the New Testament Revision Company before ho was thirty-six ! ' But it is easy to see — especially so for him noM — that that forma- tive period was of priceless value, and that the I'ich and brilliant usefulness of the later career was conditioned by it. It is l^robably not claiming too much to say that incessant collaboration with his father was in itself a liberal education. His 3'^eaming for Christian service at home, his passion for Foreign Missions, his ever- deepening devotion to Greek Testament study — these and the many other factors in his spiritual make-up were distinctly traceable to the fact of his having enjoyed
CAMBRIDGE 41
peculiarly close association with liis father at just the most susceptible period of his mental development. So far as his school duties were concerned, there is no small degree of truth in the frankly expressed opinion of one who knew him intimately and loved him warmly, that he was not a great schoolmaster, on the groimd that ' his primary interest was not in the bo3^s he taught but in what he taught them.' When he had to do with pupils Uke Percy B. Haigh,F. W. Hasluck, Harold Mattingly, and others, whose brilliance as schoolboy's has been fully sustained in their later careers, then the double interest in the boys and the subjects made his work a joy to him ; but it must be admitted that on the ordinary schoolmastering side he was not in his element, that the normal duties were somewhat of a burden to him, and that had it not been for the conditions amid Mhieh his hfe was passed and the very happy relations with his colleagues, he would have felt the burden intolerable. Once he received a tempting offer to
42 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
change his sphere during his father's life- time. His old college tutor at King's, J. E. C. Welldon — now Dean of Durham, formerly Bishop of Calcutta, and afterwards Dean of Manchester — \^ as for a few years head master of Harrow, and he earnestly but unsuccessfully urged him to come and take up a fifth-form mastership there.
In a warmly appreciative notice in the Manchester Guardian, Bishop Welldon refers to this offer, and puts down the refusal to the conllicting claims of scholarship and sclioolmastering, adding that possibly my brother was right in deciding that if he was to do his best work it must be under other conditions than those of school teaching. Yes, he was right, but that was not his primary reason for acting as he did. A HarroM' mastership would not have been compatible with the sphere which he had doliberatel}^ chosen for himself, that of the Methodist ministry, and he was not disposed to roliuipiish that for any of the blue ril)bons of the teaelung profession. Of course it may be said that Conference
CAMBRIDGE 43
would probably have placed no barrier in the way, and would have regarded him as a minister without pastoral charge ; but he had a true and certain intuition as to the difficulties involved. However fair and generous the head master would have been to him, there is little doubt that the major portion of the Harrow constituency would have felt itself affronted by the appointment of a Dissenting minister to the staff — a layman might have escaped notice — to a degree that would not have been the case with an avowed Agnostic. Sooner or latei' the position would have been intolerable, and it was probably best for all concerned that the offer was not accepted. As it was, he continued for sixteen years in a post which, although less distinguished than that w^hicli might have been his, was one of great usefulness, and afforded him singular advantages.
Alter all, Cambridge Cambridge, and the two great ancient uni\'orsity towns have a charm and interest peculiarly their own. In that life James Hope Moulton
44 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
took his full share, both in respect of what he gave and what he received. In his diary there occurs almost every week the phrase ' Hurried back to . . . ' ; and this is typical of the life he led. He lectured on the subjects comprised in Section E* of the Classical Tripos, Part II ; he lectured at Girton and Newnham ; and all the time he was taking a large amount of teaching at The Leys, partly to relieve his father and partly in pursuance of his own duties as a member of the teaching staff. But no one was moie alive than he was to the advantages afforded by Cambridge for self -improvement, and certainly no one was ever less disposed to regard the Tripos as finally concluding the period of acquisition. He availed himself to the full of the friendship of Prof. E. B. Cowell, the great Orientalist, and continued to study under his direction those subjects which afterwards became the sphere of so uuich of his published work. Prof. Cowell was undoubtedly one of the great inspiring * Centring in Philology.
CAMBRIDGE 45
influences of his life during this formative period, and he was never tired of expressing his sense of obligation and affection to his friend and teacher.* The Professor's house was conveniently near to The Leys, and the most fruitful periods of instruction were not those spent in the lecture-room at stated times but the hours spent in the study of one who poured out his stores of leaniing without stint, and was delighted to find one who was both willing and able thus to receive, without any of the limita- tions which are inevitably associated with an examination sjdlabus.
His college also remained for him a centre of stimulating intellectual intercourse with which he kept up his intimate relations after he ceased to reside in the college biiildings. King's College has always had the reputation of being somewhat of an intellectual aristocracy, largeh' because of its having been for long the one college at Cambridge wliich refused to take men who were not intending to read for * See below, pp. 135, 181,
46 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
an Honours Degree. Consequently, the number of members has never been conspicuouslj'^ large, but the average of distinction has been conspicuously high. Among those who were my brother's con- temporaries there stand out the names of Arthur C. Benson, now Master of Magdalene College ; Montague Rhodes James, now Provost of Eton ; G. T.owes Dickinson, journalist, historian, philosopher; W. R. Inge, the Dean of St. Paul's ; and numbers of others who also have taken distinguished positions in Church and State. It was, perhaps, to be expected that a degree as good as his — a high first-class in both parts of the Tripos — should lead to a Fellowship even amid the keen com- petition of such a college as King's, and in 1888 he was elected to the much coveted honour. Among the testimonials sent in to the electors was the following from Dr. Peilo, the great philologian, and it sheds interesting light upon the nature of his work at that early period :
' The character of the work is distinctly
CAMBRIDGE 47
good — very sound and thorongh. He binds liimself to a rigorous observance of phonetic law and never evades it ; the essay is scientific from tlie latest philological stand- point. . . . He has shown certainly a capabilitj' of original investigation. He belongs to a small number — about five — of students in Section E since 1882 who seem to me to stand out from the rest as qualified to do good independent work in comparative philology . . . Moulton's work shows no common grasp and attain- ment in a man of his standing.'
At the time during which he was closely connected with the college it enjoyed the exceptional advantage of having Dr. West- cott as a ' Professorial Fellow,' as well as Professor H. E. Ryle, who was a King's man, and had been elected to a Fellowship in the ordinary course. The influence of these two outstanding scliolar-saints counted for much, specially unred con- ditions where there were many temptations to lead the unformed and aspiring intel- lectual to assume that among men of
48 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
intellect the Christian Faith no longer exercised any authority ; for no one could make that assumption with two such examples witnessing daily in the college to the contrar3^ Every Sunday afternoon during term-time there were meetings held in Professor Rj'^le's rooms for religious discussion, which could not fail to be stimulating — even if somewhat disconcert- ing for the junior who had to read a paper in the presence both of his fellow under- graduates and of these outstanding pro- fessors. In his tribute to Bishop Westcoti in the London Quarterly Review* my brother refers to these gatherings. ' I was the victim twice, and on the first occasion cheerfully undertook to give an account of Methodism within the allotted time. It was amusing to see the interest and curiosity of my fellow undergraduates, to whom I spake like a traveller from Tibet. I had to stand fire for nearly an hour, explaining to the best of my power the dift'erence between a class-leader and * July, 1903.
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an archdeacon ; and answering other ques- tions betraying greater or less degrees of ignorance. Westcott's obiter dicta were deeply interesting, showing as they did his characteristic power of sympatlietic insight into the reUgious position of Free Cliurchmen. ... I liad been emphasizing our doctrine of tixe priesthood, ami West- cot t jemarked that if wg beUeved all Christians to be priests ^\e ought to have an ordination service tor them. ... If Ave Methodists took kindly to ritual, no doubt the service for the recognition of new niembej's Mould have done something in the direction of Dr. Westcott's sug- gestion.'
But although he seemed to be so much immersed in the things of scholarship he remained a very human being, and alto- gether far removed from the academic recluse interested in nothing but the world of scholarship. He retained his interest in games, certain games, and he continued to play them with zest ; and it was perhaps characteristic of his strenuous disposition
50 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
that he did not take much mterest in games except in so far as he could par- ticipate in them himself. It -was only on very exceptional occasions that he was to be found watcliing games of any kind : active employment was what he asked for in every field of life. His love for music — which had found early expression in the oratorio fragment on the subject of Jonah, before he was twelve— developed into a great enthusiasm, though here again the same characteristic manifested itself in a greater desire to be a participator than a mere listener. To the verj- end it was the choral work in which he had taken part that counted most to him, rather than the instrinsically greater work which he had onl}' heard from outside ; and the same was true in respect of those orchestral works in which as a 'cellist he had played his part. This disposition would b}^ itself have rendered the elaborate services of the Church of England distasteful to him, even if there had been no other considerations. A musical service performed for him, instead
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of one ill which he could take his share, would have had little attraction for him ; and the ' paid quartet ' regime so pre- valent in America would have been anathema. The result was that he entered with extreme heartiness into all services at which he was present ; and if he sang with a vehemence which was open to criticism both in respect of the well-being of his own voice and the blending with other voices, it was at any rate an outward expression of an earnest enthusiasm which was adequately described by AIWX in this field as in others.
Early Ministerial Career
And what about his relation to his Church during the sixteen years from 1886 to 1902 ? From what has been already said it will be abundantly clear that nothing, however alluring, would be allowed to thrust tliat into the background. Much of his teaching at The Leys was in Bible subjects, and in addition to that theie was much of the pastoral relation-
52 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
ship to the boys which gave him the oppor- tunity of making more of a contribution to Church hfc than could be tabulated at the moment. Then he was preaching most Sundays either at the school or in the Circuit, and the scholar who was spending Saturday evening studying the mysteries of Sanskrit with Prof. Cowell would, as likely as not, be expounding the precepts of the gospel on vSunday evening to a handful of villagers on the far side of the Circuit. It was this blond of 'the study and the street ' which kept him so fresh, and saved his scholarship from having the slightest suspicion of mould and mustiness.
Then there was the work involved in the guidance of the Probationers of the Church. For years his father had had charge of this work, and now the son came in, first as assistant and then as successor. Judging a priori it might perhaps be expected that one so able and learned himself would prove unsympathetic towards beginners, and over- disposed to view matters from a purely intellectual point of view ; but this did
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not prove to he the case with him an>' more than M'ith his ii\{\wv ; and tliore arc hin\- drecls of men hi the Wcslcyan M(MhodiHt Church to-day who speak with gratitude of what they owe both to father and son while passing through their period of probation.
In February, 1898, the whole aspect of things changed, for with tragic suddenness Dr. W. F. Moulton passed away. About two 3^ears previously he had received a sharp warning that there are limits to the extent to which an able and unselfish worker may spend himself for others, and for several months he had been laid aside. Gradually he came back again to the old activities, though with the recognition that never again must life be for him the stress- ful rushing existence which it had been before. But even this modified condition of service proved too much for him ; and one Saturdaj^ afternoon, when returning from a visit to one of his masters who was ill, he sat down on the steps of the bridge over the river behind The Leys^ and in ten
64 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
minutes he had passed over not that river but another.
The association between him and his elder son in both public and private work had been so peculiarly close that this bereavement meant to my brother very much more than an acute personal loss. It meant the closing of an epoch in his life ; for although he remained at the school until 1902, in happy association with his friend of many years, the Rev W. T. A. Barber, who was appointed by the gover- nors to the vacant head-mastership, it was necessarily in an altered capacity ; and there was always present the consciousness that the supreme reason for his remaining there had come to an end. \\nicn, there- fore, he was designated for the position of tutor at Didsbury College in 1902, he left the old familiar scenes for a new sphere more congenial in itself and more thoroughly suited to his special gifts. It could not be without deep regret that he would leave the spots so full of hallowed mem- ories ; and Cambridge itself had its own
CAMBRIDGE 55
unique attractions. But Manchester pre- sented a sphere for work which was free from the hmitations and disquahfications which belonged to an order so largely dominated by tradition ; and the prospect of training ministers instead of teaching schoolboys afforded ample compensation for the loss of other things. At Cambridge his Nonconformity would have remained to the end of the chapter a disqualifica- tion and a reproach in actual fact, even if in theory there was a fair field and no favour. It will take generations to exor- cise from Oxford and Cambridge that spirit which is far more ready to give the right hand of fellowship to the free- thinker than to the Nonconformist preacher. How this strikes the outsider is shown in the concluding paragraph of a discerning notice of his Prolegomena, in the Cam- bridge Revieio, May 24, 1906: 'It is now three or four years since Dr. Moulton left Cambridge, followed very shortly by Mr. Rendel Harris. They are serving each his owm denomination in little colleges
56 JAMES HOPE MOXJLTON
outside great cities, but Cambridge has lost them. Curious how Httle effort was made to keep tliem ! More curious that the theological chairs of the university are not available for scholars of such gifts! Does the system which requires their exclusion really help the advancement of learning ? ' But, for the time being, to quote from a letter to my brother from Dr. J. G. Frazer : ' There is no standing up against the countr^^ parson when he arises in his might, smites the local don under the fifth rib, bumps his head (I mean the don's head) against a wall, and departs in triumph leaving ua prostrate.' Nevertheless, it is very doubt- ful Avhether the new age will tolerate such things much longer, and the first steps have been taken in the direction of fairer treat- ment.
A new university- started free from these shackles, and there was neither the power nor the desire to give preferential treat- ment to any one form of Church allegiance. As my brother playfully reminded the
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Bislio]) of Ripon when he oaiiK^ to bring fraternal greetings to tlie Bradford Con- ference of 1910 : ' We have in the Clnivei - sity [of Manchester j a Theological Faculty which has been an object lesson of a very valuable character. We ait side by side representing all the Churches, and the only " faculty " we have — so the Vice- Chancellor says, and he ought to know — is that we never quarrel. We have never had any division in which any one could tell from the voting which were Anglican and which Free Church. It is, of course, the Bible around which we are mostly gathered, and it is a broad prin- ciple with us that nothing shall be said that may offend the religious opinions of any student there. In my own New Testament class I have students from the High Church College and from the Presbyterian Colleges, and it has never occurred to us what are the differences between the Churches.' The very fact that he later served a term of two or three j^ears as Dean of the Faculty emphasizes the difference between the
58 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
spirit of the new and the old universities where matters of religious allegiance were concerned ; and although in his moments of loneliness later he talked of retiring to Cambridge, it was to the Cambridge of hallowed associations — both of life and death, for there his much loved girl Hope was buried, as well as his father and mother — rather than to Cambridge as a. sphere of work. As his friend, E. E. Kellett, puts it : ' Cambridge gave him his learning, but Manchester was to give him the chance to use it.' /
Ill
MANCHESTER
The Neiv Sphere
It was in every way fortunate for my brother that when the way opened for his appointment to a college tutorship it should have been at Manchester. None of the otlier centres could have given him tlxe same many-sided opportunities and the blend of the University with the denominational College. Richmond was too isolated, while at Leeds and Birmingham the Universities were then very far from occupying the positions which they hold to-day. Manchester alone among the modem Universities of England had attained to a maturity and a completeness of equip- ment worthy of a great industrial centre. In addition to these intellectual interests
59
60 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
there were the problems and possibilities of a great city, which appealed powerfully' to one whose interest in politics was so wrapped up with his passion for social reform. Here was a chance of doing^ in some degree, the very things about which he had often spoken, and of bringing down his politics also ' from the study to the street.'
It was as a Methodist preacher that he came to Didsbury, and his work in the Methodist ministry always occupied the first place in his regard, as indeed it took precedence of the academic and the political in point of time. For years the post of theological tutor at the Wesleyan College, Didsburj^ had been occupied bj- the Rev. Dr. Marshall Randies, and that of classical tutor bv the Rev. Dr. R. Waddy^ Moss. With the retirement of Dr. Randies in 1902, there was a partial redistribution of work, Dr. Moss taking the tutorship in theology, and James Hope Moulton New Testament exegesis, classics and other kindred studies. A college such as Dids-
MANCHESTER 61
bury furnishes boundless possibilities for the tutor who is prepared to expend his very best on his men. The relations cmi be very close ; they can be professional and little more ; and it is safe to say that men can discern very easily whether a tutor is out to deliver lectures or to teach. No one could fail to see that J. H. Moulton had a very strong sense of the importance of his subjects, and he taught them with all the earnestness of one who was convinced that minute matters of grammar and of exegesis carried great significance. In so doing he presented to his men a living plea for painstaking accuracy, at a period of mental development when the temptation to cheap and shallow generalizations might veiy well be strongly felt. One of his men — tiie Rev. Wilbert F. Howard, M.A., B.D., who has accepted the important and dififi- cult task of continuing his unfinished Grammar of New Testament Greek — has described* the Didsbury side of my brother's life far better than I could possibh- do, * 111 the Methodist Recorder.
62 JAMBS HOPE MOULTON
and I will content myself with passing on his generous appreciation: —
' Dr. Moulton's death has left a gap in the front rank of the world's scholars, and hosts of friends all over the world are mourning him. But we old Didsbury men claim him as our own possession. We knew him as no others could. From the day he came amongst us he was one of ourselves, and we were proud of this giant of learning, who was not ashamed to call us brethren. It is impossible to think of Didsbury without him. And though we know all about the many parts he filled elsewhere, we cannot think of him apart from Didsbury. After all, it was as Dids- bur}^ tutor that he came to his own in Methodism and was recognized for the man he was — and what a man !
' Even at first we dimly knew that his scholarship was a miracle of memory and understanding and flawless accurac}'', and this was years before great universities tumbled over one another in their eagerness to heap their honours upon him. But that
MANCHESTER 63
Avas not why we made a hero of him. We honoured the scho'ar, we reverenced the saint, and we loved the man. One remembers the instinctive reverence of the subdued voice with which, in critical dis- cussions, he always named the name of Christ ; one calls to mind also his sensitive- ness for the feelings of the slow and stupid. He was too fine a gentleman ever to make a man look ridiculous before a roomful of fellows. His utter disinterestedness, no less than his humility, gave us a new insight into ministerial honour. Of course, he Avas very human. He had his foibles and mannerisms, at which we smiled and loved him none the less. But there was never a suggestion of pomposity or pedantry, for he had the simplicity of a child and the purity of a Galahad. How vehement he was in his crusading temper ! He was a very impetuous saint, and, with all his pre-War pacifism, he was trul}^ a leader in Christ's Church militant here on earth.
' His class-room was never dull. Wlio an forget that ocular demonstration with
64 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
tlie aid of the poker to distinguish between the various kinds of aorist ? One never knew Avhether some gem in the text would be given a setting of tine gold extracted from some Egyptian rubbish-heap, or whether a passing reference would discover the intimate connexion betAveen compara- tive religion and some half-forgotten nursery rhyme. The staid and stodgy may shake their heads at his unconventional methods, but this I do knoA\-, that, with many other things, we learnt a great deal of Hellenistic Greek, and always for the enrich jnent of the soul. Dr. Moulton, alone of all teachers whom I have kno\\ii, had the power of breathing life into the dry bones of grammar.
' To think that no fresh generation of Didsbury lucn Avill watch that tall, athletic figure striding yvith elastic step along the west corridor, or sit at his feet in that upper room while he eagerly unfolds to them the Scriptures, or hear the shrill exclamation when a misplaced accent is detected in Westcott and Hort, or hearken
MANCHESTER 65
to those obiier dicta that reveal the insight of genius !
' How patient he was, antl what iiinchiess ho lavished on us ! All his Diclsbury geese were swans, of course, but that was only part of his aboiniding charity which believed all things and hoped all things. Very many of his old students at home and abroad are now lamenting an inspiring teacher, and, still more, their best friend.'
Phases of Scholarship
His Avork at the college thus lay entirely along the line of his own tastes and pre- dilections. His intimate association with his father had led him at an early period to accustom himself to look for substantial contributions to exegesis from the side of grammar, and two considerations helped to accentuate that disposition. One was the fact that his father's edition of Winer's Grammar of Neio Testament Greek needed to be re-cast and in a great degree re- written— a task which the father had hoped to undertake, but which was left
66 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
as a sacred legacy to the son. Upon this he had already been engaged for several years, and the fruit of his labours appeared in December, 1905, with the publication of the Prolegomena, the first instalment of ' A Grammar of New Testament Greek, based upon W. F. Moulton's edition of G. B. Winer's Grammar.' The other con- sideration was the discovery of the papyri. Deissmann's Bible Studies, which first appeared in 1895, called the attention of scholars to the identity of the Greek of the New Testament with that of the connnon people as reflected in the papyri, and thereby opened out a new field of investigation. These two considerations led James Hope Moulton to devote more and more time to that field of study, with results which soon became manifest in a wider circle than that of a denomina- tional college. In 1908 he was appointed Greenwood Professor of Hellenistic Greek and Indo-European Pliilology at Manchester University, an appointment which was doubtless due in great measure to the
MANCHESTER 67
impression produced on the world of Biblical scholarship by the Prokgoimna. It was recognized that here was an expert of no mean order, and it is noticeable that the recognition w as not confined to England. Albert Thumb said of the book : ' We have nothing to equal it in German,' and Har- nack spoke of the author as ^ our foremost expert ' in New Testament Greek — no small praise from one so tlistinguished for his o\\ n scholarship, and known not to be over- partial to non-German work. Indeed, so profound uas my brother's scholarship that even a Cambridge papei', writing of him after his death, spoke of him as having been trained in Germany — a striking example of that deplorable disposition to ask, ' Can anything good come out of England without German aid ? '
As to his work in the field of papyrology little need be said here, for the subject has become fairly familiar, and it would not be an overstatement to say that, so far as this country is concerned, no one had a larger share than himself in that
68 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
familiarization ; and his booi^, From Egyptian Rubbish-hmps, has pre.sented the subject in a form Mliicli can be under- stood by those wlio have no knowledge of the subject, or even of Greek. It was a real satisfaction to his democratic soul to find that the Greek of the New Testa- ment— ' the language of the Holy Ghost,' as it had been called — was in reality just the language of the common people ; and he revelled in searching from the various papyrus collections for material which would be of service for the better under- standing of the language of the New Testa- ment. The bulk of his researches are embodied in the Vocabulary of New Testament Greek, which he commenced in collaboration with Prof. Milligan, of Glasgow, the son of ' Milligan of Aberdeen,' who had been our father's colleague on the Revision Company and collaborator in the Connnentary on John's Gospel in Schaff's Commentary. Only two parts out of eight had been published before my brother started for IntUa, and his
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friend will be left to complete the work by himself. A« to tiie future of that branch of stiidj^ he was perfectly prepared to beheve that the lat<)r yield from Egypt and elsewhere would not be commensurate with the earlier, partly because the As- souan dam tended to alter the climate of Egypt to so great a degree that the papyri were not so likely to survive. ' I do not think,' he writes to Dr. Rendel Harris on' July, 1910, ' that papyrology will take us much further. New papyrus collections will only add details now.' But there is no doubt as to the supreme value of the contributions already made from that source.
I have no claim to speak of the inner quality of my brother's work, but I have before me an estimate written by one who has an authority in that field second to none. In the Theologische Literaiur Zeitung for April, 1906, Deissmann reviewed the book, and there are passages in his review which may fittingly find a place in this memoir, in that they are not merely
70 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
the ostimate of a book, but olso the appreciation of a Hcholar by a scliolar — and such an one.
' James Hope Moulton's Prolegomena to the Orammar of N.T. Greek comes before me at the same moment as the announce- ment of a third German N.T. Grammar : tlie Philologica Sacra is flourishing ! As heir of his late father W. F. Moulton's work, whose English edition of the Winer Grammar had for nearly forty years exercised a favourable influence on exegetical studies in England and America, the 3'ounger Moulton modestly introduces him- self ; and his mother, now advanced in years, who forty years ago had drawn up for her husband, as now for him, the compre- hensive index of Biblical references, sym- bolizes for us the personal continuity between the older and the younger genera- tion of grammarians. The son has in- herited before all things the tpw of the research student, the zeal for scientific discovery combined with warm love for the N.T. He has further inherited the
MANCHESTER 71
solid foundation of the Winer-Moulton book itself. But it is all Lis own that he, equipped with modern Hellenic scholar- ship, has built on this foundation an entirely new work. The grammar proper he does not here provide ; that is to follow in Vol. II : in Vol. I, before the schoolroom door is opened he gives us with a smile the paper bag of almonds and raisins ! The title ' Prolegomena ' is distinctive for the character of the first volume ; with intentional avoidance of systematic tension and closeness, the nine chapters he gives us are intended to reveal in a series of specially striking phenomena of language the general character of the Hellenistic world-speech, and the historical position of the N.T. language within that world-Greek. What the learned doctrinaire will carp at as a short-coming in the special character of the first volume, is for the reader, and especially for the young reader, a great advantage. The notion that a grammar can only be solid if it is tedious, is alto- gether destroyed by these Prolegomena.
72 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
One can really read Moult on ; we are not stifled in the dense atmosphere of cxegetical wranglings, nor drowned in a flood of quotations. Everywhere the main facts and the main problems are keenly perceived and clearly formulated. And a great im- pression may be the permanent result of this remarkable investigation which ad- vances science at many points, that the N.T., treated linguistically, stands in the liveliest connexion with its Hellenistic surroundings.
' Wlxile earlier grammatical treatment of our sacred Book was mainly governed by the sense of its contrast with the world aroimd, the newer method which is weighed and adopted more energetically by Moulton than b}' his German predecessors, em- phasizes mainly the contact with that world. As to the degree to which Semitisms exist, the case is not yet closed ; a large number of mistakes in earlier exegetes depend on the failure to realize that the popular vernacular in Greek and * not-Greek ' has many points in common,
MANCHESTER 73
that accordingly man}'^ turns wliicli as- tonish tlie Atticist of the sclxools and Hebraist, which he triumphantly fastens on as Semitisms, are not always Semitisms, but often international vulgarisms, which do not support tlie isolation of " N.T. philology "... The comparison of the papyri and inscriptions that have been used shows the wide reading of the author, and helps to make the N.T. available for papyrus study and epigraphy. Admirable also is the accuracy of the printing and the beautiful get-up ; the only thing to oppress us is the praise of a German who was accidentally made aware of the papyri, and saw there what anybody else A\ould naturalh^ have seen.
' Adolf Deissmann.'
' There are only two things I know,' he once said in a lecture ; ' but I have tried to know them well.' If New Testa- ment Greek was one, then comparative religion — or one specific tract of that great continent — was the othei'. It is easy
74 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
enough to see the course of his mental development. At first classics and mathe- matics ran fairly level, as they had done with his father ; then classics forged ahead, and absorbed his whole attention. But the philological side of classics attracted him pre-eminently, and in Part II of the Classical Tripos he specialized in Philology, which brought him into close touch with Prof. E. B. Cowell, Dr. John Peile, Mr. R. A. Neil, and, later, with Dr. Williams Jackson and Bishop Casartelli of Salford, through whom he came into that deep interest in Iranian studies which charac- terized him to the very last. Thus while Greek Testament studies retained their first place in his regard, owing to home training and the career to which he felt himself called, independently of their intrinsic interest, he was perhaps quite as conspicuously an expert in matters per- taining to Zoroastrianism and the literature of Persian religion ; and it was Zoroas- trianism which was the subject of his Hibbert Lectures in 1912. There was
MANCHESTER 75
awaiting him on his return an invitation to j^ivo the SchAA'oicli Lectvirea in 1918 : and probably some phase of comparative religion would have been his subject.
Writing to his friend, Prof. Peake, in 1904, he describes the course of the develop- ment of his studies : ' My work has been slowly shifting its centre of gravity for years. I was, of course, a comparative philologist at Cambridge, a classic mostly for teaching purposes, a N.T. student from the grammar side as inheriting Winer and disposed toward the language study, and a Zendist as a philologue originally, finally a disciple of Frazer from the growing taste for comparative religion. My orbit was consequently as incalculable as that of a quadruple star. Here [i.e. at Didsbury College], of course, the N.T. at once became almost my sole concern, and the path became a circle, with perturbations from Frazer and some surviving Zend work. . . . As far as I can see this new development would (to pursue the metaphor) eliminate the perturbations and make the orbit a
76 JAMES HOPE MOFLTON
simple ellipse with N.T. grammar (or grammatical exegesis) and comparative religion as its foci.'
During his life at Manchester, James Hope Moult on found another centre of congenial activity — ^the John Rylands Library. Shortly after his advent in Man- chester he had been appointed to a seat on the council of governors in succession to the Rev. Dr. Randies ; and throughout his thirteen years at Didsbury College he took very personal interest in that institution. He frequented it both as reader and as governor ; and it was pro- bably because he was the former that he took so seriously his duties and privileges as the latter. To him it would seem no exaggeration or misuse of terms to speak of the mission of the John Rylands Library ; for to him the libraiy was a personality clearly marked, and entrusted with no ordinary responsibilities in respect of the world of scholarship. His friend, Mr. Henry Guppy, the gifted librarian, has always been keenly responsive to the
MANCHESTER 77
movings of the minds of others where the interests of the world of letters are con- cerned, and projects which suggested them- selves to my brother always found in Mr. Guppy a sympathetic Ustener. As a store- house and a school of scholarship the John Ry lands Library counts for very much ; and more than ever now that Dr. Rendel Harris is installed there as guide to those engaged in palaeographical studies. How his friend would have greeted such an appointment ! With what mutual joy and profit would they have forgathered there ! But it was not to be.
On one subject and on one only was he both ignorant and impenitently ignorant. I should scruple to say that were it not that he so often avows the fact himself, and unblushingly declares that he had no interest in philosophy and no use for it in his scheme of thinking and living. Pro- bably he did himself less than justice in this respect ; for, after all, philosophy is but the science of living, and although he may not have arrived at his ruling prin-
78 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
ciples of life by way of the categories of formal philosophical theory, there was very clear thinking at the back of his life and work. To him it seemed as though philo- sophy were altogether concerned with specu- lation and with metaphysical hair-splitting, which to his intensely practical nature seemed solemn trifling. Of course he was wrong ; all his best friends recognized that it was a distinct limitation of his quahties ; and what is more, one is half disposed to believe that his extremely tolerant disposition would have given a cordial recognition of the value of philoso- phical thought if soberly and coherently placed before him, provided always that no demand was made upon him to tliink along similar lines. That he was con- stitutionally disinclined towards speculative and metaphysical thought as contrasted with the practical, is made abundantl}' clear by his views on several subjects. The Epistle of James interested him more than the writings of John — the one instance of wide deviation from the Biblical views
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of his father. Parsisni attracted him in a way in which Buddhism and Hinduism never did ; evangeHcalism kindled his warmest sympathies, wliile saccrdotahsm left him either cold or irritated ; and while he had too much good taste and was far too sound a thinker to echo the famous prebendary's dictum, ' Hang theology ! Let us get to religion ! ' he had more than a little mental sympathy mih. the disposition that lay at the back of that outburst of revolt. As his friend, Dr. Giles, the Master of Emmanuel, sententiously puts it : ' As a Christian minister no doubt Dr. Moulton's first interest was in Christianity, not in theology, which is not the same thing.'
But what was most conspicuous in all his work was his uncompromising loyalty to truth. No considerations of hallowed associations or great traditions were allowed to stand in the way of a change of position if the facts demanded it. When his father's edition of Winer was produced it was a fundamental axiom that New Testament Greek had the three characteris-
80 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
tics of being Hebraistic Greek, colloquial Greek, and late Greek ; and when my brother AVJ'ote his useful manual for students of the subject in 1895, he started from that position. But in the Expositor for ,1 anuary, 1904, referring to this fact, he says : ' In a second edition just published the first of these elements has to disappear, and w hen " common " has been substituted for col- loquial, it is soon made clear that the addition of " late " makes little difference to the definition.' On another point — that of ' translation ' Greek — he is just as ready to reconsider his position. ' I am not disposed nowadays," he writes to Dr. Rendel Harris in 1913, ' to minimize translation Greek as I d'd in niy early fervour.'
This is quite consistent ^\■ith a proneness — an excessive proneness, according to some of his best scholar friends — to coquette wit h the most recent suggestion as to author- ship, or emendation of the text. Take Priscilla as an examj)le ! Possibly it was part of his chivalrous nature, this willing-
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nesB to give the latest adventurous gro\\i:h a chance to prove its utility. So he intro- duced Priscilla on every possible occasion to the elect fellowship of the scholarh^ world as the authoress of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and, together with Harnack and A. S. Peake, gave the good lady letters of recommendation ! But having done that much for her he left her to fend for herself and justify her existence.
Perhaps there was nothing which as- tonished the outsider more than the fact that J. H. Moulton's work was always interesting and usually piquant. To adapt the famous phrase of Junius, learning and dullness have so often and so long been received for synonymous terms that the reverse of the proposition has grown into credit, and every man who makes himself interesting to the crowd is taken to be one of little learning. It was no small achievement of my brother's that he made it clear that the profoundest scholarship could be expressed in a form which was interesting and arresting. Deissmann says
F
82 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
of his Prolegomena : ' Dr. Moult on is never wearisome ' ; and a reviewer in the Dublin Review says of the book that it ' might be described as the most amusing and lively grammar ' ever produced ; and he goes on to say that ' Dr. Moulton shares with Dr. Rendel Harris, among New Testa- ment scholars, a certain irrepressible gaiety which from time to time relieves the dullness of optatives and aorists, or sticho- metrics and Syriac fragments, as the case maj^ be.' One would have thought, for instance, that the dative case did not afford much scope for entertainment or for any language but that of the strictest propriety ; but the professor who was capable of using tlie special idioms of Mrs. Gamp to illustrate a point in his Prolego- mena was perfectly capable of viewing a Greek case as a human being with a per- sonality. Thus there is to be found in his inaugural lecture at Manchester Univer- sity this very characteristic passage, which will serve as an illustration of how he wrapped up the conclusions of peculiarly
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painstaking and accurate scholarship in an attractive garb :
' In the first century a.d. wo find the dative very much aUve. It was used so freely that it ultimately ceased to be useful, and died as we might say of fatty degenera- tion. A case that could mean almost anything could not be trusted out alone ; and we cannot be surprised that nursemaid in and nursemaid with frequently shirked their proper work and meddled with each other's province in attending to their troublesome charge,'
How this struck his hearers in the lecture-room is picturesquely described by 'P. V. B.' in an extremely tender and discerning appreciation in The Young Men of India, just after my brother's death.
' It was only a few months ago that I saw an announcement in Bomba}^ of a public lecture by Prof. Moult on. I had often run across his name in books and in conversation, had seen some of his writings, and had listened often to admirint' com- ments on his scholarship and himself.
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I knew that he had an extraordinary record of achievement and could string a small alphabet of letters after a name that was in itself a title of distinction. I had looked him np in Who's Who, found a record bristling with doctorates, German, Scotch, and English, and learned that he was known as an outstanding figure by the scholars of three continents. What an alarming person, I thought, to meet or listen to !
' The subject of the lecture was, if possible, more alarming than the lecturer. It had to do with certain characteristics of the language and letters of the early Iranians. But I resolved on an effort to appear knowing, and in the hope that some at least of the chscourse would prove com- prehensible, plucked up courage and went. What a surprise ! The lecturer seemed an incarnate joint-violation of all the rules by which the ordinary notion of the scholar is constructetl. Of the ponderousness, tiie pedantry, Ihe involution of thought and speech, the spectacled adherence to a
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musty manuscript, the terror of being popular, tlie high disdain of common interests and feelings, the speaker showed not a trace. The lecture was a straight- forward talk in the gracefully pure and simple language of a genuine classicist on things which were to the speaker plainly saturated with personality. It was astonishing how he could convert philologj^ into an adventure of the spirit among kindred souls who lived and wrote three thousand years ago. A dull black and white page of Zend or Sanskrit characters seemed to transform itself under his eye into some- thing rich and strange, Avith its text all illuminated in a far more living way than the best of old-time monks would have been equal to. To him, without any mistake, language was "fossil poetry." Scholarship was not, as it is for many, a process of squeezing the heart dry to serve a tjaannous intellect ; it was rather a process in which the heart breathed life and beauty into the dead facts which the intellect gathered. It was his sympathy and rare humanity
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that always served as his best commentary. Words were a kind of coins, minted of the very substance of the soul, and every subtle shifting of meaning had its counter- Ijait in the history of the mind.'
The Methodist Preacher
Throughout his life in Manchester, crowded A\itli manifold activities in many directions and with honours falling thick and fast upon him, while no one could call him a tj^pical Methodist preacher, nevertheless he loas a Methodist preacher by choice and conviction, as Avell as tra- dition. His was not a typical case, })artl\- because it had never been his lot to occupy the position of a circuit minister, seeing that he had, like his father, been sent straight into educational work, and had lost that experience — so full of joys even if compassed about with difficulties and 1 rials- -Mhicli forms the central fact of Methodist life. It was a loss lo him, whether he realized it or not ; but such was his power of sympathy that he never
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allowed that to prevent him from entering fully into the lot of his brethren, and the typical circuit minister found a gcncro\i8 and helpful friend in the professor, and in other ways he bore his share of connexional responsibilit3\ For some considerable time he was Secretary for the East Anglian District ; for many 3^ears, as colleague to his father and then as his successor, he was in charge of the Probationers' Examina- tion work ; and, especially after he became tutor at Didsbury, he had a heavy share of committee A\'ork on behalf of his Church. The Church showed its appreciation of his worth by electing him, in 1904, as a incDibcr of the Legal Hundred, which in strict theory constitutes the Methodist Church in the eyes of the law ; and doubt- less had he been spared, he would haA'^e risen to a still higher station in the Church of his fathers.
It may be saitl ol him that in general his position hi Church matters was that of a radical reformer strongly tinged with conservatism — a blend which was marked
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in Hugh Price Hughes, and in other leaders since his day. Any one who had an adequate policy for rendering the ministry of the Chui'ch more efficient would find in him a keen sympathiser, and he was more ready than most to give a promising scheme a chance of justifying itself, instead of seeing only the lions in the path. He was not heedless and im- petuous in counsel, but his leaning was distinctly towards the disposition that is \villing to make a venture in the hope of its proving a gain, than towards that which is too cautious to move for fear of making a loss. But when it came to a matter of personal tastes he showed himself strongly conservative. The new hymn-book was a case in point. 1 doubt whether he ever quite forgave the committee for certain of its omissions, especially in respect of hynms from the old book that were rejected. Two cases come to mind as I write — Bishop Heber's touching reverie, ' The winds were howling o'er the deep,' and W. M. Bunting's ' Blest ISpirit, from the Eternal Sire.' Tbe
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former he frequently gave out, and used with a great power in one of his sermons ; but probably he would have the majority of the Church against him on the question of its place in a collection of hymns. As to the second it will always remain a m3^stery v/hy, because of one word, perhaps the finest of all our hymns on the Holy Spirit — at any rate one that contains the two finest verses — should have been denied a place ; and it was characteristic of m}'- brother that on the Sunday evening prior to the intro- duction of the new book he chose his hymns entirely from the category of the rejected.
To some within the borders of his Church he was somewhat of a puzzle, for they did not knoM- quite where to place him. The higher critic they knew, and the evangelist they knew, but what manner of man was this who seemed to blend the parts ? Some probabh' thought the more kindly of views other than their own because James Hope Moulton held them. Others who would have liked to challenge him
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came to view the situation in much the same light as the cardinal Avho was in- structed to tackle Lord Acton — and thought better of it. One thing is very certain, and that is that no views as to the literary history or formation of the Bible narrative impaired his faith in the truth of the religion there enshrined, or gave anj' note of hesitancy to his proclamation of the supreme efficacy of the gospel, in chapel or in street, from platform or from press, for those at home and those in far-off lands.
Yes ; those in far-off lands bidk(>d large in his tlioughts and sympathies, and no dopajtment of (.'hurch work Avas nearer to his heart than foreign missions. More will have to be said about this later, but it cannot be left out of the consideration of his share in the activities of liis Church. It was probably a phase of the chivalry of his nature. The ver}^ fact of all these inillious being ' down,' and through no fault ol (heir own, at once enlisted hia sympathies. l*>w tilings in his life moved him like the Edinburgh Conference, and
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nothing at those memorable meetings moved him more than a praj^er from the lips of Dr. Karl Kinnm, in which he recounted a long list of names of African tribes utterly unknown to most of us, but burnt in upon his heart till he needed no printed page to record them. ' The A as large as France without a missionary ; the B as large as Russia without a missionary ; the C as large as Britain Avithout a mis- sionary ' ; and so past counting, with the grim fact overhanging all this agonized pleading, that Islam stands waiting to devour, and that we are poAverless to rescue when once her laws have seized the heathen we might have saved. ' Is it nothing to you, 0 ye that pass by — 3^e that hear the Name that is above every name, and profess allegiance to Him who bade us count it our supreme object in life to bring His kingdom near ? ' * It was therefoi'c not at all sui'prising tliat he should have opposed (he spending of a quarter of the
* From ' Some Rellections on the Edinburgh Conference,' pubUshcd in the Methodist Recorder.
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Twentieth Centurj' Fund upon a Church House in London, and that he should have given vent to his feehngs when speaking at the annual meeting of the Missionary Society at City Road — for which he received due and solemn castigation at the hands- of certain high priests of official Methodism !
Three Main Characteristics — Humility, Moral Passion, Ministry of Reconciliation.
A life such as that of my brother, more full of influence than of incident — at any rate, the incident that lends itself to chronicles — is better grasped from a sum- mary of impressions than from a record of occurrences ; and this will perhaps be the most suitable point at which to try to gather up his characteristics as a man and as a woiker. For it was the Manchester period which was the central epoch of his life from every point of view. CJambridge was formative, and as such ^^as of priceless value ; India was sacrificial, and as such was rich in fragrance ; but Cambridge prepared for Manchester, and
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out of Manchester came India. He was his best and did his best in Manchester, and to describe him as he was at Manchester is to describe him in the truest sense.
It would not be fanciful to describe him in terms of tlie Beatitudes, for it was the non-aggressive virtues which counted for most with him, and manifested themselves most conspicuously in his own character. To say this is not in any way to go back upon what has already been said as to his vehement forcefulness. He remained AF AN to the end, but never was there a trace of self-seeking about his aggressiveness, and it is in his selflessness that he recalls the Beatitudes. He was always in the limelight — umch more than he would have chosen had he been able to choose — but it was always in the interests of others, and it brought no satisfaction to him that thousands applauded him, unless their doing so indicated their willingness to espouse the cause which he was advocating.
His disposition may be summed up in three characteristics which themselves
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practically embody the whole of the great category — humility, moral passion, and reconciliation.
To speak of his humility is to use the word which comes nearest to the fact, though it is far from being adequate. People were more often astonished at what he was not than at what he was. They expected to find a ponderous pundit, and they found a simple comrade. A leading article in the Manchester Guardian gave expression to this when it pointed out that he ' carried his \\^eight of learning with all the simplicity of a child.' There was no aloofness about him ; and if he was set upon a pedestal it certainly was not one of his own erecting. His very style of writing and of speech, by its free- dom and unconvcntionalities made for comi'adeship, for it carried with it nothing of the exclusiveness of a caste or the asaertiveness of privilege. Of course there were many people who shook their heads and muttered concerning want of dignity, just as there are those who will prate about
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the dignity of the pulpit until it drops, from sheer respectability, into inanition ; l)ut when a scholar of international standing dared to be interesting he not only followed the bent of his own nature but he also helped to break down a fetish and to help thereby lesser men than himself.
Another phase of his humbleness of mind was seen in his readiness to recognize worth in others and obligation to others. There was no patronizing sense of superiority in his relations with those less gifted than himself. If his companion happened to belong to a totallj' different walk of life he would not be long in finding a point of contact, and he would delight in the opportunitj^ to enlarge his own knowledge of life in another sphere, for of him Chaucer's words held good :
Gladly would he learn and gladh- teach.
If it were some beginner in a branch of study where he was an expert, there would be poured out lavishly all the wealth of knowledge, without any more demonstra-
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tion than would belong to a conversation about a subject interesting to both of them. Never did he make smaller men ' feel small,' unless it might be when there was some element of pretentiousness which needed to be corrected. And if he was humble with his fellow men, how much more so was he with his God ! His was not the fawning, self-depreciatorj' humility which sometimes seems to carry with it no small flavour of affectation. It was rather the humilit}'^ which expresses itself in magnif^^ng the need for God, and the whole-hearted desire that Grod should do His perfect work in him and through him. In one of his last letters from India he enclosed, scribbled upon a half-sheet, some verses which, apart from intrinsic worth — perhaps I am not impartial — are interesting as reflecting his character on this side with singular felicity. He wrote them at Bangalore, wliere he had been deeply moved by the priv ilege of lectui'ing for a few weeks to what he styles ' a black Didsbury.'
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AT THE CLASSROOM DOOR
Lord, at Thy word opens yon door, inviting Teacher and taught to feast this hour with Thee ;
Opens a Book where God in human writing Thinks His deep thoughts, and dead tongues live for me.
Too dread tlie task, too great the duty calling, Too heavy far the \vcight is laid on nie !
O if mine own thought should on Thy words falling Mar the great message, and men hear not Thee !
Give me Thy voice to speak, Thine ear to listen, Give me Thy mind to grasp Thy mystery ;
So shall my heart throb, and my glad eyes glisten, Rapt with the wonders Thou dost sIioav to me.
Ill the second place it would not be an exaggeration to say that he was one of those that hunger and thirst after righteousness, both in respect of private conduct and public advocacy. He was always a poli- tician, and an eager one ; his diaries during his teens show that clearly enough. But the aggressiveness of his Liberalism was the result of a strong conviction that its principles made for social righteousness.
G
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He may have been one-sided, and have done less than justice to the Tory ; few politicians, indeed, escape that temptation. But because he was honestly of opinion that Toryism was out for the safe-guarding of vested interests at the expense of the \^•ell-being of the mam% and was indifferent, relatively speaking, to their interests, he fought it. If any one repUed that the Liberal candidate had no more passion for social righteousness than the Tory, his reply would be, ' So much the worse for him, seeing that he sins against a clearer light ; nevertheless his policy makes for better things.'
His passion for social righteousness found many manifestations, some positive, some negative. Few institutions elicited more of his enthusiasm than the Manchester and Salford ^Mission, imder the magnificent leadership of his friend, the Rev. S. F. Collier. The ruhng characteristics of that mission are far too well-known to call for any description : for it is recognized through- out the city as a great force making for
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social righteousness, even by those who take no stock in its reUgious purposes and agencies. But to one who not only shared its social enthusiasms and visions, but also looked to its spiritual life as the only far-reaching agency by which these things could be brought about, it was a centre of attraction second to none, and worthj^ of unstinted service and devotion. By advocacy, counsel, and gift he was always ready to help Mr. ColHer, for whose work and character he had a boundless admira- tion, and he was seldom absent from the anniversary platform. Shortly after his advent in Manchester he took up a piece of work at the Mission which aA\'akened a keen and widespread interest. It was a time when the influence of the Clarion was peculiarly potent, and it was felt that steps ought to be taken to counteract that influence, not by criticism and attack, but by a \dgorous, well-informed, con- vincing presentation of the Christian Apolo- getic on its positive side, Mr. Collier and my brother organized a course of
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vSunday afternoon lectures on ' What is Christianity ? ' — ^the lectures being given from many different points of view by experts in their own field, the lecture being followed by a question hour. For upwards of two years this procedure was followed, and a popular apologetic constructed which was of a character to reinforce waverers and convince Avell-disposed doubters, as well as to give to believers stronger grounds for their faith. Had he been allowed to return to this country nothing would have given him greater satisfaction than to find himself in one way or other associated with Mr. Colher in the Mission, pending the reopening of Didsbur}^ and in his letters from India he frequently refen'ed to that as being the course which he would prefer to follow if he had his way. And the motive at the back of it all was his strong sense that in its various activities, evangelistic, social, educational, recreative and industrial alike, the Mission was bringing in righteousness, the ' rightncss ' of relation- ships for which the gospel stands, as the remedy for the social ills of mankind.
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But his keen sympathy witli the positive work of the Mission was not his only contribution to the ideals of social right- eousness in his city. He was always ready to speak on temperance platforms when he could snatch time to do so, and he was an active member of the great temperance societies. When a crusade was inaugurated against the proposal to choose a brewer as Lord Mayor of IManchester he was in the thick of the fight at once. He had no tolerance whatever for the liquor trade, because it had no compassion for the sorrows of mankind, and it seemed to him to be an intolerable affront to the community that an active participant in that heartless and anti-social trade should be elevated to the position of Manchester's chief citizen. He brought in no per- sonalities and suggested no personal un- worthiness on the part of the proposed Lord Mayor, but he maintained that his trade disqualified him for such an office, and that no one who was involved in such a trade could adequately and impartially
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deal as chief magistrate with crime so largely the result of that baneful trade. Of course they were beaten. Such efPorta seldom succeed, for the forces against them are enormously powerful ; but they bore their witness, they cleared their con- science, and they sowed their seed.
A chivalrous sympathy with the dis- tressed and the wronged was one of the most outstanding notes in James Hope Moulton's make-up. To a cry of distress he was always responsive, and fearless knight-errantry always characterized him. Even in his early diaries his estimates of people are characterized by generosity and appreciativeness at an age when the critical faculty is usually aggressive and infallibility most pronounced ; and in later life he was ever ready to afford chivalrous help to a worker with whose methods he himself might not be in sympathj', but who was being blessed to others. Political oppression, whether of the countryside Nonconformist at home or of the man of colour by the Anglo-Indian abroad,
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roused his anger almost to the point of fierceness ; and the sense of fellowship with the victims of squire and parson tyranny as he knew it in East Anglia was always present with him.
Of course he had the defects of his qualities — most people have. His pupil, Mr. Howard, whose discerning apprecia- tion I have already quoted, points out that ' he was the Rupert rather than the Crom- well of debate,' and that ' his enthusiasm often outran his judgement.' But the par- allel of the battle of Naseby must not be pressed too far. Rupert chased the few, and returned to find that the day had been lost and the main body of his army routed. J. H. Moulton had far too much sound sense to allow him to commit that blunder. He sometimes gave the impression of having seen only one side of a question and of having pressed it for more than it was worth, and certainly he often failed to make sufficient allowance for difficulties in the path of reform. But that was due partly to a sense of moral issues which
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blocked out all else from his vision, and partly to a Banctificd optimism which 'hoped all things.' And in Church life there is normally such a vast preponderance of those whose disposition is to magnify difficulties, that there is a great ministry open for the man who is big enough to look right over the obstacles which block the view of smaller men and see the goal.
In the third place he most certainly came into the category of ' Blessed are the peacemakers,' not because he was a some- what outspoken pacifist prior to the war, but because he was conspicuously entrusted with a ministry of reconciliation. It may seem strange that one who was so pro- nounced in his advocacy should have been so universally relied upon to act as an intermediary between divergent interests and bodies of opinion, but so it was. His life was a kind of hospitable salon in which all kinds of opinions and interests — with certain well-marked exceptions — met with- out jostling, and undoubtedly with no small degree of mutual advantage.
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To him was given a ministry of recon- ciliation :
(i) Bettveen ScJiolarship and Evangelism, as has already been pointed out ; and in so acting he achieved no small good for botli interests, in that the vision of each was enlarged, and grounds for ill-will lessened, by his having shown that the two could be united in one personality. When Sheffield University inaugurated a special service to be conducted at the opening of each academic year, the preacher being alterna^€ly from the ranks of the Church of England and the Free Churches, he was the first Nonconformist chosen. If ever a man might be pardoned for being academic it would be on such an occasion as that ; but J. H. Moulton was not academic. To him it was an occasion for a gospel sermon, and he took as his text ' I came not to call the righteous but sinners.'
(ii) Between Churches. — He was the in- timate friend of a host of AngHcan dig- nitaries, and he was in the confidence of most leaders of Nonconformity ; and he
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used these pri^aleges, as his father had done before him, in the interests of achieve- ing a better mutual understanding between those who differed. The secret of his heahng influence is not far to seek. The Bishop of Manchester, in a personal letter which I am sure he will not mind my quoting, says of him : ' He could always see an opponent's point of view, and his own position rested on a basis of justice that was quite convincing.' It is a beautiful tribute, and covers a vast deal of ground. He worked hard and with ultimate success, on what came to be known as the Manchester Concordat, as to an educational settlement which would satisfy the legitimate aspira- tions of both sides. He took a prominent part in the promotion of united open-air services in the Manchester parks ; and when replying at the Bradford Conference to the Bishop of Ripon and the Vicar of Bradford (Archdeacon Gresford Jones), who brought an address of welcome, he con- vulsed the assembly by describing how he and the Bishop were joint owners of three harmoniums which ' were not iettled on any
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model deed or anything approaching to it.' In that same spcecli he referred to the Edinburgh Conference, saying how the one great thing that laid hold upon his imagination was the possibility of so many joining together on things common to all, and there was not one sign of embarrass- ment, except that no one of them seemed to be able to put all he desired to say within the allotted time. Such were the activities with which he loved to busy himself, and it was but fitting that his last long conversa- tion with Dr. Rendel Harris on the ill-fated City of Paris was on the subject of Free Church Union, and that his very last hours before the disaster were devoted to planning a concordat on that subject which might go out over their joint signatures.
(iii) Between Religions. — He beUeved with all his heart in the fact of that ' light which Ughteth every man coming into the world,' and was prepared to beUeve that every great faith which had obtained a sub- stantial hold upon the hearts of men had done so by virtue of some contribution
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entrusted to them on behalf of the religious inlieritance of the world ; and he would maintain that this position was in no sense derogatory to Christianity, whose unique claim was that ' all things were summed up in Christ.' No one can read his writings on Zoroastrianism without being struck by the generous estimate which he formed of that faith, and the genuine and tender regret with which he noted the divergence between belief and practice in modern Parsism. In short, his treatment of non- Christian religions always took the form of what the Rev. A. H. Lowe excellently describes in a review of The Treasure of the Magi as ' tolerant polemic,' due weight being allowed to each factor. It is ' polemic ' in that it is criticism firm and searcliing ; but it is ' tolerant ' in that there is the fullest disposition to give recog- nition to all that is worthy in another camp.
(iv) Between 31 en of all Types. — His cor- respondence and his personal intercourse were as varied as his father's had been,
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and often it was with those whose opinions were poles apart from his own. When, for instance, Dr. J. G. Frazer was considering the pros and cons of going to Manchester, he wrote repeatedly and at great length to his friend, and said, 'Your friendship is one of the attractions of Manchester for me,' following a recognition of the widest divergence of views and the certain fact that ' we shall not convince each other.' This intermediate position is not an easy one to occupy. It requires strong con- victions and keen perceptions if there is not to be a disposition to surrender too much for the sake of moderate agreement. But the man who is strong enough to hold his own, and intelligent enough to enter into the thoughts and feelings of another, has a fine ministry before him; and even if he never succeeds in bringing a single disputant round to his way of thinking, he will have rendered no small service in widening some one's vision and thought. Of course, when it came to intercourse with his two outstanding friends, Dr. Rendel
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Harris and Dr. A. S. Peake, there was no question of composing differences or recon- ciling opposites, but of each contributing some fresh modicum of hght upon the way which they were walking in common.
In the columns of the Classical Review there appeared, over the signature of Dr. A. S. Peake, an appreciation that is full of the love that is tiot blind, but loves all the more because it sees eveiytliing ; and in the following sentences he sums up his friend :
' Straight, clean, magnanimous, generous, unselfish, and free from littleness and jealousy, he was a friend and colleague in whom one could ^\ holly trust ; virile in character and of irreproachable integrity, he was womanly in his tenderness, full of sympath,v for the suffering and gentleness to the M-eak. His ample and varied learn- ing raised no barrier between him and the illiterate, and the ministry he delighted to render them was neither spoiled by condescension nor chilled by aloofness. He could, and sometimes did, hit hard in
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controversy, but never below the belt. He had, hke the rest of us, his intellectual hmitations. In his case it was especially his unsympathetic attitude towards philo- sophy, and perhaps one might add an occasional tendency to fancifulness in his treatment of history. But his range Avas wide, and on his own ground ho was a great master.'
The War
The European war, which was destined first to rob my brother of his eldest son and then to bring to a premature end his own life, was a cause not onl}^ of the deepest sorrow to him but of intellectual perplexity. For j- ears he had strongly upheld the Quaker position with reference to war, and he was a vice-president of the Peace Society. With all the vehemence of an idealist he denounced not only war and war-makers, but also those whom he regarded as scare-mongers, because they held that Germany meant ultimately to fight us, and that our duty was to be ready.
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In the earlier months of 1914 he had en- gaged in a hterary duel with Mr. Coulson Kernahan in the W esleyan Methodisl Maga- zine on the subject of National Armaments, and more especially on compulsory national service. He maintained that ' in war and preparation for war we turn our backs on Christ,' that ' no Christian can con- sistently support conscription ' ; and it is abundantly clear that he disbelieved in the German determination to force on a conflict. But it came, and in its coming forced many people, my brother amongst them, to reconsider their position. There was no need to reconsider his position as to war in general, or as to the crime of provoking war ; but the facts of the case forced him to realize that here was an issue whole hemispheres removed from the doubtful ethics and sordid aims which were mixed up with the South African War. He was in America when war broke out, and had no chance of making altera- tions or additions when the articles were reprinted, though on his return he did add
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a postsoript which appeared in further issues. He admitted, as he was bound to do, that his opponent had proved to bo the truer prophet, and he urged that the ease with which the German miUtary party led the whole nation into war-fever was due to the very national service against which he declaimed — a neat exploit in dialectics, if nothing else ! But he was forced to realize that there was sometliing to be reckoned with that he had left out of account. Granting that war is un- christian and anti-Christian, what is to be the attitude of Christian people when an arrogant military power sets out to achieve world-hegemony by force, and begins by devastating, under the law of military necessity, a neighbouring country whose hberties it had sworn to protect ? Nothing either in his sermon pubhslied by the Peace Society or in his contribu- tions to the pamphlet. The Black Hour, had any vital bearing upon the new situa- tion, and he e\adently felt it was so. He declared that he had not changed his
H
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views, and that was true ; but he •oon came to realize that a codicil was required to his last will and testament con- cerning war in the event of nations being thrown against their will into defensivd warfare. At the Ministers' Fraternal in Manchester on October 20, he spoke on ' Christianity and Defensive Warfare,' and the address was published afterwards in the London Qtiarterly Review. It is very clear to any reader of that address that he was being torn in two between antagonistic forces. On the one side was the Quaker view of war, to which he had practically given his adherence for years, and to which he was the more closely bound by reason of his unquaUfied admiration for the Quaker contribution to religious and social life. On the other side was the consciousness that ' there is something instinctive within us that bids us interfere when a big bully is murdering a helpless child,' and that ' if the New Testament leaves no room at all for defence against a violent and un- provoked attack, must we not say that
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its code 18 defective in practical applica- bility to the conditions of an imperfect world ? ' In other words, a Jesiis M'ho made no call for the chivalrous championship of the oppressed and had no perception of practical issues was not, to him, the Jesus of the New Testament, whatever baldly Uteral interpretation of isolated texts might suggest ; and this address reveals the idealism of the earlier utter- ances, reinforced by candid common sense. ' War is from first to last un-Christian ' : there we have the idealist. ' But while on the one side it takes two to make a quarrel, it is also true that if one party determines to use violence the other party may have to choose between resistance and extermina- tion ' : there we have practical common sense. While nothing would induce him to say anything, or permit anything to be said unchallenged in his presence, dis- respectful to the Quaker attitude, his own position came to be, as he put it in one of his letters from India, that if he agreed with the war he had no right — or would
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havo had none if he had been of mihtary age — to allow any one else to do his share of the fighting for Iiim : if he did not agree with the war, then he had no right to avail himself of the services rendered by the Navy, and had better betake himself elsewhere. It is hard to get away from the logic of that dilemma, and his pilgrim- age from sheer idealism to this blend of the idealistic and the practical is both interest- ing and characteristic.
As the issues involved are living ones for lis all at the present moment it may be worth while to quote in full from some of his letters at the time. His letters from America during the earl}' months of the war betray sore puzzlement as to the facts of the case and the interpretation to be put on them. Writing on August 8, 1914, from Mr. W. R. Moody's hospitable home at Northfield, Mass. , he says :
'The fact that he [Lord Morley] did resign makes me feel that there were responsible persons of the front rank who thought it feasible to decline Germany's
MANCHESTER 117
clialleiigc. On the information that got over here it was clearly impossible. Wil- helm cynically tore up treaties, attacked a little neutral power he had promised to respect, and they appealed to us. We bade him behave himself as a civilized person, and he declared Avar, as he would have done later if lie had polished off France and Russia. Since it is at present hopeless to get more than one in a thousand to take our Quaker view, it seemed that to accept Willielm's challenge was the only possibility : it was a matter of absolute self-defence against the cynical and barbaric aggression of a militarist who regarded treaties as mere sentimentality — ^to quote Ralph's German instructor when R. chal- lenged him about the strategic railways massed on the frontier of Belgium.'
That he was not altogether easy at having thus receded from the full Quaker position is (constantly apparent ; and yet his sound practical common sense always brought him round to the conclusion that there wai no
118 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
other course open for us, and that if that was the case, then the whole body of citizens was involved.
'September 29, 1914. ' I still feel very strongly that unless nations do take the Quaker, that is the Christian, view, we had no alternative but to step in. But I want to step out as soon as ever we can make Germany yield to terms which it seems to me she might accept without losing her self-respect.'
The time had not yet come when Ger- many was to stand pilloried for infamy unparalleled in the history of warfare ; and it is very certain that his tender and chivalrous nature would have boiled over with indignation at the atrocities which have been steadily coming to hglit. He wanted to think the best of a people whose scholars he esteemed so highly, the people to which his dear friend Adolf Deissmann belonged. But in this same letter he shows that his forbearance was being strained almost to breaking point.
MANCHESTER 119
' But all the idealist pictures of German unselfishness and of the wickedness of all the other nations in attacking her come badly to grief among the ashes of the Louvain libraries and the shattered walls of Rheims. And what is worse still, there are those intolerable outrages on helpless women and children, which it is no use for American commissions to deny just because the members of them have not seen them. My boy has talked with victims of them, and I suppose a \\oman who has got sabre slashes on her legs from a German soldier is a sufficiently difficult thing to explain aAvay. It is frightfully difficult for those who wish well to the German people — and to wish well of course in the first place means to wish that the devil may be cast out of them.'
A later letter gives the conclusion of the whole matter so far as he was concerned, in terms eminently characteristic of his disposition :
'July 6, 1916. ' Of course / feel that being forced to
120 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
accept the war as a hideous necessity — the alternative of faiUng Belgium being too appallingly selfish to be thought of — I couldn't leave other people to do the dirty work. At Ralph's age I must have left them free to put me in the firing line, and prayed God that I might be a casualty before my gun found a billet.'
Before that letter reached us, Ralph had gone up to the firing hne, and in two da3^s been a casualty.
After the death of his son he manifests not bitterness — that was foreign to him — but the sense that this was a life-and-deatli struggle against savagery, to bo carried through in the interests of all that was holy. His first letter after he received the news sounds a note not heard before :
' Strange that I who wrote as I did about war two and a half years ago should now be proud as well as heart-broken for a son who has given his life for his country ! We pacifists made one huge mistake : we didn't realize how fearfully evil miUtar-
MANCHESTER 121
ism is, and thought Germany was relatively sane. That we grappled with the wild beast in defence of humanity I cannot but approve even now.'
But there was another aspect of the case which he had to face. IJe was not only a private citizen and a Christian minister, but he was a vice-president of the Peace Society ; and there were those who were not slow to challenge the com- patibihty of his utterances with his position in the society.
In a letter, dated January 15, 1915, to his favourite newspaper, the Westtninster Oazette, he put his position cogentty to meet criticism from two different sides :
' 1 have the honour of being a vice- president of the Peace Society, which cer- tainly holds that " war is inconsistent with Christian principles." But I have not felt any obHgation to resign my connexion with the society, since I do not think its principles forbid such warfare as we are waging now. Of course, that is a matter
122 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
which could only be decided by a mass meeting of its members, which has not been called ; my own interpretation may quite possibly contravene that of the majority. I take it the present war is for us one of sheer self-defence, and even something still more altruistic — the defence of the weak who trusted our promise. A nation of convinced Christians would have acted for a generation past in such a way that the present situation could not have arisen. But it is obvious that idealist action is only possible in a comnmnity, every member of which is capable of following out all its imphcations. To refuse to fight, even in self-defence, and to accept even such consequences as Belgium shows to-day, would inidoubtedly in the long run produce a spiritual victory like that of the early Church, which, by readiness to die and resolute denial of force, ultimately conquered the Roman Empire. Those who could take so heroic a line just now ar» few, and some even of them are hampered by the reflection that such action involve*
MANCHESTJiR 123
refusal to help others who are not prepared to accept its consequences. A practical pacifist under present circumstances is driven, I believe, to accept the war and take whatever part he can therein, refusing to let proxies do the dangerous work if he is of military age. Meanwhile he strives to keep the door open for peace, provided it is not a mere truce, and to prepare the way for a geimine friendship between the peoples of England and Germany when this nightmare has passed. Since the Treitschke doctrine makes force justify itself by success, there is room for hope that failure may ij^so facto discredit it in the minds of those reasonable and Christian Germans who arc still hypnotized by it.'
Quite soon in the conflict he had to J realize how bitter a cleavage the war was to make between him and his friend Adolf Deissmann of BerUn. For to him, Deiss- mann was not merel}' a fellow student in the same field of learning ; he was a much loved friend, and the friendship
124 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
lasted to the end. Like the rest of the German professors, Deissmann took the fierce anti-British position, but in a country where both pastors and professors are the paid servants of the State, it was perhaps impossible for him to be otherwise, so far as any outward expression was concerned. For a considerable time a correspondence was carried on through a mutual friend, a Dutch professor ; and it was in one of these letters that Deissmann wrote : ' In the 1870 war Germam'^ fought and won, and that was the beginning of her end. In this struggle Britain will win, and that will be the beginning of her end.' The sinking of the Lusitania roused my brother to a great fury, as it Avell might ; and in the postscript to his War Time Paper on ' British and German Scholarship,' he wrote : ' By these crimes official Germany has shown that there is no longer a con- science to appeal to ; and if it proves that German civilians, including the pro- fessors, applaud these deeds, or even abstain from denouncing them, we must
MANCHESTER 125
feel that the gulf between Germanj'^ and the civilized world, first opened at Louvain and Rheims, has becomo too wide for us to bridge until time and God's Spirit have brought contrition.' To his friend he wrote with great frankness : ' It will be hard to be civil to any Germans until they have disavowed the Lusitania.'' To this there came no repty ; and if we reverse the situations and put ourselves in his place we are bound to recognize that no replj'^ of a satisfactory character could be ex- pected, or, if written, would have passed the Censor, But two extracts from his ' Protestant Weekly Letter,' which Deiss- mann sent me himself, through a Swiss intermediary, show how warm was the attachment notwithstanding the war. One is dated Berlin, June 5, 1915.
' There is no scholar, British or American, with whom, on account of long 3^ears of studj'in the same field, I am more befriended than with Dr. Moulton. For a consider- able length of time both of us have tried
126 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
to find a place for tlie Greek of the Apostles, i.e. its proper liintoric and linguistic setting, and a lively coiTespoudenco found its ■upplement through repeated visit* to England, the last one taking place three years ago, when, at the invitation of the University I spent a week-end in Manchester and had the pleasure to be the guest of Dr. and Mrs. Moulton in their charming home. Graduall}^ when in the course of years our esteem for each other grew, and a far-going agreement in theological and political questions showed itself, our close scientific relations deepened into a warm personal friendship, which even the terrible war could not destro}^ although each of us with firm conviction stands for the cause of his own country, and although the communications between Manchester and Berlin naturally have come to a standstill. . ... In the case of my correspon- dence with Prof. Moulton the zig-zag made was transatlantic . . . ni}' thoughts, however, have never taken such a zig-zag course ; during all these criti-
MANCHESTER 127
oal dnya of woe and trouble, and in deep sorrow over tlic conflict between European powers, 1 have thought of my true friend in Manchester. His whole- hearted patriotism was no secret to me, and he in turn knew that I was ready, if necessary, to suffer and die for my country. But the mutual trust did not grow less on that account.'
This letter, which in the main had dealt with complaints as to ill-treatment of German missionaries from the Cameroons as they passed through Liverpool, closed with a reference to my brother's eldest •on, Ralph, who ' had entered the ranks of the British army as a volunteer. The high regard in which I have always held my friend has thereby only been increased and transferred upon the son as well. The man who with clean heart and pure motives is willing to lay down his life for his country is entitled to the highest esteem even from his political enemy ; and I am confident that the more sons from England's best
128 JAMES HOPE MOFLTON
families enlist as soldiers in the army of a coimti'y wliioh has thus far carried on more wars and shed more blood in Europe, Asia, and America than any other nation in the history of the world, the quicker it will develop into a peace-loving and peace-promoting state. The world would utter a sigh of relief if with compulsory miUtary service in England would go along the general conviction of the terribleness of war, as it has become part of our flesh and blood, and for this reason makes a frivolous offensive war impossible.'
The indictment of our past record in respect of war is historically sound, unless Spain ought to be placed at the head of the list ; and many of us hold that in a country equipped with effective democratic institutions a citizen army is less likely to be aggressivel}' warlike than a professional army. But Dr. Deissmann is doing us injustice in the inference suggested in the last paragraph — that our pugnacity promoted this war; for the testimony
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of Prince Lichnowsky may be taken as having once and for all disposed of that allegation. Indeed one great question-mark might with propriety be placed over the whole paragraph, suggesting as it docs the picture of poor innocent, pacific Germany involved in the terrors of war through the fire-eating propensities of the Anglo-Saxon ! That one so transparently sincere should have been able to write thus only shows how completely the Avhole nation was fooled by its militarist leaders and their agents : and the subsequent events consti- tute the nemesis on that campaign of lying. On May 14, 1917, Deissmann writes : ' I received from Switzerland and Holland the news that my most trusted personal friend in England, who, also as a speciahst, was very much valued by me, Prof. J. H. Moulton, of Manchester University, lost his hfe at the beginning of April, through the destruction of his ship when saihng through the forbidden zone on his way from India. The last letter which I re- ceived from him, dated February, 1917,
I
130 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
told me of his intentions to return to England from India. The brave man faced without illusion the chance of the death which, in fact, he has met. A flood of heavy thoughts came over mo as I received this news. I hope to say more when I have received particulars, but at first all other things are eclipsed behind the sense of irreparable loss both for scholar- ship and for the circle of his friends. I have therefore given, on May 9, at the opening session of the New Testament Seminar at Berlin, a memorial address, paying tribute to his work and to that of Prof. Gaspare Rene Gregory, who has fallen in France for the German cause, a memorial wliich, in the distressing strife of nations turned enemies, was due to a feeling which was in spite of the war the outcome of respectful love which escapes the grave.'
It would be easy to insert marks of exclamation and interrogation at places in these letters also — as, for instance, at the
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reference to the 'forbidden zone,' and the linking together of the death of a soldier on the field and the murder of a civihan by torpedo outrage. Patriotism is a strange thing, terribly prone to distort the vision and warp the judgement even of the best, and perhaps we did not always see and judge the things of ourselves and our enemies with perfect fairness during that time of strain and stress. But one thing is very clearl}' marked in these letters — ^the fact of a loving and tender nature, capable of friendship to an unconniion degree, and able to retain that friendship even amid the bitterest international struggle the world has ever known.
One of the last letters my brother ever received from his friend was characteristic. Deissmann had been deducing, with more cogency to himself than to those not his fellow countrymen, a promise of German victory out of a passage in the sixth chapter of the Apocalypse. I do not know whether my brother took him to task for his inter- pretation, but within a short time there
132 JAMBS HOPE MOULTON
came back from Berlin the following mis- sive :
' 13-1-15.
' And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with, men . . . and they shall be His people . . . and God shall \vipe away aU tears from their eyes ; and there shall be no more death . . . And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new ... I am the Alpha and the Omega. A. D.
' Dr. James Hope Moulton, 'Manchester.'
Tliat was all, but it was much. It was tlie avowal by a devout soul of a conviction that God alone could unravel the tangle of human relationships and bring order out of chaos : and after all there is more hope of ultimate right mindedness in an enemy who places his faith sincerely there than in a fellow countiyman who leaves God out. It cannot be that in tlic end, when all know even as they are known, Adolf Deissmann and James Hope Moulton will be in opposing camps.
IV
INDIA
The Call
June, 1915, found my brother over- whelmed with a great sorrow. His wife, with whom he had spent close upon twenty- five years of singularlj^ happy married life, was slight!}'- aihng, as it seemed, and on expert advice an operation was decided upon. Satisfactory recovery seemed to be made, and there was nothing to suggest complications until suddenl}^, on June 7, new symptoms made their appearance, her condition became rapidl}^ worse, and in a few days she passed away. There is no call to dwell upon such matters here. Those who have experienced such bereave- ments will understand, and those who have not experienced them will not understand 133
134 JAMES HOPE MOTTLTON
for all that might be said ; and there are in life both joys and soitows too sacred for many words.
Immediately after the funeral my brother came on to us at Chff College, whither the cliildren had preceded him within a few hours of their mother's death. It was on the following Sunday he received the letter from Dr. J. N. Farquhar in\nting him to make the Indian tour. For my own part I cannot regard it as other than an inter- position of a kindly and tender Providence that, just at the time when the very Ught of life seemed to have gone out, there should have come to him that which was bound to divert his thoughts into a new channel ; and while in no sense thrusting into the background the ever-present sense of tragic loss, to preclude the brooding which could only have made it more tragic still. A passionate grief found itself alongside of a passionate call to living service, and the two acted and interacted as a work of grace on his mind and heart.
For ' Foreign Missions ' was to him no
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mere section of his Churcli's activitios to be taken or left according to personal predilection ; it was the very reason for the Church's existence and the condition of the Church's vitahty. Therefore, at the risk of harking back to what has already been suggested, and of making a con- siderable digression, it will be worth while at this point to dwell upon the growth of so important a phase of his rehgious thinking.
Any estimate of his attitude to such matters must begin with Prof. E. B. Cowell and his influence ; for although the mis- sionary atmosphere of our up-bringing and the inspiration that came with the visits of Dr. Egan Moulton, David Hill, William Goudie, J. A. ElUott, and others straight from the field, were calculated to awaken and quicken a living interest in world evangelization, when it came to deep thinking on comparative religion as a factor in missionary psychologj^ and practice, it was Cowell to whom he owed as much as to any, and more. In the fifties of last
136 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
centurj^ Cowell had taught Persian to his friend Edward Fitzgerald at Oxford and had urged him to translate Omar Khay- yam. In 1856 he took up a professorship at Calcutta University, returi^ing to Eng- land in 1864, and was elected to the new professorship of Sanskrit at Cambridge in 1867, a post which he retained until his death in 1903. All these years, during which he was accumulating ever increasing stores of learning concerning Eastern re- hgions, he remained a simple, convinced, humble believer in the faith which is in Christ Jesus ; and it is easy to see distinct traces of his influence upon the eager young classical student who speciahzed in his own section of the Tripos. It was fitting that my brother should have written a review of the memoir of his master and friend ;* and in that review he makes quotations which, had there been no ' setting,' might perfectlj'^ well have been taken for expressions of his own opinions. For instance, Cowell ' writes from India
* London Quarterly Review, January, 1905.
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of his reading the story of the Madagascan martyrs, and passing it on to his students, to whom he expoimded his conviction that "as the attacks seem to thicken against the external evidences of Christianity, the internal evidences are only more and more strengthened." . . . We read how he would take voluntary classes in the New Testa- ment at his house, or in a room near the college, attended by earnest and intelligent men, with whom he would often spend long hours in private, talking over their difficulties of belief and leading them persuasively to Christ. The testimonies which followed him on his return to England showed eloquently how many men were brought to know the Saviour by his teach- ing and example. Thirty years afterwards we find him \vTiting at length on a Sunday afternoon to one of these old pupils, and expressing in beautiful words the serenity of an old man's faith. His catholic spirit is well shown in a letter to his mother from India. " You would have been a little startled," he WTites, "at a letter I wrote
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to a Babii lately, whom I have helped bj^ a recent correspondence in settling some Unitarian difficulties. He wanted to know the differences between Church and Dissent. I told him they belonged to the region of feeling not conscience. Those who by temperament admired antiquity and sj'^stem and held by the aristocratic part of our constitution, would prefer the Church ; while the lovers of change and reform and the democratic principle would, as a rule, prefer Dissent. To my mind, any hymn-book or missionary history is a convincing proof that the Spirit's influ- ence is diffused on each ! " ' Would it not be easy to imagine James Hope Moulton having written such words ? Is it fanciful to see in such a friendship at a formative period a powerful influence which went out far beyond philology and scholarship, and invited exploration of the roads by which the human heart has set out to find an unknown God — unknown although not far from any one of us ? Thus, uncon- sciously, the hours spent on Section E of
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the Classical Tripos, Part II, were destined to bear fruit in a field far enough removed from the purely academic ; and the fact of Prof. E. B. Cowell's direct and demon- strable influence upon my brother in these respects must constitute my defence for having thus dwelt upon him and his personality.
The nature of the invitation to visit India may be gathered from Dr. Farquhar's ' Foreword ' to The Treasure of the Magi, which my brother wrote while in India, and which was indeed part of the pro- gramme and purpose of the visit :
' In the autumn of 1915, on the invitation of the Indian National Council of the Y.M.C.A., three scholars from England, Dr. T. R. Glover of Cambridge, Dr. James Hope Moulton of Manchester, and Pro- fessor George Hare Leonard of Bristol, went out to spend a year in India. The plan was that these men, who were dis- tinguished alike for their writings and for their close contact with the student world.
140 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
ahould spend this year in studying some of the problems of education and of rehgion in India, getting time for making friend- ships with Indians, and at the same time doing some lecturing and writing. And whilst each was asked to travel for part of the time in order to see something of India and to visit the missions of his own Communion, he was also invited to spend several months in a single community, in order to have time for closer stud}- and for the forming of closer friendships. It was hoped that books of considerable value might result from this close contact of English thinkers with the reMgious thought of India. All did excellent service by lecturing to mixed audiences in various centres and by teaching groups of Christian students ; and thej'^ were everywhere wel- comed with the deep respect which scholar- ship meets in India and with great cordiality. Even more significant than this interest which their lectures stirred up were the friendships which they made with Indians and which they valued verj' greatly.
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' To Dr. Moulton the invitation was full of attractiveness. He was always a mis- sionary enthusiast, and he was thrilled by the prospect of seeing the field for him- self. For 3'ears he had studied the rehgion of the Parsis, and now there opened out before him the opportunity of personal intercourse with them. Under ordinary conditions it would not have been possible to entertain the proposition on account of other duties ; but the war had so affected all theological colleges that a prolonged absence could be contemplated as not involving of necessity any serious inter- ruption of his normal work. . . . He had been invited to go to India largely that he might use his ripe Iranian scholarship in lecturing to the Parsis on Zoroastrianism, and he received from that community everywhere proofs of the warmest possible friendship and regard and of the keenest interest in his teaching. ... At the time when he decided to go to India Dr. Moulton agreed to prepare the volume which is herewith published. His Iranian studies
142 JAMES HOPE MOTTLTON
had alreadj^ given him all the scientific preparation required, while the experience he was about to have among Parsis would give that intercourse with those m Iio profess Zoroastrianism which is required in order to fulfil the condition laid down for the volumes of this series in the Editorial Preface.' *
It will make clearer the motive and spirit of the whole enterprise if one paragraph from that Editorial Preface to which Dr. Farquhar refers be quoted ; for it presents in a few words the conceptions of those far-seeing men who were planning this new type of approach to the non-Christian mind ; and although it refers not to one book but to the whole series, yet it does expound the spirit in which my brother went out to India and in which he MTote
* The Series to which The Treasure of the Magi belongs is entitled The Religious Quest of India (Oxford University Press), and is edited bj-- Di'. J. N. Farquhar, Literary Secretary, National Y.M.C.A. Council, India and Ceylon ; and Dr. H, D. Griswold, Secretary of the Council of the American Presbyterian Mission in India.
INDIA 143 the book which he completed just before he left.
' They [the vvi'iters of the several volumes] seek to set each form of Indian religion by the side of Christianity in such a way that the relationship ma}'' stand out clear. Jesus Christ has become to them the hght of all their seeing, and they believe Him destined to be the Light of the World. They are persuaded that sooner or later the age-long quest of the Indian spirit for religious truth and power will find in Him at once its goal and a new starting-point, and they will be content if the preparation of this series contributes in the smallest degree to hasten this consummation. If there be readers to whom this motive is unwelcome, thej- may be reminded that no man approaches the study of a religion without religious convictions, either positive or negative : for both reader and writer, therefore, it is better that these should be explicitly stated at the outset. Moreover, even a complete lack of sympathy with
144 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
the motive here acknowledged need not diminish a reader's interest in following an honest and careful attempt to bring the rehgions of India into comparison ■with the rehgion which to-day is their only possible rival, and to which they largely owe their present noticeable and significant revival'
From what has already been said as to the general character of his disposition, moral, intellectual, and spiritual, it ^vill be recognized at once that no one could be better fitted for such a mission than James Hope Moulton. His evangelical passion, enriched by open-mindedness and chival- rous sympathy, made him the man for the task, and the task the very thing for him especialty at such a juncture. This view was cordialh' taken by those under whose direction he had been working, whether in the Church or the University. His decision was rapidly arrived at, and endorsed by those to whom it was submitted. Three summer months were closelj^ filled up with
INDIA 145
preparations of various kinds : arrange- mente were made for Harold and Helen, the two younger cliildren, to make their home with us at such times as they were not at school — Ralph was already in khaki — and in October he sailed from Marseilles for Bombay, and we never saw him again.
Some Aspects of the Tour
It is neither possible nor necessary to describe the course of such a tour ; but there are many of its phases which may with advantage be singled out as shedding hght upon both his character and his influence. He wrote home voluminous letters which went the round of about eight relatives and intimate friends. These letters total up to nearly a million words in all ; and from these it is easy to gather his impressions as to what he met with, although they are not for the most part very quotable, neither would they present a very clear idea of an itinerary except to such as were prepared to go through
K
146 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
them mth a large scale map ready to hand.
Although Bombay was his first objective, and in a sense his main sphere of service during the tour — owing to its being the strongest centre for Parsism — ^he was not by any means shut up to that one sphere. We find him visiting the historic scenes at Lucknow and Delhi, and rejoicing in the history daily made in the great mission centres of Medak and Nizamabad. He spent a considerable time at Bangalore and Coimbatore, stayed at Government House, Ootacamund, visited Poona, crossed to Ceylon, planned a flying visit to Madras — whereby hangs a tale — and repeatedly returned to Bombay for a greater or less period. It was a strenuous time, and all those characteristics which have already been referred to as marking his Cambridge life — what m^iy be called the AFAN note — reappear on the Indian field with more serious results. Dr. Mackichan, the Prin- cipal of Wilson College, Bombay, and more
INDIA 147
recently Moderator of the United Fre« Church of Scotland, Avhoee generous hos- pitality my brother repeiitedly enjoyccl, and to whom he was indebted for many a kindness, told me that he was appalled to note the change for the worse that had taken place in his general aspect between his first and his last visit to Wilson College ; and he went so far as to give it as his opinion that had he spared himself and made more allowance for Indian conditions and Indian climate he would have been in a position to put up a stronger fight against exhaustion in the hour of need. He travelled sixteen thousand miles in seventeen months under the trying con- ditions of Indian travel ; he was constantly preaching, lecturing, and speaking at conferences, and as constantly writing articles for various publications in India, England, and America. Amid it all he accomphshed the difficult feat of con- centrating his mind sufficiently upon a highly technical subject to be able to write what was characterized by an expert as a
148 JAMES HOPE MOFLTON
brilliant book, The Treasure of the Magi, the whole of which was written in the first instance upon the backs of lettera, &c., wliich is suggestive as to the conditions under which it saw the Ught.
All this hustle was not only tempera- mental, it was the outcome of an ever- present sense of duty to be fulfilled and opportunity to be seized. One of the last sermons he preached in India was from the words ' I must,' and it was characteristic of him that he should take such a theme, for to him the whole visit was not a tour but a mission. ' Does anything matter now,' he writes, ' save to do what one can to advance the coming of the Kingdom where none shall hurt or destroy ? '
And what was the disposition that lay behind all this restless activity and tireless devotion to duty ? For one thing there was an unquenchable optimism that grew out of the very centre of his gospel. Tliere is not only poetry but vision in the choice of the text for his first sermon on Indian soil : ' It was now dark, and Jesus had
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not yet come.' All the three ideas en- shrined in the simple statement of fact which is at the same time the enunciation of a philosophy of missions — the need of the heathen world, the sense of a better day to come, and the ground of the hope — these in one form or other constituted his basis of appeal. He would have none of Kipling's familiar dictum concerning East and West never meeting — so true of the ordinary things of human experience and yet so false in face of the applicability of the gospel to both Jew and Greek, bond and free. ' I want,' he wi'ites, ' to miss nothing of the Spirit which shines in many dark places, for I am sure that the first great Christian missionary was right when he declared that God had never left Himself without witness. But I shall not pretend to think that these are anything but broken lights of Him who came to bring the dawning of the perfect day.'
But with all his optimism he was far too sane and well-balanced to allow any of his preconceptions to block out of sight
150 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
the stern facts of the case and to imagine that the difficulties were either non-existent or due to sheer perversity and culpable blindness. His letters reveal him as con- stantly on his guard against that kind of intellectual exclusiveness which has got no use for those who think and speak in an idiom differing from his own. He found himself in India face to face not only with heathenism but \vith types of Christian expression to which he was a total stranger and not altogether a sj'mpatlictic one by nature. It was this very fact, doubtless, which led him to write one of those self- revealing passages concerning himself which betoken liis real greatness. Spealdng of certain Conventions into M-hich he had been drawn, not altogether willingly, he ^vTites : ' My experience of them is small, but I am going to do my best to profit in this to which I have come. I know I am in great danger of being superciHous to\Aard8 things which do not quite coincide with my own angle, and these meetings may be a wholesome discipline. So far as I
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can analyse my own instincts, my feeling towards the " Keswicky " is very much hke that which nearly always finds things that jar when I go to an Anglican service ; and then I get angry with myself because of the difficulty of formulating reasonably the things I don't like. As often as not, my intellectual power of seeing two sides of a question — ^a power which I am glad to believe grows with the years — tells me that there is something to be said for the things that rub me up the wrong way. And then it becomes hard to acquit mj'^self of mere liauteur ! ' A trained tliinlver who was possessed of such a spirit of humility and teachableness, could not fail to learn from every source — whether KesAvick or Bombay or Benares ; and, what counts for yet more, it is that spirit which is calculated to impress itself most deeply upon those who are to be the scholars of to-moiTOAV.
It was fitting that James Hope Moulton's first direct introduction to the mission field should have been by a way of approach
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which had for its first objective the student life of the country, for he had long recog- nized that the most fruitful type of mission- ary work was that which strove to build up a native evangehsm through the impact of the best student life of the West upon the student life of the East. I have before me as I write two articles which he contributed to the Methodist Recorder of January 9, 1896, and January 9, 1908, both of them dealing with meetings of the World Con- ference of the Student Missionary Union, Liverpool being the place of meeting on each occasion. It is impossible to escape from the sense of urgency wliich possessed him on this matter of world-evangelization as the primary responsibility of the Church, and his heart was strangely warmed by the sheer fact of such assemblies of student life for such a purpose, altogether apart from any particular line of advocacy adopted.
And now, through the far-sighted Cliris- tian statesmanship of the Y.M.C.A., he finds himself, as it were, in the thick of a
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student movement, prepared to give of his best to it, and, unconsciously to himself, called to contribute to its efficiency not only by what he knew, but also by Avhat he was ! A dogmatic assertive apologetic, however sincere and convinced, was not half so likely to win the assent of the thoughtful man of the East as the humble and teachable spirit which, while certain of its own ground, is so abundantly willing to beUeve the best of other phases of thought ; and one is quite prepared to hear of the warm expressions of gratitude which poured upon him from all sides for an apologetic Avhich made more certain the message of every worker.
He went out full of deep sympathy with missionaries and their work ; but he came away with the sense that our highest appreciations fall miserably short of the merits of the case. He was stirred to the depths of his being by the heavenly strategy, the selfless heroism, the unfalter- ing fidelity of the men and women on the foreign field, as he saw it ; and the triumphs
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of the gospel as he saw them at Nizamabad, at Medak, at Benares, and many other centres thrilled him through and through.
It was entirely characteristic of his outlook upon the world that the work of the Rev. C. P. Cape among the Doms of Benares should have come peculiarly near to his heart ; and to his chivalrous nature the veiy fact of this work being done at all constituted a veritable Christian apolo- getic. ' The Doms,' he writes, ' are the municipal scavengers, for whom Hinduism can find no footing in the temple. The Doms must be enunierated in the census as Hindus, and so savcII the superiority of the Hindu over the Moslem. But though 1 have seen a temple where dogs are encouraged to enter, the Dom is admitted to none. He is a hereditaiy thief and an eas}' prey to the drink-fiend. Even Govern- ment harries him. Let an undiscovered theft have taken place in a Dom'a neigh- bourhood, the police will seek the Dom who has the largest record of convictions and send him to prison to encourage
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the rest ! What was the use of trying to escape from crime ? Every man's hand was against him, and he might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. . . . Could man sink lower ? Could any power on earth upHft such men ? Most certainly not. Hinduism was content to draw back its garment's hem for fear of defilement. Government alternately put them in jail and moved them on. Why not ivy educa- tion ? Educate a Dom ! Open a night- school for the monkeys ! But the fact is that to-day the Doms are not in prison, nor in the drink-shop. They have got a new hope. Somebody has touched them, and virtue has gone out from Him. It is just the old, old story, but it is a New Song, quite different from its myi'iad predecessors in the angel's music-rolls. My readers know how it is done. A man who has let the love of Christ embody itself in him goes to the Jiopeless and degraded, and there is a new creation at once.'
The sequel to this work of grace deserves to be told although it docs not actually
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belong to my brother's life. The story is given by the Rev. William Goudie in The East and the West as follows :
' The Doms are the scavengers of the city, and many of them who at the missionary's request enhsted to serve with the Indian army in France have won strong commen- dation from British officers who have seen their work. It was a great risk to send such men into such conditions un- shepherded, and a young teacher of their own tribe was found who, it was hoped, might be able to go with them. He had been taught in the mission school, he wore the decent clothes of his new profession, and lived in some comfort. He was wilhng to go. But," said the missionary, ** you must lay aside those clothes, dress as your father dressed, and go among the scavengers as a scavenger." "Then I will go as a scavenger," he said; and so he went, following, in his own life and station, another who humbled Himself and took upon himself the form of a servant.'
To the missionaries my brother's visit
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was no small encouragement and inspi- ration, as is shown by a largo number of letters. Apart from the specific value of his teaching and the inspiration of his fellowship there is little doubt that with his world-wide distinction he helped to strengthen the status of the workers and the work with which he associated him- self. It was less easy for the supercihous to sniff contemptuously at the plain man's message of salvation when that same message was proclaimed with the backing of so great intellectual attainments. And to the jaded and depressed it was something — and no mean something either — that such an one cared, and cared sufficiently, to make their anxieties and burdens his own.
There once came into the range of vision a possibility of his settling down at least for a time in India. It would be too much to say that it ever got beyond the stage of a bare possibility, but the very fact of the proposition being made at all is interest- ing and significant, for it centred in the
168 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
suggestion that he should take the principal- ship oi the Hindu College at Benares, the nucleus of the neAv Hindu University. The post had been offered to Prof. G. H. Leonard, one of his associates in the Indian tour, who had been compelled to dechne it on the ground of obHgations at home. They then turned to my brother and informally approached him through an intermediary ; would he consider it if he were asked ? The answer, so far as this sketch is concerned, had best be given in his own words as contained in a letter dated May 14, 1916, for the passage is a self-revealing one on other things than the matter immediately on hand :
' You will see at once why I did not smiply say to Saunders,* " Of course, the idea is impossible." It may be I am more inclined to-day than yesterday to say it is. But it is like one other audacious proposal that came to me nearly thirty years ago — when Welldon asked me to take a mastership at Harrow — a thing that
♦ Indian Secretary of the Y.M.C.A,
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one felt to be impoesible, and ^''et too important in its openings to be pushed aside without the most conscientious in- vestigation. I have written home . . . and here I have talked to a committee of contiguous W.M.S. men . . . and have put to them all one question : Wliat do you think is the missionary value of such an appointment, supposing they will take me on my own terms ? Those terms would be expressed something like this : "I should undertake to act like a gentleman and a Christian, and take no unfair advan- tage from my position. But I must be as free to let all people know my rehgion as you are with yours. I cannot be muzzled in preaching ; I must be free to expound Christianity as well as other rehgions in my lectures with absolute fairness to all ; I must be allowed to offer voluntary expositions of the Bible. If you like to take me on these terms — well and good ; if you don't — and I don't expect you will — I go back to work at home with a strong sense of relief, which
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I should feel as strongly if you made it Rs. 12,000 instead of Rs. 1,200 a month (and house). I am wilhng to make a big sacrifice if I can be quite sure I can really serve India. But if I am going to be hampered by a Board that will not trust me, I no longer feel constrained to make the sacrifice." Of course, coming here would mean a very poor chance for my Greek work; Sanskrit and Hinduism would demand much of my time, teaching and administration more. No salary would compensate for that. What it would mean to be separated from my children I need not try to say. And if missionary value is to be the test, I have to put in the other scale the evident fact that experience of India should make my service of missions at Didsbury probably quite equal to any- thing I could do under such conditions. That's the case in a nutshell. . . . My missionary friends are surprisingly unani- mous, while careful to premise that they can only spoak from the South Indian con- ditions, where Hinduism is much more
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161
cast-iron (should I say caste-iron ?) than in the North. Dr. Skinner said that if they would accept me on my own terms he would say ' Go.' But like all the rest he felt the overwhelming improbability that they would capitulate so far, in spite of the astounding fact that they have already asked a Christian minister. And even if they bound themselves to give me a free hand, it would be no guarantee that they wouldn't start a cabal as soon as I said or did something they did not approve, which wouldn't be long, even though Mrs. Besant and her Theosophist Principal Arundale are out of it.'
It is easy enough to see now that there was no possible chance of the conditions being bearable for both sides if the invita- tion were given — which it was not ; and I have only referred to it at length because it is a tribute to his scholarship that he should have been considered desirable, and to his open-mindedness that ho should have been considered possible for such a post. The view he expresses in the above
L
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letter is indubitably sound, and reveals a man who, while he had his ' eyes hft up to heaven, the best of books in his hand, the law of truth writ upon his lips, and the world as cast behind him,' had his feet on solid earth and faced the facts of the situation. The project so far as he was concerned came to nothing, but there is every reason for satisfaction that the idea should have been mooted.
It is interesting to note that in a sense the situation had been thought out for him some years before on another but somewhat parallel field. Of all his cor- respondents none counted for more to him than Dr. J. G. Frazer,* whose researches in Comparative ReHgion and cognate sub- jects have given to the author of The Golden Bough a unique position in the esteem of the scholarly world. No difference of rehgious faith set up any barrier between them, and their corre- spondence was of a very constant and intimate character. My brother seemingly
*Now Sir J. G. Frazer.
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kept every line that Dr. Frazer wrote hiui, for I have found in the bulky case filled with his letters, post cards on such im- material things as invitations to lunch ! It is evident that the great investigator found no small comfort and encourage- ment in the unfeigned interest and sym- pathy of so competent a scholar, who approached the question from so different an angle ; and probably — nay, certainly — he thought all the better of him for his loyalty to a faith which he had found true and satisfying. Amid all the dis- couragement which naturally came to the victim of shallow and undiscerning reviews of pioneer work, which was simply out of reach of the understanding of most of the reviewers. Dr. Frazer would turn to the Wesleyan professor and wTitc with great frankness and warmth ; and I need no letters of my brother's to tell me what kind of reply he would send.
A letter quoted above (p. 109), refers to the proposal that Dr. Frazer should come to Manchester as Professor of Comparative
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Religion ; and another letter, dated April 10, 1904, goes into the question at con- siderable length. I quote it at length because it gives, twelve years beforehand, the soundest grounds for the decision at which my brother arrived with reference to the Benares proposition. Dr. Frazer writes as follows :
' As to Manchester, about which you speak so kindly, I was asked whether I should be willing to accept the chair of Comparative Rehgion if it were offered to me, and I said I might do so on certain conditions. But I am in two minds about it. I have begun to doubt whether, with my views on rehgion in general and Christianity in particular, it would be right for me to accept a teaching post in a Theological Faculty instituted by Christians for Christians, in particular for men train- ing for the Christian ministry. How does it strike you ? Please tell me quite frankly as a friend. What would you do yourself in a similar position, e.g. if j-^ou were asked
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to lecture on religion to Buddhists and Mohammedans with an implied stipulation that you should say nothing that should hurt their feelings as Buddhists and Moham- medans, and nothing that should reveal that you were a Christian ? Woidd you accept a teaching post on such terms ? I have grave doubts whether I can do so. The case would be quite different if the chair were established independently of any Theological Faculty, and to teach the subject simply as a branch of knowledge, uncon- nected with any creed, hke mathematics or astronomy. To make the supposed parallel complete, the chair of reUgion offered to you should be established and endowed by Buddhists and Mohammedans for the training of their respective clergy, and you should be asked to take their money and train them for their work as Buddhist and Mohammedan priests, while promising implicitly never to drop a hint that you regarded Buddhism and Moham- medanism as false. I begin, I think, to foresee your answer, and my own. But
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please write to me fully and frankly on the subject. I shall regard it as a real act of friendship if you do.'
I wonder whether my brother ever re- called this correspondence when he came to face a situation which had so many points of similarity and upon which his loyalty to principle led him to a decision along the same line as that arrived at by his friend whose religious position differed so much from his own. But there is no doubt that Frazer at Cambridge and Moulton in India acted ahke under the guidance of the same Spirit of Truth, however differently they might have defined that Spirit. There is a light that lighteth every man coming into the world.
It would be unfair both to him and to others to attempt to give any estimates he formed concerning Indian thought, and especially religious thought, as a whole. He was the very last man to indulge in the shallow and pretentious egotism which, after a hurried tour of inspection on a wide field, and under the
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guidance of avowed partisans, sits down
to write ' The Truth about ! ' He
formed his own impressions and expressed them frankly and emphatically in his letters home ; but there is a difference between the informal home letter and pronouncement of the printed page which goes out to the public as a considered judgement! Probably he would have sat down to frame some such considered judge- ment on all the facts as he had gathered them, had he ever been allowed to reach home ; and possibly his judgement would have carried weight just because it came from one who was well-informed and well- equipped and sympathetic,and yet detached. But he would have been the first to lay down that any such reasoned estimate on the whole question of Christianity in India could only be formed under conditions more favourable to consecutive thought than the rush of a mission tour.
It wiU not be claiming too much for James Hope Moulton to say that his open-mindedness constituted no mean
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qualification for usefulness in India. The Englishman is always accused — sometimes unjustly — of insular prejudice ; and cer- tainly there is no doubt that as a nation we are not particularly ready to be intel- lectually sympathetic towards other bodies of thought than our own. We are not necessarily harsh towards them, but we are reserved and somewhat exclusive ; and between the two minorities of those who will look at nothing new and those who will coquette with anything because it is new, there is the great average mass of inteUigent people who are dominated to such an extent by a kind of intellectual conservatism that they are relatively slow to give adequate recognition to ideas which come out of a camp so far removed from their own. James Hope Moulton went out equipped with strong and well-tested convictions on many subjects — rehgious, ethical, political ; but also with a scholar's aptitude to learn and readiness to revise opinions in face of further evidence. And in this case it was the evidence which
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told him that what held good of one civilization did not necessarily hold good of another. His religious faith he knew to be for all — Jew and Greek, bond and free alike ; but he very soon learned that his political faith could not be applied as it stood to India without very serious danger. The eager Home Ruler recog- nized, for instance, that the principle which in home politics had been the very pole- star of his thinking would in India have worked out in the direction of the oUgarchic tyranny of the Brahmin, narrow, prejudiced, unequal, and in every way antagonistic to that conception of popular self-govern- ment which was so dear to him. In Uke mamier on the difficult questions of rehgious education — such matters, for instance, as the conscience clause and concurrent endow- ment— he fully recognized that were he called upon to act in India it would be along very different lines from those which he would unhesitatingly follow in England. His voluminous ' circular letters ' from India are very self -revealing in a great
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many directions, and nowhere more than in this.
His ' interim judgements ' are moderate, discerning, and very much along the Hne of what we have learned from our most far-seeing missionaries. He was unfavour- ably impressed with the pliability of the Hindu, as with the credulity which Avill swallow ' camel miracles of his own, and strain out the gnats of the gospel stories ' ; and his thinking appeared inconsequent to the Westerner ; but there is always the readiness on my brother's part to admit that his judgements were those of the visitor and only given as showing how things impressed him. But the conclusion of the whole matter is always the same to him from whichever side he approaches it — the hopeless darkness of lieathenism un- illumined b}'^ the gospel. ' The incom- parable elevation of their creed [i.e. that of the Parsis] above the Moslem's helps them no more to be worthy of it than does Islam's superiority over Hinduism help Moslems to behave better than the Hindu.
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It is staring one in the face that without the touch of Christ the purest Theism is helpless. It reminds me of what J. A. Hutton put so finely at the Foreign Missionary Anniversary in the Albert Hall last April — the Kaiser talks much of Oott but never of Christus ; and with the Christ interpretation thrust into the background, Gott can sink to a mere war-demon.'
On one occasion, and one only, I believe, during his sojourn in India did he come into any serious conflict with native opinions. He had been booked for a term's lecturing at Madras during the later part of 1916, and that visit was anticipated with great interest both by himself and by the Wesleyan Mission at which he was to live. But, inifortunately, a passing reference in one of his Methodist Recorder articles to a certain Hindu goddess as a she-devil, was promptly transmitted — it is easy to see by whom — to India, and was used to inflame opinion against the Western professor, and incidentally against the Wesleyan missionaries who were to be his
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hostB. These crafty Brahmins succeeded in persuading the Maharajah that this insult to the particular object of his devotion was a studied insult to himself, and there was no difficulty in creating an amount of feehng which rendered it unwise to carry out tlie plan as arranged : indeed, there were hints of possible violence, and also representations to the Government as to breach of religious non-interference ! That one so open-minded and so generous to other bodies of opinion than his own should have been subjected to this humiliation was extraordinary, and to my brother it was extremely painful, especially because at one time there seemed to be a reason to fear lest the mission might be compromised and brought into difficulty thereby. Event- ually means were found whereby the mind of the Maharajah was disabused of the idea of any failure of respect to himself, and the episode was closed by a letter from His Highness to the Rev. D. A. Rees, which deserves to be quoted for its beautiful spirit : ' His Highness asks me
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to say in reply that he much appreciates tlie sentiments which prompted you to write him. His Highness has always recog- nized that the Christian missionaries in India, with all their loyalty to the teachings and principles of their rehgion, have been scrupulous in treating with respect the rehgious convictions of others ; and he asks me to assure you that the incident to which you refer cannot, for the above reason, affect the friendly relations which have always existed between himself and the various missionary bodies working with so much self-sacrifice among the people of his State. In view of the sincere expressions of regret which are contained in Dr. Moulton's letter to you, His Highness will gladly treat the whole episode as for- gotten so far as he himself is concerned.' For thought and expression this could hardly be excelled ; and to my brother it came as an unspeakable relief. It was bad enough to be pilloried as a mischief- maker when he was by nature so much the opposite ; but to him it was still
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worse that the situation should work out not only to his inconvenience but to the possible detriment of the very work which was so dear to him.
During the early part of August, 1916, my brother was touring, and returned to Bombay on the 16th, to receive the sad news of his son's death at the front — one of those tragic disappointments to high hopes of which the war was so full. Ralph possessed no small amount of inherited abiht}' ; and if he did not do as well in his Tripos as might have been expected, it was not from lack of ability, but from a fatal inclination to interest himself in many fields of study instead of concen- trating upon a course. He showed his real quality by winning the Whewell Scholarship for International Law in the autunm of 191tt. During the long vacation of 1913 and 1911: he had spent his time abroad for the purpose of acquiring French and German, and he was in Germany — at Speyer — when war was declared. He was marched to the frontier, leaving
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behind him all his papers, books — every- thing, indeed, but what he could carry — and bringing away with him moreover a deep abhorrence of the Germans, not for any petty discomforts which he had to bear, but for the nameless abominations which made themselves manifest from the first. After considerable delay he reached England, and a few weeks later was in training, his commission reaching him the same morning as the announcement that he had Avon the Whewell. For some reason or other he was kejrt in training in England for upwards of eighteen months, and it was June, 1916, before he crossed to France. He was six weeks behind the hues, then went up to the fighting hne, and on the second night was laid low with a piece of shrapnel which tore a rough gash right through his pocket-book and Greek Testament in his breast pocket.
It is curious indeed that a letter should subsequently come from my brother dated August 9, commencing with the words, ' A dream of bad news about Ralph. I
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am thankful that my waking hours are not more afflicted with what is so easj'' a possibihty.' For the* ninth was the very day when the first telegram reached us that Ralph was missing ! We sent no message out to India until the fourteenth, and that was not received until a day or two later owing to my brother's absence from Bomba3^ WTien he did receive it he wrote a letter which I will give at length in preference to using any words of my own, the more so as he quotes largely from Ralph's last letter to him.
'Y.M.C.A., GiRGAmi,
'Thursday, August 17.
' It i.s very, very hard to start my journal again ; but it has been harder still to prepare a lecture on the Later Avesta, and I must find a few minutes' relief talking about him. I really have in a sense been expect- ing this blow ever since I knew he had gone. Did any of you liappen to see a paper of mine on James's doctrine of Prayer in the Expository Times, written
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in that blessed little Easter holiday at Hathersage, which marked the end of the old happiness ? I pictured two mothers, equally godly, sending their boys to the war, one with a radiant certainty that he would return, and the other with " Father, if it be possible ..." I never had that certainty, or anything hke it, though I was never tempted to a morbid anticipa- tion of the blow before it fell. The dear boy himseK cheered me in that memorable ten minutes we got coming back from Bramhall, on August 29 last year. He told me how his mother's passing had affected his inner life ; and he said he believed he would come back. It depended upon whether there was work for him here, and that depended on his own worthiness ; it was all a question of his personal fitness. That was part of the old introspectiveness coming up again, but it was being replaced very rapidly by a saner and brighter outlook. His letters to me have shown a very happy development throughout this year. It reached its climax in the letter
M
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which he wrote two days after crossing. You would like to read it, and it ia com- forting to write it down. After some prefatory words, he goes on :
*" There is no news at all that I can tell you. I am more glad than I can say to have come out at once from the Base. I had made up my mind to having to stay there for further training. But thanks to the fact that I was coming out to my own battahon I was let off that. A great deal will be expected of me. There is a great deal quite new to learn — I ought really to be reading things up now or poring over a map. And what is more important by far, there is such a moral standard to rise to. I am not at all afraid. I don't think I shall be in action. I am curiously unable to understand the men who are suffering from fright before action ; it seems to be a feehng which isn't in me, at least as yet ; if I should crumple up under heavy fire I do not know. But I have to keep on a high enough level to keep awake all the time, and cool, and
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strong ; and to make the men see they have got to do what they are told to when under fire — with men to whom one is quite new — takes some doing. The problem of being sensible is with me a moral, not, as it looks, an intellectual one. I have the faculties, only I can't bring them to bear unless I am in the best of moral training. I am extremely happy, and not at all hysterical, sentimental, or even excited. But I believe I shall be equal to the task. It is a great thing for me, who have always suffered (to use an accurate technical metaphor) from running too much with the clutch out — a great thing for me to be leaving so soon, and taking such a short time for a test which will really set me on my feet and show me where I stand. I hate writing such an egotistic letter, but I can't send news, and I want to let you know from the beginning what I feel like. I shan't be able to write so much later. I shall be too busy, or too tired."
' I cannot reahze it now in the least ; and it will be just a long dull consciousness
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of a loss, the magnitude of which the past year has indefinitely increased. That has really been the history of the even greater loss with me, and I don't think time has done anything with it. I feel it now in just exactly the way I felt it a year ago. That is, I can be quite calm, and talk and think of other things, as I have had to do even to-day. But all the time there is a Toid that aches and aches, even while I am talking gaily. In such a way, I take it, the successive losses as life goes on make us readier for the next abiding-place in the endless journey, into which my brilliant and noble boy has gone before his wistful father.'
No wonder that his dear friend, Dr. Rendel Harris, should speak eight months later of ' superior spiritual attractions ' as a factor in weakened power of resistance in that open boat.
Face to Face with Parsism. Had the invitation from the Y.M.C.A.
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come for work along ordinary missionary lines it would have been welcome to one whose outlook on the world was such as his was, but it is unquestionable that the call to go and see Parsism at first hand and to represent the case for the gospel to Parsis, gave the invitation an immensely added attractiveness ; and it may be claimed without undue partiality that no one else had his qualifications for that particular piece of work. His interest in the rehgion of Zoroaster and the Magi was of no recent growth. As has already been shown, it originated in his Sanskrit studies under Prof. Cowell, and rapidlj* developed with his increased attention to Comparative Rehgion. As early as 1890 I find an entry in his diary referring to his having addressed an audience of working men on Zoroastrianism, and prior to that he had given addresses to the Wesley Society and to the St. John's College Theological Society on aspects of the subject. On coming to Manchester he pursued his studies further and further
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in that direction, and in 1912 he was recog- nized to such an extent as an authority that he was invited to give the Hibbert Lectures at Oxford and London during that year on ' Early Zoroastrianism.' During the previous year he had issued a Httle volume on Early Religious Poetry of Persia^ containing not only learned exposi- tion but a number of original translations both in prose and verse, and had dedicated the volume : ' In Piam Memoriam, Edvardi Byles Co well' He therefore came to the task mapped out for him by the Y.M.C.A. leaders not only \nth knowledge and with zest, but with a status and a reputation which was known to those whom he was to addiess. How high this reputation was is shoA\Ti by the fact that eight lectures on The Teaching of Zarathrustra, given by him in Bombay to Parsis, were published both in English and in Gujerati by those to wlioiii they were addressed, on tlicir own initiuti^e. No more eloquent tribut<; both to his knowledge and to his fairness can be imagined — a situation which could
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only be paralleled here if a Hindu scholar came to lecture at the Church House on the historical and philosophical basis of the Apostohcal Succession, and the Bishops of the Upper House of Convocation asked to be allowed to publish the lectures !
On many grounds it was necessary for him to walk warily in his intercourse with the Parsis. For one thing, there was the constant risk lest fraternization and appreciation in that sphere should lead narrow and shallow though sincere Christians to imagine that he belittled the great points at issue between the Christian religion and other faiths. A case in point arose immediately on his arrival in India. Let him tell it in his own words, as he described the situation in a home letter. ' Meanwhile came a sensation. Friday evening's paper contained the news of the death of the biggest Parsi in India, Sir Pherozesliah Mehta, Vice-Chancellor of the University. I saw at once that I must move heaven and earth to get well into the funeral ceremony, which was
184 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
likely to be an opportunity I might not surpass if I stayed in India twenty years. So I wrote a note to Dr. Modi, who lives right away in Kalaba, the eastern end of the great bay. Dr. Mackichan sent it off by one of his " boys," who brought back a kind reply and a card inscribed Avith Gujerati, which was to open sesame on Saturday morning. . . . By 8.15 I was off in my topee and tussore suit, worn for the first time. I was soon on the path up which the bearers bring the corpses, passed a gate inscribed with an Enghsh warning against all non-Parsis, and presently found a custodian to whom I presented my card. He and his colleague were extremely obliging. They took me right over the lovely gardens, showed me the model of the towers, and explained how the corpse- bearers lay the body on the place prepared for it, strip off the white covering, and leave the tower. I saw the five towers — one quite small, one only kept for a particular family, two big ones appropriated to two sects into which the Parsis spfit generations
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ago on the momentous question of the right time for intercalating to put the calendar right I And round the top of the tower nearest to me the vultures were sitting expectant. It was the morning hour of funerals, the other hour being about 5 p.m., and these pleasing big birds know the time of day ! Meanwhile, two small funerals came up and enabled me to see the ritual. First came the six bearers, carrying the body on an iron bier, covered with a cotton sheet. They are clothed in white cotton. Since they are on a job that invoh es the worst kind of pollution, they have to be put through special purification, and anyhow are a despised caste. Their clothes and the coverings are, of course, specially polluted, and have to be '* destroj^ed " — in theory ! How to destroy them ? Fire, earth, and water must not receive them obviously, and they are put in a receptacle and left. But since there are four or five funerals every day, the accumulation of clothes would be tremendous. So I understand
186 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
there is a private rule by which the clothes may be used again after exposure to the Bun. If the pollution were microbic an hour in this sun would soon destroy it.
' After quite an hour of interesting talk . . . Dr. Modi arrived, a short, wliite- clad, white-bearded man of 61, with the white turban that marks the priest. He was very cordial. He took me off through the garden, and we watched the coming of the big procession. They were so many that the front came quite close up to the bearers — there ought to be an interval of several feet. The}' walk two by two, each pair linking together by holding the two ends of a handkerchief. Great num- bers of non-Parsis came to pay honour to this very distinguished man, but they all stopped at the gate and went back. The others followed to a place close up to the tower (out of sight for me), and there the face of the dead man was exposed and they filed past to see it. TJien it was taken into the towei' where only the bearers go. i heard the clang of the iron
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gate. The mourners had gathered in the lovely garden where Dr. Modi and I had been sitting. They all turned towards the tower, and repeated from their prayer- books the series of Avestan texts which Dr. Modi went over with me. They then dispersed, washed hands and face and went away,'
I have quoted this in full because it has an intrinsic interest of its own, apart from its personal element ; and probably few Westerns lia\'e had quite such a privileged position. But within a short time there was an indignant letter in an Indian newspaper — repeated, I believe, in an English religious paper — about a clergy- man who no sooner landed than he dis- carded clerical dress and took part in a Parsi rehgious service ! It is very clear that the reference was to James Hope Moulton ; and in a sense the facts were accurate, though the inference was totally false. As Dr. T. R. Glover drily remarked in the Cambridge Review, 'There must be more reasons than one for discarding
188 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
European clerical dress as soon as one can after landing in Bombay, if one had not been able to before.'
Further, there was the constant risk lest he should be drawn into party con- troversy on the matters which divide Parsis. When he arrived there was wait- ing for him an invitation to address the Iranian Association, which represented what may be called the Radical w ing, and which is therefore an object of suspicion to the orthodox and the Conservative section. Dr. i\Iodi told him that already some of these advanced men had been appeahng to the authority of the Western scholar in support of their contentions ; and, of course, there was unquestionably a Radical tendency in my brother's make-up — ' some out-crop of original sin,' as he playfully called it — which predisposed him in favour of the Progressives on every issue. Eastern and Western, ecclesiastical and political alike. But he recognized the importance of not allowing himself to be claimed at the outset as a party champion, for that
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would have impaired grievously his chance of usefulness ; and he readily undertook to postpone any address to a sectional association until he had several times addressed the orthodox ' centre.' In the end the lectures above referred to were translated into Gujerati by one sect and published with annotations by the other — an interesting manifestation upon an entirely new field of that ministry of reconciliation which had so evidently been committed to him.
It is not at all easy to arrive at any very definite idea as to the value of his work among Parsis. His lectures evidently awak- ened wide and intelligent interest on the part of a community which has exercised an influence altogether out of proportion to its numbers — only about 200,000 in all throughout India. Any who gathered the impression that J. H. Moulton had gone to India to conduct a mission to Parsis were bound to be disappointed in respect of any visible results from the visit, and undoubted! v there had been some
190 JAMES HOPE MOTTLTON
ill-considered references to his tour which might well have awakened some such expectations as to definite conversions. But it is safe to say that any such frontal attack would have been fatal to his in- fluence upon his hearers, who would have resented the suggestion that it was neces- sary to send a missionary from the West to evangehze them, of all peoples in the East. His task rather lay in the direction of expounding to them the nature and the implications of their own faith, as they presented themselves to a Western mind ; and with great faithfulness he performed his task. With the utmost frankness he warned them of the Agnosticism to which so many of them leaned ; and his very exposition of the essence of Zoroastrianism constituted on the one hand an appeal to them to be worthy of a great spiritual inheritance, and on the other a demonstra- tion of inevitable limitations of that and every other faith, except one. It was a type of evangelism which would not have commended itself to some, but it was the
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type best fitted for the peculiar field in whicli he was working, and although it is impossible to form any estimate as to its immediate effects, it is not difficult to see in such advocacy the foundation for the more direct evangelism of a later period.
The End
Throughout m}^ brother's later months in India there had been a blended fear and desire in respect to his home-coming. How much he longed to see those dear to him in England is very clear from his letters, especially at every point where a postponement became necessary ; and 5'^et his work, his mission, always came first. ' I thought I was going to see your dear faces in a few weeks, and that cup of joy has been dashed from my lips. But I can see clearly that it is best. I am very unhkely to see India again. I have got the ear of a great many people, and can tell them sometimes what it is good for them to know. I ought not to leave this
192 JAMES HOPE MOTTLTON
world of opportunity lightly, and the cutting off of my work at home seems to be a Providential indication ' (Jime 12, 1916). But alongside of that wistful longing for home there was the dread consciousness that home was no longer there for him, in the sense in which he had known it. It will be remembered that it was only a few months after his wife's death that he left for India, and he dreaded the prospect of settling down in the old spot with so much to remind him of one who was there no longer in visible form. Writing to Dr. Rendel Harris, he says : ' I shall have to work very hard to keep myself from becoming a recluse when I get home, except for the intolerableness of that house, which may drive me to fill it with voices to drown somewhat the silence eloquent in every room. Time does so httle to temper the dread of that home that is home no more.'
By the time that he left India in March, 1917, he was wearj' and worn. He had worked very hard, and as already has been
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noted, he had not made sufficient allowance for the trying character of the Indian cUmate. But the voyage, and the feUow- Bliip on shipboard with Dr. Rendel Harris, much revived him. He had hoped to have his friend in India with him for a time, but the sinking of the City of Birmingham on Dr. Harris's outward voyage, thwarted that, for he got no further than Egypt. After numerous letters and cables had been exchanged — half of which never reached their destina- tion— they met at Port Said, and had a week's happy intercourse together before the tragedy came. They knew full well that on leaving Port Said they passed into a danger-zone, because the enemy could operate so easily and effectively from the Syrian coast. One day they passed a raft, and a Ufe-buo}', and a dead body in a hfe-belt, which was a reminder of what was a possible fate for them any hour of the day or night.
* « 4t * *
There is no good purpose to be served
N
194 JAMES HOPE MOULTON
by recalling the details of the tragedy. The last four and a half years have seen so many such occurrences that what needs to be said is only too famiUar, and the rest may with advantage remain unsaid. I will content myself with quoting the characteristic letter with which Dr. Rendel Harris made us acquainted with the facts.
* Grand Hotel, Ajaccio, Corsica,
'April 14, 1917.
* You will have received the sad news of my first telegram, and will have been waiting and watching for the further information with regard to the passing over of your beloved.
' I am not able to write a great deal, and much of what I would S3,y must wait until I return, first of all because we were strongly advised not to communicate any details as to the passage of our unfortunate vessel, and second because it is too painful to recall in detail the horrors of the days of exposure and collapse. I think that what operated in his case to diminish his power of reaistance was, first of all, physical
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weakness, which had shown itself on the way home from India in a violent outbreak of boils on the face and neck, causing him much pain and inconvenience — ^but on the other side he succumbed to superior spiritual attractions which he felt a long time before the ship was struck. He talked about his dear ones in Johannine language as going over to prepare places for one another, and the spiritual tension was evidently stronger than even strong language expressed. Those on the other side stood to him Christ-wise, saying Christ's words and doing Christ's deeds to him as they had done to one another. Under these circumstances it is not strange that he should have collapsed, but he played a hero's part in the boat.
' He toiled at the oar till sickness over- came him : he assisted to bale out the boat and to bury (is that the right word ?) the bodies of those who fell. He said words of prayer over poor Indian sailors, and never, never complained or lost heart for a moment through the whole of the
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three days and more of his patience, though the waves were often breaking over him and the water must have often been up to his middle. He passed away very rapidly at the end, and was gone before I could get to him. His body was lying on the edge of the boat, and I kissed him for you all and said some words of love which he was past hearing outwardly. There was no opportunity to take from his body anj-thing except his gold watch, and one or two trifles, which are in my keeping. I could not search him for papers, indeed, I doubt if he had brought any with him from the ship.
' During the whole of the voyage his mind was marvellously alert and active. He talked and read and wrote incessantly — and preached on the Sundays. On the way home he had read the whole of the Odyssey in the small Pickering edition ; and amongst his first remarks to me was his opinion as to the disparity of the twenty- third book with the rest of the poem.
' One strange and beautiful experience
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we shared together with Major of
the Abyssinian Embassy, who was return- ing to England. We developed literary sympathies, and one day the conversation turned on ** Lycidas." The major knew it by heart — so did J. H. M., or almost by heart. I was a bad third in the recita- tion, and when we halted for a passage J. H. M. ran to his cabin and brought his pocket copy of Milton to verify doubtful words with. How little we suspected what was the meaning of our exercise ! They laughed at my delight over the sounding sentences, and I had to explain that it made my blood tingle : but we did not know that the amber flow of that Elysian speech had become once more sacramental, and that we were really reciting the liturgy of the dead, that " Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, sunk though he be beneath the ocean floor." He had his own " solemn troop " and his own " sweet society " to make him welcome.
' It is one of our Lord's sayings that one ehall be taken and another shall be left,
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and the words lie dormant in meaning long spaces of time — then rise up and smite us in the face. Why was one taken and the other left ? Why did that fatal, that *' perfidious bark " discriminate between the " sacred head that it sunk low " and the one which was so much whiter to the harvest ? But for questions Uke these there is no answer yet. I would tell you more if I could, but this is all I can say at this present.
*With deep sympathy, *Your friend and his,
*p.p. Rend EL Harris, 'G. O. Innes.
' P.S. — Manu med : I am so glad to have been with him these days : to have had him to myself, at his very best. So Johannine, and so Pauhne ! " How Pauhne we have become ! " he said to me ; and twice over he quoted some great lines from Myers' "St. Paul," to add to the ordinary Corinthian quotations.'
That characteristic letter evokes many
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199
reflections. How strange a coincidence that it should be ' Lj cidas ' that occupied his thoughts on the voyage — ' Lycidas,* which was the subject of the first article which, as a schoolboy, he wrote for his school magazine, and which was to be so tragically appropriate to his condition within a few hours ! But perhaps stranger still is the coincidence afforded by the closing stanzas of his own poem on Vasco di Gama, to which was awarded the Chancellor's Medal in 1885 :
So o'er the bosom of the unknown ocean
Youth spreads her sails before the springing wind,
Instinct with something of a heavenly motion
To seek the glory she has left behind.
And to a world of wandering men and blind
To bring the light of the supernal Day.
What though the dark clouds threaten ? There
hath shined On the wild waves a star whose kindly ray Shall break the gloom, and guide her onward in her
way.
Alas ! and many in those black depths have ended Their reckless course, from the wished haven far. By the hoarse requiem of the storm attended While angels wept their ruin. But the war
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Saw the sea stilled, and where the victors are Flame j^et the radiant trophies that they won From their unstoried voyage, and the Star Lit their path, brightening till their toil was done. Then rent the clouds, and reigned, the One, the Eternal Sun.
Thus closed abruptly a life of singular richness and usefulness, crowded with activities and full of promise as to greater things ahead. Such a tragedy adds but one more to the melancholy catalogue with which we have of late learned to become onl}?^ too famiUar : and there it must be left. But his memory will ever continue fresh and green in the minds and hearts of those who knew him ; and his record will remain not only in the printed page that bears his name, but in the ministry of all those who in one sphere or another were led by him to love truth for its own sake, to love men and women for their own sake, and to pour out life as a sacrificial offering for God's own sake. And no such life, be it long or short, is spent in vain.
Printed in Great Britain by Jarrold 6- Sons, Ltd., Norwich.
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