LIBRARY ST. MARY'S COLLEG
LIFE OF DEAN BURGON
Collegium rielense Collegium Wgorniense
HORACE HART, I'KINTKK TO THE UNIVERSITY
r/// //////,//// /J
d
WILLIAM BURGO^
LATE DEAN OF CHICHESTER
EXTRACTS FROM HIS LETTERS AND
EARL Y JOURNALS
BY EDWARD MEYRICK GOULBURN, D.D., D.C.L.
o
-SOMET/ME DEAV OK NORWICH
IN TWO VOLUMES: WITH PORTRAITS
VOL. II
116330
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1892
LIBRARY ST. MARY'S COLLEGE
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
CHAPTER II.
PAGE
THE OXFORD LIFE : FIFTH PERIOD i
(Vicarage of St. Mary the Virgin's [Oct. 15, i863~Jan. 19,
1876].)
CHAPTER III.
THE CHICHESTER LIFE [1876-1888] . . . .123
CH&PTER IV.
THE CHARACTER INTELLECTUAL. MORAL, AND
SPIRITUAL .... ... 341
APPENDIX (A) . . . 379
(B) . . 382
( C ) ... 387
(D) . 392
(E) ..... 401
(?) . 4 7
INDEX . 4I -
LIFE OF DEAN BURGON
CHAPTER II.
ERRATUM.
Vol. II, p. 36 5, footnote 5, line 6, for Polytheist reail Monotheist
Goitlburn'f Life of Bu
ui eminent uieu, uy oue man so very eminent
that lie may be ranked with John Wesley, as one of the
greatest leaders of religious thought, and originators of
religious movement, whom the Church of England has
produced since the Reformation. John Henry Newman's
movement too, though taking quite a different direction
from John Wesley's, had the same effect as the earlier
one of stirring into a new activity, and quickening with
a new life, even those ministers and members of the
Church who were avowedly out of sympathy with it.
VOL. ii. B
LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
CHAPTER II.
TEE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD.
Vicarage of St. Mary the Virgin s.
[Oct. 15, 1863 Jan. 19, 1876.]
" I WAS this day presented by the College " (the Provost
and Fellows of Oriel College, the Patrons of the Vicarage
of St. Mary the Virgin's) " to St. Mary's, and presume in
due time that the other formalities will be got through."
Thus wrote Burgon from his rooms in Oriel to his
Brother-in-law, the Rev. Henry John Rose, under date
October 15, 1863. The other formalities which he refers
to were his Institution, which took place on October 29
of the same year, his Induction on the 4th of January
in the year succeeding, and his Reading-in on the 1 7th of
January. He had been preceded in the Vicarage by a
series of eminent men, by one man so very eminent
that he may be ranked with John Wesley, as one of the
greatest leaders of religious thought, and originators of
religious movement, whom the Church of England has
produced since the Reformation. John Henry Newman's
movement too, though taking quite a different direction
from John Wesley's, had the same effect as the earlier
one of stirring into a new activity, and quickening with
a new life, even those ministers and members of the
Church who were avowedly out of sympathy with it.
VOL. ii. B
2 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
On Mr. Newman's resignation of the Vicarage of St.
Mary's in the autumn of 1843, the Reverend Charles
Page Eden, "the Earnest Parish Priest," as Burgon
styles him in his * Lives of Twelve Good Men' succeeded
("a perilous undertaking, truly, it was, to succeed to
that pulpit after such an one as John Henry Newman "),
and held the post till the spring of 1850, when he was
presented to Aberford in Yorkshire, also an Oriel College
Living". Charles Marriott, "the Man of Saintly Life,"
another of the " Twelve Good Men " commemorated by
Burgon, followed Eden in the Vicarage of St. Mary's,
and held the position until, in the summer of 1855, a
stroke of paralysis terminated, not indeed his life, but
his ministerial career. From that time to Burgon 's
presentation to the Living in 1863, it was held by the
Rev. Drummond Percy Chase, now Principal of St.
Mary's Hall, who for some time had been desirous of
devolving the post upon Burgon, but had with great
considerateness held it on during his friend's tour in the
East, and on his return thence, until he had sufficiently
recovered his health to undertake the duties of the
Parish. That Burgon was legitimately proud of being
appointed to a post, which the tenure of it by so many
distinguished men had rendered illustrious, goes without
saying. Shortly after his appointment, the author re-
members having met him at one of the dinners of
" Nobody's Club " in London, when, as a newly elected
member, he was required by one of the rules of the Club
to give an account of himself and of his qualifications
for membership. In his maiden speech he mentioned
with pardonable pride his having been recently appointed
to a post, illustrated by names all of them academically
illustrious, and one of world- wide celebrity, and modestly
said that, if his reputation could never be what theirs
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 3
was, he would endeavour at all events to do his duty in
his new vocation. But there was another and deeper
consideration besides that of the lustre of his prede-
cessors, which would make him thankful for his appoint-
ment to a parish of his own. Thirteen years ago, it will
be remembered, he had written to Mrs. Hugh James
Rose thus : " What I do desire is not to die till I have
had the shepherding of a flock. In that task I am con-
tent to wear myself out" [see above, page 190]. "The
shepherding " came to him at last in the shape of the
Pastoral Charge of the chief Parish Church in Oxford
(chief it has a right to be called, on account of its being
the University Church), and thus his desire was ful-
filled. But was it " a tree of life " to him, as the Wise
Man says that the long-deferred "desire" is, when at
length it " cometh " [Prov. xiii. 12]? Eventually, and
in one sense, " Yes." He himself always pointed to his
ministry at St. Mary's as the happiest and most useful,
the happiest, because the most useful, period of his
life. He " wore himself out " indeed in that cure, crowd-
ing into those twelve years the pastoral activities of an
ordinary lifetime, but he found " contentment," deep
and satisfying, in spending and being spent for others,
and abundantly realised the truth of the promise that
"he that watereth shall be watered also himself.'"' At
the outset of the new undertaking, however, he found
all sorts of drawbacks and discouragements ; there was
none of the couleur cle rose with which his imagination
had invested a Parish of his own, when it was only in
prospect. First, there was the reflexion, sure to be bitter
to a heart so tender and loving as his, that the Oxford
Vacations, which he had been wont to spend at his
sister's house at Houghton Conquest (since his father's
death he seems to have regarded Houghton as his home).
B 2
4 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
would now be claimed, if not wholly, yet in great part
by his Parish, at all events that those long quiet weeks,
sacred to study and the cultivation of family ties, must
now come to an end for ever.
"I can think of nothing but you all," he writes to
Mrs. Henry John Rose, under date Oct. 10, 1863, "as
usual when I come from dear Houghton; but this time
more than any other ; for there seems something very
like the severance of the ties of more than twenty bright
summers : no small portion of any life, and nearly half
of mine ! To dwell upon this aspect of the case is even
keenly distressing to me. It cuts me like a knife to
bend my thoughts steadily in that direction ; and I will
not recur to it again. But it cannot be right to shut
one's eyes to the melancholy probability that Houghton
dear, dear Houghton will never more be to me, as
for so many years it has been, my home. I may come
and go, and you may be kind enough to receive me from
time to time ; but the many consecutive weeks, the
calm, studious, quiet weeks, sweetened by your constant
kindness and the society of the beloved children, those
many weeks of repose for mind and body, alas! they
seem to have come to an end."
And then the new position seemed to him at first to
have much that was repellent in it. In the same breath
in which he tells his Brother-in-law, "I was this day
presented by the College to St. Mary's," he adds; "All
at present is heavy, strange, lonely, and discouraging."
And in the letter to his sister, an excerpt from which
has just been given to the reader, he goes on to say :
" It is certainly the most anomalous, unattractive,
queer place I ever heard of, or, I suppose, you either.
The parishioners are estimated variously by Chase, and
the Provost, and the Churchwardens, at 300 400 500 ;
while the Clergy List takes a bold leap, and calls it
1000. There are no poor in the Parish, and no schools
as the necessary consequence I am warned that I
shall find no soil to work upon, and cautioned against
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 5
expecting a congregation I listen and stare, and
can hardly believe my own ears."
But he is not going to allow the grass to grow under
his feet.
" I have resolved to attempt no changes on this side
of Advent ; but I will in the meantime visit the flock "
(be it remembered that he was not even presented as
yet, the date of the letter being October 10), " and
convince myself whether it may not be practicable to
feed the flock of CHRIST, even here !"
On Nov. 24, he writes to his sister of a change which
he did make "on this side Advent 1 ," notwithstanding
the resolution he had announced to her in the previous
month.
"I started an Afternoon Service last Sunday, or
rather revived the old Service. How hard it is to bring
back the lost ! I think there were scarcely fifty in that
vast Church ! And it used to be such a large congre-
gation ! However, the Evening Service is very popular.
I am glad to see undergraduates there, in considerable
numbers."
Those who knew him well might have augured with
tolerable certainty that one of his first acts would be
the revival of the Afternoon Service, that having been
the Service at which Mr. Newman had been in the habit
of delivering his celebrated Sermons, which attracted so
large an audience from the various Colleges, and Burgon
having always retained to the end of his life the most
affectionate veneration for Mr. Newman's memory, though
he never showed the smallest symptom of a disposition
to follow him in his secession from the Anglican fold.
Soon after the restoration of the Sunday Afternoon Ser-
vice followed that of the Daily and Saints' Day Services ;
and Burgon, foreseeing that he should not be equal
singlehanded to all the work which he contemplated
1 Advent Sunday in the year 1863 fell on Nov. 29.
6 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
for the benefit of his parishioners, appointed the Rev.
R G. Livingstone, of Pembroke College, his first Curate.
Mr. Livingstone was ordained to the Curacy of St. Mary's
at the December ordination of 1863, and became the fast
friend as well as the very efficient assistant of his Vicar.
No amiable man, who had penetrated beyond the range
of Burgon's polemical* fulmination into the inner circle
of his intimates, could resist the fascination of his affec-
tionateness and geniality.
A.D. 1864. In the year 1 864, Burgon's ' Treatise on the Pastoral Office,
addressed chiefly to Candidates for Holy Orders, or to those
who have recently undertaken the cure of souls,' made its
appearance. It had been commenced, he tells us, in
1856 (three years after he had resigned his Curacy at
Finmere), had been " laid aside for a long period," " re-
sumed from time to time," and finally " brought to a close
in 1864." He was not well in his saddle at St. Mary's,
certainly had not had more than a month's experience
of Pastoral work in a town, when this Treatise, which
enters in considerable detail into each separate depart-
ment of the duties of a Parish Priest, issued from the
press. What strikes one at first sight as requiring ex-
planation, is the very limited account of actual experience,
on which the instructions and advices given in the
Treatise are founded. He himself is evidently aware of
this objection which might be advanced against the
book ; for he says in the Preface ;
"It will distress me if I shall be thought to have
overstepped the limits of a becoming modesty: or if
any should be offended because an individual invested
with no authority has thus presumed to teach
I have confined my particular observations to that
sphere of Pastoral labour with which alone I have been
hitherto familiar, namely, the cure of souls in agri-
cultural parishes. But, in truth, whether in Town or
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 7
Country, human nature is found to be much the same ;
and,, except in matters of detail, the same general prin-
ciples are everywhere applicable."
And if it should be thought that even in agricultural
parishes, his experience had been hitherto of the briefest,
consisting only of temporary engagements at West Ilsley,
Worton, and Finmere during the years 1849 to 1853 in-
clusive, at none of which places however did he ever
permanently reside as licensed Curate, we have only to
refer to the letters descriptive of his ministry in those
places, which are given at the end of the Second Period
of his Oxford Life, to see with how much justice those
words of the Book of Wisdom may be applied to him in
his Pastoral work ; " He, being made perfect in a short
time, fulfilled a long time." In those fragments of weeks
(for this they were, and nothing more) which he devoted
to West Ilsley, Worton, and Finmere, he crowded by his
extraordinary energy the experience of years, and learnt
about his parishioners, his work, his responsibilities, and
the -best means of meeting them, what it would have
taken another man, of less fervent spirit and less intense
self-devotion, ten years' continuous residence among the
people to acquire. Add to which that he was not
ordained till he was thirty-five years old, and accordingly
came to the work with far more furniture in the way of
general cultivation, and far more knowledge of human
life and society, than falls to the lot of ordinary Clergy-
men, who receive the first grade of Holy Orders at the
Canonical age of twenty-three. Burgon was a man of
letters, a man of art, a man of high cultivation, and one
who had moved in the literary society of the metropolis,
before he put his hand to the work of the Ministry, and
his intellectual and social maturity gave him a facility
of acquisition, even in a comparatively new sphere of
8 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
duty, which would have been wanting to a man of less
advanced general experience. Any how the ' Treatise on the
Pastoral Office ' is an extraordinary production, when con-
sidered as the result of a Pastoral experience so very
brief in point of time, and so very fitful. A man who
had studied a country Parish for twenty-five years of
continuous residence in it could not write with more
thorough mastery of his subject, nor (generally speaking)
with sounder sense and better judgment. Needless to
say that his idiosyncrasies, both as regards doctrine and
manner, the thing taught and the way of teaching it
run from one end of the Treatise to the other ; as in all
his other writings, so in this, there is no mistaking who
it is that writes. The First Chapter is devoted to the
study of the Bible the fundamental study, beyond all
doubt, for those who would duly qualify themselves
for the exercise of the Christian Ministry, and the
second to Inspiration, which gives the Bible its unique
character of the Word of God. In these two Chapters,
Burgon, deploring, with only too much reason, the
shallow grounding in Holy Scripture of most of those
who offer themselves for Holy Orders, does little else
than reproduce in other, and perhaps rather simpler,
words the same views of the Bible, its claims, and the
right way of studying it, which he had already laid
before the Church in his Sermons on "Inspiration and
Interpretation." Next to the study of the Bible, he shows
the necessity of the study of the Prayer Book, in its
sources, in the changes through which it has reached its
present state, and in its teaching, the Prayer Book being
" the authorized exponent of the Church's mind on all
the chief points of doctrine." The foundation of sacred
learning having thus been laid deep in the study of the
Bible and Prayer Book, a course of reading is then
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD.
recommended in Ecclesiastical History, in the works of
the great English Divines, and, as far as possible, in the
Fathers, a too vast field, it might be thought, for
the average young Clergyman 2 ; but of course it is
intended that each one should apply himself to that par-
ticular quarter of the field, to which he is drawn by his
peculiar circumstances and prepossessions. The Eight
Chapters which follow, and constitute the bulk of the
book, give very pertinent and judicious advices on
different branches of the Pastoral Work, Preaching and
Sermon Writing, Pastoral Visitation of the Sick and the
whole (to the universality and individuality of which
2 The late Archdeacon Churton, be set right: "In p. xi. I do not
then Rector of Crayke, who, as we
have seen, had so highly eulogized
Burgon's Biography of Tytler, while
calling ' The Pastoral Office' " a rich
offering made to the Service of the
Altar," thinks that the author has
in some measure laid himself open
to the objection which he makes
[Preface, p. viii.] against Professor
Blunt' s 'Duties of the Parish-
Priest,'' that objection being that
the Professor overloads the Parish
Priest with too many subjects of
study, and sets up a standard im-
possible of attainment. Burgon,
Mr. Churton seems to think, lays
himself open more or less to the
same charge.
And in the same letter (dated
Crayke, April 30, 1 864), Mr. Churton
hits one or two other blots in the
work, in the way of chronological
inaccuracy, which are here given in
order that, should this very valuable
Treatise ever be reprinted for the
use of Candidates for Holy Orders,
the trifling blunders, here indicated
in Mr. Churton's own words, may
understand what you mean by speak-
ing of Bp. Wilkins as a ' little
later ' than Rob. Nelson, or speaking
of Pearson in terms that seem to
imply that you consider him to have
been earlier. The only Bp. Wilkins
with whom I am acquainted is
John Wilkins, the Natural Philo-
sopher, famous for proposing a
voyage to the moon, and Bp. Pear-
son's predecessor in the See of
Chester, where he died in 1672.
But his Treatise called ' EcclesiastesS
so far from being written (as you
say, p. 172)5 <a century and a half
ago,' was first published in 1646.
See Wood's ' Athence? iii. 969, ed.
Bliss, where some later editions are
also mentioned."
John Wilkins, Bp. of Chester,
was born in 1614, consecrated
1668, died 1672.
John Pearson, who succeeded him
in the see, was born in 1612, con-
secrated 1673, died 1686.
Robert Nelson, author of ' The
Fasts and Festivals,' was born in
1656, died 1714.
io LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
last visitation he attaches great weight), Village Educa-
tion and Catechizing, Preparation for Confirmation and
First Communion, impressive reading of the Psalms and
Lessons, and so forth. The chapter on Parochial Manage-
ment, which recognises each Parish as presenting a sepa-
rate problem of its own, and to be dealt with therefore
not by any cast-iron rule, but in methods demanded by
its own peculiar characteristics, treats very pertinently
and sensibly of such humble subjects as the Village
Feast, the School Feast, the Harvest Home, the Village
Club and Heading Room, the Lending Library, the
dealing of the Pastor with Dissenters, and the line he
should take in visiting them. The Book is as exhaustive
as it well can be on its own subject the exercise of
the Pastoral Office in a rural district and, as being
studiously moderate in its tone, and repudiating both
the Ultra Protestant and Ritualistic extremes, may
safely be recommended. On the one hand, Burgon is no
Puritan. " Let preaching have all honour," he says ;
" but let it subordinate duly, and never be looked upon
as the great business of the Sanctuary, the sole means of
evangelizing a Parish. In Puritan times we learn that
la Preche was a name for Protestantism. In more recent
days, we have perhaps heard of Church Services abridged,
or indecently hurried over, in order that the performance
in the pulpit might commence. All such self-glorification
is a dishonour put upon GOD ; and an omen of nothing
but ill to the spiritual life of a people" [p. 204]. On
the other hand Burgon is certainly no Ritualist. Witness
the following :
"How attired shall a man go forth to minister? A
soiled curt surplice, stained with iron-mould, and
unfurnished with hood or stole, crumpled bands, tied
askew, and muddy boots, form an unseemly accom-
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. n
paniment (to say the least) for one who is to conduct
the services of GOD'S House, however humble it
may be. But is a man therefore driven into curious
millinery, and the foppish extravagances of unpopular
sestheticism ? Need he appear in a surplice of peculiar
cut, a stole embroidered with red, green, or yellow
crosses, a hood so displayed that the crimson lining
shall make him look positively smart, or wearing
some unauthorized, or at least questionable vestment?
Why these mediaeval tricks on the LORD'S Day' and in
the LORD'S House 1 ? Strange blindness, which
sometimes overtakes a clergyman of self-denying zeal,
and unmistakable piety, that he should fail to perceive
that he is as thorough a fop, as affected and contempt-
ible a puppy, in his own solemn way, as the most secular
dandy in a London congregation 3 " [p. 307].
And as to more essential matters than costume, he
maintains that a "strictly Choral Service," (meaning a
Service " where, in addition to the Canticles, the Psalms
are invariably chanted,, and the prayers intoned,") " how-
ever indispensable in a Cathedral, is utterly out of place
in an ordinary parish Church ; and in the country, simply
ridiculous" [p. 323]; that k 'to the whole system of
3 The passage is given (not with- deeper than this in the vestments,
out hesitation) as a specimen of his As regards the first appearance
somewhat intemperate language, of Ritualism in Oxford, the Rev.
when his controversial antipathies Henry Deane, who has favoured
were aroused. It is obvious, how- the author with an able sketch of
ever, to remark that " self-denying the religious movements in Oxford
zeal and unmistakable piety" (which during Burgon's time, writes ;
Burgon admits in this passage cha- " There was considerable change
racterize many of the Ritualists) are in the religious thought of Oxford
hardly compatible with foppishness during the years 1863-6. Ritual-
and puppyism. A zealous and de- ism had now begun to take hold of
voted clergyman, leading the worship the undergraduate, and the High
of his congregation, cannot really be Churchman was nothing if not a
a fop or a puppy, however much his Ritualist. The Seniors also had
costume might give such an im- changed very much. Many were
pression to those who look only on inclining to the new school of
the surface. There is something thought."
12 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
auricular confession, whether constant or periodical, the
Church of England stands utterly opposed " [p. 220] ; and
that it is not " the office of the physician of souls to
probe the hearts of those, who come to him ' to open
their grief,' " but
"rather to lend a patient, yet most incurious ear,
(the reverse of inquisitive, I mean) to the history of
what does so weigh down a fellow-sinner in
silence and in love to listen : next, if need be, with a
faithful yet merciful hand to touch the sore which has
thus been brought to Hght ; yet not with judicial in-
quisitiveness (GoD forbid !), as having for our object the
eliciting of one additional detail ; but with brotherly
sympathy rather, as supremely anxious to minister ' such
ghostly counsel, advice, and comfort,' that the conscience
of the other 'may be relieved,'" &c., &c. [pp. 221, 222].
The merits of the ' Treatise on the Pastoral Office ' did
not go without recognition. The work elicited from
Henry Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter, the following Letter
to the Author :
"Durham, August 13, 1864.
"Dear Sir, Forgive my taking the liberty of thus
addressing you, as if I had the privilege of personal
acquaintance. But I cannot regard as a stranger one to
whom I am so much obliged, both individually, and as
the bearer of an office to which I wish you were raised.
For I know not who would be so likely to fulfil its
duties as the author of the ' Treatise, on the Pastoral Office.'
Yet you must pardon my brevity of acknowledgment of
the value of that Book. I do not write without effort,
which I think you would not wish me to incur.
" I have not been able to read your Book entirely as
yet. But I am grateful for it. If you do not become
Bishop, may you be Professor of Pastoral Theology !
" God bless you ! Believe me,
" Gratefully yours,
"H. EXETER.
" Eev. J. W. Burgon.
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 13
" If you ever come within reach of me (I return, D.V.,
to Bishopstowe, Torquay, at the end of this month),
pray gratify me with giving me an opportunity of im-
proving my acquaintance with a man, who has been
enabled by God to confer so great a boon on our
Church."
In the course of the next month "Henry of Exeter"
shewed his appreciation of the ' Treatise on the Pastoral
Office' in what may be thought a more substantial form.
"Exeter, Sept. 22, 1864.
" Dear Sir, Let me intreat your permission to propose
to you the Office of Principal of the Theological College
at Exeter 4 . Your Predecessors have been the Bishops of
Gloucester and of Ely ; and I should rejoice more than
I can express to be allowed to number you I cannot
say after, but with them as Teachers of the duties and
qualifications of the Clergy
" I would wish to write more at length ; but writing-
is inconvenient to me, almost to pain.
" Believe me, dear Sir,
" With warm esteem and respect,
" Yours most faithfully,
"H. EXETER.
"Kev. J. Burgon."
On the next day (Sept. 23), Burgon, after cordial ex-
pressions of gratitude "for this fresh mark of confidence
from one whom I honour so profoundly, and sympathize
* It is observable that in the complaint is of long standing : yet
Preface to his 'Pastoral Office,' has no practical answer been hitherto
Burgon, after some (not too severe) given to it, except by the setting up
strictures on the want of furniture of a few Diocesan Colleges, insti-
for the Pastoral Office, with which tutions which claim our generous
young men are allowed to take on sympathy, and deserve to have a
themselves so arduous a charge, place in our prayers. They found
speaks gratefully of our Theological an able advocate a century and a
Colleges as having done something half ago in the person of Kobert
to supply a recognised need : " The Nelson." Preface, p. x.
14 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
with so entirely," asks for " time to deliberate on so
serious a step as quitting a cure in Oxford, and a sphere
of undoubted usefulness. I will frankly confess that
I find it very hard to see ' my way plain before me.' "
On the ist of October he definitively declined the offer,
" having with regret arrived at the conclusion that my
duty clearly is to remain where I am." He was right
probably in the world's point of view, as well as in his
own. In a University city the claims of a theologian to
higher Church preferment are much more likely to make
themselves generally known and recognised, than at the
ecclesiastical centre of a remote provincial Diocese.
At Oxford, he stood at the fountain-head of religious
movement and controversy, ready, on the moment
of the rise of a new theological error, to enter a firm
and a learned protest for God's Truth, and also at the
fountain-head of the best youthful life of England, ready
to cast in at the very spring of that life the salt of
Scriptural teaching and wholesome moral influence.
Long years ago Professor Whewell struck this vein of
thought, as regards the sister University of Cambridge,
in commenting from the University pulpit on the text,
" Behold, I stand by the well of water " (Gen. xxiv. 43).
A.D. 1865. Burgon's political allegiance to Mr. Gladstone, like
E 52 '-' that of many other members of the University, had been
for some time past on the wane. But severe as was the
strain which Mr. Gladstone had placed upon it, it did
not even yet quite break down. Burgon supported
Mr. Gladstone by his vote in the General Election of
i865 5 ; but declined any longer to serve (as he had
5 This General Election was not liament had expired by efflux of
an appeal to the country on any time,
particular question. The late Par-
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 15
hitherto done) on his Committee. The University of
Oxford at last shook herself loose of a member, who
certainly had ceased to represent either her Toryism or
her old-fashioned High Churchism. Sir William Heath-
cote was again returned, as a matter of course, but this
time with Mr. Gathorne Hardy as his colleague, instead
of Mr. Gladstone. The latter was in a minority of 180.
From a letter of Professor Seabury's 6 to Burgon in the
June of this year, we gather that he was at this time
giving a series of Lectures to his congregation on the
Book of Genesis, the foundation of these Lectures having
been already laid in the Sunday Evening Bible Class,
which (as we have seen in one of his letters to Mr. Hens-
ley) he had eight years previously held for the citizens
at the Town Hall [see above, p. 290].
"Let me entreat you," writes the Professor, "(I am
sure you will pardon my freedom) to go on with your
Homiletics on Genesis. It is what the Saint of the golden
mouth would do, if he had now your position at Oxford.
The formal Sermon (good in its place) should not be
suffered to deprive God's people of familiar expositions
of His Word. I did not hear your first Lecture ; but
6 The Rev: Samuel Seabury, D.D., in the Sixteenth Century,' 'The
was a theologian of great eminence Supremacy and Obligation of Con-
and wide influence in the American science,' ' The Theory and Use of
Episcopal Church, and was the the Church Calendar,' and a tractate
grandson of Bishop Seabury, its entitled 'Mary the Virgin' His
first Bishop. Dr. Seabury was the son, the Reverend W. J. Seabury,
Professor of Biblical Learning and the present Rector of the Church of
Interpretation of Holy Scripture in the Annunciation, writes thus to
the General Theological Seminary the author : " I well remember the
of New York from 1862 to 1872, occasion of my father's letter, having
and held for thirty years the Rectory shared with him the hospitable kind-
of the Church of the Annunciation ness of Mr. Burgon, and having
in that city. He published several heard the Lecture referred to on
learned and valuable works, the the first Chapter of Genesis, which
best known of which are ' The Con- made an impression upon me not to
tinuity of the Church of England be effaced."
1 6 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
the unmeasured gratification of Mrs. Seabury and my
son, who did hear it, convinced me that God had given
you access to the hearts and heads of your audience.
And your second Lecture, which I heard, made me wish
for a series of the same sort on the whole Book. And
if the enemy comes in your way, don't spare him."
(Perhaps there was less need for this exhortation in
Burgon's case than tl\ere might have been in the case of
some other expositors.) " The rasp of St. Jerome is some-
times of use ; and as long as there are ' fools,' there
ought to be a ' rod for their backs.' "
Burgon never seems to have done as Professor Seabury
wished him, and completed his Expository Lectures on
the Book of Genesis. Ten Lectures on this Book he has
left behind him, the texts and subjects of which are
given at the foot of the page 7 ; and it is greatly to be
desired that these, as well as the Lectures on the Acts
of the Apostles, a series which he did complete, and
which needs nothing but editing in order to its imme-
diate publication, should be given to the world. The
Book of Genesis, like the Acts of the Apostles, was a
favourite Book with him. The simple but most stately
and majestic Record of Creation, to the acceptance of
which in its literal and obvious sense the sense in
which a child would accept it, he clung (as we shall
see) to the last moment of his life ; and the inimitable
7 SUBJECTS OF SERMONS ON GENESIS.
1. The Mosaic Record of Creation . . . . Gen. i. i.
2. The Creation of Adam and Eve . . . 11.7,18-24.
3. The Temptation and Fall of Man . . . iii. 1-6.
4. The Promised Deliverer iii. 8-15.
5. Adam's Sentence iii. 16-19.
6. Man an exile from Paradise iv. i, 2.
7. The Offerings of Cain and Abel. . . . iv. 3-7.
8. The Death of Abel iv. S-io.
9. The Curse of Cain iv. 11-16.
10. Enoch and Methuselah v. 21-27.
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 17
grace and beauty of the picture of patriarchal manners
which is painted in the later part of the Book, and
which, while it is no doubt pure history, is at the same
time largely charged with type and figure, and has
spiritual mysteries underlying every page of it, these
passages of Holy Writ had at all times an irresistible
attraction for a mind so imaginative, and so susceptible
of impressions from the sublime and beautiful, as was
his.
Burgon's position as a Parish Priest was rendered
more difficult than it otherwise would have been, by
the circumstance that St. Mary's was the Church not
only of his Parish, but of the University also, where on
every Sunday in Term time two Sermons were preached
before members of the University of all grades (preceded
by nothing but the Bidding of Prayer prescribed in the
fifty-fifth Canon, and the Lord's Prayer), for which con-
venient hours must somehow be found. The University
had undoubted rights in the Church no less than the
Vicar and Churchwardens, rights which had been recog-
nised in a practical shape by large sums contributed out
of the University Chest towards the restoration of the
fabric. By long prescription the hours appointed for
the University Sermons had been half-past ten in the
morning and two in the afternoon. College discipline
required of all undergraduates on Sundays attendance
at Morning Praj^ers in their respective College Chapels
at 8 a. m. ; but attendance at the University Sermons
was not enforced except at two or three Colleges, where
the students were obliged in the course of the week to
produce Sermon Notes, as an evidence that they had
been present at one of the University Sermons at least,
and had given some attention to it.
Accordingly, attendance at the Sermons being at most
VOL. II. C
1 8 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
Colleges voluntary, but few Undergraduates presented
themselves, except when some preacher of eminence and
notoriety had been announced in the previous week.
Many of the better Tutors, who were in earnest about
the spiritual and moral welfare of their pupils, and who
also desired such arrangements as might secure to the
College Servants the, opportunity of attending Divine
Service on Sundays, thought that the system might be
improved by a change in the hours of the University
Sermons, and of Sunday Morning Prayers in the College
Chapels. The Rev. Charles Waldegrave Sandford, then
Senior Censor of Christ Church 8 (the College not only
largest in numbers, but also first in rank from the cir-
cumstance of its connexion with the Cathedral Church),
addressed a letter to the Vice- Chancellor, sketching the
outline of such a change as he thought might be con-
ducive to the spiritual interests of the Undergraduates
and the College Servants, without however committing
himself to details. We gather from his letter the
interesting fact that "the Undergraduates had lately
addressed memorials to the authorities in their several
Colleges, praying for a weekly Communion." Mr. Sand-
ford provided in his scheme for a compliance with this
gratifying request. The proposal which he threw out
for consideration and discussion in the Hebdomadal
Council was, that there should be in College Chapels a
weekly celebration of Holy Communion at 8 a.m., to be
attended, not as a matter of College discipline, but by
such Undergraduates as might desire it ; that the Morn-
ing Prayer in the College Chapels should be at 10
(instead of, as hitherto, at 8 a.m.) ; and that the Morning
University Sermon should be moved from 10.30 a.m. to
12 (noon). He also recommended that sermons of a
8 Now Bishop of Gibraltar.
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 19
more familiar and less ambitious character than those
usually preached before the University should be occa-
sionally given in the College Chapels, in which case he
thought that the Afternoon University Sermon (almost
always feebly attended) might be dispensed with. In
this way he hoped that the Sunday breakfast parties
and luncheons, which occupied so large a portion of the
Sunday morning of many Undergraduates, might have
impediments thrown in their way (inasmuch as every
Undergraduate must be in Chapel from 10 to n), while
the request of the right-thinking ones for a weekly
Communion would be acceded to. This was just one of
those alterations which, while seeming at first sight
exceedingly desirable, are found to be impracticable
without putting other things seriously out of joint; but
there can be no question that the proposal was one,
both from the obvious aim of it, and the high character
of those who supported it, which amply deserved the
consideration that Mr. Sandford solicited for it. The
Vicar of St. Mary's had been consulted, it appears, most
pointedly consulted, nay, and listened to upon the sub-
ject ; had not this been done, the proceeding would have
been not only uncourteous in a high degree, but incon-
siderate and inequitable. But, though means had been
taken to soothe and conciliate him, it cannot be denied
that in the three letters which he wrote on the subject,
and specially in that in which he fulminated against
Mr. Kitchin 9 for the support given by him to Mr. Sand-
ford, Burgon expressed himself with an asperity quite
uncalled for. It is possible that his feelings of repug-
nance to Mr. Sandford's suggestions may have been
prompted in some measure (all unconsciously to himself)
not only by the supposed encroachment upon his rights
9 Now Dean of Winchester.
C 2
20
LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
as Vicar of St. Mary's, but also by his regarding the
spiritual welfare of the undergraduates as his peculiar
sphere, in which, during the whole of his maturer Oxford
life, he had striven to make his mark at the cost of great
personal self-sacrifice. He loved the undergraduates
dearly, it is true, and laboured hard for them ; but
others loved and laboured for them too; and it would
be most unjust not to recognise how deeply the young
life of Oxford in those days was indebted to such men
as Professor Heurtley, Mr. Linton, Mr. Christopher (both
of the latter Parish Priests like Mr. Burgon), and the late
universally lamented Canon Liddon. The faithful chro-
nicler of Burgon's Life could not pass over this incident
unnoticed ; but the reader who is curious to know more of
the particulars must consult the six Pamphlets, the titles
of which are given at the foot of the page 1 . We pass from
1 i. ' The University Sermon and
College Services.' A Letter ad-
dressed to the Vice-Chancellor, by
Charles Waldegrave Sandford, M.A.,
Senior Censor of Christ Church,
Oxford ; Chaplain to the Lord
Bishop of London ; and late White-
hall Preacher. Oxford: John Henry
and James Parker, 1865.
2. 'Mr. Sandford and the Univer-
sity Sermon." 1 A Letter addressed
to the Rev. the Vice-Chancellor,
by the Rev. John W. Burgon, M. A.,
Fellow of Oriel, and Vicar of St.
Mary the Virgin's. Oxford: John
Henry and James Parker, 1865.
3. ' Mr. Burgon and the Univer-
sity Sermon: By G. W. Kitchiu,
M.A., late Censor of Christ Church;
Examining Chaplain to the Lord
Bishop of Chester; and late Select
Preacher. Oxford : John Henry
and Jaoaes Parker, 1865.
4. ' Mr. Kitchin, Mr. Sandford,
and the University Sermon.' A
Second Letter addressed to the
Rev. the Vice-Chancellor, by the
Rev. John W. Burgon, M.A. Ox-
ford : John Henry and James Par-
ker, 1865.
5. ' The University Sermon and
College Services: A Letter ad-
dressed to the Vicar of St. Mary
the Virgin's, by Charles Waldegrave
Sandford, M.A., Senior Censor of
Christ Church, Oxford ; Chaplain to
the Lord Bishop of London ; and
late Whitehall Preacher. Oxford :
Messrs. Parker and Co., 1 866.
6. ' The Oxford Sunday.' A Let-
ter to Mr. Sandford in Reply. By
the Rev. John W. Burgon, M.A.,
Fellow of Oriel, and Vicar of St.
Mary the Virgin's. Oxford : James
Parker and Co., 1866.
It may be observed that in No. 3,
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 21
the subject with the reflexion that this was not the first
time in the history of the Church, nor will it be the last,
when good men, really seeking the same high and holy
ends, have come to a sharp parry and thrust of words.
Burgon's aptness to be betrayed, when writing, into
intemperate expressions towards opponents, was one of
the foibles of his truly great, and noble, and attractive
character, and gave a wholly erroneous impression of
him to those who were only superficially acquainted
with him. " Oh that thou wouldst dip thy foot in oil ! ''
said one of his most ardent and enthusiastic admirers
respecting Burgon, wishing for him the blessing of Asher
(Deut. xxxiii. 24). It certainly is to be desired that he
had dipped his pen in it more frequently.
The early part of the year 1867 carried away the old A.D. 1867.
and venerated friend who had baptized Burgon, and had ^
in later life been his correspondent and trusted coun-
sellor, the Kev. G. C. Renouard, Rector of Swanscombe.
Thus he writes of this event in his Journal :
" Very many were the tender memories of other years
which seemed gathered with that dear old friend into
the grave. O what a long catalogue of remembrances
there were and are ! He is almost the first person I can
remember ; and he survived my parents, and almost all
my other oldest friends, as Rogers, Hamilton, Smyth,
Millingen, and so many, many more. He departed
Mr. Kitchin, while censuring Bur- of the merits of the question at
gon's attack upon Mr. Sand ford as issue, Mr. Sandford has set a model
" sharp and somewhat flippant," of the way in which Christian Con-
admits, " One cannot help liking troversy should be conducted, the
Mr. Burgon, even when his paro- tone of his Pamphlet being, while
chial sympathies set him to lay a he firmly maintains his own ground,
sleeper in the track of the Univer- most courteous, reasonable, dig-
sity train." nified, and perfectly inoffensive
It is also only fair to say that in towards his antagonist.
No. 5, whatever view may be taken
22 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
Feb. 15, 1867, at. 86, and was buried in the corner of
the new part of Swanscombe Churchyard on the 2ist."
A natural association of ideas would connect the
remembrance of Mr. Renouard with that of his young
sister Kitty ; for it was, as it will be remembered, from
Renouard's house and Churchyard that he had been sum-
moned away thirty-one years ago to Kitty's deathbed.
[See *itp. pp. 54, 55.]
" On my return from dear Mr. Renouard's funeral/' he
writes in a special and very long memorandum, giving
the account of the removal of his sister's body to the
Holywell Cemetery in Oxford, "a sudden inclination,
which I could not explain, came over me to go and pass
half an hour in Bucklersbury with our Uncle and
Cousins. We spoke of the most recent changes in the
metropolis. ' Yes ; St. Stephen's, Walbrook, will in-
fallibly come down one of these days,' said Uncle John.
The words seemed to go through me. All the way back
to Oxford I revolved the matter, devised a plan" (for
the removal of Kitty's body from a site which might
within a few years be desecrated by the demolition of
the Church standing over her remains, and the con-
version of the site into a London thoroughfare), " and
acted upon my resolve the very next day." Having
obtained the required " faculty " and the necessary sanc-
tions from the clergymen of St. John the Baptist, Oxford,
(to which parish the portion of the cemetery in which
his father and mother had been buried belonged) and of
St. Stephen's, Walbrook, he plans with the assistance of
a stonemason " a sepulchral chamber" of stone, procures
" four huge Yorkshire flags, eight feet long, four feet
high, and six or seven inches thick," to be held together
by " a strong iron cramp, secured with lead, at each of
the four corners," and causes to be "engraved upon a
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 23
slab of Mansfield stone," destined to " fit into and fill up
the western side of the tomb," a Latin inscription of
twenty-two lines, of which he gives the following
translation :
" ^ The resting-place of a most sweet and excellent
little girl, Catharine Margaret Burgon, youngest daughter
of Thomas Burgon, Esq., and Catharine Margaret his
wife, who fell asleep in CHRIST on the 28th day of
April, 1836. She lived only seven years, six months,
twenty-one hours. Her sacred remains I removed at the
end of thirty-one years from the Church of St. Stephen's,
Walbrook, in London, to this place, in order that close
beside her parents, whom she loved so dearly, she, their
deeply lamented daughter, might rest. For our dearest
mother sleeps in peace in the adjoining grave, and at her
left hand sleeps our father also. ' They were lovely in
their lives ; and in death they were not divided.'
" O ye who succeed us, I implore and adjure you by
the Coining of our LORD JESUS CHRIST, disturb not these
so dear remains ! O reader, O by-stander, one and all,
O disturb them not. J. W. B."
By Tuesday evening, 9th of April, 1867, the sepulchral
chamber was nearly ready for its proposed occupant ;
and "on Wednesday morning I was at St. Stephen's,
Walbrook, before 9 o'clock. You may suppose with
how much agitation of mind I approached this part of
my task What if any unsuspected difficulty should
arise?" It did arise; but was surmounted. Several
years ago, when interment in Churches had become
illegal, the steps leading down into the vault had been
bricked up and the aisle above " floored with solid con-
crete." "The singular liberality and kindness of Mr.
Windle, the Rector, had," however, " ordered an opening
for me to be effected with crowbars, so that I descended
through the vaulted brickwork, which makes the roofing
of the vault." A sexton and mason, who are on the spot
24 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
to assist him, report that though they had found several
coffins with the name of Burgon on the plate, none bore
the Christian name of Catharine Margaret. With the
help of " a guttering candle, and a little sketch which I
had made in 1836," he finds the coffins of the other
members of his family, in the position of which he had
made a note thirty-one years ago ; but in the spot where
he remembered having deposited Kitty, " A coffin was
there ; but it was not hers \ I felt bewildered and giddy ;
and the men kept repeating how long they had looked
in vain, until I felt sick too." But he is not to be
daunted by the apprehension of failure. " I informed
the men that, if I stayed for a fortnight, I would Jind what
I wanted. So I bade them go and bring four or five
strong men, and a pound of candles, and make haste
back." Deeply dispirited, notwithstanding his gallant
resolution, he rouses himself to " scrutinize every smallish
coffin within three or four yards of the place, and pre-
sently saw one with a baby's body resting on it. I
cannot express the joyous emotion with which, on push-
ing that little body aside, I first read the beginning of
one of her names then the next then our surname and
the date. I blessed GOD ; sprang out of the hole in the
floor ; sent a boy after the men ; and, to be brief, in half
an hour more the treasure I was in search of had been
deposited on the floor of the aisle, quite safe ! "
Transported to Oxford in a hearse, the body was laid
in the chapel of the Holywell Cemetery, till the sepul-
chral chamber was quite completed. " On the sides of the
chamber, I employed a man to paint in vermilion the words,
^ JESUS CALLED A LITTLE CHILD UNTO HIM. >J< "
When everything was ready for the interment, on the
evening of Saturday, April 13, the Eve of Palm Sunday,
he himself in the presence of his nephew, William Francis
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 25
Rose, and two friends who had kindly assisted in the pre-
paration of the sepulchral chamber, read the Funeral Ser-
vice (mindful perhaps of the slovenly way in which it had
been read on occasion of the previous interment), " while
dearest Billy threw the dust on the body." " The strength
of the little sepulchral chamber elicited remarks from all.
It looked like something destined to last for ever ! "
To those who might be disposed to ask why so large a
space should be devoted to an incident of purely domestic
interest, the author would reply that the object of a Bio-
graphy is to exhibit the mind of the subject ; and how
very large a portion of Burgon's mind this " Translation "
of the little sister occupied, may be judged by the long
and detailed memorandum he has drawn up of the trans-
action, only a very rapid outline of which has been
presented to the reader.
The first Lambeth Conference, summoned by Arch-
bishop Longley in the autumn of this year, which was
attended by seventy-six Bishops of the Anglican Com-
munion, elicited from Burgon one of his characteristic
Sermons 2 , which he inscribes to the Most Reverend
Robert Gray, Metropolitan of South Africa, a Prelate for
whom he always entertained what he professes in the
Inscription, a " profound respect and admiration." The
Sermon justifies the tone of the Encyclical Letter put
forth by the Conference, which had created some
disappointment, as being (so it was said with something
2 ' The Lambeth Conference, and Bishops, Metropolitans, and Pre-
the Encyclical' A. Sermon preached siding Bishops assembled at the
at St. Mary the Virgin's, Oxford, Lambeth Conference. By the Rev.
on the Eighteenth Sunday after John W. Burgon, M.A., Fellow of
Trinity, (Oct. 2oth), 1867, after Oriel College, and Vicar of St.
publicly reading, by command of Mary the Virgin's, Oxford. Oxford
the Lord Bishop of the Diocese, the and London : James Parker and
Pastoral Address of the Archbishops, Co., 1867.
26 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
of a sneer), "judiciously confined to innocuous common-
places." This, says Burgon, is only because " it enun-
ciates the old Truths, rehearsing them not only in their
integrity, but also in their simplicity," and because it
" warns " both " against subtracting from the Deposit,' '
and also " from overlaying Evangelical Truth with
mere human inventions and new Articles of Faith/'
Very emphatic is the Vicar of St. Mary's Anti-Erastian-
ism. While he would " sooner cut off his right hand
than promote any severance between the Church and the
State 3 , the Church," he teaches his people, " is not the
creature of the State, any more than the State is the
vassal of the Church. The Church's Doctrine may not
be decided by Lay Tribunals, neither are her formularies
to be interpreted by secular Judges ; who really, (to
speak the plain truth in plain English), do not under-
stand them ; do not so much as understand the very
language in which they are written. [I am content to
rest this assertion on the judgment which they delivered
in the famous Gorham case]."
Two events in Burgon's history occurring at the end
of the year 1867 gave him, according to his own tes-
timony in his Journal, great satisfaction, the first the
Ordination of the nephew mentioned above 4 , whom he
had watched over with fatherly care and affection ; the
second his own election to the Gresham Professorship, an
office which he held till his death. Here is his notice
of these two incidents in his Journal.
"Oriel, Sunday Night, Dec. 22, 1867. I cannot lie
3 In the following year (1868) he of his views on the connexion of
preached at St. Mary's and pub- Church and State,
lished a Sermon on Disestablish- 4 William Francis Rose, ordained
ment: the Nation's formal rejection to the Curacy of Holy Trinity,
of God," 1 which may be consulted Windsor; now Vicar of Worle,
by those who desire to know more Weston- super-Mare.
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 27
down to-night without recording the infinite goodness of
GOD to me in suffering me to see my dearest W. F. R.
ordained Deacon this day at Christ Church. He assisted
me at St. Mary's this evening. Laus Deo I
"How can I fail also to record my election (on
Wednesday, n Dec.) to the Gresham Professorship of
Divinity an office I have so much longed for, and now
so rejoice to have obtained?
"Praise the LORD, O my soul, for both these great
mercies. J. W. B."
But what is the Gresham Professorship of Divinity ?
the curious reader may be inclined to enquire. Burgon's
own ' Life of Sir Thomas GreshamJ which he published, as
we have seen, in 1839 (twenty-eight years previously to
his appointment to the Professorship), gives full par-
ticulars on this head. Suffice it to say here that Sir
Thomas Gresham, the founder of the Royal Exchange,
who died Nov. 21, 1579, ordained by will that the pro-
perty of his great mansion house in Bishopsgate Street,
as well as the rents arising from the Royal Exchange,
after Lady Gresham's life interest in them, " were to be
vested in the hands of the Corporation of London and
the Mercers' Company. These public bodies were con-
jointly to nominate seven professors, who should lecture
successively, one on every day of the week, on the seven
sciences of divinity, astronomy, music, geometry, law,
medicine, and rhetoric. The salaries of the lecturers
were amply defrayed by the profits arising from the
Royal Exchange, and were fixed at 50 per annum ; a
more liberal remuneration than Henry VIII had ap-
pointed for the Regius Professors of Divinity at Oxford
and Cambridge, and equivalent to at least 400 or 500
at the present day " [' Life of Gresham^ vol. ii. pp. 437,
438]. From a complaint made as early as 1647, in " a
little quarto tract of eight pages, entitled ' Sir Thomas
28
LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
GresJiam, Jiis Ghost, ' to the effect that ' the lecturers
were so superbiously pettish, that they will resolve no
Quaere that may advantage the Dubitour,' " it would seem
to have been a recognised practice for pupils who had
difficulties to address questions to the Lecturer, and have
them answered on the spot for the benefit of the class.
This conversational method of conducting the Lectures
continued down to Burgon's time, and, as is testified by
persons who attended his class, he was usually 5 most
5 Not absolutely always. His
polemical antipathies were strong,
and, when roused, put him out of
the condition of mind in which calm
argument is possible for a man.
.The author has been told an amusing
story of Burgon's dealing with one
of his " Dubitours " at a Gresham
lecture. A member of the class,
with some general knowledge of
the questions of modern controversy,
started an objection to what the
lecturer had propounded. Burgon,
at all times somewhat intolerant of
opposition, gave a further exposition
of what he conceived to be the
truth, and tried to settle the matter
by his own Ipse Mjiit. " Well, at
all events," exclaimed the Dubitour,
" A. B. holds it to be so " (naming
a very eminent and well-known
Rationalistic Divine, highly placed
in the Church of England) ; "for
I consulted his book about it before
I came away." " A. B.," cried
Gresham's Lecturer in Divinity,
making his long arms perform a
whirligig, and forming his lips
to express the escape of vapour,
" A. B. ! ! Pouf-f-f-f-f-f-f ! "
He cannot be said to have been
patient " towards those that oppose
themselves," however exceedingly so
towards those who submitted meekly
to receive instruction from him. Take
the following incident, sent to the
author by a widely known and highly
esteemed beneficed clergyman :
"It was about the year '71 or
'72 that a lady of my acquaintance,
who had gone to live at Oxford
with her husband, asked me to
write to Burgon, requesting him to
allow her to call upon him in any
doubt or difficulty. Both she and
her husband had been brought up
as strong Dissenters, and had come
to me some years before for advice
and counsel. I did not know Bur-
gon ; but that want of knowledge
never has hindered me from help-
ing one who desires or needs help ;
and so I wrote to him, and ex-
plained how matters stood. He
wrote a kind reply, saying that, if
she attended his Church (which
was the case) and would come to
the Vestry some day after Matins,
he would see her. She soon knocked
at the Vestry door, and was seen
by him : he asked what her doubts
or difficulties were, and spoke at
some length in reply to them ; and
when he stopped, she said, ' But,
Mr.Burgon .' His answer was quick
and sharp, ' No huts ! go do.'"
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 29
kind, patient, and painstaking in the replies made by
him to enquirers. The Professors were originally, by
the terms of the bequest, housed in the College, each of
them having separate lodgings in that large mansion,
which Greshain probably had built with a view to the
corporate life, of which he purposed it ultimately to be
the home ; but the provisions of his will, full of wise
forethought and desire to extend the blessings of Learn-
ing to his fellow-countrymen, were no better regarded
than those of great Founders generally are, and a ruth-
less Act of Parliament gave powers, first for the
demolition of the College, said to have grown old and
ruinous (why was it ever allowed to become so ?) and
then [8 Geo. III. cap. 32] for the leasing of the ground
to the Crown for a perpetual rent of ^500 per annum.
See all the details of these disreputable proceedings, and
Burgon's wail of ]amentation over them, in the last
Appendix of his Second Volume, No. xxx. p. 500.
He gave his Inaugural Gresham Lecture, Jan. 17, 1868. A.D. 1868.
In the same year appeared his ' Plea for a ffth Final
School] in a letter addressed by him to the Vice-
Chancellor of the University. The establishment of this
" fifth Final School " was a subject which lay very near
his heart, bearing as it did upon the better qualification
of Candidates for Holy Orders, who would naturally
avail themselves of the opportunity of obtaining Aca-
demical distinctions in Theology, which this new School
would hold out. A few words of explanation are here
necessary for such readers as are not familiar with the
educational system of Oxford. In the year 1807, when
first, second, and third Classes were first awarded as
Honours to those who had distinguished themselves in
the Examination for the first (or Bachelor's) degree,
there were two Schools only (that is, two departments
30 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
of subjects), in the first of which every undergraduate
must pass an examination, and in either or both
of which he might gain a Class, Litera Humaniores,
vulgarly called Classics, and Discipline Mathematics et
Physicte, vulgarly called Mathematics. So things con-
tinued for more than forty years, till in the year 1850.
after considerable resistance from many thoughtful mem-
bers of the University, and among them from Burgon
himself (see his letter to Mr. Renouard above, pp. 211,
212), the system of Examination for the B.A. degree was
extended, so as to include two new Schools (or depart-
ments of subjects), one, Law and Modern History, the
other Physical Science. This was a fundamental change.
a subversion of the old theory and principle of Aca-
demical Education, though at first sight it might not
appear to be so. For that theory and principle were,
that Degrees in " Arts " merely stamped a man as quali-
fied by discipline of the mind and general culture (which
it was supposed that Classics and Mathematics were the
best instruments of conveying) for the prosecution of
such studies as might be called professional, the four
recognised studies (besides " Arts ") in which degrees
were given being Theology, Law, Medicine, and Music.
" Arts " were the preliminary of these ; the necessary
foundation, upon which alone any of these several super-
structures could with safety be reared. This theory, be
it sound or unsound, was entirely disturbed, when to the
subjects of study intended merely for mental discipline,
were added two new ones, of the highest value and im-
portance indeed, but departments of knowledge rather
than instruments of training. Natural Science one, the
other Law and History. However, the old educational
principle having been abandoned, and other subjects
besides Classics and Mathematics being recognised as
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 31
qualifying for the B.A. degree, and Classes being given
for proficiency in them, it was felt by Mr. Burgon and
others that Theology, the highest of all studies, would
labour under a disadvantage, if in it alone proficiency
was not signalised by any honour conferred in connexion
with the B.A. degree. If men might graduate with dis-
tinction in Law and History, and in Natural Science,
why not also in Divinity ? A young man destined for
Holy Orders would then feel that, in devoting himself to
Theological study for a year previously to his first degree,
he would be laying in a good foundation of sacred learn-
ing, for that which was to be the pursuit and business of
his life. The great Bishop Pearson had complained of
the University authorities two centuries ago ; " Year
after year ye thrust forth youthful aspirants to Holy
Orders, to whom ye refuse neither University degrees nor
testimonials, but whom ye are not careful to furnish with
even a smattering of Divinity before they leave your
walls." Burgon attempts to shew that neither the
large staffs of Theological Professors at Oxford and
Cambridge, nor our Theological Colleges, nor training in
a large town Parish under an experienced Parish Priest,
will of themselves suffice to meet this long-standing evil,
and proposes " that henceforth, just as men's attainments
in Mathematics, History, Law, Chemistry, are ascer-
tained by public examination ; and as special proficiency
is rewarded by a Class ; so exactly shall it fare with
them in respect of their Theological attainments/'
By strenuous exertion on Burgon' s own part, and
that of others who thought with him, the Statute insti-
tuting a Final School of Theology, and prescribing that
the Vice-Chancellor and Proctors, jointly with three of
the Theological Professors, should nominate the Ex-
aminers, and prescribe the Books to be examined in
32 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
was passed in the year 1870. Five years later (in 1875)
he reviewed the operation of this School in his ' Plea for
Utc Study of Divinity in Oxford 6 ' : and found it by no
means entirely satisfactory. On a recent occasion, " out
of forty candidates in the Divinity School only twenty-
six satisfied the Examiners," fourteen failing to obtain
the certificate of having passed the Examination, or, in
the slang Academical language, f; being plucked " ; and
of the twenty-six who did obtain the certificate, "the
Examiners could not find one deserving of the distinction
of a First Class " [p. 13]. He traces up " the general lack
of Enthusiasm for Sacred Learning and Sacred Enter-
prise " mainly to the recent Academical Revolution, the
effect of which had been to inundate the Colleges with
lay Fellows, thus depriving them of persons interested
in Divinity and competent to teach its early rudiments ;
indicates what he conceives to be "neglected fields of
Inquiry in English Theology" (one of them Liturgical
lore, another the furnishing of the Fathers with a com-
plete Index of Texts [pp. 33, 31]); and advocates the
endowment of four new Theological Professorships,
Textual Criticism, Modern Ecclesiastical History, Litur-
gical Divinity, and Syriac [pp. 40-44]. But the Bible,
regarded and dealt with as God's Inspired Word, is the
essential basis of all Divinity ; this is the one founda-
tion. "I take upon myself to assert that until the
dignity of Holy Scripture is more faithfully recognised
(by teachers and learners alike), no real progress in
Divinity will be made either here or elsewhere " [p. 52].
But great wrong would be done to Burgon, if it were to
be for a moment supposed that the keen zest with which
6 By John William Burgon, B.D., Lecturer in Divinity. ^
Vicar of St. Mary the Virgin's, Qn. Oxford and London : James
Fellow of Oriel College, andGresham Parker and Co., 1875.
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 33
he threw himself into all Academical movements (and
his lot was cast upon times astir with Academical move-
ments such as, for the number and importance of them,
had probably never been before), distracted him from
the demands which his Parish made upon him. He was
first and before all things else a diligent Parish-Priest,
diligent in every one of the Pastoral functions. At the
close of the year 1868 he writes to his sister on Inno-
cents' Day, proposing to come to her at Houghton for
a short respite :
" I shall be quite worn out. There was Christmas
Day with all its previous worry ; and that brought two
Sermons and five Services: four Services (early Com-
munion and Sermon) on Saturday and Monday: the
same on Friday next" (New Year's Day): "on New
Year's Eve, a Service and Sermon ; and yesterday of
course " (Sunday, Dec. 27) " full work. I feel quite worn
out. Eight Sermons and Eight Celebrations in eight days
is heavy work for a tired man in an empty College."
In the spring of the next year [1869] we find him A.D. 1
lithographing and sending round to every undergraduate
who had lodgings in his Parish a most characteristic
letter, earnestly entreating " that you will abstain as far
as possible from giving Sunday entertainments of any sort
in your rooms," on the ground that "only by your
compliance can the Family with whom you lodge enjoy
the opportunity of going to Church, and making Sunday
what God meant it to be to all His creatures a
day of rest." A few days later, we find from a letter
addressed to him by Dean Mansel (April 23, 1 869), offer-
ing to receive him at St. Paul's Deanery, when next he
comes up to London for the Gresham Lectures, that
he is raising subscriptions for the restoration of St. Mary's
organ, two schemes for which, a partial and a more
comprehensive one, he submits to those whom he asks to
VOL. II. D
34 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
subscribe. To which alternative, when laid before him,
the witty Dean characteristically replies thus :
"THE GREAT ORGAN QUESTION
Decided on the principles of Bacon (Gammon).
Of whole and part, if 'tis confest
The greater costs the larger sum,
Let Instauratio Mayna rest,
And give us Nor urn Organum"
And as to his diligence in Pastoral Visitation, he
undoubtedly endeavoured to do, and probably succeeded
in doing, what the small number of the Parishioners of
St. Mary's made practicable for the Vicar, that is, in
acquainting himself not only with every family, but
with every individual in the Parish. The author re-
members his saying how hard he had found it to get
access to the domestic servants in his Parish, and how
he had in some measure achieved this by going his
rounds in the morning as the maidservants were wash-
ing the doorsteps. He would stop, and after bidding
" Good morning to a girl thus engaged, and saying a
few ordinary words about the weather, &c., not long
enough to detain her seriously from her occupation,
would put a tract in her hand, and bid her read it, and
say, " When I come this way another morning, we will
have a little bit of talk about it." This at least shews
that he did not inculcate on others high aims in the
exercise of the Ministry without strenuously endeavour-
ing himself to act up to them 7 .
The public events of the year 1869 were such as might
well stir up almost frantic indignation in the breast of
7 The Kev. Henry Deane writes he had privately baptized. The in-
to the Author (April 29, 1890) as fant is now a very promising man,
follows : "To my knowledge Bur- and likely to take a First Class. He
gon has sat up the greater part of told me this story."
the night, watching an infant which
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 35
the old fashioned Tory and old fashioned High Church-
man ; and Burgon was both of these. The chief of these
events was the Disestablishment and Disendowment of
the Irish Church, of which measure the late Earl of Derby
had spoken so pathetically, as to the horror with which
it inspired him, in the last speech which he ever delivered
in the House of Lords :
" My Lords," he said, " I am an old man, past the allotted
space of threescore years and ten ; and if it be for the
last time that I have the honour of addressing your Lord-
ships, I declare that it will be to my dying day a satis-
faction that I have been able to lift up my voice against
a measure, the political impolicy of which is equalled
only by its moral iniquity, "-
words which the noble Earl afterwards followed up by a
protest sent in at the time of the Third Reading. Against
this measure, while yet it was only in process of con-
coction, but engrossed to itself a large share of public
attention, and was the talk of every tongue, Burgon had
entered his usual trenchant protest in a Sermon preached
at St. Mary's in the October of the previous year. The
Sermon might be taken as an undesigned setting forth
of the "moral iniquity," which Lord Derby was afterwards
to find in the measure. Its title was ' Disestablishment :
the Nation's formal rejection of God 8 .' But a measure which
galled him still more was in store for the end of the
year 1869, and a measure emanating from the same
Minister, who having shewn his respect for the status
and property of a branch of the National Church, by
depriving her of the one, and confiscating the other,
was now (for had he not always posed as an advanced
High Churchman ?) to offer what seemed like a studied
8 The author regrets that having give more than a conjectural ac-
endeavoured in vain to procure a count of its contents,
copy of this Sermon, he is unable to
D 2
36 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
insult to the solemn judgment of the Church's synods
and hierarchy. ' Essays and Reviews ' had been synodically
condemned in Convocation, every Bishop on the Bench
joining in the censure of the work, with the exception of
two, and these explaining that they did so only from
considerations of expediency, while one of the two 9
characterized the work as " subversive of the faith of
the Gospel, as well as in contradiction to the doctrine
of the Church of England." But all this shall not debar
Essayists and Reviewers from receiving the highest
honours which the Church has to give, and from sitting
in her most dignified chairs of office. The see of Exeter
having fallen vacant by the death of Dr. Phillpotts, one
of the Essayists and Reviewers, the foremost among them,
if any thing is to be augured (which however is doubtful)
from the position of the Essays in the joint volume, was
called upon by the Prime Minister to receive consecration
as Bishop of Exeter. This opened Burgon's mouth wide,
as those who knew him would know that it was perfectly
sure to do, in obstreperous clamour against all persons
concerned. No sooner had the majority of the Chapter
of Exeter "sanctioned" Mr. Gladstone's "flagitious and
tyrannical abuse of official prerogative" by accepting
the Crown's nominee, than he put forth (Nov. 12) his
'Protest against Dr. Temples Consecration to the Office
of a Bishop in the Church of Christ} making the protest
in the Name of the Blessed Trinity, in the hope and with
the prayer that " so flagrant a scandal, so deplorable a
calamity, may not befall this Church of England." In a
second Protest, dated Dec. 4, he replies to a Manifesto,
which Archbishop Tait had published in the newspapers,
" in order, as it seems, to allay public anxiety " about
the appointment ; censures the Archbishop for his " im-
9 Bishop Jackson of Lincoln, afterwards translated to London.
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 37
petuous partisanship " in " writing to persuade the Dean
and Chapter of Exeter to elect" the Prime Minister's
nominee ; and implores the Bishops by every thing that
is holy not to grant Consecration, and thus " cast this
fatal stumbling block in the way of us all." In a third
Paper, dated February 24 in the succeeding year, after
the Consecration had taken place, he examines the ' Ex-
planation ' which the new Bishop had given to the public,
and in which, while he announced the withdrawal of
his Essay from circulation, he pointedly disavowed re-
cantation of the views maintained in it, and regret for
having published it. The futility of this ' Explanation '
Burgon seeks to shew, his Essay being entitled ' Dr.
Temples "Explanation" examined] and bearing the motto,
"Is not the hand of JOAB" [sc. Archbishop Tait]
"with thee in all this?" Finally, he administered
a most severe reprimand 1 (of questionable propriety
surely, as addressed by a Presbyter to a Bishop) to
the then Bishop of London (Dr. Jackson), who, despite
his 'own strong language as to the mischievousness
of ' Essays and Revieivs ' [See above, p. 380, footnote
4], had consented, in common with the Bishop of
St. David's, the Bishop of Worcester, and the Bishop
of Ely, to act on the Commission for the Consecra^
tion of Dr. Temple issued by Archbishop Tait in
his own serious illness. Eight other Bishops of the
1 ' Protests of the Bishops against Divinity. " This shall be written for
the Consecration of Dr. Temple to the generation to come." ra ap^ala.
the See of Exeter : Preceded by a 'iQr\ Kpareircj. Oxford and London ;
Letter to the Eight Hon. and Right Janies Parker and Co., 1870.
Rev. John Jackson, D.D., Bishop The Letter is dated ORIEL, Christ-
of London,' by the Rev. John W. mas, 1869, and the Prefatory Notice,
Burgon, M.A., Vicar of St. Mary HOUGHTON CONQUEST, AMPTHILL,
the Virgin's, Fellow of Oriel College, Jan. 12, 1870.
Oxford, and Gresham Lecturer in
38 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
Province of Canterbury, to their everlasting credit
be it recorded, four of them officially under their hand
and seal 2 , four in communications of a more informal
character 3 , had announced themselves as dissentient
from the Consecration, while Bishop Wilberforce of Win-
chester, in a letter to Burgon, confirmed the prevailing
report that he too was dissentient, and had declined to
act on the Archbishop's Commission. Four Bishops had
avowedly taken up the position of neutrality. The
number of the Comprovincial sees which were filled at
that time was only seventeen ; so that, even counting
the neutral Bishops as consentient, there was a majority
of one against the Consecration, nine dissentients
against eight consentient. And it should be added that
four of the dissentients, in announcing their dissent, had
appealed to the fourth Canon of the Council of Nice 4 ,
as a Law of the Universal Church, which prescribes that
no Consecration shall take place in any Province with-
out the consent of all the comprovincial Bishops, given
in writing, if it should be impracticable for them to
attend personally and join in the Consecration. Under
these circumstances it cannot excite surprise if so grave
a scandal roused Burgon' s wrath, and drew out all the
natural combativeness of his disposition ; but it would
certainly have been well if, instead of taking matters
so summarily intp his own hands, he, being nothing
more at that time than a Fellow of an Oxford College
and a beneficed Clergyman, had fallen into line behind
other men more highly placed, who felt the scandal
2 Bp. Ellicott of Gloucester and Peterborough, and Bp. Claughton of
Bristol, Bp. Selwyn of Lichfield, Rochester.
Bp. Atlay of Hereford, and Bp. * The Canon, with a literal trans-
Christopher Words worth of Lincoln, lation of it, is given at page n,
3 Bp. Ollivant of Llandaff, Bp. note 1, of Burgon's Pamphlet.
Campbell of Bangor, Bp. Magee of
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 39
as keenly as himself, and were exerting themselves
to the utmost in the way of protest and, if it might
be, prevention. Whether he concurred in the consti-
tutional opposition made to the appointment at Bow
Church, under the auspices of Bishop Trower, does not
appear. But we find a letter of Dean Hansel's to him
about this time, in which the Dean, while sympathizing
with the opponents of the Consecration, refuses to concur
in Burgon's proposal to memorialize the Archbishop
against it, and mildly reproves him for being unjust to
those, who had laboured in the same cause before he
put his hand to the plough. It was 'a true bill.'
The Dean hit a blot, no doubt, in the attitude which
his friend assumed upon this critical occasion in the
history of the Church. The love of being prominent
in any movement, we may perhaps say. a claim, quite
unconsciously put forth) to the leadership of it, un-
doubtedly transpires in the Papers referred to above.
Burgon speaks as if he stood alone, or nearly alone, in
his protest, ignoring the fact, which yet was notorious,
that the proposed appointment had given a shock far
and wide to the feelings of Church people, both laity and
clergy, and that it was a certainty that some one of
high position in the Church would head some movement
against it, as indeed we find Dean Hansel himself had
done. Similarly, in the movement against ' Essays and
Reviews' Burgon took but the slightest notice of any
agency except his own, forgetting that, almost from the
first appearance of the publication, two volumes of an-
tagonistic Essays had been preparing by clergy and
others, more or less competent, and more or less highly
placed. On that occasion, however, there was a reason
for his separating himself from others who in the main
agreed with him, namely, that the peculiar views of In-
40 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
spiration, which formed the staple of his book, were shared
by only a small minority of those who yet held * l$xa//x
and Reviews ' to be a most mischievous publication. No
such reason existed in the case before us ; and we can
only allege, in explanation of the tone of his protests,
that very strong characters like his are not made for
co-operation, but for talking the lead, and that this coming
forward into the front rank, to bear the brunt of the
battle, has its uses, as against that shrinking and
reticence, which waits to see, before it moves in a great
cause, what other people will do, and thinks it will be
time enough to speak when persons in eminent position
have spoken. There is an interesting anecdote of a
clergyman of resolute and uncompromising character,
who in the last century succeeded in stopping an im-
proper Episcopal appointment by the mere threat of
opposition at Bow Church a threat to be followed up,
"if the appointment were persisted in, by publication far
and wide of the circumstances which made the appoint-
ment improper 5 . Meanwhile, if there were faults in this
5 The clergyman was the Reverend madman, for such an net.' Mindful
Richard Venn, then Rector of St. of this speech, Mr. Venn expressed
Antholin's in the City, father of the his determination to appear publicly
more celebrated Henry Venn ; and at Bow Church, and oppose the Con-
the appointment he objected to was firmation of Dr. Rundle, if his
that of Dr. Rundle to the See of election (by the Dean and Chapter
Gloucester. Dr. Rundle ' lay under of Gloucester) should give him the
the suspicion of Arianism,' says opportunity. Venn's decision of
Lord Hervey. But Mr. Venn's character was so well known that
objection to him was, that in general it was thought wise, if possible, to
conversation some fourteen years pre- induce him to withdraw his op-
viously he had spoken profanely of position either by bribes or threats,
the Scriptural incident of Abraham's On one occasion, when his wife and
offering up Isaac, 'asserting that, little boy (the afterwards famous
had he been a Justice of the Peace Henry Venn) were in the room, a
living at that time, he should have gentleman, either commissioned by
thought it his duty to have laid the Lord Chancellor, whose interest
Abraham by the heels, as a knave or at Court had procured Dr. Rundle's
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 41
(as in other) "Protests" of Burgon, we may yet admire
the ardent love of the Truth, the fearless outspoken
manliness, the absolute unworldliness (for preferment
seldom waits upon vehement condemnation of the course
taken by persons in high places) which transpires in
every paragraph of them, as also the entire absence from
them of any feeling of unkindness towards the persons
declaimed against.
nomination, or by some of the
Chancellor's friends, called at St.
Antholin's Rectory, and hinted that
the Deanery of Wells was soon likely
to be vacant, and that it would not
be impossible to obtain it, through
the Chancellor's influence, for Mr.
Venn, provided he would desist from
his opposition to Dr. Bundle's ad-
vancement. 'Let the Chancellor
know that I scorn his bribe,' was
Mr. Venn's reply. The gentleman
then changed his tone, and brought
to bear upon Mr. Venn the terrors
of incurring the indignation of so
influential a personage as the Lord
Chancellor ; ' You will be ruined,
Mr. Venn, you will be ruined, and
all your family ! ' Richard Venn
with great calmness turned to his
wife, who was working by his side,
and said, ' My dear, could not you
support yourself and me by your
needle ? ' ' Yes, if it were necessary.'
Then turning to the boy, Henry
Venn, ' Harry,' said he, 'would not
you like to be a waterman ? ' ' Yes,
Papa, very much.' 'There, Sir, re-
port what you have heard to the
Chancellor, and tell him I defy him/
The appointment of Dr. Rundle to
the see of Gloucester was not per-
sisted in. Sir Robert Walpole, the
Prime Minister, begged the Lord
Chancellor to relinquish his suit in
favour of Rundle ; he might be got
out of the way by being made a
Dean, or an Irish Bishop ; and ac-
cordingly in the next year Rundle
was made Bishop of Derry.
The foregoing particulars are
taken from a most reliable source,
the (unpublished) ' Parentalia ' of
the Rev. John Venn of Clapham
(son of Henry, and grandson of
Richard), with excerpts from which
the author has been favoured by the
great kindness and courtesy of Dr.
Venn of Bournemouth (the great-
great-grandson of Richard Venn),
The opposition to Dr. Rundle is
mentioned in Lord Hervey's ' Me-
moirs of the Reign of George the
Second' [vol. i. pp. 447-455. Ed.
Croker, London, 1848]. He mentions
Venn, but makes Gibson, the then
Bishop of London, the chief agent
in the opposition, whereas it was
Mr. Venn who originally brought
Dr. Rundle's case before the Bishop ;
and he attributes inferior motives to
both Mr. Venn and the Bishop, to
the former the motive of desiring to
curry favour with the Bishop in
order to get better preferment. The
whole tone of Lord Hervey's treat-
ment of the subject is thoroughly
cynical and sneering.
42 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
' ; I was very frequently with him," writes Dr. Yule 6 ,
formerly one of Burgon's Curates, " during the period of
the controversy about Dr. Temple's appointment to the
see of Exeter ; and I can testify to the personally
affectionate manner in which Burgon always spoke of
him, while strenuously, and as some perhaps thought
unduly, protesting against his Consecration. But with
him affection, the deepest even was not allowed to
prevail where the maintenance of the Faith was con-
cerned. Indeed to my thinking, his ready defence of
the Truth, together with his loving disposition, afford
the key to the understanding of his character. His
writings furnish abundant proof of the first ; but only
those, who (like myself) have been so fortunate as to
be intimately connected with him privately as well as
officially, can form any idea of the wealth of affection,
which lay concealed under his impetuous zeal for
God's Truth, so well aided by his fearless, if often
scornful, pen."
The reader's attention has been already called (see
above, pp. 149, 150) to a passage in one of Burgon's
letters, in which he expresses his appreciation of the
beauty and nobleness of the Bishop's character, an
appreciation which all those who have the privilege of
knowing him will cordially endorse. What follows in
Dr. Yule's communication to the author, falling in as it-
does both with the point of time at which we have now
arrived, and with the subject of the Essays and Reviews,
may be here presented to the Header.
" Nor should his ready wit be overlooked. In, I think,
the year 1870 several of the Essayists and Reviewers
dined together in London, the Master of Balliol (Mr.
Jowett) being of the number. Somehow a Friday was
chosen for the banquet ; and by a strange coincidence a
Friday in Lent, which, by a stranger chance still, proved
c Rector of Shipton-on-Cherwell, Oxford.
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 43
to be St. Matthias' Day 7 . Soon after, Burgon put forth
the following Epigram :
' When false Apostles wish to dine,
How plain they show their secret bias,
With Lent and Friday to combine
The Festival of St. Matthias!"
Another characteristic incident in Burgon's life belong- A. D. 1870.
r yft C M "1
ing to the year 1870 is thus recorded by Dr. Yule.
"In the debate as to the conditions, under which
Keble College should be admitted to the privileges of the
University, Mr. Burgon took a leading part. One of the
chief opponents of the measure was the late Professor
Thorold Rogers, whose reply to Burgon's speech was full
of personal allusions, not in the best taste. This, as
might be expected, excited Burgon very much ; and
neither Livingstone nor I, who, as it happened 8 , sat one
on each side of him, could restrain him from jumping up
to answer Rogers. It was in vain that many called out
that he had already spoken, and exhorted him to take no
notice of what had been said. Speak he would, and
speak he did, the Vice-Chancellor allowing him to do so.
Drawing up his figure to his full height, he said with
studied deliberation ; ' Mr. Vice-Chancellor, I only wish
to say that if the words which have fallen from the last
speaker, had been uttered by any other member of this
House, I should have been hurt\' and then he sat down
amid roars of laughter, in which I must add Professor
Rogers joined heartily."
One more incident 'of this year deserves to be recorded,
if it were only on account of an anecdote connected
7 Dr. Yule is under a mistake as 8 Mr. Livingstone had been Bur-
to the year. Not in 1870, but in gon's Curate (having been ordained
1871, did the Festival of St. Mat- to the Curacy in December, 1863).
thias (Feb. 24) fall on a Friday. Dr. Yule had succeeded Mr. Living-
The previous Wednesday (Feb. 22) stone as Curate of St. Mary's in
was Ash Wednesday, the first day June, 1 868, was his Curate there-
of Lent, fore in 1870.
44 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
with it. Burgon was a Candidate in this year for
the Professorship of Exegesis (Exposition of Holy
Scripture), the very post for which the bent of his mind
and the direction of his studies qualified him. We may
be sure that the position would have been in every way
congenial to him. But he was not destined to hold it.
An aspirant of great brilliancy and of the highest order
of qualifications (the late Canon Liddon) was elected to
the vacant Chair. Burgon must have felt a keen dis-
appointment, which with his usual transparency of
character he was at no pains to conceal.
" When I was an undergraduate," writes the Reverend
C. Jerram Hunt, " Dean Burgon was my very good friend,
and in all ways most kind to me." (How many, many
undergraduates have borne the same testimony !) " One
day he asked me to call on him, as he had a book for me.
I did so : but he told me he would not give me the book
then, but in three days' time. As the book (Scrivener's
' Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament ') was
lying on his table, I was a little surprised. But when I
called again, Mr. Burgon explained that in the interim
the Professor of Exegesis had been elected (Dr. Liddon) ;
that he had been a Candidate ; and that he had hoped to
have written in the title-page of his present, ' From the
Professor of Exegesis.' The incident seems to me
to be an illustration of that exceeding simplicity and
naivete which were so characteristic of Dean Burgon."
Reviewing the year 1870 in his Journal, Burgon
writes thus :
" The past year has been the most memorable I can
recall. The public events of that year have been
altogether without parallel. The Fall of the Emperor
Napoleon, the sudden collapse of his dynasty, the sub-
jugation of France this, on the one hand; and
then, side by side, and immediately depending upon
it, the overthrow of the Pope's temporal power, which
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 45
followed upon the promulgation of the profane dogma
of Papal Infallibility. So there has been the German
Empire rising on the ruins of the French Empire, and
the sovereignty of Victor Emmanuel supplanting the
sovereignty of the Bishop of Rome."
This thought on the public events of the last year,
which seems to have been much upon his mind, he ex-
panded in a Sermon preached in his Parish Church on A.D. 1781.
New Year's Day, 1871, and entitled ( The Review of a Year.' ^ L 5 8 -l
In this Sermon he calls attention to the
" remarkable coincidence that the very next day after the
promulgation of the dogma of Papal Infallibility, took
place the declaration of war between France and Prussia ;
the immediate effect of which was to withdraw from
Rome the arm of flesh on which she had hitherto leaned,
and to open her gates to the forces of Victor Emmanuel."
To these four topics of European interest, the fall of
the French and the rise of the German Empire, the
promulgation of the new dogma and the overthrow of
the Pope's temporal power, he adds his animadversions
on three domestic movements, the movement for the
Revision of the Authorised Version, " in which an avowed
Socinian was invited to take part 9 ," a sure omen, in his
9 In the July of this year (1871) vited to the Celebration of the Holy
he appears to have put forth a Pro- Communion, with which the pro-
test against the Westminster Abbey ceedinga of the N. T. company
scandal, to which he solicited signa- were inaugurated, an assumption
tures. Judging from the letters of which some of his correspondents
several eminent men among the think was hardly borne out by the
orthodox, in which, though entirely fact that the circular giving notice of
agreeing with him as to the scandal, the Celebration had been sent to Dr.
and the wrong done to the Church Vance Smith as to the other Kevisers.
thereby, they decline to affix their Others are of opinion that he should
names to the Protest, it does not have taken his stand further back,
seem to have been a judicious mani- and should have protested, not against
festo. It assumed that "the avowed a Eeviser's being invited to partake
Socinian " had been personally in- of the Holy Communion, but against
46 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
view, of eventual failure, the proposed New Lectionary,
to which he always entertained the strongest antipathy,
and the provisions of the Elementary Education Act,
which "formally divorces Eeligion from Education," and
which he regards as the first public avowal of England
that she is "a nation without a Religion," a proclamation
" that henceforth the little ones who come to Jier for
Education shall grow up without belief in GOD the
FATHER, their Creator; GOD the SON, their Redeemer;
GOD the HOLY GHOST, their Sanctifier." Strong speak-
ing, no doubt, and brave speaking; entirely after the
manner of John William Burgon. He was absolutely
innocent of the art of hedging and trimming, and cared
not one jot whether his words were acceptable or dis-
tasteful to those "who seemed to be pillars" in Church
and State.
It should be added that ' The Review of a Year' shows
the deep interest which, in the capacity of a Christian
Pastor, he took in current events, and the responsibility
which he conceived to rest upon him of leading the
thoughts of his flock upon such events in a right direction.
"The establishment of a School Board in Oxford,"
writes the Rev. Henry Deane, " gave Burgon some work
this year. Miss Smith, the sister of the late Professor
Henry Smith, had been elected a member of the Board.
This gave rise to Burgon's Sermon on * Woman's Place,'
dated Feb. 13, 1871 ; and the last paragraph 1 , p. 12,
an avowed Socinian's having been directed your attention at the outset
invited to become a Reviser at all. in the way of warning, and which
Bishop Trower, however, a divine now in conclusion I would faith-
of sound judgment and of temperate fully warn you against again, is
views, affixed his signature. " I the unfeminine, the unlovely method
sign it," he writes, "however un- of these last days (I will not stigma-
worthy, as a Bishop of the Church." tize it in any stronger way) which,
1 "No! The thing to which I forsaking the place and the province
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 47
(' Woman herself, I mean,') was a distinct reference to
Miss Smith, who was a friend of Burgon's, one of the
kindest and most charitable among the ladies of Oxford,
and an admirable member of the School Board."
" Miss Smith's Sermon," as it came jocosely to be
called, is really a valuable one, and needed at the present
day even more than it was at the time it was delivered.
The text (Titus ii. 5) in five brief words defines woman's
sphere, and, as involved in that sphere, the distinctive
duties to which God has called her " To be keepers at
home"; and there is one thought in it, which throws
light both upon certain passages of the New Testament,
and upon the movements of men's minds in the Apo-
stolic age. It may have been, the preacher thinks, the
exceeding honour which is placed upon woman in the
Gospels by the Mystery of the Holy Incarnation, and
by lifting her to exactly the same level with man, as
regards the terms of salvation and the hopes of glory,
which made it necessary for St. Paul " once and again, to
rebuke with something like sharpness the over-eager
self-assertion of the other sex, waking up to a proud
sense of its newly-recovered privilege, and almost giddy
(so to speak) at finding itself placed on such a pinnacle
of honour."
No one knew better than Burgon how bitter is the
GOD Himself assigned to Woman, also : wishing above all that she in
(the way of privacy, the unobtrusive whose power alone it is to check this
charities of Home, the acts which growing evil, (Woman herself, I
shun notoriety, the distaste for mean) would interfere to put it
popular applause,) is acting as if down and tread it out ; if not
some new Gospel had been dis- through a high Christian instinct
covered, which inculcated a diame- of what is lovely and what is right,
trically opposite course. Let me at least in obedience to the ordinary
hope that I am not alone in con- instinct of self-preservation, self-
fessing that I fairly loathe this new regard, self-respect."
development, while I deplore it
48 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
experience of Death's removing one dear form after
another, until at length the family tree is almost
stripped bare, what remains being but " as the shaking
of an olive-tree, two or three berries in the top of the
uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost fruitful
branches thereof." In his Journal of Jan. 27, 1871, he
thanks GOD that his brother and his sister Emily were
then at Houghton with him, "and so (except dearest
Helen " Mrs. Higgins ) " we are all together." " Little
Kitty" was the only sister he had yet lost, and we have
seen how the loss of her wrung his heart for many a long
year afterwards. Now, in that visit to Houghton in the
January of 1871, he looked his last upon Emily Mary 2 .
After the family gathering she returned to Canterbury,
where she resided, and on the 6th of May, Burgon (as
also his brother and Mr. Higgins) received a telegram
from her physician, announcing imminent danger, and
requesting his presence forthwith. He could not reach
Canterbury till between three and four p.m., and before
he arrived all was over.
" While the whole thing was sudden and shocking to an
inexpressible extent," (thus he writes in his Journal), he
finds solace in the evidence given " of her pious and
affectionate state of heart and mind," by the ejaculatory
prayers which she put up in the hearing of her attendant
amid the sufferings of pleurisy. And he recognises GOD'S
" providential love to her in sparing her all the bitterness
of parting " (with the members of her family), " all the
effort to exert herself when exertion would have been
agony, all distraction of mind, all sorrow at the sight of
our sorrow," &c.
On Thursday, May n, he brought the body to Oxford,
2 See the family tree, giving the names of his sisters and brother,
Vol. i. p. 8, note 4,
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 49
and deposited it in the Chapel of the Holy well Cemetery,
where Kitty had lain before, and on Friday, May 12,
"we buried the dear sister at her father's feet. H.
J.K., C.L.H." (Mr. Rose and Mr. Higgins), " and
the two boys " (Mr. Rose's two sons, Hugh James and
William Francis) " were the mourners present ; but
many kind hearts a long way off mourned with us, I
am sure."
Thinking it desirable, as his almost exclusive study
for some time past had been Theology, that he should
graduate in Divinity, Burgon now proposed himself for
the degree of Bachelor in that faculty (to the degree of
Doctor he never proceeded, feeling probably that the fees
demanded for the Doctorate might, with his limited
income, be better spent in another form). It was at that
time required from candidates for the Bachelor's degree,
that they should read two exercises publicly in the
Divinity School, as evidences of their competency in the
Faculty of Divinity. The then Regius Professor of
Divinity, Dr. Payne Smith 3 , suggested to him that, as
St. Mark's Gospel had always been his favourite book of
the New Testament, and as he had been for some time
past collecting materials for a work which should vindi-
cate the genuineness of the last twelve verses of that
Gospel, he should take those verses as the subject of the
two exercises now required of him. Burgon accepted,
nothing loth, the task of vindicating the genuineness of
these twelve most important verses, all the more so,
because it was known that the most eminent textual
critics of the New Testament Revision Company looked
askance upon them, and would probably, as indeed they
have done, insinuate a question as to their genuineness
3 Now Dean of Canterbury.
VOL. II. E
50 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
into the minds of unsophisticated English readers 4 . He
had been already for some years studying the manu-
script evidence for and against the verses which so many
of the learned felt disposed to obelize, that is, to ques-
tion their having appeared in the original autograph of
St. Mark, even if they were willing to allow that they
had been added at a % very early date by some one who
thought the narrative to be incomplete without them.
Accordingly his exercises for the Divinity School were
all but ready to his hand when they were wanted ; he
had but to open his desk, bring out the manuscript
notes which he had accumulated there, and throw them,
or a portion of them, into the form of two dissertations.
These dissertations he read publicly in the Divinity
School,, on July 3 and 4 of this year [1871], and as the
Epistle Dedicatory (addressed to Sir Roundell Palmer,
Q.C., M.P.) and the Preface are both dated July, 1871,
the work itself must have passed through the Press
shortly after, showing that it had been concocting long
before. ("I have conscientiously laboured at it," he says
in the Preface, " for many days and many nights, begin-
ning it in joy, and ending it in sorrow." The sorrow
which attended the end was his sister's death, as is clearly
marked by the poem, " I/Envoy," which he appends to
4 What else would a person of to place anything like a fair view
ordinary education, but altogether of the evidence before the reader, it
ignorant of Manuscripts, infer from would have been necessary to add
the fact of a break being made in the something of this kind to the note :
printing of the Revised Version " It should be said, however, that
after St. Mark xvi. v. 8, and of this the two oldest Greek manuscripts
note's appearing in the margin are full of blemishes, both in the
of v, 9, " The two oldest Greek way of omission and interpolation."
manuscripts, and some other au- See how Burgon shows this in.
thorities, omit from v. 9 to the Chapter VI. of his ' Last Twelve
end," but that the last twelve Verses?
verses are untrustworthy 1 In order
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 51
the work,! in whichjhe asks her to " tell the Evangelist
of her brother's toil 5 ." What the "joy" was, which
marked the commencement of the work, is more ques-
tionable. In the poem it is intimated that three springs
had decked the trees with blossom,
" Since I, like one that striveth unto death,
Find myself early and late, and oft all day
Engaged in eager conflict for GOD'S Truth;
GOD'S Truth to be maintained against man's lie.
And lo, my brook which widened out long since
5 " Sister, who ere yet my task is
done,
Art lying (my loved Sister !) in
thy shroud,
With a calm, placid smile upon
thy lips,
Open those lips, kind sister, for
my sake,
In the mysterious place of thy
sojourn,
And tell the Evangelist of thy
brother's toil ;
Adding (be sure !) He found it
his reward,
Yet supplicates thy blessing and
thy prayers,
The blessing, saintly Stranger, of
thy prayers,
Sure at the least unceasingly of
mine ! "
This idea of a request made to one
of the Saints in another world to
remember in favour of a person what
that person had done in illustrating
the Saint's work or writings, is not
peculiar to Burgon. Dr. Pusey,
Burgon himself tells us, not many
weeks after his son's death, said
to Canon Liddon in the course of
conversation, " I cannot help hoping
that if dear Philip " [a son of the
Doctor's] " is allowed, now or here-
after, to be anywhere near St. Cyril
in another world, St. Cyril may be
able to show him some kindness,
considering all that Philip has done
in these later years to make St.
Cyril's writings better known to our
countrymen." [See 'Lives of Ticelre
Good Men ' (CHARLES LONGUET
HIGGINS), vol. ii. p. 418, footnote
8, where this saying of Dr. Pusey 's
is cited from the Preface to vol. ii
of Liddon's ' English Translation
of Cyril.'] It is cited a propos to
Mr. Higgins, when lying on his
deathbed, having said to Burgon,
when he entered his room, ' " I
suppose, Johnny, you will inquire
for S. Mark immediately, won't
you?" " What ? In Paradise, do
you mean ? " " Yes, to be sure," he
rejoined, raising his head slightly
from the pillow to smile and nod.'
(ibid. p. 418). Such things have a
grotesque^sound ; but query whether
the grotesqueness may not come
from the fact of our not realising
the things of another world, which
saintly men do realise ?
E 2
52 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
Into a river, threatens now at length
To burst its channel and become a sea."
The probabilities are that the joy to which he referred
was his election to the Gresham Professorship at the
close of 1867, and upon the duties of which he entered in
1868. It is likely enough that he took the resolution of
vindicating the genuineness of the concluding section of
the Gospel according to St. Mark, as an occupation in every
way befitting of the position which he now held ; and
worked at it (amid divers other engagements, parochial
and polemical) with that energy and tenacity of purpose
which so remarkably characterized him, until at the time
of his sister's death it was well nigh completed. In a let-
ter addressed to Miss Monier Williams (now Mrs. Samuel
Bickersteth), a most attached member of his congrega-
tion at St. Mary's, and of one of his Bible classes, this is
the account he gives of his labours on St. Mark, of their
duration, and of the date of the publication. The letter
is dated from Houghton, whither (as " I began to feel
very like a mummy") he had come in the Oxford Long
Vacation " to get a little change of scene and occupa-
tion/' and a little society also, for " there is no tell-
ing," he says, " how lonely it is living alone in
Col
But I was going to tell you about myself and St.
Mark (for we never parted company for an hour), and
the plain truth is he almost wore me out. I rose every
morning at five, and got two hours work before break-
fast ; studied all day ; visited my parishioners in the
evening ; and so Da Capo, Da Capo, till Aug. 4. ...
You will understand that the book (which 1 have been
three years about !) is at last done. It will not be pub-
lished till October ; but it is printed ; and I shall neither
see nor hear any more about it till October, when I
return to Oxford?) The letter is dated Aug. 15.
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 53
' T/ie Last Tic eh e Verses of St. Mark' is indeed a
grand monument of Burgon's genius, of his acumen as a
textual critic, and of the extent and indefatigable in-
dustry of his researches, and while we may hesitate to
admit the claim which he makes for himself in the
Epistle Dedicatory (the " claim to have shown, from
considerations which have been hitherto overlooked, that
the genuineness of these verses must needs be reckoned
among the things that are absolutely certain,") we think that
an unprejudiced reader will rise from the perusal of the
work with a firm conviction that the main objections
alleged against the genuineness of the passage have been
successfully met, and that the evidence in favour of its
having been part of the Evangelist's original autograph
is immensely greater than anything which has been
adduced on the other side. In conformity with his own
principles of textual criticism, he appeals not to manu-
scripts only, bat to the citations made by the early
Fathers 6 , as well as to the early versions, and finds
6 This is the proper place in most safely be gathered from a com-
which to insert a Postscript to Dr. prehensive acquaintance with every
Scrivener's ' Adversaria Critica source of information yet open to
Sacra? with a sight of which he us, whether they be Manuscripts of
has been good enough to favour the the original, Versions, or Fathers ;
author, before the work itself has rather than from a partial repre-
been actually completed. It runs sentation of three or four authorities
as follows : which, though in date the more
"September 29, 1890. ancient and akin in character, caii-
" My lamented friend and fellow not be made even tolerably to agree
student, the late Very Reverend together.
J. \V. Burgon, Dean of Chichester, " I saw on my own part no need of
very earnestly requested me, that if such avowal, yet (neget quis carmina
I lived to complete the present G-allo ?) I could not deny Dean Bur-
work, I would publickly testify that gon's request. The Dean's capital
my latest labours had in no wise argument arising from the fact that
modified my previous critical con- the text used by Patristic writers is
victions, namely, that the true text often purer than primary rnanu-
of the New Testament can best and scripts written one or two centuries
54 LIFE OF DEAN BURGO&.
both Fathers and versions bearing favourable witness to
the verses in question. He shows the utter untrustwor-
thiness of the Vatican and Sinaitic manuscripts (in
which the verses are wanting), from their numerous
omissions, interpolations, corruptions, and perversions
of the truth ; then, passing to the internal evidence of
the genuineness of *the verses, shows that in them we
meet with every principal characteristic of St. Mark's
manner, and calls attention to the striking resemblances
of style and thought between the first chapter of St.
Mark's Gospel and its closing section ; then appeals to
the early Lectionaries, that of the East, which is ohlcr
than any extant manuscript, giving the last twelve verses
of St. Mark as the lesson for Matins on Ascension Day,
and also as one of the eleven Gospels for Easter Day ;
and finally suggests, as the most probable explanation
of their omission from the Vatican manuscript, that a
marginal Lectionary-mark (TO TEAOS, the end), indicating
the end of the Liturgical Gospel for the second Sunday
after Easter, was supposed by the scribe who made that
copy to mean that the Gospel itself ended there, and that
what he found after that was a later and unauthorized
addition. He would therefore transcribe no further ;
but left a column blank 7 , to show that there was
younger than they (see p. 2, note i) at least of them being the production
needs, of course, much care in its of an age deeply steeped in Arian-
application, and can only be insisted ism, is vindicated by Hippolytus,
on when the context renders it quite who flourished a full century before
clear what the reading before the the date of the most ancient of
elder writer actually was. Such a them ; while the theological infer-
case (and it is by no means of rare ence drawn by him, airoora\fts 'iva.
occurrence) as the following seems Set^j; rov km yfjs ovra fivai KOL tv
to me absolutely conclusive. In ovpavai leaves no possible doubt as
John iii. 13 the clause 6 wv kv ru to the reading of the copy which
ovpavw, omitted by some four manu- Hippolytus had before him."
scripts (Codd. NBC. and 33), three 7 The " plan " of the scribe, who
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 55
something after the word END, which he did not
venture to reproduce, as his doing so might seem to
give it authority.
It is needless to say that this great argument of
Burgon's, in support of the genuineness of an important
section of the New Testament, received the warm com-
mendation of those best qualified to form a judgment in
such matters.
" I have to thank you," writes Bishop Christopher
Wordsworth from Riseholme (Oct. 7), " for a Volume,
which (if I mistake not) will constitute a new era in the
history of the science of the criticism of the Sacred Text.
It has rendered a double service to Holy Scripture and
the Church. It has restored twelve verses to their
proper place in the Canon of the New Testament and in
the Creed of the Church. And it has also recalled us to
a sounder estimate of the value of our critical authori-
ties, and will constrain many, I trust, to revise their
principles of Biblical Criticism, and will stimulate many
to labour in the same field of patient research into the
testimony of the Old Lectionaries and Ancient Fathers,
a mine which (as you justly observe) has hardly
wrote the Vatican Manuscript, "is occasion to depart from his estab-
found to have been to begin every lished rule ? The phenomenon,
fresh book of the Bible at the top (I believe 1 was the first to call
of the next ensuing column to that distinct attention to it,) is in the
which contained the concluding highest degree significant, and ad-
words of the preceding book. At mits of only one interpretation. The
the close of St. Mark's Gospel he older MS. from which Cod. B was
has deviated from his else invari- copied must have infallibly contained
able practice. He has left in this the twelve verses in dispute. The
place one column entirely vacant. copyist was instructed to leave
It is the only vacant column in the them out, and he obeyed; but he
whole manuscript ; a blank space prudently left a blank space in
abundantly sufficient to contain the memoriam rei. Never was blank
tivelve verses, which he nevertheless more intelligible ! Never was
withheld. Why did he leave that silence more eloquent ! " Burgon's
column vacant ? What can have ' Last Twelve Verses of St. Marie,'
induced the scribe on this solitary p. 87.
56 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
been worked at all as yet with anything like adequate
care.
" It cannot, I think, be doubted, that some of our
present countless Cursives were transcribed from very
early MSS., and in many places may represent a Text
older than what we possess in any extant Uncials.
With affectionate gratitude to you, and with praise and
thankfulness to the pivine Teacher whose scholar you
are, I am, my dear Friend, Yours always,
"C. LINCOLN."
Here is the testimony of the late Canon Cook, assur-
edly no mean authority on such questions, to the ''Last
Twelve Verses of St. Mark? The letter containing it was
recently found in one of the Volumes of the Speaker s
Commentary ' in the Chapter Library of Chichester :
"Exeter, Oct. 4,1875.
" My dear Sir,
" I am very glad to have occasion to write to you,
that I may tell you with what intense interest, and
I trust profit, I have just read your work on the
'Last Twelve Verses of St. Mark's Gospel' You have
lifted a heavy weight from my shoulders ; for, much
as I distrusted the judgment and fairness of some of
the critics who condemn that portion of the Gospel, I
was unable to stand up against their combined forces.
Your arguments are unanswerable ; some of them en-
tirely new to me ; all of them ingenious, and for the
most part convincing. I shall have to study your work
carefully, since owing to unforeseen circumstances I am
compelled to write the Commentary on St. Mark myself.
You will not expect that I shall agree with you on all
points : e. g. I feel quite satisfied that the narrative
portion is independent of St. Matthew, derived partly
from a common source, partly from St. Peter's personal
teaching. But I feel that you penetrate so deeply into
the character of the Evangelists that every hour spent
with you will be full of profit. Glad indeed shall I be to
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 57
become personally better acquainted with you, though I
fear you will often think me cold-blooded, wanting in
energetic faith and burning zeal.
" Yours truly,
F. C. COOK."
Sir Boundell Palmer's acknowledgement of the book,
which is inscribed to him with a flattering Epistle Dedi-
catory, because the author " desires to submit his argu-
ment to a practised judicial intellect of the loftiest
stamp," is so remarkable, as showing the reasonableness
of demanding the strongest proof, whenever the genuine-
ness of a traditional passage of Holy Scripture is called
in question, and the great improbabilities involved in a
conclusion adverse to the genuineness of this particular
passage, that it will be well to exhibit it by itself at the
end of the Period.
The late Earl Beauchamp, writing from Madresfield
Court, Oct. 22, shows his high appreciation of the value
of the work in a form at once discerning and practical.
" In the present crisis of Christianity," he writes, " it
is of the last importance to maintain the genuineness of
v. 1 6." [ f He that believeth and is baptized shall be
saved,' &c.J " It is not as in the days of Pope,
'For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight';
but faith itself in God, as He is revealed, is denied to be
more pleasing to Him than doubt. It would be imperti-
nent in me to express an opinion on your book ; but I
think it very desirable it should be translated into
Latin ; and it would give me much pleasure to subscribe
(say) ^50 towards that object."
It is much to be regretted that this suggestion, how-
ever Burgon may have entertained it, was never acted
upon ; for such a work makes an appeal to the scholars
of Europe, not to English scholars only, in favour of the
58 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
genuineness of a most important section of the New
Testament, and Latin is the language common to all
scholars of whatever nationality.
In a later paragraph of the letter to Miss Williams
already quoted [see p. 52], he writes
" Did I tell you that I mean, if I live, to visit Florence
this summer ? I expect? to start with rny nephew in Sep-
tember, and to be away for a month. It is such a
pleasure giving 1dm pleasure ! All the family seem to
approve of the plan. So in about a month I hope we
shall start."
Accordingly, in less than a month he and his nephew
did start. On September 20 he writes to Miss Wash-
bourne (a lady who did him good service as an amanuen-
sis, and whom he addresses as " My dear Secretary ")
from Padua 8 , where he is " collecting materials for a
Second Edition of" his ''Last Twelve Verses' (though the
First Edition had not yet actually appeared), " and search-
ing for and collating manuscripts." On October 17 he
8 This was nob Burgon's first Ceriani), Modena, Ferrara, Parina,
journey to the continent in quest of Bologna, Siena, and Basle, and
Manuscripts. In the preceding working at manuscripts in the
year (1870) he had visited Paris in Libraries of all these cities. In the
company with his nephew (Rev. September of 1872 they visited
W. F. Rose), and worked in the Munich, and went thence through
Bibliotheque Imperiale, his special the Dolomite country to Venice,
interest at that time being the making an expedition by the way,
manuscript containing Victor of incidental to their main purpose of
Antioch's 'Commentary on St. examining Manuscripts, to Ra-
31<irk,' which he wished to consult venna.
in connexion with his forthcoming While doubtless the change of
work on ' The Last Twelve Verses.' scene and association which these
The journey of 1871 was in the tours necessitated was a great re-
nature of a tour, the uncle and freshment to Burgon, his work in
nephew having visited in the course the Libraries was probably as close
of it, not only Florence and Padua, and assiduous, and put as great a
but also Turin, Milan (where they strain upon him, as any of his studies
made the acquaintance of Dr. at home.
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 59
writes again to the same lady from Paris, " hoping to be
at home shortly." In the year following (as may be
now mentioned by anticipation) he made a similar tour
in September. On the 9th of that month he writes to
Miss Washbourne from the Rhine, telling her that he is
going " to inspect MSS. at Munich and Venice." Arrived
at Venice, he again writes that he is examining MSS. in
a room of the Library, "all to myself with my nephew."
In these tours Burgon got through a very large amount
of research for, and collation of, Manuscripts, utilising
for that purpose every day and almost every hour of his
time. At page 224 of Dr. Scrivener's 'Plain Introduction
to the Criticism of the New Testament for the use of Biblical
Students' [31^ Ed. 1883], we find that twenty Italian
manuscripts were added by Burgon to the list of cursive
copies of the Gospels given in Dr. Scrivener's earlier
editions these additions being announced in letters ad-
dressed to Dr. Scrivener in the ' Guardian ' of Jan. 29 and
Feb. 5, 1873. Doubtless these twenty Italian manu-
scripts were brought to light by the enquiries which
Burgon made in his autumnal tours of 1871, 1872. In
point of research for and acquaintance with Cursives,
he probably excelled every other English student of
his time.
On the last Sunday of the year 1871 (which was also
the last day of the year), Burgon preached his Sermon
on the New Lectionary, which might legally supersede
the old one on the next day, although it was left optional
with the clergy for the next seven years to use the old
one still, should they see fit to do so. It was on this oc-
casion that on closing the Book after the reading of the
Second Lesson, he said with that plaintive cadence of the
voice, which he knew so well how to assume, a cadence
full of pathos, but not without a dash of querulousness,
6o LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
" Here endeth the Old Lectionary," the further words
" and more's the pity," which are usually attributed to
him, never having been actually uttered, however much
his accents may have seemed to imply them. Certainly
the Sermon indicated very unequivocally his own
conviction that " the more was the pity " that " the
Lectionary of our fathers passes from us to-day." " I am
profoundly convinced," he says, " that the new Lectionary
is open to so many and such grave objections that we
should be better without it than with it." " I hold
that the serious curtailment of the amount of Scripture ichich
will henceforth be listened to in Church, is in itself a blot
which entirely eclipses every other proposed advantage
of the New Lectionary." " I entreat you to seek, by in-
creased private study, to remedy the loss you will hence-
forth daily sustain at the hands of the men who have
given you ' the new Lectionary.' " Yet, strong as his ob-
jections were to the Revised Lectionary, only less strong
than those which he entertained against the Revised New
Testament and, while he held, too, that the Revisers had
gone altogether beyond the terms of their commission
" in inventing an entirely new Lectionary for the Church
of England," and that its adoption, having been carried
by only a casting vote in the Southern Convocation, could
scarcely be regarded as the Church's act at all, it is in-
teresting and instructive in the way of example to observe
how loyal he is to whatever is imposed by even the
semblance of authority.
" Do any enquire why then I adopt this new Lectionary,
seeing that I disapprove of it so heartily, and for seven
years am not compelled to employ it ? I answer, Because
I hold that a worse thing by far than unskilfully con-
structed Tables of Lessons, is a divided Church. The
Bishops have requested their Clergy to employ these
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 61
Tables, and in such matters they are to be obeyed. No
vital principle is directly imperilled by compliance,
as would be the case if they were so ill-advised as to
require the suppression of one of the Church's three
Creeds." (He is thinking about the Athanasian Creed, to
the abandonment of the public recitation of which some of
the Bishops were known to be favourable, and the main-
tenance of which he felt himself bound " earnestly to
contend for " in the coming year.) " Rather than do
that, not a few of us would probably think it our duty to
resign our cures/'
Other men, while entertaining similar objections to the
New Lectionary, considered themselves quite warranted
in not adopting it till, in 1879, it became compulsory.
This was the course taken by the author in Norwich
Cathedral, and against which Burgon thus remonstrated
with him in a private letter :
" I really must affectionately entreat you/' he writes,
" to reconsider your practice of not using it. Believe me
it is best, it must be lest to set an example of submis-
sion to, i. e. of acceptance of Law." (Certainly ; but the
Old Lectionary was as much Law as the New until Jan.
i, 1879.) "It will bring a Messing to have submitted.
After all, it is but the measuring out of the same blessed
Scriptures which offends me, as it does you. Would you
not eat your mutton, because my servant carved it
badly?
"Do you know how / avenge myself on the short
Lessons. / read them wondrous slow. At all events,
I will not be deprived of my choicest privilege the
Public reading of Holy Scripture because Mr. -
3ne of the Revisers] {; has contrived a bad subdivision of
the Chapters."
It may be here mentioned by anticipation, so that
there shall be no need to recur again to the subject of
the Revised Lectionary, that two years previously to its
62 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
becoming compulsory, that is, in 1877 three intimate
friends, all of whom concurred in strongly objecting
to the New Tables of Lessons, joined in putting forth
three Essays, detailing each from his own standing-point
what they conceived to be its sins of omission and
commission. The late Bishop of Lincoln (Christopher
Wordsworth) led the way, and Burgon (then Dean of
Chichester), with the present writer, nothing loth,
followed suit. Burgon in his Sermon had " carefully
abstained from entering into a detailed examination of
the New Lectionary " ; but in his Essay he does so,
saying comparatively little of what he conceived to be
the objectionable principles underlying its structure,
which he had sufficiently handled already in his Sermon
of six years ago. Of course the joint literary enterprise
led to much correspondence between the parties, in
which Burgon was as clever, as grotesque, as cordially
affectionate as ever. " I like the notion of our writing,"
he says, " without concert or comparison ; for I think it
will ensure variety, and give force to what we say : but
we must compare our lucubrations in the end, or you
remember what happened to the Kilkenny cats ! In
quite plain English, we may contradict one another ! "
The saintly and learned Bishop, who was the captain
and pilot of this very tiny cock-boat, also writes about
the enterprise quite in his own character :
" There is something said in a certain place about
' a threefold cord.' Not that I feel any confidence in
our carrying our point ; but it is, in my judgment,
always well to leave on record a proof that things did
not go unchallenged. I recall with delight the opening
sentence of Hooker's ' Preface V What is quite,
9 " Though for no other cause, yet permitted things to pass away as in
for this ; that posterity may know a dream, there shall be for men's
we have not loosely through silence information extant thus much con-
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 63
certain is, the subject deserves prayerful thought. I con-
fess I turn to such matters with a sense of downright
relief, after the perplexing spectacle presented by the
doings of such gentlemen as Mr. " (one of that band
of advanced Ritualists, whose cases from time to time
exercise tribunals, and most unhappily ! open gaols).
The ' Threefold Cord ' has long since been forgotten,
but the only survivor of those who twisted it recalls
many pleasant and some amusing incidents to which that
ephemeral production gave rise, specially the genial and
delicious frankness with which a dear friend of his, one
of his then Colleagues in the Chapter of the Church of
Norwich, exclaimed, on receiving a copy ; " All that is
wanted is, that you should write after your names on
the title-page, THE THREE MOST IMPKACTICABLE MEN IN
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND." Impracticable or not, the
writer must avow that he is proud to have had his name
associated,however temporarily , and however unworthily,
with those of two such devout Christians and orthodox
Theologians as Christopher Wordsworth, late Bishop of
Lincoln, and John William Burgon, late Dean of
Chichester.
The year 1872 furnished Burgon with trials in two
points, in both of which he was especially susceptible,
the domestic affections and orthodoxy. In the latter A.D. 1872.
part of the month of January, he had met his only *' 59 '
brother Thomas Charles T , three years younger than him-
self, at the house of their younger sister in Bedfordshire,
Turvey Abbey. " Tom " had been to school with him
at Blackheath ; and one or more of his early schoolboy
cerniug the present state of the Laivs and Orders Ecclesiastical in
Church of God established amongst the Church of England' By Mr.
us, and their careful endeavour Richard Hooker.]
which would have upheld the same." 1 See the Family Tree, Vol. i. p. S,
['A Preface to them that seek (as note 4.
they term if) the Reformation of the
64 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
letters bear pathetic testimony to his affection for, and
quasi-parental interest in, his brother. At Turvey.
though cheerful and able to live with the family, Thomas
Burgon, who had " profound functional derangement,
often let fall remarks which terrified me. I have since
ascertained that he distinctly foresaw his own coming
dissolution, and desired to prepare us for it. I embraced
him for the last time on Saturday, 27 January, after a
very early dinner." On Ash Wednesday (February 14),
when the services of the Church on that holy day were
demanding Burgon's attention; " I received a letter saying
he was very poorly, and a telegram soon after implying
that he was gone ! I repaired to Turvey instantly, and
found that soon after 2 a.m. he had departed." On
Monday, February 19, he brings the body to Oxford,
where on the following day it is interred in the Holywell
cemetery, side by side with the remains of the other
members of his family.
" And now all is done ; and the beloved parents and
their three children are lying together. that I may
be laid close beside them ! . . . . Let me only add that
he died with a good hope, resigned, trustful, faithful, and
in charity with all. He was a very humble Christian, and
I am persuaded he entered into his Saints' rest. All
that belongs to his last days has been comfortable un-
speakably. that I had been a better brother to him,
more large-handed and more large-hearted! But
I loved him well, and he knew it. I shall wear the
sorrow of this present hour until I depart this world
myself."
Scarcely were the days of mourning for his brother
ended, than the troubles of the Church called him again
to arms. His Letter, entitled ( An Unitarian Reviser of
our Authorized Version, intolerable^ which appeared origi-
nally in the ' Guardian ' newspaper, was published by
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 65
him in a separate form under date Friday before Holy-week
[March 22, 1872]. It is an appeal to Dr. Ellicott, Bishop
of Gloucester and Bristol, the Head of the Company for
the Ke vision of the New Testament 2 , to "clear himself
of complicity in the grievous scandal " of admitting on
the Company " one who openly assails the fundamental
doctrine of the Christian Religion" (the Divinity of
Christ), either by " insisting on the removal of this
Unitarian Teacher," or by "withdrawing himself from
the Revising body." The scandal (a very serious one,
no doubt, and calculated deeply to shock and offend all
who believe the Church's dogmatic Faith to be her
security, as also to throw the gravest suspicion on the
result of the Revisers' labours) was now nearly two years
old ; and, as has just been said, Burgon had already dealt
with the same grievance in the columns of the ' Guardian'
What may have been the circumstances which moved
him to renew a protest previously made, does not clearly
appear. Judging from the few words of Introduction to
the Letter, it would seem as if he thought a n'ew objection
might be taken up to the scandal, on the ground that
the co-optation into the Revising Company of " members
of the various Sects " had been irregular, was never
formally sanctioned by Convocation, and was thus ipso
facto invalid. Anyhow, some circumstance or other seems
to have excited him (though always very susceptible of
such excitements) abnormally, and to have prompted
2 The other Bishops who served yourselves with one wlio not only
on the New Testament Revision openly denies the eternal Godhead
Company are all addressed through of our LORD, but in a rectnt publi-
theirrepresentative,the Chairman: cation is the open assailant of that
" You, the successors of the Apostles, fundamental doctrine of the Faith,
while engaged in the work of inter- a;s well as of the Inspiration of Holy
preting the everlasting Gospel, have Scripture itself." [P..*.]
knowingly and by choice associated
VOL. II. F
66 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
him to some injudicious course of action ; for we find
one of the Bishops on the Company (in entire sympathy
with him as to the outrage done to the Church by the
unhappy co-optation of a Socinian), writing thus to him
(April 10) ;
" I earnestly entreat you to cease your intended
action for the sake t>f the great cause for which you
live. I have done all that I could I never
attend the Company because of the Socinian's presence.
But I still deeply lament your course. Your threatened
agitation can only cause and widen scandal, and envenom
ill-feeling."
Probably this was a just remonstrance. These occa-
sions unduly excited Burgon. and led him oftentimes
in his excessive zeal for the Truth, to speak not
only injudiciously, but without calm consideration and
self-control. Nevertheless, it may be thought that such
vehement protests as he was in the habit of uttering
are not without their uses in that wonderful system of
Divine Providence, which subordinates to its own ends
" the unruly wills and affections of sinful men," and that
a few such champions, so bravely outspoken, so utterly
careless of obloquy, so utterly without human respect,
are needed to counteract the general indifference of pro-
fessing Christians to the truths which ought to be dearer
to them than life, and the miserable spirit of compromise,
which is ever ready to acquiesce in the admission of a
little error and a little wrong, and in the demolition
first of one, and then of another of the barriers which
secure our faith and our liberties. "What a splendid
watch-dog he is ! " said one in the author's hearing, after
perusing and throwing on the table one of the Burgonian
Philippics ; "How loud and furiously he barks, when
the smallest danger threatens the Church, or the Faith
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 67
which is entrusted to the Church's keeping ! " Yes ! it is
the business of a watch-dog to bark furiously, and even
to fly at the throat of pilferers and thieves ; and of al-
pilferers and thieves there are none who more rouse the
indignation of honest God-fearing men, than those who
would rob the Church of her faith, and the Christian of
his hope, by the gradual depredations of Rationalism.
Anyhow, the accompanying admirable letter of the late
Canon Liddon shows that Burgon, in his feelings of
horror at the constitution of the New Testament
Revision Company, had among his sympathizers and
abettors, some of the very best men whom the Church
of England could boast. It would appear from a pri-
vate note enclosed with the letter 3 that Burgon had
asked Canon Liddon to give an opinion which might be
published, upon his ' Earnest Remonstrance and Petition
atltlreswfl fo Bishop EUicott? Canon Liddon in reply
sends him the following letter, which the author con-
siders himself fortunate in having obtained permission
to publish, before the lamented death of the writer 4 .
While the Canon takes at least as strong a view of the
scandal as Burgon does, his tone throughout is perfectly
calm, considerate, and just to the Nonconformists,
and to Dr. Vance Smith most courteous and con-
ciliatory.
3 " 3 Amen Court, E.G., n April, * " Oct. 22. 1889. 3 Amen Court,
1872. My dear Burgon, I hope St. Paul's, E.C If you think
that this letter will do. I do not my letter to Burgon worth publish-
think that I can say less without fail- ing, pray publish it. So far as I
ing in sincerity. Ever yours, H. P. know, it has never been published.
LIDDON. Rev. J. W. Burgon. If What it says, might of course have
you print it, will you send me a been said much better ; but I ad-
proof ? " here to its drift entirely."
F 2,
68 LIFE OF DEAN Bunaox.
" 3 Amen Court, St. Paul's, E.G.,
" April u, 1872.
" My dear Burgon. You ask me to tell you whether I
concur in the remonstrance which you have addressed to
the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol on the admission of
an Unitarian Minister to take part in the Revision of our
Authorised Version. Silence would be welcome to me
for very many reasons, but silence, I cannot help feeling,
would imply a great want of the moral courage, in which
I am already too painfully deficient. We all of us ex-
press ourselves in our own way ; and in your letter there
are some phrases and sentences which it would not have
been natural in me to have employed. But with the
substance and drift of your remonstrance I cannot but
heartily agree ; and I desire to be allowed to assure
you of the respect which I entertain for the unworldly
and fearless devotion to Truth, which on this, as on
other occasions, leads you to encounter much unmerited
obloquy in the way you do.
" That it is the duty of the Church of Christ, in every
land, to offer to the people as accurate a rendering into
the vulgar tongue of God's Holy Word as she can, is a
point on which we are all agreed. That our Authorised
English Version admits of some real and very consider-
able improvements is, I think, also undeniable, although
of course much difference of .opinion would necessarily
arise as to the nature and number of the improvements
that are really required. But if, after consideration, it
was the deliberate opinion of the Church's rulers that
the required improvements are of so vital a character as
to warrant the unsettlement of those old associations
and habits of devotion, which have gathered around our
present Version, there ought to have been no question as
to the way in which effect should have been given to
this conviction. It would have been natural to ask a
Committee of Churchmen to revise the Church's Version
of the Bible. If such a Revision had been made, and
accepted by Nonconformists, we Churchmen must have
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 69
rejoiced very sincerely that a link of sympathy so vener-
able, so precious, traversing our differences, and in itself
a pledge, as we trust, of healthful union in the future,
had not been forfeited by the necessary improvements.
If, as is certainly the case, there are Nonconformist or
Jewish scholars who could render us solid assistance on
particular points, these gentlemen would, I cannot doubt,
have allowed a committee of Churchmen to ask them for
an opinion, without feeling that they were slighted by
not being invited to join the Committee.
" Unhappily, this unambitious and straightforward
course was not adopted. The enterprise was discussed
as if it were a literary rather than a religious one ; the
new translation was to be made for ' English-speaking
races/ rather than for the children of the Church of
England. It followed that persons, who are not mem-
bers of the Church, were associated, on perfectly equal
terms, with her Bishops and Clergy in the work of Re-
vision, in order to give it this literary and imperial
character. There were several motives which led men,
from some of whom we might have looked for better
things, to favour this proceeding ; but among these, two,
as I believe, were especially powerful. Of these, one
was the desire to make use of the opportunity thus pre-
sented, with a view to strengthening the political position
of the l Establishment.' It was hoped that the denomi-
nations, whose representative men had sat side by side
with scholars and dignitaries of the Church in the Dean-
ery at Westminster, would never be so ungrateful as to
support Mr. Edward Miall in the House of Commons.
It would be difficult, as yet, to offer any opinion upon
the actual or probable success of the experiment. But I
should have thought that well-informed Dissenters know
what these principles are from which they conscien-
tiously dissent, and that they are hardly likely to
respect the Church more than they do, when they find
that she is ready to throw her distinctive principles
somewhat ostentatiously to the winds, under the stress of
a real or apprehended political danger.
" Besides this, there was the desire to make capital out
70 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
of so promising an occasion for the cause of ' undog-
matic Christianity.' If invitations to join the Revising
Companies had been addressed only to Trinitarian Non-
conformists, this object would have been very imper-
fectly attained. Whatever our differences with Inde-
pendents and Baptists may be, as to the nature of the
Church of Christ, and of the Christian Sacraments, we
are, I rejoice to know^ entirely at one with them, in our
belief in the Most Holy Trinity, in the True and Eternal
Godhead of Jesus Christ our Lord, and in the atoning
efficacy of His Precious Death. In the interests of the
Anti-dogmatic School, it was necessary that these central
truths should be tacitly assumed to be of very inferior
importance to literary considerations, and this was
secured by the invitation addressed to Dr. Vance Smith
to join the New Testament Revision Company.
" Of that gentleman many hard, and, as I cannot but
think, wholly undeserved things have been said among
ourselves. He is an accomplished and courteous scholar,
who differs from us Christians, in that he does not
believe that Jesus Christ is very and eternal God. I
have often thought that, had I been in his position, I
should have acted just as he did. He may well have re-
flected that, when a body of persons with very different
religious convictions consent to act together for a re-
ligious object, it is only the smallest creed which escapes
discredit. Dr. V. Smith's creed has suffered more 5 by
his presence in the Revising Company. If Bishops and
Deans were willing to postpone religious to literary con-
siderations, that was not Dr. Vance Smith's affair. If
Dr. V. Smith was invited to receive the Holy Commu-
nion, he did not, as it seems to me, compromise himself
by accepting a compliment to his literary accomplish-
ments. He naturally and very properly objected to say
the Nicene Creed, which he did not believe ; but what
5 In publishing this letter, the this sentence the " more " must
author does not like to alter Canon have been a slip of the pen for
Liddon's autograph in any par- '' nothing/'
ticular ; but it would seem as if in
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 71
objection, from his point of view, could there be to his
eating a little bread and wine publicly in a beautiful
Gothic building replete with national associations ? We
have no right to expect a man to admit the force of
motives, which are really based on our own faith, a
faith which he would scout as a stupid superstition.
But, alas ! what apology can be suggested for the Church-
men, who invited a man who has spent his life in deny-
ing the Godhead of our Blessed Saviour, to join with
them in the holiest act of Christian fellowship ? What
for those who have since, in whatever way, abetted the
invitation ? When, since the Reformation, has the faith
of our Church been more cruelly wounded ? When has
a slight to our ascended Lord and King, more patent to
all men, more eloquent, been offered Him by any section
of the English Clergy ? And, as you observe, it is not a
thing done and over ; it is perpetuated. Every time
that this Company of Revisers meet, our shame as a
Church is published to the world ; and it is not difficult
to foresee the graver difficulties which must arise, when
their labours are at length completed. How can this
Socinian- Episcopal translation ever command the con-
fidence of faithful Churchmen 1 How can we ever
approach it, if we do approach it at all, but as jealous
critics, who see in it not a precious gift leading us to
clearer knowledge of the Highest Truth, but an object of
legitimate, inevitable suspicion? How many passages
will at once occur to both of us, in which we shall
expect to trace the hand of heresy almost as a matter of
course !
' It may be too late now to do anything. I do not
think that Dr. Vance Smith ought to suffer anything
that could be construed to his discredit. He has acted
with perfect honour, from first to last. Whether Prelates
who still prefer, before the world, to receive and to teach
the Faith of Nicsea, but whose actions are (apparently to
us) inconsistent with loyalty to that Faith, will listen to
your solemn and earnest remonstrance, is more than I
can say. Whether they do or not, you will find in your
own heart, and in the thankful acknowledgments of
72 LIFK OF DEAN BURGON.
thousands of devout Christians, a justification for your
faithfulness, at great personal cost, I well know, to
our Saviour's honour.
" I am,
" My dear Burgon,
" Ever yours most truly,
" H. P. LlDDOX.
; The Rev. J. W. Burgon."
The debates in Convocation on that much-vexed
question, the retention of the Athanasian Creed as a
devotional formulary to be recited periodically in the
course of Morning Prayer 6 , made the year 1872 one of
unusual interest and importance in the annals of the
Church. The question was arrived at by Convocation,
in the course of its discussion of the Report of the Ritual
Commissioners, who, as regards the Athanasian Creed,
had proposed (though some thought that they exceeded
the terms of their commission in proposing) that a note
should be appended to it explanatory of the so-called
Damnatory Clauses. This course had very weighty
suffrages in its favour. Bishop Christopher Wordsworth,
while cordially advocating the retention and public
recital of the Creed, and bringing all his vast stores of
erudition to bear on its defence, yet in that beautiful
charity to the scruples of others which, no less than his
learning, was a part of his character, proposed a note of
6 There peems to have been no to see it removed from the rnonu-
propo=sal in any qnnrter to eliminate ments of the Church, or that it
the Creed from the Book of Common should not be held in as much
Prayer. The Bishop of St. David's veneration and respect as ever. All
;Thirlwall), the great opponent of that is desired is that it should not
its public recital, says in his speech form part of th^ public services of
in Convocation, upon which Burgon the Church." Chronicle of Convo-
so severely animadverted: "I am cation: Sessions Feb. 7~*3
not aware thatanynne has suggested p. 73.
its removal, or that anyone wishes
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 73
his own very much to the same effect as that of the
Commissioners. The six Divinity Professors at Oxford 7
submitted another form of explanatory note of a similar
scope, while one of them, Dr. Pusey, in a private letter
to Burgon dated " Thursday in Easter Week " [April 4],
' 1872," thus defends the appending of an explanatory
note :
" What are our Commentaries but explanations of our
LOED'S words, in which, among others, we explain
those words of His in St. Mark and St. John, on which
the warning clauses are founded ? It implies no defect
in the Athanasian Creed to explain its meaning, since it
does not, to explain our LORD'S."
The Bishop of Winchester also (Wilberforce, who had
been translated from Oxford in the end of 1869) had
suggested at the discussions of the Ritual Commission,
though he did not formally propose, a very suitable ex-
planatory note, the first clause of which 8 was intended
to meet the objections of those who maintain that in
using the words, " The Holy Ghost is of the Father and
of the Son," we condemn the entire Eastern Church,
which denies the double procession of the Holy Ghcst.
7 Dr. Ogilvie (Pastoral) ; Dr. in the use of [this Confession of our
Heurtley (Lady Margaret's} ; Canon Christian Faith], be it enacted that
Mozley (Regius) ; Dr. Pusey (He- the words the Holy Gho*t is of the
brew) ; Canon Bright (Ecclesiastical Father and of the Son : neither
History) ; Canon Liddon (Exegesis), made, nor created, nor begotten, but
Their note was : " That nothing in proceeding do not declare the
this Creed is to be understood as Holy Ghost to proceed from the Son,
condemning those who, by involun- so as in any way to contradict the
tary ignorance, or invincible preju- Catholic doctrine that the Father
dice, are prevented from accepting alone is the fountain-head of the
the faith therein declared." Chron- Triune Godhead." See Chronicle of
icle of Convocation : Sessions Feb. Convocation : Sessions Feb. 7-13,
7-13, 1872, p. 47. 1872, p. 81.
8 " For the avoiding of all scruples
74 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
Bishop Christopher Wordsworth, probably the most
learned theologian then on the Bench, took the lead
in defending the continued use of the Creed, while
Bishop Thirlwall, gifted perhaps with the keenest and
most vigorous intellect of all his Episcopal brethren,
was the chief maintainer in the Upper House of its
unsuitability for recitation in the Public Service of the
Church.
It often happens that men of great intellectual power
will, in maintaining a thesis, overlook something which
lies immediately under their hand, and which must of
necessity be perfectly familiar to them. And so it seems
to have come to pass with that strong intellectual
gladiator, the late Bishop of St. David's, in part of his
argument in Convocation against the public recitation
of the Creed. After making the most of the very high
authority of Jeremy Taylor, which was unequivocally on
his side, he proceeded to judge the Creed on its own
merits, and invited his brother Bishops to take notice
that no loss of dogmatical teaching would be incurred by
striking out " the longest series of propositions contained
in it," these propositions being only " rhetorical amplifi-
cations."
" The plan, your lordships see, is to enumerate a
variety of divine attributes, and then to make the
assertion that the Father is such, the Son is such, the
Holy Ghost is such, and yet they are not Three, but One.
I know of no reason whatever in the nature of things
why this should not have been prolonged to the extent
of the whole Creed ; because it seems to have been by pure
accident that the author, whoever he was, confined himself to
these particular illustrations^"
9 Chronicle c>f Convocation, Se- p. 76. The italics are those of the
sions Feb. 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 1872* present writer.
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 75
But the Bishop must have known, at least as well as
any of his auditors, though he did not call it to mind at
the moment, it was not ready at hand to him, that
the successive dogmatic statements of the Creed took
their rise, as an historical fact, from the oppositions
of heresy, whether Sabellian, Arian, Macedonian, or
Apollinarian which successively elicited them. So far
from the ' rhetorical amplifications " being due to "pure
accident I' they were due to the exigencies of the Church,
who found them necessary from time to time, in order
to meet encroachments which were made upon her faith.
This slip of a very learned and able prelate (for it cannot
be supposed to have been anything more) laid him open
to the severe animadversion of Burgon. In a vigorous
pamphlet, published on St. Mark's Day, and entitled,
' The Athanasian Creed to be retained in its integrity :
And why 1 } after maintaining the Creed and the
public use of it against Dean Stanley's somewhat rabid
attack upon it, he turns to the Bishop of St. David's, and
mercilessly exposes his slip in Convocation by citing*
a long and valuable passage from a Sermon of Dr.
(afterwards Archbishop) Laurence, which exhibits the
historical genesis of the successive dogmatic statements
of the Athanasian Creed, in the rise of the heresies
above referred to. This Sermon, preached in 1816, and
entitled, * The con-sequences resulting from a simplification of
Public Creeds considered,' was entirely ad rem to Burgon's
argument with Bishop Thirlwall, and he evidently
chuckles over the having unearthed it so opportunely.
1 " Being the substance of Two Burgon, B.D., Vicar of St. Mary
Sermons preached at St. Mary the the Virgin's, Fellow of Oriel Col-
Virgin's, Oxford, April 1 4th and 2 1st, lege, and Gresham Lecturer in
1872, and now inscribed (without Divinity.... Oxford and London :
permission) to his Grace the Arch- James Parker & Co., 1872."
bishop of Canterbury. By John W.
7 6 LTFE OF DEAN
" Finding the point under discussion ready done to
my hand, and so very ably done, in the pages of (I sup-
pose) a forgotten Sermon by a very eminent Divine, I
thought it better for every reason to sufter the dead man
to deliver his testimony here for the second time, and in
his own recorded words 2 ."
Bishop Thirlwall was not unnaturally made angry by
Burgon's attack upon him, and not the less angry
because the Bishop of Winchester, in the Upper House of
the Convocation of Canterbury, took up much the same
ground as Burgon, in regard of the alleged " rhetorical
amplifications " in the Creed. In the Summer Sessions
of Convocation (July 2), he spoke sorely and some-
what bitterly, in explanation of his own meaning, and in
exposure of Burgon's method of conducting controversy.
And much as Burgon's pamphlet on the Athanasian
Creed may be admired and valued for its ability, and for
soundness of the line which it takes, it is thought that
even the reader who sympathizes with his argument will
deeply regret the way, in which he allowed himself to
speak of a prelate, venerable not by his office only, but
by his age, his ability, his learning. And, while he, or
any other Presbyter, had a perfect right to assure
the Archbishop, as he does in his Prefatory Letter, that
for himself he did take the warning clauses of the
Athanasian Creed "in their plain and literal sense," the
language of sorrowful censure in the last paragraph of
that letter, as if he had been the Archbishop's spiritual
father, instead of one of his spiritual sons, is surely
wrong both in taste and principle. On the other hand,
his independence of judgment in taking a line of his
own on this as on other questions, even where some of
his best and most valued friends materially differed from
2 P.
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 77
him, cannot fail to be admired. He argues most acutely
and convincingly against an Explanatory Note, though
both the Bishop of Lincoln and Dr. Pusey (one of them
a dearly loved, and both of them deeply venerated
friends) had determined in favour of this solution of
the difficulty, and as to the note proposed by the six
Oxford Professors of Theology, with all of whom he
was on intimate terms, he writes, thus pertinently :
" On behalf of what is called ' involuntary ignorance,'
a great deal no doubt is to be said. But then it ought
to be quite superfluous to say it ; for if the ignorance be
realli/ involuntary, what need to introduce any mention
of it at all ? ' Invincible prejudice ' on the other hand
strikes me as quite a different matter. For, Which is
meant? the prejudice which a man will not overcome,
or the prejudice which he absolutely cannot overcome ?
If the latter, it is surely needless to mention it : if the
former, it is clearly (as in Pharaoh's case), a highly
aggravated form of wickedness." [Pp. 20, 21.]
It may be added that Burgon does not omit to quote
at some length the very important testimony to the
great value of the Athanasian Creed, borne by the late
lamented Bishop Cotton, of Calcutta, in his charge of
1863, in which he shows how "the errors rebuked in
this Creed resulted from tendencies common to the
human mind everywhere, and especially prevalent in
this country." The passage is too long for citation;
but it may be safely said to be of such importance in
the controversy respecting the Athanasian Creed, that
no man is qualified to pass judgment on the merits of
this great Confession of Faith, who has not both read and
deliberately weighed it. Burgon received cordial thanks
for his pamphlet from several eminent divines, among
others Archdeacon Freeman, and Archdeacon Churton,
78 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
the latter of whom, in a letter dated May 3, 1872,
speaks of the publication as " a right valuable con-
tribution to the theological literature evoked by this
controversy. Your notice of Eishop Thirl wall's cavils,
as answered by anticipation by Archbishop Laurence,
is both effective and instructive."
In the end of this year, Burgon headed the opposition
in the Oxford Convocation to the appointment of the
Dean of Westminster (Stanley), as a Select Preacher
before the University. The ground of the opposition
was the sympathy with the rationalising and latitu-
dinarian school, which the Dean had shown on several
occasions. Socially loveable and attractive in an un-
usual degree, the most picturesque and fascinating his-
torical writer of the day, and gifted with intellectual
endowments of the highest order, the truth must yet be
told that Dean Stanley was no theologian, had not the
habits of mind which are the essential qualifications of
a Divine. Apart from particular acts which gave great
offence to those who were jealous for God's Truth and
for the integrity of the Church's faith, he was not
unreasonably complained of by Burgon as " the avowed
champion of a negative and cloudy Christianity, which
is really preparing the way for the rejection of all
revealed Truth." The nomination of Select Preachers at
Oxford (preachers, that is, chosen to supply the lack of
service of such Masters of Arts in Priest's Orders as do
not wish to take their turns of preaching) is in the
hands of a Board consisting of the Regius and Margaret
Professors of Divinity, and the two Proctors, and presided
over by the Vice-Chancellor, who has a veto upon each
nomination. But no nomination is valid, unless Con-
vocation (the legislative body of the University approves
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 79
of it and sanctions it by a majority, in case of its being-
objected to. Burgon and four other members of Con-
vocation with him, one of them of Professorial rank,
and another the Senior Tutor of one of the foremost
Colleges, announced to the Vice-Chancellor their deter-
mination to oppose Dean Stanley's nomination 3 , and
requested him to appoint a day for the polling, which
might suit the convenience of non-resident members. The
Vice-Chancellor insisted on regarding this as a proposal
to pass a " censure upon those whose duty it was to nom-
inate Select Preachers," and especially upon himself, who
was "required to approve of each name before it was sub-
mitted to Convocation." In the correspondence which
passed on the subject, and was afterwards published 4 ,
Burgon assured but did not succeed in convincing him
that, while he and his friends intended to exercise their
constitutional right of objecting to a particular name,
no sort of censure was intended, and that non-resident
members would be summoned from the country " for the
sole purpose of confirming or cancelling what some
considered to be a highly improper nomination." The
" highly improper nomination " was eventually confirmed
by a majority of sixty- two, to the sorrow and dismay of
the orthodox. But Burgon, though his party was in a
minority, was right in the point at which he was at
issue with the Vice-Chancellor. The exercise of a
3 The names besides Burgon's ap- University of Oxford, and Mr. Bur-
pended to the letter in which this gon, concerning a Privilege of Cow-
announcement is made are those of vocation in respect of the nomination
C. P. Golightly, Edward C. Wooll- of Select Preachers.' Oxford and
combe, Montagu Burrows, and H. London : James Parker and Co.,
R. Bramley. 1872. The Prefatory Words of this
4 ' Correspondence between the Paper are dated Oriel, Dec. 5, 1872,
Very Reverend Henry George Lid- and have the signature J. W. B.
dell, D.D., Vice-Chancellor of the appended to them.
So LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
constitutional privilege by some members of a legisla-
tive body cannot fairly be regarded as a censure upon
those who propose to them a measure which they refuse
to concur in. Members of the House of Commons, who
vote against a measure initiated in, and brought down
from, the Lords, do not thereby censure the Peers who
passed, and especially the Peer who introduced the
measure, however much they may repudiate it as
opposed (in their view) to the public weal.
The close of the year 1872, saw the appointment by
authority of what has since become an annual observ-
ance in our Church. Friday, December 20, was set
apart as "A Day of jmfjfic Prayer to Almighty God for ///&
increase of the supply of Missionaries , and for His blessing
on tlieir //V&." It cannot be said that the Vicar of St.
Mary the Virgin's allowed his controversial writings to
engross him to the neglect of his parish ; for we find
him providing for his Parishioners four Services on that
day, three of them accompanied with short Sermons, in
addition to an early and a mid-day Celebration of the
Holy Communion. He exhorted his people to avail
themselves of the opportunities thus offered to them in
a printed Address, which probably did not differ much
from the hundreds of similar Pastorals issued all over
the country, except it be in the pointed reminder that
Fasting, as well Almsgiving, should go along with
Prayer on such occasions, and that " self-denial in
respect of meat and drink should be practised on a
day of public Intercession."
The year 1873 was ushered in by an event which
deprived Burgon of a much-loved relative and most
A.D. 1873. congenial friend. On January 31, the Venerable Henry
* John Rose, B.D., Archdeacon of Bedford, and Rector of
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 81
Houghton Conquest, who had married Burgon's eldest
sister, passed away in his 73rd year. The Archdeacon
had made his mark in literature ; and his attainments
in Hebrew and Syriac were so considerable that he
was invited to join the company nominated for the
Revision of the Authorised Version of the Old Testament,
" who first put their hands to the work on the 3oth of
June, 1870 5 ." Of his eminence as a scholar and a Divine,
his labours as an editor and writer, his warmth of heart,
equability of temper, fairness of mind, and of the graceful
hospitality dispensed by him at his country Parsonage,
Burgon himself has preserved a brief memorial in his
Postscript to the Memoir of Hugh James Rose, the Arch-
deacon's elder brother ['Lives of Twelve Good Men,' vol. i.
pp. 284-295].
Burgon was one of those men who are able to work
with good effect at several wholly different pursuits
simultaneously. We do not find that his diligence as
a Parish Priest put any bar in the way of the prose-
cution of those abstruse studies, and that laborious
recourse to the fountains of Theology, to which he had
consecrated his life. How true it is (of Englishmen
certainly, if not of Germans) that good literary work is
often done, not by men of leisure, whose lives seem to
allow room for it. but by those who are cumbered with
some active pursuit, and can only give to literature their
hora subsecivte and their vacations ! Here is a glimpse
of Burgon's life during his autumnal holiday at Turvey,
given by himself to Miss Washbourne, whose assistance
to Burgon, in the capacity of a secretary and amanu-
5 Preface to the Revised Version moved by death before the Revision
of the Old Testament. Ten mem- was completed on the 2oth of June,
bers of the original company (Arch- 1884.
deacon Rose among them) were re-
VOL. II. G
82 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
ensis, has been already noticed under the year 1871.
(The reader will observe that, Archdeacon Rose having
passed away, Hough ton was no longer open to him as
a holiday resort ; but in one respect this loss was com-
pensated by the circumstance of his elder sister's, Mrs.
Henry John Rose, coming with her daughters to reside
near him in Oxford).,
"Turvey Abbey, Sept. 20, 1873.
" My faithful Secretary,
" I will tell you how I pass my days. I rise at 6 a.m..
come down by 7, and set to work in the Library, The
housekeeper brings me a cup of tea 6 , and at half-past 8
dear Charles and Helen appear, and scold me. Break-
fast over, at it again till 1.15, when we lunch. Then, at it
again, till they pull me out for a drive. Then dinner and
drawing-room ; so I cannot go on writing. But I pick out
the texts of the Gospels in a volume of Cyril and in
Eusebius till 10. Then Prayers ; and at 10.30 I try to go
to bed. Next morning D. G. allegretto ; and so daily.
" After this you will wonder that I have not got a
deal that wants transcribing. The truth is I have been
Ereparing five letters for ' The Guardian? besides the one
No. xi.J just now in type ; and I find that the printer
can decipher my horrid scrawl. But as soon as I can
get at my Book (our Book) 7 again, I shall be obliged to
6 In another letter to his " Secre- pears to have conceived and under -
tary " in the ensuing year, he says of taken shortly after the publication
this old and faithful servant ; "N.B- of his 'Last Twelve Verses of St.
Old Jane, who brings me in a cup Mark.' He once observed to the
of tea, and eke some bread and lady, to whom this letter is ad-
butter, at 7, becomes to me one dressed, that he had first been set
of the most interesting females in upon the undertaking by Bishop
Creation." Charles Wordsworth's (of St. An-
7 " Our Book " is that which he drews) asking him to explain his
regarded as the great work of his views on Textual Criticism.
life, a work on the 'True Prin- In preparation for this magnum
ciples of the Textual Criticism of opus, he made, with the efficient
the New Testament,' which he ap- assistance of his " faithful Secre-
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 83
worry you out of your life. There will also soon be the
residue of Cyril, Eusebius, and Gregory of Nyssa ; and
then I shall be able (thank GOD) to make some progress.
I feel goaded on, and never tire."
The five letters for the ' Guardian' alleged by him to
his " faithful Secretary," as calling him off from work in
which she could assist him, belonged to a series of
Twenty-one Letters to Dr. Scrivener, which appeared in
that Journal, the first fifteen of them in the year 1873,
the last six in the succeeding year 8 . They were the
fruit of his laborious researches in foreign Libraries
during his autumnal tours, already noticed, of 1871,
tary," his nieces, and occasionally
one or more Undergraduates of his
College, Indices to all the references
to, or quotations from, the New
Testament, made in the writings of
the Fathers, it being one of Bur-
gon's leading principles of Textual
Criticism that the true Text cannot
be otherwise ascertained than by
consulting not only manuscripts and
ancient versions, but also the cita-
tions made from the Fathers. This
involved his looking through all
the Greek and Latin folios of the
Fathers, and marking the texts in
the margin. Then the folios passed
into the hands of his assistants, \vho
arranged the references in the order
of the Books of the New Testament,
and copied them out ; so that it
might be only the work of a minute
to ascertain how Cyril, or Eusebius,
or Gregory of Nyssa, quoted such
and such a text, and what was the
generally accepted wording of that
text at the time that particular
Father wrote. The result was the
compilation of nearly twenty folios
G
of enormous bulk, bound in stout
dark red leather, and with handles
at the back, to lift them by, of the
same material. There is reason for
regret that these valuable tomes,
before being presented to the nation,
were not placed at the disposal of
the Reverend Edward Miller, Rector
of Bucknell, who has undertaken
the herculean labour of editing the
great work which Burgon has left
incomplete. and the appearance of
which will in all probability mark a
new era in Textual Criticism, and
perhaps even extort a tardy recog-
nition from some of our own scholars,
who, without independent research,
have borrowed their methods of
Biblical Criticism from Germany.
8 The dates of the numbers of the
'Guardian,' in which these Letters
appear, are :
In 1873, Jan. IK, 22, 29 ; Feb. 5 ;
Aug. 13,20, 27; Sept. 3,10, 17, 24;
Oct. i, 22, 29; Nov. 19.
In 1874, Jan. 7, 14 ; Feb. 18, 25 ;
March 25 ; April I.
84 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
1872. The series is headed, " Manuscript Evangelia in
Foreign Libraries"; and his object, he tells the reader,
was " partly to call attention to the most serious mistakes
I have noticed in the labours of my predecessors (the
result evidently, for the most part, of haste and in-
advertence), partly to supply important details which
previous critics hava overlooked." He was shown over
the Library of Milan by " the learned Dr. Ceriani," and
at Florence "Dr. Anziani most obligingly promoted the
object of a nameless and most troublesome stranger."
He entirely fulfilled his purpose, collating more or less
thoroughly almost every Codex he handled, correcting
numerous mistakes of Scholz, Tischendorf, and others,
and bringing to light many copies of the Gospels and
other parts of the New Testament, and several Lectionary
Books, the existence of which was previously unknown.
The close of this year gave Burgon occasion to declare
himself as much opposed to the Romanising and Ritual-
ising tendencies in the Church, as he had hitherto
showed himself to be to the Rationalism which was
slowly on all sides undermining the Faith, and deroga-
ting from the honour and perfection of God's holy
Word. On Wednesday and Thursday, the ist and 2nd
of October, in the year 1873, was held the Oxford Dio-
cesan Conference, the proceedings of which elicited from
Burgon two Sermons 9 , preached on the 1 2th and 1 9th of
the month, and published by him with a word of Preface
dated on the 28th. The gist of the Conference, he points
out in the first of these Sermons, lay in two Resolutions,
9 " The Oxford Diocesan Confer- by John W. Burgon, B.D., Vicar of
ence ; and Romanizing within the St. Mary the Virgin's, Fellow of
Church of England : two Sermons Oriel College, and Gresham Lecturer
preached at St. Mary the Virgin's, in Divinity." Oxford and London :
Oxford, Oct. I2th and 191!), 1873, James Parker and Co., 1873.
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 85
one in favour of " some organization of parochial Councils
to confer with the Clergyman on the conduct of their
Ecclesiastical affairs," the other " accepting as sound the
principle of the Public Worship Facilities Bill " (thrown
out in the Lords), the object of which was to enable any
twenty-five parishioners, who might happen to be dis-
satisfied with the Pastoral Administration of their Incum-
bent, to set up independently of him, and in defiance of
his wishes, a separate Church and Clergyman of^ their
own, if they could only succeed in obtaining the sanction
of the Bishop [see p. 9]. Burgon explains that to both
these resolutions he personally entertained the strongest
repugnance : but he discerns underlying both of them
(and there is no doubt he was right in his discernment)
the " growing impatience of the faithful Laity at the
Romanising movement within the Church of England,
which is even now making its way in many quarters un-
restrained, and even unrebuked" [p. 12]. In the second
Sermon, " taking up a position directly hostile to many
of my personal friends " [Preface, p. 5], he launches out
with his usual plain speaking and intrepidity against
the Romanising practices and tenets which were being
introduced and inculcated ; against the representing Tra-
dition as an unwritten Word, of co-ordinate authority with
the written [p. 18]; against Saintworship and Mariolatry
[p. 19] ; against enforced habitual Auricular Confession
[pp. 19, 20] ; against Tran substantiation, and all the
observances and ceremonial in connexion with the Holy
Communion which are grouped round Transubstantia-
tion, such as the Vestments, the Eastward position, Fast-
ing Communion, and Non-Communicating Attendance, as
well as the phraseologies unknown to our own Book of
Common Prayer, such as High Mass and Low Mass [pp.
22, 23]. As to the doctrine of the Presence in the Holy
86 LIFE OF DEAN BURQON.
Communion, he will go no further than to say that
Christ is really present in it to the faithful recipient,
that to such an one His presence " is awfully real, an
objective reality of the most transcendent kind " [p. 29].
But he will not allow of a localized Presence ; Christ is
''present in the heart, not in the hands" according to the
words of "the Author's last edition of ' The Christian Year,' "
words which were tampered with after his death [pp.
30, 33]. By those words the great poet-theologian is to
be judged, and not by his treatise on ' Eucharistic Adora-
tion,' "a singularly weak and unfortunate production,
every way unworthy of the honoured name it bears "
[p. 32]. While Burgon speaks thus vehemently, accord-
ing to his wont, he takes especial care not to allow it to
be thought that he has any sympathy whatever with the
Low Church School. " With Clergymen who deny the
doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration," he writes, "and
apparently think anything good enough for the House of
GOD, I have far less sympathy than I have with the Me-
diae valists themselves. Such persons are simply out of
court " [Preface, p. 5]. Holding " that Romish Teaching
may be popularly described as the systematic exaggera-
tion, or rather caricature of the Truth" [p. 18], he never
shows a tendency to deny the truth, of which a particular
tenet or practice is an ugly distortion. Thus, while speak-
ing in the strongest way against the miserable casuistry
of fasting Communion, according to which even a "cough
lozenge has been forbidden, on the plea that to take it
into the mouth were to dishonour the reception which is
to follow," he appeals to his flock to bear him witness
that " I specially invite you to communicate at 6, or at
7, or at 8 o'clock ; remarking generally that it is more
reverent, for those who are able, to communicate fasting
than full ; and for every reason that it is better, for
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 87
such of you at least as conveniently can, to come early
than to come late. (As for after-dinner Communions, I
consider that they are not to be tolerated, as they cer-
tainly never are necessary) " [pp. 27, 28]. It should be re-
membered that in that year (1873) the gradual growth
in our Church of Romish tenets and practices had aroused
the serious alarms of many faithful and wise Pastors
besides Burgon. It was the year of Bishop Wilberforce's
sudden death by a fall from his horse on the 1 9th of July,
(" The whole land wore the garb of grief
For that great wealth departed
Her peerless Prelate, Statesman, Chief,
Large-souled and tender-hearted ;
The man so eloquent of word,
Who swayed all spirits near him ;
"Who did but touch the silver chord,
And men perforce must hear him V) ;
and the awful and distressing incident served to call
attention to the last words of wise and loving counsel,
which the Bishop had addressed to the Rural Deans of
his Diocese at Winchester House, only four days before
his death 2 . Those words were directed against that part
of the Romish system "which required confession to a
priest from every one, especially before communicating,
as a condition for the obtaining forgiveness of sins," and
showed the social and moral mischief which such confes-
sion was calculated to do, and the specific difference
between it and that resort of a conscience unable to
quiet itself, and requiring comfort and counsel, to " some
discreet and learned minister," which the Church of
1 Lines by the Bishop of Derry WilberforceJ by his son, vol. iii.
and Mrs. Alexander. " In Memor- p. 437.]
iam Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of 2 Life of Bishop Wilberforce"
Winchester," [See ' Life of Bishop vol. iii. pp. 419, 420.
88 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
England does recommend. In a Sermon preached before
the University in 1 855 on " the Principles of the English
Reformation" (a long extract from which Burgon appends
to his pamphlet), and earlier in his correspondence with
Dr. Pusey in 1 850, the Bishop had taken precisely the
same ground. But the movement in favour of Private
Confession had still gone on working its way, spite of
these strong protests against it from strong men. " It
came this year," Bishop Wilberforce's biographer tells
us, " within the official cognizance of the Episcopate ; a
discussion upon it took place in Convocation, and on
July 4 the Episcopate agreed upon a Declaration which
was made public on July 23 3 ." Thus Bishop Wilber-
force did not live to see its publication, though he had
helped to draw it up.
The domesticity of Burgon' s character was so great, and
his interest in the servant class, and his clinging attach-
ment to old servants so strong, as testified to by his
beautiful little book of Sermons on ' The Servants of
Holy Scripture ' (S.P.C.K.), that it does not seem out of
place just to notice in this Biography the death of the old,
u>. 1874. trusty, and trusted servant of the Church, " Rebecca,"
who had, under six consecutive vicars (Hawkins, New-
man, Eden, Marriott, Chase, Burgon), acted as " sextoness "
and pew-opener at St. Mary the Virgin's 4 . Thus he
3 * Life of Bishop Wilberforce,' attendants at the Bible Classes
vol. iii. p. 418. which Burgon used to hold in the
4 He tells us in his own character- chancel of his Church), " but won-
istically comical way, in the Life o^ derfully patient and good in waiting
Provost Hawkins (' Lives of Twelve on the coldest nights till the Bible
Good Men,' vol. i. p. 397, footnote Class was over. And then it was;
8), how trying to this dear old lady ' Good-night, my dear ; good-night,
were "the ways" of the different dear Rebecca,' and (turning to me),
Vicars under whom she had served. ' You know she 's my wife ; we live
"She was a very crabbed-look- at St. Mary's.' " This was the kind
ing individual" (writes one of the of frolicsome joke with which Bur-
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 89
writes about her death to Miss Monier- Williams (now
Mrs. Samuel Bickersteth), an attached and much-loved
member of his Bible Class for young ladies. The letter
is dated " St. James's Day," [July 25] " 1874.
" I ought to add a word about dear Rebecca. She
died peacefully and happily, and was quite conscious to
the last. I am going to put a cross of stone to her
memory 5 , and all the parishioners (Mamma and Papa
are one) are to give a shilling apiece towards it. ...
You will like to know also that I have had water laid on
to the Cemetery, which was getting quite burned up
from the long drought."
The next month we find him at Turvey once again,
writing to his " faithful Secretary " (Miss Washbourne)
in terms which seem to show that his work, through her
effective assistance, had made considerable progress since
his letter of September 20 in the last year.
"Turvey Abbey, Aug. 28, 1874.
" My dear Secretary, I am very grateful to you for
the kind letter I received from you this morning. I will
not disguise from you the pleasure it gives me to think
of Cyril as a fait accompli. What a fat fellow, and what
a useful one, he will be ! I promise myself a great deal
gon was always bubbling over. . . St. Mary's,
On one occasion, when the Militia Fell asleep July 18, A.D. 1874,
had attended Service at St. Mary's, Aged 63 years,
they struck up, in marching back 'Not now a servant, but above a
from the Church, "The girl I left servant, a sister beloved. '
behind me." It was irresistible. On the back of the stone is the
"That's Eebecca," exclaimed Bur- single name REBECCA in large
gon, as the notes of the well-known capitals.
tune burst on his ear. What a delicate and gentle touch,
5 This was done. Rebecca's head- quite worthy of Burgon's head and
stone tapers into a circle, within heart, is given to the simple epi-
which is a cross. The epitaph is : taph by the accommodation to this
Rebecca Hawkins, old and trusty Church-servant of
For Thirty-Six Years Sextoness of St. Paul's words about Onesimus !
90 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
of benefit from the use of those laborious pages of
yours ; and I only feel genuine concern to think that
the task must have taxed your strength unduly
" I am working away very hard. I wake at 5 ; rise in-
stantly ; and at 6 am in the library. I open the win-
dows for five minutes, to look out on the lawn and let
in the fresh air. And O how fresh it is ! and how lovely
the matin prime ! The gossamer on the grass, drenched
with dews of night the cattle feeding on the upland
all the birds exuberant in song lengthy shadows over
the lawn and everything at peace ! . . . I cannot say
how refreshing it is to me to work on in quiet for
several long sunny hours in this pleasant home.
Farewell, and GOD bless you !
" Yours gratefully,
"J. W. B."
A.I' is;5. Burgon's ' Plea for the Study of Divinity in Oxford' has
been already noticed by anticipation, when speaking of
his ' Plea for a Fifth Final School' in 1868 [see above,
p. 376]. It was very mainly through his agency that
this Fifth Final School (for examinations in Divinity,
and for conferring honours for proficiency in that Queen
of Sciences) had been established. He had watched over
the experiment with an almost parental solicitude that
it should turn out a success, and in the November of
1874 wrote three papers on the subject in the ' Oxford
Undergraduates' Journal.' These papers seem to have
been thought by the Editor of so much value, that he
caused them to be printed at his own expense in a
separate form as a pamphlet. [See the Avant-propos to
the ' Plea for the Study of Divinity .'] The contents of this
pamphlet having been noticed previously, more need not
now be said of it than that it is one long wail over the
excessively slender furniture of the younger Clergy for
the discharge of the most onerous and responsible of all
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 91
trusts, and over the declension of the Oxford Colleges,
in virtue of the recent revolutionary changes, from the
ideal of the Founders, which was in most instances to
make them Seminaries of the Church, and sheltered
retreats for students in Theology.
And now his career at Oxford, a career in which
he had toiled so incessantly for the spiritual good,
both of his parishioners, and of the members of his
University, and had won so many hearts both of
Townsmen and Gownsmen, not more by the services
rendered to them than by the deep and tender affec-
tionateness with which he had rendered them, was to
be cut short by the offer of a Deanery, which opened
to him much more leisure for the studies so dear to
him than he had ever yet enjoyed, and relieved him
of direct Pastoral responsibilities, if to remove a man
from a sphere of work truly congenial to him can
ever be rightly called relief. In a brief note, dated
Nov. i, the then Premier (Mr. Disraeli) announced that he
"proposed with" Burgon's "permission to submit" his
" name to the Queen to fill the Deanery of Chichester,"
which had been recently vacated by the death of the
deeply venerated and greatly lamented Dean Hook.
Burgon had never coveted this or any other preferment
(rarely indeed has professional advancement been so
little of a consideration to a distinguished clergyman
as it was to him) ; nor, if the truth must be told, did he
altogether like the position in itself ; but he was moved
to accept it, partly by the reflexion that his work, which
had lately multiplied upon him, was somewhat over-
taxing his strength already, and partly by the desire to
make a home for his sister and her daughters, who, since
leaving Houghton Conquest, had been residing near him
92 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
at Oxford. On the eleventh of November came another
equally brief missive from the Premier to announce that
the Queen had been pleased to confer upon him the
Deanery, and that he (Mr. Disraeli) would " take the ne-
cessary steps to carry into effect her Majesty's commands."
But Burgon shall himself assign the reasons which
moved him to leave his beloved Parish, College, and
University, as he gave them to Miss Monier- Williams,
to whom he wrote probably more a cosur ouvert than to
any one else outside his own family. He writes from
his College, March 9, 1876, nearly two months after his
installation at Chichester, which is explained by the
circumstance that he had arranged to spend the Lent
of 1876 amid his old surroundings, and to take a pro-
longed farewell of his beloved flock and his many
Oxford friends. After speaking of " the shower of
letters " [congratulations] " such as he never saw on
his table before," he proceeds thus:
"The effort of replying to them made me quite
ill ; for I could not help telling them all that at
the end of thirty-three years of happy life, happy
and most contented life, it is impossible to sever so
many bonds, and begin a fresh career elsewhere, with-
out a tremendous pang. Some will ask ; Then why
do you go, if you feel it so much ? I have asked myself
that question again and again, and still return myself
the same answer. I am sure my dearest Parents would
have wished me to go ; and I think I owe it to them
not to refuse such an offer 6 . Yet more : I desire
6 If any other Clergyman besides and the other twenty-two years be-
Burgon, having attained the age of fore) " not to refuse such an offer,"
63, had stated that one of his rea- one would have been disposed to
sons for accepting a Deanery was, think the remark not quite genuine,
that "he owed it to his Parents" and that he was deceiving himself
(one of whom had died eighteen, as to the intensity of his filial affec-
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 93
beyond all things to provide an honourable shelter for
my sister and my loved nieces ; and what better thing
than a Deanery can be imagined for them? but the
weightiest reason is behind. I am convinced that it is
the Divine guidance I should go to Chichester. The
position is so wholly unsought, or rather comes to a man
who had so carefully disqualified himself for being a
recipient of honours of this kind 7 , that it is clearly thrust
upon me. The very fact that I am disinclined to go
makes me feel I ought to go. And the awkward circum-
stance that the income (^1000) is insufficient for the
dignity, completes my reasons for going. I am not
bribed, nor yielding to any seductive influences, nor
obeying inclination, nor beckoned on by ambition.
No ; I see an invisible Hand beckoning me on ; and some-
thing says to me that I am here overtaxing my strength,
especially on Sundays, as well as that I have here done as
much probably as I should do by living on here for a few
years more. Those few years may be employed more for
GOD'S honour and glory, and the welfare of his Church,
at Chichester, than here in Oxford would be possible.
" I will be so confiding to you as to tell you that my
own highest dream was a Canonry at Christ Church. But
see how plainly this is not GOD'S plan for me ! Ogilvie "
[the late Professor of Pastoral Theology] " died when
Gladstone was in power ; and he named King. Well ;
surely Ogilvie would have lived for two years more,
had it been the Divine Will for me to go to that side
of ' Tom Quad !'.... A few weeks after I had ac-
cepted Chichester, Mozley " [the Kegius Professor of
Divinity,, a post which Burgon would greatly have
tion and veneration. But those who world's honours and dignities. A
knew John William Burgon inti- man who aims at preferment must
mately know that such a sentiment never let fly as passionately as he
is in the most perfect keeping with did against what he considered to be
his character, and just what was to erroneous or wrong. Cautiousness
be expected from him under the cir- in expressing his feelings must be
cumstances. the policy of a man on his promo-
7 Here again it is absolutely true tion, and of such cautiousness there
that he had carefully disqualified was not one single atom in Burgon's
himself for being a recipient of this mental composition.
94 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
delighted in] " becomes paralysed. Surely Hook might
have died three months later ; and I might have had
a prospect of the Regius Professorship ! No ; I see
the hand of a Divine Power in all this ; and rejoice
in being able to see it, and to walk by faith in this
matter."
Burgon's strong claims to the preferment he so tardily
received, together with the well-understood grounds of
the delay, were duly recognised in a communique ^ known
to come from the pen of a very competent writer,
thoroughly acquainted with the facts, to ' The Churck-
manl an American newspaper published in Hartford,
Connecticut. The cowmtmiquee is dated Nov. 13, 1875,
two days after the Deanery had been conferred upon
him.
" The appointment to the Deanery of Chichester of
the gentleman whose name I see attached to articles in
The CJturclimanl appears to call for a few special words.
The Rev. John William Burgon, who has just received
this preferment, is indeed one of our representative men,
and might well have been made a Dean, or at least a
Canon, any time during the last twenty years ; but the
significance of the preferment at this moment is great.
It shows that the Government has determined to break
through the trammels of a spurious public opinion pro-
pagated by a so-called liberal press, and to think for it-
self in Church matters. Mr. Burgon has committed
what those who write for our papers would fain make to
be considered the unpardonable sin of taking up consis-
tently and powerfully the independent Anglican line, as
against the Stanley school, and that of the Ritualists.
His noble protests against the appointment of Dr. Temple
to a Bishopric, and Dean Stanley to the Select Preacher-
ship at Oxford, may occur to the minds of your readers.
It was thought impossible that the Queen, who avowedly
protects and fosters this pernicious school, would ever
consent to the promotion of its chief opponent ; and it
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 95
must be admitted that she has evinced great generosity
in so doing ; though indeed, in these days, a Prime
Minister, with right upon his side, can hardly be resisted
even by Royalty."
The Article goes on to refer to Burgon's various works,
specially the ' Plain Commentary] the ' Short Sermons for
Family Reading' (both of them as well known, and as
widely circulated, in America as in this country), and
above all ' The Last Tivelve Verses of St. Mark's Gospel, 1
which " stamped him at once as one of the most learned
critics of the Sacred Text in Europe," and which " has re-
mained unanswered."
"It displayed the most intense intimacy with the
whole literature of the Bible, and vast personal labour
pursued on the spot in Rome and elsewhere. It formed
a fitting crown to the numerous other books of the
author on the Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, and
against the attacks of the writers of ' Essays and Reviews'
Yet the press seemed to have no conception of this
position. No article in the ' Quarterly,' or ' Guardian] or
any other influential paper or periodical, appeared to vin-
dicate the work that had been done. When the Revisers
of the Authorised Version were gathered to their work,
Mr. Burgon's name was not amongst them. He had
given too much offence to the new school of High
Churchmen, and he did not pronounce the shibboleth of
the Low. He had defied the school of Stanley and
Colenso. So he seemed destined to remain in comparative
obscurity, an Oxford leader, a revered preacher, a teacher
of Undergraduates, an active Fellow of a College, but even
at Oxford not a Professor, not a Canon of Christ Church,
not a Head of a College. At last, when he has already
lived a good long life, cheerily working on, recognised or
not, he is suddenly singled out, and placed on high in
the seat of dignity and honour which Hook so gloriously
filled. Mr. Disraeli has done an honour to the whole
English-speaking family."
96 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
Excerpts from letters to Miss Williams, one belonging
to the year 1874, the other to 1875, are subjoined to this
Chapter. The latter is presented to the reader with a
little hesitation, arising from the fear that some persons
might be led to ascribe to Burgon what in truth was
very far from him an unseemly levity on sacred sub-
jects. As in Latimer,, as in Kowland Hill, and many
others of the best and most earnest men, nothing could
prevent the humour, the fun and frolicsomeness which
was in the man, from coming out and presenting itself
on what sometimes seemed to be inopportune occasions ;
but it was accepted by those who loved and venerated
him as part of his character, and did not prejudice in
any measure the serious impressions which their hearts
and consciences received from his teaching.
To Miss WILLIAMS.
" Oriel, St. Thomas' Day, 1874.
" Dearest little Girl,
" As for idleness, I am of opinion that a little mental
inactivity now and then is a good thing. It does more
than unbend the bow. It fairly gives it strength and
spring when it is next bended. I am always struck
with our Saviour's invitation to His Disciples to come
apart with Himself, and to ' rest awhile' We have also
to learn that intellectual work is not the only no, nor
is it the highest work we can do. There are other
things to be done besides that. Social kindness is one of
those things and to swell the merriment of a family
party is an admirable way of passing a few days at
Christmas. The snare is when levity and laughter be-
come the habit, amusement the business, of life.
" All here is in a very peculiar state. There is skating
on the ice, snowballing in the quiet walks, slides on
every pavement, and falls here and there. A robe of
white is spread over the whole of the country, and that
much-wished-for thing, an old-fashioned Christmas, has at
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 97
last made its appearance. I shrewdly suspect that nine-
tenths of the public prefer these old-fashioned things in
theory to the actual experience of them.
" And now farewell ! Remember me lovingly to all :
but most lovingly of all, remember me yourself.
" Ever your faithful and affectionate friend,
"J. W. B."
To Miss WILLIAMS.
"Turvey Abbey, Aug. 23, 1875.
" My dearest little Girl,
" The essential condition of teaching well is to have
first thoroughly taught oneself. To teach interestingly re-
quires some genius : but that you and I have in perfec-
tion. So I may as well proceed.
" Seriously. Read over first the bit you are going to ex-
plain, so very carefully to yourself, that you could stand a
very severe examination in it. Notice all the curious
points and there are always plenty in Scripture ; and
then insist on the children seeing all those points, by asking
them short unexpected questions, and abusing them if
they cannot answer them.
" But of course you must never ask them anything
above their powers.
" Have a quantity of tickets. (A card cut up will do ;
but paint it, or at least take care that they cannot easily
forge tickets.) Give a ticket for every right answer, or at
least every clever answer, and let twelve tickets (suppose)
represent a penny. Sixpence or a shilling on a Sunday
I think well spent in making a class attentive. And
you will find that this plan will galvanize the little
beggars, and make them as eager as mustard.
" I think I had better explain by a pack of random
questions on next Sunday morning's First Lesson. Let
me see. Oh, it is 2 Kings ix.
" ELLA loquitur \ Ver. i . . . What do you mean by
' loins ' ? Show me your ' loins.' Very well. Now 'gird '
them. Stand up, you little jackass, and gird up your loins
this instant Who has got a handkerchief ? Now
VOL. II. H
98 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
tie three together, and let him do it. The boy who girds
up his loins best shall have a mark.
" Now why did he bind up his loins ? [Then ex-
plain about the long drapery, and tell them in confidence
that if you were pursued by a bull and wanted to run,
you would of course ' gird up.' Be furnished with some
picture of Orientals in petticoats.]
" Now shut your books. ' Children of the prophets.'
Who were they ? [$Ten brought up in a school of the
prophets.] Refer them to 2 Kings ii. 3, 5, 7, 15 ; vi.
i, &c.
" Now how did he come to be talking with one of
these children of the prophets ? [If any boy were to re-
member that Elisha had called him, I would give him two
tickets, perhaps three.] What was in the box that
Elisha gave him ? Where was he to carry the box 1
Where was he to go ? Find the place on the map.
" Ver. 2. Who was Jehu's grandfather 1 Did Elisha
expect that Jehu would be sitting or standing 1 Don't
look in your book. If you do, Fll kill you. [Such
threats keep the children awake on a hot afternoon.]
"Ver. 3. I suppose we don't know ivhere the oil
was to be poured, do we ? Do you think you under-
stand how the whole thing was to take place ? [The
little beggars will say they do.] I don't believe you do,
though, you little ass. At all events I'll try you.
NOW T then / will be Elisha. But who will be Jehu ? and
who will be the son of the prophets ? Good ! You two,
now stand up. The rest of you shall be Jehu's brethren.
[Then you must act Elisha give the boy your smelling-
bottle. And if he does not do the right thing and a very
striking and graphic thing indeed he has to do I would say
that instead of tickets they deserve to be thrashed all
round.] Next Sunday I shall try you all again ; and I
will cut off the head of every one who cannot act the
anointing of Jehu.
" Seriously. I think the dear old girl will understand
what I mean. There will be no asking for ' the story.'
They will be so astonished at your method, that, unless
my memory deceives me, they will become like new
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 99
creatures. O the fun of seeing their dear stupid faces de-
vouring each succeeding verse, in anticipation of the
strange searching ordeal of the Teacher !
" Give my best love to dear Mamma, and eke to dear
Papa, and think of me ever, darling old Girl, as your
very affectionate and faithful friend,
J. W. B."
The narrative part of this Chapter being now com-
pleted, it only remains to exhibit Burgon in the several
capacities which he filled in Oxford, and in the good
and kind deeds which he was the means of doing there.
What was he as a Vicar towards his Curates 1 As a
religious instructor of young men and young women ?
The answers to these questions will be given in com-
munications made to the author by Clergymen formerly
associated with him, by attendants at his Bible Classes,
and by others who crossed his path more incidentally.
I.
Let the Reverend Dr. Yule, portions of whose paper
have been already submitted to the reader, speak of
Burgon as a Vicar. Thus he writes :
" I was with Mr. Burgon as Curate of St. Mary the
Virgin's, Oxford, from June, 1868, to October, 1871, and
during the whole of that time he was most kind and
affectionate to me Those who are only acquainted with
him by his writings, especially his controversial ones,
will never be able to believe in the deep personal affec-
tion he was capable of. As one instance out of many, I
should like to mention that for nearly the whole of the
first year of my being in Holy Orders, he, sitting with
me in the Chancel after the 8 a.m. service on every
Friday morning, corrected the Sermon I had prepared
H 2,
ioo LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
for the ensuing Sunday afternoon. I am fortunate in
possessing many books given to me by him, in each of
which he has written some affectionate words on the
title-page^ together with my name.
" In the copy of ' 'Blunts Undesigned Scriptural Coincidences'
formerly belonging to him, and now in my possession,
he has written on the fly-leaf opposite to the title-page,
as a commentary upon the title Undesigned Coincidences,
' Unsuspected, but designed from all Eternity.' This brief
sentence in pencil seems to me a complete epitome of
Burgon's theological method."
II.
The Reverend R. G. Livingstone, Burgon's first Curate,
thus writes of his Bible Classes for Undergraduates, of
his Public Catechizing, and the fulfilment of his College
duties at Oriel as Censor Theologicus. Mr. Livingstone's
remarks on the first and third of these points are sup-
plemented in the footnotes from an interesting com-
munication made to the author by the Reverend T. P.
Brandram, Vicar of Rumboldswyke, who, as formerly an
Undergraduate at Oriel, used to attend the Sunday
evening gatherings in Burgon's rooms.
" The first time that I ever saw Dean Burgon, so far
as I can remember, was in January, 1857, when I entered
Oriel College. He was then Junior Treasurer, and I had
to go to him to pay him some fees. He asked my name
on that occasion, and then more suo referred to the verse
where St. Peter in his First Epistle speaks of ' a living
stone.' The brief interview terminated with a few kindly
words of advice, and an invitation to come to his rooms
on the following Sunday, and to spend an hour or so in
quietly reading and studying a chapter of the Bible.
"Let me try to describe to you what took place on one
of those Sunday evenings in Burgon's rooms. We went
there about a quarter past eight. Usually there were, I
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 101
think, about fifteen or sixteen young men present
possibly on some occasions as many as nineteen or
twenty. His College rooms would hardly hold more.
There were one or two outsiders, who came very regu-
larly, but the great majority of those who attended were
Oriel Undergraduates. Afterwards the numbers greatly
increased, and Burgon's lectures (if I may so call them)
were given no longer in his own rooms, but in the large
Common Room ultimately, in the years immediately
preceding his departure to Chichester, in the College
Hall. I can only describe what took place in his own
rooms those well-remembered rooms in the front quad-
rangle of Oriel, on the first floor of the first staircase to
the right, as you enter the College, the two windows
looking out on the open space before Canterbury Gate.
" Proceedings began with tea, and half-an-hour or
three-quarters passed very pleasantly in conversation on
all sorts of topics our host, of course, leading the con-
versation, and taking the principal part in it, enlivening
his remarks with delightful stories of old Oxford times,
sometimes discussing measures of present interest to the
University, very often criticizing one or other of the two
University Sermons, which he, and a great part of his
audience for those were the days of Oriel 'Sermon
Notes ' had heard that morning or afternoon at St.
Mary's. I wish I could give you some idea of the charm
of his manner on those occasions his kindly wish to
bring all present into the conversation, and to interest
them in it. I seem to see him still ever mindful of his
hospitable duties when he thought it was time to
replenish our cups, going round the room, where several
of us sat at detached tables generally with a teapot in
each hand, and saying 'You'll have another cupT and
then, as if he detected some distrust on our part of the
quality of the beverage which the brace of teapots con-
tained, ' You know, I'm as strong as Hercules still.'
" At or about 9 o'clock the decks were cleared, the
tea-things removed, the remnant of the currant cake a
dainty which invariably appeared on these occasions
deposited in a cupboard near the door, whence it emerged
iO2 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
on the following morning, when a deputation of little
Blue-coat girls regularly tripped down to College, and
carried off what remained to regale themselves and their
school companions therewith.
" The reading began with the repetition of a Collect,
that for the Second Sunday in Advent if I remember
aright, and of the text, ' Open Thou mine eyes that I
may see the wondrons things of Thy Law.' And then
our friend plunged at once in media* res. He was com-
menting on Genesis at the time that I went to these
Sunday evening gatherings, and so careful and minute
was his method of procedure that at the end of four
years we had not quite arrived at the end of the book.
Of course it will be remembered that these Sunday read-
ings took place only eight times in the Term, twenty-
four times in the year. Still, in the course of ninety-six
evenings he had not finished commenting on the first
book in the Bible. Not a sentence, not a word was
slurred over, not a verse, not a chapter omitted, not
even the chapter containing the catalogue of the Dukes
of Edom. His plan was to make the Bible its own in-
terpreter, constantly referring his hearers to paralle]
passages in other parts of Holy Scripture. And the
result was that, though our attention w T as mainly fixed
on one book, yet we came to know a good deal about
other books of the Bible, which in any way helped to
illustrate the particular portion of Holy Scripture which
we were studying. I do not think he often referred
to Patristic interpreters : but there was one commentary
on which he set great store, Ainsworth's ' Annotations*'
8 " Annotations upon the Five Moses his words, lawes, and ordin-
Bookes of Moses, the Booke of the ances, the Sacrifices and other Le-
Psalmes, and the Song of Songs, or, gall ceremonies heretofore com-
Canticles. Wherein the Hebrew manded by God to the Church of
words and sentences are compared ISRAEL, are explained. With an
with, and explained by the ancient Advertisement touching some objec-
Greeke and Chaldee Versions, and tions made against the sinceritie of
other Records and Monuments of the Hebrew Text, and allegations
the Hebrewes : But chiefly by con- of the Rabbines in these ANNOTA-
ference with the Holy Scriptures, TIONS. As also Tables directing
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 103
He always had this folio open before him, his Bible
resting upon it, and he frequently quoted in terms of
high approval observations and suggestions made by the
old writer. He was fond of repeating how greatly
Bishop Pearson esteemed Ainsworth's work 9 , and in his
own l Treatise on the Pastoral Office ' he speaks very highly
of the book 1 .
" He leaned very much, as might be expected, to the
mystical method of interpretation, never ignoring the
plain primary meaning of a passage, but still always
delighting to see in it some typical foreshadowing of an
event recorded or of a doctrine fully unfolded in the
Gospel. Beyond any student of Holy Scripture that I
ever met with, he aimed at finding, and rejoiced to find,
illustrations of the famous saying ; ' In Vetere Testa-
mento Evangelium latet.'
unto such principal! things as are
observed in the Annotations upon
each severall Booke. By HENRY
AINSWORTH. Luke 24, 44. All
things mu*t ~be fulfilled which are
written in the law of MOSES, and in
the Prophets, and in the Psalmes.
LONDON, Printed for John Bella-
mie, and are to be sold at his
shop in Cornehill, at the Signe of
the three Golden Lions neere the
ROYALL EXCHANGE. 1627."
Henry Ains worth, one of the most
learned Hebrew and Rabbinical
scholars whom this country has ever
produced, was a founder of the body
called Independents. He afterwards
fled to Holland, where he sided
with the exiled Brownists, and
taught in the Church at Amsterdam.
He died quite suddenly in 1622, and
was suspected to have been killed
by the machinations of the Jews,
who could not endure the evidence
which he adduced for our Lord's
Messiahship, not only from the Old
Testament, but from their own
writers. Burgon by no means over-
estimated his ' Annotations.' The
author has been assured that the
demand for this old book in Oxford,
consequent on Burgon's recommend-
ation of it among his friends and at
his Bible Classes, had the effect of
sending up the price considerably.
9 Bishop Pearson, however, speaks
not of the merit of the 'Anno-
tations' 1 of Ainsworth, but of the
excessive literality of his transla-
tions of the Hebrew. And he
evidently thinks his translations
sometimes to be too literal. " Mr.
Ainsworth, who translated the Pen-
tateuch nearer the letter than the
sense," &c. See what he says in
vol. i. ART. v. p. 392 [Oxford :
University Press, MDCCCXXXUi].
1 " On the Pentateuch, for rever-
ence, learning, and fulness, I know
of nothing better than the ' Annota-
tions ' of Henry Ainsworth a folio
which may be easily met with," &c.,
< Pastoral Office,' chap. i. p. 32.
io4 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
" I remember, when we came to the chapters giving
the brief account of the Antediluvian Patriarchs, his ex-
hibiting an elaborate table prepared by himself, which
displayed the age of each man drawn out to scale, and
showed at a glance how few were the human links in the
chain of oral tradition between Adam and Abraham.
" I distinctly remember how beautifully he discoursed
on the chapters describing the mission of Eliezer,
Abraham's steward, to Padan Aram. By a comparison
of texts (Gen. xvii. 17 ; xxi. 5 ; xxiii. i ; xxiv. 67 ; and
xxv. 20) ; he brought out a touching trait in the char-
acter of the Patriarch Isaac his tender devotion to his
mother's memory. He showed that he was thirty-seven
at the time of his mother's death, forty at the time of his
marriage : and the tone of his voice as he read and com-
mented on the final clause of the twenty-fourth chapter,
' Isaac was comforted after his mother's death,' revealing
almost in spite of himself one of the deepest feelings of
his own nature, still lives in my memory.
"At this distance of time, I cannot do more than recall
the general impression which these readings in Bur-
gon's rooms made on me, and, I am sure, on all who
attended them. We could not but notice the profound
reverence with which he regarded the Bible as being
from first to last, through every part of it, the Word of
God the unspeakable importance which he attached to
everything which it contained. A name, a word, a date
was of importance and interest to him because he found
it there. But besides this, it was nothing short of a
revelation to me to discover that the study of the Bible
could be made so full of interest and brightness so
attractive, as he made it. I had been accustomed all
through my boyhood and youth to see the Bible carefully
and devoutly studied, and had been taught both by
precept and example that it was a duty so to study it.
But as I look back to the Bible readings to which I
was accustomed, I am impressed chiefly by the extra-
ordinary dulness and dryness which characterized them.
With Burgon this state of things was entirely reversed.
For dulness and dryness he substituted a vivacious
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 105
style of comment, he caused the characters of the Old
Testament to live, as I had never seen them made to live
before ; and he thus helped to make a duty and occupa-
tion, which had previously seemed dull and heavy, full
of interest and attractiveness. Whether others, whose
experience in their early days was different from mine,
will endorse what I have said I do not know. I only
describe what I myself felt. And to the man who taught
me so much, and showed me how attractive the study of
the Bible might be made. I owe a debt of gratitude
which no words can express.
"At 10 o'clock Burgon used to bring his remarks to a
close, and immediately afterwards the little gathering
dispersed 2 .
2 The Rev. T. P. Brandram, of
Eumboldswyke, who has also kindly
favoured the author with his remi-
niscences of these Bible Classes of
Burgon's, writes : " We were in-
vited, not encouraged, to ask ques-
tions ; nothing like discussion took
place; and we were made to feel
that we were there to hear Mr.
Burgon have his say, and very in-
teresting his say was. During the
time that I attended he travelled
slowly from Gen. xxvii. to the end
of the Book. There was no attempt
made to deal with any of the moral
difficulties, which parts of the his-
tory included in the above chapters
present. This was not Mr. Burgon's
line at all. One of the valuable
parts of his Lectm-e lay in his fre-
quent references to the Septuagint,
about which I suspect most of us
were at that time very ignorant."
Another attendant on these
Classes says of their effect : " I
don't think any of us went down at
the close of the Term, who was not
permanently impressed with the in-
explicable accuracy (inexplicable
except on the hypothesis of its full
inspiration), the all-pervading wis-
dom, and the organic unity of the
Bible. . . . Precious were those
hours in Oriel. The teacher, though
subtle and penetrating, struck no
sparks of brilliancy to illuminate
himself, but simply drew us on and
drew us out. His one anxiety was
that the Bible might be made to
produce its own complete impression
upon us. The same men usually
came, and he knew us each person-
ally. At the end of the Lecture we
each shook hands with him ; but at
the end of Term he always closed
with the two beautiful Collects for St.
Michael's Day and for All Saints."
The following notes of the teach-
ing given in Burgon's Bible Classes,
kindly furnished by Mr. Brandram,
will give a better idea of them than
any description :
"Gen. xxviii. 14. Notice 'the
West' placed first. May
not this point to the spread
of the Gospel in the Gentile
world Westward ?
xxix. 10. We see here a
io6
LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
"He allowed no engagement to interfere with his
Sunday Readings. Once, and only once, do I remember
his being absent. He was imperatively called away
from Oxford for the Sunday, but on that occasion he got
a friend (Dr. Chase, I think) to take his place. On
another Sunday he was once very poorly so poorly that,
marvellous to relate, he was not present at any of the
services at St. Mary's. But in spite of my earnest
remonstrances, he would go wrapped it is true in rugs,
and taking all sorts of precautions across the quadrangle
to the College Hall, in order that he might have his
usual Sunday reading.
"It was wonderful how the necessary strength was
supplied to him to discharge Sunday after Sunday, at
the end of a very laborious day, this self-imposed duty.
The Sunday began at St. Mary's with a Celebration of
the Holy Communion at 7 a.m., at which he was always
the Celebrant. At 10.30 came the Morning University
Sermon, at which, as well as at the Afternoon University
Sermon at 2 p.m., he was bound, as Censor Theologicus,
to be present. There were, besides, three full parochial
services, at 11.30, at 4, and at 7. At each of these he
never failed to be present. At the first and third ser-
vice he invariably preached : at the second he catechized
mark of Jacob's strength of
body. He himself rolls away
the stone from the well's
mouth, which we are told in
v. 8 could not be rolled away
till all the flocks had arrived.
Jacob again shows his
strength of body in wrestling
with the angel.
Gen. xxix. 17. ' Tender-eyed.'
6(j>0a\nol daOfVfis (Ixx.) ;
weak-eyed ; no allusion to
a soft expression of eye.
xxx. 3. Note in reference to
this verse ('She shall bear upon
my knees'} the words yovv,
gigno, genui, gener.
Gen. xxxi. 53. ' The God of
Nahor.' Laban swears by a
false god, as we learn from
Joshua xxiv. 2.
xxxvi. 24. ' That found the
mules in the wilderness.' Hot
watersprings, bearing this
name.
xxxix. This chapter of
Joseph's purity is set in
beautiful contrast to the last
of Judah's incontinence.
1. Attention called to the
heading of the chapter, and
the obsolete expression,
' Joseph is chested.' "
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 107
the children 3 . At all three he read both lessons a duty
which he never delegated to anyone ; and at the morn-
ing and afternoon services he took a considerable part
of the Prayers. And yet at 8.30, when his duties as
Vicar of St. Mary's were ended, one saw him hurry
away from the vestry to his rooms or to the Hall of
Oriel, in order to meet his young friends and spend at
least an hour and a half with them, first in pleasant
general discussion, and then in the minute study of a
portion of Holy Scripture.
" During the time that I was an Undergraduate, and
for several years afterwards, Burgon held a College office
which brought him into close contact with the Under-
graduates. He was Censor Theologicus. There was an
institution at Oriel, peculiar or almost peculiar to the
College, called ' Sermon Notes.' The Undergraduate
3 Burgon had the rare gift of so
catechizing children as to make
them attentive, and to adapt to their
capacities (occasionally in a some-
what grotesque form) the instruc-
tion he instilled. The author
remembers having once been pre-
sent at St. Mary's when he was
catechizing his Choristers. Some-
thing in the catechizing having led
up to the subject of Holy Scripture,
and the sentiments with which the
Bible should be regarded, he said,
" Some people use a fine long word,
4 Bibliolatry,' which they say is a
sin, only another kind of idolatry.
Bibliolatry means worshipping the
Bible. Now I am not at all afraid
of your worshipping the Bible in
any wrong sense, I quite allow you
to worship it as much as you like.
I'm only afraid that you won't wor-
ship it enough. It is God's own
Word, inspired by Him ; and we
owe to His Word the same rever-
ence which we owe to Himself."
Of course, like all other Cate-
chists, he got answers occasionally
which, however ingenious in them-
selves, showed that the Catechumen
had not in the least seized the
point of his instruction. One of
these instances he loved to recount,
to the great amusement of himself
and his hearers. After carefully
explaining to his boys the mystical
meaning of David's taking five stones
in his scrip (the five stones repre-
senting the Pentateuch, out of one
book of which, that of Deutero-
nomy our Lord in His temptation
drew the passages whereby He de-
feated the Tempter) after labor-
iously inculcating this upon the
children, he suddenly turned upon
them and said ; " Well, come now !
you tell me why did David take
Jive smooth stones out of the brook,
when he went to meet the giant ? "
Boy (thoughtfully) : " Mayhap 'e
thowt there mut be some more on
'em about."
io8 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
members of the College were expected to go to one
or other of the University Sermons, and on the Monday
following to send up to the Censor Theologicus an
analysis of the discourse which they had heard. In the
course of the week the Sermon Notes were returned to
the writer, a brief criticism, written in red ink, being
appended, under which were the well-known initials
J. W. B One d$y Burgon thought that he had de-
tected a case of copying. He sent for the young man,
whom he believed to be the culprit, and said to him * I
think, Mr. So and So, you have copied your Sermon Notes
from Mr. ,' naming another Undergraduate. The
young man denied the charge, and said he had not
copied. Burgon at once expressed his sincere regret
for having wrongfully accused him, assuring him that
he fully believed his statement, and that he was certain
that the similarity between his Sermon Notes and those
of the other man admitted of a perfectly innocent ex-
planation. The young man withdrew. Burgon heard
him slowly descend the staircase. A moment or two
afterwards he heard the footstep of some one slowly
coming upstairs. The door opened and the same
Undergraduate re-appeared. ' What I told you just
now,' he said, 'was not true. I did copy.' The con-
fidence, with which he had been treated, made it im-
possible for him to persist in the untruth 4 .
" It would be a serious omission, in describing those old
Oriel days, to leave unrecorded Burgon's great hospitality.
Breakfast was the meal to which he was in the habit of
inviting his friends and what pleasant breakfasts his
were ! How plentiful and generous the style in which
he regaled his guests ! Nothing could be simpler or
more frugal than his own fare when he was by him-
self his breakfast consisting only of his ' Commons '
* Speaking of Burgon as Censor the preacher (the Rev. C. P. Chre-
Theologicus, whose business it is to tien) say that our Lord, ' when He
look over the Sermon Notes, the took our body, condescended to the
Rev. T. P. Brandram says; "He veil of our ignorance,' Mr. Burgon's
must have read through our notes, annotation was, ' Only as the Son
no slight task with considerable of Man Remember.' "
care. For instance, when I made
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 109
of bread and butter the only thing to be noticed being
the cup of real oriental china made in true oriental
fashion without a handle, which stood beside his soli-
tary plate. Very different was the fare which he set
before his guests : for them there was no lack of good
cheer. But how can I describe the master of the feast ?
I despair of conveying anything like an adequate im-
pression of what he was of his attention to all the
duties of a host of his geniality his powers as a con-
versationalist the happy way in which he illustrated
any topic which was started, by some appropriate anec-
dote the dramatic way in which he told his stories,
enhancing the effect by various tones of his voice, the
play of his features, the sympathetic movement of his
hands. Any story of his which I try to re-produce
seems so flat and tame, compared with the impression
which it made on me when I first heard it from his lips.
How he made us laugh with his comical descriptions of
persons and scenes that he set with wonderful vividness
before us ! But it would be a great mistake to suppose
that he was only or even chiefly a teller of good stories.
The stories were distinctly subordinate to the general
aim and purpose of the conversation they were called
into requisition to illustrate the- particular topic under
discussion they were means to an end the end often
a very high one indeed. I remember once, at one of these
Undergraduate breakfasts, Burgon was talking of the
good which was always present, if one could only
discover it, in natures even the most unpromising and
how that good should be sought out, and, if possible,
developed and made the starting-point for further
improvement. And he urged repeatedly with great ear-
nestness that there was no one, however degraded,
without some spark of good not wholly quenched
within him to quote his own phrase which he once or
twice repeated, ' There is a green spot in every man's
nature, if only you could find it.' Some one at the table
told the story of a party of Australian miners the
rudest, coarsest, roughest human beings one could
imagine who were yet melted into tenderness, when
a newly arrived emigrant showed them a primrose
no LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
plant which he had brought with him from England,
and thereby awakened old half-forgotten memories of
home within their breasts. Burgon added another
illustration, derived from a most unlikely source, the
history of the Emperor Nero ! The story was that after
Nero's fall, when his statues and monuments were torn
down by order of the Senate, and every kind of dis-
honour done to his mjemory, it was found that some one
had gone by night and strewed violets over his grave.
Inquiry was made, but it was never discovered who had
done this. And then Burgon enlarged upon the incident,
speculating who it was that had done this deed, and
what feeling had actuated him : and finally he came to
the conclusion that even Nero had some good point
about him that he had at some time or other befriended
some one who had needed his help and that this person
had never forgotten the kindness, but when he was
overthrown and abandoned by every one, still cherished
his memory, and came secretly and scattered violets over
his dishonoured grave. ' Yes ' he added, ' there is a green
spot in every man's nature, if only you could find it.' "
We cannot terminate our notice of Burgon' s Bible
Classes for the Undergraduates without adding that this
part of his work was a source of high enjoyment to him-
self. On March 9 of the year 1876 he writes to Miss
Monier- Williams, in a letter from which some excerpts
have been given already ;
" O how I shall miss that gathering on Sunday even-
ings ! True it is that at 9 I feel very tired ; but every
bit as true is it that every atom of fatigue vanishes the
instant I enter the Hall, and see the dear young chaps in
their places. Yes, and the fatigue does not return until
the last of them is gone ! "
III.
The following particulars of Burgon's life as a Parish
Priest have been kindly furnished to the author by the
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD, in
Kev. George Henry Gwilliam, who was associated with
him as Curate of St. Mary's in 1874, and in charge of
whom he left the Parish in 1876, until his successor
should be appointed.
"During the latter part of the summer of 1875, I was
in sole charge while the Vicar was at his sister's, at Tur-
vey Abbey. . . . The weather being intensely hot, and
many of our people absent from Oxford, I found the
Sunday Afternoon Service so poorly attended that I ven-
tured to question the necessity of continuing it during
the summer. In reply I received a characteristic letter,
from which I quote as follows: 'Your natural feeling
about the afternoons and the empty Church I have two
words to say about. The experience and thoughts of
many years may not be quite unworthy of attention in
your eyes.
" l (i) Pains taken over a Sermon are NEVER thrown
away. GOD may and will for your reward, send you the
one person whom your words may reach. He at least, and
His holy Angels are present, and we preach at least for
Him, as we minister to Him WITH them. Next ;
" ' (2) Whenever you put by a sermon which was
preached to very few, be advised always to note that cir-
cumstance on the blank cover (I always do). The practical
sequel is that that sermon is very nearly as if it had never
been preached, and certainly may be made one of your
sermons at the Morning Service at St. Mary's (D.V.) next
year.'
" It is singular how unwilling he was to enter the pul-
pit without a manuscript. I have seen him writing
some addition to his sermon while I was saying the
Prayers, rather than extemporise it in the pulpit. Yet
he occasionally took off his glasses, and added some ex-
temporised explanation ; and once yet only once (it was
on Ascension Day) I heard him deliver a brief unwritten
address. Then he showed how well he could speak
without manuscript, if so disposed.
" He would draw a favourable comparison between
1 1 2 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
the best Anglican preachers and those of ancient days ;
and I have heard him say that he felt sure that Chrysos-
tom and Augustine must have received into Paradise
with open arms such men as Andrewes, and Hall, and
Beveridge, because they would recognize in them fellow-
workers who used the same methods of teaching as they
had employed centuries before
" Burgon was immensely popular in the circle of those
who knew him intimately. He was quick-tempered,
and his plainness of speech offended many ; but most of
his parishioners loved him dearly. At Parochial gather-
ings all bitterness of controversy was laid aside, and he
was at his best. Coming back once from the Church-
wardens' Dinner at Kennington Island, he kept the boat's
company in such roars of laughter at his stories and
jokes, that one of them had to declare he could handle
his oar no longer, if Mr. Burgon made him laugh so."
The following reminiscences of Burgon's preaching and
reading by a clergyman, an excerpt from whose paper
has been already presented to the reader, give all the little
traits which make a portraiture vivid :
Ax UNDERGRADUATE'S TESTIMONY.
"I am one of a host of men who owe their acquaint-
ance with the late Dean to his enthusiastic interest in
Undergraduates. His first desire was to do them good.
His next, I believe, was to send forth from Oxford a
body of young clergymen sound in the faith through a
deep conviction of the Inspiration of the Bible. And
the means which he employed were the pulpit and
private intercourse.
" I used regularly to attend his Sunday Evening Ser-
mons at St. Mary's. In the pulpit he was deeply serious ;
by which should be understood something quite distinct
from what is commonly known as an ' earnest style.' It
was not the preacher, but your Parish Priest and friend
who stood above you, and in homely but beautiful
English was bent on enlisting your attention for things
of the gravest importance.
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 113
" His voice was poor, and he was not always easy to be
heard ; yet he insisted on retaining unflagging attention,
which (truth to tell) he always did, for his Sermons were
full of interest ; and, if he observed it to droop for a
moment, the authority of the Parish Priest would come
out. 'Attend now ! ' ' Now, listen to what I am going to
say ! ' ' Pay attention, now ; I'm not going to bawl ! '
uttered in his quick and authoritative little manner,
which was always irresistibly comic, but had an instant
effect on the congregation. Before the University it
would be something more respectful e. g. ' You are in-
vited to observe, if you please,' uttered, nevertheless,
with the force of the imperative. His voice was the one
obstacle to brilliant success as a preacher. And the fact
that his Sermons before the University were generally
very well attended by the senior members, as well as the
younger men, must be accepted as testimony to the
purity of his language, the clear cogency of his reasoning,
the entire originality of his theme and of his methods,
his reputation for Biblical and Patristic learning, and
his unique and powerful individuality.
" But on Sunday evenings, before his own congrega-
tion, his Sermons were of a plain parochial character,
although scholarly, and full of fresh material quarried by
himself from original sources. When I heard him, to-
wards the close of his cure at St. Mary's, he preached
very much from the Gospels. The interesting pictures
of Gospel incident would receive a few fresh touches
from his research ; graphic details would often be filled
in, and vivid side lights, borrowed from critical study of
the text, thrown upon the scene, all enabling his people
to grasp the reality of the marvellous records. Practical
lessons were duly and pointedly enforced often in a
pungent sentence or two as he went on. (I am writing
from memory, not from any perusal of his published Ser-
mons.) Then came the close, with a few deep fervent
sentences uttered deliberately, sometimes with emotion,
while he closed his manuscript, and in a marked way,
peculiar to himself, removed his glasses very slowly, which
seemed to say to us, ' One more Sermon to your account.'
\ 7 OL. n. I
1 14 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
" During the final hymn he stood back half propped
up against the corner of the pulpit he had been going
since early morning, and had not yet done ; and I can
still see that tall, grave, scholarly form, standing in that
historic pulpit in the M.A. gown, bent a little forward,
apparently in solemn reflection, while the choir beneath
him were singing 4 A few more years shall roll,' a hymn
which oftener than ajiy other followed the Sermon.
" But if Dean Eurgon was arresting in the pulpit, he
was also striking at the lectern. He was a beautiful
reader, and it was here that his profound reverence for the
sacred Scriptures every word of them exhibited itself.
The first time that I ever heard him open his lips was to
read the first lesson Daniel xii. ; and the impression made
upon me was that no Sermon could follow that. It
seemed as if the service should appropriately end there.
His rendering of verse 2 was sublime. He always read
as if some Heaven-sent revelation had been lowered before
his eyes, not a word of which he had ever seen before,
yet each word pregnant with meaning "
TV.
We have yet to hear from those who attended them
some account of his Bible Eeadings for young ladies,
a class assuredly in which he was no less interested than
in young men. The principal figure in these classes was
the lady who has kindly placed at the author's disposal
some of the most characteristic and beautiful of all
Burgon's letters, thus contributing to this work one of
its principal features of interest. She is good enough
to permit the publication of part of a letter from herself
to the author, in which she explains the origin of her
intimacy with the late Dean Burgon, and in so doing-
gives a picture of his public and private instructions
which is full of beauty and interest.
THE OXFOED LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 115
MRS. SAMUEL BICKERSTETH (nee MONIER-WILLIAMS)
TO THE AUTHOR.
"The Vicarage, Belvedere, Kent, April 2, 1890.
" Dear Sir,
" To me Dean Burgon was goodness itself. I think,
when I was seven years old, he fancied he saw some
resemblance in me to a little sister he had lost and
tenderly loved. From that time I spent an hour in his
College rooms every Sunday afternoon, until he was
made Dean of Chichester (and I was 1 7 years old).
"I went to the four o'clock service at St. Mary's, where
his delightful and racy catechizing of the choir boys was
always full of interest. He gave each choir boy three-
pence, if he attended that service, and these threepenny
pieces I distributed in the Vestry after service. We then
walked together to Oriel, Mr. Burgon, my governess and
I, to find six Charity girls awaiting him at the Porter's
Lodge. From his smaller sitting-room, an untidy little
place, full of papers, books, dust and confusion (which
he always in joke called his ' drawing-room '), he pro-
duced cake which was given to the girls.
" Then came the pleasure of my afternoon, when sitting
on his knee, or on a stool at his feet, he taught me
Divinity (and who could teach as he could?), or Church
History, Church principles, the Harmony of the Gospels,
and other Bible study. The talk was varied by in-
struction on every conceivable subject. He would show
me old MSS., explain Codex A, or Codex B. point out
the beauties of some picture of a Madonna, or some
sculpture, with which the walls of his rooms were
adorned, and would send me home with a mind awakened
to every kind of interest.
" During the week to meet him in the streets (always
in his cap and gown) was a great delight, something
was sure to follow a game of hide-and-seek round the
trees opposite Keble ; a turn in some Fellows' garden,
not generally open to the public, and where he would
know every tree and plant, and everything, and every-
I 2
n 6 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
body of interest connected with the College ; a visit to
some Chapel or Hall; or perhaps even to a pastry-cook's
shop. If to this last, we were followed by a small crowd
of ragged children to whom he gave handfuls of cake
and buns.
" Then every Friday he had a Ladies' Bible Class in
our house, to which I, even when a child, was admitted.
I sat on a stool at Jiis feet, and had to look up all his
references. And very quick and particular he was,
expecting me to know the order of the Books in the
Bible as well as my alphabet. Sometimes he only com-
mented on one verse, during the whole hour's Bible lesson,
so carefully and critically did he go into the subject.
I shall never forget my preparation for Confirmation,
when he held a class in St. Mary's Chancel. He told us
such funny stories, asked such quick sharp questions,
never allowing us to take our eyes from his face, and
yet withal was so solemn in all he said, going to the root
of the whole matter. Then those quiet Holy Communion
services in the Chancel of St. Mary's, where according to
old custom we did not leave our seats, but the fair linen
cloths were placed all round the Chancel, over the broad
book desks. He would come down, and as he administered
the Sacred Elements, he would tenderly lay his hand
on the head of each lad who might be present, or on
the hand of each girl who knelt there.
" He used to call me his ' little sweetheart,' and I
think he guided every step of my life until he left us,
but staunch Churchman as he was, anything savouring
of Roman Confession was abhorrent to him."
Here is a communication from Miss Miller, Principal of
the Oxford Diocesan Training College, which illustrates
the vivacity of the teaching given in his Bible Classes,
and also exhibits the feature of humour which occasion-
ally lighted up his Sermons, as it has done that of
many distinguished preachers.
" The first time I saw Mr. Burgon was when in 1867
(?) he preached at Fenny Stratford on the ' Intermediate
THE OXFORD LIFE : FIFTH PERIOD. 1 1 7
State.' Those who may have heard him discourse on
this congenial topic will understand the pleasant en-
lightenment so coming as to the preacher himself
before known only by repute as a good and able divine
quaintly devoted to contention. Fuller illustration was
happily gained when, a few years later. I found myself
in the near neighbourhood of St. Mary's, at Oxford, and
for several years rejoiced in the ministrations of the
good Vicar. These included Bible Classes, at which the
method followed was perhaps open to criticism in some
respects, exuberant life and nature in the teacher being
somewhat too defiant of educational art, and pupils
being very imperfectly responsive, afraid some to show
their ignorance, others, their knowledge ; but the very
protest against prevalent conventionalism had its own
special value, and we came away, if but dimly conscious
of progress made, and more or less dissatisfied with our-
selves, yet with quickened faculties, and hearts roused
and warmed, as how could it be otherwise, on coming in
contact with one so taught of GOD his own soul aflame
with love of Truth as set forth in the Holy Book 5 ?
" Years before, I had heard the remark that the vis
:t>ni'n-a was more or less characteristic of the best men,
said in reference to Hugh James Rose, but no less true
of his friend. John AYilliam Burgon. Whatever one's
traditional sense of propriety might be, in attendance on
Sermons, how completely was it overborne and put to
flight by some pointed allusion, as irresistibly funny as
it was innocent and unexpected ! If for the moment
shocked at one's own want of self-control, it was at least
satisfactory to note that the properest folks were in the
same predicament a broad grin being apparent in every
direction. One might have thought oneself safe in Lent,
the subject being ' Conviction of Sin,' and the preacher
in dead earnest. But how could he help it ? ' Convic-
5 Those of us who joined the classes revered teacher, did her best to atone
held at Prof. Monier-Willianis's, will for the shortcomings of us older
not forget our common debt to ones ; " Now, Ella, what do you
Mrs. Samuel Bickersteth, then a say ? " being the usual last resort in
child, who, sitting at the feet of the the general silence.
n8 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
tion,' said he, 'might arise in many ways, through
some striking event in one's life, enforced reflection in
illness, reading, conversation with friends,' (then lightly,
as if barely worth mention) ' a sermon even.' Such
attempt at illustration, apart from the inimitable look
and tone of the speaker, reminds one of the dried
specimens shown in a Iiortus siccm, as compared with the
living plants, but unfortunately it is all that can now be
offered. It was this same lively preacher that pressed
upon one's attention earnestly, in private, the paramount
importance of easing the work of thought for young
ones by the provision of favourable conditions, a vital
matter which still claims the serious consideration of all
who profess to educate them in any true or worthy
sense. It was by Mr. Burgon's advice that I sought
State aid for my small training school, weighted how-
ever "with an injunction to 'hold my own/ which has
proved a less easy matter, on the whole, than the good
man could possibly have foreseen. I trust however that
as time goes on the results of the work thus feebly
attempted will be such as fully to justify the advice
given, one's aim being always for the recognition and
training of ' life,' in the fullest sense of the word, and as
so strikingly exemplified in every word, look, and move-
ment of the adviser himself.
" SUSANNA A. MILLER.
(Principal of the
Diocesan Training College at Oxford.)
"Sept. 1889."
Another lady who attended his Bible Class in the
Chancel of St. Mary's (for at the same period that one
class was held at Mrs. Monier-Williams's, another was
held in the Chancel) writes thus ;
" You may have noticed a vine and a fig-tree at the
porch of St. Mary's. At the Bible Class one day the
Dean told us he had had them planted there for us ; and
would we always, as we passed in and out, look at them
and think of the lessons they taught us, as well as of his
teaching when he was far away 1 Needless to say, I
THE OXFORD LIFE : FIFTH PERIOD. 1 1 9
always do look at them, and often, when passing the
Church, I go on that side of the road to see them better.
When he had the stone placed in the chancel floor in
memory of Amy Robsart 6 , he gave us a short account of
her and showed us the stone."
V.
This long Chapter on Mr. Burgon's Oxford life shall
conclude with a .few anecdotes which did not fall
naturally into any place in the narrative, but which the
author thinks to be quite worth preserving.
i. His FONDNESS FOR ANIMALS.
(From Rev. H. D. Pearson.)
" Burgon was not only, as you say, fond of children,
but also of dumb animals. The Rev. Arthur Brook,
formerly Rector of Hackney, told me that the only time
he ever met Burgon was in the 'High Street at Oxford.
Brook was on his way to St. Mary's ; so was Burgon ;
and there was a miserable dog on the pavement.
Burgon stopped to look at it, and hailed Brook. ' Do
take care of this poor animal,' said Burgon, ' I am
obliged to go to St. Mary's at once ; I cannot see to it:
will you be a good Samaritan ? ' Brook, who was a young
Undergraduate, did what he was asked to do, sought
out some veterinary surgeon, placed the dog with him ;
6 J. W. B. was from his early sart. As to Tony Foster, I believe
days specially romantic on the sub- that Skeffington was a descendant
ject of Amy Robsart. "One after- of that hero, who, according to the
noon," writes the Rev. H. D. Pear- brass tablet in the Church of Gum-
son, Vicar of St. James's, Clapton, to nor, is described as rir piis*imus, I
the author, " he made an expedition" think, at all events as very different
(when an Undergraduate at Oxford) from pesslmtis. We ransacked the
" with Sir William Honyman, the farmhouses near for eggs ; and with
Hon. Henry Skeffington, my bro- the ham of the inn these made a
ther, and myself, to ' The Ragged very good repast for us. Burgon
Staff,' an inn of very humble pre- was quite in his element, overflow-
tensions at Cumnor. Burgon was ing with poetry and romance."
fired with the thought of Amy Rob-
i2o LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
then went to St. Mary's, and heard a good part of
Burgon's sermon."
(From Rev. T. P. Brandram). " He used to like to see
the members of his Bible Class at breakfast, now and
again. On one occasion, I remember some one had the
face to ask him whether he could recollect ever having
been cruel to animals. He became very grave, and said,
'Yes ; twice. The first time it was dreadful, yes, too
dreadful for anything*. The second time was when I
was living in a tall London house. I went one day into
my room, and saw the cat vsitting at an open window.
Her back was towards me, and the impulse irresistible.
I crept up, and gave her a push ! ' '
2. COURTESY TO UNDERGRADUATE GUESTS.
(Henry Wagner, Esq.)
" Dean Burgon was the first and almost the only ' Don '
to seek me out and show me kindness, when I went up
to Oxford. One of my earliest recollections is my meet-
ing him in Oriel Lane, and his bidding me to dine with
him that day in the Common Room to meet (a gratui-
tous assertion on his part) * a great friend of yours,' Canon
Wordsworth (afterwards Bishop of Lincoln) ; and how
Dr. Wordsworth, fresh from Rome, and full of the
Vatican Codex, and his work in the Library there, per-
sistently talked Coder, with an absolutely unconscious
rudeness quite ignoring me ; and how the position would
have been very trying to a shy youngster, had not Bur-
gon, after some vain attempts to bring the conversation
back and down to my undergraduate level, with his quick
sympathy thrown me across the table a most humorous
look of mock despair, with a comic, shrug of the shoulders,
and, I had almost thought, a wink.
"And my last recollection is my having sent him a
date he wanted in connexion with C. Marriott, and a
post-card from him in acknowledgment, on which he
said, Never you attempt to write the lives of Twelve
Good Men ; or they will surely be your own death,'
followed so very soon after by the coincidence of his
own."
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 121
3. SENSIBILITY TO PATHETIC SCRIPTURAL INCIDENTS.
(Rev. T. P. Gamier.)
"It was in the Long Vacation of (I think) 1869 or
1870, when our own Chapel at All Souls was closed, that
I used to attend the 8 o'clock a.m. service at St. Mary's.
On one occasion the late Dean was reading the Lesson of
the day, which contained the account of the ' woman
which was a sinner ' washing our Lord's feet with her
tears. When he came to the passage, ' Simon, seest thou
this woman ? I entered into thine house ; thou gavest
me no water for My feet: but she,' &c., &c., his voice
began to falter, and he ended by breaking down, cover-
ing his face with his hands, and for a time could not
proceed. The few w r ho were there that day had been
admitted behind the veils of conventional life to the
' inner man.' "
4. THE CLAIMS SOMETIMES MADE UPON HIM.
(As told by Burgon himself to Mr. Ryman Hall, a
member of his congregation, and by him written down
from memory.)
" When leaving St. Mary's Church after Morning
Service one Sunday, a gentleman walked up to me, and
with a decided American accent said, ' Stranger^ have
you got any leisure ? ' ' Well ; let me see ; it is now a
quarter past one o'clock. I have to get my luncheon,
and be back at the University Sermon at 2 o'clock.
At 3 o'clock I ought to be At 4 o'clock I have
an Afternoon Service. At 6, if I have time, I shall have
some dinner. Anyhow, I must b$ at Church again at
7 for Evening Service, which will last until half-past 8.
Then, on returning to my rooms, I shall find 20 or 30
Undergraduates waiting lor me, and I shall be engaged
with them until about 1 1 . Oh ! at 1 1 I shall have
some leisure ! ' ' Ah ! I'll come to you at 1 1 .'
" The usual routine of the day's work went on, and
tired as a dog, you know I had just turned the men
out of my rooms at n o'clock, having quite forgotten
122 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
the enquirer of the morning, when I heard steps on the
stairs and a knock at my door. ' Come in ' ; and in
came the man, and again asked, ' Have you got any leisure
now ? ' Tired as I was, I said, ( Oh, yes ! come in. Now,
my dear Sir, will you kindly tell me what you want of
me 1 ' ' Well ; can you convince me of the truth of
Christianity ? ' ' What, Sir ! do you really come to me
at this time of night to ask such a question as that ? '
1 Yes, stranger, that's* what I came for.' ' What do you
mean, Sir ? What are your doubts ? What do you mean,
Sir 1 ' ' Well ; the Gospels, they contradict one another.'
' The Gospels contradict one another ! ! Now I pin
you to that. Sir ! Where do they contradict one
another? ' ' Oh ! so and so.' ' My dear Sir ! that is too
easy ! Do think of something else ! l No : that's enough :
explain that first ! ' I explained it at once, of course ; it
was too ridiculous. He then mentioned something else,
to be as easily made clear to him ; and so we went on,
ding-dong, hammer and tongs, until the College clock
struck 2, when he rose to go, saying, ' Well, I guess if
anyone has convinced me of the truth of Christianity, it's
you; you are so beastly positive. Good night! ' Before
leaving, he told me he was a Clergyman of the American
Church ; but from doubts that arose in his mind he had
thrown up his living, and had travelled a great deal.
He never lost an opportunity of hearing a preacher of
whom he had heard favourable mention ; and if he found
him an earnest man, he always made a point of asking
him if he could convince him of the truth of Christianity."
THE OXFORD LIFE: FIFTH PERIOD. 122(0)
SIR ROUNDELL PALMER'S 'ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE
' Last Twelve Verses of St. Mark ' is HERE SUBJOINED,
AS PROMISED ABOVE, p. 57.
"Blackinoor, Petersfielcl, Oct. 19, 1871.
" Dear Burgon, On arriving here on Saturday, I
found your kind and acceptable present: for which,
(and for your letter, and the too favourable mention made
of me in the ' Inscription '), I beg you to accept my sincere
thanks. I will bear in mind your wish, as to keeping
the book to myself, till it is regularly published.
"I have already seen enough of it, to be satisfied,
that it is a work of value and importance. But I
cannot pretend to say, that I am a wholly unprejudiced
judge of the argument, if it is a prejudice for one, who
is no professed critic, nor learned in manuscripts, to
have already a pretty strong opinion of his own upon
the subject. I think it reasonable, whenever the authority
of any text of Scripture, which has been generally re-
ceived in the Church from a remote antiquity, is assailed,
upon (alleged) critical grounds, to require from the
assailant strong proofs : and, in the present instance,
the preliminary difficulties in the way of the critic
appear to me to be so great, as to be absolutely insuper-
able by that kind of evidence, which alone is, or can
be, alleged. The improbability of either of the three
hypotheses, (i) that this Evangelist deliberately ended
his Gospel with the words tyofiovvro yap, (2) that a work
of this nature and importance was left incomplete, when
so very near the end, contrary to the intention of the
writer, (3) that the verses in question are a successful
substitution by some impostor, of a new conclusion,
different in substance as well as style, for the original
text, irrevocably lost almost as soon as written, of
which neither record, tradition, nor trace remains,
appears to me to amount to a moral impossibility : and
I can only explain to myself the facile reception, by
professed Biblical critics, of theories involving such
great difficulties, (as to their original authors), by that
credulity of the incredulous, when the objects of belief
are themselves and their own imaginations, of which we
VOL. II.
122(6) LIFE OF DEAN BURGOX.
daily witness such extraordinary instances; and (as to
their followers) by the eagerness of men, who have not
really sounded the depths of a question, to take up at
second-hand those novelties, which pass in the world for
the latest discoveries of the wise, and by that natural law,
which produces currents of (so-called) scientific or critical
opinion, through the abuse of the same principle of
authority, which all jirt'trmli'rx to science so much delight
in setting aside.
" Believe me ever
" My dear Burgon
'Yours faithfully
ik ROUNDELL PALMER."
IIDDADV CT MADY't fOI LFGE
CHAPTEK III.
THE CHICHESTER LIFE.
1876.
JOHN WILLIAM BUKGON was installed Dean of Chi- l8 7 6 -
Chester, Jan. 19, 1876. He did not, however, settle at
Chichester till after Easter (which in this year fell upon
April 1 6), partly as having many arrangements to make
in reference to the removal of his sister and her daugh-
ters from Oxford to the Deanery, and partly as desiring
to spend one more Lent and Eastertide with his flock at
St. Mary's, many members of which loved him with a de-
votion which he so ardently reciprocated. In the earliest
days of January, and while he was yet only Dean-Desig-
nate, he paid a visit of two nights to the Deanery at
Norwich, " to learn Dean-craft," as Dean Hook expressed
it, when the writer of these pages, on his appointment to
the Deanery of Norwich, paid him a visit at Chichester
for the same purpose. During this visit Burgon's spirits
seemed to be at flood-tide. Doubtless, unfeignedly
grieved as he was at being torn away from his beloved
Oxford, he felt the relief from the strain of overwork
which a Deanery would give, and also delighted in the
prospect of leisure for his theological studies, which the
position would bring with it. But with all this exube-
rant buoyancy and light-heartedness, there was a skele-
ton in the cupboard, which stalked out occasionally and
124 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
haunted him. The misunderstandings with the Canons,
soon to end in painful dissensions, had already begun.
He complained bitterly, and (as was his wont) somewhat
passionately, that his request to see the Statutes of the
Cathedral Church of Chichester, of which he was to be
the guardian and administrator, had been refused, and
that his Colleagues had not been slow to inform him,
both by letter and word of mouth, that the position of
Dean of Chichester was only that of first among equals,
and that he must look upon himself as no more than one
of five, having not even the privilege of a casting-vote in
Chapter. If this latter piece of information was not
relieved of its defiant character (as possibly it was) by
courteous expressions of personal goodwill, and brotherly
welcome, one can quite understand its making him sore,
while his being refused a sight of the Statutes (if this were
indeed the case) certainly needs explanation. These and
other complaints were ultimately formulated in two pam-
phlets printed by him for private circulation three years
afterwards, the first of which is headed, * Chichester Cathe-
dral. Suggestion* submitted to the Cathedral Commissioners,
1879.' The author is truly glad to be dispensed by their
intended privacy from referring any further to these
pamphlets, which, as dealing with jealousies and quarrels
for " pre-eminence " among brethren in the Christian
Ministry, are not agreeable or edifying reading. He
feels nevertheless that his fidelity as a biographer obliges
him to give some general account of these painful differ-
ences, and of the misapprehensions in which they took
their rise, and he is fortunate in having obtained such an
account from Canon Awdry, a warm friend and loyal
supporter of Burgon's, who joined the Chapter at a later
date (Nov. 1879), and who had fullest access to accurate
information upon the subject, such as no one outside the
THE C HIGHEST ER LlFE. 12$
Capitular Body could possibly have. Thus Canon Awdry
writes :
"The history of Dean Burgon's relations with his
Chapter from first to last was this. He declared war
upon his Residentiary Canons by sending them one of
those scoldings with which we were all familiar before
he came into residence, and when, to use his own phrase,
he 'was not yet Dean,' but only Dean Nominate. It
was evident that he was entering upon his office with
the idea that he was Rector and the Canons were his
Curates. The immediate result w r as the firm union for
self-defence of men, whom it would have required a
stroke of genius to have united in any other way.
Troubled times followed. The Dean knew very little of
the Statutes and customs of the Cathedral, which were
very hard to know, for little or no part of them had
then been printed, and the most important documents
relating to them were in the University College Library
and at the British Museum, while others had to be
hunted up in the Bishop's Muniment Room and the pon-
derous tomes of the Chapter Act Books. With the Con-
stitution of the Cathedra], and the Chapter precedents,
the Senior Canon was very familiar. He had analysed
and tabulated them, and was editing part of them. The
Chapter had certainly got out of hand, and though much
good work had been done in late years, notably, the
rebuilding of the central tower and steeple 7 , yet things
were done from time to time too much on individual
responsibility, with some of which the exquisite taste of
the new Dean was reasonably offended. In the collisions
which occurred the Dean's impulsg was almost always in
7 Under Dean Hook, and mainly great meeting was held at Brighton.,
through his exertions. The spire March 22, 1861, at which 14,300
fell on February 21, 1861. "One was raised in the room, the estimate
thing I have determined," wrote the being for 50,000, In November,
Dean to Vice-Chancellor Wood ; "I 1867, the Cathedral was re-opened
will rebuild the spire, if I beg my after the rebuilding of the spire,
bread, if God will but preserve my [See Prebendary Stephens' ' Life
life for the seven years which remain and Letters of Book, 1 vol. ii. pp.
till I am three-score-and-teru" A 407, 410, 441. Ed. 2.]
126 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
the right direction, but he was no match for the calm
knowledge of the then Senior Canon, and after struggling
impetuously for some time like a fly in a spider's web,
he almost always ended technically in the wrong.
u Not long after I became a Canon Residentiary, Dean
Burgon had a long illness 8 , induced chiefly, as it seemed
to us, by fret and worry at the sea of useless controversy
in which he was struggling at Chichester, and at the
meetings of the Cathedral Establishment Commission,
whilst he felt his life ebbing away, and the great work
on which he was bent 9 still undone. He recovered, how-
ever, and the change which took place in the Chapter
very soon after gave him a sense of confidence and free-
dom from restraint and irritation, which enabled him to
plunge once more with a good heart into his proper
literary work."
[Canon Awdry then mentions the appointment of Dr.
Crosse to a Canonry (in March, 1882) a change in the
personnel of the Capitular Body peculiarly acceptable to
the Dean ; and after highly eulogizing Dr. Crosse, and
his happy art of carrying other men with him, while he
seemed to follow them, continues thus] :
" Such was the man that came among us, and into
whose arms Dean Burgon almost immediately threw him-
self. The Dean felt himself safe. The lead was gladly
accorded to him in everything, and when he was in
danger of a blunder, he was saved from any great mistake
and still left with the lead, and all was done with tact
and delicacy. Had Dean Burgon asserted authority over
his Chapter, as inherent in his office, at the end of his
tenure as he did at the beginning, I doubt whether any
very material improvement in his position and his peace
of mind could have been brought about ; but we all
8 Canon Awdry is probably under the Canon's Installation, Nov. 28,
a slight mistake as to the date. The 1879.
illness, of which a notice will be 9 His work on ' The Principle* of
found under 1879, took P lace in ^e Textual Criticism of the New
that year. It was recent, and no Testament,' which, alas ! he has left
doubt much talked of, at the time of unfinished.
THE CHI CHESTER LIFE. 127
desired better order in the affairs of the Cathedral, and
one of the things most needed with a view to this was
that nothing of any consequence should be done without
the Dean, and that he should have as large a measure of
initiative, and be as visibly our head as possible. By no
longer raising questions of principle and of the Cathedral
Constitution, on which we were not in agreement, he
obtained his proper place as our natural leader, and left
the Dean's position stronger than he found it, and more
nearly what it ought to be.
" The position of a Dean, particularly in a Cathedral
of the old Foundation, is and must be very difficult, and
was more complicated at Chich ester by inconvenient
precedents than in the other Cathedrals with which I am
much acquainted. It was no small honour to a man of
Dean Burgon's impulsive and uncompromising tempera-
ment that he ended his term of office on terms of friend-
ship and affection with his Bishop and with his greater
and lesser Chapters."
And now let us return to the Norwich visit, in which,
his bright and sanguine mind soon throwing off the
vexation arising from the prospect of Capitular troubles
and conflicts, he displayed the spirits of a boy, and
made himself the life and soul of the little parties of
friends who were asked to meet him. He was an accom-
plished retailer of anecdotes, and one of those which he
told at a breakfast party will never be forgotten by the
hearers. He related how a friend of his had resorted to
some conjurer's entertainment. Pressing into the exhibi-
tion-room in a pushing, struggling throng of people, he
felt somebody at his coat pocket ; and putting his hand
there he found, instead of the subtraction of his pocket-
handkerchief which he had expected, that two small
wooden dolls had been introduced. "Oh, no doubt,"
thought he, " the conjurer is going to make game of me
by pretending that he has conjured these dolls into my
128 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
pocket ; but I will be raore than a match for him."
Panting and puffing into the exhibition-room immediately
in front of him was a stout gentleman, whose coat-pocket
presented every now and then, as he struggled with the
crowd, an inviting aperture. In this aperture the two
dolls were very gently ensconced, so that the wearer of
the coat was entirely unconscious of the process ;
tinder " Mr. Fagin's own supervision and drilling the
transfer could not have been more adroitly made. The
narrow straits of the door having been passed, the man
who had disposed of the dolls so cleverly took care to
seat himself as far as possible from the stout gentleman,
to the contents of whose pocket he had made a contribu-
tion. Very soon after the beginning of the entertain-
ment, the conjurer pulled out two dolls, and said he
would order them to go into the pocket of one of the
spectators. " Abra-Cadabra, Fi, fee, fo, fum, pass into
the pocket of that gentleman yonder! " Whereupon he
seemed to throw the dolls into the midst of his audience,
but really passed them up his sleeve by legerdemain.
"And now," added he, "I think if that gentleman"
(pointing out the visitor, into whose pocket he had him-
self put two dolls) " will do me the favour to look in his
pocket, he will find that he has got the dolls." Burgon
here acted the visitor, exhibiting his coat-pockets in proof
of their being empty. Standing up on his chair at the
breakfast-table, and turning his back, he pulled out the
linings of the pockets, and showed them to us in their
empty and flaccid state. And then, turning round and
fronting us, he said ; " No, I don't carry about dolls in my
pocket ; but I shouldn't wonder if that stout gentleman
yonder should find a doll or two in his." Then he acted
the stout gentleman, who, he explained, was also a little
irritable ; " What, me, Sir ? what do you mean, Sir 1 I
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 129
carry dolls! " And then he put his hands into his pocket,
and made believe to bring out the dolls, with a look of
amazement, and horror, a quasi-guilty look, which, as
he did it, was indescribably ludicrous. The audience, he
continued, were convulsed. But oh ! the poor conjurer !
How heavily the wheels of his entertainment seemed to
drag all the night afterwards ! Outdone in a trick by
one of his spectators, who might, for all he knew, be a
great adept in legerdemain, a Prospero or a Merlin ! He
was performing in the presence of one who knew his
secrets, and might perhaps expose them all publicly, and
prevent his having spectators any more ! Nerveless and
spiritless, he contrived to drag on to the end of his pro-
gramme; and then as the visitor, who had so put hini
out of countenance, was passing out with the rest of the
people, a boy, who assisted in the conjuring, touched his
sleeve, and said his master would be greatly obliged by
an interview in his private room. " By all means," said
the visitor, and was ushered into a room at the back of
the platform. Pale and looking care-worn the conjurer
grasped his hand. " My dear good Sir, I'll give you
FIVE POUNDS down on the spot, if you'll show me how
you did that trick ! " " My dear good Sir/' was the
reply, " if you would give me FIFTY POUNDS down on
the spot, I wouldn't show you how I did that trick."
It will be remembered also by those who met Burgon
at another small party at Norwich, when the talk turned
upon sleeplessness, a state of which he had had no small
experience, how he imitated in the most lifelike manner
the sound of a gnat hovering within the bed-curtains,
now more distant, now coming nearer, and at length
settling down upon his victim and poisoning and in-
flaming his blood. One has heard of some great preacher
(was it Mr. Spurgeon himself?) who, in describing to his
VOL. II. K
130 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
congregation the conflict of David with Goliath, imitated
the gesture of slinging in so life-like a manner that the
congregation in the gallery could not help ducking their
heads, under the impression that the smooth stone out of
the brook was coming in among them. The writer dis-
tinctly remembers that when Burgon's gnat was winding
in mazy dance about the room, and seemed by the altered
sound of his drone ft) be getting close up to the company
and preparing for an assault, one felt a strong inclina-
tion to dive under the tablecloth as if under bed-clothes.
" The year 1876," writes the Rev. Henry Deane, to whose
Review of the state of thought and religion in Oxford,
from 1846 to 1 876, the author is already so much indebted,
" was remarkable in the religious history of Oxford, as
being the occasion of the first Mission on the new system
which had been held in Oxford ; a mission planned con-
jointly by Ritualist and Evangelical clergy. The matter
was warmly discussed in the Ruridecanal Chapter, at
which Burgon said ; ' You say in your circular that you
cannot declare the whole counsel of God to your people in
52 weeks ; and now you get down two missioners to do
it for you in one week.' Two sermons " (one preached
at St. Mary's to his own congregation, Feb. 20, the other
before the University on Quinquagesima Sunday, Feb. 27,
both printed in a single pamphlet) ' ; were the outcome
of the Mission. In the first of them (' Home Missions and
Sensational Religion")^ says of Missioners" (of Missioners
in general, not of those employed at Oxford) ; " ' With
a few honourable exceptions, they prove to be gentlemen
conspicuous neither for their learning nor for their
attainments/ This charge he justifies in a footnote;
' There lies before me the favourite (penny) ' Hymnal for
Parochial Mission* and Retreatsi &c., &c. The colophon
of this precious document is as follows: AD MAJORAM
(.'<?) DEI GLORIAM.' He said to me afterwards, ' Per-
haps all they meant to do was to make an attempt at a
rhyme.' I suggested that it was a printer's error.
' No,' he said, ' I don't believe they knew any better.' "
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 131
His main objection to the new system of Missions (for
to the old system, as set on foot by and worked under
Bishop Wilberforce, he is careful to explain that he had
no objection; but, "retaining the old name, we have
drifted into something essentially different,") was the
(certainly very questionable) practice of an Incumbent's
" handing over his flock for so long as the Mission lasts to
the spiritual oversight of a stranger." Accordingly, while
the Mission was carried on at St. Mary's as at other
Churches, it was by himself and his Curates, the services
of the Missioner being not called into request ; and in this
course he was kept in countenance, he tells us, by his
three brother Incumbents of St. Peter's-in-the-East,
All Saints', and St. Giles's. His strictures upon the two
methods adopted by the modern Missioner, one being
" the Confessional," which he holds in thorough Protestant
abhorrence, and the other the inculcation of " the unscrip-
tural tenet that the instantaneous and effectual Con version
of the soul to GOD is quite an ordinary phenomenon in
the spiritual life of individuals," are worth reading, if it
were only as exhibiting his own thoroughly well-balanced
views of religious truth, and the fearless uncompromising
way in which he put them forth. The second Sermon,
entitled ' Humility ad Clerumj is the annual " Humility
Sermon " preached before the University, for which there
is a separate endowment, and in the course of which the
preacher is obliged to introduce certain texts, as one of
the terms of the endowment 1 . The want of humility in
1 The endowment is for two receive (including the 5 58. given
Sermons, one on Humility, to be out of the University Chest to
preached on Quinquagesima Sun day, preachers before the University)
the other on Pride, to be preached 7 15.5. apiece. Burgon was called
on the Sunday next before Advent. upon in 1880 to take "the Pride
It yields 5, which is divided be- Sermon." [See under that year.]
tween the two preachers, who thus
K 2
132 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
the Clergy , and specially in the more able and gifted Clergy,
which leads them to preach and write on the loftiest of
all topics from their own theorizings, without the slight-
est study of the science of Divinity, and to settle before-
hand what Holy Scripture ought to say, instead of entirely
prostrating the heart and the understanding before what
it does say, is the topic of this Sermon ; while in the
latter part of it the lawlessness of a certain section of
the Clergy (again traceable to their want of humility),
and the entire departure of the Kitualists from the first
principle of the Tractarian movement reverence for
authority and from the early teaching of Mr. Newman,
are very explicitly and not too severely censured. Verily
our new Dean was not slow to show his colours.
It was not in Burgon's nature to forget old friends,
more particularly such old friends as had shown him
kindness in trouble. Mr. Finn, the English Consul
at Jerusalem, with the members of his family, had been,
as we have seen, instrumental in saving his life when
he was attacked by the Jerusalem fever in 1862. The
year 1876 found Mrs. and Miss Finn in England, and
at Oxford. What need to say that Burgon renewed
his acquaintance with these ladies, and showed them
all that graceful hospitality, which was quite one of his
characteristic accomplishments ?
Here are Miss Finn's reminiscences of her visit to
Oxford, with which she has been good enough to furnish
the author.
" On March 12, 1876, my mother and I were at the
morning service at St. Mary's, Oxford, and heard Dean
Burgon read the first lesson, Gen. xxvii. to v. 41 2 . When
2 March 12 was in 1876 the Lesson for that Sunday according to
Second Sunday in Lent. Gen. the New Lectionary. It is clear
xxvii. to v. 41 is the First Morning therefore that during the first seven
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 133
he had read the words, ' When Isaac was old and his
eyes were dim/ he paused, sighed, removed his glasses
from his eyes, and after carefully rubbing them, put
them on again. The effect was irresistibly funny. The
whole chapter, and the Sermon on the history of Rebecca
which followed, were read with much pathos ; and in
his own peculiar fashion he conjured up the whole scene
before us, bringing out the tenderness in Rebecca's
character, and her sorrows.
" On the following Tuesday morning we breakfasted
with him in his rooms at Oriel, the floor piled with
books, but the table loaded with every imaginable
good thing, and in the centre the Founder's cup filled
with flowers.
" The record in my diary of the conversation is, ' Long
discussion on slang, and then on the proportions of
the Temple Area/ The latter was a subject that in-
terested us both deeply, and he told those present of
the wonderful beauty of the stained glass windows in
the ' Dome of the Rock,' which stands on the site of the
Temple at Jerusalem. He explained how the jewelled
effect of the glass was produced by refraction from the
tiles in which each pane was set, which my mother
was the first to observe, and had pointed it out to
Mr. Burgon on the spot."
We have seen how lively an interest Burgon took
in the spiritual welfare of the Undergraduates, and how
much of his time he devoted not only to instructing
them in the Holy Scriptures, but also to cultivating
their acquaintance, and seeking to gain an influence
over them. It would have been strange indeed if many
of them had not responded to such self-sacrificing and
years of the New Lectionary, when letter to the (then) Dean of Norwich,
it was optional with the clergy to which is given above, vol. ii. p. 61.
use either the Old or the New, The New Lectionary came into use
Burgon used the New, greatly as he Jan. i, 1872, and became imperative
disliked it, in preference to the Old, Jan. I, 1879, having hitherto been
in deference to authority. See his optional.
134 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
disinterested efforts in their behalf. But they did so
most warmly and cordially, and were on the point of
getting up a testimonial to him in acknowledgment of
his services. He declined this in a letter to a repre-
sentative of theirs, who had written to him on the
subject, and who, having graduated, was about to
present himself for Ordination. The letter is not only
characteristic throughout, but seems to be a commentary
on the text, " I seek not yours, but you." Here are some
excerpts from it :
To A YOUNG B.A.
"Oriel, March 7, 1876.
"Dear Mr. Knollys,
" No ; I dislike very cordially 'testimonials,' as they are
called You will remember me when I am gone, I
hope. I shall never forget all of you. My happiest moments
have been spent in teaching some of you. None but
images of brightness and pleasure are connected in my
memory (and will be till I die), with the Undergraduate
members of the University. If you wish to show me your
goodwill, do it in this way; help one another to live pure
lives. Discourage every form of vice and sin. When
freshmen come up, get hold of them, and influence them
for good. Be zealous for the truth. Be not ashamed
to confess Christ. Be bold on His behalf. Be strict
with juniors. Be faithful in the practice of earnest
Brayer. Every act of this class, which any one of you
shall at any time perform, will be the thing I covet
most at your hands, the only thing I at all covet ; and
if any thing I may ever have said in your hearing shall
indirectly have been the cause of such acts in any of
you, do believe me, that will be the most precious
' testimonial ' you could possibly offer me. Tell me
not in reply that ' I shall not know of this, and that
therefore it will be no tribute to me* I answer ; 1 shall
not know, true ; BUT GOD WILL ! and that is more than
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 135
enough for me, and ought to be quite enough for your-
selves also.
" Gratefully, dear Mr. Knollys,
" Yours,
" JOHN W. BURGON."
In sending the above letter to the author, Mr. Knollys,
the gentleman to whom it was addressed, adds that " after
the Bishop of Lincoln " (Christopher Wordsworth), " had
in vain tried to persuade Dean Burgon to reconsider his
decision, a paper signed by all those anxious to join in
the testimonial was sent to Mr. Burgon, who acknow-
ledged it in the following letter :
"Oriel, March 18, 1876.
"Dear Mr. Knollys, The expression of kind feeling
towards myself, which you have conveyed to me in
your name and in the name of thirty of your friends,
is most acceptable, most precious to me. I shall give
your address a place of honour among the papers which
I preserve, and shall rejoice greatly if I, may some day
have the good fortune to see some of those names
emerging into honourable prominence. But there is
a better thing than coming before the world. This
framework of things is passing away from us, there
is no telling how rapidly ! And the names which will
shine brightest all through the coming ages will be the
names of those who have most effectively striven to
' keep themselves unspotted from the world/
" Tell your friends this, with the assurance of my
brotherly sympathy and affectionate goodwill. I cannot
think about my departure without a kind of anguish ;
cannot write about it without saying too much about
self. But this I may allow myself to declare, that I
owe to that body, which you so well represent, some
of the happiest hours of my life, and that the memory
of you will many a time gladden me, when I shall be
far away.
136 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
" Asking you all for an abiding place in your prayers,
I am ever,
" My dear Mr. Knollys,
" Your Friend,
" JOHN W. BURGON."
We now come to a passage in the life of Burgon
creditable to himself, as showing not only the esteem
which his labours at Oxford had won for him in high
places, but also the equanimity with which he submitted
to what must have been to one, who loved Oxford as he
did, a very keen disappointment. It is to be wished
that it were equally creditable to the Government of
the day, who seem to have been terrified out of a most
suitable appointment by a few disparaging words in
Parliament, inspired no doubt by the (so-called) Liberal
party in the University, who had been thwarted on more
than one occasion by Burgon's stedfast and unflinching
Conservatism, and by his efforts to preserve the con-
nexion of the University with the Church. This party
was for revolutionising Oxford ; he for reforming it
indeed, where it needed reform (had not the new Theo-
logical School been established very mainly by his
influence?), but always on the old lines. On the ioth
of August in the following year (1877) " the Universities
of Oxford and Cambridge Act," which gave legislative
powers over the Universities and the Colleges therein, to
two sets of Commissioners, seven for each University, re-
ceived the Royal Assent. As the names were originally
drafted, when the Bill was discussed in the House of
Lords, March 31, 1876, Burgon's name stood third on
the Oxford List. On the 4th clause, which nominated
the Commissioners, the Earl of Morley moved as an
amendment to strike out the words, " The Very Reverend
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 137
John Williams (sic) Bargon (sic), Dean of Chichester 3 ."
Allowing that Burgon was the only one on the proposed
Oxford List of Commissioners " who was thoroughly
acquainted with the modern phase of Oxford," Lord
Morley alleged that he was "unfortunately known there
as a most decided partisan," and that his " appointment
would be unacceptable to most of the Colleges." Lord
Salisbury most pertinently replied that " it was the
duty of Her Majesty's Government to find gentlemen
who would represent different colours of opinion," that
the Dean of Chichester's appointment "had recommended
itself to the Government on the ground that he was
well acquainted with Oxford, and that, though a
clergyman deeply attached to the Established Church,
he was not a man of extreme theological views." In
a House of 90 Members the amendment was negatived
by a majority of 30. On June 12, 1876, the University
of Oxford Bill came before the House of Commons,
Burgon 's most kind friend and patron, Mr. Gathorne
Hardy (now Lord Cranbrook), whose influence had
procured for him the offer of the Deanery of Chichester,
moving the Second Reading. Mr. Osborne Morgan, in
moving his Amendment, reminded the House that the
Dean of Chichester's name had been "actually chal-
lenged, not only by a debate, but by a division 'in
another place,' " and added, " Surely, if it was neces-
sary to place on the Commission some representative
3 The words are given as Hansard follows the speech, the name is
gives them, and every citation is spelt Bagon. Either printers were
made verbatim from the Parlia- careless, or reporters made strange
mentary Debates. [See the Third mistakes. In glancing over the
Series, vol. ccxxviii (from March Debates one's eye catches such
15, 1876 to May 2, 1876) Col. 933, comical blunders as the "Hebdominal
in which Lord Morley's Speech will Council," (Query Abdominal ? ).
be found.] In the motion, which
138 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
of Dr. 4 Burgon's school of theology, some less osten-
tatiously aggressive he might almost say pugnacious
champion of that school might have been selected.
Oxford men had not forgotten they could not forget
how only a few years ago Dr. Burgon had endeavoured
to exclude from the University Pulpit" (yes ; this was
the sore point ; this was the unpardonable sin) " one of
the best and ablest men who had ever adorned the
English Church, or any other Church, the Dean of West-
minster 5 ." Mr. Lowe, following in the same debate, con-
descended to what one of the Ministers in a private
letter caHed " a vulgar personality." " The Dean of Chi-
chester's pretensions," he said (to a place upon the Com-
mission), "were of such a nature that even the House
of Lords could not stand them. He spoke with great
respect of the Dean of Chichester, but he believed he had
been properly described as a 'jocose fanatic' a character
he had built up for himself and maintained with such
consistency during life, that if a case were put before him
with the Church interest on one side, and every interest
on the other, it would be impossible for him, with every
effort, to give an impartial judgment G ."
These unworthy attacks had the intended effect of
excluding from the Commission the one member of it,
who would have acted as a drag upon the (so-called)
Liberal (that is, secularizing and revolutionary) prin-
ciples of " young Oxford." In the last month of the year
Burgon received an intimation through his kind friend,
Mr. Gathorne Hardy, that as his continuance on the Com-
4 So he calls him. But Burgon than on an expensive and somewhat
never took his Doctor's Degree, as empty honour.
the Statutes of Chichester Cathedral 5 Hansard 'Parliamentary Debates?
did not demand it of him, and as vol. ccxxix. (From 3 May, 1876 to
feeling, no doubt, that his very nar- 16 June, 1876; Col. 1722.
row resource? might be better spent 6 Hansard ^as above). Col. 1744.
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 139
mission, after what had passed in Parliament about him,
might embarrass the Government, they would be glad if
he would allow his name to be withdrawn. The letter in
which he sets Lord Salisbury free to act as he pleases in
the matter (or rather so much of it as may with propriety
be published) is, by the kindness of Lord Cranbrook,
presented to the reader at the end of the record of this
year. Part of an earlier letter (of June 22) is also given,
from which it will be seen what line he would have taken
in the matter of Academical Reform, had his name con-
tinued on the Commission.
The whole transaction, so damaging to the character
of the Government for not having the courage of their
opinions, and to that of the Liberal Party at Oxford for
their unfairness and unwillingness to hear both sides,
cannot be better summarised than in the following sen-
tence of a letter to the author from one of the present
Heads of Colleges ;
" There was much to recommend Burgon for a seat
on the Commission ; but, seeing that Mr. Gladstone had
already de-Christianized the University and the Colleges
by 'the Universities Tests' Act,' there is no wonder that
the extreme Secularist party in the House of Commons
should view the selection of him as * reactionary ' (that
I believe to be their slang term) ; and Conservative
Governments derive their name, in the old way, a non
conservando"
In the August of this year a correspondence took place
between Burgon and the Dean of Ely (Dr. Merivale), a
brief reference to which may be useful, as the question on
which the correspondence turned is one, which in these
days of frequent Celebrations of the Holy Communion
is continually recurring, and is most often settled in
a manner adverse to that in which these two authori-
ties, learned and able men both of them, and the Dean
140 LIFE OF DEAN BUEGON.
of Ely particularly remarkable for his soundness of
judgment and moderation, would have had it settled.
The question on which Burgon seems to have con-
sulted his brother Dean was whether the Priest-Vicars 7
of Chichester Cathedral, having already communicated
at the Early Celebration, might properly assist in the
distribution of the elements at the later irilhoitt again
communicating. The Dean of Ely points out that many
Clergymen, being single-handed, are obligedi celebrate
the Holy Communion twice in the same day, sometimes
even more than twice, having to communicate the sick
after Church in private houses 8 ; " and I do not under-
stand," he adds,
" on what principle you should feel justified in cele-
brating twice, but not justified in receiving twice with-
out celebrating I fear that to allow a man to
assist in the distribution without receiving, is the same
thing in jinnrijile as to allow him to attend without
communicating. To this ' Non-Communicating Attend-
ance,' or ' hearing Mass ' (the same thing), I hold that
Art. xxv. and one of the Homilies x are significantly
opposed, to say no more As to assisting with-
out receiving, I must for my own part stand on the
7 Called Minor Canons in Cathe- Homilies." Qffke worthy receiving
drale of the New Foundation. <md reverent esteeming oftf/e Sncra-
8 It should be understood that the ment of the Body and Blood of Ch ri*t.
reception of the Sacred Elements by " Our loving Saviour hath ordained
the Celebrant himself, before he and established the remembrance of
delivers them to the people, has his great mercy expressed in his
always been considered both in the passion, in the institution of his
Eastern and Western Church indis- heavenly supper, where everyone of
pensable. us must be guests and not gazers,
9 " The Sacraments were not eaters and not lookers, feeding our-
ordained of Christ to be gazed upon, selves, and not hiring other to feed
or to be carried about, but that we for us, that we may live by our own
should duly use them." [Art. xxv. meat, and not perish for hunger
Last paragraph.] whiles other devour all." [First
1 Dean Meri vale refers no doubt to paragraph.]
Homily xv. in " The Second Tome of
THE C HIGH ESTER LlFE. 141
Rubric 2 and Canon xxi. 3 (' as oft as he administereth,'
&c.). In King Edward's Liturgy I think you will find
it still more expressly declared that all Ministers shall
receive first, in order that they may be prepared to help
the Priest in the distribution 4 ."
Burgon is sometimes thought of and talked of as if he
had too good an opinion of his own judgment to consult
or be guided by the more eminent and judicious of his
brethren. Let this slight incident suffice to show that
such an estimate of him requires at all events very con-
siderable modification.
There are those who, while passionately vehement for
truth, are by no means equally vehement for righteous-
ness. This was not Burgon's case. In the Michaelmas
of this year (when he had removed to Chichester and
was just getting into his harness there) he put forth a
pamphlet, " addressed to Members of Congregation ; es-
pecially to the Vice-Chancellor, the Proctors, and the
other Members of the Hebdomadal Council," headed thus ;
' Our present Lodging- Ji on $e system, immoral : and requiring
Reform." 1 This pamphlet being marked STKICTLY PKI-
VATE, no quotation can properly be made from it ; but
the matter which it concerns is shortly told. In Col-
2 "Then shall the Minister first Provided, that every Minister, as
receive the Communion in both oft as he administer etk the Coni-
kinds himself, and then proceed munion, shall first receive that
to deliver the same to the Bishops, Sacrament himself"
Priests, and Deacons, in like manner * "Then shall thePriest first receive
(if any lie present}," &c.,&c. [Rubric the Communion in both kinds him-
after the Prayer of Consecration.] self, and next deliver it to other
3 " In every Parish-church . . . Ministers, if any there be present
the Holy Communion shall be (that they may be ready to hel'^t the
ministered by the Parson ... so chief Minister}, and after to the
often, and at such times, as every people." [First Book of Ed. vi.
parishioner may communicate at the 1549.] And similarly (as to the
least thrice in the year (whereof the point in question) King Edward's
feast of Easter to be one), .... Second Book of 1552.
142 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
leges the servants are, as a rule, male ; in the Lodging-
houses girls are employed. In former days, Under-
graduates, on first coming up to reside in Oxford, were
always provided with rooms in College ; and it was not
until the last term of their residence that they were
liberated from the closer surveillance involved in being
domesticated within the College walls, and allowed (indeed
required) to take lodgings in the town. Even then, it
was evident that the system must be attended with risks,
and absolutely demanded that the licence of the Univer-
sity authorities should be given only to Lodging-house
keepers of the most respectable and well-established
character, and such as might be depended upon to engage
none but respectable maidservants, and, when they were
engaged, to keep a sharp eye upon them. But in 1868
the ancient discipline was so far relaxed (under pressure
no doubt from the numbers applying for Matriculation)
that Undergraduates were allowed, on first coming up, to
lodge out of College. At the time of Burgon's protest
he calculates that one-third of the whole number of
young men in xtalu pvpillari were so domiciled. His
leading gravamen was that six of the licensed Lodging-
house keepers (he refused to give names, as that would
only have ensured the withdrawal of the licence from the
parties, without any improvement of the system) had
temporarily filled up vacancies for servants in their
households, by applying for some of the inmates of a
Penitentiary, which he and a clerical friend of his had
established. The commotion made by this pamphlet was
something terrific. An Indignation Meeting was held in
the Council Chamber (Nov. 22). at which he was charged
with cowardice (!) for " waiting until he got away, instead
of setting down his foot," while he was resident in Oxford,
" and telling them to their face of what was going on."
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 143
The University authorities seem to have shared in the
indignation of the citizens. The Censor of Unattached
Students (that is, of Students not entered at any College,
but simply matriculated at the University), whose office
would make him guardian of the morals of such students,
is reported to have said at a private party ; " The
Bishop " (Dr. Mackarness) " says we have no faith ; Bur-
gon that we have no morals. How can an University
live without faith or works ? " In vain did Burgon ex-
plain in a published letter to the Vice-Chancellor that he
had never denied for a moment that many Lodging-
house keepers were of the highest respectability 5 ; that
he had never charged even the six guilty ones, who had
resorted for servants to so questionable a source, with
any evil design, they had only erred from culpable
neglect, and from the real difficulty of finding respect-
able maidservants ; in vain did he allege, in answer to
the charge of cowardice, that he had pressed upon the
University authorities the viciousness of the Lodging-
house system, as strongly as he was able, in the spring
of 1875. before his appointment to the Deanery: but
that no steps had been taken in consequence. Now
therefore, he said, he was determined not to rest, till
steps were taken. He suffered deeply, however, from
5 In the inidstofall the worry and ton user] to say, aside, of his friend
annoyance which the incident must Dr. Frowd of Corpus, after inviting
have caused him, his humour cannot him to dinner."
help breaking out. " Some lodging- "Mo." [i. e. Moses] "Griffith,"
house keepers," he admits, "are tender-hearted but obstreperous,
even entitled to extraordinary praise. was one of the "characters" of old
One admirable woman (Mrs. Oxford. They are all gone now.
Bassett) is as solicitous about her those " characters," one tendency of
lodger's reading as if she were his modern (so-called) progress being to
Tutor. I have heard the objurga- reduce all characters to a dead level,
tion; and 'it was as good as a comedy, one uniform uninteresting type.
Sir ! 'as old Mo. Griffith of Mer-
144 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
' the indecent and offensive language " which the Ox-
ford newspaper press freely hurled upon him, and which
made him feel for a time as if he were alienated from old
friends both in the City and University. Thus he writes
to his last Curate, the Reverend G. H. Gwilliarn, who had
addressed to him a kind letter of sympathy under the
foul abuse which had been heaped upon him :
" Deanery, 20 Nov
" My dear and kind Friend, Pray have the comfort of
knowing that your words are to me a cordial to a sick
man. No one seems to have any idea what it has cost
and is costing me to stand all this publicity, misrepre-
sentation, odium, unkindness. But you enter into all.
and do not fail me at a moment when I feel the want of
friendship most. God bless you !
" Ever yours affectionately,
" J. W. B."
<: It was a disastrous business," continues Mr. Gwil-
liam. " No considerable modification of the system, such
as the Dean desired, was the result. And it was a terrible
shock to his popularity in Oxford. I believe it was the
chief cause that he was allowed to leave Oxford without
any memorial of his long and faithful pastorate. It cer-
tainly cost him his seat on the Oxford Commission.
Dearly as he loved his Alma Mater, it may be imagined
what pleasure his nomination on the Commission caused
him. Then came this unhappy affair: the citizens, in-
cluding many of his own parishioners, were furious. He
had always been an object of aversion to the Radicals
both in University and general politics. Strong pressure
was brought to bear on the Government. Doubtless
they were moved by fear of losing a seat at the next
Election. When his name was challenged in the House,
they shamefully abandoned him."
There remains nothing more to be added to the record
of this year beyond the letters to Mr. Gathorne Hardy
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 145
already referred to, and five others, addressed to Miss
Monier- Williams, which last will give some idea of the
elasticity of spirit which buoyed him up amid very
serious discomforts and annoyances, and also of the
affectionate interest with which he clung to the old
disciples, who owed so much to his instructions and his
influence.
To Miss MONIEK- WILLIAMS.
"Oriel, March 9, 1876.
" My dearest little Girl,
"Now I must really leave off. Fifty stupid things
occur to me, to make you laugh ; but I have scarcely the
heart to write them. One is that, when I am in full
dress as Dean, I am so thin that I am not sure you will
forgive me. . . . My friends tease me by reminding me
that henceforth I must give up playing with the children
in the streets : but I am determined to carry on my old
ways when none of the Canons are looking. . . . By the way,
we have a capital Bishop. You would delight in him
and his cat. He cannot breakfast until Puss is seated on
a cushion at his side ; and then the poor animal keeps
patting him with his paw every few minutes for a bit of
bread. Quite a pretty sight !
" ' Leave off Mr. Dean leave off! ' Not if you call
me ' Mr. Dean.' I am sick of the sound. My gardener
calls me by that name (' Yes, Mr. Dean ' ; ' No, Mr.
Dean ') two or three times a minute. I cannot forget
my trouble turn where I will
" Ever, my dearest Girl,
" Your loving and faithful friend,
J. W. B."
To THE RIGHT HONOURABLE GATHORNE HARDY, M.P.
"Oxford, June 12, 1876.
" Dear Mr. Gathorne Hardy,
"There will be skilful navigation needed, to get
that Bill through the troubled waters of the House of
VOL. II. L
146 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
Commons, without damage to the Bill. I deprecate all
attempts to prejudge any of the questions which the
Commissioners will have to consider. If the Headships
are taken from the Church 6 , the one remaining safe-
guard will be lost. Scarcely less mischievous (though
in a very different way) should I deem the endowment
of the unattached system 7 ; which is a mere blot, a
mere excrescence, and a confession of weakness, for
which I have a triumphant remedy. Pray let us try to
protect this Bill against the enemies of true religion,
who are enraged at seeing the Conservatives doing what
they had intended the Liberals should do instead. Their
wrath against the only Clergyman on the Commission
is a suggestive circumstance.
" Ever very gratefully and affectionately yours,
" JOHN W. BURGOX."
TO MlSS MONIER-WlLLTAMS.
" The Deanery, Sleepy Hollow, Aug. 10, 1876.
" My dearest little Girl,
" When I was last in Oxford. I fully intended calling
at Merton Lea, but simply could not. Then you sent me
a lovely nosegay ; and I went away smelling it, like a
Knave of Clubs ; and I was so pleased with my decora-
tion, and with you, that I thought I was going at once
to write. But somehow, here in f Sleepy Hollow,' I run
in a kind of groove, and often feel conscious that a
toasting fork 8 would be a desideratum.
" What to say in reply to your allusions to S. Mary's,
I know not. My heart is so much there, so wound up
with the place and the people : moreover, in my sim-
plicity, I had been secretly planning for myself so much
6 He means, if other than Church- to be members of the University,
men are allowed to be Heads of without belonging to any of the
Colleges ; if Church man ship is not Colleges.
made an essential qualification for 8 To quicken his steps by applica-
being the Head of a College. tion a tergo.
7 The system of allowing persons
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 147
of increased usefulness there, resolving to teach you all
this thing and that, that it is very difficult indeed for me
to play the oracle, and speak as sagely and gravely, as
I could speak, if the place were not _ S. Mary's, and
if my Ella was not one of the Congregation.
" But I am convinced that all that happens here is for
onr good, if we will but accept GOD'S discipline. Thus,
I, for my own part, bow, as meekly as I know how, to
a kind of lot I never wished for, and,, finding that at
least my new life gives me more leisure for study,
in spite of your sweet objurgations, I study, I confess,
very hard, and try in this way to make my advantage
out of what seems to be my discomfiture.
" For those I have left behind, I have little doubt that,
if they will but do as I am doing, they will find their
acquiescence attended by the like results. That which
sends us back to our Prayer Book, to our Bible, to our
GOD, is good, is best for us. I know that it is delightful
unspeakably to be the channel of blessedness to others,
and that one never stops to think, nor indeed cares, how
fond of oneself people may choose to grow. But rny
reason my better reason tells me that it is unsalutary
for Pastor and people alike, when he is much thought of.
It is sectarian. It is alien to the spirit of true Religion.
It may easily become a snare for all concerned, a snare
all round.
" There ! I have told you my mind. You see me on
the paper, so much do I mean and feel what I have been
saying.
" I am ever, my dearest Girl, as you know,
" Your affectionate and loving Friend,
"J.W.B."
To MlSS MONIEK-WlLLIAMS.
"Deanery, Chichester, October 27, 1876.
" My dearest little Girl,
" I think the Cooking Class all well ; but it is not
knowing how to make pastry for example but knowing
how pastry should le made, that a Lady should learn. The
L 2
148 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
skilful flavouring of soups, the excellent cooking of vege-
tables, the secrets of stewing, boiling, roasting, all these
are the things to be shown by a first-rate Cook ; and then
you can guide a Cook yourself. You will smile to hear that
I am such a Molly : but I really judge a Lady very much
by the way her dinner is served up not for a party (for
/fff
is a different affair), but for every day. A roast leg
of mutton in a dish Boiled all round the edge with gravy ;
cnlil French beans ; watery spinach ; mashed potatoes
like pomatum (instead of being floury, pressed though
a tammy) ; and pastry as heavy as lead, these are the
things to avoid, my dear ! Presently comes an omelette,
weighing a pound ! I would rather a hundred times dine
off bread and cheese, and a mug of honest home-made
beer.
"You say you are to be in London for a fortnight
from the 2nd Nov. My Lectures are on the I3th, i4th,
1 5th. So perhaps we might go and see something
together in London. People seeing us would be sure
to think that I was on a lark with my y - w :
but we don't care for the public, do we ?
" Seriously, if Mamma is good, she shall be of the
party.
" Thank you heartily, dear, for the wrapper. To
make, or to be, a comforter, seems natural to you.
" Ever, my dearest Ella, your loving Friend,
" J. W. B."
To Miss MONIER- WILLIAMS.
"Deanery, Dec. 12, 1876.
"Dearest Ella, If a young man (what are you
laughing at ?) cannot send a line to his young woman
(what are you laughing at ?) on her birthday ......
Well, I declare this laughter is unbearable ! I'll write
to your Papa, and I'll do it in Sanskrit 9 . so that you
will never know what I have said about you.
" (' No ' says the saucy Girl, ' nor he either.')
9 Sir Monier Monier - Williams of Sanskrit in the University of
was then, as he is now, Professor Oxford.
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 149
" But, as I was saying when you interrupted me, on
your dear Birthday 1 I must needs send you a few loving
lines. And so, with nothing to send you but my love,
and nothing to say, except that I wish you whatever
good things are best for you, here I am! Long may
you be spared to those who love you ; and they to you !
And as you grow older, may you grow holier wiser
better (dearer and sweeter you cannot be): and may
you know as little of sorrow as is necessary for your
perfection ; and with the sorrow may there always come
that blessed inward peace, which verily the world can
neither give nor take away.
" I would tell you of something to entertain you, if
I had it to tell. My mind is just now full of my birds.
There are some old jackdaws floating about the Cathedral,
who this morning thought they might as well come and
take a mouthful as not. So they came to reconnoitre
and at last looked in at my window. Would you believe
it ? They were so disgusted at my appearance that away
they flew at once ; and to judge from the expression
on their countenances they do not mean to come near
me any more.
" Ever, my dearest little Girl,
" Your affectionate J. W. B."
To THE EIGHT HONOUEABLE GATHOENE HAEDY, M.P.
"Deanery, Chichester, Dec. 12, 1876.
" Dear Mr. Gathorne Hardy, I should be unworthy of
your friendship, if I could hesitate to return any answer
but one to your kind communication, this instant re-
ceived. I unconditionally set Lord Salisbury free to act
in any way he pleases. I write the words, be assured,
without one particle of bitterness ; and yet with my
eyes wide open to all the bearings of the case. My
connexion with Oxford as a resident had been severed
four months, when Lord Salisbury was so good as to
write to me (loth March, 1876) as follows: 'No one
1 The letter was to reach the was the 1 3th ; and had to be posted
young lady on her Birthday, which therefore on the I2th.
150 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
knows Oxford better than you do ; and the interests of
Theological study and Religious teaching in the Univer-
sity require to be well looked after. I hope therefore
that your engagements will permit you to undertake
this useful work.'
" Perfectly well aware was I, when I accepted this
flattering proposal, that Lord Salisbury had made the
very appointment which the enemies of ' Theological
study and Religious teaching in the University ' would
most hate. I knew very well that the presence on the
Commission of one who would indeed represent the
Church would prove gall and wormwood to the large
and powerful party in and out of Oxford, whose one
Idea is to injure the Church, whose one object at this
time is to sever the connexion which has subsisted from
the beginning between the Church and the University.
It is me, whether resident or non-resident, me that the
enemy has been all along straining every nerve to get
rid of. I learn that they have succeeded I
rely on your known fairness and friendship for taking-
care that every word I have written shall be submitted
to the Chancellor 2 , when you let him know how facile
you have found me. I shall then have discharged my
duty, as faithfully as I know how, towards God as well
as towards man: towards the University of Oxford,
whose unworthy but devoted son I shall ever remain,
as well as towards Lord Salisbury, and I will add
towards yourself. Far be it from me to embarrass my
party, or to hesitate about jumping overboard, in order
ever so little to lighten the ship. I again assure
you that I do it without a particle of bitterness,
or indeed of concern, except for Oxford and for the
Church.
" I am ever, my dear Mr. Gathorne Hardy,
"Affectionately and faithfully yours,
" JOHN W. BURGON.
" P. 8. I do not mark my letter Private, only because
I really care not who sees it."
2 He means Lord Salisbury, the Chancellor of the University.
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 151
TO MlSS MONIER-WlLLIAMS.
"Deanery, Dec. 13, 1876.
" My dearest little Girl,
" But it is getting late, and I must leave off. I forgot
to tell you that I give my birds an expensive kind of
rape and canary on Sundays and Saints' Days, by way
of creating in them a regard for the Prayer Book. To-day 3
they had a dose. I daresay they will think there is a
4 Saint Ella.' Poor things ! they might make a greater
mistake than that !
" Don't call me ' Mr.' Dean, whatever you do. I shall
think you mean to cut me, if you introduce c mistery '
into so plain a matter as our friendship.
" Ever your affectionate,
" J. W. B."
1877.
In this year appeared the threefold pamphlet, entitled
1 The New Lectwnary examined, with reasons for its amend-
ment at the present time,' in which Burgon wrote the last
paper, expanding and pursuing into particulars the ob-
jections to the New Lectionary, which he had already
advanced in his Sermon on the last Sunday of 1871. In
speaking of that Sermon [see sup. p. 59 et sequent."] we
anticipated all that needs to be said on the subject of
that pamphlet, and may now pass on.
Several interesting letters belong to this year, excerpts
from which are here subjoined. They record his dis-
satisfaction with the scanty and unsatisfactory minis-
terial work which he found at Chichester ; the devotion
of all his leisure to the indispensable preparation of his
great work on Textual Criticism ; his intense love and
longing for Oxford, revived by a recent visit there ; and
his high estimation of the influence exercised by the
works of Sir Walter Scott. The final letter, addressed
3 Miss Williams's Birthday.
152 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
to one of the young men who had attended his Bible
Class at Oriel, not only shows his lively and abiding in-
terest in those whom he had instructed in the Scriptures,
but contains much valuable advice for all who contem-
plate taking Holy Orders.
To Miss WASHBOUKNE.
" The Deanery, Chichester,
"Easter Monday, 1877.
"My dear Secretary, It was very kind of you to
send me an Easter greeting. I thought of you, though I
did not write. There cannot be a greater desire for me
on the part of those whose presence in Church used to
be the happiness of my life, than there is in my bosom
for Hi em. My mini Serial work here is a kind of unreal
shadow ; a lesson read an occasional sermon preached
I don't know to whom. That is all ! And I can follow
up no teaching have no classes have no disciples of
any sort : so that my influence as a Teacher seems at an
end. Of course, I remind myself that GOD has ordered
it for me ; and so I acquiesce, and throw myself with my
ivhole heart into my great work ; and I make visible pro-
gress. Well I may ; for I never take a walk rise early
retire late and give it every minute of my time :
much to the discomfiture of all my other duties.
" So really, Miss, if you ever have to smart for your
raillery, by finding that there is a good deal more of the
work than you wish for, I shall remind you that it
serves you right. Another Secretary I have not found,
could not find if I were to try, and I would not em-
ploy her if I could.
" But the history of my silence, or rather of my not
sending you things to copy, is just this. I feel more and
more that I had better, before I set about deliberately
writing my Book, accumulate all my materials, as well
as finish the fashioning of all my tools. Indeed, until all
this is done, I can make no real progress. So knowing
that you have a great job in hand, I have thought it best
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 153
not to interrupt you in it by asking you to copy what is
not pressing.
" Between ourselves, Dean G., Lord A. C., as Chairman
of the Revision Committee, and your humble Servant,
are to breakfast with the good Bp. of L. on the 26th
April, during Convocation 4 .
' Talking of Convocation, and all such things, I almost
sigh to see quiet Lent over, and to know that the frivo-
lity of dining out is to begin again. The only pleasant
invitation I have had for a long time is one from the
Eoyal Academy on the first Saturday in May. What
with Gresham Lectures and so on, I shall not get on
so fast with my book, I fear, as I desire. But it is a
satisfaction to me the days lengthening out, and to
know that even my interruptions must come to an end
at last.
" I mean to bring you a lot of volumes of pamphlets,
which sadly want indexing ; by way of giving you a
little variety of work.
" Ever yours very gratefully,
"J. W. B."
To Miss MONIER- WILLIAMS.
"Deanery, Whit-Tuesday [May 22], 1877.
" My dearest Girl,
"Yes Oxford does indeed look lovely just now. I
think she put on her sweetest smile the day I was there,
in order to break her old lover's heart, which was un-
kind. But I forgave her, she did smile so very sweetly.
Moreover she whispered, as she passed me, ' Am very
fond of you, remember !" and put her lips so close to
my ear I was obliged in self-defence to turn round and
kiss them.
4 The object of this meeting was fore, that Lord Alwyne Compton, as
to take into consideration whether Chairman of the Committee of Con-
any thing could be done to improve vocation for the Revision of the
the New Lectionary before the use Lectionary, should be present, and
of it became obligatory upon the hear the objections of persons who
clergy. It was indispensable, there- had written against it.
154 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
" What rubbish I am writing ! but it is ' all along of
Oxford.'
" Ever, my dearest Girl, and longing to have yon here,
" Your affectionate friend,
"J. W. B."
TO AN ATTACHED MEMBER OF ONE OF HIS OXFORD
BIBLE CLASSES.
" Turvey Abbey, Bedford,
"Sept. 13, 1877.
" . . . . For my own part, I am trying to make
Chichester my home indeed. But it is wondrous hard,
impossible rather is it, to uproot oneself effectually
from Oxford, the happy, thrice happy home of 34 years
of active life. I never catch a glimpse of those towers
and spires of one spire especially without feeling my
eyelids moistened, and my heart beating inconveniently
fast.
" I was there lately. Oxford is a changed place the
same eternally; yet changed entirely to one who leaves
it for a few years: changed, I mean, in respect of the
disappearance of old faces, and those minor notes of
identity which make you feel that you are at home. But
it is still as yesterday that I was there ; and the flowers
and shrubs round St. Mary's were bright as ever. And I
went in and out exactly as of yore. And I felt like one
in a dream.
" Ever, my dear Girl,
"Yours faithfully,
" J. W. B."
To A CANDIDATE FOE HOLY ORDERS, WHO HAD ATTENDED
HIS BIBLE CLASS AT ORIEL.
"Sept. 21, 1877.
" To speak of something far more important, your-
self and your coming Ordination.
"I will not fail to remember you (D. V.). I trust that a
THE C HIGH ESTER LlFE. 155
blessing will indeed attend your dedication of yourself to
God's service. He is the best of masters, and there is no
service like His. But He will have an undivided heart.
You will do well to bethink yourself at this time of the
probable meaning of valid Ordination, as explained by
our Lord Himself in St. John. (Christ the door through
which, or rather through Whom, you will have to enter.)
You should also give considerable attention to the Pas-
toral Epistles. Of all the many topics that present them-
selves. I am sincerely at a loss to know which to select for
a lew words of counsel. But I will offer you two hints ;
i. The first, Be more attentive than ever to the read-
ing of Scripture. You will find Dr. Mill's work simply
invaluable. Begin with his volume of sermons (the cost
io/- or is/-). I suppose you have read his Sermons
on the Temptation? Also be sure you are thoroughly
familiar with Pearson on the Creed. These books are
good commentaries and helps to the meaning of Scrip-
ture.
" 2. Beware of joining any party in the Church. Si 'and
on the P. B. The Church Union is detestable, as bad
in its way almost as the Church Association. Join
neither ; avoid all singularities, and tricks, and party
names, and the like. Be a simple English clergyman.
" I will add a third hint.
" 3. In preparing a sermon, do this : always write your
sermons. Never exceed 20 minutes. Take easy sub-
jects,, and treat them naturally (as the fifth Command-
ment or the fourth) ; or take an easy Parable or Miracle,
or a character which you think you understand. Let
every sermon leave a definite impression, express one
particular truth or duty. Be sure you know what
you mean to say, and take care to say it. Go to the
point at once ; never beat round the bush, and waste
your time with preface, &c., &c., &c. As soon as you
have said what you want to say, leave off. Write fast
always on one side of the paper. Correct at leisure, next
day, on the blank page opposite, pruning away all re-
dundancies of thought or expression.
" And take care to be natural, and try to get rid of
156 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
self-consciousness, and think only of God and the pre-
ciousness of the souls you are addressing.
" Adieu, my dear Knollys !
" Ever affectionately yours,
" J. W. BURGON.
" What need to speak of the indispensable nature of
private prayer, and a life above the world- 1 "
To THE RIGHT HONOURABLE GATHORNE
HARDY, M.P.
" The Deanery, Chichester,
"St. Thomas' Day, 1877.
" Dear Mr. Gathorne Hardy,
" I read your speech at Edinburgh with much interest
and satisfaction. Specially congenial to me was your
tribute to Sir Walter Scott, to whom I suspect tens of
thousands of English gentlemen owe not a little of their
chivalry of sentiment and early influences for good. He
taught us loyalty to womankind, and many a precious
lesson, which while this heart beats it never can forget.
" And now farewell ; and may all blessings attend you
and all yours this Christmastide and for ever ! I assure
myself that they who have gone before us, keep these
seasons after some blessed fashion, in the place of their
mysterious sojourn, remember us faithfully, at Christmas
especially, and pray for us with love unutterable ; yes,
and with powers too, passing speech.
" Ever, my dear Mr. Hardy,
" Most faithfully and affectionately yours,
J. W. BURGON."
1878.
The Regius Professorship of Divinity at Oxford, to
which a Canonry of Christ Church is annexed, having
become vacant by the death of Dr. J. B. Mozley, it
was thought and hoped by many of Burgon's friends
that he might be appointed to a post so thoroughly
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 157
congenial to his tastes, and for which his studies, and
the deep interest he had shown in the younger men
at Oxford, had so pre-eminently and abundantly quali-
fied him. That the Prime Minister, in case of Burgon's
appointment and acceptance of the office, would have a
Deanery at his disposal, seemed to be an inducement,
independent of Burgon's fitness for the position, which
might carry weight with it. But this very circumstance
was alleged as fatal to the proposed arrangement.
" It would be against all precedent, whatever might be
Mr. Burgon's wishes on the subject, that Her Majesty
should transport a Clergyman from a higher to a lower
preferment."
The following short letter to Miss Monier- Williams
shows that, while Burgon was disappointed (for in-
deed of all positions in the Church of England this
was the one which he most coveted, from the influence
it would have given him with candidates for Holy
Orders), he had prepared himself, as a devout Christian
knows how, for a result adverse to his wishes.
" The Deanery, Feb. 31, 1878.
" My little Dear,
"This morning's 'Times'" [announcing the appoint-
ment of Dr. Ince, a man in every way qualified for the
post, to the Kegius Professorship] " dashed all my hopes ;
but I have insisted on feeling cheerful all day. My prayer
has been all through that GOD will send the man to
that post who will serve Him lest. Would it not be wrong
to doubt that I behold in Ince the answer to my prayer ?
My own private opinion on the subject is clearly not the
question. But we will talk of all this !
" I am ever, my dearest Ella,
" Your affectionate Friend,
" J. W. B."
The author well remembers that when he next visited
158 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
Burgon at Chichester, and expressed the vexation felt
by many of his friends at his disappointment, he replied
with the greatest calmness ;
" But I am not vexed. I prayed so often and so
earnestly that the Prime Minister might be led to make
such an appointment as might be the best for the Church,
that I cannot doubt that what has been done is for the
best."
The Lent of this year was marked by the publication
of some short Sermons on ' The Servants of Scripture 5 ,'
"addressed in the first instance to the afternoon Con-
gregation of St. Mary-the-Virgin's, Oxford (1871-1875),
because it was perceived that domestic servants of either
sex largely frequented the Church" at the afternoon
Service. This is certainly not the least attractive of
Burgon's many works. The scantiness of the record of a
servant mentioned in Scripture does not deter him from
seeking, and does not prevent his finding, an instructive
and edifying lesson in his or her history, as in the case of
Phurah, and as in the case of Rhoda. In the Sermon
on Deborah, a character which offered rather more
ample materials, the soul of the preacher is evidently
in its pleasant places, and his task is thoroughly
congenial to him.
"Deborah ends her days," he tells his hearers, "with
Jacob and his family. Of course she does. She dies ;
and he writes the tale of his sorrow, the record of
his own tears and of the lamentation of his house-
hold, on the place of the aged woman's burial. ' She
was buried beneath Bethel under an oak : and the
name of it was called Allon-bachuth/ that is, ' the oak
5 The little volume was published Dedication is to his " Brother-in-law
under the direction of the Tract and love," the late Mr. Higgins of
Committee of the S.P.C.K., and may Turvey Abbey, and the Motto, " Our-
be had at any of the Society's selves your servants, for JESUS'
Repositories (price, is, /fc?.) The sake."
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 159
of weeping.' That must have been no common sorrow,
tit at must have been no ordinary lamentation, which
imposed a name on a hitherto unknown locality ; a
name which carries with it to this hour the memory
of a Patriarch's tears and the mourning of his mighty
household ! . . . . Ah, ye who read the Bible fast,
and do not care for the little details of the story,
ye who think scorn of the humbler characters, and
perhaps have never taken the trouble to gather up the
first and the last link in the story of such an one as
Deborah the aged, and to clasp them together, and to
recognise the exquisite beauty, the tender outline of a
long life of faithful service, personal devotion, reci-
procated love, ye are at least invited to note that, in
the annals of the chosen family, second only to the
burial of Jacob himself, is the burial of his mother's
nurse, in respect of the particular record of the
mourning which attended it."
In urging his hearers to try to keep their places, and
explaining to them how it might easily come to pass
that they might not " better themselves " by a change
of masters, even if they should succeed in getting
better wages, he argues thus :
"If a servant stays with me and serves me faith-
fully for thirty years aye, or for less I cannot any
longer forsake that servant. I myself may become poor ;
but that faithful old servant has a real claim on me,
which I should be a wretch if I were not eagerly to
acknowledge. He or she must at least have a room
in my house. food and raiment, sympathy and kind-
ness, medical aid in time of sickness, an honourable
grave after I have closed his or her eyes in death.
Now the giddy and the restless ones, every time they
change their place, make such a claim as I have been
describing less and less possible, even though they may
get a slight increase of wages."
This was no mere outburst of fine sentiment. He
actually did what, he said he would be "a wretch" not to
160 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
do, and did it with all the sympathy and generosity
of his intensely sympathetic and generous heart. A
very old servant of his family, who had nursed him
through the Jerusalem fever, under which he was
suffering on his return to England in the July of
1862. found an asylum in the Deanery of Chichester
when she was able* to work no longer ; and when she
became blind, an additional servant was kept, his own
straitened circumstances notwithstanding, whose special
charge was to wait upon her.
In a letter of Mr. Livingstone to 'Thelrhlt Ecclesiastical
Gazette? dated Sept. 5, 1888, we are told of Bishop
Christopher Wordsworth's appreciation of ' TJie Servants
of Scripf
"Dean Burgon sent a copy of the little book, when
it first appeared, to the late Bishop of Lincoln. I saw
the Bishop's letter acknowledging the gift. He told
the author that he was so interested that he read the
whole volume through at a sitting. And then I re-
member he added the half reproachful question, ' But
why did you not give us a Sermon on the servants of
Bow?"
In the July of this year passed away Hugh James
Rose (the eldest son of Burgon's eldest sister), at the
age of 38. It will be remembered that at the time
of the family troubles, Burgon and Professor Come had
stood sponsors for this nephew of his at Houghton
Conquest [see Vol. I. p. 91], a gleam of sunshine at a
dreary time.
" His end," he writes to Dr. Corrie, now Master of
Jesus College in Cambridge, "was so truly Christian
that it has been an unspeakable comfort to us to recall
it ever since. Often before a little unsettled in his
notions, and accustomed to talk of Divine things as if
they were not eternal verities, resting on an immutable
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 161
basis of authority, he showed at last plainly enough
where his hopes were anchored, and on whose merits and
mercies alone he relied. Truly penitent and truly re-
signed, he expired in the presence of us all, who were
kneeling about his bed.
" We carried him down into Bedfordshire," [Mr. Rose
died at Guildford] " and in the Churchyard of his native
village laid him by the side of his loved father, amid the
tears of the villagers, who remembered and loved him
from his childhood. Truly he was a most affectionate
fellow : a most chivalrous spirit ; a truly engaging and
attractive companion. With abilities of a high order,
he should have done better than he did."
On the i3th of October, at the recommencement of
the Academical Year (an opportunity of addressing the
Undergraduates of Oxford, which he was glad to avail
himself of), Burgon preached before the University
his Sermon on ( Nehemiah, a Pattern to Builders 6 .' The
Dedication to the Bishop of Chichester bears testimony
to " the cordial and (to me) delightful relation which has
subsisted between us from the first hour when I crossed
your hospitable threshold," and also to "the entire
similarity of sentiment which (as I rejoiced to be re-
minded when I listened to your recent Charge) we enter-
tain on a certain burning question of the day." The
" burning question " was the revival of Medievalism in
the Church of England by the Ritualists, their distortion
of the proportions of the Faith by exclusively dwelling
upon the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, "as if it
were the sum and substance of all Divinity," and their
industrious advocacy of the "Romish doctrine of Con-
6 " Nehemiah, a Pattern to Build- Trinity (October I3th, 1878), by
ers: Counsels on the Recommence- Jol m William Burgon, B.D., Dean of
ment of the Academical Year. A Ser- Chichester. Published by request,
mon preached before the University Oxford and London : James Parker
of Oxford, at St. Mary-the- Virgin's, and Co., 1878."
on the Seventeenth Sunday after
VOL. II. M
1 62 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
fession." As to the " lighted candles, and incense, and
birettas, and the use of the chasuble," Burgon " cannot
away with" them; "the masculine vigour which the
severe study of Scripture imparts to a well-trained
mind must produce a recoil from all such trumpery, an
utter revulsion of mind." It was the old, old story
which he had so often told before, that the Bible,
studied as a whole, furnishes the sufficient refutation of
all religious error, whether Ritualistic or Rationalistic.
The Sermon, while somewhat loosely strung together,
and not sufficiently pervaded by unity of idea, is in-
teresting as revealing one of the deepest secrets of the
preacher's character, his strong tendency, wherever he
felt he was right, to act alone and independently of
others, without asking advice from them, or seeking
co-operation with them. Nehemiah " consulted with him-
self" he tells his hearers, in coping with the manifold
evils which beset him in the execution of his enterprise.
" He had become profoundly sensible that the present
was precisely one of those moments in his life when
consultation with others is useless. Such moments are
apt to occur in most lives ; and further, when they do
occur, a man's wisdom is to act as Nehemiah acted.
It is an unreasonable, a craven, a cowardly thing at such
moments, to have recourse to friends. You know what
you ought to do. What is the use of trying by counsel
to thrust off upon another a burden of responsibility
which ought to be entirely your own ? "
But supposing you do not know what you ought to
do, that you are honestly, and without any perverse
leaning of the will, doubtful what is the right and wise
course to pursue ? This was a state of mind which
Burgon could hardly realise. He was always perfectly
assured of the rectitude of his impulses, and of the
truth of the conclusions at which he had arrived.
THE C HIGH ESTER LlFE. 163
He had only to follow those impulses, and speak out
those conclusions bravely, let who would hear or for-
bear. Hence he never could or did co-operate with
others, inasmuch as all co-operation implies to a certain
extent compromise and mutual concession. He was only
enabled to work with his own Chapter by the experience
of the bitterness of domestic feuds. As he himself con-
fessed, he had no following in the Convocation of the
Church, as a man of his genius and learning might be
expected to have, and made no mark there. Wonderfully
gifted for the instruction and guidance of inferiors, and
in touch also with his superiors, from his reverence for
those who were set over him, and his general social
acceptability, he had no gift for carrying his equals
with him.
" Burgon " (writes Mr. Deane) " had no party at Oxford
among the Fellows of Colleges. He was respected by
all, but was no leader. He never could have become a
leader of men, because he was so thoroughly impressed
with the truth of his own view of any question, that he
would not admit any compromise. Burgon was Burgon.
He was an ' identity,' so to say, and not an ' equation/
He influenced his friends by his love and by his varied
learning ; but his influence offered few votes, if any, in
Congregation 7 . Had he done so, he could not have been
Burgon."
Excerpts from three letters of this year to Miss Monier-
Williams are here subjoined, which will show how
Burgon, in memory of his old pursuits, pricked up his
ears at any reminder of Art, as an old hunter does at
the sound of the huntsman's horn, and with what good
sense, and worldly as well as spiritual wisdom, he
7 The Oxford Congregation, part Masters of Arts, who are for the
of the legislative Body of the TJni- most part College Tutors or Pro-
versity, consisting of the Resident fessors.
M 2
164 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
counselled the young disciples who in former days
had hung on his lips. Miss Williams is about to start
for Munich shortly.
" Turvey Abbey, Bedford,
"Sept. 3, 1878.
" My dearest Girl, I must not delay my thanks for
your charming lette*, or you will be in Munich first.
" How you will enjoy your visit ! I never saw a more
royal City. The new part is so very stately. But oh !
commend you and me to the old town for fun. I am
reminded of the Scotchman, who, after visiting all the
capitals in the world, remarked that they were ' a' vara
weel, but Peebles for /?/^sure ! '
" Seriously. Spend some hours in the Glyptothek, or
Sculpture Gallery. I will tell you the story (a most
interesting one) of the Egina Marbles some day when I
am by your side. For the moment, all you will require
to know is that they exhibit the earliest phase of Greek
Art dating about 550 years B.C., in other words, being
about a hundred years older than the Elgin (or Athenian)
Marbles in the British Museum. They were found all
just under the surface of the earth having been toppled
out of their places in the pediment of the Temple of
Jupiter by an earthquake. They are truly exquisite.
[He gives here a rough sketch of the pediment.]
" So is the Picture Gallery. Study it carefully. Such
a sweet Raphael !
" Then go and poke about old ' Munchen.' You will
find the Hotel des Quatre Saisons the best. We were
there !
t; Inspect their Cemetery too, and take Papa a drive to
some romantic lake in the neighbourhood, which I should
have gone to see but for my MSS. 8 , which sucked out my
life's blood.
" I am here for my holiday : which means that I am
8 In the autumn of 1872 he had 1871, collecting materials for the
been with his nephew (Rev. W. F. series of 21 letters to Dr. Scrivener
Rose) at Munich, collating MSS. which appeared in the ' Guardian '
He was then, as he had been in of 1873, 1874.
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 165
working all day long. I brought so many books with
me, that my butler fairly laughed at the spectacle. I
wake early rise at 5 and get such a delicious time of
it being spoiled, fairly killed, with kindness : and all is
so quiet ! so tranquil and happy ! My heart flows over
with gratitude to the Giver of all good.
' In about a month, I must return to Chichester. All
looked very pretty when I came away, viz. on the 28th
August. I have just built myself a little greenhouse
for 15 which I tell myself is done for economy. Yes ;
I shall save the cost in four or five years, if I live so
long. And certainly it will afford us all a deal of
pleasure.
"I am glad you can see Chichester Cathedral from
your downs. I wish I could see you.
" With love to you all,
" Ever, my dearest Ella,
" Your loving,
"J.W.B."
"The Deanery, Oct. 7, 1878.
" My dearest little Girl,
" You were not at all wrong in sending the poor girl
a German Bible. But I question much the wisdom of
trying to proselytize in a R. Catholic country. I will
tell you some day the story of the maid-servant in my
lodgings at Rome. I am more and more struck with
the precept in S. Matthew x. 16 " [' Be ye wise as ser-
pents '], " as I grow older "
"The Deanery, Dec. 18, 1878.
" My dearest little Girl,
" All quite right about the butcher. Believe me, it is
RELIGION to keep the weekly accounts low : and I can
tell you (though I am no Molly') that it is astonishing
if there be knowledge and prudence how well all may
fare, and how small a sum will be required. I often think
with tears, yes, with tears of my own loved mother's
housekeeping. She was large-hearted as a Queen, and
there was always a very liberal well- spread table. But
1 66 LIFE OF DEAN BUEGON.
she knew that it was a duty to keep the expenses down,
and she once told me some details which convinced me
that she fulfilled that duty, as she did every other, in
perfection.
" Your loving friend,
"J.W.B."
1879.
Impressed, as any one must be, who is called to preach
the University Sermon, with the immense importance of
the congregation, " the flower of England's youth " and
"the earnest of England's greatness," as he had called
them in his " Nehemiah " Sermon of 1878, Burgon con-
trived in some way or other to be never very long absent
from that most influential pulpit. Early in the May of
this year we find him preaching before the University on
Types, a subject in which he was deeply versed, from
having given much thought and study to it, and which
happily furnished no occasion for one of his polemical
outbursts. The discourse is extremely valuable, and it
is greatly to be regretted that it was never published (as
so many of his Sermons were) in a separate form, and is
now accessible only in the Reports given of it in the
1 Oxford University Herald' of the icth of May. He is
"not particularly fond," he says, "of the expression 'a
type/ " and proposes to " substitute for it a different
phrase the typical structure of Holy Writ." His view,
very briefly summarised, is that the entire volume of the
Bible its narrative, as well as its expressly predictive
parts is prophetical, and that since " the testimony of
Jesus is the spirit of prophecy " (a text which singularly
enough he never quotes), the Holy Ghost not only framed
all the institutions of the Ceremonial Law, so as to make
them shadows of Christ and His Church, but selected
with the same reference the characters and incidents
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 167
which should be recorded. Accordingly he would have
us fasten our attention not so much on the characters or
incidents themselves as on what the Scripture says (or
leaves unsaid) about them. Of course he finds Melchize-
dek very apposite to his argument. Melchizedek was
born, and died, and had a line of ancestry like other
men ; but the Apostle to the Hebrews finds his " likeness
unto the Son of God " not only in the significance of his
name and title, but also in the fact that, contrary to the
usual rule observed in recording the more eminent Scrip-
ture characters, nothing is recorded of his birth, death, or
parentage. The Holy Spirit had Christ full in view, when
He directed Moses to pass over these particulars, and so
to make the inspired record of Melchizedek, rather than
Melchizedek himself, predictive or prefigurative of
Christ. This is the key to Burgon's whole doctrine of
types. " The Divine Mind is found to have been so full of
the great object for which He caused all Holy Scriptures
to be written, that as if unconsciously, yet evidently with
profoundest as well as most persistent purpose, it so con-
structs its stories, so handles the utterances which it pre-
serves, that they shall foreshadow, shall be evidently
intended to foreshadow, the Person and the Mediatorial
work of Christ, who in this way is witnessed to as well
by the historical as by the prophetical Books of Scrip-
ture." Burgon was always urging upon his disciples the
study of the Septuagint, on which he set the highest
possible value, as every one must do who considers the
undoubted fact that our Blessed Lord and His Apostles
almost always cited the Old Testament in that Greek
Translation of it, thereby giving it the sanction of their
authority ; and he shows in this Sermon that a student
of the Septuagint will find in its phraseology sufficiently
clear nay, unmistakeable hints that what is told us
1 68 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
of Isaac and of Joseph is prefigurative or typical. " c He
that spared not his own Son 9 , but delivered him up for
us all/ says St. Paul (Rom. viii. 32). When we turn to
the Septuagint Version, from which St. Paul was in the
habit of quoting, we find exactly the same Greek word
used in the Angel's commendation of Abraham's fidelity
to God ; ' By myself I sware, saith the Lord, because
thou didst this thing, and for my sake didst not spare
t/iy beloved son 1 , &c. Again; in the Parable of the
Wicked Husbandmen our Lord, according to the three
first Evangelists, represents the husbandmen as saying
when they caught sight of the heir, ' Come, let us kill
him 2 .' These are the identical words with which, in
the Septuagint Version of Gen. xxxvii. 20, Joseph's
brethren are represented as conspiring against him 3 ,
when they saw him afar off. These are glimpses given
by words 4 into the prefigurative significance of two pas-
sages of Holy Scripture/' although, as Burgon adds, " the
typical resemblance in these instances is so patent that
it cannot be overlooked, and might have been left to
vindicate itself." It should be said also that Burgon in
this remarkable Sermon finds the typical structure of
Holy Scripture even in the New Testament histories,
which instances of typical structure he seems to think
far less surprising and less impressive to the imagina-
tion than that, antecedently to our Lord's appearing,
" Old Testament narratives should prove to be full of
9 "Os 76 TOV loiov vlov ovtc ((pfiaaro. TOV, KOLL ptyw/jifv O.VTOV els eva TUV
1 Ou d'vfKCV tTToirjaas TO f>^i^o. \O.K/C<JJV.
TOVTO, KOI OVK ftyfiaoj TOV vlov ffov TOV * It will be remembered that
ayairrjTovoi'efjLf. Gen.xxii.i6[LXX.]. Burgon avowed, and entertained to
2 AevT, drroKTfivojfifv avrbv, St. the end of his life, the profoundest
Matt. xxi. 38 ; S. Mar. xii. 7 ; St. conviction of the verbal Inspiration
Luke xx. 14. of Holy Scripture. See vol. i. pp.
3 Nuy ovv SevTe uiroKTeivoj^v av- 273, 274.
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 169
Him, minutely predictive of all the most concerning acts
of His Ministry, His Death and Passion, His Resur-
rection and Ascension." As one example of symbolism
in the Gospel histories, he refers to "the raising of
Jairus' daughter as exactly representing the rejection
and the receiving back again of God's ancient people,
the Jews." An interesting Sermon of his will be found
in the Appendix [C], in which he developes this par-
ticular instance of the typical structure of Holy Writ.
It would appear that the above Sermon on Types, de-
livered before the University in the May of 1879, had
been in substance delivered previously, and was prob-
ably re-written for the University pulpit. For we find
an allusion to a Sermon on the same subject in a letter
to an old disciple who had attended his Bible Classes at
Oriel, which bears date May 17, 1878. His correspon-
dent had consulted him, it appears, about the best works
on Types. He answers thus :
" Strange to relate, I know of no better book on
Types than one by a Presbyterian minister, William
M c Ewen, Minister in Dundee, Edinburgh, 1768. It is
called l Grace and Truth : or, The Glory and Fulness of the
Redeemer displayed' ! But M c EwEN ON TYPES should
5 M c Ewen'a is undoubtedly an One might be disposed to think so,
able work. He writes most devoutly ; when one finds Professor Fairbairn,
but never gives way to mere fanciful whose ' Typology of Scripture ' is
allegorizing, as some devout writers a really valuable contribution to our
have done. But the reader who de- Theological Literature, ruling out,
siderates the laying down of general by the application of one of his
principles, the application of which principles, the typical significance
may exclude fanciful types and of Isaac's bearing the wood on which
include reasonable ones, such as we he was to be laid. This he does on
may suppose to have been intended the ground that Isaac's bearing the
by the Holy Spirit, will look in vain wood for the altar and Christ's bear-
for such principles in M c Ewen. ing His cross to Calvary were
Is it perhaps impossible to lay down " circumstances alike outward in
any such principles satisfactorily ? their nature," and that thus the
1 70 LIFE OF DEAN BURQON.
find it I must be allowed to say that any one
reading the Sermon of mine you allude to, and then
examining M c Ewen, may go on to the actual histories
in the Old Testament, and with the aid of ' Bixfioj) IJ'ordx-
wortlis Commentary ' will, I think, make out all he wants
to know.
" Except a weekly Lecture, which I give to the pupils
of Bishop Otter's College, I have no class here. I miss
my Sunday evenings at Oriel more than anything.
" Ever yours,
"J. W. B.
" Work at your GREEK TESTAMENT. Adieu ! "
In the June of this year Burgon fell a victim to
serious illness (congestion of the liver, accompanied
by symptoms of the " malaria fever," from which he
had suffered previously in the East) which lasted
a full month, and obliged him at the beginning of
August to leave home, and go to his nephew's house in
Somersetshire to convalesce. But before his conva-
lescence was completed, the author received from him a
letter, which shall be submitted presently to the reader,
antitype does not "involve any rise tersely and beautifully;
to a higher sphere of truth " than " Ask you the manner of His
the type. But, even granting the death ? Behold it in this lively
Professor's principle that the anti- type. For as Isaac carried the
type must move in a higher sphere wood, so the beloved Son of God
of truth than the type, is it certain curried His Cross. O ye children of
that the carrying of the Cross does men, your iniquities were the heavy
not rise into a higher sphere than load He bore in His own body on
the carrying of the wood ? Ought the tree. These, like the wood that
we not, in interpreting this type, to was intended to reduce Isaac to
reckon with the text of St. Peter, ashes, rendered Him combustible to
which seems to raise the carrying ot the fire of divine wrath." In truth
the Cross into a higher significance the bearing of the Cross was itself
than the carrying of the wood, emblematical of the bearing of the
" Who his own self bare our sins in sins. [See Fairbairn's ' Typology
his own body on the tree " (or " car- of Holy Scripture, ' vol. i. p. 199
ried them up to the tree," Marg. of (5th Ed.) ; M c Ewen's ' Grace and
R.V.)? Thus M c Ewen puts it Truth,' p. 35 (Edinburgh : 1827).]
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 171
showing wonderful energy of mind in a man still inva-
lided, and the turning of his thoughts to a difficult sub-
ject on which he contemplated preaching at Oxford in
October. This subject was, " Our Saviour's knowledge
of the day of Judgment," and the true interpretation of
the passage in St. Mark (xiii. 32), which seems at first
sight to assert His ignorance of it. It was an Assize
Sermon 6 ; but no other connexion with the Assize is
found in it than that the subject and text both direct
the mind to the day of Judgment. Burgon, with St.
Basil, whom he refers to as having received the explana-
tion by tradition from his fathers, finds the solution of
the difficulty presented by the text in the doctrine of
the Eternal Generation of the Son of God, according to
which the Godhead, with all its faculties, powers, at-
tributes, omniscience among the rest is derived from
the First Person to the Second.
" All things whatsoever the Father hath, are mine, saith
Christ ; because in Him is the same fulness of the God-
head, and more than that the Father cannot have : but
yet in that perfect and absolute equality there is not-
withstanding this disparity, that the lather hath the
Godhead not from the Son, nor any other, whereas the
Son hath it from the Father ; Christ is the true God
and eternal life ; but that he is so, is from the Father :
for as the Father hath life in himself, so halh he given to the
Son to have life in himself, not by participation, but by
communication.'" [Pearson on the Creed, Art. ii. vol. i.
pp. 242, 3, Oxford, MDCCCXXXIII.]
" Accordingly/' says Burgon, " our Saviour does not
deny that the knowledge of that day and hour dwells in
fullest measure with the Son, but He mysteriously inti-
mates (in conformity with what is found to have been
6 This Sermon also was never and Cambridge Undergraduates
published in a separate form. The Journal ' of Oct. 30 ; another in
author has before him two reports the Oxford University Herald' of
of it, one given in 'The Oxford Nov. i.
172 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
His practice on many other occasions), that the Son
Himself does but know because of His oneness with the
Father, the Fountain-head of all knowledge and of all
being, who had reserved that secret from the holy angels
themselves. He knows because the Father knows. He
would not know, if not (ei /x? x /) 7 the Father knew."
The " only " in the parallel passage of St. Matthew 8 ,
which does not appear in the passage of St. Mark, is of
course appealed to in corroboration of their mode of ex-
plaining the passage. The " only " excludes the " angels,"
indicates that the knowledge is not entrusted even to
the highest creature, but reserved exclusively for GOD.
But the verse of St. Mark has no " only," and is to be
rendered (freely) thus, if St. BasiFs andBurgon's solution
of the difficulty be the right one ;
*' But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not
the angels which are in heaven, nor indeed doth the Son
know, except by communication to Him of the Father's
Omniscience, as of all the other attributes of Godhead."
Here is the letter to the author referred to above :
To THE VERY REVEREND THE DEAN, NORWICH.
" The Deanery, Chichester,
"July 12, 1879.
" My dear Friend, I have to thank you (as I have
7 This sense of d pr) (or tdv /AT)) will not let you go but by a mighty
might be paralleled by other pas- hand," not denying that he would
sages. Thus we have in the let them go eventually, but assert-
Alexandrine Greek [Exod. iii. 19] ; ing that, if it were not for the dis-
'70; 5e oToa on ov irporjo-frai 6/xas play of God's mighty hand, he would
&apaw iropev07jvai, edv /ZT) perd xtipos not have done so.
/cparaids "I know that Pharaoh
St. Matt. xxiv. 36. St. Mark xiii. 32.
But of that day and hour knoweth But of that day and that hour
no man, no,not the angels of heaven*, knoweth no man, no, not the angels
but my Father only. which are in heaven b , neither the
a eu dyyeXoi rwv ovpavwv. Son, but the Father.
b ol ayyeAot ol tv ovpavw.
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 173
often had to thank you before) for a very kind and con-
siderate letter, received when I was still very, very ill.
I am at last what the Doctor calls ' convalescent.' If
lying on a chair with many a moan a wondrous loss of
brain power inability to do anything but eat (which
seems to have become the one business of the day) and
a curious sense of despondency mingled with the clearest
Christian confidence in GOD, and (what tries to be)
entirest resignation : if this be convalescence, I am con-
valescent indeed.
" Intending to write to you these few lines, and deter-
mined that they should be worth the reading, I just now
(to my niece's astonishment) announced to her that ' I
was going down into my Library.' She threw up her
needlework, gave me her arm, and down the stairs I
stalked pulled out (to her amusement) the third volume
of Basil, and made a memorandum of p. 360 top 362.
Read that letter, dear friend, when you are quite fresh,
beginning at the beginning ; and towards the end of
p. 362 you can leave oft' with the subject.
" But if it teaches you and convinces you of what
you may have perhaps at times suspected, but never saw
clearly laid down by competent authority before, then
let it make you think gratefully of
" Your affectionate Friend,
"J. W. B."
The Epistle of St. Basil's referred to is numbered
ccxxxvi. in the Benedictine Edition, and is in the Second
Class of his Epistles, containing those which were written
from A.D. 370 to A.D. 378. Burgon's Sermon is little
more than a setting forth of Basil's explanation of the
passage, (as against the Anomoeans or Arians, called
Anomoeans from their maintaining the dissimilarity of
essence dj/o/moior^s between the First and Second Per-
sons of the Blessed Trinity), and of the arguments by which
Basil supports it 9 . This he prefaces by a notice of other
9 With the exception of an argu- " All these things must come to pass ;
ment drawn from St. Matt. xxiv. 6 ; but the end is not yet." "To say
174 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
explanations given by the orthodox, which he considers
unsatisfactory, and rejects.
1880.
In the early part of this year Burgon's attention seems
to have been called to a work put forth by the Christian
Evidence Committee of the Society for Promoting Chris-
tian Knowledge 1 , which had appeared as far back as
1 877, and had then made considerable stir in the Church,
the late Lord Shaftesbury having withdrawn his name
from the subscribers to the venerable Society, on account
of its having authorised a publication considered by him
to be so objectionable. Burgon himself gives no other
account than the following, of his replying to this work
in a Sermon preached before the University 2 so long
afterwards :
" For a long time I hoped that some other person
would have been found to come forward and do battle
for the Truth : but this is the third year since * The
Argument from Prophecy ' made its appearance, and the
book still remains without rebuke 3 ."
' the end is not yet* sounds," says Lent (February 1 5th, 1880). With
Basil, "not like the affirmation of Introductory Remarks: Being a
one who has any doubt as to the Reply to the Rev. Brownlow Mait-
time, but rather of one who has land's 'A rgument from Prophecy?
none." by John William Burgon, B.D.,
1 THE ARGUMENT FROM PRO- Dean of Chichester. Oxford and
PHECY. By the Rev. Brownlow London : James Parker and Co.,
Maitland, M.A., author of ' Scepti- 1880.
cism and Faith,' &c. [London : 3 Introductory Remarks, p. 17.
1877]. In presenting a copy of the Sermon
2 PROPHECY, NOT " FORECAST," to Lord Cranbrook, he writes (May
BUT (IN THE WORDS OF BISHOP 17, i88o) ; " I found it impossible
BUTLER) "THE HISTORY OF EVENTS to repress my desire to remove the
BEFORE THEY COME TO PASS." A stain which a recent book on
Sermon preached before the Univer- Prophecy will leave (if it is suffered
sity of Oxford, at St. Mary-the- to go unanswered) on the Church."
Virgin's, on the First Sunday in
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 175
It is possible that the finding that other writers were
not only allowing without remonstrance, but adopting,
the new terminology which this book had introduced
into one great department of Christian Evidence, may
have induced Burgon to enter a protest against the new
term, before it should establish itself in general usage.
At all events, in the year 1879, there appeared a tractate
on the predictions put forth by our Lord and His
Apostles as to the future of the Christian Church,
entitled, c The Divine Forecast of the Corruption of Chris-
tianity -, a miraculous evidence of its truth*? which possibly
may have met Burgon's eye, and have given an impulse
to his ever-ready controversial pen. It is in the word
"Forecast," as applied to Inspired predictions by the
writer of ' The Argument from Prophecy} that he finds the
fundamental error which runs through the Book.
"The last-invented method of dealing with this de-
partment of sacred evidence" (Prophecy), "the newest
device for unfaithfully handling this portion of the
Deposit . . . may be described in a single sentence.
It consists in resolving ' Prophecy ' into Forecast. By
proposing (I mean) to substitute the word c Forecast '
for the word * Prophecy,' modern Unbelief ignores the
4 By the Rev. Edward Hunting- though veiled for the most part in
ford, D.C.L., author of ' A Prac- symbolical and figurative language.
fical Interpretation of the Eecela- But what is the meaning of a
tion of St. John,' &c. [London : " Divine Forecast " ? Do not the
Bickers .ind Son, i Leicester two terms destroy one another ?
Square.] It is only fair to Dr. God cannot possibly conjecture.
Huntingford to say that except in He foresees all things in the remote
calling " Prophecy " by the name of future with the most entire accuracy.
" Forecast," he does not in the And thus foreseeing. He predicts,
smallest degree seem to sympathize Burgon reasonably quarrels with
with the writer of ' The Argument the term " Forecast," as applied to
from Prophecy.' He takes the Inspired Prophecy. It imports into
old-fashioned view of Prophecy as the Divine Mind the anticipations
containing many very remarkable and conjectures which characterize
explicit and specific predictions, human speculation on the future.
176 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
predictive element ; tacitly assumes that what GOD and
man have in every age called ' Prophecy ' is nothing
more than a shrewd guess."
Whether or not c The Argument from Prophecy? a well-
written and plausible book by one bearing a justly vene-
rated name, might not have escaped censure, if it had
been given to the world on the sole responsibility of its
author, a clergyman now no longer holding any position
in the Church ; and whether or not Burgon, in his burn-
ing zeal for the honour of God's Word, has handled all
parts of it with perfect fairness 5 , few persons who look
into the matter will be disposed to acquit the Christian
Evidence Committee of the S.P.C.K. of a grave want of
judgment, or even something worse, in allowing such a
book to go forth with their " general approval," qualified
though that approval is by the announcement that " the
Committee does not hold itself responsible for every
statement or every line of the argument." It is desirable
that the Church of England should have some organiza-
tion which may give a passport for soundness to such re-
ligious and devotional works as are designed (like * The
Argument from Prophecy ') for general currency. Such a
passport it has always been understood that publication
by the S.P.C.K. gives (the religious books put forth by
it being subjected to a sifting examination, first by a
Committee of leading and influential Clergymen, and
afterwards by certain trustworthy Episcopal referees),
upon the guarantee of which examination hundreds of
Clergymen, who could not possibly find leisure to read
5 The author does not deny, but human sagacity, nor the unassisted
rather asserts, the necessity of theistic instinct, would naturally
miraculous foresight to certain large give birth. The victory of good
outlines of Prophecy. Thus he over evil might easily have been
says in respect of the predictions expected to be wrought otherwise ;
of a personal Redeemer, "This by a gradual annihilation, by 'a
was a forecast to which neither stream of tendency/" &c., &c.
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 177
every religious work which they give, or lend, or recom-
mend, circulate the publications of the Society without
hesitation, as being assured of their soundness. But
what confidence can any longer be placed in the Society,
if its authorities affix their imprimatur to a work on
Christian Evidence which, to say the least, presents
Inspired Prophecy in a new and strange light ; draws off
attention from the supernatural element in it by giving
it the new name of " Forecast " ; heads several consecu-
tive pages with the words PKOPHECY NOT PREDICTION 6 ;
throws suspicion on the received interpretation of
Daniel's prophecy of the Seventy Weeks, as possibly
" not referring, in its original, to the Christ of God 7 " ;
warns its readers against " confounding the grand pro-
phetical spirit . . . with a narrow prescience of specific
and isolated events 8 ," and at the very outset announces
that " the tendency of modern critical research " (for
" critical " read " rationalistic ") " has been in the direc-
tion of reducing the proportion of the definitely predic-
tive element, and raising doubts about the evidence of it
generally 9 ." Burgon in his Sermon impinges exclusively
upon the contents of the book. He might have directed
some of his strong words against the Committee, which
had given it a " general approval," and thus helped it to
a currency which it never could have obtained as the
expression of individual opinion. The inevitable infer-
ence from such an authorisation of such a work was that
the imprimatur of the Society was no safeguard at all (as
up to that time it had been) against unsound religious
teaching, or, not to put the matter too strongly, teaching
of a highly questionable character. The opening of Bur-
gon's Reply, in which he traces up Prophecy to its first
6 Pp. 31-37- 8 P. 36.
7 Pp. 102, 103. 9 Preface, pp. iii, iv.
VOL. II. N
178 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
comprehensive outline of the whole future in the sentence
upon the Serpent, and shows how Satan had studied
both that outline, and the particulars with which, as the
ages rolled out, it had been filled in, is well worth read-
ing, independently of the controversial argument. And
his collection of many minute and specific predictions as
to our Lord's career (pp. 38-42) as well as his remarks
on the entire satisfaction which the Evangelists and
Apostles, and persons of that time, seem to have felt
with the application to Christ of certain Old Testament
passages, as in their view altogether cogent and con-
clusive 1 , are valuable and serviceable.
The University of Oxford, like its sister University
of Cambridge, has undergone a revolution in our days,
the unhappy result of which has been to dissever
the connexion, which formerly subsisted between the
Church and the higher education of the country. " Your
University Tests' Bill," wrote Dean Mansel to Mr. (now
Lord Chief Justice) Coleridge, " is but one of a series of
assaults destined to effect an entire separation between the
University and the Church." And Dr. Chase, the Princi-
pal of St. Mary's Hall, said of this Bill that, should it
pass into an Act, " its effect would be nothing less than
the de-Christianizing of the Colleges of Oxford 2 ." This
secularizing Bill became Law in 1871, after having been
rejected by the Lords, though read a second time in
the Commons, in 1867. The Tests which it abolished
1 " I submit," says Burgon, Disestablishment of Religion in
" that the defect must reside rather Oxford, the betrayal of a sacred
in us, than in the instrument of trust," preached before the Univer-
proof, if there should seem to us, sity of Oxford, Nov. 2ist, 1880,
men singularly unlearned in the from which the words of Dean
Scriptures, a want of cogency in Mansel and Principal Chase here
the prophetic words cited," p. 43. cited are taken, (see p. 54, end of
2 See Burgon's Sermon on "The Appendix E).
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 179
were the subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles, and
the avowal thereby of membership in the Church of
England, which hitherto every one, on presenting
himself for a degree, had been most properly required
to make. This subscription was now required no
longer, except in the case of degrees in the Faculty of
Divinity. The divorce between the University and
the Church, however, was not quite complete, so long
as Heads of Colleges, and a certain number of Fellows
in each College, were required to be in Holy Orders,
and so long as certain Colleges had as their Visitors
Bishops, who might naturally be expected to watch
over the interests of the Church in the Societies which
they were bound periodically to inspect, with the view
of seeing that the Statutes of the Foundation were
observed. But the animus of University Legislation
hitherto had been greatly to loosen the ties which under
the old system bound the Universities to the Church 3 ;
3 It may be convenient here to of the University of Oxford, and
exhibit the several measures affect- of the College of St. Mary's, Win-
ing the Universities, taken either Chester," received the Royal Assent,
by the Crown or by Parliament. [The Coalition Ministry of Lord
These have been furnished to the Aberdeen was then in power ;
author by the kindness of Arch- Mr. Gladstone Chancellor of the
deacon Palmer. Exchequer ; Lord John Russell
i. A Royal Commission of Inquiry Foreign Secretary. It was the year
(under the Premiership of Lord John of the Crimean war.] Lord John
Russell) into the State, Discipline, Russell, who had charge of the
Studies, and Revenues of the Univer- Oxford University Bill, acknow-
sity and Colleges of Oxford, was ledged the assistance he had received
issued August 31, 1850. from Mr. Gladstone in drafting it.
ii. This Commission reported, It was this Act which remodelled
April 27, 1852. [Lord Derby was the constitution of the University,
then Premier, with Mr. Disraeli as and entrusted seven Commissioners
Chancellor of the Exchequer]. with power to make Ordinances and
Hi. On the ;th August, 1854, an Regulations for the Colleges. These
Act " to make further provision for Commissioners finished the bulk of
the good government and extension their work in 1858, and reported
N a
i So
LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
and it was no secret that the (so-called) Liberal party in
Oxford itself aimed at
nothing less than what one of
June loth of that year. But St.
John's College having kept them at
bay, a short Act was passed May
25, 1860, referring their proposed
Ordinances for that College to the
Queen in Council, who finally con-
firmed the Commissioner's Ordin-
ances on June 26, 1861. This
concluded the 1st Act of Oxford
University Reform.
iv. A Royal Commission of
''Inquiry into the property and
income belonging to, administered
or enjoyed by, the Universities of
Oxford and Cambridge, and their
Colleges and Halls," was issued on
the 5th January, 1872. This is
known at Oxford as " The Duke of
Cleveland's Commission," that Duke
having been its Chairman.
v. This Commission reported in
1874.
vi. An Act was passed (40 and 41
Viet. c. 48) which received the
Queen's Assent on the loth of
August, 1877, "to make further
provision respecting the Universities
of Oxford and Cambridge, and the
Colleges therein/' which gave legis-
lative powers, subject to the Queen
in Council, to two sets of Commis-
sioners (seven in each set) for the
two Universities. The Statutes
made under this Act by the Oxford
( 'onnnissionersfor the University and
the Colleges, were finally approved
by the Queen in Council, May 3,
1882.
This concluded the Second (and
so far last) Act of University Re-
form. Thus far Archdeacon Palmer.
It cannot be said, in view of this
summary of the steps of the (so
called) Reform, that the changes
were made hastily, or without care-
ful and even laborious enquiry. Nor
will any right-minded man have any
sentiment but one of sympathy with
a sifting enquiry on the part of the
State as to how Institutions of such
vast importance as the Universities
are working and administering their
large finances. It is the solemn
obligation of the State to see that
all trustees (and especially trustees
of the highest education) do their
duty, and benefit the body politic in
the way their Founders contemplated.
But to divert from the Church of the
country funds expressly meant and
bequeathed by old Founders to give
her a stronger hold and a wider in-
fluence ; to appropriate endowments,
designed for the education of poor
scholars, to the erection of Pro-
fessorships, or simply to make these
endowments prizes for the cleverest
competitor, disregarding the pre-
ferential claims of poverty ; to
reduce to a minimum sometimes to
reduce to zero the number of
College authorities officially con-
nected with the Church of England,
and as regards the remainder, to
strike away every guarantee for
their even being Christians, this is
not the reformation of abuses, which
in long lapse of time have grown up
around an old Institution, but the
remodelling of the Education of
the country on the wholly new prin-
ciple that Education and Religion
are things apart, having no essential
connexion with one another.
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 181
them had expressly called " the Disestablishment of Re-
ligion in the University 4 ." It needs not to be said how
with the old alumni of Oxford, who had regarded it as
a Citadel of the Faith, and had learned there the claims
which the Church of their Baptism had upon them, this
subversion of all that they had loved and venerated was
a real grievance, and seemed to estrange their sym-
pathies from their Alma Mater. But those of them who
in after life were separated, as Burgon now was, from
the University, and had found pursuits and interests else-
where, readily consoled themselves for the most part by
dismissing the subject from their thoughts. Nothing
called them back to their University, unless it were an
invitation now and then to come up and vote as Mem-
bers of Convocation, which could easily be declined ;
why should they vex their righteous souls in their snug
retreat, whether Parsonage or Deanery, or amid the new
interests which absorbed them, whether political or pro-
fessional, in thinking of, much less in struggling against,
a catastrophe which they could do nothing to avert, a
catastrophe, branded indeed, and, as they believed, justly
branded, with the ugly names of Secularization, Godless
Education, Sacrilegious confiscation, worse than all,
4 In the Appendix (B) of Burgon's Hall, and seconded by J. R. Thurs-
Serraon now under review, we are field, Esq., M.A., Tutor and Dean
informed that, a Statute being pro- of Jesus College. Mr. Hatch, in
posed in Congregation beginning moving the Amendment, remarked
thus, "Also it is enacted that no that ' the time was come for THE
Professor or Public Praelector shall DISESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION IN
either directly or indirectly teach, or THE UNIVERSITY.' " See the whole
assert dogmatically, anything which Appendix [ pp. 40-43 ] on the
is in any wise contrary to the EFFORTS OF THE SECULARISTS TO
Catholic Faith, or to good morals," DISESTABLISH RELIGION IN OXFORD.
" an Amendment to leave out the It should be observed that it is not
words to the Catholic Faith or was only the Church, but Religion,
proposed by the Rev. E. Hutch, which the Secularists avowedly aim
M.A., Vice-Principal of St. Mary's at disestablishing.
182
LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
De-Christianization 5 , but which would work itself out
in mischief to certain noble Institutions anyhow, do what
right-minded individuals might to block it ? The reader
who has accompanied this Biography up to this point will
not need to be told that John William Burgon was not
one of those who would let objectionable measures, spe-
5 This is not Burgon's term, which lie was certainly a Fellow, if
not a College Tutor. When next the
author met the young man, he
enquired naturally how he was get-
ting on under his private tutor.
The answer was, "Pretty well, I
hope ; but he " (the tutor) " is an
though he adopted and uses it. In
1869, when Mr. (now Lord Chief
Justice) Coleridge's Tests Bill was
impending, Dr. Chase, the present
Principal of St. Mary's Hall, had
written an able letter to The
' Standard,' headed "The De-Chris-
tianizing of the Colleges of Oxford,"
which was afterwards published in
a separate form. " I wish to ask all
Christian men in England," says the
Principal, "first, whether they wish
our Colleges to be Christian ? next,
whether they think the Christian
training of their sons will be safe so
soon as the bodies of men, to whom
that training must be committed,
may by law consist of persons of
whose belief they can know nothing?"
That these apprehensions of good
and learned men, like Principal
Chase and Dean Burgon, as to the
effects of the Academical Eevolution
at Oxford, are not chimerical, was
shown to the author several years
ago by a piece of his own experience,
which may be here appropriately
recounted. He desired an Oxford
Undergraduate, in whom he was
deeply interested, and who was
seeking to take Honours in the Law
School, to enquire for the best pri-
vate tutor in that subject who was
to be had, and to engage him. The
tutor most highly spoken of belonged
to one of quite the first colleges, of
odd man."
you mean ?
" In what way odd, do
' " Why, when I went
to engage him, he asked me whether
I believed in the Bible ; and on my
telling him that of course I did, he
said, 'Surely you cannot believe
in those silly stories about the Flood,
and the Ark, and Balaam's ass
speaking, and Jonah's being pre-
served alive in the fish. Nobody
believes them now : they are all
given up.' " " Well ; and what did
you answer ? " "I told him that I
came to him to learn Law, not
Divinity ; that I believed what I
had read in my Bible ; but had not
knowledge enough to argue about it ;
and that I must beg him not to talk
upon such subjects. This stopped
him." This shows that Oxford (so
called) tuition at that time (now
more than twenty years ago) offered
serious dangers to the faith of the
young. And query whether the
changes, which the University has
undergone since that time, have
done anything to arrest the process
of " De-Christianization," whether
they have not done something to
accelerate it ? Only last year it
THE CHI CHESTER LIFE. 183
cially when they concerned his much-loved University,
go by the board. The clergy, and specially the dignified
clergy, were in his view the guardians of the Christian
Faith, and of all Institutions founded for the support
and propagation of the Faith. In the new Statutes and
Ordinances which the Commission (from which he had
been excluded by a little rude blustering language in
Parliament) were about to make, he desiderated, and
had he sat on the Commission, he would have fought
valiantly for, some " guarantee that the cause of Theo-
logical Study and Religious Teaching in the University
would be upheld," amid all the changes that were to be
expected. " The last ray of hope " for so desirable a con-
summation " vanished," he tells Lord Salisbury, " when
Lord Selborne " (known as a cordial friend, not only of
Religion, but the Church) "resigned the other day his
Chairmanship of the Commission 6 ." His withdrawal
was probably necessitated by his acceptance of the office
of Lord Chancellor in Mr. Gladstone's Government, the
duties attaching to which office would prevent his giving
attendance at the Commission. But the mischief which
Lord Selborne, while he remained, had served to hold in
check, as well as the general animus of the Commission,
became apparent as soon as his back was turned. Im-
mediately after his retirement, and the appointment of a
new Commissioner in his place, the draft of the new
Statutes for Magdalen College, which was actually in
was the author's misfortune to hear Jonah, though to simple people it
from the pulpit of Christ Church certainly seems as if our Divine
Cathedral a sermon from one of the Lord had set His seal to that
Canong which, without denying the miracle in a very emphatic manner,
edifying moral use that might be 6 See the Prefatory Letter to the
made of the story, threw doubt Sermon now under Review, p. 5,
upon the historical character of the with Appendix A, p. 39.
miracle recorded in the Book of
184 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
print, and which secured to the College at least five Cleri-
cal Fellows, was recalled,, and the number of Clerical Fel-
lows was (by a majority of one) reduced to two 7 . Burgon
was instantly up in arms. He had been appointed to
preach the " Pride Sermon " before the University (as
in 1876 he had preached the "Humility Sermon" on the
same Foundation, see sup. pp. 9, 10) ; and he made this
Sermon the vehicle of his righteous indignation against
the proposed and impending Academical changes, calling
it ' The Disestablishment of Religion in Oxford^ the betrayal
of a Sacred Tnist : Words of Warning to the University 8 .'
Starting from the old-fashioned principle that the foun-
dations of all education worthy of the name must be laid
in the knowledge of God, and having pointed to the
Board Schools, High Schools for Girls, and Ladies' Col-
leges, as having discarded all distinctive religious teach-
ing, he then opens fire upon
" the recent, as well as the pending Legislation for this
loved place, which may be described as a determined
effort to ' disestablish Religion in the University.' To
abolish Clerical Fellowships : to abolish Clerical Head-
ships : to introduce the ' lay ' teaching of Theology "
(Professor Bryce at a meeting of the Liberation Society
had already advocated the making a vigorous effort to
liberate the Chairs of Hebrew and Ecclesiastical History from
clerical restriction, that is, to place "learned and ju-
dicious " laymen in them) 9 : " to substitute Lay for
Episcopal Visitors : these, which (I learn) are the
changes chiefly aimed at by the dominant party, amount
7 See Appendix A to the Sermon of Oriel College. Second Edition,
now under Review, p. 39. Parker and Co., Oxford, and 6
8 "A Sermon preached before the Southampton Street, Strand, Lon-
University of Oxford, at St. Mary- don."
the- Virgin's, on the Sunday next 9 See Appendix C to the Sermon
before Advent (Nov. aist, 1880), " PROFESSOR BRYCE, M.P., AND THE
by John William Burgon, B.D., LIBERATION SOCIETY, " p. 44. Two
Dean of Chichester, late Fellow last paragraphs.
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 185
to nothing else but a scheme for confiscating endow-
ments expressly set apart for the encouragement of
Sacred Learning; a scheme for secularizing Institu-
tions essentially religious in their character, which for
half a thousand years have exercised over Society an
unmingled influence for good, by providing for the
Christian training of the youth of England, no matter
what their subsequent destination in life 1 ."
Not the least valuable part of this Sermon is that in
which he protests against the system of recognising Un-
attached Students. The number of these, he says, was
(at the time of his writing) 417. A very small minority
of these were men of fortune, who simply disliked the re-
straints of College discipline, (a gross abuse of the system,
doubtless, which was set on foot purely for those who were
too poor to bear the expenses of life in a College, but still
coveted the advantages of education at the University,
admission to Professor's Lectures, &c.). He points out
how the necessity of receiving Unattached Students had
arisen from disregard of the preferential claim to Scholar-
ships and Fellowships, which Founders of Colleges had
almost always given to the POOR Student. The preferen-
tial claim had been disregarded, and the Fellowships
either thrown open without restriction as prizes to the
intellectually ablest competitor, or sometimes confiscated
for the endowment of University Professorships. One of
his suggestions for checking the growth of the Un-
attached Academical population is, that ' ; Colleges with
a surplus income shall be called upon, as far as that
surplus goes, to undertake that for the sum of ^50 (the
payment required to get through the University on the
Unattached system) as many as can prove that they ab-
solutely require it, shall be admitted as poor Scholars of
the College 2 ." A class of much the same kind already
1 Sermon, pp. 17, 1 8. 2 Sermon, pp. 29-36.
1 86 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
existed at some of the Colleges, under the name of Bible
Clerks.
In sending a copy of this Sermon to Lord Cranbrook.
he says that
" it has cost me no little pain and anxiety . . . How
disastrous the working of the Commission has been, you
will see with regret ... I would fain hope that it may
yet be in your power, and of the other friends of Religion,
to administer some check. There remains no longer any
guarantee for Christian Education in the University of
Oxford at any of the older Colleges."
One of the chief points of interest about this Sermon
is that it indicates clearly what measures he would have
advocated, and against what evils and dangers he would
have striven, had his name been retained, as it ought to
have been, upon the Oxford University Commission.
1881.
A movement at the beginning of this year, prompted
no doubt by desire to save the Church from those legal
suits on questions of Ritual, which not only harassed her
peace, but exposed her weak points to her adversaries,
elicited from Burgon all that was Protestant (and, despite
all his staunch High Churchism, there was much that
was Protestant) in his theological position. Ten digni-
taries of the Church, none of them under the rank of a
Canon Residentiary 3 , basing their action on an invitation
given by the Archbishop of Canterbury to those Clergy
who felt " dissatisfied or alarmed at the present circum-
stances of the Church, to state what they desired in the
3 The Dean of St. Paul's (Church) ; (Balston) ; The Archdeacon of Berks
The Dean of Durham (Lake) ; The (Pott); The Archdeacon of Mont-
Dean of Manchester (Cowie) ; The gomery (Ffoulkes) ; The Archdeacon
Dean of Worcester (Lord A. Comp- of Brecon (de Winton) ; and Canon
ton); The Dean of York (Purey Gregory.
Cust) ; The Archdeacon of Derby
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 187
way of remedy," put forth an address to his Grace,
expressing their " desire for a distinctly avowed policy
of toleration and forbearance, on the part of our ecclesias-
tical superiors, in dealing with questions of ritual." The
strong point of the address was its alleging "the re-
quirement of justice" that the same allowance should be
given to the excessive Ritual of the High Church Clergy
as was extended to the defective Ritual of the Low ; that
if one man were to be censured for wearing a chasuble
at the celebration of the Holy Communion, his neigh-
bour should not be allowed to escape censure, who read the
Communion Office from the desk instead of at the Holy
Table. Its weak point was that it suggested no answer
to the question, Where is the proposed policy of tolera-
tion and forbearance to stop ? or is it to stop nowhere ?
Is the individual Clergyman, at all events if he can
succeed in carrying with him the majority of his con-
gregation, to be allowed to bring the Communion Service
of the Church of England into so close a resemblance to
the Roman Mass that the eye of an ordinary observer
can detect no difference ? Burgon, in his Letter to the
Archbishop of Canterbury, entitled 'Divergent Ritual ;
Remark* on " The Address for Toleration 4 ," ' was not slow
to pounce upon this weak point ;
' The ' desire ' they express ' for a distinctly avowed
policy of toleration and forbearance' would seem to
amount to a demand that henceforth individual Clergy-
men shall be at liberty to introduce into their Churches
with impunity just whatever extravagances of Ritual
they and their congregations may please ... It would
4 [Rivingtons, Waterloo Place, Mr. Parker's sympathy (to some
London: Oxford and Cambridge, extent) with the Ritualistic move-
1881]. Mr. James Parker was ment would have made it awkward
Burgon's usual Publisher for Sermons to offer such a Letter to him for
and theological papers ; but probably publication.
1 88 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
greatly have simplified the issue which has thus been
raised, if the framers of the present Memorial had been
so obliging as to state which precisely are the concessions
they expect to obtain at the hands of the Bishops. For
they cannot seriously suppose that indiscriminate liceti*?
is henceforth to become the Law of the Church ; or that,
simply in order to facilitate ' Ritualistic irregularities,'
the Sectarian principle of mere Congregationalism is g'oing
to be recognised, to the prejudice of our ancient Paro-
chial System," [pp. 4, 5],
Nor does Burgon, as to the strong point of the address,
admit that an offence in the direction of defect in Ritual
is of equal gravity with an offence in the direction of
excess.
" Detestable as is the method of one who is ; slovenly'
[in his observance of the Rubrics], his removal from the
Parish at all events brings the mischief to an end. Not
so when a Ritualist has had it all his own way in a
Church for years ; and where Vestments, ' Ornaments,' and
Romish practices have been freely introduced and firmly
established. His successor is reduced to the alternative
of either continuing what his well-informed conscience
entirely condemns, or else of setting the Parish in a blaze.
Now, for a Clergyman to impose such a necessity on his
successor, is nothing else but a crime " [pp. 6, 7].
Burgon adhered throughout life to the view that the
Church movement, as originated by the primitive Trac-
tarians, had nothing in common with that efflorescence
of Ritual, which indeed succeeded it historically, but
which he held to be merely its- running to seed and de-
generation. John Henry Newman, the father and founder
of the movement, had been somewhat austerely plain
as to vestments, paced up to the pulpit of St. Mary the
Virgin's cassockless and scarfless, in the ordinary Master of
Arts' black stuff gown, and preceded neither by beadle nor
mace- bearing verger. Yet the Sermons which he deli vered,
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 189
when he reached the pulpit, were among the most power-
ful of the spiritual forces of the day, keen as any two-
edged sword, " piercing even to the dividing asunder of
soul and spirit, and discerning the thoughts and intents
of the heart." And even apart from his extraordinary
delivery of them, and when read thoughtfully after a
long interval of time, those Sermons still search the
conscience and ransack the thoughts of the heart ; and
it may be said of them, as of the great Hebrew Legislator
in the latest year of his life, that their "eye is not dim,
nor their natural force abated."
But his Letter to the Archbishop was only the precursor
of a much lengthier and more substantial protest, which
later in this same year Burgon made against the intro-
duction into the Church of England of a florid Ritual,
utterly unauthorised, as he thought, by the Book of
Common Prayer, or rather condemned by it, when fairly
and reasonably interpreted, and the tendency and effect of
which was to assimilate the Service of the Holy Com-
munion as closely as possible to the Roman Mass. This
protest he makes in his ' Letter of Friendly Remonstrance
fo Canon Robert Gregory 5 .' The letter was addressed to
Canon Gregory rather than to any of the other nine
dignitaries, who with him had signed the address for
toleration, partly (in all probability) because Burgon' s
experience of the Lower House of the Convocation of
Canterbury, in which he sate officially as Dean of
Chichester, had shown him that the Canon, in virtue of
his strong sense, general fairness, and pronounced, but
not extreme, High Church views, exercised greater in-
5 [CANON ROBERT GREGORY : A more true liberty is enjoyed than in
letter of friendly remonstrance. By the Church of England ? " BISHOP
John William Burgon, B.D., Dean OF LINCOLN (1881). Second and
of Chichester. "Is there any Com- Corrected Edition. London : Long-
munion in Christendom in which mans, Green and Co., 1881.]
1 90 LIFE OF DEAN BURQON.
fluence in that assembly than almost any other single
member, "enjoyed a considerable following, and obtained
very much his own way 6 ," and also because Burgon en-
tertained personally kind and friendly feelings for the
Canon, and was sincerely grieved to see him (as he
thought) lending the shelter of his patronage to that
Romanising party in the Church of England, to whom
the Protestant ingredient in its formularies and Articles
is undisguisedly and avowedly an offence and a dis-
figurement, which they would be only too glad to
obliterate 7 . ' The Address for Toleration ' had the effect
in Burgon's view, even if it were not so intended, of
backing up this traitorous, disloyal, and un-English
party; it pleaded for a licence for them to introduce,
without restraint from authority, any extravagance of
ceremonial, to which they could induce the bulk of their
congregations to accede. The policy of " Live and let
live " as regards all parties in the Church, which had
been insinuated in the Address, and was more explicitly
avowed in the Gravamen on the same subject presented
by Canon Gregory to Convocation 8 , fair and reasonable
6 P. i. Romaniser, no novelty-monger, no
7 There can be no manner of doubt leader of a lawless faction. Not
as to the feelings of regard and you" True ; there is a grotesque-
respect which Burgon entertained for ness in the form in which he shows
Canon [now Dean] Gregory. He calls his regard for the Canon, by
him " a man of candour and trained administering to him a scolding for
understanding " [p. 20], " so pro- the support lent by him to the
minent and respected a member of Ritualists ; but the utter simplicity
the Synod as yourself " [p. 39] ; says and sincerity of John William
of him, " I cannot so much as Burgon's character entirely preclude
imagine what you have in common the notion that his affection for the
with the ' Ritualistic ' section of Canon was simulated.
the Clergy " [p. 69] ; says that he lias 8 This " Gravamen " is printed at
known him throughout his whole length in Appendix II. to Burgon's
ministerial career, and that "You 'Letter of Friendly BemonstrunccJ
used to be no 'Ritualist,' no pp. 77-79.
THE CHICH ESTER LIFE. 191
as it seems on the first statement of it, and propounded,
as doubtless it was, by all the signataries of the Address
with a sincere desire to bring about peace and mutual
forbearance, has no doubt a side on which it is assailable.
And Burgon struck it, with all the impetuosity and
passionate vehemence characteristic of him, on its as-
sailable side.
" Do you mean that a Clergyman ought to be at liberty
to violate the Law, provided only that his Congregation
will go along with him in his lawlessness^. A more immoral
doctrine, or one more destructive of Ecclesiastical order,
it has seldom been my lot to hear gravely propounded
. . . Sectarianism, pure and simple, must be the inevitable
product. The principle you plead for is the merest Con-
gregationalism. Strange, that the ' Ritualistic ' method
should be so closely allied to that of the Nonconform-
ists ! And yet, not strange either : seeing that it is
purely Sectarian in its spirit, nature, origin" [p. 23].
Of course his argument leads him to the discussion of
the so-called " Ornaments Rubric " (Sec. xviii. p. 49 et
sequent.), by an appeal to which, in its print d facie sense,
it was sought to justify all the Ritual extravagances of
which he complains. The reader may see for himself
how he deals with the intricate and difficult question as
to the meaning of this famous Paragraph (Rubric he
will not call it ; but gives it the probably more correct
appellation of a " Rubrical Note "), and as to the pro-
bable reasons for its retention at the last Revision of
the Prayer Book in 1662. Suffice it to say that starting
from the " unassailable fact " that " never in this Church
and Realm, nowhere, and b// none, since the Rubrical
4 Note ' in question first appeared, have the Ornaments "
[in question] "been employed by the Clergy of the
Church of England" [p. 51], he infers from hence that
" it must have been perfectly well understood from the
192 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
first that the meaning of the ' Ornaments Rubric ' is
not what " [the Ritualists] " assure us it is, and has all
along been" [p. 52]. Whatever conclusion may be
come to on this vexed question (and we are concerned
now simply to exhibit Burgon's conclusion), certain it is
that he was perfectly right in insisting that the " Rubrical
Note " in question must take its interpretation from its
history and surroundings, cannot be fairly viewed as an
isolated direction, independent of other directions given
elsewhere, and of the uniform practice of the Church for
upwards of 300 years.
It was probably about this time that Burgon. finding
that, as he states in the first page of his 'Letter of
l-'i-irnilly Remonstrance' he had no following in Convo-
cation, and never obtained his own way there, discon-
tinued his attendance, thereby, no doubt, securing not
only much valuable time for his studies, but also an
immunity from periodical friction and exasperation.
The author, who, as living at a great distance from
London, and feeling that he could obtain from the
published Reports all that was valuable in the debates
of Convocation, seldom or never attended, remembers
well receiving a solemn remonstrance from Burgon on
his laches in this respect ; "It was the duty of every
member, official as well as elected, to attend and con-
tribute to the discussion ; those who simply sit at home
and read the Reports do not acquit themselves of their
duties as members of a Church Synod," &c. Three or
four years elapsed ; and then the author, being on a visit
at Chichester Deanery, and nothing having reached him
lately as to Burgon's proceedings in Convocation, asked
him somewhat archly, and with a suspicion as to the
real state of the case, what had been going forward there
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 193
of late. " Oh ! I gave up attending some time ago," he
replied, " and have found my account in doing so. You
were right in what you used to say about it ; attendance
is a waste of good time." What he said further was to
the effect that he had been so often thwarted in a some-
what unmannerly way, that, finding that he could not
carry his point, he had made up his mind to withdraw for
good. Such was his own account of the matter ; and
the author, never having been present, cannot either
confirm or contradict the statement. But it seems fair,
under such circumstances, to give the impressions of
some who were present, as to the reason for his being
thwarted, and generally for his failure as a debater.
Here then are the impressions which three dignitaries of
the Church, who happened to sit with Burgon in Con-
vocation, formed of his demeanour. The last passage is
from the pen of the late Dean of St. Paul's, whose
natural irritation at the conduct he describes does not
however seem to suppress his moderation and fairness of
mind, as what could suppress either j ustice or gentleness
with a spirit like his ?
" I took the opportunity of asking " (naming a
leading member of the Lower House of Convocation)
" what was in his opinion the cause of Burgon's failure
in Convocation ? He said ; ' Chiefly this ; Burgon could
not or would not speak to the question before the House,
and was, in consequence, constantly called to order ;
and in the end the House would not hear him. Instead
of speaking to the question, he would air some pet
grievance. He was, besides, not a good speaker.' "
" What I should say," writes another dignitary, "about
Burgon in Convocation would be, that it was not the
sphere in which he was at all calculated to move. He
was in no sense a power there ; for he was constitutionally
unfitted for discussion with equals"
VOL. II.
194 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
And thus the late Dean Church, in the course of a
letter to the author (under date Aug. 23, 1889) ;
" You ask me about Burgon in Convocation.
As far as I remember, it was not the place for him. He
had a kind of lecturing and sometimes scolding way,
which does not suit a popular assembly ; and he was
not in touch with it. I don't remember his ever making
any great effort to* carry some policy of his own ; and
though he made some speeches, he generally confined
himself to short criticisms. He brought with him
strongly his dislike to that ' thing called Ritualism.' I
remember one occasion, on which he pointed with a dis-
tinctness which could not be mistaken, to our encourag-
ing Romanising practices (I forget the exact words) in
St. Paul's, and while he was speaking, fixing his eyes
upon me from the other end of the room, glowering
sourly and steadily, like a schoolmaster at a naughty
boy, whose demerits were held up to the Class without
naming him. With all his many and excellent gifts of
mind and character, Burgon somehow had more of the
ro vfiptaTLKov " [vituperative vein ?] " in his composi-
tion than any so good a man whom I ever came across.
It was a great pity."
In another of his letters to the author about the same
period, Dean Church, smarting probably under one of the
" scoldings," of which he gives a specimen above, calls
Burgon, "that dear old learned Professor of Billingsgate."
allowing his affection for the man's person, as well as
the respect which he entertained for his learning, to peep
through his censure of " Billingsgate" phraseology.
Yes ; it must not be concealed that, with all his love-
able, generous, and chivalrous traits of character, "he
had a lecturing and a scolding way 9 " (it comes out, and
9 No doubt the scolding way from Convocation to the seclusion of
chafed himself as well as the per- his study at Chichester. Not but
sons scolded ; and it must have been that he was naturally controversial,
a real relief to him when he retired and loved crossing swords with a
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 195
somewhat comically, in the ' Letter of Earnest Remon-
strance to Canon Robert Gregory '\ and that so far from
mollifying, the lecture and the scolding acted as an
irritant on those to whom they were addressed. Scold-
ing seldom answers even in the pulpit, where however the
pastor is set over his audience, and where he is bound
(with discretion and tact) to " reprove and rebuke," as
well as to " exhort." How much less is it likely to suc-
ceed in a deliberative assembly, the members of which
having equal rights and equal votes, are not likely to
tolerate any assumption of a magisterial position ?
There was wisdom in Burgon's retirement from a
sphere for which he must have felt himself disqualified,
and in his devoting himself to that exposure of the
faults of the Revised Version of the New Testament 1 ,
for which he possessed such ample resources, and on
which he expended such indefatigable research, re-
sources and research which made him second to none
but Dr. Scrivener as a Textual Critic. In the October
of this year was published in the Quarterly Review his
first Article on " The Revision Revised," which fairly
inserted the wedge into the New Version. It needed
only a few more blows of the hammer to cleave it right
asunder. All who read that Article carefully felt (to
say the least) their confidence in the New Version to be
shaken.
But that, amid the fire and fury of controversy, he was
theological adversary; he did so more nth November, 1880. Shrewdly
or less up to the last year of his life ; surmising the erroneous principles
but it is the tendency of increasing (as he considered them) which would
years to make a man sigh for repose. underlie the treatment of the
1 In the letter to Lord Cranbrook, Eeceived Text by the Revisers,
given at the end of the record of Burgon had been long previously
the next year he says that the engaged in collecting materials for
Revised Version appeared May 17, the vindication of that Text in its
1881. The Preface to it is dated great features.
O 2
196 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
still the same affectionate and wise counsellor to those
disciples who had sat at his feet at Oxford, let the
following letter testify. "The Ella" of the Oxford
Bible Class had now become Mrs. Samuel Bickersteth ;
and this is the advice he tenders her in her new circum-
stances, as the wife of a devoted young clergyman about
to enter on the duties of his first Curacy.
To MRS. SAMUEL BICKERSTETH.
"The Deanery, Chichester, Mar. 15, 1881.
" My dearest Ella,
" I trust the Curacy at (or near) Lancaster Gate may
prove all your fancy paints. I feel as if I could scarcely
help you at all in a sphere of work of which I know
nothing and in a style of Parish with which I never
have had any practical acquaintance. But my heart
tells me what ought to be done and what will be the
thing most to be aimed at viz., to avoid secularity as
much as possible, and gather one's self up, as much
and as often as possible, with GOD.
" Do not undertake too many things ; nor encourage
Sam to begin what he will be unable to carry on for
many months together. And certainly do not fritter
yourselves away on things which may be done by
others. He should take great pains with his Sermons
and resolve (GOD helping him) to make them really
useful. You may consider how far it may be possible to
have a Class of girls, especially of that kind which
abounds in London shop girls, and employees of all
sorts, who are practically without friends and alone in
the midst of the crowd.
"Ever, my dearest Girl,
" Your affectionate
" J. W. B."
1882.
This year the Cathedral Body at Chichester received
an accession, which gave Burgon a thoroughly cordial
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 197
and congenial colleague, between whom and himself no
shadow of misunderstanding ever interposed, and whose
friendship lighted up with quite a golden ray the six
last years of his life at Chichester. On March 15 the
Reverend Thomas Francis Crosse, D.C.L., was installed
as Canon Residentiary of Chichester, and five months
afterwards (Aug. 16) the Precentorship (one of the four
" dignities " of a Cathedral of the old Foundation) was
conferred upon him by the Bishop. Dr. Crosse was not
only a man of considerable parts and cultivation, but he
possessed that invaluable social gift of tact, that intui-
tive knowledge of character, and dexterity in applying
the knowledge, which often enables a man to direct
others, while appearing to do no more than concur with
them. Dr. Crosse had been a barrister before he became
a Clergyman, and there was something of legal training
as well as of natural qualification in his calm judicial
habit of mind, and in his careful survey of a subject on
all its sides. These qualifications made him an in-
valuable adviser in Capitular business, and supplied an
useful corrective to the Dean's impulsiveness of natural
character. Having himself charge of a large flock at
Hastings (Parish of Holy Trinity), which he tended with
great zeal and much acceptance, he was in full sympathy
with the Pastor's heart, which was so marked an element
of the Dean's character. And there was another gift
which Burgon shared with Crosse, the power of wield-
ing the pencil and the brush. The Canon had executed
some beautiful paintings in water-colour ; and the great
number of sketches, coloured or otherwise, which the
Dean has left behind him, many of them dashed off in
a few minutes while waiting for a change of horses or
for a train, abundantly show what genius he had in
this direction, and how he might have made his mark
198 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
in drawing and painting, if he had followed Art as his
vocation.
In the summer of this year Burgon found time to
resume his letters in the ' Guardian ' to Prebendary
Scrivener on Cursive Manuscripts of the Gospels, a
series of which had already appeared in that journal
in 1873, 1874 [see sup. pp. 82, 83], Dr. Scrivener
having " encouraged him to believe " that any ad-
ditional information he had collected on the subject
since that time would be of use to him in preparing the
third edition of his 'Introduction to the Criticism of the
New Testament' " Since I became a Dean," says Burgon
in the first of these letters, " it has ceased to be in my
power to visit foreign libraries, in furtherance of our
favourite study yours and mine." It is therefore " pri-
marily of our insular resources " [in the way of manu-
scripts] " that I am about to speak " ; nevertheless " one
may have something interesting to communicate concern-
ing manuscripts deposited in Libraries which yet one has
never been able to visit in person." This Series of Ten
Letters 2 , as also a Series of Five Letters which followed
it in 1884, is headed Sacred Greek Codices at Home and
Abroad, the earlier Series of Twenty-One Letters in
1873-4, having been entitled Manuscript Evangelia in
Foreign Libraries. Like the earlier one, it denotes not
only the industry and laboriousness of his research, but
his critical acumen. Witness his identification of the
manuscript indicated as "Em" and " Usser. 2." in Letter
II, a manuscript exhibiting a certain reading of St.
John viii. 8, which always, according to Burgon, "in-
2 These Ten Letters are dated, VI. July 20, 1882 ; VII. July 28,
I. June 14, 1882 ; II. June 23rd, 1882 ; VIII. August 3, 1882 ; IX.
1882; III. June 30, 1882; IV. August 9, 1882 ;X. August 17,1882,
July 6th, 1882 ; V. 1 3th July, 1882; all from " Deanery, Chichester."
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 199
dicates a copy with an unusual text," "He stooped
down and wrote upon the ground the sins of each one
of them." The question having occurred to almost
every Bible reader what it was that our Divine Lord
wrote, on the only recorded instance of His having
written anything, the reading, whatever it may have to
say for itself, and quite independently of its being ac-
cepted as genuine, is surely full of interest. In the
Seventh Letter (dated July 28, 1882) he relieves his
communications to Dr. Scrivener, "hitherto insufferably
dull," with the account of the visit paid by him to the
Library of the Convent of St. Catharine on Mount Sinai
in the course of his Eastern Tour (March 28, 1862), from
which an excerpt may be given ;
"It was idle appealing to the monks for guidance.
They knew absolutely nothing at all about the matter.
At last I spied a row labelled Euayye'Acor, and mounted
the ladder. It was amusing as well as annoying to see
how astonished and suspicious the monks looked when
they perceived that I had at last subsided upon the object
of my search. Most of the volumes proved to be Evan-
gelisteria" (copies of the Liturgical Gospels read in the
Communion Service) ; " but many were copies of the
Gospels proper. So I pulled these down, carried them to
a table before the window, and tried to puzzle them out.
While thus engaged, the monks kept tapping me on the
shoulder : ' Who are you ? ' 'What are you?' 'Where
do you come from ? ' and so on. I assured them, on my
honour, that I was nothing and nobody ; and that they
would not know the place I came from, even if I were to
tell them. A fresh tap on the shoulder : ' But say
where you come from.' ' Oxford/ (without looking up
from my book). It was like throwing a hard nut into a
cage of monkeys. ' Horks 1 ' 'Auk 1 ? ' ' Hoc? ' Suddenly
one exclaimed, 'Ah ! then do you perhaps know a little
gentleman on crutches ? ' and he proceeded to imitate the
lameness of the dear fellow he referred to. 'What?
200 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
Philip Pusey ? Yes : one of my dearest friends.' The
whole party were at no pains to disguise their astonish-
ment. That admirable and enterprising scholar had
visited their library, and testified the same interest and
curiosity which they witnessed in your present corre-
spondent."
In Letter VIII (dated August 3, 1882) he gives a very
interesting and detailed account of the great treasure of
the Library of the Convent of St. Catharine, " the Golden
Evangelisterium," "a most sumptuous volume truly,
written in large and very beautiful gold uncials," at
the beginning of which
"are seven truly exquisite illuminations of Saints, &c.,
on a gold ground, with their names inserted ..... The
patience of the old Sacristan ( Vitale), with whom I was
left alone to inspect this codex, was exemplary. I gave
him five francs. In return he gave me some sugar-plums,
and wanted me to drink some eau-de-vie of the Convent
out of his own private bottle. He wrote his name for
me in my book, o-/cvw(wAa BiraAtos [?] Si
The last Letter but one, No. IX (dated August 9, 1882),
ends characteristically and beautifully ;
" I am sorry that my communications should have
been so wondrous dry. But it has been inevitable. I
am reminded of what takes place in the cultivation of a
garden. The preliminary steps (some of them at all
events) are of the most unpromising I might say, the
most repulsive description. The ultimate issue is un-
mingled delight : blossoms of unimagined beauty : the
flowers and fruits of Paradise ..... But the truest
illustration is furnished by the progress of a building.
We must dig deep, and lay our foundations wondrous
broad and strong, if we intend that our edifice shall last
for ever. And this edifice, be it remembered, is nothing
else but THE PALACE OF THE GREAT KING."
The following letters, the one giving an account to
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 201
Lord Cranbrook of the sensation produced by his Article
in the ' Quarterly ' on the Revised Version (in the October
of 1881), and of a Royal visit to Chichester, at which it
devolved upon him to do the honours ; the other to Pre-
centor Crosse, showing how a devout and pious mind
finds matter for solemn thoughts in th^ ordinary inci-
dents of life, will be read with interest.
To VISCOUNT CRANBROOK.
" Deanery, Chichester,
"Jan. 27, 1882.
" My dear Lord Cranbrook,
" Do you remember my telling you a year or two ago
that I was giving all my time to the study of the Textual
Criticism of the New Testament? The appearance (17
May, 1881) of the Revision exercised me much ; for I
found that the Greek text had been remodelled on what
I consider entirely mistaken principles. Mr. Murray
was willing to admit an Article upon the subject ; and
accordingly in the October number appeared the fruit of
not a little labour. Let me request you, if you have not
yet seen that number of the 'Quarterly,' to give what you
will find there a patient hearing. My performance
seems to have fallen like a shell into the enemy's
position. It sold the 'Quarterly,' and another edition is
called for. A shower of letters from every quarter con-
vinced me that I had been passing the long summer
days not unprofitably. Not least surprised was I to
learn from Murray that Mr. Gladstone had driven to his
door, and sat with him to discuss the merits of Burgon's
Article (for the authorship of it, in spite of all my
endeavours, transpired instantly), with which he said he
agreed entirely.
"I then turned from the new Greek Text to the new
English Version, and I only finished my task on the I4th
of this month ; working at least for fifteen hours a day.
It broke my health, and I have felt ill ever since ; but it
comforts me to know the arrow has found its mark.
2O2 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
The Bishop of Lincoln writes to me in terms which I am
ashamed to transcribe. And so much for my recent
occupations.
" A visitor of more than usual respectability honoured
this dwelling in the course of last autumn, the Princess
Imperial of Germany. The Bishop being away, the
Station-master entreated me to receive the Princess,
which I did as well* as I knew how at an hour's notice ;
and very gracious and charming she was. The first
thing was to send word to the Canons ; the next to
collect the Cathedral servants and explain. They rose
to the occasion. A moth-eaten old red plush chair was
to be a kind of chair of state ; a mouldy strip of red
cloth was spread beneath it ; and all were to be on the
qui vive. The special train was delayed considerably ;
but at last we drove to the Cathedral, which was very
crowded. Every one behaved exceedingly well, falling
back whichever way the Royal lady moved. Each of
our body in turn did the honours ; and one of the ser-
vants told her R.H. of what Prince Albert had said,
when he visited the Cathedral. Then we inspected the
Palace, which interested her greatly, particularly the
historical initials (of Catherine of Arragon) on the ceil-
ing of the dining-room. She then said she was anxious
to get back to her children ; but she readily promised to
come to the Deanery for some coffee. My ladies had
everything ready of course, and the Princess was all
affability ; she really seemed pleased and happy ; one of
her suite remarked to one of my nieces, ' Somehow we
always seem to fall on our legs.' The weather was su-
perb. I asked whether she would do us the honour of
coming into the garden. c That she would ' ; and she
noticed everything. An old mulberry tree was freely
shedding its fruit. ' Mulberries ! ' exclaimed the Prin-
cess, stooping down and picking some up. Of course I
chose a few nice ones for her. She ate them ; and turn-
ing to me, remarked confidentially, ' They make one's
teeth so black, don't they ? ' On the whole it was a de-
lightful incident. She again and again told me how
pleased she had been with her visit ; but how she did
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 203
puzzle me with her questions ! I sent her a keepsake ;
and in return she wrote me a very graceful letter, not by
any means formal and conventional, but full of womanly
kindness. She seemed to me truly charming. The
whole way from the station to our door was lined with
spectators.
" You are, I think I have heard, sharing in our own ex-
traordinary winter, " [Lord Cranbrook was at Biarritz]
" which is not winter in the least. The hedges are full
of primroses ; and in the cottage gardens I see wall-
flowers, stocks, marigolds, and such like in bloom. I
only hope the winter is not to come by-and-by ; for the
vegetation will not be able to stand it.
"One more week, and the campaign" [in Parliament]
" will recommence. O to have Lord Beaconsfield, or
rather Benjamin Disraeli, Esq., M.P., in his place for a
week, to get up when Mr. Gladstone sits down ! But I
trust there will be found some equal to the occasion."
The remainder of the letter is occupied with the
troubles of the smaller Irish landlords, as reported to
him by a friend in that country, who adds,
" One of the incidental results of Mr. Gladstone's policy
seems likely to be the establishment of the Roman
Catholic domination over three-fourths of Ireland ! "
Whereupon Burgon remarks to Lord Cranbrook ;
"I am reminded of your exclamation, when Mr. G.
proposed the disestablishment of the Church in Ireland,
viz. that the Act of Union should be produced and
read, which provided (with far-sighted wisdom) that
the maintenance of the Church in Ireland shall be re-
garded as an integral part of the Union.
" I am ashamed of this long letter. I only meant to
send you all my love, and beg to do so now. Let me be
most kindly remembered, pray, to and by all.
" Ever, my dear Lord Cranbrook,
" Gratefully and affectionately yours,
"JOHN W. BUKGON."
204 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
To THE REVEREND PKECENTOR CROSSE.
" The Deanery, Chichester,
"Aug. 30, 1882.
" Dear Precentor. This is my last night in Chichester.
My sister vanished on Monday ; the two dear girls to-day ;
the servants go to-morrow morning : and Payne " [the
Dean's Verger, who #cted also as butler at the Deanery]
"will be supreme in Creation when I shall have gone
the way of all flesh early in the afternoon. I have been
virtuously employed for two days, viz. clearing up
every arrear, epistolary or otherwise ; sorting and put-
ting away papers, or else tearing them asunder, and so
making a clearance Such acts always strike me
as a rehearsal of a more solemn departure. I cannot say
what a homily I keep on preaching to myself all day long,
and how low my spirits are at this instant.
" Not in order to inflict any portion of my heaviness
upon you, am I addressing you ; but simply because your
letter to Awdry has been before me for a week, and it
deserves a word or two." [It appears that Canon Awdry
had consulted the Dean about the propriety of reading
the Prayer for Parliament at the Daily Office in the
Cathedral, during the period of the two months' suspen-
sion of the Parliamentary Session, from the middle of
August to the middle of October. The Dean thinks
there are considerations both pro and con, and recom-
mends a reference to the Precentor.] " And so I took
refuge in a reference to your thoughtful self. We are
already looking forward with pleasure to having you
both again for our neighbours.
" Ever affectionately yours,
" and Mrs. Crosse's,
" J. W. B."
1883.
Late in the March of this year Burgon paid a visit to
his old and attached friend and quondam disciple, Mrs.
Samuel Bickersteth, to see her first-born son, Monier,
then six months old. Here are the very characteristic
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 205
few lines in which he accepts her invitation " to come
and see the little wonder."
To MRS. SAMUEL BICKERSTETF.
" The Deanery, Chichester,
"March 20, 1883.
" My dearest Ella, Will you forgive a hasty scratch
in reply to your charming letter ?
" I shall be delighted to come and see the little wonder,
and to breakfast with you : and I will come either on
Wednesday or Thursday as you may prefer. It is all
one to me,
" But MIND ! on the condition that we have NO FISH 3
nor anything of the kind. When alone, my breakfast
is a cup of coffee and a slice of bread and butter.
" Give me that, and I'll come to the little wonder
Sam and you. Ever, my dearest Girl,
" Your his and its
" Affectionate Friend,
J. W. B."
The Bill for legalizing Marriage with a deceased Wife's
Sister having passed the Commons this year and been
sent up to the House of Lords, Burgon put forth a short
paper, dated June 9, 1883, and signed DECANUS, which
he "respectfully submits to the consideration of those
with whom a very solemn Legislative responsibility
will shortly rest." What would be his view upon that
very important social question can easily be guessed.
" Undeniable it is, that when our SAVIOUR re-syllabled
the primeval decree concerning Marriage (' They twain
shall be one flesh '), besides republishing what was said
3 " I did provide some fish for his some ; and when he had finished,
breakfast," writes Mrs. Bickersteth he took all the fish bones from his
to the author, " knowing he had own plate, and slily laid them on
come some distance that morning mine, saying, ' May my bones lie
from Gresham College to the West beside your bones.' "
End. He was persuaded to eat
2o6 LIFE OF DEAN BURQON.
1 in the beginning.' He added this solemn sanction of His
own ; ' Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh!
It follows, from the relation thus declared to subsist be-
tween Man and Wife, that the Wife's Sister is her Hus-
band's Sister also ; and therefore, that a Man may no
more marry His Wife's Sister than his own Sister. Ac-
cordingly, such marriages are prohibited by the Laws of
this Church and Rea.lm."
His arguments against the legalization of such mar-
riages drawn from their unhappy social effects are such
as have often been advanced before. He concludes ;
" It shall only be added that the eyes of England are
at this instant (not for the first time !) fastened
anxiously, hopefully, trustfully, on the House of Lords.
The prayer of this Church and Nation has gone up
that they may have the constancy, the wisdom, the
courage given them to defeat the proposed legislation by
a large majority."
The paper was sent to every member of the House of
Lords. The Duke of Richmond and Lord Cranbrook
would hardly need to be told who DECANUS was.
The Postscript to the Preface of the Third Edition of
Dr. Scrivener's great work [' A Plain Introduction to the
Criticism of the Neiv Testament for the Use of Biblical Stu-
dents '] shows one of the many forms which Burgon's in-
defatigable industry had been taking in the earlier part of
this year ;
"POSTSCRIPT (July 5, 1883). When the last sheets of
this volume were about to go to press, I most unexpec-
tedly received from Dean Burgon a catalogue of about
three hundred additional manuscripts of the New Testa-
ment or portions thereof, deposited in European libraries,
but hitherto unknown to scholars, which must be here-
after examined and collated by competent persons" [in
Burgon's letter to Lord Cranbrook, given below, asking
leave to dedicate to him ' The Revision Revised, he himself
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 207
puts the number of new MSS., which his inquiries had
brought to light, at 366]. " The catalogue is compiled
from replies to inquiries made of the several custodians
by Dean Burgon, who has most liberally placed at my
disposal the results of his pains and energy. Our chief
obligations are due to the Papal Librarian, the Abbate
Cozza-Luzi, who set three assistants on the search, and
has contributed to the list no less than 179 separate Co-
dices in the Vatican, unaccountably overlooked by Birch
and Scholz, the only critics who have had tolerable access
to these treasures.
" I had said [p. 246] that ' the sum of extant copies
must be considerably greater than we know of,' with-
out in the least anticipating so sudden an accession of
fresh materials. Now that the Vatican Library is ad-
ministered in a free spirit, it is hard to conjecture what
light its contents may throw ere long upon this and
other branches of sacred learning." [Preface, pp. ix. x.]
The letter to Lord Cranbrook (dated July 16, 1883) in
which he asks permission to inscribe to him ' The Revision
Revised^ will be found among those appended to this year.
The letter to the Reverend John P. Hobson. written from
Turvey in his autumnal holiday, Sept. 21, 1883, which
also will be found at the close of the year's record,
is a good specimen of the interest which Burgon took
in the minuter points of Greek Testament phraseology,
and of the promptitude and pertinence with which
he answered enquiries on that subject. It also shows
the confidence which was reposed in him by those who.
without any closer connexion with him, had simply been
attendants at his ministry at St. Mary the Virgin's.
The letter of Oct. 5, 1883, to Precentor Crosse, has
reference in its earlier part to the New Statutes which
the Cathedral Commission required the Chapter of each
Cathedral to propose for their own future government
2o8 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
(subject of course to the supervision and correction of the
Commissioners), and shows the perfectly good and ami-
cable terms on which Burgon was at this time with the
members of his Chapter. In the latter part, the illness
of Mrs. Crosse elicits from him the tender sympathy (it
was a quasi -pastoral sympathy), of which his heart was
always so full, and which was ever ready to respond to
the troubles with which his friends were visited.
In the October number of the ' Quarterly Review ' for
this year appeared Burgon's Memoir of the late Provost
Hawkins, which, together with his Memoirs of Bishop
Wilberforce, President Routh, and other biographical
sketches, written subsequently, was to be published
(after the writer's death, alas !) as one of ' The Lives of
Twelve Good Men' Of this Memoir it is needless to say
more than that, in a very interesting and popular way, it
has done justice to the memory of one whose great talents,
strong character, and exemplary piety, might otherwise
have lapsed into oblivion, like those of some other of the
' Twelve Good Men," because the sphere in which they
shone was the Academy, not (as in the case of Bishop
Wilberforce) the world. But, as the letter to the Rev.
W. Foxley Norris appended to this year's record shows,
Burgon had another motive in writing this Article,
besides that of doing honour to the memory of one whom
he both venerated and loved, and whom he calls " The
Great Provost." The works which stand at the head of
the Article are the Provost's Dissertation on "The Use
and Importance of Unauthoritative Tradition, as an Intro-
duction to the Christian Doctrines " quite a standard
Sermon of English Theology (it was preached originally
as a University Sermon on May 31, 1818); and "the
Memorandum respectfully submitted by the Provost of
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 209
Oriel to Her Majesty's Commissioners under The Uni-
versities of Oxford and Cambridge Act, 1877, with reference
to a New Code of Statutes framed by the College." The
sending in of this Memorial (March 5, 1879) was the
venerable Provost's latest public act. It was his solemn
protest against the diversion of the great Institution,
over which he had presided with so much efficiency and
dignity for nearly half a century, from the avowed
design of its Founder, a piece of sacrilegious iniquity.
" It " [Oriel College] " was to be Ecclesiastical : a School
of Divinity ; not for Education generally, but specially for
Theology, and the training up of Christian Ministers." It
is especially on this that Provost Hawkins founds his
protest; as well as on the manifest injustice and inexpe-
diency of the proposed revolutionary changes. Needless
to say that Burgon finds (as he assures Mr. Foxley
Norris) " a peculiar solace and satisfaction " in once
again rehearsing in the ears of the Church and the
World the mischiefs and wrongs done to his Alma Mater
by the Universities Tests' Act, and the Oxford Univer-
sity Commission, mischiefs and wrongs against which
he had already protested in his Sermon of 1880 on 'The
Disestablishment of Religion in Oxford, the betrayal of a Sacred
Trust! Six pages of the Review on Provost Hawkins
[pp. 344-348] are given to a recapitulation of these
grievances, in connexion with the ''Great Provost's"
Memorandum.
At the end of this year there appeared (the Preface is
dated All Saints' Day, 1883) The Revision Revised' one
of the three great works the other two being ' Inspira-
tion and Interpretation} and ' The Last Twelve Verses of St.
Mark,' by which Burgon has established a claim upon
the gratitude of all who are jealous for the honour and
VOL. II. p
210 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
integrity of GOD'S written Word, and which, we may
confidently predict, will find for themselves a permanent
place, all rationalistic cavils notwithstanding, in the
standard theological literature of the Church of England.
' The Revision Revised ' is a reprint in a separate form
of the three Articles which had already appeared in
the 'Quarterly? the first of them (on "The New Greek
Text") in the October number of 1881, the second and
third (on "The New English Version," and "West-
cott and Hort's New Textual Theory ") in the January
and April numbers respectively of 1882. To this is ap-
pended 'A Reply to Bishop Ellicott's Pamphlet in defence
of the Revisers and their Greek Text of the New Testament,
including a vindication of the traditional reading of I Tim.
iii. 1 6,' (" God was manifest in the flesh," which the
Revisers have altered into " He who was manifested
in the flesh," asserting in their margin that " the
word God rests on no sufficient ancient evi-
dence.") Without entering into the controversy be-
tween Burgon and those Textual Critics, under whose
advice, as experts, the majority of the Kevisers acted,
and whose Textual Theory is represented in the Revised
Version, this may safely be said, that the Convocation of
Canterbury made a fundamental mistake in giving in-
structions to the Revisers for any alteration of the text
whatever 4 , and this because such alterations were premature.
4 In occasionally adopting a Greek assume, as they do in their Preface,
text different from that which the that this " was in effect an ins true-
translators of 1611 had employed, tion to follow the authority of docu-
the Revisers did not exceed their mentary evidence without deference
Commission. For the fourth of the to any printed text of modern times,
Instructions issued to them by the and therefore to employ the best re-
Committee was, " That the Text to sources of criticism for estimating the
be adopted be that for which the value of evidence." The resources
evidence is decidedly preponderat- of criticism, which as a fact they
ing." The Kevisers might fairly employed, were no doubt " the
THE CHICHESTER LIFE.
21 I
Textual Criticism is a science of comparatively recent
date, whose materials Manuscripts, Fathers, early Ver-
sions have not yet been worked out, nay, have by no
means yet been all brought to light 5 ; and, pending new
researches and new discoveries, it was surely a fatal
best " in the eyes of those Textual
experts whose lead they followed,
while in the eyes of Burgon, and the
opposite school of Textual Critics,
they were the worst. Why should
Convocation have opened the door
for them to meddle with the Text at
all, under the circumstances of the
wide disagreement of learned men
as to the true text, and as to the right
method of arriving at it ?
5 How much has yet to be done
in Textual Criticism before finality
is reached in this comparatively
new Science, we may learn from
Burgon himself ('Revision Revised,'
p. 125). " The fundamental prin-
ciples of the Science of Textual
Criticism are not yet apprehended
.... Let a generation of students
give themselves entirely up to this
neglected branch of sacred science.
Let 500 more COPIES of the Gospels,
Acts, and Epistles, be diligently
collated. Let at least 100 of the
ancient Lectionaries be very exactly
collated also. Let the most import-
ant VEKSIONS be edited afresh, and
let the languages in which these are
written be for the first time really
mastered by Englishmen. Above all,
let the Fathers be called upon to give
up their precious secrets. Let their
writings be ransacked and indexed,
and (where needful) let the MSS. of
their works be diligently inspected,
in order that we may know what
actually is the evidence which they
afford. Only so will it ever be
possible to obtain a Greek Text on
which absolute reliance may be
placed, and which may serve as the
basis for a satisfactory Revision of
our Authorized Version." The Rev.
Edward Miller, in his invaluable
' Guide to the Textual Criticism of
the New Testament, 1 distinguishes
four ' Periods in the history of Text-
ual Criticism, so far as it has yet been
evolved, Infancy, Childhood, Im-
petuous Youth, and Incipient
Maturity" (p. 7). The Childhood,
according to Mr. Miller's division
of the Periods, terminated with
Griesbach, who died early in the
present Century. Under the period
of " Impetuous Youth " he places
Lachmann, Tregelles, and Tischen-
dorf (the discoverer of the Codex
Sinaiticus), whose principles, more
fully expounded and developed,
have been applied by our Revisers
in their dealings with the Greek
Text. In the labours of Prebendary
Scrivener, Dean Burgon, and Canon
Cook he recognises the " Signs of
coming Maturity." But there must
be a vast deal more labour, accord-
ing to Burgon, before anything
approaching to maturity is attained.
And beyond question, the Science
is not yet in such a condition that a
new Greek Text, materially different
from the traditional one, can safely
be constructed.
212 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
blunder to allow any alterations of the text which King-
James's Translators had used. Tischendorf and Lach-
mann and Hort, on the one hand, may be right in the re-
sults at which they arrive ; or, on the other, Scrivener,
and Burgon, and Cook (who in the main are agreed as to
their methods and conclusions) may have the best of the
argument ; but white new Manuscripts are still being
discovered, while new researches into the early Fathers
and the early Versions are still in progress, and there
is no saying what new lights may be thrown upon
various readings, and while thus adhuc snljudiee Us est,
it was surely the height of temerity (to use no stronger
word) for the Sacred Synod of the Church to give a
commission for the alteration of the Traditional Text in
any particular. And this, first on account of the very
grave issues at stake ; and next, because it was very well
known that, on the most important parts of the Tra-
ditional Text which had been called in question, there
were two opinions among Divines who had given them-
selves to the study of Textual Criticism, the one party as
stoutly defending the genuineness of the readings ques-
tioned, as the other party vigorously assailed it. Is not
the throwing of doubt upon the account of the strength-
ening Angel, the Agony and bloody Sweat, as the Re-
visers have done, by telling us in the margin that
" Many ancient authorities omit " it, totally unjustifi-
able, while yet the battle for and against the genuine-
ness of St. Luke xxii. 43, 44 has not been fought out,
while yet there is a possibility, not to say a great proba-
bility, that those verses really formed part of the Evan-
gelist's sacred autograph ? And meanwhile the Revisers,
by the surmise which they inject into the minds of
Christians, and which is dismissed as groundless by
men quite as learned and able, and as well furnished in
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 213
critical lore, as themselves, make our voices falter, and
our hearts to have misgivings, while we pray in words
which the Church has put into our mouths ; " By thine
Agony and bloody Sweat, Good Lord, deliver us." And
these Revisers inject suspicion also into the minds of
believers as to the first of the Seven Sayings upon the
Cross, " Father, forgive them, for they know not what
they do," the one palmary illustration, by our LORD'S ex-
ample, of His precept that we should " pray for them which
despitefully use us, and persecute " us. Nay ; they will not
allow us even to say the Lord's Prayer in its full form,
without confronting us with mental scruples as to whether
the LORD did give the doxology appended to it (which
they banish into their margin), and as to whether two of
the petitions, in one of the forms in which our LORD gave
the Prayer, ought not to be eliminated altogether. Are not
these three passages alone, the record of the Agony, the
record of the first Saying on the Cross, and the Doxology
of the Lord's Prayer, passages of such value as to make
it wrong and cruel to shake the faith of ordinary Bible
readers in them, so long as they are maintained by men
quite as learned as those who dispute their genuineness,
so long as Textual Criticism has by no means as yet said
its last word, or even come to full maturity as a Science ?
And these three passages are only specimens of several
others, which the Revisers have challenged and called in
question, not in a Treatise addressed to Textual Critics,
and which only Textual Critics would read, but in a
New Testament to be placed in the hands of every Eng-
lish Bible reader, as the volume from which he is daily to
derive the precepts, hopes, solaces of the spiritual life.
But it is not only the value and importance of the pas-
sages upon whose genuineness doubt might be cast, if the
Revisers were permitted to meddle with the Text, but
214 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
also the perfect knowledge, which the members of the
Sacred Synod must have possessed, that, as to all the
main passages called in question, there were two opinions
among Divines, advocated with at least equal learning
and ability. Take as a single instance of this the
last Twelve Verses of St. Mark, the genuineness of which
Burgon himself had "so elaborately vindicated in 1871.
There is perfect justice (although one could wish that it
had been said by another for him rather than by him-
self), in what he says on this point to Lord Cranbrook in
the Epistle Dedicatory of his work.
" As Critics they have had abundant warning.
Twelve years ago (1871) a volume appeared on l The
Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel according to St. Mark,'
of which the declared object was to vindicate those
Verses against certain critical objectors, and to estab-
lish them by an exhaustive argumentative process.
Up to this hour no answer to that volume has been
attempted. And yet, at the end of ten years (1881),
not only in the Revised English, but also in the
volume which professes to exhibit the underlying Greek 6
(which at least is indefensible) the Revisers are observed
' The New Testament in the the Committee of Convocation, the
Original Greek, according to the Revisers were instructed, when the
Text followed in the Authorized Text adopted by them differed from
Version, together with the variations that from which the Authorized
adopted in the Revised Version.' Version was made, to indicate the
Edited for the Syndics of the Cam- alteration in the margin. This
bridge University Press, by F. H. A. recording of the variations in the
Scrivener, M.A., D.C.L., LL.D., margin, they tell us in their Preface,
Prebendary of Exeter and Vicar of had been found inconvenient. " A
Hendon, Cambridge, 1881. better mode, however, of giving
' ' H KAINH AIA0HKH. The Greek them publicity has been found, as
Testament, with the readings the University Presses have under-
adopted by the Eevisers of the taken to print them in connexion
Authorized Version, 1 [Edited by with complete Greek Texts of the
the Ven. Archdeacon Palmer, D.D.] New Testament." This undertaking
Oxford, 1 88 1. resulted in the two volumes, the
By the fourth rule agreed to by titles of which are given above.
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 215
to separate off those Twelve precious Verses frorn their
context, in token that they are no part of the genuine
Gospel."
The author ventures to differ from Burgon as to what
was the "indefensible" part of the conduct of the Re-
visers. Not having been convinced by his work of
the genuineness of the verses in question, they might
surely have indicated their own doubtfulness about
them, by leaving an hiatus in their new Greek Text
between verses 8 and 9 of S. Mark xvi. But to ex-
hibit, as they have done, an hiatus in the English Version^
and to inform the English Bible-reader that " the two
oldest Greek manuscripts and some other ancient authori-
ties omit from v. 9 to the end," was certainly, when cause
had been shown so ably, so learnedly, so exhaustively,
for believing the verses to be perfectly genuine, " inde-
fensible." The least that can be said for Burgon's book
is, that it makes out A VERY STRONG CASE INDEED for
the "last Twelve Verses." This being so, it was cer-
tainly quite unjustifiable to impose upon the general
Bible-reading public their own conclusion, that the
verses are questionable. And independently of the
wrong done to the public, it was an unjust slight
upon Mr. Burgon's labours. And an unjust slight is
sure to awaken a spirit of retaliation and defiance.
Powerful as is * The Revision Revised? and successful as it
has been in checking the demand for the Revised Ver-
sion, it must be confessed that, had its language been
milder, and more respectful to the acknowledged great
learning and critical ability of his opponents, this ex-
tremely able and really grand work would have gained
in persuasiveness, while it would have lost nothing in
power. " You will be amused to hear," writes Prebendary
Powles to the author, " that when I suggested a softer
216 LIFE OF DEAN BURGOX.
tone of criticism in some of ' The Revision Revised ' pas-
sages, Burgon said to me ; " Ah ! I see you're like my
Quaker friend, who, in thanking me for my Gresham
Lectures, said, ' But Oh ! if thee wouldst but dip thy foot
in oil.' "
It must be added that, even as to the Translation, Con-
vocation, judging from what the result has been, gave to
the Revisers far too free a hand. It is true that their
first instruction was "to introduce as few alterations as
possible into the Text of the Authorised Version" (pity
that the word " Text " was used here, as a confusion
is thereby hazarded with the Greek Text, which is the
subject of the fourth instruction) " consistently with
faithfulness," and their second, " to limit, as far as pos-
sible, the expression of such alterations to the language
of the Authorised and earlier English Versions," re-
strictions, which, as Burgon triumphantly shows ^Re-
vision Revised,' p. 127], they have utterly set at defiance.
It is easy to be wise after the event ; and it could not
have been expected beforehand that from so really
eminent a body of learned Divines and Greek scholars
(the ablest in the country), a version so pedantic, so
unidiomatic, so unrhythmical (to bring no graver charges
against it) should have issued ; but such being the
result, the course which ought to have been pursued has
now become obvious. " We do not contemplate," said
the Convocation of Canterbury in the third of their fun-
damental Resolutions, " any new translation of the
Bible, or any alteration of the language, except where in the
judgment of the most competent scholars such change is neces-
mry" Be it so ; but then let sufficient securities be
taken for the strict observance of this Resolution. Let
it be ruled that no alteration whatever should be made,
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 217
except in passages where, by common consent of the best
Greek scholars in the country, there was a manifest error
in the Authorised Version. (Textual Critics, as Textual
Critics, need not have been admitted to the Ee vising
Company at all, if it had been resolved not to interfere
with the Greek Text which King James's Translators had
employed.) A score of the most eminent scholars,
several of them, it raight have been provided, special-
ists in the Alexandrine Greek, would have been abund-
antly sufficient. Let their instructions be, to report to
a Committee of Convocation such passages of the Au-
thorised Version of the New Testament as, in the unani-
mous judgment of the whole body of them, contained
" clear and plain errors " of translation, requiring amend-
ment. And let them at the same time submit to the
Committee the renderings of those passages which they
proposed to substitute for the Authorised Version. Let
the Committee, in considering their Report, have the
power, not of questioning the decision of the experts as
to the necessity of alteration in those particular passages,
or as to the true meaning of them, but of objecting to
and altering the language in which the meaning had
been expressed, so as to make it more idiomatic, more
smooth, more "happy" (to use the Revisers' own lan-
guage) in its " turn of expression, in the music of its ca-
dence, and the felicity of its rhythm 7 ." When the Com-
mittee had agreed upon any modification of the language,
7 It is wonderful how utterly de- at all events they ought to have had
fective the Revised Version is in some colleague like him, who did
"turns of expression, music of not know Greek, but would judge
cadence, and felicity of rhythm." the translation solely from the
The late Archbishop Magee used to stand-point of pure English."
say "that it would have been very See Dean Macdonnell's paper on
much better if John Bright " (a ARCHBISHOP MAGEE in the Aug.
master of pure English style) " had 1891 number of ' Good Words,' p,
been one of the Revisers ; and that 552.
218 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
which in any passage might seem advisable, let the
passages, with the proposed emendations of them, be laid
before the Upper and Lower Houses, and let each alter-
ation separately be put to the vote either for acceptance
or rejection. And let no alteration stand eventually,
which had not been accepted by both Houses. Some
plan of this kind would have been unenterprising indeed,
and unambitious, and when the result had been achieved,
it could not have been ushered into the world with a
nourish of trumpets, and with " great swelling words "
about modern theories of Textual Criticism ; but it would
have been useful, generally accepted by the Church, and
welcomed by Christians of all Communions, and last, not
least, would have given rise to no angry words or mutual
recriminations. And the Sacred Synod of the Church of
England would not have laid itself open, as it already
had done in the Revision of the Lectionary, to the charge
of doing a great deal more than there was any necessity for,
ami making a great many very questionable alterations.
We part from ' The Revision Revised] probably the
second work of our age and country on the Textual Cri-
ticism of the New Testament, the first being by unani-
mous consent Prebendary Scrivener's ' Introduction to the
Criticism of the New Testament ' [Cambridge, Deighton and
Bell] with an expression of deep regret that Burgonwas
not permitted to complete that methodical treatise 8 on
the Principles of Textual Criticism, which he regarded
8 " I deplore more heartily than I Treatise istheiiulispenxaltle condition
am able to express," he says in the for securing cordial assent to the
Preface of ' The Revision Revised' view for which I mainly contend.'"
[p. ix.] "the injustice done to the It is satisfactory to know that he
cause of Truth by handling the sub- has left this Treatise in a state so
ject in this fragmentary way, and far advanced, that in the hands of a
by exhibiting the evidence for what skilful and learned Editor its lead-
is most certainly true, in such a ing principles may be exhibited to
very incomplete form. A systematic the world.
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 219
as the magnum opus of his life, and for which he has col-
lected such ample materials 9 . If anything can mitigate
this regret, and compensate for " the last touch of a
vanished hand," it is the welcome information that so
highly accomplished a Textual Critic as the Rev. Edward
Miller has, after a thorough examination of the papers
which Dean Burgon has left behind, undertaken to edit
them, and is now engaged in that very laborious but use-
ful task. Of the materials upon which this gentleman
has to operate, he writes to Dean Burgon's representative
thus ;
" I will only add a renewed opinion of the
extreme value of the MSS. through which I have gone a
first time, of the unrivalled acquaintance with the entire
history of the sacred Text, the marvellously acute intui-
tion, and the breadth of sound system hitherto unequalled,
which they evince."
It may confidently be predicted that this work, when
it appears, will mark a new era in Textual Criticism.
A letter from the late Sir Stafford Northcote, after-
wards Lord Iddesleigh, acknowledging a copy of ' The Re-
vision Revised 1 and giving his own view of the unsatis-
factoriness of the Revised Version, as also a letter from
Prebendary Scrivener to the author, expressing his gene-
ral agreement with Burgon's principles of Textual Criti-
cism, will be found at the close of this year's record.
At the Reading Church Congress, held in the October
of this year, Mr. Le Gros Clark, F.R.S., a very old family
friend of Burgon. who had been intimate with him in
early life 1 , read an able paper on 'Recent Advances in
9 Mr. Miller reckons up 2400 figures pathetically, as will be seen,
papers in the huge portfolios, con- among the incidents of his death,
taming the late Dean's "studies " in 1 In a hasty note to this gentle-
the Greek Text of the New Testa- man (i3th Feb. 1885) he writes :
ment. The pile of these portfolios " Be sure that I too recollect the
220 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
Natural Science in their relation to tJie Christian Faitfr ; in
which a qualified assent was given to the doctrine of
Evolution. Burgon's reply to him, showing both his
affectionate feeling to his friends of Auld Lang Syne, and
his abhorrence of the Darwinian theory, will be found
among the letters appended to this year.
At the end of a year which must have exhausted him
by its intensely hard work, and agitated him by its
somewhat acrid controversies, it is pleasant to find
Burgon in a sportive and frolicsome vein ; but there was
at all times a buoyant elasticity in him which relieved
his graver moods. An antique signet, once belonging, as
appeared by the legend encircling the effigy 2 , to John de
Maydenhithe, Dean of Chichester from A.D. 1400 to 1407,
was dug up in the garden of the Bishop's Palace. The
Bishop, knowing that Burgon had received some early
training in numismatic lore, sent it to him to see whether
he could throw any light upon it. and Burgon lost no
time in bringing the curiosity under the notice of the
head of the Numismatic Department at the British Mu-
seum. Having ascertained all that could be ascertained
on the subject of the gem, he remitted it again to the
Bishop, after weaving (entirely out of his own head of
course) a pretty little " local tradition," to give point
and significance to the curiosity. The jeu tf esprit, in
addition to its playfulness, is a pleasing incidental token
of the perfect amity which always subsisted, even at the
old Brunswick Square days very touching In Memoriam of him for
vividly, very faithfully. Your dear ' The Guardian.'
family is inextricably bound up with 2 The effigy is a winged animal,
my earliest memories and all that with a dragon's tail, and front legs
pleasant time." On the death of like those of a horse in full gallop,
Archdeacon Clark, Rector of Tenby, representing probably the fabulous
(Dec. n, 1874), the brother of Mr. hippocampus.
Le Gros Clark, Burgon wrote a
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 221
time of serious dissensions with his Chapter, between him
and his Bishop. It should be borne in mind that cordial
friendship between a Bishop and the Dean of his Cathe-
dral Church is supposed to be a somewhat rare pheno-
menon. There is to be seen on one of the monuments in
Hereford Cathedral a reference to such a cordial friendship,
as something which from its extreme infrequency deserved
to be commemorated on the tomb of one of the parties.
To THE LORD BISHOP OF CHICHESTER.
" The Deanery, Chichester,
"Nov. 10, 1883.
" My dear Friend, This interesting object belongs to
a known class, of which specimens are to be seen in the
British Museum. An antique engraved stone set in
silver (or gold) and used as a signet. The setting is of
the 1 4th century. I have cleaned it with my nail-brush
and a little soap. You would have been surprised to see
how much dirt was in it.
" The chief point of interest consists in its fitting in so
exactly with the local Tradition. Dean John de May-
denhithe [1400-7] and Bishop Robert Keade [1396-1417]
were firm friends. Walking round your garden, the Bishop
said to the Dean, I wonder, John, if ever there will be
a Bishop and a Dean so friendly as thou and I are ? '-
'Marry, my lord,' (quoth the Dean), 'never until this seal of
mine be found, will the thing come to pass.' So saying,
he flung the jewel as far as he could and it disappeared
among the Episcopal cabbages. 'Ah! John' (said the
Bishop) ''twill take 1000 years to recover thy lost jewel.'
'Not so' (replied the Dean), 'within half a thousand years
my seal will come back to thy successor provided
always that my successor's name be John, as mine is.'
" You find this legend in so many of the old books that
I need hardly specify one of the places.
" The interesting thing is that thou hast found the
seal and my name is John and at the end of exactly
480 years the lost jewel has been recovered ; and it bears
222 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
(as you see) the name of Dean John Maydenhithe
though the engraver has spelt it Medenit.
" Ever affec^ y rs
" & MRS. D's.
"J. W. B."
JOH ANNIS * MEDENIT*
On the 13th December of this year, it was proposed in
the Oxford Convocation that the Rev. R. F. Horton. a
Dissenting Minister, should be one of the Examiners
appointed to examine Undergraduates " in the Rudiments
of Faith and Religion," i. e. in the Thirty-nine Articles 'of
the Church of England. How an appointment so unsuit-
able (to say the least) on the face of it came to be ac-
cepted by Congregation (that is, by the body of Resident
Masters, most of them Tutors of Colleges) seems almost
inexplicable ; but so it was ; Mr. Horton' s name was
carried in that assembly by a majority of nine. No need
to say that, when the Non-Resident Masters were called
up to accept or reject the nomination, the Dean of
Chichester appeared among them. The Vice-Chancellor
(Professor Jowett, Master of Balliol), in proposing Mr.
Horton' s name in the usual Latin formula, inadvertently
made a slip of the tongue, and coupled a neuter substantive
with a masculine participle ; " Nomen vobis approban-
dus" Unaware probably of the mistake, and perhaps
nettled by the laughter with which it was greeted, he
said words to this effect ; " Perhaps, however, as many
of you may not understand Latin " (a skit at the assumed
ignorance of the country clergy), " it may be well to pro-
pose the name in English," but before he could complete
the sentence, a perfect roar of laughter drowned the last
words. The country clergy, if they did not know Latin,
knew perfectly well that one not in communion with the
Church of Errgland 3 however highly qualified in other
THE CHICH ESTER LIFE. 223
respects, was an unsuitable person to examine in her
standards ; and the result was to administer to Congre-
gation a stinging rebuff ; Placets, 155, Non Placets, 576 ;
majority against the nomination, 421. The Dean of
Chichester, and those who felt with him on the degeneracy
of " Young Oxford," went to their homes happier than
they had been wont to do of late after contests in Con-
vocation, and in 'The Times' of Dec. 15 appeared this
epigram from Burgon's pen ;
PROFESSORIAL LATIX, Dec. 13, 1883.
" Nomen," quoth Jowett, " vobis approbandus,
But p'rhaps in Latin you'll not understand us,
So, in plain English " all that followed after
Was lost (cpi'ul minim ?) in a roar of laughter.
J. W. B.
To VISCOUNT CRANBROOK.
" The Deanery, Chichester,
"July 1 6, 1883.
" Dear Lord Cranbrook, I have been engaged for full
nine months carrying through the Press a reprint, with
considerable additions, of my three articles in the ' Quar-
terly? It is quite inexplicable to myself, and seems in-
credible, how such a task can have kept me closely oc-
cupied so long ; but dates are stubborn things.
" Six of the months, I ought to explain, have been con-
sumed in writing a reply (of 150 pages) to a pamphlet of
Bishop Ellicott's; chiefly in defence of my general prin-
ciples ; but in the main as a vindication of the commonly
received text of a famous controverted place (i Tim. iii.
16), which I have tried to establish for ever.
:: This has led me into a correspondence with the prin-
cipal Librarians of Europe, and has resulted in several
new facts, and a vast accession of knowledge. I have
communicated it all in outline to Dr. Scrivener, (366 new
224 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
MSS.), whose book will be out in a week or two. This
makes my volume 520 pages long.
" But I am travelling wide of the only purpose I have
in taking up my pen, which was, to ask leave to inscribe
my book to yourself. Will you also forgive the simpli-
city of the inquiry ; but will you kindly either destroy
the enclosed scrap, if it be perfectly right, or else return
it to me corrected,* if there be any thing in it you would
like to see added or altered ? I always feel nervous
when I am meddling with another man's good name.
Whether Murray will decide to wait till the autumn for
publication, or not, I cannot tell ; but I wish to have
done with the job, which has taxed me greatly. And
one is not ' out of the wood,' until ' Title and Dedication,'
c Preface,' and ' Indices/ are all fully achieved and in the
printer's hands.
" I beg to be most kindly remembered to all your dear
party. Pray believe me ever, my dear Lord Cranbrook,
" Most gratefully and affectionately yours,
" JOHN W. BURGOX."
FROM THE REVEREND J. P. HOBSON, VICAR OF
STANSTEAD ABBOTTS,
To THE VERY REVEREND DR. GOULBURN.
" The Vicarage,
" Stanstead Abbotts, Herts, Aug. jrd, 1889.
" Dear Sir, Hearing you are engaged in writing the
life of the late Dean Burgon, I venture to send you a
copy of a characteristic letter received from him, in case
you might like to insert it. The circumstances of its
reception are as follows. Having read in his treatise on
the ' Pastoral Office ' the following sentence, ' Has it ever
been noticed that when the Paralytic, borne of four, was
healed by our Saviour, his bed (nXivj]) was left on the
house-top, not let down into the house ? ' I wrote to ask
him if the explanation was the difference between the
and the Kpdfifiaros or KXivibiovl I mentioned also
THE C HIGH ESTER LlFE. 22$
the pleasure and profit it had been to rne to hear him on
Sunday evenings at Oxford. I asked also, as his book
on the Pastoral Office was published in 1864, whether
there were any other new commentaries he would recom-
mend in addition to,, or instead of, those mentioned in
that book. The following was the reply ;
' Turvey Abbey, Bedford,,
'Sept. 21, 1883.
'Dear Sir, It is very pleasant to be reminded of those
blessed days, which I seem to myself to have made so little
use of. 2)omine, miserere. You have exactly seized my
meaning, or rather the meaning of the Evangelist. The
grabdtum was a pallet, often a very sorry one. St.
Luke calls it by a peculiar name, K\ivibiov (v. 19, 24),
the thing e<' o> Kare<etTo (v. 25). The KAirr? was a bed,
often raised from the ground (for consider St. Mark iv.
2i ) ; the Kpa/3/3aro9 was the mat which lay upon it. St.
Luke distinguishes the two in Acts v. 15. They were
not necessarily connected, but in order to carry a man
upstairs, it is more convenient of course to lay him on a
stretcher (which is all that is meant by K\irr] in this case)
than in any other way. St. Matthew, writing first, is
not careful to distinguish the words (for see St. Matt. ix.
6). But that they are to be distinguished, and in the
way I mention, is plain from the subsequent narrative,
and indeed from other parts of Scripture (see St. John v.
8, 9, 10, ii, 12). All languages use words in a vague
way. If I speak of a "bed/' it is not plain whether I
mean a fourposter with curtains and a canopy, or
whether I mean the mattress (or feather bed) which lies
upon it. The ancient church did not understand this.
They represent a boy struggling to carry off a sofa, thus :
VOL. II.
226 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
' In reply to your other question ; Pnsey on Daniel
all should read. It is invaluable, the Book of the Age,
so to speak. Wordsworth's Commentary on the whole
Bible, is on the whole the best extant. Alford I have
spoken rather too hastily of; he is valuable as a help,
but not as a guide. Scott I have also spoken too
strongly of ; his Commentary is really useful, though
deficient in learning. I do not see that I have men-
tioned "HaWs Contemplations^ They are most valuable.
" Kay on the Psalms " is also excellent for reference.
' Yours faithfully,
'JOHN W. BURGON.'
" I remain, dear Sir,
" Yours very faithfully,
" J. P. HOBSON."
To THE REVEREND PRECENTOR CROSSE.
[On the New Statute*, which the Cathedrals Commission had re-
quired the several Cathedrals to draw up and lay before themj\
"Turvey Abbey, Bedford, Oct. 5, 1883.
" My dear Precentor, I was intending to send you
a few words of acknowledgment of your kind and
acceptable letter, when the enclosed (as mercantile
people say) ' comes to hand.' I have sent the Secre-
tary a line in reply, promising to attend : and I
daresay you have done the like. Will you, in the
meanwhile, bring your own proposals to a definite
issue and let me have them to study for a few days
any time after the i6th, on which day I expect to
be leaving this dear place and returning to the mill ?
I wish the necessity had not arisen. I am quite con-
tent to live on with such men as yourselves like a
family without a code of laws. But since we must
absolutely have new Statutes, what need to add v(3ov\(as
bell " [we must take good counsel.]
"You mention your dear wife's continued affliction.
It must of course be so. We were made what we are,
with design : and these loving, anxious, sorrowing
THE CIUCHESTER LIFE. 227
hearts of ours are, I suppose, the very kernel of our
being. Religion is not intended to unmake what God
made ' in the beginning,' and pronounced ' very good ' ;
but only to sanctify and to bless, to elevate, to
purify, and to guide ' into the way of peace.'
" Invite the dear woman to ponder over the words
'What I do '-
* Thou knowest not now '-
* But thou shalt know '-
' Hereafter '
clause by clause.
" And then point out to her the comfort of the expres-
sion (found elsewhere) ' according to the counsel of His
will' [Eph. i. n'J.
"We (you, she, I) would willingly submit our-
selves to His will because it is His will ; and because
absolute, unconditional submission is as clearly our wis-
dom as our duty. But Oh, when I am assured that His
will is with counsel (Kara T^V (3ov\i]v TOV 0eA?7jua7-o? avrov)
then I gather myself up into a different attitude. Instead
of crouching trembling at His feet, I lay my head on
His bosom. It is no longer blind submission. It is
trustful love. Tell the dear woman that.
" Ever affectionately yours,
To THE REVEREND W. FOXLEY NORRIS, RECTOR
OF WlTNEY, OXON.
"The Deanery, Chichester, 22 Nov.,. 1883.
" My dear Foxley Norris, It is very agreeable to me
to see your handwriting again, and in any way to be
reminded of you. Yes ; of course the Article " [on Pro-
vost Hawkins in the ' Quarterly'} ' ; was mine, and has
been recognised as such by a surprising number of per-
sons. I am glad I wrote it, for it seems to have gratified
many. I must add that / found a peculiar solace and
satisfaction in placing on record the iniquitous history
of Oxford during these few last years. I have not done
with the rogues yet.
" Oh ! how they hate me !
228 LIFE OF DEAN BURGUX.
" You are a poet indeed, if you can tag rhymes while
suffering tooth-ache. Thank you much for your verses.
I send them on to Turvey, where they will be as much
appreciated as here.
" I trust you are well and thriving ? My ladies join me
I suppose I may say in love to you !
" Ever, dear Norris,
" Yours affectionately,
"J. W. B."
FROM SIR STAFFORD H. NORTHCOTE, M.P., TO THE
VERY REVEREND THE DEAN OF CHICHESTER.
" Pynes, Exeter, Dec. 22, 1883.
" My dear Dean of Chichester, I have been keep-
ing your letter in the hope of being able to give a
little time to the Revision question before answering
it ; but the waves of to-day succeed the waves of yes-
terday with such pitiless persistency, that I go to bed
every night re infectd, and meantime my conscience
threatens to become seared. So I must no longer delay
to thank you both for the book, and for the very kind
letter which accompanied it ; and which I warmly
appreciated. My general idea of the Revision is, that,
while some amendments and corrections were undoubt-
edly necessary, the travestie of the whole text of the
Scripture destroys far more than it can possibly give in
exchange. What becomes of all the associations, with
which from early childhood we had learned to surround
the old text ? How would Keble have felt, when he was
writing the lines on the Catechism, had he foreseen that
the 'sacred air' 3 was one day to be wwlearnt, and a new
setting adopted 1
" With best Xmas wishes, I remain, faithfully yours,
" STAFFORD H. NORTHCOTE."
3 " O say not, dream not, heavenly And cannot reach the strain.
notes Dim or unheard, the words may fall,
To childish ears are vain, And yet the heaven-taught mind
That the young mind at random May learn the sacred air, and all
floats, The harmony unwind. "
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 229
FROM THE REVEREND DR. SCRIVENER TO THE VERY
REVEREND DR. GOULBURN.
" Hendon Vicarage, Nov. 18, 1889.
" Dear Mr. Dean, I am much pleased that you have
undertaken my valued friend's life. I do not know how to
express in a few lines my literary obligations to Burgon.
He often says I was first in the field ; but by reason of
the difficulties of life, I was soon left far behind.
" If you have before you the 3rd edition of my ' Plain
Lit ml notion to tJ/e Criticism of the N. TJ (1883), the Index
II (BURGON, J. W.) will show you how much I owe to him,
and with what gratitude I have acknowledged his help.
" In principle I fully agree with him in believing that
all existing materials of every kind ought to be known,
before the text can be regarded as permanently fixed.
But as a result of my own studies I do not expect so
much help from the later copies of manuscripts, as from
a thorough examination of the ante-Nicene Fathers (be-
gun, not completed, by him). I reject Dr. Hort's base-
less theories as earnestly as he does, and am glad to see
they are not gaining ground. On the other hand, I
think Burgon' s wholesale disparagement of Cod. Vati-
canus as ' the most corrupt of all copies,' quite unreason-
able. On this head we have held many a conflict, without
either of us yielding an inch. You will see that I stand
midway between the two schools, inclining much more
to Burgon than to Hort.
"I am sorry that I can do no more for you. I am
lingering ' superfluous like a veteran on the stage.' Yet
all resigned, I trust, to the Divine Hand, which has
bestowed on me in life so many good things.
" I am, Mr. Dean,
" Yours very respectfully,
" F. H. A. SCRIVENER."
To F. LE GROS CLARK, ESQ., F.R.S.
"The Deanery, Chichester, 22 Nov., 1883.
" My dear ' Fred,' We are getting old boys, but must
keep up the ancient appellations.
230 LIFE OF DEAN BURGOX.
" I am grateful to you for your two little productions,
which I instantly read through with great interest the
address to the Hospital students with entire agreement.
I particularly like the counsel given at p. 8 (lower half).
"In the other paper you are not so happy. Physical
science, when it is unscientific, makes itself ridiculous,
when it runs foul of Revealed Truth. Thus Evolution,
when it sets about*accounting for the existence of man,
is a dream pure and simple, and not a very pure dream
either. The Creation of man and of woman is a matter of
express Revelation, to the truth of which the Creator Himself ,
the Incarnate Word, JEHOVAH pledges Himself. It
is mere chaff and draff for the Scientist to approach
such a matter with a weak theory, unproved and un-
provable. He prates of what he knows nothing. Let him
keep to his well ascertained facts, and we listen to him
with pleasure. But he ventures on what is to him con-
fessedly terra incognita, when he pretends to account for
the Origin of Man. I fasten on one definite point, you see.
" I believe you would grant all this, if pressed. But
from your paper, one would suppose you were on the
side of Darwin, or at least of Darwinism.
" I trust you are all well ?
" Ever affectionately yours,
" J. W. B."
"In my reply to this criticism," sa}'s Mr. Le Gros
Clark, in a memorandum on the subject of Burgonwith
which he has kindly favoured the author, " I ventured
to remind him that God speaks to us by His Works as
well as in His Word, and that if the two revelations
appear to be at variance, it was more probable that we
had misinterpreted the Word, than that the works should
have misled us. I was anxious for his answer to this
suggestion, but it did not come. I think this was the
nearest approach to a disagreement that we ever had."
Mr. Le Gros Clark, like all who knew Burgon inti-
mately, was drawn towards him by his affectionateness
THE CHICHESTER LIFE.
231
and transparency of character. In a letter to the author
dated Sept. 2, 1890, he says;
"I think I have never known a character so simple,
so childlike, so pure. His fondness for children was
remarkable ; and to women he was uniformly most
courteous, and evidently took much pleasure in their
society. I do not believe he was sensible of the pain he
inflicted in his polemical writings ; for such consciousness
would have been inconsistent with his tender and loving
nature. Indeed these characteristics must seem irrecon-
cilable to those who do not know that his strong convic-
tions were they not prejudices? overwhelmed all other
considerations."
1884.
In the January and February of this year Burgon
published in the columns of the * Guardian ' another
series of five letters 4 to Dr. Scrivener on copies of the
* The dates on which the five
letters were written are I. Jan. 2 ,
1884; II. Jan. 10, 1884; III. Jan.
17, 1884; IV. Jan. 29, 1884; V.
Feb. 6, 1884 (all from "Deanery,
Chichester").
It may be convenient here to pre-
sent a list of all Burgcn's Letters to
the ' Guardian ' on the subject of
Codices of the New Testament, as
they are given in a Memorandum
in his own handwriting, found
among his papers.
" Memorandum.
2 Letters in the ' Guardian,'
which are reprinted in my
' Letters from Home ' (on Cod.
B.).
21 Letters, which also appeared
in the ' Guardian ' (i-xv.
in 1873 : xvi-xxi. in 1874),
entitled ' Manuscript Evan-
gelia in Foreign Libraries.'
10 Letters, which also appeared
in the ' Guardian' (21 June
to 23 Aug. 1882), entitled
' Sacred Greek Codices at
home and abroad.'
5 Letters, which also appeared
in the ' Guardian ' (Jan. and
Feb., 1884) under the same
title.
38 Letters in all are the sum of
what has appeared in this
way."
It would appear from what he
says in the last Letter of the last
Series that he contemplated con-
tinuing these Letters : " The Editor
of the Guardian ' warns me that
at this place, these long letters must,
232 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
New Testament, which had been brought to light by
inquiries made in the early part of 1883.
" A burning wish, let me be allowed to call it a fixed
determination, to settle if possible for ever the vexed
question of the true reading of i Tim. iii. 16, set me on
obtaining from the custodians of the chief Continental
libraries the reading of such copies of St. Paul as were
known to be under their respective charges. Not a few
interesting discoveries (as might have been foreseen) were
the consequence."
Dr. Ceriani, his learned friend at Milan, gave him
" references to several MSS. unknown to me before,"
and sentiments of Auld lang syne, always so easily
quickened in his heart, must have sprung up in him,
when the acquaintance of his early life, Dr. Lepsius, the
head-librarian at Berlin, " a friend of more than forty
years' standing," promoted his wishes [see Vol. I. pp. 24,
25, and 103, 104]. But the Abbate Cozza-Luzi, the
Papal Librarian, gave him greater assistance than any
other foreign Librarian. " On being made acquainted
with the nature of my researches, this learned man set
three of his assistants to work on my behalf in the
several libraries of Rome," and the result was the dis-
covery of " a considerable number of sacred Codices
which had hitherto escaped the attention of the
critics," so considerable as to " show an increase
of no less than three hundred and seventy-four upon
the number known to us in the first half of 1883."
[Letter I]
for the present, be discontinued. I To all others, I ain painfully con-
venture to hope that, when they are scious that my letters must be
resumed, I shall have something to simply unreadable."
communicate which will interest But, whatever his intention, the
those who care for the Textual Letters never were resumed.
Criticism of the New Testament.
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 233
This is as much as needs to be said on this series
of five letters, in the course of which Burgon, both in
the second and fourth Letters gives its just meed of
praise to Mr. Berriman's 'Dissertation upon i Tim. iii. i6 5 ,'
in which he had preceded Burgon by 140 years in his
attempt to "settle if possible for ever the vexed
question of the true reading " of that text.
" Berriman claims on his title-page to have ' proved '
that the common reading of i Tim. iii. 16 (' GOD was
manifested in the fles/i ') is the true one. I venture to
assert that he has fully established his claim. As a
critic, he was greatly beyond his age. The 140 years
which have since rolled out have supplied us with a vast
succession of evidence of which he would have rejoiced
to avail himself." [Letter IV.]
Burgon's high estimation of the value of Copies, as
shown in the first Letter of this Series (Dr. Scrivener, as
5 The Title Page of this Book is BERRIMAN, M.A., Curate of St.
as follows : Sivithin, and Lecturer of St. Mary
" 0EO X 2 f(pai'pwOr] kv oapxi. OR, Alder mar y. We can do nothing
A CRITICAL DISSERTATION UPON i against, the Truth, but for the Truth
TIM. iii. 16. WHEREIN EULES are 2 Cor. xiii. 8. LONDON : Printed
laid down to distinguish, in various for W. INNYS at the West-End of
Readings, which is genuine ; An St. Paul's, and J. NOURSE, at the
ACCOUNT is given of above a hundred Lamb without Temple-bar. M.DCC.
GREEK MANUSCRIPTS of St. Paul's XLI "
Epistles ; (many of them not here- Berriman's Treatise, though not
tofore collated ;) The Writings of the long, is one of those solid and ex-
GREEK and LATIN FATHERS, and haustive ones, which are quite out
the ANCIENT VEKSIONS are ex- of date in these superficial days,
amin'd; and the common Reading At p. 432, n. I, of Burgon's
of that Text, GOD was manifest in ' Revision Revised? he tells us that
the Flesh, is prov'd to be the true in the British Museum copy of this
One. Being the Substance of Eight Dissertation there are MS. notes
Sermons preach'd at the Lady by the Author, and that another
MOYER'S Lecture, in the Cathedral annotated copy is in the Bodleian
Church of St. Paul, LONDON, in the Library.
Years 1737, and 1738. By JOHN
234 L IFE OF DEAN BUKGON.
will be seen from his letter to the author given above
[p. 229], does not estimate Copies quite so highly) may
just be glanced at, before we pass on ;
" I am thoroughly persuaded that the Copies will
eventually be recognized as our most precious helps in
determining the text of the New Testament Scriptures.
These only because they happen to exist in ' Cursive '
writing, instead of the ' Uncial ' character, have, for nearly
a hundred years, laboured under great and undeserved
neglect. Griesbach [ 1 7 74-96] began the mischief, which
Lachmann [1831-42] perfected: but it was Tischendorfs
discovery (in 1 844) of the ' Codex Sinaiticus ' which, more
than anything else, gave an impulse to the weak super-
stition which now prevails (because written in uncials,
1/H'nfore oracular), and helped to divert public attention
from the younger witnesses to the truth of the letter of
Scripture."
Burgon's heart, to which Oxford at all times lay so
near, was again to be saddened in the spring of this year
by another proof of the degeneracy of his beloved Uni-
versity. On April 29, 1884, the admission of women to
University Examinations was carried in Convocation
by a majority of 143 [Placets 464, Non-Placets 321].
Under such an abandonment (as he and the many
who thought with him regarded it) of all true delicacy
of feeling, and all sound principles of Education, Burgon
could not possibly be silent, if an opportunity were
given him to speak. And shortly afterwards an oppor-
tunity was given him, and in a way which may be re-
garded as a personal compliment, inasmuch as the
Trinity Sunday Sermon, which he was appointed to
preach before the University, was to be in New College
Chapel ; and, on occasion of the transfer of the Univer-
sity Sermon from St. Mary's to a College Chapel, it
was usual to appoint a member of the College to preach.
THE CHIGHESTER LIFE. 235
Why Burgon, whose whole attitude towards the modern
changes in the Academical system was one of uncom-
promising resistance, was chosen so often as he was in
his latter days to occupy the University Pulpit, requires
some explanation. If indeed the nominators of the
University Preachers in the main agreed with his views,
that fact, without going further, furnishes the explana-
tion. But, on the contrary hypothesis, it may perhaps
have been the case that in those nominators who differed
materially from him, a feeling of fairness operated, es-
pecially if they themselves were not altogether satisfied
with the Academical changes ; " Let us at all events
hear, as we are sure to do from Burgon, the strongest
things that can be said against what has been recently
done." Or was it that his hard hitting, and occasional
grotesqueness of manner and phraseology, were regarded
as an amusing relief from the general dulness and dryness
of University Sermons, <; Call for Samson, that he may
make us sport ? " Anyhow, such was the fact, that
every facility was given him of fulminating against the
modern movements, which he held to be so fraught with
mischief. And on June 8, 1884, Trinity Sunday, he
preached in New College Chapel (it seems to have been
his last appearance in the University Pulpit) his Sermon
on this thesis, ' To educate Young Women like Young Men
and with Young Men, a thing inexpedient and immodest'
He is careful to explain that his censure does not touch
the Halls already established for young Ladies in Oxford
('Lady Margaret Hall" and " Somerville Hall").
" The Halls were essentially private dwelling-houses.
They existed quite independently of the University
system. Many of us viewed them with sympathy, (I
avow myself of the number), because they seemed to
provide the safeguard of a pious home for just a very
236 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
few young gentlewomen, who coveted access to some of
the educational advantages of this place. Presided over
by those whose names carry with them the savour of
whatever is most admirable in Woman, the system pur-
sued at the two Halls commended itself to our Christian
chivalry, and won our confidence. But already has the
object of the Halls become a thing of the vanished
past. A new system, of things has been set up," &c., &c.
(P- 25)-
In his Postscript he endeavours to explain 6 the very
mistaken step to which the University had recently
committed itself, by
" the attractiveness of the inmates of the two Halls
which had been already opened in Oxford, and which (it
was said) would be extinguished, unless the University
would legislate in favour of Women, and practically
change its own constitution. In other words, the ad-
mirable Ladies who preside over ' LADY MARGARET ' and
' SOMERVILLK ' Halls, and the charming specimens of
young womankind who had made those Halls their tem-
porary home, proved irresistible as an argument. The
men succumbed. I remember once reading of something
similar in an old Book. The Man was very sorry for it
afterwards. So was the Woman."
The Allocution to Women, which occupies the latter
part of the Sermon, is characteristic of the preacher in a
high degree. Through the lecture which he reads them,
and the rebuffs which he gives to their aspirations for
equality with Man, (" Inferior to us GOD made you : and
our inferiors to the end of time you will remain"
[p. 29] ; " If you set about becoming Man's rival, or
6 Some explanation was necessary usually found on the right side
of how it came to pass that the " our natural friends," as Canon
majority in favour of the admission Liddon calls them in the letter in
ofwomen totheUniversity Examina- which he thanks Burgon for his
tions was so large, and not only so, Sermon. [See below.]
but composed in great part of persons
THE CHIC HESTER LIFE. 237
rather if you try to be, what you never can become,
Man's equal .... you have in a manner unsexed your-
selves, and must needs put up with the bitter con-
sequence" [p. 30]), there struggles forth, almost at every
other line, that intense susceptibility to the charms of
women, and that chivalrous deference to them, which
formed so strong an element in his character ;
" Yours are not a few of the precious qualities which
have been entirely withheld from us. ... You are the
prime ornament of GOD'S creation ; and we men are, to
speak plainly, just what you make us" [p. 29] ; " Woman
is the one great solace of Man's life, his chiefest earthly
jy" [p- 3]> & c., &c.
If it were desirable to show that it was in the interests
of women themselves that it was sought to exclude them
from competition with men, John William Burgon was
an entirely suitable advocate of such exclusion, than
whom, though unmarried, a more devoted and chivalrous
admirer of the softer sex never existed. Whatever judg-
ment may be formed of his Sermon, it at least relieved
the University from the grave charge of so objectionable
a measure having been passed into law without any
public and official 7 protest being made against it. And
this he tells us was his object in delivering and publish-
ing the Sermon :
" That it may not be said in after years that when the
University (29th April, 1884) passed a Statute to enable
young women to come up to Oxford and undergo the
same Examinations as young men, none of her sons
remonstrated with her on the dangerous course to which
7 Canon Liddon wrote a powerful " official," as a Sermon before the
letter to the ' Guardian J dissuading University, preached by appointment
members of Convocation from voting of certain Academical functionaries,
for the measure ; but this was before may be called,
it passed, and can hardly be called
238 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
she was thereby committing herself: the ensuing pages
have been sorrowfully written, and are now published."
After all, the measure in question was only a symptom,
as Burgon, Canon Liddon, Bishop Christopher Words-
worth, and other devout and spiritually- minded men
deeply felt, of the malady which has been long work-
ing among us, by Woman's invasion of the position and
functions of Man, by her abandoning the position of a
helpmate, which is her true province, and taking up the
position of a rival. That our Transatlantic brethren re-
pudiate, as earnestly as any one of us in the mother coun-
try can do, this dislocation of the Divinely constituted
order of Society, and discern as clearly as ourselves the
frightful social mischiefs which must accrue, may be
seen from that very valuable series of Lectures by Dr.
Morgan Dix, on the ' Calling of a Christian Woman*!
which has already obtained a considerable circulation in
this country, and which it were to be hoped might be
in the hands of every young woman of promise, and
every mother of a family.
This last University Sermon of Burgon's elicited from
the late Canon Liddon (whose communication to the
' Guardian' of April 23, 1884, is quoted in the Sermon),
the following Letter ;
8 ' Lectures on the Calling of a The subjects of the Lectures are,
Christian Woman, and her training I. The place of Woman in this
to fulfil it.' Delivered during the world ; II. The Degradation of
Season of Lent, A.D. 1883. By Woman by Paganism, and her
Morgan Dix, S.T.D., Rector of Restoration by Christianity ; III.
Trinity Church, New York. Fifth The Education of Woman for her
Edition. New York : D. Appleton Work ; IV. The Sins of Woman
and Company, I, 3, and 5, Bond against her Vocation ; V. Divorce;
Street, 1884. VI. A Mission for Woman.
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 239
To THE VERY REVEREND THE DEAN OF CHICHESTER.
"3 Amen Court, E.G., June 20, 1884.
" My dear Dean, Let me thank you for your kindness
in sending me a copy of your Sermon preached at Oxford
on Trinity Sunday. If, as I fear, there is no chance of
our undoing the fatal mistake of April 29, such earnest
expressions of opinion as yours will delay, and perhaps
will help to defeat, the next move, viz., the demand for
a B.A. Degree.
" The sad thing about the matter is that so many of
our natural friends helped to pass a measure, which is
really at issue with all they have most sincerely at heart.
" Let me once more thank you. and remain,
" Ever very truly yours,
" H. P. LlDDOX."
Before the time at which we have now arrived, Bur-
gon, having found that mode of instruction to be very
successful in his ministry at Oxford, had instituted
Bible Classes at Chichester. A lady residing in the city
put her drawing-room at his disposal for this purpose ;
and, as at Oxford, so here also, those who joined the
class highly valued the instruction given them (none the
less edifying on account of some grotesque ways and
phrases), and conceived a sincere esteem and affection
for him who conducted it. An account of this Bible
Class, by a Lady who attended it, with a copy of some
notes taken by another member of it on Nov. 28 and
Dec. 6 in this year, will be found at the end of the
Biography. But the Chichester Bible Class was not his
only effort of this kind. He offered himself to give
Sunday Evening Lectures to the pupils of Bishop
Otter's College, about half a mile distant from Chiches-
ter ; and immediately after the Afternoon Service at the
Cathedral, at all seasons, summer or winter, and in all
240 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
weathers, he started on foot on this self-imposed mission
to those who were being prepared to instruct others, and
whose own careful instruction therefore in the " won-
drous things " of God's " Law " he regarded as of peculiar
interest and importance. In the end of the year, it
would be nearly dark when he set forth, and quite dark
when he returned ; but, while he was in residence at
Chichester, nothing short of serious illness would pre-
vent his fulfilling this engagement. How greatly his
instructions were prized by those to whom they were
addressed, will be seen by the accounts of them given at
the end of the Biography, which have been kindly fur-
nished to the author by two Ladies, formerly Students
at the College.
1885.
On Jan. 23rd of this year Burgon lost his remaining
Brother-in-law, to whom he was so tenderly attached, and
whose house had been, since the death of Archdeacon Rose,
the home where he spent what must be called (for want of
a better word) his vacations that is, his annual retire-
ments for two months' change of scene. Of Mr. Higgins's
death he has himself given an account in the ' Lives of
Twelve Good Men? Some of the letters of this year,
which will be found at the end of the year's record,
show how deeply he felt it, and what devout reflexions
and aspirations the sad event stirred in him.
It may perhaps be chronicled also that on April the
8th, 1885, there appeared a letter from him in the
( Guardian? which elicited assent from many quarters,
advocating the publication separately, and at a reason-
able price, of the Revised Version of the Old Testament,
unencumbered with that of the New. Needless to say
that he takes occasion in this letter, and in another
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 241
which followed it, to reiterate the charges brought
against the latter in his ' Revision Revised?
" Pray let us have the Revised Old Testament by it-
self. It ought to contain a great deal well deserving of
study, if the Revisers have only adhered to their instruc-
tions namely, to remove none but plain and clear
errors] and ' to introduce as few changes as possible into the
text of the Authorised Version ' : above all, if they have
not been guilty of the incredible folly of tinkering the
Hebrew text."
It was in the Easter of this year that, at the urgent
request of friends, he put forth a small volume, contain-
ing some of his fugitive poetical pieces 9 , headed by his
Oxford Prize Poem " PETRA." The Preface glances at
his recent bereavement ; " By this time so many loved
ones have vanished from the scene, who would have given
to these Poems (such as they are) a loving greeting, that
scarcely does it any longer seem to myself of the least
importance what becomes of them " ; while in the inscrip-
tion to his sister, Mrs. Higgins, of Turvey Abbey, he
" invites her to regard the present Volume as one
more wreath sent to adorn the grave of her sainted
husband."
It only remains to say that Mrs. , to
whom most of the subjoined letters are addressed, was
a lady residing in Chichester, with whom he was on
intimate terms, and who from his faithful ministra-
tions, both in the Cathedral Pulpit and in his Bible
Classes, had conceived the most cordial esteem for him.
9 POEMS (1840 to 1878). By JOHN WILLIAM BURGON, B.D;, Dean of
Chichester. JSon&on : MACMILLAN AND Co. 1885.
VOL. II.
242 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
To MRS. -
" Turvey Abbey, April 18, 1885.
" It is a strange sensation to be in this house without
liini) and even my dearest Helen in bed. I can hardly
believe that he will not enter the room at any instant.
His things are all* left in his study, exactly as he left
them, the very hat and stick placed as if he had set
them down an instant ago. And thus it comes to pass
that one moves about like a man in a dream, and the
strangest speculations present themselves as to his where-
abouts and occupations. I do but know that he is
supremely happy ; and I am sure that he is thinking
perpetually of the place he has left for ever "
To VISCOUNT CRANBROOK.
" The Deanery, Chichester,
"Ap. 20, 1885.
" My dear Lord Cranbrook, Thank GOD that you are
back, safe and well ! I have felt the miss of you greatly :
I mean, the sense of your being so many ugly leagues
away from your dear ones and from me. It is a real
comfort to me to have it under your hand and seal that
you are returned feeling well. I choose to assume (what
I have been in part assured of) that the voyage has been
productive of the like blessed result to your son and his
wife.
" You return to find us in a rare kettle of fish. Oh ! if
Beaconsfield could but have drawn his ' scientific fron-
tier,' when he was advocating and explaining it, we
should have been spared present humiliation and future
danger. That same imperial fiolicy which he sketched
in his last Manifesto, while in power, would have made
us great all the world over by this time. I verily
believe that we should have had a Canal of our own, and
have enjoyed the absolute control of Egypt I do
not profess to be a politician ; but I watch public events
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 243
daily, and for the last year or two it has been with a
sense of dismay, for which I find no words.
" You have found dear Lord Cairns gone, a grievous
loss, on personal and private, as well as on public
grounds. I am feeling greatly the loss of the Bishop of
Lincoln. We were one in theological sentiments, and I
believe in everything else.
" Your reminiscence of Mansel (send me more, if you
have them) reminds me of Eden's advice to a man who
asked him how he was to study the Thirty-nine Articles.
' Oh, buy Tomline and Burnett ' [burn it]. In return
for your joke, I will tell you one in which you will
recognise a true bit of Mansel. He was driving out into
the country with a party of friends. A child in the
carriage remarked of a donkey by the roadside that * it
had got its head into a basket, and could not get it out.'
Mansel murmured, ' a case of ass-jix-ia ' [asphyxia].
" With love to all your party, I am ever (with fresh
welcomes back), my dear Lord Cranbrook,
" Affectionately yours,
"JOHN W. BUKGON."
To MRS.
" Turvey Abbey, Sept. 6, 1885.
" Yesterday was a sad, sad day with me, the anniver-
sary (the 3ist) of my loved Mother's departure. I live
in the past to an extraordinary extent. I seemed with
her or rather felt as if she had been with me all day.
" This is also a sad house to be in. Every thing in
every room is bound up with his loved memory and
(naturally enough) nothing is moved : so that one fancies
he will enter the room at any time. I rejoice to be here
all the same ; but cannot deny that the sense of depres-
sion is strong upon me, and is perpetual.
" In the meantime I sit at the accustomed window,
and work on, as incessantly as if my life depended
on my exertions."
244 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
To MRS. .
" Turvey Abbey, Sept. 9th, 1885.
" I do not know what may have been the result of
your own thoughtful heart's ponderings, but the result
with me (a remark which I do not by any means now
make for the firsj time) is, that happiness is very
evenly distributed, and that God is very good to all His
creatures. There are drawbacks everywhere ; but every-
where there are also privileges and blessiogs. The best
alchemy is that which insists on turning evert/ tJiuuj into
gold : the transmutation may be made without a miracle,
except indeed it be a miracle of grace.
" Another of my sage remarks is, that our happiness
has been entrusted to a surprising extent, to our own
personal keeping. And further, that happiness is to a
great extent a habit of the soul : a thing we may acquire
and cultivate, or neglect and lose, as we are of a grateful
and appreciative turn of mind, or the contrary.
" Shall I go on ? I am also inclined to believe that
there is a great deal more of goodness (as well as of
naughtiness) in the world than people commonly imagine.
And I hold it to be very wrong to think and far more
to speak evil of one another, unless we are actually
constrained to do so. Even then we should (I think)
cherish a secret suspicion that folks may not be nearly so
bad as they seem "
To MRS. .
" Turvey Abbey, Sept. 23, 1885.
" I am concerned to hear of the death of Mrs. . . .
Those young daughters of hers will feel the want of a
mother sadly. Nothing can make up for it on earth :
absolutely nothing. ' I feel/ said the poet Gray, when
his mother died, ' that a man can only have one mother.'
I often think of his words. I think lovingly, mournfully,
of mine every day ; and sometimes often in the course of
the day. I must not forget my dear father also, when I
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 245
thus speak. I recall his strong, wholly unselfish love
and concern for me, with great tenderness and gratitude.
Those who have never married are apt, I suspect, thus to
live in the past. But in the case of young girls, oh !
how grave and irreparable is the loss of a mother !
I hope (to recur for a moment to your own recent
sorrow l ) that you will learn to cherish the thought that
the Past is at least your imperishable possession. Surely, it
is not fanciful so to speak. It is surely, in a true sense, the
only thing which is unalterably one's own. No doubt,
where there has been subsequent unkindness, the memory
of antecedent tenderness becomes in a manner cancelled.
But where as in your own happy case the love has
gone on unbroken until the spirit went to God, that love
is a thing to fall back upon in memory, and to cherish,
and to feed upon, and to console one's self withal ', to the
end of one's own life. . . . the miss of the loved object, I
am far from denying, occasions many a pang : but the
other thought brings a healing balm with it, and may
always be recurred to with secret gratitude and joy.
" I am busy with the life of the dear brother " [Mr.
Higgins] "to whom (it seems but yesterday) every-
thing I see belonged. Scarcely credible is it that one who
went out, and came in, from these familiar portals, for
eight and seventy years, should never, never, more so
much as once be seen, or heard, or felt, no, not for an
instant. The swallows twitter, and the wood pigeons
coo, and the squirrels play. as they used exactly. The
harvest time has come and gone, exactly as of old, and
Ruth has not forgot to go a-gleaning, and lay down the
ears she has gathered at her cottage door. The bells
ring out on Sundays and the congregations gather --
and the services of God's house are conducted exactly
as of yore. All seems unchanged the sunshine and the
shade, and the dewy lawn at early morning, and the
cattle feeding on the upland, every shrub and every
tree, but he, the loved one, he who made the place so
interesting 7ie, he is not !
" It must be so. Ere long, the same will be said of
1 His correspondent had recently lost her husband.
246 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
myself. It is right also that the coming ones should be
made way for ; and that all should be reminded that we
are but pilgrims here below, at best "
To MRS. .
"Deanery, Nov. 24, 1885.
" I cordially subscribe to your view that where Death
has set its seal on the life, the doom is unchangeable.
We are quite agreed, believe me.
" But that is no reason why they who wish, and find
comfort in the practice, should not bless God for their
sainted ones departed, and thank God for them by name.
Prayer for the Dead, in the sense of a Prayer that their ulti-
mate doom, for weal or for woe, maybe reversed or even miti-
gated is ' a fond conceit,' finding countenance neither in
Scripture nor in Antiquity. I condemn it entirely. ..."
1886.
Burgon's pen, employed so much at all times in ex-
pressing sympathy and giving friendly counsel, was
never allowed to rest long from controversy. An Article
by Professor Pritchard, Savilian Professor of Astronomy
at Oxford, which appeared in ' The Guardian' of Feb. 10,
1886, and was entitled " The Creation Proem of Genesis,"
elicited from him a fortnight later (Feb. 24) a spirited
reply, afterwards printed in a separate form. The Pro-
fessor, while asserting his " full conviction of a super-
human element running through " [the account of the
Creation in Genesis] " from its beginning to its end,"
conceived the account to be unhistorical. It was the
record of a sublime and God-inspired dream, he thought,
full of precious teaching no doubt, but not intended to
be taken as a narrative of facts. The dreamer, whoever
he was, "recounted the wonderful dream," when he
awoke from it ; and the tale, " after the manner of the
East, sped its rapid way from city to city, until at
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 247
length the vision lost its name and became a tradition."
This was just the sort of theory to elicit Burgon's
strenuous opposition. And he meets with considerable
power the Professor's objections to the literal and ordi-
nary view of a Great Creative Week. In reply to the
difficulty raised by "the existence of waters before the
appearance of the sun/' and by the " clothing of the
earth with " vegetation " before the creation of the sun," he
points out that Moses speaks phenomenally in recording
the creation of the luminaries on the fourth day, that
what we are meant to understand by the fiat of that day
(" Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to
divide the day from the night ; and let them be for signs,
and for seasons, and for days, and years "), is " the
summoning into view of the two great luminaries," whose
orbs had been hitherto obscured by the aqueous vapour
which enwrapped the earth, and the assigning new func-
tions to them in connexion with man. As to the diffi-
culty of supposing " the successive stages of Creation to
occupy each one single day," Burgon has nothing to
reply but what reduces itself to this (and the author
holds the reply to be amply sufficient), "Why not, if
Almighty GOD willed it ? And in this case He tells us
by pure Revelation (pure in recording what there had
been no human witness of) that He did will it."
As for the account of the Creative Week being the
story of a vision, he takes up strong ground when he
points out (p. 1 6) that "although to His prophets GOD
did sometimes make Himself known in a vision, or spoke
to them in a dream, He * spake unto Moses face to face,
as a man speaketh unto his friend ' " (Exod. xxxiii. 1 1 ; Num.
xii. 6, 7, 8), and that Moses's authorship of the Penta-
teuch is vouched for by our LORD Himself (St. John v.
46, 47). And thus [p. 12],
248 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
" I insist on taking everything in this Chapter of
Genesis quite literally. I cannot even suffer it to be
called a poem or a psalm. It is neither. The Book
of Job claims the former title, to be sure ; the i O4th
Psalm is 'a Psalm of Creation' indeed. But Genesis
i. is very severe, very unadorned prose. It purports to
be, and it undoubtedly is, history in the strictest sense :
revealed history, and therefore true history. It claims to
be, and it certainly is, the history of six ordinary I)ays"
Professor Pritchard had not denied the Days to be ordi-
nary days. Nay, one of the objections which he alleged
proceeded (as we have seen) on the assumption that they
were ordinary days. But " not a few eminent persons
holding a widely different opinion, and choosing to
assume that in this place ' Six Days ' must mean six
indefinitely long periods of time," Burgon deals with
this assumption in the Postscript to his ' Reply / dated
May nth, 1886, nearly three months after the Reply
itself, which is dated Feb. 13. While not denying
that " the word Day is sometimes employed in Scrip-
ture (as in the familiar speech of mankind) with
metaphorical license," he points out that the under-
standing of the days literally is necessitated by our
being informed i . that GOD called the light Day, and the
Darkness Night, 2. by the fact that each one of these
Days (except the Seventh) '' comes before us furnished
with its own evening and morning " ; and 3. by the
reason assigned in the Fourth Commandment for the
sanctification of the Sabbath. In the remainder of the
Postscript, he leaves the^ pre-historic period that is, the
period prior to " the Creative Week which happened
nearly 6000 years ago " to the Geologist and Palaeonto-
logist. " The Natural Philosopher is the historian of
prehistoric time, the interpreter of its obscure records "
[p. 21], and when he is in his own sphere, Burgon is
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 249
ready to "listen to his teaching with the profoundest in-
terest, and receive his lawful decrees with the most sub-
missive deference." " Scripture reveals nothing concern-
ing the universe during the prehistoric period, except the
fact that GOD was its Creator." The paper concludes by
showing how completely the doctrine of man's being the
product of EVOLUTION is put out of court by the Revela-
tion of the Great Creative Week.
It must have been in the October or November of this
year (1886) that the incident occurred which Mr. Herman
C. Hoskier mentions in the first sentence of the Preface
to his very valuable ''Account and Collation of the Greek
Cursive Codex Evangelium 604 ' [David Nutt, 270 Strand,
MDCCCXC].
" Three and a half years ago I was in Dean Burgon's
study at Chichester. It was midnight, dark and cold
without ; he had just extinguished the lights, and it was
dark, and getting cold within. We mounted the stairs
to retire to rest, and his last words of that night have often
rung in my ears since : ' As surely as it is dark now, and
as certainly as the sun will rise to-morrow morning, so
surely will the traditional text be vindicated, and the
views I have striven to express be accepted. I may not
live to see it. Most likely I shall not. But it will
come.'
" Dean Burgon has passed away," continues Mr.
Hoskier, " out and beyond the region and sphere of
imperfection. His Magnum Opus, had he lived to edit it,
would have for ever vindicated his reputation, his views,
his methods, nay, the very manner of expressing himself,
if by a too decided front he had made himself enemies,
and curtailed the extent of his hearing for a time. A
misjudged man by many, as hard a worker as any, as
generous and true a heart as any brother could desire,
his name, his efforts, his labours will still be revered.
And in the near future shall we not blame ourselves for
250 LIFE OF DEAN BURQON.
being so blind and so prejudiced, so narrow and so
human, as not to be able truly in an even balance to
weigh real merits and demerits, real work against mere
speculation, sincere investigation against imperfect and
hasty conclusions ? ' It will come. 1 '
Mr. Hoskier's valuable contribution to Textual Cri-
ticism is inscribed to Dean Burgon's memory.
The correspondence subjoined to this year's record
between Burgon and Mr. Arrowsmith of Fillongley,
shows how the question of the Days being long periods
of time of indefinite length had been brought under his
notice. The letter, in which Lord Selborne acknow-
ledges his pamphlet on the First Chapter of Genesis,
indicates decided disagreement with him as to the
necessity of understanding the Days literally. The
author is grateful for the permission to publish this letter
(which is granted to him with the assurance that Lord
Selborne has " not at all changed the opinions expressed
in it"), not only on account of the eminence of the
writer, and his well-known character for sound and well-
balanced judgment and for orthodoxy, but also because
the publication is an act of justice to those who take a
different view from that of Burgon, with whom the
author entirely concurs.
The Holy Scriptures, whether in their interpretation, or
in the criticism of the text, were Burgon's favourite and,
towards the end of his life, his absorbing and all-engross-
ing study and field of labour ; but he had paid much
attention to the Prayer Book also ; and he put forth
in the course of this year two Sermons (preached at
Chichester Cathedral on the two Sundays preceding the
Advent of 1885) on " The Structure and Method of the
Book of Common Prayer." In the first of these he
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 251
points out how the structure of the Book is determined
by " the course and order of the Christian seasons," and
again how this course and order had been outlined
beforehand by the Three Great Festivals of the Jewish
Church. In the second he points out how the daily
Morning and Evening Offices are framed upon the model
of the Lord's Prayer, Praise in the first section of them,
Prayer in the second (the penitential introduction in
both of them being merely the porch of entrance to the
Service itself), and what is the theory of the sequence of
the Psalms, Lessons, Canticles, Creed, and the signifi-
cance of each of these constituents of the Office. The
Tract containing these two Sermons was published
under the direction of the Tract Committee of the
S.P.C.K.
To MRS. CHARLES PAGE EDEN ON THE DEATH OF
HER HUSBAND.
" The Deanery, Chichester,
"Feb. 23, 1886.
" My dear Mrs. Eden, I will not delay to thank you for
your nice letter, every word of which seems to me to go
straight from your heart to mine. I see the Rectory in
the red light of that last frosty dawn, and know well
the tightness about the chest and the mist of tears and
the strange sorrow, and the confused images,- sweet,
sad, tender: and the sense that a landmark has been
passed and that a fresh beginning has to be made. . . .
Read carefully over Numbers ix. 15-23, and believe that
the cloud which led you forth on that day, will prove a
cheerful flame of fire to you by night.
" It was because I divined that you must be on the
wing that I did not write to you before. I am off to
London (to give four Lectures), and shall not be back till
252 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
Saturday. But immediately after my return, I will send
you back the Sermon and something else I have had pre-
pared for you. Be quite at your ease about the 4
volumes. They are as safe as they can be, and to make any
use of them, I must have them by me for a few weeks. I
am very busy, and can only spare the odd moments of
my time.
"You are right about your dear husband's Sermons.
Abo i'.i 30 (not more than 50) should be carefully selected
from the mass and published within a year, if possible,
of his death. Call the volume * Aberford Sermons' ; (it
will distinguish it from the legion of volumes put forth
under similar circumstances) ; and if you are afraid of
the expense, publish by subscription. ... I respectfully
advise you to begin by jotting down from memory the
name, text, times (or by whatever other way you can
identify a Sermon) of every Sermon which struck yourself
most, or which friends have told you of, as having affected
them. The rest must be done by a careful (who must
also be a competent) editor. Every Sermon should have
a title. The Sermon you sent me to read, for example,
should be entitled, 'THE FAITHFUL DEPARTED, AT REST.'
;t I could not undertake to help in the selection ; but I
would undertake (if wished) to read over the proof
sheets, and indicate the title for the Sermon.
" Do not let this matter sleep. It is now or never. \\V
live so fast that 5 years hence (if any of us are alive so
long) there will be little curiosity and no enthusiasm.
" Thank you for your kind expressions about the little
Memoir 2 . You will be far better pleased with it, if God
spares his servant till the close of the year. I beg to be
remembered to Alice, and am ever,
" My dear Mrs. Eden,
" Affectionately yours,
" J. W. B."
2 The Memoir of the Rev. Charles published as one of ' The Lives of
Page Eden in ' The Guanliau,' Twelve Good Men.'
afterwards revised and enlarged, and
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 253
FROM THE REVEREND ROBERT ARROWSMITH, OF FILLONG-
LEY, NEAR COVENTRY, TO THE VERY REVEREND THE
DEAN OF CHICHESTER.
"The Moor House, Fillongley, near Coventry,
"Feb. 27, 1886.
" My dear Sir, As an old Oriel man, I may perhaps
be excused if I take the liberty of writing to you and
conveying to you my thanks for your admirable notice in
' The Guardian ' of the late Mr. Eden, which has revived so
many pleasant reminiscences ; nor are thanks less due
to you for your protest against that extraordinary view
of the Creation, which has been aired by Professor
Pritchard in the same newspaper, and which ID one of
the Periodicals of the day has been described as ' so
beautiful.' It is high time that some one spoke out on
the other side. But may I venture to ask a question '?
You consider the six days of the Creation to have
been natural days from sunrise (or sunset) to sunrise :
Are we bound to understand the word ' day ' in that
sense? To me it seems that whatever meaning is
attached to the word ' day ' in Gen. ii. 2 ' God rested
on the seventh day ' the same meaning must attach to
the word in the preceding Chapter. Can this meaning
be that God's resting day continued twenty-four hours
and no longer? My own long-cherished opinion has been
that God's Seventh Day commenced after man had been
made in His image, and is still going on, and will con-
tinue to the end of time. When His noblest work was
done when the crown was put on the arch He ceased
to create : and thenceforth nothing remained but for the
work itself to develope and multiply according to the
law of its being, and for God to superintend and regulate
the whole. Nor does this interpretation turn the nar-
rative into a poem. The word ' day ' is used frequently
in Holy Scripture, and in our ordinary conversation,
with very considerable latitude. For instance, our
Lord says that Abraham desired to see ' His Day ' ;
and we often speak of the ' day ' of adversity, which
254 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
is not seldom prolonged in God's wisdom to a very
considerable length, sometimes a lifetime. If, then,
it is allowable to understand the word 'day' in this
larger signification, and if God's Sabbath is an extended
period, then it seems necessary to hold that the other
six days are extended periods. And perhaps, as there is
symmetry in all God's works and ways, we may be per-
mitted to believe that the seven days are equal periods
of immense duration, and that when the seventh has
reached the limit of each of the other six, then the end
will come. But Dr. Reville, I see, affirms that if the
days of creation were periods of vast length, they could
not support an argument that men should work for six
days and rest on the seventh. It is on the supposition,
he says, that the days were similar to our own that the
commandment about the Sabbath is based. I fail to
recognise the force of the reasoning. I can see no flaw
in ray contention, nothing at variance with common
sense, in saying that as God worked during six periods
(each of which had an ' evening ' or close), and rested on
the seventh (which as yet has had no evening), so He
required man to labour during six (natural) days, and to
rest for a seventh of his time I am afraid
you will think me somewhat presumptuous in writing
to so eminent a scholar, the minnow to the dolphin ;
but perhaps my Oriel connexion may cover my pre-
sumption
" With best wishes, I remain,
" Yours faithfully,
" ROBERT ARROWSMITH."
To THE REVEREND ROBERT ARROWSMITH.
"The Deanery, Chichester, 1886.
" Dear Arrowsmith, After thanking you for your
kind letter, I will at once (though reri/ busy) answer
your questions. If Pritchard's doubts had been yours,
I should not have turned aside to notice them. Those
who think that they can receive Gen. i. faithfully as
the work of the Holy Ghost the very word of God
THE CHICH ESTER LIFE. 255
and yet explain the days of Creation as long tracts of
Time, may do so, for aught that I care. I think them
illogical mistaken queer what you will. I will never
accept their view nor suffer them to deliver it in my
presence, without protest. But I will not pursue them
with argument, nor go out of my way to condemn their
teaching.
"Since however you ask me, I will tell you why I
cannot for an instant admit your explanation of Gen. i.
"And it is enough that I should show you why 'the
meaning attached to the word " day " ' in Gen. ii. 2, is
NOT ' the meaning attached to the word in the preceding
chapter.'
" The seventh day u described differently from the preced-
ing six days. The plain facts of the case are that six
days each consisting of ' evening ' and ' morning 'are
discoursed of. Each has its work described. They come
to an end at last. The seventh day arrives, and the work
of Creation .is discontinued. God RESTS therefore
rests from His creative labours. Man, accordingly,
when his seventh day comes, must rest from his work and
his labours. In twenty-four hours another week begins for
man ; and therefore a renewed obligation.
" But with the Eternal God it is not so. The necessity
of the case has introduced, with regard to Hiw, a prolonged
period (if one may say such things without profanity of
God !) of cessation from creative agency.
" But this discovery is not to invalidate the antecedent
narrative. True it is, that perforce the ' seventh day '
spoken of in Gen. ii. 2 was a day of twenty-four hours
like any other that is, the earth revolved once on its
axis, as on each of the preceding six days, but what then 1
By significantly withdrawing the -mention of ' evening'' and
'morning* the author of Scripture intimates that the
Divine rest is NOT a rest of twenty-four hours. Now do you
understand ?
" Yours,
" JOHN W. BURGON.
'Note that a7roAet7rTcu o-a/S/Saurr^os r<5 Aato TOV 0eo.
" I do not know who you mean by 'Dr. Reville.' But
he is quite right.'"'
256 LIFE OF DEAN BURQON.
To THE VERY REVEREND THE DEAN OF NORWICH.
" The Deanery, Chichester,
"Easter Eve, 1886.
" My very dear Friend, I must break through what
I feel to be a galling bondage, on this blessed day, in
order that the best of all days may bring you a few
affectionate lines rom me. How it has happened that
I have maintained silence so long, I cannot explain,
seeing that I have been a letter, if not two letters, in
your debt throughout.
4 But how the silence 7je(/au, I well remember. It was
because your letter about childhood and children touched
me so deeply that I felt it deserved an extraordinary
reply. I was at that very instant extraordinarily bust/ ;
and you can divine the rest. To-morrow promised to
repair the omission ; but to-morrow never came. Then
I grew ashamed and sorry ; and at last I am quite per-
plexed at myself ; and nothing but a deep conviction of
your Christian nature would encourage me to believe
confidently that you will forgive me, when I have ex-
plained that I know I am very guilty, and that I am
very sorry to possess that knowledge.
" Very little to the purpose is it to explain that I have
had a constant pressure of work throughout. The pres-
sure of work does not prevent one, for weeks together,
from writing a letter to a dear friend.
" To begin then, I must acknowledge with a full heart
that I never knew any one who more fully felt with me,
on the subject of children and childhood.
" And next, I must say how greatly gratified I am or
rather we all are by your appreciation of our darling
little chap 3 . Truly he seems to me well worthy of being
loved and cared for. A more original child I never
knew, or a more endearing one. He lives in a world of
his own ; corresponds with all the crowned heads of
Europe ; regulates provinces ; quells outbreaks ; threatens
3 The son of the Rev. Hugh James record of that year.) The "little
Rose, Jun., Burgon's nephew, who chap," therefore, was Burgon's great
had died July 6, 1878. (See the nephew.
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 257
and punishes insurgents in every part of the world. But,
what is not least absurd, after giving the Emperor of
Russia his orders, he leaves the document on the draw-
ing-room table, and is carried off to bed. When he was
with us in the winter, I found the enclosed strange State
Paper one night, after the house was quiet, and was so
tickled that I remember putting it among my papers for
you.
" Willy, who dotes upon him and is teaching him
Latin, often sends us his ' last' The enclosed exercises
will make you smile
" Well, there ! I have scribbled off the letter I have
been so long wishing to write, and only regret that it
has been a scribble. But I wish it to reach you on
Easter Day, and the post will soon be going. With love
to your better half,
" Ever your very affectionate friend,
"JOHN W. BURGOX."
To MKS.
"Turvey Abbey, May 2, 1886.
" Now for your question. I do not say that liberality
and covetousness go hand in hand or anything of the
sort. Such a position would be utterly false. I do but
say that lavish expenditure is quite consistent with often
is accompanied by inordinate greed.
"A Latin writer says of a bad man that he was
' alieni appetens, sui profusus,' which hits off the charac-
ter in 4 words ; covetous of what was his neigh-
bour's lavish in squandering away his own.* ....
The very supply is obtained by such an one for his own
wasteful expenditure by grasping at anything which
comes in his way, and to which he has no lawful claim.
Have I made myself clear ?
" I spent all yesterday at Hendon, and saw my friend
Scrivener, and a whole host of new faces. I also found
myself recognised strangely by old Oxford men and
others, and was reminded of several remarks I have
VOL. n. S
258 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
often had occasion to make before; as, (i) How much
kindness there is in the world ; and (2) how much grace-
ful hospitality ; (3) how agreeable womankind is every-
where ; then (4) how there seems to be a perpetual
succession of graceful forms, and enchanting features,
and sweet voices. Well then, (5) what a strong family
likeness there is among mankind, so that the same types
are everywhere 4i scovera ble. And next, (6) that the
world is after all a very small place, and that every one
somehow seems to know everybody. Further, (7)
that folks are pious at bottom all the world over. And
then, (8) that children are always enchanting. You
would have laughed to see my departure from Hendon.
One little girl (eight years old) would see me off ; so she
went with me alone stood on the bench till the
train came up, with her arm round my neck. And the
last words were, ' You will let me have a letter from you
on Monday won't you ? ' ' Well, we'll see.' ' No ;
promise ! ' ' Very well then ; I will write to you/ 'And
about once a fortnight afterwards ? ' ( Oh ! no, no, you
little flea ! nothing of the sort ! so good-bye ! ! ' There
was something so ridiculous in the transaction faint
shadows of things that happened 100 years ago 4 that I
was greatly tickled, and said to myself on reviewing the
whole day, ' Life does but reproduce itself ! the child is
father to the man ! ' ;
To HIS SISTEK, MRS. HIGKHNS [on the first anniver-
sary of her birthday after her husband's deatli\.
" The Deanery, Ohichester,
< ; May 27, 1886.
" My darling * * * *" [a family sobriquet for Mrs. Hig-
gins], " I am down before the world ; have opened my
shutters, and planted myself at my desk ; and before 1 do
anything else, I will send you a few words of loving kind-
ness on the return of a day which, as long as I can re-
member, has been precious to us all. I trust it may be a
4 Probably he means reminiscences of his little sister Kitty in his
early days, and her way of behaving to him.
THE CHICH ESTER LIFE. 259
day of peace and joy to you : a day of sunshine also ; for
we have been sitting under weeping skies till I declare
I feel the effect upon my spirits. There is every reason
why the day should be thus peaceful and joyous to you ;
for the memory of the past and the prospect of the
future, are alike full of blessedness, through God's
mercies to us in Christ. Remembered in the place of
peace, you are sure to be to-morrow ; for I will never
believe that the memories of earth are sponged out there.
Rather will I believe that they are quickened as well as
sanctified, and result in ministrations of love to ourselves,
not unfrequently. Certain at all events it is (and it is
best to keep separate what one hopes and what one
knows), certain, I say, it is that he, dear sainted spirit, is
in the enjoyment of rare felicity and the blissful antici-
pation of yet greater accessions of joy. It is delightful
to think of such a one as he, translated into the fruition
of his faithful hope, and in the society of the saints gone
before, in whose footsteps he trod, and whose examples
he cherished, and with whom he longed so devoutly to
be. God bless you both ; for the bond is not severed by
death, though the hearts are parted for a while.
" I am glad you have been able to look over the dear
fellow's letters and papers. It is a sacred duty, too
often neglected or performed in a senseless hurried
way
" You must have had quite a plague of waters for the
brook to have overflowed its banks, a very unusual
thing c surely ' in May !
" I congratulate you upon your lodger's 5 having come
back. I much wish the birds would take up their
quarters more freely with me. They come to be fed
freely enough, but where they go for their lodgings, I
have no idea. I am indeed just now too busy even to
speculate, being ankle -deep in my Memoir of Hugh
James Rose. I devoutly long to get all done, and to
see the volume out, and to be able to turn to my proper
work, which is Scripture. In a day or two I will send
you, D.V., a pamphlet of mine on Genesis i., and wish I
5 A swallow building in the porch at Turvey Abbey.
S 2
260 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
could send it as a symbol of a birthday offering. But I
have nothing to send you that you would care to accept,
except my love, to-day.
" Believe me ever, my DARLING,
" Your loving Brother,
"J. W. B."
To MRS.
" The Deanery, Chichester,
"June 2, 1886.
" My dear kind Friend, Surely, Ascension Day should
bring you a letter from me ; for a more glorious Day is
not to be found in the Church's year, and with it shall
come a copy of the Pamphlet 6 which has occupied a
great deal of my time and thought of late. Read it
from end to end at twice ; and tell me if you quite under-
stand and like it. I live a wondrous quiet life as you
know ; and as I see nothing scarcely of periodical litera-
ture, and converse with scarcely anybody, I cannot be
said to kufw what the world is thinking, feeling, be-
lieving. But whenever a throb of the great human
pulse reaches me, I am shocked to find in how many
respects the body politic seems to be in an unhealthy
state. To mention only two matters I find unbelief
rampant ; and I find a Romanising sentiment on the
increase. The latter I feel I must tackle with soon.
With the former I have tackled in these thirty pages.
" In the meantime I am getting on with my Memoir
of Hugh James Rose, and reading through Cardinal
Newman's letters, written in 1833-4-5 and so on. O
how I long to be at Scripture again and to be free to
work on steadily at it !
" You give me a most graphic picture of your past as
well as of your present. Yes, the contrast of feeling
6 His Reply to Professor Prit- ' Guardian,' but was afterwards re-
chard's ' Creation Proem of Gene- printed in a separate form.
*?V whicli appeared first in the
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 261
which old scenes set before the memory and the imagina-
tion is saddening exceedingly : especially as it is ever
attended by the consciousness that all who made up
those ancient tableaux are in the unseen world severed
from us by an impassable barrier. Then, there in-
variably supervenes the thought of one's own immortality
and so the lonely walk becomes a very lonely business
indeed.
" But I incline to the belief that such meditations are
salutary : and there really does supervene a sense of
resignation, which is rather to be called a conviction,
that it is best to be growing or grown old, and to be
moving off the scene. May we not also both say with
truth that the predominating thought is one of gratitude
for the goodness which has watched over one so lovingly,
repaired so many of the losses in a very lovely way and
reserved to one the enjoyment of so many of Heaven's
best gifts, as, health of mind and body a living faith,
the society of very sweet and dear beings but how
can I enumerate them all ? the time would fail me. I am
sure I carry about with me a very thankful heart. And
so, I know, do you. Moreover you know one of my best
Friends and 1 know one of yours.
" Be assured, that if life is spared to me, and the sad
necessity should arise, I shall not be wanting to you.
I am concerned to think that you should have been
made so very uncomfortable. . . Last Sunday seemed
hardly Sabbatical without you
" The garden does really begin to look very lovely.
We && potted, out in every direction possible and im-
possible. Colour is showing in every quarter. And
this heavy rain and warmth is causing everything to
grow visibly and to grow wondrous green.
" You will think of us at 5 o'clock on Sunday, I
know, but in fact we think and talk of you every
day
" Believe me, ever your most affectionate,
"J. W. B."
262 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
FROM THE EARL OF SELBORNE TO THE VERY REV.
THE DEAN OF CHICHESTER.
"Blackmoor, Petersfield,
"August 17, 1886.
" Dear Dean Burgon, I am afraid I have been un-
grateful in not sooner thanking you for your thoughts on
the first chapter of Genesis.
" In what you say about the Sun and Moon 7 , I must
entirely agree. But why you should object, on the same
principle, to understand days, and ' evenings ' and ' morn-
ings,' of periodic times of any length whatever (which
must each have had their opening and their close), I do
not understand. To me, the facts of Geology appear to
point in that direction, as, to both of us, the facts of
Astronomy exclude Professor Pritchard's too narrow
literalism about the Fourth Day's work. Nor do I find
any difficulty in supposing three long periods, before the
vapoury covering of the earth was dissipated sufficiently
to enable the heavenly bodies to be seen. We have, even
under the present conditions of our atmosphere, many
days and nights when they are quite invisible, though
light still reaches us.
" Even less than as to the other days, do I see any diffi-
culty as to the seventh, representing the period after the
work was done, which is not said to have had ' evening '
or c morning ' ; and of which the sanctification of every
seventh ordinary day of twelve hours is the Memorial
and <^0^'-Sacrarnent to us.
" The manner of the Revelation of that order of Creation
which, as it preceded man, could only be known to man
by Revelation, is not itself revealed ; and, as it is certain
that some of the Divine revelations to man have been by
visions, it has always seemed to me (since I read a
Christian book on Geology, which suggested it), that it
is most probable that this was so. And, on that suppo-
7 That what we are to under- lights were created, but that they
stand by "God made two great were caused to appear, on the
lights" [Gen. i. 16] is, not that the Fourth Day.
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 263
sition, there can be nothing more likely or more con-
gruous (however long the periods of time), than the
description of what was seen, under such language as
we have in the Chapter, ' days,' ' evenings,' and ' morn-
ings.' The question with me always is, not whether the
words of Scripture-Revelations are true, but what do they
mean ? And to insist upon literalism is, often, the very
most unlikely way of arriving at their true meaning. . . .
" Believe me ever, my dear Dean,
" Yours truly,
" SELBORNE."
To MRS.
"Deanery, Aug. 29, 1886.
" Yesterday was the 5oth anniversary (is it possible ?)
of a death of which I shall now certainly carry the scar
to my grave a beloved little sister the first death in
the family !
" How deep some sorrows seem to lie ! the sweetness
of that little one passes speech. She was also most
tenderly attached to me and her departure when seven-
and-a-half years old, left a gap in our circle which
nothing could make up for or enable us to speak of,
one to another, with resignation : ' I shall go to her
but she will not return to me.' I still keep her little
toys in a drawer ! "
To MRS.
"Turvey Abbey, Sept. 16, 1886.
" Yesterday was an event with us. And what do you
suppose the event consisted of? Walking over the fields
(and losing our way) in order to repair to the Reforma-
tory some two miles off to witness the yearly distri-
bution of prizes. It has always been a very cheerful
day in these parts, bringing together the neighbouring
gentry and clergy and culminating in rustic games
264 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
and a pleasant tea-party where everything but the tea
and sugar have been contributed by the boys. They
farm many acres of spade-husbandry, have annual crops,
and produce a loaf of the first fruits which would fill
a wheelbarrow The moral pleasure is of course the
charm.
" There are fifty boys, who would else be in gaol, or
on their way thither, earning their bread (for the Reform-
atory is self -supporting) learning husbandry, cared for
and loved, in excellent health (for the Reformatory
stands on a breezy eminence), taught religion, blest
and a blessing to their kind. About twenty money
prizes have been instituted (for skill on the farm
kindness to animals punctuality in going errands
reading Scripture, and learning it by heart reaping,
baking, cooking, c., &c.). This money is all put to
their account. A general good conduct prize is attainable
by any one. On going out the money is given them in
a lump sum and they begin the world or can begin
it with some pounds in hand Finding every kind
of virtue and praise pre- occupied, I instituted a poetry
recitation prize, and it has become the most (indeed the
only) entertaining feature of the performance. Yesterday
we had ' The Burial of Sir John Moore,' and ' The Dog
and the Water Lily.' .... Of course, I go up and rehearse
the boys, alone, the day before ; but of a truth, the
cleverness with which they seized the points imitated
my manner and tried to copy my tones was admirable.
The ladies rewarded them with applause enough to turn
an actor's brain.
" Yes, you are quite right. A very singular note it is
of God's goodness, power, wisdom in creation that with
the ability he should withdraw from us the strong
desire to do what we once did. I grow more and more
thoughtful, as I grow older and am more and more
struck with God's goodness in Creation, wisdom in
Providence mysteriousness in all His ways. But above
all, the mysteriousness of His Word strikes me. I like
to think that it strikes you likewise. And here one has
THE C HIGH ESTER LlFE. 265
the great consolation of knowing that all one fails to
fathom in this life, will by His great mercy and un-
deserved favour be revealed to us fully in the next."
To MRS. -
" Turvey Abbey,
"St. Matthew's Day, 1886.
" How strange, by the way, it is that little children
should have such a marvellous knack of entwining their
little selves around one's heart and not only so, but (in a
manner) of prolonging our interest in life ! a most Divine
provision truly it is : for else we should be indifferent
to the future, whereas, for their sakes we look forward
anxiously to it, and are willing to make what provision
we can/or it. I suppose it is all the outcome of a longing
for immortality ; whereby we bear unconscious witness to
our own indestructibility. But oh ! if the next 50
years are to be as prolific in discoveries and inventions
as the last, what a different place this world will be
in 1 950 ! I suspect that intercourse between distant
countries will be conducted by the telephone ; that the
Queen will hear the debates in the House, or listen to a
song at the Opera, as she pleases. Bed-ridden Christians
will hear the Sermon in Church by a tube fastened to the
bed-post ; and luxurious folks in the country will listen
to a play without undergoing the trouble of a journey to
London, and a visit to the theatre locomotion
will also be by electricity, and the town will be lighted
up by a device for which science has not yet invented a
name.
"Pleasant it is to you and to me to think that
when all these wonders take place, the Church Catechism
will still contain the whole sum of faith and practice,
and the blessed Book of Books will be the selfsame un-
fathomed well, from which men will draw the Water of
Life for the sustentation of their souls throughout the
days of their pilgrimage, and for their support under
affliction, and for their comfort in the hour of death."
266 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
1887.
Professor Pritchard had, as we have seen, opened the
question as to the historical character of the Mosaic
record of the days of Creation. Other thoughtful and
able divines were not slow to follow in the path of
speculation on that First Chapter of Genesis. In the
'Contemporary Review' of October, 1886, there appeared
an Article on " The Week of Seven Days," from the pen
of an eminent Prelate of the Northern Province, affirm-
ing in a much less conjectural tone than Professor
Pritchard had assumed, that " the literal theory " (the
understanding, that is, of the narrative as a literal record
of facts) " must be simply and completely given up^ as in the
very nature of things impossible." The impossibility
(or one chief impossibility) of the literal theory resided,
according to the writer of the Article, in the necessary
inadequacy of the faculties of a newly created man to
" comprehend so refined and comparatively complicated
an arrangement as the division of time by weeks, and
the keeping of a Sabbath." As to the ground alleged
for the observance of the Sabbath in the Exodus Version
of the Fourth Commandment, he called attention to the
absence of that clause from the Deuteronomy Version of
the same precept (v. 14, 15), and seemed to incline to the
hypothesis of Ewald, that the clause had formed no part
of the original commandment. And as to the real
origin of the week of Seven Days, he supposed that, " so
far from being of Divine institution, it took its rise
from the physical fact that seven planetary bodies are
visible to the naked eye," and thought it probable that
the Israelites derived the knowledge of the seven day
week from the Egyptians, by whom he inferred from a
passage in Dion Cassius that such a week was recognised.
At all events the Babylonians appear very early to have
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 267
had a seven day week, and thus the Jews might have
been led to adopt such a week in the Babylonian Cap-
tivity. Of course speculations like these drew out
Burgon's strenuous and uncompromising opposition.
In two Articles in the ' Guardian] which appeared re-
spectively Jan. 5 and Jan. 12, 1887, though written in the
November and December of the preceding year, he, after
waiting a few weeks to see whether some more qualified
champion would not come into the field, replied to the
argument which had appeared in the ' Contemporary Review*
As to Adam's incapacity to have comprehended, immedi-
ately after his creation, the sevenfold division of time,
and the sacredness of the Sabbath, which was bound up
with that sevenfold division, he takes the ground with
which Holy Scripture furnishes him, and which there-
fore is unassailable, that Adam having given names
(characteristic ones no doubt) to the lower creatures,
and having, after the creation of Eve, spoken under
Inspiration the words by which Matrimony was ordained,
must have been created both a Philosopher and a
Prophet, and have been fully competent therefore to
comprehend the Revelation made to him as to the
divisions of Time and the sacredness of the Seventh
Day. On referring to an expert in Egyptology, he
learned that the Egyptians, at the early date of the
Exodus, had no knowledge of seven day weeks at all,
but only of months of thirty days, divided into three
decades. And on referring to persons learned in Baby-
lonian and Assyrian lore, he was apprised of three
essential differences between the seven day week of
the Babylonians and that of the Hebrews, making it
improbable that the latter was borrowed from the
former. But the objection having been insinuated that,
if the week of seven days and the institution of the
268 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
Sabbath were in truth (as the Book of Genesis repre-
sents them to have been) co-eval with the very beginning
of human history, they must have been familiar to the
Antediluvian Patriarchs, and that there is no conclusive
evidence that they were so familiar, in a second Article
in the ' Guardian? which appeared Jan. 1 2 of this year,
Burgon addressed Jaimself to this objection, and from a
close study of the sacred narrative of the Deluge (Gen.
vii. 4 to viii. 14), with its many notes of time, so
evidently studied and meant to be emphasized, drew out
a Calendar of the Flood, from which he thinks that " no
one of fair mind will hesitate to admit that a case has
been at last made out for the Sabbath as a recognised
institution in the days of Noah." While it may be
freely admitted to have been an intellectual weakness
of Burgon's, of which we have seen several previous
instances, that the strength of his convictions on a par-
ticular subject always outran the premisses on which his
conclusion was formed, it is certain that in this last
paper, for which he claims originality, he has made out
a very strong case indeed for the acquaintance of the
Antediluvians with the seven day week and the Sabbath.
It is thought best to submit the whole paper to the
reader in extenso in the Appendix [see Appendix D],
only adding here the testimony of the Rev. John Forbes.
D.D., Emeritus Professor of Oriental Languages in the
University of Aberdeen, appended to his recent ' Com-
mentary on The Servant of the Lord in Isaiah xl. to Ixvi.
reclaiming that passage to Isaiah as its author from Argument,
Structure, and Date: [T. and T. Clark : Edinburgh.]
" I cannot refrain here from drawing attention to a
most remarkable discovery made by my friend the late
Dean Burgon, which he communicated in two papers to
the ' Guardian 1 the first dated Jan. 5 and the second Jan.
THE CHICH ESTER LIFE. 269
1 2th, 1887. I wrote to him immediately to say that I
hoped he would put his discovery in a more permanent
form before the public, as it had an importance im-
measurably greater than he seemed aware of, as not
merely proving his point against the Bishop of Carlisle,
the Divine Origin of the Week of Seven Days, but de-
monstratively proving the Divine origin of the entire
narrative of the Deluge, and refuting the most plausible
of the objections that have been adduced against the
truth and genuineness of the Pentateuchal legends, as
they have been styled. The objections against the
Deluge narrative have been paraded as furnishing de-
monstrative evidence of its absurdity and inconsistency.
It has been represented as made up of two independent
and contradictory accounts, an Elohistic and a Jehovistic
document, the first of which represents the Flood to
have lasted about 54 days, and the other 150. Dean
Burgon in a Calendar of the Deluge shows that all the
important events, Noah's entering and leaving the Ark,
the commencement and abatement of the flood of waters,
the resting of the Ark on the mountains of Ararat, the
various sendings out of the birds, &c., nine events in
all, took place on one and tho same day of the week,
which could have been effected by Divine appointment
alone, and that the time Noah was in the Ark amounted
to exactly 365 days 8 .
"The Deluge narrative (vi. 9 to ix. 20) which (after
the introductory fundamental ordination of the Sabbath
in Chap. i. ii. 3, claiming and consecrating man and his
six days' work for the worship of his Creator) forms
the third and central member of the beautifully and
symmetrically arranged 10 documents, beginning each,
' These are the generations of,' which constitute Genesis,
and illustrates remarkably the distinctive use of the two
names Elohim and Jehovah.
8 There is a slight deviation here the Ark, was a period of exactly
from the calculations in Burgon's 365 days." But Noah had been in
paper. What he points out is, that the Ark (though not yet "shut in ")
"from the commencement of the seven days before the Flood com-
Flood until the day when Noah left inenced, as he also shows.
270 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
" Bishop Colenso has unwittingly done great service
by the analysis he gives of the Elohistic and Jehovistic
passages in Genesis, in Part V. of his ' Pentateuch. 3 He
has brought out the remarkable fact that Jehovah is the
Name (never Elohim) uniformly employed where sin is
the subject, e.g. the Fall, Cain killing Abel, &c., and
secondly, wherever an altar or sacrificial offering is in
question. This, % though Colenso failed to draw the
logical inference from the premisses, proves that Elohim
refers to God's natural attributes alone (Power, Wisdom),
whereas Jehovah (while not excluding the other) refers
more specially to his moral attributes (Righteousness,
Mercy, Retributive Judgments) as the God of Redemp-
tion.
" This, as I have said, furnishes at once the rule
for the use of the two Names throughout Genesis, and
explains their interchange in the Noachic document.
Elohim, as the Giver and Disposer of Life, is the pre-
vailing Name. Jehovah takes its place where, as the
Covenant God of Noah, ' Jehovah shuts him in ' [vii. 16].
It is Elohim who commands to take of the animals
' two of every sort ' [vi. J 9, 20] ; but Jehovah, when
sacrifice is in view, commands to take of the ' clean
beasts and fowls by sevens' (vii. i to 3), and so when
he offers them in sacrifice (viii. 20). The contrast too is
very marked in ix. 26, ' Blessed be Jehovah, the God of
Shem ' ; but ' Elohim shall enlarge Japheth.' "
We must not omit to add that in a third paper, which
appeared in the 'Guardian' of Feb. 9, 1887, Burgon
" disposed of certain critical objections " which his two
previous " essays had elicited."
From the two short letters to the Rev. H. M. Ingram
of Southover, near Lewes, which are appended to the
record of this year, it will be seen that his two articles
in the ' Guardian ' awakened not only hostile criticism in
certain quarters, but cordial sympathy in others, and
that he entertained a design (never unhappily carried
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 271
into effect) of enlarging them, and publishing them as a
pamphlet in a separate form.
We now approach the last of Burgon's many contro-
versial publications ; and vividly does the author recall
the occasion on which he first became aware that such a
publication was about to be made. Being in London on
one of the last Sundays in the Lent of 1887, and seeing
that Burgon was advertised to preach at the Chapel
Royal, Whitehall, he attended the service there, and at
the close of it went into the vestry to greet the preacher,
and found him, as ever, enthusiastically responsive to
words of friendship and affection. Passing out of the
Chapel we came upon a lady, who had belonged to one
of his Bible Classes in Oxford, had come a long way to
hear him, and was waiting with her husband for a few
kind words of recognition from him, which he gave her
effusively, showing that he remembered every particular
about her. This interview, to which he seemed to give
his whole mind for the moment, concluded, the author
accompanied him to St. Martin's Rectory, where he was
staying for the night ; but scarcely had he done with his
reminiscences, and enquiries, and adieux to the lady,
than in a tone grotesquely contrasted with that in which
he had been speaking hitherto, he burst in full cry upon
the very objectionable paper by Canon Fremantle, which
had recently appeared in the ' Fortnightly Review] and
which he said the Editor had invited him to answer.
He had already written his answer, though it had not
yet appeared, and the scandal caused to the Church by
the appearance of such a paper from the pen of a digni-
tary, and the necessity of protesting loud and long
against the (so-called) New Reformation, which the
" changed conditions of Theology " were (according to
2 72 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
the writer of the paper) bringing about, so strongly ex-
cited him in the course of that short walk, that the
author sought and found an opportunity to divert him
from this burning question to another and calmer topic.
Striking and sudden was the contrast between Burgon
in the affectionateness of old reminiscences, and Burgon
in his rabid controversial vein, so striking that he who
witnessed it can never forget it. As to his " Reply to
Canon Fremantle," which appeared in the 'Fortnightly
Review ' shortly afterwards 9 , while it must be admitted
that his usual controversial faults of passionateness and
scolding are exaggerated in it (the intensely hard work
of concluding, amidst so many other engagements, the
'Lives of Twelve Good Men* had evidently told upon him,
lowered his physique, and weakened his power of self-
control), it should also be borne in mind that the greatest
possible provocation had been given in the l Fortnightly '
Article to all who loved and clung to the old Faith, as
taught in the Bible and Prayer Book, and that Burgon
exhibited in his Reply a crowning specimen of that
burning zeal for GOD'S truth, and that splendid uncom-
promising intrepidity and outspokenness, which charac-
terized all his controversial efforts. It was the blood of
the old Austrian grandfather, who stood single-handed in
the porch of St. Polycarp's Church, and told Osman
Digma, at the head of his Turkish soldiers, that, if he
passed into the sacred precincts, it should be over his
own dead body. Who is there among us in these de-
generate days, when the religious opinions of people are
held to be a matter of such supreme indifference, that is
9 THE NEW REFORMATION. ery, Chichester, March 24th, 1887";
"Theology under its changed con- but bears no name of Printer or
ditions : " A Reply to Canon Fre- Publisher,
mantle. The Paper is dated, " Dean-
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 273
animated by such zeal for truth and righteousness as
John William Burgon consistently exhibited, a zeal, be
it granted, which cannot tolerate those who deprave the
truth or lower the moral standard, nay, which desires
the extermination of all such ; " I would they were
even cut off that trouble you'"? Such zeal however
met in the olden time with high encomium and high
reward ;
" Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the
priest, hath turned my wrath away from the children of
Israel, while he was zealous for my sake among them,
that I consumed not the children of Israel in my jealousy.
Wherefore say, BEHOLD, I GIVE UNTO HIM MY COVENANT
OF PEACE : AND HE SHALL HAVE IT, AND HIS SEED AFTER
HIM, even THE COVENANT OF AN EVERLASTING PRIEST-
HOOD ; BECAUSE HE WAS ZEALOUS FOR HIS GOD."
Burgon was present at the great Jubilee Service in
Westminster Abbey, which was held in the Midsummer
of this year, as it was right that one should be, so brim-
ming over with loyal and patriotic feeling, and so full
of poetic sentiment. A letter of his to Miss Washbourne
referring to the occasion will be found at the end of this
year's record.
Here is a picture of " Dean Burgon in his study,"
kindly transmitted to the author by one who visited
him there in August 1 6 of this year.
"We found the Dean just returned from the Cathedral,
and in his study. In his long black cassock he moved
or flashed about, tall and lithe, sparkling with unex-
pected turns of thought and quick varying expressions
of face and tone. A marvellous study lined with books ;
even a shelf over the door laden with Jerome's works, in
six great folio volumes. Quaint rubbings and slightly
framed pencil sketches hung or placed in every possible
nook, a head of Dean Church, sketched by Dean Burgon
VOL. II. T
274 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
himself ; another delightful pencil head by Haydon.
Over the mantelpiece a photograph of Leonardo da
Vinci's original crayon drawing for the head of our
Lord in the Last Supper ; below a chromo-lithograph of
the new Raphael. He pointed to the line of immense
volumes containing the wonderful work, which had oc-
cupied him for fifteen years, and told how he came to
begin it. ' In '73 I was at Oxford. I was leaving
the Schools one evening, when a nobleman accosted me
(a nobleman in the present Cabinet, President of the
Council). He began talking about the book I had
written on the last twelve verses of St. Mark, proving
their genuineness. He said he had been very much in-
terested in it. I did not believe he had understood it.
I began to catechize him. Yes ; he had understood it.
He said that by my book he had been enabled to prove
the genuineness of those verses to the Archbishop.
" ' The thought flashed across me Why shouldn't I
do for the whole New Testament what I have done for
those twelve verses of St. Mark ? Why shouldn't I ? I
walked home. The street was dark, but it was all
luminous within. I got home. I said to myself It
will take you a long time. I know it. The rest of
your life. I know it. It will cost a great deal of
money. I know it. And you will never finish it. No ;
I know it. No one will ever appreciate it. I know it.
I will do it. I have been fifteen years over it. Oh, and
a gieat deal more than that! See, here is one of the
Indexes. Isn't that an unearthly-looking thing ? ' It
was indeed unearthly- looking, small squares of paper of
all the colours of the rainbow, each numbered, the
colour representing the author (some particular Father),
and the number representing the volume and the page of
his work, in which the text in question was referred to.
" ' This you see,' unfolding a long page in the begin-
ning, ' shows the number of times St. Chrysostom quotes
from St. Matthew, 178; how many times from St.
Mark, and so on ; and each reference is given in the
Index.
" ' A number of ladies help me. Very good help.
THE C HIGH ESTER LlFE. 275
Little bits of genius sometimes. Here's a letter from a
young lady, received this morning ; does her great credit,
great credit.'
' Then he showed us his coins, pointing out minutest
beauties and peculiarities of line and balance. ' The
coins are such a help in studying history. You should
take some period of history, and study it in connexion
with its literature, its architecture, its paintings, its
seals and coins.'
"And besides all this accumulation of learning, and
these absorbing antiquities, upon the table a box of
hemp-seed for the birds scattered to them each morn-
ing at his whistle. * He says it is the happiest moment
in the day when they come fluttering down to him/ Mrs.
Crosse told me afterwards.
" He stood at the door waving his hand and his hand-
kerchief, till we turned out of the gate. Mrs. Crosse
said ; ' That's what is so pretty in the Dean, he always
does that to his friends.' "
And here another incident of the same year, narrated
by Mrs. Crosse, which will be read with interest, not
only as showing the reflective and deeply serious turn
of mind, which was habitual with him and interlaced
with his sprightly moods, but also from the melancholy
presage it seemed to give of what was to come so soon
after.
"During the Goodwood week at Chichester in 1887
we met the Dean near the gate at the entrance of Canon
Lane, and we stood still for a short time, watching the
gay company passing- to the Station. When we moved
on, walking back to the Deanery, the Dean began to
meditate aloud, and said,
"'I often think, and think increasingly, of the wonder-
ful surroundings to which our eyes will one day open.
The vail of flesh now hides them from us ; but in a
moment we may find that close to us, and about us, a
great company may be present.
T 2
276 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
a i
I often think too that we have the germs of great
future powers within us. Our sense of beauty, har-
mony, &c., are all comparatively undeveloped here ;
they are not fulfilled ; they will be by and by.'
" During the Goodwood week of the following year,
the Dean was dying, and the vail was removed."
In the October of this year he attended, as he usually
did, the Diocesan Conference (held on this occasion at
St. Leonard's), and manifested there his interest in the
religious welfare of young men. Youth in either sex,
and not only in the adolescent stage, but in child-
hood and even babyhood, always powerfully attracted
his sympathies. Thus writes the Rev. William S. Carter,
the Clerical Organizing Secretary to the Young Men's
Friendly Society, to the author (July 6, 1889) ;
" Dean Burgon's letters to me were always full of the
kindest expressions of his sympathy in my work for
young men in connexion with this Society. I shall
never forget the kindness with which he placed the
Cathedral Pulpit at Chichester at my disposal at a very
early stage of my work, and in the interviews which I
had with him subsequently he, over and over again, told
me that one of the greatest dreams of his life had been
to see the Church of England take up definite and united
work for young men.
"To me, personally, he was for the last two years of his
life a warm-hearted and most valued counsellor, for on
more than one occasion I took advantage of his kind
offer to look over some of my proposed addresses, and to
give me any information he could.
" At the Chichester Diocesan Conference held at St.
Leonard's in October, 1887, at which I was invited to
move one of the resolutions, he came up to me, and
(knowing that it was the first time I had been asked
to undertake such a task) thinking that I should be
THE CHICH ESTER LIFE. 277
nervous, he chatted most pleasantly; and in order to
set me at my ease, said he would support the Resolution
himself, which he did in a most kind and generous
speech."
To THE EIGHT HONOURABLE VISCOUNT CRANBROOK,
G.C.B., &c. 5 &c.
"Deanery, Chichester, Feb. 2,1, 1887.
"My dear Friend, I hasten to reply to your kind
letter. Ever since 1831, the Text of the N.T. has been
like a storm-tossed barque, drifting along without
captain, chart, or compass. At the end of 50 years,
things reached their climax viz., in 1881, when the
maximum of damage was sustained. Dr. Scrivener, the
best critic livjng, says of the latest editors of the Greek
Text ; ' splendidum peccatum, non Kr?jju,a e? aei, in lucem
emiserunt.'
" Ever since 1866 or 7, I had had my eye fastened on
this danger. It was a conversation with yourself^ by
lamplight, in Christ Church quadrangle (I suppose in
1871 or 2) that finally determined me to make it the
business of my life (CHRISTO duce !) to try to secure the
deposit : to recal men to their senses, to vindicate the
Truth of Scripture, and to establish it on a scientific
<; It was a gigantic undertaking : but I was confident
of success full of hope and full of spirits. I cannot
say how hard I worked. Besides visiting the principal
libraries of Europe, in order to familiarise myself with
MSS., I collated the most famous of them for myself. I
formed a Library of Fathers, and began to index them.
At the end of 1875, the Deanery was offered me, and I
gratefully accepted it, chiefly in order to be able to
devote myself without distraction to my self-imposed
task I toiled on unremittingly in spite of
every discouragement, and with such success that, in
the autumn of 1881, I was able to pour such a broad-
278 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
side into the (so-called) Revised Greek Text, which had
appeared in the spring of the same year, that it was
declared on all hands to be no longer sea-worthy.
"It was a tremendous effort; but I repeated the broad-
side in January, 1882, and again in April. These three
articles in the ' Quarter/// 7iVr/Vv ' I greatly enlarged, and
republished in 1883. I dedicated the ' lievmon lievised'
to yourself.
" I have been at work ever since ; the danger has not
been overcome. It has only been checked and retarded,
but it will reappear, inevitably. I have nothing on
my side, scarcely, but Ihe Truth. Crippled as I was last
year, I resolved to strengthen my defences, to gather
allies, and to make one more systematic advance against
the enemy. So I have had my Indexes of the Fathers
increased, have carried down my inquiries to the viiith
and ixth century, and in less than two months from
this date, shall have my ponderous tomes back from
all my white negroes; and (D.V.) shall be resuming
seriously my great work.
"You will understand then that in brief my object
is to vindicate the Traditional Text of the N. T. against
all its past and present assailants, and to establish it 011
such a basis of security, that H ma// be incapable of being
effectually dixf/u-bed any more. I propose to myself to lay
down logical principles, and to demonstrate that men have
been going wrong for the last 50 years ; to explain
how this has come to pass in every instance; and to get
them to admit their error. At least, I will convince
every fair person that the truth is what I say it is viz.,
that in nine cases out of ten, the commonly received fe.rf is
the true one. What you are bent on doing for the
Imperial interests of Great Britain, / am seeking to do
for the Word of GOD. And when (you ask) do I expect
to have done this ? The labour is so great, that I hardly
dare to forecast. A single text has, before now, occupied
me all day long for many weeks. A crucial place (i Tim.
iii. 1 6) taxed my energies for six months. (I corres-
ponded with every great Library in. Europe.) Bufc, to
come to the point I believe that in four or five years (at
THE CHICPIESTER LIFE. 279
furthest) from this time, I shall be able to give to the
world the result of my 23 or 24 years of toil ; that is, if
God grants me a continuance of health.
" In the meantime (as I ventured to tell you) the
struggle I have had to make against insufficiency of
income, which has long been embarrassing me, is at
last entirely disheartening, or rather paralysing me.
My health seems at last to be giving way I can bear
it no longer. The secret of my success hitherto has been
my unbroken sleep. I no longer sleep soundly. I wake
early, and distress myself w T ith the gloomy forecast.
"Anxieties preying upon me, night and morning,
effectually hinder my working and will end by em-
bittering hopelessly my life and ruining the prospects of
those whom God has given me. I fear I have wearied
you but I have tried to answer your question as suc-
cinctly as I can, without being unintelligible.
" Ever yours affectionately and gratefully,
"J. W. BJRGON."
To THE REVEREND HENRY M. INGRAM, SOUTHOVER,
LEWES.
[In explanation of the occasion of the following two
letters, Mr. Ingram writes to the author, July 3rd,
1889 ;-
" They were written in acknowledgment of certain
remarks of mine on the ' Sunday question,' arising out
of Dean Burgon's two printed Essays on the subject,
which had appeared in the * Guardian ' newspaper of Jan.
5 and 12, 1887. If I remember right, my main purpose
in writing to the Dean was to urge upon him the fuller
investigation of the passages alluding to the subject
in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in the belief that that
wonderful Epistle has not yet received anything approach-
ing to its deserts (so to speak) of patient study and eluci-
dation, on all subjects connected with the sudden and
impending ' passing away ' (at the destruction of Jeru-
salem) of the ancient Judaic ritual and worship, and the
280 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
necessary establishment in its room of the ' better ' rites
and ordinances of the Catholick Church. It was owing
to the putting on paper of some crude thoughts on this
subject, that the Dean wrote back with his characteristic
warmth of kindness. I fear that, from the inevitable
break in our correspondence, I was not successful in
satisfying him with the fuller thoughts he asked for on
' the transference of the religious obligations of the
Seventh Day (the* Primaeval Sabbath) to the First Day
of the week, the Christian Sunday or LORD'S Day. ' "]
" Gresham Coll., London,
"Feb. 16, 1887.
'' My dear Sir, I am anxious to thank you for your
interesting letter of the 14th instant. I acknowledged
it yesterday in a hurry intending to return to the
subject from London to-day.
In reply to your question (whether I will publish
those two Essays in a pamphlet form,) I answer that I
will do what will be better (D.V.), viz. enlarge them,
and leave out the (unavoidable) personalities in them,
and incorporate with them the question you touch upon
so eloquently and (in my judgment) so admirably,
I mean, the supplanting of the Jewish Sabbath by the
Christian Sunday.
" Few things have surprised me more than the discovery
that this is made a difficulty by many of the Clergy. To
me (and, I rejoice to see, toyoii) it seems one of the most
beautifully clear things in the whole range of unrevealed J
Truth.
"If anything occurs to you in illustration of the subject,
pray let me hear from you again. Certainly my own
views on the entire subject have been wonderfully enlarged
and rendered more precise by the inquiries into which I
have been led by the perverseness of my opponents. It
1 He means probably that the Christian conscience as suitable and
transfer of the religious obligation right, does not rest on express reve-
frora the Seventh to the First Day, lation.
however it may approve itself to the
THE CHIC HESTER LIFE. 281
is, in truth, a large and a curious question when and
where the custom arose of calling the week-days by their
present names.
" Very truly yours,
"JOHN W BURGON."
" The Deanery, Chichester,
" i March, 1887.
" My dear Sir, I will not go from home for three, or
rather four, days without first thanking you for your
two interesting and valuable letters. The second I was
especially glad to receive : though indeed in neither did
I find what I most wished for your thoughts on viz. on
the transference of the religious obligation of the *]th day to the
first day of the week a point on which I find many
persons are troubled, and on which, in your first letter
of all, you spoke eloquently, and (as I felt) satisfactorily.
It quite refreshed rne to find any one so sound and strong
on the subject.
" I do not mean that I am disappointed in not hearing
more on that special point ; for I am not. But it is per-
haps the point which most stands in need of elucidation.
"I propose GOD helping me to try to methodize,
and perhaps to put into the shape of a pamphlet of 16 or
32 pages, what 1 have to say on the entire subject.
It has never that I know of, been nicely handled yet.
'1 understand the Sabbath to be an emblem from the
first of man's everlasting beatific rest (o-ajS/Sarnr/Ltos) : for
which reason (there being ' no night there ') no mention
is made of ' the evening and the morning.'
" The republication (for it was nothing more) of the
Sabbath at the Exodus is best explained by the 215
years of practical neglect it must have experienced during
the age of the Egyptian bondage. I was much struck
just now in Church by the xxvth of Leviticus, which
reminded me of the extent to which the original enact-
ment was there by its Divine Author expanded as well
as enforced.
" The notices in the prophets also well deserve special
attention. They are not many, but they are very striking.
IFBRARY ST. MARY'S COLLEGE
282 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
" One or more of these you have yourself touched, and
indeed I only take up my pen to thank you for your
valuable remarks.
11 Your obliged,
" JOHN W. BURGON.
c; I find no mention of months till Gen. vii. n."
To Miss WASHBOURNE.
" The Deanery, Chichester, June 28, 1887.
" Yes, I went (as Dean] to Westminster, with my wife
(Tan 2 ), and a very glorious sight it was. The Queen
was immediately before us, and not further off than the
length of St. Mary's nave. But we were obliged to sleep
in London over night, bribe a cab, and get to the Abbey
by 8. Doors (or rather windows, for we went in by
a window) not open till 9. At 12.30 the Queen ap-
peared. Her embracing her forty children and grand-
children who sat round her was a beautiful and affecting
sight."
To MRS. CROSSE.
" Turvey Abbey, 26 Aug., 1887.
" Already have I subsided into my bad ways in this dear
place up to my eyes in ink. The quiet and repose is
most congenial to me : but I am bound to confess that I
work nowhere Letter than in my den. I question whether
there is a happier Dean or a pleasanter den in Great
Britain."
To MRS. -
" Turvey Abbey, Bedford,
"Aug. 30, 1887.
" My very dear Friend, It is high time that I should
thank you for your few loving lines, and assure you how
much we missed you on Sunday Evenings" [his corre-
spondent was a lady resident in Chichester, who, like one
2 His niece, Miss Anna Rose.
THE C HIGHEST ER LlFE. 283
or two other intimate friends, used to resort to the Deanery
on Sunday Evenings], u and send you a brief report of
myself.
" All here is unchanged. Long may this be the case !
The sameness of the scene in country houses is very
striking. Within, books and furniture abide in their
places ; and the punctuality of Nature without is (like
its Author) unchangeable. But I still miss, and shall
long rniss our loved Charles. Some persons there are
who, more far more than others, make themselves an
integral part of the house they once occupied. Of no
one could this be more truly said than of the master of
this house till the hour of his departure.
" You ask for some ' good words to-morrow.' But on
the morrow I could not write them. I was called upon
suddenly to preach two Sermons, and, as you know, I
was very tired when I left Chichester ; there was such
a deal to be done before I could get away. Whether I
can offer them now is doubtful, but I will try.
" It is remarkable and deserves to be remarked to
what an extent God has provided us, in this world of ours,
with reminders and rehearsals. There is no rehearsal like
that of leaving home for a time. O the many unfinished,
unanswered unattempted unremembered things ! O
the many reproaches, regrets, and faint resolves ! I
take it that these are intended by Him who contrived
the curious network of our existence intended for our
health, and growth, and improvement. The pang of
parting is a faint shadow of the latest pang of all : the
unpreparedness is intended to warn us : the reproaches
of conscience are meant to save us from more serious
reproofs. Need I go on ? You will see that I mean to
call your attention to the Providential character of this
part of our experience. The love concealed under the
pain we feel, when we have to say ' Good bye.'
" Ever believe me,
" Your affectionate and faithful friend,
"JOHN W. BUBQON."
284
LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
To MRS.
" Turvey Abbey, Bedford,
"Sept. 12, 1887.
" My very dear Friend,
" I am suffering from a tremendous cold. JIGW caught
I know not, which almost keeps me sneezing, barking,
and doing other graceful things all day
This seizure is the more unlucky because I have made
several engagements for the present week. Thus, on
Thursday, I am to conduct the Reformatory Boys' recita-
tion of John Gilpin and I must rehearse them for the
last time to-day : and this requires spirit and the free
use of one's voice.
" When I tell you that dearest Helen has manufactured
a ing for John Gilpin (which I will exhibit in a foot-
note), to say nothing of a scarlet cloak a boddice
and two bottles with curling ears you will understand
how busy we have both been. The wig is of tow. The
difficulty is to make these articles absurd enough. I am
obliged to direct Mrs. Gilpin ? s cap in person thus :
(RED) But seriously it is really affecting
(BLUE) ^ see now the boys enter into the fun
of the thing. For I make one talk in a
squeaky woman's voice (for Mrs. G.) ;
another has to show how the horse
behaved ; and when it comes to ' the
dogs did bark ' you would suppose
you were in a kennel. My humble
object is that they may see that there is
a fti/rer edge to the cloud of life, and
that the more gifted of their spirits may reach out into
the unseen. 0, how I feel for human kind! How
THE CHICH ESTER LIFE. 285
sincerely I love it ! How faithfully my heart beats with
it, and responds to it ! ....
" . . . . Such a letter as that which I enclose .... makes
me desire to throw over the ' Ttcelve Lire*. 1 and charge
the infidels. But how can I do more than one thing at
a time ? or do that thing more vigorously than by rising
at 5 or soon after every morning, and working all
day ? On Friday and Saturday I think I worked for
12 or 14 hours and was not tired !
" Believe me ever }'our affectionate Friend,
"JOHN W. BURGOS."
To MRS.. -
"Turvey Abbey, 16 Sept. 1887.
"My very dear Fat Jier-in- Laic ?J (ahem!), You will be
glad to hear that John Gilpin reached his journey's end
in safety and that his wig gave universal satisfaction.
Mrs. G. s cap was a general diversion to the ladies. One
of the smallest boys did so well, that Lady Tierney (like
Mrs. Gilpin) ' pulled out half a crown,' and made the
urchin happy. You never saw a queerer exhibition.
And now I am wondering what is to be the programme
for 1888, if the life of Moses is to be prolonged till then.
" The auditory yesterday were the neighbouring clergy
and gentry ; the distribution of prizes is in a tent. Almost
twenty prizes, amounting in money to j^io or more, are
distributed and placed to each boy's account : so that
he begins life with a balance at his banker's in his favour
(which, by the way, is not the way I shall eml life !)
' ; . . . . the races scrambling for gingerbread-nuts, &c.,
&c., &c., &c. are most grotesque. The whole party
then adjourned to the Building, where a grand tea is
provided and a loaf foo l>ig to carry is cut up : ALL the
work of the boys, who are supposed to be first rate farmers,
8 The Editor of these letters can- cations all of them, however obscure
not profess to interpret all the gro- to the uninitiated, of playful affec-
tesque names by which Burgon ad- tiou.
dressed his intimate friends, indi-
286 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
nurses, dairymen, cooks, and even Gilpiniaus. It was
touching to see how they looked out for my departure
and gave the carriage chase, vociferating until I was
out of sight. I like the poor fellows much. On
Saturday week I have promised to go to my friend,
Dr. Scrivener, at Hendon, and to preach his Harvest
Sermon. Can you not fancy how dry we shall be ?
" And now all Blessings attend my very dear Father,
and her party, so says her faithful and affectionate
Friend,
"JOHN W. BURGON."
Of the Reformatory Festival and the preparations for
it, described in the two last letters, Mrs. Higgins (his
sister) writes thus ;
" That merry meeting at the Reformatory Harvest
Festival in 1887 was the last my Brother attended. How
heartily he entered into the costume, which I prepared
(under his direction) for Mrs. Gilpin, I shall never forget,
he constantly rising from the table in the window,
where he was slaving morning, noon, and night, over
the ' Lives' to suggest something which would make
Mrs. Gilpin's cap more grotesque, finally running into
the garden and returning with a huge sun-flower and
red dahlia, which I was to fasten on either side of the
cap! Alas! how little I thought that summer of 1887
was to be the last summer he was to spend in this
house, the last summer he was to comfort and cheer
me by his tenderness and ever sympathizing companion-
ship."
To THE REVEREND PRECENTOR CROSSE.
" Turvey Abbey, Sept. 17, 1887.
[This letter was occasioned ly the announcement of the death
of a former Canon Residentiary, to whose house Canon Crosse
had succeeded, and who had been on bad terms with the Dean.
It shows, even in the comical incident with which it ends, that
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 287
every particle of resentment was obliterated from Burgons
" Optime Prsecentorum, I feel Dr. - -'s death. I
have written to Raper to telegraph to ine the time and
place of interment. I should wish to attend ; not merely
for form's sake by any means. I do not bear him the
slightest ill will.
" I think one or tivo pages about him from the Cathedral
pulpit would be most graceful and reasonable. You will
be well in time for this to-morrow week\ though Read
should play the Dead March in Saul after the afternoon
service to-morrow. And perhaps also on the Octave as
well.
" I sympathize profoundly with you in your feelings.
There is a reality in the house the rooms of a man's
occupancy, which nothing can obliterate.
" By the way, do you know Mrs. - ? a most dear
creature ! One day, in Chapter, after a kind of row, I
remember Dr. - saying, in a meditative voice, ' I
am told you say our wives are much better than we are.'
..... ' Yes, I think each of the wives of you four
Canons worth any half dozen of you/ and so I did
and do.
" Ever affectionately yours,
" J. W. BUEGON."
FROM DEAN BURGON TO A FRIEND.
" Tuesday night, Oct. n, 1887.
" Your complaint about the lifelessness of your prayers
is one which I can deeply sympathize with. All are more
or less either prone to, or at least have had some sad
experience of, the same infirmity ; but it is to be wrestled
with, and by God's help to be surmounted. Remember
that GOD is a Person ; and that the one Person of
our Lord Jesus Christ consists of two distinct natures
inseparably united. Address yourself to Him ; or,
addressing the Eternal Father, address Him through
288 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
the Son ; and set before yourself your Saviour as
receiving your prayers, and as it were presenting them.
Do whatever you can to make your prayers real. Besides
direct prayer, there is the habit of devout communing
with GOD. It is to be done at all times, by meditation
on His perfection, and power, and goodness, and so on.
If you lie awake, think of Him, and dart up your soul
to Him by repealed efforts of love, and gratitude, and
admiration. In travel, during the intervals throughout
the day. and during the lulls of conversation, you may,
if you will, always steal away in thought to Him, as you
would to a stronghold or a fortress.
"I recommend you to send for C. Marriott's 'Hints on
Private Devotion? This will be a prodigious help to you.
Read a chapter in this little book daily, or every second
day, and try to act on his advice. You will be very
grateful to me for telling you of this book/'
1888.
We approach the end. The last year had been marked
by much controversy ; and controversy, with a nature
like Burgon's, ardent for the Truth, though it had never
any touch of personal animosity, could not fail to be
somewhat fiery. But the only trace of controversy in
the records of this last year is to be found in letters
addressed to him by tw^o able and learned divines,
occupying both of them very high positions in the
Church, who found themselves hopelessly at variance
with him as to the literal character of the Creation
narrative in the Book of Genesis. Here is an excerpt
from one of these letters, the writer of which, though
differing from him materially, writes with Christian
kindness and courtesy. Many probably will be found
to agree with him ; but the author is not of the number;
"March 25, 1888.
" You will let me say that I am one of those who have
not been able to see that anything essentially Christian,
THE CHI CHESTER LIFE. 289
or even essentially religious, is lost or jeopardized by the
acceptance of the theory of evolution. It is a curious
thing, I wish I could verify my reference ; but I think
with time and leisure I could recover it. that a book
was written last century, which in commenting upon the
story of Creation, suggested a sort of evolution as its mode,
and that merely on the strength of the sacred story and
language I have felt that the saying, ' The
Bible was given us, not to teach us how the heavens
go, but how to go to heaven/ might cover much of the
present controversy."
One would be curious to see how the theory that
Evolution was the mode of Creation could be main-
tained on "the strength of the sacred story and lan-
guage," when that language seems so emphatically to
affirm the distinctness of species both vegetable and
animal [see Gen. i. u, 12, 21, 24, 25]. The two letters
above referred to, one of them three or four weeks later
in date than that from which the above excerpt is made,
are the only documents of 1888 (entrusted to the
author) in which any vestige of controversy is discover-
able.
Quite at the beginning of the year (Jan. 5, 1888) he
had written to his attached friend and former Curate,
Rev. R. G. Livingstone, a long letter, from parts of which
it appears that he still hoped for the best, both as regards
the prospects of his beloved University, and as to the
continuance of his own life until his great work upon
the principles of the Textual Criticism should have seen
the light ;
" Your news about Oxford is the only news I have
had ; and, thank God, it is cheering. Co you know I
have a deep inveterate feeling that the prayers, and
tears, and substantial sacrifices, with which, four, five,
and six hundred years ago, our Founders built and
endowed our Colleges, are not forgotten before GOD, and,
VOL. n. u
290 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
although He has suffered the Secularists for a while to
have their brief day, He will yet remember His ancient
servants, and bring back a better day to Oxford in due
time ? I can never think of certain Headships without
indignation and abhorrence."
Then after dwelling upon the growing inadequacy of
his income to meet the claims upon him, and the need
for retrenchment in his domestic expenses, and after
describing the almost incredible labour which ' The Lives
of Twelve Good Men ' had given and were giving him, he
proceeds thus ;
" But I desire to assure you that I am surrounded by
countless blessings, carry a joyful heart in spite of every-
thi/ifj, and only want to get to the end of ' The Lives ] in
order to take in hand my great work (so intended to be)
on the Text of the N.T. . . . I shall not lie quiet in the
grave (so at least I feel) unless I may be allowed first to
do that-. My object is to establish the question on a foot-
ing which shall never more admit of disturbance. The
subject occupies my mind incessantly, and fills up every
vacant moment ; e.g. while I am dressing in the morning,
and falling asleep at night."
In the early spring of this year he was sufficiently
strong to administer for the last time the Holy Sacrament
of Baptism on an occasion of peculiar interest, which
must have called out all the sensibility of his loving and
tender heart, the infant whom he was summoned to
baptize being a child of his old attached friend and
disciple, Mrs. Samuel Bickersteth, and named after him-
self, " John Burgon."
Soon after came the beginning of the end. It was on
the 26th of April that the author, being in the neighbour-
hood of Chichester, went over to see Burgon, little think-
ing that this was the last time he should ever look upon
him, and that the next visit would be not to himself, but
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 291
to his study as he had left it. He was looking very ill,
' peaked," to use a word now somewhat antiquated,
with a thin high note in his voice not usual to him, and
wizened. He was in the lowest spirits about his own
health, and said he felt that he should die in two or
three days ; that this was the result of over strain and
nervous exhaustion, brought on by the intense applica-
tion which his last work (' The Lives of Twelve Good Men ')
had exacted from him, but which work he rejoiced to
think was then finished, and (as far as the composition of
it went) out of hand. " The Book is to appear," he said,
" in October ; but Murray does not think it will have
any great run." In his then state of extreme dejection,
everything was clad to him in the most sombre hues.
He then turned to spiritual subj cts, and said, " Dear
friend, I daresay you think I have led a most reputable
Christian life ; but I assure you that, in looking back
upon it, my past life yields nothing that is satisfactory to
me, and that I have no hope but in the Blood and Grace
of our Divine Lord." " One thing, however," he con-
tinued after a short pause, "is a consolatory reflexion,
that I have been enabled to crush the Revised Version
of the New Testament, so that I believe it will never lift
up its head again." It was wonderful how during
luncheon (for, although so ill, he was dressed and down-
stairs) he seemed to revive, and there came now and
again a gleam of the old fire and fun. The exertion,
however, seemed to exhaust him, and, before we parted
in the late afternoon, the depression in which I had
found him closed round him again. The complaint ran
its course, and assumed in a short time a most alarming
aspect.
On the 5th of May he writes again (from a couch, and
dictating the letter to his nephew) to Mr. Livingstone,
u 2,
2 92 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
speaking of his illness as " the saddest and strangest of
breakdowns, a very serious, and, I daresay, well-needed
reminder of iny own mortality and frailness.'' The pur-
port of the letter is to send a word of sympathy to an old
friend (the Reverend John Rigaud, fellow of Magdalen
College) to whom he was strongly attached, and of whom
he had been infoiyned that he was in a dying state (he
pre-deceased Burgon by eight days) ;
" I am sure you will have caught my meaning, which
is to convey a message of kindness to a dying friend.
Tide what tide, you will be so kind (if the chance is
allowed you) as to say from me to dear J. R. somewhat
as follows ;
c Farewell, dearest fellow, until, GOD grant it ! we
meet in another world, not hemmed in by the shadows
of Time, but introduced to some of the realities of
Eternity. Do not forget Whom you have trusted, and Who
has said, 1 will never leave tliee nor forsake thee. Repeat
to yourself again and again the Comfortable Words
in the Communion Service, and the grand close of the
Service for the Visitation of the Sick (0 Saviour of the
world, who by tliy crosz, &c.). Be assured we shall often
think, often talk about you.' "
But with that wonderful vitality and recuperative
power, which he had displayed on previous occasions,
he rallied ; and in the following letter to the late Dr.
Bloxam, of Seeding, an eminent Oxonian, who had
kindly offered him assistance in the shape of a manu-
script memoir of one of his ' Twelve Good Men' he seems
to have almost regained his usual tone of spirits.
" The Deanery, Chichester,
(Not in his own hand.} "May 17th, 1888.
" Dear old Friend, I have been in the very jaws of
death ; but by GOD'S mercy am recovering, and am this
day pronounced convalescent. But I have not yet left
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 293
my bed-room, and to dictate a letter is as much as I am fit
for. I have, as you justly suppose, greatly overtaxed
my powers. I had no idea that I had brought myself
so very low.
" The ' Live* of Twelve Good Men ' have been in type for
some weeks. But John Murray requires that their pub-
lication shall be delayed till October, or the sale will be
hopelessly damaged. I submit of course.
" Charles Marriott's Life will interest you greatly. I
have taken exceeding pains with it, and have been
largely helped by the family. But I can add nothing
to it now. I had better therefore for every reason
repress my curiosity to read the memoir you speak of,
until my health shall return, and I am able calmly to
consider what use might be made of so important a
contribution to the family history. Thank you gratefully
all the same for your kind offer.
" One of the first copies of my book, D.V., shall be
sent to you, to whom it is so largely indebted.
" Ever affectionately yours,
"JOHN W. BURGON.
" The Rev. Dr. Bloxarn." (IJ'ith his own hand.)
Here is another letter, of a rather later date, addressed
to the Rev. William Valentine, Vicar of Whixley, York,
who had known Burgon's family, and to whom after-
wards at Oxford he had shown kindness. It shows that
at this date Burgon thought he might be spared, and
enabled to do more work for the Divine Master.
" The Deanery, Chichester,
"26 May, 1888.
" My faithful Vally, Though still very weak and ill
(I have not yet in fact been allowed to enter my library,
though I have been downstairs twice, and have tottered
the length of the garden). I must yet trace a few lines
of gratitude and affection to you for your friendly and
very acceptable letter. You summon up many a slum-
294 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
bering image, be sure, when you refer to the Osnaburgh
Street days, and that loved, sainted one " [his mother],
" who I know has been for 34 years with CHRIST.
" Yes ; I must take more care of my health ; for I
seem to have still a great work to do ; and the night
cometh wherein no man can work. I was very near the
portals of the other world on Sunday the 29th April,
very near indeed. % I have ever since been slowly recover-
ing, slowly gaining strength, but so slowly that I am
half in despair. And now they order me to repair to
Folkestone, and declare that sea air is necessary for my
re-establishment. I shrink from all that is before me
the expense included : for my income has fallen, and I
have been trying hard to diminish my yearly expendi-
ture.
" It is an unspeakable comfort to me, in my affliction,
to know that I am being dealt with by Almighty God,
'according to the counsel of his will/ and that none of
these things are by chance ; but on the contrary are all
wisely, lovingly, graciously ordered for one's own truest
good.
' I cordially congratulate you on your boys' dis-
tinctions. May GOD preserve their heads in the day of
battle !
" Ever, my dear Vally,
" Your affectionate old Friend,
"JOHN W. BURGON."
Burgon had a warm friend in the caretaker of Gresham
College, to whose children he had shown much kindness,
giving them small gifts and playing with them, as was
his wont with all children who crossed his path. His
kindness was most deeply felt by Mrs. Skeet ; and his
last visit to Gresham College lives, and will ever live, in
her memory.
l - He wished particularly to see my children every
time he came," she writes, " and Norah he always gave a
sixpence to, and in his kind and comical way, said, f Now
THE C HIGH ESTER LlFE. 295
5ou are to get seven Bath buns in a bag for sixpence :' "
the envelope of the last sixpence is enclosed, with the
inscription in his own hand, " For the little old girl.' ]
" I shall never forget his dear, kind, affectionate
ways to us all ; and Norah to the last he would kiss with
the affection of a father. My heart, so to speak, seems
to melt, when I think of the wonderful friend he was to
us all, and that we hare lost kirn. . . He was all goodness
to everybody he had to do with, which I have felt should
be made known He felt every one's trouble so
from his heart. I shall never forget the last shake of
the hand, as he was going into the cab, and the tears
rolling down his dear cheeks. His heart was too full,
and he was too feeble for words ; but his look told me
he was thinking it was the last time we should meet
on earth."
To this worthy person, in reply to her enquiry about
his health, Burgon wrote thus, just before leaving home
for Folkestone.
"May 30, 1888.
" Dear Mrs. Skeet, I was greatly touched by your
kind letter of inquiry concerning my health, and am
thankful to be able to assure you that, by God's good-
ness, I am sufficiently recovered to go away to the seaside
[Folkestone] with a view to my complete restoration.
I am still of course very weak, and incapable of exer-
tion whether of mind or body : but I am assured that
sea air will speedily bring me round and restore me to
my duties and to my friends. So may it prove ! for
I feel that there is still a great deal I should like to do
before I die.
" I often think of you and of your anxieties for your
family. Let me invite you to learn by heart the beauti-
ful words in St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians iv.
6, 7 ; yes, and that saying of St. Peter (i St. Peter v. 7),
' Casting all your care upon Him for He careth for
you!
" We must learn to trust our heavenly Father, and to
believe that He loves us. His very chastisements He
296 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
has taught us to regard as tokens of His love. You re-
member the words I mean ; they are found in Hebrews
xii. 5, 6, and many oiher places. Some words seem made
for you, as for example, that beautiful declaration of the
Psalmist. ' I have been young, and now am old ; yet
never saw I the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging
their bread.'
" True it is tha^ none are really and truly ' righteous ' :
but God is merciful, and accepts of our small measure of
faith, and accounts it righteousness for Jesus CHRIST'S
sake.
" I am ever with my love to you all, dear Mrs. Skeet,
" Your friend,
" JOHN W. BURGON."
Before finally quitting the Deanery for Folkestone 4 , he
wrote and lithographed the following circular letter of
acknowledgment for the many enquiries which had been
made about his health ;
"Deanery, Chichester, May 30, 1888.
"Recommended to go to the sea-side with a view to
my complete restoration to health, I cannot cross the
threshold of my home until, out of a full heart, I have
traced these few lines.
" No ordinary card of acknowledgment for ' kind in-
quiries ' would express how deeply I have been touched
by the many proofs which at first hourly reached me of
the solicitude of friends and neighbours on my behalf,
the many unmistakeable tokens which still come to me
every day, of personal affection and individual anxiety
for my recovery.
u I will only say that I am deeply grateful for all this ;
and that the response on my side throughout has been
the warmest possible ; not unmixed, now at last, with
4 He left it on Thursday, May 31, ceeding day, June 23, he installed
and returned, after an absence of Archdeacon Sutton in the course of
just three weeks, on Friday, June the Service.
22. On the afternoon of the sue-
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 297
profound anxiety that the life which has now been so
mercifully spared may be permitted to bear clear evidence
that it was prolonged for a gracious and beneficent pur-
pose.
" I trust to be back and in my place very soon.
At Folkestone he recovered sufficiently for his medical
attendants to permit his return to Chichester, where he
again undertook his duties at the Cathedral, the earliest
of them being the installation of the Reverend Robert
Sutton, Vicar of Pevensey, into the Archdeaconry of
Lewes, which had become vacant by the death of Arch-
deacon Hannah. But although, when he first returned,
both he and his family thought they saw a gleam of hope
that he might be perfectly re-established, the ground he
had gained at Folkestone was not maintained, and he
gradually lapsed again into the condition described above,
in which the author had found him on the 26th of April.
"About three weeks before his death," writes Mrs.
Crosse. (that would be about July 14,) "I met the Dean
coming out of his private gate, following his verger to the
Cathedral. He was then becoming very feeble, and had
already been to one Service. On my remonstrating with
him for attempting to go again, he answered ; ' To what
better place can I go than to the house of God ? ' And
he went on until almost quite the last. It made our
hearts ache to see each day his growing weakness.
On his last Sunday [July 29] he was at the
Cathedral ; and when he could hardly stand from ex-
haustion, he insisted on reading the Prayer at the close
in the Vestry, dismissing the Choir with ' God bless you
all ! I am very ill ' ; and then leaning on the arm of his
verger, he left the building, never to re-enter it alive.
"It was his custom to ask his particular friends to
come into the Deanery for five o'clock tea on Sunday
afternoon. On this occasion, knowing how ill he was,
we had not intended going ; but he turned to Canon
Crosse, and reminded him to be sure to come in, as
298 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
usual. We found him seated in his chair, gasping for
breath ; but he struggled to his feet to give us his usual
greeting, and again, when we shortly after left, he rose,
saying ' God bless you ' in an unusually solemn manner,
and even trying to accompany us, as usual, to the door,
when fortunately the arrival of another friend arrested
him. His gatherings of this kind were always interest-
ing. He used tobring out some old book or curiosity,
and discourse upon it ; and his bright quick eye took in
at a glance the real or the pretended listener ; and there
were quaint little outbursts of fun to enliven all. The
Dean had, as you know, considerable dramatic powers ;
and in telling a story, he would surprise his audience
with an illustration as clever as it was unexpected. . . .
" Three weeks before he died, an old friend of ours,
Bishop Quintard of Tennessee, came down to pay us a
brief visit ; and the Dean came in to see him. He was
then extremely weak ; but he brightened up, as the Bishop
stepping forward took him by both hands, and blessed
him, pinning a rose-bud in his coat, and telling him his
name was a household word in the American Church, and
adding that he had that morning been out to buy the
largest photograph of him he could get in Chichester,
and that he must now write his name beneath it. At
luncheon some of the old fire returned, and he was full
of anecdote and story, carrying the Bishop away with
him afterwards, to show him his beloved garden, and
sending him back laden with roses, and a large branch
of his favourite syringa. A few days after this, the
Choral Festival brought to him as his guest another
American Bishop, Dr. Cleveland Coxe of Western New
York, a valued friend of his, and we met for the last time
round the hospitable Deanery table. But it was a sad
gathering. It was evident to us all that the Dean was fast
failing ; and though he struggled with his weakness, and
even brightened up to tell some College stories, it was an
effort to him to recall the points, and at one moment he
paused and said, ' I want something to stir up my me-
mory.' "
Mrs. Higgins, of Turvey Abbey, one of his two surviving
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 299
sisters, alarmed by the account she had received of her
brother's state, had arrived at the Deanery. She found
him occasionally in great suffering. On July 25, throw-
ing his arm over the back of a chair in an agony of pain,
he said : " Nothing but ' the everlasting arms ' can sup-
port me now ! " " On the 27th July at 8 a.m., in much
suffering and distress from want of breath, he said to me,
'Read the Psalms for the day; it's the 27th.' I read
them ; and he repeated the Gloria Patri after each Psalm.
When finished, he pointed out in his Prayer Book, from
which I had read, some pencil memoranda, which he had
made when in the Holy Land, and spoke of his journey
there. He said : * I ought not to have gone, but staid at
home, and taken St. Mary's.' I said : ' Do not reproach
yourself for going ; you went to see the places you knew
so well by reading the Bible, a sort of pilgrimage, and
pilgrimages have been made from the earliest times.'
' Yes,' he said, ' Elijah was the first pilgrim, to Sinai ; it
was a forty days journey from Beer-sheha where he dwelt
under a juniper tree. 1 He added; 'I was punished for
going ; for I was laid up for nearly two years on my
return.' "
The account of quite the closing scenes shall be given
in the words of one of his nieces, both of whom had
watched over him during his illness with tender and
unceasing solicitude, and who felt that they had lost in
him, not so much an uncle as a second father, their
wisest counsellor, their truest friend.
" On Sunday, July 29 " (his last Sunday ; he died on
the following Saturday, Aug. 4) " he was so very much
worse that it was not thought he would last throughout
the day ; and very early in the morning, about 5.30 a.m.,
he wished to have the Holy Communion celebrated. He
told me exactly where to iind everything in his Library,
300 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
his own private set of Holy Vessels, and a special Prayer
Book. He wished us all, of course, and the servants also,
to receive the Holy Communion with him. Before the
Service he was very much exhausted, unable to lie down
on account of the terrible difficulty of breathing ; but as
the Service went on, he seemed to gain strength. My
brother " [Rev. W. F. Rose, Vicar of Worle] " officiated,
I think it was about 6.30 a.m. My Aunt ' [Mrs Higgins]
' ; Gertrude and 1, and all our servants were kneeling
round him. As the Service ended, he signed that he
would give the Blessing ; and to our astonishment and
comfort he stood up, and gave it clearly, distinctly, and
ht'antifnlli/. putting his hands, as he did so. on Gertie's
and my heads, as we were kneeling next to him. He
was very ill all through Sunday, but rather rallied for
a day or two. On Wednesday he became worse again.
"A letter from Bishop King of Lincoln pleased him
greatly three days before the end. He was too ill then
for letters to be brought to him. But we recognising the
hand-writing, and guessing what it would be, I took it
upstairs. He wished it read to him, and expressed great
pleasure in it, short as it was. It ran thus ; ' My dear
Dean, This is only to assure you of my gratitude, my
love, and my prayers. I am, as of old in Oriel 5 , Your
affectionate E. LINCOLN.' I think this was quite the last
letter he was able to hear, the last message which
reached him from the outer world."
About two days before the end he looked wistfuDy at
another bed in the room, besides that which he was him-
self occupying, and expressed a wish to have the great
portfolios, containing the notes for his work on Textual
Criticism, on which he had spent so many laborious days
and nights, brought upstairs and placed upon it where he
could see them. Some slight resistance was at first made
to this by members of the family, who apprehended that
5 The Bishop had been in former where he had rooms on the same
days an Undergraduate of Oriel, staircase with Mr. Burgon.
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 501
the excitement of seeing what had interested him so
much might be prejudicial to him. He gave way, as was
uniformly his wont, when crossed in any thing by those
who loved him ; but seemed afterwards so much to
hanker after the indulgence which had been denied,
that it was thought best to humour him. Accordingly
the portfolios were carried up to his room and laid where
he had desired.
" His face of satisfaction and pleasure," writes his
niece, " was a sufficient reward ; and he said, ' I won't
read them, or open them ; I only want to look at them.
You know, when a man is dying, he wants to kiss and
to say Good-bye to his favourite child : he may have
been a naughty boy; but his father wants to see him
and to say Good-bye, all the same."
The papers contained in those huge portfolios were the
children of his brain ; he had lived among them and
loved them with a parental love. fondly, perhaps over-
indulgently. But why were they " naughty boys " ? Doubt-
less the thought crossed him that the labour bestowed
upon them had shortened his days.
" I remember how often during the last week or fort-
night he liked us to read over to him the ' Comfortable
Words ' in the Communion Service ; and once he said to
me of the first sentence ; ' Ah ! the words don't go down
to the end of the Chapter ' ; and then went on to say,
' How wonderful ! the one place in Holy Scripture where
the Creator Himself, the Lord of heaven and earth, deigns '
(or * condescends ' I don't remember which of the two
words he used) 'to explain if we may so call it His
own character ! ' [' I am meek and lowly in heart.'] ....
" The night before his death, hardly able to speak, he
kept repeating, ' Two words' and then over and over again ;
'THY Cross. THY Cross. THY Blood. THY Blood.'
" About five minutes before his death, he said to me,
' Give me a pencil.' I gave it. ' And now S. Mark! I
302 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
held the New Testament before him, and was turning the
page to find which passage he wanted, when quite sud-
denly the breathing changed, and the end came imme-
diately."
The cause of death was certified by the physician in
attendance as having been, first, " nervous strain result-
ing from prolonged mental work," and, as produced by
this, "exhaustion of the organic nervous system." We
resume Mrs. Crosse's narrative which concludes thus ;
" The day after the Dean's death we saw him once
more, lying in the familiar cassock, stole, surplice, sur-
rounded by his books, his unfinished work " [on the
Principles of Textual Criticism] " upon his writing table,
and his favourite flowers. Everything the same out-
wardly, and yet so finally altered. The look of peace
upon his face, and the thought that he had but gone to
the presence of the Master whom he had loved and
served in life, remained to console those whose lives were
changed and their home broken up by his withdrawal.
" The Dean once told me that, when a young man, he
had a great idea of the happiness of married life ; but
that he and another young man (now an eminent Bishop
of the Church) had agreed that it was not fair to ask
a woman to undertake the cares of a home, until they
could surround her with its comforts. In his case, as we
know, when that time came, he had made a home for his
widowed sister and her daughters, so that he never mar-
ried. He was rewarded by the care and love of his
nieces until the end came."
It scarcely needs to be said that Burgon himself had
chosen Oxford and the Holy well Cemetery, where were
already lying the remains of his father, mother, brother,
and two sisters as his own last resting-place. " Dean
Burgon's last home was at Chichester," says the In Memo-
riam which appeared in the ' Guardian ' Newspaper of
August 15, and which is understood to have been from the
THE GHICHESTER LIFE. 303
pen of the late Dean Church ; " but Oxford,which had been
to him the scene of so much happiness, and of so much
suffering, had never ceased to be the home of his heart ;
and he was fittingly laid to rest in an Oxford graveyard
no more suitable place for his grave could be
chosen than the quiet Holywell Cemetery." On the day
after his death (Sunday, Aug. 5), the venerable Bishop of
Chichester, who had been on terms of cordial intimacy
with Eurgon during the twelve years of his Decanate,
delivered in the Cathedral a Sermon on his character, in
which all its points are faithfully touched upon, and yet
which perhaps is the most highly appreciative of all the
many notices of him which appeared at the time of his
death, a very model of what Sermons on such occasions
ought to be 6 . And in the Episcopal Charge of July 1 890 ,
nearly two years afterwards, the Dean, who had passed
away since the last Visitation, was the first topic touched
upon. his delight in, and punctual attendance upon, the
daily Services of the Cathedral, his devotion to the study
of God's Word and of " such studies as help to the know-
ledge of the same," the influence he had gained over
many Clergy all over England, who in time past had sat
at his feet, his deep erudition, his rare poetical gifts, his
conversancy alike with the Fathers of the ancient Church
and of our own. " Less than this could not be said of
one, whom the Cathedral of Chichester must ever count
among the most remarkable in its long catalogue of
6 This Sermon, or rather that por- Burgon's own Sermons, containing
tion of it which has reference to his views on the State of the Faith -
Dean Burgon, will be found in Ap- ful Departed. It appeared origin-
pendix E. The Bishop has most ally (after his death) in the Parish
kindly permitted the author to make Magazine, from which a reprint was
a copy of it from the original manu- made of it, by the kind permission
script, of the Editor, for circulation among
It is thought also that the volume the late Dean's Friends. See Ap-
may appropriately close with one of pendix F.
304 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
Deans, but whose fame and influence extend far beyond
the narrow bounds of a single Diocese."
The body of Dean Burgon was borne into the Cathedral
for the last time on Friday Aug. 10, where the first part
of the Order for the Burial of the Dead was chorally
rendered over it, after which, covered with wreaths and
floral offerings, ijt was conveyed to Oxford, where it
arrived about 8 p.m. and was deposited for the night
by his own express wish in the Chapel of Holywell Ceme-
tery. At noon on Saturday the Principal of St. Mary's
Hall (the Reverend Dr. Chase), the Dean's kind friend,
and who had both preceded and succeeded him in
the charge of the Parish of St. Mary's, committed the
body to the grave with the Church's words of supplica-
tion, hope, consolation, and benediction. There were
present, besides the relatives and many of the personal
friends of the deceased, Canons Awdry and Teulon and
Prebendary Bennett, representing the Dean and Chapter
of Chichester ; the Bishop of Western New York (Dr.
Cleveland Coxe), an intimate friend and correspondent,
who, as we have seen, had visited Burgon shortly before
his death, and four Heads of Colleges, the Provost of
Oriel, the Provost of Worcester, the Warden of All Souls,
the Rector of Lincoln, with several other persons of dis-
tinction. Professor Max Miiller, Sir John Stainer, the
Vicar of Brighton (Rev. Prebendary Hannah), the Rev.
C. Gore of the Pusey House, Father Benson of Cowley,
and (what need to add ?), the Rev. R. G. Livingstone and
the Rev. G. H. Gwilliam, who had formerly been, as we
have seen, his Curates at St. Mary's, and whom he had
there, in an intercourse with them, which with many
Vicars would have been purely official, " grappled to his
soul with hoops of steel." The gathering was fairly
representative of several different schools of thought, as
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 305
might have been expected ; for while Burgon had de-
claimed furiously against controversial opponents, he had
somehow made it felt that he was quite free from
personal rancour, that it was the tenet, and not its
maintainer, against which he declaimed ; and it may be
doubted whether those whom he hit hardest could find
it in their hearts to owe him a grudge. And it should
be added that the American Church testified on this
occasion to her sense of the irreparable loss, which she,
no less than the English, had sustained by his death,
one of her most eminent Bishops being among the
mourners gathered round the grave, and one of the Pro-
fessors in Hobart College, Western New York, having
sent a request to his son, then happening to be in
England, to represent him at the funeral.
The Biography of John William Burgon may appro-
priately be closed by Lord Cranbrook's beautiful poetical
tribute to his friend, so truly appreciative and at
the same time so faithful, which shall be followed by
another piece from the same pen, written when * The
Lives of Twelve Good Menl Burgon's posthumous work,
reached him with the inscription " from the Author."
To JOHN WILLIAM BURGON, DEAN OF CHICHESTER.
Buried at Oxford ', August ntfi, 1888.
I.
At rest beside the walls thou lov'dst so well,
Near the "dear Worcester" of thine early lays 7 ,
Within the Oxford, where, in later days,
With ever new affection thou didst dwell.
Teacher and preacher bold the truth to tell ;
Friend of the poor, well versed in childhood's ways,
Thyself as children guileless, to them dear,
Trusted and trusting with a soul sincere.
7 See lines to Worcester College, Burgon's Poems, p. 81.
VOL. II. X
306 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
To those, who knew thee only by thy pen,
Counted impetuous, bitter, almost fierce ;
Yet was thy heart filled full of love to men,
Even when thy weapons keenest seemed to pierce,
Eager and earnest, yet from malice free,
With old world quaintness and simplicity.
II.
The Church will miss thy learning and thy zeal,
Unwearying her bulwarks to defend :
Hastening by over-toil the journey's end,
More precious to thee than thine own her weal.
To arm thyself for her from head to heel,
Thou didst to deepest stores thy search extend,
Still keeping sword and shield and armour bright,
Watching by them in prayer, as a true knight.
So hast thou filled thy course, a champion pure,
So hope we that thy guerdon thou hast won ;
Small faults forgotten thy good works endure ;
A faithful servant greeted with "well done."
The Church's sons pay honour to thy bier,
The friend would lay this humble tribute there.
LlNES WRITTEN ON RECEIVING FROM THE PUBLISHER A
COPY OF l The Lives of Twelve Good Men' SENT BY DESIRE
OF THE AUTHOR BEFORE HIS DEATH.
Books " from the Author," and he speaks to me
From the unseen, as in his living tone:
I seem to watch him in his study lone
By his Cathedral's spire of symmetry,
Calling the friends he valued, one by one,
To group them in this goodly company,
As he had known them here : now he can see
And share the home of that fraternity.
While with enfeebled hand he did not cease
To enrol the good who had the dearest been,
He knew his nearness to th' abode of peace,
THE C HIGHEST ER LlFE. 307
And calmly chose the resting-place foreseen 8 ;
Yet not unmindful of friends left behind,
To them by name these last words he consigned 9 .
A notice of the monuments raised to Dean Burgon's
memory in three several places, in the Cemetery where
he rests ; in the Church of St.Mary-the-Virgin's at Oxford,
in connexion with which the active part of his work was
done ; and in Chichester Cathedral, under whose sacred
shadow he pursued the theological studies preparatory
to his great work in vindication of the Traditional Text
of the New Testament, will be found at the end of this
Chapter.
Meanwhile, however, certain monographs must be pre-
sented to the reader, one of them recording several au-
thentic stories (all the stories are by no means authentic)
of his extraordinary love of children and power of
attracting them, the others turning on subjects, which
during his life at Chichester, occupied much of the good
Dean's time and mind, and which brought him into con-
nexion with different classes of persons, over many of
whom he gained a salutary and permanent influence, not
more by the direct instruction conveyed to them, than
by the always affectionate, and sometimes quaint and
pungent, manner in which it was conveyed. The first
of these subjects is the Lectures which he delivered as
Gresham Professor of Divinity, a post which he held for
nearly twenty-one years, having been appointed to it, as
we have seen, at the end of 1867. The second is the
8 See vol. i. of First Edition. his death was to dictate to his
Preface, p. xxviii. "He" (Mr. nephew a list of the friends to
Golightly) " sleeps where I shall whom he desired a copy should be
soon myself be sleeping, in Holy- sent." Letter from Mr. Murray
well Cemetery." to Lord Cranbrook, Oct. 1 1, 1888.
9 "One of his last acts before
X 2
308 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
Chichester Bible Class, at which, just as at his Oxford
Bible Classes, an attached group of disciples gathered
round him, one or more of whom have kindly furnished
the author with accounts of what passed 011 those
occasions. The third is the weekly instruction given
by him, when in residence at Chichester, to the pupils
of Bishop Otter's, Memorial College, whither he regularly
repaired on foot, whatever the weather might be, after the
afternoon Service of the Cathedral, to hold a Class there.
This College had been originally founded in 1851 in
memory of Bp. Otter (consecrated Bp. of Chichester, Oct.
2, 1836, died Aug. 20, 1840) as a Theological College. That
scheme however failing, and the Education Act of 1870
leading to an increased demand for Teachers, the College
was re-opened in 1873 as a Training College under
Government Inspection for the purpose of training Ladies
as Schoolmistresses for Elementary Schools, in the prin-
ciples of the Church of England. The Dean of Chichester
is an ex-officio Member of the General Committee ; but
the religious instructions given at the College by Dean
Burgon were perfectly gratuitous, not in any way a part
of the duties of his position. He felt no doubt the need
for his own mind of some corrective in the shape of
practical work, so much of his time being absorbed in
theological research and the daily Offices of the Cathedral ;
and he dearly loved to train the young in the knowledge
of GOD'S Word, and to make the study of studies attrac-
tive and interesting to them. He commenced his visits
to Otter College in 1877, ^ ne year after his settlement at
Chichester, and continued them till 1887, the year
before his death. Nor must the helping hand which
he held out to Candidates for the Ministry, whose
means, without some help from others, would not have
enabled them to procure an Academical Education, go
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 309
without distinct record from the pen of one or more of
those who feel that they owe their present position (in
one case at least a distinguished one) to the interest and
sympathy which in their early days he showed to them.
1. His LOVE OF CHILDREN AND POWER OF
ATTRACTING THEM.
i. Mrs. Crosse. " No Dean ever loved his Cathedral
more, and few indeed have ever been so constant in their
attendance at the Services. Day by day, a few moments
before the bell ceased, the little garden door of the private
walk leading from his study used to open,, and the quaint,
tall, bent figure clothed in cassock, surplice, hood, stole,
and college-cap, preceded by his Verger (himself a cha-
racter) would pass out, crossing St. Richard's walk to the
cloistered entrance of the Cathedral. He was generally
intercepted by a perambulator, and a small group of
children drawn up with a sure hope of being noticed.
The Dean would never pass a child without a word ;
and generally some small fun passed between them, no
matter how short the time remaining before the stopping
of the bell. Or if a lady was on her way to the Service,
the Dean would stand cap in hand until she had first
Eassed through the entrance door, his courtesy never
liling
" His love for children was perfectly unbounded, and
the quiet of Canon Lane was often broken by the merry
sound of children's laughter from the Deanery Garden.
I remember on one occasion of a children's party, which
was going on without him, a small girl of three years
old, almost hidden in the depths of a white sun-bonnet,
feeling the gathering was incomplete, took upon herself
to walk to the Dean's study, where he sat immersed in
his books, and asked him to come out and dance with
her ; and accordingly, in a shorter time than it takes to
tell it, she returned in triumph, hand in hand with the
Dean in cassock and college cap ; and he was soon within
the weeling circle, enjojdng it as much as the youngest
present, the life and centre of the fun."
3io LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
2. One of 7m> nieces. " There are so many stories of his
love for children, that I need hardly add any more ; but
one rather pretty story comes to my mind, which we may
not have told you. One of his great pets was a little
girl of three, who responded most prettily to his affec-
tion. During Lent their mother told the elder children
that, if they had no sugar in their milk at breakfast and
tea, at Easter they should have the sum which would
have been spen in sugar, to buy flowers with for the
Church. Lily participated in the self-denial ; but when
Easter Even came, and the flowers were about to be taken
to the Church, the child was in a state of great distress.
She came to her mother, ' No, no ! Deanie, Deanie,' and
could not be pacified until her mother allowed her to
choose some flowers, and to bring them JierseffiniQ his
Library. This was evidently her idea of an offering to
the C/utrcJi ! I mention the story only to show how fully
children understood him and returned his love for them.
" Do you know the story of his calling one day at the
Palace, I think to take a walk with the Bishop, when
Mrs. Richard Durnford brought her baby into the room
for him to admire ? Its hair, of a light golden colour,
was somewhat in disorder ; and so, delighted with the
mother's admiration of her child, he thought he would
tease her in his humorous way by fixing upon the one
feature which he could quiz. In the evening he sent
her a sketch of the baby (so pretty, and yet a sufficient
caricature), with these lines ;
11. 1). sinyx.
Attend, all ye lasses !
My Baby surpasses
All Babies that ever were known,
With the eyes of Mamma,
And the nose of Papa,
And his periwig wholly his own !
She was delighted, and called the representation of the
hair 'his glory' ; it did look something like a golden halo.
" One more story of children I think you asked me to
let you have. I ought to say that these children were
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 311
two of the shyest and most nervous little ones we ever
knew ; but my uncle never rested until he had at last
made him no longer afraid of him. I shall never forget
his look of triumph the first time he had induced the
eldest little fellow to take hold of his finger, and come
with him through the iron gates and up to the Deanery
door (it was done, as he said, by the encouraging word
' Cakie ' repeated at each step) ; but beyond the door no
power on earth would persuade the little creature to ven-
ture. The mother wrote to me in Jan. 1889, five months
after my uncle's death, as follows : ' I am pleased that
my little boys retain a most vivid picture of him in their
minds. Only last week one of them said (the child was
ill); ' Sped me be deaded 'fore next Kissmas : then me go to
God: me see Deanie ! Is Deanie waiting for me, mother?'
3 . Rev. John F. Kitto, Vicar of St. Martins, Charing Cross.
" On one Sunday, when Dean Burgon was staying at this
Vicarage, and had been preaching (I think at Whitehall
Chapel) in the morning, he went up into the drawing-
room after dinner, to rest until the evening service, when
he had promised to preach for me at St. Martin's. By and
by two little girls of four and five years of age came down,
ready to go to the afternoon children's Service. ' Ain't
you going to Church with us ? ' was their appeal. To the
Dean, tired though he was, it was irresistible. He at once
got up, a willing captive to his two playmates, and with a
hand stretched down to each, he took them to the Service."
II. THE GRESHAM DIVINITY LECTURES.
Here is a specimen of some of the latest topics chosen
by him for these Lectures, furnished to the author by
the kindness of the Reverend Edward Collett, M.A., who
laboured long and faithfully in two most important
parishes of the City of London (St. Botolph's, Aldersgate,
and St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate), and gave constant attend-
ance at the Gresham Lectures.
" Lent, 1 887. I. On the Unbelief of the Age. II. The
Unbelief with regard to Holy Scripture, which calls itself
312 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
scientific. III. The Analogy between God's Word and
God's work, a plea on behalf of Bible difficulties.
"Easter, 1887. I. Popular Unbelief, in relation to
Miracles. II. Popular Unbelief, in relation to Pro-
phecy. III. Popular Unbelief, in respect of the general
scheme of Redemption. IV. Practical counsels to those
who are not disinclined to be believers.
"Michaelmas, 1887. I. God, the Creator of the Uni-
verse, an axiom of the reason. Man, the great mystery
of this lower world. II. The Bible, professing to be a
Revelation from God, furnishes a sufficient solution of
the mystery of man's being. III. The Divine Origin of
the Bible argued from its supernatural structure. IV.
The prophetic texture of Holy Writ, a proof that the
Bible is what it professes to be, namely, a Revelation to
man from God."
The very last Series of Gresham Lectures given by
him, partly in the Lent, partly in the Easter- tide of
1888 (Easter fell that year on April i) was on the Epistles
to the Seven Churches in the Book of the Revelation, the
eighth and concluding Lecture being on " The Doctrine
of the Millennium explained." Rev. xx. 4, 5.
" Many of the answers," says Mr. Collett, " given by
the late Dean to questions put to him by those who
attended his Lectures, were as useful as the Lectures
themselves. Many of the questions put from time to
time were irrelevant and impertinent. Nevertheless he
always displayed the greatest patience and forbearance
in dealing with them."
Here is the greater part of the Gresham Lecture given
by him on April 5, 1883 (it was the Thursday after
Low Sunday, Easter having fallen that year on Lady
Day, March 25). It is in fact an expository Lecture on
the Journey to Emmaus, and is a good specimen both of
his lively and interesting style of exegesis, and of the
way in which he sought to give a practical turn to his
instructions in Divinity at Gresham College.
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 313
The paper was written out from notes made at the
time by one of his hearers, and was procured for the
author by the kindness of Mrs. Ashworth of 42 Canon-
bury Park, in North London.
St. Luke xxiv. 13 to 50.
" We now go on with what has been revealed to us of
the events of the day of the Kesurrection. We admit
that none of the Lord's appearances on that day possess
the same dewy fragrance, or Divine sweetness, as those
in the early morning. The later ones however are not
wanting in variety and tender beauty ; and (if I may be
allowed to make such a personal allusion) I would rather
have been an eye-witness of one of these appearances of
our Lord in the evening of that day. We saw that St. Mary
Magdalene was not permitted to touch her risen Lord,
because the touch of faith would be more real than that
of sense [St. John xx. 17]. Next followed His appear-
ance to the company of women as they went to tell the
disciples. Jesus met them, and bade them go and tell
His brethren that they should see Him in Galilee [St.
Matt, xxviii. 9, 10]. We notice how differently he dealt
with different persons ; to one severe ; to another in-
dulgent ; and yet the severity may be the greater kind-
ness. How does this message declare His human heart
to be overflowing with human love! Much might be
gained in the study of Scripture if we would only acquire
the habit of tracing reverently, with chastened imagination,
outlines given us, and try to recognise in them that of
which they are the anti-type. We are reminded of the
words, ' I am Joseph, your brother ' [Gen. xlv. 4]. Here
again in the Gospel is the same tender ' my brethren ' ;
the true Joseph comes out ! You may ask, ' W^hat is the
use of all this ? ' I answer, ' A thousand different uses ' ;
not the least of them being, that we are in this way
convinced of the oneness of Holy Scripture, that it is
woven out of one piece.
" The next recorded appearance was that to St. Peter ;
we do not know for certain whether it was first to St.
Peter, or first to the two disciples, as they walked to
314 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
Emmaus. There is something secret and pathetic in this
appearance to the Apostle, who had three times denied
Him ! But we pass on from the wwknown to the known \
St. Luke was divinely guided to pass by the Saviour's ap-
pearing to St. Mary Magdalene ; he beginning his narra-
tive of Easter morning like the rest ; and then passing
on at once to the evening of the day. ' And, behold, two
of them went that % same day to a village called Emmaus,
which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs,'
or seven miles ; * And they talked together of all these
things which had happened.' These two were Cleopas,
and probably St. Luke himself. I say, probably ; be-
cause if any one should say, ' You can't prove it,' there is
certainly but shadowy evidence to go upon. It seems
not unreasonable, however, to suppose that, as St. Mark
records one thing about himself [xiv. 51], St. Luke may
have done the same also. Well might they talk despond-
ingly of the events that had happened. To us the
incidents of the Resurrection are a matter of course ;
but how different to His earliest followers ! To them it
was a thing incredible. But had He not foretold it?
Yes ! but they had ' questioned one with another what
the rising from the dead should mean ' [St. Mark ix. 10].
Thus what we look on as a matter of course, they consi-
dered a- sheer impossibility. All this, and more, was the
case with these two. The whole was a story to them of
some wild dream. ' And it came to pass that, while
they communed together and reasoned, Jesus Himself
drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were
holden that they should not know Him/ I confess that
the remark that first occurs to one here is one which
experience has caused us all to make, that we are
prone to overlook our choicest blessings, though nearest
to us. The hearts of these two were full. A stranger
draws near to them. It is the Saviour Himself; but they
overlook the fact, and pour into His ear what they have
been speaking of. St. Mark says, ' He appeared in an-
other form unto two of them' [xvi. 12]. Here it is,
' their eyes were holden.' The two statements convey
the same thing, that He was not known. The differ-
THE CHICH ESTER LIFE. 315
ence was not so much in Him as in them. Not all of us
know Him now. Some but dimly ; some indeed never
recognise our ascended Lord at all ; for a veil is on their
hearts. The above are but two ways of saying the same
thing. From the earthly side, it was that our Saviour
took a different form. From the heavenly side, it was
that ' their eyes were holden. that they should not know r
Him.' ' And He said unto them. What manner of com-
munications are these that ye have one to another, as ye
walk, and are sad ? ' There must have been a marked
sadness in their voices, a deep earnest tone of debate, to
draw forth such an inquiry as this. ' And Cleopas an-
swering said unto Him, Thou art the only one sojourn-
ing amongst us who doth not know these things. And
He said unto them, What things ? ' You notice how
completely, by this remark, He lulls all thoughts of Him-
self to sleep. That our Saviour was to rise again no one
understood. And an inquiry why they were so sad must
have seemed to them to sever the inquirer from them-
selves completely. It shows how overwhelmingly im-
portant the things of those days must have been the
preternatural malice the madness of the people the
darkness over the land the portents that followed the
vague rumours of a rising again ! All these combined
made up such a cluster of marvels, that for two to walk
together and not talk about it was simply impossible.
' They said unto Him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth,
which was a prophet, mighty in deed and word before
GOD and all the people. And how the chief priests and
our rulers delivered Him to be condemned to death, and
have crucified Him. But we trusted that it had been He
which should have redeemed Israel : and beside all this,
to-day is the third day since these things were done.'
This last saying is very remarkable ; it means more than
that this was the third day after the Crucifixion, and
that nothing as yet had taken place. We have this mention
of the third day which had come, and was almost over,
because of its setting forth one more ground of per-
plexity. It was a veteran form of belief among the Jews
that the third day was set apart for some special relief,
316 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
for a gracious display of unexpected mercy, and hitherto
they had buoyed themselves up by the hope that some
such refreshment as had been extended in the cases of
Joseph's brethren [Gen. xlii. 18], Esther [Est. iv. i6~|,
Jonah [Jonah i. 17], and others, would be granted them ;
but behold ! they say, no such refreshment has come !
' Yea, and certain women also of our company made us
astonished, which were early at the sepulchre ; and when
they found not His body they came, saying, that they
had also seen a vision of angels, which said that He was
alive. And certain of them which were with us went
to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had
said : but Him they saw not.' The fulness of their nar-
rative is a particular very surprising. Notice that it is
not related so much in detail, because St. Luke was the
other disciple, but that Luke was the companion of
Cleopas, because these events needed to be closely re-
corded. It is because we are meant to have full details
concerning other incidents 1 that Peter was present. He
was made to be there. And this extraordinary fulness
here is precisely one of the things that strikes you as
remarkable. You see this was an unusually solemn
event, when on the evening of Easter day, there was no
incident which more occupied their thoughts. Thus these
two disciples uttered what was in their mind. * Then
He said unto them, O fools ' (wanting in intelligence),
' and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have
spoken : Ought not Christ to have suffered these things,
and to enter into His glory ? And beginning at Moses
and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the
1 He means the incident, recorded ing the incident, however, to our
in -v. 12, of St. Peter's having run to Lord, Cleopas and the other disciple
the sepulchre, and looked in, and use the plural, showing that more
seen the grave-cloths, and returned than one disciple had visited the
to report his experiences to his sepulchre, to ascertain the correct-
brother Apostles. He had been ac- ness of the women's testimony ;
companied by St. John (as we know " Certain of them that were with us "
from St. John xx. 3} ; but in St. [anfj\66v rives rwv ovv fjfuv] " went
Luke's own narrative of the Resur- to the sepulchre, and found it even
rection St. John's having been with so as the women had said," v. 24.
St. Peter is not noticed. In report-
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 317
scriptures the things concerning Himself.' Oh ! beyond
all earthly things to have been permitted to listen to that
discourse ! You will notice in the margin of your Bibles
that but six places of Scripture are given you here as
references : four in Genesis, one in Numbers, one in
Deuteronomy [Gen.iii. i5;xxii.i8; xxvi.4; xlix. 10; Num.
xxi. 9 ; Dent, xviii. 15]. But do you suppose such a
meagre set of references sufficient 1 ? Could these few
texts possibly give any notion whatever of the discourse
of our Lord to the two disciples ? He spoke to them of
things undreamed of. How Christ was the second Adam.
How, ' by man came death, by man came also the resur-
rection of the dead ' [i Cor. xv. 21 ]. This passage, which
is now part of our Easter anthem, must have found a
place in this discourse. He spoke to them of the new
heaven and the new earth [Isaiah Ixv. 17 ; Rev. xxi. i],
and showed that He claimed to be the Head of the whole
human family ! that He, Christ, was the true Abel, and
Cain the unnatural people who compassed His death.
He spoke of Noah, Melchizedek, Isaac and Jacob, and
when He came to the story of Joseph, hated by his
brethren, sold by Judah, tempted, imprisoned, lifted up,
made second only to Pharaoh, how amazed the two sor-
rowing men must have been ! Then followed the typical
teaching of the Passover, with the singular grafting in of
the Lord's Supper ; then the crossing of the Red Sea,
the manna, the crossing to Canaan, until they must have
felt as some traveller crossing an Alpine mountain
might feel, that, at first, all is veiled in mist ; but as this
rolls away, one beautiful peak after another comes in
sight. The valleys are seen, and the rivers carrying
verdure as they How, until the pilgrim knows where he
is going, and his soul overflows with rapture ! Not less
wondrously than the five barley loaves did these five
books of Moses, when so divinely handled, suffice for the
needs of a dying world ! It was a theme for angels to
come down to listen to ! Suck a commentary never has
been, and never will be again ! Yet not only was the
Divine Speaker's form unrecognised, but his voice also !
They knew Him not while they gazed on Him! Yet
318 LIFE OF DEAN BURGOX.
the method of handling the Scripture ; the aptness, the
skill, to elicit the most enchanting harmonies all this
filled them with wonder ! How natural that their hearts
should have hurned within them ! ; And they drew nigh
unto the village whither they went: and he made as
though he would have gone further. But they con-
strained him, saying. Abide with us, for it is toward
evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to
tarry with them.' By the time they reached the village,
what strange emotions must have filled the minds of
Cleopas and his companion ! A stranger, who had heard
all they had to say, had then turned round on them with
upbraiding, and then showed that He knew so much
more about the matter ! When He seemed about to
leave them, well might they exclaim, ' Abide with us ! '
Notice here a parable in action. This was not the only
occasion when our Lord acted in this manner. The three
angels who came to Abraham were pressed to remain
[Gen. xviii. 3, 4]. The mysterious Person who wrestled
with Jacob was detained till He blessed him Gen. xxxii.
26]. Our Saviour, when He came to His disciples
walking on the sea, as they toiled in rowing, would
have passed by them [St. Mark vi. 48]. And here again,
' He made as though He would have gone further.' De-
pend upon it, we have here a great practical lesson, that
some conscious effort, on man's part, is required for keep-
ing the Saviour's presence in the soul. No doubt they
laid their hands gently on His, and shewed the pain His
leaving would give them.
" I wish you to observe expressly that this lesson is
needed when, as now, Easter is far spent. ' Abide icith
us ! ' should be the language of our hearts. Has He not
been with us in His agony ? in His humiliation ? in His
crucifixion ? in His entombment ? in His rising again ?
If any good lessons have been learned, if one good inten-
tion has been solemnly formed (as you will notice the
Collect for Easter Day implies), shall we not, at this time,
make the prayer of this verse our own ? You must
surely have been struck by the curious phenomenon of
the Collect giving expression to this thought.
THE C HIGH ESTER LlFE. 319
"'
Abide with n*!' The young should say it, because
they need His guidance. The middle-aged, because they
have to bear the burden and heat of the day, and because
it is hard, or rather impossible, to grapple with the cares
of life alone. The aged, because their walk to Emmaus
is nearly done. What makes life at its close truly dreary
and solitary, or rather inexpressibly sad, is that a man's
or a woman's experience should be that of Saul ; ' I am
sore distressed ; for the Philistines make war. against
me, and GOD is departed from me, and answereth me no
more' [i Sam. xxviii. 15]. ' Abide with us' is an echo
which never should leave the heart ; and the answer
comes back to us, ' Fear not ! for I am with thee ' [Isaiah
xli. 10 ; xliii. 5]. ' If GOD be/0/ us, 'if /to can be against us ?'
[Rom. viii. 31] ; ' Lo, I am with you alway ' [St. Matt.
xxviii. 20]. What else would we have as the sum of all
promises ? ' Abide with me ! ' It is the earnest cry of
some aged one who finds the need of the Saviour's pre-
sence. I am growing old and feeble. Abide with me ! "
My dearest ones have gone on before. ; Abide with me ! '
This dimmed eye, these tottering feet, all speak of a life
which is passing away. ' Abide with we ! ' ' Leave me
not, neither forsake me, O GOD of my salvation ! ' '
III. THE CHICHESTER BIBLE CLASS.
(From one of those who attended it.]
"This Bible Class, held successively at two private
houses in the City of Chichester, was for Ladies only.
Those attending came from Chichester and its neigh-
bourhood. It always began and ended with prayer.
The first subject chosen was the Acts of the Apostles.
Afterwards the Dean took up the Old Testament His-
tory; and, when he died, he was in the middle of the
Book of Joshua. At special Church Seasons however,
such as Holy Week, he would take some subject con-
nected with the Passion of our ' Divine LORD ' (as he
always called Him) and go minutely into all the details
of the history. His usual plan was to read the passage
himself (in the case of the New Testament, translating
320 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
rapidly from the original) ; then he would explain it,
refer to the parallel passages noted either in the margin
of our English Bibles, or in his own Greek Testament,
and would often read extracts explanatory of the passage,
either from his own works or those of others. ' That
dear fellow, Charles Marriott,' was often quoted. Often
too he would remark on the opinions of those with whom
he did not agree, e.g. Dean Stanley. Then he would ask
questions and say, ; Have you any remarks to offer ? '
But it was very seldom that the remarks approved them-
selves to him. What Jie was driving at was something
<jirite unexpected, and anything but commonplace.
" He was very peculiar in his method, and at times
most eccentric ; but the lessons he taught impressed
themselves on the minds of his hearers ; and those who
attended the Class owe a deep debt of gratitude to him
for opening out to them the meaning of the Sacred Writ-
ings in a manner (to say the least of it) very unusual.
" The teaching of the Types was always strongly
enforced. One of his favourite types was the passage of
the Red Sea, and the destruction of Pharaoh's host. He
would refer to it as 'the Exode,' and connect it typi-
cally with our Blessed LORD'S ( decease 2 ' and descent
into Hell. As the Egyptians lay dead upon the sea-
shore, so the hosts of Satan were vanquished by our
LORD'S ' decease,' or exodus from the body.
" Joseph also was a favourite type with him. He used
to compare the butler and the baker, one of whom was
forgiven, and the other condemned, to the thieves upon
the cross.
" One of his ideas was that the field purchased by
Boaz from Ruth [Ruth iv. 3, 5, 9] was that in which
the shepherds kept their flocks at the time of the
Nativity [St. Luke ii. 8] ; another that the offerings of
2 See St. Luke ix. 31. "They" Greek word translated "decease"
[Moses and Elias appearing in is -rr\v eo8ov, "his Exodus." St.
glory] " spake of his decease which Peter uses the same word in speak-
he should accomplish at Jerusalem." ing of his own death [2 Pet. i. 15] ;
The reader of the English Bible perd. rrjv i^y eo5ov, "after my
needs to be informed that the decease."
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 321
the wise men [St. Matt. ii. 1 1] furnished the means for
the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt.
" He used to draw a very interesting parallel between
St. Peter and St. Paul, showing that both had the
power of working miracles ; that the miracles were
much of the same kind 3 ; and that the presence of each
had a miraculous effect 4 .
" Being on one occasion asked what was the use of the
Book of Canticles in the Bible, Dean Burgon replied,
' In the human body there is an organ called the spleen.
No one knows its use ; still it is necessary. So with
the Canticles. Being a part of GOD'S Word, we may be
sure that the book is necessary, and has its function to
discharge, though what the use and function are may
not be known.'
"He had no respect for legendary lore as compared
with the sure and infallible teachings of GOD'S Word,
telling us that legends were to the Word of GOD what
liver, lights, &c., are to good meat, a sort of spiritual
garbage. Yet no one had a livelier appreciation than
he of the poetry and beauty which there is in certain
legendary tales. I remember his reading out to us a
poem about a (supposed) child of Lydia, the purple-seller
of Thyatira. The poem showed how Lydia s belief in
the Resurrection had given her hope and comfort in
thinking of her child. He recited it with great pathos,
and was himself deeply affected while doing so."
Notes taken by one of his nieces of the CJiickester Bible Class
Lectures given Nov. 28, Dec. 6, Dec. 14, 1884.
" There are three different aspects of Holy Scripture,
the Historical, the Moral, and the Spiritual.
3 Compare the cure of the lame xx. 9, 10].
man at the Beautiful gate of the 4 He alluded no doubt to the
temple [Acts iii. 2, 7, 8] with the miracles wrought by St. Peter's
healing of the " cripple from his shadow [Acts v. 15], and those
mother's womb " at Lystra [Acts wrought by the " handkerchiefs and
xiv. 8,9, 10]. Also the raising to aprons" which had touched St.
life of Tabitha [Acts ix. 40, 41] with Paul's body [Acts xix. 12].
the raising to life of Eutychus [Acts
YOL. II. Y
322 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
" Under the Historical aspect falls whatever lies on the
surface of the passage. The date ; the manners and
customs ; the products of the country ; whatever belongs
to the geography, or chronology of the passage ; when
incidents are mentioned, whatever details of them are
discoverable by a careful reader ; the peculiar words
employed, the modes of expression, and in fact whatever
grows out of an Attentive study of the place. In a word,
everything that belongs to the passage, except the
teaching derivable from it, or the spiritual inferences to
be drawn from it.
" The Moral use of the passage consists in the lessons
which it is designed to bring home to every one's
conscience and heart. In the history of Joseph and his
brethren, for example, how their sin found them out;
how the sense of retribution was brought home to them
[Gen. xlii. 21], and so forth. We may moralise thus on
this narrative, that, though God's sentences sometimes
seem harsh, the design of them is a loving one, to bring
to our remembrance our violation of His laws. It shows
too His intimate personal knowledge of each one of us.
Joseph knew each of his brethren intimately and so God
knows each one of us. Observe the story of Joseph's
dealing with his brethren ; and think of the dealing of
the true Joseph with each one of His brethren ; for in
the one may be seen, as in a glass darkly, the image of
the other. The lessons of piety and wisdom which Holy
Scripture teaches may be declared to be its moral aspect.
Whatever belongs to guidance, help, comfort, comes under
this head. Holy Scripture, as it is a lantern unto our
feet and a light unto our paths, a help, a consolation, a
guide, an instrument of reproof, and rebuke, may be said
to be Holy Scripture in its moral aspect."
The spiritual aspect and meaning of Holy Scripture.
" It is one thing to be fanciful in our explanation of
Holy Scripture, and quite another to see that there is
much more of mystery and mystical meaning in its
records, than appears on the surface. If it be a book,
which, while narrating past events, is so written that it
THE C HIGHEST ER LlFE. 323
not only gives a history of those events, but also, in
narrating the past, shadows forth the future, it must be
a book, like no other book in the world. Illustration.
There are some materials so woven, that looked at in
one light, they appear to be of one colour, looked at in
another light, of a different one. So too with the gilded
edges of certain books. Looked at from one point of view,
the edges are merely gilt ; turn them a little, and you see
red ; turn them further, you see different colours, and
sometimes even figures or views are seen in certain lights.
The colours, the views, &c., are all there, but, except
when they are placed in certain lights, they are invisible.
"The structure and tissue of Holy Scripture is through-
out typical and prophetical. It is interwoven with
typical foreshadowings. It reads like a simple story,
but looked at in a different light, it is a divine predic-
tion. No human device could achieve this. One remark-
able point in this method of procedure is, that the re-
velation is thus extended further than it could have
been by direct and express statement ; another that
Holy Scripture becomes a part of human probation, the
Divine Author of it thus revealing to the quick ear and
attentive eye of faith, mysteries which it would have
been impossible to describe, and which in fact could not
have been so well set forth in any other way, as by this
suggestive method.
" The whole structure of the New Testament no less
than of the Old is thus prophetical. In the parable of
the Good Samaritan, for example, our Lord sets before
us a prophetical picture of the whole human race, and of
Himself as man's Saviour, when the Law, represented by
the Priest and Levite who passed by on the other side,
had done nothing to relieve the sufferer."
IV. THE BIBLE CLASS AT THE BISHOP OTTER
MEMORIAL COLLEGE.
[From two Ladies, both of ichom were pupils at the College^
(i)
" I shall always remember with gratitude and pleasure
Y 1
324 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
Dean Burgon's teaching. He used to come to the
College on Sunday Evenings for about an hour, or
perhaps longer, and take with us some part of the Bible.
I think he generally asked us which Book we should
like to read ; and if the wish for a particular one was
fairly universal, then that one was decided upon. Dur-
ing my two years at the College we did the Book of
Genesis ; and, when that was finished, we began St.
John's Gospel. He used to ask each of us to read a verse
in turn ; sometimes he would hear two or three verses
before he made a remark ; but usually after each verse
he would stop us and make comments upon it, or he would
ask us first what we had to say about such and such a
verse (he was fond of this way of questioning ; he would
put no definite question, but -would simply ask for our
opinion on some expression or incident in a verse). His
own comments were the most beautiful and thoughtful I
have ever heard. I think what struck one perhaps most
of all was (at least so it seemed to me) his originality ;
one felt all the time that he had not got up his lesson
for us from any commentary or other book, but that he
was simply telling us what he had found out for himself
from a constant reverent study of the Bible. Indeed he
would sometimes say ; ; This is only what / think about
it ' ; and it seemed to us that this remark generally
followed an unusually beautiful idea. He certainly
taught us to read the Bible as few of us probably had
read it before. I for one have never done such thorough
work with any other teacher, either before or since. I
have never seen any one with such an intense and
loving reverence for GOD'S Word as he possessed ; his
intimate acquaintance with it always struck me as
something remarkable.
" He was always pleased when any of us asked him
questions. This we used to do either in writing (in
which case the paper was laid on the table before he
came) or orally during the lesson. He answered the
questions publicly, saying, ' I have been asked,' &c., but
never mentioning the name of the questioner. I ought
perhaps to have mentioned before his invariable habit of
THE C HIGH ESTER LlFE. 325
beginning each lesson with the words, ' Open thou mine
eyes, that I may behold the wondrous things of thy
law.'
" His manner in teaching was singularly attractive and
winning. He carried us away with him, and made us
feel in sympathy with him. He was full of little
anecdotes, which often called forth peals of laughter.
He had a characteristic way of saying ; ' Now, do you
agree with me 1 Say, Yes ' ; and if the answer of ' Yes '
was feeble, he would say in a louder and more emphatic
tone, ' Say, Yes.' All old Bp. Otter students will re-
member this, I am sure. His courtesy towards us all
was never failing. He constantly said what a great
pleasure it was to him to come to the College, and how
much he enjoyed those Sunday evenings. On one oc-
casion, when he was called away into Somersetshire for
a Sunday, he wrote, ' If it is a disappointment to any
of yourselves, believe me it is a greater disappointment
to me. It is the only thing, to say the truth, w^hich
makes me unwilling to be away from Chichester on
Sunday' ...... I will only add in conclusion that
I shall ever be grateful for the privilege of having
been taught by him. I think many of us felt, when we
heard of his death, that we had indeed lost a friend, and
that we should never see his like again."
" Many of us enjoyed the Dean's Lectures more than
anything else at College. Our one grievance was that
he sometimes got so much interested in his subject that
he forgot to leave off ; and when we heard the supper bell
ring, we used to begin to get fidgetty. He rarely came
punctually ; but we used to be on the look out for him,
and hurry into our seats as soon as he appeared. A
chair was put for him, and he used to turn it round
and sit down on the back of it for a few moments ; but
he spent most of the time walking up and down with a
thin quarto volume in his hands. I should think it
probably contained his own manuscript notes ; anyhow
326 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
it was difficult to read, and had to be carried to the
window or to the gas according to the time of year.
" One of the chief results of his teaching was that he
showed us how very much there was in the Bible which
we had never noticed or thought about. Sometimes we
read only a few verses ; but the Dean taught us all
about them so very thoroughly that he made us feel how
superficially we must have read them before.
" He used the black board a good deal, and drew with
wonderful facility. I have in my note-book an illustra-
tion of one of the sheaves doing obeisance to Joseph's
sheaf. With a few touches he drew the sheaf; and a
very few more touches turned it into the figure of a
woman leaning forward.
" But the black board was occasionally used for
another purpose. GEESE would appear on it in large
letters, when no one could answer what the Dean con-
sidered to be an easy question; and I have also seen
GOOSE written there, because one of the students had
forgotten whether Jacob guided his hands wittingly or
unwittingly, when he laid them on the heads of Joseph's
sons. Fortunately the Dean did not mind how much
we laughed ; and we often laughed a good deal.
" He used to tell us to read with expression ; but
there were some verses, especially in the history of
Jacob, which only he could read to his own satisfaction.
Jacob's reply to Judah [Gen. xliii. 6] begins with a long
reproachful groan before he says, ' Wherefore dealt ye so
ill with me, as to tell the man whether ye had yet a
brother ? '
" He told us he had once puzzled some boys by
asking them how they would tell Jacob from Esau, if
they saw them walking by, each covered from head to
foot in a sheet ? Answer : They would have seen one of
them limp ; ' Jacob halted upon his thigh/
" At last he would stop, reluctantly. We took it in
turns to hand him his coat and hat, and we watched him
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 327
go through the garden. He always turned round and
took off his hat two or three times before he got to the
gate ; and the last we saw of him was his handkerchief
waved over the top of it. The very worst weather never
kept him away, though it was twenty minutes' walk,
and the College Lane was often one mass of mud.
" He drew up a little Book of Private Prayers for us,
and we valued it very much ; but he always told us
that the Book of Common Prayer was the best Manual
of Devotion we could use."
V. THE HELP GIVEN BY HIM TO CANDIDATES FOK THE
MINISTRY, AND HIS SUBSEQUENT INTEREST IN
THEIR CAREER.
(From iico Clergymen of the Church of England.)
" My first introduction to the late Dean of Chichester
took place in the year 1855* I had been up to Oxford
to compete for a Scholarship at Oriel, which I did not
succeed in obtaining. The Provost, Dr. Hawkins, had
asked me to breakfast, and at the breakfast-table I met
Burgon. I was not introduced to him, but my attention
was attracted to him ; and I suppose it was scarcely
possible to be in his company for any length of time,
without his strongly marked personality making itself
felt.
" The same afternoon, as I was leaving Oxford by
train, I met Burgon at the station, and was introduced
to him by a friend who was with me. Burgon at once
proposed that we should travel to London together, and
during the journey he elicited from me information
with regard to my circumstances, my difficulties, and my
hopes. My father, a well-known author, had been dead
about a year, and, as he had left behind him no provision
for his family, I was at that time acting as assistant-
master in a school, and so earning my own living, with
328 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
but little prospect of ever being able to save enough to
enable me to proceed to the University. As I sat by
Mr. Burgon's side and answered his enquiries, and as-
sisted in the demolition of the large piece of plum-cake
which he produced from his travelling bag, his eye
glistened with tender sympathy, and his hand was often
stretched out to grasp my own in the expression of it.
When we parted, Burgon spoke a few kindly words of
hope and encouragement, such as many a man might
have used, without intending any particular value or
importance to be attached to them. But Burgon's
sympathy was true and strong ; and he was not content
with words. It must have been about six months
afterwards when I received from him a brief note,
telling me to come up to Oxford at a given date, to
matriculate at Hall. From that day forward until
my University career was ended, I had no anxiety nor
even thought about the payment of my ordinary ex-
penses. Burgon made himself entirely responsible, and
amongst his friends collected whatever amount was
needed. To this day I know nothing whatever of the
arrangements which were made. I only know that I
owe my University education entirely to the sympathy
and generous assistance of one who was at that time
a complete stranger."
(*)
" When the Dean of Chichester died, I lost the best
and dearest friend that a man ever had on earth. It was
mainly through his disinterested kindness that I was
enabled to fulfil the one great desire of my life in taking
Holy Orders.
" I was first brought under his notice three or four years
before he left Oxford for Chichester. I used generally
to see him once a week in his rooms at Oriel. He was
always hard at work when I called ; but with his
characteristic kindness, he would always spare me a few
minutes for guidance in my reading. What a privilege
it was to be able to consult him in one's difficulties !
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 329
" When he went to Chichester, he still kept up his in-
terest in me, and allowed me to write to him whenever
I wanted guidance in any matter.
" During his short visits to Oxford, after he had left
it, I generally saw him for a short time. I used to
meet him at St. Mary's before the early morning Service.
It was on one of these occasions that he made known to
me the joyful news that, through his own liberality and
kind interest, I should be enabled to take Holy Orders.
I shall never forget that time. It was a beautiful
morning in early October. The Virginia creepers, which
he himself had planted, hung down in festoons gloriously
russeted about the beautiful porch of St. Mary's. The
Church door was locked. We stood within the porch,
He took my hand and said, ' Let us pray.' After a short
silence he said the Lord's Prayer aloud. When he had
finished he said, ' Now don't thank me. Thank God for
the blessing, and be sure you prove yourself worthy and
faithful/ My heart was too full. I could only return
the pressure of his dear hand in silence.
" W T hen I went to my Curacy, I found a letter awaiting
me in which he welcomed me as a Brother Clergyman
into the Ministry.
" A few weeks after my Ordination the greatest cala-
mity which can happen to a man befell me. My mother
died. The letter which the Dean wrote to me in my
sorrow now lies before me. The comfort it gave me
has never left me."
[Excerpts from this and other letters of the Dean to
this Clergyman, valuable for their own sakes as well as
tending to show his continued interest in his friend, are
here subjoined.]
a. Advice to an Undergraduate not to indulge in versification.
"Deanery, Nov. 5, 1880 The verses are
digit t, but very pretty; remarkable rather for the
beauty of the sentiment than for the skill of the execu-
00'
LIFE OF DEAN BUEGON.
tion. But this is in fact giving the verses a very good
character. Keep a copy of them (and of everything else
you write) by all means.
" Once when I discouraged you from writing poetry,
my meaning was not, of course, to check you from
giving utterance to a thought in your heart longing for
poetical expression ; but only to remind you to abstain
from cultivating the habit, and trying to improve in the
art, of writing English verses. And this, for no other
reason but the obvious one, viz., that you cannot at prevent
AFFORD THE TIME. That will come, please GOD, by and
by
" P. S. Remember the frequent prayer, and the pure
life, and the habitual thought of GOD ! GOD bless you ! "
(3. Popular amusements not to be over-indulged in by
Clergymen.
"Deanery, Chichester, 1886 Your
letter is a great comfort to me. Yes ; be very sparing in
Lawn Tennis engagements. Take my advice. You will be
more RESPECTED AND MORE LISTENED TO ON SUNDAY by
frequent requests to be excused (on the plea of parochial
engagements), than you will be POPULAR by frequent
compliances with every silly solicitation. I KNOW WHAT
I SAY."
y. The wisdom which may be discerned in the loss of a
parent by those who look for it.
" The Deanery, Chichester, 23 Jan. 1886
This morning I learn that the heaviest grief which can
befall a son has suddenly overtaken you.
" I am extremely concerned sincerely concerned for
your bereavement. It would have been a great solace,
could she have been spared to you, a solace to her, a so-
lace to you. And you will realise at this time, and for the
rest of your life, that a man can only have one Mother.
" I am bound nevertheless to declare that the marks
of a loving Providence discernible in this dispensation
strike me more forcibly than it is easy to express. I
will enumerate some :
THE CHIC HESTER LIFE. 331
" i. She has been spared to enjoy for a month the
certain knowledge that her son is a Clergyman, and
may well have felt her cup run over (Nimc dimlttis /).
" 2. You had been with her to the last. Henceforth you,
/////$/ have been severed. The best moment for a more
effectual severance had therefore clearly come, having
been deferred till now, deferred as long as possible.
" 3. You had dutifully resolved on her support, and
arranged for it effectually. In GOD'S sight, that is a
deed which has been done''
" 4. Your anxieties concerning your Mother are now
ended ; and you must have been anxious so long as her
life was prolonged. She is now with CHRIST.
" She has already told your father all about yourself,
and in the place of peace will pray for you ; they both
will, and will pray effectually.
" 5. How dreadfully harassing the event would have
been at any period of your preparation for the Schools
at Oxford, or for Holy Orders ! I am
amazed at the loving skill with which" [her death]
" has been delayed until now."
" 6. Lastly, you have been permitted to close her eyes,
and be with her at the last.
" You will, I suppose, bury her with your father.
You will have to consider whether you desire some day
to lie with them. If so, better to ask leave now to enclose
(with box edging) the necessary space of ground."
8. Clergymen should not lie absorbed in the secular concerns
of their flocks, and should observe Friday as a day of
abstinence.
"Deanery, Chichester, 4 June, 1886
Being much pressed for time, I will on this occasion give
you but two hints.
" i. Beware of suffering the secular to trench unduly
on, much less (GoD forbid) to swallow up the spiritual
claims.
" There is a great tendency in the ministerial earnest-
ness of a young man (and of an old one too) to be drawn
332 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
more and more into the temporal wants and concerns of
an interesting population, like this of yours. Secure for
yourself the best hours of every day for actual study ; and
when going hither and thither have some bit of the
Gospel or of St. Paul (in the Greek) in your pocket to
fall back upon and think over.
" 2. When you give entertainments, carefully eschew
Friday. Teach and tell the people why. For my part I
simply refuse all dinner parties and festive gatherings
on that day. The Head of the Depot here invited me
to dine with him at mess on a Friday. I pointed to tuy
Order Book, and declined. Ever affectionately, yours,
J. W. B."
6. The merits of Bishop Christopher Wordsworth's ' Holy
Bible with Notes'
" Wordsworth is very good and useful, as you say.
The great merit of his Commentary is this: (i) That
he exhibits the mind of the Church in its best and
purest time ; (2) That he is a really learned and well
read man, and therefore never falls into the blunders of
the unlearned ; (3) That he is thoroughly Anglican,
and may be depended upon. But his work has this
further extraordinary merit, (4) That being a commen-
tary on the whole Bible, and all the work of the same
hand, you meet with none of those discordant interpreta-
tions and inconsistent methods of teaching, which are
inevitable when you have before you the joint product of
many hands."
f, On the Greek substantive avTapKeia occurring only twice
in the Neiv Testament., and translated "sufficiency" in
2 Cor. ix. 8, but "contentment" in i Tim. vi. 6.
"Deanery, Chichester, 31 August. I am glad to see
you notice the word avrapKua. It is only by cultivating
this habit that you will ever understand languages, and
be worth powder and shot as a Clergyman.
" I have not time for many words ; but I will tell you
something about avrap^ia. It does not mean contentment.
THE CHICH ESTER LIFE. 333
That virtue is of Christian growth, and has no word to
denote it in classical antiquity. The substitute is
apKcivdaL, ap*.oi>iJLtvoL, as in Heb. xiii. 5, i Tim. vi. 8, or
as in V. 6, avrdp/ceta.
" Now this, as you see. is in strictness ' self-sufficiency '
(not in the conventional sense of the word, but in the
classical meaning of being sufficient to oneself, not need-
ing external aid). The underlying notion in all these
substitutes for ' contentment ' is always sufficiency, or the
sense of sufficiency. Take the place before us, i Tim. vi.
6 ; ' But godliness is a gainful calling, if it be combined
with the sense that GOD has given us enough.'
"Ponder the matter over, and you will see that
avTCipKtia refers to the ovtward supply, ' contentment ' to
the inward feeling. That says (with Esau, Gen. xxxiii. 9),
' I have enough, my brother ; keep that thou hast unto
thyself.' This says (with Jacob, Gen. xxxiii. IT.),
* Because God hath dealt graciously with me, and be-
cause I have enough,' (margin, ' all things '). The brothers
were very different. Jacob was more than ' content ' ;
he was grateful to GOD. Esau had enough, and knew
it : but he took Jacob's gift notwithstanding (see ver. 1 1.)
" GOD bless and keep you ! Take a walk daily, while
the sunshine is so glorious ; and go to bed early. Rise
before the lark. I was up at 5 this morning, and have
been working all day, and yet it was near i in the
morning, ere I screwed out my lamp. Your friend,
J. W. B."
The Clergyman, to whom the above letters were
written, saw Burgon for the last time during his visit
to Folkestone in the June of 1888, when "He was quite
as kind as ever. He inquired about all my doings, and
took the greatest interest in my hopes and plans for the
sailors and fishermen among whom I was then working.
Dear holy man, he thought of everybody except him-
self ! I never saw him again. Soon after his return to
Chichester I heard that all hope was over. He wrote me
one short note in which he said he was dying through
334 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
overwork, but that he was happy, because he knew in
whose hands he was. He sent me a loving message from
his dying bed." The loving message was, in the words
of the Rev. W. F. Rose, who conveyed it ; " Tell him I
feel fully repaid."
It now only remains to give some account of the
Memorials erected, or in course of being erected, to
Dean Burgon in Chichester Cathedral and in Oxford.
The first of these is a Memorial window in the Lady
Chapel of the Cathedral at Chichester. This is a three-
light window on the North side of the Lady Chapel,
the second window from the West end. The central
light represents the Flight into Egypt ; and in the side
lights are figures of Angels, in the Eastern of gvi fling
Angels showing the way, in the Western of guardian
Angels bringing up the rear of the procession. In the
tracery above are depicted figures of the Holy Innocents
glorified. This particular feature was introduced as a
way of marking Dean Burgon's intense love for little
children ; but the general subject of the window was
determined upon many years ago by the Dean and
Chapter. At the base of the window runs along the
following inscription ;
" Afl gloriam Dei 0. Hf., et in memoriam Johannis Gnlielmi
Burgon S.T.B., hujus ecclesiae Catheflralis Decani [A.D. 1876-
A.D. 1888] Jianc fenestram P.O. amid, confratres, maerentes.
Quomodo dilexi legem tuam, Domine ! iota die meditatlo mea
est. Psalm cxix. 97 " [the text always used by Burgon
at the opening of his Bible Classes].
The cost of the window was defrayed by subscription.
It was designed and executed by Messrs. Clayton and
Bell. It was solemnly dedicated April 12, 1890, with a
short service, the Psalm used in which was Psalm cxix.
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 335
97-104, the Lesson, Wisdom iii. 1-6, and the Prayer of
the function as follows ;
" LORD GOD ALMIGHTY, to Thy Honour and Glory
we dedicate this window, which has been placed in this
Chapel in memory of Thy servant John William Burgon.
May we ever strive to walk, as he did, in Thy fear and
love, making Thy Word the rule of our life ; and in the
study of that Word may we ever find, as he found, our
chiefest delight, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
The service being finished, and a Hymn ("Let Saints on
Earth in concert sing," &c.) having been sung, the Reve-
rend Prebendary Powles, one of the Dean's oldest and
, warmest friends, delivered a beautiful and appropriate
Address, bringing out well the leading features of his
history and character, and containing the following
striking anecdote ;
"When the l Revision Revised' was passing through the
Press, he asked me to look over the proof-sheets, and
point out what I thought objectionable. I confess I
undertook the task with some trepidation, and when I
went with my first criticisms, I did not feel at all sure
how they would be received. I had to deprecate what
seemed to me certain severities of expression, and a certain
redundance of sarcasm. The Dean heard me patiently,
and after a little consideration said, with an amused
smile, ' Well, I suppose the}^ must go.' Without exception
the offending passages were struck out. In truth, all
his sensitiveness was for GOD'S honour. Jealous there,
he had, apart from that, no care for himself."
There were present at this Service the Bishop, the
Dean, three of the four Canons Residentiary, and six of
the Prebendaries.
But Chichester was not satisfied with this Memorial
of one of the two most illustrious men (and very illus-
trious both of them were) who since the Reformation have
336 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
filled its Decanal stall, and one of them in immediate
succession to the other. The second Memorial to Dean
Burgon is a full length figure of him in brass, inserted
in a slab of Derbyshire marble, measuring about 6ft. 2in.
in length. The figure, exclusive of the base on which
it stands, is 3ft. yin. The Dean is represented in sur-
plice, cassock, stole and hood, with the hands clasped
in front of the breast. Upon the breast (below, and not
in the hands) is a chalice. Across the breast is a scroll,
intersected in the centre by the joined hands, bearing
the legend, " Credo quod Redemptor meus vivit." There
is a wide border of brass, with the symbols of the Four
Evangelists at the four corners, running round the sides
of the slab, and enclosing the figure. On this border is
the inscription ; " Johannes Gulielmus Burgon S.T.B.
hujusce Ecclesiae Cathedralis per xii annos Decanus
S. Scripturae Indagator indefessus Defensor strenuus.
Obiit prid. IN on. Sext. A. S. MDCCCLXXXVIII se-
tatis suae Ixxv." The work was designed by Messrs.
Bodley and Garner, and executed by Messrs. Barkentin
and Krall of London. It should be added that the placing
of this monument in the Cathedral was principally due
to the munificence of Archdeacon Mount. The brass is
fixed in the pavement of the South Transept, east of the
S.W. pier of the central tower, and almost immediately
behind the Dean's Stall in the Choir.
The Memorials in Oxford are two, one of a private
character, erected by members of the family, over the
spot where Dean Burgon was interred ; the other a
tribute to his memory shortly to be erected in the
Church of St. Mary-the- Virgin's, from his former Parish-
ioners and from members of his Congregation, from
attendants on his Oxford Bible Classes, and a still wider
circle of friends indebted to him in various ways.
THE CHICHESTER LIFE. 337
The first of these Memorials is in the enclosure in
Holywell Cemetery, where there sleep not only Dean
Burgon himself, but also his little sister Katharine
Margaret (who died April 28, 1836, see vol. i. p. 54),
his mother (who died Sept. 7, 1854, see vol. i. p. 228),
his father (who died Aug. 28, 1858, see vol. i. pp. 244,
245, &c.), his sister Enrily Mary (who died May 6, 1871.
see vol. i. pp. 392, 393), and his brother Thomas
Charles (who died Feb. 14, 1872, see vol. i. pp. 407, 408),
and two intimate friends, Miss Hargreave (d. 1872), and
Miss Mary Wintle (d. 1880). This memorial is a solid
gabled cross of white marble. At the end of each arm
of the cross, under the gabled termination, are the sacred
symbolic letters -P and All blended in a monogram. At
the upper end of the cross under the gable is carved a
crown ; at the lower end under the gable two intersecting
triangles. Round the base runs this inscription ; Ci JOAN-
NES WILLELMUS BURGON S.T.B., DECANUS CICESTRENSIS
HAG OLIM IXURBEECCLESIAE B.M.V.VlCARIUS OBDORMIVIT
ix CHRISTO DIE iv. AUGUSTI MDCCCLXXXVIII NATUS
AXXOS FERE LXXV." The Tablet in the Wall immedi-
ately over this monument (a very elaborate trefoil) con-
tains the following inscription from the pen of Arch-
deacon Palmer ;
^ LEOK.V ^ ^ ftve loved Tl,, ^
* *
J. W. B. j. w. B
DECA.VUS CICESTRENSIS Dean of Chichester,
PIETATE NOBILIS iNGENio UTERis, Renowned for his devotion, his
CARUS PRAETER MODUM suis talents, his cultivation,
PAri'ERiBrs PARVULISQUE D ear beyond measure to his friends,
PRO PATRE To the Poor and to Little Ones
OBDORMIVIT ix CHRISTO A Second Father.
DIE iv. AUGUST i MDCCCLXXXVIII Fell asleep in Christ
X ^ V AUg ' 4 ' 1888 ^
r * *>/E MEDITATE ^ ' **1 the day it is ro>' ^
VOL. II. Z
338 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
The Memorial in St. Mary the Virgin's Church, Ox-
ford, now (June 23, 1^91) in course of execution, and
which will probably be in its place before these pages
see the light, is the painted glass with which it is pro-
posed to fill the great West Window of the Nave. The
design for this window, which has been accepted both
by the authorities of the University and by the Vicar
and Vestry of the Parish, was furnished by Mr. C. E.
Kempe, M.A., of Pembroke College, Oxford. The sub-
ject of the painting is a " Jesse Tree," the Dedication
of the Church seeming to make some reference to the
Incarnation appropriate. In four of the lights are in-
serted figures of the four Evangelists writing their his-
tories, an insertion suggested by an early and de-
servedly popular work of the Dean's, his ' Plain Com-
mentary on tJie Holy Gospels.' In the tracery of the
Window are introduced figures of St. Thomas of Canter-
bury, St. Anne, St. Catherine, and St. Nicholas, to whom
Chapels were dedicated in the old Church. The seven
lower lights contain the Arms of the twenty-one exist-
ing Colleges (it will be remembered that Burgon's
' Historical Notices of the Oxford Colleges ' were written
in connexion with, and as the letter-press for, Mr.
Shaw's 'Arms of the Colleges] see vol. i. p. 239 et sequent.}.
In the tracery are the heraldic shields of King Edward
II, who granted the advowson of the parish to Oriel
College ; of King Henry VII, in whose reign St. Mary
the Virgin's Church was rebuilt; of Cardinal Morton,
Archbishop of Canterbury, who issued letters of recom-
mendation for that work ; of Russell, Chancellor of the
University and Bishop of Lincoln, in whose diocese
Oxford was then situated ; of the diocese of Oxford ; of
the University ; of Oriel College, the patrons of the
living ; and of Dean Burgon himself. This Memorial
THE CHICHESTER LIFE.
window derives additional interest from a circumstance
communicated to the author by the Rev. R. G. Living-
stone, to whom these volumes are already so much in-
debted ; and who writes thus ;
" You will be interested to hear that many years ago.
when I was his Curate, the Dean mentioned to me a
design which he had, viz. to fill the great West Window
of the Nave of St. Mary's with stained glass. He in-
tended to apply to all the Colleges for help, and to place
their armorial bearings in the Window. Now, after so
many years, the design which the Dean had in view is
about to be carried into effect."
Our notice of the Memorials of Dean Burgon may be
appropriately closed by the mention made of him in the
speech of the Public Orator (Rev. W. W. Merry, D.D.,
Rector of Lincoln) at the Encania of the year after his
death, June 26, 1889 ;
" Verum enirnvero, quo-
niam in hac concione sem-
per moris fuit eorum repe-
tere mernoriam, quos nu-
perrime morte abreptos
moereat Academia, liceat
mihi insignem pietate vi-
rurn in mentes vestras re-
vocare, qui etsi nobis longae
absentiae condicione tarn-
quam amissus, tamen et
totius Universitatis, et
praesertim Collegii sui
Orielensis amator exstitit
et castigator, unicus. Quis
est cujus ex animo exciderit
Joannes Burgon, Decanus
Cicestrensis. vir admodum
reverendus, et in critica
sacra expertissimus ? Qui
" Yet, as in this Oration
it hath ever been the custom
to commemorate those over
whom theAcademy mourns,
as having been quite re-
cently torn away from her
by death, suffer me to re-
call to your minds a man
of eminent piety, who, al-
though in a manner lost to
us by the circumstance of
his long absence, yet ever
stood forth as in an un-
paralleled degree the loving-
friend and faithful reprover
of the whole University,
and particularly of his own
College of Oriel. Who is
there that remembers not
the Very Reverend John
Z 2
340
LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
profecto quotienscunque in
controversias se injecisset,
' Impiger, iracundus, in-
exorabilis, acer 5 ' proculdu-
bio videbatur : idem tamen
omnibus disputationibus
tantum leporis immiscebat,
tarn suavi pervioacia sui
ipsius opinionibus inhae-
rebat, tam sincerum acti se
temporis laudatorem prae-
stabat, ut omnium sibi
indulgentiam, multorum
aniorem, sibi conciliaret."
Burgon,Dean of Chichester,
a man profoundly versed
in sacred criticism ? who
doubtless, whenever he
threw himself into contro-
versies, seemed to be
' Swift, passionate, uncom-
promising, fierce 5 ,' and yet
with all his contentions
mingled up so much that
was attractive, with so
pleasant a persistency ad-
hered to his own opinions,
and showed himself so sin-
cere in his eulogy of bygone
times, as to win indulgence
from all, love from many."
Horace's sketch of the character of Achilles, A. P. 121.
CHAPTER IV.
THE CHARACTER INTELLECTUAL, MORAL, AND
SPIRITUAL.
THE writer of this Biography feels that he owes some
sort of explanation to the reader of his having contra-
vened, in Dean Burgon's case, the views which the Dean
himself entertained and expressed of the proper limits
of an ordinary Biography.
" I have long cherished the conviction," says the
lamented author of ' The Lives of Twelve Good Men,' " that
it is to be wished that the world could be persuaded
that Biography might with advantage be confined within
much narrower limits than at present is customary. Very
few are the men who require 500 pages all to themselves :
far fewer will bear expansion into two such volumes "
[bed. Pref. viii].
Judicious as this suggestion may be in regard to the
biographies of less distinguished persons, the writer, in
studying Dean Burgon's character and career, has found
him to be in every way too large a man to be adequately
portrayed on a very small canvass. While the names
of persons of less note, who yet may have established a
claim to be gratefully remembered by those who come
after them, are sufficiently preserved from oblivion by a
Memoir, there are those, surely, whose intellectual and
moral pre-eminence, and whose rnanifoldness of gift and
342 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
power, challenge a Life. Would anyone say that the
brief Memoir of Samuel Wilberforce in ' The Lives of
T/'-flre Good Men] admirably as it is executed, would, if
it stood alone, be an adequate tribute to the memory of
one who was (probably) the greatest English Bishop of
the Century ? No ; but before the Memoir appeared
there were in existence three bulky Volumes, giving a
methodical account of Bishop Wilberforce's career, from
his birth to his death, and copiously illustrated by his
Letters and Journals, not more, surely, than he de-
served, who in his day (and it was a day of stir and
movement) was the most potent factor in the life of the
English Church. His friends claim for Dean Burgon
that, in regard of the variety and versatility of his in-
tellectual powers, the intensity of his moral faculties,
and that profound veneration for the Word of God
which formed the chief feature both of his spiritual
character and of his teaching, he showed a pre-eminence
among the men of his generation, which abundantly en-
titles him to a Life as distinct from a Memoir. The
outline of his character, now to be traced, will, it- is
hoped, serve to justify this claim.
I. The first character, then, in which, when his name
is mentioned, John William Burgon is thought of, is that
of a theologian. Theology absorbed him entirely in the
later period of his life ; more and more as he grew older
did he, in pursuance of the charge given to him at his
Ordination to the Priesthood, " apply himself wholly to
this one thing, and draw all his cares and studies this
way." But to say no more than this, would be to ignore
the versatility of his powers and the wealth of his mental
resources, and thus to give an entirely inadequate con-
ception of his character as a whole. The century, of
which the last quarter is now fast ebbing away, has
THE CHARACTER. 343
seen other learned and profound theologians, some of
whom possibly may have rivalled him in this single and
highest department of human knowledge (though it may
be doubted whether any have displayed an industry
equal to his) ; but where shall we look to find a theo-
logian with an equal breadth of general cultivation, and
one who, while he was a devoted student, living in and
for theological folios and ancient manuscripts, came
down into human life, in its humblest details, so fami-
liarly and lovingly as he, and touched all, even the
humblest, whom he came across, with the tender colours
of his sympathy and affection ? He had considerable
knowledge of, and manifested the keenest interest in,
Archaeology ; was a passionate admirer of ancient Art ;
and copied antiques with the pencil and brush of a
master. This was the flavour with which the jar was
first imbued, and which it retained quite to the end.
Then he had quite the genius of an artist ; a genius so
irrepressible that it not only led him to employ his odds
and ends of time, wherever he was, in sketching his im-
mediate surroundings (in which, by a natural aptitude
for Art. he always seemed to discover something pictur-
esque) ; but also burst forth in his letters, which he loved
to garnish with illustrative drawings ; sometimes, if
corresponding with children (whom he treated as his
playmates), of the most grotesque character. Then,
again, he was no inconsiderable biographer. The ' Life and
Times of Sir Thomas Greskam? his earliest original literary
effort, published at the age of twenty-six, before he had
had the advantage of a University education, shows a mar-
vellous power of historical research, and proves that he
was early initiated into the secret, which since those days
has been widely and generally recognised, of going to the
original sources of history, and examining archives, in-
344 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
stead of accepting and handing on the traditional accounts
borrowed from comparatively modern writers. In later
days, when Burgon had become a Fellow of Oriel, his
great friend Patrick Fraser Tytler, who had given him
" frequent good counsel and kind assistance " in the
composition of Gresham's ' Life? was made by him the
subject of a biography, which attracted much attention,
was reviewed in terms of the highest commendation in
the ' Quarterly,' and rapidly attained (though the author
was then comparatively unknown) a second edition.
How little could it have been foreseen (and, it may be
added, what a testimony is it to the immanence and
indestructibility of certain aptitudes and talents) that
the latest literary labour of the learned and accomplished
Dean the labour which may be said to have given the
coup <le grace to his strength, already failing beneath the
strain of undue and excessive mental application
should be what his earliest had been, Biography!
' The Lives of Twelve Good Men ' reached a fifth edition
within less than a year from the time of their pub-
lication (they have now reached a seventh) ; and while
some portion of this success is no doubt due to the lamented
removal of the author, before the work could make its
appearance, and to the large crop of interesting remini-
scences which sprang up in consequence of his removal,
and called public attention to his career,and to the irrepar-
able loss which the Church and the Science of Theology
had sustained by his death, it is clear from the universal
verdict of approval, which the work has elicited from
all intelligent and discriminating readers, that what
has chiefly recommended it to public favour has been
its literary merit. It is seldom indeed that our great
theologians have shown a proficiency like this in any
department of literature distinct from and unconnected
THE CHARACTER.
345
with theology. Of his poetical powers, which were- also
considerable, it must be said that what he has left behind
hardly gives an adequate conception of them. The little
collection of fugitive pieces, which his friends " so
strongly urged him to put together " in his later days
(the date of the publication is Easter 1885), contains
several highly pleasing little poems 6 , together with two
6 ' The Sailing of the Fleet in
1854' is a most spirited lyrical
piece, traced on the lines of Camp-
bell's ' Battle of the Baltic,'' while
the affectionate memories of his
undergraduate career, the Provost,
the Tutors, his academical contem-
poraries, even the College Ser-
vants, which he has enshrined in
" Worcester College," have a pathos
and beauty about them most char-
acteristic of the writer. And his
indomitable cheerfulness and bright-
ness of spirit sentiments which
several of his letters also give ex-
pression to, and which had its source
in the beautiful sights and sounds
of Nature, and in the many bless-
ings allowed to us all by a wise and
loving Providence, find appropriate
utterance in ' IS Envoy? and in the
verses, ' Written in a Steamboat on
the Clyde? The volume commences
with his Oxford Prize Poem on
* Petra,' which itself rises much above
the average of such compositions in
poetic power. While these lines
are being written, the author has
received a curious testimony to the
poetical merits of ' Petra ' from a
passage, which has been copied out
for him, in the Biography of the
late Reverend Thomas Anthony
Methuen, formerly Rector of All
Cannings in Wiltshire. The bio-
graphy was written by Mr. Me-
thuen's eldest son, who gives this
account of his father's friendship
with Burgon, a friendship contracted
late in life. It is right to add that
the author of the present Biography,
having known nothing of Mr. Me-
thuen, cannot say what may have
been his qualifications as a judge of
poetry. Suffice it that a man of
considerable mark, as he is assured
Mr. Methuen was, was thoroughly
captivated by the beauty of ' Petra'
" My list of friendly notables
would not be complete without men-
tion of the last, * born as it were out
of due time,' whom my father ac-
quired. He had run beyond the
span of threescore and ten years,
when the feelings which receive
warm impressions of others are in
most men lapsing into barrenness ;
but in him old age was remarkably
green and succulent, as the sequel
will shew. It happened once upon
a time that the 'Poet's Corner'
of the 'Denzes Gazette,' whither his
eyes always bent first on opening
the paper, contained an extract from
an Oxford Prize Poem called 'Petra,'
My father was so fascinated by the
lines, that he could not rest till he
had got the whole poem. After he
had it in his possession, his interest
and pleasure knew no bounds. He
346
LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
or three, such as ' The Dedication of the Temple, ' St. Paul
preaching at Athens,' and ' The Blin<( Minstrel's Smile,' which
indicate original imaginative power in a degree that
was never developed in more sustained efforts. But
these are quite enough to show that he had the true spirit
of poetry in him, and that it was a spirit which prompted
him to sing, whenever the stress of more serious avoca-
tions was relaxed, and the result of which was to give a
never ceased his libations, till he
got himself saturated, and oozed
4 Pcfra ' at every pore. As in the
case of Archdeacon Hoare's lines, I
tried once or twice to put on the
' brake,' but he generally contrived
to elude me, or trip me up, and get
his pleasant wilful way.
" The next step was to indite a
letter to the author, which being re-
sponded to in most kindly mood, an
invitation to visit the Rectory fol-
lowed, and thus my adventurous
father, oblivious of all considerations
but the sweets of poetry, and the
desire to see the man who had filled
his mouth with honeycomb, caught
the Sev. John William Bury on in
his artless toils, met. him with the
enthusiasm of a schoolboy at the
Devizes Station, and carried him off
in triumph to All Cannings. I really
forget whether the cold-blooded sons
prophesied an evil result, and cynic-
ally expected they should have to
cry, < There ! I told you so ' ; but if
they did, their prognostications were
utterly wrong. A genial Christian
gentleman and an accomplished
scholar paid us a visit, not once nor
twice, and always left behind a fra-
grant memory of his presence. This
late friendship (for such it truly
became) was the more remarkable,
because the two friends hailed from
very different ports in respect of
their Churchmanship and theological
opinions; but my father's militant
days were over, and whereas in his
years of vigorous life and thought
he would certainly have courted an
encounter or two, now he carefully
avoided such occasions, and his own
conversation turned chiefly on the
archaisms, of which his far-ad-
vanced years gave him an interesting
store.
" I have been amused to see, by
my father's letters which have fallen
into my hands, that he was taken to
task by Low Church friends on ac-
count of his new associate. He does
not refuse to plead, but seems to
take a lesson of the cuttle fish, and
uses his ink by way of beclouding
the line of attack. Or to vary the
metaphor, he tries to throw his har-
riers off their scent by holding a
garland of Surgonia Oxonienxis be-
fore their noses, and expatiating on
the attractive qualities of the man.
" The following is the poetic
greeting which Mr. Burgon received
at All Cannings in October, 1859 :
' Burgon, whose lyre 'mid Petra's
ruins strung,
Sounded, associate with thy tune-
ful tongue, &c., &c.' "
THE CHARACTER. 347
sort of ornamental fringe of song to a life of close and
severe study. And had he any gift for music, a power
which is so often denied where there is found, as there
was in his case, a genius for drawing and painting ?
Judging from the intercourse which the writer was
privileged to hold with him, and which during his tenure
of the Deanery of Chichester was intimate, he should
have questioned any power of Dean Burgon's in this
direction were it not that one who was formerly Priest
Vicar and Succentor of Chichester Cathedral 7 , and there-
fore skilled both in the theory and practice of music,
writes thus of his own mind (not in answer to any ques-
tion put to him on the subject) ;
" The late Dean had a fine appreciation of music, and
there could not be a better listener than he when there
was anything going on in the way of playing or singing.
Without great musical knowledge, he seemed to know
at once what was worth listening to, and what not."
In short, while of course his natural capacity for one
form of Art was greater than for another, there was no
form of it wholly without interest to his artistic mind.
And in order to establish out of his own mouth what
Mr. Brandram has here said of him, it is only necessary
to cite a passage occurring in a letter to one of his
sisters (Oct. 29, 1841), in which he describes very poeti-
cally the impression made upon him by the music in
Magdalen College Chapel, on the first occasion of his
attending Divine Service there.
" Oh ! if you could see Magdalen Chapel ! and hear
the organ ! ! oh, it is indeed seraphic. But you will
7 The Rev. T. P. Brandram, Rec- reinaiks on the late Dean's Bible
tor of Rumboldswyke, Chichester, Classes for Undergraduates at Oriel,
to whom the author is indebted for have already been presented to the
much kindness, and some of whose reader.
348 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
some day see it, and feel your blood curdle with
emotion. . . . We had a fine anthem and beautiful
chanting ; but the way the organ was managed beats
everything. I don't quite know how to explain it ; but
it is as if, while the full tide of music was pouring
from every tube of the instrument as if a sharp strong
musical movement were taking place at the same time,
harmonizing with contrasting with relieving, and
at the same time uniting the more powerful sound. I
can only illustrate my meaning by some such fancy as
that of a sweet climbing plant wreathed about the stem
of an enormous oak."
He who wrote that passage must have had " a fine
appreciation of music " to enable him to write it.
But indeed there was scarcely any branch of know-
ledge uncongenial to him, or which did not receive from
him, at some time or other of his life, a measure of atten-
tion. The passion for Archaeology and archaeological
research, which has been already adverted to, ran in his
blood ; it was his inheritance from his father ; his
earliest publication 8 testifies to it. Heraldry, with its
cognate research into pedigrees, had always a strong
attraction for him ; ' The Amis of t/ie Oxford Colleges] with
Historical Notices of the Colleges annexed [see vol i. pp.
239-242], a work which he found time to put forth amid
the graver studies and engrossing controversies of his
Oxford life, evinces not only a love of the subject, but a
good measure of practical acquaintance with it. To Ar-
chitecture he was so drawn by his natural bent, that he
was wont to say that, next after Holy Orders, the vocation
upon which he had set his heart from a very early
period, he would have chosen the architect's profession
8 'Memoire sur les Vases Pana- Burgon,' Paris, 1833. [See vol i.
thenaiques, par P. O. Brondsted. pp. 37, 38.]
Tnuluit de I 1 Anglais, par J. W.
THE CHARACTER. 349
for his pursuit in life. While his love of language and
aptitude for the study of it, are shown, not only by his
frequent etymological speculations, some of which will
appear in the sequel, but also by the ' Glossary of Bedford-
shire Words*' [see vol. i. p. 214, and Appendix B], which
he compiled for the local press, and which he intended
to publish in a separate form, but was always diverted
by more serious pursuits.
II. But I must pass from his intellectual gifts to speak
of faculties of a more moral cast, in which he was equally
versatile. And first as to humour. I suppose there are
but few men who, while they have been immersed all
their life long in the gravest and severest studies, have
succeeded so perfectly as he did in retaining to the end
(sobered somewhat at the very end by uncomfortable
narrowness of means, of which he frequently complained
during the two or three last years of his life, and by a
constitution giving way under the strain of excessive
literary toil) such a wonderful exuberance of the gaiety
and light-heartedness of youth. For this was the true
account of the jocose side of his character ; it was not a
man's cultivated and polished wit ; it was not the rich
humour of a matured mind ; it was to the end a child's
9 He has left three manuscript years since " he u began to collect
books, into which he has pasted the the words and phrases which form
slips from the local newspaper, as the present Glossary." So that it
they successively appeared. The would have been begun in the midst
blank pages and spaces of these of his undergraduate career, prob-
books are copiously annotated in ably in one of the vacations spent
manuscript, with additions to the by him at Houghton Conquest, when
glossary, illustrative quotations, &c. he was reading twenty chapters of
In his introductory article (' Pro- Herodotus and ten of Livy daily.
"vincialisms of Bedfordshire, No.I'), Excerpts from the Introductory Ar-
which he dates Oriel College, Ox- tide and from the Glossary will be
ford, Feb. 10, 1868, he tells the given in an Appendix. [See Ap-
reader that it was " full twenty-five pendix B.]
35 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.,
wild, extravagant, sometimes boisterous gaiety, which
made the heart juvenile, even when old age had been
attained. " I have the spirits of a boy," said he to the
author one day at Norwich, when he had been keeping
a room full of people in a tumultuous uproar of laughter,
by narrating a comic incident with an accompaniment of
the most grotesque attitudes and gestures. [See above
pp. 127-130.] That was exactly the case, "the spirits
of a boy." A dignitary of the Church, who knew him
well, says of him, in a letter which I am permitted to
quote ;
'' He did not seem to appreciate the line which divides
the humorous from the ludicrous .... his jesting, both
in speech and act, passed at times into buffoonery ....
sometimes his comedy passed into broad farce."
This criticism is true, and may quite be accepted by
those who loved the natural frolic and sportiveness
that was in the man, almost as much as they revered
his profound learning, his splendid genius, his sterling
worth. The spirits of childhood are naturally extrava-
gant ; and he (peculiar in this, as in many other respects)
retained the spirits of childhood long after they have in
ordinary men been broken in, and tamed, and chastened
by the experiences of life and the monotonous routine of
daily duty. In the late Dean Mansel, many of whose
witty sayings are recorded in 'The Lives of Twelve Good
Men, 9 the fun that was in him was in harness. In Dean
Burgon, if the expression may be allowed, it was turned
out to grass \ like the fun of the old Aristophanic
Comedy, it knew not how to put restraint upon itself.
If, on one side of it, this must be regarded as an in-
firmity (for that which is disciplined and cultivated is of
course per se preferable to that which has not been sub-
mitted to such a process), on the other side, anything
THE CHARACTER.
which tends to keep the heart fresh amid the carking,
cankering, corroding cares of life, has of itself a certain
advantage, not to say a certain beauty, and helps to-
wards the fulfilment of those sacred precepts, " Take no
thought for the morrow," " Be careful for nothing V
1 It requires to be said that
several of the grotesque stories told
about Dean Burton have, as told of
him, no foundation at all in fact,
while others which have such a
foundation, have in passing through
several mouths, acquired new fea-
tures, which they had not originally.
One story very generally told of
him, to the effect that he ended
a sermon very eulogistic of Bishop
Jeremy Taylor and Bishop Bull with
the ejaculation, " Be it mine to live
the life of a Taylor (tailor?), and
die the death of a Bull (bull ?)," has
been thoroughly sifted, and found
to be untrue, as told of him. His
nieces well remember the story
having been told to him by a clergy-
man who was sitting with him at
table at Oxford, and of his being
greatly amused by it. They also
remember his often having told it
in conversation to others as a good
story; and thus, as doubtless some
of his pulpit utterances were gro-
tesque, it came to be supposed that
the connexion between the story and
him was, not that he had told the
anecdote vrifhffusto, but that he had
himself originated an eqiiii-oqiie,
which, as uttered from the pulpit,
would be, to say the least, of a very
unseemly character. By way of
showing the frequently far-back
origin of many such good stories,
which are groundlessly fastened, as
time goes on, on any character on
whom people think that they would
sit suitably j the author is permitted
to quote part of a letter addressed to
a niece of the late Dean Burgon's by
the Eev. Henry Deane,B.D., formerly
Vicar of St. Giles's in Oxford, an
intimate friend of the Dean's, and
one who, anxious as he is to clear
him of a false charge, does not
at all, as will be seen, minimise the
element of the humorous which
there was in his character, and
which (as in the case of South,
Latimer, and other preachers simi-
larly endowed) would occasionally
peep out even in the pulpit.
"Clay Hill House,
" Gillingham, Dorset,
"March 12, 1890.
' ' My dear Miss Rose, Xo. Your
good uncle would never have said
anything of the sort. In fact he
never did. The story is very old.
My father matriculated in 1817,
that is 73 years ago, and then the
story was ascribed to a Canon of
Christ Church. But stories of this
sort are always fathered upon some
living person in a most wicked way.
Even upon myself stories have been
founded, which I have proved to be
either fibs, or borrowed from some
older story which I have been able
to trace. So you may give complete
contradiction to this particular story.
My clear friend, your uncle, did say
352 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
But assuredly this juvenility of spirits in mature age
had a deeper connexion with the subject than can at
first sight be appreciated. It was essentially part and
parcel of a character which, as many parts of this
Biography will testify, had the strongest, the strangest,
the most enthusiastic and romantic interest in children,
even at the earliest age, in their pursuits, their ways,
their manner of looking at things, their amusements,
an interest so constant and clinging that, busy man as
he was, studious man as he was, devout man as he was,
it was never out of season with him to play with child-
ren, to make himself one of them. It is told of him,
and probably with substantial accuracy, that on one
occasion being missed at the week-day Office of the
Cathedral, when it was known that he had habited him-
self for it, and had passed out of the Deanery into the
Cloister, and being afterwards interrogated as to where
he had been during the Service, he explained that,
having found a little boy in the cloister playing with
a ball, but looking very disconsolate for want of a play-
mate, the temptation to give the child a happy half-hour
proved too much for him, and he proceeded eagerly to
funny things sometimes in Ms ser- ' Commentary on Jeremiah? as I
mons (as for instance when he com- was going up to Miss Wintle's for
pared me at St. Giles', when the supper, I heard a voice behind me
Organ was opened, to Jeroboam, for say, * There is a strong smell of
' devising a feast out of my own Jeremiah somewhere about here.'
heart/ &c., &c.), but he would never I turned round and saw the Dean
have perpetrated so miserable a joke coming up behind me, and said,
as that about Bishops Taylor and ' Yes ; and here are the figs.' And
Bull. As the story was current at there they were, in two baskets, but
least 73 years ago, he cannot be as we ate them at supper we found
guilty of it certainly, as Dean of that they were not ' naughty'
Chichester, he would not have said "With my kind regards to your
such stuff. I do remember this, sister,
however. One evening in 1875 " I am, very sincerely,
when I was hard at work on my " H. DEANE."
THE CHARACTER. 353
throw and catch the ball, leaving the Divine Office to
go on without him. Similar stories of his seizing
every opportunity of participating in the amusements
of children are "legion," and some of them have been
recounted in our narrative. I refer to them now, only
because they seem to accommodate themselves so well
to what has been just said of his own juvenility of
spirits. Thoroughly juvenile in heart, he was attracted
by a natural sympathy towards children, even when in-
fants, and was susceptible beyond ordinary men to
the charms of their manner, their simplicity, their in-
nocence. And thus we are led up naturally to speak of
that which was indeed the very core of his character,
and which supplied the interpretation of what might
seem to persons, who lacked the true key to it, unamiable
and repellent, I mean the intense and altogether un-
usual affectionateness of his soul, and its thorough
penetration with tenderness and sympathy. And here
the writer is fortunate in being able to present the
reader with a sketch of Dean Burgon's character from
the pen of a common friend, Bishop Hobhouse, who
knew him intimately (as having had charge, when
the Dean was Vicar of St. Mary-the-Virgin's, Oxford, of
the neighbouring parish of St. Peter's in the East) and,
like all who knew him intimately, loved him cordially.
The Bishop shall speak for himself; in vain would the
author seek to improve upon a sketch so true, so faith-
ful, and so discriminating.
" My intimacy with him gave me a thorough insight
into his character. It enabled me to see how impossible
it was for outsiders to read it aright. To many of them
he made himself known by fierce utterances, and such
persons cannot be prepared to hear that the key-note of
the character was love. But in very truth it was so.
VOL. II. A a
354 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
Whatever he had to do with habitually, whether a place,
a person, a family, or an institution, he clothed it with
such reverent affection, that it became sacred in his sight.
To depreciate it, to alter it, to see any faults in it need-
ing amendment, was sacrilege to be withstood with all
his might. No disparaging argument must be listened
to. It was thus that his College, his University, his fa-
miliars, the Church of his Baptism, with all its standards
and customs, th*e -Version of the Bible adopted by the
Church of England, were all too sacred for the touch of
change to be allowed without indignant protest. Every
statement that depreciated the venerated objects, he
repelled as he would have repelled a slander upon his
mother. His outbursts were instinctive, showing the
depth from whence they came. They were not aimed at
the persons whose utterances or policy distressed him ;
for with many of them he maintained unbroken friend-
ship. Their strength gave the measure of the strength
of his loving allegiance, which had been, in his view,
unjustifiably provoked. His nearest friends knew the
wisdom of avoiding those subjects, upon which his affec-
tions were too strong to allow the judgment to exercise
its due control ; but they can all testify to his utterances,
though sometimes unduly disdainful, being wholly free
from the venom of hatred or spite. . . . They only who
knew him intimately could know the intensity of his
affections."
While entirely concurring in the justice of the above
remarks, the present writer thinks that even more might
be said than Bishop Hobhouse has said, in explanation
and justification of the strong and passionate utterances,
with which Mr. Burgon occasionally vindicated truths
or institutions, which seemed to him to be wantonly
assailed. Antipathy to the opponents of what we have
learned to love and honour, antipathy passionately felt
and expressed, is generally, and not in his case only,
love at its negative pole. It was the Apostle of love,
who seems to have reciprocated in a peculiar manner the
THE CHARACTER. 355
distinguishing affection of the Divine Master, it was he
and his brother who were for calling clown fire from
heaven upon Samaritans, when refusing to that Master
harbour and hospitality. And although it is true that
they were rebuked for this display of a carnal zeal, as
seeking the destruction rather than the reformation of
adversaries, and thus manifesting a spirit wholly incon-
gruous with the genius of the New Dispensation, yet it
is to be remembered that, even after the bestowal of the
new heart and the new spirit at Pentecost, holy men of
God, speaking as they were moved by the Holy Ghost,
did use occasionally the language of anathema, Stephen,
though he died with a prayer for his murderers upon his
lips, being carried away at the end of his apology by a
fierce burst of indignation against the " stifTnecked and
uncircumcised in heart and ears," who had been the
" betrayers and murderers of the Just One," and John,
in a spirit very like that which Eusebius says that he
expressed, on hearing that Cerinthus was in the bath-
house, forbidding one of his correspondents to harbour
under his roof, and to bid God-speed to, those who brought
not with them the doctrine of Christ. It is true, no
doubt, that the inspiration of St. Stephen and St. John,
at the time they so spoke and wrote, sanctions the lan-
guage which it prompted, and that it does not necessarily
follow that similarly strong language, proceeding from
ordinary Christians, would be warrantable, even if the
errors thus reprobated were as criminal as those of the
unbelieving Jews, or the heretics of the Apostolic age. Still
we may argue from analogy that the lower Inspiration,
which all Christians share in common (" by one Spirit
are we all baptized into one body, and have been all
made to drink into one Spirit "), is by no means in-
compatible with occasional vehemence of language in
A a 2
356 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
censuring what is felt to be vital and soul-destroying
error ; and certainly, in these days of unsettled faith and
spurious liberality, when men have become impatient
of all definite doctrinal teaching, and prate of "large-
heartedness " and " breadth of view," as releasing them
from those trammels of dogma, by which their fore-
fathers were shackled, and the free exercise of thought
restrained, it may be a serious question whether an age
so propense to Rationalism, has not need of one or two
John William Burgons to shout defiance and anathema
every now and then, as new .encroachments are made
upon the Faith once delivered to the Saints, and thus
redress the balance. Revolutions cannot be either made
or turned back by rose-water; and it is impossible to
stem the tide either of unbelief or superstition by pro-
phesying smooth things to the errorists, and using the
language of compromise or conciliation.
Thus much, it is thought, may with perfect propriety
and justice be pleaded by a friendly advocate in apology
for those "volcanic utterances 2 " of Dean Burgon's which,
looked at by themselves, apart from the rest of his
peculiarly intense character, gave serious offence to
many, and almost certainly alienated persons who had
not the privilege of knowing him well. But the writer
is quite sensible that the biographer has a duty to truth
as well as to his hero, and that in exhibiting that hero to
the reader, he must not play exclusively the advocate's
part, but represent faithfully the weak as well as the
strong points of the character. Dean Burgon himself
would censure his biographer, if, while his virtues were
expatiated upon, his faults were not at all events can-
didly admitted. For, curiously enough, a letter of his to
2 This phrase I take l^ave to borrow from one of Bishop Hobhouse's
letters to me on the subject of our common friend's character.
THE CHARACTER. 357
Mr. Dawson Turner (dated Feb. i, 1840) has been pre-
served, in which he gives his views decidedly in favour
of a biographer's portraying the faults as well as the
excellences of his subject. Thus he writes ;
" I seek to act towards others, as I would be acted by.
Much indeed would it grieve me to think that, when the
grave had closed over me, (supposing one were to become
important enough to have any thing said about one) some
reckless person should be found willing to cast a slur
upon one's name, by monstering one's nothings 3 , or, if
one had been betrayed into some sin, by insisting on
letting all the world know all about it. But on the
other hand, I should not mind having it said of me
what weaknesses of character, or infirmities of temper,
or other peculiar features were my bane, and prevented
this excellence or that achievement : and it is this
impartial statement that I desire to see in Biography.
We ostentatiously put forward the energy, enthusiasm,
romance, truthfulness, piety and so forth of our hero,
because these were springs of high, or graceful, or good
action ; accordingly the imitation of these, in hopes of
attaining similar results, becomes naturally inculcated.
3 Burgon was very familiar with It is clear from the context that
Shakspere's phraseology, and prob- what Coriolanus means by mon-
ably quotes him here without sfering nothings is the undue ex-
having present to his mind the way aggeration of achievements in them-
in which Shakspere uses the phrase selves trifling. And it is equally
of " having one's nothings mon- clear from Burgon's context that
stered." Coriolanus, standing for what he means is, the undue ex-
the consulship, and obliged to go aggeration of trifling faults of
through the necessary forms, avows character. The verb " to monster"
his repugnance to sit by, while his [to make monstrous, represent as
warlike exploits are recited before monstrous] has now become ob-
the Senate : solete. Shakspere does once again
"I had rather have one scratch use the verb, and in malam partcm :
my head i' the sun, " Sure, her " (Cordelia's) " offence
When the alarum were struck, Must be of such unnatural degree
than idly sit That monsters it " (as to make
To hear my nothings, mon- it outrageous, monstrous).
tiered." [II. 2, 81.] Lear ' [I. i. 223].
358 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
But a love of praise, a certain degree of irresolution, a
procrastinating habit, c., &c., these, by being similarly
dwelt upon and exhibited in Biography, would become
beacons to warn us from the rock on which a goodly
vessel has foundered ; and therefore am I for the distinct
exposure of these blemishes of character."
Be it so, then, as regards himself. The frequent
want of self-control in his controversial utterances was
a blemish, in spite of which, however, he was warmly
loved and deeply venerated by all who knew him well
enough to gain an insight into the secret of his character.
Nor will any one who has studied the workings of his
own heart, and the subterranean operation of motives in
it, suppose that the fierceness of these utterances was
prompted exclusively by love of the truth, which he sup-
posed to be impugned. This doubtless was his wain
motive, the only n/ottrc of which he was at tlie 1une conscious.
But there was in him an intensely and passionately
strong will, which in private life, and quite apart from
theological controversy, had an autocratic bent, and could
not bear thwarting, or even contradiction, unless the
thwarting came from an acknowledged superior. This
would break out occasionally, and lead to ruptures with
colleagues and associates, especially if they stood in the
position of inferiors, which ruptures, however, were
usually healed very soon by the flowing forth from him
of genuine Christian love. And doubtless this despotic
bent of the will, all unconsciously to himself, accentuated
his controversial repugnance to those who set themselves
against what he conceived to be the Truth, and in part
instigated the "unduly disdainful utterances," of which
Bishop Hobhouse speaks above.
Nor can it be denied that the tone of his expressions
on these occasions had a deplorable effect, counteracting,
THE CHARACTER. 359
as it did, the very end which he had at heart, and which
he desired with all the energy of his being to subserve.
Those who would have felt a genuine deference for his
brilliant abilities, his profound learning, and his godly
zeal, and who might have been disposed to listen to
quiet and dispassionate reasoning from one so highly
qualified to speak, were hardened in their errors by
being set down and rated like naughty school-boys,
tossed his lectures and scoldings to the winds, and said
to themselves and others, ' Oh, it is only John Burgon :
who cares for what he says ? ' Like many another ex-
cellent clergyman, the great and good Dean seemed to
forget that the chief (if not the only) end of Christian
censure is to induce the sinner or the errorist to act
or to think rightly, and that therefore the censure,
which is administered in such a form as to be tossed
aside with indifference or even ridicule, defeats its own
object.
The charge of conceit and an overweening estimate of
his own abilities and attainments, which has been often
brought against him by those who knew him only
superficially, may be dismissed in very few words. If
it means only that he was assured beyond all question
that his own views and convictions, the old familiar
views in which he had been nurtured from his boyhood
upward, were the only true views and convictions,
and that he was intolerant of any one who ventured to
impugn them, this has been admitted already; this
conceit (if you are pleased so to call it) resolved itself
partly into that " reverent affection " for all the traditions
and surroundings, in the midst of which he had been
born and bred, which Bishop Hobhouse has pointed out
with such admirable discrimination, partly into the im-
perious and autocratic character of his will, which has
360 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
been already commented upon, and which, as has been
said, not only led to breaches of the peace between him-
self and his colleagues, but also, by the fiery utterances
which it sometimes dictated, greatly prejudiced his
influence for good. If the charge means nothing more
than that he was conscious of his own great abilities,
this he had in .common with every man of genius,
who cannot but be conscious of his own gifts ; true
humility stands, not in denial or disparagement of
the gifts, but in the attribution of them to a higher
source than self, (" what have I that I have not re-
ceived ? "), and in the recognition of a deep responsibility
for the use to which they are put. If, when examined,
the charge resolves itself into this, that going to College
at the age of twenty-nine, already a biographer, an
arch geologist, an artist, and highly cultivated in general
literature, he sometimes may have given himself airs (if
it were so) among the mere striplings, of the same aca-
demical standing with himself, who had absolutely no
mental furniture beyond the knowledge of Latin and
Greek scholarship, which they brought with them from
their Public School, (many of whom however conceived a
deep affection for him, and he for them, which lasted for
life), well ; if so it should have been, (the author has
received no proof whatever that so it was) there would
be nothing here to excite surprise, and no serious
ground surely for a charge of conceit. But proof there
is, let it be added, both in his Journals and Letters, that
he took in a most beautiful spirit, with expressions of
thankfulness to God for any measure of success, and
grateful acknowledgment of the help which his Tutors
had given him, the rebuff which Alma Mater administered
to him in refusing to him his First Class (a rebuff, which
no doubt was blessed to his humiliation, and so to his
THE CHARACTER. 361
spiritual welfare), and that his failure to win one of the
highest places in the Class List, instead of disgusting
and souring him, seems to have operated as a stimulus
to work harder and more sanguinely than ever for the
attainment of that independence, which only a Fellow-
ship could give.
Before we pass on to sketch his theological position
and views, there is a point of his character which
deserves to be noticed all the more, because, from a
variety of causes, the English Clergy of to-day, while
often more active than their predecessors in the Ministry,
have as a rule sadly deteriorated in that undefinable,
but yet easily recognised qualification breeding. John
William Burgun was beyond all question a IdgJi-lrecl
gentleman it was this which constituted one of the great
charms of his character. His wide cultivation for it
was, as we have seen, very wide, although it consisted
with very profound study of particular subjects, gave
him a refinement of mind which could not fail to trans-
pire in social intercourse. His chivalrous devotion to
the gentler sex, his courtesy (inbred and unfailing) to
the whole of womankind, was another ingredient of the
quality we are attempting to describe. Those who had
been thrown across men of sterling worth indeed, but of
coarser fibre and ruder manners, felt themselves trans-
ported into a wholly different social atmosphere, when
they passed a week in his company. As a host he made
this felt by all his guests, for however short a time they
might be under his roof; there was that about the
menage in the Deanery of Chichester (due in part, no
doubt, to the ladies of the family), which showed that
the Dean, though the better part of his life had been
spent in College rooms, thoroughly well understood
how to entertain with grace, courtesy, and dignity.
362 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
The large-hearted old-fashioned hospitality which thinks
nothing too good for guests, the tact which knows
how to put them entirely at their ease, the vivacity
of mind which knows how to draw them out and
entertain them, all these transpired in his dealings with
his social circle, though none of them was obtruded.
This type of clergyman has hitherto never been wanting
in the English Church. Often has it been met with in
the retired country parsonage, where the ripe scholar,
the profound student, the sound theologian, has shown
himself, as occasion offered, to be also the most delightful
of entertainers. Burgon was an excellent specimen of
this school. It is, alas ! dying off now, not only by the
admission into the Ministry of men of a lower social
grade, which is necessitated by the Church's exigencies,
but by the pressure, restlessness, and breathless hurry, of
modern life, which are partly responsible for this, as for
many other very unlovely results.
III. But we have yet to speak of the uniqueness of his
position as a Theologian, which even had he been a
Theologian only, and nothing more, would have made
him worthy of grateful commemoration by all those
who regard God's written Word as the most precious
treasure in the world after His Personal Word, as
closely analogous to (nay, as vitally connected with) the
Personal Word, being equally a Kevelation of the
Eternal Father; equally Divine penetrated by Deity
throughout, even as was the human nature of the Son
of God ; equally human, equally wrapping up and
appealing to all beautiful human sympathies, and
equally adapted to the spiritual necessities of every
human soul. This Word has been insidiously assailed
in our days, the assault being masked with professions
of esteem and veneration, and excused by the necessity
THE CHARACTER. 363
of bringing it into agreement with the discoveries of
Science and the progress of human knowledge ; its
integrity has been tampered with ; and its trustworthi-
ness called in question ; in a word, the whole traditional
mode of regarding and receiving the Bible, the mode in
which the Universal Church has hitherto always re-
garded and received it, is being undermined by the
subtle speculations of Rationalists, and the application
to the Sacred Volume of what are called the canons of
criticism. And many of the conclusions thus arrived
at have been received, if not as well-established truths,
yet as reasonable and worthy of consideration, not only
by members, but also by ministers of our own Church,
men for whose opinion on such a subject their ability
and learning must needs conciliate respect. The sad
traces of this sceptical animus are found scattered up and
down throughout the pages of the Revised New Testa-
ment. In the Version of the Lord's Prayer, as given in
St. Luke's Gospel, the Invocation has been mutilated
and cut down to a single word, while two important
petitions have been entirely expunged from the text.
The Doxology is expunged from the Prayer as given in
St. Matthew's Gospel, thereby no doxology being
left; for in St. Luke's Gospel the Prayer never had
a doxology. English Christians then are taught by our
Revisers to believe that the doxology is no genuine
part of the Prayer which our Lord gave for the use of
His people. And to this it must be added that the
account of the descending Angel at the Pool of Bethesda,
and of the troubling of the water, and the salutary
effect to him that after the troubling first stepped in,
has been entirely obliterated from the text of St. John's
Gospel. And the passages upon which doubt is thrown
by a marginal note to the effect that "many ancient
364 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
authorities omit them " are of more serious import still.
Misgivings are thus instilled into the mind of the reader
as to the only account we have of the Agony and
Bloody Sweat ; as to the authenticity of the first Saying
upon the Cross (" Father, forgive them ") ; as to the
mention of the Ascension in St. Luke's Gospel ; and as
to far the larger part of the words of Institution of the
Eucharist in the same Gospel. While still graver doubt
is thrown upon the last Twelve Verses of St. Mark's
Gospel by the annotation, " The two oldest Greek manu-
scripts, and some other authorities, omit from ver. 9 to
the end," and by an ominous gap which is left in the
page after the eighth verse, almost as much as if the
Revisers would intimate to their readers ; " If you desire
to be perfectly assured that what you are reading is the
Word of God, go no further than verse 8." If such
excisions are made of parts of the sacred deposit of the
New Testament, while other parts, of great preciousness
and interest, are questioned and suspected, by a great
company of learned theologians, working under a pres-
sure from that healthy English public opinion which has
prejudices (if prejudices they be) in favour of the old
and familiar translation, what shall we suppose to be
the views of Holy Scripture taken by critics (whether
foreign or domestic) who have never been nurtured in
our traditions, and who are laid under no restraint at
all in what they call their free handling of the Word of
God? Nor is it the text only, but the genuineness and
authenticity of the Sacred Books which are assailed by
these critics. While these lines are being written, the
theological mind of England is still in the ferment, into
which it has been thrown by the eighth Essay in ' Lux
Miindi' which seems to admit fully that " the attribution
to first founders of what is really the remoter result of
THE CHARACTER. 365
their institutions" is a " process" which " has been largely
at work in the Pentateuch," and that therefore " we may
suppose Deuteronomy to be " (not written by Moses at
all, but) " a republication of the law ' in the spirit and
power ' of Moses." And it has been stated to the writer,
on authority which he cannot doubt, that in the course
of last year an Oxford Professor avowed his conviction
in a Sermon preached before the University, that Psalm
ex. was of a date long posterior to David, and therefore
certainly not of Davidic authorship 4 , this being the
Psalm, the Davidic authorship of which is absolutely
essential to the validity of the argument which our
Blessed Lord would lead us to draw from it as to His
being both the Root and Offspring of David, both His
Lord and His Son. And on the question whether " the
inspiration of the recorder guarantees or not the exact
historical truth of what he records," all the answer which
we can extract from the Essay in ' Lux Munch ' is that
"there is nothing to prevent our believing . . . that the
record from Abraham downward is in substance in the
strict sense historical." Most generous concession in-
deed ! But what of the record from Abraham upward ?
What of the Flood and the Salvation in the Ark 5 ?
4 Doubtless the Sermon referred the Holy Scriptures .... and
to was Dr. Cheyne's First Bampton upon the Divinity of our Lord and
Lecture on ' The Origin and Eeli- Saviour Jesus Christ," P. 20 et
gious Contents of the Psalter' in the seq.
course of which the Lecturer con- 5 The Bishop of Manchester en-
eludes that Psalm ex. was originally ables us to answer this question
" an encomium upon Simon" [Mac- categorically in his (so-called)
cabaeus] murdered by his son-in-law ' Teaching of Christ.'' According
Ptolemseus, B.C. 135. See this sad to the Bishop's view the patriarch
volume of Lectures, professedly Abraham, the first Polytheist, threw
written, in conformity with the terms a Babylonian legend of the Flood,
of Canon Bampton's will, "to confirm in which that calamity is spoken of
and establish the Christian Faith as inflicted upon man by Bel in
.... upon the divine authority of caprice, and in which the gods are
366 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
What of the events of the first five days of Creation,
the recorder of which must have been, not merely
assisted by Inspiration, but must have had a direct
revelation made to him of every particular incident,
since "the process of historical tradition" had not
yet begun? The Essay seems to give us no assur-
ance whatever that these are historical records, in the
sense of being reliable narratives of matters of fact. We
may accept them, if we please, as instructive myths
and old-world legends, "presented from a special
point of view," " in which point of view," the Essayist
seems to think, " lies their inspiration." The Flood, he
would probably say, is the mythical history of some
great catastrophe to the human race, which " illustrates
God's dealings with man God's judgment on sin." As
regards the Evangelical narratives, indeed, Mr. Gore
implies that while "the Church cannot insist- upon the
historical character of the earliest records of the ancient
Church in detail, she can insist on the historical character of
the Gospels and the Acts of the Aposlles" But alas! this is
cold comfort to us in our present circumstances. The
authenticity of certain well-known New Testament facts
was freely and openly questioned among us long before
represented as descending like flies occurred. The narrative of it is a
upon Noah's sacrifice of thanks- heathen myth, purified from the
giving, into such a shape that the falsehoods and follies of heathenism,
worshippers of the one true God by a devout worshipper of the one
could accept and be edified by it. true God. [See Bishop Moorhouse's
In Abraham's modification of the ' Teaching of Christ ' Macmillan
legend, which we have substantially and Co. 1891 P. 5 et sequent. ~\
in Gen. vi. vii. viii. ix., the Flood is This work probably represents the
represented as called down by the extreme limit to which rationalising
sin of the human race, and one God criticism has as yet gone in this
only is recognised as inflicting the country. And doubtless this is
judgment, and removing it. But but an instalment of its ultimate
there seems to be no reason for be- demands,
lieving that the Flood ever actually
THE CHARACTER. 367
Mr. Gore's Essay made its appearance. The writer has
seen a volume of sermons by an eminent clergyman of
our own Church, of great repute as a preacher, and
patronised in high quarters, in which our Lord's Tempta-
tion is represented as a vision rather than a real trans-
action, the moral teaching of the vision being that
Christ was victorious over every form of temptation to
which our nature is exposed, but the narrative having
no basis of fact. And if the reader will only refer to
that beautifully written and exceedingly popular work,
Archdeacon Farrar's 'Life of Christ] he will find the
learned and eloquent author not indeed absolutely
denying " the literal reality of demoniac possession,"
but stating that " it is not a necessary article of the
Christian Creed," and therefore it is open to us to take
any view of the subject which most approves itself to
our judgment. Thus he writes of the great miracle in
Gergesa [vol. i. pp. 338, 9] ;
"It is true that the Evangelists (as their language
clearly shews) held, in all its simplicity, the belief that
actual devils passed in multitudes out of the man and
into the swine. But is it not allowable here to make
a distinction between actual facts, and that which was
the mere conjecture and inference of the spectators from
whom the three Evangelists heard the tale ? ... If
indeed we could be sure that Jesus directly encouraged
or sanctioned in the man's mind the belief that the
swine were indeed driven wild by the unclean spirits,
which passed objectively from the body of the Gerge-
sene into the bodies of these dumb beasts, then we
could, without hesitation, believe as a literal truth,
however incomprehensible, that so it was. But this by
no means follows indisputably from what we know of
the method of the Evangelists."
Indeed? These are the words in which the first Evangelist
narrates the incident in question [St. Matt. viii. 28-32] ;-
368 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
"And when he was gone to the other side, into the
country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed
with devils, coming out of the tombs exceeding fierce,
so that no man might pass by that way. And. behold,
they cried out, saying. What have we to do with thee,
Jesus, thou Son of God? Art thou come hither to
torment us before the time ? And there was a good
way off from them an herd of many swine feeding. So
the devils besought him, saying, If thou cast us out,
suffer us to go away into the herd of swine. And he
said unto them, Go. And when they were come out,
they went into the herd of swine : and, behold, the
whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place
into the sea, and perished in the waters. And they that
kept them fled, and went their ways into the city and
told everything, and what was befallen to the possessed
of the devils."
If our Blessed Lord, when on being solicited by the
devils He gave them permission to go away into the
swine, did not sanction in the minds of all who heard
Him the belief that the possession was transferred, under
His license, from the bodies of the demoniacs into the
bodies of the dumb beasts, then the Evangelists have not
narrated with faithful accuracy what occurred, as it
occurred ; they are not trustworthy witnesses, who can
be depended upon to tell the truth exactly ; they have
deceived the hundreds of thousands, who have received,
in all its simplicity, the account which " in all its sim-
plicity they believed " ; and the only hypothesis which
can explain or account for their deviation from matter
of fact is their subjection to the prejudices current in
their time and country, and their habit of viewing what
occurred through the distorting medium of popular but
groundless beliefs, and coloured and exaggerated reports,
which went their rounds afterwards. And would God
have permitted the chosen witnesses of His Son's Birth,
THE CHARACTER. 369
Death, and Resurrection, to make such misrepresenta-
tions of fact in points which really are of no small
moment ?
But we must add to what has been already said that
not only the traditional text of Holy Scripture, and the
traditional views of its genuineness and authenticity, but
also its traditional interpretation, have been in these latter
days assailed. When we ask for a guide in the right
interpretation of Holy Scripture, the first question which
arises in every reverent and rightly constituted mind is ;
'' Does Holy Scripture itself furnish no clue to the inter-
pretation of itself 6 ?" And the answer is that it does.
The Old Testament is frequently quoted or referred to by
the writers of the New. And if we will but reverently
and attentively study the applications of the Old Testa-
ment, which are made by the writers of the New, what a
wealth of significance will they often open to us, of
meanings which lie, not upon the surface, but under it !
The particular passages cited are often the last we should
have looked for in that connexion ; we never should
have so cited them for ourselves. Take as a single
example that passage of the Old Testament Scriptures, in
which our Lord tells the Sadducees that the doctrine of
a future life was wrapped up, " I am the God of Abraham,
and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" [St. Matt.
6 It will be readily seen that in and present to her children for their
speaking here of the Interpretation reception. Here the Church herself
of Holy Scripture, the writer is not is the interpreter of Holy Scripture,
thinking of the fundamental articles But what we are now thinking of
of the Catholic Faith contained in and dealing with is that large mass of
the Creeds, all of which are found in Old Testament Scripture, into which
Holy Scripture, and must be proved the Holy Spirit has been pleased to
from it before Christians are called give an insight by references made
upon to believe and receive them. to it, or direct quotations drawn
These it is the province of the from it, in the writings of the in-
Church to draw forth, summarise, spired Apostles and Evangelists.
VOL. II. B b
370 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
xxii. 32 ; St. Mark xii. 26 ; St. Luke xx. 37]. Not to
find the doctrine of the Resurrection in that passage is,
according to Him who is the Wisdom of God, " not to
know the Scriptures," that is, not to have that deep and
penetrating insight into them, which only a thoughtful
revolving of every word of God, guided by the Spirit of
God, can impart. -Nothing less than this will our Lord
allow to be "knowledge of the Scriptures." Scriptural
knowledge is with Him nothing short of the mental
digestion of God's Word ; He will not degrade the term
by bestowing it upon the faculty of glibly rolling its
sacred utterances off the tongue.
But now let us observe what is the account, which the
new School of Biblical Critics are disposed to give, of
that strangeness and unexpectedness of the application
of passages of the Old Testament, which comes across
us so frequently in the New. Mr. Gore indoctrinates
us into their method of explaining such citations in a
single sentence of his Essay. He has been pointing
out that, as to the narratives of Holy Scripture, the
Preface to St. Luke's Gospel, and other Scriptural evi-
dence, lead us to think that the sacred historians were
as much dependent on human testimony for the correct-
ness of their information as secular writers, who had
not the same assistances of the Holy Spirit. And then
he adds ;
"Nor would it appear that spiritual illumination,
even in the highest degree, has any tendency to lift men
out of the natural conditions of knowledge which belong
to their time. Certainly in lite similar case of exegesis, it
would appear that St. Paul is left to the method of his time,
though he uses it with inspired in tight into the function and
meaning of law and prophecy as a whole."
W"e hope it is not hyper-critical to note the phrases
that " St. Paul is left to the method of his time," and that
THE CHARACTER. 371
" he has an inspired insight into the meaning of the law
and prophecy as a whole" Let us suppose that the pas-
sage of St. Paul's writings, which Mr. Gore has in his mind,
is the well-known allegorical interpretation which the
Apostle gives in Gal. iv. to the Old Testament narrative of
Hagar and Sarah. St. Paul had been trained at the feet
of Gamaliel in Jewish Schools of Theology ; and there
can be no reason to deny, and probably no reasonable
person will be found to deny, that this application of the
narrative in Genesis was of a similar complexion with
other interpretations of the Old Testament given by the
Rabbies in those schools. But while freely making this
admission, it is to be remembered that those Rabbinical
schools were THE DIVINITY SCHOOLS OF THE ANCIENT
CHURCH OP GOD ; and that therefore, since God never
left that Ancient Church to herself, or refused to recog-
nise her as His witness (at all events until she had
deliberately rejected the Son of His Love), more or less
of Divine sanction would attach to the method of inter-
pretation of "the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets,"
traditionally handed down and taught in those Schools.
But while St. Paul's allegorizing of the narrative of Sarah
and Hagar may have been (and doubtless was) in the
same style as that of the school in which he had learned
his Theology, it must have been, as to the matter of it,
purely new ; it was the opening of a fresh vein of thought
on an old passage of Scripture, the Jewish Doctors of
the day would have repudiated any such application of
Genesis with horror. Whence then came this opening of
a fresh vein of edifying thought in connexion with the
sacred and venerable narrative ? From the action of St.
Paul's own mind ? was it a freak of his own fancy, taking
its outward shape and form from his theological training ?
It would be unfair to charge Mr. Gore with saying this,
B b 2
372 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
as he distinctly admits that the Apostle speaks "with
inspired insight into the function and meaning of law
and of prophecy." But why does he add, " as a whole ? "
Surely his words needed no such qualification. Surely this
particular argument, drawn from the Law in favour of the
Gospel, was suggested to the Apostle's mind by the same
Spirit, under whose prompting the narrative in Genesis
had been written ; " an inspired insight " was vouchsafed
to him, not merely into the general meaning of law and
of prophecy, but into the particular Gospel significance
underlying that particular narrative. Surely in this, as
in so many other Old Testament references of a similar
character, God the Holy Ghost Himself is interpreting
for us a particular portion of His ancient oracles,
putting into our hands the key wherewith we may un-
lock a long concealed treasure. Away with the notion
that the Apostle's fancy, trained in Jewish Schools of
Exegesis, originated the allegory !
The above then are some of the noxious ideas on the
subject of the Bible, which have now been for more than
half a century floating about in our theological atmos-
phere, germs of spiritual malady, which fasten upon
weak intellectual and moral frames, and work havoc there.
All of them have this point in common, that there is
alike in all a failing faith in the Bible as the Word of God, in
its text, in its genuineness , in its authenticity, and in the method
of interpreting it, which has become traditional in the Church
of Christ. Blessed be His name, God has not left Himself
without witness amidst the various attempts which have
been made to disparage and discredit His living oracles.
He has raised up several honoured instruments, true and
faithful, to lift up their voice in protest against any and
every attempt substantially to alter or modify the usual
view of the Bible, hitherto taken in this Church and
THE CHARACTER. 373
nation, both by the leaders of religious thought and by
their followers. But while other Divines have occupied,
and occupied successfully, different parts of the field,
there has been no single man who has brought such
indefatigable industry, such enthusiastic zeal, such con-
summate and versatile ability, combined with such
genuine spirituality, to the task of rehabilitating Holy
Scripture in the minds of his countrymen, as JOHN
WILLIAM BURGON. If the text be in question, we have
already the frequent references to his most valuable
assistance in Dr. Scrivener's ' Plain Introduction to the
Criticism of the Neiv Testament' (the standard work
on the subject); the fact that "to the last Edition" of
this standard work, " Dean Burgon has added particulars
of three hundred and seventy-four manuscripts pre-
viously unknown to the world of letters 7 " ; and, last of
all, ' The Revision Revised? a republication of certain
Articles in the ' Quarterly Review, which exposed, and
with so much point and force, the fallacy of the
principles by which the Revisers were guided, that the
Version itself was seriously discredited and brought into
suspicion, and in consequence the demand for it materially
abated. And the Church now waits for the great work,
the labour of years, which was left by him unfinished,
but with sufficient indications of the way in which he
meant its outline to be filled up, and which is in the
able editorial hands of the Rev. Edward Miller, Rector
of Bucknell in Oxfordshire. Its character is to be, not
destructive, like ' The Revision Revised] but constructive,
and its design is to exhibit the true principles which
should underlie the Textual Criticism of the New Testa-
ment, a work so hallowed to its writer by his veneration
7 Rev. Edward Miller's ' Guide to the Textual Criticism of the New
Testament' [Bell and Sons, York Street, 1886], p. 33.
374 LIFE OF DEAN BUROON.
for God's Word, so endeared to him by the thought of
the many happy but laborious hours which he had spent
upon it, that when death was impending, and the doctors
forbade him to open a book, he implored to have the
huge pile of portfolios, containing the materials of the
work, placed where he could see them from his bed ;
" I only want to lock at them. You know, when a man
is dying, he wants to kiss and to say good-bye to his
favourite child." Then as to the genuineness of Holy
Scripture, it is now nearly twenty years since his ' Last
Twelve Verses of the Gospel according to St. Mark, vindicated
tif/d'nist Recent Critical Objectors, and established? made its
appearance, of which the very least that can be said is
that it makes the genuineness of the verses infinitely
more probable than the contrary hypothesis. While as
to the authenticity of the inspired narrative, and the
true method of Scriptural interpretation, the noble
stand which he made against the subtle encroachments
of Rationalism (which indeed is incipient Scepticism) will
be found in his Volume on ' Inspiration and Interpretation V
8 The authenticity of the nar- with any independent consideration
ratives of Holy Scripture, and of the difficulties involved in them ;
specially of its miraculous narra- we takethem simply on the authority
tives, is dealt with in Sermon VII., of the Divine Master, who can
and in his observations on Professor neither deceive nor be deceived,
Powell's Essay, p. xlvi ; the true and who is Sponsor for them. This
method of Scriptural Interpretation is a line of thought which has often
in Sermons V. and VI. As to the been pursued by others, but by
authenticity of the supernatural none more lucidly, more convinc-
narratives of the Old Testament, ingly, more eloquently than by
Burgon calls attention to the fact Canon Liddon, in his recent Sermon
that the most marvellous of these, on ' The Worth of the Old Tes-
and those which have most proved lament,' one of the greatest master-
stumbling-blocks, are witnessed to pieces of our greatest modern
by our Lord and His Apostles; and preacher: " For Christians it will
that therefore we, as Christians, be enough to know that our Lord
have no need to trouble ourselves Jesus Christ set the seal of His in-
THE CHARACTER.
375
the most popular probably of his controversial works,
containing a separate reply to each of the obnoxious
Essays, together with seven magnificent Sermons preached
before the University of Oxford. [See vol. i. pp. 260-
274.] The above are only his larger works on questions
of the text, genuineness, authenticity, and interpreta-
tion of the Holy Scriptures ; to enumerate the separate
Sermons, Pamphlets, letters to the ' Guardian' letters
to Ecclesiastical Authorities, all bearing on the same
subjects, which, as occasion served, he put forth, and
which were sure to dart forth from his study at any
new movement in the history of the Church or of
the University, would be from their number almost an
impossibility. It must necessarily excite surprise how
fallible sanction on the whole of the
Old Testament. He found the
Hebrew canon as we have it in our
hands to-day, and He treated it as
an authority that was above dis-
cussion. Nay, more ; He went out
of His way, if we may reverently
speak thus to sanction not a few
portions of it which modern scepti-
cism rejects. When He would warn
His hearers against the dangers of
spiritual relapse, He bids them re-
member ' Lot's wife.' When He
would point out how worldly en-
gagements may blind the soul to a
coming judgment, He reminds them
how men ate, and drank, and mar-
ried, and were given in marriage,
until the day that Noah entered
into the ark, and the Flood came
and destroyed them all. \Vhen He
would put His finger on a fact in
past Jewish history, which by its
admitted reality, would warrant
belief in His own coming Kesurrec-
tion, He points to Jonah's being
three days and three nights in the
whale's belly. When, standing on
the Mount of Olives, with the Holy
City at His feet, He would quote a
prophecy the fulfilment of which
would mark that its impending
doom had at last arrived, He de-
sires them to flee to the mountains,
when they shall see the abomination
of desolation spoken of by Daniel the
prophet, standing in the holy place.
The trustworthiness of the
Old Testament is, in fact, insepar-
able from the trustworthiness of our
Lord Jesus Christ ; and if we believe
that He is the true Light of the
world, we shall close our ears against
suggestions impairing the credit of
those Jewish Scriptures, which have
received the stamp of His Divine
authority." ' The Worth of the Old
Testament, a Sermon preached in
St. Paul's Cathedral on the Second
Sunday in Advent, December 8,
1 889, 'pp. 13, 15.
376 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
time was found by him for so vast an amount of work,
and this when, at certain periods of this literary activity,
he had charge of private pupils, charge of outlying
Parishes in the neighbourhood of Oxford, and, later, the
pastoral charge of St. Mary the Virgin's in Oxford, a parish
small indeed in population, but somewhat exacting in
its demands, both from its immediate connexion with the
University, and from the remarkable character which pre-
ceding Vicars had impressed upon it. And Burgon was
ever, as has been more than once shown in our narrative,
the pastor as well as the preacher, acquainting himself as
far as possible with the circumstances and history of every
soul committed to his charge, and giving every evidence
he could of the kind and fatherly interest which he felt
in it. No doubt, in this as in all other cases, God
qualified His champion by peculiar gifts, and by certain
surroundings, which constituted his qualifications for his
life-task. No doubt, though from time to time he
laboured under two or three severe illnesses, he was
of an originally fine and sound constitution, which
could bear the strain of excessive labour as ordinary
constitutions cannot do. He could dispense with exercise
without feeling the worse for it, and did dispense with
it throughout his Chichester life, only taking it when
some guest, or his sister or nieces, wanted him on a fine
day as a companion of their walks or drives. As for
sleep, it was a habit with him to sit up into the small
hours of the morning, a practice which tended no doubt
to shorten his life by some years, but which did not
seem at the time to be attended with any paioful or
inconvenient results. The positions in which he was
placed in the order of God's Providence, the Fellowship
of Oriel and the Deanery of Chichester, both contributed
materially to the great purpose of his life, the one
THE CHARACTER. 377
opening to him Libraries with unbounded stores of
Theology, and the society of many learned and able
Theologians, the other a Deanery in a singularly quiet
country town furnishing the learned and devotional
leisure, the atmosphere of worship and contemplation,
in which alone such works as he had on hand can be
brought, under God's blessing, to a successful issue. Yes! his
work was appointed and indicated for him, and he was
specially endowed for the prosecution of it ; and quickly
did he understand his mission (as God's chosen champions
never fail to do), and nobly did he respond to the call,
and to the needs and difficulties of the Church in his
days, if sometimes with words passionate, and wanting
in self-control (such words as St. Paul once used to the
high priest, and expressed regret for them afterwards),
yet always without personal ill will towards those who
had galled and thwarted him, and always gallantly,
intrepidly, and in a spirit of enthusiastic loyalty to
the Divine Master, of whose Word of Truth he was the
standard-bearer in critical and dangerous times. And
assuredly he has left behind him a monument more
durable than any sculptured in marble, or engraved on
brass, in the loving veneration of those hundreds of
thousands of English Christians, who have learned to
echo from their hearts God's own panegyric of His own
Law;
" The law of the Lord is an undefiled law, converting
the soul :
The testimony of the Lord is sure, and giveth wisdom
unto the simple.
The statutes of the Lord are right, and rejoice the
heart :
The commandment of the Lord is pure, and giveth
light unto the eyes.
378 LIFE OF DEAN BURGON.
The fear of the Lord is clean, and endureth for ever :
The judgements of the Lord are true, and righteous
altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold, yea than
much fine gold:
Sweeter also than honey, and the honeycomb.
Moreover, by tljem is thy servant taught:
And in keeping of them there is great reward."
APPENDIX (A).
[See vol. i. pp. 45, 46.]
A few excerpts from the Notes and Memoranda on Slia'kspere
made by Burgon in his early life.
AN example of the various headings, under which the items
of information on each separate play are exhibited in Burgon's
Shakspere manuscript book, is given on p. 45.
The following memoranda are interesting, as indicating his
purpose of putting forth an edition of Shakspere, with Notes
and a Life, and also some of the principles which he laid down
for his guidance in this great literary undertaking.
" Mem. Not to forget in my ' Life ' to mention the ungenerous
saying of Milton respecting Charles the First's love of Shakspeare 9
9 The passage referred to in the
Prefaced the Catalogue "of the
Royal Library" (i.e. the 7000 and
odd books collected by various
Kings of England from Henry VII.
onward, and presented to the British
Museum by George II.) is as
follows : " If King Charles I. was
ever able to form a more important
Library, it shared the fate of his
other collections, and was dispersed ;
for so rancorous was the enmity
which prevailed against that un-
fortunate Monarch, that even
Milton unfeelingly and illiberally
reproached him with consoling him-
self during his confinement in the
Isle of Wight with his favourite
author Shakspeare, ' the well-
known closet companion of his soli-
tude,' and that, instead of spending
his time in prayer and devotion, he
was studying that of dissembling,
from the character of King Richard
III."
The work of Milton's, in which he
throws out this unfeeling and il-
liberal reproach, is his " Answer to
Eikon Basilike" (Prose Works,
vol. ii. p. 407. Ed. Symmons) ;
"The poets, and some English
have put never more pious
words in the mouth of any person
than of a tyrant. I shall not
380 APPENDIX (A).
(for which see the Preface to the Catalogue of the Royal Library,
vol. i. p. ii), adding, ' We cannot forgive Milton for this ! ' '
"Mem. Never, in reviewing the errors of preceding Commen-
tators or Editors, to crow, or be, in the remotest degree, insult-
ing. To handle their blunders delicately, if at all, and to give
their assiduity a full share of praise. It is at their altars that
each succeeding critic lights his little candle ; and we must
never forget the laborious nature of their researches, without
which we should be at a loss to advance a step. It must be
acknowledged that, if their controversies were sometimes petty
and ridiculous, they were at least harmless ; and that they were
not always unproductive of good.
" Nothing is more easy than to make merry and be witty at
the expense of Shakspeare's Commentators. When the gratuitous
and inglorious nature of their investigations is considered, we
shall feel most inclined to forgive them for having ' moustered '
Shakspeare's * nothings V "
"Mem. In illustrating Shakspeare, * Cette voie d'interpreter
instance an abstruse author, where- More than the infant that is born
in the king might be less conver- to-night;
sant, but one whom we well know I thank my God for my humility.'
was the closet companion of these Other stuff of the same sort may be
his solitudes, William Shakspeare ; read throughout the whole Tragedy,
who introduces the person of Richard wherein the poet used not much
the Third, speaking in as high a licence in departing from the truth
strain of piety and mortification as of history, which delivers him
is uttered in any passage of this [Richard III.] a deep dissembler,
book " [EiJcon Basilike], " and not of his affections only, but of
sometimes to the same sense and religion."
purpose with some words in this 1 Here again by the Shaksperian
place; ' I intended/ saith he, ' not phrase " monstering nothings"
only to oblige my friends, but my (Coriolanus, II. 2, 81 ) Burgon
enemies.' The like saith Richard, doubtless means the making much
Act II. Scene I : of trifling faults, not the unduly
' I do not know the Englishman exalting trifling merits, which is the
alive, sense of the phrase, as Coriolanus
"With whom my soul is any jot uses it. [See above chap. iv. p.
at odds, 357, footnote 3].
APPENDIX (A). 381
un auteur par lui-rneme est plus sure que tous les Commen-
taires.' "
"Shakspeare seems to have been so full of the ideas that
struck him, that he was not solicitous about the grammatical
accuracy of the words which he employed to express them. His
chief object was at all times to convey HIS MEANING to his
audience. Hence the mixed metaphor which so often occurs
in his pages, and which is at variance with the spirit of accurate
criticism. Hence too another curious peculiarity; he often
applies the e2ntliet to the word it does not belong to. Thus he
would say, thirsty weather. A multitude of instances might be
produced from his works.
" The truth is Shakspeare thought with amazing vigour, and
force, and correctness ; and when he came to clothe his pur-
poses with words, he seized on the first which presented them-
selves."
" If Shakspeare had read more, he would probably have
thought less."
"Shakspeare may or may not be guilty of all the puns and
quibbles that are to be found in his writings. In the course of
10 or 12 years, which elapsed before several of his pieces were
published , there were abundant opportunities for interpolations
and corruptions of all kinds to creep into the text. That he
was sensible of the impropriety of the practice of quibbling, is,
I think, pretty clear from a passage in The Merchant of Venice
(Act iii. Sc. 5), where, when Launcelot has been punning on
the word Moor, the following remark is put into the mouth of
Lorenzo : ' How every fool can play upon the word ! I think
the best grace of wit will shortly turn into silence.'
" I am very strongly tempted to believe that (except perhaps
in his earliest performances, when his judgment was as yet
unformed) he disapproved of a pun, and only introduced such
humble sallies of wit in compliance with the prejudice of the
age he lived in.
" Mem. To observe whether the puns predominate in the
382 APPENDIX (B).
pieces published during his lifetime, or in those of posthumous
publications."
" In the Lives of Shakspeare the critick and essayist swallow
up the biographer."
" It must be confessed that there is some truth in an observa-
tion which was once made to me concerning Shakspeare's hero-
ines, and very warmly insisted on, viz. their want of delicacy.
The warmth of Portia throughout this play" [Merchant of
Venice] " offends one's ideas of a woman's delicacy ; (and yet
he meant Portia to be a jewel of a woman)!'
" I always picture Shakspeare to myself a curious and in-
quiring man, with an ardent thirst for knowledge, and a talent
for acquiring it, in whatever shape it might present itself, I
mean whether in the shape of a penny ballad, an adventure, or
a book. He must have felt his inferiority (on all classical
points) to the rest of his contemporaries, who, almost all, had
received University educations; and he must have earnestly
striven to supply from translations those deficiencies."
APPENDIX (B).
"I have also compiled a little Glossary of the County of Beds"
vol. i. p. 214.
SOME account of this Glossary, which appeared in the columns
of a county newspaper (with the heading PROVINCIALISMS OF
BEDFORDSHIRE) will be found above chap. iv. p. 349 and w. 9. In
the Introductory Article, to which reference is there made, he
gives this pertinent warning to the reader ;
" Thus much it may be right to premise ; viz., that the in-
creased facilities for travelling, and the process of assimilation
which is rapidly going on in consequence, seem likely in the
course of a few years to obliterate many of our provincialisms,
APPENDIX (B). 383
and, in the end, to abolish them all. It becomes necessary
therefore for those who think a record of such things worth
preserving, to register their facts without more delay."
And as to the conceivable discoveries, which careful observa-
tion and research might bring to light in this field, he throws
out the following ;
" Surely it would be a curious discovery if it should be ascer-
tained that certain words are all but unknown except within
a very limited area ; that a river acts like a boundary wall to
certain other words ; and that here and there a few terms are
literally the property of one or two obscure villages, where
they maintain a precarious existence, and seem destined in the
course of another generation to disappear entirely ! "
From a few of the Provincialisms which appear in this
Glossary the reader will be able to form an idea of its general
character.
" BAVEE, n. (pronounced bayver). The ' lunch ' of a labouring
man is so called. It is the name of the meal he partakes of at
about 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., during harvest and hay-time, when he
breakfasts at 6 and dines at i. In the north of Beds these two
' bavers ' are called ' eleven o'clock ' and 'four o'clock.' In Sussex
the meal is called a ( bait ; ' in Somersetshire and the Isle of
Wight, ' narnmot.' .... Would it not seem as if the word had
come to us from the Italian bevere, and implied that the refresh-
ment taken was fluid rather than solid ? In Berks I have
heard the word ' beverage ' used for ' baver.' "
" CANTING, partic. Gossiping about a neighbour's affairs ;
playing the busy-body. In Sussex an aged female with a taste
for this occupation is called ' an old Canterbury.' Is the word
connected with the French ' chanter ? ' '
"*CHURCHiNG 2 , n. A going to Church on any occasion. The
going to Church ' of women after child-birth, commonly called
THE CHURCHING OF WOMEN,' has monopolized this word ;
which has no such restricted meaning in Bedfordshire. ' When
2 " I prefix an asterisk to common words employed in an uncommon
sense." J. W. B.
384 APPENDIX (B).
is your churching 1 ' is the inquiry of a stranger who desires to
know the hour of Morning or Evening Prayer."
" DICK-WITH-HIS-WAGGON, n. The constellation of the
Great Bear, 'Charles's (i.e. the Churl's) wain/ is so called.
' Charles ' is evidently Dick in Bedfordshire."
" DILLUP, v. Said of the dangling legs of a person sitting on
a high stool. ' Don't sit dillupping there ! ' Probably a cor-
ruption of dewlap." '
" FEW, adj. The word is constantly used in Bedfordshire
(together with its correlative ' many ') with reference to liquid
measure; e.g. 'a few broth.' A village shopkeeper, filling a
phial to the neck with ' Godfrey's/ remarked that she had
' given a many for the money.' "
" FKEM, adj. Succulent, full of sap ; generally used as an
epithet for vegetables which grow vigorously and look healthy,
e.g., 'The taters are so frem still, we cry, you maun dig them
yet/ ' The time for getting yerbs is the spring, when all the
nicefrem's in them/ A child growing tall and slender is meta-
phorically said ' to grow frem.' "
" ' Yerbs ' means such herbs as parsley, sage, and penny royal,
as distinguished from vegetables, which they call ' sarce.' "
" GAWN, v. A person is said to gaum after those they gape
and stare at, as a passer-by. It is the same word probably as
yawn (as ' church-yard is called in the northern counties ' kirk-
garth '), and denotes (like the word gape] open-mouthed wonder.
But the meaning is very definite and peculiar, implying wist-
fulness and curiosity, and perhaps something more."
" GOOLABEE, n. A lady-bird. Evidently a corruption, but
query whether of golden bee ? or of cow-lady ? (for ' gold ' was
once gould, and a cow is often a coo) In the north of
Beds the lady-bird is thus addressed :
' Cow-lady, cow-lady, fly away, flee ;
And tell me which way my wedding 's to be.'
" Bisliop Barnabee or Burnabee is the name by which this
insect is known in Norfolk ; and the rhyme is,
APPENDIX (B). 385
' Bishop, Bishop Barnabee,
Tell me when your wedding be.
If it be to-morrow day,
Take your wings, and fly away.' "
[After giving the names of the lady-bird in French, Polish,
German, Spanish, &c., Burgon concludes a long article on
GOOLABEE thus] '
" How does it come to pass that this little insect should enjoy
such singular honour in every Christian land 1 It is accounted
a sin to kill the creature in many places."
" LIGHTER OF EGGS. n. The quantity of eggs laid at once by a
hen. Is it the same word as Utter 1 "
" *LINGER, v. To desire earnestly ; to long. Compare Gray's,
' Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind.'
The word is generally used with Reference to some article of
food. An old man who had lost his wife was heard to talk of
' lingering after his gooseberries ! ' '
" MUNGY, adj. Said of the weather, when it is both warm
and damp, muggy, as we say. ' The day was so mungy that I
sweat welly (well nigh) a pailful.' ' We can't make lace when
our hands are mungy' i.e. hot and moist."
" OGEE, adj. and adv. (Sometimes pronounced ivogee.} To
' drive ogee,' is to drive a horse in a hay or harvest field, while
the hay, corn, &c. is being carted. This operation is commonly
performed by small boys, hence called ' ogee boys/
" The obvious etymology would be 'wo' 'gee,' two of the
cries generally addressed to horses, and understood by them
probably from one end of England to the other. But this does
not appear to be the real meaning of the expression. For,
besides that 'gee,' (go?) generally precedes ' wo ' (wait?), (as
in the well-known ballad of ' Sally Brown,'
' Which made his woe to flow afresh
As if he'd said gee woe'},
besides this consideration, I am assured by a competent in-
formant that what the urchins are directed to cry is 'Hold ye'
and that they address this shout not to the horse, but to the
VOL. II. C c
386 APPENDIX (B).
men on the cart, who without such a warning mi^ht fall off,
and who accordingly would flog any ' ogee boy ' who omits to
utter the familiar signal before setting the cart in motion.
' Ogee ' therefore is ' Hold ye? "
" PIMMOCK, n. and v. Dainty, delicate in appetite. ' Takes
more to keep a pimmock than a glutton,' is a local proverb.
It is also a verb ; ' How dainty ye be, pimmocking ! ' So in
Devonshire."
" SCRINGE, v. To cower with cold. Is it an intensive of
cringe ; as smelt of melt, slight of light, slender of lean, slack of
lack 1 Compare sweat, swing, swelter, smoulder, dash, stumble.
" So SLAG, v. To idle (' Don't hang slagging behind ! '), which
is probably lag with an s prefixed.'.'
When the " Bedfordshire Provincialisms " had been carried
through some dozen communiquees in the county newspaper, it
was found, from correspondence and fresh researches, that
several interesting words had been omitted from their alpha-
betical positions. These had to be added in a Supplement,
headed PART No. xiii. Of these supplementary words two
instances must suffice.
" ' TANDRE ' CAKE, n. The name of a cake consisting of little
more than 'bread adorned with currants and carraway seeds
eaten on St. Andrew's day (Nov. 30), which sufficiently proves
the word to be a corruption of ' St. Andrew cake.' The final t
cleaves to the initial vowel, as in many similar instances ; e.g.
Tooley Street, which is a corruption of St. Olave's ; and the
epithet tawdry is said to be derived from the character of the
wares sold at a fair held in honour of St. Etheldreda, or
Audrey (June 23). Since the lace trade has been so unprofit-
able, the manufacture of Tandre cakes has been discontinued in
some places. St. Andrew's Day is called Lacemakers' Day ; and
the humble festivity here noticed is called ' keeping Tandre.' "
" SNIB, v. To administer correction, as a parent to a child ;
but properly, I believe, to reprove, reprimand, rebuke, and so
to check and restrain. The readers of Chaucer are familiar with
this good old English word. The Parson c wolde snibben ' ' any
APPENDIX (C). 387
person obstinate ' ; and ' I have my sone snibbed,' says the
Franklin.
" ' Snib ' (like ' sneb ') has quite disappeared from polite
speech : but ' snub ' nourishes, and as used by Ray (and in the
Tatler, No. 235) had no admixture of the ludicrous, as now.
' Snub ' is likely to live on as a convenient designation for a
peculiar form of rebuke which would else be without a name.
He who 'snubs' another may be wanting neither in dignity,
courtesy, nor ceremony ; but it is implied that the person
' snubbed ' has been unceremoniously treated, and has ex-
perienced a certain amount of indignity, which he deserved.
All this however is quite foreign to the original signification
of the word, which is retained only in the provincial speech
of England."
APPENDIX (C).
" As an example of symbolism in the Gospel histories, he refers
to the raising of Jairus' daughter as exactly representing the
rejection and the receiving back again of God's ancient people, the
Jews. An interesting Sermon of his will be found in the Ap-
pendix [(7], in which he develops this particular instance of the
structure of Holy Writ." See above chap. Hi. p. 169.
HEKE is the Sermon, preached at St. Mary's, Nov. 6, 1864,
and referring, it will be seen, to one of three weeks earlier.
This last it is not thought necessary to give, as it only adds to
the symbolism of the narrative such spiritual and practical
lessons deducible from it as might be found in any sermon on
the same passage.
THE RAISING OF JAIEUS' DATJGHTEE, A PROPHETIC
HISTORY.
tfje people foere put fortfj, fje iuent in, anU took fjer fcg tfje
fyano, ano tfje maiti arose." St. Matt. ix. 25.
"It will be in the recollection of some who attend the
Evening Service, that three Sundays ago the Miracle, or rather
C C 2
388 APPENDIX (C).
the pair of Miracles, which constitute this day's Gospel, was
made the subject of a Sermon. I would fain hope that those
who heard it have not forgotten a few remarks which were
offered at its close, on the symbolical, or mystical, or spiritual
teaching of the entire transaction. In fact, in all the Gospel
history, there is scarcely to be found a more unmistakeably
typical event than the raising of Jairus' daughter and the heal-
ing of the woman wilh the issue of blood.
" You were requested to observe, first, how singularly, in all
the three Gospels, the woman's cure is thrust in, as it were,
made a kind of parenthesis in the other transaction. "While our
LORD was on His way to the house of Jairus, the woman pressed
up to Him, laid her hand in faith upon the hem of His gar-
ment, and was healed. It was just so that the Gentiles appre-
hended CHRIST by faith, when the errand on which He came
was to seek and to save His ancient people, the seed of Abraham.
The maiden was 1 2 years old, and the woman had been for just
12 years afflicted. The life of the one corresponded exactly
therefore with the period of the other's affliction ; and when the
one died, the other was healed. Exactly so was it with the
Gentile and the Jew. The one had suffered loss exactly for as
many years as the other had abounded with life ; and the heal-
ing of the Gentiles was the signal for the rejection and death of
the Jews. The woman 'had spent all that she had' upon many
physicians, ' and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse '
[St. Mark v. 26]. Exactly so had it fared with those nations
whom she represented. They had derived no benefit from the
philosophers and other teachers who had undertaken their cure ;
but rather had grown worse, until their case was hopeless, and
they betook themselves to CHRIST pressing up to Him and
snatching the blessing by force : laying the hand of faith on
the garment of His humanity, and deriving to themselves
healing and health from the very fountain of life and im-
mortality. Meanwhile the daughter of Jairus died, even
as the Jewish Church died out when the Gentile Church
was restored. It was shown further that the symbolic teach-
ing of the transaction does not end here. Shall then the
APPENDIX (C). 389
daughter of the ruler of My people 3 lie lifeless for ever ? Not
so. ' Believe only, and she shall be made whole ' [St. Luke viii.
50]. CHRIST entered into the ruler's house and restored the
maiden to life. And so (doubt not !) in the end it will fare
with the Jewish Church. The same Divine LORD will yet take
her by the hand, and she shall revive. And oh, 'if the casting
away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the
receiving of them be, but life from the dead 1 ' [Roin. xi. 15.]
" Something like this was said on that former occasion : but
it has occurred to me since, that I omitted, after all, to call
your attention to what seems to be the most striking feature in
the whole transaction. I will explain what I mean in a few
words.
" The incident is called (and rightly) the raising of Jairus
daughter. It was to raise her from death that our SAVIOUR
came forth : it was not till He had raised her from death that
the story even makes a sensible break, much less comes to a
conclusion. The cure of the woman with the issue of blood was
an incident by the way, just as the narrative of her cure is
parenthetically thrust in. It forms no essential part of the
story. It might be omitted, and the chief transaction would be
unimpaired in its completeness, undiminished in its interest.
The tendency and application of these remarks is obvious. The
part we Gentiles play in the history of Salvation is an incident
by the way ; a very considerable incident indeed, I freely
grant, but still it is no part of the main plot. It is an out-
growth, is unmistakeably exhibited to us (so to speak) as a
species of addition to the main history, a thing thrust in by
way of parenthesis, not the main incident itself. Inseparable 4 ,
3 We suppose that in this phrase from God's plan, bound up with it,
Burgon had in his mind Jer. viii. and really a part of it; as it is
22, ("Why then is not the health written; "For as ye in times past
of the daughter of my people re- have not believed God, yet have
covered ? ') and inserted the words now obtained mercy through their
"the ruler of" to suit the case of unbelief: even so have these also
Jairus, who "was a ruler of the now not believed, that through your
synagogue," St. Luke viii. 41. mercy they also may obtain mercy."
* Inseparable, he probably means, Rom. xi. 30, 31.
390 APPENDIX (C).
I am well aware, in the deep counsels of GOD, is the Call of
the Gentiles. All Scripture shows it. But this portion of the
Gospel, I contend, exhibits our share in the matter in a novel,
and somewhat unexpected light. The main thing the great
transaction is the raising of the dead Church the conversion,
or awakening, or restoring to life of the Jews. CHRIST rested
not, (He halted for a moment to heal, and to ask, and to bless,
and to pardon, but) He rested not until He had achieved His
main purpose, the raising of the dead maiden to life. And you
are requested to notice the prophetic light which is thus thrown
on that great transaction, yet future, the restoration of the Jews.
To achieve this is the great Physician's object. Till He has
achieved this, CHRIST will not have completed His errand of
mercy, the very purpose of His coming. But when this act of
Divine Love and Almighty Power shall have been accomplished,
the End will have come ! When the daughter of the ruler of
My people the Jewish Church is brought back to life, the
whole economy of Grace, the whole scheme of Redemption,
will have been completed. The miracle which forms the Gospel
for the day is in fact nothing else than a prophetic history of
the Church, from the days of our LORD'S Incarnation, down to
the very end of the world.
" Let me invite your attention to only one more point of
detail, which may have easily escaped you. As, when the
typical Joseph, ' at the second time ' made himself known unto
his brethren [see Acts vii. 13], he caused every man to go out
from him ; and, behold, ' there stond no man with him, while
Joseph made himself known unto his brethren' [Gen. xlv. i],
so was it now. It is expressly related that our SAVIOUR said,
'Give place' [St. Matt. ix. 24], and 'put them all out' [St.
Mark v. 40], and ' suffered no man to follow Him ' [St. Mark
v. 37], and that it was not until the people were put forth,
that He went in and took the maiden by the hand It
seems to be implied by both narratives (prophetic histories
both), that in some marvellous privacy, which will be, in like
manner, of His own Divine contriving, the SAVIOUR of the
world has decreed hereafter to recall the Jewish Church to life
APPENDIX (C). 391
and health and activity, to raise up the daughter of His
people from that bed of death whereon now she lies, departed
and, to all appearance, departed for ever !
" Kemarks like these, you will observe, fail to interest us
deeply, because they relate to nations, not to individuals. But
we are to blame, if we do not seek sometimes to look beyond the
circle of ourselves, our homes, our families, our friends, our city.
National prospects should interest us, no less than private
and personal hopes. For national mercies we should cherish a
spirit of thankfulness, to a far greater extent than seems com-
mon with the men of this generation, with ourselves at this
day. The Service which, until a few years since, was observed
through the length and breadth of the land, as on Tuesday 5 last,
commemorated two great national events ; and all men are
agreed in associating with the 5th of November a great national
deliverance. We have discontinued that Service ; but we need
not put away the memory of the mercy, or forget to feel grate-
ful. GOD'S ancient people may well be our teachers here, by
their constant practice throughout all the days of their history.
National mercies are the theme of all their inspired Hymns
and Psalms, supply the imagery of their teaching, and run
into the texture of their very prayers. It is still the long-
suffering of GOD in the days of Noah, and the deliverance of the
sons of Jacob out of Egypt the pillar of fire and the covering
cloud the riven rock and the heavenly Manna the Red Sea
dried up and Jordan driven back. At a later period, they
rehearsed the feats of their Judges, and the faithfulness of their
Prophets, and the captivity of Zion turned away by Him Who
had promised with an oath unto Abraham that He would never
forsake His people ; ' for His mercy endureth for ever ! '
" I will not detain you longer. To review thankfully great
national mercies, is, I repeat, a solemn duty : and, ever and
5 There is some confusion here. ceding day (Nov. 5), when the
He was preaching on Sunday, Nov. deliverance from the Gunpowder
6, 1864. " Tuesday last " therefore Plot, and the arrival of William of
would be All Saints' Day (Nov. i). Orange, used to be commemorated
But the obsolete service he is speak- in one and the same service, both
ing of is of course that for the pre- events having occurred Nov. 5.
392 APPENDIX (D).
anon, to give GOD thanks for them on our knees is our duty
too .... So likewise is it right to pray for the peace of our
Zion our public welfare our national prosperity. Looking
beyond ourselves, we should long for the reconciliation of
Christendom, for the reunion especially of our own sadly
divided Christian bodies here at home, and, as far as may be,
we should promote it : certainly we should pray for it. Lastly,
the conversion and restoration of GOD'S ancient people should
be a frequent subject of devout anxiety with us all . . . . ' The
maiden is not dead but sleepeth.' The mourners are there, but
' the maiden is not dead/ Pale and rigid as her features con-
fessedly are, they exhibit no token whatever that the terrible
process of dissolution has begun. Above all, He who conquered
death is coming ; and when He shall have reached the ruler's
house, and put the people forth, and gone in where the maid is
lying, He will take her by the hand, and her spirit will come
again, and the maiden shall arise straightway." [St. Mark v.
42 ; St. Luke viii. 55.]
APPENDIX (D).
"From a close study of the sacred narrative of the Deluge
[Gen. vii. 4 to viii. 14] with its many notes of time, so evidently
meant to be emphasized, Burgon drew out a Calendar of the
Flood, from which he thinks that l no one of fair mind will hesitate
to admit that a case has been at last made out for the Sabbath as
a recognised institution in the days of Noah! " See above
chap. Hi. ]). 268.
THE WEEK OF SEVEN DAYS : (THE CALEXDAH OF
THE FLOOD).
(Reprinted from the ' Guardian' of January 12, 1887.)
" Nor is it at all incredible that a book which has been so long
in the possession of mankind, should contain many truths as yet
undiscovered." Bp. Butler.
" I PROCEED to fulfil the promise I made at the conclusion of
my former paper viz., to exhibit proof of the assertions there
APPENDIX (D). 393
hazarded (a) That the Antediluvian Patriarchs were demon-
strably familiar with the weekly division of time ; and, further,
(b) That it may be confidently declared that ' they were ac-
quainted with the Sabbath!
11 Now, this task is forced upon me ; because, although it is
logically certain from what is related (in Exod. xvi. 22-30)
with reference to the Miracle of the Manna, that the delivery of
the Fourth Commandment on Mt. Sinai in the first year of the
Exode (clearly a subsequent transaction), was but the republica-
tion of a law already in existence and familiarly known objectors
have, nevertheless, insinuated that no proof exists that the
Hebrew race had been for any length of time acquainted with
either the Week or the Sabbath Day. In reply to these
persons, it is obvious to appeal to Genesis xxix. 27 ; but to this
they rejoin that such a mention of a ' week' does but imply the
recognition of seven days as a division of time. The same is
said of Gen. 1. 10, and of Judges xiv. 12. These instances (it
is urged) do not 'go further than showing the custom of
observing a term of seven days for any transaction of import-
ance. They do not prove that the, whole year, or the whole
month, was thus divided at all times, and without regard to
remarkable events V
"The required proof nevertheless exists in perfection. It is
to be found in the history of the Deluge Gen. vii. 4 to viii. 14.
No intelligent person ever reads that portion of Scripture
without being struck by the singular particularity of the
record. I will add, that no one who has made the method of
the SPIEIT his study, can rise from that narrative without a
profound conviction on his mind that all those chronological
details must needs have been set down with some definite
purpose. Let me recall them to my reader's memory ; and at
the same time invite his attention to the results which they
spontaneously evolve. ' Years ' and ' months ' (the Ilnd, the
Vllth, and the Xth) are freely mentioned, as things known :
also, ' days of the month.' Periods of ' seven days' are at least
6 Quoted with approval by the Bishop of Carlisle, from the ' Dictionary
of the Bible,' art. " Week," p. 1726.
394 APPENDIX (D).
three times referred to 7 . But once more, men ask, Can it be
shown that the whole year was divided into weeks ^ Yes, I
think it can. And, Are there sufficient grounds for assuming
that one and the same day in seven was held in special honour
throughout the year ? Yes, I think there are.
" (i) I take it for granted, as all the critics have done before
me, that the * months ' spoken of in Genesis vii. and viii., con-
sisted (as they did with GOD'S chosen people at a subsequent
period) alternately of 30 and of 29 dnys. Moses states that, a
solemn announcement having been made to Noah that, ' yet
seven days,' and there ahould be 'rain upon the earth 40 days
and 40 nights ' (vii. 4), the Patriarch with his family entered
the Ark: and that, accordingly, at the end of those 'seven
days ' of warning, the Flood came.
" (2) In the absence of any evidence whatever to the contrary,
it is obvious to assume that the ' seven days ' thus solemnly
introduced to our notice indicate a iveek, of which the last day
was a Sabbath. Not proposing, of couree, to press this assump-
tion, if it shall be found to derive no support from the chrono-
logical details which follow, I shall, on the other hand, claim
that if several striking confirmations of my hypothesis shall
come to light, they are to be regarded as so many proofs that it
is correct. And, at the outset, it is obvious to remark that the
expression, 'yet seven days' clearly designates an 'octave,
which, therefore, begins as well as ends with a Sabbath-day.
That on a Sabbath Noah should have rested from his work and
his labour might even have been expected. Since, therefore, it
was 'on the seventeenth day of the second month' that the
flood actually began, the loth as ivell as the ifth day of the
second month will (by the hypothesis) have been Sabbaths. And
this is the fixed point from which we proceed to construct our
' Calendar of the Flood.'
"(3) For brevity, I shall take no notice (in the table which
will presently follow), after the first Week of warning, of the
intermediate six days, with their notation, a bed e f : but,
with my scheme before him, the reader may without difficulty
7 Gen. vii. 4: viii. 10,12.
APPENDIX (D). 395
construct for himself a * Calendar of the Flood ' which shall
contain the days in full; and thus survey the year in its
entirety and in detail. For convenience, in what follows, the
Sabbaths (which are alone specified) are indicated by the letter
' s,' the more memorable Sabbaths by a blacker letter (' S '),
to which an asterisk (*) is prefixed.
" (4) At the end of 40 days and 40 nights, a flood of waters
from above and from beneath not only covers the mountains,
but prevails upwards for 15 cubits. The earth continues to be
thus submerged for a hundred and fifty days, the last of
which will have been the 2 th of the eighth month ; and that
day also is found to have been a Sabbath, the third recorded.
And now (viz., at the end of 150 days) the waters have abated
(viii. 3).
"(5) But in the meantime, the Ark has rested 'upon the
mountains of Ararat ' in the seventh month, on the seventeenth
day of the month (viii. 4). And that day also proves to have
been a Sabbath, the fourth recorded.
" (6) On the first day of the tenth month the tops of the
mountains are seen (ver. 5) : and at the end of a third period
of 40 days, Noah opens the window of the Ark, and sends forth
a raven and a dove (viii. 7, 8). This, because it coincides with
the nth day of the month, must also have been a Sabbath,
the fifth enumerated.
"(7) Noah 'stays yet other seven days" (viii. 10), arid again
sends forth the dove, which returns in the evening and in her
mouth an olive leaf, plucked off. ' He stays yet other seven
days and sends forth the dove,' which does not return to him
(viii. 12). Thus, perforce, a sixth and a seventh consecutive
Sabbath has been marked.
" (8) ' It came to pass that, in the 6oist year of Noah's life,
in the first month, and in the first day of the month, Noah
removes the covering from the Ark' (viii. 13). This incident
also coincides with a Sabbath, the eighth in number.
" (9) ' And in the 2nd month, on the 27th day of the month,'
the earth being now dried, Noah is commanded ' to go forth of
the Ark/ with his family (viii. 14-16). And so he does, and
396 APPENDIX (D).
offers sacrifices. It is once more, the Sabbath day, the ninth
Sabbath day expressly indicated in the Calendar of the Deluge.
"(10) AVhat precedes can only be fully understood, as well as
verified step by step, by my exhibiting the CALENDAR OF THE
FLOOD somewhat in detail. It follows, having never, that I
am aware, been so exhibited and explained before ;
Day. UND MONTH (Marchesvan 8 ) : 6ooth YEAR OF NOAH'S
LIFE (Gen. vii. n).
*io S After (3 x 40 =) 1 20 years of warning (Gen. vi. 3), [and
a at the end of 40 days (30+ 10) from the beginning of
b the year,] Noah is commanded to enter the Ark. It is
c the loth day of the Hud month. 'Yet seven days/
d and 40 days and nights of rain are threatened (vii. 4).
e
f
*i7 S On the I7th day [which is the 7th Sabbath
from the beginning of the year,] the Week
of Warning having expired, Noali is ' shut
in/ and the Flood begins (vii. n) ist day of
the Flood.
24 s [ist week of the Flood ends] 8th
IIlRD MONTH (Chisleu).
2 s [2nd week ends] I5th
9 s [3rd week] 22nd
1 6 s [4th week] 2pth
23 s [sth week] 36th
27 d The 40 days and nights of rain end (vii. 12,
17). [Note, that omitting the Sabbaths,
this is also the 4oth day since the loth of
Ilnd month, when Noah entered the ark
viz., 6 x 6 = 36 + 4] 4oth
30 s [6th week] 43 r d
8 Note, that the names of the is it to me of any importance whether
months are introduced merely for the year of the Flood began with
the reader's convenience. They do Tisri or with Nisan.
not affect the argument. Neither
APPENDIX (D). 397
IVTH MONTH (Thebet).
1 s [7th week ends] 5oth day.
1 4 s [8th week] 57th -
21 s [9th week] 64th
28 s [roth week] 7ist
YTH MONTH (Sebat).
6 s [nth week ends] 78th
1 3 s [ 1 2th week] 85th
20 s [i3th week] 92nd
275 [i4th week] 99th
YlTH MONTH (Adar).
4 s [i5th week ends] io6th -
1 1 s [ 1 6th week] 1 1 3th
1 8 s I" 1 7th week] i2Oth
253 [i8th week] 12 7th
YIlTH MONTH (Nisan).
3 s [i9th week ends] I34th
10 s [2Oth week] i4ist
*i7 S [2ist (3 x 7) week ends, and] * the Ark rests
upon the mountains of Ararat ' (viii. 4) . . 14 8th
24 s [22nd week] i55th
YIIlTH MONTH (Jyar).
i s [23rd week ends] i62nd
8 s [24th week] i6gtla.
15 s [25th week] I76th
22 s [26th week] i83rd
*29 S [27th week] 150 days (since the 40 days)
end, and * the waters are abated ' (vii. 24 :
viii. 3) ipoth
MONTH (Sivan).
7 s [28th week ends] I97th
143 [29th week] 204th
2 1 s [gotli week] 2 1 ith
28 s [3ist week] 21 8th
398 APPENDIX (D).
XTH MONTH (Thammuz).
i c On the first day of the tenth month ' the
tops of the mountains are seen' (viii. 5). . 22ist day.
5 s [32nd week ends] 225th
12 s [33rd week] 232nd
19 s [34th week] 239^1
26 s [35th week] 246th
X!TH MONTH (Ab).
4 s [36th week ends] 253rd
*u S [37th week] 'At the end of 40 days' from
the ist clay of the Xth month (viz. 29+11),
Noah sends out a raven and a dove
(viii. 6-8) 26oth
*i8 S [38th week] 'Yet other 7 days/ and Noah
sends out the dove (viii. 10) 267th
*25 S [39th week] ' Yet other 7 days,' and Noah
sends out the dove (viii. 12) 274th
XIlTH MONTH (JEM).
2 s [4oth week ends] 28 ist
9 s [4 ist week] 288th-
16 s [42nd week] 295th
23 s [43rd week] 3<D2nd
IST MONTH (Tisri) : 6oisr YEAR OF NOAH'S LIFE (viii. 13).
*i S [44th week ends] ' The face of the ground
is dry/ and 'the covering of the Ark is
removed ' (viii. 13) 309^1
8 s [45th week] 3i6th
155 [46th week] 323rd
22 s [47th week] 33oth
29 s [48th week] 33?th
UND MONTH (Marchesran).
6 s [49th week ends] 344th
13 s [soth week] 35ist -
20 s [5 ist week] 358th
*27 S [52nd week] 'The earth is dried.' Noah
'goes forth of the Ark/ and sacrifices
(viii. 14-16, 1 8, 20) 365th
APPENDIX (D). 399
"(n) Several interesting numerical coincidences will be
observed to result from the foregoing ' CALENDAR OP THE
FLOOD : ' as
(a) That three periods of 40 days have been enumerated :
(6) That it was on the ^th Sabbath in the year that the Flood
began :
(c) That on the I7th day of the yth month, and at the end of
the (3 x 7 = ) 2 ist week, the Ark rested on Ararat:
(d] That from the commencement of the Flood until the day
when Noah left the Ark, was a period of exactly
365 days.
" (12) More to my purpose, however, is the discovery that 53
consecutive weeks are distinctly recognisable in this portion of
the inspired narrative.
"(13) But the only matter of real importance, the one
object I have in bringing forward this ' CALENDAR OF THE
FLOOD,' is to call attention to the undeniable (but hitherto
unsuspected) fact, that it was on the same day of the week that
(i.) Noah and his family entered the Ark :
(n.) The Flood of waters began :
(in.) The Ark rested on the mountains of Ararat :
(iv.) The waters ceased to prevail upon the earth :
(v.) A raven and a dove were sent forth by Noah :
(vi.) The dove was sent forth, and returned in the evening :
(vn.) The dove was again sent forth, but returned no more :
(vin.) The ground was dry, and the covering of the Ark was
removed :
(ix.) Noah and his family came forth of the Ark.
" (14) Not unaware am I that there is a sort of men who will
insist that, after all, it cannot be demonstrated that these nine
identical week-days were Sabbaths. But I do not believe that
any one of fair mind will hesitate to admit that a case has
been at last made out for the Sabbath as a recognised institu-
tion in the days of Noah, which may not be reasonably resisted.
The reader is invited to recall what is offered above in section
(2), and to note the extraordinary corroboration which lias been
subsequently furnished to what was at first proposed as little
400 APPENDIX (D).
more than an hypothesis. Supported from behind by the
primaeval record of Creation, with its emphatic testimony to
the fact that the weekly day of Sabbatical rest was in its origin
Divine : met also in front by the narrative of the typical
Redemption of the human race, into which is carefully woven,
and by the very finger of God, an emphatic republication of the
reason assigned in Genesis for resting on the seventh day, and
for keeping the Sabfaath holy ; we deem it unreasonable (not to
use a stronger expression), that any should refuse to discern in
the ' CALENDAR OF THE FLOOD ' clear evidence that the Sabbath
was recognised in the days of Noah as an already existing
institution. And this must suffice on the subject.
"(15) I took up my pen, in the first instance, solely to ' banish
and drive away ' what seemed to me ' an erroneous and strange
doctrine contrary to GOD'S Word 9 .' It is presumed that on
that former occasion I effectually demolished the wild hypothesis
that it was ' the number of the planetary bodies which settled the
length of the week 1 / (By the way, Is the sun a 'planetary
body ? ' I have always been taught that that is precisely what
the Sun is not !) But on the present occasion I have done
something far better than refute error viz., I have sought to
establish Truth. I have made it my aim to vindicate the plain
teaching of Gen. ii. 2, 3, and of Exod. xx. n, by appealing to
Gen. vii. and viii., in, as I believe, a hitherto unattempted way.
Commentators have indeed discerned in the three periods of
' seven days ' an evidence of the antediluvian observance of the
Sabbath 2 . But I have shown that if there be so many as three
Sabbaths indicated here, then there must be at least nine 3 : and
if nine, then the consecutive Sabbaths will have been in all
fifty -four*.
9 From' The Ordering of Priests' 2 Blunt's 'Undesigned Coinci-
1 Some readers of the 'Guardian' dences,' p. 21. Bishop Wordsworth
may be grateful for a reference to (of Lincoln) on Gen. vii. 4.
Lotz's ' Quaestiones de Historid 3 Cyril of Alexandria makes the
Sabbati' which is full of interesting sending forth of the birds occupy
Babylonish lore on the subject of my four Sabbaths.
former letter. It was published at * I might just as reasonably have
Leipzig in 1883. made the three days of the sending
APPENDIX (E). 401
" ( 1 6) Whether what has been thus offered with reference to
'the Week of eve:i Days' may be accepted as an illustration
of Butler's striking remark concerning the Bible 'nor is it
at all incredible that a book which has been so long in the
possession of mankind, should contain many truths as yet
undiscovered 5 ' other men must determine. Enough for me,
if what I have written shall have the blessed effect of ' confirm-
ing, strengthening, settling ' one doubting heart, one anxious,
wavering spirit. It is impossible to build one another up too
effectually in an absolute and undoubting reliance on that Holy
Word, on which we shall lean our full weight in the hour of
failing nature. So employed may I be permitted to end my
life, as I seek to end this present year !
"JOHN W. BURGON.
"Deanery, Chichester, St. Thomas' Day, 1886."
APPENDIX (E).
EXCERPT from a Sermon preached in Chichester Cathedral
on Sunday, Aug. 5th, 1888, being the day after the death of
the Very Reverend John William Burgon, B.D., Dean of
Chichester, by Richard, Lord Bishop of Chichester.
2 Sam. xiv. 14. "We must needs die, and are as water spilt
on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again."
After touching allusions to other great losses which the Chapter
of Chichester had recently sustained, the Bishop continued thus :
"Again the signs of public and general grief are shown within
these walls, yea, in the very Sanctuary, and this time for the
Dean of this Cathedral Church. We miss in his accustomed
forth of the raven and the dove my The result would obviously have
fixed starting point, and from those been exactly the same,
two consecutive weeks those three 5 ' Analog y] Part II., chap, iii.,
consecutive Sabbaths might have about one- third of the chapter
worked backwards and forwards. from the end.
VOL. II. D d
LIBRARY CT MADVC
402 APPENDIX (E).
place that devout and reverent figure, that earnest and solemn
countenance ; we shall never more behold him in this pulpit
nor hear his voice. This is no place for praise of Christ's
faithful servants; and I should deem it little less than pre-
sumption to use the language of eulogy towards one better than
myself, who, as I firmly believe, lived very near to God, and
devoted himself, body, soul, and spirit to His honour and the
good of His Church. For he was a most faithful and attached
member of that branch of it, which by the signal mercy of God
has been preserved and established in this land. In this
respect, as indeed in the general cast of his religious belief, he
was in perfect harmony with his predecessor Dean Hook, whose
name and services must still be freshly remembered, not only in
this city and diocese, but throughout the Church of England at
home and abroad. I do not compare two men of very different
gifts and qualities, but they agreed in their view of the true
position of the Church of England at once reformed and
Catholic, reformed, as purged from Roman errors and super-
stitions, Catholic as adhering to the faith once delivered to the
saints, and respecting the voice of Primitive Antiquity. Both
held this doctrine, not as a mere matter of opinion, but as a
truth for which, if need had been, they would not have feared
to die.
" There could never be a doubt of Dean Burgon's sincerity.
It was written in his very looks, as it found expression in his
words, his writings, his actions. From the earliest days of his
ministry he gave himself wholly to that great work. He
prepared himself by diligent unwearied study to be a teacher of
others. He had many tastes, nay, accomplishments, which
might have drawn away a less resolute man from his especial
duty ; but he put all aside, and was content to live for this one
end, to draw all his cares to the service of the Lord, to live
laborious days, yes, and to pass laborious nights in this sacred
work.
" No part of his character was more remarkable than his
APPENDIX (E). 403
reverence for the Word of God. He might take to himself
David's saying, and declare with perfect truth, 'Lord, what love
have I to Thy word ; all the day long is my study in it.' Every
jot and tittle of the Scriptures was infinitely precious to him.
He treasured them not as the word of man, but the word of
God, given by a real immediate inspiration, and communicated
to His servants, Prophets, Evangelists, Apostles, each in his own
good time. He delighted in searching out the meaning of the
Word, and pondering it in his heart. He did not disdain such
assistance as could be got from the old Fathers of the Church.
Few men perhaps in our day have so large and profound a
knowledge of the mighty teachers of the earliest Church, or
have more carefully digested their manifold instruction. The
great divines of our own Church he held in especial esteem, and
was well content to sit at their feet. But he was no slave of
commentators, as you must have observed ; he often exercised
an independent judgment ; and whatever may be thought of his
interpretations, they were always fresh and honest. Well, my
dear friends ; the results of his careful study of the Scriptures
he gave to the world in his so-called ' Plain Commentary on
the Gospels,' a work which later commentaries have by no
means superseded. For it is no dry explanation of difficulties,
though, when such exist, the Dean meets them with courage
and fulness ; but is a work which appeals to the heart and
conscience, and embodies, as the text suggests, precious Christian
counsel. In our sister Church of America, I have reason to
know, Dean Burgon's commentary holds a high place in the
esteem of its Bishops and Pastors, and when I lately met many
of these in the great Lambeth Conference, they expressed
with one accord their sense of his services to our honoured
Church and their anxiety on his behalf. His reverence for the
letter and the spirit of Holy Writ, for he held that the spirit
was inseparably bound up with the letter, and that both were
divine, his reverence, I say, led him to vindicate with great
learning, and, as it is confessed, with great ability, the divine
authority of the last verses of the Gospel according to St. Mark.
D d 2
404 APPENDIX (E).
This had been attacked by a school of critics, of whom the
Dean was justly suspicious ; for he feared that they were sub-
verting the authority of the revealed Word, and thus under-
mining the faith of many half-learned persons wise in their own
conceit, and of many simple souls. For this reason he set him-
self to combat the conclusions as to the true text of the New
Testament, which ^he authors of the Revised Version had
adopted. ' I believed, and therefore will I speak,' might be
said of him with perfect truth. It was his burning zeal for the
Word of God which stirred him to come forward as a champion
in a cause, which he thought was being betrayed by those who
should have been its guardians. And this I think cannot be
denied, that his arguments have greatly shaken the theory upon
which the Revised Version is constructed, have in not a few
cases exposed serious defects of omission or translation, and
have retarded, if not completely barred, its general reception by
our Church as supplanting the old Version, the inheritance of
English-speaking people throughout the world, whatever their
creed or Communion.
" But it would be a great injustice to consider Dean Burgon
only or chiefly as a vigorous controversialist, a well-equipped
eager defender of that Faith by which he lived ; not so did he
understand his calling as ' a minister of Christ and steward of
the mysteries of God.' For many years he held the Vicarage of
St. Mary's in Oxford, the principal Church of that City, though
the parish is small. This post had great traditions. Newman,
a name that must ever be famous in the annals of our Church,
first for his services in her cause and then for his desertion of it
preached in the parish pulpit of St. Mary's the sermons which
are known and read far beyond the narrow bounds of this
island. And in the same Church the Dean gathered a congrega-
tion, whom he taught for many years with a faithful and true
heart, and ruled them prudently with all his power. Many of the
discourses which he addressed to his beloved flock he printed
for their benefit, and in these ' being dead he speaketh/ They
are plain, affectionate, and forcible. They reflect the real
APPENDIX (E). 405
character of the preacher, and are durable monuments of his
learning and piety. He was no mere student, no recluse. If I
were asked the quality which as a divine distinguished him, I
should say that he was ' apt to teach,' always ready to pour out
for the instruction of others the full stores which by long toil he
had accumulated. Thus in Oxford he was not content with the
duties of his parish. He attracted to him many youths who
sat at his feet, and learned from him how they might resist the
temptations, which at that critical age, and in that place, un-
happily tried alike their faith and their moral stedfastness. He
taught them the way of life from the Word of life. I have
known many of these his scholars who owned their deep
obligations to him. And perhaps some here present may
remember with gratitude his weekly lessons and expositions of
the Scripture given to a chosen few in this City, and also to the
students of Bishop Otter's College. Never was he happier
than when he found himself in the midst of such disciples,
hearing them, teaching them reverently, and asking them, and
drawing out for their instruction the deep things of Holy
Scripture.
" Perhaps those Oxford years were the happiest of his life.
His college, like a second mother, fed and sheltered and supplied
all that was necessary for his modest wants and even more ; for
he contrived by careful economy always to have to give to the
needy and to suffering. Although a private man, he was a real
power in that great University. He lived in the society of the
wise and the good, in the world, yet free from its cares and
its ambitions, holding stedfastly his own course, and bearing
what he believed in his conscience to be a witness to God's
eternal truth.
" For his trumpet gave no uncertain sound, and on all great
questions as they arose, and there were many, he delivered
himself with courage, as one who was convinced himself and
strove to convince others.
" By God's good Providence he was called to a place and
dignity in the Church, which he had well earned, but never
406 APPENDIX (E).
desired, far less sought ; and so called he obeyed. So you have
all known him, and his constant familiar presence, and his
work among you ; and you have always felt that he was truly a
master in Israel. Yet this profound scholar had a most tender
heart. He wept with those who weep, as he rejoiced with those
who joy. His love for children was always showing itself in
little gifts, words of kindness, and sweet caresses ; and those
who were admitted to his intimacy knew the depth and sincerity
of his feelings. None of us, be sure, will look upon his like
again, nor perhaps in many respects on his equal. And then, in
our sorrow that such a man is taken from us there is danger
that we may forget that God's ways are not our ways, nor His
thoughts our thoughts. He removes from their place those
whom we deemed the pillars of His Church, necessary for its
strength, its defence, its support, as though to show that such
judgment is not for us, that He needs no man's abilities, or
zeal, or courage. Yet His servant had passed the appointed
age of man ; he had not done the work of the Lord negligently ;
he had improved the talents that were lent him ; his good works
follow him. His name will be honoured by this and by other
generations, and when unworthy detraction shall have been long
silenced, the learned defender of the faith as it is in Jesus, the
thoughtful expositor and interpreter of God's Word, the jealous
assertor of the literal authority of Holy Writ, will be remem-
bered.
" Friends and Brethren, it is our comfort that God has devised
means that His banished should not be expelled from Him.
Surely His faithful servants, though lost awhile to our sight,
are with Him, through the merits of His blessed Son, enjoying
a rest which shall not be broken, a peace that shall no more be
troubled. They are lost to our sight, but not to our thought.
Still we behold them in mystery kneeling at our side. Still we
have true communion and fellowship with them in the mystical
body of our Lord Jesus Christ."
APPENDIX (F). 407
APPENDIX (F).
[The Notes on this Sermon are by the Author.^
Short Sermon by the late Very Rev. /. W. Burgon, B.D., Dean
of Chichester.
THE STATE OF THE FAITHFUL DEPARTED.
En IJara&isc. St. Luke xxiii. 43.
" THERE is no denying that the things after death are shrouded
in mystery, difficulty, wonder. The very revelations made to us
in Scripture concerning the Intermediate state by which name
we speak of the long interval between our death, and our
resurrection are themselves in a high degree perplexing. But
it is by no means fair to represent this subject as shrouded in
impenetrable darkness. As much as it is good for us to know
concerning what will befall us after death has been sufficiently
revealed. Precious hints abound, which are calculated either to
comfort the heart or else to stimulate the imagination ; to assist
the reason, or, at least, to minister food for faith and hope to
feed upon.
" i. And, first, the terms employed when ' death' is spoken of
in Scripture are eminently helpful and consoling. Our Saviour
calls it ' sleep ' in the parable of the wise and foolish virgins (St.
Matt. xxv. 5-7), and again in the case of Lazarus, His friend
(St. John xi. 11-14). His design is clearly to remind men of
the comfort of rest after labour; of the strength and refreshment
which sleep brings to the weary ; above all, of the solemn
certainty that there is to be a waking up in the end, which, in
the case of the departed saint, will be nothing else but a resur-
rection to eternal life. Elsewhere He speaks of it as a fainting
or failing at the end of a race. 'When ye fail 6 / He says (St.
6 "Orav tK\iirr]Te. In hia Plain of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob ; of
Commentary on this verse of St. Abraham [Gen. xxv. 8], Kcu lAet-
Luke, Burgon points out that this TTOJV airtOavev 'A@paa.fj. ev yrjpa KO.\O>;
word, in the Septuagint or Greek of Isaac [xxxv. 29], Kcu fKXf'nraiv
Version, is used to denote the end 'laaaK direOave ; finally of Jacob
408 APPENDIX (F).
Luke xvi. 9) ; whereby He hints that death is but the momentary
failing of the powers of nature to be speedily recovered from,
when the race will proceed with vigour. But His tenderest
image is employed with reference to the disciple He loved best.
' If I will that he tarry till I come 1 ' (St. John xxi. 22) ; which
shows that, in His account, the death of a saint is not so much
his going to Christ as Christ coming to him ; the gentlest thing
imaginable, and wholly without admixture of alarm.
" Where St. Paul says that it is better ' to depart and be with
Christ ' (Phil. i. 23), he uses a word which implies the weighing
of the anchor, and the loosening from the shore, in the case of
one who has to go a voyage. What need to remind you that
this also is an image of bliss, if the journey be to some congenial
clime, or destined to convey the voyager to the home of his heart's
affections, and to the forms and faces of those he has been
sundered from all too long ? But * to depart and ' (in some
mysterious way) ' to be with Christ/ Oh ! that must be a
blessedness for which the tongue of man can find no adequate
expression !
" Then, further, in a certain place our Saviour even says, ' He
that liveth and believeth in Me shall never die " (St. John xi.
[xlix. 33], where the verb (tc\(tirca peace." But while "the coming"
stands alone with out the airoQvrioKoj, will no doubt embrace the natural
Kal tapas roi/s TroSa? avrov etrl TTJV death of St. John, and indeed of
K\ivr)v, ft\nrf. Thus, to the ears of every other believer, it may be
the Apostles who were familiar with questioned whether it can be re-
the Septuagint Version, the word stricted to this meaning, whether
would ' ' imply a peaceful and happy the destruction of Jerusalem, the
end." granting to St. John of the Apoca-
7 Burgon, with his friend Bp. Ivpse, and the Second Advent at
Christopher Wordsworth [" Greek the end of the world, are not corn-
Testament with Notes " in loc.~] takes prised under it, as well as the taking
Augustine's view [Serm. ccliii] of of individual saints one by one to
the meaning of " the coming " in this their rest, The prophetic words of
passage ; " If I will that he should the Divine Master are wonderfully
not follow Me, as thou wilt, by comprehensive, and fulfil themselves
martyrdom on the cross, but that he in various ways, as the scheme of
should tarry for a placid consum- God's Providence is gradually un-
mation, and wait in expectation till rolled.
I come to take him to Myself in
APPENDIX (F). 409
26) ; by which saying He clearly abolishes death entirely,
refuses to acknowledge it, will only regard it as an incident in
life.
" So much for the language employed concerning ' death ' in
Scripture. It is reassuring, comfortable, helpful in a high
degree.
" 2. Next, there are not a few revelations made to us of what
will befall us immediately after our departure hence. And,
first, we are assured that no sooner have the eyes been closed to
the affairs of this life, than the other life without pause or
interruption of any kind begins ; begins by a carrying away of
the departed saint to the place where Abraham, the father of the
faithful, is (St. Luke xvi. 22). Unaided reason might have
divined as much. Angels minister to God's people in their
lifetime. 'Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to
minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation? ' (Heb. i. 14).
And is it credible that their good offices shall suddenly come to
an end, when the need thereof is most urgently felt 1 How shall
the disembodied spirit find its way to the bowers of bliss with-
out a friendly guide ? . . . But the circumstance is by our
Saviour made the subject of distinct revelation. The departed
saint (He assures us) is at once ' carried by the angels ' by a
company of them, as it would seem 8 'into Abraham's bosom'
(St. Luke xvi. 23).
" 3. From the same discourse we obtain a clear intimation that
there will be Recognition in the place whither the departed one
will be conducted by his heavenly guides. For Abraham is at
once seen, recognised, parleyed with ; and Lazarus is also seen,
seen 'in his bosom' (St. Luke xvi. 23), and known to be
Lazarus. I am inclined to infer from this that we shall carry
out of this world a recognisable form ; not parting with the
semblance of humanity, though the fleshy garment has been laid
up in the wardrobe of the grave, laid up against the Eesurrec-
8 In Burgon's ' Plain Commen- licked his sores : to-day, ' not one
tary ' on this verse [in loc.] he says, angel carries him, but many; for
quoting from Isaac Williams and many are eager to bear': 'each re-
frona Ludolphus ; " Yesterday, dogs joicing to touch such a burthen.' "
410 APPENDIX (F).
tion morning. We gather as much from the recognition of
Moses and Elijah by the three disciples on the Mount of
Transfiguration (St. Matt. xvii. 3). We infer as much from
the appearing of Samuel to Saul and the witch of Endor (i Sam.
xxviii. 14). But, in fact, reason cries aloud that so it must
needs be. When Abraham, when Isaac, and when Jacob ' gave
up the ghost and were buried,' it is significantly added that
' they were gathered to their people ' (Gen. xxv. 8, xxxv. 29,
xlix. 33). Of what avail would that be, if it were not thereby
implied that they were severally restored consciously restored
to the society of their lost kindred ? Abraham to his Sarah,
Isaac to his Rebecca, Jacob to his beloved Rachel 1
11 4. It may be confidently gathered from the same discourse of
our Lord, that we shall carry with us out of this world recollec-
tions of it ; that solicitude concerning home and kindred will go
along with us. The fundamental truth, in fact, which is
observed to underlie the whole parable (and it may not be for-
gotten that our Lord is the speaker !) is, that the departed carry
with them out of this world human loves, fears, hopes, desires.
The rich man in the place of pain is solemnly invited by
Abraham to call to remembrance what, during his life time, had
been the relative estate of himself and of Lazarus. (' Son,
remember/) And thus our Lord's discourse helps wonderfully
to set before us the solemn truth that this life is but the
beginning of the next ; the next life but the continuation of
the present. No such change, as some seem inclined to imagine,
will come over the complexion of our thoughts and over the
dispositions of our hearts. Doubtless the eyes will be opened
wide to the great realities of our being, but there is no hint
anywhere given that we shall become changed in character,
temperament, disposition, by the fact that we have been
translated. The passionate love, and the strong desire for
husband, wife, child, depend upon it, will go on : sublimed, it
may be, into the voice of a passionate prayer : but, even in that
altered shape, it will still subsist. Of course the tear will be
effectually wiped away, and the sigh will be unknown, in the
bovvers of bliss : the wounds, too, which cruelty or injustice
APPENDIX (F). 411
inflicted, cannot possibly go on smarting there. But the memory
that such things have been, will probably never pass away ; and
(as already suggested) solicitude concerning others will abide
with us, until those persons also shall have been gathered into
the unseen world, and be themselves eternally at rest.
" 5. There is a blissful region, there, a place of refreshment and
consolation, where all God's accepted ones who have departed
this life are already congregated together. Our Saviour calls
it ' Paradise/ implying thereby the recovery procured for our
race, in and through and by Himself, ' the second Man,' of that
state of entire felicity and lofty privilege from which our first
parents by transgression fell. On reaching that blessed region
(the whereabouts of \vhich it is impossible even to conjecture
reasonably), the departed saint finds himself surrounded by
thousands of congenial natures, and by them is eagerly accosted,
lovingly welcomed, led about with joy unspeakable. Oh, but it
needs the tongue of angels to image forth to one another the
very smallest portion of such mysterious blessedness as that I
For there must of necessity be all the holy ones who have ever
lived and died, in all but perfect bliss : 'the glorious company
of the Apostles, the goodly fellowship of the Prophets, the noble
army of Martyrs/ the four Evangelists (oh, to embrace their
feet and ask them a thousand questions !), yes, all the Saints
and Doctors of the Church, from the beginning until yesterday !
" 6. Now, familiar intercourse with blessed spirits such as
these implies a scarcely imaginable weight of bliss we are not to
forget the evidences of God's goodness, wisdom, power, love, to
be again and again elicited from their converse ; the removal of
unnumbered grounds of perplexity, and the springing up in
their place of fresh motives for love, and admiration, and
desire. Surely also, we are to picture to ourselves in Paradise
a species of polity, heavenly, not earthly iii its character and
attributes, yet in the strictest sense, human, social, and active,
and happy in all its manifold relations, as being of the very
essence of that ' Intermediate State ' of which we speak. I
assume this as certain, and from such considerations as the
following : (i) That, as already pointed out, men's and women's
412 APPENDIX (F).
natures cannot become essentially and entirely changed by
departing out of this world, but must still have objects of love
and desire. (2) That the population of Paradise must already
be excessive ; and that, where myriads of intelligent human
beings are congregated together, there must needs be order and
subordination, times and places of worship ; worship sublimed
to any extent you will, but still worship. (3) Occupations too
there will surely be in that thickly peopled world, though
exertion will bring no weariness ; and there will be no further
regrets, no such thing as disappointment, or sorrow, or unrest.
But the passionate prayer will go up like a fountain for every
human tie it left behind. And who can tell the power and
efficacy of the prayers of accepted spirits within the veil, prayers
poured forth in the very presence of the Almighty with un-
tiring earnestness, night and day ; while angels are standing by,
eager to receive their Creator's mandate to minister for any, the
very least, of the heirs of Salvation ?
" (7) I have said nothing yet of the rapture which will attend
the inevitable restoration of every lost tie, even on the very
threshold of ' Paradise ' ; restoration of all that the heart has ever
asked for, without the possibility of further severance, further
change. But the subject claimed earlier notice, for this will
probably be the characteristic blessedness of the wondrous place
whereof we speak ! . . . . Add to every other source of rapture
and of wonder the sense of God's nearness, the partial coming
into view of His attributes of glory, and verily the cup of human
joy must altogether flow over. For there will be the certainty,
and at no very distant day, of perfect bliss and glory above that
of the holy angels themselves, to result upon the redemption of
the body from the power of the grave, at the last day.
" (8) Surely no one will complain that such thoughts are
lacking in personal application and practical use. It seems to
me quite impossible, even in thought, to place oneself within the
veil without deriving some practical benefit from the effort. To
say that sin straightway hides its hideous form, that unholy
desires go out ashamed, that unlovely dispositions slink away
abashed to say all this and more, is not to say much. Surely
APPENDIX (F). 413
sorrow straightway lays down half her burthen, and suffering
goodness is made to feel more strong. Surely, every holy
aspiration becomes hereby encouraged, and faith becomes
sensibly confirmed. Surely, instead of cultivating avaricious,
or ambitious, or any other form of grovelling desire, we all
feel ourselves stirred up to strive to win for ourselves an
imperishable crown ! And then there spriogs up a deep, deep
sense of confidence in the unspeakable goodness, mysterious
wisdom, boundless power of Him with whom we have to do.
We feel as children may be supposed to feel, who have been led
for once into an unknown region where all is awe and wonder,
yet where all is love and promise ; and we cling to the strong
hand which is guiding us, with a sense of need, insufficiency,
confidence, which finds no words. ' Leave me not, neither
forsake me, O God of my salvation/ Lord, when my turn
comes to depart hence in peace, Thou wilt be faithful and true
(wilt Thou not ?) to those I shall leave behind ! Lord, Thou
wilt suffer me wilt Thou not? to meet again, and to dwell for
ever with, those whom Thy love once gave me : the loved parents,
the authors of my being the husband, the wife of my youth
the children of many prayers the friends who made the hap-
piness of my life ? Lord, I commit them all with undoubting,
unswerving confidence to Thee ! ' Lord, into Thy hands I com-
mend my spirit.' "
INDEX.
ABB
ABBOTSFORD, i. 79.
Abou Simbel, Burgon copies in-
scription in temple at, i. 304, 305.
Accommodation, doctrine of, i. 198,
269.
Acres, Mr., i. 131.
Acts of the Apostles, Lectures on, i.
95 ; " l6 -
^Eschylus compared with Shak-
speare, i.. 137.
Ainsworth's Annotations, ii. 102
and n.
'Alderman's Numismatic Journal'
Articles in, i. 10, 16.
Allen (the Quaker), i. 105.
Allies, Mr.,i. 186, 193.
American Clergyman interviews
Burgon, ii. 121, 122.
Amusements, over-indulgence in,
by Clergy, ii. 330.
Andrieu, Bertrand (Art. on\ i. 71.
' Anthologia Oxonienais' i. 129.
Antiquities, Burgon sketches his
father's collection of, i. 95, 96.
Anziani, Dr., ii. 84.
' Apostles, The Church of the,' pro-
jected, i. 94.
Archer, Dr. Thos. (Art. on), i. 72.
Armstrong, Bishop, i. 201.
Art, with reference to University
Studies, i. 127.
Ashworth, Mrs., ii. 313.
Assaad a Khayat, i. 333, 337.
Athanasian. See Creed.
Atlay, Bishop, ii. 38 n.
Aubrey, Dr. William (Art. on), i. 72.
avrdpfcfia occurs only twice in N. T.,
ii. 332.
Author, letters and communications
BIK
to, i. 164, 233; ii. ii n., 347?.,
44, 110-112, 115, 121, 125, 126,
132, 144, 163, 194, 275, 276, 279,
286, 297, 299, 302, 309, 311, 312,
339. 347, 353-
Awdry, Canon, ii. 304 ; letters to
author, ii. 125, 126.
B.
Babbage, Mr., i. 272.
Bacon's ' Advancement of Learn-
ing,' quoted, i. 263.
Baldwin, Mrs., i. 6, 7.
Balston, Archdeacon, ii. 186 n.
Bandinel, Dr., i. 60.
Barrow, Dr., i. 256.
Barton, Bernard, i. 69 and n.
Bayley, Captain and Mrs., i. 294,
298, 301, 312.
Beauchamp, Earl (the late), ii. 57.
Beds, Glossary of Words in County,
i. 214; ii. 349, 381-386.
Bennett, Prebendary, ii. 304.
Benson, Father, ii. 304.
Berkeley, Dr., i. 334.
Berriman's ' Critical Dissertation
upon i Tim. iii. 16,' ii. 233 and n.
Bible Classes, Sunday Evening, for
Undergraduates at Oxford, i. 260 ;
ii. 100-107; for ladies, ii. 116,
117; at Chichester for ladies, ii.
319-323 ; at Otter College, ii.
38, 323-327-
Bickersteth, Mrs. Samuel, ii. 290 ;
letter to author, ii. 115. See
Letters.
Biography, truth as to faults in, ii.
357, 358-
Birch, ii. 207.
BLA
416
BUR
Blachford, Lord, i. 62 ; ii. 21.
Bliss, Dr., i. 60, 61.
] '.] >infield, Bishop, i. 98.
f Jlliaifx Undesigned Coincidences,'
ii. 100.
Blunt, Professor, ii. 9 w.
Bodleian Picture Gallery, i. 115.
Booth, Mr., i. 31.
Bower, Mr. Henry, i. 86.
Brarrdey, H. R., ii. 79 n.
Brancker, Mr., i. 60, 120, 123.
Bran dram. Rev. T. P., letter to
author, ii. 347.
Bright, Rev. Canon, ii. 73.
Bright, John, ii. 217 //.
Brondsted, Chevalier, i. 37 n., 38
and H,, 40, 51.
Brook, Rev. Arthur, ii. 119.
Broomer family, i. 2.
Brougham, Lord, i. 176.
Browell, Mr., i. 64.
Bruce, John, i. 47.
Bucklnnd, Rev. Dr., i. 62, 64, 265.
Buckle, Henry, i. 334.
Bull, Bishop, i. 159, 272.
Burgon,Emily Mary, death, ii. 48, 49.
Burgon, John, researches into his
pedigree, i. i, 2 ; signification of
name, i. 2 ; birth and parentage,
i. 8 and n. ; family-tree, i. 8 . ;
taste for archaeology, i. 10 ; talent
for drawing, i. 17, 21 ; school-life
at Putney, i. 18 ; at Blackheath, i.
18, 19 ;. confirmation, i. 20; de-
sire to take Holy Orders, i. 22 ;
goes into bis father's counting-
house, i. 22 ; gets a prize at the
London University, i. 23 ; society
at his father's, i. 24-31 ; inter-
course with Samuel Rogers, i. 25 ;
trip to Notts, and Derbyshire, i.
31 ; early friendships, i. 31-40 ;
wins the Lord Mayor's Prize for
essay on Sir Thomas Gresham, i.
36, 59 ; visits Stratford-on-Avon,
i. 43 ; sleeps in Shakspeare's
house, i. 43 ; special study of
and notes on Shakspeare, i. 44-
50 ; ii. 378-381 ; correspond-
ence with Mr. Hunter on spelling
of Shakspeare's name, i. 46-50 ;
journal of his sister Kitty's illness
and death, i. 54-59 visits Oxford,
i. 60-65, and Cambridge, i. 60 n. ;
first literary earn i ngs, i. 6^ ; visits
Norfolk, i. 66-69 ; tour in Scot-
land, i. 73-79 ; distaste for busi-
ness, i. 80 ; his father's failure, i.
90-93 ; draws his father's collec-
tion of Greek antiquities before
their sale to the British Museum,
i. 95 ; goes to Oxford, i. 114; to
Worcester College, i. 116-121;
interview with Dr. Pusey, i. 116,
117; matriculates, i. 120; visit
to Newman, i. 123; wins the
Newdigate Prize, i. 125 ; takes
B.A. degree, i. 125, and M.A. i.
125 n. ; takes a Second Class, i.
126; Fellow of Oriel, i. 131;
draws frontispiece for 'Anthologia
Qxomenris'l. 129; gains Ellerton
Theological Essay Prize, i. 131 ;
connection with the Oxford Move-
ment, i. 134, 135 ; grief at New-
man's secession, i. 135 ; sub-
librarian of his College, i. 143 ;
feelings before Ordination, i. 155,
156; ordained Deacon, i. 162;
his first sermon, i. 162 ; curacy
at West Ilsley, i. 163, 181, 182 ;
ordained Priest, i. 163, 209; his
love for his flock, i. 164, 165 ; first
extempore sermon, i. 166, 167 ;
curacy at Worton, i. 167; at Fin-
mere, i. 168-172; first sermon
before the University, i. 174, 175,
197; votes for Gladstone, i. 177,
204, 211 ; withdraws from E.C.U.
i. 179 ; maintains doctrine of
baptismal regeneration, attacked
by Mr. Gorham, i. 179 ; called
a ' primitive Tractarian,' i.
179; his first baptism, i. 182;
his mother's death and burial,
i. 228-233 ; his father's death,
i. 244 - 246 ; Select Preacher,
i. 258 ; his sermons on Inspira-
tion and Interpretation, i. 261-
274 ; effect on his hearers, i. 275-
279; chaplain at Rome for three
months, i. 253, 292 ; tour in Egypt
and the Holy Land, i. 292-336 ;
illness at Jerusalem, i. 294, 331 ;
considers his illness a chastise-
ment for leaving his work at Ox-
BUR
417
BUR
ford, i. 338 ; Vicar of St. Mary's, I
Oxford, ii. i ; refuses the Prin-
cipalship of Exeter Theological
College, ii. 14; votes for Glad-
stone, but will not join his Com-
mittee, ii. 14, 15 ; removes his
sister Kitty's body to Holywell
Cemetery, ii. 22-25; appointed
Gresham Professor, ii. 26 ; anec-
dotes illustrating his impatience
in argument, ii. 28 n. ; sends a
letter to undergraduates against
Sunday entertainments, ii. 33 ;
his acquaintance with each indi-
vidual parishioner, ii. 34 ; protests
against Disestablishment of Irish
Church, ii. 35 ; protests ngainst
Dr. Temple's consecration, ii. 36-
39 ; admiration for Bishop Tem-
ple's character, i. 149, 150 ; ii.
42 ; takes part in the debate on
Keble College, ii. 43 ; candidate
for Professorship of Exegesis, ii.
44 : protests against an Unitarian
being one of the Revisers, ii. 45 n.,
64, 65 ; his sister Emily's death,
ii. 48, 49 ; takes his B.I), degree,
ii. 49, 50 ; visit to Paris, ii. 58,
and to Florence, ii. 58 ; adopts
New Lectionary in obedience to
authority, ii. 60 ; his brother's
death, ii. 63, 64; protests against
Dean Stanley being Select
Preacher, ii. 78, 79 ; -offered the
Deanery of Chichester, ii. 91,92;
his reasons for accepting it, ii. 92,
93 ; account of him as Vicar, ii.
99, 100 ; in intercourse with un-
dergraduates, ii. 100 ; Bible read-
ings with undergraduates, as
Parish Priest, ii. 1 10-1 14 ; classes
for young ladies, ii. 114-119;
fondness for animals, ii. 119 ;
courtesy to undergraduate guests,
ii. 1 20 ; sensibility, ii. 121 ; claims
made on him, ii. 121, 122 ; in-
stalled Dean of Chichester, ii.
123 ; visits Norwich, ii. 123, 127-
130; anecdote of conjurer, ii. 127,
128; refuses testimonial, ii. 134,
135 ; placed on Universities Com-
mission butopposed in Parliament,
ii. 136-139 ; consults Dean Meri-
vale as to whether clergy may assist
in a second celebration without
again communicating, ii. 140, 141 ;
protest about Oxford lodging-
houses, ii. 141-143 ; disappoint-
ment as to Divinity Professor-hip,
ii. 156, 157; not fitted to work with
equals, or to be a leader, ii. 163 ;
withdraws from Convocation, ii.
192, 193 ; Bible-classes at Chi-
chester, ii. 239, 240 ; in his study,
ii. 273 ; last illness, ii. 290-302 ;
gees to Folkestone, ii. 295, 296 ;
last hours, ii. 299-302 ; funeral
sermon by Bishop, ii. 303 ; burial,
ii. 304 ; personal reminiscences of
him, in his love for children, ii.
309 ; his Bible-classes, ii. 308-
323 ; his interest in Ordination
candidates, and advice to them,
ii- 3 2 7-334; memorials to him,
ii. 334-340 ; mention in speech of
Public Orator, ii. 339 ; his cha-
racter, intellectual, moral, and
spiritual, ii. 341-377.
- Works of
' Aker man's Numismatic Jour-
nal,' contributions to, i. 10 n.
' Gentleman s Magazine? contri-
butions to, i. ii n.
' Life and Times of Sir Thomas
Grexham,' i. 23, 66.
' Mt moire sur les Vases Pana-
tfona'iques' (transl.), i 37, 38.
'Memoir of P, F. Tytler? i. 42.
Articles on Bertrand Andrieu,
Dr. T. Archer, and Dr. William
Aubrey, in ' Neiu Biog. Diet.,'
i. 7L72.
' Harmony of the Gospels,'' i. 112,
172.
Newdigate Prize Poem, ' Pdra?
i. 125, 145 ; ii. 345.
' Remarks on Art with regard to
Unirertiti/ Studies,' i. 127.
Ellerton Prize Essay on ' The
Importance of Translation of
the Holy Scriptures? i. 131.
' Letter to Parishioners of Fin-
mere,' and 'Manual of Prayers,'
i. 171.
' Commentary on the Gospels, 1 i.
173, 201, 237; ii. 95 .
VOL. II.
E e
BUR
418
BUR
* Glossary of Hertfordshire Words'
i. 214 ; ii. 349.
' Xineti/ Short Sermons for
Family Reading, 1 i. 234; ii.
95-
' Oxford Reformers, 1 i. 226.
History of our Lord in coloured
engravings, i. 237.
' Historical Notices of the Colleges
of Oxford, 1 i. 237, 239-242,
286, 289.
' Letters from Rome 1 i. 253, 342.
' Last Twelve Verses of S. Mark,'
i. 257; ii. 50, 53-56, 58, 95,
214. See S. Mark.
' Christian Inscriptions in the
1'ntacombs? &c., i. 257.
' Inspiration and Interpretation, 1
i. 260-272, 304, 309,
1 Treatise on the Pastoral Office, 1
ii. 6, 8-13.
' Expository Lectures on Genesis '
(unfinished), ii. 15, 16.
* Lectures on the Acts of the
Apostles 1 (unpublished)/!. 95;
ii. 1 6.
' The University Sermon and
College Services,' ii. 20.
' Mr. Sandford and the Univer-
sity Sermon,' ii. 20 /;.
' Mr. Kitchin, Mr. Sandford, and
tin- University Sermon,' ft. 20 n.
1 The Oxford Sunday, 1 ii. 20.
' Lambeth Conference and the En-
cyclical,' ii. 25.
* Disestablishment : the nation's
formal rejection of God,' ii. 26,
35-
* Plea for a Fifth Final School,'
ii. 29, 90.
'Plea for the Study of Divinity
in Oxford,' 1 ii. 32, 90.
' Protests of the Bishops against
the Consecration of Dr. Tem-
ple,' ii. 36, 37.
* Dr. Temple's Explanation ex-
amined,' ii. 37.
' Review of a Year' ii. 45, 46.
' Woman's Place,' ii. 46, 47.
* An Unitarian Reviser of our
A. V. intolerable,' ii. 64.
* Earnest Remonstrance and Pe-
tition to Bishop Ellicott? ii. 67.
' The Athanfisian Creed to be re-
tained in its integrity] Sfc , ii.
75-
True Principles of Textual Cri-
ticism of N. T.' (not finished ,
ii. 82, 83, 277, 278.
' .!/>'. Evangelia in Foreign Li-
braries? 11.84, 198, 231.
' Oxford Diocesan Confer enc ;
and Romanizing icithin the
Church of Kn-ilund' ii. 84.
' Chichester Cathedral; sugges-
tions to Commissioners' i. 124.
' Home Mission* ami Sensational
Religion? ii. 130.
1 Humility ad Clcrum,' ii. 131.
' Our Present Lodging-house
System? Sfc., ii. 141.
' The New Lectionary examined?
Ac. (third paper by Burgon), ii.
151.
'The Servants of Scripture? ii.
158.
c Nehemiah, a Pattern to Build-
ers? ii. 161.
' Typical Structure of Holy Writ,'
ii. 166.
' Our Saviour's knowledge of the
day of judgment,' \\. 171.
'Prophecy not Forecast? ii. 174
and n.
' Disestablishment of Religion in
Oxford? $c., ii. 184.
' Divergent Ritual? 8fc., ii. 187.
' Letter of Friendly Remon-
strance to Canon Gregory? ii.
189-191, 195.
'Sacred Greek Codices,' Sfc., ii.
198.
' Revision Revised? ii. 209.
' To educate Young Women tvith
Young Men, inexpedient? <Sfc.,
" 235.
' Poems,' ii. 241. See also Poems.
' Articles on the Mosaic Cosmog-
ony; reply to Professor Pritch-
ard,' ii. 246, 268, 270.
'Structure and Method of the
Prayer Book? ii. 250, 251.
The New Reformation,' $c. y ii.
272.
' Lives of Twelve Good Men.' See
under Twelve.
BUR
419
COT
Burgon, Katherine Margaret, death,
i- 2 4> 54-5 8 ; " 22-25, 337-
Mrs. (mother), i. 8 and n. ; last
illness and death, i. 228, 230-
233, 286 ; ii. 23, 337.
pedigree, i. 8 n.
Thomas, i. 8 and ^.-15, 51 n. ;
death, i. 246; ii. 23, 337.
Thomas Charles, death, ii. 63,
64, 337-
Burrows, Mr. Henry, i. 64.
Montagu, ii. 79 /?.
Burton, Dr., i. 62.
Cairns, Lord, ii. 243.
Carter, Rev. W. S., letter to author,
ii. 276.
Catherwood, Frederick, i. 24.
Ceriani, Dr., ii. 58 n., 84, 232.
Chalmers, Dr., i. 98.
Chan trey, i. 30 and n.
Chaplin, Mr., i. 331.
Charles Edward, Prince, i. 75.
Chase, Rev. Dr., i. 310, 343; ii. 2,
106, 178, 182 and n., 304.
Chequers, visit to, i. 72.
Chichester, Classes at. See Bible
Classes.
Chichester, Burgon offered the
Deanery of, ii. 91 ; reasons for
accepting, ii. 92, 93 ; article in
the American 'Churchman' on
his appointment, ii. 94 ; instal-
lation, ii. 123 ; misunderstand-
ing with canons of, ii. 124127.
Bishop of. See Durnford.
Cathedral, dedication of memorial
window in, ii. 334. See Memorials.
New statutes to be drawn up
for, ii. 226.
' Sugo-estions to Cathedral
Commissioners,' ii. 124.
Children, Burgon's love for, i. 43,
169; ii. 309, 352, 353.
Chretien, Mr., i. 214 n., 215 n.
Christopher, Mr.,ii. 20.
Church teaching, importance of, i.
210 n.
Church, Dean, ii. 1 86 n. ; letter to
author, ii. 194.
Churton, Archdeacon, i. 251, ii. gn.,
7-
Clark, Archdeacon, ii. 220 n.
F. le Gros, ii. 219, 229.
Claughton, Bishop, ii. 38 n.
Clergy, laxity of, i. 149.
Clough, Mr., i. 64.
Cockerell, C. R.,i. 14-17, 24.
Codex B., Vatican MS., i. 256, 257.
N, Sinaitic MS., i. 257.
Codices, Sacred Greek, ii. 198.
Coins, current, of England, Art. on,
i. 16.
Colenso, Bishop, i. 260 ; ii. 95, 270.
Collett, Rev. E., letter to author, ii.
3", 312.
Colossians ii. 15, reading of, i. 269 n.
Combe, Mr. Taylor, i. 14.
Commentary, Plain, i. 173, 201,
220-224, 237; ii. 95.
Commission, Royal, of inquiry with
regard to the Universities, i. 175.
Commissioners for the Universities
Act, Burgon placed on Oxford
list ; opposition in both Houses,
consents to withdraw, ii. 136-139,
144, 149.
' Common- Room, Common-Places,'
Burgon's answer to, i. 225, 226.
Communion, fasting, ii. 85-87.
Holy, Clergy assisting in,without
communicating. See Merivale.
weekly, petition for, from under-
graduates, ii. 1 8.
Compton, Lord Alwyne, ii. 153,
1 86 n.
Conference, Diocesan, at St. Leon-
ard's, ii. 276.
Confession, enforced auricular, ii.
87 ; Bp. S. Wilberforce on, ii. 87 ;
discussion in Convocation on, ii.
QQ
OO.
Confirmation Classes at Ilsley, i.
170; Worton, i. 195; Finmere,
i. 202 ; Oxford, ii. 116.
Contentment, of Christian growth,
no classical word for, ii. 333.
Convocation, Burgon in, ii. 193, 194;
withdraws from, ii. 192 ; why he
had no following there, ii. 163,
192-195.
Cook, Canon, ii. 56, 211.
Copeland, William Taylor, i. 51.
Corrie, Rev. Dr., i. 91 ; ii. 160.
Cotton } Bishop, ii. 77.
E e 2,
COT
420
EVI
Cotton, Rev. Dr., i. 118, 119.
Cowie, Dean, ii. 186 n.
( 'owper (Poet), i. 39, 40.
Cox, G. V., Recollections of Oxford,
i. 176, 212, J5<).
( 'oxe, Bishop Cleveland, i. 238;
ii. 2,98, 304.
- Rev. H. O., i. 258.
Cozza-Luzi, Abbate, ii. 207, 232.
Cramer family, i. 2 ; Catherine Mar-
guerite de, see Burgon, Mrs. ;
Chevalier de ; i. 3 ; his defence of
S. Polycarp's church at Smyrna,
i. 4; ii. 272.
Isaac, i. 3, 4.
Cranbrook, Viscount, ii. 15, 137,
138, 139, 174, 186 ., 195 n., 206,
207. Lines on Burgon, ii. 305, 306.
See Letters.
Creation, six ordinary days of, in
Burgon's view, ii. 248 ; corres-
pondence with Mr. Arrowsmith,
ii. 253. See also Genesis.
Creed, Athanasian, Burgon's two
Sermons on, ii. 75 7^ > Bishop
Cotton on, ii. 77 ; Divinity Pro-
fessors at Oxford on,ii. 73 and n. ;
Dr. Pusey on, ii. 73 ; Bp. Thirl-
wall's speech in Convocation on,
ii. 72-74 ; Bp. S. Wilberforce on,
ii. 73 ; Bp. Christopher Words-
worth on, ii. 73.
Criticism of the N. T., Introduction
to, by Dr. Scrivener, ii. 218.
Textual, of N. T., Burgon's work
on,ii. 126, 218, 274, 277, 300, 301,
302 ; four periods in, ii. 211.
Crosse, Canon, ii. 126, 197, 207.
Letters.
Mrs., ii. 208 ; letters to author,
ii. 275, 297, 302,309.
Oust, Dean, ii. 186 n.
D.
Dale, Mr., i. 97, 98.
Daman, Charles, i. 127.
Darby, Mr., i. 309.
Darwin, Dr. Erasmus, i. 88 and n.
Sir Francis Sacheverell, i. 88, 89.
Days, meaning of in Gen. i., ii. 253 ;
week of seven, ii. 266-269, 391-
400.
Deane, Rev. Henry, i. 259, 260 ;
ii. 130, 163 ; letters to author, ii.
ii n., 34 n. ; to Miss Rose, ii. 352.
Deborah, sermon on, ii. 158, 159.
Delphi, oracle at, i. 148 and n.
Deluge, narrative of. See Genesis.
Denison, Archdeacon, i. 178, 212.
Derby, Earl of (the late), i. 177,
207 ; ii. 35.
'ablishment of Religion in
Oxford? ii. 178 n., 184, 209.
Disestablishment of Irish Church,
Sermons on, ii. 26 n. ; the late
Lord Derby on, ii. 35.
Disraeli, Mr., ii. 91, 95.
Divinity, the study of, in Oxford,
ii. 32, 90.
Dix, Dr. Morgan, ii. 238.
Dodsworth, Mr., i. 98, 135, 162.
179, 185, 191, 192.
Donaldson, Thomas L., i. 24.
Durnford, Bishop, of Chichester, ii.
161, 303.
Mrs. Richard, ii. 310.
E.
Earle, Professor, i. 214.
Ecclesfield Church, i. 84.
Eden, Rev. C. P., i. 272 ; ii. 2, 243,
252.
Education Act, Elementary, opposed
by Burgon, ii. 46.
Egina Marbles at Munich, ii. 164.
Egypt, tour in, i. 300-318.
Ellerton Theological Prize Essay,
i. 131.
Ellesmere, Lord, i. 207 n.
Ellicott, Bishop, ii. 65, 210, 223;
Burgon's reply, ii. 210.
Elliott, Ebenezer, i. 84 n.
Elohim. See under Jehovah.
Endemus and Ecdemus, i. 226.
English Church Union, Burgon
withdraws from, i. 179.
Epigrams, ii. 34, 43, 223.
Epitaphs, i. 212, 213.
Essays and Reviews, i. 175, 256,
259, 260, 261 ; ii. 36, 37, 39, 95.
Evangelisterium, the Golden, in S.
Catherine's Convent, Mount Si-
nai, ii. 200.
Evans, Arthur, i. 130 n.
Evidences of Christianity, sermon
on, i. 271.
EVO
4 2i
HAR
Evolution, Burgon's views on Dar-
winian theory of, ii. 220, 230, 289.
Exchange, Royal, burnt, i. 65,66.
Exchequer documents, i. 102.
Eyre family, i. 2.
F.
Fairbairn, Typology of Scripture, ii.
169, 170 n.
Faithful departed, Burgon's sermon
on, ii. 406-411.
Farrar, Archdeacon, 'Life of Christ,'
ii. 366-368.
Fathers, Indices of quotations from
N. T. in the, ii. 82 n, 8371.
Fellowes, Sir Charles, i. 13, 24, 31-
37, 97, 104, 106. See Letters.
Ffoulkes, Archdeacon, ii. 186 n.
Fialetto, i. 106.
Final School, Fifth. See Theology.
Finmere, Curacy at, i. 168, 200-
203, 209 ; Archdeacon Palmer's
account of Burgon's ministry
there, i. 168-172.
Finn, Mr. and Mrs., i. 305, 331,
33 2 > 337-
Finn, Miss, letter to author, ii.
132.
Flood, calendar of the, ii. 268,
391-400.
Forbes, Professor, i. 294, 340, 341 ;
ii. 268.
Fox, Bishop, i. 242.
Frankland, Sir Robert, i. 72 n.
Fraser, James Baillie, i. 74.
Fraser, Mrs., i. 75.
Freeman, Archdeacon, ii. 77.
Fremantle, Canon, Burgon's answer
to his paper in the ' Fortnightly,'
ii. 271.
Fridays, observance of, ii. 332.
G.
Gainsborough's 'Boy in Blue,' i. 27.
Garbett, Mr., i. 144.
Garnier, Rev. T. P., letter to au-
thor, ii. 121.
' Gathering host,' office of the, i.
H5.
Genesis, Burgon's Lectures on, i.
243, ii. 1 6 ; account of the Crea-
tion in, Professor Pritchard on,
ii. 246, 266 ; Burgon's reply, ii.
246-249 ; Bishop Harvey Good-
win on, ii. 266 ; Lord Selborne on,
ii. 262 ; Professor Forbes on, ii.
268. See Sabbath.
Gibson, Bishop, ii. 41 n.
Gladstone, Rt. Hon. W. E., i. 176.
177, 204, 211 ; ii. 14, 15,36, 201,
203 ; Burgon's letter to, on Oxford
Reform, i. 227, 281.
Golightly, Rev. C. P., ii. 79 n.
Goodwin, Bishop Harvey, ii. 267.
269.
Gore, Rev. C., ii. 304, 365, 366, 369,
37, 37 1 -
Gorham case, the, i. 178, 179.
Gospels, Commentary on the, i. 173,
201, 205, 220, 225,249.
Harmony of the, i. 112, 172,
201, 208, 213.
Granger, Rev. James, i. 107 n.
Society, i. 107.
Gray, Bishop, ii. 25.
(Poet), i. 28-30.
Greenlaw, Mr., i. 18, 294, 340.
Gregory, Canon, ii. 186 n., 189;
Burgon's ' Friendly Eemonstrance
to, ii. 189 and n., 195.
Gresham Lectures, ii. 307, 311-319.
Professor of Divinity, Burgon
appointed, ii. 27, 52.
Sir Thomas, Life of, i. 41, 51,
63, 66, 67, 72, 73 ; ii. 27, 343.
Portrait of, i. 108-110. Prize for,
i- 59-
Greswell, Rev. Richard, i. 125, 127,
128, 130, 144.
Grey, Lady Mary, i. 72 n.
' Guardian,' Burgon's letters in, i.
253 ; ii. 198,231 n., 260, 270, 279.
Guise, Miss Frances, i. 294, 297.
Sir John, i. 296.
Gwilliam, Rev. G. H., letters to
author, ii. in, 112, 144, 304.
H.
Haddan, Arthur West, i. 127.
Hall, Mr. Ryman, ii. 121.
Hamilton, Bishop, i. 115.
Hampton Court picture?, i. 106.
Hannah, Archdeacon, ii. 297.
Prebendary, ii. 304.
Hardy, Mr. Gathorne. See Cran-
brook.
HAR
422
KEI
Hargreaves, Miss, ii. 337.
Harrison, Archdeacon, i. 62.
Harrowby, Earl of, i. 207 n.
Hanvood, Dr., i. 83.
Hatch, Rev. E., ii. 181 n.
Hawkins, Dr., Provost of Oriel, i.
234; ii. 208, 327.
Rebecca, Sextoness of S. Mary's,
ii. 88, 89.
Havvtrey, Mr. William, i. 2 n.
Heathcote, Sir W., ii. 15.
Heliopolis, obelisk at, i. 310.
Hensley, Rev. Alfred, i. 120, 121,
125-127, 131, 180,209,228, 237,
239,242,244. See Letters.
Herodotus, i. 103, 104, 147, 302.
Heurtley, Dr., i. 260 ; ii. 20, 73.
Higgins, Charles L., i. 8 n., 219,
231, 3375 "- 5 1 ", 158 n., 241,
245, 283.
Mrs., i. 219, 337; ii. 298, 300;
letter to author, 286.
Hill, Rowland, ii. 96.
History, Modern, School at Oxford,
i. 212 n.; ii. 30, 31.
Hobson, Rev. J. P., ii. 207 ; letter
to author, ii. 224.
Hobhouse, Bishop, i. 231 ; letters
to author, i. 164, 233; ii. 353.
Hogarth, i. 105.
Hog, Mr., i. 79.
Holy well Cemetery, Oxford, i. 230,
233, 246 ; ii. 24, 49, 64, 302, 304,
337-
Honyman, Sir W., ii. 119 n.
Hook, Dean, i. 290; ii. 91, 94, 125.
Hooker, i. 148, 160 n., 242 ; ii. 62 n.
Hor, Mount, i. 320.
Horsley, Bishop, i. 272.
Hort, Dr., ii. 229.
Horton, Rev. R. F., ii. 222.
Hoskier, Mr. Herman C., on Dean
Burgon, ii. 249.
Houghton Conquest Parsonage, i.
114.
Humboldt, Baron, i. 104.
'Humility ad clerum,' Sermon, ii.
131-
Hunt, Rev. C. Jerram, letter to
author, ii. 44.
Hunter, Rev. Joseph, i. 34, 46.
Huntingford, Rev. E., ii. 175 n.
Hussey, Professor, i. 131.
I.
Ickhard (Icard) Margoton, i. 9 /.
Iddesleigh, Earl of, ii. 219, 228.
I.H.S., meaning of, i. 113.
Ilsley, West, Burgon's curacy at,
i. 163-167, 181-188, 195-197;
ii. 7.
Ince, Rev. Dr., ii. 157.
Inglis, Sir Robert, i. 177.
Ingram, Rev. H. M., ii. 270 ; letter
to author, ii. 279.
'Inspiration (ax 1 In ferpretation,' an-
swer to Essays and Reviews, i.
175' I9 8 2T 9> 2 56, 260-279, 2 94;
ii. 209 ; reviews of, i. 309.
Irish Church, Disestablishment, &c.,
of, ii. 35.
Irving, Edward, i. 98.
Ivor church, epitaph in, i. 213.
J.
Jackson, Bishop, ii. 37.
Dean, i. 160 n.
Jacobson, Bishop, i. 120, 122, 124,
131-
Jairus' daughter, sermon on, ii.
386.
Jebb, Bishop, i. 309, 341.
Jehovah and Elohim, different uses
of in Genesis, ii. 270.
Jerusalem, Burgon's stay and ill-
ness at, i. 320-329.
Johnson family, i. 2.
- Dr., i. 6, 7.
Jones of Nayland, i. 181, 217.
- Bishop Basil, i. 214, 215 n.
- Inigo, i. 143.
Jowett, Dr., ii. 42, 222.
Jubilee service in Westminster
Abbey, ii. 273.
Justification and Sanctification, Bp.
Bull's theory on, i. 159 and n. ;
Justification prior to Sanctifica-
tion, Bp. S. Wilberforce on, i. 159,
1 60 and n.
K.
Kafir women, appreciation of sacred
pictures, i. 238.
Keble College, Burgon's share in
debate on, ii. 43.
Keil on Joshua, i. 324 n.
KEM
423
LET
Kempe, C. E., ii. 338.
King, Bishop, ii. 93, 300 n.
Kitchin, Dean, ii. 19.
Kitto, Rev. J. F., letter to author,
ii. 311.
Knight, Payne, i. 12.
Knollys, Mr., ii. 134.
Lake, Dean, ii. 186 n.
Lamb, Charles, i. 69 n.
Lambeth Conference, first, ii. 25 ;
Burgon's sermon on, ii. 25.
Lappenberg, Dr., i. 53 and n.
Laud, Archbishop, i. 148.
Laurence, Archbishop, ii. 75, 78.
Law and Modern History, Fourth
School at Oxford, i. 175, 211, 212 ;
". 3. 3 1 -
Lawson, Rev. R., i. 136, 145, 150.
Lectionary, New, examined, &c.,
Burgon's Sermon, ii. 151.
Lectionary, the New, Burgon's dis-
like to, ii. 60 ; adopts it in obedi-
ence to authority, ii. 59, 60, 132 ;
remonstrates with author for not
using it till it was compulsory,
ii. 61, 133 n. ; essay against by Bp.
Christopher Wordsworth, Burgon,
and author, ii. 62, 63, 151.
Leighton, Dr., Warden of All Souls,
i. 166.
Lepsius, Dr., i. 24, 25, 103, 104;
ii. 232.
Leslie, i, 26.
Letters to Burgon from
Arrowsmith, Rev. R., ii. 253,
Beauchamp, Earl, ii. 57,
Churton, the late Archdeacon, i.
25 1 -
Cockerell, C. R., i. 15, 16.
Cook, Canon, ii. 56.
Gladstone, Rt. Hon. W. E., i.
227.
Hunter, Rev. Joseph, i. 49.
King, Bishop, ii. 300.
Liddon, Canon, ii. 67 n., 68, 239.
Northcote, the late Sir Stafford,
ii. 219, 228.
Palmer, Rev, W. J., i. 216, 217,
223.
Phillpotts, Bishop, ii, 12, 13.
Pusey, Dr., i. 225 n.
Letters (continued"
Seabury, Professor, ii. 15.
Wordsworth, Bishop Christopher,
" 55-
Letters from Burgon to
a Bible-class member, ii. 154,
169.
Circular answering inquiries
during illness, ii. 296.
a Friend, ii. 287.
Mrs. , ii. 242-246, 257, 260,
^ 263, 265, 282, 284, 285.
his parents, i. 19, 20.
his sisters, i. 81, 115, (See Hig-
gins, Rose.)
Arrowsmith, Rev. R., ii. 254.
Bickersteth, Mrs. Samuel, ii, 196,
.205. (See Williams.)
Bloxam, Rev. Dr., ii. 292.
Chichester, Bishop of, ii. 221.
Clark, F. Le Gros, Esq., ii. 229.
Corrie, Rev. Dr., ii. 160.
Cranbrook, Viscount, ii. 145, 149,
156, 186, 201, 223, 242, 277.
Crosse, Canon, ii. 204, 226, 287.
Mrs., ii. 282.
Eden, Mrs. C. P., ii. 251.
Fellowes, Sir C., i. 32, 36, 99.
Gladstone, Rt. Hon.' W. E., i.
281.
Goulburn, Dean, ii. 61, 172. 256.
Gwilliam, Rev. G. H., ii. 144.
Hensley, Rev. A., i. 126, 209^
211, 283-291, 339.
Higgins, C. L., Esq., i. 314.
- Mrs., i. 309, 321, 331, 333;
ii. 258.
Hobson, Rev. J. P., ii. 225.
Hunter, Rev. Joseph, i. 46.
Ingram, Rev, H., ii. 279-281.
Knollys, Mr., ii. 134, 135, 154-
156.
Lawson, Robert, Esq., i. 145, 150.
Livingstone, Rev. R. G., ii. 289,
291.
Norris, Rev. W. F., ii. 227.
Renouard, Rev. G. C., i. 52, 53,
108, 110-112, 2ji, 212.
Rose, Rev. Henry John, i. 299,
300, 311, 318; ii. 4.
Mrs. Henry John, i. 295,
297> 3 J o, 3I5> 3 2 6, 34 8 ; 4
33-
LET
424
MIL
Letters (continued}
Rose, Mrs. Hugh James, i. 155,
157, 181-209, 280; ii. 3.
Skeet, Mrs., ii. 295.
Southey (Poet), i. 39.
Turner, Mr. Dawson, i. i, 82, 92,
101, 104, 105, 107, 137, 141-
144, 152, 154; ii. 357.
Valentine, Rev. W., 293.
Washbourne, Miss, ii. 8 a. 89, 152,
282.
Williams, Miss Monier-, ii. 52, 58,
89, 92, 96, 97, no, 145-148,
I 5 1 , J 53, I57 ? 164, 165. (See
Bickersteth.)
Lkldell, Dean, i. 62, 127 ; ii. 79
and ii.
Liddon, Canon, ii. 20, 44, 51 >/., 73,
237. See Letters.
Linton, Mr., i. 260 ; ii. 20.
Linwood, ' Anthologia Ojconiensis,'
frontispiece by Burgon, i. 129,
130 n.
Litton, Mr., i. 260.
Livingstone, Rev. R. G., i. 275 ;
ii. 6, 43, 100, 1 60, 304 ; letter to
author, ii. 339.
Lodging-houses at Oxford, Burgon's
pamphlet on, ii. 141-143.
Lowe, Mr., ii. 138.
S. Luke xxiv. 13-50, ii. 313-319.
Luther on the Galatians, i. 160.
* Lux MuncH,' Rev. C. Gore's Essay
in, ii. 365, 366, 369-371.
M.
Macbean, Mrs., i. 292.
M'Caul, Dr., i. in and //.
Macdonald, Major, i. 323.
Maedonnell, Dean, ii. 217 n.
McEwen, W., ii. 169 .
Mackarness, Bishop, ii. 143
Mackenzie, i. 102.
Mac Neill, Sir John, i. 75.
Magdalen College Chapel, music in,
" 347-
Magee, the late Archbishop, ii.
38 n., 217 n.^
Mai, Cardinal, i. 342 n.
Mair, Josephine, i. 161 n., 204, 220,
280 n.
Maitland, Rev. Brownlow, ii. 1 74 n.
Maltass, Sarah, i. 9.
Manning, Cardinal, i. 98.
Mansel, Dean, ii. 33, 39, 178, 243.
350 ; lines on S. Mary's new
organ, ii. 34.
Mansell, Captain, i. 333, 337.
Dr. Francis, i. 241.
' 3fiiiinacripta Ei'angelia in Fnrei<in
Libraries' ii. 84. See Codices,
Sacred.
Manuscripts, cursive, added by Bur-
gon to Dr. Scrivener's list, ii. 59,
198.
S. Mark xiii. 32, Burgon's sermon
on, ii. 171.
- last twelve verses of, Burgon on,
1. 257; ii. 49-58, 95, 209, 214,
215, 373 ; Canon Cook on, ii. 56 ;
Revisers on, ii. 49, 50 n. ; Bp.
Christopher Wordsworth on, ii.
55. 56.
Ma triage with a deceased wife's
sister, Burgon's argument against,
ii. 205.
Marriott, Rev. Charles, i. 231 ; ii.
2, 120, 288, 293.
Marsham, Dr., i. 177, 178 n.
S. Mary's Church, Oxford, memo-
rial window to Burgon in, ii. 338.
Mary Queen of Scots, i. 252, 253.
Masaraki, i. 331.
Mass, etymology of, i. 113.
Maydenhithe, John de, his ring
found at Chichester, ii. 220.
Melvill, Mr., i. 97, 98.
Memorials to Dean Burgon in ( 'hi-
chester Cathedral, ii. 334-336 ;
Holywell Cemetery, Oxford, ii.
337 ; proposed west window at
S. Mary's Church, Oxford, ii. 338.
Meredith, Mr., i. 333, 334, 337.
Merivale, Dean, Burgon consults
him as to whether clergy can
assist at a second celebration with-
out again communicating, ii. 139,
140.
Merry, Rev. Dr., his mention of
Burgon in his speech, ii. 339.
Methuen, Rev. T., ii. 345 n.
Miller, Rev. Edward, ii. 83 .,
211, 219,372, 373.
- Miss, description of Burgon s
teaching and preaching, ii. 116-
118.
MIL
425
PEA
Millingen, James, i. 24, 27 ; ii. 21.
Milton, John, i. 61, 115.
Milton's house, Burgon's visit to,
i. 44, 61, 62.
Miracles, Burgon's view on, i. 272.
Missions, Parochial, first inaugu-
rated,!. 243 ; at Henley, Burgon's
sermon, i. 243, 244 ; services in
North Bucks, i. 246; first held
at Oxford, ii. 130.
Foreign, Intercession- Day first
appointed, ii. 80.
Missions, Home, &c., Burgon's
sermon on, ii. 130, 131 ; Burgon's
views on, i. 243 ; ii. 131.
Moberly, Bishop, i. 290.
Molyneux, Sir Capel, i. 320.
Moore, Mr. Niven, i. 334.
Dr., i. 97.
Hon. and Rev. E., i. 181, 182,
185, 196.
More, Sir Antonio, i. 1 08 and n.
Sir Thomas, i. 30, 107.
Morgan, Osborne, ii. 137.
Morley, Earl of, ii. 136, 137.
Mozley, Professor, i. 62.
Muckleston, Mr., i. 119 and n.
Miiller, Professor Max, ii. 304.
Murdoch family, i. 2.
Murray, Bishop, i. 20, 21,72.
John, i. 104, 106 ; ii. 201.
Nash, Mr. F. P., i. 223 .
Professor, i. 223 n.
Neander, i. 118 and n., 119 n.
Neate, Mr., i. 290 and n.
1 Nehemiah' Burgon's sermon on, ii.
161.
Nelson, Robert, ii. 9, 13.
Newdigate Prize Poem, 'Petra,' by
Burgon, i. 144.
Newman, John Henry, i. 63, 64, 94,
99, 101, 117, 118, 122, 123, 135,
136, 138 and n., 140, 142, 151,
191 ; ii. i, 132, i8x.
' Xew Reformation,'' &c., the, Bur-
gon's reply to Canou Fremantle,
ii. 272.
Newton, Sir Isaac, i. 28, 29.
Nice, Council of, Fourth C;inon re-
quires the consent of the com-
provincial Bishop to the conse-
cration of a Bishop, ii. 38.
Nobody's Club, Burgon's maiden
speech at, ii. 2.
Norris, Rev. W. F., ii. 208, 209.
O.
Ogilvie, Rev. Dr., ii. 73, 93.
Ollivant. Bishop, ii. 38 n.
Oranges, when introduced into Eng-
land, .i. 1 08.
Oriel College, i. 240 ; Burgon fellow
of, i. 131.
Ornaments Rubric, ii. 191.
Orton, Dr., i. 87.
Otter, Bishop, Memorial College at
Chichester, ii. 308.
Ottley, Miss, i. 26.
Oxford Colleges, Burgon's Historical
Notices of, i. 237, 239; ii. 348.
Diocesan Conference, Burgon's
sermon on, ii. 84.
Movement, Burgon's connection
with the, i. 134-136.
Reformers, Burgon's paper on,
i. 226.
University, not existing distinct
from the colleges, i. 281.
Royal Commission of Inquiry,
i. 175, 176, 207 n.
- Bill, i. 176; Election, i. 176,
177.
P.
Paget, Rev. F. E., i. 174.
Palgrave, Sir Francis, i. 108.
Palmer, Archdeacon, i. 168; ii.
179 .., 1 80 n. ; letter to author,
i. 168.
Rev. W. J., i. 168, 180, 200.
209, 216.
- Mr., i. 64.
Panathenaic, Amphora, i. 12. 37, 38.
Parallelism the great principle of
Hebrew poetry, i. 341.
Parentalia, Burgon's, i. I, 2, 4, 5 n.
Parents, on the death of, i. 245. 246.
Parthenon, Burgon as an infant
carried up to the, i. 15.
Pastoral office, Burgon's treatise on,
ii. 6, 8-13 ; chronological inac-
curacies, ii. 9 n.
Pearson, Bishop, ii. 9 ., 31,103,171.
PEA
426
ROG
Pearson, Rev. H. D., letter to au-
thor, ii. 119.
Pellevv, Dean, i. 68.
Perceval, Mr., i. 177, 178 w.
S. Peter's, Oxford, i. 115.
' Petra and other Poems? ii. 241 ;
Newdigate Prize Poem, i. 125,
145 ; ii. 345 .
Petra, rocks at, i. 320,326, 327 and n.
Phillpotts, the late Bishop, i. 178,
189, 204, 207 ; ii. 36. See Letters.
' Philological Club,' lines on, i. 214,
215.
Pickford, Rev. John, i. 44.
Poems by Burgon, i. 32, 34, 37, 65,
119 n., 234,241, 251, 254,327?*.,
335 5 ii- 5 1 * 345-
Pomander, i. 108, 109.
Pott, Archdeacon, ii. 186 n.
Powles, Prebendary, i. 136; letter
to author, ii. 215, 335.
Prayer Book, Sermons on structure
and method of, ii. 250, 251.
Prayers for the Dead, ii. 246.
Pride Sermon, ii. 131 n., 184.
Princess Imperial visits Chichester,
ii. 201, 202.
Prints, Sacred, value of, in mission-
ary work, i. 237.
' Print*, Sacred, for School and Cot-
1n,je?\. 156, 157, 173, 238.
Pritchard, Professor, ii. 247, 253,
254, 260 n., 262, 266. -SeeGenesis.
' Prophecy, A rgument from? by Rev.
B. Maitland ; its unsoundness
though published by S. P. C. K.,
ii. 176, 177-
' Prophecy not Forecast? Burgon's
answer to Rev. B. Maitland, ii. 174.
Psalm ex, Davidic authorship es-
sential to our Lord's argument,
ii. 365.
Pusey, Rev. Dr., i. 64, 115-118,
123, 135,148,192,290; ii. 51 .,
73: 77-
- Philip, ii. 51 n., 200.
Q.
Quintard, Bishop, of Tennessee, ii.
298.
R.
Recognition in Paradise, ii. 408.
'Record* Newspaper, recollections of
Burgon, i. 275.
Reformatory boys, taught by Bur-
gon to recite, ii. 264, 284-286.
Regeneration, Baptismal, doctrine
impugned by Mr. Gorham, i. 178,
179 ; defended by Buryon, i. 179,
189, 190; Bishop of Exeter's
letter to Archbishop of Canter-
bury, i. 178.
Reid, Dr.,i. 13.
Reminiscences, personal, of Burgon,
i. 133, 168, 233, 275 ; ii. 28, 34, 42-
44, 99, 100-122, 125-127, 132,
144, 193, 194, 249,275, 276, 294,
2 97> 2 99> 3d, 302, 309-312, 319,
323-333. 335* 345, 34 6 > 35o,35 2 ,
353-
Renouard, Rev. G. C., i. 51-55, 59,
90, 101, 162, 173 and ., 1 80,
214; ii. 21. 30. See Letters.
'Review ofaYear,' Burgon's Sermon,
ii. 45, 46.
Revised Version of New Testament,
ii. 210-219, -77, 291 ; many altera-
tions in, premature, ii. 216; traces
of sceptical animus in, ii. 363,
364-
Revision of Authorised Version,
Burgon's protest against an Uni-
tarian having part in, ii. 45, 64,
65 ; letter to Bishop Ellicott, ii.
65* 67 ; Canon Liddon's letter to
Burgon on, ii. 67-72.
'Revision Revised? i. 257; ii. 195,
201, 206, 207, 209-218, 223, 278,
335. 373-
Riff- mff, etymology of, i. 1 1 1 and n.
Rigaud, Rev. John, ii. 292.
'Ritual, Divergent? Burgon's Sermon
on, ii. 187.
' Ritualism," 1 first appearance in Ox-
ford, ii. ii??.; Burgon's protest
against, ii. 85, 86, 179. See
Toleration.
Robsart, Amy, ii. 119 n.
'Rock' in S. Matt. xvi. 18, Burgon
on, i. 225 n. ; Dr. Pusey on, i.
225 n.
Rogers, Sir F. See Blachford.
Miss, i. 26.
Samuel, i. 25-31, 141, 144.
Professor Thorold, ii. 43.
ROM
427
STU
'Romanizing u-ithin the Church of
England,' ii. 84-86.
Rome, Chaplaincy at, i. 253, 254.
'Rome, Letters from,'i. 253, 261, 342.
Rose family, i. 2, 8 n.
- Misses, ii. 299-301, 352.
Rev. Henry John, i. 8 n., 71, 90,
91, 114, 115, 117, 118, 156, 157,
168, 231, 237; ii. 80, 82. See
Letters.
Mrs. Henry John, i. 8 n., 184 ;
ii. i, 82. See Letters.
- Rev. Hugh James, i. 72 ; ii. 117,
2 59-
Hugh James, junior, i. 296 n. ;
ii. 1 60.
Mrs. Hugh James, i. 136, 173,
219, 233, 234; ii. 3. See
Letters.
- Rev. W. F., ii. 24-26, 58 and n.,
3> 334-
ilossi, Cavaliere, G. B. de, i. 257.
Round, Mr., i. 178 n.
Routh, Dr., i. 233, 234.
Rundle, Dr., ii. 4071.
Russell, Lord John, i. 176.
S.
Sabbath, antediluvian, ii. 255, 391,
400 ; law of, expanded and enforced
in Exodus and Leviticus, ii. 281 ;
supplanted by the Sunday, ii.
279-281.
St. Helens, Lord, i. 29.
Salisbury, Marquis of, ii. 137, 139,
183-
Saltonstall, Lady Mary, i. 213.
Sandford, Rev. C. W. (Bishop), pro-
poses changes in the hours of Sun-
day services at Oxford ; Burgon
opposes them, ii. 18-20.
Scholz, ii. 207.
School Board, established in Oxford,
ii. 46.
Schools, changes in Oxford, fourth
and fifth Schools added, i. 175,
211, 212; ii. 31, 32.
Scripture, Holy, three aspects of, ii.
321 ; spiritual aspect, ii. 322.
Scrivener, Dr., ii. 211 n. y 257, 277,
286, 372 ; on Burgon, ii. 53 n. ;
Burgon's letters to him in the
' Guardian,' ii. 59, 83 and n., 164
n., 231 ; letter to author, ii. 229.
Seabury, Professor, i. 243; ii. 15
and )(.
Rev. W. J., letter to author, ii.
15 n.
Second sight, stories of, i. 75, 76.
Selborne, Lord, ii. 183, 262.
Selwyn, Bishop G. A., ii. 38 n.
'Sermons for Family Reading,' Bur-
gon's, i. 234, 235, 250 ; ii. 95.
Sermons, Lenten, at Oxford, i. 239,
290.
' Servants of Scripture? Burgon's, ii.
88, 158-160.
Sesostris, figure of, cut in the rock
between Sardis and Smyrna, i.
103.
Seven Churches, Gresham Lectures
on the, ii. 312.
Shairp, Principal, i. 138 n.
Shakspeare, ii. 357 n. ; spelling of
his name, i. 44, 45 ; notes and
memoranda on, i. 45 ; ii. 378-381.
Shaw, Henry, i. 239.
Sheridan, i. 28.
Silkstone, i. 3, 85.
Sinai, Mount, probable origin of the
name, i. 323 n. ; Burgon's visit to
the Convent of S. Catherine, ii.
199, 200.
Sinaitic MS., ii. 54, 234.
Skeat, Etymological Dictionary, i.
in n.
Skeet, Mrs., letter to author, ii.
2 95-
Skeffington, Hon. Henry, ii. 119 n.
Smith, Arthur H., i. 96.
Miss, ii. 46.
Professor Henry, ii. 46.
Dr. Vance, ii. 45 ., 67, 70, 71.
Smyrna, S. Polycarp's Church de-
fended against the Turks, i. 4, 5.
Smyth, ii, 21
Stainer, Sir John, ii. 304.
Stanley, Dean, appointed Select
Preacher ; Burgon's protest
against it, ii. 78, 79.
Stewart, James and Charles, ' The
Princes,' i. 74, 75.
Stuart, Cardinal Henry, i. 75.
Students, Unattached, Burgon's pro-
posal with regard to, ii. 185.
SUM
428
WHE
Sumner, Archbishop, i. 224.
Sunday School lesson, Burgon's sug-
gestion for a, ii. 97, 98.
^ussex, Duke of, i. 105.
Sutton, Archdeacon, ii. 296 w., 297.
Sydnope, 5. 89.
Symbolism in the Gospel histories,
ii. 386.
T.
Taylor, Jeremy, i. 148 ; ii. 74.
Temple, Bishop, i. 149, 259, 384 ;
Burgon's protest against his con-
secration as Bishop of Exeter, ii.
36 ; his explanation ; Burgon's
reply, ii. 37 ; Archbishop Tait's
manifesto, ii. 36 ; eight Bishops
dissentient, ii. 37, 38 and n.
Testament, New, Burgon's work on
text of. See Criticism.
Old, interpreted by the New,
" 3^8, 369 ; suggestions how to
read the, i. 150-152.
Teulon, Canon, ii. 304.
Theologian, Burgon as, ii. 362, 372-
377-
Theology, Fifth Final School of,
Burgon's plea for, ii. 29-32, 90.
Thirl wall, Bishop, on the Athanasian
Creed, ii. 72 ?/., 74-76, 78.
Thomas, Archdeacon, i. 253.
Thompson, i. 78.
Thorpe, Mr., i. in.
Thursfield, J. R., ii. 181 n,
i Timothy iii. 16, true reading of,
ii- 233.
Toleration of Ritual, address to the
Archbishop by ten dignitaries for,
ii. 1 86 and n.
Tract XC, i. 134; Remonstrance of
Four Tutors, i. 134.
Tractarian movement in Burgon's
view has nothing in common with
excess of Ritual, ii. 188.
Trench, Archbishop, i. 157, 290.
Tritton, i. 193, 214.
Turner, Dawson, Mr., i. 7, 34, 66,
67, 68, 69, 71, 72, 97. See
Letters.
' Tivelce Good Men, Lives of,' i. 235,
272 ; ii. 51 n., 81, 88, 1*20, 208,
252, 272, 285, 290-293, 341, 344,
350.
Types, Burgon's Sermon on, ii. 166-
169, 386.
Tytler, Patrick Fraser, i. 34, 41, 42,
67, 73-
Burgon's Memoir of, i. 74, 249-
252 ; ii. 344.
William Fraser, i. 77.
U.
Unb lief amongst Oxford tutors,
anecdote of, ii. 182 n.
' Uiiit((r!<(tt ]\'eri.*er of Authorised
Yfi-*'wn intolerable^ Burgon's let-
ter, ii. 64.
Universities, the different measures
of the Crown and of Parliament
affecting the, i. 284 n. ; ii. 136,
178, 179 n., 209.
' / '// irrrfiity Pennon and College Ser-
vices,' Burgon's Sermon, his letter
and pamphlets on, ii. 20.
V.
Vatican MS., Codex B, i. 256 ; ii.
54, 55 n., 120, 229.
Venn, Henry, ii. 40 n.
- Rev. John, 41 it.
Rev. Richard, anecdote of, ii.
40, 41.
Victor of Antioch, ii. 58 n.
Victoria, Princess, i. 26.
W.
Wagner, Mr. Henry, letter to au-
thor, ii. 1 20.
Wai ling-place of the Jews at Jeru-
salem, i. 329.
Washbourne, Miss, ii. 58, 59, 81,
273. See Letters.
Watts, Rev. R, E. R., i. 253.
Webb, Miss, i. 292, 294, 295, 298.
299 30i, 312, 316, 320, 330, 332,
334-
Wedderburn, Mrs., i. 75.
Wellesley, Dr., i. 130.
Lord Charles, i. 207, //. 4.
Wellington, Duke of, i. 175, 1/7,
207.
Wesley, John, ii. i.
Westall, i. 26.
West Ilsley. See Ilsley.
Westmacott, Sir R., i. 24.
Whewell, Professor, ii. 14.
WIL
429
YUL
\Vilberforce, Bishop Samuel, i. 158,
159, 204, 239, 244, 246 ; ii. 38, 73,
87, 88, 208, 342.
Wilkins, Bishop, ii. 9 n.
Williams, Miss Monier-, ii. 52, 89,
117 n. See Letters.
- Professor, ii. 117 //.
- Rev. Isaac, i. 222.
Wilson, John Matthias, i. u;.
Rev. W., i. 194.
Windle, Mr., ii. 23.
Wintle, Miss Mary, ii. 337.
Winton, Archdeacon de, ii. 186 n.
Wolff, Dr., i. 85.
' Woman's Place,' ii. 46, 47.
Women admitted to University
Examinations, Burgon's Sermon
against, ii. 234-238.
Woolcombe, Rev. E. C., ii. 79 n.
Worcester College, Oxford, i. 117,
241.
Wordsworth, Bishop Charles, ii. 82 ?/.
Bishop Christopher, i. 224, 290,
342; ii. 55, 62, 63, 72, 74, 120,
135, i$o, 202.
Bishop John, i. 133.
Worship, Public, Facilities Bill, ii.
85.
Worton, curacy at, i. 167, 194, 195 ;
ii. 7.
Wotton, Sir Henry, i. 106.
Y.
York Minster, i. 86, 87.
Yule, Dr., letter to author, ii. 42,
43. 99-
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