TWELVE CAMBRIDGE SERMONS
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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TWELVE
CAMBRIDGE SERMONS
BY
JOHN E. B. MAYOR, M.A., F.B.A.
LATE PRESIDENT OF ST JOHN'S COLLEGE AND PROFESSOR OF LATIN
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
EDITED, WITH A MEMOIR,
BY
H. F. STEWART, B.D.
FELLOW AND DEAN OF ST JOHN'S COLLEGE
Cambridge :
at the University Press
1911
3 3
PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVEBSITY PRESS
COLLEGIO DIVI IOANNIS
EVANGELISTAE
ALVMNI CLARISSIMI
MNHMOCYNON
EO - TANTVM - NOMINE DIGNVM
QVOD - NOTAM ILLAM
GNAVITATEM BONITATEM
PIETATEM
SVIS - IPSIVS - VERBIS
REPRAESENTET
AMIGVS
FAMILIARITATE MVLTIS
AMORE NVLLI SECVNDVS
D-D-D
274059
PREFACE
IT was Professor Mayor's usual practice, after preaching
in his College Chapel or the University Church, to
print the sermon, with abundant annotations, and distribute
copies among his friends. Twelve of these sermons are
here reprinted, just as he issued them 1 , with all the notes
and all the quotations. Neither could be spared. If the
notes are an embellishment, the quotations are of the very
tissue of the work. Mayor delivered the utterance of
other men with much more emphasis and expression than
he could bring himself to put into his own, and even
when he used the same passage a second time, there was
always something in the setting that gave it distinction.
The business of the editor has merely been to select
and see through the Press such discourses as exhibit in
clearest light the preacher's mind at different stages in his
long ministry.
The proof reading has been an easy task, as all will
believe who know Mayor's extraordinary accuracy. The
misprints discovered in the originals may be counted on
the fingers of one hand, and any that occur in the present
edition must be set down to my less practised eye. The
process of selection has been far more difficult, for all his
sermons are worth preserving, all are finely written, all
have some characteristic touch, all amid their multifarious
learning sound the same simple and stirring call to duty
and the Christian life.
There is another aspect of Mayor's preaching, less
1 The Commemoration Sermon, p. 153 to p. 166, is reprinted, by
permission, from the Eagle Magazine of June 1891.
Vlll PREFACE
familiar to the world, which for want of space could not
be illustrated in this volume. But it is proposed to issue
shortly a collection of his parochial sermons, which have
never been printed and which will shew that the great
scholar had in him the essential qualities of the faithful
shepherd.
In compiling the memoir prefixed to the sermons I
have drawn freely from the obituary notices in the Eagle
Magazine of March, 1911. I have also had access, through
the kindness of Dr J. B. Mayor, to a long series of family
letters written chiefly to his mother from 1844 down
to her death in 1870. Passages in the text, placed with-
out reference between inverted commas, may generally be
ascribed to this source. Other friends have been forward
in lending letters and supplying information and re-
miniscences. Among them I would especially mention
the Master of St John's, Dr Liveing, Sir John Sandys,
Professor G. C. Moore Smith, Mr Axon, Mr A. Broadbent,
Mr R. Bowes, Mr J. D. Duff, Mr D. R. Fearon, the Rev.
H. Hill, Mr E. S. Payne, Mr C. J. Powlett, Mrs F. J. A.
Hort, Mrs H. Nettleship and Mrs Priest. Grateful thanks
are due to them all on the part of my readers and myself.
It has been thought that students of heredity may be
glad to know something of the stock from which John
Mayor sprang. So two shortened pedigrees have, been
appended which will shew at a glance whence he derived
his learned aptitude, his religious and missionary instincts,
and where within the limits of his family the same
characteristics still flourish. For help in drawing up
these tables I am again indebted to the kindness of
Dr J. B. Mayor.
H. F. S.
4 November 1911.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PORTRAIT OF J. E. B. MAYOR Frontispiece
DEDICATION vi
PREFACE vii viii
MEMOIR xi Ixvi
LIST OF SERMONS Ixvii Ixviii
CHRIST THE WAY TO THE FATHER .... 119
THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION 21 49
THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE .... 5165
THE CHILD AND THE MAN 6794
THE PEACE OF GOD . . . . . . . 95113
LOVE DIVINE AND HUMAN ....... 115127
BOLDNESS OF THEM THAT HAVE BEEN WITH JESUS . 129149
COMMEMORATION SERMON . . . . . . 151166
READY TO DISTRIBUTE . . . . . . 167184
NEITHER JEW NOR GREEK '. 185197
A GOODLY HERITAGE 199230
RENDER TO ALL THEIR DUES 231243
INDEX '. 245254
PEDIGREES . At end
a5
Sapientiam omnium antiquorum exquiret sapiens....
Narrationem virorum nominatorum conseruabit....
Occulta prouerbiorum exquiret....
Cor suum tradet ad vigilandum diluculo ad Dominum, qui fecit
ilium, et in conspectu Altissimi deprecabitur....
Collaudabunt multi sapientiam ems, et usque in saeculum non
delebitur.
Ecclesiasticus xxxix.
MEMOIR
THE facts of John Mayor's life are soon told. Born at
Baddegama in Ceylon on January the 28th, 1825, sixth in
a family of twelve, he went to school in England, first at
Newcastle-under-Lyme (1832), then at Christ's Hospital
(1833-36), then at Shrewsbury (1839).
In 1844 he followed his elder brother Robert to St John's
College, Cambridge, where he took his degree as third classic
in 1848. Next year he was elected fellow and went as
assistant-master to Marlborough College. In 1853 he returned
as assistant-tutor, i.e. classical lecturer, to St John's, which
he never left again.
He served the University as Librarian from 1864 to 1867,
and as Professor of Latin from 1872 to 1910. In 1902 he
was elected President (or Vice-Master) of his college. In
1908 he had the only serious illness of his life, a bronchial
attack which his doctor said would have killed a younger
man, but from which he completely recovered. He read the
service in St John's for fifty years, and he was preparing for
chapel on the morning of 1 December, 1910 when death took
him. He was in Priest's Orders, and he kept an act for the
Cambridge B.D. though he never proceeded to the degree.
He was an Hon. LL.D. of Aberdeen and St Andrews, Hon.
D.D. of Glasgow, Hon. D.C.L. of Oxford, and an original
Fellow of the British Academy.
His most substantial contributions to literature during
his eighty-five years of life are the Juvenal; the lives of
Xll FIRST SCHOOLING
various Cambridge worthies in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries; two volumes in the Kolls Series; editions of
Ascham's Scholemaster, Fisher's English Works, early College
Statutes, Baker's History of St John's College, Cyprian of
Toulon's Latin Heptateuch ; a volume entitled Spain, Portugal,
the Bible, giving the history of various attempts at reform in
the Iberian Peninsula. He also produced educational books
in Latin, Greek, and German, and hosts of pamphlets and
adversaria on subjects connected with Cambridge, classical
learning, vegetarianism, and the " los von Rom " movement.
But if the chronicle of his acts is brief, and if the literary
output, though it occupies forty lines in Crockford, bears no
proportion to his erudition 1 , the tale of subjects which engaged
his interest would fill a volume, and the zeal with which he
pursued them would need his own pen to do it justice. The
vigour of his mind and will were apparent from the first and
never flagged. His earliest schoolmaster was as greatly taken
with his vehemence as with his precocious learning and iron
memory, and his younger brother still recalls the energy with
which he would ply the swing to the rhythm of a flaming
passage from Lockhart's History of Napoleon Buonaparte :
" with the .eye of an eagle and the voice of a lion, urging his
breathless and eager troops " : words which, mutatis mutandis,
might serve as a motto to his own life. His ardour was some-
what damped at Christ's Hospital, for which, as "a bookless
desert," he had less kindly recollections than Coleridge or
Charles Lamb. But there at least he learnt to endure
1 Of his erudition it is enough to quote what H. A. J. Munro wrote
to H. Nettleship in 1872, "He is far the most learned man I have ever
known. His knowledge of all the sources of Latin scholarship is extra-
ordinary." And again in 1877, "In Latin (and in Greek as well), in
English literary history and antiquities, and in other departments of
learning, he is a perfect mine of knowledge and well assorted information,
always knowing where to refer for anything which he does not carry in
his head."
HOME TEACHING Xlll
hardship and to distinguish between the sentient and the
intelligent soul. Once when his master, after the first strokes
of the cane, asked whether it hurt him, the boy replied, " I
don't know." "For," he used to say, "I knew it hurt my
hand, but I did not know whether it hurt myself." Such
philosophy was beyond Orbilius, and the flogging went on.
An outbreak of scarlet fever sent him home in 1836 for
three years to which he looked back as the most fruitful
period of his life. "Neither my brother nor I ever made
greater progress." He taught his brother and 'was himself
directed by his mother, " not exactly taught, for I knew more
than she did " ; but she learnt Greek and Latin in order to
help him in his lessons. It was then too that, through his
father's evening readings from Milton, he began to value the
art in which he became an acknowledged master 1 . His eldest
brother Robert also gave him valuable aid then, as later, and
was to him in all respects what John was to their younger
brother Joseph. In one of the Shrewsbury letters with which
John kept his senior posted with his work and progress, he
says : "In the Medea and Horace papers I got pretty nearly-
full marks, which was entirely owing to your kindness in
getting me the Orellius and the Pflugk." It is a natural
touch that shews the kinship of character in the brothers 2 .
1 The habit thus formed of reading aloud never left him. " Still
to this day when I am with my three sisters...! read many hours every
day French, German, Italian, or English... and have found the benefit
of the exercise both to myself and my hearers. The ancients testify
to the advantage to health of reading aloud ; nor can any one be said to
know a language until he can follow it by the ear.... The great, cardinal
rule is to read the greatest and best authors and no others." (Letter
to the Rev. H. Hill, 23 May, 1910.)
2 Cp., in this connexion, the dedication of Dr J. B. Mayor's edition
of the De natura deorum (1880), Fratri dilecto | lohanni E. B. Mayor |
qui primus puerilem mini mentem | quo et ipse puer flagrabat | antiquitatis
amore imbuit | hie grati laboris fructus | dedicatur.
XIV SHREWSBURY
Shrewsbury School 1 , which he was enabled to join in 1838
through the kindness of his uncle, Mr Robert Bickersteth,
a successful Liverpool surgeon, opened the way for his talents
and his thirst after knowledge. He has left a vivid picture
of the place as it was then the simple sports, the domestic
examinations, the big boys writing their exercises in the
crowded "head-room" and also of his own methods of self-
education, his common-place book, his collections, the thousands
of lines in English and Latin committed voluntarily to
memory 2 . But even this willing young servant found "the
Doctor " a hard task-master. " Kennedy," he writes to his
mother, "certainly has a most extraordinary idea of the
quantity of work which can be crammed into those un-
fortunate 7 weeks which in derision, I suppose, are called
the holidays; as, when I told him I wished to read over
again all the classics which I have been over before, he
gravely said, 'Oh, you know, you have the holidays for
that.'" Towards the end of his time at least he dared stand
up to his redoubted chief, and expressed a wish to leave
school a year before the headmaster would let him. "In the
conversation I had with the Doctor I gave him to understand
pretty plainly that I did not think that Mr P.'s instructions
were calculated to instil very accurate notions of mathematics
into the mind." The Doctor accordingly arranged for his
private tuition in this subject.
He had already discovered for himself the real way to read
the classics by "a plan," as he writes to his brother Robert in
May, 1844, "which I think answers extremely well, which is
1 The Mayors, not long after their return from the East in 1828,
had settled at Harborough Magna, hoping to educate their sons at
Eugby. But the privileges of foundationers had just at that time been
restricted to residents in the town, and Joseph was the only member
of the family who was eventually sent there as a boarder in 1841.
2 See The Latin Heptateuch, p. Ixvii f.
SHREWSBURY. ST JOHN'S XV
not to be engaged upon more than one book at a time. By
this means I got over in 3 weeks a book of Thucydides,
a play of Sophocles, do. of Plautus, and a book of the
Odyssey, besides 3 or 4 Satires of Horace." And if thus
as an elder boy he knew his own needs and how to supply or
get them supplied, he was at the very outset keenly conscious
of his rights and sensitive to anything like injustice. Witness
the following shrewd remarks from a letter written in March,
1839 : "There is a practice and I think a very bad one here,
for the master to construe the lesson over to the boys before
they say it, but their parents pay 8 a year for this * privilege,'
and I am the only one in our class who does not have it
Mr W. a clergyman in the town is my master, and is in
general very kind, though he has once or twice been what I
call rather unjust. On Friday morning last we learnt as
usual Greek Grammar, but Mr W. had at 6 o'clock the night
before changed the lesson and told the boarders that he had
done so. Next morning we 1 , knowing nothing of the change,
went up with our Greek Grammar, and he set us to write out
the lesson."
Mayor came up to St John's in October, 1 844, and although
to his disappointment he failed to win the "Port Latin"
Scholarship, he was on the 5th of November admitted scholar
pro domina fundatrice. The traditions of the place suited his
bent, and there probably has never been a student more in
tune with the intentions of the foundress whose constant
prayer it was that her fellows and scholars might devote
themselves to the worship of God, purity of life, and
the strengthening of the Christian faith 2 . He entered on
Dr Hymers's side, and his private tutor was W. H. Bate-
son, who stood him in such good stead afterwards as Bursar
1 John boarded in the town with a Mrs Lloyd, who had boys of her
own in the school.
2 See below, pp. 37, 49.
XVI UNDERGRADUATE DAYS
and custodian of the college archives, and for whom as Master,
Mayor, though he criticized his policy, had always the warmest
regard. He also read classics with "Jupiter" Thompson (not
to be confounded with the Master of Trinity) and Shilleto
(when he could get him), and between whiles taught himself
German by that very Ollendorffian system upon which he was
wont in after years to pour such scorn, calling it "Crambe
repetita, loathsome snippets; "
He certainly was not like the common run of under-
graduates. For field sports he had no fancy, though he was
a strong swimmer and as a boy had been fond of straight-
forward skating. In his memoir of Isaac Todhunter he says :
" Twice I have gone down to the boats, and twice he went,
each of us by constraint." He had friends in St John's and
other colleges who shared his antiquarian and philological
tastes but he led a secluded life. " He (Todhunter) and I
constantly discussed all the literary and ecclesiastical questions
of the times ; yet I doubt whether we were ever in one
another's rooms. Probably neither of us could see in crowds
of people who met every day in hall, the fit recipients of
hospitality, if that word is interpreted by the light of history,
as presided over by Zcvs ^evios 1 ." Yet as in private duty
bound 2 , he took active part such part as a junior could in
the contest for the Chancellorship, which divided all Cambridge
during the Lent Term of 1847. "I have written some 2 or 3
letters for the chance of hooking a vote or two for Lord Powis,
who certainly, as educated here and being a friend to the
Church and having a seat in the House of Lords, is preferable
to Prince A."
Most of his letters home of this date are the ordinary
1 In Memoriam Isaac Todhunter (1884), p. 5.
2 Cp. "St John's are going to work doubly; they summon all their
own men as on a College question, and raise the cry of the Church."
(Life and Letters of F. J. A. Hort, i. 49.)
LETTERS HOME XVli
gossip of the reading man accounts of his work and re-
creation (then, as always, books), his chances in the schools
(a subject of interest to his mother, though not discussed
among his fellows), enlivened by touches of fun (e.g. when
one of his contemporaries falls in love), and betraying a
keen interest in the external events and anxieties which the
"roaring forties" aroused in every thoughtful Englishman
the danger of Chartism, the Irish famine, the unrest in
Italy. Sometimes they sound a very serious personal note,
as when he writes on the eve of the Classical Tripos in
1848: "I have been reminded in several letters that to-
morrow is my birthday; it is no pleasant thing to look
back and see how much the last year might have done for
me which it has not done, how much progress I might have
made in those things in which, if there be no progress, there
will infallibly be a regress : how impossible it is that your
prayers and my father's 1 can avail for any of your children
unless they work out their own salvation with fear and
trembling. God grant that this new year of my life may
indeed be a new year to me, and all my brothers and sisters."
The same tone may be heard in an earlier letter (1845), which
is so interesting in other respects and shews so plainly the
beginnings of his admirable English style that it deserves
complete quotation : " This habit of attending the morning
chapels gives me plenty of time for letters and the like after
Hall, so that I hope to clear off most of my debts this
evening. I was very sorry to hear of Thomas's 2 most sudden
death : he was so good a husband and father, and so faithful
and loving a servant that none who had to do with him in
any of these relations could help feeling that he was an honest
man ; but still there may with all these good points have been
a question whether he was ready for death ; and how if I
1 His father had died at Acton, near Nantwich, on 14 July, 1846.
2 The gardener at Acton.
XV111 CARLYLE. TRENCH
should meet the like end, who never, with far greater means
than he, shewed like honesty?...! hope at any rate that his
death will not deprive his excellent wife and his family of
their livelihood; it is no easy task for a woman, and in
Cheshire overpeopled as it is, to provide for a young family.
The failure of the crops of potatoes does not seem so alarming
in general as was apprehended ; what is the case in Acton ?
I am afraid bad crops would make Chartism and other ill
feelings revive, as I suppose the first cause of them was
starvation and neglect. I have been reading of late a work
by Carlyle, Past and Present, in which he puts most strongly
a point which I have seldom seen elsewhere treated of, that
the greatest good which can fall to a man is labour ; and
that, where he thinks any body or society in which he forms
a part however small, in the wrong, his way is not to speak
much of the faultiness of the whole, of what great things might
be accomplished, if so and so would but bestir themselves ;
but simply to work at his own part in the best way he can,
nothing doubting but that possibly the whole may, by simply
seeing a man among them quietly and steadily keeping to
one aim and not to be turned from that, be brought to bestir
themselves too; and, instead of the mere pretence of trying
to make others believe that what is ill done is well done,
doing the best they can, which will, it is like, be an easier
as well as far manlier task than the other, of keeping a fair
show. I wish you would read some of his works, there is so
much truth in them, and hatred of lies and cantings of all
kinds that I am sure you would like them after you had over-
come your repugnance to his most barbarous style. Trench's
sermons have come out. I have read 2 of them over again
with great liking ; indeed, as his delivery is none of the best,
they interest one more when read than heard. I will not fail
to bring them with me when I come down, and that will be
after but a short while, about the middle of next week, so
CARUS. THE WAY TO WORK XIX
that any books which you would have me bring from the
Union it would be expedient to mention in your next letter.
I have promised Bickersteth 1 to pay Watton a visit at the
end of the vacation and must be at Cambridge on the 16 Jan.
as an examination for two University scholarships begins on
that day. There is not the smallest probability of my getting
one, but it is usual for men who read Classics to "go in" for
them. And this brings to my mind a request which I want
to make of you. The Greek Professor lectures every year;
for the 1 st course which you attend you pay 3<, for the 2 nd
.2, and for any others l : most men who read classics
attend them and they are of great use. Do you think that
it would be advisable for me to put my name down, as if I go
I must do this term 1 I told you awhile ago of a scheme to
make up a sum of money to give to Mr Carus to be by him
laid out at his discretion on Missionary concerns. He wishing
to employ some of the men who had set this matter on foot in
gathering money for some purpose connected with the Calcutta
bishopric, they disclosed to him their design, on which he
with the avowal that nought in his whole life had warmed his
heart more, still declined it, lest misrepresentations should get
abroad. So it is, that if a man make up his mind to work,
and not to worship gold, eyes are sharp upon him to spy out
where they may attack him ; but I suppose that, as well as
other things, must be borne. Nor indeed, if bearing scandal
and ridicule were all, would it be a hard matter to be an
honest and active man; but the steadily sticking to your
purpose once formed and ever to think that once taken it
is taken for life is not, at least with one of humour like mine,
so plain a matter. Indifference will fence you from a laugh,
decision is a thing necessary to work ; nor is that, to me at
least, to be attained at once." Clearly his love of Archbishop
Leighton was bearing fruit. The Commentary on St Peter
1 Edward Bickersteth, afterwards Bishop of Exeter.
XX UNIVERSITY EXAMINATIONS
was one of that " fortuitous concourse of atoms " that formed
his father's library, and John had mastered it as a child.
These passages apart, there is no display of religion or theology
in his undergraduate correspondence. He was, it is plain, greatly
attracted by Trench, to an appreciation of whose sermons he
won recalcitrant friends ; his missionary and patriotic instincts
kindled to the work of Bishop Selwyn ; he despised as absurd
the proceedings of the Camden Society, at that time deeply
concerned in the question of altars v. wooden tables; but
though he was interested in all kinds of controversy, he took
no forward part in any, and to quote his own confession,
"the Oxford reaction never had the least influence on me 1 ."
Throughout his college course he was above all things
<j>t,\ofj.a6r)<; ; and, although he looked forward to a good degree
as a means of securing independence and of helping his
mother, he was entirely free from examination fever. On the
eve of an important University examination he writes a letter
home which is totally silent as to his own chances of success
and only bespeaks a fatherly interest in his younger brother
and an anxiety to get back to study. " Immediately after the
examination I hope to get fairly to work with Shilleto; but
during it I can very well supply Joe with work to do which
will prevent him from getting rusty before he gets back to
Rugby." He let the news of his place in the Classical Tripos
list come round to him by chance when he was out of Cam-
bridge.
In March, 1849 he was elected fellow of St John's, and
in August of that year he obtained the coveted post of lower
sixth form master at Marlborough, largely through the good
offices of his tutor, Bateson, who was a personal friend of
Mr Wilkinson. The school had reached 500, the limit of its
capacity and of its charter ; new buildings, including the
chapel, had been erected and were in use ; but the four years
1 Cp. The Eagle, xxiii. 106.
MARLBOROUGH XXI
that Mayor spent there are the gloomiest in its history.
He saw the "great rebellion" of 1851, which dislodged the
headmaster and nearly destroyed the school; but beyond a
humourous expression of fear lest he should be blown up
by some adventurous Guy Fawkes fireworks were the main
artillery of the mutineers no extant letter of his refers to
that crisis. His correspondence, however, speaks plainly of
the deplorable want of discipline that led up to it the in-
competence of many of the masters, the drinking, smoking,
and lying of the elder boys, the greed and gossip of the
younger. And he had experience of all ages. Besides his
sixth form work he had three hours a week with a low form
whose interest he managed to awaken by dint of a method
all his own, getting scraps for retranslation from Boethius
"or some other author new to me" Englished on the spot,
and driving "impositions" out by eager work 1 . Whatever
may have been the general effect of these experiments, he
certainly left a deep mark on a few pupils of the better sort,
and if once he succeeded in kindling the divine fire in a boy,
it was most intense and quite inextinguishable. Some of those
whom he helped still remember him with gratitude. One, upon
whom he expended infinite and tender pains, writes, " Until I
knew him, I did not know what scholarship was.... If only I
had learnt to imitate his character, to be simple, laborious, and
good as he was." Another says : "To any boy who had any
literary taste or feeling, he was an admirable teacher. It
delighted him to get that boy up to his room; to open to
him the wonders of the Greek and Latin writers ; to declaim,
translate, explain, and illustrate" (later pupils of his at
St John's will recognize the authentic touch). "And when
that boy left his room, after an hour of such communion with
Yirgil or Homer, Horace or Herodotus, he felt that, great as
were the delights of sports and games, there were other joys,
1 Cp. First Greek Reader, p. xxxiii.
M. s. 6
XX11 MAYOR AS SCHOOLMASTER
very different in kind, but not less delightful, locked up in
those old books of which this strange teacher held the key."
The fame of these friendly conferences spread. The parent
of a boy not in his class wrote asking Mayor to admit his
hopeful son to his lectures gratis, "so he underlined the word.
However I shall get off for the present on the plea that I
don't wish to offend the master with whom he now is, and
that I have now under me more than twice as many boys as
I can accommodate at my * lectures.' "
But candour compels the admission that his work was
unsatisfactory with a form of 20 to 25 boys, whom, from
want of touch and want of sympathy, he could neither inspire
nor control. Lover of children as he always was, he could
not take up naturally with ordinary boy life, and he was
incapable of feigning what he did not feel. He was uneasy
to find Cotton's new masters entering " much more than the
others (or than I) think desirable into the pursuits of the boys;
not cricket only, but football, and even debating. It can
only foster conceit in boys when they are encouraged to spout
before and against their betters on points of politics or litera-
ture of which they are profoundly ignorant ; and a boy must
have an unusual store of innate modesty who is not spoilt by
such displays." And although he was kindness itself and
would not willingly have hurt a mouse, he applauded the
cane as a means to order, and prophesied disaster from its
disuse. Schoolmastering indeed was not his vocation, and he
knew it. In the middle of his Marlborough career he was
urged to stand for the headship of a grammar school; but
he feared failure. "I should always feel so much stronger
an interest in the intellectual improvement of my school than
in anything else, that I am afraid order and discipline would
not be very strictly enforced." So he stuck to his subordinate
post, winning the confidence of the new headmaster, and re-
joicing in the happy accomplishment of some needed reforms.
EDITS JUVENAL XX111
But he longed for a niche where he could read more and
with more helps, and the call to return to St John's which
came in 1853, although it meant a serious pecuniary loss,
was to him a message of release. Yet he had found time
at Marlborough to keep up his French, Italian, and German,
and to edit Juvenal. The book appeared early in his last year
there, and concerning it he confessed himself "pretty well
satisfied... as far as the research goes,... but the form of the
notes is as awkward, as awkward can be. I ought to have
six good months of constant filing and polishing before I
could be content with it ; however, if students find it useful,
I shall not greatly care for the snarling of nice critics
I shall not much care if only I can succeed in winning the
approbation of the ' doctor ' and of a few other scholars." The
epithet which he applies to the notes of the first edition,
ranged at the foot of the page, applies rather to those of the
second, in which they were relegated to a separate volume and
printed teutonice ; and the twenty years that intervened between
the two editions were not devoted to the file but to further
accumulation of illustrative matter which did indeed make an
edition " complete, for the use of scholars " out of what was
originally intended for schoolboys. But in this school book
written by the young man of 28, all the principles that directed
his learned energy for 60 years are plainly seen. His chief
concern was the history and use of words, and not literary
criticism; he presents facts and authorities rather than opinions
and results; the genius of Juvenal and of the other Roman
satirists is ruled away as a subject alien to his purpose. A
plea is put in for the Stoics and the neglected "silver age"
authors in an enlarged scheme of classical education. Another
25 years and the writer will be heard claiming the whole
range of Latin literature, including the Christian fathers, as
the classical student's proper field 1 . It must be admitted
1 See below, p. 133.
62
XXIV THE RETURN TO CAMBRIDGE
that his zeal for language closed his eyes to the literary
insignificance of the later Western Empire, and the young
students to whom he was wont to commend Lactantius had
not his own familiarity with Lactantius' s greater master,
Cicero.
He left Maryborough late in September 1853, and in order
to put to best advantage the period between the packing of his
books and his final departure he determined that his farewell
to the "fellows" should take the form of advice about reading,
etc., "for though they may not much relish a lecture, they
may be more disposed to heed it when it is the last."
II
Cambridge held out prospects of varied usefulness every-
where : "in our college above all there seems a determination
to use all endowments to make the University what it once
was and may be again, the leader of thought and great
authority in science and literature throughout the country,
and above all, to make it a training school for a learned
clergy 1 ." The vision of the great past and the dream of the
great future of Cambridge and of St John's henceforth possessed
him. Thus, while he was always wanting to compile a history
of the church as told by the authors, pagan and Christian, of
the first three centuries, yet it was the story of Cambridge
in the seventeenth century as illustrated by the lives of her
quiet students, that at once engaged him on his return to
his true home. And, looking forward as well as back, he was
1 " Stupor mundi clerus anglicanus " was his adopted device, even in
an age when there were few besides himself to whom it could apply. It
is the burthen of his latest letters and public utterances. Shortly before
his death he spoke for two hours to an undergraduate audience on the
way in which the country clergy ought to use their leisure.
TESTS AND SCHOLARSHIPS XXV
generously disposed towards all changes in college or University
statutes that seemed to promise learning greater freedom.
He welcomed the removal, in 1856. of local restrictions on
scholarships and fellowships as a step "which will put us
on a level with Trinity in every respect," and in 1859 he
stood with Adam Sedgwick and Hort against Lightfoot for
the abolition of religious tests 1 . How far ahead he looked
may be gathered from the short way with prize scholars and
fellows which he suggested to the Commissioners of 1878.
He would only let stipend accompany status when the money
was clearly needed for work's sake, and he would require every
fellow to spend a year of study abroad within three years of
his election under pain of forfeiture 2 . On the other hand
he stoutly resisted attacks upon " our fundamental law of
celibacy," foreseeing "a tribe of pauper wives and children
begging for promotion for their husbands or fathers. Sons
would be jobbed into scholarships and fellowships, and much
of the simplicity of manners and freedom of intercourse which
form the great charm of University life, would disappear."
It is only fair to add that none was more glad than he that
this gloomy forecast came to nothing. Indeed the past rather
than the future was his proper sphere, and he was more at
home with the founders of his college than with University
reformers.
In the College Muniment Room his curiosity found free
play and full reward. The researches which he records in his
Commemoration Sermon of 1902 3 , and which bore further fruit
in editions of Bishop Fisher's English Works, Baker's History
of the College and Richard of Cirencester's Speculum historiale
(in the Rolls Series), were no merely antiquarian or patriotic
pastime. " Every day that I read in the original records of
1 See below, p. 146 f., and cp. Life of Hort, ii. 95.
3 See A Letter to the University of Cambridge Commissioners, 1878.
3 Cp. The Eagle, xiv. p. 309.
XXVI INTEREST IN HISTORY
our history convinces me that there is a battle for the truth
to be fought not less by bookworms ' than by missionaries
or scripture readers. Our history, if it were but truly told,
is more interesting than any romance, and would do much to
wear off the asperities of our party strife. Within the week
(he was to be ordained priest on March the 7th, 1857) I am going
to take upon myself new obligations to love and serve truth ;
I cannot look back without feeling that of mere knowledge I
have not the tenth part of what I might have, and that very
much of my hours of study has been lost ; our hours of
amusement are so wholly and always." And just a year
before, he had written on his birthday (28 January 1856) :
"Often when I think how miserably my time is frittered
away I am ready to look upon my books as a huge imposture,
and to throw over all existing engagements in order to apply
to some one study for my life, whereby I might indeed do
my part towards a true history of our church and country."
He never ceased to love and serve truth ; but it must be
admitted that with all his good will and marvellous powers as
editor and commentator, he was no historian. He lacked the
constructive gift. Even when a "Life" was required for his
edition of Pliny's Letters, Book in (1880), he was fain to call
in a friend, Mr G. H. Kendall, to do it. So his Church
History remained unwritten. His real bent, of which the
Juvenal had given a glimpse, was further revealed by two
elaborate, yet to some extent popular, articles on Latin-
English lexicography in the Journal of Classical and Sacred
Philology launched by him with the help of Lightfoot and
Hort in 1854 1 . He set out to describe the great Latin
lexicons from which he himself had learnt, to trace the line
of English works "which once trained our English youth in
sound Latin, and may yet train them and their modern
1 The Journal was suspended after 1860, but was revived in 1838
and still flourishes under the title of Journal of Philology.
LATIN LEXICOGRAPHY XXV11
teachers in racy, home-spun mother-English," and to examine
critically Dr Smith's recent lexicon. This last threat was
not carried out. Dr Smith disarmed him by handsomely
retracting his aspersion of Scheller's lexicon, which Mayor
had bought with his prize money at school and valued as
"one of the most honest books ever made, and the author
a truly brave and honest fellow." But Mayor, though he
held his hand this time, never forgave what he termed the
TraVroX/xos dpaOta of Freund and " his tail," " who introduced
into lexicography the system of bluff, and sprinkles his ' rare/
1 only here ' broadcast out of a pepper-box." His pet instance
was adiutoriuntj " declared by Freund and Co. to be rare. It
occurs in many silver age writers, 39 times in the Vulgate, very
often in Ambrose, Augustine, Cassian and the medical writers,
Theodorus Priscianus and Caelius Aurelianus." It is lament-
able that the knowledge by virtue of which he exercised the right
to expose hundreds and thousands of blunders in other men's
dictionaries was never put to account in a great constructive
enterprise 1 . If the loose statistics of which he complained
"could only be justified by the work of many contributors
dividing the whole field of Latinity, down at least to Jerome,
among them," he might at any rate have led the army and laid
the lines for their operations. What could not have been
accomplished by a man who confessed to owning inter alia
five copies of "Andrews" (the margins black with MS re-
ferences) "which I use to collect examples in, but I do not
go to it as an authority." Fifty years after his articles in
the Journal he writes to a friend : "I intend to go on a
crusade against these blind guides, and (to make a beginning)
1 The story of Mr Henry Nettleship's vain endeavour to secure
Mayor's collaboration in a Latin-English Dictionary, and of the Oxford
scholar's heroic attempt to carry through the undertaking single-handed,
may be read in Mrs Nettleship's Memoirs of her husband, prefixed to the
Lectures and Addresses, Second Series (Oxford, 1895).
XXV111 ORDINATION
have offered to give two hours' talk to London schoolmasters
about Latin lexicography." His last and most successful
effort of this kind was in 1910 when he visited his old school,
Shrewsbury, and poured out his heart to both masters and boys.
He had been ordained deacon in 1855 and priest (as we
have seen) in 1857. Remembering that Donne after several
years of severe study doubted whether he was qualified for
Orders in point of knowledge, and lamenting the low estimate
in which theological studies were held, thanks to " the extreme
laxity of our bishops and the carelessness of most of our
clergy," Mayor had determined to devote himself to theological
reading, keeping classics subsidiary thereto. Indeed he never
neglected theology "Probably half my books," he wrote in
1902, "were theological" and when he was offered an
honorary degree at Glasgow in 1901 he chose to be D.D.
rather than LL.D., to the pride and pleasure of the divinity
faculty there.
But very soon after his ordination we find him taking up
Dutch, partly for its own sake, but chiefly because he is going
to work at classics again, and " some valuable journals are in
Dutch 1 ." By May, 1859, he was sufficiently familiar with the
language, as he proved to his own satisfaction by attending
service in the Dutch Church in Austin Friars, to venture on
a trip to Holland. He was delighted with the country and
1 It is worth noting that his zeal for Dutch, though it landed him
in difficulties with the authorities of the University Library who thought
he was putting too much Dutch theology upon its shelves, had the
support of Henry Bradshaw. In a letter written to him on 3 May 1859
(C. U. L. MSS. Add. 4602), Bradshaw says: "I hope very much that
you will be able to persuade the Syndics to-morrow to buy the Dutch
Mercuries.... Dutch is not a language perhaps which many would take
up for light reading, and therefore many persons cannot see why Dutch
books should be bought, whereas in truth any one engaged in historical
researches could as easily make use of works in Dutch as in most of the
languages of Western Europe."
FIRST VISIT TO HOLLAND XXIX
people and speedily acclimatized himself, as the following letter
to his mother shews : " Sloterclijk, 1 mile from Amsterdam.
(Letters to be sent to Amsterdam, Poste Restante.) You
will be surprised to hear that here in this strange land and
above all in this quiet little village I am in a fair way of
getting more notoriety than I ever enjoyed or suffered from
in my life before. Certainly I never before was mentioned in
the public prints twice in one week. How ? Why ? What ?
You shall hear. On Whitmonday I preached at the English
Episcopal Church here for Mr Jamieson the chaplain, who has
been very kind to me, while he was absent at Utrecht, and
my name (as you shall see when I return) duly appeared in
the * Domine Brief je ' or List of Preachers. (All ministers
are here Domines, with a long O.) The second occasion was
a bit of an adventure for a life so still as mine. Perhaps
I had better begin from the beginning and tell you that my
friend Mr Barford, the Norwegian merchant (with whom I
am on the best of terms and have the run of his house),
brought me over on Saturday to Sloterdijk to call on mijn
Heer Domine Calkoen the pastor of this village. Sloterdijk
is a village exactly a mile from the outskirts of Amsterdam
on the Haarlem road, canal, and railroad (all 3 run parallel).
It is approached by a perfectly flat road, enlivened however
by an avenue of trees on both sides of the footpath, and by
a multitude of ' buiten-plaatteni ' ('outplaces,' little country
houses to which the townsmen resort for tea and pure air).
You will rejoice to hear that I thus walk to and fro at least
4 miles a day, besides the long walks in the town. The village
itself lies on the ridge of a horse-shoe shaped dyke, which
protects it from the overflow of the river or rather estuary,
of the Zuider Zee (ui pronounced like our 'eye'). It con-
tains about 550 inhabitants of the Reformed (i.e. Calvinistic
Established) Church, and some Romanists who have no church
here. Like all Dutch villages, its houses consist in great part
XXX IN HOLLAND
of brick, and there are gardens ('tuinen' our word 'towns')
and summer houses to each. The pastor with whom I live
has in his house 3 sons, one a Doctor of Theology who is just
named his assistant on a salary of 300 florins or 125, though
he is a man of high education and a very good fellow ; another
son who is at the ' kantoor ' (a Dutch way of spelling * comp-
toir') in Amsterdam, and a pleasant lad of 9 or 10, Hendrik,
who is a great pet of mine and has this moment come into the
room to look for something. There is also Mevrow the wife,
and two daughters (whom one ought to call * jonge Juffrow,'
but I don't give them any title) and whom it is forbidden to
shake by the hand. There are also married sons and daughters.
One daughter married to an Amsterdam 'Domine' I have seen
with 4 or 5 of her six children, and have just brought home a
magnet angle and iron-snouted fish for 'die jongen.' The rest
of the family are two maids, one the queerest little thing in
her high cap. They have all a great notion that an English-
man must be very luxurious and that every man must eat
5 or 6 times a day or at least drink 'een kopje thee.' So
much for the establishment : you will readily conceive that
living thus in the midst of rural life and being on the most
friendly footing (as you may well imagine when you shall
have heard my tale) with the whole family, I have such
opportunities of learning the language and manners of the
people as others who have lived 20 years in the towns do
not acquire.
"Now for the story. About 4 or 4J ('half fijf,' as they
say here) we were seated at table and I had successfully
parried perpetual invitations to eat more meat and vegetables,
and to drink more wine than I had a mind to, when a cry was
raised that a house in the village was on fire. I sallied out
with Hendrik and the elder son (the other being in town), and
saw a house smoking and helped to get to the water a clumsy
village fire-engine and then to work it, making a grievous
THE FIRE AT SLOTERDIJK xxxi
rent (which I have just been botching up) in a new pair
of trousers during the process. The engine was so bad, the
wind so strong, the houses so dry and full of combustibles,
and the day so fine, that the fire gained strength apace. So
I turned my attention to clearing out the houses, bawling
in my best Dutch, "All must come out!" and so on, and
removing benches, mirrors, beds, chests of drawers, kettles,
and all manner of things. The people seemed to have no
notion of pulling down a house nor even of taking off the
shutters and window frames. I called for a crowbar, and
then for a poker, and got two of the paltry little things with
which in England we rake out stoves. However a carpenter
came with axe and heavy hammer, and we managed to make
somewhat of a clearance. I must have saved .40 or 50 worth
of goods, unless some were carried away by the silly by-standers,
to a neighbouring house which afterwards burnt with all
its own and with many strange goods. After getting well
tired I went to the parsonage for a glass of beer and a flannel
jacket, and took advantage of the pause to start a subscription
by giving the Domine a note for 60 florins (about 5 guineas),
and received hearty shakes of the hand from some of the
weeping women who had taken refuge in the parsonage. By
half-past nine the fire was under command, but 23 houses
perished (most of which with the effects were insured), and
as the baker's house was burnt with the rest, my money came
in handy for getting bread from Amsterdam for the sufferers.
It was very pleasant to see the friendly feeling between the
people and their pastor. Wine or beer or tea and pipes were
ready for all who came till near twelve o'clock, and many
were lodged here, and others in the church. To-day there
is a notice of the fire in the paper giving great credit to me
for my work and my money. The only thing I have lost in
the bustle is a pair of trousers, which will I hope fall to the
lot of some one who needs it more. It was touching to hear
XXX11 PRAISE OF CAMBRIDGE
some poor folks who had lost their all, lament most of all their
dog and cat, and of all my work what pleased me best was
to rescue a poor bird in a cage."
In contrast with this agitated scene we may set an
account of a quiet day in Cambridge which illustrates his
character and home tastes as they were at the time and ever
afterwards. " I have been largely occupied since I came up :
indeed I find that the notion of doing one's duty as it comes
in one's way, if calling upon freshmen and lionizing strangers
form any part of it, is likely to leave me little time for study,
though it certainly takes off one's thoughts entirely from
oneself, so that I held forth to my lecture room for an hour
without any nervousness upon the benefits of a thorough
study of original authors, instead of painful cramming of
compendiums, and can interest the men more than ever I
did before, since my first years at Marlborough. I find every
day that everybody except noisy professors is much better
and wiser than I had any notion of. A descendant of the
Ferrar family called on me yesterday and I shewed them
over the colleges etc. and was surprised to find that, though
plain people, both husband and wife delighted in Bacon and
Barrow, in Thorwaldsen and Rembrandt, in talking of the
condition of the poor and the harm done by charities and
schools which make the poor beggars and teach them to
throw off parental responsibility from themselves to the
school teachers; indeed no better testimony could be had
to the simple truth of Maurice's lectures than the fact that
they find an echo in every unpretending mind. Above all
I was delighted that the Trinity walks appeared 'like fairy
land ' ; and indeed the glorious tints of the horse-chesnuts, of
every shade from deep orange to green, lit up by a noonday
sun under such a clear sky as we seldom enjoy here, made
one long to have a great painter to sketch it. Talk of
travelling ! If a man will but open his eyes and ears in
SOCIAL WORK XXXlll
spring or autumn, Cambridge with its nightingales and trees
is as grand a place as any poet could wish to live in. And
then the libraries open their wide arms summer and winter ;
no ' summer friends ' they." It was always so. As long as he
lectured in college, whether to poll or honours men, he always
began with a history of the college and a list of the best
books; as long as he trod the courts of Cambridge, he was
eager to point out their beauties to visitors and freshmen.
There was another side to his interests, indicated by the
reference to Maurice in this last letter, which throws into
singular relief the student's life. He awoke to the value of
work among the poor. In 1855 he writes to his mother:
"I find to my astonishment how much I have lost by keeping
aloof from the poor 'who are always with us.' Such patience,
such simple trust, such racy humour, I have never witnessed,
and it is something to know that you are always welcome.
Besides I learn many lessons for the lecture-room from the
poor outcasts of the ragged school. And their affection to
one another and their master, their industry and humility,
seem like things of another world." He develops the theme
at greater length in another letter. " I have made a regular
practice (if four days can establish a practice) of visiting the
Industrial School and teaching reading, writing, divinity, or
whatever comes uppermost; and certainly never learnt so
much in my life as from these poor ragged fellows, not a
few of whom have seen the inside of a prison. One day for
instance they were reading a book about cow-keeping, and
there were a number of long Latin compounds which I had
to analyse in order to shew them the meaning of the parts.
So the lesson was a lesson in Latin. Then l surtout ' came in,
which made it a lesson in French. Then 'short commons,'
which supplied the text for a lesson in university manners,
and in the need we had of hard-working men, so that if they
would work hard we should find room for them. Then 'Kerry'
XXXIV THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL
and 'Kyle' cows led to geography, but they had no maps of
Great Britain or Ireland. Here money might do something,
so five shillings was spent in maps which the master is to
frame. The boys' definitions are so racy, smacking so strongly
of our true mother-tongue, that the poor would seem to be,
coordinately with our great authors, the true well of English
undefiled, at which they who are weary of newspaper and
review 'fine writing' may slake their thirst. Another day
I taught writing and found my old blue-coat experience come
in handy l . Then I took a reading in poetry, choosing a piece
on 'November,' it being a raw November day. After they
had spelt out some thirty lines, and been questioned upon
them, I began, having but a few minutes to spare before
lecture, to read with proper intonation and regard to rhythm,
so far as I am master of those accomplishments. At first
the boys plainly thought that I was putting off a joke upon
them, and began, in sheer good-humoured ignorance, to titter.
However I bore up under the ridicule, and a wonderful
change came over them as they listened for the first time
to the modulations of the voice and the music of verse.
Their looks replied to the changing sense, as Nymph Echo,
only less fitfully ; and I learnt what ' education ' means.
Then to-day talking with the master, a most excellent fellow 2 ,
I found that a boy, whose gentle sweet expression and happy
innocent way had caught my attention, was of 'a rough
family ' in Barn well, ' the very sink of vice.' The poor fellow
had been for three years at the school, and seemed to feel
for his master as a son for his father : sometimes he had got
him a decent place, but he begged his mother to let him go
1 Calligraphy was the only art he learnt at Christ's Hospital.
2 Mr Eichard Boning. On his most valuable work, see Bawnsley's
Life of Harvey Goodwin, pp. 67 ff. and an article by Harvey Goodwin,
entitled "Annals of an Industrial School" in Macmillan's Magazine for
May, 1860.
THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY XXXV
back to school, with tears in his eyes as he spoke. Once
he got him a place, four shillings a week, at the gas works,
but the poor fellow, who is neatness itself, was disturbed that
he could never make himself clean. 'Besides, master, you
don't know what I hear.' ' No good, I dare say, my poor
fellow,' says the master, 'for indeed (to me) they are a rough
lot.' The boy seems intended for a shoemaker, for he is never
altogether happy except when cobbling. So I am negotiating
to get him a place, which is not so easy as you might think,
and will advance a premium which the young fellow must
repay as he can. As for charity, it is worse than useless
'except to the fatherless and widow, who cannot repay you.'
I had no notion before I took up this business, how many
people I stand in relations to, and how little need there is
for an Arab feeling. In fact the contact with the poor seems
to make one at home with every one. To-day at the Vice-
Chancellor's wine party on taking office I happened to be
next him (Whewell), and talked to him as familiarly as I
ever did to any one, though till now I have fought very shy
of him. He seemed to have some fears of the Senate against
the heads, which I hope I did something to dispel, and dropped
some hints which he seemed really glad of about the University
Library. But you will be tired of my talking of myself, and
indeed I must turn to something less egotistical."
Ill
So, with college and social work, with unremitting study
and literary enterprises manifold, the time ran on till 1864,
a date which marks an epoch in our story. Mayor's Librarian-
ship, from '64 to '67, is the passage of his life perhaps least
known to the present generation. It is ancient history to-day,
and he did not often recur to it in conversation ; yet no other
experience of his is more characteristic of the man, nor
XXXVI WORK IN THE LIBRARY
exhibits more plainly his merits and his failures his entire
disinterestedness, his independence, his generosity, his sagacity,
his frenzy of work, and, on the other hand, his stubborn
pursuit of crotchets which might be reasonable in theory, but
which did not help business.
The Public Library in 1864 needed a strong Head. The
present Syndicate of 16 elected members in place of the 70
officials to whose perfunctory management the Library had
been entrusted for a century, was then barely 10 years old.
The University indeed had never treated the Library or the
Librarian as they deserved, and when the chance came, Mayor
determined at the cost of his own work to attempt the task
of raising both to a position of respect. Upon Mr Power's
retirement he offered himself as his successor, and was elected
without opposition. Personal ambition had no place in his
mind. He simply thought that he could, better than anyone
else, serve the cause of learning at the Library, and for this
he was ready to sacrifice himself and the friends, publishers
and editors, to whom he was deeply pledged.
He was well fitted for the post. Apart from his learning
and love of books, he had specially qualified himself by serving
on the new Syndicate and by a careful study of the theory of
library management at home and abroad. He now set him-
self to translate theory into practice with unexampled zeal.
He was at the Library each day when the staff arrived. "In
the quiet hour from 9 to 10, the only time we can call our
own, the business of the day is arranged ; the binders come,
each on his respective morning ; letters are read and answered.
...All persons who come to see the Library, unless they claim
it as a right, I conduct myself, telling them, if they remon-
strate, that it is necessary for the sake of discipline. In
particular I have thought it my duty to shew all courtesy
to my fellow-townsmen. My time has not been lost; people
go away with more respect for the place, and many donations
WORK IN THE LIBRARY XXXvii
of books are due to visitors.... Last year I wrote upwards
of 2000 titles, chiefly of books released from their 150 years'
exile in the star classes.... In June 1864, about 2 waggon
loads of books and tracts from a lumber room and from every
store room, were roughly sorted by some of the assistants,
my secretary and myself. All serials were collected, tied up
in bundles and registered ; but the single pieces, amounting
to many thousands, I have no means of cataloguing. With
2 new assistants I could go through the whole, sort out the
few valuable pieces for binding, and enter the rest in the slip
catalogue Many books in the south room had rotted away;
skirting now protects them from the damp wall. In the royal
library, the tops of .the cases, before treacherous nests of
vermin, are now safe platforms, convenient for many pur-
poses; the cases themselves, for 150 years supposed to be
full, have yielded space for about 9000 books from the star
classes Mr Smith and I are now on our second round
through the royal library and the east room, examining
whether a book is a duplicate, whether it will bind with
its neighbour, and whether that is a duplicate Every
duplicate sold has passed about 6 times under my eyes ; the
copy kept by us has in every case been collated throughout,
often by me.... One-fifth of our books [i.e. of duplicates] were
transferred at once to the British Museum; the rest have
gone for the most part to American public libraries 1 ."
The result was a life and stir in the Library such as that
institution had never known before. But there were points in
Mayor's administration that invited the criticism of practical
men. It was right that the Librarian should have large
powers to buy and bind books ; but Mayor exceeded in three
months his statutory allowance for the year. It is right to
part with duplicates; but Mayor sold hundreds at ridiculously
low prices. It would be right, in starting a new library, to
1 Statement made to the Syndics of the Library, 7 March 1866.
M. s. c
XXXV111 RESIGNS THE LIBRARIANSHIP
adopt a continuous numeration of the classes, and Arabic
numerals offer the most obvious and convenient system. But
when Mayor insisted on renumbering all the classes in an
already crowded collection, he threw a burden on the slender,
overworked staff which it could not well bear, though he was
ready to do more than his share and altered many of the
entries with his own hand, and he caused a nutter among
the frequenters of the place who knew their way about the
shelves. On all these points there were differences of opinion
felt and expressed between the Librarian and the Syndics.
But the actual cause of his resignation after three years' toil
with only eight days' holiday was the attitude of the Senate.
A special syndicate (against which Mayor had protested from
the first on the ground that the Library deserved separate
treatment) had been appointed to investigate the general
question of capitation taxes and their appropriation, and had
recommended early in 1866 that the old Library tax of 6s.
a head should be commuted for an annual payment from the
Chest of 2500 plus ,1000 towards a building fund. Mayor
felt that as the tax was a steady and steadily growing source
of income, the Library would suffer rather than gain by this
commutation. He knew he could not supply its wants nor
increase its staff unless he had the tax, and a tax increased to
10s. a head throughout the University.
His Syndicate were by no means unanimous in their sup-
port of him in this matter and he resigned. There is perhaps a
note of disappointment in the letter with which, on 11 Nov.
1866, he apprized his friend and colleague, Henry Bradshaw,
of his intention 1 ; his letter to the Senate three months later is
admirable in its simple dignity. To Bradshaw he says : " It
seems right that you should now know what I had not in-
tended to communicate to any one in the library until I
should announce it publicly. Macmillan, to whom my tenure
1 This letter is preserved in the Registry of the University.
LETTER TO BRADSHAW XXXIX
of the librarianship involves a loss of at least 100 a year,
appeared to have a right to my confidence from the first. In
May 1864, when I ceased the printing of Juvenal, I told him
that I would relinquish the library and return to his service
when I thought I could in justice to the University and
without dishonour Clay, who has had just cause to com-
plain of me, has also known for a year or more that I
considered library work incompatible with publishing engage-
ments. Pierotti * for more than a year, and the library since,
have not left me time to clear off more than a few sheets for
the Antiquarian Society and the Baker Catalogue 2 , the last
of which I should never have completed if my power to
purchase and to bind had not been taken away. I need
not speak of Archdeacon Cotton's 3 or Lord Romilly's 4 claims
upon me. Maitland's 5 and Cooper's 6 deaths, the last more
1 Dr G. Pierotti, a Sardinian, architect-engineer to the Pasha of
Jerusalem, who identified many sites in the Holy City, and attracted
a good deal of attention in England and especially in Cambridge about
this time. Mayor gave him help in producing Jerusalem Explored, 1864,
translated by Dr T. G. Bonney.
2 In the Catalogue of MSS. preserved in the Library of the University
of Cambridge (1867), v. 193-567.
3 The Archdeacon of Cashell had made transcripts of a collection
of papers connected with Bedell, to which Mayor added others and went
to press with them in 1866. But all that came of it was the Life of
Bedell by his son (1871).
4 Lord Romilly, Master of the Rolls, for whom Mayor was engaged
upon his edition of Richard of Cirencester. See below p. xlii.
5 S. R. Maitland died at Gloucester on 19 January, 1866. Mayor's
connexion with him, which was very close, began apparently about 1849.
"I am glad to find," he writes to his mother, "that Baker's notes are
being properly appreciated: Maitland, to whom I had sent... one or two
corrections of his mistakes in his Essays on the Reformation, wrote to me
the other day to tell me that he was very thankful to see them, and that
they are invaluable."
6 C. H. Cooper, Town-clerk of Cambridge, author of the Annals of
Cambridge and the Athenae Cantabrigienses, to whom Mayor dedicated
c2
xl LETTER TO BRADSHAW
particularly by making my collections useless, seem to call
me to devote what time I can to the history of the church
and of learning. Nor do I think the prospects of classical
learning in England so bright that any man who has read
carefully and extensively can be willing to remain silent for
life while 'science militant' carries all before it. I cannot
make up my mind to put my collections into Macmillan's
hands, that he may employ some drudge to put them into
shape. For these reasons, and because I was sure from the
first that to place the librarian's office on a firm basis I must
be able to say ' Whatever is done will not affect me,' I told
the subsyndicate appointed to draw up the paper I gave you
this morning, that I proposed to resign office at Christmas.
However as that would be inconvenient, and some time will
be required for drawing up the various forms mentioned in
the report, I think now of holding on till February 26, on
which day three years ago I was elected.
"Enough time will have elapsed since Campion's 'row 1 '
to shew that I do not act from transient pique; and the
university will probably be inclined to take a more favourable
view of my services than it does now, or indeed than they
deserve; all which will tend to procure a hearing for the
wants of the library....! think my exact observance of the
statutable term of residence will prove the folly of the statute ;
I confess that, not having left Cambridge for eight days con-
secutively for near three years, I am hungry for a summer
abroad. In talking of myself, I have left myself no room to
his Matthew Robinson, had died in March, 1866. Mayor equally deplored
the backwardness of the University to honour by a degree during his
lifetime a man who "has adorned our Sparta as no gownsman has
done," and the failure of the attempt to raise money by public sub-
scription for a memorial of him after his death. The bust of Cooper
which is now in the Free Library was procured and paid for by Mayor
himself.
1 I cannot discover to what this refers.
LETTER TO THE SENATE xli
speak both of your generosity in leaving the field open to me
in 1864, and of the ready help which you have given me all
along. Without you I should have thrown up my post in
disgust long ago ; now I hope by my retirement to do more
for the library than I have done by work in it 1 ."
Here is what he wrote to the Senate on Feb. 26 : " In
resigning into your hands the trust which you confided to
me three years ago, I beg to assure you that I shall always
retain a lively sense of your favour, and be ready to serve
the University in any way, so far as other duties leave me
leisure and opportunity. Engagements of long standing, the
pressure of which has, by no act of mine, been of late greatly
increased, make it impossible for me any longer to devote to
the business of the library either the time or the undivided
interest which are necessary to an honest discharge of the
duties of your librarian."
1 To-day at least the University knows the worth of his labours.
This is what the Library Syndicate say in their report for 1910 : "With
Professor Mayor's tenure of the office the organization of the Library
on modern principles may be said to have begun. Bradshaw, writing in
1882, said of Mayor's librarianship that 'an enormous increase of life
and vigour, inspired by his energy, found its way into every branch of
the work of the library,' and a study of the memorandums and pamphlets
which Mayor printed for the information of the Syndicate at this early
period, as a member of the Syndicate and afterwards as Librarian, shews
how thoroughly he understood the nature of the problems which lay
before him and also the difficulties with which he would have to contend.
Some of the reforms for which he fought are even now being slowly
carried through. In chronicling the death of a former Librarian and
expressing their sense of the loss which the University generally has
sustained, the Syndicate desire to emphasise their continued gratitude
for Mayor's reforming energy at a most critical time and their recognition
of the lasting value of his influence."
xlii LITERARY ACTIVITY
IV
Mayor used his recovered freedom in a brave attempt to
discharge his literary engagements. What he could not bring
himself to finish was the larger edition of his Juvenal, which
was ten years in the press and did not appear till 1878.
Readers of Alexander Macmillan's Life will remember the
letter of 6 July 1875; and never did publisher essay more
winningly to fix a wayward author to his task.
"It is well to be off with the old love
Before you take up with the new.
Think of keeping that oldest, best and beautifullest of all
your loves waiting at the door while you dandle a wretched
German interloper on your knee. Fye, you perversest of
Professors 1 ." But he completed for the Rolls Series his
edition of Richard of Cirencester (1863-69), with a preface
fixing the forgery of the De situ Britanniae on its eighteenth-
century editor, Charles Bertram of Copenhagen. He brought
out Thomas Baker's History of St John's College in a form
which is the model and the despair of all academic historians.
He added a volume (a short Life of William Bedell}' 2 to his
"Cambridge in the seventeenth century," which already in-
cluded Two Lives of Nicholas Ferrar (1855) and the Auto-
biography of Matthew Robinson (1856), and inaugurated a
new series, "Cambridge under Queen Anne." Of this the
Life of Ambrose Bonwicke (1870) is the only volume published.
The accounts of visits to England made by Frans Burman
and Z. C. von Uffenbach in 1702 and 1710 were annotated,
printed off, bound in two volumes (of which vol. i ended with
a comma and vol. ii with a hyphen) and given to a few friends
1 Life and Letters of A. Macmillan (1910), p. 330. The "German
interloper" v?as the Bibliographical Clue to Latin Literature, founded
upon Hiibner. which Mayor issued in 1875.-
2 See above p. xxxix, n. 3.
COMPULSORY GREEK xliii
but never put into general circulation 1 . He also lectured
with renewed zeal to his college classes which he had not
neglected even during the strenuous years at the Library,
and to women students, whose higher education had no
warmer advocate 2 . It may be doubted whether the gift of
lecturing was native to him, but he was always happy in
the exercise of it even for the benefit of "poll men," who
found in him an unexpected champion. "During the last
eighteen years I have lectured to students of this class almost
every term, and... some of the most intelligent pupils I ever
had were among them ; men who would start as from the
' cold snake ' from any unscholarlike nostrum." These words
were written in 1871, when the question of "compulsory
Greek " was first raised. Mayor spoke with no uncertain
voice. He would have no soft option for Greek such as
French or German, which could be picked up abroad in
childhood. If other languages were to be offered, " Hebrew,
Sanskrit, Arabic, Italian might put in a claim." The debate,
renewed in 1891 and 1905, always found him on the same
side, and his pamphlets Mutato Nomine and An Infant School
are the fairest medals of the victorious party. It is indeed
somewhat difficult to reconcile what he said in the first of
these flysheets, that "modern languages ought not to be
taught in higher schools at all, much less here, but learnt
at home 3 ," with his demand in 1869 for chairs of Italian,
French and English literature 4 .
1 The Cambridge Antiquarian Society will shortly publish the com-
pleted work, together with an index and an introduction by the Provost
of King's.
a His Latin Accidence and Latin Exercises (1870) were composed
expressly for the ladies.
3 It must be remembered that French, the only foreign modern language
taught in schools during Mayor's childhood, was not well taught. Con-
cerning it, he writes to Robert Mayor in 1840 : " I am very little improved
since coming to these schools, as the master is not considered at all a
good one." 4 Cp. Cambridge University Gazette, 12 May 1869.
xliv THE LATIN PROFESSORSHIP
In 1872 he was chosen to succeed his friend Munro in the
chair founded to commemorate Dr Kennedy's head mastership
of Shrewsbury School. The topic of his first lecture as Pro-
fessor of Latin was the author who first brought him fame
(Juvenal, Satire x), but what may be regarded as his inaugural
discourse was a set of three lectures on the choice of books
useful to the student of Juvenal and Tacitus. Throughout
his long tenure of the office he kept steadily to the same
round of subjects Juvenal, Martial, Seneca, the younger
Pliny, Tertullian, Minucius Felix, with occasional excursions
into Plautus, Terence, Quintilian, Ausonius, and Lactantius.
In 1876 he discoursed to theological students on Bede
H. E. iii and iv, and published his notes with the help of
Dr Lumby, and in 1905 he gave one lecture on pseudo-Richard
of Cirencester.
His manner of lecturing is preserved in a reminiscent
article by an undergraduate, who formed sibi soli the Pro-
fessor's penultimate class, in the Easter Term of 1910 1 . "To
hear him speak, to hear him quote, not only Greek and Latin,
but French, German, Italian, Cingalese (he treated me to
several autobiographical reminiscences) and, if I remember
aright, Hebrew 2 , with as much naturalness, as little fuss, as
if he were quoting the Times of that morning, startled me
until his encyclopaedic references and the wide range and
fulness of his quotations became a commonplace. Then the
rare gift he displayed of investing apparent minutiae with
a large meaning, of laying bare the vital and essential im-
portance that was attached to them, made one often wonder
if the modern contempt of what are often misnamed pedantries
1 He lectured again in the Michaelmas Term to a solitary M.A. The
subject announced was Minucius Felix ; but at the suggestion of his
auditor, who had heard him before on this writer, he changed it in a
twinkling to Seneca's Epistles.
2 This is not likely. Cp. "I... blush at myself for knowing Moses and
Isaiah only at second hand." Mutato Nomine, p. 2.
MAYOR AS LECTURER xlv
merit the vogue it receives.... More than once would he devote
a great part of the hour to explaining the fundamental differ-
ence between such words as condicio and conditio, and to
castigating Lewis and Short for their ubiquitous and criminal
carelessness In his introductory remarks on Martial I well
remember the concentrated sarcasm he threw at those who
condemned the poet as unreadable for the tone of many of
his epigrams. On the negative side he was compared to the
courtier writers of the Restoration, especially the dramatists,
and the imperial laureate had at least a clever wit to commend
him Even now I can hear his fervid recital of certain lines
which he did not scruple to put alongside the aphorisms of
the New Testament. Martial, I was told, had been a favourite
author of men like Jeremy Taylor, which was sufficient
guarantee of the quality of his precepts 1 ." This account
brings out vividly one point that raised Mayor's lectures
above the ordinary, his wonderful reading of original au-
thorities ; but it does not mention what was more remarkable
and more rare, the marvel of his renderings into English.
About the date of his election to the chair of Latin, Mayor
became actively engaged in the Old Catholic movement. This
supplied fresh matter for his enthusiasm and gave a new colour
1 The Gownsman, Feb. 19, 1911. Cp. "Few are aware how all
literature is charged with lessons of practical wisdom, how even a
Martial, whose venal muse often wallows in the mire, can yet now
and again soar into a purer air, giving clear and earnest utterance to
thoughts and aspirations which we cannot afford to let die. For my
part, in such lucid intervals, I refuse to scent hypocrisy; in my ears
they echo the voice of the true and better self, breaking loose for a
moment from the spell of vicious fashion." Sound Mind in Body
Sound (1901), Preface.
xlvi OLD CATHOLICS
to his studies. He was led to it partly by his natural hatred
of anything like tyranny, partly by his historical imagination,
largely by the learning and nobility of its leaders. Dollinger
and Reinkens, Schulte, Reusch, and Herzog were in his eyes
the spiritual offspring of the English Reformers. He saw
them living through the experience of the sixteenth century,
fighting the same battle for religious freedom, raising "an
insurrection of Christian conscience and intellect against a
besotting and withering thraldom." So he put himself gladly
at their service, acting as secretary for Germany to the Anglo-
Continental Society, attending congresses at Bonn, Constance,
Freiburg; incessantly writing, talking, preaching in their
cause. For the first time since the Reformation an English
voice was heard in the Lutheran Church at Constance, uttering
words of sympathy in German and in English. Of the 1873
Congress there Mayor wrote for the Society a full and accurate
report, in which details, dry enough to-day, are refreshed by
brilliant vignettes of the chief actors and by his own irre-
sistible humour. Who can forget Pastor Hosemann, boycotted
for his opinions by his flock? "The butcher refused to supply
meat, the baker bread ; only the innkeeper did not dare, with
the law before his eyes, to withhold that third staff of life, the
most necessary of the three to a Bavarian beer. So the brave
Pfarrer imported his bread from Munich, and set up a warren,
with near 200 rabbits, to furnish his table with meat. The
poor folk believed that he was doomed to everlasting perdition,
and that horns were sprouting from his head. He bade them
search for the diabolical ensigns with their own hands, and
assured them that he had never felt his conscience so light as
after his excommunication."
All Mayor's powers were put into motion for his persecuted
friends. Facts and documents relating to their sufferings were
collected and disseminated, their present protests were trans-
lated, former utterances germane to their case were reprinted,
SPANISH AND ITALIAN CHURCH REFORM xlvii
sermons of his own were preached wherever opportunity offered
notably in St John's Chapel printed and spread broadcast.
That on Luther and good works (1883) was dedicated to Rein-
kens who, with Herzog, had visited Cambridge in the previous
year; that on Reusch (1901) to Johann Friederich Schulte.
Constant references in his homilies on other subjects shew
how full his mind was of this for 20 years. And when the
star of Old Catholicism began to wane, there were other
Rom/reien Kirchen to take its place in his horizon. Lord
Plunket's action in the Peninsula and his consecration of
Cabrera as bishop found no more outspoken advocate than
Mayor. His sermon in college on the Spanish Reformed
Church (1895) was the postlude to a magnificent discourse
in St Mary's. This last, too long to be read there in its
entirety, was issued in book form under the title Spain,
Portugal, the Bible. The text was passed for press in 1892 ;
the notes were not ready till 1895. Text, notes, and preface
form together the most lasting monument of his eloquence,
of his generous temper and catholic sympathies. The whole
man is in this little volume of 120 pages.
Then, when Italy seemed ready to follow in the steps of
Germany and Spain, the friend of Reinkens and Cabrera came
forward to help Campello with pen and tongue and the re-
sources of a slender purse. Italy had a special place in his
heart. His eldest sister, Mary Anna, had settled in Rome
where, being herself an accomplished artist, as well as a very
good woman, she had already rendered admirable service
among the young art students before she directed her great
gifts of heart and head towards the cause of Italian Church
Reform 1 . John visited her in 1875, was taken with her work
and with her friends, shared her hope of a bright future for
the Italian church, and when that hope grew dim and his
1 There are several interesting letters addressed to Miss M. A. Mayor
by Lord Plunket in How's Life of Archbishop Plunket (1901), pp. 282 f.
xlviii VEGETARIANISM
sister died, he continued to do his best for her sake and to
save her labours from being wasted. He became deeply
attached to Professor Cicchitti and welcomed him to England
more than once, while his hand is very visible in the Liturgy
published at Milan in 1903. The words that went with the
wreath laid upon the grave in Cambridge on 6 December,
1910, tell what Cicchitti and the church at Milan felt for him:
"Dal presidente della chiesa Riformata d' Italia, Professore
Cicchitti, che con la sua famiglia, consideravano il carissimo
defunto, come padre, amico, maestro e benefattore incom-
parabile."
VI
Besides his love of religious liberty, John Mayor had a
passion for simplicity of living. This found its fullest satis-
faction in membership of the Vegetarian Society which he
joined in 1881, to its great advantage and his own. He told
the German vegetarians, assembled in conclave at Cologne in
1889, that as a boy of thirteen he had "in quest of know-
ledge eschewed all animal products fora whole Lent"; now,
lamenting subsequent relapses, he rejoiced to be living as
Nature taught. Long before he formally forewent fish, flesh
and fowl, wine, tea and coffee, he was hovering 011 the edge
of thoroughgoing abstinence, as is seen from the following
passage from a letter written in 1846 on his return to Cam-
bridge from home : " I tried an experiment, half voluntary,
half forced, this morning thinking to save my charge at the
Inn 1 . I told the hostess that I would breakfast in College
and called on 2 or 3 of my friends to beg ; but one had gone
down the day before, the others were not in, so that I had
to go without : as I did not feel any inconvenience from it,
1 Where, reaching Cambridge too late for admission to the college,
he had put up, in company with a loquacious bagman.
A COUNTRY QUIRE AT LUNCHEON xlix
though I had tasted nothing but your sandwiches since leaving
home, I am beginning to think that breakfast may become
almost as unnecessary as tea generally is."
But in 1866 he had not yet banned flesh-meat from his
board. Here is an account of how the Cambridge recluse
entertained his country friends in that year. "I have just
seen the Gordons (or rather Mr Gordon, his nieces 1 and
Miss Roffe) with 10 quire boys and men off by the train.
The day was most successful. I met them with an omnibus
about ten o'clock, shewed them over the press, the college
gardens and library ; then to lunch at one o'clock : I had
provided substantial joints, having heard the fame of their
appetites, and remembering how once, when I had only
'birds' and light things, and no 'piece of resistance/ I
blushed for my scant provision. This time I had, for 19
in all, a haunch of mutton, a meat pie, a neck of mutton,
and a good piece of rib of beef. The pie disappeared, nearly
all the beef, a serious hole was made in the haunch, and
Green 2 did not think the neck worth saving for me. I sent
1 The Reverend R. A. Gordon, rector of Barley, near Royston, with
whom Mayor became acquainted at the house of one of his Bickersteth
cousins, Mrs Durrant. Mr Gordon is described in another letter as " a
high church friend and neighbour of Emily's.... Though he has been but
5 years in the parish he has nearly reclaimed it from dissent, has adult
schools taught by himself, his wife and governess, and has induced some
25 adults to be baptized." The nieces in question are Miss Lindsay
(afterwards Lady Temple) and her sister, with whom Mayor on his
frequent visits to Barley loved to read aloud.
2 Green, his gyp, was a great character. " My books came in to-day
from Mr Mitford's sale, and contain several duplicates which I shall
make over to Joe. Green, as usual, had his remarks to make. First
he thought that there was no room for more ; when satisfied as to that,
he went on to a more searching criticism. ' German, I suppose, Sir.' No,
Greek, most of them.' * Oh, you're beginning to buy Greek now.' ' Not
beginning; many hundreds of the books in this room are Greek.' ' Oh,
I didn't know.' " From a letter of 6 January 1859.
1 THE ART OF DINING
the haunch to a very worthy fellow who had to stay behind,
and sent every body away with a photograph and charmed
with his day. It is wonderful to see how entirely at home,
and yet how respectful, the boys are, and how naturally Mary
and Laura Lindsay manage them. After lunch (at 1) they
went to Trinity, where a fellow of the college shewed them
everything, and then to King's, where they climbed the roof,
and heard an anthem chosen expressly for them, and then
after service the 'dead March in Saul' and other things.
Then came tea at 6 o'clock, and then a ride in the omnibus
again to the train. It is good practice in the art of dealing
with men of other ranks, and also in the art of dining a large
number of people. I dispersed the gentlefolk amongst the
boors 1 ...! put Mary next to Hessels 2 , and succeeded in making
the whole party anxious to know more of him. Green pre-
dicted that my rooms would never again be in order, but
I put them in perfect order yesterday and this morning, and
have been putting up some new shelves, so that reckoning the
space gained by Hessels, who has placed two rows of books,
one behind the other, I am now more at ease than I have
been for years." It is quite plain that, apart from the ulterior
motive of self -improvement at which one sentence in the letter
hints, the whole business, meat and all, was a pleasure to his
simple and generous soul.
To return to Cologne he gave his hearers half a dozen
reasons, not all of equal force, why he was a vegetarian. It
was because he had learnt German early and won thereby
introduction to books like Hufeland's Makrobiotik, Strevel's
1 One of the Barley "boors" in question affirmed that this was the
first time he had been treated like a gentleman.
2 Mr J. H. Hessels, now of St John's College, Hon. M.A. 1884 ;
author, among other works, of the article " Typography " in the Encycl.
Brit. (edd. 9, 10 and 11), editor of the Archives of the London Dutch
Church, etc.
COLOGNE CONGRESS li
Rauchhexe, Struve's Pflanzenkost. It was from motives of
economy : " ten of us can live where one flesh-eater pure and
simple must starve." It was because Nature teaches that
homo sapiens is nearer to fruit-eating apes than flesh-eating
beasts of prey. It was because "fruit and seeds uproot the
drink crave." And he clinches his argument by a list of
sages drawn from every epoch, than whom he could not aspire
to be wiser : Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Epicurus, Masinissa,
Plutarch, Seneca, Musonius, Clement, Chrysostom, Bernard,
Cyrus, Decius, Fabricius, General Gordon. Not that all these
were vegetable eaters, but they were vegetarians. He is, in
another connexion, careful to define the word, pouring scorn
on those who make it mean " eater of vegetables." " When
librarian means an eater of books, antiquarian an eater of
antiques, even then vegetarian will not, cannot mean an eater
of vegetables." Vegetarius is one who deals with vegeta, and
vegetus, according to Holyoke's Latin Dictionary, London,
1677, means "whole, sound, strong, quick, fresh, lively, lusty,
gallant, trim, brave." Truly he answered to the definition
and was a living example of the word. He found a very
frugal, non-flesh diet best for his own mind and body ; small
wonder that he blessed it and sought to bring others to that
way. He would have each friend of his dprt/xcX^ KOLL dprivovv
like himself. " See that the boy's body is looked to ; you can
look to his mind well enough " was his parting advice to a
father. The boy's speedy success and promotion as a " scout "
gave him the keenest pleasure. " I am glad that Chris takes
so kindly to scouting. The movement lays hold of the chivalry
innate in the young."
His most important contribution to the literature of
Vegetarianism is perhaps his Modicus cibi medicus sibi
(1880), an expansion of two college sermons on Temperance
and Chastity ; but he wrote a host of pamphlets and addresses,
some of which have been collected and published under the
Hi VEGETARIAN SOCIETY
title Plain living and high thinking (1897). His duties as
President of the Vegetarian Society gave him the power and
opportunity of public speech ; from 1884, the year of his
election, till his death he never missed an annual meeting
save once, in 1909, when he strained his knee falling down-
stairs on the underground railway. Latterly these gatherings
and short visits to the College Mission at Walworth, and to
his relations at Kingston and Hampstead, were almost his
only Ausfliige.
But though he preached his dietetic creed in season and
out of season, distributing tracts 1 by handfuls and tins of
farinaceous food, he never made his idiosyncracy a source
of trouble to his friends. He was the easiest of guests to en-
tertain. Of what was set before him he took what he could in
conscience and left the rest. "If I pry into every pudding and
cake You are quite sure there is no milk, no eggs, no butter
here? I become a nuisance." And that he never was.
His Vegetarianism filled his mind for 30 years ; and with
it were associated in earlier days other hobbies which com-
manded less sympathy at Cambridge, such as anti-vivisection
and anti-vaccination. But time tempered the violence of his
convictions, and he ceased to look on those who differed from
him here as sinners against the moral law. No words could
be more sweetly reasonable than these, written to a protege
in 1910 advocating the use of non-alcoholic wines, ciders and
beer, " which are cheap and delicious. It is a more Christian
and more rational way of combating intemperance to make
brewers and vintners interested in temperance drinks than
to denounce as ogres men who are often excellent members
of society."
1 When Walworth folk came to Cambridge on the August Bank
Holiday, he let them eat their fill of the good things provided in the
College hall and then went the round of the tables sowing his seed in
the shape of How to live on 4d. a day.
THE SIMPLE LIFE liii
But he was steady in his own practice to the end. His
breakfast at 6 a.m. or earlier was a plate of oatmeal porridge,
without milk, and some prunes ; his luncheon a hard biscuit ;
he drank but once a day, a draught of lemonade in Hall.
When his housekeeper took him in hand, she heated the
porridge and added a dish of vegetables at 1 o'clock. There
was no other change 1 . His experience of tobacco was confined
to a whiff of a cigar when he was a child. " I have tasted
nothing of the sort since (1889) and I have saved some 1500
thereby : I gave up beer : the teetotallers asked, what right
have you to take the good wheat and barley from the starving
people, to make beer and spirits of it ? I could not see that I
had the right, so I gave the thing up."
There is little to record in the last 30 years. In 1881 he
abandoned to his books the rooms he occupied in the second
court over the gateway, and transferred himself and the other
library which he had stored elsewhere in the town to a little
house in Jordan's Yard. Here he was tended by Mrs Priest
with a care that had its reward in his unceasing and ex-
panding affection. He read aloud to her daughter every
evening; he started her sons 2 in life, and stood godfather
1 The legend of meat-juices stealthily introduced into his daily dishes
in hall is, I am assured by the college cook, devoid of basis.
2 It is to one of them that he addressed the following admirable
words of counsel: "If you are taken into the choir, you will have the
opportunity of a good education, and, as few people read the best
books, you will be able by degrees at little cost to form a library of
really standard works. Most people read little but the newspaper ;
many read only the papers of their own party, which teach them to
hate their neighbours. It is a good rule : ' choose the best ; custom will
make it easy and pleasant.' The best books are those which rich and poor,
learned and unlearned, can read again and again, and like them better
every day; the Bible and Prayer Book, and then great poets like Shake-
speare and Tennyson. There is no reason, but drink and idleness and
party politics, why people who work with their hands should not make
friends with the best authors of many countries.... Money may be stolen
M. s. d
liv HERKOMER'S PORTRAIT
to her grand-children. But he kept in closest touch with
the college, sleeping there during the summer months of the
first ten years of his extra-mural residence, and daily reading
prayers in chapel and dining in the hall where Herkomer's
fine portrait of him now hangs. This was painted in 1891.
When Dr J. E. Sandys asked him to sit for it, he said :
" I had hoped to be allowed to go down to a green grave with-
out any memorial ; but, if my friends wish it to be otherwise,
I must do as I am bid 1 ." He was soon on easy terms with
the artist, and did not find the sittings at all irksome. In
1902 he was elected President in succession to Mr P. H. Mason.
In 1905 an address of congratulation for his 80th birthday
was written in Latin by Professor Reid, and read and handed
to him in presence of the many signatories by Sir Richard
Jebb. " Then came the really interesting part. The fine old
man got up and began with a speech in Latin, after which he
passed into English. It was characteristic of his non-egotism
that he seemed to forget the occasion, and launched out into
a discursive speech on all his hobbies in scholarship, illustrated
by a wealth of learning. His memory is still prodigious. As
to vigour and spirit, he might be forty 2 ."
He continued collecting and reading his hand was never
or lost in many ways ; it needs a wise man to use money rightly ; many
men only eat and drink too much, or gamble, or waste their money in
one way or other, so that the more they have, the less happy they are ;
but knowledge, that is solid and useful, no one can take from you; it
stays at home with you, or goes abroad with you; it makes you friends
wherever you go, and never lets time hang heavy on your hands : think
of Jesus in the carpenter's shop, or St Paul stitching tents for his daily
bread, and you will see that one need not be rich to be wise ; the rich
fool is the most miserable of men ; the wise man will shew his wisdom in
having few wants, so that, whether rich or poor, he will have something
to spare for others."
1 The Eagle, xxxii. p. 198.
2 Sir Richard Jebb's Life and Letters, p. 410.
THE TEACHING OF LATIN Iv
without a pen or a book giving freely out of his treasury,
contributing to Notes and Queries or the Classical Review*;
but although of him the hackneyed (and misquoted) phrase
is exactly true, nihil quod tetigit non ornavit, he produced
nothing after this year of a nature to enhance his reputation
as a scholar second to none in Europe.
But his interest in education rather grew than waned as
time went on, and he was as hot at 80 years as he had been
at 25 against mechanical and lifeless teaching of the young.
He wrote to Mr E. S. Payne, of Clifton, in 1905: "Every
single Greek and Latin sentence that comes before a beginner
should be classical. I send you the exercises 2 which I drew
up for the ladies 35 years ago, which after a short spell of
life gave way to the official mumpsimus. You will see that
when speaking of the ablative after the comparative, I have
not forgotten the provident forethought of Polyphemus (Ov.
Met. xm), who strings together nearly thirty comparatives in
describing Galatea lucidior glacie laudato pavone superbior.
But 'Balbus and his wall' is more to the taste of masters.
The very first lesson in Greek should be taken from the
ypafjLfMTLK'rj rpaywSta of Kallias, Athen. pp. 453-4, where the
letters are introduced, and a syllabary." Another letter takes
up the parable of the First Greek Reader and sketches a model
lesson. "Take a Latin Psalter or N.T., or the Imitatio Christi
or the Colloquies of Erasmus, or the monostichs of Publilius
Syrus, or the Tristia or Epistles ex Ponto of Ovid. Bid the
boys open their books. Read aloud to them a Latin sentence.
Make some boy read it. Then give the English for that
sentence. Make another boy give it. Close books. Say a
Latin sentence and make one boy repeat it, or the whole class,
1 Two posthumous reviews appeared in the C. JR. for March 1911 on
a volume of the Vienna Corpus and on the eighth edition of Friedlander's
Darstellungen.
2 See above p. xliii, n. 2.
Ivi THE GERMAN READER
by memory. Then make one boy, and afterwards the class,
say it in English. Day by day repeat the old lessons, training
ear and memory in longer and longer nights. The instinct
which makes pupils revolt against Ollendormanisms is as
sound and healthy as that which rejects doctors' drugs....
I am quite sure that ten minutes spent at the end of a lesson
in reading to the boys something that they have not prepared
would quicken their pace greatly. Latin first, then construe
(word for word), then fluent English, winding up with Latin
again." He heartily commended the method of Dr Rouse at
the Perse School, who "teaches languages in a living way:
first French, then German, then Latin, then Greek. The boys
are taught to speak each of these tongues."
His hatred of Ollendorfnanism found practical expression
in the last two years. In 1910 he brought out a First German
Reader, lacula Prudentium, and he was busy with a First
Latin Reader when he died. Of this last, he thus describes
the scheme. "My first volume will consist of verse. Part 1.
Latin from English. Proverbs and wise saws. The proverbs
I take from Ray, Herbert, and Herrick. Part 2. Para-
phrases (see Quint, and Suet. Gr. as cited by Forcellini),
i.e. Latin verse extracted either from Latin prose, or from
a different kind of verse. It is ominous when Suetonius tells
us that in his day men were too idle to practise these exercises.
Part 3. Shorter Latin extracts from poets, with my trans-
lations. [Part] 4. A few specimen translations from the
poets with accredited translators, e.g. Howes for Horace
My second volume will be of prose. I intend these books
to be read with children by those who are at home in the
languages V
It must be admitted that the German Reader opens with
a past participle rather formidable to the fledgling : " Mann
mit zugekopften Taschen," but no one can question the splendid
1 From a letter to Mr E. S. Payne, 4 November 1910.
A SECOND DE TILLEMONT Ivii
vigour and telling terseness of the translations. This book
soon attained a second edition, dedicated to his friend Karl
Breul, the newly elected Professor of German.
In 1904 he offered to resign his Chair, and if the Council's
inability to accept it was partly dictated by prudential reasons 1 ,
we may believe that the motives that prompted the selection
of Joseph Scaliger to succeed Lipsius as professor at Leyden
were not wholly absent 2 . Any University may be proud to
possess a " Prince of Latin Literature."
One parallel suggests another and the ages have been
ransacked for the purpose. If a fresh one be permitted, let
the reader think of Le Nam de Tillemont whose master
passion was the history of the church, whose day of 19 hours
was broken only by the daily offices and a brief pause at
noon, who studied for study's sake without thought of recog-
nition or reward, who never withheld the key of knowledge
from any who sought it the perfect pattern of the Christian
scholar, whose epitaph spoke simple truth : sancte educatus
sancte vixit s .
But after all, comparisons are misleading. Mayor was
really like no one but himself, and few can have wished
him otherwise. When he left us, those who knew him least
might regret the loss of irrecoverable learning, but others
were simply grateful for his example and his memory.
1 The University had made no provision for pensions, and it would
have had to pay a far higher stipend to his successor than Mayor ever
received. Cp. The Eagle, xxxii. p. 195.
2 Cp. " Dousa proposed to concentrate in Leyden a complement of
professors, all illustrious for their learning, and if the most transcendent
erudition could not be procured for the University with the obligation
of teaching, that it should still be secured to it without.... Lipsius... had
retired. Who was to succeed him? Joseph Scaliger, the most learned
man whom the world had ever seen... was, if possible, to be obtained."
Sir William Hamilton, Discourses (1853), p. 377. And appointed he
was, to honour learning and illustrate the University.
3 Cp. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, iv. 5 ff.
Iviii HATRED OF PRETENCE
VII
It remains to gather up the scattered hints of the foregoing
pages, and to hazard a few supplemental touches to the picture
painted by his own words and actions.
He was perfectly sincere, honest, simple-minded; and,
after the manner of the simple-minded, he gave credit for
sincerity, honesty, and (we may add) knowledge like his own
to all who did not stand convicted of pretence. These
he would scorch with a very fire of contempt, expressed or
tacit. Thus he writes of a vainglorious author: "XI met
just now... and did not know what to say to him or he to me.
When one meets a man who has published a book which
means to be popular, one seems bound to congratulate or to
enquire about its success, much as one interests oneself about
a newly married couple ; but where there is no valid excuse
for publishing at all, I cannot bring myself to feign a concern
which I do not feel." And again : "I do not, nor ever did,
despise any man solely for his ignorance, but only if, being
ignorant, he set up to teach others." He imagined that
what was of concern to him must necessarily interest every
one else ; he would sweep a casual hearer into the full current
of his thoughts, toss him for a moment on the flood of a
diatribe against some violator of the laws of letters or of
charity, and leave him breathless and bewildered.
But for all his vehemence against wrong-doing, great or
small, real or imagined, he was the kindest hearted and most
affectionate of men. His good deeds are unnumbered and
unknown. He gave away books by the thousand and money
beyond his means 1 .
1 Books bestowed by him for the purpose of promoting knowledge
were sometimes exchanged by inconsiderate recipients for others more to
their taste. Mayor's eye, long practised in the perusal of second-hand
LOVE OF CHILDREN AND OF CAMBRIDGE lix
He loved children, treasured and repeated their prattle,
filled their hands with flowers from the Fellows' garden,
worshipped at the feet of "King baby" with the fondest.
And as his little friends grew up, Mayor would read aloud
to them, direct their lessons, write out for them with his
scholar's hand keepsakes, collections of verses and aphorisms
in every tongue, and, when the time came, marry them with
words of fatherly kindness 1 .
He had himself the child's heart, the child's strong will,
the child's natural modesty. If his conversation and his books
were often autobiographical, it was not because he wished to
magnify himself, but that he might spur his juniors to profit
by advantages unknown to him at their age 2 .
He was intensely loyal to his family, his college and
University, his friends and their friends. He was proud
of his forebears and connexions Sir Matthew Hale, Lord
Langdale and he rejoiced greatly whenever a Mayor or a
Bickersteth, an Ottley or a Cook scored a success in life.
He loved St John's with open piety, but he had room
in his heart for other colleges; for instance, he allowed
certain virtues to be the special mark of Trinity 8 .
catalogues, was quick to detect the barter. He would write on an
ironical postcard that, seldom receiving any acknowledgement of his gifts,
he had often feared that they might have been stolen on the way : now
he was sure that they had been stolen and that Messrs A and B were
the receivers. He pilloried the feeble excuse that they were " duplicates
or not needed" as "a monument of the incompetence of those who
represented the book learning of the Anglican communion at the end of
the nineteenth century."
1 Op. his sermon Holy Matrimony (1902 and 1907).
2 Cp. "With helps infinitely fuller than we had sixty years ago... the
students of to-day ought to leave the Westcotts, Horts and Lightfoots of
the past far behind them." The One Thing Needful (1904). See below
p. 160.
3 See below p. 165 f.
Ix BIOGRAPHICAL COLLECTIONS
This enthusiasm for his home was prompted by no petty
pride, but by the conviction that in Cambridge, as nowhere
else, has a stand been made for simplicity, tolerance, and
freedom. So strong was this conviction that, with a large-
heartedness that would have seemed extravagant in a man
who cared for these things less, he did not hesitate to invest
his great contemporaries with an attribute of a Hebrew
prophet, and to set Sir John Cheke beside St Paul 1 .
He kept a register, not of Johnians only, but of all
Cambridge men, their chief dates and doings. This was
contained in half a dozen interleaved Graduati Cantabri-
gienses, for the purpose of posting which he ransacked all
the newspapers 2 .
But his interest in all this was not merely historical :
former members of the college revisiting Cambridge could
always count upon his kindly recollection and warm welcome
of them. When a new comer was introduced to him by some
one whom he trusted, he spared no pains for his advancement.
One young man whom he never saw was supplied with books
and good advice, was commended by him to friends at Oxford
who made his life pleasant to him there. The letters he
received of thanks and gratitude he would shew with glee, as
an earnest that his pains were not misspent.
1 See below, p. 166.
2 Oxford did not escape his vigilance. There were two double-
interleaved copies of the Oxford Graduati treated like the Cambridge
ones and as religiously kept up to date. The beginning of this bio-
graphical work, in which Mayor was greatly assisted by his faithful
secretary, C. G. H. Bielefeld (fl881), is marked by two vast MS volumes,
lettered " Athenae Britannicae" 1854 and 1857. When over 80, he used
to say : " I shall find these books awkward to handle when I grow old."
These books must have been invaluable to the editors of the Dictionary of
National Biography. Mayor welcomed the inception of that great under-
taking, but he came in the end to look askance at it, chiefly because of its
articles on English divines and scholars, especially that on the Oxonian
Elmsley, which he deemed quite inadequate. See below p. 204.
POLITICAL VIEWS Ixi
Nor was his reading of the daily press, whose style and
methods were abomination to him, confined to the gazette
and the domestic intelligence from which he drew notes for
his diptychs. Vaunting the title of antiquary, he still kept
abreast of current history. He applauded all reforms, and
suggested some 1 , which he thought made for good, and, while
he hated the socialism of advanced democracy, he admired the
doctrines and practice of Maurice, Kingsley, and Llewellyn
Da vies. But in politics, whether public or academic, his
instincts were conservative. A week before his death the
Senate divided on the question of a House of Residents.
Mayor descended into the arena with a flysheet. "Officialism
militant is in the air. Cabinets, wagged by their extremities,
gag Parliament into dumb voting booths. Councils seek to
disfranchise the great bulk of the University."
For all his modest and retiring life, he was no Timon.
Once, speaking of a friend who, as he thought, had spoilt
himself by shyness, he said to me : "I am a hermit too, but
whenever there is a fad forward, I come out." And indeed
in his time he followed many fancies. The last he tried was
Esperanto, which he commended to business men and botanists
as the language for modern things, and of which he learnt
enough in a week or so fully to enjoy the Congress at Cam-
bridge in 1907.
All his undertakings were marked by the same vehemence
of attack and boldness of execution, and the independence
which characterised him as a boy never left him. In literature
at least he fought for his own hand. His maxim was " never
1 A letter of his in the Cambridge University Gazette for 12 May 1869
on the proposed Professorship of Experimental Physics was hailed by
competent judges as containing "the most valuable hint... yet contri-
buted to the mass of suggestions towards organizing the education of
the University." See op. cit. 19 May 1869. As early as this date he
was all for reorganizing lectures on a University basis. See First
Greek Reader, p. xliii.
Ixii MAYOR IN SOCIETY
consult others about your writings, but let them represent
yourself alone 1 ." Writing to Mr J. D. Duff on 9 Nov. 1898,
he says : " All my work has been thrown off at white heat,
to keep the press going I do not doubt that what I have
done would have been better for criticism, but I never sub-
mitted a line to any man's judgement before publication."
The atmosphere of such a mind, quick to kindle and soon
at white heat, is not conducive to a true perspective. And
Mayor was undoubtedly prone to see trifles too large. But it
is a virtue to treat them as he did, with a scholar's desperate
carefulness. And he was wise enough when he made mistakes
no man is infallible not to let them spoil his sleep. He
admitted the error ("I am apt to fall into lapsus calami "),
and passed on to something else.
Needless to say that, with his knowledge of books and
men, his vivid sympathy and shrewd humour, he was an
incomparable host. He seldom went up to Combination
Room; but in the Hall, where he presided, he shewed equal
courtesy to every guest, from the great man of the hour to
the Oxford undergraduate, whose fear to find himself placed
beside so much learning was soon cast out by kindness.
Mayor could talk with ease and charm on general topics,
but his conversation was mainly guided by his own fancy.
On subjects that did not directly interest him he was mute.
He claimed no ear for music ; for the arts, graphic or plastic,
we may believe that he had little sense. At the age of 32,
by which time most men have formed their own aesthetic,
he could write : "I consider myself to be obtaining not
exactly money but credit for taste on false pretences, seeing
that I have no less than ten pictures of one kind or another
on my walls." But though he praised in print the figures of
the Lady Margaret and Bishop Fisher in the Chapel porch
objects more remarkable for their symbolism than their artistic
1 Cp. In Memoriam I. Todhunter, p. 58.
LITERARY TASTE Ixiii
worth he was often moved to eloquence by the ancient beauty
of St John's and by the eighteenth century vandalism that
mutilated the First Court. With science, apart from phy-
siology, of which he knew a good deal, he never meddled,
though he was a lover of nature and was fascinated by clever
mechanical contrivances. His literary taste, outside the large
field of the Classics where he ranged at pleasure, was sound
and sure, though limited by the precept Trdvra Trpos oiKoSofMjv.
Novels later than the Clementine Recognitions he hardly
touched except as tools for learning a new language. Then
he read them aloud, " which accustoms tongue and ear to the
sounds, besides impressing the words more on my memory,"
as he wrote on the occasion of his first visit to Bonn. When
they had served this purpose, he discarded them for more
substantial fare, e.g. Luther and the adagial writers in whom
Germany is so rich.
In French he preferred Guizot to Sainte-Beuve and Pascal
to both.
The Italian works of Metastasio and Goldoni he faintly
praised, as easy practice or amusing trifles. He mentions
Alfieri, Machiavelli, Guiccardini and "some other classics,"
but Dante never.
He was also widely read in Dutch and Spanish.
Among English poets his favourites were Shakespeare,
Milton (an edition of whose works he undertook but never
carried through), Herbert, Cowper, Wordsworth, Henry Taylor,
Trench, Tennyson, and Shairp. He projected a new Temple,
a collection of sacred verse. One may be sure that those
whom he called great lapidary artists, such as Ken and Watts,
would have been well represented, and that the softer school
of Faber and Newman would have had small place in it.
For modern English prose-writers he had as little sympathy
as, in his own famous phrase, Todhunter had for dogs. His
early admiration of Carlyle was tempered partly by that
Ixiv MAYOR'S RELIGION
writer's style, but still more by the careless treatment of
Nicholas Ferrar in his Cromwell.
Macaulay's periods left him unmoved, except to wrath.
" Read aloud to an intelligent audience one of John Donne's
Sermons on the Conversion of St Paul (which I regard as the
very highwater mark of English prose) and then read the same
audience a chapter of Macaulay's history, or one of his Essays 1 .
The vulgarity of the latter style will strike every one by the
contrast, and the hearers will resolve to spend laborious nights
and days on the Elizabethan and Stuart worthies." He him-
self profited by that high commerce to the full. His style was
unconsciously modelled upon theirs, so that he soon came to
write like one of them. There can be no higher praise.
To such a character, the Faith that blesses children and the
childlike was an easy yoke. And he was nobly tolerant.
With Clement and Jeremy Taylor and Frederick Maurice,
he was ready to see Christ present in all good deeds and
thoughts, and he found in Plutarch, Epictetus, and Antoninus
a Christian temper which he missed in modern controver-
sialists 2 .
The evangelical system in which he was born and trained
underwent a sensible modification as he thought and read.
The readiness with which he received the results of biblical
criticism was remarkable in a man of his cloistered life. He
strongly condemned those, whether scoffers or believers, who
seemed determined "to make our Heavenly Father responsible
for every word in the existing text of the Old Testament,
imprecatory psalms and all." "A student," he said in 1907,
"drilled in critical methods, cannot lock up in some Blue
Beard closet any part of the title-deeds of history 3 ."
1 The MS of one of his sermons has "the historian Macaulay"
altered in the press to "the rhetorician Macaulay."
2 Cp. Spain, Portugal, the Bible, p. Ivii.
3 Cp. The Oracles of God (1907).
VIEWS ON CONVERSION Ixv
On another crucial point of the old puritan discipline
he wrote soon after taking orders : " Conversion is not always
necessary, and its manner is infinitely various. Bear with me,
my mother. I have thought that I must be converted ; and
have wept and prayed, waiting for some instantaneous, sensible
'conversion.' But now, I ask, is not assurance a false and
dangerous doctrine ? Not but that a Paul or an Arnold at
his death might say : ' I have finished my course ; henceforth
there is laid up for me a crown of life.' But that any
Christian, often by no means more self-denying and always
more proud than his congregation, should get up in the
pulpit and separate his congregation into the converted
(including himself) and the unconverted, not conceiving it
possible that any should be, what almost all are, in a middle
state, with the world and Christ struggling in them for
mastery ; this seems to me no less than denying the success
of Christ's work It seems to me that our popular theology
utterly forgets the children and young men in Christ. The
Church of Rome is wiser here ; it allows that all its members
are members of Christ.... Why are men to think that they are
to wait till they become Christians 1 Why not tell them that
they are Christians and must act as becomes the vocation
wherewith they are called? Many and many a man has a
love for Christ and for goodness in his heart, but is driven
away by those who pretend to be alone inheritors of the
kingdom, and say that he must renounce all that he has been,
even his love of truth and of freedom, which surely in a
Christian land are Christ's gifts."
The great freedom of thought and action which Mayor
allowed himself never loosened his hold on things essential.
But if the lamp of his faith never nickered, it was not because
he kept the windows shut. He read all books and met all
doubts. Books and doubts were justly and generously tested.
What was worth keeping, he kept and used the rest he put
Ixvi MAYOR AS CHAPEL-READER
away from him and never troubled himself with again. One
of his latest readings was a book on the heathen mysteries, in
which their terminology is claimed as the source of some of
St Paul's most sacred utterances. It would have shocked
many men of Mayor's generation, but to him anything that
seemed to widen the horizon and establish truth was welcome 1 .
He was true to his Church and loved its services ; but he
was no formalist. He donned and doffed his black non-regent
hood on his way to and from the reader's stall, and he did
many little things which might offend the punctilious.
But the care with which he read the prayers and Holy
Scripture was a constant witness to his essential reverence.
Like Thomas Fuller he sought to change the accent of his
soul according to the several subjects of the Psalms, and to
express the mental transposition with his lips. And he never
missed the meaning, for he was Bibelfest. As nothing gave
him greater pleasure than to find a younger student using his
Bible to illustrate classical or secular knowledge, so nothing
roused his ire more than the discovery of ignorance of Scrip-
ture and the Fathers on the part of accredited scholars and
teachers.
For the rest, there is the clear evidence of his sermons.
They proclaim with a certainty that none who knew the man
can doubt his zeal for mission work at home and abroad, his
hatred of everything un-Christian, his steady schooling of
himself and others by the highest standard. He had his
reward in the answer of a good conscience and the know-
ledge of Him whom he served. He might with literal truth
have said with Polycarp : 'OySo^Kovra *ai e en? SovA.eva> avrw,
/cat ovSev (j, ^StA
1 Cp. " It would be well if we taught whatever positive truth has
been made known to us, and did not give error the advertisement of
a refutation." Letter to the Rev. H. Hill, 22 May 1910.
Ixvii
A LIST OF SERMONS BY JOHN E. B. MAYOR
WHICH HAVE ALREADY APPEARED IN
PRINT
Tendring
St John's College Chapel
Those which are included in the present volume are marked with a *.
1* Christ the Way to the Father 1867 St John's College Chapel
2* The Sign of the Ascension . 1868
3 Blessed are the pure in heart -1878
4 Then shall they fast in those
days ....
5* The Truth shall make you free
6* The child and the man .
7 The seven virtues
8* The Peace of God .
9 Luther and good works
10 Temperance for mind and body
11* Love divine and human
12 The example of Christ .
13 The art of Christian content-
ment ....
14 The royal law of liberty
15 Christian liberty in meats and
drinks ....
16* Boldness of them that have
been with Jesus
17 Kingdom of God not eating
and drinking .
18* Commemoration sermon
19* Eeady to distribute
20 The Christian rule of hospi-
tality ....
1880
1880
1881
1881
1882
1883
1883
1884
1885
1887
1888
1889 Salford
1890 St John's College Chapel
1890 Salford
1891 St John's College Chapel
1894
1894 Salford
Ixviii
LIST OF SERMONS
21 Do all to the glory of God . 1895
22 The Spanish Reformed Church 1 895
23 Rich and poor . . . 1899
24* Neither Jew nor Greek . 1899
25 Antipathies of race and habit 1900
26* A goodly heritage . . . 1900
27 Franz Heinrich Reusch . 1901
28 Love your enemies . . 1902
29 Holy Matrimony . . .1902
30* Render to all ...
31 The one thing needful .
32 They had all things common
33 Brotherhood ....
34 The fear of the Lord .
35 The oracles of God
36 The church of Scotland
Cross Lane, Manchester
St John's College Chapel
Great St Mary's
St John's College Chapel
St Sepulchre's,Cambridge
1903 St John's College Chapel
1904
1906
1906 Salford
1907
1907 St John's College Chapel
1908
Sermons 3 and 4 were issued together under the title Modicus
cibi medicus sibi (Cambridge, 1880).
Sermons 10, 15, 17, 20, 21, 33 are included in the volume entitled
Plain living and high thinking (Manchester, 1897).
This list does not claim to be exhaustive, but it contains all the
sermons which I have been able to trace.
<%ist % Wfog to % Jfa%r
ST JOHN'S
10 November 1867
M. 8.
Dominus noster lesus Christus, qui ait, ' Ego sum via et veritas
et vita,' ambulare nos voluit et per se ipsum et ad se ipsum. Qua
enim ambulamus, nisi per viam? Et quo ambulamus, nisi ad
veritatem et ad vitam, vitam scilicet aetemam, quae sola vita
dicenda est?
S. Augustin. serm. 346 1.
CHEIST THE WAY TO THE FATHER
/ am the Way and the Truth and the Life: no man cometh to
the Father, but by Me. St John xiv. 6.
THIS is one of those golden sayings of scripture from
which the great masters of the church have in all ages
drawn their chief inspirations. St Augustine quotes it
more often than almost any other verse; he has two
sermons on the text, in addition to the exposition which
he has given of it in its place in St John's gospel (a) ;
Luther has also two sermons upon it as a part of the
gospel for St Philip and St James's day, and treats it very
fully in that exposition of John xiv., xv., xvi., which he
himself called the best book he ever wrote, which he often
took with him to church and read diligently there (6).
More than three hundred years ago this same text served
a noble Huguenot lady as an invincible argument, when
plied at the stake with quotations from the councils, to
which she knew no other answer (c).
Our Lord in this His last discourse with His disciples
made known to them more clearly than before the neces-
sity of His departure, the nearness of it, and its purpose,
to prepare them a place in the many mansions of His
12
4 CHRIST THE WAY TO THE FATHER
Father. The successive questions of Peter, Thomas, Philip,
and Judas Lebbaeus, shew that they were still looking for
some local manifestation of divine power, to all the world
as well as to the disciples, some vision of the Father with
the bodily eye. Yet implicitly, knowing and resting in
Christ, they knew more than they could express, and
therefore our Lord could assure them : * Whither I go ye
know, and the way ye know.' Thomas, the representative
of the critical inquiring temper among the apostles, replies,
with something, as it seems, of a gentle reproach : ' Lord,
we know not whither Thou goest, and how can we know
the way ? ' Not knowing the destination, how can we
make for it?
Our Saviour's reply at once raises the apostle's thoughts
from earth, from movements to this place or to that,
and fixes them on that which cannot change. Not in
Jerusalem, nor on this Samaritan mountain, not in one
place more than another, must men seek the Father, but
in spirit and in truth. By godliness men draw near to
God, whose heaven is no farther from one point of earth
than from another.
I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life ; no man
cometh to the Father, but by Me.
It is plain that the stress lies here on the term the
Way ; not merely does the context prove this, but the
latter clause, in which, by the parallelism so frequent in
St John, what had before been stated in a positive form,
is reasserted in a negative; I am the Way; no man
cometh to the Father, but by Me.
I, He says, as so often. Ye have heard that it hath
been said, but 7 say unto you ; I not prophets, or saints,
or priests, or Moses' chair : not nature, for she, though she
CHRIST THE WAY TO THE FATHER 5
reveals power and order and wisdom, rather removes man
far from her Author ; He dwells in unapproachable light,
and we cry, ' When I consider Thy Heavens, the work of
Thy fingers : what is man that Thou art mindful of Him ? '
I, and not conscience : for conscience tells of a Judge
omniscient, vigilant, incorruptible, and who is clear in His
sight ? I, not philosophy : for philosophy confesses by the
mouth of her noblest votary : It is hard to find out God,
impossible to make Him known to all (d).
I am the Way. This symbol appears to be entirely
original and unique. Often indeed, both in scripture and
in profane writers, we find 'the way' used to denote a
religion, a course of life, defined and marked off by rule ;
as 'There arose no small stir about that way.' But applied
as here, to a person, the word seems nowhere to occur : it
is just that it should be His undivided prerogative who
alone has said : * Come unto Me, all ye weary and heavy
laden.' Elsewhere in scripture we find expressions which
seem to refer to this word 'I am the Way,' which was
doubtless well known in the church long before St John's
gospel was composed. Thus St Paul : ' As ye have there-
fore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.'
'Who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways,
which be in Christ.' So the writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews : ' Having boldness to enter into the holiest by
the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He
hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say
His flesh.'
Other scripture metaphors, I am the true Vine, the
good Shepherd, the Light, the Resurrection, the Life, are
evident at first sight. But this, ' I am the Way,' and that
other, ' I am the Door/ have a stranger sound.
6 CHRIST THE WAY TO THE FATHER
What is a way ? It is the means of communication
between distant points, it brings them nearer ; where there
is a way, there is no longer an utter wilderness, but society
and intercourse and material and spiritual exchange have
been established. A way is also a guide and direction, it
recalls the wandering foot ; the lost when they have struck
into the way know that each step they take tells, and
brings them so much nearer to their journey's end ; the
way gives certainty, decision, hope ; it implies prudence
and self-restraint. A way is also a security, a strong
support : to the right hand and to the left there may be
pitfalls and treacherous ground ; the beaten way witnesses
that it has borne many in safety, and that we too may
confidently adventure ourselves upon it. A way is also
continually present to the traveller ; day by day he
becomes more familiar with it, more seasoned to his
march ; it is only by its presence that it is of service to
him. So lastly, the way demands the personal efforts of
the traveller ; it is vain to say ' This is the way,' unless you
add, ' Walk ye in it. 1 The way does not carry you along,
but demands unremitting exertion along the whole line.
Christ our Saviour had reached the end of His earthly
way, and now from the heights He could survey the
course ; and so in some degree can we. See the Boy of
twelve years old going to the Temple, and hear His words :
'Wist ye not that I must be in my Father's house (e)?'
Hear the Man, witnessing to a fallen generation of the
Father, whose voice they had not heard at any time or
seen His shape; who could of stones raise children to
Abraham. Through crowds of timid friends, of insidious
foes, He held on His straight course, working the works
of Him that sent Him ; and now He was to pass through
CHRIST THE WAY TO THE FATHER 7
the Valley of the Shadow of Death, treading every path
that His brethren tread, to open through all their way to
the Father. Through all that life no lost step, no idle
word, no act without a meaning and an aim. No eager
zeal chilled after the first outburst; no instant but had
been seized and used to the utmost ; no passing occurrence
but had yielded its full profit to all around. Onwards
His path had led without haste and without rest(jf),
returning to the Father from whom He had gone forth,
attended ever by His Father's Spirit. To go out far and
wide into all the world He left to His disciples ; for Himself
He reserved a work small to outward view and on a narrow
stage, but whose scope would widen with succeeding ages,
to open the fountains of life and of healing for the nations,
to satisfy the severe law of God, and to establish peace
between the Maker and His work.
I am the Way. The way must mean in the first place
the way of which St Thomas asked, the way which Christ
Himself was going. He is His own way to the Father.
By Himself, by the Spirit which dwelt in Him without
measure, by His perfect obedience unto death, He made
His way back to the glory which He had with the Father
before the world was.
He is also the way of God to man and of man to God.
Of God to man ; for God was in Christ reconciling the
world unto Himself; only by the Word of God is God
made known to man : to believe in a God who is deaf and
dumb is idolatry (g) ; and the voice of God is His Wisdom
and His Word.
But St Thomas asked more particularly of man's way
to God. It was that he might follow his Master that he
sought to learn whither He was going.
8 CHRIST THE WAY TO THE FATHER
Christ is man's way to God, as our High Priest by His
atoning sacrifice offered once for all, and by His continual
intercession: as our Prophet by His word and Spirit
applying the word ; by every word of man which is
charged with His Spirit : as our King by all the influences
which in His kingdom raise men's souls from earth, by
every law and institution and bond of family or of friend-
ship, by every changing fortune, by every chastening
sorrow, which enlarges the heart and opens the bountiful
hand, and makes men live not for themselves alone, but
for God and their neighbour.
He is our Way, because His person and work is our
best security for a life to come ; because those who reject
Him, the Eternal manifested in time, rarely hope for an
eternity to be manifested when time shall for us be no
more. He has proved what perfect man can be, and has
thereby enlightened the individual and public conscience,
and made human laws also a truer reflex of the divine ;
he has set the slave free and so brought humanity nearer
to God, with whom is no distinction of race or regard of
person. He is the way of humility, of sacrifice, of that
purity of heart which shall see God. He is the Way by
His passion, by His teaching, by His Spirit which inspires
faith and devotion, by His example.
Here a question arises, which has been often asked :
How can Christ be the way ? The way is the means to
an end. When the end is gained, the means may be
discarded. In common material things this is so. What
we desire is the end ; we choose the means solely with a
view to the end ; there is no significance or value in the
means except as introductory to the end. But in higher
things we cannot thus sharply distinguish means and the
CHRIST THE WAY TO THE FATHER
end : the search after truth has a worth in itself, the way
to life is itself life ; and therefore our Lord says in a breath,
I am the Way, and (therefore) the Truth and the Life ;
the way and the end at once.
We may illustrate this from the work of our calling
here. We are scholars all ; teachers or learners ; or rather
teachers and learners at once. Learning is no doubt a
mean ; a mean whereby we may be enabled to serve God
and our country in church and state. Yet learning is not
only a mean even to this high end, much less to those
low grovelling ends which, by a corruption of language
unknown to our founders, are called the rewards or prizes
of knowledge. No single result is the satisfying fruit of
labour, but the labour itself, steadily moving onward day
by day, and proving itself not to be in vain, is the best
proof that God's blessing is upon us. The work of
education is the end and the reward: and that teacher
and that student will labour restlessly and slavishly, not
with a free and hearty enthusiasm, who do not lose them-
selves and all distant ends in the engrossing enjoyment of
the work itself.
It is true that the end to which Christ is the way is
the Father ; but our Lord tells Philip, He that hath seen
Me hath seen the Father. Thus He is the way and also
the goal ; a consequence of His twofold nature, such as
the early church loved to dwell on. He the Victim, and
He the Priest. This is the point which St Augustine has
seized, and on which he fondly enlarges. ' By Me,' says
he, 'they come, to Me they come, in Me they abide.
When we reach Him we reach the Father; knowing the
equal, we know Him also whose equal He is. We may
see that nothing ought to detain us on the way, since the
10 CHRIST THE WAY TO THE FATHER
Lord Himself, in deigning to be our way, will not delay
us, but move us onward, that we rest not weakly in things
temporal, but cheerfully run on through them to Him, who
has freed our nature from temporal things, and set it at
the Father's right hand(A). Because He who is Life and
Truth was with the Father, and we could not reach the
Truth, the Son of God took man's nature and became the
Way(t). If thou seekest the Truth, keep to the Way ;
the Way is the Truth. Walk on Christ, to Christ;
through the man Christ, to Christ who is God ; through
the Word made flesh to that Word which was in the
beginning (j). Walk on the lowly, and thou wilt reach
the lofty. The Way is Christ in humiliation; the Life
and Truth Christ exalted (A:). Seek no way to Him but
Himself. If He had not chosen to be the Way, we should
for ever go astray. I say not Seek the Way. The Way
has come to thee : arise and walk(i). He came to teach
humility, because pride forbad us to return to life. God
is humble, and is man still proud (k) ? '
Here we see the emptiness of that reproach which is
sometimes cast upon Christianity, that it makes men
indifferent to the present, by fixing their thoughts and
hopes on the unknown future. The way is made not for
flying nor for sitting still in dreamy musings, but for
walking amid the dust and stir of real present life. The
way is each moment present to the wayfarer, whether the
goal be near or far. The strain is continuous along his
whole route, no single point can be neglected in favour of
another more distant. Each as we come to it demands
our whole heart ; each daily task must be fulfilled in its
turn. Christ the divine Way will shew the divine foun-
dations on which rest earthly, passing things; the continual
CHRIST THE WAY TO THE FATHER 11
communion with Him who is the Life, who ever worketh,
will make us run and not be weary, walk and not faint ;
communion with the Truth, revealing the reason and the
law of the commonest duties, will give a new zest and
purpose to our lives.
The text began with an invitation : I am the Way, the
Truth, and the Life. It ends with a warning, contained in-
deed implicitly in the articles, the Way, the Truth, the Life.
No man cometh to the Father but by Me. As we
read in St Matthew : ' he that is not with Me is against Me/
These exclusive claims have we know been adopted by
the church of Rome and by its head the self-styled vicar
of Christ. In the canon law(Z) there still remains a
judgement of pope Boniface VIII: 'It is necessary for
every human creature, as he would hope to be saved, to
submit to the Roman pontiff.' So the great papal advocate
of our day(Tn) declares religious tolerance to be impious
and absurd ; and we have seen a child (n) kidnapped from
Jewish parents to be sheltered in the ark of the only
saving church.
How far do our Lord's words authorise such com-
pulsion and such exclusive claims ? It is true that, meek
and lowly as He indeed was, Jesus required the absolute
surrender, the full submission of every heart to Himself
personally, but He has carefully guarded against usurpa-
tion of His inalienable sovereignty on the part of any
mere man. He who said ' He that is not with Me is
against Me/ said also, ' Forbid him not [him that casteth
out devils in My name and followeth not with you] ; for
he that is not against you (this, vp&v, not i^wi/, is the
true reading in St Luke) is with you/ In a recent French
analysis of the gospels (o) these sayings are declared to be
12 CHEIST THE WAY TO THE FATHER
irreconeileable ; yet it is a common-place in theology to
point out how they supplement one another. The one is
the claim which the Lord Himself makes on the obedience
of each of us, and is addressed to our individual conscience:
the other is the law of toleration, regulating our treatment
of one another. Without Him the church can do nothing :
Christ can do everything without the church. His spirit
bloweth where it listeth ; other sheep He has, not of this
fold. The church must be content to let tares and wheat
grow together ; or it may burn the wheat, a John Huss
or Hugh Latimer, and leave the tares, an Alva or
Alexander VI, to grow. We know little of the final
judgement of man, but we do know that its awards will
fall as a surprise both on the evil and the good. Some
loud professors will see coming from the east and west, a
Queen of Sheba, a Socrates perhaps and an Epictetus, as
the charity of Justin Martyr (p) and St Clement(g) hoped;
these strangers will learn, to their own and the world's
amazement, that they fed their unknown, unconfessed
Lord when hungry, clothed Him when naked, visited Him
when sick and in prison. They will enter in, and children
of the kingdom will be shut out. Indeed the warning of
our text seems to imply this same promise. No man
cometh to the Father but by Me. Therefore every man who
is on his way to the Father, is consciously or unconsciously
led by Christ. Wherever there is a ray of truth, it beams
forth from the Truth ; wherever there are stirrings of
spiritual life, they are quickened by the Life.
We may be thankful that our lot is cast in a church
which makes no exclusive assumptions. Historically the
church of England is united by its prayers and hymns and
creeds with the ancient churches of East and West, as by
CHRIST THE WAY TO THE FATHER 13
the Trishagion and the Te Deum; with the protestant
churches of the continent by its confession and by the
gratitude due to our masters in sacred and profane
learning; with English dissenters by its version of the
Bible and by its hymns, by the main tenour of its doctrines,
and by persecution endured in common. The rigour of
subscription has been by universal consent relaxed within
the last few years; and we have received in full com-
munion the bishops of a daughter church which has
used its liberty to remove the last anathema from its
formularies (r), leaving vengeance in God's hands, who
alone can search man's spirit.
It is a signal advantage in times of controversy not to
be encumbered by untenable pretensions. Happy shall
we be, ministers of our church, if we imitate her modera-
tion, if we leave denunciation to the infallible ; and as our
reformers handed down the church purer and stronger
than they found it, by God's blessing upon their diligent
labours, and by a fearless use of the best scholarship of
their time, so let us scorn to bring violence and clamour
to the discussion even of biblical criticism ; but hold it
always possible that new truth may be brought to light,
and regard him as a traitor to Christian faith who com-
plains of its being sifted by the same laws which all truth
must satisfy, if it is to command the assent of reasonable
men.
And however our ways may diverge through life, some
it may be passing into other churches, adopting other
convictions, let us all continue to follow that one Way,
which, as St Clement says, ' is narrow, yet coming down
from heaven, leads ever heavenwards ; narrow, while
despised on earth, broad, when adored in heaven ' (s).
14
NOTES
(a) p. 3. The verse is cited 16 times by Augustine. Other
favourite texts are Gen. i. 26 (cited 13 times) Faciamus hominem ad
imaginem et similitudinem nostram; Matt. vi. 12 (21) Dimitte
nobis debita nostra ; John i. 1 (20) In principle erat Verbum ;
i. 14 (19) Et Verbum caro factum est ; xiv. 26 (17) Pater maior me
est ; xxi. 15 (17) Petre, amas me ? Acts ix. 4 (14) Saule, Saule, quid
me persequeris ? Rom. v. 12 (23) Per unum hominem peccatum in
hunc mundum intravit, et per peccatum mors ; v. 20 (15) Lex
subintravit, ut abundaret delictum; vii. 24, 25 (15) Infelix ego
homo, quis me liberabit de corpore mortis huius? viii. 10 (17)
corpus quidem mortuum ; i Cor. xiv. 50 (14) caro et sanguis regnum
Dei non possidebunt ; n Cor. iii. 6 (13) Littera occidit, Spiritus
autem vivificat. Augustine's two sermons on the text are 141, 142,
ed. Bened. See also his tractatus 69 in loannis evang.
(6) p. 3. Luther's sermons on the text are in his works (8vo
Erlangen ed.) vi. (1826) 208224; xv. (1828) 299312. His
exposition of John xiv. xvi. was delivered in sermons at Wittenberg
in 1537, taken down in short-hand by Caspar Creuziger and pub-
lished by him in 1538. Luther says in his Table-talk, ' it is the
best book I have made, though indeed I did not make it, for
Dr Creuziger has shewn his great intelligence and diligence in it ;
next to the Holy Bible it is my best and best loved book.' The
passage on the text is in vol. xlix. (1851) 37 68. The living force
of Luther's words evaporates in a translation ; yet listen to this
fragment (vi. 220) ' So is it also with the pope [as with Turk, Jew,
and heathen] and his crew ; he makes many ways to the Father.
For this a monk has run into his cloister ; for this a priest says
mass ; for this another serves and adores the saints ; a fourth buys
indulgence, or founds masses, thinking to make for himself a way or
NOTES 15
bridge to heaven. But do what thou wilt, not even the holiest
works, contained in the ten commandments, will bring thee to the
Father. For why 1 Christ alone is the Way, He alone the Truth
and the Life.' Or this (xlix. 44 etc.) after a distinction between
1. the bodily or natural way, ' from one place to another, such as
cows and horses also go, and all that lives and moves, for the
support of this natural life and its wants ; whereof scripture and
God's word teach nothing'; 2. secular or civil life, 'in which we
walk together outwardly before the world in good, upright conversa-
tion, manners and virtues, maintain this earthly government, peace,
honour and discipline, whereby we arrive at wealth and dignities ' ;
3. a way unseen, trodden not by the feet, but by faith of the heart.
* A Carthusian makes such a way to heaven. / will desert the world,
as evil and unclean, and creep into a corner, fast daily and eat no
flesh, torture my body ; such a strict spiritual life God will regard
and save me. Here too is a way made and spiritually trodden ; for
he hopes to win the goal not on foot, but by the heart, which thinks,
if he lives and acts thus, he is on the right path to heaven. Another
monk or priest will also live spiritually, but makes for himself
another way. If I keep so many masses, go barefoot and in woollen,
then I am on the right road, and no sooner shall I close my eyes, than
I shall pass to heaven.'
(c) p. 3. At Orleans in 1550 (Jac. Thomasius Teutsches
historisches bibl. Spruchbuch 737).
(d) p. 5. Plato Timaeus, 28 c. TOV /*ej/ ovv TTOITJTTJV /cm irarepa
Tov8e rov iravTos cvpfiv re fpyov KOI fvpovTa ts irdvras ddvvarov
\cyciv. The passage is very frequently cited by Christian apologists,
Justin Mart. apol. n. 10. Athenag. c. 6 p. 6 D. Clem. Alex,
protrept. 6 68. strom. v. 12 79. Orig. c. Cels. vn. 42. Euseb.
dem. evang. in. 6. Cyril c. Julian. I. 1. Tertull. apol. 46. Minuc.
Fel. Octavius 19. Lactant. i. 8.
(e) p. 6. Luke ii. 49 ev rois TOV irarpos p.ov. Many commen-
tators, with Valckenaer, De Wette, Ewald, still accept the rendering
of our version ; but Christ might be about His Father's business
elsewhere than in the Temple. Lobeck (on Phrynichus, 100) has
collected authorities (e'/Sadtfop r TO. TOV aSeX^oC etc.) for the use of
TO. with the genitive to denote the house of .
16 CHRIST THE WAY TO THE FATHER
(/) p. 7. Ohne Hast, ohne Rast, Goethe's motto.
(g) p. 7. John Byrom's miscellaneous pieces (in Chalmers's
British Poets xv. 309) :
' To own a God who does not speak to men,
Is first to own and then disown again ;
Of all idolatry the total sum
Is having gods that are both deaf and dumb.'
(h) p. 10. De doctrina Christiana I. 34 38 ' Ego sum Via et
Veritas et Vita ; hoc est, per me venitur, ad me pervenitur. Cum
enim ad ipsum pervenitur, etiam ad Patrem pervenitur ; quia per
aequalem ille cui est aequalis agnoscitur.... Ex quo intelligitur
quam nulla res in via tenere nos debeat, quando nee ipse Dominus,
in quantum via nostra esse dignatus est, tenere nos voluerit, sed
transire ; ne rebus temporalibus, quam vis ab illo pro salute nostra
susceptis et gestis, haereamus infirmiter, sed per eas potius curramus
alacriter, ut ad eum ipsum, qui nostram naturam a temporalibus
liberavit, et collocavit ad dexteram Patris, provehi atque pervehi
mereamur.'
(i) p. 10. Sermo 141 4 'Quia ergo ipse est apud Patrem
veritas et vita, et non habebamus qua iremus ad veritatem, Filius
Dei, qui semper in Patre veritas et vita est, assumendo hominem
factus est via. Ambula per hominem, et pervenis ad Deum. Per
ipsum vadis, ad ipsum vadis. Noli quaerere qua ad ilium venias,
praeter ipsum. Si enim via esse ipse noluisset, semper erraremus.
Factus ergo via est qua venias. Non tibi dico, quaere viam. Ipsa
via ad te venit : surge et ambula.'
(J) p. 10. in loannis evang. tract. 13 4 * Si veritatem quaeris,
viam tene : nam ipsa est via quae est veritas. Ipsa est quo
is, ipsa est qua is ; non per aliud is ad aliud, non per aliud venis
ad Christum : per Christum ad Christum venis. Quomodo per
Christum ad Christum? Per Christum hominem ad Christum
Deum : per Verbum carnem factum, ad Verbum quod in principio
erat Deus apud Deum.'
() p. 10. Sermo 142 2 ' Via Christus humilis : Christus
veritas et vita, Christus excelsus et Deus. Si ambules in humili,
pervenies ad excelsum. Quia tu ire non potuisti ad eum, ille venit
NOTES 17
ad te. Venit docens humilitatem, qua redeamus : quia superbia
nos redire non sinebat ad vitam. 6 lam humilis Deus, et adhuc
superbus homo ? '
(1) p. 11. Extravag. communes, L. I. tit. 8, c. 1 'Subesse Romano
Pontifici omni humanae creaturae declaramus esse de necessitate
salutis.'
(m) p. 11. Praelectiones theologicae, quas in Collegia Romano
Sodetatis Jesu habebat Joannes Perrone, ed. 21. Ratisbonae 1854, 1.
290 * Tolerantia religiosa impia est et absurda.'
(n} p. 11. In 1858 the servant-maid of a Jewish family in
Bologna treacherously baptised her nursling. The papal government
seized the child, and brought him up at Rome as a Christian. An
ear-witness relates that Edgar Mortara, at 7 years of age, when
asked whether he were happy, whether he were content to be a
Christian, raised his eyes bright with joy to heaven ; and when
asked whether he would not gladly return to his parents, replied,
* most gladly, if they will become Christians.' The learned Romanist
divine Dollinger (Kirche und Kirchen, Papstthum und Kirchenstaat.
Miinchen 1861, p. 622) justly says, that the scandal of this Mortara
story did more injury to the papacy than a lost battle. There is
point in Edmond About's satire, when he estimates the faithful in
the flock of Rome at so many millions and the young Mortara.
(o) p. 11. Les fivangiles, par Gustave cTJEichthalj I. Paris 1863,
177 * D'ailleurs, cette foi aveugle dans le texte de Marc a conduit
Luc a une autre anomalie beaucoup plus grave. Dans un passage
interpote (Marc ix. 37 39) 1'auteur prte k Jesus cette sentence
d'une moralite vraiment par trop mondaine : " Qui n'est point
centre vous est pour vous." Luc a fidelement transcrit ce passage
(ix. 50). Mais un peu plus loin, oubliant ce qu'il vient d'e"crire, il
copie non moins fidelement cette autre sentence, toute contraire,
que Matthieu met dans la bouche de Jesus " Qui n'est point avec
moi, est contre moi" (Luc. XL 23). De cette facon, a quelques
lignes de distance, Jesus, dans le troisieme ISvangile, se trouve
successivement affirmer et enseigner le pour et le contre. C'est la
certainement un des plus singuliers resultats auquel Luc se soit
trouve' conduit, par sa fa$on de proceder dans la composition de son
fivangile.' It is plain that M. d'Eichthal not only misunderstands
Id. 8. 2
18 CHRIST THE WAY TO THE FATHER
the two texts, but assumes that the gospels were written in the
order in which they stand in our bibles, or at least that St Luke
wrote after St Matthew and St Mark ; an assumption which no one
is entitled to make, in the present state of the question. Still,
though the popular critic Sainte-Beuve has inordinately over-
estimated the scientific merit of M. d'Eichthal's book, a French man
of letters taking so much pains to understand scripture is, irrespec-
tive of the particular results attained, a cheering sign of the times.
So also clear-sighted believers have recognised the relative and
provisional service rendered even by M. Kenan's works and by
Eugene Sue's posthumous Life of Jesus to those many Frenchmen
who know nothing of scripture at first hand. Some healing word
may there, as in incognito, surprise hearts fortified against undis-
guised Revelation.
(p) p. 12. Justin (apol. i. 46) * We were taught that Christ was
God's first-born, and we have before set Him forth as the Reason
(Xo-yoi>), in which all mankind had part. And they who lived with
reason (/zero Xoyov) are Christians, as among Greeks Socrates and
Heraclitus and the like, among barbarians Abraham, Ananias,
Azarias, Misael and many others.' See also Otto's index under
Logos.
(q) p. 12. Clem. Alex, (strom. VI. c. 17 160) ' Is it not absurd
that we, while ascribing to the devil disorder and injustice, should
make him the giver of a virtuous thing, even philosophy ? For so
he would be kinder to the Greeks, towards the attainment of virtue,
than God's providence and counsel. I on the contrary hold that it
is the special function of law and of all right reason to attribute to
each individual thing its own special properties. For as the lyre
belongs to the harper, the flute to the fluteplayer, so all excellences
belong to the good ; it being the good man's nature to do good, as it
is that of fire to heat, of light to enlighten ; but evil the good will
no more do, than light will darken, fire chill. Vice on the other
hand will do nothing virtuous, for its operation is evildoing, as that
of darkness is to confuse the eyes. Philosophy therefore, since it
makes men virtuous, can be no work of vice ; it remains therefore
that it is God's, whose only work is well-doing ; and all gifts of God
are both given and received well. Again, as the use of philosophy
NOTES 19
is found not among the evil, but granted to the best of Greeks ; its
source is also manifest, even that Providence which distributes to
all after their deserts. With good reason then had Jews the law,
but Greeks philosophy, until the Advent; whereon ensued the
catholic invitation to join the peculiar people of righteousness,
according to the doctrine which is of faith, the one only God both of
Greeks and barbarians, or rather of all mankind, uniting all by the
one Lord.'
(r) p. 13. On the American prayer-book see the Christian
Remembrancer 18351838, 1843. The Athanasian creed is omitted ;
the minister is at liberty to substitute certain selected psalms for
the psalms for the day ; there are also other changes, suitable to a
church which disclaims infallibility. In Peter Hall's Reliquiae
Liturgicae, Bath, 1847, vol. v. is ' The book of common prayer, and
administration of the sacraments... as revised and proposed to the
use of the protestant episcopal church at a convention held in
Philadelphia 27 Sept. 7 Oct. 1785.' The changes introduced into
this draft are far more sweeping than those finally sanctioned by
the church, and may be of practical interest to ourselves in impend-
ing controversies.
() p. 13. Clem. Alex, protrept. x. 100 TTWS ovv dve\0a>, <pTjo~\v,
fls ovpavovs ; 686s fcrriv 6 Kupior, o~rcvf) pfv, aXX' e ovpavav, crrcvrj
p.ev, dXX* els ovpavovs avairf^novcra' orevri cVi yfjs virfpoptopcvt],
TrXareta ev ovpavois irpocrK.vvovp.fvrj.
22
21
Sip
ST JOHN'S
17 May 1868
22
Kesurrectio domini, spes nostra ; ascensio domini, glorificatio
nostra. Ascensionis enim hodie sollemnia celebramus. Si ergo
recte, si fideliter, si devote, si sancte, si pie ascensionem domini
celebramus, ascendamus cum illo et sursum cor habeamus. Ascen-
dentes autem non extollamur, nee de nostris quasi de propriis
meritis praesumamus. Sursum enim cor habere debemus, sed ad
dominum. Sursum enim cor non ad dominum, superbia vocatur :
sursum autem cor ad dominum refugium vocatur.
Augustin. serm. 261 c. 1.
23
THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION
When they therefore were come together, they asked of Him,
saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to
Israel? And He saith unto them, It is not for you to know the times
or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power. But ye
shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and
ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea,
and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. And
when He had spoken these things, while they beheld, He was taken up :
and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And while they looked
stedfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by
them in white apparel ; which also said, Ye men of Galilee, ivhy stand
ye gazing up into heaven ? this same Jesus, which is taken up from
you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go
into heaven. Acts i. 6 11.
WHEN these words were written, two theologies
divided the world. A high officer of state in the imperial
city, an unwearied student, a martyr to that science, of
which he was for 1500 years the oracle, thus states the
one : * It is a main comfort under the imperfection of
man's nature, that God Himself cannot do all things. For
He cannot, if He would, take His own life, the chief boon
which He has given to man amidst his great pains; He
cannot give eternity to mortals, nor recall the dead to
life;... and many other things He cannot do, all which
shews Nature's power, which is indeed that which we call
God (a).' Another voice went forth from the preachers of
what Tacitus(6) calls a pernicious superstition. 'With
24 THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION
God all things are possible; it is impossible for God to
lie.' That is, as the great teachers of the church have
clearly explained(c); His power is limited only by His
perfections ; He is Almighty because He can do what He
wills ; not because He must suffer what He does not will :
He cannot lie, or die, or be deceived.
Still the same theologies divide the world, and of late
even the church itself. To the one, God is a force, acting
under the law of some Fate or Nature, without will,
without love, without consciousness or conscience ; to the
other He is a Person, a Father, whose tender mercies are
over all His works, free Himself and setting His servants
free; they cannot believe that the source of their life is
stagnant; that the giver of their wisdom and love is
stubbornly silent (d) or hard, His ears and eyes alike sealed
to their prayers or to their wants ; that He who feeds
the ravens does not much more compassionate spiritual
hunger. It is well that the deniers of a living God have
had the courage to submit their doctrine to the severest
test, by taking it as a key to the life of Christ: two
writers of rare literary skill have grappled the problems
of that life, assuming no higher cause than common
nature. Take their scheme of things as true; and ask
yourself on laying down their books, whether your intel-
lect, your doubts, are satisfied ; whether the existence of
a church, whether such a meeting as ours this evening, is
accounted for ; will the heart warm and the knee bend to
such a Christ ; for such a Christ would martyrs have sung
in the fires, and apostles have essayed the conquest of a
world ? Could such a Christ have sifted out from the
villages of Palestine types of each form of grace and zeal
and holiness, a Mary, and a Peter, and a John (e) ?
THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION 25
An able advocate of Pantheistic theology grants with-
out hesitation all that upholders of a supernatural
Christianity would require. ' Miracles,' he says, ' follow
most directly from the ordinary Theism. Once regard
God as a Will exterior to the world, and we must allow
that this Will acts in the world ; but this action, as the
interposition of a transcendent principle in the course of
the world, can only be supernatural, i.e. a miracle (/).'
Other deniers of miracles fail to discriminate between
the various ages of theology. A man of scientific fame(#),
lecturing to working men, pictured theologians as explain-
ing every accident by miracle ; men of science account for
losses in a house by theft; theologians, by miracle. In
the earliest ages, as in Homer (h) e.g., we do find divines
of some such principles; but to a Rothe(t) or to a
Thirlwall ( j) natural law and miracles are correlative
terms ; where there is no conception of a natural law, no
acquaintance with the actual laws of nature, there there is
no miracle, simply because all is miracle. Christianity
claims to be supernatural, and in Christendom natural
science has sprung up ; so little necessary repugnance is
there between natural law and divine revelation. Num-
quam aliud natura, aliud sapientia dicit(k). The professor
whom I quoted but now probably regards Luther as
superstitious ; yet Luther says of the ascension, magnify-
ing the miracle, ' To move in air is to men an unusual,
nay, an impossible thing. A man's body has the natural
property of tending downwards, like a stone or other
heavy thing (I).'
Perhaps the miraculous element in our faith would be
less jealously scanned, if we ourselves learnt gentleness
and consideration. One lately called to his rest through
26 THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION
sharp suffering (ra), a man in whom, as in very few,
childlike faith and reverence were wedded to a manly
vigour of intellect, has laid down two cautions respecting
this matter, which he found of service to himself.
First (n). Clearly distinguish between two questions;
the abstract question, are miracles in themselves con-
ceivable ? and the concrete, are such and such particular
reported miracles facts ? The first is a philosophical, the
second a historical question. Many fear to allow the
possibility of miracles, lest they should be compelled to
admit certain alleged miracles without criticism. But
they are bound to no such admission. There is only one
way in which we can assure ourselves of the truth of any
narrative, natural or supernatural, namely, by a searching
inquiry into the evidence for it.
In like manner the most learned of our bishops
teaches (o): 'It is only with spiritual truths that faith
is ever properly conversant. Historical facts are the
object of a historical belief, which Scripture itself (p)
teaches us to distinguish from that faith which it
describes as the indispensable condition of salvation....
And certainly such a faith has no injury to dread from
the progress of physical science. The region in which it
lives and moves is wholly spiritual and supramundane ;
one in which a science, which deals only with the laws of
matter, can find no footing, and therefore must needs
leave it in peace.' 'We have greater need than ever,'
he else where (q) teaches, 'to distinguish between things
which do and things which do not concern our Christian
faith and hope. A great part of the events related in the
Old Testament has no more apparent connexion with our
religion than those of Greek or Roman history... The
THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION 27
numbers, migrations, wars, battles, conquests, and reverses
of Israel, have nothing in common with the teaching of
Christ, with the way of salvation, with the fruits of the
Spirit. They belong to a totally different order of
subjects. They are not to be confounded with the
spiritual revelation contained in the Old Testament, much
less with that fulness of grace and truth which came by
Jesus Christ. Whatever knowledge we may obtain of
them, is in a religious point of view a matter of absolute
indifference to us; and if they were placed on a level
with the saving truths of the Gospel, they would gain
nothing in intrinsic dignity, but would only degrade that
with which they are thus associated. Such questions
must be left to every one's private judgement and feeling,
which have the fullest right to decide for each, but not
to impose their decisions, as the dictate of an infallible
authority, on the consciences of others. Any attempt to
erect such facts into articles of faith would be fraught
with danger of irreparable evil to the church, as well as
with immediate hurt to numberless souls.'
Similar to this is the teaching of St Chrysostom's first
homily on St Matthew, where he claims for the gospels
substantial agreement in the main articles of the faith,
amid circumstantial divergence, in matters of time, place
and number (r). Compare also Paley's(s) protest against
the 'unwarrantable, as well as unsafe, rule to lay down
concerning the Jewish history, what was never laid down
concerning any other, that either every particular of it
must be true, or the whole false.' Paley is arguing
against Voltaire.
Rothe's second caution relates to our treatment of
those who differ from us, who reject a portion of what we
28 THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION
hold to be the truth. We might be content with our
Saviour's tenderness towards the sceptic Thomas, and
with His warnings against the proud spirit of the inquisi-
tion : Let both grow together until the harvest, lest haply ye
root up the wheat also; He that is not against you is
with you. But there is something more directly applic-
able to our case in these words (t), which tell how faith
and charity may be held fast amid the wildest storms
of doubt:
'A thoughtless belief in miracles I certainly do not
mean to advocate, which imagines that the admission of
miracles relieves us from the conscientious, strict investi-
gation of the presumed miraculous fact in its concrete
detail. My soul is a stranger to the wish to compel men,
already in fact possessed of Revelation, to assume its
miraculous origin : I will not make my confidence in their
faith depend on such assumption on their part. It is a
great thing, if Revelation's light does but illumine such
men, if the Christian ideas have dawned upon them, and
the main point is that they journey through life in the
light of this sun. If they stumble at miracles, I say to
them: Friends, I will not force upon you a faith in
miracles ; beneficia non obtruduntur. If you cannot make
up your mind to the miracles, leave them on one side.
Look to it, how without them you will deal with the
history, how without them you will trace the causes of
those well authenticated results, for which we possess
the key in the miracles. For my part it is out of no
dogmatical cupidity that I accept the miracles, but from
a historical interest, because in the case of certain indis-
putable facts I cannot dispense with them as historical
explanations.'
THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION 29
Another weighty argument against harsh treatment
of doubters is suggested by the noble heathen proverb,
' So treat your enemies as those who may one day become
your friends (u).' Shall we deny respecting any of Christ's
enemies that they may one day take rank among His
friends? Then Saul consenting to Stephen's death,
making havock of the church, breathing out threatenings
and slaughter against the saints, would have been beyond
the pale of our charitable hope? If ever Christian
professors appear less generous and free than other men,
if ever the atmosphere of the religious world is felt to be
more stifling and poisonous, less pure and fresh than that
of the common outer world ; if the language of sermon,
religious tract, religious protest and religious organ is
sometimes hastier, bitterer, more timid and suspicious
than that of worldly prints, do we not drive the lovers of
peace from our walls ? do we not in mistaken zeal for
God's service make our brother, who, if he be in sincere
doubt, is one of Christ's little ones, to offend ? Shall we
endorse the charges of the old pagans that Christians are
tenebrosa et lucifugax natio(v), a sort of men that hug
darkness and shun light, haters of human kind(w); and
not rather extort that other witness (#), ' See how these
Christians love one another?'
Let us not doubt that He who is the God of Nature,
of History, and of Revelation, will at last shew that they
have one voice.
It may be hard to hear
'If God there be or gods,
Without our science lies;
We cannot see or touch,
Measure, or analyse.'
30 THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION
But sooner or later the discovery will be made :
"To matter or to force
The All is not confined,
Beside the law of things
Is set the law of mind.
* * *
With equal voice she tells
Of what we touch and see
Within these bounds of life,
And of a life to be;
Proclaiming One who brought us hither,
And holds the keys of whence and whither (y}'
The soul is still naturally Christian, as when Tertul-
lian(^r) bade it stand forth in the midst and bear testimony
against its own heathen prejudice.
It has been asked, Why the two eyewitnesses of the
Ascension, St Matthew and St John, do not record it ?
We may rejoin: Why is not the Ascension numbered
with the three principal festivals ? Why are there so
few Ascension hymns compared with the multitude for
Easter and Whitsuntide ? The Ascension is implied in
the Resurrection : ' For Christ being raised from the dead
dieth no more ; death hath no more dominion over Him.'
It is implied in the mission of the Spirit ; for the Saviour
said, 'If I depart, I will send the Comforter unto you.'
But though seldom distinctly narrated, the Ascension is
presupposed wherever we read of Christ's sitting at God's
right hand, as our advocate with God the Father, prepar-
ing for His people the many mansions of His Father's
house, purposing to descend at the last day from heaven
to judgement. In this way the Ascension is attested
perhaps by all the New Testament writers, except
THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION 31
St James and St Jude, and by St John alone nine times
in his gospel (aa). Lastly, the whole church rests on this
belief. If our risen Lord did not return to His Father in
the body, His body must once more have been separated
from the spirit, i.e. He must have died again. How then
could St Paul have spoken that bold defiance : Death,
where is thy sting ? grave, where is thy victory ? The
noble words of encouragement and of warning uttered at
this season by Augustine (66), Chrysostom(cc), Bernard (dd),
would have been vain babblings of a dream. Luther's
three sermons on the Ascension (ee), in which we see the
personal powers of good and evil in deadly conflict, as we
see them in no other writer but St John, would be mere
cloudland ; his shout of triumph echoing with infinite
variety of joy and thanksgiving the cry of St Paul, would
be empty wind.
On what basis does the historic certainty of the
Resurrection and Ascension rest ? On that of documents
reaching up to within thirty of forty years of the event,
as even reluctant critics (ff) are beginning again to
confess. These documents report the evidence of witnesses
chosen for their special knowledge to depose to the facts.
Their witness is confirmed by their enemies, whose
cruelties were so many tests of and testimonials to the
credibility of our accounts. It is confirmed even by false
friends, the romancing authors of spurious gospels, acts,
epistles, revelations. This confirmation is two-fold :
knowing what apocryphal writings are, we can judge
whether any canonical books are apocryphal ; again, amid
all their fables, the substance of our gospel history lies
treasured in these books. Strange fate ! too good for
men who defend truth by a lie ; their forgery is rejected,
32 THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION
but between its lines the faint characters of the truth
may still be deciphered.
The stream of evidence rolls on through each Christian
land, and bears down the same scriptures in each several
tongue.
It were hard to name an event of profane history, of
the same date, attested by such weight of written evidence
as the Resurrection, even if we overlook the later growth
of the church. But take that into the account. Compare
the aspirations and claims of the Saviour and their fulfil-
ment at this day. ' Ye shall be my witnesses/ says the
text, ' unto the uttermost parts of the earth.' St Chry-
sostom's argument from these words has only gathered
strength since his day, but it carries weight as coming
from a champion, breathed in the life or death grapple
with heathenism. As for us, our very security blinds us
to evidence which lies open before our eyes, while we
frame or tolerate factitious apologies, which a gainsay er
will scornfully brush aside.
'Measure not/ says Chrysostom(^), 'the order of the
words, but the force of the authority.... /may assume the
tone of command and say to a few of my brothers or
my household : Go forth into the nations and teach all,
convert all.... The words go forth from my mouth, but if
the event does not confirm them, I am condemned as a
liar.... Examine the Lord's words, not by what He said,
but by what He did. He said, Make disciples of all
nations', if that saying has not been fulfilled, it was a
vainglorious boast, not divine authority ;... if there be any
corner of earth which is without preaching, the prediction
was false ; but if the accomplishment outshine the words,
then the witness is true.'
THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION 33
And again (hh) : ' If He did not rise, but remains dead,
how did the apostles work signs in His name ? Or did
they not work signs ? How then did our society arise ?
For that it exists they will not deny, against the evidence
of their senses. If they deny that signs have been
wrought, they disgrace themselves the more. For this
were the greatest of signs, that the whole world should
have hurried up without sign, caught by the bait of twelve
poor and illiterate men. For not in wealth, or wisdom of
speech, did the fishers excel/ And once more(iY) : ' This
were the greatest sign and most marvellous paradox, if
poor men, despised, unlearned, private, and held cheap,
twelve in number, should be proved to have drawn to
themselves so many cities, nations, peoples, kings, rulers,
philosophers, orators, and so to say the whole world,
without signs/
The same Chrysostom who finds this true and effective
evidence in our text, draws a warning from the text
against false evidence. These few verses furnish us with
proved armour of heavenly temper, and also with a means
of detecting the false armour which will fail us in our
need.
The disciples, still full of patriotic hopes, raised to the
highest pitch by the great Easter victory, ask: 'Lord,
wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to
Israel ? ' The Saviour jealously guards the divine
Regale, the prerogative of heaven's crown : 'It is not
for you to know the times or the seasons, which the
Father hath put in His own power/ Just as in answer
to the question, ' Tell us when shall these things be, and
what shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of
the world/ Jesus had said, 'Take heed that no man
M. s. 3
34 THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION
deceive you : for many shall come in my name, saying,
I am Christ ; and shall deceive many. But of that day
and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are
in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father/ And once
again : * Ye shall indeed drink of My cup, but to sit on
My right hand and on My left is not Mine to give, but it
shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of My
Father/ And as here in the text the rebuke of idle
curiosity is followed by the call to work, and the promise
that the work should not be in vain, But ye shall receive
power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you : and ye
shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all
Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the
earth ; so in St Matthew and St Mark : This gospel of the
kingdom shall first be preached in all the world, for a
witness to all nations. Chrysostom and Augustine, those
great lights of East and West, humbly accept the condition
of humanity ; they are content to be ignorant of the future.
' It is said to Peter, It is not for you ; and dost thou say,
It is for me ? Away with curiosity ; let piety take her
place. What is that to thee, when the kingdom shall
come ? So live, as if it were coming to-day ; and thou
wilt not fear when it shall come(jf/)/ 'The apostles were
not suffered to examine even into the times.... Dost thou
not reverence the apostles' measure ? They who lived
with the Saviour, to whom He appeared, who were
illuminated by Him, are not allowed to know, but are
forbidden to transgress their measure, and heard the
words, It is not for you to &now...and dost thou ex-
amine (kk) ? '
I know no sadder page in literary history, and few
darker stains upon the church, than the usurpation of
THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION 35
divine prescience by many self-styled expositors of scrip-
ture. Even Bengel(^) says here, 'It is not for you;
whence it does not follow, it will not be for others in days
to come.' Bengel's failure proves at least that it was not
for him. Who can tell how many are driven out of the
Christian church by those wild calculations, worthy only
of astrological imposture, which are vended, in our country
beyond all others, as authentic interpretations of pro-
phecy ?
It seems probable that St Paul is quoting this saying
when he writes (i Thess. V. 1) 'But of the times and
seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.
For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord
so cometh as a thief in the night.' Times appear to be
long periods ; seasons, critical epochs of man's necessity
and God's opportunity. Such a 'season' was the refor-
mation; such, there seems great reason to hope, is
dawning in our day. So in the world of science prepara-
tory ages are succeeded by inductive epochs, when the
same truth flashes often upon several minds at once : so
in the political world changes long preparing, when the
hour has come, are swiftly brought about, with an ease
amazing to their very authors.
One evidence, it may be thought, is lost to us by the
very lowliness and obscurity of our origin ; the mustard-
tree may now overshadow the world, but no one took note
of the tiny sprouting seed. Go to the cabinets of the
curious, and they will shew the image and superscription
of our Lord's earthly lord, Tiberius Caesar, son of the god
Augustus ; you will see too the fiery consecration or
apotheosis of these dead (mm) gods. Christ we cannot
know after the flesh ; no inscription, no marble statue, no
32
36 THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION
proud titles on stone or brass carry us back to His very
days, and strike doubt itself dumb. His kingdom is not
of this world; His outward lineaments, the signature of
His abasement, we cannot trace ; painters are free to soar
to the highest ideal perfection in portraying Him. Would
you see his Vera Et/ean>, the spiritual likeness of the risen,
living Christ? Man is God's image; but the poor man is
Christ's stamp to boot(nn). When John Baptist doubted,
Jesus appealed to the signs of His mission ; the climax of
all works of wonder, greater than the raising of the dead,
was this, The poor have the gospel preached to them. So
again, Ye have the poor always with you ; Me ye have not
always. So at the last day service to the least of our
brethren, or neglect of them, must be reckoned for with
Him : to Him we do it, or do it not. Did you never see
a poor man bearing need, sickness, age and its infirmities,
meekly and cheerfully ; knowing one book alone, and
having no critical knowledge of that ; but with a quiet
dignity in his simple manners, a light in his eye, a lofty
and eternal hope, such as put you and your comforts and
your breeding to the blush, so that you reverenced in the
man of few wants a faint image of the God who has
none(oo)? There you saw a likeness of Christ, purified
by suffering.
While rebuking curiosity our Saviour set His apostles
a task, His parting legacy. They desired a kingdom
ready made, struck out at a heat by one magic word : His
patient ways led them a long journey to their goal ; from
Jerusalem to Samaria, and so to the world's end. A heaven
not earned by work, by self-devotion, were no heaven.
He Himself had sought first the lost sheep of Israel's
house ; and the apostles, as their records testify, observed
THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION 37
the same order; the nearer duty first, then the more
remote.
If we for our parts would hold the same course, and
first ' adorn ' this our country, our Jerusalem, our college
home, our commission will be found the very same with
that of the apostles ; an inspiring thought in days big
with change for good or evil. Lady Margaret prayed
that her fellows and scholars might promote three main
desires of her heart, the worship of God, purity of manners,
and the confirmation of Christian faith (pp). Bishop
Fisher, in the allusive style of his day, took for his motto,
'I will make you fishers of men.' To the ends of the
world there have gone forth from these walls such fishers
of souls; members of our body still living have made
barbarian languages echo for the first time our immortal
hopes.
Thus our private service to our college exactly satisfies
a public want of our age and country. Divines sober,
learned, impartial, unselfish, fearless, can at this moment
do more perhaps for England than any other men. And
whether we live more in memory or in hope, our hands
can alike find work to do. Are you content with our
present settlement, and do you delight in its ideal
excellence? Do nothing yourself to dim that beauty in
others' eyes ; labour to make it worthier of your affection.
Do you aspire to a better order ? You are without excuse
if you do not make the most of the old order ; if you do
not reverently study its principles, and demolish nothing
that has a right to stand, in your eagerness to rebuild.
So shall we all alike prepare for that home whither
our Forerunner has gone before; risen with Christ our
Head, we shall set our affections on things above. Born
38 THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION
to glorious hopes, citizens of heaven, let us not sell our
birthright or cast it away, but lift up our hearts, lift them
up unto the Lord : Sursum corda, above all touch of earth,
its passions, interests, indolence, pleasure ; above the lust
of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the prevailing pride
of life ; above rebellious fretting against the age in which
God has fixed our lot, or craven fears for the church
founded on the Rock of Ages; above a fond optimism,
dreaming of some perfect past, clinging to some frail
changing stay; high too above reforms, narrower, less
reverent, less divine, than that whereby, at whatever time
or season, in whatever form, the kingdoms of this world
shall become the kingdom of our God and of Christ exalted
at His right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour.
39
NOTES
(a) p. 23. Plin. nat. hist. n. 7 27 cited by Pearson, On the
art. vi. n. o.
(6) p. 23. Tac. ann. xv. 44 ' Ergo abolendo rumori [the report
that he had set fire to Kome] Nero subdidit reos, et quaesitissimis
poenis affecit, quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos appellabat.
Auctor nominis eius Christus Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem
Pontium Pilatum supplicio affectus erat ; repressaque in praesens
exitiabilis superstitio rursus erumpebat, non modo per ludaeam
originem eius mali, sed per urbem etiam, quo cuncta undique atrocia
aut pudenda confluunt celebranturque.'
(c) p. 24. See the quotations from Augustine, Ambrose, Theo-
doret, and other fathers in Pearson, ibid, notes t to y.
(d) p. 24. Rothe (Zur Dogmatik, Gotha 1863, p. 60) citing from
a translation of F. de Rougemont's Christ and His Witnesses, ' If the
idea of God had in our eyes all the characteristics of an indisput-
able, necessary, absolute truth ; if the God, whose existence is
demonstrated to us, did not directly assure us of His presence, we
should be amazed and take offence at this entire immobility of the
Being, who is Life itself, at the obstinate silence of Him, who is
Wisdom and Love.'
(e) p. 24. The most eloquent of the living protestant preachers
of France, Eugene Bersier, has a striking passage on the piercing
keenness of His eye, who from the country population of an obscure
tribe drew forth so many varied models of excellence.
(/) p. 25. Zeller cited by Rothe, p. 87.
(g) p. 25. Prof. Huxley.
(/i) p. 25. This is shewn at length by Nagelsbach in his
40 THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION
Eomerische Theologie ; many proofs may be seen in the story of
the funeral games, towards the end of the Iliad.
(*) p. 25. P. 87.
(j} p. 25. Charge, Oct. 1863, pp. 2536, esp. p. 36 * The student
of nature, who, without surrendering one particle of physical truth,
or admitting any restriction on the freedom of scientific investiga-
tion, is yet able to withstand the most dangerous temptation
which besets his favourite pursuits the tendency to a mechanical
philosophy, or the resting in second causes and, who, resigning
himself to the consciousness of his limited faculties and imperfect
knowledge, clings to the centre of his spiritual being, and finds
a secure anchorage in the love of his heavenly Father, as revealed
in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, such a one exhibits one of the
noblest examples of Christian humility, wisdom, and self-control,
that in these days it is possible to witness.'
(Jk) p. 25. luven. xiv. 321.
(I) p. 25. Hauspostille ( Werke, Erlangen, 1826, iv. 2).
(m) p. 26. Richard Rothe, one of the greatest ethical philosophers
of any age, in simplicity of character the Arnold of Germany, but
far superior to Arnold in power and knowledge, died 20 Aug. 1867,
leaving no equal behind him among the theologians of Germany.
In Krause's Protestantische Kirchenzeitung No. 35 (31 Aug. 1867)
there is an interesting account of his last days by an eyewitness.
On the 5th of August he attended, though ill at the time, an
important meeting of the Baden church council. In the night he
endured great torture, but would not disturb the household ; a
forgetfulness of self to which his physician ascribed his death. He
compelled his colleagues, who would have stayed with him to the
last, to take their usual vacation tour ; left his body to the disposal
of his physician, if he thought its dissection might lead to the
alleviation of others' sufferings ; forbad any display at his funeral ;
dictated to his maidservant the words : ' I entreat from the bottom
of my heart my ecclesiastical friends, especially the speakers at my
grave, not for any supposed reputation of mine to let fall a word
that can pain my opponents, whom I have always sincerely esteemed
higher than myself. No fame can be vainer than that which wounds
one's neighbour.'
NOTES
' Indescribably mild and gentle was the expression of his features
throughout.... The two maidservants said they could not hand him
a glass of water without receiving his hearty thanks with the
friendly look peculiar to him ; they knew when his pains were
most severe, because he sent them away on some little errand into
a side-room ; when they lamented his sufferings, he bade them not
to complain, for it was God's will that he should bear it.... When
they asked whether they should not send word to his relations, he
said, It is not good when too many stand around a death-bed, for
then no room is left for the angels ; adding, It may sound ridiculous,
but there is some truth in it.
1 He was to the last entirely free from all that theatrical display,
with which the fashionable piety of the day loves to deck a death-
bed, free from every sort of excitement or agitation, just the same
as ever. He spoke just in his usual tone about his own state ; at
first (with the manifest intention of inducing me to set out on my
tour) of the utter uncertainty in which he, as a layman, was about
his state, adding, however, that it was certainly possible that the
disorder might reach such a point that the crumbling tabernacle
would fall in ; but he knew that a better building was prepared for
him. Above all, whatever the issue might be, he could only thank
God from the depth of his soul for the grace vouchsafed to him
always and also in this illness.'
On the last day of his life, having needed several little services
one after another, he begged his maidservants 'not to be angry with
him for giving so much trouble, it would not be for long.'
As his friends were lamenting his death, his nurse delivered his
last message : she was to say, that he died in the Name of Jesus
Christ, and believed also that he understood in some measure what
that meant, to die in the Name of Jesus Christ.
(n) p. 26. P. 84.
(o) p. 26. Thirlwall, 1. c. p. 28.
(p) p. 26. James ii. 19.
(?) p. 26. Ibid. pp. 123, 124.
(r} p. 27. P. 5 A seq. * Why then, among so many disciples, do
two only of the apostles write, and two of their followers ?. . . Because
they did nothing for display, but all for use. What then ? was it not
42 THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION
enough that one evangelist should say all ? Enough it was ; but if
the writers are four, neither at the same times, nor in the same places,
nor after meeting and conference with one another, and yet they say
all as if from one mouth, this becomes a most powerful demonstration
of the truth. But, says he, the very contrary is the case ; for they
are convicted of differing from one another in many places. Nay,
but this very difference is a very great proof of the truth. For if their
agreement had been precise and universal, extending even to time, and
place, and the very words, no enemy would have believed, but that
they had come together and by some human concert written what they
wrote ; for that such accordance could not belong to simplicity. But
now even the apparent discordance in details relieves them of suspicion,
and is a brilliant defence of the character of the winters. But if their
reports differ somewhat in regard to places or times, that does not in
any degree detract from the truth of what they say In the main
points, on which our life and preaching depend, there will not be
found any where in any of them the smallest discordance. What are
these main points ? For example, that God was made man, that He
worked miracles, that He was crucified, was buried, arose, ascended,
that He will judge, that He gave saving commandments, that He
introduced a law not contrary to the old commandment, that He is
the Son, that He is only-begotten, true, of the same substance with the
Father, and the like; for in these points we find that they are entirely
(*) p. 27. Evidences, pt. in. c. 3, where he also says : ' a refer-
ence in the New Testament, to a passage in the Old, does not so fix
its authority as to exclude all inquiry into its credibility, or into
the separate reasons on which that credibility is founded....'
' I have thought it necessary to state this point explicitly,
because a fashion, revived by Voltaire and pursued by the disciples
of his school, seems to have much prevailed of late, of attacking
Christianity through the sides of Judaism. Some objections of this
class are founded in misconstruction, some in exaggeration ; but all
proceed upon a supposition, which has not been made out by
argument, viz. that the attestation, which the Author and first
teachers of Christianity gave to the divine mission of Moses and the
prophets, extends to every point and portion of the Jewish history ;
NOTES 43
and so extends as to make Christianity responsible in its own
credibility for the circumstantial truth (I had almost said for the
critical exactness) of every narrative contained in the Old Testa-
ment.'
(0 p. 28. Kothe, L c. pp. Ill, 112.
(u) p. 29. Soph. Aias 679 o r expos' fjfjuv es Too-di/8' exQapreos,
a>s KOI (piXrjo-av avQis. Cf. Demosth. c. Aristocr. 122 p. 660 fin. ;
Philo de caritate c. 21, u. 401 Mang. These three add to this rule
of Bias fua-fw a>s <pi\f)<rovTas the converse <pi\lv cos /uo^o-ovras
(Aristot. rhet. n. 13 14, 21 13). Cicero Lael. 59, Publius Syrus
in Gell. xvir. 14, and Diog. Laert. i. 87 only give the latter rule,
which is condemned by Aristotle and Cicero. Diodorus (xn. 20 3)
ascribes to Zaleukos the warning against implacable enmity.
(v) p. 29. Minuc. Felix, Octav. 8 5.
(w) p. 29. Tacitus (ann. xv. 44) calls Christians odio humani
generis coniuncti. They were ' public enemies' (Tertull. apol. 2, 35).
(#) p. 29. Tertull. apol. 39 'eiusmodi vel maxime dilectionis
operatic notam nobis inurit penes quosdam. Vide, inquiunt, ut
invicem se diligant'
(#) p. 30. Hymns by F. T. Palgrave, 2nd ed., Lond. 1868,
pp. 42, 45.
(z) p. 30. See the tract de testimonio animae, one of the boldest
and grandest pieces of eloquence in all literature, an expansion of
the 'testimonium animae naturaliter Christianae' of Tertull. apol. 17.
'Consiste, anima, in medio....Sed non earn te advoco, quae scholis
forinata, bibliothecis exercitata, Academiis et porticibus Atticis
partam sapientiam ructas. Te simplicem et rudem et impolitam et
idioticam compello, qualem habent qui te solam habent, illam ipsam
de compito, de trivio, de textrino totam. Imperitia tua mihi opus
est, quoniam aliquantulae peritiae tuae nemo credit. Ea expostulo,
quae tecum in hominem infers, quae aut ex temetipsa aut ex
quocunque auctore tuo sentire didicisti. Non es, quod sciam,
Christiana, fieri enim, non nasci solet Christiana. Tamen nunc a te
testimonium flagitant christiani, ab extranea ad versus tuos' (c. 1).
Cf. adv. Marc. i. 10.
44 THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION
(aa) p. 31. See the references in Pearson, or in Bretschneider,
Handbuch der DogmatiJc, 4th ed. Leipz. 1838, u. 235.
(bb) p. 31. See his sermons 261265, ed. Bened.
(cc) p. 31. Homilies 1 and 2 on the Acts ; and homily on the
Ascension in. 914 seq. ed. Gaume.
(dd) p. 31. See his five short sermons on the Ascension
i. 918 934 ed. Bened., esp. serm. 2 1 ' Consummatio et adimpletio
est reliquarum sollemnitatum et felix clausula totius itinerarii Filii
Dei.'
(ee) p. 31. These sermons, one without date, the others dated
1533 and 1534 respectively (Werke, ed. Erlangen, iv. 151), are
among the most vigorous of Luther's works, and (unlike even the
best of patristic writings) contain little or nothing that is not as
effective now as when he spoke it.
P. 3. ' Seeing that Christ mounts up to heaven, we may readily
conclude, that He will have nothing to do with the world and its
kingdom ; else He would stay here on earth, and need what other,
worldly, kings and princes need. But all this He leaves below, and
mounts up to heaven, where we see Him not ; teaching us rightly
to mark and know His kingdom, that it is no worldly kingdom, as
the disciples thought, that He would bestow on them money,
estates, and great lordships ; but a kingdom spiritual and eternal,
as He will bestow spiritual goods on them, who are therein with
Him.
'For no one ought to become a Christian for this purpose, to
come to money or estate or great honour thereby. Not for this
cause were preaching, baptism and sacrament instituted ; not for
this cause did Christ come from heaven to earth and ascend
again into heaven, to set up such a worldly, perishable, temporal
kingdom.'
P. 6. * Most men with soul and body, with heart and hand, are
engrossed in this fleeting life alone, and strive to have enough here,
caring little or nothing for Christ's ascension into heaven. This
the Holy Ghost would fain prevent, and preaches, Christ has not
remained on earth, but is gone up on high ; in order that, while we
are still in the body here below, we may with heart and thought
NOTES 45
rise upward, and not suffer our hearts to be laden with cares of this
life. 3
Pp. 21, 22. * Thou art gone up on high. He is speaking of
Christ, who will occupy and set up a new and eternal kingdom....
Hereby Christ's kingdom is clearly and properly distinguished from
all kingdoms on earth. Worldly kings do not go up on high, when
they would occupy and take possession of their kingdom, but
remain below on earth. The king of France, the Turkish sultan,
and other kings, do not go above the clouds, when they would take
possession of land and people, nor reign above the clouds in heaven ;
but stay here on earth, rule on earth in this earthly kingdom. So
soon as they part from earth and go up, their kingdom and govern-
ment ends. But my Son and Lord, says David, is such a king, as
ascends on high from earth into heaven, and sits at God's right
hand, and rules on high. Other kings plant their throne on castles,
cities, land and people on earth. But this King sets His throne on
high, at the right hand of the divine Majesty in heaven, there He
rules for ever, as the 45th Psalm also says, Thy throne, God, is for
ever and ever.
'This the prophet David saw long before in the spirit.... There-
fore he thus foretells of Him, making Him no bodily, worldly king
on earth, as the Jews, aye, and the apostles hoped of the ascension ;
and as the pope and his followers would have it, who boasts to be
Christ's vicar on earth. But Christ needs no pope as vicar. If
He would have a vicar on earth, emperors, kings, princes, judges,
executioners, were enough for His turn, He would have no need
whatever of the pope to boot. But His kingdom is not of this
world ; therefore He needs no vicar. He does indeed reign in
heaven and earth over all creatures ; but He is no earthly king, nor
has He an earthly kingdom.'
Pp. 25, 26. ' Of the power and fruit of Christ's ascension David
preaches very finely and gloriously. Wouldst thou know, he says,
to what end Christ ascended ? I will tell thee : For this Ne went up
on high, to take captivity captive. Short words, but in these short
words he embraces heaven and earth, and all that therein is. He
hath taken captivity captive. A grand and a proud speech. There-
fore He went up on high, and sitteth above in heaven, to lay the
stocks in the stocks, and imprison the prison. This is His kingdom,
46 THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION
office and work, which he has accomplished on high, that He has
cast captivity into captivity. Though we see it not, yet we hear it
preached.
' But what means the saying, Thou hast led captivity captive ? . . .
In plain English we say : Christ therefore ascended on high, and
therefore sitteth at the Father's right hand in majesty, that He may
release and set free the captives : for that is the meaning of taking
captivity captive. But we must keep the prophets' language, and
use ourselves to it. He says not, Thou art gone up on high, and
hast set the captives free (though that is the meaning), but, Thou
hast led captivity captive, Death in death, Sin in sin, Hell in hell ;
for he speaks of a kingdom and a prison, not earthly or of earth,
but on high before God. Thou hast led captive, he says, the
captivity, which is called captivity before God, in His eternal
kingdom, which is a kingdom of faith.
* What kind of prison, stocks or tower, is that ? Not such a
prison, bond, stocks or tower, as the executioner or constable has.
For Christ is not concerned with that, not for that did He ascend ;
but He has to do with the eternal prison before God. And there-
fore is He gone up on high, and sitteth at the right hand of Majesty,
that He may lead captive the eternal captivity before God. Were
He not gone up on high, and had He not led captivity captive, we
must have been for ever captive. But He is gone up on high, and
hath taken the great, high, deep, strong, dungeon before God,
namely, Sin in sin, Death in death, Hell in hell.'
P. 26. 'For this cause Christ is gone up on high, and hath
taken captive captivity, even Sin, as though He would say : I go up
on high, and sit down at God's right hand ; this is My kingdom, office
and work, to take captive captivity, which had taken My Christians
and believers, Thou, Sin, art a piece of such a prison, but as thou
hast done to My Christians, even so will I do to thee. They were
forced to be thy captives, either freely to sin against God through
security, or through sadness to remain in despair : to this thou, Sin,
hast driven them: but come hither and be taken in thy turn, and
made a slave.'
Pp. 33, 34. * Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to
every creature. It is a strong and mighty command, that the Lord
sends His disciples, not into a city or village, not only into Judaea
NOTES 47
to the people of Israel, not only to Jerusalem to the priests and
Levites, not into a kingdom and principality of the heathen ; but
into the whole world, to all kings, princes and lords, and all men
under heaven, Jews or heathen, gentle or simple, man or woman,
young or old. That is indeed to open the mouth wide, and preach
not in a corner, but freely, openly, that the sound may go forth
before all creatures, sun, moon, etc., and that all men.. .may hear,
that none may be able to excuse himself or say, he has not heard it.
'This command is so great and strong, that no greater or
stronger command or order ever went forth into the world. For
every king's, emperor's, prince's and lord's command reaches no
further than to his own kingdom, empire, principality, land and
folk ; just as every householder's order goes no further than his own
household. But this King's order embraces all kings, emperors,
princes, land, people, great and small, rich and poor, learned and
unlearned.... The apostles' word and preaching have, according to
Christ's command, come to all the world, though their persons and
their feet did not journey through all the world. Our fathers and
forefathers have received before us the same word (though preached
at one time more clearly than at another). The word goes con-
tinually onward, through other and yet other persons. The apostles
began to preach it in all the world ; the apostles' successors carry it
on to the last day.
* This command we must mark well, for hereby Christ Himself
distinguishes the preaching of the gospel from all other teachings
upon earth. For since He says, the apostles must go into all the
world, and preach the gospel to every creature, it follows, that all the
world, with all its wisdom, art and teaching, knows and understands
nothing of Christ's gospel. For did it know and understand it out
of its own head, then it had not needed the apostles' mission and
preaching. Had the Greeks known it, St Paul had not needed
to go to them, and set up amongst them the obedience of faith.
Therefore by this command all the learned of this world, philoso-
phers, jurists, theologians, with all that they know, understand and
teach in the world are brought to school, and subjected to the poor
beggars and unlearned fishermen, the apostles, as the messengers
sent by Christ to be masters of all the world, whom all the world
must hear and learn of them, or with all its art and wisdom be
48 THE SIGN OF THE ASCENSION
condemned. The world knows and understands how to build, keep
house, eat, drink, support itself, rule land and people, etc. ; but of
Christ's kingdom, how to be saved, of that it knows nothing.'
Pp. 46, 47. * Thus we must rightly distinguish the preaching of
faith and the doctrine of good works, and leave each in its own
proper place. For though the doctrine of good works must also
needs be urged ; yet good works are only as the foliage, or as apples,
pears, or other fruits on the tree. But faith is the tree which bears
both, leaf and fruit. Good works must stay here below among men
and serve our neighbours. But faith rises on high, and deals with
God, receives forgiveness of sins, life and bliss, offered through the
gospel in Christ. This faith is no mere empty thought, but a
living assurance, so that we can venture with all our heart on the
promise, and in its strength defy and pluck up heart against sin,
death and devil.'
Abp. Leighton's beautiful words in his Exposition of the Creed
(a refreshing contrast to the dry scholasticism of Pearson) will bear
comparison with these of Luther.
(ff) p. 31. Reuss, Reville, Nicolas, Holtzmann, Schenkel, Kenan,
for the most part negative critics, agree in fixing the date of
the synoptic gospels A.D. 71 80 (Pressense, Je'sus- Christ, ed. 2,
p. 173).
(gg) p. 32. Vol. in. 932, ed. Gaume.
(hh) p. 33. Ibid. ix. 8.
(w) p. 33. Ibid. ill. Ill, 112.
(jj) p. 34. Aug. serm. 265 c. 3 4.
(kk) p. 34. Chrysost. in. 930 seq. cf. xi. 563.
(II) p. 35. ' Non vestrum est, inquit : unde non licet colligere,
ne aliorum quidem posthac fore.' Oetinger (cited by Stier) thinks
that we, who have the Apocalypse with Bengel's exposition, are
far more enlightened than the apostles, who were without the
Apocalypse. For seasons the German versions have Zeitpunkte ;
an excellent rendering.
(mm) p. 35. Cf. Nero's jest, who called the boletus, wherewith
Claudius was poisoned, deorum cibus (Suet. Ner. 32) ; and Vespasian's
dying jest (Suet. Vesp. 23), Ut puto, deus fio.
NOTES 49
(nri) p. 36. Geo. Herbert, Church-Porch, p. 14, ed. 1838.
(00) p. 36. The saying ' It is the property of the gods to need
nothing, of godlike men to need little,' is ascribed to Socrates by
Xenophon, memor. i. 6 10, cf. Censorin. 1 4 ; by Diog. Laert.
vi. 105 to the cynic Diogenes.
(PP) P- 37 - In the codes of statutes of 1516, 1524, 1530, and
1545 (Early Statutes of St John's College, Cambr. 1859, pp. 88, 89,
309, 373), we read of 'tria illa,...quae pientissima fundatrix a sociis
scholaribus ac discipulis praecipue curanda votis omnibus exoptavit,
nempe Dei cultus, morum probitas, et Christianae fidei corro-
boratio.'
So also in the statute de his qui concionibus ad plebem exercita-
bunt sese (ibid. pp. 96, 97, 313, 377) ' Ut autem id tandem cuius
gratia potissimum optima et pientissima fundatrix collegium istud
erigi voluit, sortiatur effectum (id est ut tandem enascantur ex hoc
coetu theologi qui suorum studiorum fructum aliis communicent),
statuimus et ordinamus ut semper quarta pars ex universe sociorum
numero concionibus ad plebem in vulgari dicendis incumbat.'
M. s.
51
e tratjj s|jall mak ptr frte
ST JOHN'S
7 November 1880
42
53
THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE
" Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye
continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed and ye shall
know the truth and the truth shall make you free" St John viii. 31, 32.
THE text reveals the intimate relation between
intellect and will, belief and practice, the word and the
life, a relation ripening and deepening in a normal growth,
like confidence between friends. The freedom of man
lies in his ready surrender to the divine law : ' our wills
are ours to make them Thine ' ; but to obey the law we
must know it. The wise man, as the Stoics taught,
though in bonds, as Bacchus confronting Pentheus, is
alone free (a).
The complement of this truth, the influence of action
on belief, is taught in c. 7, ver. 17 ' If any man will do
has the will to do, 6e\r) TTOLGLV His will, he shall know of
the doctrine whether it be of God, or whether I speak of
myself!
Many here have but lately come among us; some,
we hope, with an ingenuous thirst for truth and a
generous confidence that it may here, if anywhere, be
found ; almost all with a buoyant sense of freedom ; they
are their own masters at last. And indeed the freshmen
of each year are our band of hope. Never in the lives of
most will there occur a single month so free for thought,
for study, for the deliberate ordering of their hours, as
54 THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE
will be the three whole years which they have now before
them. Already you are a chosen generation. Many a
father has long stinted himself that he may send a son
this year to his old university ; but illness, death, stress of
hard times, some moral or intellectual crash, has dispersed
the day-dream and clouded a self-denying home. Year
by year others will fall upon the course, their own slaves,
because they will not be their own masters; slaves of
appetite and of sloth, because they cast off the yoke of
reason and of conscience, which is the easy yoke of Christ.
There will be gaps in your ranks, when you march up to
receive your first degree ; some perhaps will have been
summoned to their account by the Great Taskmaster;
others by an abuse of the common freedom will have
forfeited an abiding record on our boards; their place
shall know them no more. Many and many a student
amongst working men, amongst ministers of religion,
amongst traders, would gladly fill, at the cost of great
sacrifices, the posts thus wantonly betrayed. Crimes,
Mme. Roland exclaimed, are committed in the name of
Liberty ; licence, Milton found to his cost, may lurk under
that spirit-stirring cry. We may therefore profitably
review some of the ways in which the Truth, the know-
ledge of that which indeed is, may set us free.
We be Abrahams seed, and have never yet been in
bondage to any man; how sayest thou then, ye shall be
made free? So asked the Jews in the verse following our
text ; and pride of birth or of calling is a bondage from
which students of all men need to be set free. Here, if
anywhere, in the thoughtful part of our community, men
are measured by their personal merit, not by adventitious
distinctions. Yet that vulgar word Philister and all that
THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE 55
it implies viz. that we the men of the gown alone are
gentle this temper is by no means uncommon and
impedes in many ways the action of the university on
the outer world. This bondage is manifestly due to
ignorance and will cease with fuller knowledge. For
example you may see I have seen an undergraduate
taking freedoms in a shop, which he would never dream
of in a private house, smoking perhaps and addressing
the owner in a hectoring tone. Knowledge of the
world is enough to dispel such rudeness: still more the
knowledge of Christ and His work. Many Cambridge
tradesmen liberally contribute of their time and money to
labours of love, associating with the university on friendly
terms. Town and Gown are not necessary foes; it is
ignorance alone that keeps them apart. When the
Temperance Societies in the Oxford colleges began last
year to give entertainments to the people, that was a
frank recognition of the truth that the School is for the
Nation, not the Nation for the School (b).
Some months ago I heard a lecture at Derby. The
lecturer, invited by the working men's co-operative society,
was a clergyman: his subject 'the self-uplifting of the
working man,' and the keynote of all was sursum corda.
The chairman, a working man, was a dissenter, as his
father and grandfather had been before him, bred to
regard a clergyman as a natural enemy. But as he learnt
more, his feelings had changed. Head-work, he found,
was harder than hand- work. He himself had judged
other classes as other classes judged the working-class
unfairly, by their black sheep. Yet amongst the working
class might be found men who led heroic lives.
Would we shake off prejudice like that clear-sighted
56 THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE
artisan? Let us study our countrymen, not as caricatured
by the sophists of the press, but from actual personal
contact with them or their works. The most diligent
among us might shrink from comparing himself, e.g. with
the member for Morpeth(c), who refuses invitations to
public feasts, lest he should contract a habit of luxury ;
for his constituents may at any time revoke his commission,
and he must return to the coal-pit ; for he is a miner by
trade. Observe that the first book bought by Mr Burt
out of his earnings, was the poems of William Cowper.
For indeed if the truth can deliver us from contempt
of our neighbour, so can it also from unworthy fear. We
learn to fear ourselves, and to trust others.
Who are the dangerous classes ? The murderer, the
thief, the harlot, the drunkard ? Are they ? Do they not,
all unconsciously, preach a most necessary lesson, with a
distinctness of tone such as few preachers since Luther
have attained ? Evil, they warn us, is not good, not even
an imperfect form of good. They teach us to see with the
eagle eye of our patron saint those eternal opposites, good
and evil, light and darkness, life and death. They sin
without knowledge : we may hope for them. Who are
the dangerous classes ? They who sin against knowledge.
They who having have not. Having at call leisure,
culture, safety, sweetness, light, they never lift their eyes
to the Source of all good; never earn by self-denying
labour, what they have freely received. These are they
who make men loathe culture and gentle manners.
Shutting their eyes to the many works of real service to
church and state which without them must be left undone,
they waste time and pains on that fantastic idol which
they worship as Pleasure.
THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FEEE 57
They who like Christ and His apostles have gone in
and out among publicans and sinners, amongst the outcasts
of our great towns, never find their trust betrayed. Miss
Hopkins, here in Cambridge, left her father's home at
nights to seek drunkards in the public-houses and to
invite them to hear the news of Christ. She testifies
( Work amongst working men) p. 84) ' Speaking from my
own wide experience, I can only positively say that ladies
may trust working men not to insult them under any
circumstances, if they are making an effort for their good/
Can we be content simply, like the Pharisees, to criticise
the publicans in our midst, without helping, by our means,
by our prayers, by our sympathies and encouragement,
those who go forth armed with faith, in what seems so
unequal a conflict ? One lady reformed the military
hospitals at the request of government ; another is known
as the Sailors' Friend, a third as the Soldiers' Friend, and
by their efforts, seconded by officers and chaplains and
the men themselves, the stain of drunkenness is fast being
wiped from our flag(cf). The march of Gen. Roberts was
made possible by temperance societies numbering many
thousands of soldiers. Would you ask in whose power
these mighty works are done ? Miss Hopkins will tell
you (p. 8) 'If there is one truth I have grasped more
strongly than another, it is this : only be sure of your
duty, and there must be an infinite store of force in God
which you can lay hold of to do it with, as an engineer
lays hold of a force in Nature and drives his engine right
through the granite bases of an Alp. If you are sure
that it is God's will you should do it; then "I can't'*
must be a lie in the lips that repeat "I believe in the
Holy Ghost.'"
58 THE TKUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE
Despise not, fear not. How shall we receive those
classes of our countrymen, who, estranged from us in
1662, have lately returned, the legislature having removed
the tests which it so industriously imposed in the 16th,
17th, 18th centuries ? We are justly proud of our
martyrs, nor can any political or religious party boast that
its hands are clean : each persecuted in its turn(e). How
shall we receive the nonconformists after their exile of
200 years ? Let us be as large-hearted as our fathers in
God. The most important work which our church has
undertaken for many years is the revised version of
Scripture. In a few months the New Testament will be
in our hands. It is the joint labour of churchmen and
nonconformists, and has been conducted in perfect harmony
all along. Commentaries, edited by dignitaries of the
church, or published at our press, have contributions from
nonconformist divines and are largely used by Scotch
Presbyterians and English dissenters. At the church con-
gress in Leicester the nonconformist ministers presented
an address, in which they dwelt on the many points in
which they are at one with the church, acknowledging
expressly their debt to the Cambridge school of divinity.
Our text-books are theirs. All these things shew that
we need not fear the contact of dissenters, and no one
who has studied, not the bad side : the dissidence of
dissent, but the good side, its self-denying energy, its
power of enlisting all its members in active labour, the
apostolic lives of many of its missionaries, no one I say,
who remembers all this will doubt that nonconformists
may supply an element which we in Cambridge want;
bringing with them traditions and setting examples of
plain living and of evangelical teaching, and so confuting,
THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE 59
by a Christian revenge, the apprehensions of upholders of
tests.
There is yet another class whom the church, to its
great loss, has often despised and feared. We are apt to
deny the name of Christian to those who, baptised in our
pale, forsake our assemblies. Yet such men, through doubt
and despondency, may be ripening into saints of God ;
they may be treading the path which Saul of Tarsus and
Justin Martyr and Augustine trod. Two Biblical scholars,
who had passed through these refining fires, De Wette
and Tholuck, have described The Consecration of the
Doubter, The True Consecration of the Doubter (/).
Hear the words of William Law(^r) : ' It is very observable,
that there is not one command in all the gospel for public
worship ; and perhaps it is a duty that is least insisted on
in scripture of any other. The frequent attendance at it,
is never so much as mentioned in all the New Testament ;
whereas that religion or devotion, which is to govern the
ordinary actions of our life, is to be found in almost every
verse of Scripture/ Nor must we forget that we may
offend by our presence even more than by absence.
One thing more I am bound to say. Suppose that
next Sunday morning that test were administered to us
that proved the faith of Ridley and Latimer: suppose
that presence in chapel were the passport to the stake:
whether my place would be filled or no I cannot say : none
of us can answer for himself: but that places now vacant
would be filled I am as certain as that I stand here. It
would be given them in the same hour how they should
speak. Richard Rothe breathed the very spirit of prayer ;
he would abash young students, who revered him as a
saint born out of time, by entreating their intercessions.
60 THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE
Yet he warns the educated that to come to church, in
order to set an example of respect for worship, is at least
very near to a profanation of the Highest (h).
You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you
free. Thucydides contrasts classical work, slowly matured
' a possession for ever ' with the rhetorical essay, fitted
to tickle itching ears for a moment. To this day the two
modes of composition are in conflict; like Virtue and
Vice in the Choice of Hercules, they solicit you. Will
you slowly learn, slowly mature your thoughts, and at last
give to the world something solid, which will advance the
sum of knowledge ? or will you sell opinions, cheap and
hasty, to confuse the simple and unwary ? Our founders
by making the classic of classics, the book of books, the
centre of our studies(t), marked out our course : 'This is
the road, walk ye in it.' Cambridge has been true to her
traditions : her divinity school is eminently a school of the
Bible. And the truth has made it free.
When attacks made on the Bible were received with
exultant applause by some, with terror by others, our
professors calmly brought a higher scholarship and a
wider knowledge to bear on the points at issue, and the
fears vanished, the boasts were discreetly hushed.
Surely if the Bible were no more than unfriendly
critics say, they who know it best would find out its
shortcomings. Yet look to the country where Biblical
criticism is most free, and what do you see ? Of the
consummate scholars of this century, one Lachmann
taking up the task left unfinished by Bentley, prepared a
critical edition of the New Testament. And his biographer
tells us : Lachmann war ein frommer Christ, ' Lachmann
was a pious Christian ' ; familiarity in him did not breed
THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE 61
contempt. Winer, the author of the grammar of the
New Testament, says in the last edition of his Bible
cyclopaedia : ' On the whole, I confess, it appears to me
that there is more of true, connected history, even in the
Old Testament books, than many now allow, and during
my work, this time also, I have learnt to esteem the Bible
still more highly/ This was after twenty-nine years of
biblical studies. Meyer's commentary is happily now well
known among us. No one, I think, can read his preface
to the fifth edition of St Matthew, without feeling that a
perfectly honest witness is speaking to us, who has care-
fully sifted the evidence, and by the labour of more than
thirty years has been more and more convinced of its
sufficiency.
Nor is learning wanted to prove the truth of
Christianity : many a poor woman in town or country,
knowing no other book, has made proof through a long
life, of her Bible ; it has been her stay and support under
suffering. What can minute objections avail to shake
her confidence ? She knows in whom she has believed,
and the truth has made her free. She has done the will
of Him that sent her Lord, and knows of the doctrine that
it is indeed of God.
It were easy to shew how in matters of daily life the
truth makes us free. Thus in diet ; experiment proves
that alcohol is to many a poison even in small quantities,
and evidence is accumulating to shew that, generally
speaking, even taken in moderation it shortens life: this
truth of material science re-echoed from arctic snows and
tropic suns, is doing much to set free bodies and spirits
enslaved to drink : the young among us may live to see a
sober England. Thought and experiment employed on
62 THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE
our daily expenditure and early rising would in like
manner tend to make us free, forming habits of order and
self-control. We may lessen our troubles by lessening our
wants ; for artificial, imaginary wants will torment us no
more, when we are content to be what God and nature
and reason require us to be. In this self-discipline we
may derive great help, not only from Scripture, but from
the teaching, often in terms identical with Scripture,
of- Socrates, Seneca, Musonius, Epictetus, Antoninus.
St Paul's commendation of the heathen, who, not having
a law, were a law to themselves, applies eminently to the
Stoics of .his own generation.
If you learn here lessons like these, if you leave
Cambridge rich in the fewness of your wants, in the
simplicity of faith, in the fervour of love, then you will
have received the benefits which Lady Margaret designed
to convey through you to the world (j).
I have cited the testimony of Miss Hopkins in her
work amongst working men. Do you ask how that work
has prospered ? Learn of any one who knew Cambridge
thirty years ago, the reputation of Barnwell : then go to
St Matthew's church ; mark the reverent behaviour of the
people ; hearken to the singing and the responses ; the
church, you will see, is the people's church ; they love it
and are willing to labour for it.
That church has taken up the work begun long ago in
fear and trembling by the daughter of a foremost leader
of science ; and the motive which sent her forth was this :
'From a girl I had the strongest conviction that the
Gospel of Christ was essentially for men', and that only
so far as a man is in Christ and like Christ can he really
be a man/
NOTES
(a) p. 53. Sen. ep. 37 4 humilis res est stultitia dbiecta sordida
multis affectibus et saevissimis subiecta. hos tarn graves
dominos, interdum alternis imperantes, interdum pariter, dimittit a te
sapientia, quae sola libertas est.
(6) p. 55. During the October term 1880 several concerts were
given to the townspeople of Cambridge by the musical societies
of colleges. In House and Home for Dec. 18, 1880, p. 298, is an
account of a meeting of the working men's club at Hackney Wick.
'The special event of the evening was the appearance on the
platform of Mr Drew, one of the masters of Eton College, and of an
Eton boy.... They came to say to the meeting that the masters and
boys of this famous old school had agreed to recognise the fact that
there was something else in this world than learning and play
that schoolmasters must teach rich men's sons, while young and
impressionable, that there are things to be learned which are as
important as "how to get on" and play a great part in the world....
So Eton boys and masters are forming a sort of league to find fields
of labour, and one of these fields is to be Hackney Wick. The
students and teachers are subscribing to a fund which may provide
labourers in this field, and help any institutions which are estab-
lished for the good of the people there. Better still, boys and men
of Eton hope in spare hours to come and work themselves. Thus,
having heard of the club, they have subscribed to its funds.
Masters will come and give lectures, if wanted ; boys will come and
sing and recite, or play football and cricket with Hackney Wickites,
if the Hackney Wickites wish for their company.
'Now, is not this a "happy thought"? The sons of rich men
cannot learn too early to care for the less fortunate classes, learn to
find their way to the hearts of the hand- workers, help to build up a
64 THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE
better state of society, where fraternity shall play a larger part than
in the past.'
(c) p. 56. A memoir, with portrait, of Mr Burt has appeared
in House and Home. A better-known example of self-help is
Mr Hoyle of Tottington, a leading authority on the statistics of
the drink-tramc. As a boy Mr Hoyle was employed in a factory,
and rose regularly at 3, reading till 6, when he went to work.
Books of travels were his favourite study. Savage tribes, he could
not but observe, lived in many respects more rationally than we do.
He told his mother that he should like to try their way of life.
* You will kill yourself.' He practised vegetarianism, first for three
months, then for six, and has adhered to it now for more than
thirty years, living as simply, now that he is a wealthy manufacturer,
as when he was a ' hand ' in a mill.
(cF) p. 57. When the combined fleets were in the Adriatic, the
sobriety of English sailors on shore was frequently commented
on by the press. Ten years ago how different would have been
the report !
(e) p. 58. Of the last five persecutions in Cambridge, four lie at
the door of that party which by profession is specially bound to
a large-hearted toleration.
(/) p. 59. De Wette's Theodor oder des Zweiflers Weihe (Berlin,
1822) called forth Tholuck's wahre Weihe des Zweiflers (Hamburg,
1823).
(g) p. 59. Serious call to a devout and holy life.
(h) p. 60. Theologische Ethik (a classical work, too little known
in England V a 470-1): 'For a Christian belonging to the more
highly educated classes of society it is precisely this characteristic
of public worship that gives life and power to it, that here he sees
himself united with the Christian community in its entirety before
God and in the living feeling that He is near, united in devotion
and prayer, in complete forgetfulness of all the distinctions which
at other times interpose at every step to divide him from his
Christian brethren ; the union is perfect and it is altogether a matter
of course. To be sure if any one should come to church, as a point
of duty, to set to others, especially to his inferiors in culture and
NOTES 65
station, an example of due respect to worship such a one would be
at least not far removed from a profanation of the Highest.'
(i) p. 60. Bp. Fisher founded a Hebrew and a Greek lecture in
the college.
(j] p. 62. From the statutes of 1530 (c. 19) we learn the
constant prayer of the foundress : that her fellows and scholars
might devote themselves to the worship of God, purity of life
and the strengthening of the Christian faith.
M. S.
67
Cljiltr mtir fyt
ST JOHN'S
6 November 1881
52
68
'A civilization without a Spirit is a civilization which must
always be limited to the easy and comfortable portion of society.
It will affect their behaviour, not their manners ; it will come forth
in an external and dishonest politeness, not in gentleness and grace.
In a commercial community, the possession of money will be the
highest sign of it. Art, literature, science, religion will bow to that,
and will take its standard for their standard. The mass of the
people will be regarded as dangerous. To keep them from mischief
if preaching does not avail they may be offered education, or
amusement, or a share of political power. But they will no v be
reverenced as men ; for that is not the distinction upon which their
superiors value themselves rather upon their being unlike the rest
of mankind.
* The poor of the earth have always craved for this message of a
Divine Spirit, have always felt, however they may have expressed
the feeling, that some Spirit, not divine, but the contrary of divine,
was oppressing and tormenting them. Civilization tells them they
are deluded in these convictions ; but civilization does not happen
to know what is going on in their hovels or in their hearts. When-
ever a gospel penetrates into them, we may hear strange things.
The son of a Saxon miner an English tinker may have deadly
conflicts with the Devil, by the reports of which witty men will be
greatly amused. But the miner's son comes forth from his battle
to emancipate the nations ; the tinker rises from a barbarian into a
cultivated man capable of writing a Pilgrim's Progress*
F. D. MAURICE, The Conflict of Good and Evil in our day (1865)
2089.
69
THE CHILD AND THE MAN
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought
as a child : now that I am become a man, I have put away childish
things. For now we see in a mirror, darkly (in a riddle) ; but then
face to face ; now I know in part ; but then shall I know even as also
I have been known. I Cor. xiii. 11, 12.
ST PAUL has concluded his panegyric of love, meek,
longsuffering, trustful, hopeful, eternal. The chapter finds
an echo in every true heart, far beyond the limits of any
professing church. M. Renan ranks it, and it alone, with
the divine lessons of the gospels. Yet after soaring so
high the apostle stoops to claim fellowship with common
men ; even his knowledge here below is reflected, partial,
at second hand : full and perfect and infallible insight
the beatific vision is reserved for the manhood of our
race, in the world unseen. We wrong the sacred writers
when we overlook such modest disclaimers. Approaching
the Bible as the simple and unlettered do, without any
preconceived opinion, reading it as we might read Epic-
tetus for the first time, we shall find in it more than
Epictetus; more than Solomon; by little and little we
shall take it as the light of our steps. Peruse the epistles
each at a sitting as though addressed to you, and burdened
70 THE CHILD AND THE MAN
with no traditional reputation; they will shine out, be
sure, with a fresher and more inviting beauty ; they will
draw you with the cords, not of outward, official authority,
but of willing love. William Hone, author of many books
against Christianity, one day saw a girl reading her Bible.
' My child,' he said, ' you seem very busy : are you
preparing for an examination ? ' ' No, Sir ; I love the
book.' It was a word in season : he had often read the
Bible to carp at it ; but for love never. He became of a
Saul a Paul.
Many of us have in these few weeks made the passage
from boyhood to manhood ; for the first time you are your
own masters ; you have assumed the manly gown. Like
St Paul you are called to put away childish things:
Brethren, he exclaims (xiv. 20), be not children in mind :
howbeit in malice be ye babes, but in mind be men.
Our Johnian poet bids us rise on stepping-stones of
our dead selves to better things (a):
The child is father of the man,
And I should wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
What childish things are to be put away? Revise
your personal habits. Many a schoolboy lavishes his
father's money on indulgences because he thinks them
manly : and the child's follies cling to the man, whose old
age suffers in health and purse and character, because he
lacked courage betimes to judge himself. Learn of the
stoics to reverence yourselves. See in your bodies temples
of the Holy Ghost; in your spirits and consciences the
light of the Word, that lighteneth every man. Aristotle (b)
warns us that the body must be our slave or it will be our
tyrant : it is good for the body to obey ; without virtue
THE CHILD AND THE MAN 71
man is the most impious and savage of creatures, both
as regards lust and gluttony. In like manner Charles
Kingsley(c): God made man for something more noble
and blessed than to follow even his own lofty human nature.
God made the animals to follow their nature each after his
kind, and to do each what it liked, without sin. But he
made man to do more than that ; to do more than what he
likes, namely, to do what he ought. Hercules (d) in the
apologue chose the path of virtue, the way of the cross,
and philosophers set him and his labours before them
as their exemplar of self-sacrifice. Yet Hercules could
become the slave of Omphale, as Samson of Dalilah ; in
Greek comedy he sinks into a sot and a glutton. It is
by no means only the worst of men that are exposed to
these temptations. No scholar ever stood higher for
patient industry, for scrupulous, unwavering honesty, than
Professor Porson(e), yet the convivial habits of his day
overpowered his better nature. Well did the Greeks
make Hermes the god of manly exercises as well as of
eloquence ; for bodily training aids mental growth and
brings the appetites under the dominion of reason. In all
labour there is profit. I have written to you, young men,
because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you,
and ye have overcome the wicked one. Speaking from this
place some time back I warned you against the mock
generosity of treating. To the sober your bounty is an
insult ; to the weak, a snare, and even, as a late tragedy
has taught us, a poison. That life cannot be recalled by
any remorse, by any magic art, but its unhappy end may
save others. Resolve to lead none into temptation. This
society since I have known it, has been sober; but
I remember two lives cut short by alcoholic poison.
72 THE CHILD AND THE MAN
I knew not when these victims of intemperance were
seated at my board, that there was any danger to them
more than to me. Now that I am forewarned I am
forearmed ; since the Ash Wednesday of 1880 I have given
to no one what may be the ruin of body and soul. There
are myriads of things on this earth, which we may give
without risk. Why should we choose for our friends the
one gift that may destroy them ? Respect the liberty of
the abject. There are those who cannot approach the
Lord's table without awakening the drink fiend (/). On
the other hand the soldiers of Christ are gathering to
rescue the land from this curse, which, far more than bad
seasons, is destroying agriculture (#); and together with
the ruin of woman (h) is degrading our town populations.
If the example of brotherly unity among various sects
cannot attract us, let the heathen shame us. In 1876 the
Chinese formed a society for promoting total abstinence
from opium, and in a pamphlet (i) set forth at large the
injury done by English opium to mind, body, and estate,
to the common -wealth and the home. Thus is the
Christian weapon of free, self-denying association, a
weapon known to Pliny (j), borrowed by pagans to
encounter temptations forced on them by Christians.
Pass from the ministry of your own bodies and from
society with your equals to your so-called inferiors. For
the first time in your lives you have servants paid by you.
Read the Epistle to Philemon. Hear Seneca (&), the lord
of a thousand slaves. Are they slaves? he cries. Nay,
they are humble friends. You will discourse glibly in
your debates on the dangers of non-residence; on the
separation of classes ; you call us 'dons' because you think
we live apart like the gods of Epicurus in selfish state.
THE CHILD AND THE MAN 73
Shew us a better example. You receive personal service
from your bedmaker; be ashamed to repay it with dead
money only. Call each of you on your servants at home ;
take a personal interest in their welfare, in their children's
progress. Form a Boys' and Girls' Friendly Society.
Obey, in the strict letter, your Lord's command : When
thou makest a dinner, call not thy rich neighbours) lest a
recompense be made thee ; but... bid the poor. Try for a
change a Christian Saturnalia (I): invite your servants
and their families to a frugal feast and be amongst them
as one that serveth. Whole classes of men are called
into existence to serve your diversions; their wages are
precarious and their temptations great; are you not
bound to contribute, from the income of your clubs, to
those institutions in which your dependents, brought here
for your pleasure, must seek refuge in case of sickness or
accident ? Some twenty-five years ago the fellows of our
college voted unanimously for a large increase in the
scholarships. Has their public spirit been rewarded ? So
far as any poor man of merit has been enabled to come
among us, yes. So far as money has been spent on luxury,
or on any thing except books or charity, no, certainly no.
We can tell of men whom numerous prizes have lured on
to extravagance and so to early death. Assuredly Lady
Margaret, the most ascetic of saints (m), never meant to
pamper her sons, but rather to train them to manly
fortitude and temperance. I cannot find that the richer
scholars of to-day buy more books or spend more in alms
than their poor predecessors. If you do not surpass us in
learning, it is a disgrace to you : for neither the university
nor the college opened its library to us.
In regard to expenditure a just and plain rule is,
THE CHILD AND THE MAN
measure yourselves by your sisters. Forswear tastes
which make you more burdensome to your homes than
a daughter. Play the man here also: forego every
luxury which will pinch your mother and sisters. We
shall not despise your poverty, we shall honour your
thrift. Not the poor, but (as a speaker at the Primitive
Methodist Congress said lately) the idle rich, are the
degraded classes. Not the roughs of Oxford, but wine-
flown lordlings, purse-proud, pot-valiant, burnt the Ch. Ch.
statues. Thirty years ago the dinner in college hall
consisted of one simple course; the importunity of the
students made it more costly. Do you admire those
trencher-knights, a garrison in the Transvaal, who
surrendered when reduced to rations of bread ? Loyal
Saguntum(n) drew lots which of the besieged should first
serve as food to the rest: Caesar's beleaguered veterans
fed on roots (o). Our troops, it seems, may face bullets,
but short commons never. Capua was the ruin of
Hannibal.
Many, it may be, will invite you to cast off the
traditions of your childhood. Hundreds of our upper
ranks, since 1830, have bowed their necks and now fret
in secret, beneath the galling yoke of Rome. Hundreds
more have cast off, and are casting off, the easy yoke of
Christ. Will ye also go away ? Divide the world roughly
into three classes (p), and you will find that most of these
secessions belong to the middle class. The first class is of
those who add to knowledge. Such men know what they
know and are content to be ignorant of many things. The
second class is called by the Germans, with keen irony,
' die gebildeten,' ' the educated.' They must know a little
of everything, they supply the bulk of the writers and
THE CHILD AND THE MAN 75
almost the whole public for popular journals and reviews.
Last come those who make no pretence to learning, but
know what they know directly by acquaintance and
experience. The second class is at the mercy of fashion :
the others can repeat that watchword of the African
church (q) : Our Saviour Christ called Himself not Custom,
but Truth. Take an example or two of slavery to fashion :
Some time since there was a controversy in the press
about prayer. No disputant knew the Paternoster, or
' Not my Will, but Thine.' Nay, none can have remem-
bered the heathen petition (r): 'Father Zeus, grant us
good things, whether we pray or pray not, but evils avert,
even though we pray/ All regarded prayer as a magical
and unfailing spell for commanding temporal advantages
the purse and wishing cap of Fortunatus.
Again. We read in the sermon on the mount. Resist
not evil : but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn
to him the other also. Philosophers, I am told, deride this
injunction, construing it as a police regulation. Paley(s)
might teach them that private conduct from private
motives alone is regulated by the words. Two simple
Christians, to whom I propounded the riddle, solved it at
once : ' It is the spirit/ ' the feeling/ that is meant. But
the salvation army(), who approach very nearly to the
condition of the early Christians, obey their Lord to the
very letter. Strong men and weak women bear patiently
the utmost violence, being forbidden by their general's
orders to resist. Apply the rule to literary controversy or
the strife of tongues, and its wisdom is apparent.
The mention of religion naturally suggests a topic on
which opinions are divided, viz., the influence of recent
legislation on our position as churchmen here.
76 THE CHILD AND THE MAN
Clear the ground by asking what we understand by a
university ? Is it an institution for squandering in luxury
the hardly earned savings of parents (u) ? Is it a place of
trade, in which by the right use of means, namely reading,
we may gain the only true end of life, namely money, to
be squandered as before (v) ?
Or is the university a congregation of lovers of wisdom
and lovers of learning, (f)i\6o-o(f>oi, and fyikopaOels, who one
and all gladly learn and gladly teach ? Place Archimedes
on the sea shore, with a rod(w) in his hand ; place St Paul
anywhere, in a prison, at the bar of justice, in a shipwreck ;
place John Cheke(#) in our first court, in a fireless room
shared with several chums, his habit bought once a year
at Sturbridge fair, his diet stinted to the barest neces-
saries ; surround them with eager hearers, and you have
academies of mathematics, of theology, and of classics;
more than all, you have schools of self-denial the dis-
cipline of the cross. Thirty years ago (I appeal to those
who in 1848 were at the head of the two great triposes to
confirm my words), examinations and prizes held a very
modest place in the thoughts of the foremost students.
We revelled in letters and in the controversies of the time.
A pupil asking Mr Hopkins, the great wrangler-maker,
* What place shall I have in the tripos ? ' drew down upon
him the tart rebuff: 'That is no concern of mine: it's
my place to make a mathematician of you : it is for the
examiners to class you.'
For the last thirty years the more active spirits among
our residents have been placed in a false position with
regard to Alma Mater] they have been employed in
distributing its revenues, dividing the spoil; but the
history of the university, the sources of its wealth, they
THE CHILD AND THE MAN 77
have neglected. Many think that we were endowed by
the civil power, which gave unfair advantages to a
dominant sect. What is the fact ? The state, in the
person of Henry VIII, robbed us of our estates before we
had a place and a name(y). Every farthing that we
possess was given to us by private benefactors for one
end, to promote sound learning, in order that we might
send forth preachers into the world (z). Twenty-six years
ago I said in print (aa): 'Would we ascertain the efficacy
and value of religious tests, the sufferings of non-
covenanters, non-engagers, non-conformists, non-jurors,
furnish abundant matter for grave and impartial reflexion.'
That is, in a word, five persecutions raged here between
1640 and 1720, and four times out of the five the tyranny
professed the sacred name of freedom. Once the party
so-called of order ejected non-conformists, but many of
these did but disgorge ill-gotten booty. How did these
tests act ? It was thought a great relief when subscrip-
tion to the 39 articles was exchanged for the declaration :
'I am a bona fide member of the Church of England.'
Yet my honoured friend Dr S. R. Maitland(66), once a
Johnian, left Cambridge without a degree, because as a
Presbyterian he could not profess himself an Anglican.
Yet he would have subscribed the thirty-nine articles.
Professor Maurice (cc), that inheritor of the prophetic
spirit, born a Unitarian, was offered a fellowship at Trinity
Hall when examining the claims of the English Church.
He refused to bias his decision by worldly hopes. His
first publication, ' Subscription no Bondage/ set forth the
intention of the articles as guides for the student. Thirty
years later, in 1863, he wrote(dd) : We both thought then...
that the Articles were useful to those who were seeking a
78 THE CHILD AND THE MAN
learned culture, and were needing to be warned against
some errors and superstitions which might interfere with it.
We have both, I doubt not, altered our opinions about the
wisdom of calling laymen to subscribe a formulary which
they evidently do not receive in this sense, which they look
upon as a mere bondage upon their consciences. We may
both begin to doubt whether the subscription of clergymen is
not becoming a snare to them also.
Subscription no bondage ! Professor Francis New-
man (ee), in his most touching and instructive confessions,
has testified that it was none to him. I am bound to
testify that to me they have been articles of peace ; I owe
to them that love of church history which has won friends
for me in many Christian confessions. In my boyhood
there were no helps for the scholarlike study of the Greek
Testament ; a child of ten years old has now better means
for ascertaining the real meaning of scripture than I had
on taking my degree. So I look forward with hope. Is
not God revealed as the God of hope ? The reformation
revival, the mediaeval revival, are giving way to a biblical
revival(j5^), and Cambridge is its chief seat. Bishop
Fisher's motto will be fulfilled over sections of the Christian
church hitherto estranged from us : Faciam vos piscatores
hominum.
I have copied with my own hand the roll of our
members from the first; I have traced by many years'
labour of myself and others the later careers of our
graduates: and I say deliberately that since the college
was opened in 1516, no year can be pointed out in which
so many Johnians were serving in the sacred ministry of
the church throughout the world. Why are ye fearful,
ye of little faith ? Is it because men speak ill of us ?
THE CHILD AND THE MAN ; 79
Rejoice, and be exceeding glad. I would fain quote Hooker's
appeal to the Most High against Romish detraction (gg) :
but Frederick Maurice's words are still more to the point
and it was he, remember, who in St John's lodge, headed
the movement against tests some years ago (hh). It would
be a blessing beyond all blessings, and worth encountering
all the indignation of all the reviews in Europe for, if we
could send forth a few priests, feeling that the word and
sacraments are really committed to them, and that the trust
is a most real and awful one, and that they have nothing to
do with the catchwords of this party or that, and that they
may be messengers of truth and peace to high and low, and
that God has indeed founded Zion, and that the poor of his
people may trust in it. It is terrible to see the noblest,
bravest spirits driven to despair by coldness and heartless-
ness, led to think the church the cruelest of taskmasters,
imtead of the most loving of mothers, led to spurn the
very truths which in their inmost hearts they are confessing
and longing for.
80
NOTES
(a) p. 70. Wordsworth ' poems referring to the period of child-
hood' 1.
(b) p. 70. Arist. pol. i. 2, p. 1253 a 36 ; 5 p. 1254 a 35 seq.
b 6 seq.
(c) p. 71. The Good News of God (Lond. 1878) p. 184.
(d) p. 71. Hercules the philosopher : see my note on luv. x. 361.
(e) p. 71. See Bp. Turton (Crito Cantabrigiensis) : A vindication
of Professor Porson. Cambr. 1827. Cobet, the glory of Ley den,
once spoke to me with enthusiasm of Porson, whose few works he
continually read with ever new admiration. In his adversaria there
may be some hasty conjectures made when he was a boy ; but in his
mature works all are certain. He made a hundred conjectures, looked
them carefully over and burnt fifty, and so went on sifting, until he
reduced them to ten. So Madvig in his adversaria critica (I. 124)
commends the 'natural prudence 5 of R. P.
(/) p. 72. In the Church of England Temperance Chronicle
5 Nov. 1881 is a report (pp. 7223) of a meeting of the Church
Homiletical Society in the Chapter House, St Paul's. . Dr N. Kerr
shewed that unfermented wine might legally be used in the
sacrament. He himself, as an individual, cared nothing about what
kind of wine was employed at the sacrament. He had always
communicated in fermented wine, and perhaps might always do so ;
but in his capacity as a physician, he would be disloyal to truth if he
did not honestly testify to the serious risk of communion in an
intoxicant to the reformed inebriate, and to the yet unfallen subject of
the hereditary drink-crave. At present what was the fact? Some
reformed drunkards had been repelled from the church altogether,
some had deprived themselves of the privilege of communion, and some,
NOTES 81
while worshipping regularly at an established church, communicated
at some nonconformist place of worship where unfermented wine was
used. He implored the clergy, as a mere matter of justice and of
right, to render the most sacred rite of their venerable church safe
for the weakest of the victims snatched from the fatal embrace of
drink.
Two clergymen stated that unfermented wine was used in their
churches. Surgeon-General Francis thought it his duty to bear
testimony to the truth of what Dr Norman Kerr had said in reference
to the danger drunkards met when they were called upon to drink
fermented wine at the Lord's table. Up to his acquaintance with that
gentleman he was a disbeliever in this idea, but was quite convinced
by the arguments adduced; and recently there had come under his
observation a case in point, where a lady, somewhat fond of wine,
though not a drunkard, took to drinking (on his recommending)
Mr Frank Wright's unfermented wine. Lately she went to a place of
worship where fermented wine was drunk, and came back to tell
him the following day that she felt all the old feeling coming back.
In fact it renewed the appetite, and it was a very dangerous precipice
altogether upon which the communicants were called upon to tread.
Dr B. W. Richardson said : As to the practical point, whether
there is a danger in this matter of using wine at the sacrament ?
Yes, I say there is. I say the danger is very great indeed, in regard
to a considerable number of people. The clergy have made to them
certain statements by those who consult them, and we have too. The
physician's room is, in fact, a confessional. Very often statements
are made to us physicians which are made to none other. In respect
of this very question hardly a month passes but what someone speaks
to me on this very point which Dr Kerr has brought forward. I could
at this moment, if it were right to do so, name at least ten persons who
wish to accept the communion and who do not go to it from the fear
lest they should fall back into those ways from which they have been
rescued by the influence of friends or physicians [or]/rom other causes.
Well, this is a very important point indeed to bear in mind. I don't
know whether I have ever known a person myself go back from that
cause. 1 invariably tell them not to run the risk, and therefore I have
not had the opportunity of seeing, and never will have. If a person
comes and asks me for his body's health, to tell him what is right, and
M. s. 6
82 THE CHILD AND THE MAN
/ see a risk even in his accepting that part of the service of the church,
I tell him not to take that risk, and I always shall. It remains,
therefore, for the very careful consideration of the clergy individually
whether they cannot meet those who are working as we are, by the
general introduction of this particular form of unfermented and
harmless wine into the service
(ff) p. 72. It is proposed to send to every clergyman and magis-
trate in the kingdom a copy of Intemperance: its bearing upon
agriculture ; with an appendix containing the testimony of landlords,
farmers, labourers, travellers, science, &c. by John Abbey, Lond.
337, Strand, 1881. (Subscriptions may be sent to Mr Abbey,
44, St Giles', Oxford.) See p. 3 : / am persuaded, after long experience
and much anxious thought on this subject, that by far the greatest
hindrance to our Agriculture is England's common enemy or I might
say curse, Intemperance, which has been literally forced upon the
nation by the Government from age to age.
At a meeting of the C. E. T. S. in the Town Hall, Buckingham,
31 October, 1881 (Ch. Eng. Temp. Chron. 19 Nov. pp. 7623), the
Hon. Percy Barrington said : He had paid his men money instead of
beer. He supplied no beer, but in its place he gave them as much tea
as they liked to drink gratis. He had found the greatest benefit from
it himself. Mr W. Collier, of the Radcliffe Infirmary, said : there
could be no doubt that the hay and harvest times were seasons of
special temptation to the labourers. The labourers themselves acknow-
ledged when they were admitted into the Radcliffe Infirmary that there
were times in their history when they used to take a large quantity of
beer per day... They had said to him: I 0h yes, it's all very well for
you, but if you did hard work you could not get on without beei' ; we
cannot get on without beer.' There was another cause too. The beer
was supplied to them instead of money, and the labourer thought if he
did not have it he would be losing something a part of his pay.
Mr R. Sawyer pointed out that the alliance between the farmers
and the brewers was breaking up. The brewers were giving up
malt and hops, and using rice, maize, Russian oats and sugar.
A Kentish farmer once said to him that he would not employ a man
who did not drink six pints a day. He asked him how he would go on
if a stout strong teetotaller who could do twice the work offered to
come: ( Why, I would not have him; I wouldn't have any man who
NOTES 83
doesn't drink beer; I want all England to drink beer, or how can
/ sell my barley ? ' Since then things had changed.
A friend of mine was employed harvesting this year. A fine
afternoon was wasted by the labourers in drinking, and the next
day, also fine, was spent in recovering from the debauch.
(h) p. 72. See Miss Ellice Hopkins' Work in Brighton; Work
among the Lost (Hatchard).
(z) p. 72. In the Ch. of Eng. Temp. Chron. 29 Oct. 1881 is an
extract from the English translation (pp. 700) of this pamphlet,
which (1) sums under eight heads the indictment against opium ;
(2) replies to apologists of the trade ; (3) gives reasons for its
suppression. The eight counts are (1) it squanders wealth ; (2) it
interrupts industry ; (3) it destroys life ; (4) it cramps talent ; (5) it
disorganises government ; (6) it enfeebles the army ; (7) it loosens
the bond of society ; (8) it corrupts the morals of the people. The
peroration of part I is worth citing : If we are told to let things go
on as they are going, then there is no remedy and no salvation for
China, and as we think of it in the stillness of the night, well may our
tears flow down unbidden, and our voices sink to sobs. Oh, it makes
the blood run cold.
(j) p. 72. Plin. ep. x. 96 7, the renegade Christians declared
this was the whole of their fault or mistake, that they used to meet
on a fixed day before dawn and recite to one another a hymn to
Christ as a God and bind themselves by an oath, not to some crime,
but not to commit thefts, robberies, adulteries, not to break their
word, not to repudiate a deposit when called on.
(&) p. 72. Sen. ep. 47 1.
(0 p. 73. Mart. XL 7 4, xiv. 1 2 ; Solin. 3 ; lustin XLIII. 1
3 seq. ; Serv. Aen. in. 319 ; Accius in Macrob. 1 7 37, in the
Athenian Cronia and thence in the Saturnalia masters entertained
their slaves : mos traditus illinc iste ut cum dominis famuli epulentur
ibidem. Arrian Epict. iv. 1 58, the Saturnalia a season of truce
for slaves. They were masters for the nonce and had full licence of
speech (Lucian Saturnal. 5 f . 18 ; Dio XL. 19 3 ; Athen. 6396).
Many a master or mistress among Christians might learn priceless
lessons for life, if a servant's mouth were unlocked to speak home
truths, like the slave in Hor. s. n. 7.
62
84 THE CHILD AND THE MAN
(m) p. 73. C. H. Cooper, Memoirs of Lady Margaret, and
Bp Fisher's funeral sermon upon her.
(n) p. 74. luv. xv. 114n.
(6) p. 74. Drumann, Gesch. Moms in. 494 n. 17.
(p) p. 74. Compare the three classes in Hesiod (imitated by
Sophocles, Cicero, Livy, Basil ; see Rog. Ascham, Scholemaster, book
II. under Metaphrasis) :
That man in wisedome passeth all,
to know the best who hath a head:
And meetely wise eeke counted shall,
who yeldes himself e to wise mens read:
Who hath no witte, nor none will heare,
amongst all fooles the bell may beare.
(q) p. 75. See my Modicus cibi medicus sibi (Cambr. 1880),
p. 86 n. 44.
(r} p. 75. [Plato] Alcib. n. 143 a. Cf. Mr Marsden's Philo-
morus 2 1878 and luv. x. 346 353 n.
(s) p. 75. Evidences, pt. 2, c. 2 ( Works, 1825, i. 232, 235, 239, 243.
He who should content himself with waiting for the occasion, and with
literally observing the rule when the occasion offered, would do nothing,
or worse than nothing. 244).
(t) p. 75. Allowing for exaggeration and bad taste, one cannot
read The War Cry without admiration for the general and his staff.
They go into the vilest haunts, declaring that man was made for
holiness and peace. They cry : Heathen England, P. 42, Any time
is Gods time, and any one can be saved. If God can save such a
fellow as me, He can save any one else. They shelter their converts
under a purer public opinion. At the Newcastle church congress
their services to morals were generously recognised and they have
been derided by the Saturday Review. See Heathen England : being
a description of the utterly godless condition of the vast majority of
the English nation, and of the establishment, growth, system, and
success of an army for its salvation, consisting of working people
under the generalship of William Booth. 3 Lond. 1879. Is this
fanatical? P. 11, Thousands of your fellow-countrymen never volun-
tarily bowed their knees to any god in their lives. Am I not right in
NOTES 85
calling them heathen ? And what are you, if knowing all this, you do
not do your utmost to turn them to the living and true God that made
heaven and earth ?
P. 47. ' How do you deal with opposition at your meetings?'...
We never reply to the objections of any one unless it be by bringing
into our speaking in an indirect way an answer when likely to do
good... An objection or question rarely comes from any one but a
drunkard or an infidel, to reply to either of whom would be a foolish
waste of time. Pp. 48 9, We conquer by patient perseverance in
well-doing. Preacher-hunting is a grand diversion for any number
of weeks or months, if the preachers make good running ; but if they
stand their ground doggedly and invincibly, it becomes uninteresting.
To holloa and push for ten minutes is delightful. If no impression
be made, however, it becomes rather trying in twenty minutes. In half
an hour it begins to be quite monotonous....
A great crowd of men and lads had assembled one evening for the
purpose of destroying an open-air meeting. Shouting and pushing
about were the means employed; but the preachers, mostly women,
stood their ground, and went on just as if all were quiet.
' Had you not better go ? This is no use,' said a friendly man.
1 Oh ; that will never do. It will be all right directly] was the
reply. In half an hour the disturbers had all dispersed, leaving the
immense crowd they had gathered us to listen in the deepest silence.
Who is not reminded of the anecdote in Aelian (v. h. ix. 29) ?
Some rakes waylaid Socrates coming home late at night from
supper. It was their way to startle the wayfarers with blazing
torches and masks of the Furies. Socrates, with the utmost
composure, standing still, posed them with questions, as if they had
been pupils in the Lyceum or Academy.
P. 58. A great navvy was met in the street one day by some
acquaintances and knocked down over and over again to test his
temper. A policeman suggested that he should give the men in
charge, ' Oh, no ; Pll leave them to the Lord,' he said. But the same
man... called out at parting to a friend, 4 Hit the devil hard, mate'
Cf. pp. 81, 82, 84, 85 (excellent reasons for daily service), 86 (' army '
officers on duty fifteen hours every Sunday), 107 ( We look with the
greatest suspicion... upon movements which continually afford to able-
bodied men and women the opportunity to feed upon the bounty of
86 THE CHILD AND THE MAN
others. No, no! a company of working people are perfectly well
able, unless in times of extraordinary distress, and perfectly glad if
their hearts are set upon it, to provide themselves with victuals, table
and crockery}.
P. 137 (the outward change in recruits). The universal conscious-
ness of right and wrong makes it perfectly clear to the rudest minds
that to become one of the Lords people is to enter upon a new life.
The young convert must go home to ask Gods blessing upon his
food, and to kneel down and pray, in a household where such things
have never been done before, and where they must produce general
amusement, if not stronger opposition. He must take no further part
in the songs he sang up to that evening, and must sing words that
shock his friends as much as a lewd music hall ditty would shock
polite ears.
P. 144. There must be daily, unwearied, insatiable diligence.
There must be constant sacrijice of ease and comfort, and ceaseless
exertion of all the powers of mind and body. There must be readiness
gladly to endure shame, scoffing, opposition, abuse, and even personal
violence at times.
P. 145. We only desire to form and keep up outside every
denominational circle a body as large as we can of free- shooters, for
the express purpose of assaulting with spiritual weapons those who,
like ourselves, are without the church, but who, unlike us, are still in
rebellion against God.
P. 151. During one year more than 12,000 are received from
the poor, as against 4,000 given by the rich. We think it a vastly
important test of the value of any work done amongst the poor, to
what extent they themselves help to keep it up.... Nor can we see how
any large amount of devotion to God can be developed in the hearts of
people who are not taught liberally and practically to support His
cause.
See also Mrs Booth's Papers on practical religion, Lond. 1878.
(u) p. 76. I know no nobler ideal of university life in this 19th
century than the 'idyllic dream' of Richard Rothe (Theologische
Ethik v. 2, Wittenberg 1871, 148176). The universities can with
difficulty hold their ground, as the guides of scientific life, against
the invading flood of popular Halbbildung. As they now are, they
NOTES 87
may serve a legitimate purpose, namely to train our youth for
political life; but this is not their original design. 'We may be
content, that institutions should exist, in which our youth may
amuse themselves for some years on their parents' hardly earned
savings ; but still we must wish, that side by side with these there
were also institutions for the really scientific training of those who
yearn for such a training.' Mark Pattison (Suggestions on academical
organisation, Edinb. 1868, a book which should be read by every
student) honestly confesses that the system of bounties is a failure.
P. 58. The commissioners of 1850 meant scholarships to be so
administered as to stimulate the industry of the able, not to aid
parents in meeting the expenses of the place.... Open scholarships have
been multiplied on all sides with eager rivalry. The market is glutted.
A scholarship open to competition is now, probably, within the reach
of as low a grade of attainments as that which used to fill the old
restricted scholarships. Yet university education is not cheapened.
For what colleges have done in the way of reduction of their fees and
charges with one hand, they have undone with the other, by lavish
allowances to scholars. We have secretly supplied fuel to the fire we
were engaged in extinguishing. Well-to-do parents continue to make
their sons the usual allowance, and the scholar treats his 80 a-year
as so much pocket-money, spent in procuring himself extra luxuries.
P. 62. The scholar's gown is too often to be found on youths who have
no vocation for science or literature, and whom it was no kindness to
have drawn away from their proper destination to active life. They
have come here as a commercial speculation.
P. 76. Instead of subsidising the poor student up to the level of
our expenses, we ought to bring down the expenses to the level of the
poor. It is idle to say we cannot. We have never tried. For what
we have tried to do is, to restrain those who have money to spend, from
extravagance. Something, but not much, can be hoped for in this way.
Sumptuary laws will be evaded by the rich. We cannot much beat
down what those will spend who can spend, though it is desirable,
for example's sake, that extravagance should be discouraged in every
possible way.
P. 78 (from Oxford Univ. ^Commission, Evidence, p. 43, speaking
of early times). The seniors were at once the instructors and example
of the juniors, who shared the same plain food, simple life, and
88 THE CHILD AND THE MAN
narrow economy, looking forward themselves to no other life. Cf.
p. 122 (Balliol in 1282) indigent students collected into a house and
provided with a table of two meals a day, while attending the univer-
sity exercises.
P. 138. If the public, which believes in newspapers, were to take
us in hand now, it would no doubt try to set up a school of liberal
education for its youth, in which the measure of attainment would be
what would get him on in life We have thought it a more wholesome
life to live under the surveillance of the press and parliament, than
wrapped in our aristocratic seclusion, and polishing our Latin verses.
P. 139. Can we save the endowments, not for ourselves, but for our
country ?... Many of us had rather that the endowments were not
1 saved,' than that we should remain as we are.... We must do nothing
less than ask that the college endowments be restored to their original
purpose that of the promotion of science and learning.
P. 144. To endow a professor in a university is as allowable, as
necessary, as to endow a minister of religion. To attract pupils round
the professor by largesses of money is as little allowable as to pay
people for going to church. Mischief of the system of bounties to
learners, teachers, and methods of teaching.
P. 159. If wealth be a temptation to indolence, the temptation
did not exist for our collegiate predecessors. Their life was the life of
the labourer. It was a life of self-renunciation for the sake of learning.
The Oxford scholar came from poverty and want not to fatness and
ease, but to prolonged poverty.... The indigence contemplated by the
statutes is not indigence with 300 a-year pocket money.
Pp. 240 1. Experience has sufficiently refuted the hypothesis
that compulsory examinations produce habits of industry. The
preparation for them takes up time. But the total of idleness is not
thereby lessened. A distaste is engendered for books and reading
them, and the youth compensates himself for the hateful hours spent
upon his l grind' by taking all the rest of his time to ^ himself .'
P. 241. Spoiled by the luxury of home and early habits of self-
indulgence, the young aristocrat has lost the power of commanding
the attention, and is not only indisposed for, but incapable of work.
Profound idleness and luxuriousness have corrupted his nature. He
is no longer capable of being attuned to anything. He is either the
foppish exquisite of the drawing-room, or the barbarised athlete of the
NOTES 89
arena, and beyond these spheres all life is to him a blank. Con-
gregated mostly in one college, they maintain in it a tone of contempt
for study, and a taste for boyish extravagance and dissipation, which
infects the moral atmosphere far beyond their own circle.... Our
examinations harass these students, but do not affect their ideas.
They are punishments which do not correct. It is a violation of
a first principle of education to use learning as an instrument of
chastisement.
P. 242. Only public opinion among the undergraduates them-
selves can make ignorance and idleness disreputable among them. It
is far from hopeless to win over a percentage of the aristocratical idle
to an interest in intellectual pursuits.
P. 257 (Oxford as it is). Tutors zealous, diligent, inculcating
industry, and spending their strength upon their pupils ; the pupils
on the other hand seventy per cent, of them languid, uninterested,
with their intellectual instincts and tastes not only undeveloped, but
blunted by school grind, and overborne by a gladiatorial appetite for
feats of the cricket Jield.
P. 316, the mastery which the athletic furor has established over
all minds in this place. So entirely are the tutors beaten by it, that
to cover the disgrace of defeat, they are obliged to affect to patronise
and encourage the evil. . . . Can parents and schoolmasters possibly go on
any longer pretending to think that cricket, boating, and athletics, as
now conducted, are only recreations are only the proper and necessary
relaxation, which Jills up the intervals of lecture and private study ?
it is quite time that this delusion should be dispelled. They have
ceased to be amusements ; they are organised into a system of serious
occupation. What we call incapacity in young men is often no more
than an incapacity of attention to learning, because the mind is
pre-occupied with a more urgent and all-absorbing call upon its
energies. As soon as the summer weather sets in, the colleges are
disorganised; study, even the pretence of it, is at an end. Play is
thenceforward the only thought. They are playing all day or
preparing for it, or refreshing themselves after their fatigues. There
is a hot breakfast and lounge from 9 to 10 a.m. ; this is called
training. At 12 the drag which is to carry them out to the cricket-
ground begins its rounds, and the work of the day is over.
George Grote, the historian, was filled with melancholy by the
90 THE CHILD AND THE MAN
sight of ' the boats.' Such energy, such enthusiasm, so wasted. To
many of our students Commodus, rather than M. Aurelius, is the
exemplar of excellence. Parents early give ambition a wrong bias,
by taking pride in the ' cups ' won in school contests ; forgetting
that all prizes ultimately are paid for by themselves. Plato's
caution to the gentleman (Protag. 3126) against aiming at pro-
fessional mastery (eV rt^vfi, *>s fypiovpybs eVd/zei/oy) will never be
obsolete. Remember what class is called 'Barbarians' by Mr
Matthew Arnold. Jockeys and gamekeepers have too large a share
in the training of our nobility. Wherrymen could learn their
trade cheaper anywhere else than at the seats of learning. Since
the above was in type I learn that at Sherborne school cheap bronze
medals have superseded 'cups' as prizes. May other schools
imitate this pattern of true progress.
(v) p. 76. Pattison, p. 64. There is no difference whatever in
principle between paying wages for school attendances, and scholar-
ships^ when administered in such a way as to become an inducement
to enter the university. P. 65. These competitive examinations, even
while they urge to work, have a fatal tendency to falsify education.
Open scholarships have not been an unmixed good. They have stirred
up the schools, but they have also stirred up an unwholesome system of
training the competitors for the race. The youth comes up with a
varnish of accomplishments beyond his real powers.
P. 74. Nothing, indeed, can be more respectable, nor does any-
thing secure more profound respect among us, than the cases (would
that they were more numerous /) where a youth of humble origin, from
mere love of learning and intellectual aspirations, undergoes bodily
privations, hardships, and, harder still to bear, the contumely of the
world of flunkeys.
P. 75. Already, nearly one-third of the whole number of students
within our walls is being paid for coming here.
P. 244. The tyranny of the examination system.. .has destroyed
all desire to learn. All the aspirations of a liberal curiosity, all
disinterested desire for self-improvement, is crushed before the one
sentiment which now animates the honour-student, to stand high in
the class-list. P. 245. A sophistic art is found to have taken the place
of a scientific training. A vague and windy rhetoric has supplanted
NOTES 91
solid acquisition. Extract from Dr Whewell, On the Principles of
Engl. Univ. Education, The habit of preparing for examinations
makes other studies appear flat and insipid. P. 330. We have for-
gotten that we ourselves the teachers are here as learners.
(w) p. 76. On the staff with which geometricians drew diagrams
on sand see lexx. under pulvis (Cic., Liv., Pers., add Sen. ep. 74 27,
88 39. SiL xiv. 677. Plut. Dion. 13. Earth on Claudian, p. 128),
pulvisculus (Apul.} radius (Cic., Verg., add Tert. idol. 9 Jin. Oehler.
Ambr. hexaem. v. 86. Claud. Mam. in. 9, p. 187, Earth. Amm.
xxii. 16 17).
(x) p. 76. See my edition of Ascham's Scholemaster ind. under
Cheke. Lady Burleigh gave money to provide fire in hall on every
Sunday and holiday between All Saints' and Lady-day. (Baker's
St John's, p. 404) For the scanty fare of the students see Lever
cited ibid. 131 2. On the chambers shared by the fellows with
their pupils see my Early Statutes of St John's College (1859),
pp. 1647 ; on the livery ibid. 1723.
(y} P- 77. See Bp Fisher's account of difficulties overcome in
founding the college (Baker 344, 26 ; Early Statutes, p. 240, 7).
(z) p. 77. Early Statutes, p. 88. The three main designs of the
foundress were to promote the worship of God, virtuous life and
the establishment of the Christian faith ; that from the college
theologians might arise, to communicate the fruit of their studies.
ibid. 96 seq. a fourth part of the fellows were to be engaged in
preaching to the people in English. Preachers were to deliver at
least eight sermons to the people every year, and one other within
the college. In 1545 a further onus was imposed on the preachers,
of delivering one private sermon yearly in the college, in which they
should rebuke the reigning vices of the place. Each preacher in
turn was to expound the Bible lessons read in hall daily.
(aa) p. 77. Two Lives of Nicholas Ferrar (Camb. 1855), p. xliv.
(66) p. 77. Dr Maitland afterwards migrated to Trinity, where
his bosom friend, Dr W. H. Mill, was then an undergraduate. He
told me he attended chapel regularly, 'for I did not know that
there was any harm in it.' Mill (of whom he had a miniature
92 THE CHILD AND THE MAN
displaying a face of feminine beauty) was even then remarkable for
learning.
(cc) p. 77. It is to be feared that Maurice's works are now
comparatively little read. Those who are frightened by his reputa-
tion for 'mysticism,' may begin with 'Learning and Working,'
'The Church a Family,' 'Sermons on the Lord's Prayer.' Some-
thing of his power is seen in Kingsley's life, but for an adequate
portraiture we must wait for the memoir promised by his son. It
is to the credit of the Ritualist party that many of them freely
opened their pulpits to him.
(dd) p. 77. The claims of the Bible and of science. Correspondence
between a laymen and the Rev. F. D. Maurice on some questions
arising out of the controversy respecting the Pentateuch. Lond. 1863,
pp. 16, 17. Take a 'taste' (as John Strype says), p. 36. The
religious world offers a premium to the scientific inquirer to make his
conclusions Jit the Bible conclusions. So it produces a race of quacks
who can always prove what they are wanted to prove ; men in spirit
much like the false prophets of old. And it often, I am afraid, bribes
men of real insight and diligence to suppress or misrepresent facts and
their own convictions, lest they should injure their reputation. A heavy
price is paid for these momentary triumphs. The discomfiture which
follows of course, appears to shake the edifice which had been
buttressed so feebly and so needlessly ; numbers suppose that the very
foundation of it is undermined. And yet this is the smallest part of
the calamity. To obtain these physical facts on its side, the Bible
suffers greater perversion and contraction than the facts have suffered.
We lose the very messages which it delivers to us, whilst we are straining
our ears for proofs that it is not deceiving us. George the Third
shewed more than his usual homely wisdom in this criticism of
Bp Watson's book. Apology for the Bible! I never knew that it
wanted an apology.
In the 6th ed. (1881) Mr Stephens has added a letter (p. 528)
to the biography of his father-in-law, Dean Hook, who 'fired
up at the narrow-minded opposition offered to the appointment
of the Rev. F. D. Maurice to the incumbency of Oxford chapel,
St Mary le bone.'
NOTES 93
Chichester: July 20, 1860.
My dear Mr Maurice, If any steps are to be taken to protect you
from this abominable puritan persecution, I for one shall be most
happy to stand by you. I am not one of your disciples, though I read
you with edification, and because I differ from you in some things,
I may be the better friend in this infamous narrow-mindedness. All
parties should unite, or we shall be, many of us, burned at the stake.
Yours most truly.
(ee) p. 78. Phases of faith: or, passages from the history of my
creed, by Francis W. Newman? Lond. 1853, p. 2. When I was
rather more than seventeen, I subscribed the 39 Articles at Oxford in
order to be admitted to the University. Subscription was 'no
bondage,' but pleasure; for I well knew and loved the Articles, and
looked on them as a great bulwark of the truth ; a bulwark, however,
not by being imposed, but by the spiritual and classical beauty which
to me shone in them. But it was certain to me before I went to
Oxford, and manifest in my Jirst acquaintance with it, that very few
academicians could be said to believe them. Of the young men, not
one in Jive seemed to have any religious convictions at all : the elder
residents seldom or never shewed sympathy with the doctrines that
pervade that formula. I felt from my Jirst day there, that the system
of compulsory subscription was hollow, false, and wholly evil. For
myself I shall always be grateful to Shrewsbury, where I learnt the
Articles with the help of several commentaries, and so was led as a
schoolboy to buy and study Hooker and Butler.
(ff) p. 78. I borrow this from a speech of Dr Sandals at the
Newcastle church congress 1881.
(gg) p. 79. Hooker (sermon 5 15) after citing the calumnies of
Bristow a man 'both born and sworn among us' (He has charged
us ' to hold a common school of sin and flattery ; to hold sacrilege to
be God's service ; unfaithfulness, and breach of promise to God, to
give it to a strumpet, to be a virtue ; to abandon fasting ; to abhor
confession ; to mislike with penance ; to like well of usury : to charge
none with restitution ; to Jind no good in single life, nor in no well-
working ;... that all men, as they fall to us, are much worsed, and
more than afore corrupted'}, replies: I appeal to the conscience of
94 THE CHILD AND THE MAN
every soul that hath been truly converted by us, Whether his heart
were never raised up to God by our preaching ; whether the words
of our exhortation never wrung any tear of a penitent heart from his
eyes ; whether his soul never reaped any joy, any comfort, any con-
solation in Christ Jesus by our sacraments, and prayers, and psalms,
and thanksgiving ; whether he were never bettered but always worsed
by us.
merciful God! If heaven and earth in this case do not witness
with us, and against them, let us be razed out from the land of the
living! Let the earth on which we stand swallow us up quick, as
it hath done Korah, Dathan, and Abiram! But if we belong unto
the Lord our God, and have not forsaken him, if our priests, the sons
of Aaron, minister unto the Lord, and the Levites in their office; if
we offer unto the Lord every morning and every evening the burnt
offerings and the sweet incense of prayers and thanksgivings ; if the
bread be set in order upon the pure table, and the candlestick of gold
with the lamps thereof, to burn every morning ; that is to say, if
amongst us Gods blessed sacraments be duly administered, his holy
word sincerely and daily preached; if we keep the watch of the Lord
our God, and if we have not forsaken him : then doubt ye not ; this
God is with us as a Captain, his priests with sounding trumpets must
cry alarm against you ; ' ye children of Israel, fight not against the
Lord God of your fathers, for ye shall not prosper'
95
0f
ST JOHN'S
22 Ocfofor 1882
96
'According to the passable notion and definition, What is a
gentleman but his pleasure? If this be true, if a gentleman be
nothing else but this, then truly he is a sad piece, the most incon-
siderable, the most despicable, the most pitiful and wretched creature
in the world : if it is his privilege to do nothing, it is his privilege
to be most unhappy ; and to be so will be his fate, if he live accord-
ing to it ; for he that is of no worth or use, who produceth no
beneficial fruit, who performeth no service to God or to the world,
what title can he have to happiness? What capacity thereof?
What reward can he claim ? What comfort can he feel ? To what
temptations is he exposed ! What guilts will he incur ! But in
truth it is far otherwise : to suppose that a gentleman is loose from
business is a great mistake ; for, indeed, no man hath more to do,
no man lieth under greater engagements to industry than he.'
BARROW in 419 Napier.
97
THE PEACE OF GOD
But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blas-
phemy, jttthy communication out of your mouth. Lie not one to
another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds ; and
have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the
image of him that created him : where there is neither Greek nor Jew,
circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free :
but Christ is all, and in all. Put on therefore, as the elect of God,
holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind,
meekness, long-suffering ; forbearing one another, and forgiving one
another, if any man have a quarrel against any : even as Christ
forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things put on charity,
which is the bond of perfectness. And let the peace of God rule in
your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body ; and be ye
thankful. Coloss. iii. 8 15.
IN days of change, when old landmarks are being
removed, it is well to take counsel of the past. So may
we steady our thoughts, recall them to more sober
anticipations, find common ground with those who hope
or fear more than it is given to us to do from any legisla-
tion or social revolution. In the text we see the mighty
antagonisms of race and caste and sect crumbling away
in the franchise of the catholic church ; Jew and Greek,
barbarian, even Scythian, freeman and bondslave, rejoicing
together in the one image of the Creator, the one bond of
M. S. 7
98 THE PEACE OF GOD
perfectness, the eternal peace of God; Christ all and in
all. Have we in these days forfeited this glorious inherit-
ance ? Has Parliament robbed us of our title-deeds, or
effaced the cross from our brow? Can the colleges no
longer in good faith and due reverence bear such names
as Holy Trinity, Emmanuel, Jesus, Christ ? For ourselves,
must we once more banish St John to his Patmos, to
escape an iconoclastic axe of keener edge than William
Dowsing's ?
Glance for a moment at the persecutions which have
again and again driven loyal and learned and God-fearing
men from our walls; for no college can shew such an
array of martyrs as St John's. The engagement and
abjuration oath did not concern the essentials of the faith,
the catholic creeds, in the smallest jot or tittle. The
nonconformists of 1662 might without surrender of essen-
tial principle on either hand have been retained in the
visible unity of the national church. Look at the new
lectionary of our Prayer-book : those noble books of
Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus are indeed still appointed to be
read, and so is a small part of Baruch ; but the legendary
Judith, and Tobit, and Bel and Susanna, are struck out.
The last two were newly added at the restoration, in
wanton defiance of the nonconformists' scruples against
the apocrypha. Surely, as churchmen, we must blush for
such petty tyranny. If the charitable mind which twelve
years ago conceived a joint revision of the Bible had
prevailed two centuries before, certainly there need have
been no schism.
I can imagine no nobler theme for a historian of
generous sympathies and sound judgement, a Thomas
Fuller, a Dr Maitland or a Neander, than the friendly
THE PEACE OF GOD 99
relations between our church and other Christian com-
munions from the Reformation downwards. Think of
Melancbthon and Bucer and Peter Martyr and Casaubon
and Isaac Vossius, under the Tudors and Stuarts ; then of
Bentley and the Benedictines ; of Bull and Wake and the
Gallicans; of archbishop Sharp and the king of Prussia
under queen Anne. In this century our own bishop
Marsh, the restorer of biblical learning in Cambridge, an
opponent of the Bible Society, was yet one of the first
subscribers to the heroic Baptist scholars of Serampore.
To these peacemakers add Dr Lingard, whose most
intimate friend was the neighbouring Anglican incumbent;
Dr Hook, the uncomprising author of ' Hear the Church ! '
yet he could say to Dr Stoughton, ' I should like to make
a churchman of you ; but I am afraid there's no chance ;
and I suppose you would like to make a dissenter of me.'
' No, indeed ; if I could, I would not take the trouble.'
And they remained fast friends to the last. Dr Hook
again, like Mr Tennyson, cheered Frederick Maurice under
persecution. For our honoured archbishop as many
prayers were offered in nonconformist chapels as in our
churches ; to their end he kept up loving correspondence
with his college friends, deserters from our ranks, Oakeley
and Ward.
These examples might be multiplied a thousand
fold (a). No man, be sure, need sacrifice one friend by
taking office in our national church. This is of itself a
great security against prejudice and evil speaking. ' Don't
introduce me to that man,' said Charles Lamb ; ' I don't
want to see him.' Why not ? ' One cannot hate a man
whom one knows.' This is the great value of church
congresses. When sects and parties keep to themselves,
72
100 THE PEACE OF GOD
they people all beyond their horizon, as old map-
makers did terra incognita, with Gorgons and hydras and
Chimaeras dire.
' The devil/ says the proverb, ' is not so black as he
is painted.' Ignorance is the mother of antipathies.
In the days of His flesh the Son of Man was branded
as the Friend of Sinners. In that sinless and loving
presence hearts hardened to stone by contempt, melted
into penitence. Once more the Saviour is calling sinners
to himself. Here in England the innocent have by a
cowardly silence long given consent to a worse than
African slave-trade. ' Licentiousness/ says Bp Fraser,
'not drunkenness, is our besetting sin.' We have set
apart one class for honour, another for dishonour, one to
receive the homage of us men, the other to serve our
brute appetites. These extremes are meeting under the
shadow of the cross, and a still, small voice, the voice of
judgement and of mercy, reveals to each i ' If I had been in
your place, I might have been as you.' 'If women all
were holy, men must be holy too (6).' Such meetings of
two or three, of sinners and saints, in the name of Christ,
are no idle imaginations, to point a moral or adorn a tale.
They are hard, everyday fact, as real as sin and misery.
The saint has no heart to cast a stone, for the sin of a
lifelong omission (c) has found her out. The sinner
awakens to new hope as she hears from spotless lips :
Neither do I condemn thee : go, and sin no more. Ladies
will soon scorn and loathe the advances of gentlemen
so-called who neither reverence woman nor pity infancy.
' We are beginning/ says Miss Hopkins, ' to realise the
dignity and consecration of our own womanhood as we
have never done ; to suffer over its degradation as we
THE PEACE OF GOP 101
have never done; to realise our natural guardianship of
all children as, till now, we have scarcely done.' In this
holy war we in Cambridge cannot be neutral ; and what-
ever sects press through our open doors, will come, be
sure, as allies. Men have corrupted women, and women
men ; together we have sinned at least by a pharisaic
reticence. Knowledge of the worst will only prove to us
that no one of us can be spared, all are required to save
any of ourselves who may be in danger. For take the
most selfish profligate now entering the university, if such
a one there be, and shew him the end of his course, the
murder of little children, for it has come to that; Lust
hard by Hate, outheroding Herod, for he only killed the
body, and after that had no more that he could do ; shew,
I say, to the most dissolute freshman the wages of his sin,
and he must cry : Is thy servant a dog that he should do
this thing? He must be stark iron who sees unmoved
Rachel weeping for her children, the women of England
mourning over the lost souls and bodies of the innocents.
This then is one safeguard in a period of transition : unite
frankly in all works of faith and labours of love.
Some of us remember the parable of the blank bible.
No papal censure, but a really infallible, omnipresent
Power, had expunged from all literature and all art,
whatever directly or indirectly drew its breath from the
oracles of God. Consternation seized on the men of
sweetness and light, no less than on the humblest
Christian, as they discovered little by little the havoc
that had been wrought ; for virtue had passed away
from poet and orator and painter. 'Whither is fled the
visionary gleam ? Where is it now, the glory and the
dream ? '
103 THE PEACE OF GOD
Imagine in like manner the church of England effaced
from Cambridge, not by parliamentary abolition of parlia-
mentary tests, but by the Searcher of hearts. Not merely
priests and deacons, not merely professing churchmen, but
very many nonconformists would appear as in a wider
sense sons of the church, listening gratefully to her
divines, lifting no finger to harm her. Reputed atheists
would shine forth as Christian of heart and life. Nor
would the popular antithesis of science and religion be
found to exist here. Geometry on the steps of our altar
does obeisance to Theology, not less than do Philosophy
and Poetry. We have learnt with Plato o 0eo? yeanerpei.
Remember Clerk Maxwell.
If any of us would fain examine his own attitude
toward our church, let him judge her not by 'religious'
newspapers or platform agitators, or the din of critics, but
by some sample of her hidden life and by her authentic
words. Wm Wordsworth's brother, a former master of
Trinity, published Ecclesiastical Biography and Christian
Institutes. Read these eight volumes, and think : Here
is a very small fraction, not a ten-thousandth part of the
life and thought of the English church. Look at the
monthly paper of the S.P.C.K. See that one society
bearing the cross into all lands. In British Honduras
a missionary and his wife, ministering to an area of over
a thousand square miles, throw their little all, 135, into
the treasury of the church, and receive unsought con-
tributions from distant Indians. Follow the track of
Charles Lowder in East London. Bp Ryle will shew you
in Liverpool a parish of 4500 people, none keeping two
servants, only 30 keeping one; 195 houses with more
than one family, 133 families living in cellars. In the
THE PEACE OF GOD 103
church 700 attend the morning service, 300 the afternoon,
950 the evening. There are three mission rooms with
350 attendants in the morning, 450 in the afternoon.
There are more than 800 communicants, nearly one half
men. The pastor began 14 years ago with four people in
a cellar. He has built a church, has one paid curate, one
paid scripture reader, one paid bible-woman, one paid
organist, 82 voluntary Sunday school teachers, 120 church
workers, 17 bible classes with 600 adults on the register.
The congregation raises 800 a year for the cause of God.
There are 1100 pledged abstainers, not a single house of
ill-fame or known infidel in the district.
If we can thus give a reason for our own church-
manship, we may next consider our relation to other
communions. We shall find it a convenient division of
labour to allow every person and every party to confess in
their own words their own faith or their own unbelief.
This is no superfluous caveat. Faith is shewn by works,
just as the Divine Spirit is known by His operations;
where no fruits of love ripen, there, be sure, is no root
of faith. This is the only criterion we have; but it is
infallible. Profession is but a mist to obscure our judge-
ment. Let both grow together to the harvest ; judge not,
that ye be not judged, are warnings neglected not only by
the ecclesiastics who by hundreds condemned unheard
books of Drs Ward and Newman and Pusey, of Bps
Hampden and Colenso, but by the secular critics who
ascribed to Bp Thirl wall a book contradicting the life-
long teachings of that master in our Israel. He must
have exchanged his delicate irony, his reticence of power,
for coarse and feeble braggadocio, his world-wide know-
ledge for empty parade, his judicial fairness for the heat
104 THE PEACE OF GOD
of faction, his sober and reasonable faith for haphazard
doubt, before he could have penned such a work. The
most competent of all critics said to me, as he pointed to
a wilderness of errors, scenes surpassing fable and yet
true : ' Thirlwall in jackets could not have written thus.'
Yet the mere rumour secured a wide sale for a book
intrinsically worthless, and dismayed not a few bishops.
Bp Berkeley's Alciphron inferred from a comparative
study of religions that all are alike false and fabulous.
The S.P.C.K. describes the religions of the world with
respect and sympathy, noting their points of contact with
our faith. All bear witness to some truth, it may be to
truths neglected among us ; the very heathen thus serve
not only as a warning, but an example ; they preach to
us. Surely by this Pauline method, becoming all things
to all men, we are more likely to save some, than by the
heat of a Tertullian or a Dominic.
That same venerable society believing that the visible
world is from God, who made all things in number,
measure and weight, deals now with subjects wide as
knowledge and nature and life and man, employing the
ablest writers in each department, careless to what fold of
the one flock they belong. It teaches thrift, for we are
God's stewards; it teaches the laws of health, for our
bodies are temples of the Divine Spirit.
What can we learn from Protestant or Romish non-
conformity ? Both may teach us to spend our money and
our time for our creed and our neighbour. Too many
votaries of culture, here and elsewhere, contribute to the
elevation of the ignorant and the sinning nothing more
comforting than a sneer or an epigram. This cynicism
must be cast out. Sooner or later such armies as the
THE PEACE OF GOD 105
Girls' and Boys' Friendly Societies will enlist all men of
virtue in active service. Only a few short years ago
laymen found little scope for evangelistic energies in our
pale. Miss Hopkins in Barnwell rescued many drunkards.
She brought them into the fold of our church. But there
was no room for them in the inn. They had accepted the
call: Freely ye have received, freely give. It is more
blessed to give than to receive. Silver and gold they had
none, but they offered themselves. Repulsed from the
Church's gate, they found a welcome and a sphere in
other communions.
Again, gorged as we in Cambridge are with the
appliances of learning, bribed by its rewards as we call
them, nonconformists may lead us to buy the truth and
sell it not, to pursue it under all difficulties. Many of
the martyrs of 1662 were men of rare parts and culture ;
with reverence and shame we watch their endeavours to
keep alive the lamp of knowledge in exile from this home
of the Muses. And when at last some clear-sighted
churchmen, with the aid of the state, founded an open
university, did we welcome the nonconformists' yearnings
for more light ? Nay, we spat upon their foundation as
godless. But God's ways are not as our ways ; He has set
His seal upon the work. We are mourning a high church
bishop, a man of signal devotion and universal talents, the
head of our Universities' Mission to Central Africa. He
was bred at University college and found in it a nursing
mother of the church. What school sent forth Butler and
Seeker ? Why are ye fearful, ye of little faith ?
Before I release you, I would give a word or two of
caution to those who have lately come among us. Learn
of St Paul the vulgarity of emulation. Know ye not that
106 THE PEACE OF GOD
they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the
prize ? So run that ye may obtain. In the heavenly race,
all may obtain ; the prize of our high calling is open to all
that seek it. Whoever wins it, is a help, not a hindrance,
to all others. / therefore so run, not as uncertainly ; so
fight I, not as one that beateth the air. When I was an
undergraduate, those who took the highest degrees
thought very little of examinations or fellowships. They
read for reading's sake. In my simplicity I thought that
this continued to be the case, and when years ago the
university was reproached with seeking truth for gain,
I publicly repelled the calumny. But I fear that I had
not read truly the signs of the times. Two days ago
I saw a testimonial signed by a tutor of 32 years' stand-
ing : ' I had the great pleasure, which has occurred to me
only once besides in all my long experience, of teaching
a man who simply wanted to master a subject, with no
ulterior views as to its effects in examinations.' Can it
be true that curiosity is dead, choked by ambition or
avarice, in the university of Bentley and Newton ?
If so, hearken to the voice of the friend of Bentley and
Newton, a scholar like the one, a mathematician like the
other, as a divine superior far to both, and unsurpassed as
a master of English undefiled. It was to Cambridge in
her poor estate that Barrow thus spoke*:
' And do we not deserve great blame, displeasure, and
disgrace from mankind, if, having such opportunities of
qualifying ourselves to do good, and serve the public, we
by our idleness render ourselves worthless and useless ?
' How, being slothful in our business, can we answer
for our violating the wills, for abusing the goodness, for
* Works, ed. Napier HI. 4512.
THE PEACE OF GOD 107
perverting the charity and bounty of our worthy founders
and benefactors, who gave us the good things we enjoy,
not to maintain us in idleness, but for supports and
encouragements of our industry ? how can we excuse
ourselves from dishonesty and perfidious dealing, seeing
that we are admitted to these enjoyments under condition,
and upon confidence (confirmed by our free promises and
most solemn engagements) of using them according to
their pious intent, that is, in a diligent prosecution of
our studies; in order to the service of God and of the
public ?
'Let every scholar, when he misspendeth an hour, or
sluggeth on his bed, but imagine that he heareth the
voice of those glorious kings, or venerable prelates, or
worthy gentlemen, complaining thus, and rating him :
Why, sluggard, dost thou against my will possess my
estate ? why dost thou presume to occupy the place due
to an industrious person ? why dost thou forget or despise
thy obligations to my kindness? thou art an usurper, a
robber, or a purloiner of my goods, which I never intended
for such as thee ; I challenge thee of wrong to myself, and
of sacrilege toward my God, to whose service I devoted
those His gifts to me.
' How reproachful will it be to us, if that expostulation
may concern us, Wherefore is there a price in the hand of
a fool to get wisdom, seeing he hath no heart to it ?
'If to be a dunce or a bungler in any profession be
shameful, how much more ignominious and infamous to a
scholar to be such ! from whom all men expect that he
should excel in intellectual abilities, and be able to help
others by his instruction and advice.
' Nothing surely would more grate on the heart of one
108 THE PEACE OF GOD
that hath a spark of ingenuity, of modesty, of generous
good nature, than to be liable to such an imputation.
1 To avoid it therefore (together with all the guilt and
all the mischiefs attending on sloth), let each of us, in
God's name, carefully mind his business ; and let the grace
and blessing of God prosper you therein. Amen.'
109
NOTES
(a) p. 99. There is room for a new harmony of confessions.
Bibliographical annals, comprising translations from English divines
into Latin and modern languages, and again from foreign divines
into English, also Latin theology naturalised on both sides of the
water, would prove that one life-blood, one current of thought and
feeling, throbs in the remotest veins of Christ's body Catholic.
Devotional works of Robert Parsons, * adapted' by the Puritan
Bunney and by dean Stanhope, are eloquent witnesses to the com-
munion of saints.
(fe) p. 100. THE GIRLS OP ENGLAND: A BATTLE-CALL.
Ye girls, ye girls of England !
Yours is a blessed lot,
For ye may be good angels,
Fair guides, deceiving not :
As subtly as a magnet
May draw to holy things
The hearts of all around you
Earth's angels, without wings.
If ye your power could reckon
To mould men as ye will !
They'll follow where ye beckon,
They'll wait upon you still :
And ye can give them courage
To win the dreadful fight,
And be in darkest moments
An influence of light.
110 THE PEACE OF GOD
Ye may command unchallenged,
If ye will only dare
Ever to use your fairness
To lure to what is fair :
So may ye be the sources
Of many a noble deed,
Streams turning in their courses
That human action feed.
But ye must have such knowledge
As life demands should be ;
Weak innocence for childhood,
For women purity :
And ye must use your beauty,
And keep the weapon bright ;
Abuse of it is hateful,
But use of it is right.
The world would be an Eden
Almost a Paradise
If women were all holy,
And women were all wise.
Men are but women's vassals,
If women only know :
If women were all holy,
Men must be holy too.
Vice is consumed by virtue,
Where women all are pure ;
O girls, ye girls of England,
Be strong ! be true ! endure !
Let womankind united,
Stand like a wall of fire,
Till evil shall, affrighted,
Back into hell retire.
But first ye need God's Spirit,
And then ye need a bond
To draw you all together,
That none may be beyond.
NOTES 111
Then pray, with strong reliance,
That He will be your Guide,
And love, for love's alliance
The world cannot divide.
Ye girls, ye girls of England,
Lead, lead ! point out the way !
Men look to you for guidance,
Although they do not say.
They measure by your measure
The evil and the good.
Oh ! look ye, look ye to it,
Ye measure as ye should.
In fellowship let women
Of every race unite,
That none may be uncared for,
Or lonely in the fight.
So sympathy unfettered
Shall point all hearts to good,
And all the world be bettered
By banded womanhood I
(Hatchards.) F. B. MONEY COUTTS.
(c) p. 100. You have, I suppose, good food, pretty rooms to live
in, pretty dresses to wear, power of obtaining every rational and
wholesome pleasure ; you are, moreover, probably gentle and
grateful, and in the habit of every day thanking God for these
things. But why do you thank Him? Is it because in these
matters, as well as in your religious knowledge, you think He has
made a favourite of you ? Is the essential meaning of your thanks-
giving, * Lord, I thank thee that I am not as other girls are, not in
that I fast twice in the week while they feast, but in that I feast
seven times in a week while they fast ' ; and are you quite sure
this is a pleasing form of thanksgiving to your heavenly Father?
Suppose you saw one of your own true earthly sisters, Lucy or
Emily, cast out of your mortal father's house, starving, helpless,
heartbroken ; that every morning when you went into your father's
room, you said to him, * How good you are, father, to give me what
112 THE PEACE OF GOD
you don't give Lucy,' are you sure that, whatever anger your parent
may have just cause for against your sister, he would be pleased by
that thanksgiving, or flattered by that praise ? Nay, are you even
sure that you are so much the favourite? suppose that, all this
while, he loves poor Lucy just as well as you, and is only trying
you through her pain, and perhaps not angry with her in anywise,
but deeply angry with you, and all the more for your thanksgiving ?
KUSKIN.
But though he never tolerated selfishness of principle, to all
sorts of lapses, from failure, from forgetfulness, from weakness, from
ignorance, he was absolutely tolerant. He used to say that * there
is goodness enough in the world to save it over and over again ;
moral effort enough to effect six times over all that wants doing.
Men are anxious enough to live up to a standard ; it would be more
to the purpose to alter their standard.' Here again he would bring
in his favourite idea of nutrition or stored-up force liberated in
function. Nature has stored up moral force by setting people for
ages to impossible and useless and self-centred tasks, till the habit
of doing something else besides what one likes, has become strong
enough for any purpose for which it can ever be wanted ; and now
the thing is to set it free to apply itself to true purposes. In this
connexion he often spoke of fashion as a great store-house of moral
force. ' It is vain to preach and write and talk,' he used to say ;
1 nothing would ever persuade men and women to leave off" making
themselves uncomfortable for fashion's sake, merely in order that
they may be more comfortable. The habit of dressing not merely
for one's comfort for instance, has become ingrained and inveterate.
But once shew people that they can better serve others when more
simply dressed, and then all the force of self-sacrifice, which has
gone to make them dress outrageously, will flow into some other
channel, and they will dress comfortably, as a matter of course.'
Life and Letters of James ffinton, edited by ELLICE HOPKINS,
4th ed., London, Kegan Paul, 1882, p. 342.
How little helping others is put first in our modern Chris-
tianity is perhaps best shewn in the choice of a house. Next to
the question of health comes a pleasant neighbourhood, fashion,
NOTES 113
agreeableness, etc. ; service, except in the case of a professional man,
never enters. Who thinks of taking a house in a healthy but low
neighbourhood, because there the people most want raising, holding
our social advantages as what they are, a trust for the good of the
many ? If it be urged that the thought of our families must come
first, Mr Hinton would say, 'Yes, the devil always comes to an
Englishman in the shape of his wife and family.' Not ' 1'ego'isme a
un,' but ' I'e'goisme a deux, k trois, & quatre,' is the great stronghold
of self in England. But would it not be worth considering whether,
in the evils around us, we have not, as it were, the weights, the
pulling down of which would do our work of raising and elevating
in our families, as well as outside them, far more effectually than
our too often futile endeavours to raise and elevate our children by
our own efforts ? Might we not use the evils without to cure the
evils within?
Miss HOPKINS, ib. 3001.
M. 8
115
Ifarfce Jifrim antr
ST JOHN'S
12 October 1884
82
116
RETRIBUTION
righteous doom ! that they who make
Pleasure their only end,
Ordering the whole life for its sake,
Miss that whereto they tend.
While they who bid stern Duty lead,
Content to follow, they
Of Duty only taking heed,
Find Pleasure by the way.
R. C. TRENCH.
Gerechter Himmel, der du dies geordnet hast,
Wer Freude sucht als eignes Ziel, verfehlt sie nur;
Wer im Berufe wandelt von der Pflicht gefiihrt,
Die Freude findet er uberall am Wege bliihn.
FR. RUECKERT.
117
LOVE DIVINE AND HUMAN
We love, because He first loved its. If a man say, I love God, and
hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother
whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen. And
this commandment have we from Him, that he who loveth God love
his brother also. 1 John iv. 19 21.
IN appointing the text as the epistle for Trinity
Sunday the church declares that Christian doctrine ia no
barren scholasticism, but fruitful of Christian practice.
We love Him, there is the sum of Christian morals,
because He first loved us, there is the sum of Christian
faith, God's love manifested in Christ applied to our
hearts by the Holy Spirit.
In the gospel for the day, that Old Testament, in
which some ears seem to catch no voices but those of
sectarian or Semitic bigotry, in to-day's* gospel, I say,
the law and the prophets are summed up in two words
love to God and love to man. In our text, as in the
Decalogue and Lord's Prayer, love to God our Father is
the source and root of love to man, His offspring, made in
His image, while love to man is the fruit and evidence
of love to God. From faith, which receives what no man
can give, springs love, which gives what no man of himself
* Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity.
118 LOVE DIVINE AND HUMAN
can give, for it gives only what faith has received of God,
a lively hope, a glad and cheerful heart for the service
of God and man. Faith mounts on high and brings man
to God, love descends in blessings to man ; by faith we
suffer God to benefit us, by love we in our turn benefit
our neighbour. The slightest service done the cup of
cold water given to man for God's sake is worship.
Pure religion (or worship, Opya-iceia) and undefiled before
our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and
widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted
from the world.
God's universal love to the unthankful and the evil is
often proposed as the motive of our love, not only towards
those who love us, but towards all mankind. God com-
mendeth His own love toward us, in that, while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. The beloved apostle
himself bears witness that his own love to his Master was
but a reflexion of the Master's love. Ye did not choose
me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that ye should go
and bear fruit. The wise heathen knew this mystery of
love. ' This/ says Seneca, ' is the true philtre or love-
charm. Si vis amari, ama. Wouldst thou win love,
display it.' In the commerce of affection, as of trust, its
twin sister, the supply precedes the demand and creates
it. Our conception of love, as of every virtue, is in the
first instance awakened by our experience of it in concrete
form in the actions of the virtuous. Hereby know we love,
because He laid down His life for us : and we ought to lay
down our lives for the brethren. Beloved, if God so loved
us, we also ought to love one another.
Our age is remarkable for triumphs of mercy, and not
the least of the blessings which the merciful have rendered
LOVE DIVINE AND HUMAN 119
to us is that they have shewn disinterested virtue to be
possible. He who ennobles himself ennobles his race,
draws away many a wavering recruit from the seat of the
scorner, giving him an ideal and a hope in life. Ask
those who have thus elevated their generation whence
they drew their inspiration, and they will one and all
reply : We love Him because He first loved us. They will
say : If we have taught our soldiers and sailors to keep
their bodies in temperance, soberness and chastity ; if we
have cleansed and clothed the waifs and strays of our
modern Babylons and sent them forth as welcome
colonists to subdue the virgin lands of our empire ; if we
have rescued woman from corruption and slavery ; if we
have carried thrift and peace and purity into the lowest
dens of misery; we were but following Him who promised
rest to the weary and heavy laden. If our light shines
before men, if they see any good works in us, let them
glorify not us, but our Father which is in heaven, the Sun
of all our day, from whom every good and perfect gift
descends. We are unprofitable servants : we have but
done a scantling of our duty. We that are strong ought
to bear the infirmities of the weak and not to please our-
selves. If He, the Lord and Master, washed our feet, we
also ought to wash one another's feet. It is the part
payment of a debt.
To many of us this is the first Sunday in Cambridge ;
all here present may claim a free admission to the
services of the English Church; they are her sons, and
have a birthright in this ancient home of religion. Our
latest statutes, though they no longer require the fellows
to take holy orders, nor allow any so-called religious tests,
expressly provide for the maintenance of church worship
120 LOVE DIVINE AND HUMAN
in the chapel, and of religious instruction for the sons of
our church. Two venerable members of our society, long
in holy orders, who have died within the year, are bene-
factors to the house. They at least regarded St John's
as still a seminary of the church; for the faith in our
future we owe them more than for their munificent
bounty.
Fifteen years ago this chapel was opened amidst
general rejoicings. It was built by the self-sacrifice of the
society of that day. A fellow of Trinity, pointing to it,
once said to me : 'I know no better example in our day
of faith in the permanence of the Anglican church/ He
was a man of large experience both of men and books.
Have we lost that faith ? It was no hasty design that
was then carried out. A chapel worthier of the foundation
had been a daydream of bishop Gunning, that brave
confessor, who by suffering for the church, had learnt to
spend and be spent in her service. At this day, we may
frankly confess, so costly a chapel could not be raised
by any of our old colleges. The impoverishment of the
country on the one hand, and still more the diversity of
opinion in the society on the other, would soon frustrate
such an attempt.
But remember our past history. When Henry VIII
seized the estates destined for our foundation, bishop
Fisher with unexampled patience and fortitude secured
a modest endowment and carried out the design of the
foundress. Nor does the university owe less to him : he
found her ignorant and obscure ; he left her famous and
rivalling Italy in learning. The Greek and Hebrew which
he imported led to the reformation ; and he started in
affright as did Sir Thomas More from the work of his
LOVE DIVINE AND HUMAN 121
own hands, as from the ruins of Biblical learning and of
the church. Yet neither the church nor the Bible have
ceased to find able ministers here to this day.
Two of those who came up with me 40 years ago have
gone as bishops, each to a teeming continent ; Mackenzie
to lay down his life for heathen Africa ; Barry, this very
year, to Australia, where the church enjoys no prescription
or privilege. In yet another continent, a present fellow
of Sidney College, bishop Machray, has seen several sees
founded out of his vast diocese, and is chancellor of a
university which comprises in harmonious operation a
Romish, a Dissenting, and a Church college.
No love of place or power will explain lives like these.
And the churchmen of the future here will be fewer
perhaps in number than before, but on the average more
active in the church's service, knowing that her existence
here depends on the living zeal and energy of her sons.
When a convert joins Mr Spurgeon's congregation, the
first question put to him is : ' Well, what are you going to
do for us ? ' Our clergy have till of late not given the
laity enough to do, forgetting that, if it is more blessed to
give than to receive, no order ought to monopolise the
blessing of giving themselves.
I will name but three out of many ways in which
students who are churchmen may serve the church ; (1) by
daily reading the Bible, and by study of the history and
doctrines of the church on Sunday ; (2) by securing leisure
for our servants to attend their parish church; (3) by
taking part, according to opportunity, in the college
mission in South London.
First : Read daily, morning and evening, the Holy
Scriptures, which are able to make you wise unto salvation.
122 LOVE DIVINE AND HUMAN
If we have to lament many desertions from our church,
to the right hand and to the left, few, perhaps none,
of the renegades had been eminent as Biblical scholars.
Read the 119th psalm; trace the widening empire
of the Bible, a paramount book, the book, in every
language, carrying dignity, contentment and peace to
sufferers in every clime. Christ Himself knew it from
a child and fed on its hidden manna. What if many
profess to have outgrown its teachings ? They are not
such as are best qualified to speak by acquaintance with
the Bible itself or with the laws of interpretation. They
kill parable and proverb and metaphor (and Eastern
wisdom loves to speak in figure) by reducing it to cold,
hard, matter of fact prose. Many who pass current as
philosophers do violence to garbled texts, not less than the
Roman pontiff himself.
Read not only critically, but as the believing poor
read. Two eminent mathematicians, great students of
the Bible, De Morgan and Todhunter, used versions as
the best interpreters. Chrysostom of old, Bengel among
moderns, will fix your attention on the moral lessons, the
spirit of the word, without neglecting the letter.
If by reading the Bible and the lives and works of
saints, George Herbert, a Kempis or Leighton or Butler,
we learn somewhat of the love of God, to learn love to
man we must go amongst men. While all know that the
separation of classes is a great danger to modern states,
some perhaps have not observed that much of the mischief
is due to our modern system of boarding-schools. Parents
are parted from children, brothers from sisters, the rich
from the poor. An Eton or Harrow boy sees no poor but
servants or those who minister to his amusements; the
LOVE DIVINE AND HUMAN 123
real working classes are known to him only by hearsay.
Now for the first time you are brought into direct relations
with the class, the relation of master to servant. Say
with Seneca : ' Servi sunt ? immo humiles amid. Are
they slaves ? nay, they are lowly friends/ Be considerate
in your demands on them, especially on their Sundays.
Many of them as churchwardens or members of the
choir are engaged in their parish churches ; respect their
engagements. Call on them in their homes, and you will
know something at first-hand of the struggles of honest
labour in a crowded country.
Our Walworth mission is no Quixotic enterprise,
springing from the fashion of the hour, no bubble blown
to please a childish whim. It is a direct fulfilment of the
will of Lady Margaret, who as she established a preacher-
ship here in the university, designed her colleges as
seminaries of preachers to carry the Gospel through the
dark places of the land. The call came from one of our
fellows who has long given himself to the work. Read
the Ecclesiastes of Erasmus, who knew better than most
men the mind of bishop Fisher, and you will learn that
this is no mere academy for abstract sciences, but was
founded for the good of the common people. From the
homes of the poor our scholars mostly came ; they found
here overcrowding and frequent plague; and they were
sent forth to speak to rich and poor of those truths which
to Margaret of Richmond and John Fisher were dearer
than life.
I have only time to notice a few advantages which we
may expect to reap from the work as years go on.
We are consumers here, and go amongst the poorest
of producers. We shall learn to criticise consumption
124 LOVE DIVINE AND HUMAN
both our own and theirs ; ours, for we shall see how hardly
the rage for cheapness presses on the workers ; we shall
be ashamed to live luxurious lives and clamour for more
costly dinners while men, women and children are starving
around us ; we shall criticise their consumption, that we
may enable them to help themselves. A prosperous
German in the neighbourhood set down the sufferings of
the people to bad management. If we can learn what is
the cheapest and most nutritious diet, if we can prove
to the people that stimulants and narcotics are ruinous
to health, we may make them richer at once without
degrading them. We can check the growing vice of
gambling by teaching thrift and giving opportunities for
saving.
Remember we have long years of omission to make
good, and must not expect to win confidence in a day.
We are verily guilty concerning our brethren ; for evil is
wrought by want of thought, as well as want of heart.
Our missionary is cheered by our presence. Coming
from many homes, we can bring a varied experience to
meet ever new wants. In the International Health
Exhibition you may see among the educational apparatus
of Japan admirable works from schools for the blind and
for deaf-mutes, so soon do the inventions of Christian
charity traverse the globe. Any of us, who sees any
where any contrivance for making small means go a long
way, has only to think of Mr Phillips and he will be a
benefactor to South London. If it is but some rough
and ready substitute for the common apparatus of games,
it will have its use where money is scarce and hands
clever.
In learning to deal with the poor we shall learn at the
LOVE DIVINE AND HUMAN 125
same time to deal with the rich. We shall rebuke their
luxury, at least tacitly, by refusing to partake of it,
ingeniously selecting from a Sybarite board the fare of an
apostle, of a Paul, or a Schwarz.
We shall soon find that if we have something to teach,
we have more to learn. Take a sample of the population
of our district. A poor woman, who sent children to the
school, when asked : ' Why do you send them ? You are
a Roman Catholic/ 'Their parents would have wished
them to go.' ' They are not your children then ? ' ' They
are no more related to me than you are/ ' Why did you
take charge of them ? ' ' There was no one else ; they
could not be left to themselves/
A wife, deserted by her husband, was in extreme
poverty, and pestered by the solicitations of a well-to-do
profligate. Her neighbours rallied around her, one asking
her to breakfast, another to dinner. She hoped to come
to church in the evening, when her rags would attract less
notice; but she came in the morning. 'How is this?'
'A neighbour lent me her gown/ The same woman, who
earns a living by sewing boots, receiving no pay unless
she delivers the full tale at the appointed time, would sit
up till one o'clock at night nursing a dying neighbour of
ill repute. Yet at four o'clock in the morning she must
rise to her own work.
Can you not understand why the Earl of Shaftesbury
and Bishop How prefer East-end society, why Arnold
said that prayer and the friendship of the poor are needful
to lift us out of ourselves, why Richard Rothe yearned
for a university, frugal as a convent, in which the selfish-
ness of study should be tempered by visitation of the
sick during a full half of the working day ? Archbishop
126 LOVE DIVINE AND HUMAN
Trench shall tell us what the eye made wise by charity
can find in the huts where poor men lie : *
Patience by lengthened suffering not outworn,
Promptness to aid in one another's needs,
With self-denial, yea, heroic acts,
The more heroic, as not knowing themselves
For such at all, and there not seldom too
Such thankfulness for small things, such content
Under the absence of most earthly good,
As might rebuke the pining discontent,
That haunts too often rich men's palaces.
Several of us can speak with far more intimate know-
ledge than I can of our Walworth friends, but the most
superficial view can detect one or two promising features.
They never beg, and they can all read. Let us not tamper
with their independence but frankly honour it, and let us
introduce into their homes the books which are our own
best possession.
To those who are now standing at the cross-roads of
life, having their whole university career before them,
I will add one word. Remember what you do for yourself,
for your higher self, you do for others, for God and man ;
what you do against yourself, you do against others. For
our sakes make the better choice. Shall St John's
College be to you what it was to Ascham and Bentley
and John James Blunt and Isaac Todhunter? or what
it was and is to many whose names we wish to forget
with that of Titus Gates ? Remember, the opportunity
which you now have thousands of working men are covet-
ing ; we hope in time to welcome freshmen from Walworth
itself.
* Antignosticus.
LOVE DIVINE AND HUMAN 127
The sum of all I wish to say I will leave with you in
Archbishop Trench's words :
THE LAW OF LOVE.
Dig channels for the streams of Love,
Where they may broadly run ;
And Love has overflowing streams
To fill them every one.
But if at any time thou
Such channels to provide,
The very springs of Love for thee
Will soon be parched and dried.
For we must share, if we would keep,
That good thing from above,
Ceasing to give, we cease to have,
Such is the law of Love.
M. S
129
0f %m
ST JOHN'S
9 November 1890
130
Tune stabunt iusti in magna constantia adversus eos qui se
angustiaverunt et qui abstulerunt labores eorum.
Sap. v. 1.
Bibentes vinum in phialis et optimo unguento delibuti. Et
nihil patiebantur super contritione Joseph.
Amos vi. 6.
Alii vero ludibria et verbera experti insuper et vincula et
carceres. Lapidati sunt secti sunt temptati sunt in occisione gladii
mortui sunt circuierunt in melotis in pellibus caprinis egentes
angustiati afflicti. Quibus dignus non erat mundus. In solitu-
dinibus errantes in montibus et speluncis et in cavernis terrae.
Hebr. xi. 3638.
131
BOLDNESS OF THEM THAT HAVE
BEEN WITH JESUS
Now when they beheld the boldness (irappycriav, freedom of speech)
of Peter and John, and had perceived that they were unlearned and
ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that
they had been with Jesus. Acts iv. 13.
THEY are the high priest, the rulers, elders and
scribes ; they are enquiring by what power and ia what
name the apostles made the lame to walk. By unlearned
and ignorant, aypd^fjuaroi ical ISicorcu, we are to under-
stand men without Rabbinical school learning, laymen,
belonging to the accursed multitude which knoweth not the
law. Hath any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed
on him? The rulers might well marvel, for it is the
crowning miracle of the kingdom, that to the poor, by the
poor in spirit, the gospel is preached.
From Whitby's note you may see that this foolishness
of preaching was an offence to the Greeks, a Celsus, a
Julian, a Porphyry, during the ages of persecution.
Throughout the New Testament we hear the same
strain : if the servants are despised, the Master bore the
cross before them. John vii. 14, 15, Jesus went up into
the temple and taught. The Jews therefore marvelled
92
132 BOLDNESS OF THEM
saying: How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?
Matt. xiii. 54, 55, Whence hath this man this wisdom ? Is
not this the carpenters son ? To the accomplished Corin-
thians St Paul (1 Cor. i. 17 25) magnifies Christ as the
power of God and wisdom of God, a divine foolishness
wiser, a divine weakness stronger, than men. To the sons
of the imperial city he cries (Rom. i. 14 17), I am debtor
both to Greeks and to Barbarians, both to the wise and
unwise. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach
the gospel to you also that are in Rome. For I am not
ashamed of the gospel; for it is the power of God unto
salvation unto every one that believeth; to the Jew first
and also to the Greek. Jews, Greeks, Romans, revelation,
culture, empire, must bow beneath the cross. Yet there
are Christians so ignorant of Christ, or of soul so craven,
that in contempt of God and fear of man they will blush
to confess that they read their Bible, as their mother bid
them, while they dare not risk reputation with their
clique by overlooking the last new novel or magazine
article that sets our quidnuncs agape. Who is ashamed
of health, when sick ; of light, when blind ? yet the
great Prophet warns us that some whose ears have heard
His voice shall be afraid to confess its saving power
(Mark viii. 38), For whosoever shall be ashamed of Me and of
My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son
of Man also shall be ashamed of him, when He cometh in
the glory of His Father with the holy angels. The
Mohammedan is not ashamed of his Koran. The sons of
Jonadab the son of Rechab performed the commandment
of their father; but Christians incline not their ear nor
hearken unto Christ. We will not have this man to reign
over us. What avail our open Bible, our free press, our
THAT HAVE BEEN WITH JESUS 133
free speech, if we do not use them freely, proving all
things, choosing that which is good ? Fifty years ago in
this place fellows only had access to the college library,
only graduates to the university library: what boots it,
that you have so vastly wider avenues to learning than we
had, if you cast them from you in indolence or sheer want
of thought ?
You will observe that freedom of speech, and therefore
still more freedom of conscience, is declared in the text to
be due to communion with Christ. 'He is the freeman
whom the truth makes free, and all are slaves besides.'
The right, the duty of private judgement, is the privilege
of the whole family of man : Matt. ii. 25, / thank Thee,
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide
these things from the wise and understanding and didst
reveal them unto babes.
It is a blind philosophy of history that has not been
with Jesus, that is blocked out by prejudice and fashion
from the Light of the World. Even so it is a limping
scholarship that proscribes Christian classics, poring over
Libanius and leaving Chrysostom in the dust. Erasmus,
Casaubon, Gataker, Grooovius, Bentley, and in our day
Lachmann, Frederick Field, Bernays, Lightfoot, have a
completeness of learning which we miss even in a Madvig
and a Ritschl. How truly said Vauvenargues : Les grandes
pensfes viennent du cceur! Neander's motto was pectus
iheologum facit, and what an intellectual light does his
moral sympathy cast over the history of the church,
making figures which to Gibbon or Voltaire were simple
scare-crows, butts for sarcasm, big with instruction and
example for us in these latter days ! It is the mens cordis
that pierces within the veil. He who is the way, the
134 BOLDNESS OF THEM
truth, and the life, is also the light of the world. One
day in the Reform Club Mr Bright, talking to a friend of
his favourite hymns, began to recite them. That musical
voice, that heartfelt conviction, drew one and another to
the spot ; until at last there was a large circle of listeners,
spellbound with unfashionable, unaccustomed reverence.
In such a place, a temple of faction, who but one that had
been with Jesus would have dared (Ps. cxxxvii. 3, 4) to sing
one of the songs of Sion ? How shall we sing the Lord's
song in a strange land?
Have we denied Christ ? Let us take comfort from
the text. John and Peter had forsaken their Master.
Peter had thrice denied Him, even with an oath. A few
days had passed and these timid perjured renegades amaze
their persecutors, and even now confound deniers of the
resurrection, by their boldness. Narrow they had been,
ignorant and slow of heart, and now behold the disciples
of the Gospels have ripened into the apostles of the Acts
and Epistles, founding a church under the cross by the
spirit of wisdom and of power, and of a large tolerance.
Read the scorn and hatred which Greeks and Romans
express for the Jew ; read the writings of those learned
Jews, high in position and influence, Josephus and Philo ;
then turn to your New Testament. Why are these few
pages so far more paramount, catholic, imperishable, than
all the wisdom of Athens and of Rome ? Why have these
Jewish fishermen and tentmakers held in cheerful subjec-
tion the hearts and wills of commanding intellects, of an
Isaac Barrow or a Leslie Ellis ? There is but one possible
answer, but it is sufficient. Peter, James and John, had
been with Jesus. No man would be ashamed to be
known as the friend of those accomplished gentlemen,
THAT HAVE BEEN WITH JESUS 135
George Herbert and John Donne ; why then should we be
ashamed of their Master ? Matt. x. 24, A disciple is not
above his Master, nor a servant above his Lord.
The recent opening in Cambridge of a Roman Catholic
Church, dedicated to our Lady and the English martyrs,
Blessed John Fisher, Thomas More, and the rest, together
with this present date, four days after the fifth of Novem-
ber, in the ninetieth year of the 19th century these
coincidences naturally turn our thoughts to the great
struggles for religious freedom which have agitated
Western Christendom for four centuries, and which have
been marked by signal triumphs of the right at the close
of each century. In 1590 the Armada had been over-
thrown, very mainly by the patriotism and princely
liberality of Howard, who, true to queen and country,
dared to defy the papal interdict ; a tradition of loyalty
to which the Roman Catholic families of England have
clung stedfastly to this hour. The sums advanced by
Gregory XIII for the queen's assassination had not been
earned. Henry IV was on the throne of France. In
1598 Philip II died, and the edict of Nantes gave a
breathing time to the reformed church of France.
In 1685 that edict was revoked, the perjured king
having sapped it piecemeal since 1660. In that same
year 1685 James II came to the throne pledged to destroy
Protestantism. The best of our Protestant dissenters,
Baxter, Howe, Bunyan, had the honesty and the sagacity
to discover that there and then the test was a bulwark of
liberty ; they refused emancipation from a tyrant, fearing
the Danai even with gifts in their hands. In 1690
England was safe under the strong rule of William of
Orange, while the Protestants of France were in exile or
136 BOLDNESS OF THEM
pining in dungeons or galleys or clefts of the rocks. Once
again in 1790 French Protestants were exulting in the
unwonted possession of citizenship. On the 21 Aug. 1789
the constituent assembly declared that all citizens are
equal in the eyes of the law, and that no one may be
disturbed for his religious opinions or molested in the
exercise of his religion. On the 15 March 1790 Rabaut
St Etienne, a pastor himself, wrote to his father, the long
proscribed Paul Rabaut: 'The President of the National
Assembly is at your feet.'
I propose to speak of the French church of the desert,
a living commentary on our text, but first to prove that
for religious liberty we are indebted not to Milton or
Jeremy Taylor or Bayle or Locke or Voltaire, though each
of them deserves all honour for his services in the cause,
but to the New Testament. Protestants, even the Long
Parliament and men of rare moderation like Thomas
Fuller, long thought that some few extreme opinions, as
atheism or Arianism, might justly be punished by death.
Roman Catholics, as Lord Burleigh pleaded, were executed
for treason, not for religion, however much we may deplore
such sacrifices as that of Robert Southwell. But from
Priscillian, A.D. 385, onwards, whatever blood has been
shed by Christians on account of opinion, has been shed
in direct opposition to the warnings of our holy religion.
Matt. vii. 1, Judge not that ye be not judged, xiii. 29, 30,
Nay ; lest haply while ye gather up the tares ye gather up
the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the
harvest. If the rebuke in Luke ix. 55 is uncertain in the
letter, it breathes the very mind of Christ, and was in the
Bible of all persecutors : Te know not what manner of
spirit ye are of. For the Son of Man came not to destroy
THAT HAVE BEEN WITH JESUS 137
men's lives but to save them. If Baronius could before
Paul V venture upon such a freak of exegesis as this :
'Holy Father, St Peter's office is twofold, it consists in
feeding and in slaying, as it is written : Feed my sheep
and kill and eat' \ a Protestant might retort that to
Peter it was said: Put up the sword into the sheath, a
lesson which, if the syllabus may be trusted, Rome has
not yet learnt. Christ's kingdom (Jo. xviii. 36, 37) is not of
this world. 2 Cor. x. 4, the weapons of our warfare are
not of the flesh. Augustine, alas (ep. 93), misapplied the
words compel them to come in (Luke xiv. 23) to authorise
persecution, but Bayle's immortal commentary has for
ever dispelled the calumny.
What a freedom breathes through the New Testament
any one may see, if he will but read a chapter and compare
it with any heathen author of the time. Take the
Apocalypse, that indignant protest against the worship of
the emperor, and against the persecutions by which that
worship was enforced. Mommsen, unhappily himself a
worshipper of Caesarism, is distressed by the obstacle
which Christian faith, uncompromising, resolute to the
death, presented to the imperial policy. But Mommsen
at least sees that the wonderful book is to be interpreted
by contemporary history. Jurieu in predicting the down-
fall of Babylon as represented by James II and Louis XIV,
in three and a half years from 1685, created false hopes
and fostered a dangerous sedition in France ; and like
presumptuous augurs, as I knew to my cost when a child,
still disturb the peace of the unlearned.
To Tertullian (apol. 23) belongs the honour of first
uttering the great word 'liberty of religion.' Non est
religionis, he cries (ad Scap. 6), cogere religionem. 'To
138 BOLDNESS OF THEM
force religion is irreligious.' In a sublime application of
Juvenal's words (apol. 33) he exclaims, ' I will not call the
emperor god, because I know not how to lie.'
I pass on to the church of France under the cross, and
will speak briefly of Louis XIV and of the public opinion
of his day, and then of four ministers whose work spanned
the century from 1685 1790, ending with a few thoughts
on the bearing of this question of religious freedom on our
college life in the past and in the present.
In the imperial library at St Petersburg is shewn a
sheet of paper, bearing in a boyish scrawl, six times
repeated, the words: Vhommage est <M aux rois ; Us font
tout ce qu'il leur plait. The writer was the future king
Louis the Great ; his Jesuit teachers chose those fatal
signs as a copy for the infant hand to trace. That child
was father of the man who declared I'etat c'est moi. So
Pius IX boasted : La tradizione sono io. So certain
teachers of our day, dogmatising with a hectoring bigotry
under the mask of nescience, virtually call on us to submit
our reason to them as incarnate Science. Nay: with the
great Richard Rothe we hold : ' The entire and pure truth
is no man's monopoly, all of us together have it': individual
knowledge must be partial.
The edict of Nantes was recalled on the 17 Nov.
1685. The elder Le Tellier, dying aet. 83, some days
later, sang a Nunc dimittis. Long before, many churches
had been destroyed, 141 in 1663 alone, Roman clergy
authorised to force their way to the dying, children of
seven allowed to change their religion and claim a pension
from their parents; singing of psalms was forbidden in
the open air or in the churches while a procession went
by; funerals were restricted to the twilight; dragoons
THAT HAVE BEEN WITH JESUS 139
quartered on the Protestants with orders to push them to
the last extremity to live very licentiously. Louvois has
enriched our language with two words, the verb 'to
dragoon,' the substantive ' dragoonade.' By the edict all
churches were destroyed; all pastors banished with one
fortnight's grace under pain of the galleys ; lay emigration
entirely forbidden ; all children, from five to sixteen years
of age, to be taken from their parents and brought up as
Catholics ; death to all pastors found in the country ; men
who helped them to be sentenced to the galleys, women
to prison for life; death to all holding assemblies or
any exercise of religion ; all who in sickness refused the
sacraments, on recovery to be sent to the galleys or prison
for life, in case of death, their bodies to be cast out
unburied ; in either case their estates confiscated ; books
of religion, Bibles, prayerbooks, psalters, to be burnt ; all
offices and professions, down to that of midwife, closed to
professors of the religion pretendue reform&e', the marriages
of Protestants were declared void, their children illegiti-
mate. I mention only one torture out of many, the
invention of Foucault, very effective in procuring conver-
sions: the torturers by relays keeping sleep from the
victims' eyelids. This Foucault was, I grieve to say, a
scholar, and, by a strange irony of fate, first discovered
Lactantius ' On the death of persecutors.' All these and
countless other penalties, more grievous than death, were
summarily inflicted without due form of trial. In one
year, though France was kept like a dungeon girt by
troops and ships, 9000 sailors, 12,000 soldiers, 600 officers
had emigrated, including the best general of his age,
Schomberg. Switzerland, the Low Countries, Germany,
England, America, the Cape, all gained by the loss of the
140 BOLDNESS OF THEM
flower of the French industry and learning. Berlin, till
then not half the size of our present Cambridge, made
rapid strides. In London there were 31 churches of
French Protestants. The present Lord Mayor, the Bishop
Designate of Worcester, our Junior Missioner at Wai worth,
are all of emigrant blood.
How was the royal massacre welcomed ? Foucault
told the gentlemen of Poitou : ' It was a mistake to dis-
tinguish the obligations of conscience from the obedience
due to the king.' Bossuet exclaimed to the new Constan-
tine, the new Theodosius: 'You have confirmed the faith,
you have exterminated the heretics.' Massillon, Flechier,
Fe'nelon, all joined in the chorus of praise and in the work
of compulsory conversion. The hundreds of persecuting
edicts were purchased one by one by the clergy ; each new
subsidy producing a new violence. Mme de Maintenon
obtained the assent of the Archbishop of Paris to her
secret marriage with the king by undertaking to stimulate
him to fresh outbreaks. As David covered adultery by
murder, so Louis was taught that Heaven's vengeance on
his sins must be washed away in the blood of heretics.
La Bruyere, La Fontaine, Mme de Sevigne, all applaud
the champion of the faith. The last writes playfully :
'Father Bourdaloue, by the king's order, is going to
preach in the provinces where so many folk have been
converted without knowing why. He will teach them
why. Hitherto the dragoons have been excellent mis-
sionaries. The edict by which the king has recalled the
edict of Nantes is admirable.' She lamented the fatigues
bravely borne by a marquis, hunting the miserable
Huguenots to exterminate them. ' No sooner is your back
turned/ she complains, ' than they are out of their dens
THAT HAVE BEEN WITH JESUS 141
again/ Yet Mme de SeVign6 was no bigot. She read
with enthusiasm the Protestant Abbadie's treatise on
the truth of the Christian religion : ' It is the most divine
of all books.' * No other book to read in all the world but
this.'
On the 8 March 1715 the king issued an edict de-
claring that there existed no more Protestants in France.
Non estis goes beyond the old non licet esse vos. A statue
was erected, medals were struck in honour of the exter-
minator of heresy.
He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh them to scorn,
the Lord shall have them in derision. What was the truth ?
Since 1685 France had fallen lower and lower. In 1693
an anonymous piece, known to be by Fenelon, found its
way into the king's hands: 'you do not love God, you do
not even fear Him except with the fear of a slave ; it is
hell, and not God, that you fear. Your religion only
consists of superstitions. You refer everything to yourself
as if you were the God of earth, and as if all else were
made only to be sacrificed to you.'
On the 26 Aug. 1715 Louis XIV lay on his death-bed.
Mme de Maintenon, two cardinals and Father Le Tellier
were there: fastening his eyes on them, he said he was
sorry to leave the affairs of the church in the state they
were in; 'he was perfectly ignorant of such things; he
took them to witness that he had done nothing but what
they wished; he had done all that they wished; it was
for them to answer before God for all that had been done,
the too much or the too little. His conscience was clear.'
It is sound Jesuit doctrine. Five days after, the Most
Christian King died, deserted by Mme de Maintenon ; the
next day his will was set aside. When his body was
142 BOLDNESS OF THEM
carried out, it was pelted and hooted. Massillon in his
funeral sermon preached: 'God alone is great.' From
Bentley's sermon on popery, preached on the 5 Nov. 1715,
we gather what Cambridge feared and hoped at that critical
time.
In and after 1685 about fifty of the emigrant clergy
are known to have returned to their flocks and held
assemblies in the desert. The chief was Claude Brousson,
an advocate, who had at the risk of his life defended the
cause of the Protestants until Nov. 1683, when he fled to
Lausanne. From that time to the day of his torture and
martyrdom, 4 Nov. 1698, as diplomatist, lawyer, contro-
versialist, preacher, apostle, he was the great stay of the
afflicted church. He summoned the emigrant pastors to
the post of duty and of danger. When they discovered
no vocation for martyrdom, he exclaimed : ' If these shall
hold their peace, the stones will cry out. I am one of these
stones.' Uno avulso non deficit alter aureus et simili
frondescit virga metallo. Two years before Brousson 's
end, Pierre Corteiz, a lad of 16, fell in with some of
Dumoulin's books and with a tract against hypocritical
compliance with the mass. He resisted the prophets who
preached rebellion, and confronted persecution and the
pestilence with unshaken resolution till his retirement in
1733. He was a simple artisan, though ordained in 1717.
In 1696, when Corteiz began to act, was born Antoine
Court, the statesmanlike restorer of French Protestantism.
His father died when Antoine was four ; he went to school
at seven, and soon learnt all that his master could teach.
To the boys he was known as the first-born of Calvin.
One day four of the strongest of his schoolfellows tried to
drag him to mass ; he held fast by the banisters and,
THAT HAVE BEEN WITH JESUS 143
though begged by the bystanders to yield, remained victor
of the field. When yet a stripling he withstood to the
face the prophetesses who preached a new war of the
Cevennes. On the 21 Aug. 1715, a few days before the
king's death, he, a lad of 19, convoked the first synod to
restore church order and discipline, appointing elders to
collect funds, summon assemblies, guard against scandals,
provide for the safe-conduct of preachers. The Bible, not
revelations of new prophets, was declared the sole rule of
faith. Prayers should be offered for the king and all in
authority.
From 1715 to his death in 1760 Court was the main-
spring of the wonderful revival. Whereas in 1715 he
collected with difficulty 15 to an assembly, in 1744 10,000
congregated. Schisms arose, but were quelled by his tact
and firmness. In 1729, with the help of Abp Wake, he
founded at Lausanne a seminary of candidates for martyr-
dom, from which 450 students went forth before 1809,
when Napoleon transferred it to Montauban. For the
last thirty years of his life Court resided in Switzer-
land, maintaining an immense correspondence, collecting
materials, still at Geneva, for the history of the churches
under the cross. La froissure de Joseph, ' the affliction of
Joseph/ occurs again and again in the writings of these
confessors; it seems to have been the keynote of their
preaching; and indeed the sixth chapter of Amos, the
herdman of Tekoa, must have thrilled with a sense
of present reality the shepherds and ploughmen of
Languedoc.
From 1743 to his death in 1795 Paul Rabaut was the
leader of the resident pastors of the desert. He acknow-
ledges the aid of Abp Seeker and George III in 1762.
144 BOLDNESS OF THEM
In a memorial addressed to the intendant Le Nain in
1746 Rabaut sums up in prophetic vision the course of
his ministry. 'In determining to exercise the ministry
in this kingdom, I was not ignorant to what I exposed
myself: I regarded myself as a victim devoted to death.
No human consideration could have led me to such a
choice. I thought to do the greatest good in my power
by devoting myself to the office of a pastor. Ignorance is
the death of the soul and the source of an infinity of
crimes. Protestants being debarred from the free exercise
of their religion, not believing that they could attend the
exercises of the Roman religion, not having access to the
books necessary for their instruction, judge, Monsignor,
what their state might be if they were absolutely bereaved
of pastors. They would be ignorant of their most necessary
duties; they would fall either into fanaticism, fruitful
source of extravagance and disorders, or into indifference
and the contempt of all religion.' It is a proscribed
outlaw, with a price on his head, who thus reasons with
his oppressor.
Verily Michelet speaks words of sober truth when he
cries : ' Poor forgetful France ! how little hast thou
cherished, preserved thy tradition ! How negligent, re-
gardless of thy national treasure ! By this word I mean
that which was thyself, thy higher life, in the grand
crises : the martyrs and the true heroes ! All this in the
dust and tost to the wind ! ' We English also have to
revise our judgement of the French ; not fickle, frivolous,
indifferent, easy, debonnaire, and brisk, were these country-
men of Coligni and Duplessy-Mornay, but stubborn with
an iron will, fearing God and nothing else. Witness above
all the life-long agony of the galleys. Not the sophist at
THAT HAVE BEEN WITH JESUS 145
his desk, but the martyr at the stake or on the gibbet,
bought for us this freedom of speech. ' Be of good comfort,
master Ridley, and play the man ; we shall this day light
such a candle by God's grace in England, as I trust shall
never be put out/
Our college has borne a full share in the battle for
freedom of thought. To Burleigh England owes it that
Elizabeth escaped the fate of William the Silent and
Henry of Navarre. Thomas Lever, our seventh master,
one of the Marian exiles, ' a man/ says Baker, ' of as much
natural probity and blunt native honesty as the college
ever bred, had the spirit of Hugh Latimer ' ; our sixteenth
master, William Whitaker, the most learned who ever sat
in that chair, more than a match for Bellarmine, raised
the college to the rank of a university, and won the
admiration of Scaliger. Add a few out of many. Bp
Morton, whose long life stretched from near the beginning
of Elizabeth's reign to near the end of the Commonwealth,
whose reverend form gives dignity to our hall, whose
services to the Reformation raised a scruple even in
roundhead persecutors ; Overall ; Stillingfleet, whose
library and example made Richard Bentley possible.
Shall I claim John Fisher ? I will not, if you can
name another man to whom Cambridge and the Reforma-
tion owe so much. He brought hither Erasmus, Hebrew,
Greek, the Bible ; he is himself an excellent textuary.
May the college never cease to feel for him that reverence
which they expressed to him in prison: 'Thou art our
father, our teacher, our lawgiver, the pattern of all virtue
and holiness/ And may the blessing which closes his
statutes never fail to descend on those who meet here :
4 When, saith He, the Spirit of truth shall have come, He
M. s. 10
146 BOLDNESS OF THEM
will lead you into all the truth. But whom shall He lead ?
even the lowly and obedient ; on such He rests, fostering
them and refreshing them with consolations unutterable ;
and being the porter, He opens and unlocks to them the
mysteries of Scripture.'
The college has many links with the reformed churches
beyond sea. The first fellow admitted by King Edward's
visitors was an Italian; in 1744, when the great final
persecution of the desert churches began, Antonio Ferrari,
a Neapolitan convert, who from the beginning of the
century had received hospitality here, bequeathed to us
a unique collection of early French and Neapolitan
Reformation literature, from which Churchill Babington
recovered what Macaulay lamented as gone beyond hope,
irrecoverable as the lost decades of Livy. In 1762, the
year of the last French martyrdoms, William Grove,
formerly fellow, gave to the college seven folio volumes
of acts and documents relating to the Protestants of
France. When their councils are published, these manu-
scripts will be of signal service.
One last word. Thirty- five years ago I said in print,
in a volume which the Examiner, the chief literary
authority of the day, denounced as smuggling Popery
into Cambridge : ' Would we ascertain the efficacy and
value of religious tests ; the sufferings of non-conformists,
non-covenanters, non-engagers, non-jurors, furnish abun-
dant matter for grave and impartial reflexion.' Twenty-
one years before that, in 1834, sixty-two members of the
senate, including Sedgwick, Henslow, Peacock, Thirl wall,
petitioned for the abolition of religious tests as at variance
with the true principles of Christian toleration. In the
year of the opening of this chapel, at a meeting in our
THAT HAVE BEEN WITH JESUS 147
new lodge, on the 29th November 1869, Thompson and
Sedgwick and Maurice spoke, and a petition was adopted
for the opening of college fellowships. Our wish was
granted.
Has the Church of England been despoiled by the
admission of men of any or no creed to place and power
here ? Are we churchmen here under the cross, in the
desert, like Paul Rabaut ? No doubt, fewer fellows take
holy orders, fewer attend college chapel than was the
case fifty years ago ; and if that implied indifference to
religion, or the belief that religion concerns clergy and
the poor only, it would certainly cause us poignant shame
and grief. We should have taught them better. Indif-
ference is the deadliest of heresies, it is the palsy of the
soul. Yet it is surely something that no one is profane
enough to come here merely to set a good example. At
any rate no dragoons have destroyed our chapels, burnt
our books; if we are ignorant of the Bible, ashamed of
Christ, we individually are to blame, not the persecuting
state. The college is bound by statute to maintain the
services of the church. Our loss can be told in pounds,
shillings, and pence. What is our gain ? It is a spiritual
gain, too volatile to be fixed by statistics. Sirs, ye are
brethren. The sons of the exiles are coming back to alma
mater ; even Romanists, I rejoice to hear, are now encour-
aged to graduate here. We are becoming one nation, not
as party prints may vaunt or murmur, in defiance of
churchmen, but in answer to the prayers of many of them
from generation to generation.
William George Clark once said to me : * Your chapel
is a signal evidence of faith in the future of the national
church.' Have we lost that faith in the short span of 21
102
148 BOLDNESS OF THEM THAT HAVE BEEN WITH JESUS
years ? Let old members of the college answer : ' Fifty
years ago your Wai worth mission would have been im-
possible.'
If the wild boar out of the wood should indeed once
more lay Cambridge waste, as in Ascham's days, would
St John's be worthy to furnish martyrs as of old ?
You remember the warning uttered by that Nestor of
divines, Mr Gladstone's patron saint, my reverend friend
Dr Dollinger: 'The destruction of the Church of England
will be a deadly blow to Catholic Christendom.'
If government, fashion, literature, should conspire
against us, as they did against the French Reformation
two hundred years ago, God is able of these stones to raise
up a Claude Brousson, an Antoine Court, a Paul Rabaut.
My kingdom is not of this world. A little one shall become
a thousand, and a small one a strong nation : I, the Lord,
will hasten it in his time. Not by might, nor by power t but
by my spirit, saiih the Lord of hosts.
149
NOTES
Most of what I have said respecting the churches of the desert
may be found in one or more of the following : [A. Mader] Die
Protestantiscke Kirche FranJcreichs von 1787 bis 1846. Heraus-
gegeben von Dr J. C. L. Gieseler. Paris 1848. 2 vols. Histoire des
Protestants de France . . .par G. de Felice. . . . Quatrieme Edition. Paris
1861. Histoire des Eglises du Desert chez les Protestants de France
depuis la Jin du regne de Louis XlVjusqu'a la Revolution Francaise.
Par Charles Coquerel. Paris 1841. 2 vols. Histoire de la restaura-
tion du Protestantisme en France au XVIII 6 Siecle Antoine Court
tfapres des documents inedits par Edmond Hugues. Quatrieme
edition. Paris 1875. 2 vols. Les premiers Pasteurs du Desert
(1685 1700) dtapres des documents pour la plupart inedits par
0. Douen. Paris 1879. 2 vols. Jean Colas et sa famille. Etude
historique tfapres les documents originaux...par Athanase Coquerel
fils. Paris 1858. Les Forcats pour la Foi, Etude historique (1684
1775) par Athanase Coquerel fils. Paris 1866. Also Lichtenberger,
Encyclopedic des Sciences Religieuses ; Martin, Histoire de France;
Haag, La France Protestante (both editions, so far as the second has
gone) ; Herzog's Real-Encyklopadie (both editions).
151
Commemoration Sermon
ST JOHN'S
6 May 1891
153
COMMEMOEATION SERMON (6 May)
For verily 1 say unto you, that many prophets and righteous men
desired to see the things which ye see, and saw them not ; and to hear
the things which ye hear, and heard them not. St Matt. xiii. 17.
HERE, as elsewhere in the Gospels, we are plainly told
that the revelation to Israel was but as twilight, that
patriarchs and prophets are neither in life or doctrine an
absolute standard for the Christian Church. Moses for
your hardness of heart suffered you to put away your wives
(Matt. xix. 8). Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are
of (Luke ix. 55).
Nor would Abraham, Moses and David alone, have
rejoiced to see the day of Christ. Read such commen-
taries as those of Grotius, John Price and Wetstein on
the New Testament, or of our Johnian Thomas Gataker
on the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, or the Echoes*
and Seminal Word"\ in which modern divines have
* R. Schneider : Christliche Kldnge aus den griechischen und romi-
tchen Klassikern. Gotha. 1865. 8vo.
f Edm. Spiess : Logos Spermaticos. Parallelstellen zum Neuen
Testament aus den alten Griechen. Leipzig, Wilh. Engelmann. 1871.
8vo.
154 COMMEMORATION SERMON
collected the yearnings and strivings of the better heathen
towards a Sun of Righteousness, and you will confess that
Justin Martyr and the Alexandrian church were justified
in regarding Socrates and Plato, Musonius and Epictetus,
as heralds of the Gospel dawn, of that light which arose to
lighten the Gentiles, if it was the special glory of His people
Israel. The God who made the world, made of one every
nation of men, that they should seek God, if haply they
might feel after Him and find Him. The Hortensius of
Cicero was a main instrument in Augustine's conversion.
God's ways are not as our ways. The spiritual needs of
our race are one and indivisible. St Paul bore the
reproach of the cross at Athens and Rome, at Corinth and
Ephesus. Greek philosophy may even yet have a work
to do in lifting the church and the world from the death
of materialism to a nobler life, to sweeter manners and
purer laws.
Plato reverently but firmly ejects Homer and his frail,
passionate gods from the ideal state ; and from the days
of Xenophanes onwards the crimes and vices of Olympus
were an offence to thoughtful heathen and a temptation
to the weak. The imitation of Jupiter would degrade
human nature below the level of the brute ; the imitation
of Christ transfigures earth into a forecourt of heaven.
But not only would the ancient world have envied the
privileges of such a society as ours ; at this hour foreigners,
even from the most civilised states, admire our polity,
consecrated not only by memories of noble endeavour
and repeated martyrdom among the sons of the house, but
also by the very auspices of our birth, by the saintly
example and earnest entreaty of the Foundress and of
our legislator Bishop Fisher. Lady Margaret prayed
COMMEMORATION SERMON 155
(Statutes, c. 19, 1530) that her fellows and scholars might
keep three ends in view the worship of God, innocency
of life, and the establishment of Christian faith. A college
may be, and is in design, a family, meeting around the
family altar, to begin and end the day with prayer and
praise.
After the fusion of East and West under Alexander,
Stoicism, rising above narrow antipathies of sect and race,
of birth and fortune, conceived the intellectual world as
one state, animated by one spirit, ruled by one law, where
men are fellow-citizens with gods. How easy should it be
for us here to widen our hearts to these catholic hopes !
Our studies, as symbolised on the steps of the holy table,
embrace all nature and all history, Greek wisdom, Roman
order, and the divine oracles of Israel. Among those
whom we honour as Johnians are found sufferers for very
different causes. Mere local curiosity, common college
patriotism, makes us seek for the good which now unites
those who in life fought in opposite camps. We learn
that the things in which good men agree are many and of
eternal moment ; that differences arise in great part from
misunderstanding. If we are all one in Christy there can
be neither Jew nor Greek, Barbarian nor Scythian, bond
nor free. The fogs of prejudice and of party melt away
as we follow those who in this place for near four hundred
years have followed the Light of the World.
Many at this day, I have said, envy our liberty and
order. Hear the teachers of Dorpat groaning under
Russian tyranny, or the children of Israel appealing to
a new Pharaoh. Mark how Prussia since 1870 has crept
to Canossa, and, to win the suffrages of the Ultramontane
Centre, has sacrificed the Old Catholic faculty at Bonn,
156 COMMEMORATION SERMON
swamping loyal professors by the creation of superfluous
chairs for men of no academic fame ; long withholding
from Professor Langen, a man of rare merit, the increase
of stipend which was his due ; making acceptance of the
Vatican decrees a condition of advancement in the hier-
archy of schools. Nay, Pastor Thummel was prosecuted
by the Protestant state for teaching the very doctrines of
the Augsburg confession, the public prosecutor daring to
say that, if Luther were now alive and spoke as he did
in the 16th century, the government would drag Luther
himself to the bar. English politicians may indeed buy
Vatican votes by unworthy concessions ; but the example
of James II does not encourage an assault on academic
freedom.
Three hundred and forty-one years ago one of our
college preachers, afterwards master, delivered at Court
on Midlent Sunday a sermon such as few kings have been
privileged to hear. ' There was in the North a grammar
school, having in the University eight scholarships of one
foundation, always replenished with the scholars of that
school, which school is now sold, decayed and lost/ In a
year and a month Sedbergh school was refounded by King
Edward. When another Thomas Lever or Hugh Latimer
shall be raised up, he may say here what he will : none
will silence his blunt prophetic speech. We have the
liberty of prophesying for which Jeremy Taylor pleaded ;
an Elijah, or, to come nearer home, a Rowland Hill, may
freely rebuke what he sees amiss in us, and win the
thanks of all men of good will. Many an Austrian, Russian
or Spaniard at this hour sighs for a mere fraction of the
full tolerance which our martyrs earned for us at the
stake and in exile. If any man chooses to change his
COMMEMORATION SERMON 157
religion with the last magazine article or controversial
novel, without approving his choice of an oracle, we leave
him to go his way. It may be that after many days an
Epictetus or an Antoninus may teach him what the Church
means by saving the soul alive, saving the higher self, the
true man, by crucifying the flesh with its affections and
lusts.
Let us now praise famous men and our fathers that
begat us. The first place, without dispute or doubt,
belongs to John Fisher, of whom the tyrant who beheaded
him challenged all the monarchs of Christendom to shew
a peer among their bishops. Hear him recount the end-
less delays on the part of Rome, of the Bishop of Ely, of
my Lady's servants, of Wolsey, of King Henry ; how each
clamorous suitor had to be bought off ; consider the cost
and fatigue of travel in those days ; and you will confess
that the mere material foundation and endowment of this
house was work for a hero of faith and patience. Examine
the statutes carefully corrected by the Bishop's own hand ;
how code succeeded code, as the vision of culture widened
before him ; read his funeral sermon on the Foundress, and
other discourses which rank him high among the fathers
of English prose ; of that prose which in the sermons
of John Donne reached perhaps the greatest majesty of
which our language is capable. Four colleges of two
of which he was master, Queens' and Michaelhouse (now
Trinity) of two of which he was legislator and virtual
founder, Christ's and St John's are bound together by
special obligation to Fisher; but the entire university
owes to him more than to any other man. Oxford in the
middle age ranked with Paris ; Roger Bacon, Bradwardine,
158 COMMEMORATION SERMON
Occam, Wiclif, to name a sample, spread the fame of
literary England through Europe: but Cambridge was
unknown till Fisher introduced Greek and Hebrew among
us ; when Erasmus in his rooms at Queens' was busy on
the first published Greek Testament, the reformation of
religion and the part which Cambridge would play in it,
became a mere question of time.
Of our masters two Nicholas Metcalfe and William
Whitaker are immortalised by Thomas Fuller in his
Holy State, the one as the good master of a college, the
other as the controversial divine : Scaliger's exclamation,
Comme il etait docte ! (' What learning ! '), is weightier
evidence of Whitaker's worth than any laboured encomium
or royal patronage. The days when our sizars had 3d. a
week and fragments from the fellows' table, were days in
which the college harboured as great men as it has ever
bred, and as loyal and grateful.
Of scholars, John Cheke, who taught Cambridge and
King Edward Greek, Ascham and William Grindal who
taught Elizabeth, were of this hardy race. Since then
Gataker, Bentley, John Taylor, down to the Butlers and
Kennedys, have handed on the torch from age to age. To
this day the best editions of venerable Bede and of Philo
are the work of Johnians of the last century, John Smith
and Thomas Mangey.
Of poets we claim a score or more, including Greene,
Ben Jonson, Herrick, Prior, Akenside, Wordsworth, who
in his life and doctrine set forth that plain living and high
thinking which have been the glory of our house in the
past; its best friends will pray that it may cease to be
when it renounces the one or the other. John Stuart
Mill looked forward with dread to an age in which
COMMEMORATION SERMON 159
Wordsworth should lose his hold on the mind and heart
of England.
Of statesmen I will name but three, Burghley,
Strafford, Falkland. I make bold to say that the counter-
reformation in the 16th century and in the 19th, could
not have triumphed as it has, if Austrian, Italian, Spanish,
French statesmen, had possessed the insight of Burghley ;
Prince Bismarck's defeat sprung from an ignorance as to
the designs and power of Rome shared by Niebuhr and
Ranke. When a learned German editor prints as a
Greek comic fragment a verse of St Paul, it is not only a
revelation of individual sloth, but it portends world-wide
changes. Protestants who despise the Bible justly forfeit
the freedom which Luther inherited from St Paul. There
is a melancholy truth in Dr Cole's maxim, so often cast
in his teeth by Protestant disputants: Ignorance is the
mother of devotion, i.e. of Romish devotion.
Of divines, Redman, Lever, Fulke, Morton, Cartwright,
Overall, Sibbes, Thomas Goodwin, Cave, Stillingfleet,
down to Herbert Marsh and John James Blunt, are
names merely taken at haphazard ; of the seven bishops
imprisoned by James II, three were of St John's. One
forgotten worthy, Thomas Becon, Cranmer's chaplain,
awaits resurrection as a master of racy, homely English ;
a concordance to his works would be a priceless boon to
English lexicography. Of converts to Rome we have had
several, the most considerable of whom, John Sergeant,
had been chaplain to Bp Morton, so that he had at least
heard all that can be said on the Protestant side. Of
John James Blunt, as of Julius Hare, Frederick Maurice,
Bishops Kaye and Thirlwall, we may safely affirm that
their influence, so far as it reached, was a talisman of
160 COMMEMORATION SERMON
proof against all spells of John Henry Newman, perhaps
the most overrated Englishman of this century.
Of the noble army of missionaries, Martyn, Jowett,
Whytehead, Selwyn, Colenso, Cotterill, were ours. In my
own year Mackenzie, who graduated from Caius, went
forth, not because he felt any peculiar aptitude for the
work, but because he thought that some one should go.
Of philanthropists we claim the liberators of the slave,
Clarkson and Wilberforce. One of the earliest apostles
of temperance, Thomas Spencer, sometime fellow, has
earned the unsuspected praise of his nephew Mr Herbert
Spencer.
Of antiquaries, Baker will ever be remembered by
the title * ejected fellow ' which he wore for more than
twenty years as a badge of honour. Sir Symonds D'Ewes,
Dodsworth, Nalson, Peck, the Drakes, Whitaker the
historian of Yorkshire, are well known to students of
history.
Of mathematicians, Gilbert, John Dee, Henry Briggs,
Brooke Taylor, Herschel, are a handful out of a vast
multitude who have gladdened the hearts of their teachers
on degree day and still keep alive among us the old
Platonic warning : ' Let none enter here without geometry.'
Among physicians, Martin Lister, Heberden, Frampton,
Gisborne, Pennington, Haviland, Watson, deserve to be
rescued from that oblivion which too soon overtakes even
the greatest of the sons of Aesculapius.
On a day like this I do not care to play the part of
Cassandra. In a few words I will name one or two points
in which the college seems to have gained ground since
I came up in 1844.
COMMEMORATION SERMON 161
The endowments are more effectively applied, so that
it is possible, as we saw the other day, for a boy from
a London board school to pass through a Johnian fellow-
ship to a professorship in New Zealand. Many more
subjects are studied now, with far better appliances;
lecturers can concentrate their attention on a limited
field ; text-books are more exhaustive and research more
universal; our younger graduates more often study in
foreign universities. Then in Cambridge the poorer
residents greatly value the College concerts, which are a
proof that we are beginning to hold our advantages as
a trust for the community, not for selfish enjoyment ; we
have too much recreation, the poor have far too little.
The college mission must reassure those of our friends
who, with the kindest intentions, have for some years
informed the world that we have cast off the faith ; in the
first thirty years of my life here no sermon ever produced
a tangible result like Lady Margaret's Church, Wai worth.
One word about work remaining to be done.
Two great libraries, Bp Fisher's, the richest in
England, and Abp Williams's, were lost to us in troublous
times. We cannot make good the loss, but if each
Johnian would endeavour, wherever he goes, to inquire
for books published by members of the college, or for
records of their lives, and would send his acquisitions to
our librarian, in a few years our stores would be of price-
less value to the historian of letters. For many years
I have sent books to the libraries to which they by
birthright belonged, whether our Public Library, or the
Bodleian, or college libraries, or Stony hurst, or Protestant
nonconformist institutions. We may be loyal to our own
church and yet desire that every other communion should
M. 8. 11
162 COMMEMORATION SERMON
breed men learned in its annals. If we give, we shall
soon receive.
It depends on us whether this place shall be a more
or less comfortable club, or a home of sound learning.
Both it cannot be. Epicurus and Metrodorus vied with
one another who could spend least on the wants of the
body. The gentlemen who dined in London the other
day for 16 a head wished to rival Vitellius. Epicurus
tells us that he found pleasure in curtailing his desires ;
if any one has a prejudice against the observance of Lent,
the May term affords an unexceptionable stage for experi-
ments in abstinence.
Sallust's remark has passed into a proverb : * It is easy
to maintain empire by the arts whereby it was won at the
first.' Newton and Bentley had means of research far
inferior to ours, and perhaps for that very reason they did
more : they learnt self-reliance. Cobet, the most soul-
stirring teacher of this age, made his pupils begin Greek
anew by closing their lexicons. We do not learn English
by looking out every word we hear or see, but by continual
practice in speaking and reading ; gradually the meaning
of words dawns upon us. The pushing throng of aids to
learning shuts us out from the Canaan of our day-dreams,
from the sources of ancient wisdom. If we once more,
like Lipsius and Casaubon, read the Greeks for their
moral doctrines, if like Gataker we seriously compare the
Stoic rule of life with the Christian, we shall learn that
against a mechanical philosophy the Greek sages and the
Hebrew are at one. It is idle, it is weak, to complain
that such books as de La Mettrie's L'homme machine are
reprinted in this age and make converts. Let us hear in
such conversions a divine call to us in our own action,
COMMEMORATION SERMON 163
whether as churchmen or citizens, to trust to spirit and to
life, rather than to complex machinery. None but a
madman could see in Luther an automaton; if we had
a spark of Luther's faith, we should laugh at those who
explain spiritual life faith, hope, love by the random
clash of atoms. Atz/o? ySacrtXeuet, TOV A/' ef eX?7\aaJ9.
The greatest of the masters of Trinity College, Isaac
Barrow, like our greatest master, William Whitaker, died
at the early age of 47. The most industrious of men,
Barrow must have carried all generous hearers with him,
when pleading thus for industry in our particular calling,
as gentlemen and scholars.
'How, being slothful in our business, can we answer
for our violating the wills, for abusing the goodness, for
perverting the charity and bounty of our worthy founders
and benefactors, who gave us the good things we enjoy,
not to maintain us in idleness, but for supports and
encouragements of our industry ? how can we excuse
ourselves from dishonesty and perfidious dealing, seeing
that we are admitted to these enjoyments under condition
and upon confidence (confirmed by our free promises and
most solemn engagements) of using them according to
their pious intent, that is, in a diligent prosecution of
our studies; in order to the service of God and of the
public ?
' Let every scholar, when he misspendeth an hour, or
sluggeth on his bed, but imagine that he heareth the
voice of those glorious kings, or venerable prelates, or
worthy gentlemen, complaining thus and rating him :
W hy, sluggard, dost thou against my will possess my estate ?
why dost thou presume to occupy the place due to an
industrious person ? Why dost thou forget or despise thy
112
164 COMMEMORATION SERMON
obligations to my kindness ? Thou art an usurper, a robber,
or a purloiner of my goods ; which I never intended for
such as thee : I challenge thee of wrong to myself, and of
sacrilege toward my God, to whose service I devoted those
his gifts to me.
' How reproachful will it be to us, if that expostulation
may concern us. Wherefore is there a price in the hand of
a fool to get wisdom, seeing he hath no heart to it?'
Prov. xvii. 16.
Our late master will always be kept in memory by
this chapel, and by the unfailing prudence which steered
the college through the breakers of unrest. More than
200 years ago Bp Gunning had bequeathed 300 towards
a new chapel, but we had to wait till the 12th of May
1869 before this building was opened for daily service.
Let me recall one of the lessons taught by Dr Bateson
from the master's seat. ' Suppose a college like our own,
founded in a remote age to foster learning and the arts,
to be a centre of intellectual life and of moral influence....
Suppose there be in such a college, with every incentive
and appliance for learning and study, a band of students
sent hither from year to year with bright hopes and noble
aspirations, yet many of them neglecting or misusing the
opportunities for good, acquiring evil habits and indulging
in vicious propensities, and gradually becoming a gnawing
care to their parents and friends and finally a burthen to
themselves, may we not ask whether a student's life in a
noble college like this is not in danger of becoming worse
than a wasted opportunity ? '
I have spoken of the college, but a college is after
all only a member of a larger body ; when the university
COMMEMORATION SERMON 165
suffers, it is unnatural, it is impossible, for us not to
suffer too.
To-day we have given to earth what is mortal of a
loyal son of the university, who knew and loved its history
as few had done, deserving to rank with Thomas Fuller,
Thomas Baker, William Cole and Charles Henry Cooper.
No man perhaps was ever more deeply versed in the
chronicles of mediaeval England. Like many under-
graduates some 47 years ago, he was inspired by the
Dark Ages and other essays of the acute and witty
Samuel Roffey Maitland, in whom St John's boasts the
father of modern historical criticism, and to whom, as in
private duty bound, I feel gratitude and reverence for
encouragement generously given to my early studies in
church history.
Luard was a mathematician, but he was also an accom-
plished, ardent scholar, to whom as to Cobet, whom in
many things he resembled Bentley, Dawes, John Taylor,
Markland, Tyrwhitt, Porson, Dobree, Elmsley, Gaisford,
Monk, Blomfield, were intimate friends ; he was encom-
passed by their relics and literally sat in Person's chair.
I never met in any professed philologist so exact an
acquaintance with the emendations on which critical
fame rests.
In defiance of broken health, and of the bereavement
which cast a gloom on his last years, making him long
for death, he was an untiring student almost to the very
end. Chastened in the school of suffering, constrained to
dwell much abroad, he moved among foreign churchmen
and authors, as amongst the poor of Great St Mary's, an
ambassador of whom Cambridge need not be ashamed.
He was a constant friend, true to the wholesome Trinity
166 COMMEMOBATION SERMON
tradition that flattery degrades receiver and giver; he
had indeed a gracious courtesy of manner telling of French
descent, but words smoother than butter, softer than oil,
could no more be wrung from him than from Hugh
Munro, William Hepworth Thompson, or the prophet
Isaiah himself.
Of the registraries his predecessors John Taylor alone
rivalled him in learning, while none approached him in
ungrudging pains lavished upon his office, the mere routine
of which became of late years overwhelming. Mathe-
matician, bibliographer, antiquary, historian, linguist,
divine, he united in his single self, like his friend our
own Churchill Babington, interests and capacities which
the division of labour tends more and more to keep
asunder ; if the whole gains, the individual will assuredly
be dwarfed.
Not their own, ah ! not from earth was flowing
That high strain to which their souls were tuned,
Year by year we saw them inly growing
Liker Him with Whom their hearts communed.
Then to Him they pass'd ; but still unbroken,
Age to age, lasts on that goodly line,
Whose pure lives are, more than all words spoken,
Earth's best witness to the life divine.
Subtlest thought shall fail, and learning falter,
Churches change, forms perish, systems go,
But our human needs, they will not alter,
CHRIST no after age shall e'er outgrow.
167
10 istrilrate
ST JOHN'S
1st Sunday in Lent
11 February 1894
168
Christianity is not a sum of isolated observances. It is the
hallowing of all human interests and occupations alike. Worship
is a very small fragment of devotion. The Christian does not offer
to GOD part of his life or of his endowments in order that he may
be at liberty to use the rest according to his own caprice. All life,
all endowments, are equally owed to our Lord, and equally claimed
by Him. Every human office in every part is holy. Our conduct
our whole conduct is a continuous revelation of what we are. At
each moment we are springs of influence. Virtue goes out of us
also or weakness. Our silence speaks. We who profess to be
Christians must from day to day either confirm or disparage our
Creed. Our faith our want of faith must shew itself. It is
finally the soul which acts. The body is but its instrument. Under
this aspect it is evident that the voice of conscience repeats in our
hearts the words of St Paul : Whether ye eat or drink, or whatever
ye do, do all to the glory of GOD. Do all, that is, so as to make the
purpose and the will of GOD His love and righteousness, His com-
passion and grace better known and more inwardly prevailing.
B. F. WESTCOTT, The Incarnation and Common
Life (1893), 128, 129.
169
We cannot in many cases expect to see the issue of our labours,
but we can foresee it in faith ; and for the present no reward can
be more satisfying than to know that another has had benefit
through our ministry. It is a reward which stirs to fresh activity.
The desire to serve more perfectly, more bountifully, increases with
the sense of the joy which comes from each partial effort. The
terrible contrasts of life are found to be less perplexing when love
is enabled to use them as an opportunity for fresh endeavours after
fellowship. If personal wealth has a tendency to encourage selfish
indulgence and display, to exaggerate the value of the services
which it can command, to occupy and absorb the possessor in
sordid cares, the thoughtful use of it, as a responsible trust, deepens
the sense of our social dependence, discloses pleasures which do not
cloy by continuance, quickens and extends the power of the common
life. If the love of money is, as all experience teaches, a root of all
evil, the use of money as an instrument of GOD is a spring of divine
force.
B. F. WESTCOTT, The Incarnation and
Common Life (1893), 200.
/, A B, elected scholar, do solemnly promise that I mil submit
myself cheerfully to the discipline of the College and obey its orders,
according to the Statutes. So far as in me lies, I will endeavour, by
diligence and innocency of life, to promote its peace, honour and well-
being, as a place of education, religion, and learning.
DECLARATION OP SCHOLARS OF ST JOHN'S COLLEGE.
170
But what is the meaning of this coming to the Father by the
Son ? Can these theological mysteries be translated into common
experience when we close our books and go forth into the open air ?
It is in the open air that we may best learn what they mean. We
know that there is around us what we call the world : we have been
told, and we partly believe, that there is above us One whom we
call God. We know that at every moment we are acted on by the
world : we are told, and we partly believe, that we were created and
that we are sustained by God. We know that we cannot stir a
finger without ourselves acting on some part of the world : we are
told, and we partly believe, that all we do is marked and judged by
God. We know that the world is full of objects which attract that
which is in us, drawing forth our desires and energies towards
them : we are told, and we partly believe, that God claims the
direction of our hearts to Him. Our time, our capacity, our mental
and bodily force are limited : how are we to apportion them between
the world which we hear calling to us from around and from below,
and the God whom we suppose to be calling to us from above ?
Are the two powers entirely at variance, or do they at all coincide
in their requirements, and if so, how far ?
F. J. A. HORT, The Way, the Truth, the Life
(Cambridge 1893), 160.
171
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Charge them that are rich in the present world, that they be not
high-minded, nor have their hope set in the uncertainty of riches, but
on God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy ; that they do good,
that they be rich in good works, that they be ready to distribute,
willing to communicate. 1 Tim. vi. 17, 18.
MANY years ago, in the chapel of the London
Oratorians, I heard Father Faber preach on almsgiving.
He attacked the church of his baptism for Inkewarmness
in regard to this branch of duty to our neighbour. Noble
works of charity, he allowed, issue from our communion,
but as fruits of our discipline, he gave us no credit for
them. We must declare the universal obligation of
stinting ourselves to feed the poor; we must denounce
woe on all who neglect this elementary obligation of the
Christian life. Otherwise works of mercy amongst us
must be regarded as happy inconsistencies, exotics, which
had strayed into our wilderness from the Roman paradise,
where alone they were native to the soil. With charac-
teristic hardihood he held up the example of Naples to
put London to the blush.
Must the Church of England plead guilty to this
indictment ? Has she no heart for the sufferings of our
172 READY TO DISTRIBUTE
Lord in His poor ? Or had the renegade's memory played
him false as to her authentic teaching ?
Our Thirty-eighth Article upholds, against Anabaptist
communism, the right of Christians to enjoy private
property. But it adds, in the same breath, 'Notwith-
standing, every man ought, of such things as he possesseth,
liberally to give alms to the poor, according to his ability.'
One of our homilies is entitled : ' Of Alms-doing.'
Deacons promise at ordination ' to search for the sick,
poor, and impotent people of the parish,... that... they may
be relieved with the alms of the parishioners, or others.'
The bishop at his consecration is examined in certain
articles, the last of which is: 'Will you shew yourself
gentle, and be merciful for Christ's sake to poor and
needy people, and to all strangers destitute of help ? ' He
answers : ' I will so shew myself, by God's help.'
The litany and communion service enforce the same
lesson on the laity.
He must know little of our country's church history,
of the origin and growth of colleges, schools, hospitals,
who will not bear witness to the generosity and alacrity
with which our bishops and clergy have fulfilled their
solemn promise and vow. Take one example, the martyr
John Hooper. John Foxe speaks as an eye-witness :
Twice I was in Bishop Hooper's house at Worcester, where, in
his common-hall, I saw a table spread with good store of meat, and
beset full of beggars and poor folk. And I asking his servants what
this meant, they told me, that every day their lord and master's
manner was to have customably to dinner a certain number of poor
folk of the said city by course, who were served by four at a mess
with wholesome meats. And when they were well served, being
before examined by him or his deputies of the Lord's prayer, the
articles of the faith, and ten commandments, then he himself sat
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down to dinner and not before ;... being spare of diet, sparer of
words, sparest of time.
Those who know the story of Little Gidding will
remember how Nicholas Ferrar also combined food for
soul and body in his alms.
If there was one teacher whom Mr Faber and his
school laid under ban as a corrupter of youth, it was
Thomas Arnold. Yet from Arnold's life and works Lenten
lessons might be culled, earnest and persuasive as those of
any famous master of fasting under the Roman obedience,
and far more manly. Thus he says :
I can imagine hardly anything more useful to a young man of
an active and powerful mind, advancing rapidly in knowledge, and
with high distinction either actually obtained, or close in prospect,
than to take him or much better, that he should go of himself to
the abodes of poverty, and sickness, and old age. Everything there
is a lesson ; in everything Christ speaks, and the Spirit of Christ
is ready to convey to his heart all that he witnesses. Accustomed
to all the comforts of life, and hardly ever thinking what it would
be to want them, he sees poverty and all its evils, scanty room,
and too often scanty fuel, scanty clothing, and scanty food. Instead
of the quiet and neatness of his own chamber, he finds, very often,
a noise and a confusion which would render deep thought impossible ;
instead of the stores of knowledge with which his own study is
filled, he finds perhaps only a prayer-book and a Bible. Then let
him see and it is no fancied picture, for he will see it often if he
looks for it how Christ is to them that serve Him, wisdom at
once, and sanctification, and blessing. He will find, amidst all
this poverty, in those narrow, close and crowded rooms... old age,
and sickness, and labour, borne, not only with patience, but with
thankfulness, through the aid of that Bible, and the grace of that
Holy Spirit who is its Author.
Arnold, speaking to schoolboys more than sixty years
ago, maintains that ' the profitable duty of visiting the
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poor ' concerns his hearers in the springtime of their life.
The founders of school and college missions are only
following in the track laid down with prophetic foresight
at Rugby before the Reform Bill of 1832. He continues :
It would indeed be a blessed thing, and would make this place
really a seminary of true religion and useful learning, if those among
us who are of more thoughtful years, and especially those who are
likely to become ministers of Christ hereafter, would remember
that their Christian education has commenced already, and that he
cannot learn in Christ's school who does not acquaint himself some-
thing with the poor. Two or three at first, five or six afterwards,
a very small number might begin a practice which, under proper
regulation, and guided by Christian prudence, as well as actuated
by Christian love, would be equally beneficial to the poor and to
yourselves. Depend upon it the time must come, and come speedily,
when the spirit of the schools of the prophets, such as we read of in
Israel in old times, must be revived amongst us here, or a worse
fate than that of Jerusalem will be ours. If such were the case, if
young men here remembered that they were preparing to become,
some, ministers of Christ, and all His servants and if therefore
they would begin, even here, to practise Christ's lessons, and to
follow Christ's example, I should not dread, but fully rejoice in the
highest exertion of their intellectual powers ; and a blessing, both on
themselves and others, would come upon that pursuit of truth which
did not exclude humility, and ministered to the purposes of charity,
and to the service of Christ.
Another voice may speak for the Cambridge of this
generation, as Arnold for the Oxford of the last. The
Bishop of Durham is putting into practice lessons learnt
and taught at Birmingham, Harrow, and Cambridge. The
Gospel, the centre of his life-long study, still, as of old,
speaks with living force to the poor. The war of capital
and labour, envenomed by agitators who traffic in votes, is
hushed by one whom none that knows him, even by look,
can take for a hireling. Dr Westcott says :
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We can feel at once, when we come to reflect, that service is a
necessary element in every Christian life. It is through service
rendered to others that we can secure that we can alone secure
our own personal growth. And this being so, my friends, surely it
must strike us with wonder to see the overwhelming disproportion
between the number of those who bear the name of Christ, and the
number of avowed Christian workers. I speak, of course, only of
our own communion ; but certainly at present we have not, in our
great National Church, claimed from every Churchman the fulfilment
of his own proper work. We must claim it. We cannot rightly
rest till every churchman... is a church worker.
We need then some fellowship which shall bind together all
workers of all classes, all men and women, in their endeavours to
do, in the words of our communion office, ' all such good works as
our Father has prepared for us to walk in.'
And again :
Almsgiving is the natural, the necessary expression of a healthy
Christian character. The Christian cannot but be communicative
of the goods which he has. Almsgiving is not a concession to
importunity, by which we free ourselves from unwelcome petitioners :
it is not a sacrifice to public opinion, by which we satisfy the claims
popularly made upon our place or fortune : it is not an appeal for
praise : it is not a self-complacent show of generosity : it is not, in
a word, due to any external motive. It is the spontaneous outcome
of life.
I might multiply evidence without end to prove that
English churchmen need not reinforce the Italian mission
in order to learn the second great commandment.
The Quinquagesima collect and epistle remind us that
our Liturgy connects Lenten abstinence, self-denial, with
almsgiving. We should scorn to give to God that which
costs us nothing.
What can we save this Lent ?
A Cambridge philosopher, lecturing lately in London
on luxury, called attention to the ambiguity of the word ;
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what is to one man a luxury, is to another, or to the same
man, at another period of life, an ordinary comfort, even a
necessary.
The remark is just, and conveys an important warning.
Whosoever committeth sin at first with repugnance, by
habit losing shame and self-control becomes at last the
willing victim, the bond-slave of sin ; even so, whoever
spends money for that which is not bread, and labour for
that which satisfieth not, is in danger of being by his
artificial appetite enthralled. Starving men, we are told,
have refused bread for their accustomed stimulant or
narcotic.
Heathen gods were patrons and incarnations of excess.
We Christians are taught to ask of our Heavenly Father,
bread, the simplest and most universal of all foods, and
that not for ourselves only, but for all His children : not
my bread, but our bread.
Even if they cost us nothing, manufactured cravings
must be eschewed by all who covet health of body and
mind. My honoured friend, Dr Db'llinger, who attained
his ninetieth year in perfect sanity, would often say:
L'homme ne meurt pas, il se tue ' Men do not die, they
kill themselves.' It is a common-place with the few
modern physicians who study diet and its effects on the
body, that many a man shortens his days by strong drink
is emphatically ' the worse for drink ' who was never
drunk in his life. And proverbs, not a few, testify in
Seneca's words : Multos morbos multa fercula fecerunt
'Many dishes, many diseases.'
In Seneca's age men of luxury fitted up a pauper's
cell in their mansions, where from time to time they would
live as poor men live, on hard fare, in coarse clothing,
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lying on the bare boards. Lent affords an occasion to
gauge our loss of freedom. Let us refrain from some
customary indulgence. If the abstinence is irksome,
* forewarned is forearmed ' ; let us make it perpetual. Nor
should we regard our own liberty only. St Paul in his
two greatest epistles lays down the Christian rule of
choice in things called indifferent, that is neither absolutely
commanded nor absolutely forbidden. He jealously resents
all abridgement of his own freedom in principle, as a
matter of abstract theory and dogma; for himself he
knows no weak scruples. Since the day when the Lord
made all meats clean by His universal charter of release,
there is nothing from without the man that going into him
can defile him. Christians must not make unclean what
God hath cleansed. In St Paul's casuistry there is no
room for works of supererogation, because no man ever
satisfied the searching demands of God's positive law,
which requires the sacrifice of the whole man, body, soul,
and spirit. For a like reason the Apostle will not create
imaginary sins, ficta peccata ; our real sins are enough and
more than enough. Whatsoever is set before you, eat,
asking no question for conscience sake. All things are
lawful for me ; but it does not follow that, when it is a
question of practice, I insist on doing all lawful things.
Often I prove my liberty by abstinence. My right is
mine to be surrendered. All things edify not: all things
are not expedient : I will not be brought under the power
of any. Destroy not with thy meat him for whom Christ
died. If meat maketh my brother to stumble, I will eat no
flesh for evermore lest I make my brother to stumble.
In the debate last week in the Canterbury convocation,
it was stated that intemperance is on the increase in the
M. 3. 12
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universities ; that ' drunkenness in moderation ' is scarcely
felt to be a disgrace. If so, the duty of all who are in
danger, or whose friends are in danger, is as plain as their
interest. There are in this town, and in every large town
in the land, many earnest workers for temperance, who
have seen, some of them, fathers or brothers or messmates
descend into a drunkard's grave. To all who are hovering
on the brink of ruin they propose this dilemma : ' If you
find it hard to abstain, abstain for your own sake ; if easy,
surely it is no great hardship to abstain for your neigh-
bour's safety.' Such men are the seal of God's Spirit on
St Paul's words : Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever
ye do, do all to the glory of God.
For some among us the call of Lent may be not
to generosity, not to charity, but to bare justice. At
Egyptian feasts a skeleton formed one of the party.
Revelry would often come to an untimely end if the
economic history of the host suddenly, as by some mystic
MENE MENE, flashed upon the guests; father perhaps,
mother and sisters, pinched for years to enable the hope
of the house to enter college ; or tradesmen the real,
though unwilling and unthanked, givers of the feast.
A resolution never to run into debt, never to gamble,
would be a worthy Lenten offering.
By an oversight of the last commissioners considera-
tions of poverty were struck out of the qualifications for
scholarships and fellowships. That the bounty of ascetics
like Lady Margaret and Bishop Fisher, who lived for and
with the poor, should endow luxury, is plainly an abuse.
Extravagant habits, encouraged by an accumulation of
scholarships, have been known to blast a life of high
promise. Such a fall may be averted in various ways.
KEADY TO DISTRIBUTE 179
The stipend may be returned to the college ; restitution
of this kind is by no means unknown, and would no doubt
be more frequent if the opportunity were more distinctly
offered. There is abundance of public spirit here, only it
needs direction.
Some, as the late librarian of Corpus Christi, Bishop
Lightfoot, and very many of the clergy, spend their whole
professional income for public ends. Such examples of
the consecration of wealth are always seasonable, especially
to the young. Nor need we scruple to supply ourselves,
even beyond what is absolutely necessary, with books for
our own use, the tools of a scholar, the only property
valued by St Paul.
I would plead also for the needs of the university and
colleges, and of the church. Why should Benedictines
and Jesuits be more loyal to their foundations than we
who inherit traditions of freedom ? If each of us adopted
some one Cambridge worthy, and collected his works and
investigated his history for preservation in our libraries,
we should add a new interest to our lives and new glories
to our annals. I gratefully acknowledge the 'services of
our college magazine in this direction. Again, enquire
what libraries over the world would welcome, and turn to
fruitful account, books of great intrinsic value which now
moulder in the dust, a mere encumbrance to the ware-
houses of our universities. A few thousand pounds spent
in furnishing home and foreign missions, the Old Catholics
of the continent, our sister churches of Ireland, Scotland,
and America, with treasures precious as ever, though
neglected by the caprice of passing fashion I say, a
moderate sum so spent would carry far and wide the light
which universities exist to diffuse. Mrs Spurgeon set an
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180 READY TO DISTRIBUTE
example here which we might do well to follow. Diogenes
the cynic, when sold as a slave, was asked by his purchaser
of what art he was master ? He replied : ' I know how to
rule.' So St Paul, poor as he was, tells us, I know how
to abound. It is a great art, and therefore we pray for
deliverance in all time of our wealth. General Gordon
was an adept in this art. China and Egypt could not
understand a man who returned four-fifths of the salary
assigned to him. Yet it stands blazoned in history that
money has never made the true man. Read the story of
apostles, philosophers, martyrs, reformers, missionaries, of
our colleges three hundred and sixty years ago, and you
will learn that the best work has always been done by
men of fewest wants and most unshaken faith. When
the Twelve went out without purse or scrip, they lacked
nothing. There are some men who, we feel sure, would
live as simply in possession of boundless wealth as they
do on a scanty income. Several of the great American
philanthropists, as Peabody, were of this sterling type.
But few heads are strong enough not to be turned by a
sudden whirl of Fortune's wheel.
We are labouring here under a burden of books. Fifty
years ago no library was open to undergraduates, but they
formed libraries for themselves. Now we must go, it
seems, to Uganda to find a genuine thirst for letters.
Bishop Tucker in six months sold 35,000 books at three
or four times the English price. One reason for the decay
of interest in books is the slavish way in which we read
them, not for our own needs, but to satisfy an examiner.
I am told that Paley's manual of Evidences is supposed
to be obsolete. If I had read, not the original, but a bald
compendium, I should certainly loathe the subject myself.
READY TO DISTRIBUTE 181
But the university recommends, not a summary of Paley,
but Paley himself to our notice. Let us make ourselves
at home in Paley's works, and in the records of his life ;
let us survey the part he played in the reform of studies
here, and in social reforms in after years. His style is a
model of perspicuity and strength. We shew contempt
for the university when we study, not the classic which
she commends to our attention, but a worthless change-
ling. So with the humanities ; for weary years we wander
in the wilderness of crude grammar, and thus never reach
the promised land of ancient letters which Ascham's pupils
entered from the first.
Sometimes the question is asked, why a student here
is idle, while his sister at Newnham or Girton is almost
sure to be diligent. Dissipation of energy accounts for
the sloth of the one, concentration of energy for the eager-
ness of the other. The sister is carefully shielded from
temptations, not merely to downright vice, but to frivolous
society and amusement ; the brother is so overwhelmed
with good-fellowship that he has no time to reflect that a
student's calling, the very reason and justification of his
existence and of his name, is to study. As with time, so
with money. The sister has little or no opportunity of
running into debt ; the brother finds it sometimes difficult
not to ape the expenditure of his rich acquaintance ;
unawares, blindfold, he falls into a snare from which it
may take years to escape. In Seneca's first epistle he
urges Lucilius to claim the mastery of himself, to gather
and treasure the precious time, the only true possession
of man, which hitherto was wrested from him by force,
or filched by cunning, or slipt noiselessly away. We die
daily, he says with his contemporary St Paul ; while we
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look forward to death, a great part of death is already
past and gone. And Pliny, in the seventh letter of his
first book, shews how in fashionable society time flits away
in the busy idleness of compliment ; conventional engage-
ments crowd out the thought of work. Strenua nos
exercet inertia. The greatest curse of luxury, moralists
warn us, is the loss of time. If our students would stickle
for an eight-hours day, eight hours of silent and solitary
study, ' never less alone than when alone ' with the mighty
dead, we should have fewer shipwrecked careers to lament.
We cannot, and would not if we could, return to the
monastic discipline of 1525, but if outward law controls
your steps less and less, see to it that you become as the
heathen whom St Paul admired, a law unto yourselves.
Walk in the one Way, in the light of the one Truth, the
Sun of Righteousness, that you may lay hold of eternal
Life. 'Scorn delights and live laborious days.' Neglect
not, there is little danger of your neglecting the dis-
cipline of the body, but remember that ancient sages
and physicians contrasted the athlete's body, gross and
incapable of sustained effort, with the soldier's body
seasoned to endurance and to abstinence. Galen was
physician to athletes, and he, with all antiquity, pours
contempt on the athlete's mind. Plato cautions us that
a gentleman may carry exercise to an illiberal excess ; he
may degenerate into a professional swordsman or runner.
Do not make a trade of recreation ; let it not benumb your
thought or engross your conversation.
As we see generation after generation haunt these
seats of learning, we know that some will go away the
worse, not the better, for the time spent here; the
traditions of the place will not colour their lives; our
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venerable buildings, as Canon Browne told the extension
students last summer, will be known only ' as the nearest
way to the boats/ Such idlers will certainly bear away
no good report of us ; but the fault may perhaps be theirs
and not ours; they may hate us with the hatred which
man harbours to those whom he has injured ; odisse quos
laeseris; we may be to blame; they must be to blame.
For suppose our whole society were a godless, careless
crew, and one single Abdiel, humbly but bravely, every
where and at all times, confessed the faith of Christ
crucified, alone in the worship of this chapel, alone with
the officers of the church at the table of the Lord; can
you doubt that such a man would carry away a grateful
memory of his sojourn here ? above all rejoicing that the
right of the Church of England, even if represented by
one single member, to that daily order of open prayer for
which St John's was founded, is scrupulously respected ?
Never was a nobler example of a c general artist ' than
Isaac Barrow. In his sermon on 'Industry in our par-
ticular calling, as gentlemen and scholars,' he sets forth
the peculiar guilt of slackness in our high service here.
With his words I will conclude:
How, being slothful in our business, can we answer for violating
the wills, for abusing the goodness, for perverting the charity and
bounty of our worthy founders and benefactors, who gave us the
good things we enjoy, not to maintain us in idleness, but for support
and encouragement of our industry ? How can we excuse ourselves
from dishonesty and perfidious dealing, seeing that we are admitted
to these enjoyments under condition and upon confidence (confirmed
by our free promises and most solemn engagements) of using them
according to their pious intent, that is, in a diligent prosecution of
our studies, in order to the service of God and of the public ?
184
After the idea of walking in righteous ways or 'ways of the
Lord ' has long prevailed, the thoughts turn inward and the com-
munion with God rises to a higher level.
Then a difference is felt to exist among men analogous to that
which distinguishes a body from a corpse. Among those who are
engaged in every pursuit of life there is felt to be something in some
which is not in others. The outward fashion of the doings differs
little or not at all. All are pursuing the same occupations, meet
with the same accidents of life, and are subject to the same cycle of
change. Yet the psalmist or wise man or prophet whose heart has
been in the presence of God feels that the common busy life of
many is in itself as the state of a corpse in contrast with the state
of others not outwardly different but who have learnt to look up
to God.
In these last there is a second life, a life within and above that
universal life which they share with all that breathe, a life exempt
from being dried up, for it flows from an ever-living fountain in
the heavens.
F. J. A. HORT, The Way, the Truth, the Life
(Cambridge 1893), 191, 192.
185
r Jfeixr tt0r
ST JOHN'S
19 January 1896
186
Non dissimile Platonis illud est, quod aiebat se gratias agere
naturae : primum quod homo natus esset potius quam mutum
animal, deinde quod mas potius quam femina, quod Graecus quam
barbarus, postremo quod Atheniensis et quod teinporibus Socratis.
LACT. Inst. in. 19, 17 (cf. Plut. Mar. 46.
Diog. Laert. I. 33).
The secret of true breeding, its beginning and the special key to
it, lies in the mastery over selfishness and particularly over dissipa-
tion. Hence it happens that often a very plain man, without much
knowledge or acquaintance with so-called good society, is never-
theless better bred than a gentleman of fashion or a scholar. He
surpasses them in the essence of breeding, and has taken the easiest
road to acquire it. Of all people whom I myself have known,
peasants, artisans and servants have been the best, indeed they
alone have really taken all the commandments of Christianity
seriously and have endeavoured to fulfil them ; when they do not
perform their duty to the utmost, they are not spared, but sharply
reproved. For the so-called upper classes one cannot say as much.
Prof. CARL HILTY, Gluck (Part n.
Leipzig 1896), 164, 165.
187
NEITHER JEW NOR GREEK
For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ.
There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free,
there can be no male and female : for ye are all one man in Christ
Jesus. Gal. iii. 27, 28.
Lie not one to another ; seeing that ye have put off the old man
with his doings, and have put on the new man, which is being renewed
unto knowledge after the image of Him that created him : where there
cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian,
Scythian, bondman, freeman ; but Christ is all, and in all. Col. iii.
9, 11.
CONSULT the wisest and best informed contemporaries
of St Paul or of his Master. Ask what nation bore the
palm for bigotry, for exclusiveness, for hatred of the
human race. All with one voice assign the bad pre-
eminence to the sons of Abraham. A learned critic, the
latest editor of Juvenal, acquits his author of prejudice
against the Jews. Yet the satirist makes proselytes for-
swear all ties of country and of blood, refusing to Gentiles
the most elementary offices of charity. 'None/ he says,
' but the circumcised, votaries of the Mosaic law, will
these renegades lead back to the road which they have
lost, or guide to watersprings in a thirsty land.' And
188 NEITHER JEW NOR GREEK
certainly, if we take Tacitus as a standard of educated
Roman opinion, Juvenal is tolerant in comparison. The
great historian may well have known Josephus personally ;
he probably had some knowledge of the native chronicle
of the Jewish war. He ought to have examined the Old
Testament, which was ready at hand in the Greek. He
is content in blind credulity to repeat slanders against
the worship of Israel which those who know the law and
the prophets would expect to meet on the lips of the
rabble, but not as the deliberate verdict of a philosopher
and statesman.
Even to this day many, as Mr Goldwin Smith, who
calls the Old Testament the Christian millstone, overlook
in the old covenant elements of catholic, universal brother-
hood. They see deeds of blood, words breathing fierce
vengeance, ascribed to men after God's own heart.
Patriarchs, psalmists, prophets, in such outbursts sink to
the level of heathen around them. But the interest of
the Old Testament lies in what we search for in vain
elsewhere ; in its care for the stranger, the fatherless, the
widow ; in its preference of mercy to sacrifice. When
Simeon hailed the glory of God's people Israel, he did not
forget that a light was rising to lighten the Gentiles. The
hope of Abraham was not selfish or tribal ; in his seed all
nations of the earth were to be blessed. St Paul delights
to cull from the records of his country such foretastes of
a universal kingdom of God. The Gentiles shall come to
Thy light, and kings to the brightness of Thy rising. I will
call that My people which was not My people; and her
beloved which was not beloved. Assuredly we shall not
serve the cause of Christianity by cutting it off from its
root; the New Testament itself supplies all needful
NEITHER JEW NOR GREEK 189
cautions : Ye know not what spirit ye are of; Moses for
the hardness of your hearts ; Ye have heard that it was said
to them of old time, but I say unto you.
Think of the brief summary which has come down to
us of St Paul's lecture on Mars' Hill. Are these the
words of a narrow bigot ? The God that made the world
and all things therein, made of one every nation of men,
that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after
Him and find Him. The times of ignorance therefore
God overlooked; but now He commandeth men that they
should all everywhere repent. Compare Plato's confession,
so often contrasted by the early Christians with the
universal message of the Gospel. ' It is hard to find out
the Maker of all, impossible to make Him known to all
men.' Or compare our text with the saying fathered on
Thales or Socrates, or in this form on Plato : ' Thanks be
to Nature, first that I was born a human being, not a
brute beast; next a male, not a female; a Greek, not a
barbarian ; an Athenian and in the days of Socrates.' So
in the Jewish prayers to this day: 'God, I thank Thee
for making me a man, not a woman.' More Christian
sounds the women's thanksgiving to Him who made them
as they are.
Consider St Paul's testimony delivered before each of
the three great fathers of our modern life, the Jew, the
Greek, the Roman. How narrow was the stage from
which Plato or Seneca addressed the world compared with
the audience that still hangs upon the lips of the tent-
maker of Tarsus ! True it is that after the conquests of
Alexander men's horizon expanded. There rose before
the mind visions of a spiritual commonwealth, of which
gods and men were citizens. Diogenes is said to have
190 NEITHER JEW NOR GREEK
anticipated St Paul's charter of universal dominion.
' Friends,' he cried, ' have all things in common ; good
men are friends of the gods ; therefore they are lords of
all.' Yet while we welcome all such testimonies of the
naturally Christian soul, wherever we find them, we must
after all confess with St Paul that to the Jews were
committed in a higher sense the oracles of God ; the Son
of David is the Light of the world, the way, the truth, and
the life.
Max Mtiller has said that the science of language was
born on the day of Pentecost. And certainly the indiffer-
ence of Greeks and Romans to foreign tongues, their
contempt for barbarians, shew strangely by the side of
that missionary zeal which in our days has made the
Bible a classic in every nation under heaven. Many
languages are first reduced to writing in the Scriptures.
There are languages which escape extinction only by
their consecration as vessels of the sanctuary ; thus
Virginian survives as a dead language nowhere but in
John Eliot's Bible. Indeed we may doubt whether even
the three languages inscribed on the Cross do not owe
their enduring place in education, if not their very
preservation in libraries, to the necessities of the Christian
church. What would Tacitus or Pliny or Antoninus have
thought, could they have foreseen that the persecuted
and despised faction would outlive the empire of Rome
and the learning of Greece, or that these world-wide forces
would owe their immortality to the forbearance and
enlightened curiosity of the Nazarenes ? The conception
of the unity of the race is a Christian conception, and so
are the ideas of humanity, of the philosophy of history.
The University which has made accessible the religious
NEITHER JEW NOR GREEK 191
books of all nations, gives as its motto Dominus illumi-
natio mea.
The stern Tertullian even in things indifferent may
widen to the utmost the gulf between the Church and
the world, ' What has Athens to do with Jerusalem, the
Academy with the Church ? Out upon those who have
brought forward a Stoic, a Platonic, a dialectical Chris-
tianity ! ' Wiser, calmer teachers, the Justins, Clements,,
Origens, loved to trace the action of the Divine Word in
Socrates or Plato or Musonius. They had caught the
principle of St Paul's saying, neither Jew nor Gentile,
neither circumcision nor uncircumcision.
In proclaiming the overthrow of barriers, middle walls
of partition, in the Christian Church, St Paul does not
destroy patriotism. Christians are not like the cosmo-
polites of the French revolution, men without a home or
an altar. To St Paul the law was indeed a national
institution, yet not an end but a means, to awaken the
consciousness of sin and a hunger and thirst for righteous-
ness. Like the Baptist, the law must decrease that Christ
may increase. The law teaches us a just discontent,
holding up an ideal, that we may learn how far we fall
short of it. The law must train us to become a law ta
ourselves; to put on Christ; perfect love must cast out
fear. The glory of the law is that historically and morally
it leads to Christ ; as His disciples we are no more bond-
servants but sons; and the divine sonship is not only
a comfort and a hope, but a call to holiness ; Be ye holy
for I am holy. ' Our wills are ours to make them
Thine.'
Barbarian, Sqythian. To Greeks and Romans, though
they boasted that the whole world had its Greek and
192 NEITHER JEW NOR GREEK
Roman Athens, yet in practice all peoples beyond the
favoured two were barbarian; and of barbarians the
Scythians took the lowest rank. Much the same anti-
pathies exist now; Europeans call coloured races by
opprobrious names, and often exterminate them. Mission-
aries, taught by St Paul, see in these outcasts fellow-
citizens with the saints, a chosen generation, a royal priest-
hood. A school of Australians, taught by German
Moravians, has been known to win from Government
larger grants than any English school in the colony.
Patagonians and South Sea Islanders have become new
men, carrying to their neighbours the light which they
have received. Perhaps no district in Great Britain rivals
Uganda in a thirst for Christian teaching, and readiness
to make sacrifices for the faith. The day has long gone
by when no Englishmen could be found to offer themselves
for the mission field; Germans and Danes no longer
furnish recruits to the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel. This very month there was a meeting in
Liverpool of a students' volunteer missionary association.
Both sexes were represented, and many nations, including
Japan. So abundantly is the Lord of the harvest sending
labourers into the harvest.
Neither bond nor free. To Plato and Aristotle slaves
were living tools. Christ did not proclaim a hasty revolu-
tion, but the epistle to Philemon and incidental precepts
elsewhere shew how the bitterness of bondage was
sweetened in the Church. Slaves were the Lord's free-
men, freemen were the Lord's bondsmen. All have a
Master in heaven, neither is there respect of persons
with Him. In the Christian church slaves could become
bishops ; imperial freedmen were numerous among the
NEITHEE JEW NOR GREEK 193
converts. England led the way in striking off the slave's
fetters; and we must never forget, not as a matter of
boast but as an example to encourage or shame us, that
the Johnians, Clarkson and Wilberforce, gave up their
lives to overthrow the slave-trade. Never was university
distinction so big in momentous issues as Clark son's Latin
Essay on the middle passage. The English settlements
in Central Africa may, in the life of many of us, put an
end to the Mohammedan raids which supply the slave
markets of the Turkish Empire.
No male and female. It was almost a paradox
when Musonius pleaded for the right of sisters to share
their brothers' studies. The German historian, Hermann
Schiller, even now derides his proposal to teach philosophy
to women. Yet the prophet Joel had foreseen the day
when the daughters of Israel should prophesy. Women
of refinement, shielded from temptation, are beginning to
ask: Who made us to differ? Wherever their weaker
sisters are in danger, there, like angels of mercy, they
appear to save them : no place, they say, no hour, shall be
devoted to sin; where the tempter is, there the Saviour
shall be in the person of His servants, the King's daughters.
Two women, alike in good breeding, may be living, one
wholly for self, the cause of cruelty even in her choice
of food and clothing, the other wholly for God and the
friendless of her sex. The women of India, of China, cry,
if only by mute sufferings, to their safe sisters here :
Come over and help us. And many neglect the idol
comfort to obey the call. To Zenanas they carry medicine
for body, soul and spirit. Nor do they shrink from
martyrdom; in China last August the sufferers knew a
rapture of joy when their hour came. One who has
M. s. 13
194 NEITHER JEW NOR GREEK
recovered from her wounds tells us that she felt no pain ;
and she is going back to her post of honour and of peril.
Fathers and mothers rejoice that their sacrifice has been
accepted. Well might the whole population of Uganda,
with the king at their head, go forth to greet the first
English ladies who had marched up from the coast.
Already, in India and in China, native ladies are qualified
to practise medicine and to teach ; but it will be long
before they can dispense with European guidance. Even
Christian men in China despaired of teaching their heathen
wives and daughters. 'If ever they are to learn/ they
would say, ' they must learn from women/
We have seen how men heard of the unity of mankind
from Jews and from Christians, from a race and a sect
denounced and hunted down as enemies of the kind, as
atheists and rebels. Years went by, and the church,
ruined by outward success, deserted the principles of its
birth, setting up a human centre for the one cornerstone
of its foundation. It became a kingdom of this world,
ruling by main force, by poisoning truth in its sources,
by closing the Bible, by offering prayers in an unknown
tongue, by forged decretals, by the inquisition and the
stake, by the confessional and enforced celibacy. Mankind
was divided into men, women, and priests, a third class,
divorced from the sanctities and the discipline of home
life. The dead hand of clerical ownership palsied com-
merce and crippled the resources of the state. And when
Luther freed Europe from her Babylonian captivity, the
counter-reformation by assassinations, by wars and slander,
by setting class against class and dividing families, by a
literary policy corrupting history in its documents and in
catechisms for infancy, brought great part of Europe under
NEITHER JEW NOR GREEK 195
the yoke again. Fifty years ago, in Germany especially,
where Protestant and Roman Catholic faculties of theology
lived in academic peace, and reforming prelates dreamt of
a national independent church, a Catholicism arose worthy
of the name, tolerant, learned, charitable.
In such an atmosphere Dollinger grew up, and threw
off prejudice after prejudice as he took a wider view of
Scripture and of the growth of theology. The Vatican
Council destroyed in a day the work of years, making an
Italian priest the centre of unity, the fountain of Christian
dogma. Prelates who had opposed the Papal claims, laid
under ban the very professors who had supplied them
with arguments and with authorities. Governments, even
Protestant governments, persecuted men whose only crime
was that they continued to teach what they were appointed
to teach. As a citizen, a Christian, a theologian, a his-
torian, Dollinger could not accept the Vatican decrees.
Man proposes, God disposes. Pius IX thought by his new
dogmas to unite the world under his sway. Cardinal
Manning hoped for a rich harvest of perverts. But what
has been the result? The most learned divines of the
Vatican church have been lost to Rome, and have formed
plans for the reunion of Christendom more full of promise
than any since the great schism of East and West. At
the Bonn conferences, presided over by Dollinger, repre-
sentatives of the chief historical churches met to find in
how many points, and those fundamental, they were at
one. My revered friend, Bishop Reinkens, who was called
to his rest a fortnight ago, delivered at Cologne in 1872,
in the presence of Bishops Christopher Wordsworth and
Harold Browne, a stirring speech on Christian Union, the
echoes of which have not yet died out.
132
196 NEITHER JEW NOR GREEK
A quarterly review, published at Berne, supplies
common ground on which Russians, Anglicans, Latins,
Greeks, Lutherans, and divines of other churches, discuss
their differences in peace. The Old Catholic Church,
some thirty years ago, counted but one bishop in Holland.
Now there are three in Holland, one (lately two) in
Germany, one in Switzerland, one in Spain, one in Haiti,
one in Mexico, one in the United States ; Portugal, Italy,
Austria are biding their time. And everywhere the help
of Protestants has been sought and often freely given.
Most of the congregations could not have met for public
worship if Protestant churches had not been thrown open
to them. In Switzerland a church has been consecrated
for the joint use of the Swiss Old Catholics and the
American Episcopalian Protestants. Bishops Reinkens
and Herzog have communicated in both kinds with
Anglicans. Not long ago Bishop Reinkens and Professor
Friedrich, the historian of the Vatican Council, asserted
the validity of Anglican orders. All these symptoms are
new in the history of Christendom, and they may be
traced to reaction from the Vatican Council.
If I may apply the subject to our life here, I would
ask : ' Why are we selected from the mass of our country-
men, to spend in study years which others must devote to
winning a livelihood ? Why this preference, as of Jew
over Gentile in religious privilege ? as of Greek over
barbarian in means of culture ? ' Surely not for our own
sakes, but for the public good. Let us read what is best,
custom will make it easy and pleasant. Cambridge has
done much of late years to make the Bible an open book.
Bishop Ryle complains that though there never were so
many Bibles, there is little Bible reading. If every one
NEITHER JEW NOR GREEK 197
who leaves Cambridge were a student of the Bible, what
a bond that would be between men of different Christian
communions, between natural science, and history, and
the Church ! St Paul bids us despise no man, no class of
men. I will only point to one class, who have much
leisure for reading, whose reading we may, some of us, be
able to direct in healthy channels. Only yesterday I read
of a Pembroke man, a Norfolk vicar, who had twice spent
some time in Australia, and learnt the methods of a
voluntary church. His parish consists of 1400 people.
Of their own impulse they are forming a fund for the
improvement of the benefice ; and the vicar testifies that
they are, in the long winter evenings, great readers. Look
at the solid theology of the seventeenth century; ask
yourselves where was the demand for so many editions of
writers like Baxter. If our clergy love good learning, be
sure their flocks will catch the sacred flame. Thy
monies are my delight and my counsellors.
199
(Sootrlg Jmtage
ST MARY'S
Commencement Sunday
17 June 1900
200
Bishop Wren was a true antiquary. He has left collections
wherever he went, as Pembroke hall, where fellow, Peterhouse,
where master, Windsor, where dean, and Ely, where bishop, many
of which Mr Baker hath seen : but being in loose scattered papers
are in danger of perishing. Dr Tanner hath likewise seen many of
this good bishop's collections. The Cambridge men are much
wanting to themselves in not retrieving the names of their worthies.
Mr Baker is the only man I know of there that hath of late acted in
all respects worthily on that head, and for it he deserves a statue.
THOMAS HBARNE, 25 June 1728.
201
A GOODLY HERITAGE
/ have a goodly heritage. Ps. xvi. 6.
NEARLY 400 years ago Bishop Fisher, our Chancellor,
welcoming Henry VII to our borders, deplored the
destruction by fire of our archives. Still, notwithstanding
the loss of title-deeds, there could, he thought, be no doubt
that Paris was daughter of Cambridge. On the 5th of
August 1564, William Master, Public Orator, introduced
Alma Mater to Queen Elizabeth as the fountain-head
both of Oxford and Paris. Oxford took up the gauntlet.
In 1566 the Queen, being there, accepted a defence of
that University, written by Thomas Key or Caius. Arch-
bishop Parker was on the alert. He charged our John
Cains to answer his namesake, and Thomas Hearne, as
late as 1730, honoured the controversy with a reprint.
In the 17th century Brian Twyne and Antony Wood
bore the cudgels for Oxford, Sir Simonds D'Ewes and
Thomas Fuller for Cambridge. On three several days
of March 162^ this question of precedence arrested the
attention of the Lords. Early in 164J a bill before the
Lower House placed Cambridge first. Oxford protested,
202 ELMSLEY
and Cambridge cheered. Sir Simonds D'Ewes, professing
great moderation, stated our case thus :
If I do not prove that Cambridge was a renowned city, at least
500 years before there was a house in Oxford standing, and whilst
brute beasts fed and corn was sown on that place where that city is
now seated : and that Cambridge was a nursery of learning before
Oxford was known to have a grammar-school in it, I will throw up
the bucklers.
In the bill, as carried, Oxford took the lead.
No men deserve better at our hands than Fisher and
Parker, Cains and Fuller, yet here we must forsake them.
Could we fill the years before 1500 with names like
Alexander of Hales, Robert Grosseteste, John Peckham,
Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, William of Occam, Bradwar-
dine, Wiclif, Reginald Pecock, then indeed we might
encroach upon the unknown past; but barren years,
when wealth accumulates and there is little to shew for
it but bricks and mortar, bring no glory to man or
corporation.
In antiquity we now cheerfully vail to Oxford, count-
ing it no treason to say, not in courtesy but as a matter
of right, Oxford and Cambridge. We grudge our sister
no honour that is her due ; rather we resent any slight
cast upon her fame. Take an instance or two. We are
proud, on the whole with reason, of a national work,
maintained by the public spirit of a wealthy bookseller
I mean the Dictionary of Biography, now nearing its com-
pletion. We dare not hint that the Cambridge editor
gave of malice prepense short measure to Oxford worthies
as such. Nor can malice, or any graver crime than
ignorance, be cast in the teeth of the Cambridge scholar
who wrote the account, one of the shortest of the whole
MENDHAM 203
series, of Peter Elmsley (a). Yet short as it is, it sins by
excess even more than by defect. A piece of vulgar
gossip is here, and in two other articles, canonised as
history, though in one article the authority for the story
is decried as untrustworthy, and though nearly fifty years
ran by after Elmsley's death before it found its way into
print. See now what is left untold. Not Samuel Parr,
not Charles Burney, but Peter Elmsley and Peter Paul
Dobree, rank second and third or, if you please, third
and second as Grecians to Richard Porson. In Greek
grammar, in lexicography, in metre, Elmsley was a
discoverer. He was the first to estimate aright the
manuscripts of Sophocles, and one of the first to give
antiquity its due weight in balancing manuscript evidence
generally. Of history he was a master, notably of Church
history, and of the Roman controversy. He approved
Roman Catholic emancipation. From a boy he was a
friend of Robert Southey; by his generosity Southey
was enabled to pursue his studies. After Middleton's
death noluit episcopari, he refused the see of Calcutta,
which fell to Reginald Heber. Turn to the name of Joseph
Mendham. He was a controversialist we are told, and a
list of his works is given. That he brought to light
new evidence, for which Ranke thanked, and the Vatican
librarian Theiner envied him, this we must learn for
ourselves. Do not suppose that Cambridge has no ground
of complaint. John Strype and Joseph Wasse (6) (of whom
Bentley said, ' When I die, Wass will be the most learned
man in England') Strype, I say, and Wasse may pair
off with Mendham and Elmsley.
Standing at the parting of the ways, in the year of
grace 1900, it is natural to glance backward and forward.
204 MATRICULATION LISTS
As for more than half a century my leisure has, from time
to time, been spent on academic history, I will trace a few
lines on which honest toil may expect a reward.
Our first want is an authentic list of all who, if but for
a day, have been enrolled on our boards. Do you ask who
among Englishmen have studied abroad, at Padua, Leyden,
Heidelberg and elsewhere, printed books will tell you.
Oxford too has left us in the lurch. By the zeal of an
American colonel and an English antiquary, employed on
records more complete by far than ours, Alumni Oxonienses
have been carried back to 1500.
Cambridge has printed lists of graduates, and graduates
only, from 1659 to 1884. Following a foolish fashion, set
by Oxford, we started with the Restoration and adopted
an alphabetical order. Many lists of admissions to schools,
colleges, universities are now appearing. All follow the
order of date, so shewing boy or man among his fellows.
Think of the risk of error in compiling a printed index to
a manuscript register. Those who are at home in their
Graduati, a class larger now than of yore, will echo my
cry for reform. The Graduati teem with errors. Even
Dr Luard, one of the most exact of men, dropped all
degrees conferred in one congregation. I forestall an
objection. To set up matriculations will cost money.
For many years they have been set up. I only ask you
to keep the type standing. With the new year and the
new century let us turn over a new leaf musing why
antiquaries, like William Cole, bequeathed their Cambridge
collections away from us to the British Museum. Let us
at least shew some colorable concern for our goodly heri-
tage. At each year's end issue a yearly part, containing
the year's matriculations and degrees. When you have
S. R. MAITLAND 205
parts enough for a volume, furnish it with an index.
Gradually go backward through the centuries. Until
Elizabeth's time there are many gaps ; further back
evidence can be found in the proctors' books. For the
first half of the fifteenth century, and all beyond, we must
be content to wait in patience. Little by little ramblers
will rifle national, municipal and family archives, college
treasuries, diocesan registers, chronicles, statutes of colleges
and monasteries and guilds, letters, wills, epitaphs. Many
such contemporary documents are stored in county his-
tories. Our Roman Catholic students may find employ-
ment to their mind on a Monasticon Cantabrigiense. So
by the year 2000 hundreds of names may be won from
the abyss. Here and there one or another may have
brought back new learning from Italy or Paris, have
collected books, or have endowed or reformed colleges or
churches or religious houses.
Would you learn what we lose by making graduation
the one necessary passport to our lists, take the Thomas
Fuller of our age, Samuel Roffey Maitland. Of him
legends are current, which I can refute from his own lips.
Fifty or sixty years ago Maitland was like Coleridge,
Julius Hare, Thirl wall, John James Blunt, Frederick
Maurice, a voice of power in Cambridge. The Provost
of Trinity College, Dublin, acknowledges the same spell.
Maitland came of Presbyterian stock. To be near William
Hodge Mill he migrated to Trinity from St John's. ' Mill
and I,' he said to me, ' have always been fast friends, but
on the church and other matters of opinion, we agree to
differ.' When the time came for his first degree, Maitland
was confronted by the declaration substituted (by grace
of the Senate 23 June 1772) for subscription to the 39
206 S. R. MAITLAND
articles. 'I could subscribe to the articles, for I do not
know/ he said in his droll way, ' that there is any harm
in them ; but I could not call myself bona fide a member
of the English church, when I was a Presbyterian.' See
the pity of these tests. The Senate in 1772 plumed
themselves on lightening our burden ; for Maitland they
increased its weight. On taking orders, Maitland fell to
the study of prophecy, and gave the death blow to the
uncritical year-day theory. From the days of Flacius
Illyricus and Gottfried Arnold men had sought champions
of the truth among victims of Roman tyranny. Faber
found the two Apocalyptic witnesses in Albigensians and
Waldensians, assumed to represent Reformers before the
Reformation. In a goodly volume, ' Facts and Documents
illustrative of the History, Doctrine, and Rites, of the
ancient Albigenses and Waldenses,' Maitland proved, to
the satisfaction of all later historians, that; the Albigenses
held dualistic tenets. Foxe and Milner being cited against
him, he dissected those writers in criticisms, which for
curious learning and racy humour stand almost alone in
our literature. He was charged with betraying Protes-
tantism. Mr John King of Hull, true to the traditions
of Queens' College, wrote a tract whose very title to us
now-a-days seems startling, 'Maitland not entitled to
censure Milner.' And when in the Essays on the Dark
Ages Robertson, Warton, Jortin, and many another popular
idol was shattered, and the Bible found to have been
known before its discovery by Martin Luther, Maitland
was denounced, e.g. by Merle d'Aubigne", as a traitor to
the Reformation. Maitland's reply absolves him from all
taint of dalliance with Rome. 'If it should be proved
that I am a Crypto-papist and a Tractarian, and the
S. R. MAITLAND. STRYPE 207
properest person in the world to be triplicated with the
gentlemen he has named [Pusey and Newman], yet that
does not affect the matter.' I repeat what I have before
stated in print. Maitland projected a Church History of
his own time, hoping to expose the unfair dealing of
Messrs Pusey and Newman towards his friend Hugh
James Rose. During Rose's illness the Oxford men had
foisted into his organ, the British Magazine, matter
extremely distasteful to him.
The Dark Ages emboldened some would-be monks to
crave Maitland's support and counsel. He replied : ' We
can no more revive the Monastic System than the Feudal
System/ His warnings, in the light of later events, shew
prophetic insight. He guarded himself, writing in 1844,
against the suspicion of Romanising, in words which would
seem to bar cavil. ' No one who fairly and candidly reads
these essays can imagine that I designed to hold up to
imitation what has, since I wrote them, been much talked
of as "the mediaeval system." As to some superstitions
and heresies, and a thousand puerilities, which seem likely
to creep into the Church under that name, I do not feel it
necessary to say anything. I have never, I hope, written
a line which the most ingenious perversion could construe
into a recommendation or even a toleration of them.' The
true Cambridge, ever since I knew it, would I believe
endorse every one of these words, written 56 years ago.
When Dr Maitland shewed me at Gloucester his copy
of Strype, corrected by the Lambeth registers, I coveted it
for the University Library. It is now there, by favour of
Dr Maitland's grandson. There, too, are the Strype and
Patrick papers from Milton Hall, a treasure which also
I had long coveted. In St John's we have Baker's copy
208 CAMBRIDGE AND THE BIBLE
of Strype's Parker, with copious notes. A student of
Church history could brave no more bracing discipline,
could render no more loyal service to his Church and
University, than by editing Strype's works, the corner-
stone of all serious study of the Reformation. I repeat
Dr Maitland's pleas for Strype prizes and Strype examina-
tions. Surely Matthew Parker is worthy of our homage.
Do not forget two other claims of Dr Maitland on our
gratitude. He, if any man, created those societies for
publishing historical documents, which are a glory of the
Queen's reign. The Roman Catholic records, above all,
are a revelation. Maitland also it was who first freed
bibliography from the contempt into which its ape biblio-
mania had plunged it.
Happy the writer whose theme is Cambridge and
the Bible. Erasmus and Tyndal, Taverner and Sir John
Cheke, Cranmer and Parker will pass before him. In Spain
itself no Spanish Bible (c), not even a New Testament,
was printed before 1790. But our Greek Reader, Francis
Enzinas or Dryander, in 1543 dedicated to Charles V
a Spanish translation from the Greek New Testament ;
Cyprian de Valera, fellow of Magdalene, revised the whole
Bible in 1602, after which no Spanish Bible was printed
for near two hundred years. Archbishop Grindal, of
Pembroke, saved from destruction the manuscript of a
Spanish Bible, as the translator, Cassiodoro de Reina,
avows in the dedication. Late in the 16th century
Bishop William Morgan, of St John's, translated into
Welsh the Old Testament and revised the New; in the
17th century the bosom friend of the great Paolo Sarpi,
Bishop Bedell of Emmanuel, caused the Bible to be
translated into Irish ; in the 18th Bishop Mark Hildesley,
TRANSLATORS OF THE BIBLE 209
of Trinity College, into Manx. ' Strange to think that no
one has ever written lives of King James' translators.' It
was a remark of Charles Henry Cooper, and lapse of time
only enhances our wonder at the undeserved neglect.
Cambridge men, at their head the illustrious Andrewes,
took the lead in that work, to which under God England
owes her greatness. Will no young ambition buckle to
a task like this, to be followed after many days by a
gallery of the Victorian companies ? John Eliot, of Jesus,
born at Nazing, Essex, in 1603, the apostle of the Indians,
who died full of years on the 20th January 1690, is best
known by his Bible, in a language long since dead.
It is hard for us now to conceive the storm raised in
Cambridge, 89 years ago, by the inroad of the British and
Foreign Bible Society. Bishop Marsh, who by lectures
to an overflowing audience in this church, had roused his
faculty from its slumbers, and brought criticism of the
Greek Testament into vogue in England Marsh, of all
men, sounded the note of alarm. He proposed a donation
from the chest of 100 to S.P.C.K., and the grace was
carried on the day before that announced for the installa-
tion of the intruder. Simeon, E. D. Clarke, and their
friends, outwitted the enemy by cordially supporting the
grace. In spite of Marsh, Christopher Wordsworth, and
Maltby, the Cambridge Auxiliary (d) was happily launched
on 12 Dec. 1811. Charles Simeon, with fine tact, in the
very thick of the fray, in November, preached before the
University four sermons on the excellency of the Liturgy.
For the new Society, it was foreboded, would damage the
old, the Bible needing the safeguard of the Prayer Book.
William Otter, of Jesus, afterwards Bishop, proved the
panic to be groundless. In his parish the Bible Society
M. s. 14
210 THE BIBLE SOCIETY. CENTURY OF MISSIONS
had given new life to S.P.C.K. To Marsh's credit one
thing must be borne in mind. He aided the heroic
translators of Serampore, who to Sydney Smith (e) were
but 'Anabaptists/ 'a nest of consecrated cobblers/ 'delirious
mechanics/ ' didactic artisans ' ; and to Marsh, Carey and
his brethren turned, not in vain, for comfort after their
disastrous fire.
The century now expiring has witnessed the growth
of Christianity from a European and American to a
world- wide brotherhood ; and from the pioneer chaplains,
Buchanan, David Brown, Corrie, Henry Martyn, Thomason,
down to Pilkington of Uganda, Cambridge soldiers have
fought in the van. For the history of missions much has
still to be done in England. In Germany text-books are
in use in schools and colleges, special libraries are spring-
ing up, and one watchful scout, Gustav Warneck, keeps
in touch with the armies of the Cross in whatever uniform,
under whatever flag they serve.
Take a few heads of promising research : the imperial
ambition of secretary Walsingham ; the chaplaincies at
our merchant factories abroad here Dr J. B. Pearson, of
Emmanuel, has broken ground; the Virginia Company,
as piloted by Nicholas Ferrar and Sir Edwin Sandys;
plans for a colonial church, which like Bishop Berkeley's
and that of the large-minded Archbishop John Sharp, of
Christ's, failed through no fault of the promoters. John
Marshall, of Christ's, prompted by the Master, Dr Covel,
sometime chaplain of our embassy at Constantinople,
spent many years in India, and translated the Puranas.
He read before the Royal Society, in 1700, just two
hundred years ago, 'An account of the religion, rites,
notions, customs, and manners of the Indian priests called
JO. MARSHALL. AL. WHITAKER 211
Bramins.' Marshall took his B.A. degree in 166|, and,
one is glad to find, had a mandate for M.A. in 1704.
Among Covel's papers, in the Harleian MSS., are several
volumes by Marshall, containing accounts of his travels.
Some time ago, at my request, Professor Cowell inspected
the collection and found much that would have been news to
Europe long after Marshall's death. I return to an earlier
name, the apostle of Virginia, Alexander Whitaker(/),
son of that William who was the most learned of all
Masters of St John's. Alexander had his Christian name
from his father's uncle, the excellent Dean Nowell. He
was at Trinity, B.A. 160f, M.A. 1608. Will no Trinity
man revive his memory ? Since Claudius Buchanan
preached in this church, in 1810, on Let there be light,
many and many a language has been reduced to writing
by Cambridge men. Thomas Fanshaw Middleton, William
Jowett, William Hodge Mill, the Bishops Selwyn, father
and son, Jani Alii, these may serve as samples of multi-
tudes who have carried forth from this place that gospel
light and cup of salvation, lucem et pocula sacra, which it
is our mission to receive and pass on. Beacons of that
light have been kindled not at Delhi only, not in Uganda
only, but North and South, East and West, amid eternal
snows where the post comes once a year, amid torrid heat,
in that white man's grave, Sierra Leone. Those who
knew Robert Machray in early days, see with admiration
how he has risen with the increasing demands of his
office. Patriarch of a virgin province of unwieldy range,
Chancellor of a mixed University, Professor of mathematics
and of theology, he seems to find time and strength for
every new duty. Bishop Whipple(#) last year called him
the greatest and grandest missionary of the Cross of
142
212 CAMBRIDGE AND MISSIONS. PECKARD
Christ. Doubtless it is to Christian labourers in our
Colonies, not from our nation alone, not from our Church
alone, that we owe the loyalty, the amazing loyalty, of all
races and creeds in the Empire in our hour of need. Said
Keshub Chunder Sen : ' England holds India not by the
sword, but by the Bible.' Maoris, Malays, Indians of every
caste, French Canadians, even many Dutchmen in South
Africa, rejoice in the Pax Britannica. Since my father
was visited, in September 1825, at his mission station in
Ceylon, by his old Shropshire neighbour, Reginald Heber,
progress has never nagged. In forty years our Indian
congregations multiplied twenty-fold. In 1883 there
were but five Christians, all told, in Uganda. Assuredly
we children of the mission manse, and there are many of
us here, will never be ashamed of that plain living which
was bred in our bone. Nor do missionaries alone deserve
honour. The Church Missionary Society, watched in its
cradle with dismay by our wary Fathers-in-God, has grown
up into the chief power of its class in the world. And
how has it grown ? By the zeal and statesmanship of its
home staff, such as Josiah Pratt, Henry Venn, and many
a soldier or governor from the East.
Yesterday the Propagation Society celebrated its 199th
anniversary. It was founded by Archbishop Tenison, of
Corpus, a true Father of our Church.
Among allies of missions, room must be made for the
uprooters of the Slave Trade. By the side of Clarkson
and Wilberforce the name of Peter Peckard, Master of
Magdalene and benefactor, should never be overlooked.
Not only did he often preach against our national sin, but
as Vice-chancellor, by his choice of a subject for the Latin
Essay, enlisted Clarkson in the holy war. Nor then alone
CAMBRIDGE WILLS 213
did a university prize give a bias to a career. James Bass
Mullinger also and Christopher Wordsworth were by a like
bait enticed to the work of their lives.
There are other points on which I would fain linger,
as the international and interconfessional relations of our
church and university ; our many MSS. still awaiting an
editor, including notes of Bentley, Porson, Dobree(^)
H. R. Luard often pleaded for j ustice to these three lights
of his beloved Trinity; the letters of those Cambridge
writers of news, John Chamberlain, Thomas Lorkin,
Joseph Mede, who interpret for us the university of the
early Stuarts. Of the wills, long since wrenched from
our grasp by absent-minded legislators, and banished to
Peterborough, I have spoken often in the ear to men in
office, and now, as a forlorn hope, here tell it out. Oxford,
without a moment's delay, spoiled the spoiler (i). While
our registrary wept, his brother on the Isis was up in arms.
Vulnus et auxilium Pelias hasta tulit The wound dealt
by one act, another act a brief clause in the next local
act can heal. I leave the responsibility with you. Some
forty years ago Dr Corrie, Charles Henry Cooper, William
George Clark, the two Babingtons, George Williams, and
others, put out a prospectus of a Cambridge Historical
Society. For want of support our plan fell through, but
you, who have your lives before you, will surely, now that
the Oxford Historical Society points to its forty volumes,
take up and carry to a happy issue what we could only
design. A history of toleration would do honour to Cam-
bridge, for Roger Williams, of Pembroke, founder of Rhode
Island, his friend John Milton of Christ's, and Jeremy
Taylor, of Caius, fought in the forefront of that crusade
of mercy and justice.
214 HISTORY OF TOLERATION
They were ID advance of their age, for on the 9th of
August 1644 the House of Commons ordered Williams'
book, 'The bloody tenet of persecution for conscience
sake/ to be burnt by the common hangman ; it was also
bitterly assailed by William Prynne and the pilgrim father,
John Cotton, of Emmanuel, both of them themselves
victims of intolerance.
Arthur Stanley often contrasted the storms of Oxford
with our unruffled calm. The fact is certain : what was
the cause ? If we had full and judicious memoirs of
Julius Hare, Connop Thirlwall, John James Blunt, James
Amiraux Jeremie(J), William Hepworth Thompson, the
answer would be ready to hand. The solution of Stanley's
riddle, propounded in 1865 by a popular author, fails to
convince me. Mr Stephen records, honestly I doubt not,
his impressions of Cambridge. But there is another side
to the shield. My view of the second third of our century
is not altogether the same as his. It is the time of
Sedgwick and Whewell ; of Henslow and the Babingtons ;
of William Carus, Corrie, Philpott, Thompson, William
Selwyn, Harold Browne, Bateson(&), Harvey Goodwin, John
Grote, Charles Kingsley, Luard, Hugh Munro, H. J. S.
Maine, Yansittart, C. B. Scott, Westcott, Hort, Lightfoot,
Henry Bradshaw; of Hopkins, Thurtell, Cayley, Leslie Ellis,
Adams, Todhunter, Maxwell ; of Edwin Guest, George
Edward Paget, George Murray Humphry. Of such a
band Mr Stephen drew this portrait (I). ' Our prevailing
tone is what I should venture to describe as one of quiet
good sense, and what fanatics would consider only fit for
careless Gallios. 5 ' We leave theology to theologians, and
mind our classics and mathematics/ Party feeling during
the American civil wars somewhat vexed Mr Stephen's
CAMBRIDGE CALM. LONDON UNIVERSITY 215
bliss, but ' it was only necessary to turn the conversation
upon theology to smooth the troubled waters.' ' The one
thing that can spoil the social intercourse of well-educated
men, living in great freedom from unnecessary etiquette,
is a spirit of misplaced zeal/
Yes indeed : surtout point de zele. If Mr Stephen
ever tried to draw Mr Hopkins or Dr Thompson into
trial of tongue-fence on sacred themes, he recoiled, I am
very sure, baffled from the sport. Yet the late Master of
Trinity once said to me, as we left these walls : ' People
think going to church means nothing: it means much/
That saying marked the man. His presence or absence,
his speech or silence, meant much. Men feared him as
haughty and cynical. He was in fact very shy, very
modest and diffident of his own powers ; kind-hearted as
a woman, and generous beyond his means. 'I have no
financial ability/ as he put it. But where he saw a mean
or unjust action, where he heard railing or ribaldry, his
shyness gave way to a stern sense of duty. Of Mr Hopkins
his daughter testifies : ' My father was not a man who
talked much about religion (m), but he lived a holy, God-
fearing life constantly before us, and always had a tender
word ready for us/ In 1867, two years after Mr Stephen
had unmasked us to the world, in 1867, I say, J. A.
Dorner(Ti) drew the attention of divines to the rising
Cambridge school. The life, visible from afar, was hidden
from the ' chield amang us, taking notes/
We felt in Cambridge some faint ripple of the Oxford
movement. There was a jealousy, lasting into my time,
of London University, partly, I am afraid, as vulgar, partly
as profane. It was known by a rude nickname. Why are
ye fearful, ye of little faith ? See how Divine Providence
216 A. DE MORGAN
put to shame the ignoble scare. From Gower Street went
forth that devoted head of the Universities' Mission, Bishop
Steere. Nor were Key, Long, Maiden, and Maitland's life-
long friend, Augustus De Morgan, the men to plot against
the Christian's hope. Of one and all Trinity may well
be proud, as Cambridge is proud of Dublin and Harvard.
Mr Stephen, I am aware, says of De Morgan : ' He pre-
ferred the Unitarian to other creeds.' I presume to check
this statement (o) by the testimony of Mrs De Morgan,
daughter of the Unitarian William Frend, of Jesus.
The state of mind in which he had lived, and in which he died,
is shewn by a sentence in his will :
I commend my future with hope and confidence to Almighty God; to
God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom I believe in my heart to
be the Son of God, but whom I have not confessed with my lips, because
in my time such confession has always been the way up in the world.
You have before you the two, the confession of a
dying man, heart and tiesh crying out for the living God,
this, I say, on the one hand, this dream, if you will
and on the other hand, this interpretation thereof into
the bald prose of the clubs. ' He preferred the Unitarian
to other creeds.' Forewarned, forearmed. Knowing our
teacher's licence of paraphrase, we shall be on our guard.
Here the giddiest reader must take refuge under Dr
Routh's golden canon : ' Verity quotations.'
I think little worse of our Norrisian Professor, John
Hey, because Mr Stephen lays him under ban as a
Rationalist. On such a point, I confess, the verdict of
Bishops Kaye and Turton, and Dr Arnold, carries more
weight with me. Little children should beware of edged
tools, and standers by of technical terms. Anathemas
sound uncouth on English lips, not Italianated. Our
PROFESSOR J. HEY. J. W. COLENSO 217
master may possibly attach a definite meaning to the
word 'rationalist/ but we learners are left groping in
the dark. If he means rationalism as known to church
history, we find small trace of it in Professor Hey, whose
lectures were edited by Bishop Turton, and recommended
to candidates for orders at Ely in the time of John
William Colenso.
For many months our thoughts have dwelt on South
Africa. Christian missions there are full of promise. This
faith we English have long upheld by word and deed, and
time in its flight makes it doubly sure.
In March 1855 two Second Wranglers of 1836 and
1848 sailed together for Natal the one as Bishop, the
other as Archdeacon.
Some time after the present war broke out, a letter
appeared in a public journal (p). The writer had employed
a nephew of King Cetewayo, and still hears from him,
supplying him with books. The last choice of the Zulu
prince was Napier's History of the Peninsular War.
Travelling through Zululand in October, he found his
countrymen in our favour to a man. Their motive was
this. Englishmen treat the blacks with justice, Boers
deny them rights; Englishmen train the intellect and
foster spiritual yearnings among their subjects, Boers
harry them like wild beasts. As their chief benefactor,
Sobantu or ' father of the people/ Zulus reverence Bishop
Colenso. His noble presence might of itself win their
confidence. Are they not right ? Altogether setting
aside the years spent in England in critical study, and
the results of that study, I beg you to ponder these facts.
In seven years Colenso learnt the Zulu language, and
printed eighteen volumes, including Zulu grammars, and
a Zulu-English dictionary, together with Zulu translations
218 COLENSO AND MACKENZIE
of Genesis, Exodus, Samuel, and the whole New Testament.
And when he had incurred a sentence of deprivation,
endorsed indeed by English convocations, but null and
void in the eye of the law, he forfeited the support of
other classes, to whom his criticisms, if not welcome, as to
George Grote and M. Renan, were at least indifferent.
All oppressors of coloured races combined to crush one
who to the last was the Las Casas of South Africa. No
man, of whatever shade of opinion, who knew Bishop
Colenso, but must have admired his courtesy and Christian
temper under sore provocation, and his chivalrous bearing
towards Bishop Gray. His friends rejoice that he ended
his days on African soil, and not, as he had fondly hoped,
in charge of a theological college here in Cambridge.
Turn now to Mackenzie, who entered St John's when
I did, in October 1844.
A German lady (q), for some years busy in the service
of our Church in South Africa, introduces us to a native,
'one of Nature's gentlemen, as the English say,' Charles
Frederick Malunga.
Miss von Blomberg had opened an evening school for
Kaffirs near Cape Town. One day a man, between forty
and fifty, called on her. He was a gardener, and had
spent more than twenty years at Rosebank, half an hour
from the Cape by rail. Having long wished to consecrate
his leisure to good works, now at last he found the door
open. He gave his help freely, as a labour of love, refus-
ing even travelling expenses.
For nine years indeed until Miss von Blomberg's
return home he spent the evenings of all weekdays, and
the whole of Sundays, in teaching, not merely reading
and writing, but a more difficult art for Kaffirs how to
speak the truth.
C. F. MALUNGA. LIVINGSTONE 219
To Miss von Blomberg he became a friend and brother,
overflowing with humour, of sound and sturdy judgement.
Who was he ? Until his tenth year he lived with father
and mother on the upper Zambesi, a happy life as of
Eden, on milk and fruits. One night Arabs fell on the
village and set it on fire, slew the father and mother,
yoked the boy to another, and drove them, with a large
troop, on foot northwards for many days. At last white
men attacked the caravan, and beat off the slavedrivers.
The kidnapped lads having never seen Europeans, feared
that they would be killed and eaten. But Livingstone
for he was in command set them free, took them to
Zanzibar, and made them over to Mackenzie, who built
houses for them and put the children to school. He acted
as godfather to young Malunga, and gave him his own
names, Charles Frederick. No wonder that Malunga
exclaimed :
You can imagine how gladly I lend a hand to others I who
have been so wonderfully rescued, and have by God's grace become
a Christian.
So the seed sown in tears by Livingstone and Mac-
kenzie, has after many years grown up with increase at
the Cape. Some of us will recall to mind the meeting in
the Senate House, on the 4th of December 1857, which
heralded the birth, within a twelvemonth, of the Univer-
sities' Mission. Livingstone formally bequeathed his
mantle to us. His parting words were :
I beg to direct your attention to Africa ; I know that in a few
years I shall be cut oft* in that country, which is now open ; do not
let it be shut again ! I go back to Africa to try to make an open
path for commerce and Christianity ; do you carry out the work
which I have begun. I LEAVE IT WITH YOU !
220
NOTES
Motto at back of title, p. 200. When I was allowed to fill a niche
on the north side of the new chapel of St John's with a statue of
the admirable antiquary on whose manuscripts I have bestowed
so many months of labour, I did not remember this aspiration of
Thomas Hearne.
(a) p. 203. Peter Elmsley. Some Oxford scholar will surely do
justice, however tardy, to Elmsley's memory. I transcribe a few
references from my collections. Annual Biography, 1826, p. 42 seq.
cf. 1822, p. 460 b ; Van Mildert's Life, p. 34. Hermann's Opuscula,
vi. pt. i, p. 95 seq. James Tate (Mus. Grit. i. 522) urged him to
collect his observations on Greek authors. His indices to Thucy-
dides, ed. Edinb. 1804, 6 vols. cr. 8vo (cf. Dalzel, Analecta maiora,
i. 2, 28). Edited the homilies Oxf. 1822. 'The fattest undergraduate'
of his day, engaged afterwards (1820) on the Herculean manuscripts
(Southey's Life, v. 21). Julius Hare's wish (Philol. Mus. i. Cambr.
1832, pp. 2078) still remains unfulfilled : ' Very little has hitherto
been publisht out of Elmsley's papers since his death : and yet so
laborious and accurate a scholar must probably have left many
important observations : it was even reported that he had collated
the manuscript of Hesychius, and read it very differently from
either Musurus or Schow. It is to be hoped that some member
of his university will ere long be induced to inquire into this point,
and, should there be anything to be placed before the learned world,
will superintend its publication. A collection of Elmsley's reviews
and scattered critical dissertations would also form a valuable
volume.' Probably much material will be found in the Burney and
Butler MSS. in the British Museum. See Bishop Samuel Butler's
Life by his grandson, I. pp. 646, 701, 746, 889, 146. Above
all see Southey's Letters, 1856, I. 102, 248, 289 ad fin., 3405, 371,
NOTES 221
392 ; II. 21, 53, 228, 329 ; in. 93, 222, 227, 230, 262, 321, 351, 371,
4301, 433, 499, 509, 510, 535 ; iv. 310, 355, 530. Southey's Life
and Correspondence, 1849, n. 98, 133, 180, 212, 286, 295, 298, 347,
351, 354 ; in. 44, 85, 87, 187 ; IV. 112 ; v. 21, 181, 191. One or two
of these passages may refer to the bookseller. The article Elmsley
in a book of no pretensions, The Imperial Dictionary of Universal
Biography (Wm Mackenzie, London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, n.d.),
written by Thomas Jackson, afterwards Bishop of London, shows
an intelligent appreciation of the great scholar in which we in
vain seek in D. N. B. In the article Tyrwhitt, Tho. (D. N. B.) is
a notice of a minor publication of Elmsley's.
(6) p. 203. Joseph Wasse. Many years ago I printed an
account of him for the Cambridge Antiquarian Society.
(c) p. 208. Spanish Bible. See my Spain, Portugal, the Bible
(Cambridge, Macmillan and Bowes), 1892, pp. 7, 8.
(d) p. 209. Foundation of the Cambridge Auxiliary of the Bible
Society. See my edition of Baker's History of St John's (Cambridge
University Press, 1869), pp. 809862. Marsh's support of the
Serampore mission, p. 856, 1. 46.
(e) p. 210. Sydney Smith. See his flippant essays on Metho-
dism (Edinb. Rev. 1808, 1809) and on Indian Missions (ibid. 1808).
He dares to say (preface to his works, June 1839) * I have nothing
to retract, and no intemperance and violence to reproach myself
with.' Thus he in cold blood wishes to be known to all times as
the author of such flowers of rhetoric as this and the metaphor is
carried out in loathsome detail ( Works, I. 5 , 1859, p. 138b) 'the
nasty and numerous vermin of Methodism.' Julius Hare long ago
called for a collection of Southey's essays. Side by side with Sydney
Smith's, Macaulay's, and other utterances of the Edinburgh Review,
Southey's Quarterly essays are the work of a grown man respecting
himself and his readers, as against the babble of Don ny brook fair.
As for the Edinburgh Reviewers, read Copleston and Spedding, and
remember their treatment of Wordsworth. * This will never do ! '
Munro spoke with vehement contempt of Macaulay's essay on
Boswell as compared with Carlyle's. The main value of Macaulay's
papers is the research which they have provoked. If not critical
himself, he is the cause of criticism in others. See Churchill
222 A GOODLY HERITAGE
Babington's early book on Macaulay's caricature of the country
clergy in the 17th century.
See in the first number of the Quarterly, February 1809,
Southey's ' Account of the Baptist Missionary Society/ and remem-
ber that he represented the aristocratic, Smith the democratic, side
in politics.
P. 220. * " Why should we convert the Hindoos ? "because our
duty to God and man alike requires the attempt. Why should we
convert them? because policy requires it, religion requires it,
common humanity requires it. Why should we convert them ?
because they who permit the evil which they can prevent are guilty
of that evil, and to them it shall be imputed.'
P. 225. c Nothing can be more unfair than the manner in which
the scoffers and alarmists have represented the missionaries. We,
who have thus vindicated them, are neither blind to what is
erroneous in their doctrine, or ludicrous in their phraseology ; but
the anti-missionaries cull out from their journals and letters all
that is ridiculous, sectarian, and trifling ; call them fools, madmen,
tinkers, Calvinists, and schismatics ; and keep out of sight their
love of man, and their zeal for God, their self-devotement, their
indefatigable industry, and their unequalled learning. These low-
born and low-bred mechanics have translated the whole Bible into
Bengalee, and have by this time printed it. They are printing the
New Testament in the Sanscrit, the Orissa, Mahratta, Hindostan,
and Guzarat, and translating it into Persic, Telinga(?), Karnata,
Chinese, the language of the Sieks and of the Burmans, and in four
of these languages they are going on with the Bible. Extraordinary
as this is, it will appear more so, when it is remembered, that of
these men one was originally a shoemaker, another a printer at
Hull, and a third the master of a charity-school at Bristol. Only
fourteen years have elapsed since Thomas and Carey set foot in
India, and in that time have these missionaries acquired this gift of
tongues ; in fourteen years these low-born, low-bred mechanics have
done more towards spreading the knowledge of the Scriptures among
the heathen than has been accomplished, or even attempted by all
the princes and potentates of the world, and all the universities
and establishments into the bargain.'
NOTES 223
(/) p. 211. Alexander Whitaker seems to be forgotten. See
Ralph Churton, Life of Alexander Nowell (Oxford 1809), p. 331 :
'One of the orphans, named after the Dean of St Paul's, and
educated in Trinity College, Cambridge, had competent provision as
a clergyman, in the north of England ; but quitted his preferment
and native country to assist as a preacher of the gospel in Virginia ;
and from his meritorious labours, in that infant province, obtained
the title of the " Apostle of Virginia." He is mentioned with respect
in Smith's travels*, in the year 1614 ; and was himself the author
of a tract entitled " News from Virginia," published the year before.
It contains, I am informed t, a good zoological sketch of the country :
and in speaking of the various kinds of fish in those rivers, it
appears, that he had caught the propensity of his father J and great
uncle for the amusement of angling.'
(g) p. 211. Bishop Whipple. At the C.M.S. Centenary (The
Record, 14 April 1899, p. 386 a).
(A) p. 213. Bentley, For son, Dobree. Luard did but echo the
wishes of Julius Hare (Philol. Mus. I. 207 8) : ' Dobree's notes on
the Greek prose writers are to be followed by those on the poets.
During his life he publisht but little : he was so fastidious, that
hardly anything but death could loose his tongue, except his rever-
ence for Porson. There may probably however be a few scattered
articles from his pen in some of our reviews or journals ; and if so,
and they can be ascertained, it were much to be wisht that they
should be subjoined to this collection. It is not likely that he
should ever have printed anything which was not valuable. After
finishing this meritorious task, Professor Scholefield would confer a
fresh obligation on all scholars, if he would undertake the labour of
editing the unpublisht portion of Person's remains, the remarks on
the Greek prose writers and on Hesychius, which we have been told
are of such great importance. It is worthy of the chair which he
fills, to discharge this pious duty towards his predecessors in it....
* 'Account of Virginia, etc. by Captain John Smith, p. 117, 147.'
f 'By Dr Whitaker from the tract itself, by Alex. Whitaker, Minister
of Henrico in Virginia.'
$ ' How dear a lover and great a practiser of it [angling] our learned
Dr Whitaker was.' Walton's Compl. Angler, p. 40.
224 A GOODLY HERITAGE
' Even Bentley himself has never had justice done to him in this
matter : his works have never been collected ; many of his notes
and conjectures have only recently seen the light ; others perhaps
are still lurking in some of our libraries ; all these ought surely
to be collected. Would that the weightier avocations of the dis-
tinguisht person who has displayed such exemplary diligence and
love of truth in recording the events of Bentley's life, would allow
him leisure to erect this second monument to the honour of his
hero, a monument which unlike the other would be wholly and
solely to his honour.'
Monk began a collection of Bentley's letters, which was continued
by John Wordsworth, and after his death completed by his brother
Christopher. That admirable scholar Alexander Dyce printed only
three volumes of Bentley's works. His adversaria remain to be
collected ; delay is dangerous, for a German was detected, many
years ago, cutting manuscript notes from Bentley's books in the
British Museum. With Monk should be compared De Quincey and
R. C. Jebb. Luard printed some letters from the originals for the
Cambridge Antiquarian Society. In Luard's article on Dobree
(D. N. B.) he does not refer to the Dutch Professor Bake. W. H.
Thompson never spoke of Dobree without recommending Bake.
(i) p. 213. Oxford spoiled the spoiler. See Jo. Griffiths (keeper
of the university archives) An index to the wills in the Court of the
Chancellor of Oxford, 1862, with the preface. If my memory does
not deceive me, a Cambridge student, long after the migration of
our wills, travelled to Peterborough to consult one, and found that
the collection had not been unpacked. Cambridge has already
fulfilled, in great part if not entirely, the condition on which
Oxford retained its own property. I printed, in the calendar of
the Baker MSS. a summary (not a mere list, as the Oxford one) of
all the wills noticed by Baker.
(j) p. 214. James Amiraux Jeremie. Munro often pointed him
out as a man for a bishopric. While leading Oxford divines were
hounding their pupils against Hampden, Gorham, and others,
founding party journals, and procuring signatures far and wide to
party memorials, the foremost men of Cambridge, with knightly
generosity, came forward again and again in defence of the weaker
NOTES 225
party. Dr E. A. Abbott (Anglican career of card. Newman} reveals
the tactics by which J. H. Newman raised an uproar against a man
(Dr Hampden) who was a far more consistent member of our church
than his assailant. J. C. Hare, Thirlwall, and Maurice, and among
Oxford men Arthur Stanley, never failed to allay the artificial
storms which agitated the Church. So too Jeremie. When J. W.
Donaldson found himself ill at ease in Bury, after the publication
of Jashar, Thomas Carlyle advised him to settle in Cambridge.
1 No where else will you be so free.' Thompson, Cope, Munro, and
W. G. Clark, and most of the chief Cambridge scholars of the day,
welcomed him by attending his lectures on comparative philology.
A rising divine, I think in an official (Christian Advocate's) pub-
lication, rebuked Cambridge for 'harbouring' a heretic. Jeremie
compelled the offender to cancel the persecuting note. Donaldson,
in a paper written for the Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology
answered violence by violence. Hort and Lightfoot, my brother
editors, left me, as the senior, to deal with him. I showed him that
we professed to avoid polemical theology, and the stir ended peace-
fully. Again, when Bishop Gray had deposed the Bishop of Natal,
Jeremie said to me a young M.A. * I should not like to be tried
by a clerical court.' He then spoke of Colenso's books on the
Old Testament. Most of the criticisms on history were, he said,
borrowed from others, but some of the remarks on the Psalms were,
he thought, both new and true. Hupfeld at Halle, a well-known
commentator, said the very same thing to me. A high churchman,
Mr N. Pocock, in his article in D. N. B. on Bishop Kobert Gray,
notes the want of ability shewn by most of the bishops in dealing
with Bishop Colenso. Jeremie, from his Haileybury experience,
viewed all things with the eye of a statesman ; and was too genuine
a scholar to dream that England could be hermetically sealed
against the researches of Ewald and his compeers beyond the sea.
F. J. A. Hort, in a letter written to me and printed in his life
(Vol. ii.), has some caustic remarks on a memorial, largely signed
by the clergy, against the late Archbishop Plunket. In so writing
he was true to the traditions of the Cambridge faculty of divinity.
Take another proof of Jeremie's tolerant nature. In Mr Spurgeon's
early days young Cambridge found it pleasant and profitable to
poke fun at him in the Saturday Review. Jeremie his disguise
M. S. 15
226 A GOODLY HERITAGE
was treacherously betrayed in a leading article seized an occasion
in the Times to thank the strong hand stretched out to rescue the
fallen. He had heard Spurgeon preach, and recognised the voice of
a true man.
(k) p. 214. Bateson. When St John's new chapel was opened
on the 12 May 1869, the preacher, who had been chosen because of
his most effective sermons in St Mary's during the Crimean war,
woefully disappointed his hearers. The sermon was an old one,
with one purple patch of novelty. Describing Bishop Colenso, so
that no one could fail to know who was meant, he spoke to this
effect. * He went out from us, but he is not of us. One thing still
remains : we can at any rate pray for him.' Colenso was Bateson's
friend, of the same year. He was a subscriber to the chapel, and
had wished to be present at the opening, but at once acquiesced,
when Bateson suggested that his presence might lead to a scene.
The indignation was general at the want of courtesy in a place and
on a day when we would fain have been of one heart and one soul.
If one hearer had left the chapel, the sermon would have been
continued to empty benches. I presided at dinner in the combina-
tion room, but Bateson himself told me what took place in the hall.
* I felt I must do something.' So, on proposing prosperity to the
College, he spoke of the many who had come, some from far, to
share in our joy. ' And others there are, who, though unable to be
present in body, are present with us in spirit, not the least the
illustrious prelate, whom the preacher specially commended to our
prayers.' Dr Garrett saw a grave Doctor of Divinity hammer on
his plate with his spoon, till he thought the plate would break.
Cambridge men of that day did not trust to numbers, but to each
man doing his individual duty, however disagreeable it might be.
(1) p. 214. this portrait. See Sketches of Cambridge by a Don,
1865, pp. 136 7, 140 2. Mr Stephen has fallen a victim to what
we may call the TPir-fallacy. Silence does not always give consent.
Those who listened to his theological arguments, may well have
changed the subject, not from indifference, but because no good
result could be expected from discussions so conducted. It never
occurred to him that his cynicism was the Medusa's head that
petrified his company. David Strauss, in his The New and the Old
NOTES 227
Faith, assumed that 'we' of this day, such of us at least as are
abreast with the march of science are materialists, and accept his
reducing ' life to a simple chemical and physical mechanism, and
making thought a mere secretion of the brain.' Every critic that
I have seen and among them my Old Catholic friends, Johannes
Huber and E. Zirngiebl, bad Strauss speak for himself. * Vieux
et nouveaux catholiques, protestants de toutes nuances, redacteurs
de la presse, philosophes et m&ne naturalistes, tous furent d'accord
de repousser les principes et les conclusions de Strauss. Ses amis,
les Zeller, les Vischer, se turent ' (A. Freydinger in Lichtenberger,
Encyclopedia des sciences religieuses, xi. Paris 1881, p. 727). As
Strauss failed utterly in his passage from literature and theology to
physical science, so conversely Ernst Haeckel is likely to ruin as a
theologian the reputation which he made as a physiologist. See
Dr Loofs Anti- Haeckel, eine Replik nebst Beilagen, Halle, Max
Niemeyer, 1900 (also a review in Litterarische Rundschau fur das
evangelische Deutschland, Leipzig, Carl Braunn, XI. 51, June 1900).
None but those who have occasion to search the sweepings of the
gutter press, will recognise the name and the nom de guerre of
Haeckel's authority, ' the learned and acute English divine, Saladin
(Stewart Ross).'
(m) p. 215. not a man who talked much about religion. Christopher
Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln, 1807 1885, by John Henry Overton
and Elizabeth Wordsworth 2 , Rivingtons, 1890, pp. 49, 50: 'It was
not the habit of his mind, nor that of the circle in which he moved,
to be prodigal in the expression of religious emotion. In a house-
hold composed entirely of men there was a healthy interest about
concrete realities which left little room for the subjective side of
life. There was the proverbial Englishmen's reserve on religious
matters. And it may not be untrue to say that, where intellectual
interests are strong, and there is great enjoyment in the use of one's
mental and bodily faculties, the apparent religious development is
slower than in cases where there being less to mature maturity
is sooner reached.'
G. W. Prothero, Memoir of Henry Bradshaw, London, Kegan
Paul, 1888, p. 414: 'Though by no means all things to all men, he
was remarkably capable of regarding a question from the same point
of view as his interlocutor, so much so that he sometimes conveyed
152
228 A GOODLY HERITAGE
the impression of an agreement which did not really exist. Thus it
came about that different persons formed different conceptions of
his views ; and I have been assured, on the one hand, that he was a
High Churchman, on the other, that he was an Agnostic. Those
who knew him best will probably agree that, while not caring to
formulate his belief too closely, he died as he had lived, a devout
Christian, and a member of the Church of England.' Many other
instances of Cambridge reticence, the offspring, not of coldness, but
of reverence, might be cited.
(n) p. 215. J. A. Dorner. See Geschichte der protestantischen
Theologie, p. 914.
(o) p. 216. this statement. The last words of De Morgan's life.
(p) p. 217. a public journal. See the St James's Gazette, 1 Dec.
1899, p. 5:
DOFFS ROAD, DURBAN,
November 3rd, 1899. .
' SIR, I keenly appreciate your generous tribute to the loyalty
of the Zulu nation during the fierce crisis of English rule in South
Africa. It is the first real test of the loyalty of the Zulus, and as a
Zulu who was once a chief, to see that the loyalty and gratitude of
my people is appreciated by the white people of Natal.
* It is as you say, respected Sir, a tribute, and a magnificent one,
to England's just policy to the Zulus. I dare to assert it is even
a finer to the native's appreciation, not only of benefits already
conferred, but of the spirit that actuated England in her dealings
with him. I may disagree as to the lessons taught by Maxim guns,
hollow squares, and the " thin red line." I think no one can have
read Colonial history, chronicling as it does the rise again and
again of the native against Imperial forces, without feeling that he
is influenced far less by England's prowess in war than by her
justice in peace. My Zulu fellow-countryman understands as clearly
as anyone the weakness and the strength of the present time. If
the Zulu wished to remember Kambula and Ulundi, this would be
his supreme opportunity to rise and hurl himself across the Natal
frontier. But I, having just returned from my native country, have
been able to report to the Government at Pietermaritzburg that
NOTES 229
there is not the slightest symptom of disloyalty, not the idea of
lifting a finger against the white subjects of the great and good
Queen.
* There is among the chiefs and indunas of my people an almost
universal hope that the Imperial arms will be victorious, and that
a Government which, by its inhumanity and relentless injustice,
and apparent inability to see that the native has any right a white
man should respect, has forfeited its place among the civilised
Governments of the earth, and should therefore be deprived of
powers so scandalously abused formerly by slavery and in latter
years by disallowing the native to buy land, and utterly neglecting
his intellectual and spiritual needs. There are wrongs to be re-
dressed, but we Zulus believe that England will be more willing to
redress them than any other Power. There is still much to be done
in the way of educating and civilising the mass of the Zulu nation.
We chiefs of that nation have observed that wherever England has
gone, there the missionary and teacher follow, and that there exists
sympathy between the authority of Her Majesty and the forces that
labour for civilisation and Christianity. We Zulus have not yet
forgotten what we owe to the late Bishop Colenso's lifelong advocacy,
or to Lady Florence Dixie's kindly interest. These are things that
are more than fear of England's might, that keep our people quiet
outside and loyal inside. This is not a passive loyalty with us.
Speaking for almost all fellow-countrymen in Zululand, I believe if
a great emergency arises in the course of this history-making war,
in which England might find it necessary to put their loyalty
to the test, they would respond with readiness and enthusiasm,
equal to that when they fought under King Cetewayo against Lord
Chelmsford's army. Again assuring you that the Zulu people are
turning deaf ears to Boer promises as well as threats, I remain with
the most earnest hope for the ultimate triumph of General Buller
who fought my King for half a year
* Your humble and most obedient servant,
'M'PLAANK,
'Son of Maguende, brother of Cetewayo.'
230 A GOODLY HERITAGE
Another evidence of the moral influence exerted by Colenso
may be seen in British Central Africa by Miss A. Werner (in
British Africa, London, Kegan Paul, 1899, p. 256): 'Several native
Christians I know in Natal, who had received their religious
instruction under the late Bishop Colenso, struck me as sincere
and honest people, who, to the best of their ability, lived up to the
light that was in them, and did not appear to have lost either in
reverence or simple, childlike faith from having been frankly told
that the story of the Ark was an inganekwane, or, as we should say,
a fairy tale.'
(q) p. 218. See Allerlei aus Sud-Afrika, von P. D. von
Blomberg. Gutersloh, C. Bertelsmann, 1899, ch. 4, ' Der Mann vom
Zambesi.' Copies of this interesting book may be seen in the
libraries of Mackenzie's two colleges, St John's and Caius, and also
in Henry Martyn Hall.
231
10 all tjmr
ST JOHN'S
Trinity Sunday
7 June 1903
233
RENDEK TO ALL THEIR DUES
Render therefore to all their dues. Rom. xiii. 7.
FEW pages in literature are more winning than the
preface wherein M. Aurelius pays a tribute of gratitude
to the gods, to his parents, and to the teachers who
trained him to live, even in the purple, a life according
to nature, content with little. Some early Christians, as
Tertullian, saw in the gentile faiths and the gentile sages
pure and unmixed evil. Wiser fathers, as Clement and
Origen, pierced deeper with a kindlier insight. The
Divine Word, they held, was not idle throughout the
ages, was not left without a witness outside the chosen
O *
people. Socrates and Musonius, in their measure, rejoiced
in His light. Happily scholars and missionaries are
abandoning the despairing view which espies nothing but
blank night outside the Christian fold. With loving
sympathy Nagelsbach traces high instincts in Homeric
and post-Homeric theology. The venerable Society for
Promoting Christian Knowledge, and the Oxford Press
(whose motto is Dominus illuminatio mea) place in the
hands of Western Students fair and calm renderings of
the Sacred Books of the East. When Mohammedan
soldiers come to London they scorn to neglect their
234 RENDER TO ALL THEIR DUES
religious duties, and the crowds, if they wonder, look on
with respect. The change of tone on the Christian side
has been met in a kindred spirit. The Lord Mayor this
year, a Jew by birth and creed, presided over the annual
meeting of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Would
that Russians and Roumanians would learn something of
this Christ-like tolerance !
M. Aurelius thanked not only the gods but his parents,
and we, in a period of change, may combine the two and
think what we owe to the God of our father and mother.
Some of us, perhaps, have grown up, as I did, under
the older puritan discipline. To us the Bible was, in
a literal sense, from first to last, the Word of God who
cannot lie. Of a growing revelation, of human elements
through which the divine light forced its way into the
world, of the earthen vessels in which we have this
treasure, of historical criticism, we learnt nothing. Life
on earth was bounded by the tables of Archbishop Ussher.
We were trained to attend family prayer morning and
evening, to keep holy the Lord's day as a day of rest and
worship. Then came upon us the discovery of a history
and a civilisation far older than the Hebrew, of cosmic
changes working through countless ages. My friend
Brooke Foss Westcott*, born in the same month, who has
lately passed away, after C. F. Mackenzie and Isaac
Todhunter and C. B. Scott had gone before, shall tell what
theology owes to the new learning. He said, thirteen
years ago, at the beginning of his episcopate :
'Physical science places vividly before us the solemn and
majestic background of Revelation. Historical criticism brings
the records of Revelation into contact with human life. As long as
* Lessons from Work. Macmillan, 1901, pp. 323.
RENDER TO ALL THEIR DUES 235
the Bible was supposed to be wholly removed from the general mass
of literature, and exempt from the action of the natural forces
which affect the composition and transmission of other books, it
lost more than half its power over the souls of men,...
'To compare carefully the first chapters of Genesis with the
corresponding narratives in the Babylonian tradition is to gain
a lesson in the methods of Divine teaching.... Above all, perhaps,
the Psalter gains most in power when we realise that it contains
the words of many men in many ages who realised each for himself,
under most different conditions, the master-truths of the glory, the
faithfulness, the mercy, the love, the righteousness, the sovereignty
of GOD, the Lord of Israel and the King of the whole earth. What
would be the difference if we continued to think, with not a few
older teachers, that David composed By the Waters of Babylon
in some prophetic trance instead of hearing in it the real voice
of men who had felt the bitterness of exile not without accents of
human passion ?
* Historical criticism, in a word, brings to us, through the Bible,
messages from living men like ourselves, among whom God is shewn
to be working : it enables us to feel that He is working also in the
chequered events of human life all the days and now among us : it
dissipates the paralysing illusion that in some distant period of
prophets or apostles there was once a golden age utterly unlike the
times on which we have fallen : it makes it possible for us to believe
that even through us, as we are faithful, the Divine counsel is
carried forward to its issue.
* And more than this : it encourages us to place the writings of
the Old Covenant side by side with the sacred writings of other pre-
Christian religions.'
It speaks well for Christianity in England that this
frank acceptance of new lessons, thanks mainly to the
labours of Westcott, Hort and Lightfoot, is no longer
strange to Protestant communions among us. The national
Church of Scotland, the Nonconformist Churches there
and here, have, during the last quarter of a century, made
great advances in candour as in biblical learning.
RENDER TO ALL THEIR DUES
If any one is in honest doubt respecting the faith
of his infancy, I commend to him a maxim of Thomas
Scott, which in early days deeply moved John Henry
Newman.
' If you have no good reason for doing a thing, that is a very
good reason for leaving it undone.'
Pause long, with meditation and prayer, for the
guidance of the Divine Spirit, before you cast off the
creed of your childhood. And if at last conscience bids
you go, never speak harshly of the Church of your
baptism. Julius Hare and B. F. Westcott resented, and
with reason, the flippant scorn with which Newman assailed
the Anglican Communion and especially the Oxford School.
Far different was the tone and temper of Archer Butler,
of Dublin, who left the Roman Church for the Reformed.
Aurelius does not forget his teachers and the spiritual
profit drawn from them.
So we, as we pass through our second court alone on
some moonlight night, cannot but think sometimes on
what a heritage of simple and severe dignity we have
entered. As we turn over the books in the library, each
telling of some scholar's eager joy at its acquisition, as
we lament the violence that robbed us first of Fisher's
library, the choicest of its age in England, and then of
that of the founder of the third court library, Archbishop
Williams, we resolve to do what in us lies to sow the seed
of sound learning throughout the length and breadth of
the land, to make Wai worth the better for the name of
Lady Margaret.
Ask why Manchester is less enslaved to money-making
now than 70 years ago ; much may be due to its university,
RENDER TO ALL THEIR DUES 237
its bishop, its high schools for boys and girls, but some-
thing, no doubt, to its almost peerless libraries.
Freely ye have received. Look at one who received
little but bare life, and is now the happy head of one
of the most peaceful and earnest schools in the world*.
At Tuskegee, in Alabama, is an industrial college for
negro men and women, with 1,100 students gathered from
the United States, Africa, Cuba, Porto Rico, Jamaica,
and other countries. After 19 years it has amassed
property to the value of half-a-million dollars, and counts
86 officers and teachers. Nearly all the buildings, 40
in all, were put up, from first to last, by the students.
Yet he who in 19 years has won this great success, the
first negro to receive an honorary degree from Harvard,
was born a slave. He never heard his white father's
name ; as a child never knew what play was, never slept
in a bed, never had more than one piece of clothing, never
sat down to a meal. At the end of the war numbers of
Christlike men and women from the north opened negro
schools, and were rewarded by a passionate thirst for
knowledge on the part of the liberated slaves. Few were
too young and none too old. If they could do no more,
they craved to read the Bible before they died. One
ex-slave had struck a bargain with his master, two or
three years before the Emancipation Proclamation, to
buy his own freedom. When emancipation came, some
300 dollars were due, but could not in law be recovered.
Still, the slave had pledged his word, and had never
broken a promise. He paid the very last cent with
interest ; and then, and not before, felt himself free indeed.
* Up from slavery : an autobiography. By Booker T. Washington.
London : Grant Richards, 1902.
238 RENDER TO ALL THEIR DUES
This example may shew that payment of debts,
commercial honesty, is no mere material thing, but has
a spiritual element. Trade rests on credit, trust, that is
on faith, Tricms, fides.
No man more stoutly enforced this truth than
Westcott*, whom many mocked as a mystic, a high-flown
Utopian dreamer. He was addressing the annual meeting
of the Christian Social Union, Liverpool, 27 Nov. 1899,
that is, his words apply to those who live on their own
means :
'While we endeavour to gain the largest and keenest power
of appreciating all that is noblest in nature and art and literature,
we must seek to live on as little as will support the full vigour of
our life and work. The standard cannot be fixed. It will necessarily
vary within certain limits, according to the nature and office of
each man. But generally we shall strive diligently to suppress all
wants which do not tend through their satisfaction to create a nobler
type of manhood ; and individually we shall recognise no wants
which do not express what is required for the due cultivation of our
own powers and the fulfilment of that which we owe to others. We
shall guard ourselves against the temptations of artificial wants
which the ingenuity of producers offer in seductive forms. We
shall refuse to admit that the caprice of fashion represents any
valuable element in our constitution, or calls into play any faculties
which would otherwise be unused, or encourages industry. On the
contrary, we shall see, in the dignity and changelessness of Eastern
dress, a typical condemnation of our restless inconstancy. We shall
perceive, and act as perceiving, that the passion for novelty is morally
and materially wasteful : that it distracts and confuses our power of
appreciating true beauty : that it tends to the constant displacement
of labour : that it produces instability, both in the manufacture
and the sale of goods, to the detriment of economy.'
These counsels appeal with tenfold force to those who
come here not at their own charges, but by the help of
* Lessons from Work, pp. 347 8.
RENDER TO ALL THEIR DUES 239
parents or guardians. The late Master of Trinity, in
a sermon in St Mary's, warned his audience against costly
entertainments. Anticipating the retort from a student :
' I only do what my elders do/ the Platonic sage pointed
out a main difference between the cases. 'You spend
your father's money; they their own.' Indeed it is
wonderful, considering the allurements to waste which
beset the freshman, unstinted credit for the first and last
time in his life, the example perhaps of richer friends,
false shame which makes him hide and disavow his poverty;
taking into account all these dangers, it is wonderful,
I say, that so little is done to shield the newcomer from
himself. There are brotherhoods to guard him from
drunkenness two successive Bishops of Durham and
Archbishops Temple and Manning were abstainers from
gambling, from cruelty to animals, and many other vices.
I never heard tell of a guild pledged not to run into debt,
to be just and render suum cuique. Many societies invite
us to generosity ; to simple honesty, none. True, the
Christian rule of life bids us do to others, as we would
that they should do to us : nevertheless, temperance,
mercy, and other virtues, seem to require special aids over
and above the general provisions of the Christian law.
Are there not some here, known to townsmen as customers
to whom a jury of townsmen could scarcely bear witness :
' See how you Christians love us, how considerate you are
with us, how timely in enabling us to meet our creditors ? '
For remember Paley's caution : the dealer must buy before
he can sell. Many condole with the man who leaves
college burdened with debt ; few have any pity to spare
for the defrauded tradesman. Learn a lesson from Plato.
If we have done wrong, it is well, not ill, for us, that
240 RENDER TO ALL THEIR DUES
we should suffer. For him who has placed in us groundless
confidence, we ought to feel compassion; we ought to
make amends by denying ourselves every comfort till we
have met his claims ; but any shame and mortification to
ourselves we should welcome as our just desert, and take
warning for the time to come.
Many complain Tennyson's Maud gives forcible voice
to their complaints of the rogueries of trade, but few
trace them to their cause. If all customers paid ready
money and a fair price, trade would become healthier
week by week, till adulteration and the false weight would
disappear. Is it peace or war ?
A former fellow of Trinity Hall, sometime curate to
Frederic Maurice, now a well-known and, in many respects,
instructive writer, Edward Carpenter, for some time tilled
the ground with his own hands, and sold the produce
of his labour in the market. The difference is great, he
found, on which side of the counter you stand. We cannot
all follow his example and discover the hardships of trade
by ourselves turning traders. Yet we may make friends
with our tradesmen and ask of them how our promptness
or slackness in settling our accounts makes trade healthy
and prosperous, or risky and ruinous. We are bound to
trace the fruits of our actions, and if the search makes
us abridge our indulgences, so much the better for us and
for the world. Socrates, passing through a richly-stored
market, exclaimed : ' How many things I do not want ! '
A few words touching the rules of life by which men
are governed.
Paley's list, at the beginning of his Moral Philosophy,
meets the case of a single class, professing Christians of
the wealthier order. Replace the law of honour, his first
RENDER TO ALL THEIR DUES 241
rule, by traditions and bias of sect, party, trade, clique ;
for the Scriptures, his third rule, read whatever ideal
serves as a polestar to guide our path over regions where
the writ of the Law of the Land, Paley's second rule, does
not run, that is over the whole range of choice, of so-called
indifferent actions.
The letter of the law must often leave us in the lurch ;
it cannot meet every case of conscience ; its voice is Thou
shalt not, we need a positive inspiration.
Seneca says (de ira ii. 58, 2). ' Who is he that professes himself
innocent by all laws? even granting his claim, how narrow an
innocence is virtue by rule of law ! quam angusta innocentia est ad
legem bonum esse.'
When the young man*, who had great possessions,
yearning to do some good thing to purchase eternal life,
was referred to his duty to man, as contained in the second
table of the law, he said : ' All these things have I kept
from my youth up, what lack I yet?' St Paulf was,
touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless,
while he was a persecutor of the Church. Paley's in-
dictment of the law of honour is severe, and omits its
better side.
' Profaneness,' he says, 'neglect of public worship or private
devotion, cruelty to servants, rigorous treatment of tenants or other
dependents, want of charity to the poor, injuries done to tradesmen
by insolvency or delay of payment, are accounted no breaches of
honour.... The Law of Honour, being constituted by men occupied
in the pursuit of pleasure,... allows of fornication, adultery, drunken-
ness, prodigality, duelling, and of revenge in the extreme.'
So far Paley. In this twentieth century our idlers are
striving might and main to abolish in England the rest of
* Matt. xix. 20. f Phil. iii. 6.
M. 8. 16
242 RENDER TO ALL THEIR DUES
the Lord's Day. In other countries, of late years, much
has been done to secure for labouring people a weekly
respite from toil. In this country what are called week-
end parties, fling hordes of noisy barbarians broad-cast
over the land. Many of our hardest workers, as Mr Gladstone
and our late Queen, owed to their Sunday calm the power
of unbroken work to old age. How startled our spend-
thrift rabble would be to learn a homely truth or two.
A weekly fast, seasoned with sober reading, would be
a rare tonic for their pampered bodies and barren
minds. Little as they think it, they are persecutors, not
less than an Alva, or a Louis XIV, forbidding all who
unfortunately depend upon them to worship God according
to conscience.
Fifty years ago our colleges jealously fenced about the
Sunday rest of the servants : whether we are as guiltless
now in this respect I greatly doubt.
Of party traditions making void the law, the Jewish
Corban is a typical instance, and finds its parallel in sums
wrung by priests from the fears of dying Romanists.
Assaults on free labourers by unionists on strike, plots to
refuse rates and taxes, on plea of conscience, alike tend to
anarchy. Cambridge tradesmen, whose shutters have been
commandeered for a bonfire, furnish a parallel nearer
home. They have as much reason as the Khalifa himself
to fear Lord Kitchener's visit. Said the son of Jesse to
Araunah
' Nay, but I will surely buy of thee at a price ; neither will
I offer burnt offerings of that which doth cost me nothing.'
Brushing aside all selfish badges of class, widening
and deepening the claims of written law, comes the ideal,
the unwritten law, the hidden man of the heart, the
RENDER TO ALL THEIR DUES 243
ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. From the Sermon
on the Mount we learn the soul and end and pattern of
the decalogue ; it bids us be perfect, as our one Father in
heaven is perfect. The word of God is quick and powerful,
a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And
the more entirely we bring our acts into tune with this
far-reaching rule, the more free we feel; witness the
joyous strains of the 119th Psalm. The mediaeval church,
we know, and the Papal church to this hour, draw a sharp
line between precepts, binding on all, and evangelical
counsels, works of supererogation, whereby men, doing
more than God demands, lay in a stock of merit. Common
virtues of common life are held in little account, as we see
in the Jesuit casuists; laymen are suffered to content
themselves with a standard far below that of heathen
moralists. Celibacy, voluntary poverty, implicit obedience
to priestly rule, oust justice, mercy and truth. Submission
to Church dogmas is enforced by the stake. Luther de-
throned the usurper, teaching that active, public service,
not cloistered, fugitive loneliness, is man's true calling,
that the home is a holier sanctuary than the convent,
mother a nobler name than nun.
If we, each in his place, strive to discharge our daily
duties as in God's sight, we need fear no return of priestly
dominion. Indifference is the soil in which all baneful
weeds grow apace.
We are bidden to-day to adore the Majesty of God
Most High ; and in speaking of our habits, viewed in the
light of Christian duty, I have tried to lead your thoughts
to Him in whom we live and move and have our being.
He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can
he love God whom he hath not seen ?
162
245
INDEX OF PROPER NAMES
Abbadie, Jacob 141
Abbey, John 82
Abbott, E. A. 225
Abdiel 183
Abiram 94
Abraham 6, 18, 54, 153, 188
About, Edmond 17
Aceius 83
Adams, J. C. 214
Aelian 88
Aesculapius 160
A Kempis, Thomas Iv, 122
Akenside, Mark 158
Albert, Prince xvi
Alexander the Great 155, 189
Alexander of Hales 202
Alexander VI 12
Alfieri Ixiii
Alii, Jani 211
Alva 12, 242
Ambrose, St xxvii, 39, 91
Ammianus Marcellinus 91
Amos 130, 143
Ananias 18
Andrewes, Lancelot 209
Andrews, E. A. xxvii
Anne, Queen xlii, 99
Antoninus see Aurelius
Araunah 242
Archimedes 76
Aristophanes 163
Aristotle 43, 70, 80, 192
Arnold, Gottfried 206
Arnold, Matthew 90
Arnold, Thomas Ixv, 40, 125, 173 f.,
216
Arrian 83
Ascham, Roger xii, 84, 91, 126,
148, 158, 181
Augustine, St xxvii, 2f., 9, 14,
16 f., 22, 31, 34, 39, 48, 59,
137, 154
Augustus 35
Athenaeus 83
Athenagoras Iv, 15
Aubign<, Merle d' 206
Aurelius, Marcus Ixiv, 62, 90, 153,
157, 190, 233 f., 236
Ausonius xliv
Axon, W. E. A. viii
Azarias 18
Babington, Churchill 146, 166,
213 f., 221 f.
Babington, C. C. 214
Bacchus, 53
Bacon, Francis xxxii
Bacon, Roger 157, 202
Bake, Prof. 224
Baker, Thos xii, xxv, xxxix, xlii,
91, 145, 160, 165, 200, 207, 221,
224
"Balbus" Iv
Barford, Mr xxix
Baronius 137
Barrington, P. 82
Barrow, Isaac xxxii, 96, 106, 134,
163, 183
246
INDEX OF PROPER NAMES
Barry, Bp 121
Barth, C. 91
Basil, St 84
Bateson, Wm H. xv, xx, 164, 214,
226
Baxter, Rich. 135, 197
Bayle, Pierre 136 f.
Becon, Thos 159
Beda xliv, 158
Bedell, Bp Wm xxxix, xlii, 208
Bellarmine 145
Bengel 35, 48, 122
Benoy, Jas. 140
Bentley, Richard 60, 99, 106, 126,
133, 142, 145, 158, 162, 165,
203, 213, 223 f.
Berkeley, Bp 104, 210
Bernard, St li, 31, 44
Bernays, Jak. 133
Bersier, Eug. 39
Bertram, Chas xlii, xliv
Bias, 43
Bickersteth, E. xix
Bickersteth, R. xiv
Bielefeld, C. G. H. Ix
Bismarck, Prince 159
Blomberg, Miss von 218 f., 230
Blomfield, E. V. 165
Blunt, J. J. 126, 159, 205, 214
Boethius xxi
Boniface VIII 11
Boning, Rich, xxxiv f.
Bonney, Dr xxxix
Bonwicke, Ambr. xlii
Booth, Wm 84 f.
Booth, Mrs 86
Bossuet 140
Boswell, Jas 221
Bourdaloue 140
Bradshaw, Hy xxviii, xxxviii f.,
214, 227
Bradwardine 157, 202
Bretschneider 44
Breul, K. Ivii
Briggs, H. 160
Bright, John 134
Bristow, Rich. 93
Brousson, Claude 142, 148
Brown, David 210
Browne, Bp G. P. 183
Browne, Bp Harold 195, 214
Bucer 99
Buchanan, Claudius 210 f.
Bull, Bp 99
Buller, General 229
Bunney, Edm. 109
Bunyan, John 68, 135
Burghley, Lord 136, 145, 159
Burghley, Lady 91
Burleigh see Burghley
Burman, Frans xlii f.
Burney, Charles 203
Burt, Thos 56, 64
Butler, Archer 236
Butler, Bp Jos. 93, 105, 122
Butler, Bp Sam. 158, 220
Butler, Sam. 220
Byrom, John 16
Cabrera, Bp xlvii
Caelius Aurelianus xxvii
Caesar, Julius 74
Caius, John 201 f.
Caius, Thomas, 201
Galas, Jean 149
Calkoen, Domine xxix f.
Calkoen, Hendrik xxx
Calvin 142
Campello, Count xlvii
Campion, W. M. xl
Carey, Wm 210
Carlyle, Thos xviii, Ixiii, 221 f.,
225
Carpenter, Edw. 240
Cartwright, Thos 159
Carus, William xix, 214
Casaubon 99, 133, 162
Cassandra 160
Cassian xxvii
Cave, Wm 159
Cayley, Professor 214
Celsus 131
Censorinus 49
Cetewayo 217, 229
Chamberlain, John 213
Cheke, Sir John Ix, 76, 158, 208
Chelmsford, Lord 229
Chester, Col. 204
Chrysostom li, 27, 31 f., 33 f., 41 f.,
48, 122, 133
Churton, Ralph 223
Cicero xxiv, 43, 84, 91, 154
INDEX OF PROPER NAMES
247
Cichitti, Prof, xlviii
Clark, W. G. 120, 147, 213, 225
Clarke, E. D. 209
ClarksoD, Thos 160, 193, 212
Claudian 91
Claudianus Mamertus 91
Claudius 48
Clay, C. J. xxxix
Clemens Alex, li, Ixiv, 12 f., 15,
18 f., 191, 233
Cobet 80, 162, 165
Cole, William 159, 165, 204
Colenso, Bp 103, 160, 217, 225 f.,
229 f.
Coleridge, S. T. xii, 205
Coligny 144
Collier, Wm 82
Commodus 90
Constantino 140
Cooper, C. H. xxxix, 84, 165, 209,
213
Cope, E. M. 225
Copleston, Bp E. 221
Coquerel, Ath. 149
Coquerel, C. 149
Corrie, Bp 210
Corrie, Dr 213 f.
Corteiz, Pierre 142
Cotterill 160
Cotton, John 214
Cotton, Archdn xxxix
Cotton, Bp xxh
Court, Antoine 142, 148 f.
Coutts, F. B. M. Ill
Covel, John 210 f.
Cowell, Professor 211
Cowper, Wm Ixiii, 56
Cranmer 159, 208
Creuziger, Caspar 14
"Crockford" xii
Cyprian of Toulon xii
Cyril of Alex. 15
Cyrus li
Dalilah 71
Dalzel 220
Dante Ixiii
Dathan 94
David 45, 140, 153, 235, 242
Davies, J. LI. Ixi
Dawes, Rich. 165
Decius li
Dee, John 160
De Morgan, A. 122, 216, 228
De Morgan, Mrs 216
Demosthenes, 43
De Quincey, Thos. 224
D'Ewes, Sir Symonds 160, 201
Dio Cassius 83
Diodorus Siculus 43
Diogenes 49, 180, 189
Diogenes Laertius 43, 49, 186
Dixie, Lady Florence 229
Dobree, P. P. 165, 203, 213, 223
Dodsworth, Roger 160
Dollinger xlvi, 17, 148, 176, 195
Dominic, St 104
Donaldson, J. W. 225
Donne, John xxviii, Ixiv, 135, 157
Dorner, J. A. 215, 228
Douen, O, 149
Dousa, Janus Ivii
Dowsing, William 98
Drakes, the 160
Drew, Mr 63
Drumann, W. 84
Dryander see Enzinas, Fr.
Duff, J. D. viii, Ixii
Dumoulin, Pierre 142
Duns Scotus 202
Duplessis-Mornay 144
Durrant, Eliz. xlix
Dyce, Alex. 224
Echo xxxiv
Edward VI 146, 156, 158
Eichthal, G. d' 11, 17 f.
Elijah 156
Eliot, John 190, 209
Elizabeth, Queen 145, 158, 201, 205
Ellis, Leslie 134, 214
Elmsley, P. Ix, 165, 203, 220
Enzinas, Francis 208
Epictetus Ixiv, 12, 62, 69, 154, 157
Epicurus li, 72, 162
Erasmus Iv, 123, 133, 145, 158, 208
Euripides xiii
Eusebius 15
Ewald, Heinr. 15, 225
Faber, F. W. Ixiii, 171, 173, 206
Fabricius li
248
INDEX OF PROPER NAMES
Falkland, Lord 159
Fawkes, Guy xxi
Fearon, D. R. viii
Felice, G. de 149
Fenelon 140 f.
Ferrar, Nicholas xxxii, xlii, 92,
173, 210
Ferrari, Antonio 146
Field, Frederick 133
Fisher, John xii, xxv, Ixii, 37, 65,
78, 84, 91, 120, 123, 135, 145,
154, 157, 158, 161, 178, 201 f., 236
Flacius Illyricus 206
Flechier 140
Forcellini Ivi
Fortunatus 75
Foster, Jos. 204
Foucault 139
Frampton, Alg. 160
Francis, Surgeon General 81
Fraser, Bp 100
Frederick I 99
Frend, William 216
Freund, W. xxvii
Freydinger, A. 227
Friedlander, Iv
Friedrich, Joh. 196
Fulke, Wm 159
Fuller, Thomas Ixvi, 98, 136, 158,
165, 201 f., 205
Foxe, John 172, 206
Gaisford, Thos 165
Galatea Iv
Galen 182
Gallio 214
Garrett, Dr G. M. 226
Gataker, Thomas 133, 153, 158, 162
Gellius, Aulus 43
George III 92, 144
Gibbon, Edward 133
Gieseler, J. C. L. 149
Gilbert, Wm 160
Gisborne, Thos 160
Gladstone, W. E. 148, 242
Goethe 16
Goldoni Ixiii
Goldwin Smith 188
Goodwin, Bp Harvey xxxiv, 214
Goodwin, Thomas 159
Gordon, Gen. Charles li, 180
Gordon, R. A. xlix
Gorham, G. C. 224
Gray, Bp R. 218, 225
Gregory XIII 135
Green, Mr (gyp) xlix
Greene, Robert 158
Griffiths, Jos. 224
Grindal, Abp Wm 158, 208
Gronovius 133
Grossetete, Robert 202
Grote, George 90, 218
Grote, John 214
Grotius 153
Grove, William 146
Guest, Edwin 214
Guicciardini Ixiii
Guizot Ixiii
Gunning, Bp 120, 164
Haag 149
Haeckel, E. 227
Hale, Sir Matth. lix
Hall, Peter 19
Hamilton, Sir Wm Ivii
Hampden, Bp 103, 224 f.
Hannibal 74
Hare, J. C. 159, 205, 214, 220 f.,
223, 225, 236
Haviland, John 160
Hearne, Thomas 200 f., 220
Heber, Reginald 203, 212
Heberden, Wm 160
Henry IV of France 135, 145
Henry VII 201
Henry VIII 77, 120, 157
Henslow, Professor 146, 214
Heraclitus 18
Herbert, George Ivi, Ixiii, 49,
122, 135
Hercules 60, 71, 80
Herkomer, Sir Hubert liv
Hermann, Joh. 220
Hermes 71
Herod 101
Herodotus xxi
Herrick Ivi, 158
Herschel, Sir John 160
Herzog, Bp xlvi, 196
Herzog, J. J. 149
Hesiod 84
Hessels, J. H. 1
INDEX OF PROPER NAMES
249
Hesychius 220, 223
Hey, Professor John 216 f.
Hildesley, Bp 208
Hill, Hy viii, xiii, Ixvi
Hill, Rowland 156
Hilty, Carl 186
Hinton, James 112 f.
Holtzmann 48
Holyoake, Fr. li
Homer xv, xxi, 25, 154
Hone, William 70
Hook, Dean 93, 99
Hooker, Richard 79, 93
Hooper, John 172
Hopkins, Miss E. 57, 62, 76, 83,
100, 105, 112 f., 214
Hopkins, Wm 76, 214 f.
Horace xiii, xv, xxi, Ivi, 83
Hort, F. J. A. xvi, xxvf., lix, 170,
184, 214, 225, 235
Hort, Mrs viii
Hosemann, Pastor xlvi
How, Bp W. 125
How, F. D. xlvii
Howard, Lord Thomas 135
Howe, John 135
Howes, Fr. Ivi
Hoyle, Mr 64
Huber, Joh. 227
Hiibner, Emil xiii
Hufeland, C. W. 1
Hugues, Edm. 149
Humphry, G-. M. 214
Hupfeld, H. 225
Huss, John 12
Huxley, T. H. 25, 39
Hymers, Dr xv
Isaiah xliv, 166
Israel 27, 33, 47, 188, 193
Jackson, Bp T., 221
James, St (ap.) 31, 41, 134
James, St (disciple) 3, 135
James, Dr M. R. xliii
James I 209
James II 135, 137, 156, 159
Jamie son, Mr xxix
Jebb, Sir R. C. liv, 224
Jeremie, Dr 214, 224 f.
Jerome, St xxvii
Jesse 242
Jesus Christ passim
Joel 193
John, St 3f., 24, 30, 98, 117 f.,
134
John, St, Baptist 36, 191
Jonadab 132
Jonson, Ben 158
Jortin, John 206
Joseph 143
Josephus 134, 188
Jowett, Wm 160, 211
Judas Lebbaeus 4
Jude, St 31
Julian 131
Jupiter 154
Jurieu 137
Justin Martyr 12, 15, 18, 59, 83,
154, 191
Juvenal xi, xxiii, xxvi, xxxix, xliv,
25, 40,80, 84, 138, 187f.
Kallias Iv
Kaye, Bp 159, 216
Ken, Bp Ixiii
Kennedy, B. H. xiv, xxiii, xliv, 158
Kerr, Norman 80 f.
Keshub Chunder Sen 212
Key, Thomas see Caius
Key, T. H. 216
Khalifa, the 242
King, John 206
Kingsley, Charles Ixi, 71, 92, 214
Kitchener, Lord 242
Korah 94
Krause 40
La Bruyere 140
Lachmann 60, 133
Lactantius xxiv, xliv, 15, 139, 186
La Fontaine 140
Lamb, Charles xii, 99
La Mettrie, de 162
Langdale, Lord lix
Langen, Professor 156
Las Casas 218
Latimer, Hugh 12, 59, 145, 156
Law, Wm 59, 64
Leighton, Abp xix, 48, 122
Le Nain 144
Le Tellier (Chancelier) 138
250
INDEX OF PROPER NAMES
Le Tellier (Pere) 141
Lever, Thomas 91, 145, 156, 159
Lewis, C. T. xlv
Lewis, S. S. 179
Libanius 133
Lichtenberger 149, 227
Lightfoot, Bp xxv f., lix, 133, 179,
214, 225, 235, 239
Lindsay, Mary see Temple, Lady
Lindsay, Laura 1 f.
Lingard, Jn 99
Lipsius Ivii, 162
Lister, Martin 160
Liveing, Dr viii
Livingstone, D. 219 f.
Livy 84, 91, 146
Lloyd, Mrs xv
Lobeck 15
Locke, John 136
Lockhart, J. G. xii
Long, Jas 216
Loofs, F. 227
Lorkin, Thomas 213
Louis XIV 137 f., 140!., 149,
242
Louvois 139
Lowder, Charles 102
Luard, H. R. 165, 204, 213 f., 224
Lucian 83
Lucilius 181
Luke, St 11, 15, 17 f.
Lumby, Dr J. R. xliv
Luther xlvii, Ixiii, 3, 14, 25, 31,
44 f., 48, 156, 159, 163, 194, 206,
243
Macaulay, Lord Ixiii, 146, 221
Machiavelli Ixiii
Machray, Bp Robert 121, 211
Mackenzie, Bp 105, 121, 160, 217,
219, 229 f., 234
Macmillan, Alex, xxxviii f., xlii
M'Plaank 229
Macrobius 83
Madvig 80, 133
Mader, A. 149
Maguend^ 229
Maine, H. J. S. 214
Maintenon, Mme de 140
Maitland, S. R. xxxix, 77, 92, 98,
165, 205 f., 216
Maitland, F. W. 207
Maiden, Hy 216
Maltby, Dr 209
Malunga, C. F. 218 f.
Mangey, Thomas 43, 158
Manning, Cardinal 195, 239
Margaret, Lady Ixii, 37, 49, 62,
65, 73, 84, 123, 154, 178, 236
Mark, St 17 f., 34
Markland, Jer. 165
Marsden, J. H. 84
Marsh, Bp 99, 159, 209 f., 221
Marshall, John 210 f.
Martial xlivf., 83
Martin, Henri 149
Martyn, Henry 160, 210
Martyr, Peter 99
Mary, St, the Virgin 24, 135
Masinissa li
Mason, P. H. liv
Massillon 140, 142
Master, William 201
Matthew, St 11, 17 f., 27, 30,
34, 61
Maurice, F. D. xxxiif., Ixi, Ixiv,
68, 77, 79, 92 f., 99, 147, 159,
205, 225, 240
Maxwell, J, Clerk 102, 214
Mayor, Dr J. B. viii, xii f., xiv, xx
Mayor, J. E. B. vii Ixvi passim
Mayor, Mary Anna xlvii
Mayor, Robert xiii, xvii, xx, 212
Mayor, Mrs R. viii, xiii f., xxiii
Mayor, R. B. xiiif., xv, xliii
Mede, Joseph 213
Medea xiii
Medusa 226
Melanchthon 99
Mendham, Joseph 203
Metastasio Ixiii
Metcalfe, Nicholas 158
Metrodorus 162
Meyer, Heinr. 61
Michelet 144
Middleton, T. F. 203, 211
Mill, J. S. 158
Mill, W. H. 92, 205, 211
Milner, Jn 206
Milton xiii, Ixiii, 54, 136, 213
Minucius Felix xliv, 15, 29, 43
Misael 18
INDEX OF PROPER NAMES
251
Mitford, Mr xlix
Mommsen 137
Monk, J. H. 165, 224
More, Sir Thomas 120, 135
Morgan, Bp Wm 208
Mortara, Edgar 17
Morton, Bp 145, 159
Moses xliv, 4, 42, 153, 189
Miiller, Max 190
Mullinger, J. Bass 213
Munro, H. A. J. xii, xliv, 166,
214, 221, 225
Musonius li, 62, 154, 191, 193, 233
Musurus 220
Nagelsbach 39, 233
Nalson, Jn 160
Napier, Sir Wm 217
Napoleon xii, 143
Neander 98, 133
Nero 39, 48
Nettleship, Hy xii, xxvii
Nettleship, Mrs H. viii, xxvii
Newman, F. W. 78, 93
Newman, J. H. Ixiii, 103, 160, 207,
225, 236
Newton, Isaac 106, 162
Nicolas, Michel 48
Niebuhr 159
Nowell, Dean 211, 223
Oakeley, Fred. 99
Gates, Titus 126
Occam, William of 158, 202
Oehler 91
Oetinger 48
Ollendorff xvi, Ivi
Omphale 71
Orbilius xii
Orellius xiii
Origen 15, 191, 233
Otter, William 209
Otto, J. C. T. 18
Overall, Bp 145, 159
Overton, J. H. 227
Ovid Iv
Paget, G. E. 214
Paley, William 27, 42, 75, 84,
180 f., 239 f.
Palgrave, F. T. 29 f., 43
Parker, Matthew 201 f., 208
Parr, Samuel 203
Parsons, Robert 109
Pascal Ixiii
Patrick, Bp 207
Pattison, Mark 87 f., 90
Paul, St Ix, 5, 29, 31, 35, 59, 62,
69 f., 76, 104 f., 125, 154, 159 f.,
168, 177 f., 179, 182, 187 f.,
190 f., 197,241
Paul V, 137
Payne, Chris, li
Payne, E. S. viii, xxvii, li, Iv
Peabody, G. 180
Peacock, Dean 146
Pearson, Bp 39, 44, 48
Pearson, J. B. 210
Peck, Fr. 160
Peckard, Peter 212
Peckham, John 202
Pecock, Reginald 202
Pelias 213
Pennington, Sir Is. 160
Pentheus 53
Perowne, Bp J. J. S. 140
Perrone 11, 17
Persius 91
Peter, St 4, 14, 24, 34, 131, 134,
137, 174
Petrosin, 0. P. 146
Pflugk xiii
Philemon 72, 192
Philip, St 3, 9
Philip II 135
Phillips, W. I. 124
Philo 43, 134, 158
Philpott, Bp 214
Phrynicus 15
Pierotti, G. xxxix
Pilkington, G. L. 210
Pius IX 138, 195
Plato li, 15, 84, 90, 102, 154, 182,
189 f., 192, 229
Plautus xv, xliv
Pliny xxvi, xliv, 39, 72, 83, 182,
190
Plunket, Abp Lord xlvii, 225
Plutarch li, Ixiv, 91, 186
Pocock, N. 225
Polycarp, St Ixvi
Polyphemus Iv
252
INDEX OF PROPER NAMES
Pontius Pilate 39
Porphyry 131
Person, Rich. 71, 80, 165, 203,
213, 223
Power, Jos. xxxvi
Powis, Lord xvi
Powlett, C. J. viii
Pratt, Josiah 212
Pressense 48
Price, John 153
Priest, Mrs viii, liii
Prior, Matthew 158
Priscillian 136
Prothero, G. W. 227
Prynne, Wm 214
Publilius Syrus Iv, 43
Pusey, E. B. 103, 207
Pythagoras li
Quintilian xliv, Ivi
Rabaut, Paul 136, 143 f., 147 f.
Rabaut, Saint-Etienne 136
Rachel 101
Ranke 159, 203
Rawnsley, H. D. xxxiv
Ray, Jn Ivi
Rechab, 132
Redman, Jn 159
Reid, Prof, liv
Reina, Cassiodoro de 208
Reinkens, Bp xlvi f., 195 f.
Reitzenstein, Ixvi
Rembrandt xxxii
Renan, Ernest 18, 48, 69, 218
Rendall, G. H. xxvi
Reusch, F. H. xlvi f.
Reuss, E. 48
Reville 48
Richard of Cirencester xxv, xxxix,
xlii
Richardson, B. W. 81
Ridley, Matth. 59, 145
Ritschl 133
Roberts, Lord 57
Robertson, Wm 206
Robinson, Matth. xl, xlii
Roffe, Miss xlix
Roland, Mme 54
Romilly, Lord xxxix
Rose, H. J. 207
Ross, Saladin Stewart 227
Rothe, Richard 25 f., 39 f., 41 f.,
43, 59, 64, 86, 125, 138
Rougemont, F. de 39
Rouse, Dr W. D. Ivi
Routh, M. J. 216
Rueckert, Fr. 116
Ruskin, John 112
Ryle, Bp J. C. 102, 196
Sainte-Beuve Ivii, Ixiii, 18
St Etienne Rabaut see Rabaut
Sallust 162
Salmon, George 205
Samson 71
Sanday, Dr 93
Sandys, Sir Edwin 210
Sandys, Sir John viii, liv
Sarpi, Paolo 208
Savory, Sir Joseph 140
Sawyer, R. 82
Scaliger, Joseph Ivii, 145, 158
Scheller xxvii
Schenkel 48
Schiller, Hermann 193
Schneider, R. 153
Scholefield, Prof, xix, 223
Schomberg, G* de 139
Schow 220
Schulte, J. F. xlvi f.
Schwarz, Carl 125
Scott, C. B. 214, 234
Scott, R. F. viii
Scott, Thomas 236
Seeker, Abp 105, 144
Sedgwick, Adam xxv, 146 f., 214
Selwyn, Bp G. A. xx, 160, 211,
226
Selwyn, Bp Jn 211
Selwyn, Wm 214
Seneca xliv, li, 62 f., 72, 83, 91,
118, 123, 176, 181, 189, 241
Sergeant, John 159
Servius graminaticus 83
Sevigne, Mme de 140 f.
Shaftesbury, Lord 125
Shairp, J. C. Ixiii
Shakespeare liii, Ixiii
Sharp, Abp John 99, 210
Sheba, Queen of 12
Shilleto, Rich, xvi, xx
INDEX OF PROPER NAMES
253
Short, C. xlv
Sibbes, Rich. 159
Silius Italicus 91
Simeon, Charles 188, 209
Smith, G. C. M. viii
Smith, John 158
Smith, John (C.U.L.) xxxvii
Smith, Capt. John 223
Smith, Sydney 210
Smith, Dr Wm xxvii
Socrates H, 12, 18, 49, 62, 85, 154,
189, 191, 233, 240
Solinus, C. J. 83
Solomon 69
Sophocles xv, 43, 84, 203
Southey, Robert 203, 220 f., 222
Southwell, Robert 136
Spedding, Jas 221
Spencer, Herbert 160
Spencer, Thomas 160
Spiess, Edm. 153
Spurgeon, Charles 121, 225 f.
Spurgeon, Mrs 179
Stanhope, Dean 109
Stanley, Dean 214, 225
Steere, Bp 216
Stephen, Leslie 202, 214 f., 216,
226
Stephen, St 29
Stephens, W. W. R. 93
Stier 48
Stillingfleet 145, 159
Stoughton, Dr J. 99
Strafford 159
Strauss, David 226
Strevel 1
Struve li
Strype, John 92, 203, 207 f.
Sue, Eugene 18
Suetonius Ivi, 48
Tacitus xliv, 23, 39, 43, 188, 190
Tait, Abp 99
Tanner, John 200
Tate, Jas 220
Taverner, Rich. 208
Taylor, Brooke 160
Taylor, Henry Ixiii
Taylor, Jeremy, xlv, Ixiv, 136, 156,
213
Taylor, John 158, 165 f.
Temple, Abp 239
Temple, Lady xlix f.
Tenison, Abp 212
Tennyson, Alfred liii, Ixiii, 94, 99,
240
Terence xliv
Tertullian, xliv, 15, 30, 43, 91, 104,
137, 191, 233
Thales 189
Theiner 203
Theodoret 39
Theodorus Priscianus xxvii
Theodosius 140
Thirlwall, Bp C. 25 f., 40 f, 103 f.,
146 f., 159, 205, 214, 225, 239
Tholuck 59, 64
" Thomas " (gardener) xvii
Thomas, St 7, 28, 47
Thomason, Jas 210
Thomasius, Jac. 15
Thompson, " Jupiter " xvi, 214
Thompson, W. H. xvi, 147, 166,
214, 215, 224 f.
Thorwaldsen xxxii
Thucydides xv, 220
Thummel, Pastor 156
ThurteU, Alex. 214
Tiberius 35, 39
Tillemont, Le Nain de Ivii
Timon Ixi
Todhunter, Isaac xvi, Ixiii, 122, 126,
214, 234
Trench, R. C. xviii, xx, Ixiii, 116,
126 f.
Tucker, Bp 180
Turton, Bp 80, 216
Twyne, Brian 201
Tyndal, Wm 208
Tyrwhitt, Thos 165, 221
Uffenbach, Z. C. von xlii
Ussher, Abp 234
Valckenaer 15
Valera, Cyprian de 208
Van Mildert 220
Vansittart, A. A. 214
Vauvenargues 133
Venn, Hy 212
Vespasian 48
Victoria, Queen 229, 242
254
INDEX OF PROPER NAMES
Virgil xxi, 91, 142
Vischer 227
Vitellius 162
Voltaire 27, 42, 133, 136
Vossius, Isaac 99
Wake, Abp 99, 143
Walsingham, Sir Fr. 210
Walton, Iz. 223
Ward, W. G. 99, 103
Warneck, Gustav 210
Warton, Thos 206
Washington, Booker T. 237
Wasse, Jos. 203, 221
Watson, Bp 92
Watson, Sir Thos 160
Watts, Is. Ixiii
Werner, Miss A. 230
Westcott, Bp lix, 168 f., 174 f.,
214, 234 f., 238 f.
Weston, Miss 57
Wetstein, J. J. 153
Wette, Wilhelm de 15, 59, 64
Whewell, William xxxv, 91, 214
Whipple, Bp 211, 223
Whitaker, Alex. 211, 223
Whitaker, T. D. 160
Whitaker, Wm 145, 158, 163, 211,
223
Whitby, D. 131
Whitworth, W. Allen 123
Whytehead, Thos 160
Wiclif 158, 202
Wilberforce, William 160, 193,
212
William III 135
William the Silent 145
Williams, Abp John 161, 236
Williams, George 213
Williams, Roger 213 f.
Wilkinson, Matth. xx
Winer 61
Wolsey, Cardinal 157
Wood, Antony 201
Wordsworth, Christopher (M. of
Trin.) 102, 209
Wordsworth, Christopher, Bp 195,
227
Wordsworth, Christopher (Preb.)
213
Wordsworth, Elizabeth 227
Wordsworth, John 224
Wordsworth, William Ixiii, 70, 80,
102, 158 f., 221
Wren, Bp 200
Wright, Frank 81
Xenophanes 154
Xenophon 49
Zaleukos 43
Zeller 25, 39, 227
Zeus xvi, 75
Zirngiebl, E. 227
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