History of the Christian church (Volume 5) online

preaching.

Another result was that in a world whose intellect-
ual outlook was immensely broadening, and whose
social conditions were becoming more and more com-
plex, there was no effort made to understand the sit-



176 History of the Christian Church,

uation, to make the gospel so applied as to be of trans-
forming value. Few books of deep or original
thought, or of permanent value, came from
Balre^ess. ^he Evangelical Movement. That adjust-
ment which must come, came from other
sources. There can be no neglect of study, of the
demands of the intellectual life of the times, without
permanent loss of power and influence.

Another result was the demand for a tj^pe of re-
ligion which should embrace the whole life; one which
should have place for childhood and youth,
''"of'ufe**^ for play and recreation; one which could
know and love art and beauty, and could
consecrate and not stifle human affections; one in
which joy and gladness mingled in the strain, as well
as pain and sorrow ; in a word, a religion which not
only redeemed, but developed the whole man. The
Evangelical ideal was a high one, and resulted in noble
characters in those who endeavored to realize it. Duty
was the motive force, and duty alone can make noble
men. But the tendency was often to gloom, as with
Zachary Macaulay. The inspiration of life must know
and make felt love and joy. Too often this was a for-
gotten note to be recovered in the gospel song.

We do not have to go to the caricaturist, like

Dickens, to see perversions of Evangelical teaching.

To intellectual indolence came sometimes

Perversions. . ^.^^

carelessness m manners and dress. Then
the calumny and scurrility, the uncharitableness and
censoriousness, revealed in the Fly-leaf Controversy
and its calamitous results, show that there were hate-
ful faults deeply ingrained in the spiritual life. Often-
times Evangelical Churchmen were the most unchris-



The Evangelical Church. 177

tian in their treatment of Nonconformists. Hence
there must come to English Christianity a new force,
to purify and to supplement its religious life, that the
building of the new time should not be a mere repeti-
tion of the old, but that fairer structure which should
enhance and show the true worth of the work and
workmen who had preceded it.

This came on one side from the demand for a freer,
while reverent thought, and a wider intellectual hori-
zon. This Broad Church Movement put ...

, -.,,,, ^ The Broad

Stress on intellectual honesty, on ;making Church
your own your beliefs, and on intellectual ^"^e*"®"*-
hospitality, a readiness to welcome all new truth and
set at once to adjust the new message, whether from
the rocks or from the stars, with the old Evangel.
Hence it was intensely practical and ethical in its con-
ception of the religious life. Its chief thinker was
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

A poet with the most regal imagination since
Shakespeare; a thinker whose comprehensive grasp
and penetration, though his work was most 5^^^,
fragmentary, has not been surpassed among Taylor
Englishmen of the nineteenth century, and ^°'®"^«®-
whose knowledge of the rarest qualities of the English
language and of English poetry by no Englishman of
any time, was Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772- 1834).
His father was an English clergyman, and he was the
youngest of ten children. His father died young, and
at an early age he was sent to Christ's Hospital, where
Charles Lamb and Bishop Middleton, of Calcutta,
were among his schoolmates. In 1791 he entered
Jesus College, Cambridge. Having imbibed Republi-
can opinions in politics, and Unitarian ones in religion,
1%



178 History of the Christian Church,

he became disgusted with university life, and enlisted
as a common soldier. By the influence of friends he
was discharged, and returned to Cambridge. He left,
however, the university in 1794 without taking his
degree. In the same year he met Southey, and con-
ceived his scheme of a settlement on the banks of the
Susquehanna, where, in a *' Pantisocracy," should be-
gin a new era of unselfish brotherhood for humanity.

In 1795, for lack of funds, this was dropped; then
Coleridge married Miss Sarah Fricker, and Southey
married her sister. In 1796 Coleridge published his
''Juvenile Poems," for which he received $150. He
then made the acquaintance of Wordsworth, and
with him, in 1798, published "Lyrical Ballads," in
which appeared " The Ancient Mariner."

In the same year, through the liberality of the
Wedgwood brothers, he went to Germany and studied
German philosophy and literature. On his return,
after a stay of fourteen months, he published in 1800,
a translation of Schiller's " Wallenstein," which, as a
translation, is unsurpassed in our literature. The
next year Coleridge became a victim of the opium
habit, in whose bonds of bitterness and impotence he
was bound for fifteen years. When he did at last
break away and recover himself, health and prospects
were ruined. He lived yet eighteen years, and made
his marvelous genius felt, but only fragments remain
of the whole, strong and beautiful, of which he was
capable.

In these years Coleridge turned from the Unita-
rian faith and the Utilitarian philosophy. He became
a devout communicant of the Church of England,
and sought on grounds of reason to preserve her Ks-



The Evangelical Church. 179

tablishment. In politics he remained a Liberal, and
in theory a Republican. As a religious thinker Cole-
ridge sought to broaden the basis and insure in per-
sonal conviction the certitude of the religious life. It
is a phase of the same movement which meets us in
Schleiermacher in Germany, and in Vinet in France.
In this endeavor Coleridge followed Kant and the
German idealists, like Schelling. His great service
may be said to be that he introduced German thought
to Englishmen, and taught them to think in a plane
above the popular Utilitarianism of the time. Cole-
ridge founded no school, but he taught men to verify
their religious convictions, instead of taking them on
trust, and he led them in a passionate devotion to
truth. He left his impress on the whole Broad
Church school, and upon such eminent Americans as
Professor Henry B. Smith and Bishop Phillips
Brooks.

The great master of English schools in this gener-
ation, and the man who did most for educational
ideals in England in this century was
Thomas Arnold (1795-1842). Thomas Ar- ^â„¢"d!
nold was the son of an officer in the cus-
toms service, who died when his son was but six
years old, Thomas was educated at Winchester,
1807-1811, and at Corpus Christi, Oxford, 1811-1815.
In the latter year he gained a Fellowship at Oriel, and
remained in residence for the next four years. In
181 9-1 828 he resided at Laleham, near Staines, where
he devoted himself to preparing a few young men
each year for the university. In these years, as at
Oxford, he gave himself particularly to classics, his-
tory, and social politics. His especial study was



i8o History of the Christian Church.

Thucydides and Aristotle, and they ever remained his
favorite authors. At this time, after thorough ex-
amination, he became a convinced Christian. Thomas
Arnold was a deeply religious man, and his religion
was of a profoundly ethical type. With him religion
meant the supremacy of the moral and spiritual ele-
ments in our being ; it included as foundation-stones
in character, justice, honesty, and truth. In June,
1828, he was ordained, and in August he entered
upon his work as headmaster at Rugby, 1 828-1 841.
It may be said with truth that these years mark an
epoch in the history of English education. According
to Arnold's thought, education was much more than
training the intellect; it included as chief elements
the development of the moral and religious nature.
The impression he made upon his students was inef-
faceable. Archbishop Benson says of the effect of
his work, and no one could speak with better right,
" His never-dying glory is to have utterly reformed
the public schools." It is scarcely too much to say
that he found the great schools of England heathen,
and that his work and its influence made them Chris-
tian. In 1 841 he was appointed Professor of History
at Oxford. Arnold made history live. His edition
of Thucydides and " History of Rome," are not the
work of a profound scholar, but they made men see
the ancient world alive again. His essay on a
National Church, in 1833, was a failure. His stand-
ards of thought and work are seen in his five vol-
umes of "Sermons." Most fortunate was Arnold in
his biographer. Dean Stanley, whose " I^ife of Ar-
nold " remains a classic. Matthew Arnold, the poet



The Evangelical Church.



i8l



and critic, was his son, and Mrs. Humphrey Ward,
the novelist, his granddaughter.

If Thomas Arnold was the teacher of the Broad
Church movement, Julius Hare (i 795-1 855) was its
most distinguished scholar. Hare was
born in Italy and partly educated in Ger- ''"""h^^^^"'''^''
many, before he entered Charterhouse
School. From there he went to Trinity College,
Cambridge. Being elected Fellow of Trinity in 181 8,
he traveled on the Continent. After reading law for
a time, he returned to Trinity as assistant tutor, 1823-
1832. In 1827, with his brother, he published
"Guesses at the Truth." In 1832 he became rector
of the rich benefice of Hurstmonceaux ; in 1840 he
was made Archdeacon of Lewes, in 1853, chaplain to
the queen. In 1840 he published "The Victory of
Faith," and in 1846 "The Mission of the Com-
forter;" in 1848 appeared the "Remains of John
Sterling," who had been his curate. Hare was strong
in his admiration of Luther and the Reformation, and
in 1854, he published against High Church detraction,
"A Vindication of Luther against his Recent English
Assailants."

Hare's influence was greater than his works.
His large acquaintance with the thought of his time
is shown in his library of twelve thousand volumes,
in which German philosophy and theology were
largely represented. In range and depth of knowl-
edge he was without superior in the English Church.
While his views in general were those of his school,
yet he combined them with those of an Evangelical
Arminian cast.



1 82 History of the Christian Church.

The great preacher of this school was Frederick
W. Robertson (i8 16-1853), who made famous Trinity
Frederick Church, Brighton. Robertson's father was
William a captain of artillery, and the son had the
Robertson, jj^^i^aj-y yirtucs and a desire for the mili-
tary life. At fourteen he spent a year at Tours, in
France, and then returned to take up his work in the
Academy and University of Edinburgh. All through
his youth and young manhood he was noted for purity
and truth. At eighteen he began the study of law ;
but his health suflfered from the confinement. He
sought a commission in the army, but finally deter-
mined to study for the ministry. He entered Brase-
nose College, Oxford, in 1837. There he worked
hard reading Plato, Aristotle, Butler, Thucydides, and
Jonathan Edwards. He also committed to memory
the New Testament, both in English and Greek. In
1840 he was ordained. His ascetic life, in 1841, broke
his health. In 1842 he traveled in Switzerland, and
this year he married. He was curate at Cheltenham,
1 842-1 846. In 1846-47, he traveled in Germany and
the Tyrol. There he passed through a religious crisis.
The one fixed point in his theological thought was
the nobility of the humanity of the Son of man.
From that as a firm basis he made his own the other
Christian truths. From 1847 to 1853 he was pastor of
Trinity Church, Brighton. It may be doubted if six
years of the ministry of any other man of the cen-
tury left a mark so deep or an influence so wide. No
other English preacher has so appealed to German
thinkers, and his influence has been potent in
America.

It is but just to say that Robertson specially ap-



The Evangelical Church. 183

peals to those who seek final certitude for the mini-
mutQ of Christian truth, and from that accept farther
truth. His own experience made him, for such, an
admirable guide. For those to whom God is the
surest as the greatest of realities, and his revelation
in Christ the culmination of the religious education
and the spiritual development of the race — that one
focal point in which all lines of historical tendency
converge, and without whom they can not be under-
stood — to such, much of Robertson's thought will
seem without special illumination or help. His '* Life
and Sermons" are among the most popular religious
works of the last half of the century.

The leading bishops of the Broad Church party
were Richard Whately and Connop Thirlwall.

Richard Whately (i 787-1 863) was the youngest of
the large family of an English clergyman. From a
private school at Bristol he went to Oriel
College, Oxford, in 1805, and three years whrteiij.
later he graduated with the highest honors.
In 181 1 he was elected Fellow of Oriel; in 18 14 he
was ordained. In 1821, Whately married, thus va-
cating his Fellowship. For the next two years he
prepared students for the university at Oxford. The
years from 1 823-1 825 were spent in successful
pastoral work at Halesworth ; but the health of his
wife required a change of location. In 1825 he be-
came principal of St. Alban's Hall, Oxford. His vig-
orous administration there opened a new era in its
history. In 1831 he was made Archbishop of Dublin.
The thirty-two years of his administration did not
reach a large measure of success; but the situation
was such that success seemed well-nigh impossible.



1 84 History of the Christian Church.

Whately was admirably adapted for a teacher, but had
little fitness for the leadership of clergy and people in
a crisis where sympathy only could win a tolerable
success. Whately had a strong and well-trained
mind, a vigorous understanding, and a keen wit, He
was Liberal in his politics, and his religion, though
genuine, was of the intellect, not of the heart. An
able and logical thinker, he detested the Oxford
Movement.

Whately wrote much and well. Three of his
works were largely popular and of permanent value :
"Historic Doubts Concerning Napoleon Bonaparte;"
*' Logic," 1826; and "Rhetoric," 1828. His logic
marked an era in the study among Englishmen.
Whately's daughter founded and carried on success-
fully a school for native girls at Cairo.

A man of large thought and equal vigor of intel-
lect was Connop Thirlwall (i 797-1 875). Thirlwall
was distinguished as a scholar, a critic, and
Thiriwau. ^ Statesman. He was a remarkable child.
The son of an Knglish rector, he learned
Latin at three years of age and Greek at four, and
wrote sermons at seven. He prepared for the univer-
sity at Charterhouse with Julius Hare and Grote, the
historian of Greece. He was at Trinity, Cambridge,
18 [4-1 8 1 8, and then spent a year on the Continent.
On his return he studied law, and translated Schleier-
macher's essay on the Gospel of Luke. John Stuart
Mill called him the best speaker, in debate, he ever
heard. Finding, in spite of a most judicial mind, in
himself no fitness for law, he was ordained deacon in
1827. In 1828, with Julius Hare, he translated Nie-
buhr's "History of Rome." In 1832 he accepted the



The Evangelical Church. 185

assistant tutorship of Trinity, Cambridge, vacated by
Julius Hare. Two years later he resigned, and ac-
cepted the living of Kirby. In 1834 he began his
"History of Greece," completing it in 1847. This
work is surpassed in English only by that of his
schoolfellow Grote. In 1840 he was appointed to the
See of St. David's, which he held until 1874. He
learned to preach in Welsh.

Thirlwall never married, and his aloofness and
sharpness at retort prevented his being popular with
his clergy. He was said to be tender toward all weak
things except weak-minded clergy. For years he
showed the insight of a statesman in the House of
Lords. He favored the grant to the Roman Catholic
college at Maynooth, the admission to Parliament of
the Jews, and the Gorham Judgment of the Privy
Council. He voted for the disestablishment of the
Irish Church, though he would have favored, rather,
concurrent endowment with the Roman Catholics.
His Episcopal ''Charges" and his "Letters," all attest
the scope and grasp of his thought and the breadth
and tenderness of his sympathies.

The influence of these men was an intellectual
ferment, but did not crystallize into associated or in-
stitutional effort, and so soon was overshadowed ; but,
like leaven, it wTought on and effectively.

There were men in England who went much
farther than the Broad Church men. Such a man was
Thomas Carlyle, who, through German pan-
theism, came to doubt immortality and a
personal God, but in his later years returned to his
earlier faith. His " Life of Sterling" was a blow at the
teaching of Coleridge.



1 86 History of the Christian Church,

Jeremy Bentham ; Lord Brougham ; John Mill, and
his son, John Stuart Mill; George Grote, the histo-
rian ; and Harriet Martineau, the novelist

Radicals.

and traveler, were Utilitarians, while the last
named became a Positivist, they rejected Christianity
altogether.

Gray old Oxford has been the seat of three great
religious movements, which have transfused them-
selves into the life of the Knglish people.
Movement*! '^^^ ^^^^ ^as that of WycHf and his '' Poor
Preachers," which heralded that sure com-
ing Reformation which should wrest the greater part
of Christendom from Rome. The second was that of
the Wesleys, which brought Christ to the common
people, and made his gospel effective among them as
never before in the history of the Christian Church.
The third was that of Newman and Pusey, which
aimed to make clear that the Church had an independ-
ent, self-sufficient, and historic life. It was the sharp-
est blow ever struck in Europe at the State Church
system. For that, if for nothing else, it deserves our
gratitude ; that it was much else this history will show.
Cambridge also had its religious movements of
which it was the source and hearth, and which have
equally affected Knglish life. The first of these was
the Reformation. So far as it was a popular move-
ment it came from Cambridge men. If Oxford burnt
Cranmer and Ridley and Latimer, Cambridge trained
them. The second was the Puritan Reform, which,
from the days of Queen Elizabeth to those of Oliver
Cromwell, had its headquarters at Cambridge, where
not only Milton and Hampden, but Wilberforce and
Macaulay, were trained. The third movement was



The Evangelical Church. 187

that awakening of English Christian scholarship in
tjie last half of the nineteenth century, forever asso-
ciated with the names of Lightfoot, Westcott, and
Hort. This will show something of the debt the
religious life of England owes to her two great uni-
versities.

Among the larger foundations of Oxford, Oriel
College is not prominent. But between 1820 and 1840
there met in its common room a remarka-
ble group of men — men whose words and
character changed the face of affairs in the Church of
England, and whose influence has been felt through-
out Evangelical Christendom. Easily the first among
these was John H. Newman.

John H. Newman (1801-189^, was the son of an
Evangelical banker and a Huguenot mother. He was
born in 1801. Trained at Oxford, he was
elected Fellow of Oriel in 1822. Outside j****""-

Newman.

of his home his chief religious influences
in early life came from Scott, the Evangelical com-
mentator, from Bishop Butler, and from Whately, after-
ward Archbishop of Dublin. Newman had a keen
literary taste and appreciation, as became one who was
to become one of the great masters of English prose
in his century, and a poet whose words, though few,
are fit, and will never die from the accents of English
speech. Newman felt, his life long, the influence of
the Romantic Movement through the writings of
Scott, Coleridge, and Wordsworth.

In mental equipment and scholarship, Newman
shows well among the men of his time. He knew the
classics and philosophy, English literature and Eng-
lish theology. Of history, either secular or ecclesias-



1 88 History of the Christian Church.

tical, he had never any critical appreciation or under-
standing; nor was he ever a theologian. He was a
master of moral distinctions, of clear and subtle
thought, with a power of expression which, in vigor,
clearness, and beauty, has seldom been equaled in
English literature.

Newman was of a masterful disposition and a nat-
ural leader of men. This was felt at Oriel College,
where he lived for twenty years, 182 2-1 842, and
especially as Vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford, from 1828
to 1843. As a preacher to young men, especially to
students, his spiritual vision, his penetrating moral
criticism, his enforcement of the authority of con-
science, and his making real the attractiveness of great
Christian ideas, made the pulpit of St. Mary's a power
which the men of that generation never forgot.

But the source of Newman's influence was not
chiefly intellectual or due to rare gifts, which were his
as a thinker, a writer, or a preacher. The source of
Newman's influence was his character and his manner.
It was his sincere love of truth as he conceived it, and
willingness to follow wherever it might lead, his dis-
interestedness, his humility, and that elevation of
character which was at once a gentle and efiective in-
spiration to a moral and religious life, which,, with
manners of unusual grace and attraction, made so
potent his influence.

Next to Newman stood a man in many respects his
opposite, but through all changes, his lifelong friend,
Edward B. Pusey (i 800-1 882). Pusey was
plLYey. * ^^^^ ^^ ^ landed family of wealth and influ-
ence, and inherited large means. His train-
ing was that of a strict High Church family. He says



The Evangelical Church. 189

he learned to love the Prayer-book from his mother's
teachings. His piety, nevertheless, had ever the tone
of Augustinian Calvinism. Sin, duty, penitence, and
work are its chief notes. The piety of his " Spiritual
Letters " contrasts sadly with the New Testament, or
with even such ** Letters " as thqse of Fenelon.

Pusey was trained at Oxford, and was a good stu-
dent in what was there taught. In 1823 he was elected
Fellow of Oriel. In 1825, and again in 1826, he spent
some time in Germany studying Hebrew, Syriac,
and especially Arabic. He had a favorable idea of the
German theological movement, which he soon lost
when he came to adopt his fixed principle, which was
his lifelong guide and that of his party, — that there is
no defense against unbelief except an authoritative
Church doctrine and tradition. From this point of
view all criticism is barred from touching the Bible,
or Church doctrine and often Church tradition, as an
enemy to the faith. Pusey, within these limits was a
profound Hebrew scholar; but, of course, the limits
were such that his work is of minor importance. As
a thinker, Pusey does not count; his ignorance of
Church history and of the Roman Catholic Church of
his time was phenome"^nal. In no sense was he orig-
inal. In his ecclesiastical reforms he copied, without
improvements, the conventual life, the Roman Cath-
olic books of devotion, and the practice of auricular
confession from the Church of Rome. It was a
strange comment on his own practice, that he should
be compelled to say, in 1877, "The misery is with the
pedantic copiers of Rome." Yet Pusey never left
the English Church for Rome, though in practice more
Roman than Newman. Manning discerned the reason



I90 History of the Christian Church.

when he wrote, in 1850, " They both [Keble and
Pusey] seem to me to have given up the Divine tra-
dition as the supreme authority, and to apply private
judgment to antiquity." Pusey did dare to criticise
the claims of the Roman Catholic Church, although
he could arrange even the doctrine of the sacrifice of
the Mass according to the Council of Trent, so as to
swallow it.

As a thinker, Pusey can not command our respect ;
any fact or argument against his position made no
more impression on him than a cannon-shot on a bale
of cotton. On the other hand, his humility, his self-
sacrifice, his self-discipline, his generosity and sympa-
thy with those in spiritual difficulties, and the settled
peace of his self-mastery, were sources of increasing
influence until his death.

In 1828, Pusey was appointed Regius Professor of
Hebrew in Oxford, a position he held until his death.
The same year he married. His happy wedded life