History of the Christian church (Volume 5) online

lessened and modified, but were not abolished until
1871. In 1877 further reforms followed, which
brought in better teaching in natural science, larger
incomes for the universities as distinguished from the
colleges, and a more effective use of Fellowships and
work from the professors. Clerical restrictions and
advantages were greatly modified where not utterly
abolished. University education became less Churchly,
and for a time certainly much less religious, and
John S. Mill and Professor Jowett, whose sobriquet
was ''the old heathen," took Newman's place of in-
fluence at Oxford. At Cambridge ruled a different
spirit, though neither Green nor Sedgwick made for
an aggressive Christianity; that came with the visit of
Moody and Sankey in 1882.

Universities were founded for those who, on ac-
count of the religious tests, and, later, on account of
the expense, could not avail themselves of the advan-
tages of Oxford and Cambridge. Such were London
University, founded in 1827; Durham University,
established in 1837; and Victoria University, with its
seat at Manchester, dating from 1851.

In 1870, Foster's Educational Act gave the chil-
dren of the English people a right to the rudiments



522 History of the Christian Church.

of an education. In this they were much behind
Scotland, Germany, and the United States; but the
law has been well enforced, and the English lower
classes now can read and write.

It was in such an era of change and vast progress
that Evangelical Christianity did its work in Great
Britain and Ireland.

The Church of Engi^and.

The first great event in the constitutional history

of the Church of England was the reassembling of the

Progress of Convocation of Canterbury in 1852, after an

the Oxford intermission since 171 7. The Convoca-

Movement. ^^^^^ ^^ Canterbury and York now hold

their regular sessions.

In the first twenty years of this period, the Oxford
Movement kept on its way with increasing power.
After Newman's secession, and especially after the re-
forms of the Universities Commission, it lost its hold
at Oxford. But in the Church at large, and especially
in sending clergymen and men of rank to Rome, this
was the height of its influence. Robert I. Wilberforce
and his brother, and a crowd of others, went over to
Rome, while Newman prophesied of the second
summer of the Roman Catholic Church in England.
Newman wrought for seven years without success at
a Roman Catholic university in Dublin, and then again
at Birmingham. Manning's influence was sufficient
to prevent his opening a school at Oxford.

So far as active work is concerned, Newman's life,
after his adhesion to the Roman Catholic Church, was
a failure. There are few more pathetic letters from a
great man conscious of his powers than that which he



Evangelical Church in Great Britain, 523

wrote to his friend, Father Whitty, of the Society of
Jesus, October 19, 1865. It is as follows:

** My Dkar Father Whitty, — I thank you very
much for your most kind letter; and thank you heartily
for your prayers, which I value very much. It is very
kind in you to be anxious about me, but, thank God,
you have no need. Of course it is a constant source
of sadness to me that I have done so little for Him
during a long twenty years; but then I think, and
with comfort, that I have ever tried to act as others
told me, and if I have not done more, it is because I
have not been put to do more, or have been stopped
when I attempted to do more.

"The cardinal [Wiseman] brought me from Little-
more to Oscott; he sent me to Rome; he stationed
and left me in Birmingham. When the Holy Father
wished me to begin the Dublin Catholic University, I
did so at once. When the Synod of Oscott gave me
to do the new translation of the Scriptures, I began it
without a word. When the cardinal asked me to
interfere in the matter of the * Rambler,' I took on
myself, to my sore disgust, a great trouble and trial.
Lastly, when my bishop, propria 7nottc [on his own
motion], asked me to undertake the mission at Oxford,
I at once committed myself to a very expensive
purchase of land, and began, as he wished me, to
collect money for a church.

'' In all these matters, I think, in spite of many
incidental mistakes, I should, on the whole, have done
a work, had I been allowed, or aided to go on with
them ; but it has been God's blessed will that I should
have been stopped. If I could get out of my mind



524 History of the Christian Church,

the notion that I could do something and am not do-
ing it, nothing could be happier, more peaceful, or
more to my taste, than the life I lead.

''Though I have left notice of the catechism to
the end of the letter, be sure I value it in itself and as
coming from you. The pope will be very glad to hear
the author of it.

** Ever yours, affectionately,

"John H. Newman."

This letter, showing the failure of the Church of
Rome to use or wisely direct the ablest English con-
vert she ever had, or honor him until he was almost
eighty years old, will repel thoughtful men from her
communion more than Newman's " Grammar of As-
sent " will win. But what was loss to Newman and to
the Roman Catholic Church was gain to Christianity
and to English Literature. His "Apologia Pro Vita
Sua," in 1864, will ever be the lasting memorial of his
greatness. Its sincerity, its evident conscientiousness,
and its grace of style, rank it with the great records of
noble souls. Some poems written later have the ex-
quisite flavor of his genius. In 1865, at Keble's
parsonage, he met, for the last time, Pusey and the
author of the "Christian Year." In 1879 the new
pope made Newman a cardinal of the Roman Church ;
eight years after his life-long friend, Pusey, he left the
ranks of the Church militant for that land " where
severed ties are knitted up," August 11, 1890. The
great leader of the Oxford Movement had long sur-
vived his illusions.

A very different fate was that of his fellow-convert
to Rome, Dean Manning, of Chichester. He was in



Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 525

school at Rome, 1 851-1854. In 1857 he became pro-
vost of the Chapter of Westminster and Archbishop
of Westminster in 1865. He enjoyed the fullest con-
fidence of Pius IX, and was more papal than the pope.
With Newman and his friends he had neither sympa-
thy nor patience, as they were " minimizers of doc-
trine."

In the Vatican Council he was a leading spirit, and
took a prominent part with the supporters of infalli-
bility. He lived long enough after the Vatican Coun-
cil himself very largely and trenchantly to minimize
the decree he had so ardently sought to secure. For
twenty-five years he was the head of the Roman
Catholic Church in England. Yet he also survived
his illusions. With lyco XIII he had none of the
influence he wielded with Pius IX. The cares of his
ofl&ce with "the Irish occupation of England," to use
his own phrase, did not meet the ideals of his most
English soul. In his later years, with all the energy
of his nature, he threw himself into reform movements,
especially the temperance reform, to the great benefit
of his people. In 1875 he was made cardinal; but, as
his Roman Catholic biographer says, "his heart was
with Lavington," the -Lavington of his pre-Roman
days. In January, 1892, he followed his more lofty-
natured and greater countryman. Cardinal Newman,
beyond the shadows of earth's fleeting day.

Dr. Pusey most vigorously nourished his illusions
in the first twenty years of this period. In 1853 he
preached his sermon on the Holy Eucharist, taking
extreme sacramental ground. His persuading young
girls to go to confession against the wish of their
parents, led to a breach between him and his bishop.



526 History of the Christian Church.

Samuel Wilberforce, of Oxford. His three labored
and futile Eirenicons showed the measure of that hope
of corporate reunion with Rome which was shattered
by the Vatican Council. The great aim of his life
was further off than ever. No Englishman again will
work so hard to realize it. Henceforth he devoted his
energies to the defense of all that he conceived men-
aced by the oncoming tide of Liberalism, and to the
spiritual direction and advice of the numerous crowd
of clergy and laity who waited upon him. This first
endeavor brought him into an unseemly opposition to
the increase of the income of Professor Jowett, then
to a violent attack upon the " Essays and Reviews,"
and a bitter opposition to the consecration of Frederic
Temple, afterward Archbishop of Canterbury, as
Bishop of Exeter. For Pusey's character as a man of
holy life, and with a sincere desire to promote holiness
in others, neither his narrow-mindedness nor his
astuteness as a party leader could prevent the rever-
ence of men of all parties. He died September, 1882.
Their companion in the Oxford Movement, John
Keble, died in 1866, and Keble College, Oxford, was
founded in his name in 1868, to be a nursery and
school of the sacramental principles and traditional
views of the Oxford Movement.

Henry P. Liddon, the ablest preacher among the
High Churchmen of his time, and, in many respects,
of his generation, became principal in 1854, of Cudde-
son Hall, a school for the training of the clergy,
under the care of the Bishop of Oxford. In 1866 he
delivered the Bampton lyccture on ''The Divinity of
Christ," perhaps the ablest apologetic work of the
period, one which, in many respects, will never be out



Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 527

of date. In 1870 he was made Canon of St. Paul's,
a position which his character, his learning, and his
eloquence fitted him to fill with honor until his death ;
for it he declined more than one bishopric. He died
in September, 1890.

Richard W. Church, more broadminded and versa-
tile than these men, became Dean of St. Paul's in
187 1, succeeding the poet and scholar, Henry H.
Milman, author of " The History of Latin Christian-
ity." Church did honor to the place, and, deeply
loved, died in December, 1890.

The history of the Church of England came to be
largely influenced by its primates in the nineteenth cen-
tury, from the election of Archibald Camp-
bell Tait as Archbishop of Canterbury. The ^"'f^^''''
new Archbishop was a Scotchman, born in
181 1 ; his mother died three years later. He had his
preparatory training in Edinburgh Academy, where he
led the school. In 1827 he entered Glasgow Univer-
sity. It was here, he says, that " Evangelical Gospel
truth first came home to me, from the preaching of
two men. Dr. Welch and Mr. George Smith." In
1829 he won an exhibition at Balliol College, Oxford.
The next year he went to Oxford, and was confirmed
in the Church of England, and won a scholarship.
In 1833 he graduated first class, and, after a trip on
the Continent, won a Fellowship in Balliol, in 1834.
The next year he became tutor in the same college.
The year following he was ordained. In 1839 he was
a student at Bonn. In 1842 he became head master
at Rugby, succeeding Dr. Arnold. Here he made his
reputation. The next year he married, and two years
later visited Italy. In 1849 he became Dean of Car-



528 History of the Christian Church,

lisle. In the succeeding six j^ears he showed his ad-
ministrative ablities in the restoration of the Cathe-
dral; and here he suffered the severest blow of his
life in the loss of five young daughters, through
scarlet fever, in March and April, 1856. None who
have read the profoundly touching account of their
illness and death in the " I^ife " of their mother will
ever forget it. In 1856, Dr. Tait was consecrated
Bishop of London, and in 1868 he succeeded to the
See of Canterbury, dying in 1882.

As Bishop of London, Dr. Tait gave his attention
to evangelistic work and to diocesan missions. In the
" Essays and Reviews " controversy, he sided with his
friend, Arthur Stanley, against the prosecution. In
1863, Stanley was made Dean of Westminster, which
position he held until his death in 1881. He became
the great dean, and of the Cathedral, in those years,
he was " the charm, the glory, and the soul." In
1867, there met the first Lambeth, or Pan-Anglican,
Council. Seventy-six bishops were present. In 1869
came the election of Dr. Temple as Bishop of Exeter.
The violence of his opponents, on account of his con-
nection with the *' Essays and Reviews," can be
gauged from Dr. Pusey's charging him with having
"participated in the ruin of countless souls." A
clergyman described Dr. Temple's consecration "as,
perhaps, the greatest sin, with respect to fidelity to
revealed truth, in which the Church of England has
been involved since the Reformation." In 1870 the
Bishopric of Dover was constituted as a suffragan to
the See of Canterbury, to care for the peculiarly
diocesan business and duties of the Archiepiscopal
See. In 1870 the Canterbury revision of the King



Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 529

James Version of the English Bible was begun. The
New Testament was finished and published in 1881 ;
the Old Testament in 1885.

In 1 87 1 the Purchas judgment condemned the
vestments, the eastward position of the celebrant, the
wafer-bread, and the mixed chalice in the administra-
tion of the holy communion, as illegal. This was
modified by the Risdall judgment, 1877, which de-
clared the vestments and wafer-bread illegal, but au-
thorized the eastward position, provided the manual
acts were not concealed from the congregation.

In 1 87 1 there arose a great agitation concerning
the compulsory use of the so-called Athanasian Creed
in divine service. Lord Shaftesbury's name ^^^^
led those of seven thousand laymen pro- Athanasian
testing against such use. Dr. Pusey op-
posed any change as a betrayal of the faith. A
clergyman wrote the archbishop, asking him how, in
his dying hour, he could have any hope of mercy for
this attempt to " depreciate, or set aside, one great
portion of the Catholic faith." On the advocacy of
the archbishop, in 1873, the following rubric on that
Creed was adopted:

" For the removal of ' doubts, and to prevent dis-
quieting in the use of the Creed commonly called the
Creed of St. Athanasius, this Synod [the convocation
of Canterbury] doth solemnly declare :

"i. That the Confession of our Christian Faith,
commonly called the Creed of St. Athanasius, doth not
make any addition to the faith as contained in the
Holy Scripture, but warneth against errors which,
from time to time, have arisen in the Church of Christ.

" 2. That, as Holy Scripture in divers places doth
34



530 History of the Christian Church.

promise life to them that beheve and declare the con-
demnation of them that believe not, so doth the
Church in this Confession declare the necessity, for all
who would be in a state of salvation, of holding fast
the Catholic faith, and the great peril of rejecting the
same. Wherefore the warnings in the Confession of
Faith are to be understood no otherwise than the
like warnings in Holy Scripture ; for we must receive
God's threatenings, even as his promises, in such wise
as they are generally set forth in Holy Writ. More-
over, the Church doth not herein pronounce judgment
on any particular person, or persons, God alone being
judge of all."

In 1874 a Public Worship Regulation Act was
adopted, which was a rock of offense to the ritualist
party. Some of their members, as Messrs. Tooth and
Green, lay a long time in prison on account of infrac-
tions of this law, and would not accept pardon. The
lyincoln judgment rendered it largely nugatory. In
1875 and 1882, Mr. Moody and Mr. Sankey visited
England, and accomplished great good at Oxford,
Cambridge, and I^ondon. lyord Shaftesbury said that
** Moody would do more in an hour than Canon
lyiddon in a century." Nevertheless, the archbishop
would not give his aid or countenance to the move-
ment. But in 1876 he held a conference at Lambeth;
six English bishops meeting twenty-two Nonconform-
ist ministers and two clergymen of the Church of
Scotland.

In 1877 ^^ immense excitement was produced by
the publication of ''The Priest in Absolution," a
translation of Gaume's " Manual for the Use of Ro-
man CathoHc Priests in the Confessional." The book



Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 531

was bitterly denounced in the House of Lords, and
was withdrawn from sale. The Second Lambeth Con-
ference was held in 1878, one hundred bishops being
present. They adopted a Declaration on Confession,
which affirmed: "This special provision [tor occa-
sional confession of those in trouble or sick], how-
ever, does not authorize the ministers of the Church
to require, from any who may resort to them to open
their grief, a particular or detailed enumeration of all
their sins, or to require private confession previous to
receiving 'Holy Communion,' or to enjoin or even
encourage any practice of habitual confession to a
priest, or to teach that such practice of habitual con-
fession, or the being subject to what has been termed
the direction of a priest, is a condition of attaining to
the highest spiritual life." The archbishop wrote his
own view in answer to an inquiry: "You ask if it is
necessary to go to confession before receiving Holy
Communion? To this I answer. Certainly not. The
Church of England does not recognize what is com-
monly called sacramental confession, still less is such
confession inculcated by our Church as necessary."

In 1880, sixteen thousand clergymen, led by
Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln, protested against
the Burials Act allowing Nonconformists to bury in
English churchyards with their own burial service.
The bill, nevertheless, passed in September; but only
at rare intervals have any cared to avail themselves
of its provisions.

The year 1878 was an eventful one for Archbishop
Tait. His daughter Edith married his secretary and
chaplain, the present Primate of England; his son,
recently ordained and just returned from America,



532 History of the Christian Church.

died; and in December the devoted wife and mother
followed him. Archbishop Tait was interested in the
centennial of the Sunday-school movement in 1880,
and in the appearance of the Revised Version of the
English Bible. The death of Dean Stanley and Pres-
ident Garfield deeply touched him. On Advent Sun-
day, 1882, he ceased from earthly toil, and entered
into rest.

Archbishop Tait was more of a statesman than a
Churchman. The foreign news was always read to
him first, and he cared comparatively little for Church
periodicals and news; these came last. He was a
Broad Churchman, and had no sympathy with ritual-
ism or auricular confession. Though the Bennett
judgment in 1872 decided that "the objective, real,
actual, and spiritual presence " could be legally taught
in the Church of England, Dr. Tait would not have
cared to teach it. He was a man with many-sided in-
tellectual tastes, and read largely in secular literature
until his death.

He had admirable qualities for his great position.
While of sound scholarship, he was not an eloquent
preacher, but was the most persuasive orator in the
House of Eords that has occupied the See of Canter-
bury in more than a hundred years. Eord Granville
said: "Of all our great speakers, none had more the
gift of persuasiveness. This arose from a sense of
his strength, earnestness, gentleness, and charity. He
united, to a remarkable degree, dignity and sim-
plicity." In his letters, "he said exactly what he
meant, but he said it with a courtesy which does not
always accompany straightforwardness and simplicity
of style."



Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 533

His manner of doing business reveals a first-class
administrator, with the instincts of a gentleman and
a Christian. "First," says his secretary and son-in-
law, now Archbishop Davidson, "his invariable anx-
iety was to regard the matter rather than the manner
of every letter he received. 'Angry? Of course he
is. Never mind that; what is it he asks me to do?'
The letter might be prosy or longwinded, or curt
even to rudeness. It might be overflowing with per-
sonal grievances, or sternly reticent or reserved. It
was all the same. ' What is his point ? What do you
gather are the facts ?' If the story was a long one,
especially in colonial matters, where our geography
or history was at fault, he would have written out for
us in black and white a brief, cold statement of the
unvarnished facts, and then, if necessary, he would go
into the whole matter with that strange penetration
which seemed to carry him straight to the point of a
controversy, whether in great things or small. I have
never known any one else who could, with the same
quick clearness, disentangle the threads of an intricate
correspondence on some entirely novel subject. He
would always dictate an answer or decision the mo-
ment he had listened ta the letter, and would then
leave it, if necessary, to * simmer ' for a day, and to be
criticised from end to end before it was sent off. And,
generally, if the matter was a complicated one, he
would at the last moment, before signing the letter,
restate the case aloud in a few clear sentences, as he
walked about the room. ' The man asks me to do so
and so. I have answered that I won't, and for two
reasons: first, that it isn't my business; and secondly,
that I think he is in the wrong. Will that do?' "



534 History of the Christian Church.

Archbishop Tait was a man of sincere piety. In
1864, Bishop Whipple asked him, "Why do you per-
mit the ritualism of those clergy in East London?"
With deep feeling and with tears in his eyes he an-
swered: "Bishop, these men realize that those poor
lost souls can be saved, and that our blessed Lord
is their Savior as he is ours. Who am I, to meddle
with such work as they are doing, in the way they
think best, for those who are going down to death?"

Few words of greater practical wisdom for men
liable to worry or overstrain, or to spiritual forgetful-
ness under the pressure of administrative detail, have
been spoken than these of Archbishop Tait: "Two
things are essential to a man's due discharge of each
day's round of monotonous and often tiresome duties.
The first, to keep the spirit fresh by constant prayer;
the second, to quicken and enlarge the intelligence by
the constant reading, under whatever difl&culties or
drawbacks, of books upon other subjects than those
belonging to working hours."

The successor of Dr. Tait in the See of Canter-
bury was Edward White Benson (1829-1896). Dr.
Benson was educated with Bishops Light-
^Benion!" ^^^t and Wcstcott at King Edward's School,
Birmingham, and the three were at Trinity
College, Cambridge, and until their deaths the most
devoted friends. This friendship had important effects
upon the after career of each of them, and especially
upon that of Benson, the youngest of them. Benson's
father, a chemist and manufacturer, died while his son
was young. In 1848 he entered Cambridge. Two
years later his sister was ill with typhoid fever. He
sat in his room at college writing a letter to his



Evangelical Church in Great Britain. 535

mother, expressing his sympathy and anxiety, and
hoping she was better, when the message came that
she was dead. He took the train for home, and
arrived only to learn that his mother, overwearied
with the care of her daughter, had died the night
after his sister's decease. He found also that she had
so invested her property in an annuity upon her own
life that there was but $500 left for the whole family.
For young Benson there seemed as the sole duty and
prospect to leave the university and seek to support
those depending upon him. He went back to Cam-
bridge to prepare for this future. As he entered the
quadrangle, Mr. Martin, the treasurer of the college,
met him; he was well-to-do and unmarried. That
night he called upon Benson in his room, and
arranged that he should go on unhindered in his
college course. This unlooked-for and providential
kindness was the turning-point in the career of the
future Archbishop of Canterbury. Well did the
young student justify the confidence placed in him.
In 1852 he graduated and took the highest honor, the
chancellor's medal. No other triumph of his life
gave him greater joy. His eldest son bore his bene-
factor's name.

The same year he went to Rugby as one of the
masters of the school. Two years later he traveled
on the Continent, visiting Rome, and was ordained
deacon. After seven years at Rugby he was chosen
headmaster at WeUington College, a new institution
founded for the training of the sons of ofiicers of the